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- Former AIPAC lobbyist assumes weighty mantle (and travel budget) of … 16
- Press Release: Isabel Kershner chosen to reveal future Israeli exonerations 5
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click link to see last 100 comments- There’s been a sea change in US opinion on the conflict (14)
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Just google "honorary whites", and see how Apartheid South Africa dealt with such things.
Cut out the "Israeli-Nazis" bit please. I know that to many people comparing Israelis to Nazis is irresistible, because it is the most painful insult. But it is cheap and counterproductive.
Please look up some of my comments over the years before concluding that I am a concern troll. You may not like what I said about the impact that these very different images of funerals have, but I think my comments are valid.
This will sound crude but Palestinian funerals are a public relations disaster. At South African funerals during Apartheid you saw motherly women bursting into many-voiced hymns. Such scenes were on television all the time and I am certain that they were important in getting the sympathy of the world. At Palestinians funerals women are absent. Grief is less visible because it is kept private and most of the time all you see is agry men jostling with a corpse. Frankly, it usually looks scary.
I have often thought that this difference plays a role in the lack of attention and sympathy for Palestinian victims.
What does color have to do with it? 'Women of color' etc?
As far as I can see, it is Western arrogance, which is not the same as 'white' and I have seen 'women of color' among the protesters too. Another thing is that, looking at an array of pictures in my newspaper of these Femen demonstrations in a number of countries I thought 'how small all their breasts are', then realizing that these are natural women. I sign of how inflated breast in advertisements are.
tokyobk, I have no idea where my comment will end up, but I reply to your use of the term dhimmi. This is a historical, outdated term. The Ottoman Empire officially abolished the dhimmi system in 1856. The average Muslim had never heard of the term until it was revived by Islamofobes who have succeeded in making it into a household word in most western countries. Same goes for taqiyya: Most (Sunni) Muslims will have to look up what the term means, but both terms have been so much bandied about over here (Netherlands) that people keep pestering bewildered Muslims about their supposed tradition of lying to non-muslims, and pushing them into servitude.
Just don't use these words. They are useless because they are dragged out of context and they have been too much abused.
Men seem to have a bigger problem in keeping their hands of other people who do not want to have sex with them, be it women, other men, or children. Cardboard box or no.
Do we condemn Apartheid because it made it so that the Afrikaners couldn’t be a light unto the world or some such nonsense?
Priceless.
I have no idea if Teitel's nickname really is "the Jewish terrorist", or if Kershner made it up. Either way, the name conveys the idea that he is the only one, that terrorism is not something that Jews are involved in. Sneaky and effective.
I saw a video of him talking to his brother in Gaza. I don't think he is deaf, hard of hearing maybe...
This story really makes me sick. Especially seeing the boy happy and proud of all the sweets he got at his party. How can people survive such kind of loss? How can Israeli's expect not to be hated? How scared of revenge you must be, knowing that your country does this over and over again...
That was what crossed my mind too: The mighty Israeli deterrence had to be restored at all cost.
Bad people...
I meant to answer to your post about David Flusser Donald, but it ended up somewhere way down.
I have read Flusser years ago, and he never even mentions Zionism as far as I can recall. He is able to clarify many aspects of the stories in the NT by adding context from his knowledge of Judaism. (He is not the only one to do so by the way: This is almost standard fare in progressive post-WO2 churches in Europe.)
One thing I recall is that he showed from other, similar decriptions, that the scene where Jesus is mocked by the Roman soldiers (who dress him up as a king) is something that Romans did on other occasions as well. So it seems they had a habit of making fun of the Jewish hope for a future king to liberate them. That really adds a whole new perspective to the story, doesn't it?
That was terrific Betsy: Thank you!
"only Israeli citizens are being attacked, as civilians"
This made me think of the sad but in some ways hilarious report on CNN: They tried to compare to people as being in an 'equal position'; an Israeli who lived withing range of the rockets from Gaza, and a Palestinian in Gaza. The Palestinian was just shown sitting in a cramped room. The Israeli was introduced by means of pictures of his family, his five lovely children and his spaceous home. The Palestinian talked about the fear for his live he had felt that day on the streets. The Israeli complained that his children (the youngest only 1 year old) had had to run to the safe room all day and his poor parents did not even have a safe room. He got all teary eyed and only seemed to consider the attacks on Israeli's as relevant because they were intentional. The fears of the Palestinian man did not register as Israel never intended to hurt civilians. The fact that in reality Israel does so on a massive scale made no difference: Only the lofty intentions of the Israeli's compared to the base instincts of the Palestinians counted.
So far it went all well, but then explosions started to interrupt the interview with the Palestinian man. He tried to continue, saying: Let's get this game of, 'who is the victim and who is the victimizer' out of the way so we can talk about more substantial issues. At that moment more explosions made him fall from his chair and the skype connection was interrupted. All the time the Israeli man's pouting face remained completely indifferent to what was happening to the man in Gaza. That is the power of the meme: "only Israeli citizens are being attacked, as civilians".
I am from Europe and as I remember it the slogan 'Yankee go home' was associated with the American presence and interference in South America, Vietnam, the Philippines and Iran and so on, not Europe.
I loved that too!
I wish someone would conduct an interview with the Palestinian parents. I am interested to know what they think of the project and what they think of the attitude of (hopefully only some of) these Jewish parents.
By the way, most of the world does not eat kosher. If 'exposure' to non-kosher food is so frightful you really cannot go anywhere in the world. You can hardly venture outside your own community and may as well build a wall around yourself.
Why are they against the sexual liberation promoted by the generation '68? Usually 'Khader' is painted as a threat to sexual freedom, so what is this statement doing in an anti-immigration/anti-Muslin declaration of war?
There should be more of these protests. Let's call them Occupation Pricetags.
Very well put (he wouldn't). And by the way, Jon S: You really do not need to be gay to find life in Gaza unbearably hard... Anyone would prefer to live in Tel Aviv.
Funny, I had the opposite impression: That Europeans consider more people 'white' than Americans. It had to be explained to me years ago that Colin Powel was 'black'. He looked European, though not northern European perhaps.
"A man who is not circumcised cannot understand the context of the Bible."
And the other half of humanity, the one without the appendage, is not even worthy of consideration.
I think you are talking of King David mostly. The story of his dealings and what Nathan has to say about that is amazing of course. And it is amazing that it wasn't scrapped from the Bible at some point, as the memory of King David's rule got idealized more and more. Still, other prophets such as Samuel, Nathan himself and others are depicted as pretty flawless. I also think there would be many Jews with hurt feelings if King David was portrayed in a movie as a backhanded, cynical opportunist and murderer, warming himself to a young girl in his old age, while locking up his discarded wives for life, even though the Bible itself describes it all.
Who says he slept with her if she was nine?
It is a while ago and I don't remember the country but a Dutch man who had worked in Afrika for a long time once talked of a conversation he had had with someone who had married the daughter of his best friend (I think he had other wives as well). She was really young, 8 or 9, so the Dutch guy was shocked and in a roundabout way started to inquire about the physical part of the relationship. They talked around for a while, not getting each other's point, until his partner suddenly understood what he was asking about and now HE was shocked: "You don't believe I sleep with her, do you?! She is even to young to have breasts!!"
I think we do not know what marriage to a child meant in Mohammeds time and place. It could be a way to secure a safe home for a beloved child with all kinds of unspoken rules of behavior, such as waiting with untercourse until the child was sexually mature.
I still don't like it, but we just don't know what the deal was in those times.
I just hope no Copts are going to be lynched over this in Egypt.
I am always a bit surprised when I see liberal member of some religion or other convert. In my idea liberal Muslims, Christians and Jews have more in common with each other than with their orthodox (let alone fundamentalist) sisters and brothers.
There are branches of Islam that I could easily embrace, while there are branches of Christianty (the slot where I belong) that are abhorrent to me.
But then, Kovel was not a religious Jew at all. He gave up on Judaism at such an early age that he never studied it seriously, and never gave it the chance to touch him in the way that Christianity later did.
I think that usually it is better to explore your own tradition (or different branches of it) first, as I find that it is easier to separate the genuine from the bullshit in your own tradition than in an alien one. But that said, I think that Kovel made an excellent choice in the kind of Christianity that he decided to embrace.
Not JUST a thought, a really dumb one, and one we have heard a million times before. Thousands of Palestinians get around those barriers every day, yet the 'women and children' of Jerusalem can enjoy their pizza. (Israeli men eat no pizza, huh?) The wall is there to turn Palestinian neighborhoods into ghetto's that are easily controlled.
In my experience human suffering and not sin is an important theme in Christian churches, but denominations come in many flavors.
God's frozen people...!! I love that. It describes a good section of Dutch Protestantism too. I find it worse when they loosen up and get all happy-clappy and Evangelical.
"all morality and all civilization"
Wow, fuck the Chinese, the Indians, the indigenous peoples of the America's, Australia etc. etc.
Anonymous comments are always more extreme than normal, but I was stunned at the comments on the Corrie trial in English language newspapers in Israel. Almost without exception very agressive, gloating often. How representative of the general public can they be?
The idea of Christian Zionists working as slaves on Jewish settlements made me grin. But I think Hagee will pass that on to the Palestinian Christians (preferably the people of Sabeel), not his own flock.
Agree!
They did?!
(I still call it the Peculiar Institution.)
Look, a picture from his time in Israel (with natural hair color).
link to alatoerka.nl
It would be fun. (People are joking about his hair a lot anyway.) But you are seeing things into Wilders that are no there. He does not have a fairly dark complexion for instance. He is very pale. Your idea that the hair functions to transform him into a white man, and that the people in your audience should therefore also be fairly dark skinned to hold a mirror up to him, so to speak, really does not hold.
The function of the hair is probably no more than to make him stand out, a kind of trade mark. (One of his nicknames is "the Xenophobic Mozart from Venlo".)
I am from the Netherlands and an avid newspaper reader, and must have read a thousand of articles on Wilders if not more. But this is the first time I heard about a part Indonesian ancestry of Wilders' mother. What I mean to say, is that this is such an irrelevant issue over here that it is simply passed over by everyone. (It is certainly not because the issue would be a kind of taboo or whatever.)
I do not think it played any part in the development of W's ideas. His ideas on Islam were moderate, not outspoken, until he found out that this issue was his opportunity to gain fame and financial support. His intimate contact with Hirsi Ali in the period when she was in the Dutch parliament played an important role here.
I agree. The same types hated Jews when they were 'the problem'.
"...but carefuly, because we don’t want you to get hurt!"
Lovely!
Here the last one with translation
link to friends-partners.org
Something for Lehava's shame page:
link to friends-partners.org
Colin, the horseriding-thing was in fact brought up by me somewhere at the beginning of the thread. You could be right that part of it is a re-enactment.
Thanks for that link, American. I put the book on my 'planning to read' list.
Shmuel,
“It lends an aura of authenticity, of a direct connection to the land.”
I thought about that too. And I have seen interviews with the hilltop-types: They really look and talk like hippy-ecologists as long as the topic is ‘the land’. But the funny thing is: They do not realize that if they had an authentic ‘connection to the land’ they would be riding donkeys, wouldn’t they? But that is for the lowly Arab.
Your quotation from the psalms stands in a long and venerable tradition (the best in my opinion): Through history people have always managed to read the scriptures as a subversive text.
I guess riding a horse ads to the feeling of being a pioneer, a master, a lord of the land, a 'new Jew'.
"I think that if you read all the material on the case, what kicked the legal machinery into gear, and what made the court find that rape had taken place, was that an Arab had represented himself as a Jew and thus succeeded in committing miscegenation in a profoundly racist society."
That is exactlywhere I do not agree. I thought so before too, but not no longer after I read this story.
And Woody and Danaa, whether she lied or not is always hard to determine but not relevant here: The question is "was there reasonable ground to prosecute the man for rape".
Well yes, her claim and some physical evidence.
You have to admit that this is very different from the way in which this incident has often been reported elsewhere and now here: She had a consensual quicky and then 'cried rape' on finding out her lover (or customer as Danaa believes) was a despised Arab.
That is what I pointed out.
The claim you guys all ran for was that there was consensual sex and that the only reason why the woman later called ‘rape’ was because the guy had hidden the fact that he was a hideous Arab.
(AND she was a slut of course: “My take: A guy picks up some chick and bones her the same day he meets her. No one seemed to question her morals………” Did I hear you disagree?)
That story proves to be complete nonsense. She was raped.
Mooser: “Eliszabeth, yeah, we’re all calling her a slut. Might as well give you something you can understand.”
You have turned into somewhat of a bully on these threads, Mooser.
Mooser: “the more disturbed an naive they are, the better we like ‘em!
Her father began sexually abusing her when she was 6, and later sent her to work as a prostitute. Much of her youth was spent in boarding schools. As a teenager, she worked as a prostitute and started abusing drugs, and at one point she lived on the street. None of this ended her father's abuse. Just a month before her encounter with Kashur, her father sexually assaulted her again, and she fled to a shelter for young women at risk.
Mooser: “On the other hand, is the testimony pretty salacious? Lubricious? Hubba, hubba, here I come. "
If you enjoy reading about an unscrupulous opportunist forcing himself inside a child-like abused girl, be my guest Mooser.
"He took my pants and underpants off," B. says. "All this happened by force; I didn't agree to anything ... Then he took my clothes off; he then put saliva on his penis and there was, like, full penetration - this was not, as he says, with consent. He put me down on the floor, and then he started to kiss my breasts, and then, like, I asked that he stop, and I tried to push him away, but he pressured me with his hands. When I tried to push him with my hand on his stomach, then what had already happened once happened again, this was at a later stage; he was inside me, and then he said that if I kept quiet and stopped trying to resist him, it would be over more quickly, and he wouldn't, like, use force. But I resisted, and it happened by force. “According to B.'s testimony, Kashur remained on top of her for some time, and then got up and walked away, leaving her naked. Alone in the stairwell, B. started to cry.
"I was really hysterical," she testifies. At this stage, she noticed blood around her vagina, and that added to her fears. A few minutes later, her brother called, and B. asked him to contact a worker from the shelter. This woman quickly contacted B., who told her what happened.
"She [the shelter worker] said I should stay calm, and contact Magen David Adom," B. says. Later policemen came, and found B. in the stairwell. "When they arrived I was not wearing pants; that's how I was, and I was in shock," B. says. "The floor was dirty with blood, and I was really afraid to touch myself to see if I was okay; I was really scared."
Later, a Magen David Adom team showed up. B. states that she was later checked at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, which documented scratches on her body. The prosecution's files contain photographs of her wounds.
Mooser, you are a jerk.
It seems to have been a bit more complicated. Please read her testimony.
link to haaretz.com
She seems terribly disturbed and naive, but with a background like that maybe you guys should reserve your judgment.
Here is Peres on Dutch television, explaining why so many Palestinian children were killed during Cast Lead (takes him just one minute):
link to youtube.com
Need one say more on this Nobel Peace Prize winner?
Terrific post and the last lines almost made me jump up and cheer behind my computer.
The servile language ("I do apologize, Officer"), the broken English ("other people, they are not serious..") and the oriental body language ( "he bowed a little when he spoke") seem to be copied straight from Disney's portrayal of Arabs in Aladdin.
I do not know about the US of course, but in the Netherlands and most of Europe, interfaith marriage usually means: Two people marry whose families are vaguely of a different religious tradition, but they themselves couldn't care less and are never seen in Church, Mosque or Synagogue.
In such cases, the marriage is either secular, or the family that is most insistent wins, and the ceremony is conducted according to their religion.
NOBODY CONVERTS! It is just a marriage ceremony, and soon afterwards, everybody forgets.
This is not very on topic, but nevertheless:
When I was about 11 years old, I heard the father of my best friend explain to her what 'prostitutes' were ('women who sell their bodies for money'). It annoyed me and I wanted to say: "They do not SELL their bodies, because they get them back afterwards. Sell is forever. They RENT their bodies out."
(You see, my mother had explained to me in very gentle but clear terms what prostitution was really about, and she did not use such pompous and abstract terms, which do not explain anything.)
At the time I was too respectful of older people to correct him of course.
Please remember that it was you who started this by saying that there were "very few" innocent Germans. That was what I reacted to: Hitler was never elected by the majority of Germans, let alone by almost everyone except "very few".
Then, in answer to Woody Tanaka, you say "Did the zionists ever try to find innocent germans or damned them all? What is good for the goose, also good for the gander."
There are enough intelligent Israeli's who do not damn all Germans, so do not set up a bogeyman, who you then (ironically enough) think fit to emulate. Why not joint the part of humanity that can see nuances.
The last free election was in 1932. These are the circumstances under which the elections of 1933 were held. Judge for yourself:
"The election took place after the Nazi Machtergreifung of 30 January when President Paul von Hindenburg had appointed Hitler Chancellor, who immediately urged the dissolution of the Reichstag and the arrangement of new elections. In early February, the Nazis "unleashed a campaign of violence and terror that dwarfed anything seen so far." Storm troopers began attacking trade union and Communist Party (KPD) offices and the homes of left-wingers. In the second half of February, the violence was extended to the Social Democrats, with gangs of brownshirts breaking up Social Democrat meetings and beating up their speakers and audiences. Issues of Social Democratic newspapers were banned. Twenty newspapers of the Centre Party, a party of Catholic Germans, were banned in mid-February for criticizing the new government. Government officials known to be Centre Party supporters were dismissed from their offices, and stormtroopers violently attacked party meetings in Westphalia.
Six days before the scheduled election date, the German parliament building was set alight in the Reichstag fire, allegedly by the Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe. This event reduced the popularity of the KPD, and enabled Hitler to persuade President Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree as an emergency decree according to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. This emergency law removed many civil liberties and allowed the arrest of Ernst Thälmann and 4,000 leaders and members of the KPD shortly before the election, suppressing the Communist vote and consolidating the position of the Nazis. The KPD was "effectively outlawed from 28 February 1933", although it was not completely banned until the day after the election. While at that time not as heavily oppressed as the Communists, the Social Democrats were also restricted in their actions, as the party's leadership had already fled to Prague and many members were acting only from the underground. Hence, the fire is widely believed to have had a major effect on the outcome of the election.
The resources of big business and the state were thrown behind the Nazis' campaign the achieve saturation coverage all over Germany. Brownshirts and SS patrolled and marched menacingly through the streets of cities and towns. A "combination of terror, repression and propaganda was mobilized in every... community, large and small, across the land." To further ensure the outcome of the vote would be a Nazi majority, Nazi organizations "monitored" the vote process. In Prussia 50,000 members of the SS, SA and Stahlhelm were ordered to monitor the votes as deputy sheriffs by acting Interior Minister Hermann Göring.
Despite achieving a much better result than in the disappointing November 1932 election, the Nazis did not do as well as Hitler had hoped. Despite massive violence and intimidation, the Nazis won 43.9% of the vote, rather than the majority that he had expected. Therefore, he was forced to maintain his coalition with the national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) to control a majority of seats. The Communists forfeited about a fourth of their votes, while the Social Democrats suffered only moderate losses.
In addition to this, Hitler needed a two-thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act (a constitutional amendment which allowed him to pass laws without consulting the Reichstag parliament), which he gained by persuading the Catholic Centre Party to vote with him with regard to the Reichskonkordat. The bill was passed on 23 March with 444 against 94 votes. Only the Social Democrats led by Otto Wels opposed the measure, which came into effect on 27 March. Moreover, Social Democratic representation was suppressed, because several Social Democratic deputies that were elected to the Reichstag were already prevented from taking their seats by the Nazi SA. Had the Communist Party participated, its representatives would have contributed 12% of the Reichstag votes. Instead, their representatives were on the run or under arrest for their suspect role in the Reichstag Fire."
Two links here on how Hitler was never an elected chancellor of Germany. The highest percentage of the vote he ever got was 37%. His popularity was dropping when a backroom deal was presented to him, handing him the position of chancellor.
link to democraticpeace.wordpress.com
link to huppi.com
In my country (Netherlands) we were so sure for years that (almost) every German was guilty and that "Wir haben es nicht gewusst" was just a lie.
Over the years I have come to understand that this is for a large part nonsense. Hitler was never democratically elected, no more than about 30 percent (if I remember correctly) voted for his party when he was handed the Chancellorship in a backroom deal. By that time his goons took over the streets, it was no longer free society where people could gather information, there was no internet of course and radio broadcasts, newspapers etc, everything was monitored and censored. Just think about it.
"Few innocent Germans." Are you serious?
Oh, I can be snooty too:
"I am responding just to point to the fact that your comment shows clearly the lack of any knowledge about those who protect these migrants from Africa"
And by the way: I wasn't talking about the people in the video.
Dimadok, you say "all those who protect mostly economical migrants from Africa forget to care about the poores citizen of their own state, being Israel."
I can't be sure of course, but I my guess is that many of those who care about the African refugees were also against the policies that in recent years changed Israel into a much harsher capitalst society with large income disparity. So I think it is unfair to blame them for the situation of the Israeli poor.
It was more the words and the place where it was sung than the actual song itself, Annie
(Oh, and by the way, I had goosebumps way back in highschool when I heard Ofra Haza sing "Am Israel chai" in Germany, so I guess my inborn European anti-Semitism was repressed at the time.)
"Although geographically not in Europe, Israel is within the European Broadcasting Area and can thus participate in the Eurovision Song Contest. The boundaries of the European Broadcasting Area have their origin in the regions served and linked by telegraphy cables in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "
Funny: Iraq, Jordan and Syria fall into the EBA too.
Ah, I look forward to it every year: The busty chick saying "Shalom, this is Jerusalem calling, the eternal capital of the Jewish state." This year no doubt followed by "La Turquie zero points, Chypre, douze points"
OlegR:
"i have very little sympathy to German civilian casualties in WW2
And yes i am quite aware that the same phrase can be applied to Israel."
But read the bloody comments! (4 so far, and all nutty.)
“Altogether now: Oy Veh!”
A rabbi setting one part of his congregation against another....Wow, did anyone else find that shocking?
That one is the best!!
You are right. Years ago I met a Pole in Japan, who told me: "Western Europeans always ask me why I hate Jews. I do not hate Jews, why would I? But they all think I must hate Jews because I am Polish." I asked him if he had seen the film Shoah, and that this film was a major factor behing the Westen European perception of Poles as anti-Semites. Later the film was shown at the auditorium of a Christian Japanese highschool nearby, where we both went to see it, but it was hard for him to follow because all the French, German, Jiddish etc. was subtitled in Japanese.
Who knows also how the film was edited: If there were 530 hours shot, there may have been many expressions of sympathy by Poles that were not included in the final version.
Ferguson deserves Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
What about the innovative use of tear gas canisters?
My kids are blond. They do not look like Hitler Jugend to me, but I will keep them away from the 'Holy Land' just to be sure. The hostile and racist mentality behind these remarks and behind the policies of the present Israeli regime should vanish from the page of time. I must be a 'born anti-Semite'.
I do not believe there were mercenaries in Lybia, but I just did not get the rest of the argument. And it was hard to follow: All these twitching an changing visuals (I am an old fashioned person, I do not adjust to these things.) And then trying to follow the sound (French) which did not agree in timing at all with the English subtitles. I did not get anything from it at all. But maybe this is just me.
I looked at it. Thought it was not very good or convincing. Sorry.
Does he keep these two letters in the same desk as where he keeps the ancient seal with the name Netanyahu? (One of his ‘ancestors’, before they changed their name to Milikovski.)
What a manipulator of the past this man is.
I think a lot of the silence of the world has to do with the fact that Khader Adnan is a member of Islamic Jihad. If he were a member of almost any other faction his fight against Israel's system of administrative detention would resonate more.
"Anyone who writes a book called “the end of history”and it not being sarcastic, is not an intellectual,but another miseducated moron and in thrall to idiocy."
Thanks, thanks, you took the words out of my mouth. The man is a pompous ass, and the attention his book got has always irritated me. (Perhaps even more than the attention given to that other monumentally ridiculous book, Goldhagen's "Hitler's willing executioner"s.)
I don't understand why everyone is giving Beinard such a hard time. He is after all willing to compromise. Yes, he is willing to give up his liberalism (!!) for Israel's security and for its status as a Jewish state.
Who could ask more? What do the Palestinians care for the right to return to their homes? What does full, equal citizenship mean to Arab Israelis? Nothing, compared to what Beinard is willing to give up. I wish there was just a little more appreciation here for the sacrifices this guy is making.
But Avi, you will need artificial light, and who will turn that light on and off on the sabbath?
I wonder to whom these messages are adressed? It cannot be to Europeans (apart from the fringe, psychotic Breivik type), as we in Europe know that this is such utter crap that it does not ring a bell. When things really hit on something, when there is a play on things that are really going on in a society, you cannot help but laugh, but this is just dumb.
The language is English not Hebrew, so the intended audience in clearly not Israeli. The intended audience is uninformed Americans then?
I thought I knew about the checkpoints, what they were like in a general sort of way. It turns out that I didn't.
I can't tell you how much these images shocked me. I have been following the treatment of the Palestinians quite closely for some years now (at least I thought I had) and I am still shocked by this. How would the general public react if they saw these images on their TV screens?
And what a wry humor all these men waiting in line have... Amazing.
Thanks for adding some more about the Haan. And yes, he was Dutch, not Polish. (I suppose 'Holland' sounded like 'Poland' during the interview.) In the Netherlands he is more known as a writer, not as an anti-Zionist activist and it was thought for years that his assasination was related to his (quite open) homosexuality. His killer however came forward in the eighties and had this to say: "I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (who later became the second president of Israel 1952-1963)... I have no regrets because he (de Haan) wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism" He denied allegations that De Haan's assassination was related to his homosexuality: "I neither heard nor knew about this", adding "why is it someone's business what he does at his home?" According to Gert Hekma, Zionists spread a rumour he had been killed by Arabs because of his sexual relations with Arab boys
"If she were as smart as her freaking degree in whatever pretends, she would have clearly understood that the religious journey would not end in an exclusively Jewish state, but in a spiritual homeland within truly democratic Palestine."
Thanks, that was terrific. I may hare to borrow that sometimes when talking to people who are so easily bowled over by those historical and religious claims.
I was hoping to make you reconsider some of your more rigid beliefs, but I guess I failed. Cheers Woody.
Rationaliy/irrationality and good/evil are unrelated categories. Being kind can be irrational. (Why hide a Jewish girl like my grandparents did, when it only endangered themselves and their children?) And evil deeds can be rational. (You can really profit from massacring and taking over the property of an ethnic group that is weaker than you.) Your disdain for religion and your constant suggestions that religious people are more prone to do evil things than atheists like yourself stem from your obsession with rationality. There is no need to think in this way, as the link you make between irrationality and evil is baseless.
Oh, so now irrationality is the root of all evil. Well, I guess you and I just believe in different ‘goshes’. Your ‘gosh’ seems to be rationaity my ‘gosh’ happens to be kindness.
I know a lot of irrational people who are are kindness itself. Irrationality is not evil. It can even be a lot of fun. Where is your sense of humor? (Rigid rationality is boring... That is a major objection I have to it)
“And you yourself, Tanaka-san, are a Shintoist of course, even if you deny it."
"Nope, not even close at all. I am an atheist. I was raised Roman Catholic (as were my parents before me), but I freed myself from those mental chains in my early 20s, oh, those many, many, many years ago."
I was blind but now I see. From the rooftops I will sing. I was bound but now I'm free. (Strings, growing stronger and stronger and finally trumpets…)
(Actually, I did not expect you to take the Shintoist bit seriously, but then, rationalists and humor... Not a happy marriage.)
" I find, however, find Shinto to be interesting."
Interesting, yes, and DEFINITELY irrational. (And therefore evil?)
If some nasty secular ideology doesn't agree with your delusion that religion is the root of all evil, you just conflate the ethnicity of the adherents with their local religion, and miraculously, religion is now the root of all evil again. By your reason Nazi's were Christians, Stalinists too, Khmer Rouge were Buddhists, Maoists were Confucianists (except if they are Shining Path, then they are Christian again, how funny). And you yourself, Tanaka-san, are a Shintoist of course, even if you deny it.
Haunting. Very beautiful and very sad. I will remember this.
One lie and distortion after another in Netanyahu's speech. The most idiotic perhaps the 'proof' of his own ancient roots in the country: An ancient seal with the name Netanyahu that was found near the western wall.
Well, the seal should have said Miliekovski to prove anything because THAT was his grandfather's name before he CHANGED it to Netanyahu. What a joke.
"There won’t be peace until Indonesian and Moroccan Muslims and Christians and the people in Sabra and Shatila are allowed back into Jerusalem."
What the hell are you talking about? Am I missing something?
Bernard Henri-Levy is a joke. See: link to timesonline.co.uk
Even J.K. Rowling gives him an appearance as a long-winded magician-philosopher named Bertrand de Pensées-Profondes. (Author of "A Study into the Possibility of Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death, with Particular Regard to the Reintegration of Essence and Matter.")
Thanks, that was enlightning. I have always wondered why Jenin is so often mentioned as "Pallywood"when in fact so many people were killed.
The only hit I got when I searched for "checkpoint" and "sexual abuse" was the following: "According to Assiwar, there were reports of rape by Israeli forces
during the first Intifada, but they have not received reports of rape
during the second Intifada. Gila Svirsky of the Coalition of Women
for Peace told us that she commissioned an informal study and found
cases of sexualized verbal abuse, but no reports of physical sexual
abuse. We were not able to determine whether rape occurs because
it is so stigmatizing. Zahira Kamal related an incident in Hebron
where Israeli soldiers forced women to undress and ‘pose’ while the
men masturbated. Veiled women have been forced to remove their
veils, a shaming and denuding experience. They have also been
subject to inspection by security dogs, which is seen as ‘polluting’.
Sexual harassment, sexual violence and the reluctance of Palestinian
women to report incidents of sexual violence must be understood in
their political and social context. Israel has created a network of
spies and informants within Palestinian society. Israeli agents sometimes seek to force women into becoming informants by threatening
to expose or to spread rumours about their lack of “honour” and
virginity. Assaults on women’s reputation thus represent a means by
which women are forced into betraying their national cause. If a
women agrees to provide information to spies out of fear that her
sexual behaviour will be exposed or compromised, she may save
herself from becoming a victim of an “honour crime”; however, she
nonetheless risks being killed as a collaborator. The link between
The Gendered Impact of War and Occupation V60.
sexuality, “honour” and the nationalist struggle suggests that
Palestinian women who are victims of sexual violence may be highly
reluctant to bring the matter to light.
Sexualized abuse can also be inflicted secondarily on women
through de-masculinizing forms of humiliation inflicted on men.
One woman recounted a chilling story about the siege of Jenin by the
Israeli army. Israeli soldiers encircled a community centre and
ordered all the men to leave the building with their hands in the air.
They then ordered all the women and children to leave the building
in a separate group. However, the Iman of the community remained
behind with the women and children so that he could assist his
disabled elderly mother exit the building. Upon seeing the Muslim
cleric, a number of Israeli soldiers began to laugh and joked that he
clearly did not know if he was a man or a woman. They ordered the
cleric to strip naked and then forced him to carry his elderly mother
out of the building into a waiting vehicle that was full of women. This
intentional infliction of mental anguish and humiliation upon the
cleric amounts to psychological torture and has produced untold
anguish for the cleric and his family. His wife, who was forced to
witness the incident, remains traumatized."
link to osaarchivum.org
Hi Donald,
I was just wondering about the "wholesale fondling of breasts" of Palestinian women at checkpoints. I have read Breaking the Silence testinomies, and stories of women of Machsom Watch and so on but never came accross this. (Humiliating fathers in front of their children and so on, yes, but not this.) Have you? If it is really that prevalent how come I have not heard it reported?
Or is anyone else here able to point to some links that document such behavior?
Here is some more information on House of Dolls:
House of Dolls is essentially the Israeli equivalent to The Diary of Anne Frank in the United States and Elie Wiesel’s Night in Western Europe. Ka-Tzetnik 135633 became Israel’s official literary witness to the Holocaust, similar to the role Elie Wiesel has in Europe and America. House of Dolls is required reading in the Israeli school curriculum, and gives students their first exposure to the Holocaust. But there is a problem. Considered a Holocaust classic for many years, scholars now consider House of Dolls to be pornography and made up.
Ka-Tzetnik 135633's work now considered "fiction" and "graphic and barbaric"
Na’ama Shik, a researcher at Yad Vashem, says, “It was fiction. There were no Jewish whores in Auschwitz.” House of Dolls, however, is treated as historical fact throughout Israel. “His books were so graphic and barbaric,” says Sidra Ezrahi, professor of comparative Jewish literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “…if this is what they have chosen to leave in the Israel curriculum, it’s a scandal.” It was House of Dolls that inspired the 'Stalag' genre of Israeli fiction.
I know that House of Dolls in the Israeli highschool curriculum, but it is a work of fiction (seriously!). More related to the Stalag-porn novels than to The Diary of Anne Frank.
During the Apartheid era, white mistresses would coerce their black maids to take such three-monthly injections to 'help' them. But is was well known that their real motive was to keep the black birthrate down.