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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Without racial purity laws, brutally enforced by the military, there IS no Israel.
Without laws forbidding non-Jews to marry in Israel, there is no Israel.
Without laws stripping non-Jews of their right to property ownership and citizenship, there is no Israel.
Without the fundamental understanding that Jews are superior to non-Jews and entitled to preferential treatment under the law, there can be no Israel--period.
Unless you are suggesting that non-Jews will simply acquiesce in their own persecution and displacement, which seems pretty "wacky" to me.
What you are arguing for is a "whites only" beach, where all races are welcome. This is absurd and plainly untenable. You can have one or the other--not both.
No virulent racism enforced through violence: no Israel.
It's as simple as that.
Parents?
Why do you think the Israelis established the kibbutz policy? The whole idea was to wrench children from their parents so that they could be force-fed state propaganda until their minds were jello and they were converted into robot killing machines.
Neither evil nor indecent, but incompatible with the whole notion of a Jewish state.
Once you stop virulent discrimination against non-Jews, Israel collapses.
Klan rallies could also "be made decent." They should just allow people to participate in the festivities in a non-hostile environment, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Of course-- then it wouldn't be a Klan rally any more.
See my point?
Agree with kathleen and MRW's statements above--a needed antidote to the self-mythologizing too many Jews continue to be engaged in.
It would be wrong (if not, downright anti-Semitic) to say that Jews "have been at the forefront of predatory lending policies" yet you hear again and again how activism in the Civil Rights movement is somehow embedded in Jewish culture and Jewish identity.
SOME Jews fight for justice and equal rights, just as SOME Jews are masters of financial fraud. That's about all you can say, without falling into self-aggrandizing nonsense in the first case or racist demonization in the second case.
Zionists and Zionism are pretty much irrelevant.
Zionists were those lobbying for a Jewish state, which has long since become a fact of life in the world. If you say you are anti-Zionist, you are really calling for the dismantling of Israel.
The entire concept of a Jewish state loses all meaning once you add the provision "with equal rights for all, irrespective of religion."
Avi June 30, 2010 at 11:51 am
Neturei Karta were right all along. Israel is antithesis to Judaism.
Actually, Judaism and Zionism are closely related ideologies of racism, phony victimhood and contrived history.
Each draws its poisonous strength from the other, as we see in the settler movement, the IDF religious lunacy, and Israeli racism in general.
Zionism's right to dispossess non-Jews of their land and their lives comes directly from the Talmud and other related items of hebraic lunacy. We have to fight the TWIN scourges of Zionism and Judaism.
Naturally, Thomas never implied that the Jews of Israel should be forcibly removed, and suggestions that she did ( or more outrageously, that she advocated Jews return to Europe during the Shoah, to be gassed) are really too dishonest and laughable for words.
That said, we ought to talk about the expulsion of Israel's Jews. It's perfectly legitimate to talk about and bears no relation whatever to the Nakba of '48, inflicted on the Palestinians BY the Israelis.
#1, The Jews had no right whatsoever to invade someone else's land and steal it by force of arms in the first place. They have no legitimate claim to living there--they are squatters, at best.
#2 They won't have to exist as miserable, stateless refugees, like the Palestinians driven from their homes. They can return, as Thomas recommends, to the lands they came from. This would go a long way toward righting historical wrongs, not only the wrongs done to the Palestinians but the wrongs committed against Jews by Europe during the holocaust. Why shouldn't Europe be obliged to absorb these (admittedly vile) Jews from Israel?
Let's not compare forcing Israel's Jews to go home after decades of unacceptable criminality in the region, with the Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestine that began in 1948 and continues today. That's an unreasonable comparison.
"At a non-emotional level, of course, I know that Thomas was wrong."
Huh?!?
That's insane.
Franklin Foer of course is the brother of the equally clue-less non-writer Safran Foer.
Ozick, Foer, Chabon, and a whole horde of undistinguished losers milk their Jewish identity to death. Without it, no one would publish their 11th rate crap.
Yes Israelis are still welcome to post on Mondoweiss. Let's not do anything that could hurt their feelings.
Disgusting.
Why not a flotilla of Iranian Jews? After all, they are the 2nd largest Jewish population in the Mid East. Furthermore, it is their lives being threatened by the nuclear psychopaths of Israel.
The Israelis have tried for years to lure the Jews of Iran to move to Israel. To their credit, the Council of Iranian Jews told the Israeli filth from the sewer to drop dead.
Sderot?
A huge joke. An exercise in 2nd rate play acting. Every Israeli in Sderot and Tel Aviv and everyplace else knows he has a better chance of being killed by lightning than by a Palestinian missile.
The problem is not that Israelis are fearful. The problem is that Israelis lead completely normal, unencumbered lives while the Palestinians suffer and die.
One approach to this impasse is embodied in the phrase "no justice, no peace." What does this mean? To me it means, if the Palestinians are terrorized, if they are suffering, if they have no security, then Israelis also will be denied peace and security, Israelis will also be terrorized.
Now one can decide this is a terrible or counter-productive approach That's fine. I have mixed feelings about it. But that is what "no justice, no peace" means. If it doesn't mean that, then I think it's just a hollow slogan, suitable for T shirts but carrying no weight of conviction.
good post. you make a few assumptions I find difficult to agree with, particularly concerning what the world will or won't countenance. It has countenanced everything so far from the Nakba to Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatilla, the massacre of 20,000 civilians in Lebanon in 1982, the attack on the USS Liberty, the Jenin massacre, the Gaza massacre, the massacre of passengers on a humanitarian aid flotilla, and a couple dozen other atrocities, not to mention the 60+ year brutalization and dispossession of the Palestinians. The US, openly contemptuous of international law will break any countries in half that try to interfere with US-Israeli aggression.
You point to a looming, bloody conflict, quite possibly involving Israel's nuclear arsenal. If that is the case, wouldn't it be far more prudent for the US not to "get out of the way" but rather, to use its muscle to crush Israel, either through a crippling embargo of goods or credible military threat? Obviously, the US won't do either of these things as we are in cahoots with Israel and its crime spree, but why should we theoretically get out of the way of something we have the potential to put a stop to?
Finally, BDS forcing Israel to surrender does not seem remotely credible.
I hear ya, Sam. In some respects, I quite agree. We have all sorts of ethnic nationalisms in the world and often the resulting attitudes to otherness are pretty shocking and distasteful.
I was talking with a Bulgarian girl awhile back..bright, highly educated, utterly charming until the discussion for some reason touched on the Roma. Suddenly, I was talking with an arch racist, who saw nothing of any redeeming value in this (long oppressed) minority and spat out some choice denunciations of them as basically a waste of space. Nevertheless, the Bulgarians are not bombing their playgrounds and flour mills with white phosphorus!
It's very puzzling. Perhaps the most puzzling to me are people like Amira Hass, who grew up in Israel, who live in that society, are immersed in the same milieu, yet utterly reject its poisonous mindset and devote themselves, with great courage, to opposing it. The development of such a person is mysterious to me. I've often wondered about it. It pains me to admit that under the circumstances, I would probably not have the incredible independence of spirit to be an Amira Hass. I might very well be a typical Israeli. But that doesn't make them less of a threat to the world's stability. Indeed, just how they got that way seems pretty immaterial alongside the sobering reality, which is that they are itching for a war with Iran and could wind up blowing up the planet in the process. I think something has to be done about them.
wondering jew. There have been various polls pointing to the attitudes of the Israeli vermin to the flotilla attack and other abominations. Here's one:
link to washingtonindependent.com
The figure I cite in my post--94%--comes from a poll conducted by Tel Aviv University concerning Israeli public support for the Gaza massacre.
"These figures are alarming, but it would not surprise me if 1950’s polls showed that 75 % of southern whites detested mingling with blacks, and 90 % supported limitations of voting rights and separate, inferior schools."
David Samel
Actually, if we want the analogy to be accurate, we have to make a few slight adjustments.
Instead of 75% of southern whites, we have to talk about 94% of the entire country. Then we have to replace 'detest mingling with whites' to "favor dealing with the blacks in the Unites States through a combination of expulsion and extermination."
Now the comparison with Israel is sound.
Israel can in no way be described as normal. They are a severely pathological and dangerous society. They not only pose an existential threat to the Palestinians and to Iran, but literally, to all earthly life.
As to Zakkai's article, his intentions may have been good or ill but the piece remains absurd in either case, as it offers absolutely no suggestion, no hint of any kind as to how this state can possibly be bought into being against the longstanding efforts of the US and Israel. It's like discussing what the national anthem of our new planet in some distant quasar galaxy ought to be, when no means of reaching, let alone colonizing it, have been proposed.. What purpose does this serve?
I'm curious too why you believe a one state solution (or for that matter, two states) is in any way inevitable. The most likely scenario is that the Israelis consolidate their stranglehold on Palestinian land and resources and lock the remaining victims in a huge, maximum security prison for life. Some will move, some will starve, people will forget them, especially as conditions globally become worse and worse and people have their own severe issues to deal with: food shortages, water shortages, fuel shortages, environmental degradation, mass migrations brought on by climate change, waves of disease and so forth.
That's one interpretation. Perhaps for the politicians in charge, this is largely about politics. I don't see that as the case at all with the Israeli citizenry.
Under the right conditions, a society can become diseased, gangrenous. It's not something that happens often, but it can happen. We saw it in Nazi Germany and we see it today in Israel.
In any society, you can find a few psychopaths who would be euphoric to see an unarmed girl shot in the face and blinded with a tear gas canister or a young woman crushed by a bulldozer. Generally, such people are in prison or tied to their beds in a mental ward. But in Israel, they are in the government, in every business, in every shop and cafe, on television, indeed, everywhere. In Israel, criminal psychosis is the norm. Finkelstein calls Israel "a lunatic state." I don't think the characterization is merely for effect. We are dealing with a nuclear-equipped society that has gone utterly mad.
Why bring in the refugee issue? That's not the stumbling block to peace and never has been. The stumbling block is that Israel flatly rejects ANY livable arrangement for ANY Palestinians, refugee or otherwise.
..and talking about flags, currency and national anthem seems downright silly.
If you don't have a plan to force the Israelis into joining the human race and accepting the Palestinians as human beings with fundamental rights, you don't have a plan. You have nothing.
I don't buy it. The idea of Israelis living in peace and harmony with anyone is simply too far-fetched to seriously entertain. I also think that the similarities to the South African case have blinded many to the substantial differences, in terms of demographics, relations with the US, propaganda apparatus, economic realities and so many other features.
Finally, the temptation to believe that history repeats should also be approached with great caution. Nothing ever repeats itself, save in a very superficial manner. Israel is a separate case and must be analyzed on its own terms.
..and the Israelis are going to grant citizenship and voting rights to the people they are busy killing and ethnically cleansing because why again?
Don't sweat it, David.
Mooser's whole life is a clerical error.
He's a GOOD BOY this Tommy Friedman! All his life..he want to write for your paper. I know I know...instead of brains, he has a little bit kreplachs up there...but he's such a sweet boy! He writes for you maybe a little opinion piece now and then? Just a little something...not much? What harm? Haven't the Jews suffered enough? You give him job...yes?
Check this out:
link to benjerry.co.il
You remember hippy-dippy, socially responsible Ben and Jerry, right? They are helping the occupation just like nearly every US business is helping the occupation, because all they care about is $ at the end of the day.
Hate to rain on the parade, but I don't see how a boycott can get very far. America's economy is so interwoven with Israel's at this point, you have to pretty much boycott everything and convince everyone else to follow suit, for it to make a dent.
I'm in favor of it--any method deserves to be tried, but to hear some people talk about BDS, you'd think all we have to do is get some resolutions passed on college campuses and steer clear of Starbucks and the occupation is going to fall.
josh
Heartbreaking and moving account. The irony of a Birthright tour being the event that transformed your thinking is so poignant and you've captured it all so elegantly. Thanks.
The Israelis are compromising their own security just to ease the blockade on Gaza!
They are putting their lives at risk JUST so people like YOU will quit picking on them, but you just can't resist, can you? You just can't help attacking Jews.
Even if they allow in pasta AT THEIR OWN RISK, you'll find something to abuse them over.
Well get this, buster. I've got the tefillin out and I'm gonna go daven* for Israel right now, so they stay safe!
* I think it means pray or something.
Hey..I can't see what people are complaining about. Perhaps you don't recall that the Israelis conducted a very serious investigation into allegations of misconduct during Cast Lead. Two IDF soldiers who stole someone's credit card were apprehended and punished!
link to haaretz.com
But nothing will satisfy you anti-Semites, will it?
FWIW David, I thought it was devilishly funny.
..hard to top the hair-raising absurdity of Israel's own declarations, though. They are a laugh riot without much need for embellishment.
um...I'm pretty sure Samel's piece is a parody, sherbrsi.
"I would like Squeaky Fromme and Tex Watson to lead the impartial investigation of my actions."
Charles Manson
That's TOTALLY unfair!
What happened was, the Israelis were trying to decide between two Irish Nobel laureates..David Trimble and Mairead McGuire.
Finally, it came down to a coin toss and David won.
No space in the Times to cover this.
Instead, we have a full page of Isabel Kershner shedding her Nazi tears for THIS creep:
link to nytimes.com
Didn't Abbas lend a hand to kill the Goldstone Report?
Of course, Hamas has made use of terrorism for a noble cause while Irgun and Stern used terrorism (as Israel continues to do) for a despicable cause.
That's quite a distinction.
I'd rate the chances of successful legal action against members of the flotilla, possibly even including imprisonment, as quite good. Unquestionably, the chances are far better than any chance that the perpetrators of this brazen act of piracy and murder will ever be brought to justice.
I didn't encourage you to write a damn thing, mooser. Write whatever the hell you want. Whatever your strategy is, it's been a complete and utter failure.
The Palestinians were just fine until violent criminals moved into the neighborhood. They have tried every legal means to remedy the situation for 60 years. Things have only gotten worse and will plainly continue to get worse, all of your 'consciousness raising' efforts notwithstanding. Are you saying you stand firmly against making a place for these beleaguered people when you have NO proposal whatsoever for getting the Israelis to make a place for them, something that is NEVER going to happen, unless the United States suddenly collapses?
i shingo
..gotta run here. just a couple things. I was referring to the expulsion of non-Jews from within the green line to Gaza and the far side of the apartheid wall, not expulsion from the OT.
I don;t think the utterly senseless, violent attack on the flotilla can be squared in any way with Israel's supposed concern with its public image. Indeed, it seemed calculated to produce maximum public outrage for almost no benefit. It's true they invest a lot in image-burnishing efforts too, so there's clearly some contradiction. Thanks to the US, they have more cash than they know what to do with, so why not blow a few million on PR?
Finally, I have maybe gotten a rap on Mondoweiss as 'Mr. Violence.' I try to reiterate that I have no grand scheme at all. I just see a horrifying stasis and after the flotilla event and US response, feel other tactics ought to be discussed and considered.
Hell--we should even consider the ZIONIST solution! I'm serious. Get the Arab states to take in the Palestinians!
On first blush, this seems crazy--neither the Arab states nor the Palestinians would ever go for it. I'm not so sure. It would be easier to get the US government to put pressure on the Arab states than on Israel. We could offer various enticements for them to make this humanitarian gesture.
As to the Palestinians, doubtless they would say 'hell no we won't go.' At least at first. But if the offer were closer to reality and not just an idle theory, I'm not so sure most wouldn't relocate to a place where their children had some hope for a future and a semblance of a life.
It goes without saying this would be monstrously unjust. It would be a triumph for Israel, a triumph of the most despicable tactics. But at least the poor Palestinians could live without bombs falling on them and tanks crushing their homes. My 2 cents.
Good post VR. I mostly agree. Without some optimism, some glimmer of hope, things are lost, though it is sometimes very difficult to feel hopeful. I don't see a compelling reason why Israel won't complete its task of forcing Palestinians into ever-shrinking enclaves, stealing what land they covet and leaving the people to suffer in what amounts to a concentration camp.
As to the "demographic threat" within Israel, I have less and less difficulty imagining the Israelis expelling their non-Jewish population on some trumped up "security" pretense. The world will look on aghast, there will be outraged editorials and some marches in the street, but they'll get away with it. I mean--who knows, but that doesn't seem far fetched any more. I take issue with all the talk about "Israel shooting itself in the foot" or "Israel painting itself into a corner." Israel is winning. I think we have to start with that tragic fact, if we are not to lose our way in fantasy.
There are many aspects of this that need rethinking, in my opinion. Some central tenets of the movement may simply be wrong. For example, it's an article of faith that our dreadful mainstream media is largely to blame for the perpetuation of this disaster. It's the fault of idiots like Thomas Friedman, Ethan Bronner and so forth. If Americans were better informed, there would be far more opposition to Israel's unconscionable behavior. That seems so obvious as to hardly bear repeating and yet, I don't see the evidence for it. On the contrary, you have quite a bit of seething hostility in America to Israel's abominable conduct, in spite of the lousy to non-existent news coverage, as opposed to Israel, where one can read astonishing pieces in Ha'aretz about Israel's Nazi rampages through the Occupied Territories, the blind cruelty on display, yet the citizenry are more homogeneously militarist and murderous than ever. Again, public awareness doesn't necessarily lead to a change of heart, and as you rightly stated, in the civil rights movement, the fear of riots and uncontainable unrest may have been a greater engine of change than people's guilty conscience over the fundamental injustices black's faced.
All quite depressing.
All quite reasonable. You may be entirely right on both matters (resistance in Iraq and Palestine).
I do think that recent events including Cast Lead/Goldstone and the flotilla massacre need to be fully taken stock of, and I don't think they really have been.
The US under the most liberal leadership the country can ever expect to have, extends carte blanche to Israel for war crimes and even the murder of US civilians. I think it's clear that the US position is 'Israel uber alles' and absolutely nothing can change that fact. If that is true, then world opinion is utterly irrelevant and recruiting public sentiment to the cause can not work as a strategy.
In any case, public sentiment worldwide is already with the Palestinians and against the Israelis and this had been the case even before the latest outrages. The law is entirely on the side of the Palestinians. The World Court supports the Palestinians. The overwhelming majority of UN member states support Israel's complete withdrawal to the 67 borders. As Finkelstein accurately notes, it's the whole world on one side, Israel/US on the other.
But the US is not going to budge and if that is the case, I really can't see any other way for the Palestinians to save themselves from extermination than a war of attrition that identifies the entire state of Israel as a military base.
..as a follow up, I would ask why the most powerful military on earth is leaving Iraq after flushing 3 trillion dollars down the drain and accomplishing absolutely nothing other than helping to empower Iraq's neighbor Iran?
I think we can give a one word answer. Terrorism. That is what defeated the United States in Iraq. Our supply lines were cut to pieces and our GIs were cut to pieces, with no end in sight--all thanks to simple, inexpensive and highly lethal IEDs. We couldn't take it any more, so we're getting the hell out.
I'm aware of the argument, which seems to be the common wisdom on the matter. On the other hand, consider this:
"Attacking civilians is an accepted, indeed vital part of our agenda and public opinion beyond our borders is a matter of utter indifference to us."
This is the mindset of the people who are winning in this conflict.
"Violent resistance MAY be acceptable, but only against uniformed soldiers, who are essentially invulnerable, due to their overwhelming military superiority and weaponry. Any other use of violence could hurt our image."
This is the mindset of the people who are losing in this conflict.
We seem to be avoiding the meat of the issue here. Lives have been lost. A girl has been blinded. The siege continues with no end in sight.
What did the resistance on the Mavi Marmara accomplish? It raised public awareness. But is this actually useful? I don't see how. We have been 'raising public awareness' for 60 years. Most of the world is now bitterly opposed to Israel and its Nazi-inspired policies. This pubic awareness has produced absolutely zero in the way of positive changes on the ground.
Personally, I don't see the point in engaging in battles that are lost before they start. Engagement with the trained and highly armed thugs of the IDF is a losing proposition. Why fight in a battle on their terms? It makes no sense.
There is one place however where Palestinians have an advantage. They are used to living in perpetual fear, perpetual chaos. They have been doing so for decades. The Israelis on the other hand are a pampered society that really has almost no experience with violence whatsoever. Israeli society is a target that can be effectively attacked. This is the only place that I can see where violence can have something other than a merely token effect. To make life utterly unlivable for the Israeli people, so that peace becomes preferable to incessant terror is one approach to the current impasse, and obviously has been applied in other liberation struggles.
Getting in fights with the IDF is just getting people killed, to no good end that I can see. I'm not advocating this particular strategy, which may very well be counter-productive--no one has a crystal ball. I only point out that it has a chance for success, where other forms of violent resistance will only get more activists and Palestinians killed, with no resulting benefit that I can see.
Maybe you're right, sherbrsi. Hell--I have absolutely no clue anymore what is to be done. So much of the movement's efforts have been aimed at getting the US to change its position. I have to admit, on learning of the killings aboard the Mavi Marmara, amidst the rage and disgust, some part of me felt--almost giddy. Surely things MUST change now. The US simply won't be able to allow something like this to pass without punishment. US citizens in a humanitarian aid convoy, butchered in international
waters?!? Not even Israel can get away with something that brazen!
Wrong. Completely dead wrong. In fact, when a rumor surfaced that the US might request an independent investigation of this outrage, Obama went out of his way to make clear that nothing could be further from the truth.
Blind an American art student in a non-violent protest and this is allowed to pass, without a word from our government? This is completely beyond belief.
I thought after everything, I was unshockable. I'm shocked. I think these events radically alter the terms and change what we can ever reasonably expect from the US government. If they are so determinedly against us, where do we turn? Where is there any credible hope?
Today when I hear people talk about one state or two states, it sounds to me like beggars arguing about whether to buy a Maserati or a Lambourgini. I don't see the Palestinians getting anything. Why should they wind up with one or the other? Who can bring that about?
We don't engage the Ku Klux Klan in a dialogue. We don't engage the Nazi party in a dialogue. It is immoral to even propose a dialogue with the Israelis. They are a disease to be combatted. Nothing more.
Time to slam the cyber-door shut on the Israelis. Phil should proudly advertise Mondoweiss as "an Israel-free site" in accordance with principles of BDS.
We should try to get as many websites as possible worldwide closed to the Israelis. Let the bastard scum build their own internet.
Israelis OUT.
What ever option 5 would be, that's my choice!
Full disclosure: Zach Karabell is related to Norman Podhoretz. I think he's his son or something.
By the same token, if Israel were not menacing the region with 200+ nuclear weapons, I would oppose Iran acquiring such a weapon. As things stand, Iran would have to be out of their minds not to develop a nuclear deterrent to the Nazi psychotics of Israel, who have attacked every country in the region, with spectacular loss of innocent life, and are currently beating the drums for war against Iran, to punish it for exercising its legal rights under the NPT--the treaty the rogue filth of Israel refused to sign.
You have no goddamn case whatsoever. Just give up and quit making yourself look stupider and more vile than you already have.
Let me be the first to state the obvious:
MONDOWEISS SHOULD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW SUIT!
How can we preach BDS and fail to take the obvious, local step in that direction?
Hopefully, Phil's Israeli readers, cut off from the flow of vital information, will stage a mass exodus from Israel. (I mean a REAL exodus, not like the phony one out of Egypt.)
sorry..wrong thread
Despite the obscene trumpeting of the Zio-lice, the matter is not settled science. For any interested, here is a lengthy, detailed discussion of some of the issues in Discover Magazine:
link to blogs.discovermagazine.com
I intend to speak with one of the researchers I work with who is an authority on 'snips' or so-called 'single nucleotide polymorphisms' on which these studies were based.
The studies are serious, though the tone of the authors certainly suggests that more than dispassionate investigation of the facts was driving their research. That doesn't mean they are wrong, but to call their conclusions about Jewish interrelatedness "definitive" ..as we are hearing in the major media, is almost certainly outlandish. Also--while these studies do not support the theory of the khazars, they do not, as claimed, prove it to be wrong. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the greater scientific community.
I think the drones are really just one facet of our push-button murder club. Even our piloted aircraft are often relying on 'stand off 'weapons, fired from hundreds (thousands?) of miles away, the killing, very similar to the drone operator's Nintendo game mentality, seen in all its disgusting glory in the wikileaks video--the one whose release, Obama is fiercely intent on punishing.
A recent segment on NPR dealt with the drones in some detail. Most of what you might wish to know was covered, with the glaring omission of a) the question of the legality of these cowardly attacks, and b) the significant and mounting civilian toll. The segment talked a lot about whether the drones were or were not "helping america meet its strategic objectives."
I think more disturbing than the technology itself, is the fact that the program in Afghanistan in being conducted by the CIA and has essentially no oversight..it answers to no one, operates in secret, and carries on as it pleases. We are going to pay for these strikes. I think everyone pretty much knows this. Still, we can expect the "why do they hate us" brigade to reemerge from their fortified revetments. Same old story.
Fuck off and jump in the sewer.
Take the rest of your vile compatriots with you.
Why did the Israelis elect Netanyahu? Everyone knows it's because Barak and Tzipi Livni failed to fully satisfy the population's sick bloodlust, during the Cast Lead massacre.
As repulsive as Israel's leaders are, the citizenry is worse. They exist to kill and maim innocent people, and assert their domination over the defenseless. It's impossible to feel anything but loathing for them.
The name of the game is stopping Israel before it starts a nuclear war--a very real and very terrifying possibility. Whatever needs to be done in this regard, ought to be. The welfare of Israelis should be at the very bottom of any list of considerations.
We don't NEED Der Sturmer, so long as Israeli filth like you insist on conforming to the most vicious anti-Semitic stereotypes of the lying, thieving, murderous Jew.
Forget your idiotic, paranoid fixation with the Arabs and the "goys."
Jews are your greatest enemy.
We 'assimilated' Jews surely WILL join our "goy" brethren and reach for the nearest glass of champagne the next time you and your tefillin-wearing tapeworm pals are attacked, until your vile dung-heap of a nation is finished.
Go to hell.
Filth from top to bottom
You will look long and hard to find a decent Jew ANYWHERE who does not regard the enthusiasm unanimously expressed in Israel for the massacre of civilian aid workers as a profound and dangerous psychosis.
It is we Jews of the disapora who are under constant threat from the vermin of Israel. We have absolutely nothing in common with them, share none of their cultural traits and certainly, none of their appalling "values" ..their Nazi mindset that has utterly sickened the world.
To be a Jew of character is to repudiate Israel, root and branch and stand AGAINST the existence of this gangster state, that has the unmitigated gall to attach the name of world Jewry to its grotesque facade. Diaspora Jews are the victim of identity theft. Let us bring the Israeli criminals to justice and reclaim our honor.
The reasonable question seems to me: was the original announcement a fake or was the retraction a fake? Frankly, I have no idea. The whole thing is severely disturbing. Why is no one even attempting to have Israel condemned in the UN for threatening aggression against Iran? It's completely outrageous.
hear hear.
oh..and I particularly like this comment from the courageous alison weir on the helen thomas fiasco:
link to palestinethinktank.com
Richard Silverstein is an aggressively silly person. He shouldn't be placed in the company of Chomsky and Finkelstein. He's both belligerent and shockingly uninformed.
"Sorry y'all. We were just kidding. Everyone knows there's no such thing as a Jewish people. C'mon. It's a crazier idea than the Easter Bunny."
That just ain't gonna happen. One reason is that so many benefits are attached to Jewishness. There's nothing like it to turn the mediocre mind into something incredible. This point was neglected in Michael Chabon's dreary and much talked about piece on Jewish identity in the Times. Chabon hadn't the honesty to point out that the milking of Jewish identity allows perfectly average writers like him to rapidly ascend the social ladder. Go check out his site. A non-jewish writer putting fdown that sort of half baked crap would NOT have a career in letters, I can tell you that.
Maybe someone here with a flair for quotes can remind me who said that after the holocaust, Israel was the worst thing to happen to the Jews.
Great line.
yes..I agree. Obviously, in a literal sense, the analogy is flawed. Nevertheless, the analogy can easily be adjusted for greater accuracy.The underlying point seems to me unimpeachable. A subset of any group behaving abominably should be singled out for condemnation, not enthusiastically embraced.
But we Jews haven't got much to embrace and some will take what they can get. We can't embrace our common language. We can't embrace our shared religious convictions--smart Jews tossed these out ages ago. A desperate effort to bind us all together through genetics leaves no one convinced.
Luckily, there's always Israel. We are united through our Jewish nation. It may be that giving up on Israel is really giving up on Jewishness. As a Jew, this bothers me not one whit. I could honestly care less. For many Jews, the thought is utterly intolerable.
Sam
Time to put this fiction to rest.
The Israelis don't kick an elderly Arab woman from her home in East Jerusalem because they're afraid of her.
They do it because they are Nazis.
..and Obama's justice dept is going all out to throw the book at the guy who leaked the video of one of our air atrocities in Afghanistan to wikileaks, complete with the signature US Nazis laughing about the murders. To reiterate the obvious, no charges will be forthcoming against the killers--just the messenger.
Nothing ever changes in this vile craphole that poses as a nation.
Should all Italians honor bonds of tribal kinship with the Sicilian mafia or should they declare the mafia an utter disgrace to all things Italian and vow to help destroy it?
That's like saying we shouldn't study evolution because it will never convince most of the imbeciles who discount it.
People will cultivate their so-called Jewishness just like people cultivate other forms of misguided idiocy--because society rewards them for doing so.
This is interesting too..also by Nicholas Wade in the Times:
link to nytimes.com
Wade seems unwilling to connect the dots. That is to say, it's easy to find what look like deeply meaningful markers and genetic associations in the genome, unless you actually use them in some definitive way, like making disease predictions. Then suddenly, the iron-clad associations tend to evaporate and uncertainty takes over. I suspect the same idea is at work with the supposedly conclusive evidence of a common genetic linkage among the world's Jews, based on Middle Eastern descent.
lysias
Some studies have been done that show greater genetic similarity between Palestinians and Ashkenazi Jews than between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. For some odd reason, we don't read this as a headline in every newspaper and magazine in the country. A cynic might suggest some media bias is involved, (though of course, that would be a crazy idea).
Despite the obscene trumpeting of the Zio-lice, the matter is not settled science. For any interested, here is a lengthy, detailed discussion of some of the issues in Discover Magazine:
link to blogs.discovermagazine.com
I intend to speak with one of the researchers I work with who is an authority on ’snips’ or so-called ’single nucleotide polymorphisms’ on which these studies were based.
The studies are serious, though the tone of the authors certainly suggests that more than dispassionate investigation of the facts was driving their research. That doesn’t mean they are wrong, but to call their conclusions about Jewish interrelatedness “definitive” ..as we are hearing in the major media, is almost certainly outlandish. Also–while these studies do not support the theory of the khazars, they do not, as claimed, prove it to be wrong. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the greater scientific community.