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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
OK. I might have been too pessimistic myself! April 6th appears too far now. Demonstrations continue to show up out of no where all over Cairo. And a date is set for Friday after the prayers for crowds to go out of mosques in marches and sit in public squares around the country "to bring down the regime."
Things r looking real now. Revolution is triggering in the minds of many.
All hopes.
I was in the protests all day and all night, and I organized some. It's been amazing amazing. People, people, people everywhere with unbelievable numbers, and reports coming from so many places in Cairo and around the country. Unbelievable. The 1977 riots were spontaneous food riots. Yesterday's demonstrations had its date set, its plan outlined and executed by street activists like 6 April youth, etc. The plan was genius and it worked perfectly despite overwhelming police presence. But the enthusiasm of the regular folk and the inspiration from Tunisia (more like jealousy) was moving masses of all kinds. The 1977 were riots; yesterday's were organized demonstrations and marches, very peaceful, challenging the full knowledge and watch of a police apparatus of more then 2 millions.
In many ways, Egyptian grass root protest activists have passed a giant threshold yesterday and they've been joined by thousands and thousands, and they've received the most powerful boost of self-confidence they've ever experienced in their life times.
We will come back very soon. I recommend you keep an eye on April 6th.
hophmi's is actually the most common "counter-argument" to criticism of Israel these days, and it's quite pleasant. It shows Zionists are cornered into being - even if just implicitly - self-critical. The "singling out Israel" argument implicitly admits that Israel is guilty just as Sudan, Iran, etc, are. Israel is just one of those pariah states and targeting it is not wrong in principle, but "wrong" for external reasons. That's quite an improvement. I cannot hide my joy when I hear this "counter-argument". Of course, it usually succeeds in dragging the conversation into useless and irrelevant comparisons between crimes, thereby positioning the anti-Israel activist in the defence, as you can see in this conversation. But the long term outcome of equating and comparing Israel to other pariah states is definitely positive.
Of course, that "counter-argument" is no argument at all. It makes criticism of Israel and action against it, and indeed of any other criminal, a practical impossibility. If a critique of a state crime or an action against it had to include every single crime committed by every other state in the world for it to be approved as genuine, no criminal would have ever been brought to justice. It is just the nature of the world that people feel more closer to, or informed of, an injustice that they feel compelled to act against it, perhaps wit their full capacity. (Talk about the Israeli support and exchange with pro-Israel Arab dictators). In my mind, I see it quite natural for a Jewish person or an Arab to have Palestine on their top list, given that Arab governments are executives of the atrocities (Egypt, for example, donates gas to Israel and does the dirty job of Israel by shooting African immigrants trying to get into Israel and by building underground walls to strengthen the siege of Gaza) . Also, Western citizens definitely have a direct concern given the exceptional support their states give to Israel on their behalf and using their tax-money and their resources.
It's all good, Witty. Get some rest.
"It is only a vector to out and out war, that will result in far more suffering and far more removal of Palestinian residents, and permanently."
You sure qualify to be an Israeli Prime Minister, Witty. All you need now is an IDF and you are good to go. Far more suffering and far more removal of Palestinian residents, and permanently, sounds real ambitious. You will have to beat your own masters.
"Insisting on the unlimited right of return of ambiguous [Jewish] descendants of residents of [ancient] sovereign Israel, will prohibit any reconciliation," said Richard Witty.
--"The Greek classical tradition was transmitted to Europe via the Muslim world, in Arabic."
There is a common, in many cases unintentional, omission people make when they mention the fact that Muslims preserved and transferred Greek knowledge. Muslims did that, but more importantly, they developed it further and produced so much more, and, additionally, they connected the east to the west and transferred knowledge of other civilizations like the Persian, the Indian and the Chinese. I think it was the Oxford history of Islam that mentioned that the amount of written knowledge that was produced in the Muslim civilization (in the middle ages) is more than what was produced by all of humanity before it. In another work, the suggestion was that the roots of the Western civilization are as Arabic as they are Greek and Latin.
They trash Arabs as backward and their regimes as dictatorships ("Israel is the only democracy" non-sense) and all the rest, but they cite those regimes and they matter much when it comes to invading another country. How does this work both ways? The Arab people absolutely hate their governments which, without the massive Western support, wouldn't have survived. Except for the minority of Wahhabi fanatics who live in a Sunni vs. Shi'i world (along with everything that the West is supposedly against, of oppressing women and religious minorities, etc) Arabs would love to see anyone else other than Israel with a bomb in the region.
I liked Jon Stewart's response to O'Reilly when he was asked "If Iran gets the bomb, it will be in the hands of a guy named 'Akhmed'" as if bearing the name means u r insane (something I can't judge since I am one of these people. How does one prove he is not insane?) Jon asked him "Doesn't Pakistan have the bomb? Doesn't Russia have the bomb..." etc. "Couldn't they give it to "Akhmed? The problem is not who has it. The problem is the weapon." O'Reilly responded by asking Jon "U r Jewish, aren't u?!" as if being Jewish means u r pro-war. That's worse than being insane!
I was just watching some of he Herzliya conference on "Winning the Narrative," where that guy from the Reut institute was speaking. Am I the only one who finds it weird to see a massive government officials and think tanks of a Middle-Eastern country gathering in a European country to discuss how they can organize hasbara internationally?! These people are openly advocating the manipulation of social media and the enlisting of their citizens and European and American citizens in the service of propagating a state message! Does that not scare, or at least disgust, anyone?
Activists also joined in commemoration by trending #Gaza on twitter. Check the action story at link to justicentric.posterous.com
and link to nadinemoawad.com
So 1) the internationally renewed, Rwanda and Yugoslavia trials-sitting, Hebrew University-honored, Jewish Justice Richard Goldstone, 2) the International Court of Justice and 3) the Anti-Racism Conference are war against Israel? If this is not the most explicit, it is the most eloquent way to say that his country is racist and unjust.
If Israeli Jews can accept full equality with their fellow Palestinians citizens, then they necessarily accept their right of return as they do for Jews wordwide. Either Palestinian Israelis live as demographic threats indefinitely or some bi-national arrangement has to take place.
I think it was Bernard Avishai speaking at the J Street conference who discussed the "Judeans" as "the real demographic problem.” I don't remember his words exactly. Is that an emerging national brand among religious settlers in Jerusalem and the West Bank? I do remember Avishai wondering how many Israelis are going to fight the Judeans for the sake of the Palestinians should there be effort to dismantle the settlements.
So we are working on the bigger picture and Levy is sort of filling in the details. He is doing it in a simple and powerful way. Demand respect for the law.
Thanks Michael for counting "one billion Muslims" against you. That's quite an honor for them. I hope they will not disappoint you. (By the way, they are more than 1.5 billion now: link to pewforum.org
I am impressed by the massive racialization of "Chinese" and "Indians" and the Muslims and bla bla bla. This is the chief Israeli diplomat in the United States speaking.
OK. We all know Obama is a well-intentioned man who sees exactly where the problem is. It sure is still highly unlikely any such final status negotiations will lead to something or will even be held in the next 8 years. However, one is hoping the pressure from a respected president like Obama will open up the debate a little bit in American media. The response from the arrogant and crazies will place them in opposition to American liberals and progressives. Or wait until Obama loses the second term because of them. Losing the liberal and progressive stronghold will deal a decisive blow to the Zionists. What Obama can do is shift the limits of the debate, legitimize the Palestinian struggle and make it very hard to return to the times when Israel could be so innovative in massacring the people of Gaza.
Also, let's hope at some point he will pressure for lifting the siege of Gaza. It's a shame. I think this is the issue of the day. It is clearly more important than the "final status negotiations." Phil, why don't you give some coverage to the Gaza Freedom March? link to
Just want to say, being Muslim and Arab myself, with masters and (an ongoing) Phd in studies that relate to the Middle East, I find your comments on the Muslim world and on Arabs exceptionally informed and informative.
--"If you think that the veil is limited to the other side of the world you oughta try visiting Brooklyn a little more often, Mr. Weiss."
Therefore?!
You are right. If they threw rockets in this demonstration, they shouldn't just be called non-violent; they should be treated like this: link to mondoweiss.net
link to mondoweiss.net
Give me a break with the "existential threat" and the "national threat." Everything the Israeli government talks about is an existential threat!
The racial exclusivity is unsustainable. Period.
Fact is, this WordPress system is entirely inadequate for carrying on any extended discussion.
We can always use a plugin like the one we had in the older interface.
The best Phil can do, and not just for Richard, is to make the comment system display the last comment first and the first comment last. I admire this system in big news portals because it does not give "Internet soldiers" monopoly on the attention of the readers. Think about it. By giving the first commenter the right to always show his comment first, you are giving that commenter as much, if not more, attention and credit than the blog author and the blog post. You know that every single reader of your post will read what the first commenter had to say, and the later one is posting a comment, the less likely that comment will be EVER read and the less encouraged he or she is to comment.
On the other hand, rolling down comments so that the last one posted shows first will expose more comments, diversify the attention and deny the monopoly of it to "soldiers," and will make the comments more up-to-date.
The only way out of this (for someone looking for attention) is to post unusual number of first-level comments in every post. But in this case, abuse will be more easily spotted.
Also:
5) Every homosapien is an irrational maniac genetically engineered for loving to hate us and for a fetish for Hitler.
After what the crusaders did in Palestine (genocide, destruction, expulsion, etc) to both Muslims and Jews, what did Salah al-Din did to them while having the power to do otherwise?
In the millennia of history in Palestine, who was the most tolerant group to Jews while in power: the Romans, the Crusaders or the Muslims?
Didn't Muslim give Jews refuge from European expulsion in Spain and, yes, in Palestine?
NPR had a story running yesterday about the Muslims who saved the Jews from the holocaust in Europe. Check it out: link to npr.org
--"Host Liane Hansen speaks with photographer Norman Gershman about his book Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II, which is also the subject of a documentary called God's House. Greshman spent five years collecting stories of Albanian Muslims who harbored Jewish refugees during World War II."
Feel free to delete this comment! Many of these books are available at link to gigapedia.info
Use that address to search instead of the homepage and, also, you have to register to see the links.
Awesome. Was looking for a list like this Thanks very much. I am saving this page.
You think Israel, the US and Abbas will allow another elections to take place? No way they will fall into this "trap" again. They cannot afford another victory by Hamas. If they could destroy this government, they paid a heavy price. Even if it is a slight chance, another victory for Hamas will be too much for the "champions of democracy" to take.
Abbad and Fayyad are not illegitimate only because they made a coup against the elected government. They, and Fatah, have lately been transformed into another Arab state government. All the funding they get is not from Israel, the US and the donating countries. And all the resistance forces they had have been put on paid retirement and the new forces have been trained by Dayton (the forces that proudly suppressed the Palestinian dissent against the latest massacre of Gaza). Those are the "representatives" of the Palestinian people who will soon "negotiate" with Israel.
Bye Bye Two State Solution. Will miss you.
--"No white gentile can effectively criticize organized and collective jewish conduct, same as he/she cannot criticise similar black conduct."
True, except unfortunately when it comes to "Arabs" (whom I fail to figure out why are they treated as a race when they, the peoples usually associated with the term, are obviously not) or Muslims. The latter two groups are much much more easily targeted with racism and discrimination, even when they are perceived to be acting collectively. I think this is maybe because: 1) Arabs/Muslims (hardly synonymous, but for some reason treated as such) are not actually acting collectively, seeing that their governments are somewhere and their people are in another, 2) they are just way too much in the way of our interests (oil, strategic location, etc). There is too much struggle in Arab/Muslim societies for them to have any influence comparable to that of the Jews. It is not that they lack historical narratives of Western oppression or sources of influence. They just can't play the game "right."
Richard Witty must have some kind of a notification service turned on for posts uploaded here. He is always the first to comment. One other strategy he is pursuing, and which I've seen elsewhere, is to write other first level comment on the same page again and again, sometimes just repeating the same idea in the first comment. The rest of the people who comment end up catching up and stay on the defense and Richard gets to focus the conversation to his advantage. The reader gets the feeling that there is much opposition to what is being said and more readily reaches the "conclusion" that the issue is "controversial." This conclusion, of course, by disabling the forming of an opinion and paralyzing action, is to the advantage of the oppressor and the dominant in the relationship and ensures the continuity of the massive funding and arming of Israel.
There is another side of this; it keeps the likes of Richard Witty busy. It drains the resources of the IDF in continuous battles on the Internet. Israel thinks that oppressing the Palestinians long enough will get them to leave or to to indefinitely submit. They are missing the human element in the equation. But they are also missing it in another context. The perpetual state of conflict, confrontation and alarm Israelis are paying for sustaining their domination of Palestinians will pressure them, will radicalize them and will isolate them so that before the civil world intervenes, they might very well individually and socially break down themselves.
Thank you very much for highlighting this.
OK. Ignorant question: JSF is link to
?
You of all the websites are going to slow down because of money? Come on, man. You are hands-down the best source of news and commentary on the I/P situation. I have hundreds of blogs/news portals/etc in my RSS feeds and yours is the only one I type its address in my browser and visit daily.
There are so many ways to generate money. Why do you not have any kind of ads on the site. Use Google's adsense or something like that. You can get it up and running in a couple of minutes. That should generate some money if you have a good number of regular visitors. There are scripts that would politely ask visitors to disable ad blocking if it detects that they have them (seen it on dailykos).
Also, option 5 (PBS-style fund drive) is a good idea. I've seen it work on many liberal outlets. Give it a shot.
Seriously, what are those supporting the settlements planning on doing with the Palestinians?! My guess is sending them to Jordan? I also heard arguments that the more land Israel gets, the more it will be able to take in negotiations. Do they really think this is possible? I just can't get their long-term plan.
I loved this video. This is what what I call resistance.next!
What the video is trying to convey, and I think this is clear at the end, is that the issue of the systematic and deliberate erasure of the Palestinian culture, hardly disputable, needs to be addressed. It needs to be acknowledged, and yes, needs to be, at least, apologized for. We recently heard apologies from colonial nations, like Australia, for their extermination of the indigenous peoples. But I guess Israel will only do that when Palestinians are like the indigenous peoples of Australia and America and Canada, etc, when they are politically insignificant, wen the apology has no practical consequences. This is probably the single most important failure of Israel; it couldn't marginalize the indigenous people of Palestine enough. The biggest problems for Israel right now is the EXISTENCE of a large number of Palestinians (and their sympathizers). If somehow Israel manages to make them disappear, Israel will gladly open its archives, Zionist historians will suddenly be enlightened, they will apologize for the whole thing, and they will probably make museums full with full-size 3D models of Palestinian men and women in their traditional clothes.