Total number of comments: 218 (since 2010-02-23 14:51:28)
atime forpeace
an interested observer...and a critical thinker of american foreign policy intentions and interests.
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- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status … 22
- Israel takes 30 dunams of land near Salfit ‘for security … 4
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- Israeli judge to issue verdict in Rachel Corrie case 94
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Ira et al, keep in mind that if Iran is attacked and if it turns into an intractable world conflagration there is one group in the crosshairs that will be scapegoated if things do not go as they plan which seems to be a pretty fair expectation given their past performance at prognosticating other military adventures which they fomented.
Just remember how easy it was to scapegoat the migrants who cross the river and come here to work for slave wages when the economy turned down...given the right circumstances certain groups have a target on their back...history can serve as a peek into the future for when an easily identifiable population segment foments for political actions that are deemed unacceptable by the native population, especially when things go awry, my guess is that the cross will be bared as in the past.
The term israel firster wasn't feared by the Dersh and the neocon minions for nought, they see in it a hate filled appelation which points blame for military actions on an easily identified group.
They are concerned and for good reason given what history has taught those who wish to learn.
The Iranian peaceful nuclear enrichment program as has been established by the U.S agencies whose job it is to analyse such information have concluded that Iran does not have a nuclear arms program.
link to antiwar.com
I no longer think that the west will ever attack Iran, the rest of the worlds western puppet nations can not afford either financially nor politically this imposition from the U.S and will simply just not go along.
The narrative of attacking and hating Iran is nurtured just in case they can ever muster enough popular support to warrant an attack, so unless the Iranians start to crucify christians or put yellow starts on their jewish population or maybe bayonet babies in their incubators or can be accused of commiting some heinous concoction of a crime, i am in the highly doubters camp on this one.
The europeans can not be led by the nose into any more of these western concocted schemes to stay engaged against the moooz-slims, european politics seem to be turning against the old order, from what i can surmise the new enemy du jour for the United States is China, will be China, and can not be anything other than China, as we are seeing and will continnue to see as we time travel towards our destiny.
2 cents worth of tea leaf reading.
What would you say? If Israel didn't exist as a state would the u.s be doing what they are doing in the middle east or is everything happening there directly related to that flea on a dogs back of a nation called israel.
In other words do these .... really have that much financial power that they can make a nation like the u.s go into what could turn into ww3 with a total disregard for human life.
i just want to hear that the u.s in and of themselves would be pursuing these same interests in that part of the world so that my unnatural inclination to dislike a group of people would not make me feel paranoid that i may be anti anyone.
Say it ain't so shane.
Here is what the neocons have wrought us...contempt for the Gov't of the United States.
Turkish reflections: What I learned at the Istanbul World Political Forum
Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, May 21, 2012 - 12:06 PM
"2. One of the more vivid impressions I took from the conference was the prevailing wariness -- if not outright suspicion -- with which the United States was viewed by many of the attendees. Virtually any statement that cast even mild doubt about U.S. policy (on Iran, Middle East peace, past interventions, Iraq, etc.) drew spontaneous approval from the audience, even if the statements weren't especially provocative, penetrating, or anti-American. For example, in the panel on a possible war with Iran, I suggested that if the U.S. wanted to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons, it might make sense to stop threatening Tehran with regime change. The audience immediately burst into loud applause. Similar statements by journalist and professor Stephen Kinzer and Juergen Chrobog of the BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt elicited much the same response. And most of the questions (or diatribes) from the audience were either explicitly or implicitly critical of the U.S. position. I had a similar experience in my other panel as well.
I wish some U.S. government officials had been there to observe this phenomenon, because it drove home to me the degree to which U.S. policy is regarded by many is inherently myopic, selfish, and illegitimate. (And the positive bump produced by Obama's election in 2008 is long gone). It's not a deep hatred of Americans themselves, but rather a simmering resentment of America's global role."
They played that poor little rich boy like a stradivarius, i wonder just how embarrassed GW feels having been played the fool by the neocon orchestra.
Bill Kristol does a very good Jackie Mason imitation just before the end of that clip.
Talented fellow isn't he.
giladg, with all due respect what is the difference? please do obfuscate on for us.
" Widespread miss-use of this term is directed at Israel"
Do you usually puke right after you have to repeat such dribble, does your concience have a board to resonate against, is that where the problem lies?
If the palestinians were the jews and today would be somewhere in the 1930's where would you best guess we be?
Can you wax Churchillian for us?
more prose from the heart of zion follows.
"What are you offering Jews Mr. Barghouti?"
You gilad. surely must be kidding?
After all these years, that is the most humanity zion could offer the palestinians, to ask/allow them to give more, what an offer.
So if the palestinians were the jews just how far would you go with them? what if the world wasn't even looking, what barbarous acts might Israel commit?
is there a limit?
in one word or less.
Dr Barghouti, An excellent article/manifesto.
Let us hope you can find a partner for non-violent change that recognizes the humanity of the palestinians and is not just thinking about the land they covet.
It is a sorry lot you must negotiate with for your human rights, but they are the overlords.
This meddling is the main reason why i see a blowback of epic proportions for this clan...historically it aint ever been pretty, historically they have also been the scapegoats, and if their meddling in the politics of the u.s is any indication of what has occurred in the past then there is no reason to expect anything different. The americans will not like what they find in the ashes of their crumbling empire, namely the fingerprints left behind at the scene of the crime and someone will be scapegoated.
Right now its all the muslim terrorist fault for everything, but that story can't hold water for much longer even among the most misinformed.
The Foxman's, and the Joe Lieberman congressman types of the world will never back down, they just charge forward always believing they are doing God's work and thinking that they can fool everyman all the time, but being out of touch with reality they miss the signs warning of the coming storm.
History is a guide for many things why not this thing also?
Phil we are not losing we are winning them over one at a time, these jewish friends of yours who went on the tour have always been Israels friends, you tried to turn them but they have been courted back, that is all, in the meantime go tell it on the mountain, it's the right thing to do, look at it sort of like your midlife barmitzva project.
by the way everytime i go to a bar or bat mitzva now i always think of Rachel Corrie, who trained in the jewish way went out to do her good deed to help people and was taken by the predator state.
As i heard it tell and also have read the tales of, Russia once upon a time used to invite other national communist from round the world to a tour of the motherland to show off their proleterian wonderland so as to impress their disciples, the potemkin villages would light up at night during the long train rides across russia on their way into moscow where they were headed to receive their marching orders.
Israel is rotting from within. The tours serve only to impress on their acolytes how beautiful things look from the outside.
Qestion: Is it really that bad for the Gov't of the United States that the jewish lobby here in our nation can actually cause that much consternation for you that you are not even allowed to field a legitimate question with regards a humanitarian issue involving the Palestinian prisnoners on a prolonged hunger strike? Is that lobby that powerful?
Answer:
"For the greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
President John F. Kennedy june 1962
Snoop dog. JFK was caught in the crosshairs of his many many enemies, the anti communist domino theorists despised him most of all, anything else was just icing on the cake for that bunch of ultra paranoid alcoholic rabble.
"who like Lyndon Johnson was more compliant than their predecessor, the late John Kennedy."
I find this entire story of his escape so damn hard to buy into, the idea of a blind man pulling something like this off without the aid of his captors defies credulity.
Well done Phil.
Check out what Jeremy Haber says about the impotent Israel-lobby...where have you been living Proff Emeritus Slater?
He also mentions the many blogs that deal with the I/P issue but doesnt even mention mondoweiss dot net.
" I want to take (mild) issue with that, and especially with MJ Rosenberg, who today wrote: "If he speaks out on Israel/Palestine, the lobby will try to shut him down....After all, if they can shut Paul Krugman up, who exactly will be allowed to speak?"
A bit over the top, dear MJ? "They?" "shut Krugman up?" Who will be "allowed" to speak?
The Israel lobby isn't that powerful, indeed not by a long, long shot. Indeed, by suggesting that the lobby has the power to shut up the critics, we are in danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn't take much bravery to take on the lobby; rather, a fear of doing so, when the consequences are so trivial, might be labeled as timidity."
I found this from Pepe Escobar of Asia Times which sheds some light on the change from war with Iran to a focus on China.
I guess we just didn't enough time to get around to Iran, and if Syria is to go it will be a NATO operation, Libyia-like.
link to atimes.com
"Before 9/11, the Bush administration had been focused on China as its future global enemy number one. Then 9/11 redirected it to what the Pentagon called "the arc of instability," the oil heartlands of the planet extending from the Middle East through Central Asia. Given Washington's distraction, Beijing calculated that it might enjoy a window of roughly two decades in which the pressure would be largely off. In those years, it could focus on a breakneck version of internal development, while the US was squandering mountains of money on its nonsensical "Global War on Terror."
Twelve years later, that window is being slammed shut as from India, Australia, and the Philippines to South Korea and Japan, the US declares itself back in the hegemony business in Asia. Doubts that this was the new American path were dispelled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's November 2011 manifesto in Foreign Policy magazine, none too subtly labeled "America's Pacific Century." (And she was talking about this century, not the last one!)"
Phil, it has been an amazing turn of events watching all of these secret service guys coming out from both Israel and the U.S and basically walking back all of the "imminent war talk" against iran, what i find most intriguing is where did the change of orders come from exactly?
Was it Pentagon? I don't know, but sometime ago someone or some series of someones made a decision and then the dominoes just started lining up, does it have to do with the potential for economic upheaval and the resulting chaos that could ensue?
As best i remember CJCS Gen. Dempsey was the first major American official who was sent out to make an official statement.
any ideas?
Since AIPAC is THE reason why Israel is at the center of American Foreign Policy this is apropos to the story, methinks.
How does AIPAC endanger America? Workshop videos now online
April 23, Washington, DC--Video from the March 3, 2012 workshop "AIPAC: What it is, who its allies are, why it's dangerous and how to stop it" sessions are now available over the Internet. Turn off HD (high definition) for faster video streaming.
AIPAC History Proto-AIPAC's incubation in the Israeli embassy in 1948. Strategic direction-setting by the Mossad and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Confrontations with the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations and the secret battle over registration as an Israeli foreign agent. FBI espionage investigations of AIPAC. AIPAC and the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons program. The grassroots fight for transparency, regulatory oversight and accountability. Presented by Grant F. Smith, Director of IRmep
link to vimeo.com
"When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published their 2005 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, it was vulnerable to predictably lurid charges in part because it was not just aimed at the powerful American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The authors also insisted on documenting a much wider phenomenon, and their use of the somewhat vague term “Israel lobby” did not properly elaborate that AIPAC and scores of other politically powerful non-religious Jewish organizations like it are all affiliates of the larger Conference of Presidents. Peter Beinart’s original essay in The New York Review of Books, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” spoke more directly to this reality and provided the more apt and precise term “American Jewish Establishment,” of which the Israel lobby is merely a part.
IT IS LARGELY FOR THIS VERY REASON THAT BEINART’S EXPOSURE OF THIS ESTABLISHMENT HAS PROVOKED YET UNPRECEDENTED HYSTERIA FROM THE FAMOUSLY HYSTERICAL NEOCONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. HE HAS BEEN GIVEN A MEGAPHONE TO ANNOUNCE TO THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST TIME WHAT INFORMED AMERICAN JEWS HAVE ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD ABOUT THE NEOCONS — THAT THEY, IN FACT, ARE THE TRUE SELF-HATING JEWS, WITH THEIR PATHOLOGICAL HATRED OF ANY EXPRESSION OF JUDAISM’S TRADITIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE and other affronts to the Spartan virtues. In short, he has said everything about the American Jewish Establishment for which Pat Buchanan and Norman Finkelstein were so brutally vilified in years past."
link to original.antiwar.com
Can Mjayrosenberg have his job back now that everyone is out of the closet.
Pretty amazing writing Bruce, you make a most compelling argument.
zionist captivities are usually resolved by a nationalist spirit of animus against those perceived to be trying to destroy the nation wherein their activities are perceived to be dominant and generally do not play out over thousands of years, historically a hundred years seems to be an outlier.
Hubris is incurable they say.
Goldberg et al don't see themselves as the rest of us see them, apparently they think they are invisible, either that, or they really think that the u.s and israel are one and the same, or that the american people are dumb as f-*k and simply can't understand all the "adult talk", so they think that the kids just don't understand that the parents are fighting and a divorce is impending.
"The Zionist Captivity. "
Historically zionist captivities have evolved into an animus directed against those perceived to be the zionists.
History can never be a precise guide for the future, and things of this nature have never occurred in the past exactly as they are occurring now.
It all reminds me of that line from the Trix cereal commercial.
to quote the words of Jesus Christ from a conversation with a lawyer from Luke 10:25-
25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
33But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
34And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
36Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
37And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
If these churches are followers of Jesus Christ I do not see how they can turn their back on the Palestinians and not stand with them in their hour of need.
"So it must grapple the U.S. to its soul with hoops of steel."
Excellent word picture.
Israel first medal of dishonor for Cantor.
It's a special country for special people, what else can be said about what this experiment supported by the nations of the west and wealth has evolved into, sort of like a frankensteins monster.
no ammount of hasbara can make this turd smell like anything other than what it is.
when the levy breaks i'd hate to be in the vicinity, they may need those nukes to threaten national suicide if the world gets any closer, stand back or we will nuke ourselves, i can see it from here all you need is to have vision.
It is really a shame that at this important time MJ Rosenberg is not over at a major news site offering up information that may inform the masses and wake them up out of their controlled narrative induced slumber that will more than likely lead the world into a neocon war of choice which will destroy innocent iranian lives and cause untold financial chaos, but as long as the few can benefit from these wars i guess it will be full steam ahead, damn the torpedos.
here are a few clues to discovering the password and get into the cloud, Dostoievski gives us a clue.
"True, it is very difficult to learn the forty-century-long history of a people such as the Jews; but, to start with, this much I know, that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly after each step and word of theirs, - about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom." Dostoievsky
the only oppressed peoples ever, and forget about any other people ever getting killed during a war, there were only one people that mattered.
Gunther ought to apply for entry into Israel as a peace activist going on behalf of the German people in an attempt to try to keep the world from the horrors of another catastrophic war.
I saw him deliver it, it felt not right at all. These losers are trying to create "facts on the ground" so they can then move with support.
The smear mongering community must be running ads for new positions opening up everyday now, they must be shorthanded with all these new revelations, this is the "Saul of Tarsus" moment for ex Israel apologists.
The waves just keep crashing on the shores of Zioism.
Hey eguard, i think it's because anyone who dares try to speak a truth about israel gets smeared by the zionist bund as an anti semite.
in case you want to look up some examples of what i mean and the reason why neither men nor women too often dare to speak up on israels crimes, look up
jimmy carter, desmond tutu, mearsheimer and walt, judge goldstone they made a real example of him and attacked him and his grandsons barmitzva, norman finkelstein, mjrosenberg had a whole article in the newyork times trying to get him fired, lets see whom else has been smeared by the dreaded ziobund see if you can search and name a few others, the numbers would astound you.
basically all classless stuff but what else can one expect from those zionists right?
"Israel first"
and then these great american journalist will wonder later why the american public turned no them, and the jewish american community will think it just came out of nowhere, evidence of the anti semitic gene in the white european gene pool.
Israel first is an apropos appellation for the ad hominem smear mongers whose job it is to discredit the messenger in order to diminish the value of the message and to keep their peeps in the dark.
Israel first
Yeap, we had one of our players in the majors and he decided to go back to single a ball because he felt compassion for his comrades in the minors.
Thanks Mjay, the next time you get to move back up to the show please take em up on it and put the cause back in the spotlight.
this is on Mjays site today.
"But, followed to its logical conclusion that means that criticizing Israel and its lobby is, in fact, dangerous and I had to leave to protect an organization I love from people who, in their single-minded devotion to the Israeli government, will go after anyone and anything who stands in their way."
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you either have a voice or you don't...when you see them coming out and trying to silence Philweiss @ mondoweiss then you can say he has a voice, over here we preach to the choir...it's a conversation inside a church not out there where the narrative is managed and the sheep are not allowed to change the station, the sheep are very valuable and their ignorance must be protected from getting infected with the wrong message coming from a reliable source.
Congrats to MJay on the new blog i hope you achieve what you are setting out to do.
"They need us to tell them that we know exactly what is going on. That is what the neocons are so afraid of. That is why they went ballistic over “Israel Firster.”"
As best i can tell the term Israel firster gets the message out faster and more clearly than any other means which is why MJ recognizes that the neocons are so afraid of it, because it tells Americans "exactly what is going on".
Don't try to rediscover the wheel MJ, you hit the nail right on the head and the nail screamed a big ouch, push these guys back relentlessly like they do when they have the upper hand, this is a really tough crowd with tons of resources, and by that i do not just mean finances, facts on the ground can be created to foment the passions into backing them before you can say jump down turn around pick a bail of cotton.
I believe it is a big mistake to keep "Israel firster" in retirement.
For the sake of expediency bring it out of retirement, the best offense is a good offense.
This it could be said is even sad for these settlers who have been made to believe the lie that Zionism taught them.
Zionism has bred dogs for war, and now the dogs must suffer for the lies their owners taught them.
This poor settler's plight is also sad.
Awesome development, maybe this will lead the American Jewish community to consider other positions other than the cold war mentality that has proven itself a failure in achieving peace of any sort.
The U.S politicians need a signal so they can know which way to go so that they do not offend their base, and this can only come from "the community" itself, the more fragmented "the community" becomes the more chance the U.S will have of breaking the chains that bind them to this non productive ideology.
A moral argument stands on its own merit, the weight of the messenger is not needed to give it the value that the truth of the message carries.
ut oh, the Germans reparations bill will multiply due to this social infraction by a representative of the entire German population, as we know the entire nation must be held accountable, well only in this case.
damn the waves just keep breaking on Israel beach.
yeah, they ought to at the very least get tasered for daring to play with stereotypes, or maybe we can put them all on medication to correct that malfunctioning part of the brain.
its criminal i tell ya.
hop, more reasons to be proud of your little piece of heaven on earth.
from richardsilvertein dot com
The Committee to Protect Journalists has published its annual ranking of nations who imprison journalists. Israel has the dubious distinction of coming in second in the competition behind Eritrea, one of the most closed societies in the world. Per capita Israel has imprisoned more journalists than Iran.
Israel Israel rah rah rah!!!
Cris mathews would turn such an offer down.
"My preferences would be to turn the conversation over — at least for the time of a breathing space — strictly to non-Jews,"
What i see is that Jews in America openly talking about this issue will allow for the non jews in the media to tip toe out of their Stockholm Syndrome condition, out into the room to maybe mention something from their prior lives, before servitude.
At this moment in time, for non jews in the media this is still the third rail, remember Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez and the others who dared before the Ubermenshen opened up the forum to allow such talk.
You will see the media gentile tiptoe out carefully, what happens after carefully is where the danger lies, once the forum is taken over by the vandals and heathen, yes I recognize that there is a lurking danger.
Thanks for the topmost informative lead article of my newsday Phil.
It looks like hophni is right again, nobody is talking about Beinart and he didn't start a conversation.
"Jews don’t want non-Jews in this conversation. Israel was established because we are not safe among the gentiles and we must have sovereignty to be safe; so when non-Jews criticize Israel they’re immediately suspected of seeking to endanger our safety (they must be anti-semites). And you can understand the thinking."
Yes Phil we must understand their thinking how can we not.
"True, it is very difficult to learn the forty-century-long history of a people such as the Jews; but, to start with, this much I know, that in the whole world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly after each step and word of theirs, - about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom." Dostoievsky
Israel is the land flowing with milk and honey, a veritable heaven on earth made by the jews.
alleluyah brother, congrats on your huge success in the middle east, there is noone like you guys on the face of the earth, such a successful loving people.
and the idf is the most moral army ever on the planet and zionism should be replicated in every nation.
Phil, since you are being nativist and all I would like to bring to your attention a remark made by one of the SDS boys from Columbia whom I had never heard of before you mentioned them in your manifesto, Mark Rudd, who makes this observation.
"This year I visited Israel with my family for the first time. I learned that far from being culturally retro, which is the way I used to think of it—a small, socialist, anti-materialist nation—Israel is really an avatar, way ahead even of California. Israel is America’s future: militarized, racist, religio-nationalist, corporate, riven with so many internal splits and hatreds that only the existence of a perpetual enemy keeps the nation from exploding. If we don’t organize to stop the current direction in this country, thirty years from now we will be Israel."
I love your manifesto dude, stay thirsty my friend.
Is shiksa falls a rollercoaster ride at some amusement park?
Many a man has lost his family going ove shiksa falls i hear tell.
"the year before I went over Shiksa Falls."
Phil that was awesome, i will share it with my tribey wife, she very much feels the same detachment yet concern for Israel.
Phil is saying that he is an American, that is it, pure and simple.
He does not feel the allegience that you feel to another nation, it would be interesting to know how many of these kids will betray the U.S because of this specialized training that you all get in dual-allegience?
i am sure Israel loves having access to the minions who feel dual allegience and have jobs that would be of interest to their intel services.
what a burden that must be to the us services.
So, Tel Aviv is so beautiful, so what? what good is a beautiful city when you have no Peace.
Is there a chance that those two can make peace?
Jerusamel according to wiki says this ‘dwelling of peace’, ‘founded in safety’
Semitic/Hebrew for ‘to lay a cornerstone’, yielding the idea of laying a cornerstone to the temple of the god Shalem, who was a member of the West Semitic pantheon
In Arabic, Jerusalem is most commonly known as al-Quds and meaning "The Holy" or "The Holy Sanctuary".
So i guess it's ok to publish the racist criminal remarks made by the zionist ( they get to publish and get media coverage to propagate their message ) while we get censored for mentioning verifiable historical facts that have been suppressed for years which is the reason why we got this far down the road to begin with, and to add insult to injury they get to do ad hominem attacks against those who do not support the crimes israel commits by smearing them with the anti semite appelation, which ought to be a crime in itself, and is used as a bludgeoning tool just to try and discredit the messenger, while we must comport to their rules of engagement.
Thanks for the great story David.
This is starting to remind me of a story i read this morning about a grandma that told her grandson about rats leaving a sinking ship.
Krauss, why would you put such an ugly name ( dabble in anti-semitism) on some guy in the United States who simply makes an observation about some groups' ability to exert political pressure, which is directly tied to the financial support that said group exerts over the political process, in their zeal to get the United States into a shooting war with a nation that presents no clear and present danger to us here.
why?
Awwww shucks, poor little Chris (is that one t or two) Mathews will not besmirch whom he is beholden to.
Phil this is why i think you are the best, it's the money quote for me and how i view the issue, it is why it repulses me so to watch it play out in zionist-time.
"The awfulness of this debate IMHO is that Palestinians face these realities every day, have for years, and yet we American Jews and Israeli Jews get to stand around the blackboard. Oh my. The structure of imbalance.)"
Stand around the blackboard indeed and pontificate all the while patting they-arrogant selves on the back over how humane and wonderful they-all-is.
Alleluyah Phillip Weiss! go tell it on the mountain, o'er the hills and everywhere!
Absolutely excellent piece of reportage. Even though i can imagine just how sold out the americans are to this project it is still good to see these behind the scene manipulations to assuage the tribe.
Listen, i don't believe for a moment that the u.s is not in this kneck deep too and, for their own reasons, but the amount of money that is passed out must be staggering to keep this project ongoing for so long.
While i agree that it would be an excellent opportunity to bring the Israel issue before the American public, and Kentucky would be as good a place as any, my fear is that the body snatchers have podded those churches with Israels zombies, i just do not think Christians will turn their back on that little project in the middle east.
Abandon hope all ye who expect the U.S to stop supporting that little project in the middle east.
It is a beautiful thing having to see these men of such great humanitarian concern and religious tender mercies to come out in defense of-----nope not the killing of innocent palestinians but of the murderous state of Israel-the pride of world jewry.
This guy is so funny on so many levels, boycott he says is the language to delegitimize israel yet does he realize that boycott has been the language of the jews to silence anyone who tries to do anything they find displeasing. The list can be long for anyone wishing to see one.
Would he like to pull a Chrystallnacht on Beinarts book? I will venture to say that if not for Walt and Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, and the many others who have been smeared and attempts at censoring their speech were made to keep their words in the dark had not come prior to Beinarts book, that Beinarts book would not have been allowed to be released in this country. This episode reminds me of Ariel Toafs book in Italy, which he had to walk back into the closet because "the community" would not allow it to come to the light of the world.
How about the part about the Knesset and Israeli society being boisterously democratic...while in the same breath just prior he speaks about silencing Beinart basically by saying he has crossed a redline and should be relegated to the netherworld- basically a place where the community of the wise does not allow words to escape from.
His arguments were salted with inconsistent juxtapositions.
Fidel Castro himself – ("I am not a Communist! I am an Christian Humanist! I am a lover of liberty! 1958)
again, i think the world could use a Fidel today for his stance against american imperialism of the monroe doctrine type, but what he did to the cuban economy and its citizens is pretty despicable, never the less the United States did not help things after he came to power and for over fifty years have kept in place an embargo that has helped him hang on to authoritarian power.
the world is simply not black or white and neither are world events.
beware this info was gotten from the internet which you pointed out was a valid place for learning, if the info here is unacceptable just make up your own, heaven knows myths and legend about the land that time forgot (cuba) abound for those who live virtual lives.
"Early in the Cuban revolution, for instance, Czech economist Radoslav Selucky visited Cuba and was rudely awakened: "We thought Cuba was underdeveloped except for a few sugar refineries?!" he wrote when he got home to Prague. "This is false. Almost a quarter of Cuba's labor force was employed in industry where the salaries were equal to those in the U.S.!"
"44 per cent of Cubans – a higher percentage than Americans – are covered by social legislation," starts a report on Cuba dated 1957. "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. According to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization, the average daily wage for an agricultural worker was also among the highest in the world, higher than in France, Belgium, Denmark, or West Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent."
Prior to Castro, Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages – not in Latin America, not in the hemisphere – but in the world. Cuba had established an 8-hour work-day in 1933 – five years before FDR's New Dealers got around to it. The much-lauded (by liberals) Social-Democracies of Western Europe didn't manage this till 30 years later.
These aren't the ravings of a "Cuban exile right-wing crackpot!" (me) this right-wing crackpot is only regurgitating a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba from 1957.
"Naturally for a 20 th Century Cuban with all the luxuries which Imperialism has accustomed him," Wrote Che Guevara, "much of what he saw (in eastern Europe) struck him as belonging to undeveloped countries.
We turn now to a United Nations (no less!) study of Cuba circa 1958. "Cuba has a tremendous advantage in national integration over other Latin American countries because of a largely homogeneous white Spanish immigrant base. Cuba's smaller Negro population is also culturally integrated. Those feudal modes of labor that exist in the rest of Latin America, don't exist in Cuba. The Cuban campesino does not resemble the one in the rest of Latin America who is tied to the land, and is profoundly tradition-bound and opposed to innovations which would link him to a market economy. The Cuban campesino, in all respects, is a modern man. They have an educational level and a familiarity with modern methods unseen in the rest of Latin America."
"High infant mortality" – (in fact, Mr. English, Cuba's infant mortality in 1958 was the 13th lowest – not in Latin America, not in the Hemisphere – but in the WORLD – lower than Ireland's.)
"Subhuman housing" – (in fact, Mr. English, Cuba's per capita income in 1958 was higher than half of Europe's, including Ireland's.)
"Dispossession of small farmers" – (in fact, Cuba's agricultural wages in 1958 were higher than half of Europe's, including Ireland's. And – far from huge latifundia hogging the Cuban countryside – the average Cuban farm in 1958 was SMALLER than the average in the U.S.)
PLEASE NOTE!! A professor/U.N. technician named Juan Noyola (Mexican, no less!) wrote the above passage – not me! So bash HIM as a "racist" or a Falangist if you like.
r u moving over there any time soon? i hear its a wonderful place to live a real life not a virtual internet life.
people want to go where there is freedom, thats why israel is being evacuated even by the israeli jews, the ones that move there are ideologue religious extremist and you see the life they lead there, and like cuba, israels supporters lend their support from abroad with intellectual arguments.
going to havana for hookers and beaches and rum and cigars is probably similar to going to tel aviv for the night life or its beaches, but i dont know cause ive never been to either, its what i read on the internet.
cubana de aviacion flight 666 departing shortly housing is available i hear its free.
and medical attention is free also.
imagine what value is there in something that is given for free, even a free hooker would make me wary.
a world class champ at standing up to the monroe doctrine and american imperialism.
i understand that castro worship is a third rail of the intellectual left and with you i just touched it and therefore u tried to zap me, no harm no foul there it is your right to see the world from your ideological viewpoint, but the world is not so simple, bad people can stand for good things and do some great things and good people can support some very bad things and also do some very bad things at times.
the cuban people live under a stasi like surveillance and in fear and under submission.
although i would suspect the stasi was much much better at being mechanical than the more tropical climate cuban secret police, stasi like was meant only to identify it as a under surveillance police state.
let me complicate things for you further, i would love if Fidel were today the young firebrand he was in 1960, it would be a great treat to hear him stand up to the world govt's and call a spade a spade again before the united nations or in havana in those fresh air speeches where he spoke some great truths, unfortunately his economic model gave the cuban people nothing of value and the embargo and bellicosity of the u.s drove him into a siege like style of governance that diminished the spirit of the cuban citizen.
"During the 1990s 'Special Period', only 30,000 left the country", she noted.
a bit of a misleading quote here, this makes it sound like they are not leaving because cuba's citizens have some type of commitment to the govt's ideology, well just open the floodgates and there would be an exodus of biblical proportions.
While Fidel has stood up to the monroe doctrine and u.s imperialism like a world class champ, the oppression and the stasi like police state cubans have endured is a story of its own and will be told some day when the socialist communist left intellectuals lift their heads out of the sand and stop the adulation of Castro.
The mistake the U.S made in Cuba was continuing the foreign policy which is still in effect way past the time when the realization of its failure ought to have been noted by the Pentagram and the cia and the famous state dept.
Look at Jstreet as a back-up fish net, their job is to catch all of the fish that were leaving the aipac net because of what Lieberman and Netanyahoo and the white phosphorous attack on a civilian population did to how israel is being perceived, that caused the liberal american jew to recoil away from an israel that was too coarse and did not stand up to what a more liberal jew could support comfortably.
Jstreet is doing their job by setting up the back stop just a few yards behind where aipac would normally have been. jstreet is serving up their membership for zionism to use in their defense now, no new additions, they just kept the numbers of israels defenders at the same levels as before, the more idealistic jews such as Phil and Adam really expected too much from Jstreet.
zionisms breakup wont be such an easy row to hoe.
It's a good thing Israel is such a good friend to the United States.
Why Pollard Should Never Be Released (The Traitor)
The New Yorker Magazine | :January 18, 1999, pp. 26-33 | SEYMOUR M. HERSH
"In fact, it is widely believed that Pollard was not the only one in the American government spying for Israel. During his year and a half of spying, his Israeli handlers requested specific documents, which were identified only by top-secret control numbers. After much internal assessment, the government's intelligence experts concluded that it was "highly unlikely," in the words of a Justice Department official, that any of the other American spies of the era would have had access to the specific control numbers. "There is only one conclusion," the expert told me. The Israelis "got the numbers from somebody else in the U.S. government."
THE men and women of the National Security Agency live in a world of chaotic bleeps, buzzes, and whistles, and talk to each other about frequencies, spectrums, modulation, and bandwidth -- the stuff of Tom Clancy novels. They often deal with signals intelligence, or SIGINT, and their world is kept in order by an in-house manual known as the RASIN an acronym for radio-signal notations. The manual, which is classified "top-secret Umbra," fills ten volumes, is constantly updated, and lists the physical parameters of every known signal. Pollard took it all. "It's the Bible," one former communications-intelligence officer told me. "It tells how we collect signals anywhere in the world." The site, frequency, and significant features of Israeli communications -- those that were known and targeted by the N.S.A. -- were in the RASIN; so were all the known communications links used by the Soviet Union.
The loss of the RASIN was especially embarrassing to the Navy, I was told by the retired admiral, because the copy that Pollard photocopied belonged to the Office of Naval Intelligence. "He went into our library, found we had an out-of-date version, requested a new one, and passed it on," the officer said. "I was surprised we even had it."
The RASIN theft was one of the specifics cited in Defense Secretary Weinberger's still secret declaration to the court before Pollard's sentencing hearing. In fact, the hearing's most dramatic moment came when Pollard's attorney, Richard A. Hibey, readily acknowledged his client's guilt but argued that the extent of the damage to American national security did not call for the imposition of a maximum sentence.
"I would ask you to think about the Secretary of Defense's affidavit, as it related to only one thing," Judge Robinson interjected, "with reference to one particular category of publication, and I fail to see how you can make that argument." He invited Hibey to approach the bench, along with the Justice Department attorneys, and the group spent a few moments reviewing what government officials told me was Weinberger's account of the importance of the RAISIN. One Justice Department official, recalling those moments with obvious pleasure, said that the RASIN was the ninth item on the Weinberger damage-assessment list. After the bench conference, Hibey made no further attempt to minimize the national-security damage caused by its theft. (Citing national security, Hibey refused to discuss the case for this article.)
The ten volumes of the RASIN were available on a need-to-know basis inside the N.S.A. "I've never seen the monster," a former senior watch officer at an N.S.A. intercept site in Europe told me, but added that he did supervise people who constantly used it, and he described its function in easy-to-understand terms:
"It is a complete catalogue of what the United States was listening to, or could listen to -- information referred to in the N.S.A. as 'parametric data.' It tells you everything you want to know about a particular signal -- when it was first detected and where, whom it was first used by, what kind of entity, frequency, wavelength, or band length it has. When you've copied a signal and don't know what it is, the RASIN manual gives you a description." A senior intelligence official who consults regularly with the N.S.A. on technical matters subsequently told me that another issue involved geometry.
A senior intelligence official who consults regularly with the N.S.A. on technical matters subsequently told me that another issue involved geometry. The RASIN, he explained, had been focussed in particular on the Soviet Union and its thousands of high-frequency, or shortwave, communications, which had enabled Russian military units at either end of the huge land mass to communicate with each other. Those signals "bounced" off the ionosphere and were often best intercepted thousands of miles from their point of origin. If, as many in the American intelligence community suspected, the Soviet communications experts had been able to learn which of their signals were being monitored, and where, they could relocate the signal and force the N.S.A. to invest man-hours and money to try to recapture it. Or, more likely, the Soviets could continue to communicate in a normal fashion but relay false and misleading information.
Pollard's betrayal of the RASIN put the N.S.A. in the position of having to question or reevaluate all of its intelligence collecting. "We aren't perfect," the career intelligence officer explained to me. "We've got holes in our coverage, and this" -- the loss of the RASIN -- tells where the biases and the weaknesses are. It's how we get the job done, and how we will get the job done."
"What a wonderful insight into how we think, and exactly how we're exploiting Soviet communications!" the retired admiral exclaimed. "It's a how-to-do-it book -- the fireside cookbook of cryptology. Not only the analyses but the facts of how we derived our analyses. Whatever recipe you want."
Pollard, asked about the specific programs he compromised, told me, "As far as SIGINT information is concerned, the government has consistently lied in its public version of what I gave the Israelis."
In the mid-nineteen-eighties, the daily report from the Navy's Sixth Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility (FOSIF) in Rota, Spain, was one of America's Cold War staples. A top-secret document filed every morning at 0800 Zulu time (Greenwich Mean Time), it reported all that had gone on in the Middle East during the previous twenty-four hours, as recorded by the N.S.A.'s most sophisticated monitoring devices.
The reports were renowned inside Navy commands for their sophistication and their reliability; they were based, as the senior managers understood it, on data supplied both by intelligence agents throughout the Middle East and by the most advanced technical means of intercepting Soviet military communications. The Navy's intelligence facility at Rota shared space with a huge N.S.A. intercept station, occupied by more than seven hundred linguists and cryptographers, which was responsible for monitoring and decoding military and diplomatic communications all across North Africa. Many at Rota spent hundreds of hours a month listening while locked in top-secret compartments aboard American ships, aircraft, and submarines operating in the Mediterranean.
The Navy's primary targets were the ships, the aircraft, and, most important, the nuclear-armed submarines of the Soviet Union on patrol in the Mediterranean. Those submarines, whose nuclear missiles were aimed at United States forces, were constantly being tracked; they were to be targeted and destroyed within hours if war broke out.
Pollard's American interrogators eventually concluded that in his year and a half of spying he had provided the Israelis with more than a year's worth of the daily FOSIF reports from Rota. Pollard himself told the Americans that at one point in 1985 the Israelis had nagged him when he missed several days of work because of illness and had failed to deliver the FOSIF reports for those days. One of his handlers, Joseph Yagur, had complained twice about the missed messages and had asked him to find a way to retrieve them. Pollard told his American interrogators that he had never missed again."
its so comforting to know that there is a "nation within a nation" right here in river city taking advantage of our soldiers and our tax dollars.
God bless America, its the best thing thats ever happened to the jews.
Debbie, this year in Jerusalem don't wait till next year.
Beinart is younger and less of an ideological zionist than the rest of the jewish establishment, I would certainly expect nothing less from him since he grew up with some sort of american values, wait that last line is starting to sound ridiculous even to me.
just because he is from a younger generation nothing to do with any national values.
why do jews of all people want a state that belongs only to one race of people?
special rights only for themselves. Hell they don't seem to be supporters of muslim countries wanting to be only for muslims.
no africans no hispanics or orientals or others too many to mention, no other religions permitted either?
just us and no others allowed, the he man women haters club a la the little rascals.
why are jews so inclusive in the west but so exclusive when it comes to israel?
" the formula passed by the Florida legislature leads inexorably to the eradication of Israel" jstreet.
"We urge both chambers of the Florida Legislature to revoke these egregiously-misguided resolutions and to support the only route to Israel being both Jewish and democratic – a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
"Why does Florida hate Israel?" eljay.
i guess the only logical conclusion using ADL methodology would be anti-semitism.
good thing they got all of them minorities down south to help dilute that european gene that so readily expresses anti-semitism.
i can not wait to see how this resolution is walked back, if that does not happen and this resolution is not walked back then there is something more serious afoot here with regards the special relationship.
I agree that it is rather ridiculous for these Stateside Legislatures to be voting on something of that nature.
as a fellow floridian and southerner from way down here in south florida, also known as Miama back in the day, i am blown away by this issue actually taking up their time.
They must of thought they were pleasing someone that needed pleasing.
They also must of clearly misunderstood the order of the day.
sheesh, can they be more see-through?
That's just beautiful language Annie.
he’s got his foot in the door but he’s wading in denial.
who'd a thunk that a river could be right outside his door.
let me clue you in as to why this appeal is out there to stop using "israel firster"
"they" as in the israel firsters being singled out, have a firewall, a scapehatch, behind which they try to hide, sort of like a cloak of invisibility that they believe they can stand behind and disappear ( think of a two year old hiding behind a blanket only much more sophisticated) it is fear of anti semitism which they use to their benefit only to stop any finger pointing, a la "the dreyfuss affair" which according to the fearmongers would or could lead to a holocaust, cause one never knows how these goying would react once that strand in their dna is activated.
so in short it is used as a tactic to allow the israel firsters (neocons) to avoid prosecution, one could almost believe that it is a legal defense of sorts for them.
thinking of it in banking terms then it is similar to too big to fail, if you let them fail by being singled out then the whole edifice would come crashing down on the rest of the banks.
therefore do not use that term cause it could hurt the entire community, back to the shet'l, hunker down for the sake of the clan and whatever you do, do not air out our dirty laundry in front of the goy.
this is just an attempt to explain the what and why of the stopping of the usage of israel firsters is used as an appeal to the entire community, when it only applies to the leaders of the groups.
so if this was an aesops fables cartoon what would the moral of this story be?
Jeremiah Haber of the Magneszionist writes on MJ.
link to jeremiahhaber.com
"M J allegedly tweeted in response to Dershowitz’s threats that he can go to hell. Dershowitz has responded by going nuclear. Because of his fury at Rosenberg, he is willing to attempt to cost Obama the election if the White House doesn’t publicly distance itself from Media Matters, or if Media Matters doesn’t fire Rosenberg, such is his fervor of the heresy hunter scorned. This time he has set the bar high, and, optimist that I am, I trust that he will fail.
Liberal Zionists, I am talking to you! Stand up for M. J. and you are standing up for your own against the like of those who delude themselves into thinking they are liberal Zionists. Otherwise you will end up by saying
I was silent when Dershowitz went after Norman Finkelstein because I am not Norman Finkelstein. I was silent when he came for Matar, Giora, and Sand because, well, I had never heard of them. I was silent when he came for a liberal Zionist like M. J. Rosenberg because I don’t tweet. Then when he went after me, nobody was there to help me….
[Update, March 8: Perhaps the Forward’s J. J. Goldberg’s heard this call, but whether he did or not, he has written a beautiful defense of M. J. here.]
Perhaps there is a ray of light in all this. The Israeli Reut Institute last year outlined an Israel advocacy strategy of driving a wedge between the liberal Zionist and the extreme left in Israel and abroad. For the most part, it hasn’t worked. There is indeed a gap, but it is between the real liberal Zionists like M.J., Peter Beinart, Naomi Hazan, Larry Derfner, Michael Lerner, Leibel Fein, David Grossman, Amos Oz, as well as the activist groups in Israel like B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence, on the one hand, and the faux liberal Zionists like Dershowitz, Abe Foxman, Benny Morris, Ari Shavit, and all those members of the so-called “disappointed left” in Israel, on the other.
How do you distinguish between the genuine and the fake liberal Zionist? After all, both kinds say that they are for two states, oppose settlements and settlers, support territorial compromise, etc. It’s very simple: if they publicly criticize Israel’s human rights violations; if they support groups that expose such violations; if they call out Israel’s elected leaders on matters of policy and morality -- in short, if they adopt the stance of moral critic because that is deep in their Jewish and mentshlich soul – then they are true liberal Zionists. All the others are deluded into thinking they are.
And no one is more deluded into thinking he is a liberal Zionist than Alan Dershowitz, who never ceases to remind his readers that he opposes the settlements and supports the two-state solution. Sorry, Professor, that is not enough to qualify. You also have to support harsh measures against the state if the settlements continue. You can’t be a liberal Zionist and support Binyamin Netanyahu, the arch-enemy of liberal Zionists.If you care about Israel as Jewish and democratic, to borrow the language of the liberal Zionists, you will – like M. J. and the others – have to fight against those Israeli government policies that are destroying the democratic nature of the state. You will join hands with human right activists, Jewish and Palestinian, who are fighting for justice. You will support, like M.J., Peter Beinart, David Grossman, and Amos Oz, boycotts against the settlers and the settlements. You will support pressure from the Americans and the European states to stop Israel’s slide into a Putin-style democracy,
If, Prof. Dershowitz, you are all about carrots but refuse to use sticks – no, even twigs – in dealings with Israel, then your “liberal Zionism” is humbug and self-delusion that is designed for one thing – to allow you to face yourself in the mirror next time you read of some outrage in Haaretz, and say,
‘Hey, I’m a liberal Zionist. I am against the Occupation.”
U go MJ, get'er dun.
So the entire geopolitical-financial planet is a zionist spiderweb?
Even if much forensic evidence could be found and zionist fingerprints were left on the scene of many false flag events ( think king david hotel, uss liberty among the few we are aware of ), americans and american jews still wish to defend israel because they see it as our true friend in the middle east and a place jews in the united states and across the western nations can be proud to be associated with and support proudly.
The gatekeepers in the press keep a tight lid on that casket and the closet door must be kept closed, the skeletons must remain hidden for the myth to hold sway over the hoi polloi that support "that project in the middle east".
As those lies are exposed to the light of day more people like myself come to their senses and change their minds and stop supporting "the project" and turn their back on the myth that is zionist apartheid israel, not israel per se, just zionist apartheid israel.
I do not hate the place i simply disapprove of the work of the elites and the press in lying to us to keep us supporting that place. Who the hell likes being lied to, i feel like a kid who discovered late in life that the folks who i grew up believing were my loving parents really had kidnapped me from my real parents and had raised me as their own, a tough realization to assimilate even as an adult. They may have loved me but they did a bad thing.
This is not psychotherapy, i am making comparisons, in case anyone wonders if i am fragmented by an event of that sort.
Remember Helen Thomas, that scion of the American press who was sacrificed on the altar of zionism right before our very eyes. Who the hell came to her defense?
She is just one venerable example of what can and does happen still to anyone who dares to utter the unutterable.
The catalyst that exposed the chink in the zionist armor was the economic damage of the recent past and will again be the economic damage around the bend.
Just my two cents worth of hope for what i see ahead, more exposure.
You know annie, truth be told the battle lines ought to be drawn at some point where things can be defended.
Winning hearts and minds is more important than winning battles, stay at the core and battle the core, the rest will splinter.
Decoupling american minds and americas jewish community from the israeli myth is way more important to winning this battle than exploring conspiracies which are more impossible to prove than the myths of the founding of that little project in the middle east.
Our Press here in the States sucks, and is more to blame than most things we can point to, mainly because they are the wolves in sheeps clothing, our very own pravda but with the credibility pravda could only dream off.
Think of it this way, if not for the internet we would be who knows where, but definitely in way deeper $hit in the middle east than we are now.
And we would probably believe way more of the lies that the Gov't tells us than we do now, and all because dissenting voices on the internet have an outlet and truth seekers have places to go to search it out.
Oh and i can not forget to thank guys and gals like Phil who left the establishment to be able to speak some truths, men and women with training and the credentials and knowhow to operate at this level.
U guys are starting to frighten me, this sounds too conspiratorial to me.
Just why would such a little country have so much power and influence, please don't tell me that it's just all of that zionist money and connections to banks and the mafia, that is just way too much hollywood for me, oh and while speaking of hollywood i am surprised you havent tried to implicate hollywood in your israeli propaganda meme.
I am shocked at where you are heading with all of this Phil, surprised even to the point that i doubt you would post my shock at all of this.
There is no way to connect these dots without crossing over into conjecture land.
you will make fools of yourselves.
we need a clean break from zionism, the clean break that got us into zionism has worked out well for its planners, but the one that will get us away from zionism will be more of a natural phenomenom, problem is though, that i think we still may be a few years away, unless of course the economy takes over again.
nature abhors a vacuum, and zionism is becoming an empty space, noone wants to be there anymore except the few, the proud...etc.etc.etc.
while the world looked the other way...well, while the u.s continnues to look the other way.
to all the hasbarist that float on through here, congratulations on your humanitarian concerns for all the people that you guys care so much for, you give israel a great name and by association you also reflect on others of your tribe by default.
again, my congrats to you guys for all you do on behalf of your people, you are after all "the chosen".
check this stuff out...it's like when it rains it pours...it's like all of a sudden everyone got permission to do this schtufff.
Palestine: A national soccer team without a nation
link to edition.cnn.com
Adam, i love all that i have seen you do and commend you for what you try to expose, for whatever it's worth to you, i value what you do.
The supporters of Israel in the U.S will not relinquish their positions easily and like a tick on a dog will not let loose, ever, at least willingly, you shall see, it is not in their makeup. It is a very emotionally charged issue and can and will drive a wedge between lansmen, it has in the past and will again in the near future.
American jews of high profile like Tom Friedman in concert with many others like him may be able to exert some force due to the fears that he expressed recently over a blowback on his lansmen, i suspect that he doesnt wish to be seen as an israel firster and be singled out or made suspect of that charge, after all he like any other american does not wish to be seen as an outsider. Priviledge and position are important.
This sentiment may be able to drive a wedge between the more hard core zionist and those who just wish the best for israel but would rather prefer their confortable way of life that the u.s has afforded them, but the more hard core older jews will cling to the belief that world jewry needs israel so that nothing like what occurred in europe ever happens again without the jews having a place to run for protection.
i continue to follow the instruction of Malcolm Hoenlein when he suggested that the Christian Zionist will stay with Israel longer than those American jews who do not have that same affinity for the israel project than the older jews do.
like a tick on a dog and for very emotional reason and lots of misinformation the supporters will continnue regardless of what happens, it is that important to them and they think they know better what jews need.
Prof's Walt and Mearsheimer should receive the Medal of Freedom for having spearheaded the assault on "the lobby that doesn't exist".
so i guess Pat Buchanans statement that congress is Israeli occupied territory is true.
“Oh man, I’d love to play sound bites of those quotes for you. But they’re in Hebrew. Because they were said by members of the Israeli Knesset. Because apparently in Israel, you are allowed to criticize Israel and still hold public office
"The question remains, Why did Obama do it? Why after all these years of caving to Netanyahu did Obama grow a spine?"
My guess would be because his national security peeps are moving on and wants to cease and desist the nonsense, they couldnt have made the argument more clear than sending out CJCS Dempsey and Pentagram head Panetta on national tv to articulate some truths that even the media have tried pushing back on.
They have Obombers back.
I am still waiting for the despicable craven Chris Matthews to open up, but alas his bonafides might come into question and then there would be no more parties.
Heck i even think thewashintonote blogger Steve Clemons is speaking up (and he has been the biggest wuss for the longest) since he has cover now that others have led the way.
How does this feel Phil? are you taking an online course in sensoring to see if you could ever get as good as aipac? at least they send out notes, you just delete into the ether-sphere.
"With the conference slated to start on Sunday, I got a curt note on Wednesday, simply stating: “Thank you for your interest in attending this year’s AIPAC Policy Conference as a member of the press. However, press credentials for the conference will not be issued to you. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”
It came from someone named Sarah Coopersmith at Scott Circle Communications, a firm AIPAC contracted with to handle the press logistics. The email wasn’t even signed.
Inquiries to both Coopersmith and AIPAC’s new press officer, Adam Harris brought no response. Ari Goldberg, despite having left AIPAC, did respond to me, expressing surprise and the hope that this was just a mistake.
To say this is highly unusual behavior would be an understatement. And I wasn’t the only one this happened to.
Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss, who had been credentialed the past three years without incident, and Adele Stan, the Washington Bureau Chief at AlterNet were also rejected without explanation. As I understand it, Phil and Adele were rejected outright. In my case, I was given media access and then had it revoked".
link to muzzlewatch.com
You are learning from the best.
Jestfully frustrated, your humble admirer to some degree obviously.
Hey Phil look at it in this way, is Netanyahoo allowed to foment anti goyism?
Apparently so, because his remarks offend the hell out of me by trying to place blame for the holocaust on us here in the united states.
Netanyahoo should not be allowed to stand alone and represent his side without having a countering point of view on the other side, much like the neocons demanded of Jimmy Carter when he tried to speak at Brandeis.
You're a sensitive sensible fellow, liberal and all those nice things, then be considerate of me and allow me to counter post Netanyahoos libel against me as an american.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Netanyahoo is the one who is pulling out the old documents we ought to be allowed to also present other documents from the past.
The only reason why i sort of kind of believe that Obomber might be actually pushing back on I/P status quo is because prior to this meeting the Americans have sent in the National security state leadership re: Gen Dempsey and Leon Panetta to make statement on major networks as well as a noticeable difference in the language being used by some media figures.
There seems to be a sea change of sorts from the normal narrative that we have gotten accustomed to.
Who is over here in the states begging and egging the united states to go to war with iran?
oh could it be bibi i am israels prime minister netanyahoo maybe?
so it is the israelis who demand it and it is aipac who fully expects americans politicians to go on their hand and knees to their conference to voice their undying support for the jewish state.
so lets recap- who is presently in the united states trying to get a promise out of an american president to attack iran? you're right if u said bibi netanyahoo
and what group of american jews who call themselves american ISRAELI public affairs committee fully expect AMERICAN politicians to go groveling before them while pledging the full and undying support for the jewish state and everything and anything they do? in case you missed it i wrote it in the question but will give you the answer anyways cause the obvious seems to elude you in your game of hide the sausage it isssss the american israeli public affairs committee.
nope no corporations begging for war here, only israeli prime ministers supported by american jewish aipac-ers.
in case you can miss the obvious or like to point in the wrong direction, i thought a recap of what is going on, as we speak, live and in living color, might serve for your elucidation.
No linkage allowed, linkage verboten.
"In 45 minutes, Goldberg appears to have asked 23 questions, not one of them dealing with the 4-1/2 million Palestinians living without rights under occupation. Palestinians don't merit a reference except when Obama disparages the Goldstone report and the flotilla.
But I guess that's the point of the Great Game of the Iranian threat-- take Palestine off the table."
Going back to Feb of 07 the smell of Israel/U.S separation was in the air.
Prof. Alan Dershowitz – “Israel must be ready to lose U.S. support in the coming years”
Famed Harvard Professor speaking at 7th Annual Herzliya Conference
Speaking via satellite to the 7th Herzliya Conference of The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz warned Israel that they might have to go it alone in the coming years.
He pointed to 4 recent events that, according to Dershowitz, could bring about a “perfect storm” in the otherwise close relations between the U.S. & Israel.
The first event was the publishing of Former president Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book has received a lot of attention and despite the panning it took in the media; Dershowitz says it legitimizes certain negative stereotypes including the “Jewish controlled media” and the disproportional involvement by the Jewish lobby in American politics. This, according to Dershowitz is coming from a man (Carter) who’s received millions of dollars from anti-Israel & anti-Semitic organizations.
The second event is the rise of anti-Israel discussions in academic circles and on campuses around the U.S.. This legitimizes in the academia what Carter’s book legitimizes publicly. The “trash academics” as Dershowitz called it is becoming more prevalent. This could threaten the education of future American leaders.
The third event is the Media War being fought by Hizbullah & Hamas against Israel. The battle for media attention is being fought in earnest by these and other anti-Israel groups. Dershowitz did not voice his opinion as to which side is winning that war but made it clear that it is an important factor in U.S./Israel relations.
Finally, a recent statement from Former Democratic Presidential Candidate and Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe, General Wesley Clark recently hinted at Jewish involvement in U.S. foreign policy by saying “New York ‘money people’ are pushing the U.S. into war with Iran”.
All of these events point to statements that in the past wouldn’t only be heard in Europe. Dershowitz’s advised Israel & Jewish groups to continue to fight against the negative image that is being perpetrated by these and other factors but he also warned that “Israel must be prepared to lose American support in the coming years both diplomatically and economically. “My message to Israel is ‘be strong’ and be prepared to go it alone.”
Yes sort of like a picture developing on an old kodak picture, or like a ghost taking shape, first you might see smoky wisps then you start to notice a shape and eventually voila, le ghost.
Phil had a premonition, and it is happening.
is our children learning? GW Bush.
So on Fox news Dershowits makes an appeal to the white house to dissasociate themselves from Mediamatters because it will help Obama get reelected?
And fox really fell for this?
On Fox news, really? Making an appeal to help get Obama reelected.
So if Republicans want to sink Obama they should hope that he stays with media matters, is Fox news now trying to get Obama reelected, trying to make him more electable? trying to get him to make a decision which will help him get a second term in the whitehouse.
Or is it about keeping both parties chained to Israeli foreign policy concerns first and foremost, Israel first.
Phil you are on top of your game, you picked up the scent a long time ago and now things are starting to show themselves for what you saw them from the beginning of your quest, excellent observation.
I am giddy as a school boy on the last day before summer school.
This sh-t needs to be exposed it is a festering wound in the soul of the United States body politic.
I keep thinking about that scene from animal house where Belushi starts the food fight in the cafeteria.
link to youtube.com
Be careful Americans do not hear the rest of the story Dersh my boy, food fights tend to get out of control.
So that was Jeff Blankforts sin, trying to reveal the unspeakable about ww-deus.
gotcha...wont go near that rail...it's all there though for all to see though.
This is one of my favorite articles that exposes americas jewish israel firsters going way back to feb of 07 ( i know it is rather long but well worth it for the prescience shown by this man, here Malcolm Hoenlein shows how prescient he can be while also decrying the fact that his community should have taken the offensive very early in this episode of the “nation within a nation”.
this is my take away line at this juncture of this episode…the part about the christian zionist being the last group to possibly support israel is the part i can not wait to see, by then the jewish community will have fragmented, over support for Israel no less, thank God.
“Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.”
they may have missed that opportunity but now they are at the redline and will not back down, i say good bring it on, i am sure americas intelligence community is sick and tired and fully expect some disclosure to come from them to embarass israel with another american jew spying for israel.
Written by Forward Editorial
Friday, 02 February 2007
While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran.
In early advocacy efforts on the issue, Jewish organizations stressed the threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel in light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‚s calls to „wipe Israel off the map.” Now, with concerns mounting that Israel and its supporters might be blamed for any military confrontation, Jewish groups are seeking to widen their argument, asserting that an Iranian nuclear bomb would threaten the West and endanger pro-American Sunni Muslim states in the region.
Jess Hordes, Washington director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that the strategy of broadening the case against Iran was not an attempt to divert attention from the threats to Israel. „It is a fact that Iran is a danger to the whole world,” Hordes said. „We are not just saying it to hide our concerns about Israel.”
Yet many advocacy efforts, even when not linked to Israel, carry indelibly Jewish fingerprints. Last week, Jewish groups claimed victory when the United Nations approved a resolution denouncing Holocaust denial, with Iran‚s regime as the obvious target. Additionally, numerous Jewish activists are pressing in advertisements and Internet appeals for Ahmadinejad to be indicted in The Hague for incitement to genocide.
In warning of possible scapegoating, insiders point to the experience of the Iraq War. Since the initial invasion in 2003, antiwar groups have charged, with growing vehemence, that the war was promoted by Jewish groups acting in Israel‚s interest ˜ even though the invasion enjoyed bipartisan backing and popular support, and was not at the top of most Jewish organizations‚ agendas. The Iraq backlash prompted former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to order in 2005 that his ministers keep a low profile on Iran.
Now, however, Jewish groups are indeed playing a lead role in pressing for a hard line on Iran. The campaign comes at a time when President Bush‚s popularity has reached record lows and members of both parties are cautioning against a rush toward war.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called „the poisoning of America,” Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.
Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.
Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the Israel Lobby by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter‚s best-selling book, „Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that „New York money people” were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran.
„In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the neocons‚ as a code word,” Hoenlein said. „Now we see that code words are no longer necessary.” He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread.
„This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down,” he said. „It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society.”
According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to „intimidate American Jews not to speak out.” He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.
Another instance of casting blame, less widely reported, was attributed to former secretary of state Colin Powell. In a new biography, by Washington Post writer Karen De Young, Powell is said to have put at least some of the blame for the Iraq war on Jewish groups. The book, „Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell,” claims that Powell used to refer to the pro-war advisers surrounding former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the „Jinsa crowd.” Jinsa is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a hawkish think tank that supported the Iraq war.
Thomas Neumann, Jinsa’s executive director, said he was not offended by Powell’s reference, although he was surprised that the former secretary of state would single out a Jewish group when naming those who supported the war. „I am not accusing Powell of anything, but these are words that the antisemites will use in the future,” Neumann said.
Whatever worries exist about a negative backlash over Israel, they have not deterred Jewish and pro-Israel activists from publicly pressing for tough U.S. action against Tehran or invoking concern for Israel.
A particularly forceful argument for a hard line against Iran appeared this week in The New Republic, a Washington insider journal widely viewed as a bellwether of pro-Israel opinion. The lengthy article, written by two respected Israeli writers, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, both fellows at the Shalem Center, a hawkish Jerusalem think tank, names Iran as the main threat to Israeli survival, regional stability and to the entire world order. This theme has been echoed in publications and press releases put out by most major Jewish groups, including Aipac and the Conference of Presidents.
„The international community now has an opportunity to uphold that order,” Oren and Klein Halevi wrote. „If it fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons ˜ by a country that denies the genocide against Europe’s six million Jews while threatening Israel‚s six million Jews ˜ will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history”.
Izik, snap out of i have some good kona coffee for you to sniff on to take the shet'l out of the person.
Have you not seen the battle these last few days, CJCS Gen Dempsey, Leon Panetta, and the U.S security apparatus trying to make a stand against the politicians and the press who are trying to lead us into a war on israels behalf by creating a false narrative in order to foment support from the american public to lead us into a war, i think our soldiers deserve better to to sign up to fight to defend the American flag and end up fighting to defend the Israeli flag because they are led into a false flag war.
Quit it, you are smart enough to be on this site, you must be smart enough to think for yourself, try it you'll be ok afterwards i promise you your community will respect you in the morning.
Phil, are you setting some of your commenters up to be banned?
Could the U.S example of jewish involvement in power political games within nations be used to study past historical examples of anti semitism?
What causes them and the drivers that lead up to such events could probably be studied if they would have had an internet.
Anti semitism is after all a mental disorder that is passed on from generation to generation and is not caused by any actions jews ever take within any nation.
Phil, are you setting some of your commenters up to be banned?
Could the U.S example of jewish involvement in power political games within nations be used to study past historical examples of anti semitism?
What causes them and the drivers that lead up to such events could probably be studied if they would have had an internet.
Anti semitism is after all a mental disorder that is passed on from generation to generation and is not caused by any actions jews ever take within any nation.
Has Mel Gibson been completely rehabilitated yet?
Isn't Purim coming up soon?
"Could someone direct me either to posts or to comments which would clarify for me what is meant by the term “anti-Semitism” as it’s used on MW? Or is part of the larger difficulty, apart from the discussions here, that many players in the Middle East troubles benefit from keeping the definition unclear?"
It seems that Phil and the sites monitors are trying to be sensitive to the Israel firsters who are so well know for their sensitivity and tender concern for others.
What i really think is that Phil is trying to draw more american jews to his narrative, who may be totally turned off if they perceive this website to be a troth for anti semites only, but the tribe is so confused and deluded after so many years of propaganda used against them to keep them safely ensconsed in the Shet'l, that the only reason why we are seeing a renaisance among them is the nasty turn that israel has taken (seemingly to them, only in the last few years) or is it the fact that Jimmy Carter, Mearsheimer and Walt and many other regular americans (anti semites all of course) have finally gotten sick and tired of being led by the nose and have opened up the dialogue by speaking the unspeakable.
So both Witty and Blankfort are long standing friends?
I knew that witty was more than your typical american Jew because he was way more aware that those Jews in my family who i KNOW are oblivious to the politics of the entire thing, but never the less he never offended me i just saw him as a representative of the zionist mentality, Israel is special because we are Jews, and anything they do is justifiable and unassailable.
I am never pleased to see suppression of speech, and while this is your ball and you can take it home and stop the game for any if you so choose to, the only excuse for banning any comment would be reserved for ad hominem attacks.
But hey i understand that you may not want your site to be singled out by "the community" as a pig troth for antisemites thereby minimizing the power of the arguments that are being made here about jewish power and it's leaning to protect israel.
your reasons are noble and your'e hunting bigger game, i wish you great luck in alerting american jews of the dangers of being unawares may pose to them in the long run if they do not awaken and fight back.
they are fomenting the seeds for antisemitism...it wont be difficult if americas soldiers wake the hell up and realize that this "nation within a nation" wants them to fight for the israeli flag.
unfortunately many neocons are not jewish but for some reason lobby for americas soldiers to sacrifice their lives on the altar of israel.
Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, discusses the “Occupy AIPAC” counter-summit in Washington, D.C. from March 2-6; his article “The Mossad Has Long Given Marching Orders to AIPAC;” the fine line between a domestic lobby and a foreign-controlled intelligence operation; and how constant warmongering and talk of “existential threats” gets AIPAC’s hardcore American donors to open their wallets.
link to antiwar.com
How do american soldiers feel about going to war because Israel demands it of them?
has anyone done a survey?
can that community of soldiers be canvassed to discover how they may feel about this?
it could be helpful to enlist the men and women in uniform who may not feel like defending the Israeli flag.
i'm just saying and sure hope it isnt anti semitic of me to suggest that u.s soldiers shouldn't die for Israel, afterall democratic donations from israel firsters is probably as large as those to the repubs and we know that both of those parties represent americas interests. bwaaahahahaha.
this is one of my favorite articles that exposes americas jewish israel firsters going way back to feb of 07 ( i know it is rather long but well worth it for the prescience shown by this man, here Malcolm Hoenlein shows how prescient he can be while also decrying the fact that his community should have taken the offensive very early in this episode of the "nation within a nation".
this is my take away line at this juncture of this episode...the part about the christian zionist being the last group to possibly support israel is the part i can not wait to see, by then the jewish community will have fragmented thank God.
"Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests."
they may have missed that opportunity but now they are at the redline and will not back down, i say good bring it on, i am sure americas intelligence community is sick and tired and fully expect some disclosure to come from them to embarass israel with another american jew spying for israel.
Written by Forward Editorial
Friday, 02 February 2007
While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran.
In early advocacy efforts on the issue, Jewish organizations stressed the threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel in light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‚s calls to „wipe Israel off the map." Now, with concerns mounting that Israel and its supporters might be blamed for any military confrontation, Jewish groups are seeking to widen their argument, asserting that an Iranian nuclear bomb would threaten the West and endanger pro-American Sunni Muslim states in the region.
Jess Hordes, Washington director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that the strategy of broadening the case against Iran was not an attempt to divert attention from the threats to Israel. „It is a fact that Iran is a danger to the whole world," Hordes said. „We are not just saying it to hide our concerns about Israel."
Yet many advocacy efforts, even when not linked to Israel, carry indelibly Jewish fingerprints. Last week, Jewish groups claimed victory when the United Nations approved a resolution denouncing Holocaust denial, with Iran‚s regime as the obvious target. Additionally, numerous Jewish activists are pressing in advertisements and Internet appeals for Ahmadinejad to be indicted in The Hague for incitement to genocide.
In warning of possible scapegoating, insiders point to the experience of the Iraq War. Since the initial invasion in 2003, antiwar groups have charged, with growing vehemence, that the war was promoted by Jewish groups acting in Israel‚s interest ˜ even though the invasion enjoyed bipartisan backing and popular support, and was not at the top of most Jewish organizations‚ agendas. The Iraq backlash prompted former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to order in 2005 that his ministers keep a low profile on Iran.
Now, however, Jewish groups are indeed playing a lead role in pressing for a hard line on Iran. The campaign comes at a time when President Bush‚s popularity has reached record lows and members of both parties are cautioning against a rush toward war.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel's prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called „the poisoning of America," Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.
Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests.
Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the Israel Lobby by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter‚s best-selling book, „Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that „New York money people" were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran.
„In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the neocons‚ as a code word," Hoenlein said. „Now we see that code words are no longer necessary." He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread.
„This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down," he said. „It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society."
According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to „intimidate American Jews not to speak out." He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.
Another instance of casting blame, less widely reported, was attributed to former secretary of state Colin Powell. In a new biography, by Washington Post writer Karen De Young, Powell is said to have put at least some of the blame for the Iraq war on Jewish groups. The book, „Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell," claims that Powell used to refer to the pro-war advisers surrounding former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the „Jinsa crowd." Jinsa is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a hawkish think tank that supported the Iraq war.
Thomas Neumann, Jinsa's executive director, said he was not offended by Powell's reference, although he was surprised that the former secretary of state would single out a Jewish group when naming those who supported the war. „I am not accusing Powell of anything, but these are words that the antisemites will use in the future," Neumann said.
Whatever worries exist about a negative backlash over Israel, they have not deterred Jewish and pro-Israel activists from publicly pressing for tough U.S. action against Tehran or invoking concern for Israel.
A particularly forceful argument for a hard line against Iran appeared this week in The New Republic, a Washington insider journal widely viewed as a bellwether of pro-Israel opinion. The lengthy article, written by two respected Israeli writers, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, both fellows at the Shalem Center, a hawkish Jerusalem think tank, names Iran as the main threat to Israeli survival, regional stability and to the entire world order. This theme has been echoed in publications and press releases put out by most major Jewish groups, including Aipac and the Conference of Presidents.
„The international community now has an opportunity to uphold that order," Oren and Klein Halevi wrote. „If it fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons ˜ by a country that denies the genocide against Europe's six million Jews while threatening Israel‚s six million Jews ˜ will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history".
Nice write up Phil.
this Israel Palestine issue must help jews to better understand how the world was silent during wwii for as long as they were as "things were happening", i guess similar discussion were under way all around the world back then also among intellectuals of the world.
today while your community pontificates about the crimes against palestinians such as the white phosphorus assaults among the many thugish crimes that run-a-muck govt's usually carry out against helpless populations these fireside chats are taking place over a glass or two of some good wine and maybe even after a religious service, how nice, it must warm the hearts of the palestinians to know these things.
it just makes it easier to understand how crimes against humanity can be carried out and later generations find it so difficult to understand how it could have been.
at least it will be said by later generations that some did care as it can be also said about the wwii experience that some did try to save lives.
the ball is on the 20 yard line and the defense is holding strong, only eighty more yards to go.
Phil, what do you see happening when the American voice takes over the so called debate from the jewish left and the jewish right? You did note that it was now the jewish left and the jewish right who was having this discussion but there may be another voice in the room once they perk up their ears and pick up on what is being discussed and how it is affecting them directly.
How do you think that is going to work out for all involved?
Do you foresee the possibility for red state and blue state americans to feel that a foreign peoples have been operating in their midst pressuring both the press and the politicos with money and jobs?
Or is that too conspiratorial to be considered?
Consider that these things have a life of their own once they are sent into motion and pass the point where the dialogue can be monitored and controlled.
Nice piece of reporting on what to me is the issue dujour, this one will affect our soldiers and the rest of us back in the "homeland", siegheil.
unless the American President speaks directly to the volk and the narrative changes 180 degrees the aggressive neocons personality shall win the day.
link to original.antiwar.com
Norman has his way of confronting "the fascist state of Israel" and the BDS movement has another, there really is no need for Norman to try to belittle the attemps of the BDS'rs since the purpose of the entire confrontation with "the fascist state of Israel" is to get them to change their evil ways.
the more fronts that can be opened against Israel the better chance of getting them to mend their evil ways.
Dersh is an irritant and his intent is to irritate those whom he is trying to bully.
The Dersh isn't wearing threads.
Excellent approach to the Joke that is Dershowitz.
What should Dershes Wiki say about his propagandistic pronouncements.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (Arabic: محمد سعيد الصحاف; born 1940) is a former Iraqi diplomat and politician. He came to wide prominence around the world during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which he was the Iraqi Information Minister under Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, acting as the mouthpiece for the Baath Party and Saddam's regime.
He is best known for his grandiose and grossly unrealistic propaganda broadcasts prior to and during the war, extolling the invincibility of the Iraqi Army and the permanence of Saddam's rule. His announcements were intended for an Iraqi domestic audience subject to Saddam's cult of personality and total state censorship, and were met with widespread derision and amusement by Western nationals and others with access to up-to-date information from international media organizations.
What truly saddens me is how oblivious your average american jew really is...just think how oblivious your average american on the street is about "the only democracy in the middle east" and apply that to the american jews.
good luck trying to not blame anyone and pretend that shit just happens all by itself and that the american public will not scapegoat someone...we know that the gov't would like to blame iran and point the finger away from our shores but the public by then may not be in the mood for more war.
When the neocons tore into someone, whether it was Judge Goldstone, Pres Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Prof Mearsheimer, Prof Walt, Prof Finkelstein or any of the many others that would add their name to the list, the aim of Israels defenders was to silence ridicule and or destroy their lively hood and reputation, and now we are to be sensitive and concerned not to hurt these barbarian vandals sensitive human side.
The good thing is that these things take on a life of their own and hopefully the direction of the debate has changed.
It can not be forgotten that this crowd wants war which kills innocent men women and children who have zero to do with anything, the everyday citizen that pays the price when empires seek to control others.
Let's just get the Who out of the way and answer that question to the best of our abililty.
"So the U.S. military doesn’t want to attack Iran and neither does Israel. Who does?"
Phil, it could be the "big money people" that General Wesley Clark spoke about back during his time in the spotlight.
I'm just saying, it could be if there is such a thing.
Don't expend too much energy disliking these fellows they do not deserve the attention they bring to themselves. They are either ignorant or bad.
Ignorance or malice either one a shame.
I agree this article with its art so representative of everything neocon is terrific.
Dershowitz, anyone willing to take up the defense?
Let's see who is going to have the haaauhztpa.
How does one defend the unjustifiable?
With a straight face.
Stay tuned.