Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 326 (since 2009-07-31 06:14:34)

homingpigeon

American pilot who flies in Africa and the Mideast; libertarian pacifist; bilingual in Arabic, studying Hebrew during my second half-century;

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  • 'Forward' piece on destruction of Palestinian neighborhood fronting Western Wall is not embraced by all 'Forward' readers
    • homingpigeon May 24, 2013 at 3:58 am

      jon s, Habibi, I would really like a reaction to the information that tree has provided.

      I am always curious in these situations when hasbarists come up with partial or historically incorrect information - were you completely unaware of the full context of the destruction of the Hurva synagogue, or were you just hoping that no one on this site would know about it?

      This is an important question. If the former, you need to look more deeply into the movement that has inspired you to go forth in its defense without all the information you need, and made you look ignorant and foolish. You don't owe them anything. If the latter, you need to be more aware that the mondoweiss readers are not your normal ignorant American schmucks to be swindled and outwitted. Give us incomplete and twisted history and you will be called on it.

  • Barbara Boxer's visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack
    • homingpigeon May 18, 2013 at 11:11 pm with 1 replies

      No, no Habibi, we don't invite people like that to move to Israel. They'll live on settlements or on confiscated property. Better they stay in the US where they'll do less damage to us than they would to the Palestinians.

      In fact, whatever the outcome of this bill, which means by the way, that Russian mafia get an easy ticket into the US, I will welcome Israelis to come visit and then hopefully stay here. Let them settle down, marry, have kids and not serve in the IDF, and not be a threat to themselves and others.

  • 'If I had to choose between the wealth of the world and going home, I would go back'
    • homingpigeon May 18, 2013 at 2:47 am with 1 replies

      Sumud and Hughs bring up an example of the hasbara technique which sucks in lots of people in the debate .... the Zionists are great at throwing out factoids which are wrong on the one hand but irrelevant on the other. We are vulnerable to getting sucked into arguing the facts and forget about the irrelevance. We find ourselves arguing about whether the name Palestine was imposed by the Romans or first used by Herodatus five centuries earlier, whether or not the Balfour Declaration intended to include Trans-Jordan, when the Palestinians became a "people" and so on. Sometimes I am tempted to try the same technique and claim that the Palestinians domesticated the donkey first.

  • Senator Boxer’s far-fetched defense of the visa waiver exemption for Israel
    • homingpigeon May 11, 2013 at 11:18 pm

      On the one hand, this shows once again how Congresspeople take their orders from Israel. But on the other hand I hope lots of Israelis move to the US quickly and easily and stay there and never serve in the IDF or displace any more Palestinians. I welcome them every chance I get. Then again, there's the matter of a new pipeline into the country for the Russian mafia.

  • Zionists thrill that Obama will recognize ancient Jewish connection to 'homeland' (undoing his Cairo error)
    • homingpigeon March 18, 2013 at 7:05 am

      I have spent the last hour or so watching some videos about the Jewish ancestry of many Palestinians, which add an interesting twist to all arguments about Jewish and Palestinian right of return. A Rabbi Dov Stein and scholar Elon Jardin, who as best I can tell at this point are not part of any "pro-Palestinian" project, are on a schtick making the case that the Israelis should be tolerant and accepting of Palestinians because so many of them have Jewish roots. The last major conversions of Jewish Palestinians to Islam took place as recently as three centuries ago and many maintained Jewish symbols and customs around their homes up to modern times. Even in the rubble of some destroyed Palestinian villages are doorway archstones with Magen Davids. Many Palestinian clans are not shy of admitting their Jewish ancestry. Others are trying to hide it. Imagine being a Palestinian and on your ancient family home you have a Magen David on the arch placed there by a Jewish ancestor. Do you show it to an Israeli and hope that he will respect the common ancestry or do you destroy it for fear that a settler from Brooklyn will claim the building?

      I'm not sure if the goal of the Israelis involved in this project is to just be tolerant of Palestinians or if they are trying to suborn the Jewish ancestry Muslims into returning to Judaism or otherwise serving the Israeli state. Anyone have insight on these folks?

  • 'NYT' columnist praises fundamentalist Jews as collective of 'the future'
    • homingpigeon March 8, 2013 at 1:41 pm

      But I like the Natorei Karta. They are anti-Zionists, call for the peaceful dismantlement of Israel, and say that the future joys of the Messiah will blot out the sorrows of the present. As for their other strange beliefs, well, they are not stealing my beer or breaking my leg.

  • Following Rand Paul's historic filibuster there is room for common cause in challenging killer drones
    • homingpigeon March 8, 2013 at 10:36 am with 1 replies

      Medea is again showing wisdom. There are other people among the left liberal side of the spectrum who spend their time warning us against being seduced by anyone conservative or libertarian. Much better apparently to respect and vote for a liberal democrat war criminal than an anti imperialist pro peace libertarian.

  • Israeli drumbeat grows for Pollard's release ahead of Obama visit
    • homingpigeon March 8, 2013 at 10:08 am

      The full extent of what damage he did is one of the most closely guarded secrets. There were definitely deaths, but the full number is classified. Whenever a US politician gets close to being influential enough to potentially move Pollard's release along, he gets a very detailed private chat from some highly placed folks in the intelligence community. After this conversation the said politician does not bring up the subject.

    • homingpigeon March 8, 2013 at 10:03 am

      Marwan Barghouti, Vanunu, and every prisoner who has done less harm to Israel than Pollard did to the the US.

  • Poet Joy Harjo responds to boycott demands over Israeli performance by adding a West Bank visit
  • Reactions to UN vote: Livni calls Palestinian move 'strategic terrorist attack'
    • homingpigeon December 2, 2012 at 11:14 am

      For the life of me, with all the discussion of the recent UN vote, I cannot find any coherent hasbara about what it is the US and Israel are objecting to, beyond the rhetoric of their positions. It seems this has been a setback for the one country solution, and a step - albeit miniscule - towards the two state solution and Palestinian recognition of Israel. In fact Ali Abunimah and Joseph Massad have dissed the whole thing as meaningless for the Palestinians.

      I wonder if one of our hasbarists could really articulate what the objection is here?

  • An 'industry' built on hate: How the right-wing successfully brought anti-Muslim bigotry into the American mainstream
    • homingpigeon October 27, 2012 at 3:35 am with 1 replies

      Last time I read something he wrote, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch propagandized for the Crusades as a Christian defense against Islam. That premise aside, I'm wondering how his Jewish allies relate to him on the matter of Crusader massacres of Jewish communities along their march from Europe to Jerusalem.

  • Roger Waters says Israel's staggering record of impunity from world's judgment is due to elephant in the room: the lobby
    • homingpigeon October 9, 2012 at 10:49 am

      I don't know about "international bodies" but as far as I am concerned, if I denounce US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and US support of the Saudi monarchy, or criticize Wahabi practices, or make note of Saudi treatment of its Shia population, or discuss the status of South Asian workers in Saudi Arabia, (all of which I do) I do not have to brace myself for a barrage of criticism from Wahabi hasbarists, They will not come out of the woodwork in America to denounce me for anti-Arab racism or hatred of Muslims. Nor would my career be hurt and nor I would I risk being drummed out of polite company.

  • New ad describing Palestinian dispossession hits Metro-North, NY
    • homingpigeon October 7, 2012 at 8:11 am with 2 replies

      An important point to emphasize in the discussion of absentee landlord sales is that according to the laws and customs of the area, which survive to this day, the act of purchasing real estate from a landlord does not entitle the new landlord to either evict or change the rent on the tenants. In the case of feudal peasant areas the new landlords would have been entitled to continue exploiting the peasants - along with practicing "noblesse oblige" - but not evict them.

      Also, I'm not sure it should necessarily be considered a shameful or treasonous act to sell land to Jewish immigrants or any other immigrants at the beginning of this affair. Immigrants also came from Bosnia, Circassia, Uzbekistan, Chechenya, Baluchistan, Bukhara, Africa, and even America and Germany and bought land. However as has been pointed out, Zionism subsequently claims the right of state sovereignty over areas purchased by Jewish immigrants and modern settlers - no matter how specious or tainted the purchase might be. Thus the act of selling Palestinian real estate to Jews has become an treasonous anti-social act, and codified in law as such. Hasbarists in turn will point to this as anti-Jewish discrimination on the part of modern Arabs.

  • Richard Cohen and the Jewish man's burden
    • homingpigeon August 12, 2012 at 9:35 am

      This statue smashing thing keeps popping up. In Switzerland Calvin and Zwingli were big on cleaning out the Catholic churches they took over five centuries ago. Go into a church in Switzerland. If you see paintings and statues, it is Catholic. If you see the places where statues used to be and where paintings were scraped off the walls, then it is Reformed. There are precedents to the Taliban.

  • The occupation machine can't run on empathy
    • homingpigeon July 26, 2012 at 12:39 am

      Actually the Holocaust museum is on the site of a destroyed village, I forget which one, but someone here can help me. And last I knew Deir Yassin is now home to a mental institution housing deranged Holocaust survivors. The story of Deir Yassin and what the site has been turned into is a metaphor for the Israel/Palestine tragedy.

  • Susan Abulhawa demolishes Itamar Marcus
    • homingpigeon July 24, 2012 at 11:46 pm

      Mondonut, Are you an anti-Semite doing black propaganda, posing as a hasbarist in order to provoke people into hating Jews? This type of sophistry buys into the worst anti-Semitic stereotype of the swindling, outwitting, outsmarting, fact twisting, not-to-be trusted Jew. So are you an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew?

  • Homage to Alex Cockburn
    • homingpigeon July 25, 2012 at 12:20 am

      "to send you words out of which many flowers bloom, but sloth won the day and my hand was stayed"

      I have always admired the things that people of Indian and Pakistani heritage can do with the English language.

    • homingpigeon July 25, 2012 at 12:16 am

      I remember this incubator story well as it was the item that most angered me about the Iraqi invasion, though I continued to take a firm stand against the US response. Gradually the story fell apart. Oddly the first crack in the story for me was a tiny piece in buried in USA today quoting a Finnish hospital worker saying it didn't happen.

      The significance of this story beyond one normal atrocity fabrication is that six Senators who had up to that point been against the pending war changed their positions as a result of it. Their six votes were enough to change the balance of votes in the Senate in favor of the US military intervention. By the time the story was totally exposed as a hoax generated by a Washington DC PR firm, the war had been fought.

      Moral of the story is to not support anyone's war based on initial reports of horror stories.

  • How many of you are uncomfortable with the phrase 'oppression of Palestinians'? In the packed room, just a few heads nodded
    • homingpigeon July 22, 2012 at 6:49 am

      "Those who deal in weapons of mass destruction must know that whether the threat on their lives is from within or from outside, their life expectancy is not long."

      Oh dear are we supposed to start assassinating American, and Israeli nuclear scientists?

    • homingpigeon July 22, 2012 at 6:45 am

      "back then there was no people called the Palestinians."

      This is another hasbara diversion that is false on the one hand but on the other is as irrelevant as getting into an argument about who grew eggplants first or who domesticated the donkey first or which ancient Roman was the first to write the word Palestine and when. There were people there with property and an identity connected with the land. It doesn't matter if they called themselves Palestinians, or Arabs, or Syrians, or Haifawis, or Martians.

  • The 'Muslim insiders' of the War on Terror
    • homingpigeon July 21, 2012 at 1:04 am

      For a renegade Jewish American analogous to Hirsi Ali you should refer to Adam Gadahn, also known as Adam al-Amreeki, the Al-Qaeda English language public relations manager.

      There is a difference between the dissidents and revolutionaries who take risks to transform their societies, and those who go off the deep end and align with those who are blindly and murderously at war with their own societies.

      The renegade Muslims who appear on the neo-con howler monkey talk show circuit and parrot the crudest propaganda of those who would harm their families are also notorious for being frauds. Hirsi Ali is not the only dissembler. Liberty University (i.e. Jerry Falwell's schtick) was embarrassed when the Ergun Caner, the ex-Muslim-with-a-dramatic-story they had hired as Dean turned out to be a fraud. The former jihadist terrorist from Bethlehem - his name slips my mind at the moment - also has been exposed as having a fabricated past. I'd actually enjoy they way they swindle American war mongers if their acts were less harmful.

  • Congressman with ties to Netanyahu calls J Street 'anti-Semitic'
    • homingpigeon July 14, 2012 at 12:20 am

      Good commentary as usual, but I'm going to start calling you out on the use of "left" and "right." I concede that in Israel "left" refers to nicer people who tend to be more conciliatory to Palestinians and "right" refers to angry cranky people who don't get along with Palestinians, don't want them around, want more war, and so on.

      However ultimately these expressions mislead, confuse, and dumb down the conversation. To help you focus on my point, I will ask, what is a socialist who supports Israeli expansion? Left or Right? What is someone who is fully embracing of the free market who recognizes Palestinian rights and works for reconciliation? Left or Right? What is someone who supports Obamacare and also supports whatever war is being waged by the US or Israel? Left or Right?

      For a second reason why these expressions should never be used let us assume for the sake of argument (but happy friendly argument), that they actually mean something coherent. Whoever uses the expression "left" is at a psycholinguistic disadvantage. One is "left" behind, "left" out, "left" over, or off on "left" base. An insincere invitation is a "left handed" invitation. Something in bad taste is "gauche" - left in French. And then things can be "sinister" - from left in Italian. Meanwhile whoever uses or receives the label "right" is at a linguistic advantage. "Right" also means "correct." We speak of human "rights" not human "lefts." We get the job done "right" away, not "left" away. There is a name Benyamin - son of the "right" in Hebrew and Arabic, but there is no Benyassar. When we greet people we extend the right hand, not the left hand.

      Finally for a huge segment of the world's population, the left hand is strictly reserved for certain hygienic purposes and the right hand for eating, for handing people money or whatever is being handed.

      So stop using these words. They don't serve the quality of the your discourse.

  • Arthur Koestler's Zionist recruiters used anti-Semitic ideas
    • homingpigeon July 13, 2012 at 10:25 am with 1 replies

      I recommend that this argument not be used. English is a chaotic language and the definitions of anti-Semitic and Semitic are not logical. "Semitic" refers to language groups including ancient Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic and a few other Ethiopian languages. "Anti-Semitic" is an expression coined in Europe 150 years ago to refer specifically to the phenomenon of hating Jews irrationally and blaming them for every ill in society. It was a poor choice but it has stuck and means what people think it means, though it does confuse the discussion. So, a Semite, a speaker of a Semitic language, could indeed be an "anti-Semite," an irrational hater of Jewish people. A "philo-Semite," a recent term used to describe people who irrationally love Jewish people and believe all blessings come from them, could really hate Hebrew and Arabic grammar.

    • homingpigeon July 13, 2012 at 10:11 am

      Whatever you do, don't plant stuff and try to raise goats at the same time. Done that. Big mistake.

  • Israeli gov't study declares West Bank not occupied, Earth flat
    • homingpigeon July 10, 2012 at 12:29 am with 1 replies

      We must react to references to San Remo and international law as we would to a conference in which the Chinese declared that Peru was the homeland of the gypsies.

      Eitan, how about suggesting that Palestine belongs to Zionists because the ancient Hebrews were the first to domesticate the donkey and the word appears in the Torah more times than in the Koran? You might get us all to waste a lot of time digging up references to the donkey in Akkadian tablets.

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  • Separation of East Jerusalem from West Bank is destroying city's economy -- 'The Forward'
    • homingpigeon July 10, 2012 at 1:22 am

      It is true about the fragmentation - and you could add that of the fifth group, those in exile, they are fragmented according to which countries they fled to and where they were educated and what citizenships or travel documents they obtained.

      You are also correct about the "official" response of spokespeople and activists: "We are all one." This is especially common when they are on the defensive and in public. In private and when they know you are their friend and ally and not going to go public and embarrass them they will admit to all sorts of shortcomings in their society. I could give many examples but the most glaring was the need to publicly defend Yassir Arafat while privately so many who did so actually despised him.

      I find the same among many Jewish folk - once they trust me they start telling me all sorts of nasty stuff about themselves and I have to tell them to stop being anti-Semitic.

      This phenomenon of what people say in public versus what they say in private is why we have to be so careful of information from reporters and delegations who blow in and out of the Middle East on fact finding tours.

    • homingpigeon July 10, 2012 at 1:00 am

      Habibi, don't be calling them dumb and stupid, though I agree with you on your conclusion. The weight of the Zionist onslaught and the cunning with which it is executed makes it very difficult for Palestinians to discern the most shrewd way to defend themselves. The violent reaction - a natural one, which was more justified than any of the wars of the American empire - was counterproductive in the end and resulted in even more losses. But other reactions have also not produced success.

      The first stage of the one country movement is to publicize the project and gain it wide respectability. That is happening. Beyond that we have to imagineer (a Disneyland word I learned recently) practical steps. I think one of the next steps is for Palestinians whenever and wherever possible gain and exercise the right to vote in Israeli elections. The step after that is to demand a full and formal annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. Force Zionism to choke on its own contradictions.

      About twenty five years ago the Palestinian Mubarak Awad announced that he was converting to Judaism with the intention of applying for Israeli citizenship under the law of return. The entity went into a panic as though the biggest terrorist operation ever was about to happen. Rabbis in the US received an organized alert to be on the lookout for this guy and not convert him. And apparently he wasn't even serious. It was guerrilla theater.

  • Harvard student describes her 'birthright' trip: endless discussion of 'the Arabs' but god forbid you should talk to one
    • homingpigeon July 9, 2012 at 12:32 am with 2 replies

      It is useful for thoughtful people to move beyond categorizing political thought and behavior into "left" and "right." But the vehemence with which you come down on this young lady for once using "right" as a pejorative implicitly accepts the notion of these as accurate or meaningful labels.

      As a libertarian I am regularly attacked for being "leftist" or being "rightist" depending on which issue is discussed. I reject the label and refuse to use them in discourse.

      However, it is unfortunately true (from a psycholinguistic point of view) that in Israel, the world "leftist" refers to to people who tend to be more respectful of Palestinians and more willing to work for accommodation. The word "rightist" refers to people who do not get along with Palestinians, tend to be hawkish in their positions on war and peace, and are more likely to be in favor of ethnic cleansing.

      It has nothing to do with their economic theories or what they feel about Pol Pot or Stalin or the constipated Democrats in the US. I wish they used a better word and her use of it and your reaction proves why it is an unfortunate choice.

  • 'Americans for Peace Now' says Presbyterian measure could stoke 'global anti-Semitism'
    • homingpigeon July 6, 2012 at 5:20 am with 1 replies

      "You’re kind of indirectly lending weight to these people, and helping to perpetuate the notion that Jews deserve a privileged place in the discussion here in the US by publishing every response made by these hacks."

      As for me, I find it useful to know where every group stands. It doesn't give them extra weight in my mind.

  • DNC member resigns after emails faulting Israeli 'aggression' and Palestinian burden for Holocaust
    • homingpigeon July 6, 2012 at 5:57 am with 4 replies

      I would recommend my choice, Libertarian, which supports an unambiguous unconditional end to all foreign aid. At the same time those Americans who are enamored of any foreign country or cause are free to contribute to contribute to it.

      However Greens are nice people, and it is important to break away from the "lesser of two evils" thinking that guarantees the duopoly of Republicans and Democrats. I find it easier to convince people of the merits of libertarianism than to convince them to boycott these two parties. So when the two old party candidates are competing with each other to see who can be most beholden to the Likud, I would prefer to vote for a monkey if that were the third choice.

      And then call up the old party candidates and tell them why.

  • Mourning Shamir
    • homingpigeon July 2, 2012 at 11:31 pm with 2 replies

      On the business of eulogies for the death of a disliked person, an Egyptian long ago taught me a saying: "raaH lil ma'bara wa ba'at sukkara bi Teezu." He went (i.e as a corpse) to the cemetery and there was (i.e. they found) a lump of sugar in his ass.

    • homingpigeon July 2, 2012 at 11:10 pm

      What about the business of the Italian fascists - before they realized they were supposed to be anti-Semitic - helping set up a sister Jewish fascist organization? Who did they work that out with? I remember reading that it was a maritime unit that morphed into the Israeli Navy.

    • homingpigeon July 2, 2012 at 1:42 pm with 1 replies

      Perhaps his traumatisation from the Shoah was due to the fact that he had collaborated with the Nazis against the British without anticipating the full consequences. His extremism against Palestinians a form of compensation for his own contribution to the Shoah ?

  • Shamir ordered Bernadotte assassination to save Jerusalem for Jews. But will his obits tell you that?
    • homingpigeon July 3, 2012 at 1:02 am

      "There was no Corpus Separatum, because the Partition Plan was never accomplish, because the Arabs had no intention of allowing it and invaded the new state of Israel. So your language is inaccurate. "

      Hophmi, Since you write with such confidence, could you please tell us the date of the partition plan, the location of Deir Yassin in relation to the partition lines, the date of the Deir Yassin massacre, the date of the withdrawal of the British, and the date of the entry of the Arab Armies into Palestine? And perhaps, while you are on a roll, you could discuss the deployment of the Hagannah and Irgun forces during the period between the declaration of partition and the entry of the Arab armies in relation to the partition lines? And maybe you could tell us if you know anything of how many Palestinians were displaced before the entry of any Arab armies? If you don't know there are plenty of people on this blog who could tell you. I'm curious as to whether you are a conscious dissembler or just clueless.

  • 'Israelis are helping write US laws, fund US campaigns, craft US war policy'
    • homingpigeon June 30, 2012 at 10:48 pm with 2 replies

      I'm often inhibited by the fear that when discussing the power of Israel within the US government I might sound like one of the paranoid conspiracy theorists muttering about the Illuminati or the Jewish-Bolshevik weather machine. I've had friends react to me that way if I suggest that a politician who does not toe the Likud line is very likely to get smashed, or that the first step in campaigning for the US Presidency is to get the approval of Israel. Add that to the need to walk carefully on semantic eggshells in order to distinguish myself from classic anti-semites. How I envy those who take up the Tibetan cause not having to spent time convincing anyone that they are not racist haters of the Chinese!

      It is important to commit to memory the details such as are described by Ahmed Moor and be ready to state them in a discussion.

      When addressing the concept of US foreign aid and the huge chunk of the pie that goes to one tenth of one percent of the world's population, I like to add that furthermore, if Israel is not satisfied with its chunk of the pie, no one gets foreign aid. The bill as a package does not pass. The peanuts for landmine clearing or polio vaccination somewhere are on hold. This can really get the eyeballs of incredulity rolling and spark hints of paranoid schizophrenia. I came to this realization back when Stephen Solarz was head of the Foreign Relations Committee and as a routine sent the foreign aid bill to AIPAC for review before submitting it to Congress. But he is long gone in a trail of bounced checks, unpaid bills, and an embezzling wife.

      Does anyone have an update on the mechanics of passage of the foreign aid bill with some details on how it is submitted, and who AIPAC works through on a regular basis to make sure it doesn't pass if Israel is not satisfied?

  • What's the difference between South Africa and Israel?
    • homingpigeon July 3, 2012 at 1:23 am

      Perhaps I should have used a different word than "exterminate." But it wasn't my point to get into what relative portion of the native populations were killed, displaced, or just subdued. I was addressing the fact that there exists a body of theological literature from the Puritans and other American settler denominations, and from the Reformed Church of South Africa, which draws and the Hebrew scriptures stories of the Exodus and the takeover of the "Promised Land." The settlers saw themselves as the chosen people who were entitled to take land from natives whose role was that of the pagan Canaanites and Amalakites and who deserved no mercy.

      Modern Christian Zionism continues with the same theme on Palestine.

    • homingpigeon July 1, 2012 at 10:56 am with 4 replies

      Just read all the thoughtful comments and there is one interesting parallel that has not yet been mentioned. Settlers in North America and South Africa used the divinely ordained mass slaughters described in the Hebrew Scriptures as precedent and theological justification for extermination of the natives.

      The refugees from one place, ancient Egypt, (or Europe), fled to another place, and God required of them and assisted them in mass slaughter and dispossession of the locals in the new place.

  • 24 Hours in Israeli Custody: The arrest of an American activist in Palestine
    • homingpigeon June 30, 2012 at 11:11 pm with 2 replies

      Dooler, it must have been disturbing to be interrogated by an Arab - though it could have been an Israeli with good Arabic who was trying to mess with your mind. Other possibilities would be a Druse or a veteran of the disbanded Israeli run "South Lebanon Army." Do you have any further thoughts on this? Do you know Arabic well enough to place his accent?

      What I read in the story about the cellmate is that besides her being a collaborator, she had to deal with the possibility that you were also a spy sent in to check up on her. It could even be that she was innocent of collaboration, but wanted to prove to the Israelis that she was harmless, assumed you were the spy, and went through a charade of collaboration to ingratiate herself with the jailers, thinking that she was only ratting out spy who was checking on her. Weird stuff goes on in political prisons where people are messing with minds.

  • A random photograph
    • homingpigeon June 30, 2012 at 10:18 am with 1 replies

      I can give a small detail of info in international air transport law. If you are already checked into a country past immigration and then deported, then you can be made to pay for your ticket. However if you are stopped and turned back before your passport is stamped by immigration, the airline is responsible for taking you back to where they brought you from. The airline has the right to try to recover the funds from you, but from the point of view of the rejecting country, the airline is responsible for getting you out of there on the next flight in any case. This is why visas are checked at airline counters and European airlines are also getting into the business of bumping passengers who they suspect might be deported.

  • Homecoming
    • homingpigeon June 26, 2012 at 9:35 am with 2 replies

      AllenBee, the second article you posted deserves some further commentary as it also brings up a case in which both sides are telling opposite truths. I have discussed this phenomenon with Zionists. A hasbarist will produce evidence that they bought land in Palestine - at least in the early days before the full scale fighting and ethnic cleansing. And then these nasty Palestinian peasants kept attacking them. Well the hasbarist is technically telling the truth (except for the nasty part).

      I don't know the history of feudalism in Europe, but I do know that in the Middle East, a feudal landlord did not have the right to evict tenant peasants nor did a buyer have the right to do so. In fact this applies to individual houses as well. A landlord cannot change the rent or evict the tenants without cause. If someone purchases a house with tenants resident, these tenants likewise cannot be evicted without cause or have the rent increased. A buyer who wants such a house empty has to negotiate a payment to the tenants to buy the "key" from them.

      Many Zionists will say with a straight face that they bought the land and thus had the right to evict the tenants. The native tenants however didn't see it that way.

      Worse was to come. These uprooted fellahin migrated to the cities where they began finding work. (Hasbara alert: "We gave them jobs.") Alas, a campaign began to discourage Jewish employers from hiring non-Jews. One of the primary goals of the Histradut labor union was to make it difficult or impossible for the Jewish employers to do so.

      These uprooted peasants and laid off workers eventually rioted .... and the rest is history.

    • homingpigeon June 26, 2012 at 9:13 am with 6 replies

      AllenBee, the articles you've printed bring in some interesting issues - more layers of the onion as it were, and metaphors for the discourse on this issue. In the first article we have one of many accounts of the fertility of Palestine long before Zionist settlement. Yet there are also many travelers' accounts of the barrenness of Palestine which a hasbarist could dig up when necessary. Actually Mark Twain gave an account of how desolate and barren it was. So what was going on? It does not rain in the region for seven to nine months of the year. Travelers who blew through in the spring and summer reported lush and productive fields. Travelers who did the same in late summer and fall reported barren fields. It really does look different during different seasons. So, opposite but true accounts exist to be picked and used as necessary to make arguments. Hasbarists can in an instant bring out all the articles from the appropriate journals to prove that the Palestinians had no agriculture worthy of the name. So one lesson is that we must always be on guard for writings by tourist journalists who blow through an area for a few days and think they are qualified to write about it. Without a sense of whether their writings are informed by time and experience and context they could be accurately reporting what they see and yet be completely wrong in the larger context.

      There are also areas of Palestine that never were and never can be cultivated. Many of these would be on the West Bank, on the hills overlooking the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley in the area of Jericho. This fact reinforces the Zionist agriculture meme to naive tourists: - within pre-67 Israel there are green fields and in large areas of the West Bank there is barrenness. The Dalai Lama, Bhudda help us, was the most recent to say that the Palestinians obviously need to learn something from the Israelis. He, for all his holiness, seemed unaware of the barren Negev, under Israeli control since '48, or of the fact that the majority of the green fields he saw inside the '67 lines were confiscated from Palestinians.

      Certainly the Israelis made some advances in agriculture, in the past 60 years, but so did everyone in the region.

      Now to anticipate the hasbarist barrage that might ensue about agriculture and the cherry tomatoes and eggplants and who domesticated the donkey first, I should make a point that a sharp minded Palestinian friend made long ago. He said to watch out for the whole phenomenon of setting the terms of the debate. It doesn't matter if the place was cultivated or a desert. "It was ours and they took it."

  • It's not just the settlers: Samah Sabawi responds to liberal Zionists on the settlement boycott
    • homingpigeon June 25, 2012 at 2:26 pm

      It's a choice the liberal Zionists will have to make. If they love Israel, they should have no problem with the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In fact to be consistent they should increase the rate of ethnic cleansing and put more energy into the settlement project. But if they are offended by the occupations, then to be consistent with what offends them, they will have to withdraw their consent from the entire state that occupies Palestine and work for its transformation.

  • Amnesty Int'l collapse: new head is former State Dept official who rationalized Iran sanctions, Gaza onslaught
    • homingpigeon June 25, 2012 at 2:04 am

      Hey I'm thinking of returning to the Druid roots of my ancestors, special and persecuted, as evidenced by how few they are. I want the real estate around Stonehenge for a national homeland to protect our remnant from further extermination.

  • Tourism in Israeli settlements: Practice shooting Palestinians
    • homingpigeon June 20, 2012 at 8:09 am

      No, perhaps she will grow up to be a libertarian anarcho-pacifist advocating for the one country solution, refuse military service and so on.

    • homingpigeon June 20, 2012 at 8:05 am with 1 replies

      Don't forget there are terrorist cows, terrorist chickens, terrorist goats, and terrorist olive trees.

  • Why hasn't Jonathan Pollard applied for parole?
    • homingpigeon June 16, 2012 at 9:16 am

      "Worse people have gotten heroes’ welcomes in Arab countries for deeds that were not only worse, but monstrous. Like the Lockerbie bomber in Libya and multiple mass murdering terrorists in Lebanon and Palestinian controlled areas."

      Yes indeed, and it would be really outrageous if American Senators and Congressmen regularly fell all over each other trying to compete to see who could voice the most sympathy for these bombers and to send a huge welfare check to the mobs that welcome them.

  • Former Israeli soldier wants to live in Palestine, says, 'I hate Zionism'
    • homingpigeon June 16, 2012 at 9:08 am

      On the Palestinian position regarding Israelis living among them on the West Bank - any question on their opinion should be framed in the context of a Palestinian right of return to the '48 areas, settlers vacating or purchasing - with consent of the owners - all locations were they settled on private property, and equal rights and laws applying to members of both communities. And many of the settlers really need to go to charm school. They are not obnoxious just with Palestinians, but with most anyone including fellow Israelis.

    • homingpigeon June 16, 2012 at 8:57 am

      Unfortunately, the fortunes of war were such that the Jewish communities in what came under Jordanian control in '48 were ethnically cleansed. You are aware of the Zionist slander that the Arab governments called upon Palestinians to abandon their homes? Well this is in fact a projection of the Zionist position regarding Jews living in Arab countries. There was a tacit confluence of this policy with various Arab communal reactions local Jews once Palestinian refugees began arriving. Each Jewish community has it's own story as does each Palestinian village regarding the ethnic cleansing.

      In the case of the West Bank, there was a Jewish settlement in the Etzion Bloc near Hebron. Combat was fierce and it fell to the Jordanian Army and local militias. My reading is that the survivors credit the organized army for preventing massacres by the local militias and they were handed over to Israeli forces by the Jordanians. With the incoming flood of Palestinian refugees from areas of Hagannah control it would have been a stretch for the local peasantry to act like Mother Theresa or the Dalai Lama to the local settlers. (Partition along ethnic lines is a sloppy business, be it India, Palestine, or Sudan).

      In the case of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, this came under Jordanian Army control. The residents were religious, took a dim view of Zionism, and did not participate in combat. I have not heard or read anywhere that they were harmed. However as part of the Armistice agreement, these Jews departed in an orderly and protected way from their homes to the Israeli side of the ceasefire lines. In other words, no threat of massacre, no shooting up of their houses or at them as they left. Someone with access to the details of the Armistice negotiations would have to say if it was the Israelis who asked for their transfer, or the Jordanians who pushed for it, or whether it was a mutualy assumed premise of the situation on the ground. My source on this was the book Oh Jerusalem.

      I think the Jordanians should have allowed them to stay but then they would have been accused of holding them as hostages.

      The homes of this community were then inhabited by refugees from the Israeli controlled area. When the Israelis captured Jerusalem in '67, these Palestinians were ordered out immediately and the old homes were bulldozed to create the paved plaza you see in front of the Western Wall.

  • One state, two states and the art of the possible
    • homingpigeon June 16, 2012 at 8:22 am

      I agree with the point but come to the opposite conclusion. The national state is vile treif and the concept should be thrown into the dustbin of history by both Israelis and Palestinians.

    • homingpigeon June 16, 2012 at 8:19 am

      Transformation? Be a race traitor, de-tribalize, de-racinate, defect from your class, make love to someone from another ethnic group, or better yet a citizen of an "enemy" country.

      And no, don't vote for Republicans or Democrats. I vote Libertarian even if they put a monkey on the ballot, but psychologically breaking out of the two-party paradigm is such a step forward in itself that I applaud voting for any third party or independent.

    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 9:51 am with 4 replies

      Good thinking. Any solution will require a transformation in the way people think. Those of good will must help each other along.

      I had to go to Disneyworld recently. That phenomenon is yet unprocessed in my bewildered mind, but I learned a new word - "imagineer." It's what they call the people who think up and design their rides and displays. We should be imagineers for the outcome in Israel/Palestine.

  • MSNBC squelched Donahue, Press and Buchanan to make way for Iraq war cheerleaders
  • 'Ha'aretz' article in Hebrew suggests that racism is inherent in Zionism
    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 5:27 am

      This racism thing isn't so simple. I remember reading in a book, The Thirteenth Gate, that a Japanese newspaper published a piece talking about how the Jews were clever businessmen, controlled the levers of power in the West, were the majority of smart lawyers, could bring down governments, make or break banks, destroy currencies, etc etc. A western rabbi living in Tokyo went to the editor of the paper to complain and say that this was anti-Semitic and hurtful to Jews and he shouldn't be publishing things like that. The editor was puzzled and confused about why the piece was a problem, as the writer had gone to such lengths to praise and complement the Jewish people.

    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 5:15 am with 1 replies

      As with the question of what defines a Jew, the definition of being an Arab can vary depending on the time and place and who is asking the question and what point they are trying to make with the answer. No one definition is complete and all definitions will have exceptions that don't fit. ts has at times referred specifically to the nomadic tribes. It can also be a reference to having an Arab male ancestor in the case of several African communities. It also refers to people who speak Arabic. The historian Hourani wrote that anyone who speaks Arabic and considers himself an Arab is an Arab.

      I know "Arabs" who say that their ancestors were Berber or Armenian but that they are now Arabized. I also know Berbers and Armenians who make it clear that they are still Berber and Armenian. I have heard Iraqi Jews arguing with each other about whether or not they are Arab.

      So yes, the millions of people across the middle east who spoke Aramaic and Coptic who gradually adopted the Arabic language and culture for the most part consider themselves as Arabs, even if they are Christian. Then again some Lebanese Christians will make a case that they are really Phoenician. The Zazidis in Iraq - small mysterious minority - are mostly Kurdish but there are two villages that speak Arabic and will identify as Arab, definitely depending on who is asking and what they intend to do with the answer.

      Palestinians are a geographic subset of the Arabic speaking community and are not troubled by being referred to as Arab. But then of course you have the Druse who threw in their lot with the Zionists. They will tell you they are Arab if you are an Arab asking them in Arabic - but if you are an Israeli asking them in Hebrew they will say they are Druse. Individual Druse repudiating the collaboration with Israel will tell you they are Palestinian Arab Druse. Other Palestinian minorities who may or may not refer to themselves as Arab include Uzbeks, Chechens, Circassians, Bukharis, Bosnians, Armenians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. Some might even call themselves Israeli. And for good measure you've got a few hundred Samaritan Palestinians who speak Arabic and consider themselves the only true Jews in the world, the rest being imposters. Go figure.

      I suppose my points are that people are usually what they define themselves to be and that the situation can lend itself to lots of useless arguments about ethnicity.

  • 80 refugees are rounded up as Israel's Interior Minister declares, 'this country belongs to the white man'
    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 9:21 am

      I honestly wouldn't know the precise statistics as to how many of the Sudanese refugees in Israel would be from which part of Sudan. Bear in mind that it is only in recent months that the Sudans are consolidating such things as passports and residence, partition being such a sloppy affair. Any Sudani who had a passport or ID issued from before the separation of the South would have Sudanese documents and thus be referred to as from "Sudan" in the statistics. Further, there are many South Sudanese whose parents migrated to the North over the years who are now being forced to decide which country they belong to. These also would have the Khartoum papers, (if any), and be listed as from Sudan, though by heritage they might belong to one of the southern ethnic groups. Yishai referred to "Muslims" among the refugees but one would need to see lists of names to sort them out. I would assume Muslims would be less likely to go to Israel for work. As for Zionism being a "draw" - I would say there would be a combination of firstly the information and travel money sent from the first arrivals back to their friends and relatives, then perhaps an affinity for a common enemy of the Arabs, and yes there is a naive sort of Zionism among many African Christians. "They are the chosen people of our Lord."

      African Christians are subject to every sort of American religious hucksterism and TV evangelism, - prosperity gospel (give to the church and you will become rich), charismatic practices, and Christian Zionism. Then it is often transformed into syncretic African versions.

      For a touching look at Christian African Zionism watch the movie "James' Journey to Jerusalem." It's a sad comedy.

    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 5:44 am with 3 replies

      Glad you brought this up. I spent most of 2011 in South Sudan. Many of the Christians there are into Zionism. Israeli flags are common. I had a general tell me of his admiration for Sharon. I met some who received military training in Israel. (Though to be fair, everyone got in on the act - South Sudanese got military training in the US, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Ethiopia, etc. It's an evil world, and governments can be so generous when training foreigners to kill other foreigners).

      Anyway, back to Israel. There really is something in the psychology of the Zionist that wants to be hated. Here is their strongest ally in Africa, their greatest admirer, and the Israelis are treating the South Sudanese guest workers like rubbish.

  • Should we call it apartheid?
    • homingpigeon June 13, 2012 at 6:26 am

      I agree that there is something to be said about not using the word "Apartheid" for Israel. Apartheid was much milder and thus makes for an imprecise analogy. Yes, plenty of black Africans were displaced here and there for white settlements, but at no time were they driven out of South Africa en masse as were the inhabitants of Palestine or massacred on the scale of natives in Australia or US. They were kept for their labor. Even the apartheid army was overwhelmingly black African.

  • Barney Frank and Gary Ackerman push Obama to free Pollard
    • homingpigeon June 11, 2012 at 6:55 am with 3 replies

      As far as I have been able to discern, there are only two items on which the United States disobeys Israel. One is Pollard. The full extent of his activities, with precision, is itself highly classified. Whatever politicians say about releasing him during their campaigns, if and when they are elected, they receive a visit from some highly placed people in US intelligence who provide information (beyond what has been mentioned publicly by anyone) which persuades them to drop the subject. The most recent former spook to tell me this is Giraldi.

      The second item on which the US disobeys Israel is on the status of Jerusalem. For reasons that elude me - and I have not been able to get a convincing answer as to what they are - the US actually takes the 1947 Partition Resolution seriously when it comes to the international status of Jerusalem. Politicians will declare that the US Embassy must be moved to Jerusalem, but once they are in power, they receive a visit from the State Department which convinces them to drop the subject. The US Consulate in Jerusalem has a unique status in that it reports directly to the State Department and not to the Embassy in Tel Aviv. I have not been able to get a clear answer from Ambassadors and other highly placed people as to why our government has religion on this matter and ignores all other facts and matters of international law in Palestine.

      Anyone have any ideas?

  • 'Do you feel more Arab or more American?': Two women's story of being detained and interrogated at Ben Gurion
    • homingpigeon June 2, 2012 at 4:42 pm

      The staff of the US Embassy in Israel is largely locally hired Israelis, and it was probably an Israeli who spoke to these detained women. The justification is the need for Hebrew speakers and there just aren't that many non-Israelis who speak it well enough. It is assumed by US intelligence that they work for Shin Beth, including the janitors. In one of the ironies of the US-Israeli relationship, while the US Congress and President slavishly kowtow to the Israelis, and pour infinite quantities of baksheesh on them, US counter-intelligence, State Department security, US Marine Embassy Guards, etc. are very preoccupied with intercepting Israeli espionage attempts which apparently rival those of the Chinese.

  • Once she joined 'Women in Black' and opposed aid to Israel. And then-- she ran for Congress and went to AIPAC
    • homingpigeon June 2, 2012 at 6:19 am

      What this unprincipled lady is likely to discover is that the peace and justice community will not back her because of her betrayal, and that the Zionists will also destroy her because of her past.

      But my greater concern is my friends who have some knowledge of the issues of Israel and Palestine, and are working for a more peaceful and just world. Yet when it comes time to vote, they fall into the "lesser of two evils" trap and try to imagine that one candidate will be less vicious than the other. Perhaps one candidate calls for a slower rate of increase in the size of the welfare check to Israel, or strangling Iran rather than bombing it, or calls for a halt to wreaking havoc in Afghanistan while advocating a military buildup in Africa. Or if both the old party candidates are extreme Zionists these nice voters - some of my best friends - simply ignore the issues that concern us and vote on the basis of abortion stance, or herb legalization, or tolerance of gaiety. This amounts to cooperating with the good cop in the torture chamber. It enables AIPAC. It gets Israelis and Palestinians killed.

      So the problem at hand is not so much the sharmootat and sharameet who outdo each other in their advocacy of the Likud, but the good people who vote for them in an effort to be "realistic." The Zionist machine does not allow its voters to do this. The candidate who does not toe the line 101% is smashed.

      The least we could do is call both candidates and say, "as long as you are competing to out-Zion each other, I am voting for a third party." In my case I vote libertarian even if they put a monkey on the ballot, but I respect people who choose Green or independent candidates.

  • Knesset member and J14 advocate: Jail all human rights activists who support African migrant workers and send them to work camps
    • homingpigeon June 2, 2012 at 9:17 am

      This is a teachable moment for Israelis. How about if these Africans claim that they are the original inhabitants of the land, that the land is theirs, and that their intention is to settle it and establish their own state there, and displace the Israelis, except for some who will be kept to catch snakes (yes Herzl said that), and they raise their own army and are supported by the US, Britain, and Russia, among others. Now the Israelis might have a sense of how the Palestinians felt.

    • homingpigeon June 2, 2012 at 9:13 am

      "Annie – the odd things about Ethiopian Jews is that they weren’t even Jewish until they were converted. This was a process that begin in the 17th century, but really took off with the arrival of French Jewish emissaries (the Jewish equivalent of Christians missionaries)."

      Elliot Habibi, we may need to do some fact checking on this one. My understanding is that the Falasha have been Jewish for more than two millenia and were what Ethiopians were before most of them converted to Christianisty. The issue for them was being rejected as Jews by many Israelis because (1) they were black and (2) because of their isolation they missed out on having the Talmud. If they had been converted three centuries ago that wouldn't have been a problem. In fact their position was that they were more authentic ancient Jews and the position of the Orthodox rabbis was that they had to go through a conversion process in Israel to make sure they were Jewish - a process that Russian quasi-Jewish athiests didn't have to go through.

      There is also another group of Falasha who converted to Christianity in the last few centuries (maybe you are reversing the story) and have been an Ethiopian version of the Spanish "conversos" with the same suspicions from Christians that their conversion was fake. Many of these have been trying to revert to Judaism and emigrate to Israel and so have two sets of controversies to deal with in the face of the Orthodox rabbis. (Someone help me and say what they are called - memory fails me).

      Now, if you want a group of recent African converts to proper Orthodox certified kosher Judaism you have the Ugandan Abayudaya who live in Mbale, Uganda. They go back about a century.

  • The audacity of our ancestors
    • homingpigeon June 1, 2012 at 5:21 pm

      I read the Abileah biography about twenty years ago and wondered if you were related when I started seeing your name in the news. Was it Joseph's father who named himself after his fourth daughter contrary to the local tradition of first son?

      Joseph was an insightful fellow and it's sad there wasn't a large movement of like minded Israelis, but it's so wonderful to see you carrying the torch.

  • US to differentiate between 'personally displaced' Palestinian refugees and their descendants
    • homingpigeon May 26, 2012 at 6:41 am

      Thank you for the pilpul reminder. I again bring to the attention of new commenters and remind old ones of what I call the eggplant phenomenon. Just when there is an intelligent discussion happening, a hasbarist can declare that Israelis were the first to develop eggplants. Then the commenters will work themselves into a frenzy looking for ancient references to eggplants in Hebrew and Arabic literature, bringing in eyewitness accounts of who was cultivating eggplants in Palestine in which year, arguing over the definition of the eggplant, and the various species thereof, and who developed which cuisine first from the the eggplant, and who was the first to market these eggplant dishes in Kansas.

      It is a powerful and effective trap. I see people falling into it all the time. Bring the discussion back to the core: A movement of immigrants came to a populated land, claimed it as theirs, displaced the majority of the inhabitants, and set up its own state with weird definitions of citizenship, and continues to displace the native inhabitants on a daily basis.

  • The left lacks an analysis of the neocon rise
    • homingpigeon May 16, 2012 at 10:22 am

      I agree. I speak as a dropped out naval officer who was the sorriest excuse of an Ensign to ever walk the decks of a warship.

    • homingpigeon May 16, 2012 at 10:20 am

      Habibis, (aHbaab), resist the temptation to argue about whether the military industrial complex, the neo cons, or the corporate empire is to blame. In any disaster, there are several events which occur simultaneously, many of which would be innocuous if occurring in isolation, and together they combine to cause illness, storms, or plane crashes. In the case of airplane crashes, (which I have to study professionally), there are an average of seven such events occurring, which we refer to as "links in the disaster chain," leading to the accident. If any one were to have been removed, the crash would not have happened. The causes presented for the Zionist disaster in this discussion are all correct. The only error in any analysis is when there is insistence that one is the cause and the other isn't.

      Remember that there are millions of Americans who believe they are hastening the return of Christ - or his first arrival - by supporting Israel. That is one more link in the disaster chain. There are at least a dozen more we could think of.

  • 'Tablet' describes American veterans of IDF experiencing 'dual loyalty' issues
    • homingpigeon March 17, 2012 at 8:11 am

      I'm glad you brought up John Walker Lindh. It's a good case to show the inconsistency in principle of the current situation. Lindh joined the Taliban at a time it was not at war with the US. Then the US attacked the Taliban and he is suddenly guilty of taking up arms against the US. Let us imagine a scenario (unlikely, but work with me) in which the US went to war against Israel, perhaps after another USS Liberty type incident. What would be the status of the Americans serving in the IDF?

      Personally I believe no one should join any armed force - that of his own ruling killer class, or that of a foreign nation. I would use all powers of persuasion to try to convince a young fellow not to join up. But I disagree with the idea of shunning those who enlist during moments of weak judgement and misguidance. And when they return from serving in a foreign armed group, be it the IDF or the Taliban, I would welcome them home with as much warmth as possible, and hope they never do such a thing again.

  • A Palestinian student asks, 'Can I go on Birthright?'
    • homingpigeon March 8, 2012 at 1:21 am

      I have recently discovered Abayudaya, a small tribe of Ugandans who practice Orthodox Judaism. They do not claim descent from any lost tribes or from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. They have converted over the past century. Could someone elaborate on their birthrights and property rights in Palestine, especially in the context of Palestinian Jews who have converted to Islam or Christianity and been dispossessed?

    • homingpigeon March 8, 2012 at 1:16 am

      A year or so I read an article in which an Israeli was arguing that they shouldn't be so quick to dispossess Palestinians as so many of them were of Jewish origin, some clans having converted as recently as two centuries a ago. Anyone remember it or have a link to the subject?

    • homingpigeon March 8, 2012 at 1:14 am

      Ah how happy I am to see this picture at the top. The lady on the right, Ellen Siegel, did much more than appear in this famous picture. She later served as a nurse at Sabra Shatilla and was eyewitness to the massacres in 1982 and was almost shot herself by the Phalangists. She testified at the Kahan commission.

  • Opposing boycott, Walzer shares stage with speakers known for attacking Islam
    • homingpigeon March 5, 2012 at 3:31 pm

      Actually, I am grateful to Walzer for helping me make the argument that there is no such thing as just war. He wrote a book in which he argued that Israel's wars were examples of just war.

  • Ahmed Moor in WaPo: Harvard One State conference 'informed by the uncontroversial view that all people are created equal'
    • homingpigeon March 6, 2012 at 1:26 am with 1 replies

      Hey Oleg, I thought long and hard about it. We are all wrong you are right. Transjordan is really part of Palestine. The Zionists only stole one third of Palestine. Now could you now please tell us why you think this is relevant? Does it make Israel any more legitimate? Should the uprooted Palestinians be only one third as annoyed as they are?

    • homingpigeon March 5, 2012 at 3:24 pm with 2 replies

      Annie and Woody, I have to jump in with my eggplant alert. (Hasbarist claims Palestine on the basis that Zionists developed the eggplant and Palestinians and their supporters go into a frenzy trying to prove that the Palestinians grew the eggplant first and people argue on about an irrelevance).

      In the case of the Mandate the relevant fact is that the whole concept was illegitimate. In the case of the Balfour Declaration Britain neither owned nor controlled Palestine at the time it was made and it was not Lord Balfour's or His Majesty's to give away (or "view with favor" its disposal).

      There was a very brief period after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and before the Hashemite Emirate was established when the few small towns east of the Jordan River were administered by the Mandate Authorities. But this was also before Winston Churchill drew the boundaries of "Trans-Jordan" with Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia on a Sunday afternoon in Cairo. So it would be unclear how far this area extended into the desert or how large it was during that short period. By the time "Trans-Jordan" was defined it was no longer part of the Mandate Administration.

      A case could be made that "Jordan is part of Palestine" but certainly not in the sense that the Zionists would have it. Certainly it should not bear on the core fact of the displacement of one set of people by another. The idea that the limits of theft by a colonial settler state should be defined by the limits of a the preceding imperial administrative apparatus is rather astonishing.

      It is essential that we not be manipulated into wasting our time debating Hasbarists in irrelevant arguments that they have framed, including the contents of the Balfour Declaration and arcania about the extent of the British bureaucracy east of the Jordan River immediately after World War I.

  • Finkelstein's prescription for a two-state solution is not realistic
    • homingpigeon March 2, 2012 at 11:35 am with 1 replies

      "These arguments may be countered by more reasoned analysis from the other side, but submitting hyper-technical legal arguments to the whims of the public is not a sure thing."

      Good point, and there is another concern about the "whims of the public" - or more charitably, the inability of much of the public to focus on the history and the issues long enough to develop a deep understanding.

      Let's imagine that an agreement is reached whereby settlers are forced out of their settlements. Think of the scenes they will create on TV screens, the trauma, the screaming, the civil disobedience, and the hasbara about ethnic cleansing. Then imagine them inside Israel "proper." Would these angry displaced settlers not turn on the Palestinians in the Galilee and the Negev with the logic that as they were displaced from their homes in the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state, so now should the Palestinians depart Israel? After all the Jews had to move out of the Palestinian state to the Jewish state, and now the Palestinians can move out of the Jewish state to the Palestinian state. Astute historians can argue with the greatest of eloquence that the two transfers are not morally equivalent, but they will not command the sound bytes on the TV screens. Such a trade of population would sound very logical to the gullible American public and more importantly the US Congress. To be fair, I certainly didn't have the background or stamina to sort out the relative merits of various population transfers and cleansings in the Balkan upheavals.

      I think the odds of success are better aiming for a deal with the Palestinian right of return and the settlers staying in place. It will be complex and difficult, but much less traumatic than the two state "solution."

  • Dershowitz claims he 'exposed' CAP and Rosenberg, and calls out Barbra Streisand
  • Shit Zionists say
  • Where is the Bedouin Intifada?
    • homingpigeon February 12, 2012 at 11:34 am

      "Ten of thousands have applied for Israeli citizenship and have gotten it. But I doubt the moderator will allow this to be published – in the past I’ve ben blocked for pointing this out.

      Tens of thousands. How can that be? Why do they want it?"

      They are the pioneers of the one country solution.

    • homingpigeon February 12, 2012 at 10:46 am with 1 replies

      AngelaJerusalem, a few years ago, well thirty four years ago, I visited "Zbeidat" the name of the tribe and their village in the Jordan Valley, not too far from Jericho. They were Bedu refugees from the Beersheba area. As a community they volunteered their men for service in the Jordanian Army, and in exchange after twenty years of residence on the state land they had settled they were to be given full title. (These former nomads were in transition to sedentary agricultural lifestyle - a common trend). However as the West Bank was captured from the Jordanians in '67 after they had only been on the land seventeen years they did not receive titles.

      Sure enough, Israeli settlers used the lack of titles as an excuse to confiscate large tracts of their land, pump their well water into the new settlement's swimming pool, dry up the Zbeidat orchards, and so on. Whatever became of them?

    • homingpigeon February 12, 2012 at 10:33 am

      Coming late to the discussion I offer a few observations:

      In the dynamics of colonialism there is a common phenomenon of foreign oppressors making common cause with native groups who are victimized by other native groups. Local group B is oppressing smaller group A and foreign group C joins up with A to dispossess B. This happened with the US Cavalry - when they went in to massacre a particular tribe, they had allied trackers from a tribe that had been dispossessed by the tribe they were about to destroy. The Nationalist Chinese regime and Army, in fleeing the mainland and taking control of Taiwan, and asserting control over the indigenous Taiwanese (who were ethnically Chinese but a distinct community from the mainlanders), made common cause with oppressed non-Chinese aboriginals. The CIA, to make trouble for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas began "supporting" the various marginalized aboriginal tribes of the Miskito coast.

      In the case of Palestine (and pretty much all over the world) there is a natural cultural rift between the Bedu and the peasantry going back to Cain and Abel, manifested most commonly by Bedu goats invading peasant cucumber patches or peasants planting their cucumbers where Bedu graze their goats - depending on your perspective.

      And the urban people would show contempt for both the peasants and the Bedu, not unlike the attitudes of urbane Americans to rural Appalachians.

      These differences, as well as other cultural separations with the Druse and Circassians lent themselves to Zionist manipulations. The people who became "collaborators" had a choice between resisting and being driven out, or accepting the new order. They served it to various degrees, and kept their land as a result - at least until now.

      I would agree with Shmuel that it is a complex human tragedy. It is not helpful to demonize the Bedu of the Negev as traitors.

  • 'Romeo and Juliet' and the politics of occupation
    • homingpigeon February 5, 2012 at 6:18 pm

      "As he kissed me, his gold necklace, the shape of Palestine, pointed into my neck as we moved our bodies together in the night, his first night out of jail, the point going in between my bowed and swelled chai."

      Wonderful piece of writing. Waiting for your book.

  • Abunimah and Woolsey debate BDS in the 'Philadelphia Inquirer'
    • homingpigeon January 30, 2012 at 7:18 am

      Excuse me, could you say that again? I'm not sure you could possibly mean what you wrote. An immigrant family from Brooklyn who by choice moves into a home on private property confiscated by an occupying authority from indigenous inhabitants is to be judged equally with a refugee family evicted from a village in one part of Palestine and moves against its will to a camp or neighborhood in another part of Palestine? On the other hand you might have an interesting point to pursue, - where would you suggest the Palestinian "settlers" go? I know where the settlers from Brooklyn could go. Don't even go into comparing the Jordanian administration of the West Bank with the Israeli occupation. There are issues with it, but not ones that would support a Zionist hasbara. The main grievance being that it was done in tacit collusion with Israel and served to guard the 1948 armistice line from refugees intent on going back to their villages to retrieve property or commit some retaliation against those living in their homes.

  • Jack Ross in Brooklyn tonite-- on Elmer Berger and the 'foreign nationalism' of Zionism
    • homingpigeon January 27, 2012 at 12:55 am

      I keep realizing that we don't need to debate and argue so much of this stuff. Bright lights have done so already. We just need to bring out their writings into the light of day and see whose analyses and predictions stand the best test of time.

  • Why Christian Zionism is nothing short of outright heresy
    • homingpigeon January 24, 2012 at 12:27 pm

      Oh and I forgot to mention the Red Heifer! That's the best one of all. Check out the article by Laurence Wright in the New Yorker. The first step necessary for things to start happening is for a perfectly red heifer to be ritually sacrificed in the reconstructed temple in Jerusalem. As soon as this Christian fundie in Missouri genetically breeds a perfect red heifer and sends it to Israel, the Jewish part of the group will blow up the Haram to get the sequence of final events on course and speed, rebuild the temple, sacrifice and burn the heifer, and welcome the messiah!

    • homingpigeon January 24, 2012 at 12:20 pm

      Actually, I would have to disagree (but in an agreeable manner). These folks are philo-semitic. It's just as weird as anti-semitism, but just as the anti-semites will dwell on all the faults of Jews, the philo-semites in Christian Zionism dwell on the virtues and blessings bestowed on Jews. Philo-semitism is ultimately as harmful as anti-semitism. In apartheid South Africa, superstitious philo-semitic Boer officers and sergeants, upon hearing there was a Jewish soldier in the unit, would order this soldier to accompany them whenever they went on any dangerous drive or combat mission in the belief that the "lucky Jew" would protect them. The "lucky Jews" were thus exposed to danger more often than anyone. In the case of the philo-semitic Christian Zionists, their backing for the most fanatical irrational of the Israelis is as harmful as any anti-semitism. The prophetic interpretations from some Christians of a certain number of non-converting Jews dying in the final days is just one of many end-times scenarios these people come up with. It is not in itself anti-semitic as they believe just about everyone gets fried, drowned, plagued with locusts or whatever.

    • homingpigeon January 24, 2012 at 1:34 am with 1 replies

      The phenomenon that has led to modern Christian Zionism is more diverse than might seem at first glance. As humans we have a yearning to discern the future, through tea leaves, coffee grounds, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, Tarot cards, and so on. Attempting to decipher and make sense of the various prophets of the Hebrew scriptures (who were ranting, hallucinating, blessing, and cursing according to political and military crises during a specific time) combined with the mad visions in the book of Revelation is part of this phenomenon. Those most successful in this process are the ones who view current events as they happen, and then work backwards to find verses that fit. If there is a war between Egypt and Israel, a verse can be found that fits. If Egypt wins, there will be a verse. If there is peace, another verse can be found. For example, when the space shuttle Columbia crashed, one could refer to Obadiah 4, "Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD." The original verse refers to Edomites that lived on a clifftop in what is now known as Petra in Jordan who managed to annoy Obadiah, but you can titillate people, collect money, and start a cult with this technique.

      Long ago I discovered a Christian Zionist book published before WW II. Author had the name of Rice I think. (Craig did you ever come across him?) He predicted that Mussolini would set up the Jewish State, that Italy would win WWII, and the Jewish State would be the Antichrist.

      Another set of interpretations has it that Israel will be defeated and the survivors will take refuge in Petra. About fifty years ago a fellow went to Petra with Christian evangelical tracts written in Hebrew and wandered around leaving them in the caves for the benefit of the coming refugees. The bewildered Jordanian tourist police invited him to leave.

      The Jehovah's Witnesses figured out that Jesus would return in 1913.

      The Rastafarians have found the considerable number of verses referring to ancient Ethiopia and have developed their own weird Zionism involving Jamaicans going back there. And of course every appearance of the word "herb" refers to cannabis.

      The Iraq wars and verses about Babylon drove TV evangelists into a frenzy. Money was collected!

      There is also the phenomenon of the British Israelites who discerned that the Anglo-Saxons were descended from the lost tribes (Danube = Dan?, etc). Queen Victoria is alleged to have taken this seriously. This theology survives in the Aryan Nations and remnants of the Klan in the US.

      Every crisis in Palestine, from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD through the Islamic and Crusader and Islamic conquests of the city, provoked predictions of the imminent Second Coming. In modern times it started again with the Napoleanic invasion, got another wind with Allenby capturing Jerusalem from the Turks, and continued to brew with the establishment of Israel in '48, the Israeli capture of East Jerusalem in '67, and every crisis thereafter. It's a good way to make money as an evangelist, or a career as a politician.

    • homingpigeon January 24, 2012 at 12:52 am

      It's true, Christian fundamentalists started on modern Zionism before Herzl was born, and there was more than one source to this unfortunate stream. Scofield was one. There was also a stream within the Anglican Church which manifested itself in Christ Church in Jerusalem, built in 1830 or so in the design of a synagogue, with Hebrew scriptures on the walls. Its mission was, and still is, to preach Christianity to returning Jews.

  • The Mondo crew hosts WBAI’s 'Beyond the Pale' to discuss Ron Paul, Dennis Ross and the myth of Obama's 'Jewish problem'
    • homingpigeon January 21, 2012 at 12:04 pm

      Regarding "liberals" who give higher priority to their concerns with libertarian domestic ideas than what should be their agreement on issues of war and peace abroad, I am reminded of a psychology test I took in my youth.

      At the beginning of my training as a Naval Aviator I was given a thorough test. Before they send us out to drop white phosphorous, napalm, cluster bombs, and nuclear bombs on people they want to make sure we pilots are stable. It was a test similar to what many have taken, with choices, word associations and so on. Does "breast" make you think of a chicken or a woman? etc. One question was so weird I never forgot it. "Would you rather have a door slam on your thumb or vomit on a crowded bus?" Years later I found out that the obvious question was whether you would rather punish yourself or other people. Would you rather pay extra for your gasoline or kill a bunch of people abroad? This I believe is a major question for our society, and the answer given by individuals shows their final stance on questions of war and peace, especially when weighed against their own personal comfort.

      When people shy away from the chance to vote truth against the empire, and when they hesitate to withdraw consent from the artisans of death of the Washington regime for fear that their favorite domestic social programs might be harmed, I think they really don't have a deep understanding of the horrors the war machine inflicts on the planet.

    • homingpigeon January 21, 2012 at 9:08 am

      Thank you for this question about US foreign policy relative to Israel/Palestine.

      Answer: (1) an unconditional ending of all US government funds transfers (i.e. tax money of citizens) to any regime or entity between and including Morocco and Iraq with no exceptions, including Sesame Street.

      (2) an unconditional cancellation of all military alliances with every nation between and including Morocco and Iraq with no exceptions.

      (3) withdrawal of US forces from all nations between and including Morocco and Iraq with no exceptions.

      (4) an end to all military sales to all nations between and including Morocco and Iraq with no exceptions.

      (5) issuing immigrant visas and welcoming deserters from all armed forces from all nations between and including Morocco and Iraq with no exceptions.

      (6) free trade, unsupported by US government intervention, subsidy, or protection, with all nations between and including Morocco and Iraq without exception.

      It's a good policy for the whole world, but you only asked about Israel/Palestine.

      On an individual level, vote for libertarian candidates for everything from President to dog catcher.

  • Bombshell: Israeli intelligence posed as CIA to recruit terror group for covert war on Iran
    • homingpigeon January 15, 2012 at 1:52 am

      In reply to all you Habibis discussing the power dynamics between the Washington regime and Israel --- the mention of dogs and tails and wagging reminds of of a friend who owns a pit bull. It's an expensive one that wants lots of food and makes lots of demands on my friend. He uses the pit bull to intimidate other people but this pit bull has a mind of its own and often goes off and and attacks other people which is why my friend is not so popular. People argue about whether the pit bull or the owner of the pit bull is at fault every time this dog goes rogue. They even get annoyed with each other in the debate. This pit bull, for all the food and pampering from my friend, has even been known to attack my friend himself but this guy loves his pit bull so much he insisted to everyone that it was an honest misunderstanding on the part of the dear dog, his only reliable friend and ally.

  • Ron Paul on Israel
    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 2:54 am with 1 replies

      PS, "you wouldn’t get a tax break for your contribution" Actually, some libertarians would say that everyone should get the tax break for the contribution,whoever it might be to. Current policy gives the tax breaks to those who donate to Zionist projects and prison for those who contribute to Palestinian ones.

    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 2:41 am with 4 replies

      OK Habibis, last one for now on libertarians and our favorite sad subject.

      On this one there are some comrades who would disagree with me. There are some who crank on about dual citizenship and dual loyalty. I have no problem with this as I have dual loyalty, indeed triple and quadruple loyalty myself. Maybe more.

      There is no problem with dual loyalty. I understand why a Jewish American could have a soft spot for Israel as I would understand why a Palestinian American would have the same feelings for Palestine. It is good to have lots of friends and connections around the world. We are made up of immigrants, many of whom will have sentiments to their countries of origin which we cannot turn off with a switch. There are others who through their travels and accidents of history develop attachments. It wasn't my choice to go live in Jordan at the age of one, but that's where my American parents took me and where I was brought up and the Palestinian girl who took care of me taught me everything I needed to know before I was six. Well, nearly everything.

      So this dual loyalty is not a problem when the two countries are allies, but when the two are in conflict it is a problem in our present political situation. Again, I ask my Zionist American friends how they would feel if they lived in a world where there was an alliance with Palestinians equivalent to the current one with Israel, and the situation of Jews in Palestine was equivalent to that of Palestinians now. Their dual loyalty would be very stressful indeed. So in a libertarian society this would not be an issue at all. You could be as loyal as you wanted to a foreign state, as long as you didn't make me contribute to murdering the people I am loyal to. And I won't make you contribute to murdering people you are loyal to.

      But what I'd really like to do is work on the one country solution, and we could all be loyal to it. And let's accomplish this without grovelling and whining and manipulating for tax money out of the Washington regime.

    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 2:23 am with 2 replies

      More on how libertarians think on Israel-Palestine, this time on the matter of personal financial contributions. (Sorry, I'm not always with internet and free time so I have to blast a few off).

      An American citizen should have the right to contribute personal funds to whoever the citizen wishes, regardless of whether I or anyone else approves of the recipient. So you can donate your personal coin to Israel or to Hamas. I would disapprove but not attempt to use the power of the state to stop you.

      And oh yes, you wouldn't get a tax break for your contribution.

      But then again, we're working on repealing the personal income tax anyway, but that's another subject.

    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 2:17 am with 1 replies

      Further on how libertarians would think on Israel-Palestine.......

      While we might disapprove of a citizen joining a foreign army, we would not want the US government to forbid any American citizen from serving in either the Israeli Defense Forces or the Palestinian fighting forces. At the same time we would want the US government to easily and quickly process the visa applications for deserters from either of those armed groups.

      I personally would use every reason I could come up with to persuade a young person not to join the armed forces of any country or movement in the world.

    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 2:12 am with 1 replies

      To process the statement from Ron Paul it is important to clearly understand how libertarians think. Citizens of most nations are conditioned to think that if we like something we must call upon the government to support it and if we don't like something we must call and the government to suppress it and if we want something we need to beg the government to give it to us. Libertarians think exactly the opposite on these things.

      So, on Israel/Palestine - foreign aid and military support should go to no one in the libertarian world view. A citizen offended by Israel should not be compelled to support it via tax money any more than one offended by Hamas should be compelled to support it. Within the libertarian movement there is strong sympathy for the Palestinians and angst about the blank check to Israel. There are also Zionists in the movement who buy into the (incorrect in my view) theory that by subsidizing Israel to the extent that we do, the US has some influence over it. These Zionist oriented libertarians, who I think are few in number, make the case that the US should stop aid in order to give Israel more room to make its own decisions. While the analysis will differ, the conclusions will be the same and the path towards coming to these conclusions are one in which we agree to disagree.

      In conversations with American Zionists who are offended by the idea of cutting off Israel's welfare check, I would ask them how they would feel if they lived in a world in which a Palestinian regime was oppressing Jewish residents of Palestine and in which American politicians had to fall all over each other every election to prove who could send the most money and armament to that Palestinian regime. I suspect they would find the libertarian way of thinking attractive.

  • Israeli Supreme Court upholds discriminatory citizenship law: 'Human rights shouldn’t be a recipe for national suicide'
    • homingpigeon January 13, 2012 at 6:13 am

      fascinating story about your family! Two weeks ago, on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Uganda I sat next to an African with a kippa. I thought maybe he was a Moslem with a small skullcap. But he opened his laptop and was listening to a sermon from a rabbi. (Wasn't trying to peek, but couldn't help it). He wasn't Falasha, I could see that, and he spoke English the way Ugandans do. So I had to ask, and sure enough there is a community of Ugandan Jews. I googled later, being one who has reason to know the tribes of East Africa. Sure enough there is a community living out near Mbale, Uganda called the Abajudaya. Some chief of a small tribe a century ago was pissed off with the English at a time when Ugandans were converting to Islam and Christianity. He decided Judaism was the real thing and started working it out. Some western Jews participated in the process of kosherizing them and here they are, about 1500 of them! Definitely not from ancient Judea, but they are kosher enough to go home to Palestine.

  • Just wars-- and civilian casualties
    • homingpigeon January 9, 2012 at 11:06 pm with 8 replies

      Ok, Habibis, I have a thought exercise. Let's all travel in our imagination to Germany in 1930 something. We have befriended a young seventeen year old physically fit German fellow who is trying to decide what to do with his life. I and several other commentators will do our best to persuade him not to join the German army. I will offer to help him find a way to escape the draft. I will conjure every argument I know against war and service in any nation's death machine. Others when in conversation with this fellow will talk about the virtue of just war and the theories thereof. Others will talk about humanitarian intervention and the merits of protecting the oppressed Finns from the aggressive Soviet invasion. Others will talk of the virtues of this war or that war and what a great honor it is to die for one's country.

      Now who would we hope would win the battle for this fellow's soul? I especially ask those who believe World War II was the goodest war of all to contemplate this.

      My point is that all efforts at just war, humanitarian intervention, "self defense" of the state, or whatever other arguments we contrive to validate military service, are ultimately building blocks in the edifice of our own incineration chamber.

    • homingpigeon January 9, 2012 at 10:45 pm

      I would be honored and amused if Mooser considered me worthy enough to ridicule.

    • homingpigeon January 9, 2012 at 10:42 pm with 21 replies

      Well said! A very strong argument against "just war" is the fact that Walzer could write a whole book about the concept and then shill for Israel's wars as just.

  • Ron Paul's foreign policy should be embraced
    • homingpigeon January 9, 2012 at 11:26 pm with 3 replies

      "Ron Paul’s positions would stop the US from doing immoral things in the world, but they would also stop the US from providing needed assistance."

      Stopping Jack the Ripper would deprive London of the services of a trained surgeon.

    • homingpigeon January 8, 2012 at 11:31 pm

      "True, but isn’t that a reason to oppose almost all wars, with very very few exceptions for cases like WWII?"

      An excellent article but we should examine this insistence on proving the worth of our argument by reassuring readers and listeners that we believe World War II was a good war.

      The alleged goodness of this war is always used as the first argument in favor of any war, and anyone opposing a given war seems to feel called upon to nervously reassure the reader or listener that indeed World War II was a just war. Even the death of civilians will be justified because civilians died in this supposedly most worthy of all wars.

      This phenomenon will be thoroughly examined in the first chapter of the book which refutes the World War II mythology.

  • Is Paul a precursor of a more presentable candidate in 2016?
    • homingpigeon January 9, 2012 at 12:15 am

      Quoting Pat Lang above: "Paul should run as a representative of a new party."

      Teachable moment. Paul actually did run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in the 80s, and is a life member. The results were miniscule, unfortunately. Although the Libertarian Party has not reached a critical mass, it is the most stable and enduring of all parties that have come into being in the last half century.

      Within the libertarian movement, there is a debate which parallels that of socialist inclined Americans. The question is whether to set up new independent parties or to join and influence the Republicans or Democrats respectively. The arguments for and against are similar in both cases. In the case of libertarians there is a sometimes respectful and sometimes rancorous divide between those who wish to build the party and those who choose to join the Libertarian Republican Caucus. The rise of Ron Paul has boosted the argument of of the latter, and the members of the Party are waiting for the nomination process to complete before deciding whether to run a candidate. In the event that Ron Paul is not nominated, the Libertarian Party will run a candidate, possibly Gary Johnson. It is hoped that the Ron Paul people will then turn to the Libertarian Party.

    • homingpigeon January 8, 2012 at 11:40 pm with 1 replies

      Yes, that means AIPAC could give all the money they want to a politician. However said politician would be unable to give our tax money to Israel or work to compel American military allegiance to it.

    • homingpigeon January 7, 2012 at 2:08 pm

      We have focused on how out front the man is on issues of foreign policy and war. But libertarians are also the most tolerant on issues of immigration. I wonder when the attack will start on that. It will be curious to see how the liberal Democrats and progressives will deal with someone who is most compassionate about the right of foreign born people to earn an honest living within our borders and send some income home to their families. How will they try to diss this spontaneous transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, and how will they sneer at this wonderfully just and efficient manifestation of people's foreign aid.

    • homingpigeon January 7, 2012 at 1:51 pm with 1 replies

      For all that the mainstream media have tried to ignore Paul, it might be that he gets plenty of great publicity from liberal social fascists who are freaked that a free marketeer is more peace oriented than anyone they can come up with. What impressive discussions come up in comment sections whenever a liberal Democrat attempts to twist up a case that libertarian social theories are more horrifying than their own white phosphorous, their cluster bombs, their ghastly humanitarian wars, the gutting of the Constitution by their darling President, and on and on........!!!

      The attacks against Ron Paul invite responses and hence more publicity and opportunity to discuss libertarian concepts. It's wonderful!

  • Ron Paul's antiwar position is simpleminded
    • homingpigeon January 7, 2012 at 1:29 pm with 2 replies

      Now as far as Ron Paul goes, may we remind ourselves that we are not trying to elect a Pope on the basis of infallibility. It is foreign intervention and war waged by the American death machine. The quibbling about anything else in Ron Paul's program shows how little people really know about the realities of war. To even list it on the same balance sheet as domestic social programs is absolutely ghastly. I'm thinking that if there were Roman Senators who were speaking against massacring villages in Gaul and nailing dissidents to crosses there where a bunch of liberal Romans whining about possible cutbacks in subsidies for the bread and circuses for the mobs, renovations to the stadium, maintenance of the public baths and so on.

    • homingpigeon January 7, 2012 at 1:18 pm with 1 replies

      I see the foundations of something very troubling in the essay. No, not "everyone" thinks World War II was a just war. With the right amount of time I can make a very articulate case. But that is not the point. Where do you get off saying "everyone"? There's a body of literature and argument against it. I even know a holocaust survivor who lost a mother in Auschwitz and suffered through Dresden who makes a convincing case against it being a just war. Whether you like it or not, we do exist.

      And as for just war theories, I am not impressed. The just wars will require that certain conditions be met. Those wishing to make a war have the power to convince us that those conditions have been met - a la Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of their incubators. By the time we discover that we have been misled, the war is long over.

    • homingpigeon January 7, 2012 at 9:44 am

      I think the people of the world have had to try to defend themselves from the occupiers of the North American continent since 1492.

  • Ron Paul challenges liberals on love of 'big finance' and 'big-ass wars'
    • homingpigeon January 1, 2012 at 6:54 am with 1 replies

      Much of the discussion by my Habibi commentators above uses the words "right" and "left." These terms, originally used to describe the seating arrangements which separated quarrelsome factions in one of the French Parliaments, are inadequate, indeed meaningless, for analyzing current events.

      In libertarian thinking the concern is whether a particular process empowers or dis-empowers the state. This is the dividing line. Hence one finds people as disparate as John Birchers on the one hand and Catholic Worker anarchists on the other under the libertarian umbrella.

      But the mainstream of the movement is made of up regular people who don't approve of the violent imperial interventions abroad or the intrusive social fascist interventions at home.

  • More responses to Ron Paul's surge
    • homingpigeon January 1, 2012 at 7:21 am

      This Ron Paul surge is defying expectations and analysis. I'm reminded of when we all (I mean those of us of a certain age) thought that the Romanian dictator Ceaucescu had no significant opposition, when one day at the back of the crowd some people started spontaneously heckling his speech and the next thing we knew the whole crowd was howling. Not long after that he was led off to the firing squad.

      Not that I want these artisans of death who rule us shot. They need to work as orderlies in VA hospitals for the rest of their lives. Or clear landmines, clean up toxic military waste, and so on.

    • homingpigeon January 1, 2012 at 7:08 am

      "The U.S. also provides humanitarian aid that is meant to fight disease, dire poverty, starvation, the impact of natiural disasters, discimination against women and all kinds of other evils. Paul would ban all such aid."

      Paul and other libertarians would not ban such aid at all. They would welcome you contributing voluntarily. They would not force to contribute if you do not feel called to do so.

  • Ron Paul prose on Israel allegedly makes woman cry
    • homingpigeon December 30, 2011 at 2:32 am

      Heh heh, I can assure you it was a parody. There was a young fellow, slightly unbalanced, who made a hysterical crying video telling people to "Leave Britney Spears alone." It's worth watching. Then this young lady made one about Israel, using the same language, gestures and so on.

  • Ron Paul's stunning antiwar performance: Iran threat recalls Iraq, 'a useless war that killed 1 million Iraqis' and 8000 Americans
    • homingpigeon December 16, 2011 at 5:39 pm

      Stopaipac, please consider that the Roman Legions are wiping out entire villages in France, capturing slaves, nailing dissidents on crosses. We have someone trying to put an end to this. Should our first concern be bread and circuses for the mobs of Rome? And maybe fixing the cracks in the Coliseum?

    • homingpigeon December 16, 2011 at 5:33 pm

      I can't help wondering if when journalists write this stuff to diss Ron Paul they are actually attracting favorable attention to his views.

    • homingpigeon December 16, 2011 at 5:31 pm

      Habibi Mooser you have described exactly the type of capitalism that libertarians OPPOSE, not support. We use this turn of phrase ("privatizing profits and socializing costs and losses") to describe the imperialism and corporatism of the status quo. In true free enterprise the government, meaning the taxpayer, would not pay for armies or mercenaries to protect investments abroad, nor would it subsidize any enterprise nor would it protect any enterprise from competition.

      Closer to my heart, and to yours, would be the concept that the state does not have the right to choose friends and enemies for its citizens, and further does not have the right to force all taxpaying citizens to subsidize those friends and harm those enemies.

  • 'New Yorker' editor tells American readers one thing-- and Israeli readers something else
    • homingpigeon December 15, 2011 at 11:48 am

      I like bringing up the example of Jamaica and specifically the Rastafarians. They have their own weird sort of Zionism, with selective reading of Biblical verses promising God's blessing to the ancient Ethiopians and Cushites, and further believe they are the legitimate heirs to those blessings. (For good measure every appearance of the word "herb" is interpreted as marijuana). But these folk are not stealing land from anyone, they have not manipulated the US Congress into falling all over each other seeing who can increase the welfare check to an artificial Rasta nation which is wreaking havoc on another indiginous people across the water.

      Their music is nice too.

  • A single-state vision must go beyond Israel vs Palestine, and be inclusive
    • homingpigeon December 14, 2011 at 6:17 pm

      I am reminded of a few lines from Mahmoud Darwish's State of Siege, as translated by Fady Joudah:

      "....Then we'll disagree over everything: over the design of the national flag
      (you would do well my living people if you chose the symbol of the simpleton donkey)
      and we'll disagree over the new anthem
      (you would do well if you choose a song about the marriage of doves)....."

      One important point, very important, is that in the original Arabic it is pigeons, not doves!

      Anyway, when we see the enlightenment which would bring the one country solution to fruition, I suspect the name will not be a contentious issue. But I really like the idea of a flag with a donkey on it.

  • JNF board member resigns over eviction of Palestinian family in Silwan
    • homingpigeon December 14, 2011 at 6:51 am with 6 replies

      When someone on the wrong side of justice makes a principled choice to move in an ethical direction we should welcome that person. It is destructive to the cause to chastise them for their past misdeeds while they are in the process of trying to make amends and move to the camp of decency. We should extend the hand of friendship and welcome. Maybe in a year or two this fellow will be an articulate advocate for the one country solution.

  • Obama ad attacks Romney, Gingrich and Perry for wanting to cut aid to Israel
    • homingpigeon December 12, 2011 at 12:07 pm with 1 replies

      I just predicted it on this blog two days ago but I thought it would take a little longer than that to come true. But again, what disturbs me every election is that so many of my friends who understand the Palestine issue will put it aside and vote for a Zionist American sharmoot politician based on other platform issues. And I even have Palestinian friends who do this, Ya LaTiif!

      We need to persistently communicate to these politicians that as long as they compete to see who can be the most extreme Zionist, we will vote for neither.

      The Libertarian will get my vote, but if you aHbaab (Habibis) have problems with them at least vote Green or write in something.

  • Gingrich comment that Palestinians are an 'invented people' enters primary debate
    • homingpigeon December 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm with 3 replies

      I agree with NorthofFortynine so much! Too often we allow the Zionists to set the terms for the debate and end up their countering absurdities with other absurdities - the Big Swinging Dick Contest, as you put it. In the past I have given "eggplant alerts." A Hasbarist announces that Israel has the right to the land because they were the first to cultivate eggplants and friends of the Palestinians work themselves into a frenzy trying to prove that the Palestinians were the ones who invented the eggplants.

      So we do have to return to the individual rights, including property rights, and the rights of individuals to live in their ancestral towns even if they own no real estate. It does not matter if Palestine was ever a state, if the Palestinians ever existed as a "people," if Jerusalem is mentioned more times in the Torah than the Koran, if Trans-Jordan was governed under the Palestine Mandate adminstration for a brief period, if the word Palestine was imposed by Emperor Trajan or used by Pliny 500 years earlier, if Jews are descended from the ancient inhabitants or if they are Khazar converts, or if the Palestinians are descended from the nomads from Arabia or the ancient Canaanites.

      We must break away from the eggplant cultivation debates and focus on the fact that a community of people lived between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. They were descended from a mix of all peoples who had ever lived in or conquered the land, and there were several minorities that hadn't quite mixed in. They overwhelmingly spoke Arabic along with a smattering of other languages. They were predominantly Muslim with a few dozen religious minorities (counting all the Christian sub-sects). The majority had written history of their presence in the land on specific locations far longer than that of the immigrant civilization of North America. And there were a few who were more recent arrivals - a Bosnian village here, and Uzbek community there, and an African quarter there. (That's a bone for you Hasbarists to play with).

      And the fundamental truth remains that the bulk of these people were either wrenched from their homes and farms by Zionist immigrants or allowed to remain under a harassing military occupation. And it didn't stop with the initial onslaught - it happened to one more house yesterday, is happening to one more farm today, and will happen to one more olive orchard tomorrow.

      Foreign immigrants are dispossessing indigenous people - we must hold our focus on that core fact.

    • homingpigeon December 11, 2011 at 3:47 pm

      The Democrats will compete to be more extreme on this issue than the Republicans. But what is disheartening is that so many good people will support the perceived lesser of two evils, thus colluding with and enabling the process.

  • Why the tight security at J Street president's Syracuse talk?
  • Game changer: Hillary says Israeli restrictions on women remind her of Rosa Parks and Iran
  • Sabra alternative: Inching towards social responsibility at DePaul University
    • homingpigeon November 24, 2011 at 6:14 am

      Interesting brand name "Sabra." It contains so much of the nature of the conflict in layers of meaning and metaphor.

      Sabra the Hummous would be named after "sabra," the word used to describe Jewish Israelis actually born in the land, to distinguish them from the immigrant Israelis. In the mid eighties, the number of "sabras" rose to equal about one half of the Jewish population. The proportion slipped in the early nineties with the arrival of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Not sure what the proportion is now, but it would be approximately half sabra.

      Those slightly well-read in America know that this word was chosen for the native born Israeli in reference to the sabra cactus, or prickly pear, which is "tough on the outside but sweet inside."

      But there is another layer. The name of the fruit is actually the Arabic name for it. And the Arabic name means "patience." When I ignored warnings about fifty years ago and picked one with my bare hands and found them filled with the almost microscopic fuzzy looking thorns the local kids I was with explained that you needed patience to get to this fruit and hence its name. (Sabr is the abstract and collective word and sabra the singular).

      And there's more. This cactus is an excellent natural fencing, an organic barbed wire. You plant it around your gardens to keep the goats out. (Unfortunately camels will eat their way right through it though). But the roots remain indestructible. Chop down, burn, or bulldoze the sabra cactus, and it will grow back. So the best efforts to destroy the evidence of Palestinian villages are frustrated by the resilient sabra which continues to sprout and remind us of that another people had gardens here.

  • Kissinger: 'Is there a more self-serving group of people than the Jewish community?'
    • homingpigeon November 19, 2011 at 9:47 am

      There's another story behind this story:

      "Among the appeals flooding the White House was one from the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to President Richard Nixon in August 1972 asking him to protest to the Kremlin its levying of fees for exit permits."

      Members of the US Senate, falling all over each other in an effort to please AIPAC, jumped the gun one day and drafted legislation to penalize nations which charged fees for their citizens to emigrate. (The penalties related to free trade, tariffs, and so on if I remember correctly). Just as the bill was on its way out of committee, AIPAC discretely got in touch with the esteemed members, and essentially said, "ahem, that bill isn't really helpful because we charge fees for Israelis who want to emigrate." The idea was quietly dropped. In both cases, the excuse for the fees was the same, - that money had been spent educating the said citizens.

  • Romney promises to abdicate American foreign policy towards Israel . . . to Israel
    • homingpigeon October 29, 2011 at 4:08 am

      I accept and understand that the campaign between the Republican and Democratic candidates will be to see who can be most subservient to the most extreme tendencies in Israel. What disturbs me more though every election is that so many of my friends who have a more sophisticated understanding of the issue, be they liberal Zionists with a pretense of a guilty conscience about the Palestinians, be they anti-Zionist Jews, be they "pro-Palestinian" Americans, or even be they Palestinian-Americans, will vote for the lesser of two evils on other issues, and thus enable the perverse process.

      Meanwhile the American Likudniks will care only about a commitment to increasing the size of the welfare check to Israel and increasing the level of diplomatic and military support to Zionism. All other issues are irrelevant.

      An American politician will have nothing to fear from people of conscience on this subject as long as this process continues. Only when we have the courage to reject the candidates from both major parties, and make them aware of our rejection, will there be a chance of a shift.

      I vote Libertarian, but hope that good people will choose any third party or an independent candidate.

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