Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 5980 (since 2009-08-03 02:01:29)

DICKERSON3870

Georgia Tech, B.S. / Mercer U., J.D.

Website: http://www.facebook.com/jlewisdickerson

Showing comments 3500 - 3401
Page: 60 59 58 ... 37 36 35 34 33 ... 3 2 1

• Sy Hersh: US funded and trained Iranian group on State Dept. terror list
  • DICKERSON3870 April 7, 2012 at 4:42 pm

    RE: "Hersh reports that during the Bush administration, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an elite Special Operations force, transferred funds, arms and intelligence to the MEK." ~ Alex Kane

    MY COMMENT: I wonder if that is the source of some of the money that is being paid to high-profile Americans to give speeches in favor of removing the MEK from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Sheesh, what a corrupt, hypocritical country we are!

    SEE: Washington’s high-powered terrorist supporters, by Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 3/12/12
    LINK - link to salon.com

    AND SEE: MEK and its material supporters in Washington, by Jeremiah Goulka, Salon.com, 3/28/12
    LINK - link to salon.com

• Netanyahu will get 'talks'--plus 800 more settlers blocking Bethlehem from Jerusalem
  • DICKERSON3870 April 7, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    RE: "Once 'the deed' is done, the game change’s in
    their favor." ~ Pixel

    A/K/A: "facts on the ground" and/or "fait accompli" (“an accomplished fact”)

  • DICKERSON3870 April 7, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    RE: "More than 800 [settler homes] are planned for an area called Har Homa, whose expansion would effectively block off East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital, from the Palestinian city of Bethlehem in the West Bank, said Lior Amihai, spokesman for the Peace Now group." ~ Reuters

    TO BETTER UNDERSTAND LIKUDNIK/BE(I)TARIM/REVISIONIST ISRAEL, WATCH THESE TWO ITEMS:

    • ITEM ONE - Nietzsche and the Nazis, 2006, PG, 166 minutes
    [A LECTURE] Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party drew upon the works of famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to justify their World War II atrocities and quest for power. In this documentary, professor Stephen Hicks explores Nietzsche's teachings and determines whether the Nazis correctly interpreted their meaning. History buffs and philosophy enthusiasts alike will appreciate the thorough examination Hicks conducts of this controversial topic.
    Netflix Availability: Streaming and DVD
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    ALSO ON YouTube IN TWO PARTS:
    Nietzsche and the Nazis 1 of 2 (VIDEO, 1:11:24) - link to youtube.com
    Nietzsche and the Nazis 2 of 2 (VIDEO, 1:34:52) - link to youtube.com

    • DISCOVERY: ITEM TWO - Italian Fascism in Color, 2007, NR, 100 minutes
    Using period letters, secret memos, rare archival footage and expert interviews, this documentary traces the rise of Mussolini's fascist Italian government after World War I to its violent downfall in the throes of World War II. This penetrating exploration of Il Duce's rule reveals why his efficient administration was initially admired across the globe as well as the reasons his growing allegiance with Nazi Germany sealed his fate.
    Netflix Availability: Streaming and DVD
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    ALL BUT THE FIRST 20 MINUTES OR SO IS ALSO ON YouTube:
    The Rise of Italian Fascism
    Part 1 - missing
    Part 2 - missing
    Part 3 - link to youtube.com
    Part 4 - link to youtube.com
    Part 5 - link to youtube.com
    Fascism In Color, Mussolini In Power
    Parts 1 thru 5 - link to youtube.com...9599.18411.0.26578.3.3.0.0.0.0.57.158.3.3.0.

• Israeli army raids West Bank village, arrests minors and steals gold jewelry
  • DICKERSON3870 April 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm

    RE: "The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) routinely raid West Bank villages that resist settlements and the separation barrier, and arrest, harass and beat residents, including protest leaders." ~ Alex Kane

    FROM ALISTAIR CROOKE, London Review of Books, 03/03/11:
    

    (excerpts). . . It was [Ariel] Sharon who pioneered the philosophy of ‘maintained uncertainty’ that repeatedly extended and then limited the space in which Palestinians could operate by means of an unpredictable combination of changing and selectively enforced regulations, and the dissection of space by settlements, roads Palestinians were not allowed to use and continually shifting borders. All of this was intended to induce in the Palestinians a sense of permanent temporariness. . .
    . . . It suits Israel to have a ‘state’ without borders so that it can keep negotiating about borders, and count on the resulting uncertainty to maintain acquiescence. . .

    SOURCE - link to lrb.co.uk
    ALSO SEE: Learned helplessness - link to en.wikipedia.org

• The intellectual cowardice of Günter Grass’s critics
  • DICKERSON3870 April 6, 2012 at 12:17 pm with 4 replies

    RE: "Then comes the defamation. Why must Grass be condemned and his words ignored? Because as a seventeen year-old he served for five months in the Waffen-SS. '[A] former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel.' Heilbrunn whips the SS line so hard and fast..." ~ Woodward

    FROM THE "Hasbara Handbook", pages 22-23:
    

    • Name Calling
    Through the careful choice of words, the name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol. Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try and get the audience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative associations, without allowing a real examination of that person or idea. The most obvious example is name calling -- "they are a neo-Nazi group" tends to sound pretty negative to most people. More subtly, name calling works by selecting words with subtle negative meanings for some listeners. For example, describing demonstrators as "youths" creates a different impression from calling them "children".
    For the Israel activist, it is important to be aware of the subtly different meanings that well chosen words give. Call "demonstrations" "riots", many Palestinian political organizations "terror organizations", and so on. .
    . . . Name calling is hard to counter. Don't allow opponents the opportunity to engage in point scoring. Whenever "name calling" is used, think about referring to the same thing (e.g. Gilo), but with a more favorable description (e.g. "suburb"). Consider calling settlements "communities" or "villages". Use the same names back; if somebody talks about Sharon's "war crimes", talk about Arafat's war crimes and involvement in terror. . .

    SOURCE, "HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus" (March 2002) -
    link to scribd.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 6, 2012 at 12:12 pm

    RE: "Under a headline posing the question, Is Günter Grass An Antisemite?, Heilbrunn proceeds with passion and no reason to a foregone conclusion" ~ Woodward

    FROM SOURCEWATCH.ORG (Hasbara):
    

    (excerpts) Hasbara refers to the propaganda efforts to improve Israel's image abroad, to justify its actions, and defend it in world opinion...
    ...Hasbara Campus Manual
    A Hasbara manual for students to use on US univesity campuses is now available online[2]. A summary of the techniques is provided...
    ...Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message.
    The manual goes on to describe seven propaganda techniques:
    • Name calling: through the careful use of words, then name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol.
    • Glittering generality: Simply put, glittering generality is name calling in reverse. Instead of trying to attach negative meanings to ideas or people, glittering generalities use positive phrases, which the audience are attached to, in order to lend positive image to things. Words such as "freedom", "civilization",…
    • Transfer: Transfer involves taking some of the prestige and authority of one concept and applying it to another. For example, a speaker might decide to speak in front of a United Nations flag, in an attempt to gain legitimacy for himself or his idea.
    • Testimonial: Testimonial means enlisting the support of somebody admired or famous to endorse and ideal or campaign.
    • Plain folks: The plain folks technique attempts to convince the listener that the speaker is a 'regular guy', who is trust-worthy because the are like 'you or me'.
    • Fear: Stressing that ignoring the message will likely lead to war, terrorism[3]
    • Bandwagon: Suggest that the stated position is mainstream and use polls to suggest this. [4] . . .

    SOURCE - link to sourcewatch.org

    * "HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus", published by the World Union of Jewish Students (March 2002) - link to scribd.com

• Finkelstein 'not going to be an Israel-basher anymore' but remains 'appalled and disgusted'
  • DICKERSON3870 April 6, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    SEE: "I don't mean to say I told you so, but..." ~ by Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy, 2/08/10
    

    (excerpts) . . . This week, yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along. In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns about Israel were part of the equation and that Israel officials were involved in those discussions.
    Take it away, Tony:
    

    As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."

    . . . Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum became cheerleaders for the invasion, and they played a prominent role in helping to sell the war here in the United States. Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, DC in April 2002 and spoke in the U.S. Senate, telling his audience "the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount," and that the campaign "deserves the unconditional support of all sane governments." (It sure sounds like he was well aware of the discussions in Crawford, doesn't it?) In May, foreign minister Shimon Peres said on CNN that "Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as bin Laden," and that the United States "cannot sit and wait." A month later, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post recommending that the Bush administration "should, first of all, focus on Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein."
    This chorus continued through the summer and fall, with Barak and Netanyahu writing additional op-eds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, each calling for military action to topple Saddam. Netanyahu's piece was titled "The Case for Toppling Saddam" and said that "nothing less than dismantling his regime will do." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official spokesman, Ra'anan Gissen, offered similar statements during this period as well, and Sharon himself told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee in August 2002 that Iraq was "the greatest danger facing Israel." According to an Aug. 16 article by Aluf Benn in Ha'aretz, Sharon reportedly told the Bush administration that putting off an attack would "only give [Saddam] more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of WMD." Foreign Minister Peres reiterated his own warnings as well, and told reporters in September 2002 that "the campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must." (For sources, see pp. 233-38) . . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to walt.foreignpolicy.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 6, 2012 at 12:27 pm

    RE: "In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein’s customary meticulous research with polemical brio..." ~ OR Books

    MY COMMENT: To put it mildly!

• A wall
  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 5:17 pm

    RE: "JPEG IMAGE – link to facebook.com" - me, above

    ELABORATION: This capture (of medieval Sweden) is from the following film.
    Arn: The Knight Templar (Arn: Tempelriddaren), 2007, R, 133 minutes [a very good, but not great, film - J.L.D.]
    Based on Jan Guillou's Crusades trilogy about Swedish Knight Templar Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterqvist), this adventure saga follows the son of nobility from his monastic education to his return to the family to help fight for the crown of Sweden. That mission is interrupted, however, when Arn impregnates his lover and is sent to the Holy Land, where as penance he must become a warrior for Christ in the battles of the Crusades [with an interesting segment regarding Saladin*].
    Language: Swedish (English subtitles) DVD/Blu-ray has English audio option.
    Netflix Availability: Streaming, DVD and Blu-ray
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    Arn: The Knight Templar, Movie Trailer - link to youtube.com

    * P.S. So much for the power of the "True Cross"!

  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 4:51 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "Jews out of the WWII ghettos, built themselves another ghetto in Israel." ~ American

    MY REPLY: I guess they decided that they did not want to be "beyond the pale"* .

    * JPEG IMAGE - link to facebook.com

    "BEYOND THE PALE", phrases.org.uk:
    

    (excerpt). . . This 'pale' is the noun meaning 'a stake or pointed piece of wood'. That meaning is virtually obsolete now except as used in this phrase, but is still in use in the associated words 'paling' (as in paling fence) and 'impale' (as in Dracula movies).
    The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of 'the area that is enclosed and safe'. So, to be 'beyond the pale' was to be outside the area accepted as 'home'.
    Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement in Russia in 1791. This was the name given to the western border region of the country, in which Jews were allowed to live. The motivation behind this was to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians. Some Jews were allowed to live, as a concession, 'beyond the pale'.
    Pales were enforced in various other European countries for similar political reasons, notably in Ireland (the Pale of Dublin) and France (the Pale of Calais, which was formed as early as 1360). . .

    SOURCE - link to phrases.org.uk

• Jazz reviewer pulls glowing review of my album so as to 'stand with Israel'
  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 3:02 pm

    RE: "my humble apologies to my jewish friends for reviewing rich sigel (sic) an anti-zionist peace activist that supports the destruction of israel." ~ Brent Black

    MY COMMENT: This is the propaganda device referred to as "name calling" in the Hasbara Handbook (2002) on pages 32-33.

    SEE: Hasbara, Shmuel Rosner and the Israel Factor, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Signs Of The Times, 1/11/07
    

    (excerpt)... It was thanks to the forum and forum member a.saccus, that I became aware of the World Union of Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook ["HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus", March 2002] which you can read HERE. It has also been archived HERE...
    Hasbara Manual, page 32:
    

    Seven Basic Propaganda Devices
    Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message. To effectively present Israel to the public, and to counter anti-Israel messages, it is necessary to understand propaganda devices.
    This article applies a list of seven propaganda devices to the Israeli situation, and by doing so allows an understanding of some of the ways in which public opinion is fought for in the International arena.

    Thus what this manual is explicitly (and revealingly) about is ways to help the user win battles, not to find out the truth of the matter.
    The seven basic propaganda devices are:
    NAME CALLING
    GLITTERING GENERALITY
    TRANSFER
    TESTIMONIAL
    PLAIN FOLKS
    FEAR
    BANDWAGON
    Each of the seven is followed by several paragraphs of examples on how the technique is to be applied. . .
    . . . I will only quote "NAME CALLING" in full, both out of space/time considerations and because it seems to be a technique universally and invariably used; but all the entries are interesting. The emphases in the passage are mine.
    Hasbara Manual, page 32-33:

    Name Calling
    Through the careful choice of words, the name calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol. Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try and get the audience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative associations, without allowing a real examination of that person or idea. The most obvious example is name calling -- "they are a neo-Nazi group" tends to sound pretty negative to most people. More subtly, name calling works by selecting words with subtle negative meanings for some listeners. For example, describing demonstrators as "youths" creates a different impression from calling them "children".
    For the Israel activist, it is important to be aware of the subtly different meanings that well chosen words give. Call "demonstrations" "riots", many Palestinian political organizations "terror organizations", and so on. . .
    . . . Name calling is hard to counter. Don't allow opponents the opportunity to engage in point scoring. Whenever "name calling" is used, think about referring to the same thing (e.g. Gilo), but with a more favorable description (e.g. "suburb"). Consider calling settlements "communities" or "villages". Use the same names back; if somebody talks about Sharon's "war crimes", talk about Arafat's war crimes and involvement in terror. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to sott.net

  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    Rich Siegel, "In Palestine" (VIDEO, 12:17) - link to vimeo.com

• English effort to boycott Israeli theater is likened to.... 'Nazi book-burning'
  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 4:13 pm

    P.S. RE: "The call for a boycott of Habima, which was founded by Jews in Moscow in 1905, was condemned by Sir Arnold [Wesker], who said that 'depriving an audience of an artistic experience is like the Nazis burning the books of the finest minds and talents of Europe'." ~ The Jewish Chronicle

    FROM THE HASBARA HANDBOOK (pages 24-25):

    • Testimonial [one of the seven propaganda devices]
    Testimonial means enlisting the support of somebody admired or famous to endorse an idealor campaign. Testimonial can be used reasonably - it makes sense for a footballer to endorse football boots - or manipulated, such as when a footballer is used to support a political campaign they have only a limited understanding of. Whilst everybody is entitled to anopinion, testimonial can lend weight to an argument that it doesn't deserve: if U2's Bono condemned Israel for something that it didn't do, thousands would believe him, even thoughhe was wrong.
    Enlisting celebrity support for Israel can help to persuade people that Israel is a great country. Obviously some celebrities are more useful than others. Students are probably a little too sophisticated to be affected by Britney's opinion on Israel, but those associated with intelligence like professors, actors, radio hosts, sports managers and so on can be asked tooffer testimonial. A celebrity doesn't have to fully support Israel to be useful. Quotes can work as testimonial, even when they might be old or out of context.
    Opponents of Israel can use celebrity support to strengthen their own message. Undermine this by drawing attention away from celebrity advocates towards 'the issues'. It is not usefulto attack celebrities openly, or even to imply that they don't know what they are talking about- this will alienate their supporters. If celebrity support for Palestinian causes goes beyond humanitarian issues to the political, consider coordinating an organized protest. Most celebrities will care more about their public image than they do about the Middle East. Threats of tainting a celebrity's image will usually persuade them to back away from controversial political issues. . .

    SOURCE, “HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on
    Campus” (March 2002) – link to scribd.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 3:52 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "English effort to boycott Israeli theater is likened to…. ‘Nazi book-burning’ "

    MY COMMENT: This appears to use the propaganda devices referred to as "name calling" and "transfer" in the Hasbara Handbook (2002) on pages 22-24.

    HASBARA HANDBOOK, pages 22-24:
    

    (excerpts) Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions,and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message. To effectively present Israel to the public, and to counter anti-Israel messages, it is necessary to understand propaganda devices.
    This article applies a list of seven propaganda devices to the Israeli situation/b, and by doing so allows an understanding of some of the ways in which public opinion is fought for in the International arena.

    • Name Calling
    Through the careful choice of words, the name calling technique links a person or an idea to anegative symbol. Creating negative connotations by name calling is done to try and get theaudience to reject a person or idea on the basis of negative associations, without allowing areal examination of that person or idea. The most obvious example is name calling - "they area neo-Nazi group" tends to sound pretty negative to most people. . .

    • Transfer
    Transfer involves taking some of the prestige and authority [or negative connotations - J.L.D.] of one concept and applying it to another. For example, a speaker might decide to speak in front of a United Nations flag, in an attempt to gain legitimacy for himself or his idea. Some of the symbols that might be used indiscussing Israel might include the Israeli flag, or Star of David; Islamic symbols, which might lend a militant speaker the apparent support of Islam, even when what they are saying goesagainst mainstream Islamic beliefs [in this case, the use of book burning imagery to associate BDS with the Nazis through "transfer" ~ J.L.D.]; non-denominational prayer, which gives a sense of religiosity to a speaker even when his message is not 'religious'; and the national symbols of a speakers' own country - such as the American flag - which create the impression that thespeaker is presenting 'American values'. Jewish student groups in the Diaspora can use the flag of their own country side by side withthe Israeli flag, where appropriate, to lend support to Israel. In a sports-loving country (suchas Australia), students can make people aware of famous Israeli sportsmen and sportswomen,in order to transfer positive feelings (about a football team) to Israel. . .

    SOURCE, "HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on
    Campus" (March 2002) - link to scribd.com
    ALSO SEE - link to sourcewatch.org

• Beinart awaits Netanyau's 'epiphany'
  • DICKERSON3870 April 5, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    RE: "In occupied territories the law is infinitely flexible, but this is IDF that determines the flexibility." ~ piotr

    FROM ALISTAIR CROOKE, London Review of Books, 03/03/11:
    

    (excerpts). . . It was [Ariel] Sharon who pioneered the philosophy of ‘maintained uncertainty’ that repeatedly extended and then limited the space in which Palestinians could operate by means of an unpredictable combination of changing and selectively enforced regulations, and the dissection of space by settlements, roads Palestinians were not allowed to use and continually shifting borders. All of this was intended to induce in the Palestinians a sense of permanent temporariness...
    ...It suits Israel to have a ‘state’ without borders so that it can keep negotiating about borders, and count on the resulting uncertainty to maintain acquiescence...

    SOURCE - link to lrb.co.uk
    ALSO SEE: Learned helplessness - link to en.wikipedia.org

• Leading sociologist says 'the enemy' includes 'disloyal' individualistic young Jews who push human rights
  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 1:46 pm

    RE: "It used to be that Jews wanted to stay inside the Jewish collective. 'That is no longer critical to Jewish identity'." ~ Rabbi Amy Eilberg

    MY COMMENT: That's completely "beyond the pale", so to speak!

    BEYOND THE PALE:
    

    (excerpt)...This 'pale' is the noun meaning 'a stake or pointed piece of wood'. That meaning is virtually obsolete now except as used in this phrase, but is still in use in the associated words 'paling' (as in paling fence) and 'impale' (as in Dracula movies).
    The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of 'the area that is enclosed and safe'. So, to be 'beyond the pale' was to be outside the area accepted as 'home'.
    Catherine the Great created the Pale of Settlement in Russia in 1791. This was the name given to the western border region of the country, in which Jews were allowed to live. The motivation behind this was to restrict trade between Jews and native Russians. Some Jews were allowed to live, as a concession, 'beyond the pale'.
    Pales were enforced in various other European countries for similar political reasons, notably in Ireland (the Pale of Dublin) and France (the Pale of Calais, which was formed as early as 1360)...

    SOURCE - link to phrases.org.uk

• From sea to spying sea: FBI used 'outreach' program to collect and store data on Muslims
  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    RE: "The New York Police Department (NYPD) isn’t the only law enforcement agency to spy on Muslims living in the US. The San Francisco Federal Bureau of Intelligenc" ~ Kane

    NOT EXACTLY RELATED, BUT: Spying on the Spies, by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, 4/04/12
    Outsourcing intelligence-gathering to the Israelis imperils national security
    

    (excerpts)...Israeli spying in the US is a topic the government, and the news media, don’t like to talk about, and yet the GAO has stated the Israelis run the “most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally” and that “classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country.”
    In view of this, a new Wired report that Israeli companies are a key link in the government’s top secret high-tech spying operation, code-named “Stellar Wind,” is sure to raise eyebrows. Intelligence expert James Bamford relates:
    

    “In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network. According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book 'The Shadow Factory' in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
    “At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment. What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.”

    . . . Verint, formerly Comverse/Infosys, is another familiar name to longtime readers of this column. Back in 2001, Carl Cameron of Fox News reported Israeli agents in the US had been tracking Mohammed Atta and his terrorist team prior to the 9/11 attacks, and may have had foreknowledge of the event. One leg of this steadfastly ignored four-part series detailed the Israeli government’s intimate connection to a company with the exclusive contract to work on the technical aspects of our eavesdropping operations: Comverse-Infosys, now known as Verint.
    Verint makes customized computers and software designed to cut into the system of circuits and switches that make up the nation’s phone system in order to capture, store, and record wiretapped conversations, simultaneously sending them to government agents. The problem, however, is that the producers of this valuable tool have constant access to the computers and the information contained therein for “maintenance” purposes. This amounts to what many in law enforcement regard as a “back door” left wide open. What this means, in practice, is that the entire system has been compromised, as a letter from 15 law enforcement officials to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted. Cameron concluded his report with these words:
    

    “What troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place.”

    Fox News has never retracted this story, which was broadcast in the first half of December, 2001...
    ...The implications of this story – the pervasive penetration of America’s secure communications networks by Israeli intelligence and a possible connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – are too hot to handle for the “mainstream” news media...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to original.antiwar.com

• The 'Jewbags' photo
  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 12:45 pm

    P.S. ALSO SEE: "Bibi and the Yo-Yos", by Uri Avnery, Antiwar.com, 05/26/11:
    

    (excerpt) It was all rather disgusting.
    There they were, the members of the highest legislative bodies of the world’s only superpower, flying up and down like so many yo-yos, applauding wildly, every few minutes or seconds, the most outrageous lies and distortions of Binyamin Netanyahu.
    It was worse than the Syrian parliament during a speech by Bashar Assad, where anyone not applauding could find himself in prison. Or Stalin’s Supreme Soviet, when showing less than sufficient respect could have meant death.
    What the American Senators and Congressmen feared was a fate worse than death. Anyone remaining seated or not applauding wildly enough could have been caught on camera – and that amounts to political suicide. It was enough for one single congressman to rise and applaud, and all the others had to follow suit. Who would dare not to?
    The sight of these hundreds of parliamentarians jumping up and clapping their hands, again and again and again and again, with the Leader graciously acknowledging with a movement of his hand, was reminiscent of other regimes. Only this time it was not the local dictator who compelled this adulation, but a foreign one.
    The most depressing part of it was that there was not a single lawmaker – Republican or Democrat – who dared to resist. When I was a 9 year old boy in Germany, I dared to leave my right arm hanging by my side when all my schoolmates raised theirs in the Nazi salute and sang Hitler’s anthem. Is there no one in Washington DC who has that simple courage? Is it really Washington IOT – Israel Occupied Territory – as the anti-Semites assert? . . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to original.antiwar.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 12:33 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "and it reminds us why Wasserman Schultz is chair of the Democratic National Committee" ~ Weiss

    ALSO SEE: Peter Beinart’s Book Explains Why Democrats Gave ‘Thundering Ovations’ At Bibi’s Speech To U.S. Joint Session Of Congress, By Stan, AlterPolitics.com, 3/27/12
    

    (excerpt) ...From Scott McConnell’s review of Peter Beinart’s new book, The Crisis of Zionism (emphasis is mine):
    

    A year later, when Obama stated that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for renewed two-state negotiations—an American position for more than a generation—Netanyahu delivered what Beinart describes as “one of the most extraordinary humiliations of a president by a foreign leader in American history.” Fresh from speaking at AIPAC’s annual conference, Netanyahu replied that there was no chance of Israel withdrawing to “indefensible lines.”
    Then Netanyahu went before a joint session of Congress. Each member of Congress had a single gallery pass to give out, and most gave theirs to their largest AIPAC donor. With the hall packed with supporters, Netanyahu received one thundering ovation after another. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who as head of the Democratic National Committee plays a key role in party fundraising, used arm motions to signal to her colleagues when to stand and applaud, and they rose and clapped at Netanyahu’s most controversial statements.
    Concluding from this that America was unlikely to help, the Palestinian Authority tried to secure United Nations backing for a state within the 1967 borders. [...]

    Wonder if the President, whom the Israeli Prime Minister humiliated that afternoon, ever called Wasserman-Schultz to ask her whose side she is on? SOURCE - link to alterpolitics.com

• Beinart gets a Jewish conversation going in the media (just don't call us a cabal)
  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    Not to denigrate Dostoyevsky, but to err "kvetch" is human.
    P.S. Never, ever mix Fyodor Dostoyevsky with Bob Marley! Phil did, and you see what it hath wrought!

  • DICKERSON3870 April 4, 2012 at 11:50 am

    RE: "I write about Israel-Palestine issues only occasionally, because the onslaught of emails and comments calling me a self-hating Jew can be emotionally overwhelming." ~ Dana Goldstein

    ALSO SEE (for the 'N'th time) - Dear liberal American Jews: Please don’t betray Israel, by Dahlia Scheindlin, +972 Magazine, 2/14/12:
    

    (excerpts). . . After two weeks in America visiting family and friends, two observations struck me powerfully. First, the understanding that Israel is committing terrible deeds that are destroying itself and its neighbors, has penetrated among you…
    . . . On this trip, I was stunned to learn that now you don’t even really want to visit Israel because you can’t face what you’re increasingly coming to see as a brutal occupying entity flirting with fascist notions. . .
    . . . My second observation is that because of your fear – not of the goyim or the anti-Semites, but of yourselves! – you are keeping a low public profile. On this trip, I suddenly realized how naïve it was to imagine that J Street had sufficiently opened the door for anyone who cares critically for Israel to speak out. I underestimated how deep and terrible the intimidation has become and that one political lobby group is far from enough.
    I do understand: those of you who still call the Jewish community home, are afraid of the onslaught that you will receive from your (our) very own people.
    I hold no illusions about how vicious the attacks might be. We Jews, not the goyim, will call you the most painful names, will threaten in various ways to label you as beyond the pale of your people, should you voice your critique. You might be chastised in your professional community. You will be hit not only by shadowy bloggers but by the very cherished and established groups you have loyally, even automatically, supported over the years. The anger might come from your friends and it might even come from your family. . .
    . . . Here’s how that made me feel: abandoned, by the liberal Jews of America. You were swept away by Ruth Wisse’s thesis that liberals betrayed the Jewish cause by believing too much in rational universalism [e.g. universal human rights - J.L.D.] and failing to acknowledge the unique, everlasting threat of anti-Semitism. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to 972mag.com

• Showdown in Hebron: Netanyahu steps in to protect illegal settlers facing military eviction orders
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 10:37 pm

    HAARETZ: Israeli cabinet decides to evacuate controversial Hebron house; Eviction slated to take place by April 25.
    LINK - link to haaretz.com

• Iowa. New Hampshire. Yad Vashem
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    RE: "Wow, what a surprise. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in Jerusalem, visiting Yad Vashem and meeting the Prime Minister." ~ Weiss

    FROM THE AIPAC WEBSITE (undated, but still there as of 4/03/12):
    

    African American Political Leaders and Activists Visit Israel

    A group of African American politicians, consultants and activists arrived in Israel this week to participate in an American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) Seminar. The group of 18 includes eight state and local elected officials and three appointed government officials, including the presidents of the city councils of Atlanta and Detroit. The other participants are all deeply involved in political and civic life in their communities, including five who are co-chairs for the DNC’s Generation44 fundraising initiative in their cities. A number of the seminar participants have already attended pro-Israel events in their communities and have shown interest in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May passed Iranian divestment resolutions in their jurisdictions in 2009.

    SOURCE - link to aipac.org

• Activists post mock eviction notices in campus dorms to highlight Israeli home demolition policy
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 12:47 pm

    P.S. ALSO SEE: Hasbara, Shmuel Rosner and the Israel Factor, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Signs Of The Times, 1/11/07
    

    (excerpt)... It was thanks to the forum and forum member a.saccus, that I became aware of the World Union of Jewish Students Hasbara Handbook ["HASBARA HANDBOOK: Promoting Israel on Campus", March 2002] which you can read HERE. It has also been archived HERE...
    ...The Hasbara handbook is concrete evidence that the Jewish/Zionist reactions to floods of facts are a planned and deliberate strategy for victory in social debate and in shaping U.S. policy favorable to Israel, regardless of that policy's usefulness to the American people. The type of discourse described in this handbook is carried on at every level of American society: in Congress, in the Media, e.g., the recent bashing of President Carter, and most importantly, on school and college campuses across the nation.
    [Here] a.saccus gives a short review of the Hasbara Handbook in the context of the attacks on Jimmy Carter:
    

    Reading the article, and especially the comments of Abba Eban, a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., I wondered why it was that pro Is. debaters were so successful...
    ...As I read through the comments, especially those by "Bill Pearlman" (not reproduced here because of their scurillity), it struck me that I had heard similar pro-Israel arguments before...
    ...I Yahoogled, and wound up at SourceWatch... which spoke of the existence of -- a "Manual" !! And it wasn't a piece of fluff either -- at 131 pages long...
    

    "Hasbara Manual, page 32:
    Seven Basic Propaganda Devices
    Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message. To effectively present Israel to the public, and to counter anti-Israel messages, it is necessary to understand propaganda devices.
    This article applies a list of seven propaganda devices to the Israeli situation, and by doing so allows an understanding of some of the ways in which public opinion is fought for in the International arena."

    Thus what this manual is explicitly (and revealingly) about is ways to help the user win battles, not to find out the truth of the matter.
    The seven basic propaganda devices are:
    NAME CALLING
    GLITTERING GENERALITY
    TRANSFER
    TESTIMONIAL
    PLAIN FOLKS
    FEAR
    BANDWAGON
    Each of the seven is followed by several paragraphs of examples on how the technique is to be applied...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to sott.net

  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 12:07 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "While Hillel supports free speech and champions civil discourse on campus we will not sit idly by when Israel is singled out, delegitimized and demonized." ~ Scott at FAU Hillel

    MY SNARK: Yes, of course Hillel "supports free speech and champions civil discourse on campus". ABSOLUTELY! No doubt about it! Saying otherwise would be tantamount to perpetrating a blood libel!

    SEE: The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics, by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009
    

    (excerpt)…It is an extraordinary fact that no fewer than thirty-three distinct organizations - including AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund - are gathered together today as members or affiliates of the Israel on Campus Coalition. The coalition is an overwhelmingly powerful presence on American college campuses for which there is simply no equivalent on the Palestinian or Arab side. Its self-proclaimed mission is not merely to monitor our colleges and universities. That, after all, is the commitment of Campus Watch, which was started by pro-Israel activists in 2002. It is, rather (and in its own words), to generate “a pro-active, pro-Israel agenda on campus.”
    There is, accordingly, disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations, who have no time for — and even less interest in — the niceties of intellectual exchange and academic process. Insinuation, accusation, and defamation have become the weapons of first resort to respond to argument and criticism directed at Israeli policies. As far as these outside pressure groups (and their campus representatives) are concerned, the intellectual and academic price that the scholarly community pays as a result of this kind of intervention amounts to little more than collateral damage. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to tikkun.org

• Flabby Zionism
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 11:30 am

    P.S. I WONDER IF WHAT WEISS/BEINART/ATZMON ARE SAYING IS REALLY DIFFERENT FROM THIS: Israel’s Defense Chief OK’s Hundreds of Israeli Deaths, By Ira Chernus, CommonDreams.org, 11/11/11
    

    (excerpt). . . An essential motive of Zionism from its beginning was a fierce desire to end the centuries of Jewish weakness, to show the world that Jews would no longer be pushed around, that they’d fight back and prove themselves tougher than their enemies. There was more to Zionism than that. But the “pride through strength” piece came to dominate the whole project. Hence the massive Israeli military machine with its nuclear arsenal.
    But you can’t prove that you’re stronger than your enemies unless you’ve also got enemies -- or at least believe you’ve got enemies -- to fight against. So there has to be a myth of Israel’s insecurity, fueled by an image of vicious anti-semites lurking somewhere out there, for Zionism to work. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran has gradually risen to the top of Israel oh-so-necessary enemies list. Iranophobia is rampant in Israel, as one Israeli scholar writes, because “Israel needs an existential threat."
    Anyone who has grown up in Israel, or in the U.S. Jewish community (as I did), and paid attention knows all this. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to commondreams.org
    ALSO SEE - Iranophobia: The Panic of the Hegemons, by Ira Chernus, Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2010
    LINK - link to tikkun.org

  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 11:29 am with 3 replies

    RE: "This is the crisis inside American Jewry, that so many of us feel a need to sustain a project most of us haven't even visited and whose political values utterly contradict the values on which our own democratic citizenship is based." ~ Weiss

    MY RHETORICAL QUESTION: Aren't you treading on very thin ice, Phil?

    SEE - Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon ~ by Palestinian and Palestine-solidarity activists, 3/13/12
    (excerpt)…Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. . .
    SOURCE – link to uspcn.org

• The Israel/Palestine conflict will be resolved when Arab countries kick the U.S. out of the region
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 11:09 am

    An excellent analysis! I wholeheartedly concur (VIDEO, 01:53) with "doctor" Wolman.
    Obama tried to get the Israelis to freeze the settlement process and they refused. It is absurd (and ultimately counterproductive) to continue the so-called "peace process" while Israel feverishly works to permanently foreclose any possibility of a two-state solution by creating more and more "facts on the ground".

• A twitter debate on Israel/Palestine and racism
  • DICKERSON3870 April 2, 2012 at 4:01 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "I have no right of return to the Eastern European countries where my ancestors feared pogroms, nor do Israelis." ~ Ben Adler

    CHRIS HEDGES, 3/05/12: (excerpt)...The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, in his poem “Rypin,” translated by Peter Cole, examined what power, force and self-worship do to compassion, justice and human decency. Rypin was the Polish town his father escaped from during the pogroms.
    

    These creatures in helmets and khakis,
    I say to myself, aren’t Jews,
    In the truest sense of the word. A Jew
    Doesn’t dress himself up with weapons like jewelry,
    Doesn’t believe in the barrel of a gun aimed at a target,
    But in the thumb of the child who was shot at—
    In the house through which he comes and goes,
    Not in the charge that blows it apart.
    The coarse soul and iron first
    He scorns by nature.
    He lifts his eyes not to the officer, or the soldier
    With his finger on the trigger—but to justice,
    And he cries out for compassion.
    Therefore, he won’t steal land from its people
    And will not starve them in camps.
    The voice calling for expulsion
    Is heard from the hoarse throat of the oppressor—
    A sure sign that the Jew has entered a foreign country
    And, like Umberto Saba, gone into hiding within his own city.
    Because of voices like these, father
    At age sixteen, with your family, you fled Rypin;
    Now here Rypin is your son.

    SOURCE - link to commondreams.org

• Comcast's David Cohen is honored at fundraiser for religious nationalist group
  • DICKERSON3870 April 2, 2012 at 1:13 pm

    RE: "the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Tree of Life fundraiser... The gala honored David Cohen, the Executive Vice President of the Comcast Corporation" ~ Weiss

    SEE - Isaiah Weeps: Jewish National Fund, GOD-TV Erase Israeli Bedouin Village to Bring Jesus’ Second Coming, by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 12/06/10
    

    (excerpts)...The Israeli government is hoping the seventh time is the charm in their efforts to eradicate the Israeli Bedouin village of Al-Araqib. That’s how many times they’re destroyed it only to have its inhabitants return and rebuild it once more...
    ...Now, Israeli State thieves have come upon a new scam to make the destruction of the place more thorough and long-lasting. They’ve enlisted the Jewish National Fund, whose forests have already disappeared hundreds of former Israeli Palestinian villages uprooted during the Nakba. JNF [Jewish National Fund] together with the Israel Lands Administration which claims the Bedouin land on behalf of the State, brought their bulldozers to plant a new forest that will cover the ground on which Al-Araqib stands. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, JNF’s partner in this crimes is even more astonishing: the Christian Zionist evangelical GOD-TV. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to richardsilverstein.com

    ALSO SEE: GOD TV and the Jewish National Fund plant the Forest Of Hate, by Max Blumenthal, 12/13/10
    LINK - link to maxblumenthal.com

    AND SEE: Uprooting the Bedouins of Israel, by Neve Gordon, The Nation, 12/02/10
    LINK - link to thenation.com

• My spirit is American (a religious manifesto)
  • DICKERSON3870 April 2, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    Come on Phil, you know you want to accept "the blood". You will never be "saved" if you "reject the blood"! (lol)
    P.S. Sometimes Phil reminds me of young Ernesto in The Motorcycle Diaries (2000).

  • DICKERSON3870 April 2, 2012 at 2:21 pm with 1 replies

    Have you ever considered getting "washed in the blood", Phil?

    Daniel Day Lewis gets baptized in "There will be blood" (VIDEO, 04:36) - link to youtube.com

• SFO Jewish Library (you read that right-- library) cancels panel on Jewish activism because participant supports boycott
  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    RE: "the news traveled up to the Jewish Federation which put pressure on the Library to cancel the event because I was too controversial" ~ Rae Abileah

    MY COMMENT: And yet, the Jewish Federations apparently consider "Pastor" John Hagee to be "oh so kosher"! If that don't beat all.

    SEE: Houston Jewish Federation, Jewish Agency Fund Im Tirzu’s Assault on Israeli Universities ~ by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 3/17/10
    

    (excerpts) What do the Houston Jewish federation, the Jewish Agency, John Hagee, and Im Tirzu have in common? They’re all either directly or indirectly funding a major assault on academic freedom on Israeli campuses...
    ...The Israeli finance website, Calcalist, reports (Hebrew) that John Hagee donated $120,000 to Im Tirzu in 2009 through the Jewish Agency. The money had been transferred to the Agency by the Houston Jewish Federation as part of an overall $5-million gift. $3-million of that came from CUFI and went towards its largely pro-settler Israel philanthropy. Hagee passed the gift through the Agency in order to qualify for a U.S. tax deduction. The Israeli site also notes that the Central Fund of Israel, a pro-settler fund supported by American Jews, donated $35,000 as well. I reported some of this earlier in this post. But what I’m trying to discover is whether the funds reported on by the Calcalist are independent of the $200,000 in Hagee gifts I reported earlier. I suspect that they may be since there was no mention concerning the earlier gift that it was a pass-through via the Jewish Agency.
    The Israeli website notes that the Agency is only supposed to act as pass-through for donations to “non-political” Israeli groups. I wonder how they fudge this one concerning one of the most hardline political groups currently functioning in Israel? Further the Agency is only supposed to accept funds for projects that are directly connected to its work. So does this mean that Im Tirzu is a project under the official auspices of the Agency? Or has someone there fudged those inconvenient rules again? Further, the funds provided to the Zionist-Brut group were supposed to be used for “educational” purposes. Instead, they were used to support political activism. They went for salaries and covering other organizational expenses...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to richardsilverstein.com

    ALSO SEE: Pastor Hagee: The Antichrist Is Gay, "Partially Jewish, As Was Adolph Hitler", by Max Blumenthal, Huffington Post, 6/02/08
    LINK - link to huffingtonpost.com

    P.S. God bless synagogue Sha'ar Zahav!

• More on the Barghouti attack at Qalandiya on Friday
  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 3:45 pm with 3 replies

    RE: "...unidentified individuals attempted to co-opt the peaceful non-violent protest. These individuals tried to hinder the unified demonstration." ~ Ahmed Nasser

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Mista'arvim]:
    

    Mista'arvim (Hebrew: מסתערבים‎, lit. Arabized; Arabic: مستعربين‎, Musta'arabin) is the name given to those counter-terrorism units of the Israel Defense Forces in which soldiers are specifically trained to disguise themselves as Arabs in order to kill or capture a wanted terrorist. These are also commonly known as the 'Arab Platoons'. In Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Acts of War, it is stated that Mista'arvim do not allow their real identities to become known to people outside their unit, and that even when they are undercover, they go to great lengths to avoid being recorded. They are also said to be trained in counter-detection of human or mechanical surveillance. . .

    SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org

• Covering Adelson, Matthews leaves out the 'Obama Oy Vey' factor
  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 4:07 pm with 1 replies

    RE: “‘All the terrorists are Islamists,’ he [Adelson] says in that
    video.” ~ Weiss

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [King David Hotel bombing]: 
    

    (excerpts) The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by the militant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946.[1][2] 91 people of various nationalities were killed and 46 were injured.[3]. . .

    SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

    ALSO FROM WIKIPEDIA [Folke Bernadotte]:
    

    Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (in Swedish: Greve af Wisborg; 2 January 1895 – 17 September 1948) was a Swedish diplomat and nobleman noted for his negotiation of the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps during World War II, including 450 Danish Jews from Theresienstadt released on 14 April 1945.[1][2][3] In 1945, he received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler, though the offer was ultimately rejected.
    After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by themilitant Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties. The Lehi was led at the time by Yitzhak Shamir, who was later to become Prime Minister of Israel. . .

    SOURCE -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

    AND FROM WIKIPEDIA [Deir Yassin massacre]:
    

    (excerpt) The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people.[1] The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.[2]
    Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes.[3] Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem, though accounts vary.[4] Four of the attackers died, with around 35 injured.[5] The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force—and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.[2]. . .

    SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org

    AGAIN, FROM WIKIPEDIA [Lavon Affair]:
    

    (excerpt) The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation,[1] a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence for plans to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned targets. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.[2] The operation caused no casualties, except for those members of the cell who committed suicide after being captured. . .

    SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    RE: "'All the terrorists are Islamists,' he [Adelson] says in that
    video." ~ Weiss

    FROM WIKIPEDIA:
    

    [excerpts] Alex Odeh (April 4, 1944 – October 11, 1985) was an Arab-American anti-discrimination activist who was killed in a bombing as he opened the door of his office at 1905 East 17th Street, Santa Ana, California. Odeh was west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
    Born into a Palestinian Christian family in Jifna, the West Bank, Odeh immigrated to the US in 1972.[1] He was a lecturer and poet who recently had published a volume of his poetry, Whispers in Exile.[2]...
    ...Irv Rubin, who had become chairman of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) the same year, immediately made several public statements in reaction to the incident. "I have no tears for Mr. Odeh," Rubin said. "He got exactly what he deserved."[7] ...
    ...Four weeks after Odeh's death, FBI spokesperson Lane Bonner stated the FBI attributed the bombing and two others to the JDL...
    ...Immediately after the 1985 assassination the FBI identified three suspects, all of them believed to be affiliated with the JDL, who fled to Israel. In 1987 it was revealed that Israel was hindering the FBI investigation. Floyd Clarke, then assistant director of the FBI, claimed in an internal memo that key suspects had fled to Israel and were living in the West Bank town of Kiryat Arba...
    ...In 2007, the FBI revealed they had received information from a deceased informant, believed to be former Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel who had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for 2001 plots to bomb a Southern California mosque and office of an Arab American congressman. It is believed that Irv Rubin, who died in prison while awaiting trial on the same charges, revealed to Krugel the names of those responsible for Odeh’s death and Krugel shared those with the FBI before he, too, died in prison. The bombers are believed to be Manning and two individuals now living in Israel.[14]...

    SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org

• Those who criticize Israel join campaign to 'slaughter the Jews en masse'
  • DICKERSON3870 April 3, 2012 at 10:55 pm

    RE: “…the logic of irrationality.” ~ Keith

    FROM TED RALL, 07/22/10: . . . Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay "Eternal Fascism" describes the cult of action for its own sake under fascist regimes and movements: “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”. . .
    SOURCE – link to commondreams.org

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 3:16 pm with 3 replies

    P.S. RE: “Those who criticize Israel join campaign to ‘slaughter the Jews en masse’ ” ~ Weiss

    ALSO SEE - Dear liberal American Jews: Please don’t betray Israel, by Dahlia Scheindlin, +972 Magazine, 2/14/12:
    

    (excerpts). . . After two weeks in America visiting family and friends, two observations struck me powerfully. First, the understanding that Israel is committing terrible deeds that are destroying itself and its neighbors, has penetrated among you…
    …On this trip, I was stunned to learn that now you don’t even really want to visit Israel because you can’t face what you’re increasingly coming to see as a brutal occupying entity flirting with fascist notions. . .
    …My second observation is that because of your fear – not of the goyim or the anti-Semites, but of yourselves! – you are keeping a low public profile. On this trip, I suddenly realized how naïve it was to imagine that J Street had sufficiently opened the door for anyone who cares critically for Israel to speak out. I underestimated how deep and terrible the intimidation has become and that one political lobby group is far from enough.
    I do understand: those of you who still call the Jewish community home, are afraid of the onslaught that you will receive from your (our) very own people.
    I hold no illusions about how vicious the attacks might be. We Jews, not the goyim, will call you the most painful names, will threaten in various ways to label you as beyond the pale of your people, should you voice your critique. You might be chastised in your professional community. You will be hit not only by shadowy bloggers but by the very cherished and established groups you have loyally, even automatically, supported over the years. The anger might come from your friends and it might even come from your family...
    . . . Here’s how that made me feel: abandoned, by the liberal Jews of America. You were swept away by Ruth Wisse’s thesis that liberals betrayed the Jewish cause by believing too much in rational universalism [e.g. universal human rights] and failing to acknowledge the unique, everlasting threat of anti-Semitism…

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to 972mag.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 3:11 pm with 4 replies

    RE: "Those who criticize Israel join campaign to ‘slaughter the Jews en masse’ " ~ Weiss

    SEE: How Israel Is Like an Alcoholic Mother, by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic, 3/22/12
    

    (excerpt). . . What is it Alex Portnoy overhears his mother say to her friends, apropos of the lengths she has to go to to get him to eat? "I have to stand over him with a knife!"
    To be a bit more serious for a moment, though, Chesterton famously quipped: “My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying: My mother, drunk or sober.” Well, yes, but she is your mother, drunk or sober, right? Similarly, it is your country, whether your country is right or wrong. The question is what that entails. If your mother is a drunk, and begs for another drink, are you obliged to give it to her? Presumably not.
    But are you obliged to devote yourself to getting her to dry out? That, it seems to me is the real heart of the question. I think many of Beinart’s critics — like Jeffrey Goldberg — would say: that’s exactly how they think about Israel and the settlements. They are against them. . . They think they were and are a grave and historic mistake…
    . . . So they are doing what they can to convince their mother to check herself in and dry out. But she’s their mother. If it takes her a long time to convince, they’ll keep trying. If she slips a drink on the sly, they’ll try to hide the liquor better, but they’ll forgive her. [In other words, they will act as "enablers". ~ J.L.D.] And, whatever she does, they certainly aren’t going to call the cops on her, and give the neighbors (who never liked her, even have tried to get her evicted) the satisfaction of seeing her humiliated by her own son in public. After all, she’s their mother. [Let's call this "constructive engagement"! ~ J.L.D.]
    Well, talk to a few children of alcoholics, and you’ll discover that “my mother, drunk or sober” is not always a tenable proposition. Sometimes, for some people, the sense of obligation to one’s mother is trumped by a sense of obligation to oneself, and to protect oneself from her disease. And that, in a nutshell, is what Beinart is saying. She may be my mother, yes, but if she keeps carrying on, I don’t care what the neighbors say, and I don’t care if she never speaks to me again afterward: I’m going to call the cops on her. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY – link to theatlantic.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 2:31 pm

    P.P.S. AND NOTE:
    

    (excerpts)
    Sacrificing Europe’s Jews
    The correlative to the acts of collaboration with the Nazis throughout the 1930’s was that when attempts to change the immigration laws of the United States and Western Europe were contemplated in order to provide token refuge for persecuted Jews of Europe, it was the Zionists who actively organized to stop these efforts.
    Ben Gurion informed a meeting of Labor Zionists in Great Britain in 1938: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative." [84] This obsession with colonizing Palestine and overwhelming the Arabs led the Zionist movement to oppose any rescue of the Jews facing extermination, because the ability to deflect select manpower to Palestine would be impeded. From 1933 to 1935, the WZO turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates.
    Berel Katznelson, editor of the Labor Zionist Davar, described the "cruel criteria of Zionism":
    

    German Jews were too old to bear children in Palestine, lacked trades for building a Zionist colony, didn’t speak Hebrew and weren’t Zionists. In place of these Jews facing extermination the WZO brought to Palestine 6,000 trained young Zionists from the United States, Britain and other safe countries. Worse than this, the WZO not merely failed to seek any alternative for the Jews facing the Holocaust, the Zionist leadership opposed belligerently all efforts to find refuge for fleeing Jews.

    Fighting Asylum
    The entire Zionist establishment made its position unmistakable in its response to a motion by 227 British members of Parliament calling on the government to provide asylum in British territories for persecuted Jews. The meager undertaking which was prepared was as follows:
    

    His Majesty’s Government issued some hundreds of Mauritius and other immigration permits in favor of threatened Jewish families.[86]

    But even this token measure was opposed by the Zionist leaders. At a Parliamentary meeting on January 27, 1943, when the next steps were being pursued by over one hundred members of Parliament, a spokesperson for the Zionists announced that they opposed this motion because it did not contain preparations for the colonization of Palestine. This was a consistent stance.
    Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had arranged the Balfour Declaration and was to become the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit:
    

    The hopes of Europe’s six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: “Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?” I replied, “No.” ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it. [87]

    Yitzhak Gruenbaum, the chairperson of the committee set up by the Zionists, nominally to investigate the condition of European Jews, said:
    

    When they come to us with two plans - the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land - I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraisation of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the Karen Hayesod [United Jewish Appeal] to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing? No. And once again no! [88]

    ~ from 'The Hidden History of Zionism', by Ralph Schoenman

    SOURCE - link to marxists.de

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 2:09 pm

    P.S. ALSO NOTE:
    

    . . . As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to 'study' the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine.
    This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated:
    "It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference. ... It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws.". . . ~ from "Our Shomer 'Weltanschauung,"' Hashomer Hatzair, December 1936. Originally published in 1917, Brenner, Zionism, p. 22.

    ADDITIONAL SOURCE - link to jewsagainstzionism.com
    ALSO SEE - link to rense.com

    P.S. And yet, Netanyahu had the unmitigated chutzpah to pull this during his recent speech at the AIPAC conference:
    

    (excerpt)...Mr Netanyahu evoked the horrors of the Holocaust, quoting a 1944 letter in which the US rejected a request by Jewish leaders to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in Poland...

    SOURCE – link to irishtimes.com
    ALSO SEE - link to csmonitor.com

  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 1:17 pm with 2 replies

    RE: "any and all criticism of Israel not only can be but must be antisemitic. It is either subjectively antisemitic...or it is objectively antisemitic... The distinction, if there ever was one, between the two, is now meaningless. Either way, the result is the same: Those who seek to slaughter the Jews en masse are brought a step closer to their goal." ~ Benjamin Kerstein

    MY COMMENT: The really sad thing about using/abusing the the charge of anti-Semitism in this way is that it will ultimately (over time) make the concept of anti-Semitism meaningless. In the wake of the Holocaust anti-Semitism came to be universally reviled. But by making the patently absurd claim that "any and all criticism of Israel not only can be but must be antisemitic", Kerstein virtually makes "anti-Semitism" meaningless, acceptable, or even (God forbid) laudable. Allegations of anti-Semitism will then be largely dismissed/ignored. The horror of it all!
    

    Why doesn't Ralph blow the conch at the end of the assembly chapter 5? [In: 'Lord of the Flies']
    Answer: When Piggy suggested to him that he should blow the conch and call back the boys Ralph had clearly given the answer some thought and he replied, "If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued." SOURCE - link to wiki.answers.com

    But then, I suppose this is the inevitable consequence of the Zionist tactics illustrated by the following excerpts from “The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict”, published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East.

    EXCERPTS FROM “The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict”, Published by Jews for Justice in the Middle East:
    

    (excerpts)…“In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine.” ~ John Quigley, 'Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice'
    “It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency’s Executive on June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do ‘is belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing... ~ Israeli author Boas Evron, 'Jewish State or Israeli Nation?'
    “[Ben-Gurion stated] ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second — because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented that ‘the human conscience’ might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: ‘Zionism is in danger.’” ~ Israeli historian, Tom Segev, 'The Seventh Million'...
    • Roosevelt’s advisor writes on why Jewish refugees were not offered sanctuary in the U.S. after WWII
    ...“[Roosevelt] proposed a world budget for the easy migration of the 500,000 beaten people of Europe. Each nation should open its doors for some thousands of refugees...So he suggested that during my trips for him to England during the war I sound out in a general, unofficial manner the leaders of British public opinion, in and out of the government...The simple answer: Great Britain will match the United States, man for man, in admissions from Europe...It seemed all settled. With the rest of the world probably ready to give haven to 200,000, there was a sound reason for the President to press Congress to take in at least 150,000 immigrants after the war...
    “It would free us from the hypocrisy of closing our own doors while making sanctimonious demands on the Arabs...But it did not work out...The failure of the leading Jewish organizations to support with zeal this immigration programme may have caused the President not to push forward with it at that time...
    “I talked to many people active in Jewish organizations. I suggested the plan...I was amazed and even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered, and then attacked me as if I were a traitor...I think I know the reason for much of the opposition. There is a deep, genuine, often fanatical emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement [Zionism]. Men like Ben Hecht are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.” ~ Jewish attorney and friend of President Roosevelt, Morris Ernst, 'So Far, So Good'

    ENTIRE “ORIGIN” BOOKLET – link to ifamericansknew.org

    P.S. I read somewhere that Pajamas Media was established and funded by a Levi Strauss heir ("trust fund baby"). Remember that the next time you consider buying a pair of Levi's. Personally, I will never again go anywhere near a pair of them!

• Survivors of Kandahar villages massacre speak to western journalist
  • DICKERSON3870 April 1, 2012 at 12:21 pm

    RE: "Survivors of Kandahar villages massacre speak to western journalist"

    ALSO SEE: You Really Think the Killers of Trayvon Martin and Those 16 Afghan Villagers Will Ever Do Time? ~ by Andrew Cockburn, Counterpunch, 3/31/12
    LINK - link to counterpunch.org

• Sullivan forces American attention on the settlements
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 5:23 pm

    RE: “And now in his favorable review of Peter Beinart’s book, the Crisis of Zionism, titled 'Why Continue To Build The Settlements?'* Sullivan continues to place the settlements center stage, where they belong.” ~ Annie Roberts

    AN EARLY SPRING EVENING'S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, brought to you courtesy of the makers of new Ziocaine Xtreme®: It's guaran-damn-teed to knock you on your butt!™

    *"The writing's on the wall. It won't go away. It's an omen!"
    • The Prodigy, "Omen" (VIDEO, 03:19) - link to youtube.com!

  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    RE: "...that excellent article is by Megan McArdle, not Noah Millman." ~ Annie Roberts

    MY REPLY: "Oops" (VIDEO, 01:23), as Rick Perry might say!

    P.S. On second thought, make that a 'double dog' oops!

  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 1:38 pm

    P.P.S. YOU GUESSED IT! AN EARLY SPRING AFTERNOON'S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, brought to you courtesy of the makers of new Ziocaine Xtreme®: It's guaran-damn-teed to blow your effing mind!™

    • Requiem For A Dream / Music composed by Clint Mansell, performed by the Kronos Quartet. / From the soundtrack for Darren Aronofsky's second film. (VIDEO, 05:21) - link to youtube.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 1:31 pm with 1 replies

    P.S. ALSO SEE: Requiem for a Dream, 2000, UR, 102 minutes
    A widow's growing dependence on amphetamines and a self-help television show parallels the struggles of her heroin-addicted son and his girlfriend and friend in Darren Aronofsky's bleak drama.
    Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Christopher McDonald, Louise Lasser, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Janet Sarno, Keith David, Sean Gullette, Ben Shenkman
    Director: Darren Aronofsky
    Netflix Availability: DVD and Blu-ray
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    REQUIEM FOR A DREAM TRAILER HD HQ - best scenes of a movie (VIDEO, 03:32) - link to youtube.com

    P.S. Be certain to watch/listen to "The making of..." and the "Director's Commentary" in the bonus/extra features. Aronofsky has some interesting things to say about addictions that I think might also apply to Zionism* (and many, many other things). Also, try to have Dolby/DTS 5.1 audio when watching the feature film. They make very good use of the side/rear channels. And Ellen Burstyn's acting is absolutely brilliant!
    * I see some parallels between Zionism and Sara Goldfarb's (Ellen Burstyn's) addiction to amphetamines and her obsession with the self-help television show - an infomercial hosted by self-help guru Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald), based on the acronym JUICE (Join Us In Creating Excitement).
    BUT THEN, WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm certainly no Stuart Smalley!

  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 1:14 pm with 9 replies

    RE: "And now in his favorable review of Peter Beinart's book, the Crisis of Zionism, titled "Why Continue To Build The Settlements?" Sullivan continues to place the settlements center stage, where they belong." ~ Annie Roberts

    SEE: How Israel Is Like an Alcoholic Mother, by Noah Millman, The Atlantic, 3/22/12
    

    (excerpt)...To be a bit more serious for a moment, though, Chesterton famously quipped: "My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying: My mother, drunk or sober." Well, yes, but she is your mother, drunk or sober, right? Similarly, it is your country, whether your country is right or wrong. The question is what that entails. If your mother is a drunk, and begs for another drink, are you obliged to give it to her? Presumably not.
    But are you obliged to devote yourself to getting her to dry out? That, it seems to me is the real heart of the question. I think many of Beinart's critics -- like Jeffrey Goldberg -- would say: that's exactly how they think about Israel and the settlements. They are against them. . . They think they were and are a grave and historic mistake...
    . . . So they are doing what they can to convince their mother to check herself in and dry out. But she's their mother. If it takes her a long time to convince, they'll keep trying. If she slips a drink on the sly, they'll try to hide the liquor better, but they'll forgive her. [In other words, they will act as "enablers". ~ J.L.D.] And, whatever she does, they certainly aren't going to call the cops on her, and give the neighbors (who never liked her, even have tried to get her evicted) the satisfaction of seeing her humiliated by her own son in public. After all, she's their mother. [Let's call this "constructive engagement"! ~ J.L.D.]
    Well, talk to a few children of alcoholics, and you'll discover that "my mother, drunk or sober" is not always a tenable proposition. Sometimes, for some people, the sense of obligation to one's mother is trumped by a sense of obligation to oneself, and to protect oneself from her disease. And that, in a nutshell, is what Beinart is saying. She may be my mother, yes, but if she keeps carrying on, I don't care what the neighbors say, and I don't care if she never speaks to me again afterward: I'm going to call the cops on her. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to theatlantic.com

• Jews utilize 85% of historical Palestine (and counting)
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    RE: "Jews utilize 85% of historical Palestine (and counting)"*

    AN EARLY SPRING EVENING'S MUSICAL INTERLUDE, brought to you courtesy of the makers of new Ziocaine Xtreme®: It's guaran-damn-teed to knock you on your butt!™

    *"The writing's on the wall. It won't go away. It's an omen!"
    • The Prodigy, "Omen" (VIDEO, 03:19) - link to youtube.com!

• Land Day in Pictures: Israel, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 5:51 pm

    RE: "Yesterday, Palestinians marked Land Day by protesting against the Israeli land confiscations with demonstrations..." ~ Allison Deger

    MY COMMENT: These Land Day protests are completely "beyond the pale"!

• UPDATE: Mustafa Barghouti stable after being struck in head at Qalandiya; Palestinian protester reports Barghouti attacked by fellow protesters
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 5:43 pm

    RE: "The info I have regarding Mousteffa Bargoutti injured,is that he was hurt by a Pales,as he was trying to convince youth in #Kalandya to riot" ~ IDF spokesperson Avital Leibovich

    PARAPHRASING GROUCHO*: IDF "facts" are to facts what military "music" is to music!

    * "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." ~ Groucho Marx (also attributed to Mark Twain, and perhaps first used by Georges Clemenceau in referring to the Dreyfus case)
    SEE - link to talkleft.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:24 pm

    RE: "Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been 'disappeared' from the Jerusalem Post website." ~ me, above

    CORRECTION: After reviewing my browser history for the last few days, it does not appear that I checked the link that I had for the article when I posted the excerpt yesterday at Mondoweiss (as is my customary practice). Consequently, since I copied the link several years ago when I originally excerpted the article, it is not really surprising that the old link is no longer good. I finally managed to find the article using Google and it now has a different http. Self-flattery be gone!
    NEW LINK - link to jpost.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 12:57 pm with 1 replies

    P.S. Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been "disappeared" from the Jerusalem Post website. Israel "shares our values", NOT!
    Nonetheless, I am truly flattered.

    ANOTHER INTERESTING COMMENTARY BY MIRSKY: The Russian wave, By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09
    

    (excerpts)...behind the Iron Curtain lay not millions of Natan Sharanskys and Ida Nudels yearning for Zion, but millions of men and women, rightly suspicious of all ideologies, whom decades of Soviet policy had alienated from Jewish tradition and history, and who simply sought better lives and opportunities...
    ...Soviet Jewish dissidents and refuseniks had generally been either democratic political activists who made common cause with non-Jewish dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, or cultural activists focusing on the preservation and transmission of Jewish ideas; there were also some religiously inspired figures, like Yosef Mendelevich. None prepared the Israeli and Jewish public for the peculiar mix of attitudes that characterizes the later immigrants, and is personified in Israel’s current foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.M
    As Ze’ev Khanin documents in the Israel Affairs collection, early attempts at creating a centrist, wide-tent Russian political party (Yisrael Ba’aliya) foundered as the immigrants went either Left or, more often, Right. Today, three-quarters of Israel’s Russians are either with the Likud or with Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party. Their rightward orientation springs from a well-founded suspicion of state institutions, reinforced in many cases by their having been directed on arrival to peripheral development towns. Perhaps as a consequence, they have tended to look for strong leaders, which may explain how many ended up voting for Ehud Barak in 1999, while his military decorations still glistened.
    IN PERHAPS the most interesting article in the journal, Julia Lerner observes that Lieberman is a paradigmatically “post-Soviet” figure of the sort increasingly familiar in the FSU: ethno-national, authoritarian, committed less to ideology than to “the rational management of a national collective and its elements based on ethnic and cultural hierarchies, and accompanied by a taken-for-granted distinction between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized.’”...

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to jpost.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 12:13 pm with 2 replies

    RE: "I was there. He was attacked by plainclothes pple. His colleagues had no idea who they were..." ~ Hugh Naylor

    SEE: "The First Word: A day in Jerusalem", By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09 
    

    (excerpt) Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us... 
    ...As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off.
    I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk. 
    First ambulances came - some of the EMTs were haredim, and some were women. Then came the police, and I reported to them what I'd seen. After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife? 
    I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"... 
    ...When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710892040&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

• Live updates from the Global March to Jerusalem and Land Day protests
  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:27 pm

    RE: "Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been 'disappeared' from the Jerusalem Post website." ~ me, above

    CORRECTION: After reviewing my browser history for the last few days, it does not appear that I checked the link that I had for the article when I posted the excerpt yesterday at Mondoweiss (as is my customary practice). Consequently, since I copied the link several years ago when I originally excerpted the article, it is not really surprising that the old link is no longer good. I finally managed to find the article using Google and it now has a different http. Self-flattery be gone!
    NEW LINK - link to jpost.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 1:52 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "the Global March to Jerusalem and Land Day protests"

    ALSO NOTE: "The First Word: A day in Jerusalem", By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09 
    

    (excerpt) Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us... 
    ...As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off.
    I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk. 
    First ambulances came - some of the EMTs were haredim, and some were women. Then came the police, and I reported to them what I'd seen. After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife? 
    I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"... 
    ...When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY-www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710892040&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

    P.S. UPDATE: Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been “disappeared” from the Jerusalem Post website. Israel “shares our values”, NOT! ! !
    Nonetheless, I am truly flattered. So should be Mondoweiss.

• Global March to Jerusalem website blocked in Israel; decoy site directs to hasbara video
  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:28 pm

    RE: "Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been 'disappeared' from the Jerusalem Post website." ~ me, above

    CORRECTION: After reviewing my browser history for the last few days, it does not appear that I checked the link that I had for the article when I posted the excerpt yesterday at Mondoweiss (as is my customary practice). Consequently, since I copied the link several years ago when I originally excerpted the article, it is not really surprising that the old link is no longer good. I finally managed to find the article using Google and it now has a different http. Self-flattery be gone!
    NEW LINK - link to jpost.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 12:59 pm with 1 replies

    P.S. Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been "disappeared" from the Jerusalem Post website. Israel "shares our values", NOT!
    Nonetheless, I am truly flattered.

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 12:11 pm with 2 replies

    RE: "Global March to Jerusalem website blocked in Israel..."

    SEE: "The First Word: A day in Jerusalem", By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09 
    

    (excerpt) Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us... 
    ...As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off.
    I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk. 
    First ambulances came - some of the EMTs were haredim, and some were women. Then came the police, and I reported to them what I'd seen. After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife? 
    I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"... 
    ...When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710892040&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

• Emma Thompson among group of prominent British actors calling on Globe theatre to withdraw invite to Israeli National Theatre
  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:30 pm

    P.S. Vera Drake, 2004, R, 125 minutes
    Vera Drake spends her days doting on her working-class family in 1950s England. But Vera also has a secret side: She visits women and helps them induce miscarriages. When the authorities get wind of her activities, Vera's world quickly falls apart.
    Cast: Imelda Staunton, Richard Graham, Eddie Marsan, Anna Keaveney, Alex Kelly, Daniel Mays, Philip Davis, Lesley Manville, Sally Hawkins, Simon Chandler
    Director (and Writer): Mike Leigh
    Netflix Availability: Streaming and DVD
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    ALSO ON YouTube in 14 parts - link to youtube.com...10299l28167l0l32295l4l4l1l0l0l0l100l225l2j1l3l0.
    Vera Drake TRAILER (VIDEO, 02:09) - link to youtube.com

    P.S. I thought Imelda Staunton was superb as Vera Drake, and Mike Leigh’s writing was excellent.

    P.P.S. I ♥ Emma Thompson! ! !

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:09 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "Mike Leigh film-maker, dramatist" ~ signatory

    FILM: Naked, 1993 NR 131 minutes
    A self-confessed lost boy heads for the big-city grit and glamour of London to escape the repercussions of his most recent misstep -- the sexual assault of a young woman. But a fresh start isn't meant to be.
    Cast: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Claire Skinner, Peter Wight, Ewen Bremner, Susan Vidler, Deborah MacLaren, Gina McKee, Carolina Giammetta
    Director (and Writer): Mike Leigh
    Netflix Availability: Streaming and DVD
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    ALSO ON YouTube in 13 parts - link to youtube.com...24273l40635l0l43387l3l3l0l0l0l0l67l154l3l3l0.
    Mike Leigh's "Naked" Film Trailer (VIDEO, 02:29) - link to youtube.com
    P.S. I thought David Thewlis was outstanding, and Mike Leigh's writing was superb.

• Obama and Republicans have to support Iran war 'because of funding from certain ethnic groups'
  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 3:52 pm

    RE: "Obama and Republicans have to support Iran war ‘because of funding from certain ethnic groups’ " ~ Weiss

    MY COMMENT: Tikkun/NSP is running the following ad in major American newspapers.
    

    No Mr. Netanyahu,
    No President Obama:
    No War on Iran
    and No First Strike

    Some who have signed this ad believe that the best path for homeland security is through rejecting the old-fashioned “domination strategy” to get your way...
    ...Click HERE to see a draft of how this ad would look in the newspaper.

    If you would like to help Tikkun/NSP run this ad, please make a donation.
    TO DONATE - link to salsa.democracyinaction.org

    TIKKUN WEBSITE - link to tikkun.org
    NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES (NSP) WEBSITE - link to spiritualprogressives.org

• Obama administration buys time on Iran--but what will happen after the elections?
  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 3:43 pm

    RE: "And if Oren is right, that the promised funds for Iron Dome have staved off an Israeli attack on Iran for now, the question then becomes what happens next year?" ~ Alex Kane

    MY COMMENT: Tikkun/NSP is running the following ad in major American newspapers.
    

    No Mr. Netanyahu,
    No President Obama:
    No War on Iran
    and No First Strike

    Some who have signed this ad believe that the best path for homeland security is through rejecting the old-fashioned “domination strategy” to get your way...
    ...Click HERE to see a draft of how this ad would look in the newspaper.

    If you would like to help Tikkun/NSP run this ad, please make a donation.
    TO DONATE - link to salsa.democracyinaction.org

    TIKKUN WEBSITE - link to tikkun.org
    NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES (NSP) WEBSITE - link to spiritualprogressives.org

• Another two-stater goes one-state
  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    RE: "no Israeli politician will be able to retreat to the 1967 lines as long as Hamas will not radically change its views" ~ Strenger

    MY COMMENT: No Israeli politician will be able to retreat to the 1967 lines, no matter what! PERIOD! EXCLAMATION POINT(S)! ! !

• How to win friends and influence people -- to bomb Iran
  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    P.S. ALSO SEE: Hawks Steering Debate on How to Take on Iran, By Eric Lichtblau and Mark Landler, New York Times, 3/18/12
    

    (excerpts)WASHINGTON — Even before President Obama declared this month that “I have Israel’s back” in its escalating confrontation with Iran, pro-Israel figures like the evangelical Christian leader Gary L. Bauer and the conservative commentator William Kristol were pushing for more...
    . . . Urging diplomacy are liberal groups like J Street, which is helped by $500,000 a year in contributions from the liberal philanthropist George Soros, and Tikkun, a Jewish journal that has begun running newspaper advertisements here and abroad that urge, “NO War on Iran and NO First Strike!” Tikkun, based in Berkeley, Calif., is hoping to link its antiwar message with the Occupy protests.
    “A lot of people talk about the ‘Israel lobby’ as if it’s a monolithic thing,” said Dylan Williams, head of government affairs for J Street. “It’s a myth. There is a deep division between those who support military action at this point and those who support diplomacy.”
    Clear fissures have developed among pro-Israel groups — not only between hawks and doves over whether to use military force against Iran, but among hard-liners themselves over just how aggressively to confront it...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to nytimes.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:58 am with 1 replies

    RE: "Here is Noam Sheizaf in a piece of March 7...saying that Israeli leaders have dug themselves in with their war talk. They have to attack Iran now because if they don't it will destroy their streetcred in the Middle East." ~ Weiss

    MY COMMENT: Please consider helping Tikkun/NSP run the following ad in major American newspapers.
    

    No Mr. Netanyahu,
    No President Obama:
    No War on Iran
    and No First Strike

    Some who have signed this ad believe that the best path for homeland security is through rejecting the old-fashioned “domination strategy” to get your way...
    ...Click HERE to see a draft of how this ad would look in the newspaper.

    If you would like to help Tikkun/NSP run this ad, please make a donation.
    TO DONATE - link to salsa.democracyinaction.org

    TIKKUN WEBSITE - link to tikkun.org
    NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES (NSP) WEBSITE - link to spiritualprogressives.org

• Wrong planet
  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:33 pm

    RE: "Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt in a comment here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been 'disappeared' from the Jerusalem Post website." ~ me, above

    CORRECTION: After reviewing my browser history for the last few days, it does not appear that I checked the link that I had for the article when I posted the excerpt yesterday at Mondoweiss (as is my customary practice). Consequently, since I copied the link several years ago when I originally excerpted the article, it is not really surprising that the old link is no longer good. I finally managed to find the article using Google and it now has a different http. Self-flattery be gone!
    NEW LINK - link to jpost.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    RE: " 'The First Word: A day in Jerusalem', By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09" ~ Excerpt posted yesterday by me (see above)

    UPDATE: Between yesterday (when I first posted the above Mirsky excerpt here at Mondoweiss) and today, the entire 05/07/09 commentary by Yehudah Mirsky has been “disappeared” from the Jerusalem Post website. Israel “shares our values”, NOT! ! !
    Nonetheless, I am truly flattered. So should be Mondoweiss.

  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:47 am

    RE: "Zionism (especially Revisionist Zionism) wasn’t a response to Nazism and fascism — Zionism, Nazism and fascism all sprang from the same cultural and ideological soil" ~ seanmcbride

    REPLY: Yes, hence: "The Betar Movement...was one of many movements and youth groups arising at that time out of [and not in response to - JLD]* a worldwide emergence of fascism. Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth...
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. . ." ~ Wikipedia
    SOURCE - link to en.wikipedia.org

    * P.S. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article is poorly worded in describing Betar as "arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism" and can easily be misinterpreted. However, the meaning becomes clear as the article goes on to mention that "the group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism..."

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:58 pm

    P.S. Discussing a 2010 survey of 536 Jewish and Arab respondents between the ages of 15-18, Ha’aretz reported that "Nearly half [49.5%] of Israel’s Jewish high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel. . . The same poll revealed that more than half [56%] of the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset."
    While the ADL and other Jewish organizations consider graffiti such as "Death to the Jews" to be serious manifestations of anti-Semitism, the Jerusalem Post reported on the same poll and noted that "50% of the Jewish youngsters who defined themselves as religious [in the poll] said they believe the 'Death to Arabs' slogan was legitimate."

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:39 pm

    P.S. EVEN MORE “BE(I)TARIM” IN ACTION: Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’, by Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss, 3/24/12
    

    (excerpt)...Chanting "Death to Arabs," hundreds of Beitar soccer fans crowded into a mall in Jerusalem after their team won a match and what spilled out ...words escape me:
    

    The Independent: Hundreds of fans, mostly teenagers, descended on busy Malha Mall, jumping on tables, waving scarves, and chanting "Death to Arabs".
    When a group of fans started to heckle and spit on Palestinian women dining with their children in the food hall, the centre's Arab cleaning staff rushed to their defence and chased the fans off. But moments later, the fans returned, and started to attack the Arab staff.
    "They [the fans] caught some of them and beat the hell out of them," Yair, the Jewish owner of a bakery in the shopping centre, told Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. ... One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy." The brawl might have turned deadly, but food hall staff refused to respond to fans' demands for knives and sticks...

    SOURCE - link to mondoweiss.net

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:36 pm

    RE: "Be(i)tarim in action" ~ me, above

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Betar]:
    

    (excerpt) The Betar Movement (בית”ר, also spelled Beitar) is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Betar has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many movements and youth groups arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the latter of whom idolized Jabotinsky.[2]…
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. . .

    SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    RE: "I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off." ~ Mirsky, above

    FROM TED RALL, 07/22/10:
    

    …Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay "Eternal Fascism" describes the cult of action for its own sake under fascist regimes and movements: “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of
    emasculation.”…

    SOURCE – link to commondreams.org

    P.S. It appears to me that Israel/Zionism has come to resemble what Umberto Eco referred to as “fascist regimes and movements”, and consequently Zionism ascribes to the “cult of action for its own sake” (e.g. Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank, Israel’s determination to bomb Iran, etc).

    P.P.S. MORE "BE(I)TARIM" IN ACTION: Jerusalem Day celebrations PART1 : Provocations. (VIDEO, 03:49) - link to youtube.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:24 pm with 8 replies

    P.P.S. ALSO SEE: "The First Word: A day in Jerusalem", By Yehudah Mirsky, Jerusalem Post, 05/07/09 
    

    (excerpt) Nobody who has lived in Jerusalem in recent years needs any educating about the sword from without. A week ago Thursday I discovered the terror within. It coils through Jerusalem's streets, and us... 
    ...As I came out of the plaza, right across the street from city hall, I saw four men jump, stomp and kick the daylights out of several others (Lord knows why) and run off.
    I called for the police and waited for them to arrive as people ran out of the surrounding pubs to help the crushed victims, whose blood ran down the sidewalk. 
    First ambulances came - some of the EMTs were haredim, and some were women. Then came the police, and I reported to them what I'd seen. After the police left, some young haredim came up to me, hungry for details: Did you see fists? Did you see a knife? 
    I told them how earlier in the day their comrades had nearly done the same to me. "There was action at the demo? We missed it?"... 
    ...When I finally got home, at about 2:30 in the morning, my wife was, luckily for me, awake. I told her something that I had been thinking and scared to say for a long while: that the Jerusalem of my dreams, the Jerusalem where heaven and earth kiss, the Jerusalem of my father's childhood, is finally dead. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710892040&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 6:08 pm

    P.S. ALSO FROM YNET NEWS (ISRAEL): "Jerusalem: Orthodox riot in protest of chastity squad arrest", by Neta Sela, 08/26/08
    Haredim burn garbage cans, block streets in protest of arrest of community member suspected of torching store that sells MP4 player. 'Safeguarding Torah considered a crime in this country of Sodom and Gomorrha,' they say 
    

    (excerpt) Ultra-Orthodox Jews rioted in Jerusalem on Monday in protest of the recent arrest of Shmuel Weisfish, a member of the haredi community's chastity squad who was allegedly involved in the torching of a store selling MP4 players in violation of a ruling of the Orthodox Court of Justice.  Demonstrators set garbage cans on fire on Shmuel Hanavi, Dvora Hanevia, Hanevi'im and Shivtei Yisrael streets in the capital... 
    . . . Haredim recently distributed pashkevilim (informative ads or posters often plastered in the Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods) against stores selling MP4 devices, saying "a terrible plague is upon us, claiming victims every day… these sinful devices were banned by all the great rabbis, but are still common in the haredi world… their devilish distributors want nothing more than to drive the people of Israel to sin through movies and other abominations. . . "

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to ynetnews.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 5:51 pm with 10 replies

    RE: "This is the 'official' Rabbi for the Israel military? There is no hope for these people." ~ American

    FROM YNET NEWS – Rabbi Aviner: Women must not wear pants even when alone, by Neta Sela, 05/02/08
    One of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders defines trousers as a ‘self-prohibition,’ says women ‘must dress modestly also when alone and in the dark’
    

    (excerpt) Women must not wear pants even when they are home alone, Rabbi Shlomi Aviner has ruled.  Aviner, Beit El’s rabbi and one of Religious Zionism’s most prominent leaders, was asked in a cellular Q&A session published in the “Small World” bulletin, “When a girl goes to relieve herself at night, is she allowed to say the ‘Asher Yatzar’ (‘he who formed’) prayer while wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers?”  The rabbi replied that it is permitted to say the prayer in such a case, but added that “in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.” . . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to ynet.co.il

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:41 am

    P.P.P.P.S. MORE “BE(I)TARIM” IN ACTION: Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’, by Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss, 3/24/12
    

    (excerpt)...Chanting "Death to Arabs," hundreds of Beitar soccer fans crowded into a mall in Jerusalem after their team won a match and what spilled out ...words escape me:
    

    The Independent: Hundreds of fans, mostly teenagers, descended on busy Malha Mall, jumping on tables, waving scarves, and chanting "Death to Arabs".
    When a group of fans started to heckle and spit on Palestinian women dining with their children in the food hall, the centre's Arab cleaning staff rushed to their defence and chased the fans off. But moments later, the fans returned, and started to attack the Arab staff.
    "They [the fans] caught some of them and beat the hell out of them," Yair, the Jewish owner of a bakery in the shopping centre, told Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. ... One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy." The brawl might have turned deadly, but food hall staff refused to respond to fans' demands for knives and sticks...

    SOURCE - link to mondoweiss.net

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:37 am with 1 replies

    RE: "Colonel Eyal Qarim of the Military Rabbinate wrote nine years ago – out of uniform – that ‘prohibitions against immorality’ are removed during war..." ~ Gurvitz
    AND RE: "Wow. Herein lies a hornet’s nest. The first is that according to Qarim, the rape of female prisoners is not just permitted, it is also essential to war..." ~ Weiss

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Betar]:
    

    (excerpt) The Betar Movement (בית”ר, also spelled Beitar) is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Betar has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many movements and youth groups arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the latter of whom idolized Jabotinsky.[2]…
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, however, was seen as “cowardly” by Betar and led them to break with him shortly after.[8]…

    SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org

    P.S. FROM TED RALL, 07/22/10:
    

    …Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay "Eternal Fascism" describes the cult of action for its own sake under fascist regimes and movements: “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”…

    SOURCE – link to commondreams.org

    P.P.S. It appears to me that Israel/Zionism has come to resemble what Umberto Eco referred to as “fascist regimes and movements”, and consequently Zionism ascribes to the “cult of action for its own sake” (e.g. Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank, Israel’s determination to bomb Iran, etc).

    P.P.P.S. "BE(I)TARIM" IN ACTION: Jerusalem Day celebrations PART1 : Provocations. (VIDEO, 03:49) - link to youtube.com

• And you thought they just followed the Dow! WSJ publishes bible story to justify occupation
  • DICKERSON3870 March 30, 2012 at 11:55 pm

    RE: "Watch out, Dickerson. You’re perilously close to being branded a 'Slaves in Egypt' Denier." ~ Pixel

    MY REPLY: I'm literally quaking in my Hush Puppies™! Damn, that reminds me of my beloved Tater Tots®. I think I'll fry me up a mess of extra greasy "Tots" right now!

  • DICKERSON3870 March 29, 2012 at 11:20 am with 2 replies

    RE: "Israel isn't just an ordinary state; it's the continuation of a story beginning in history's most famous book, the Bible." ~ Daniel Freedman in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal

    SEE: Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth? ~ By Josh Mintz, Haaretz 3/26/12
    

    (excerpt). . . The reality is that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt. Yes, there's the story contained within the bible itself, but that's not a remotely historically admissible source. I'm talking about real proof; archeological evidence, state records and primary sources. Of these, nothing exists.
    It is hard to believe that 600,000 families (which would mean about two million people) crossed the entire Sinai without leaving one shard of pottery (the archeologist's best friend) with Hebrew writing on it. It is remarkable that Egyptian records make no mention of the sudden migration of what would have been nearly a quarter of their population, nor has any evidence been found for any of the expected effects of such an exodus; such as economic downturn or labor shortages. Furthermore, there is no evidence in Israel that shows a sudden influx of people from another culture at that time. No rapid departure from traditional pottery has been seen, no record or story of a surge in population. . .

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to haaretz.com

    P.S. "Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never sway us." ~ Neocon Creed (This creed also works for Team B, Republicans, Fox News, Fundies, and now even The Wall Street Journal.)

• Sullivan unmasks Goldberg as a propagandist for Netanyahu's 'lies, bluffs and deceptions' aimed at getting us into war
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 12:02 am

    BETTER (I THINK): Down, down, down we go into the deep, dark abyss; hand in hand with Israel.

  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 4:38 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "we are left with continued support (and aid!) for a demographically doomed Greater Israel, permanently dragging the US down in global power and credibility - and possibly a world war of unknowable consequences." ~ Andrew Sullivan

    MY CONTRIBUTION: Down, down, down into the deep, dark abyss we go; hand in hand with Israel.

  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 4:21 pm with 1 replies

    RE: "L.J.Wall referenced it as 'on Bibi’s payroll'. Ouch." ~ Annie Robbins

    SPEAKING OF BEING ON BIBI'S PAYROLL (George Jahn of the AP):
    How Mossad Justified Its Murder of an Innocent Iranian Electrical Engineer, by Gareth Porter, TruthOut.org, 3/17/12
    

    (excerpts)...The possibility that Mossad killed the wrong Iranian scientist cannot be completely ruled out. But almost immediately after his murder, Israel sought to justify the murder of Rezaeinejad by presenting him as working on the covert nuclear weapons program Israel had been claiming for years. Associated Press correspondent in Vienna George Jahn reported on July 28 that an anonymous official of an anonymous "member state" of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told him Rezaeinejad had been participating in "developing high voltage switches," which he described as "a key component in setting off the explosives needed to trigger a nuclear warhead.". . .
    ...Two months later, on September 19, Jahn and his anonymous source from the unnamed member state were back at it again, this time with a purported "intelligence summary" claiming to identify the researcher who had allegedly collaborated with Rezaeinejad...
    ...Finally, the intelligence summary claimed that Rezaeinejad was not an electrical engineer at all, but a "physicist" who had worked for the Iranian defense ministry on not only high-voltage switches, but also on other projects linked to nuclear weapons development - which it did not identify.
    But an investigation into the Rezaeinejad case reveals that Israel had used the AP's Jahn to carry out a deliberate disinformation campaign about the victim to justify his murder. Rezaeinejad left a record of published research which makes it very clear that he was indeed an electrical engineer, rather than a physicist, and that he had been working on basic electrical power engineering technologies...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to truth-out.org

• Hey girl, feeling bad about the Park Slope Co-op vote?
  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 10:21 pm

    P.S.
    Ryan Gosling On Blue Valentine (VIDEO, 03:33) - link to youtube.com
    'Blue Valentine' Trailer HD (VIDEO, 01:53) - link to youtube.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 12:35 pm with 1 replies

    I very much like Ryan Gosling (as a person and as an actor), but the film Drive (2011) was really, really lame. That shiny jacket was totally nasty!
    MUCH BETTER:
    The Ides of March (2011) - link to movies.netflix.com
    Blue Valentine (2010) - link to movies.netflix.com
    Half Nelson (2006) - link to movies.netflix.com

    P.S. RYAN GOSLING AT IMDb - link to imdb.com

• Sen. Rand Paul blocks Iran sanctions bill, calls for 'thoughtful debate' before we start another war
  • DICKERSON3870 March 31, 2012 at 12:30 am

    AIPAC and/or the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC)
    will probably go after Rand Paul in Kentucky's 2016 Republican primary by recruiting and funding a "social conservative" / "values" candidate that especially appeals to the Fundies (Christian Evangelicals).

    NOTE: White Evangelicals. State, %. Tennessee, 47.0% Oklahoma, 46.3% Alabama, 46.1% W. Virginia, 44.2% Arkansas, 44.0% N. Carolina, 40.0% Kentucky, 37.0% S. Carolina, 36.4% Mississippi, 35.6% Kansas, 34.3%...
    SOURCE - link to beliefnet.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 5:09 pm with 5 replies

    RE: "Sen. Rand Paul blocks Iran sanctions bill, calls for ‘thoughtful debate’ before we start another war" ~ Weiss

    MY COMMENT: AIPAC will make every effort to see to it that Rand Paul is not reelected. Think Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, Chuck Percy, etc.

    SEE: 10 Ways AIPAC Undermines Democracy at Home and in the Middle East, By Medea Benjamin, AlterNet, 2/29/12
    

    (excerpt) 6. AIPAC attacks politicians who question unconditional support of Israel.
    AIPAC demands that Congress to rubber stamp legislation drafted by AIPAC staff. It keeps a record of how members of Congress vote and this record is used by donors to make contributions to the politicians who score well. Members of Congress who fail to support AIPAC legislation have been targeted for defeat in re-election bids. These include Senators Adlai Stevenson III and Charles H. Percy, and Representatives Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, and Earl F. Hilliard. AIPAC’s overwhelmingly disproportionate influence on Congress subverts our democratic system. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to alternet.org

• Ethnocentrism and journalism (Beinart's double standard for Israel and Iraq)
  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 1:01 pm

    RE: "And Beinart cited the failure of Avigdor Lieberman's rise to rouse the American Jewish community. So he was stirred to speak out." ~ Weiss

    SEE: Is Lieberman the New Israeli Mainstream? ~ by Mitchell Plitnick, 1/08/11
    

    (excerpt) In an interview given to Newsweek, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman made the following, quite chilling statement: “I am the mainstream. When I started with my vision, I was really a small minority. Today we’re the third [largest] party in Israel.”

    Lieberman is certainly no stranger to bluster, so it’s easy to dismiss this as more of Yvet’s (as he is called) hubris. But is that really the case? There’s a good deal of evidence to suggest that Lieberman is absolutely right.

    Each piece of that evidence is another massive blow to the teetering ship that is Israeli democracy. The latest was a proposal introduced this past week by Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, to set up a Knesset committee to investigate the funding sources of progressive, and only left-wing, NGOs.

    Israeli journalist and blogger Yossi Gurvitz likened the event to the burning of the Reichstag, implying that this was the point where Israel slipped from democracy to fascism. Gurvitz may be overstating the case (I’d certainly say he is), but he is not exaggerating how anti-democratic this action and this Knesset are. Nor can it be reasonably denied that, whether Gurvitz is right or not today, if Israel continues on its present course, there is no doubt he will be someday and probably not in all that distant a future...

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY - link to mitchellplitnick.com

• Hana Shalabi has been on hunger strike for 40 days-- A call to action
  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 10:01 am

    RE: "It has been more than forty days since Hana Shalabi began her courageous fast" ~ Ahmed Moor

    AN EXCELLENT FILM ON THE NATURE OF BEING A "CONSCIOUS PARIAH"*: "Hunger", 2008, NR, 96 minutes
    Acclaimed visual artist Steve McQueen makes his feature film debut with this gripping drama (and Independent Spirit Award Best Foreign Film contender) that depicts the events surrounding a hunger strike staged by a group of IRA prisoners during their 1981 incarceration in Britain's Prison Maze. Led by IRA volunteer-poet Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the strikers waged their six-week-long protest in an attempt to be acknowledged as political prisoners and to improve the prison's conditions.
    Netflix Availability: Streaming, DVD and Blu-ray
    NETFLIX LISTING - link to movies.netflix.com
    HUNGER Trailer (2008) - The Criterion Collection (VIDEO, 01:53) - link to youtube.com
    P.S. IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not watch this film anywhere near mealtime. To say the least, it does not "whet the appetite". At least, not for food! Also, a 'barf bag' might be advisable when viewing this film.

    * A RELATED FACEBOOK GROUP
    Name - Hannah Arendt: Integrity Personified
    Category - Common Interest, Beliefs & Causes
    Description - A group for individuals who greatly respect the legendary Hannah Arendt, and who admire the immense integrity her life epitomized. Oh, come, all ye "conscious pariahs", Joyful and triumphant! Oh, come ye, oh, come ye...
    LINK – link to facebook.com

• Jewish establishment-backed mayoral candidates rush to denounce Park Slope BDS effort
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 7:03 pm

    RE: "The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC), a coordinating body for major Jewish organizations in New York...spends time, and a lot of money, bringing elected officials to Israel to tour the country, as Quinn recently did." ~ Alex Kane

    FROM AIPAC'S WEBSITE (undated):
    

    African American Political Leaders and Activists Visit Israel

    A group of African American politicians, consultants and activists arrived in Israel this week to participate in an American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) Seminar. The group of 18 includes eight state and local elected officials and three appointed government officials, including the presidents of the city councils of Atlanta and Detroit. The other participants are all deeply involved in political and civic life in their communities, including five who are co-chairs for the DNC’s Generation44 fundraising initiative in their cities. A number of the seminar participants have already attended pro-Israel events in their communities and have shown interest in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May passed Iranian divestment resolutions in their jurisdictions in 2009.

    SOURCE - link to aipac.org

• JNF launches new 'bluewashing' website - PositivelyIsrael
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 5:31 pm

    RE: "The Jewish National Fund (JNF) recently launched a blueshwashing website, PositivelyIsrael.org, to inform how 'Israel is changing the world - for the better.' ~ Deger

    FOR EXAMPLE, SEE - Isaiah Weeps: Jewish National Fund, GOD-TV Erase Israeli Bedouin Village to Bring Jesus’ Second Coming, by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 12/06/10
    

    (excerpts)...The Israeli government is hoping the seventh time is the charm in their efforts to eradicate the Israeli Bedouin village of Al-Araqib. That’s how many times they’re destroyed it only to have its inhabitants return and rebuild it once more...
    ...Now, Israeli State thieves have come upon a new scam to make the destruction of the place more thorough and long-lasting. They’ve enlisted the Jewish National Fund, whose forests have already disappeared hundreds of former Israeli Palestinian villages uprooted during the Nakba. JNF together with the Israel Lands Administration which claims the Bedouin land on behalf of the State, brought their bulldozers to plant a new forest that will cover the ground on which Al-Araqib stands. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, JNF’s partner in this crimes is even more astonishing: the Christian Zionist evangelical GOD-TV...

    ENTIRE ARTICLE - link to richardsilverstein.com

    ALSO SEE: GOD TV and the Jewish National Fund plant the Forest Of Hate, by Max Blumenthal, 12/13/10
    LINK - link to maxblumenthal.com

    AND SEE: Uprooting the Bedouins of Israel, by Neve Gordon, The Nation, 12/02/10
    LINK - link to thenation.com

• 'Peter Beinart's offense against liberalism' and the spiritual crisis Zionism has wrought
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 2:55 pm

    RE: "The avalanche of neocon hysteria that has rained down against Beinart even before the official release date of his book is frightening and unprecedented." ~ Jack Ross

    ALSO SEE - Dear liberal American Jews: Please don’t betray Israel, by Dahlia Scheindlin, +972 Magazine, 2/14/12:
    

    (excerpts). . . After two weeks in America visiting family and friends, two observations struck me powerfully. First, the understanding that Israel is committing terrible deeds that are destroying itself and its neighbors, has penetrated among you…
    …On this trip, I was stunned to learn that now you don’t even really want to visit Israel because you can’t face what you’re increasingly coming to see as a brutal occupying entity flirting with fascist notions. . .
    …My second observation is that because of your fear – not of the goyim or the anti-Semites, but of yourselves! – you are keeping a low public profile. On this trip, I suddenly realized how naïve it was to imagine that J Street had sufficiently opened the door for anyone who cares critically for Israel to speak out. I underestimated how deep and terrible the intimidation has become and that one political lobby group is far from enough.
    I do understand: those of you who still call the Jewish community home, are afraid of the onslaught that you will receive from your (our) very own people.
    I hold no illusions about how vicious the attacks might be. We Jews, not the goyim, will call you the most painful names, will threaten in various ways to label you as beyond the pale of your people, should you voice your critique. You might be chastised in your professional community. You will be hit not only by shadowy bloggers but by the very cherished and established groups you have loyally, even automatically, supported over the years. The anger might come from your friends and it might even come from your family...
    . . . Here’s how that made me feel: abandoned, by the liberal Jews of America. You were swept away by Ruth Wisse’s thesis that liberals betrayed the Jewish cause by believing too much in rational universalism [e.g. universal human rights] and failing to acknowledge the unique, everlasting threat of anti-Semitism…

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to 972mag.com

• Vigilante settler seeks ‘strong men' to evict Palestinians from East Jerusalem home
  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    RE: "I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the 'No Fact Zone.' FOX News, I hold a copyright on that term." ~ Stephen Colbert

    MY CONTRIBUTION: "Sticks and stones may break our bones, but facts will never sway us." ~ Neocon Creed (This creed also works for Team B, Republicans, Fox News, Fundies, etc.)

  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 11:58 am with 3 replies

    P.S. FROM TED RALL, 07/22/10: …Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay Eternal Fascism describes the cult of action for its own sake under fascist regimes and movements: “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”…
    SOURCE – link to commondreams.org

    P.S. It appears to me that Israel/Zionism has come to resemble what Umberto Eco referred to as “fascist regimes and movements”, and consequently Zionism ascribes to the “cult of action for its own sake” (e.g. Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank, Israel’s determination to bomb Iran, etc).
    SEE: Jerusalem Day celebrations PART1 : Provocations. (VIDEO, 03:49) - link to youtube.com

  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 11:49 am with 4 replies

    RE: "the right-wing leader, Aryeh King published an ad in a newspaper seeking 'strong men [who] are wanted to legally evacuate Arab squatters.' " ~ Deger

    MY QUESTION: Will the Be(i)tarim answer the call?

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Betar]:
    

    (excerpt) The Betar Movement (בית”ר, also spelled Beitar) is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Betar has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many movements and youth groups arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the latter of whom idolized Jabotinsky.[2]…
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, however, was seen as “cowardly” by Betar and led them to break with him shortly after.[8]…

    SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org

    ALSO SEE: Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’, by Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss, 3/24/12
    

    (excerpt)...Chanting "Death to Arabs," hundreds of Beitar soccer fans crowded into a mall in Jerusalem after their team won a match and what spilled out ...words escape me:
    

    The Independent:
    

    Hundreds of fans, mostly teenagers, descended on busy Malha Mall, jumping on tables, waving scarves, and chanting "Death to Arabs".
    When a group of fans started to heckle and spit on Palestinian women dining with their children in the food hall, the centre's Arab cleaning staff rushed to their defence and chased the fans off. But moments later, the fans returned, and started to attack the Arab staff.
    "They [the fans] caught some of them and beat the hell out of them," Yair, the Jewish owner of a bakery in the shopping centre, told Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. ... One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy." The brawl might have turned deadly, but food hall staff refused to respond to fans' demands for knives and sticks...

    SOURCE - link to mondoweiss.net

• Hana Shalabi and the international indifference to the arbitrary arrest of women and children in Palestine
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 12:20 pm

    RE: "Hana Shalabi has entered her 41st day of her hunger strike" ~ Today in Palestine

    PETITION: Free Hana Shalabi and End Administrative Detentions
    TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
    

    Hana Shalabi was held for 25 months in Israeli prison under "administrative detention" without charge or trial. She was released in October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal. She was captured by Israeli Forces again on February 16, 2012 and has been on a hunger strike since then. Her condition continues to deteriorate. According to Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Israel's abuse of administrative detention violates the rigid parameters placed on it by international law. Administrative detention allows individuals to be held without charge or trial, restricting their rights to due-process. It is something to be used only "in the most exceptional cases" but Israel has used it to detain thousands of Palestinians. Israel's excessive use of administrative detentions is undemocratic. The US should condemn the government of Israel and pressure them to end this practice and free Hana Shalabi as well as others who are currently held in their prisons without charge or trial.

    TO SIGN THE PETIION - link to change.org

• Brandeis students disrupt town-hall meeting with Israeli Knesset members
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    RE: "FREE HANA SHALABI!" ~ shouted by the activists

    PETITION: Free Hana Shalabi and End Administrative Detentions
    TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
    

    Hana Shalabi was held for 25 months in Israeli prison under "administrative detention" without charge or trial. She was released in October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal. She was captured by Israeli Forces again on February 16, 2012 and has been on a hunger strike since then. Her condition continues to deteriorate. According to Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Israel's abuse of administrative detention violates the rigid parameters placed on it by international law. Administrative detention allows individuals to be held without charge or trial, restricting their rights to due-process. It is something to be used only "in the most exceptional cases" but Israel has used it to detain thousands of Palestinians. Israel's excessive use of administrative detentions is undemocratic. The US should condemn the government of Israel and pressure them to end this practice and free Hana Shalabi as well as others who are currently held in their prisons without charge or trial.

    TO SIGN THE PETIION - link to change.org

• Bloomberg warns BDS will lead to 'massacres' as Park Slope Co-op holds initial vote on boycott tonight
  • DICKERSON3870 March 28, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    RE: "i thought god sent katrina to punish the sodomites. so will the sodomites be punished at a later date?" ~ marc b.

    MY REPLY: These right-wing rabbis will have to duke it out with Jerry Falwell (R.I.P.), Pat Robertson, John Hagee, the Wesboro Baptist "Church", etc., before we know* the answer to your question.
    * assuming that the answer is "knowable" per Donald Rumsfeld

  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 11:33 am with 2 replies

    RE: "Bloomberg warns BDS will lead to ‘massacres’ "

    THIS BRINGS TO MIND - Rabbis warn Bush: Annapolis will bring destruction to US, by Neta Sela, Ynet News, 11/06/07
    Group of right-wing rabbis writes open letter to US president demanding he cancel Annapolis summit or risk provoking 'wrath of the almighty.' Rabbis assert Katrina disaster a result of America's support of 2005 disengagement, say California fires a warning
    

    (excerpt) A fringe group of prominent ultranationalist rabbis issued a harshly-worded letter to United States President George W. Bush earlier this week, warning him that the upcoming Annapolis peace conference would bring destruction upon America.
    The rabbis evoke their previous prediction in 2005, when they published an open letter to Bush in the New York Times, demanding the US rescind its support of the disengagement plan.
    "We wrote to President Bush, a man who believes in the Bible, to warn him against the terrible danger to which he is exposing his country by hosting such a conference," said Rabbi Meir Druckman, one of signatories to the letter.
    "The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. God punishes anyone who coerces Israel to give up its land," he said.
    "There is no doubt the New Orleans flood from the Katrina hurricane was God's punishment for evicting the settlements," said Druckman , "with hundreds of thousands left homeless, hundreds killed or wounded and billions of dollars sent down the drain – can we really ignore God's hand collecting an eye for an eye?"
    The disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank was completed August 23rd, 2005 – which was also the date Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas.
    "Despite those consequences, yet again we find ourselves facing an initiative to expel Jews from Judea and Samaria and cede their cities to terror organizations. And once again the patrons of the event are President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
    "This time the Almighty is warning the US in advance: if the plague of water was not enough now he shall send flames. While hundreds of thousands of families have already fled the terrible fires in California, and we ask you, will you really forge ahead with this malevolent plan?" added Druckman. . .

    SOURCE - link to ynetnews.com

• 'J Street' review-- mixed, but positive
  • DICKERSON3870 March 27, 2012 at 11:29 am

    P.S. And Genuflecting, of course!

Showing comments 3500 - 3401
Page: 60 59 58 ... 37 36 35 34 33 ... 3 2 1