Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 19 (since 2009-08-02 18:20:20)

Koozie

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• Paul's challenge to progressives
  • Koozie January 3, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    If I'm an American in 2012, there are three issues at the top of my mind:
    (1) Wall Street collapse and Wall Street bailouts without ANY accountability
    (2) A looming war in Iran on the heels of an Iraq war that cost over a trillion dollars.

    America, please focus on these two issues and the candidates who propose the most serious solutions. The rest is a distraction.
    P.S. Sorry, the Perry gag still cracks me up.

• Reliable sources prove reliable on Helen Thomas
  • Koozie June 13, 2010 at 11:57 am with 1 replies

    Update on the lead: After Howard Kurtz released Helen from the pillory on Reliable Sources, he went after Reuters for editing a photograph from the Gaza flotilla in which a knife being held in the hand of a flotilla member was cropped out. After which Mr. Kurtz made the point that it wasn't the first time Reuters had used such tricks in their reporting on Israel. Interesting isn't it how the American press is policing itself.

• Why there is no mainstream investigative journalism about the Israel lobby
  • Koozie March 31, 2010 at 8:39 am with 2 replies

    Phil,

    Very cathartic post for Catholics, such as myself, who read the newspapers and wonder why Catholic transgressions receive so much attention and criticism when the transgressions of other groups are washed over?

    Why is the sexual abuse scandal framed as a Catholic phenomenon when the same percentage of Jewish rabbis and Protestant ministers sexually abuse their congregations? Why is this obvious fact never once mentioned in the same story? Why are the misdeeds of the Catholic hierarchy so thoroughly exposed when not a single word has ever been printed about how the more insular Jewish Orthodox community has protected its own predatory rabbis and silenced their victims?

    In short, why is sexual abuse framed as a Catholic problem when it is a problem that plagues every known human institution? Strange, that such context is never included.

    I was raised in a conservative Catholic home and belong to a conservative Parish. It is because of this upgringing that I learned to value and respect all human relationships. My Catholicism is the source of my intense social justice instinct. It is the source of my deep admiration for Jewish culture and history.

    I was active in the life of the Church and had nothing but positive, enriching experiences. I was an alter boy. I also walked hundreds of miles on foot during pilgrimages with priests and seminarians. We talked philosophy, politics, science. We slept in old barns, open fields, and peasant houses. I worked in shelters, soup kitchens and hospitals with them. I heard stories of their toil in the darkest corners of society, in the trenches where the people society discards congregate. They have worked amidst crushing poverty and brutal war in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Why is this never news? Should we throw all of this out too along with the 4% of bad priests?

    Justice is supposed to be blind, and yet it's strange how the justice seekers in our papers fixate on the mistakes of the Catholic Church and on the crimes of the few without any context or sense of proportion.

    Leonard Cohen was right. "Everybody knows the dice are loaded", but it's a damn shame that everybody plays along.

    Thanks Phil, for pointing out the hypocrisy and double-standard of our media.

• When it comes to E Jerusalem, 'NPR' misleads and misinforms
  • Koozie March 27, 2010 at 2:15 pm

    This is pretty lame.

• More on Jews, Poles and peasants
  • Koozie March 4, 2010 at 6:13 pm with 1 replies

    Glad to see Phil researching/posting issues that speak to the complexity of Polish-Jewish relations. I think it's quite pertinent to our understanding of the present blinkered, ethnocentric and often chauvanistic, mindset in Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The denigration and demonization of 'the Other' is quite an important tactic in the zionist playbook and, I might add, very effective. One wonders what could be achieved if the average American would just one day peer over that brick wall of mischaracterization that prevents him from actually seeing a real Palestinian.

• Let me not to Wieseltier's fulsome toast of a power marriage admit impediments
  • Koozie February 11, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    I actually thought the toast was beautiful, so much so that it is difficult to imagine that this is the same person who wrote the attack on Andrew Sullivan.

• Israeli media consultant in Maariv: 'The Haiti Disaster is Good for the Jews'
  • Koozie January 24, 2010 at 2:01 pm

    "Herzog said that all children adopted from Haiti would undergo the standard conversion process to Judaism".

    One can say this much about Haiti and Israel's bad PR problem, they finally have a plan to snip it in the bud.

    ;)

  • Koozie January 24, 2010 at 1:51 pm

    link to ejpress.org

    "A US Jewish group has denounced a call by an international evangelical organization to target European Jewry for conversion, declaring it a “serious affront to the Jewish people” and “disrespectful to Judaism’s own teachings.”

    Two legs good. Four legs bad.

• the meritocracy and Jewish kinship networks
  • Koozie January 13, 2010 at 12:17 pm with 4 replies

    Phil,

    You raise an interesting point about tribal favoritism, and I'd like your help in getting my thinking in order about the fact that it appears the people that were at the center of (a) the economic collapse and (b) the econonic recovery are all Jewish.

    Greenspan, Bernanke, Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Gensler, Feinberg (who am I missing?).

    I want to look at this situation rationally. I genuinely do not want to jump to conclusions that would even have a whiff of anti-semitism because I do not want to offend any of my Jewish friends. I am truly asking for genuine advice on how one should interpret the rather obvious concentration of Jewish people at the helm of the major US economic institutions.

    Should I look at this state of affairs and think:
    (a) Wow, what a coincidence.
    (b) I'm not surprised considering David Brooks' article about the premium placed on education in the Jewish culture and the intelligence and motivation of Jewish people. The cream will rise to the top. I'm glad we live in a meritocracy.
    (c) I'm not surprised considering the information in the Brooks article that 25 percent of Ivy Leaguers are Jewish. The best educated and best trained will get these important jobs and thank goodness for that. I want a Cpt. Sullenberger at the helm.
    (d) I'm concerned that the common denominator for a top job in these institutions appears to be affiliation with Harvard or Goldman Sachs or Chicago.
    (e) I'm concerned that perhaps Jewishness is the determining factor for who gets hired and fired at the top. It is not a meritocracy. It's an ethnocracy. It's Serbia.

    The advantage of (d) and (e) , of course, is that it allows the small group of people working in such a pressure cooker to have utmost confidence and instant trust in one another. Close kinship means there is no fear of leaks or back-stabbing. Again, I think you need that to operate in such an environment. You don't have five or six years to first build up trust with the people you depend on the most. It has to be instant. I understand that. In terms of (e), I understand that in the Jewish community there are certain codes of conduct which is conducive to such instant trust building. For example, I came across some observations which state that in the Jewish community, revealing something embarrasing in front of the goyim is considered a no-no. Furthermore, there is, quite understandably, considering the historical context, an undergirding empathy between Jews where one looks after the other. Jewish Solidarity. How could there not be, considering the world was out to destroy them just a generation ago? So, again, the central issue is the necessity of having instant trust in such a pressure cooker.

    Problem is, such an approach, the establishment of a team based on instant trust based on tribal identities, means that everyone in this little tight knit group will cover for each other and serve the interests of the small group and not the American people as a whole. Isn't that what they were appointed for?

    My final question: How much accountability has there been over the last year?

• Two-state solution needed, and fast-- for U.S. and Israel!
  • Koozie January 4, 2010 at 10:15 am with 34 replies

    One of my favorite Professors (perhaps of all time) was Eugene Rothman who taught Middle East history. I will never forget what he once said, that every ethnic or racial or religious group puts forth its own PR, but it just happens that the Jewish community has the largest megaphone.

    Whereas the Jewish community possesses no one single physical sound amplifier, it does have thousands of highly motivated and organized people who take any opportunity of a free press to put forth their views. I have always admired that about the Jewish community: they walk the talk. They expend the energy it takes to have real influence in a democratic system, whereas most other ethnic groups just bitch about the status quo to themselves at the dinnertable. I count my ethnic community among the latter.

    As evidence of the mobilization of the Jewish voice, take a look at the bloggers or columnists featured on Huffingtonpost at any one time. You'll notice that the percentage of Jewish voices amounts to anywhere between 30-to-75 per cent of the discourse. This is great considering that most of the posts are quite enlightening or, at the very least, stimulating.

    The problem is, knowing that the Jewish community becomes mute or mealy-mouthed on Gaza and Palestine and Israeli indiscretions, the overwhelming presence of Jewish observers and opinionatti in the national discourse leads to intellectual constipation on issues of national importance.

• So much for a canard (Israel admits organ harvesting)
  • Koozie December 20, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    RW,
    I think you miss the significance underlying the story. In August, the Swedish newspaper and Sweden itself was publically exoriated for raising the issue of Israel harvesting organs from Palestinians. Accustations of 'anti-semitism' were levelled that effectively closed all debate and precluded any further investigation into the matter. Now it turns out there was a lot more truth behind the concerns raised by the Swedish paper. Significance? Notice how quickly the Goldstone Report was dismissed and buried using the same tactics.

• Look at the headline
  • Koozie November 6, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    Forget the headline. Incase you didn't recognize the ethnic origin of the gunmen, the New York Times describes him as a "chubby-faced man with HEAVY EYEBROWS"!!! When did the Times start paying attention to eyebrows? Um, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two angry, misguided teenagers, with matching arched eyebrows walked into Columbine High School today....OR...Bernard Madoff, a short, stout wall-street maven with immaculately-coiffed eyebrows....OR...Timothy McVeigh, a slender, athletic, former army reservist with white-bred, middle-american eyebrows. Anti-semites focus on noses. The New York Times focuses on eyebrows. It's all bigotry.

• Palestinian equal rights joins the progressive agenda on 'The Daily Show'
  • Koozie October 29, 2009 at 1:01 pm with 3 replies

    The version that aired was so badly editted that the effect was completely lost. Two significant points here (1) the Jewish-American woman was completely muzzled save for a few meaningless slogans about cooperation (2) not one word about the 1,600 Palestinians killed in Cast Lead (3) not one word about the Goldstone Report.

• Desperation: Canadian newspaper likens Naomi Klein to.... Goebbels
  • Koozie September 16, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Now that the cat is out of the bag, and we know that TIFF is an instrument of Brand Israel, I would like to quote parts of a poem by ee cummings which I think is terribly appropriate called I Sing of Olaf, which goes...

    I sing of Olaf glad and big
    whose warmest heart recoiled at war...
    ...Olaf (upon what were once knees)
    does almost ceaselessly repeat
    "there is some shit I will not eat".

• 'LA Times' says Toronto has lit a 'prairie fire' against a 'pariah' state
  • Koozie September 12, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Mr. Goldstein is right about the power of Paul Simon and Graceland except that in this case black South African musicians, and hence South Africa in ALL ITS COLORS, were being showcased whereas in the Toronto Film Festival's celebration of Israel twenty percent of the Israeli population--the Arab colors--are completely left offstage and their existence denied. The very presence of the black South African musicians in Graceland was a monumental political statement, something along the lines of the striking municipal workers in Memphis in the 1960s carrying sandwich boards with the slogan "I am a man". I am here, I exist, and in turn you, Israel, recognize that I am here and that I exist. Graceland pierced and transcended the walls of Apartheid. TIFF reinforces them.

• another sign of change in the discourse
  • Koozie August 8, 2009 at 9:30 am with 1 replies

    Arabs and Muslims are painted as having a "terrorist" chromosome, as if there isn't a faction of Jews (or Irish or Basque or....) who are ready to strap on a bomb vest or plant an I.E.D the moment even a handful of their soil is put on the auction block. Your posting makes that point.

• 'I am homeless' 'This is a Jewish country' (voices from the evictions in E. Jerusalem)
  • Koozie August 3, 2009 at 12:16 pm with 1 replies

    From a purely tactical standpoint, it's brilliant, in terms of how to carry out ethnic cleansing without attracting international attention. There are no images of columns of Palestinians being driven out at gunpoint on cart-and-donkey. It is the systematic, orderly, transfer of one family for another on a beautiful sunny afternoon, and this avoids triggering 'the urgency of now' response.

    So, again thinking in terms of tactics and solutions, moving away from simply decrying the situation to thinking strategically, collectively, about how to respond, how to empower, how to trigger that urgency:

    If the Palestinians in East Jerusalem could organize themselves and for an afternoon hold a 'mock expulsion' out of the city, recreating a good ol' fashion twentieth century cleansing on a grand scale, with thousands of people marching two-by-two, mothers with wailing children, the infirm on-top of donkeys laden with belongings, perhaps such a demonstration would gather some attention somewhere before the inhabitants return home. Make it dramatic, and repeat daily. In essence, would this not amplify what the Israelis are doing on a small, imperceptible level and take the essence of what Israel is doing and put an image to the idea, make it concrete? The power of the march. The power of the powerless.

    Get someone to take a photograph of the long column of evacuees and put it on a postcard that reads "Visit Israel: Stretch Your Legs" or "Israel: A Country Apart" some such thing and target the country's tourist economy by using shame tactics.

    Is it possible to go door-to-door in East Jerusalem and sign up people for this mock march?

  • Koozie August 3, 2009 at 10:18 am

    The banality of evil.

• Pearl Harbor, continued
  • Koozie August 3, 2009 at 9:13 am

    Speaking of parallels, I wonder if part of the reason why the War in Gaza resonated so loudly in Europe and not so much in North America is that it was so reminiscent of Russia's brutal punishment of Chechnya and specifically the complete wanton destruction of Grozny. Europeans were transfixed by horrific images from Grozny, a major population center reduced to craters and rubble by Russian aerial and tank bombardments, on their nightly news for years, while in America it only received occasional commentary. For someone who follows European politics very closely, I immediately made the association between Gaza and Grozny. I thought of a story about an approaching pincher movement of Russian tanks forcing an entire village either to face its war machine or walk through a minefield. The villagers walked through the minefield. Reminds me of the 'choice' generously presented to Palestinians who were blamed for not heeding the 'fair warning' given by the IDF to evacuate their homes before the shelling. Either face the bombs in their homes or face the bombs in the streets. In both Grozny and Gaza, the citizens chose to face death on their terms, thus exercising their only freedom. Having said all that, I welcome the invitation by the ten State Attorney Generals to talk in parallels, because it's important not to talk about Gaza in isolation. Let's start with Gaza and Grozny.

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