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Total number of comments: 2032 (since 2009-07-30 20:10:07)

LeaNder

curious nitwit from Köln/Cologne Germany

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  • Legal fight continues against NYPD spying on Muslims: an interview with civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein
    • LeaNder May 3, 2013 at 11:07 am with 2 replies

      Alex, or whoever is in charge of moderation, could you please instead of allowing this comment correct Eisenstein's name in the headline? Strictly I can imagine that Ironstone would cause less troubles. But it feels this man deserves to have his name spelled correctly in the headline. ;)

      Good job. Interesting concerning NY police history too.

  • As Obama visits Ramallah, Palestinians vent anger over US policy and political prisoners
    • LeaNder March 23, 2013 at 10:18 am with 1 replies

      and to identify with the black kid killed in the fight with the latino-white kid down in Florida.

      The "latino-white" was 28 at the time, he is 29 now, I wouldn't call that a kid. The juvenile he shot had just turned 17. He did not identify with the boy, but with the grief of the parents.

      The Trayvon Martin case got more news in 2012 the US then even the presidential election. So maybe it was no wonder he responded. Do we get news on the dead in Palestine?

      I happen to belong to the people that believe that the case should have gotten news, since there is a peculiar home-security-angle to it. Once you allow a nation to freely vent their anger against a collective scapegoat they can freely add their own respective "others". And they do, so much the German history taught me.

  • On US television, Zuckerman, Ross and Remnick all refer to Israeli prime minister as 'Bibi' on first reference
    • LeaNder January 25, 2013 at 7:01 pm with 1 replies

      I can't stand Ross, he's unbearably slick. Mort Zuckerman leaves no impression. Distinguished to the point of turning faceless. Ross is his servant: Here's hope "bibi" does what Dennis tells him. ;)

      David Remnick definitively was a breeze of fresh air on the scene.

      Ross core drivers? Simple, no? Elite consent? His master's servant. Can't we sent this guy to retirement? No chance?

      Who took over his job in the administration, anyway?

  • 'Israeli opposition network' launches in US with call for democracy over there
    • LeaNder January 26, 2013 at 12:23 pm

      Thanks, Hostage, interesting response, Hostage.

      Hagel Foes Graham and McCain Praised James 'F**k the Jews' Baker, Jon Perr

      Interesting since it shows that James Baker shows us the real reason behind the "antisemitic slur", obviously not aware it could be diligently recorded and preserved, for the very simple reason he didn't support the Neoconservative idea of bringing democracy at the point of a gun to a series of ME states.

      This may well be a sign for the limit of lists, just as much as simplistically observed "core drivers", since they usually miss the larger context of realistically considered complex sources for our ultimate choices and motivations.

      In any case it also shows that the hawkish pro-Israel perspective specific kind of lists of antisemites may not work either.

      ****************************************

      May I ask you something. I am brooding over something while looking into the larger context and chronology of "Hendryk M. Broder" polemics against Jakob Augstein, or his attempts to out him as a pure antisemite over here first, that in turn triggered Augstein's listing as top ten antisemite by SWC in the US ...

      In this context I discovered this. The American perspective first:
      Arab-Israeli Fatalities Rank 49th, Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes

      In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

      The German variation on the topic by Gunnar Heinsohn alone : How to enlighten the youth on anti-Semitism

      Scholars would parry that indeed since 1948 about 55,000 Muslim lost their lives in war against Israel, but this means only represents 0,5 percent, which means one of 200 of the about 11 million Muslim victims since 1948.

      Notice the different numbers used, cannot be explained away by the distance between the publications (Okt 8, 2007 versus Jan 22, 2013). The more interesting difference is Muslim casualties generally over here, versus "Muslim on Muslim" casualties in the US. Casualties defined how exactly? And what is it only "Muslim on Muslim" atrocity or will e.g. the victims of the French in Algeria be included?

      The article uses a suggestive pattern, repetitively starting out with what kids would/do think or say and then offering the informed/initiated scholar's response. Handing over talking points so to speak. The above one follows the misguided statement by German kids that Israel kills people.

      Were would I find reliable research concerning this type of numbers, does it exist at all. It feels even the sources the give beneath the tables could be an attempt at manipulation. They do not tell us what the above numbers are based on. And they cannot be deducted from the numbers in the table.

      When I contacted Heinsohn via Broder since he publishes on Broder's Axis of the Good about scholars and sources Heinsohn responded with one word in the subject line only: casualties.

      I have to leave, no time to proofread. Forgive. ;)

  • Millions disenfranchised in Israeli vote due solely to ethnicity and geography
    • LeaNder January 24, 2013 at 1:17 pm

      where Jews in France are conservatives because they’ve been driven out of the left wing parties.

      Like Daniel Cohn-Bendit has been pushed out of the German Greens, and before out of the diverse left groups in France, I guess?

      Look what are you reading besides smoking?
      I decided I have no interest in challenging propaganda.

    • LeaNder January 24, 2013 at 12:31 pm

      the anti-semitism that exists today in Europe is mainly on the left not the right.

      Dream on, that's obviously a quite successful meme.

      Fact is, it was always really easy to see the closer people move towards the right the more antisemitism surfaces again. It's not really surprising either ...

      I watched this over the decades, Not long ago I spoke to an earlier lefty, that feels he has been tricked by the left, they have destroyed his life. Quite a few familiar themes surfaced. The media is controlled by the left, but paradoxically his initial awakening happened when he saw a portray of this guy: Hermann J Abs, (who had played a key role in the economic design and stabilization of Nazism), he told me recently. Not a single grain of worry, about his work for and under the Nazis. And yes, when I challenged him about it, he blurted out that a late compensation under Schroeder to Israel was paid out of the pension fund. I have been watching him for some time now, and asked myself if I would have heard the same stuff had some other figure surfaced in our debates, some hero worship I would have challenged.

      I am amazed to what extend German Jews like Hendryk Broder, who has been drifting to the extreme right over the decades, tricking themselves by moving ever further to the right into exactly these circles. He was cited by Anders Breivik, by the way. It even seems to have pleasing him (see below). I guess he tells himself every day it's only about them lefties and them Muslim, after all.

      He proudly presents this chapter of his hisotry. Translation top paragraph, which is German, the rest is English, from his blog the Axis of the Good.

      The mass murderer Anders B. Breivik in his manifesto cites among many big thinkers of European intellectual history several times the anoymous, Islam critic, the Norwegean blogger "Fjordman", who in turn cites Hendry M. Broder. Some have tried to use these commentaries to claim that critique of radical Islam was used as a template for death and murder. I document the texts of "Fjordman", in which Hendry M. Broder is cited.

      Look how pleased he looks while interviewed about this topic by a German newspaper.

      I found nothing about the Breivik story really surprising, I in fact feared it the propaganda during the last decades would trigger similar stuff over here. But you enjoy your "Arabo-phobia", which I assume you share with Broder, if you write something like that and watch were it takes you mentally, if you can.

    • LeaNder January 24, 2013 at 10:15 am

      I absolutely positive disagree with these sorts of restrictions in the many democracies that have them France, Germany and Israel. I’d like to see them gone.

      Could you elaborate? Do you think Germany should allow parties that basically aim at destroying the German system, abolishing democracy and aim at some type of Germany for the Germans? Don't you think one shouldn't look closer if evidence surfaces that people gathering around these parties kill all type of people that they define as enemies?

      Concerning the larger apartheid discussion, would you say Israel does not control the West Bank? How can they withhold Palestinian taxes if it does not? Who exactly controls peoples ability to travel to use their cisterns to build houses? Who exactly has access to their water? And to remain slightly with the economic angle, what type of economic warfare is Israel exactly conducting on Gaza, no control there? What about the serial destruction Could it be that once she developed the Orientalist image of the Arab village, with a little help from German Orientalism, and once it had hammered ihis image successfully into the Western minds, it does it best to make Palestinians conform at least superficially with that image. If necessary by bombing them back to to the stone age occasionally.

      If you think that is perfectly good so, then I would like to warn you that German Jews would be on that enemy list too. Not to worry, since they should all come to Israel anyway?

  • More on 'Israel and the nomination of Chuck Hagel'
    • LeaNder January 23, 2013 at 3:36 pm

      alway helpful, thanks Annie. ;)

      I love Blake, one of my spiritual friends. Good there is a Kindle edition, swift and easy.

  • Rights of return-- first class and no-class
    • LeaNder January 21, 2013 at 8:32 am with 2 replies

      mondonut, since you compare to German laws. Yes, Germany brought back many Russian Germans under Kohl, people that had left Germany centuries ago and yes, even grants special immigration conditions to Russian Jews. The vast majority of German Jews have Russian roots today. Why not bring all the Germans in Australia and the US back too, let alone all the Germans somewhere else? And strictly that is the Zionist idea, although there always was an inherent paradox, since at the same time they felt that their enterprise should not harm the Jews in other countries were of course they should enjoy equal rights.

      Yesterday I watched the report about a new book by a young German journalist who hiked through Israel/Palestine, encountering people on both sides. Among the people he met were settlers and the Palestinian protest camp (of which we do not get any images, we get an image of the settlers in passing though), but also the Palestinian mother of a suicide bomber, of which we do get the story.

      In Jerusalem he meets an old lady, Karla Pilpel born Rothstein, from his hometown Berlin. Her parents had sent her to England under the Nazis with one of the children transports, they died in the camps. After the war she went to Israel. She talked with him about the her difficult relationship to Germany but she also talks about feeling like a stranger in Israel:

      A German Journalists hikes through the Israel/Palestine conflict.

      Karla Pilpel: I wondered how I could invite a German to my house. Since for years I didn't want to have anything to do with Germans. I almost forgot the German language. It did hurt too much. But then I thought Martin is a new generation, he doesn't have anything to do with it.

      Narraters Voice: Thus, Karla Pilpel told the author of her difficult relationship to her former home country but also about the pain of feeling a stranger in Israel, her new one.

      Karla Pilpel: When I think about what is happening here, I think about Germany in 1936/37/38. The Jews hate the Arabs and the Arabs hate the Jews. Why? Why?

      Martin Schäuble: What does this remind you of?

      That's how it started. Since the Germans hated us. And I am always very much afraid of what is going to happen here.

      towards the end of the report:

      Karla Pilpel: I am so disappointed. If I was younger I wouldn't live in Israel today.

      Martin Schäuble: Why?

      Karla Pilpel: Because of the hate. (she pauses) Between the two sides.

      It obviously is the standard to pick out German Jews prominently on TV over here, although they will soon be gone. Since it is most interesting for us what they feel like over there. And this lady tells us, she feels like a stranger in her own "new country", it even reminds her of how it all started over here.

      Do you feel this hate will mysteriously vaporize if you only stay on course? Schäuble told us he hasn't met one single family on both sides that wasn't traumatized by events. Is this a valid start into the future? How will this trauma be passed on to the next generations?

  • Israel and the nomination of Chuck Hagel
    • LeaNder January 25, 2013 at 12:29 am

      Like Joel Kovel, Norman Finkelstein has also called Israel a ‘satanic State’, though in the context of Operation Cast Lead.

      The problem with many anti-anti-Semite-hunters or self-hating-Jew hunters for that matter, is, that they usually have not much knowledge beyond talking points leave alone human depth.

      While claiming you can descend into Norman's head you unveil your own propagandized mind.

      Since Iran is the current ultimate enemy consent, than Norman must look more satanic, if he addresses an Iranian audience in Cairo. Fantasized guilt by association. You surely couldn't have merged "the enemy" and "the suspect" more perfectly.

    • LeaNder January 25, 2013 at 12:02 am

      But what’s really in Finkelstein’s head came out during a interview he gave in Cairo not too long ago when he suggested ... So Finkelstein, who used an anti-Semitic motif to demonize Israel in front of an Iranian audience no less

      Interesting, Obsidian, why did Norman address an Iranian audience in Cairo? Did Finkelstein and the Iranians choose that setting for a special reason?

      You have to read Joel Kovel's essay, and understand why he used "satanic":

      The "military industrial complex" is identified as "satanic" in the opening sentence of this essay, perhaps jarring the reader unused to figures of speech that seem archaic to the contemporary mind. But surely the MIC is more than the sum of weapons, contracts, factories, military bases, political deals, and propagandist manipulations of which it is ordinarily composed. It must also be anchored in the mind, as part of the consent necessary for hegemony.

      Not everything must necessarily be as easy as it seems on first sight.

    • LeaNder January 23, 2013 at 12:44 am

      Yes, that's just you. I prefer adamantly. More stony, less busy, in his not wanting to make up his mind.

      We had a news report over here, by the way, that an average Jew called Moose from Bremerton, WA has failed to contact Obama to express his support of Hagel. No images though only a short report. ;)

  • Israeli reporter admits suppressing images of 'piles of bodies of civilians' when Israel went 'crazy' in Gaza
    • LeaNder January 21, 2013 at 9:24 am

      He said was the guy deserved to die, but that might only be a reference to Divine justice.

      Or the necessary nod to the Israeli mainstream?

      I don't know much about this guy, but I think Americans hardly know who is killed in their name either.

      If I may speculate a little too. ;) Who seriously wants to be called a terrorism sympathizer in Israel?

    • LeaNder January 21, 2013 at 9:21 am

      I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t “touching” the massacre ... But, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know what came over me. Seriously. I fell for it.

      We have always to live with our "sneaking suspicions", Avi.

      There are a couple of other points though that we can check. Did he speak out against Operation Cast Lead as he claims, and against the latest Operation Pillar? Or does he only claim now he was against it.

      He talks about, if I remember correctly, having just spoken with some members of the larger security apparatus? Could he get himself into troubles when he talks about more of the material. Besides, he claims he couldn't face it leave alone check it. Or is something else on your mind concerning "the massacre"? Strictly I don't agree with him that it is so much better to bomb the place and force the people into rebuilding under the given harsh economical circumstances.

      Doesn't the security apparatus in Israel dominate everything, especially journalists? I never quite understand, how he can disclose the Meshal - Olmert affair in this context. On the other hand, yes, we have elections tomorrow. and that may be the ultimate source for our suspicions ;)

  • In Budrus, grief stings
    • LeaNder January 20, 2013 at 9:28 am

      The renewed suppression of Palestinians organizing burials recalls a commonplace tactic during both the first and second Intifada.

      very good reporting Alison. I think for longer now, but it feels I should tell you one time. ;)

      Shmuel and Avi once explained to me what the repression was about and the closer circumstances during the first intifada.

      Thus the repression and the following military activities seemed to be mainly the result of fear they could be used as political gatherings. Admittedly I was pretty shocked a couple of years back about the statements by an American-Israeli academic in a private exchange. It in fact stopped further exchanges. His deeply prejudiced perception of Palestinians was hard to ignore.

      Pat Lang once wrote from a military perspective that the IDF soldiers in the OT are usually young, badly trained and with a rather lax command. The rest for him is mainly the result of this. I am not sure if Avi and Shmuel can confirm this. Although I am assuming they were young to, when they were sent there. If Avi was sent there too at all, that is.

  • Fallows bridles at the use of the anti-Semitism bogy
    • LeaNder January 16, 2013 at 1:32 pm with 1 replies

      I've been following the Jacob Augstein debate over here, and just noticed that I was right Dieter Graumann the president of Central Council of German Jews does not believe Augstein is an antisemite either, I think we had already the vice president denying it. English version

      SPIEGEL: Mr. Augstein, are you an anti-Semite?

      Augstein: No.

      SPIEGEL: Mr. Graumann, do you think Jakob Augstein is an anti-Semite?

      Graumann: No. To make it clear right from the start, he doesn't belong on the list of top 10 anti-Semites that was recently compiled by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But I find his column entries despicable and repugnant. He is recklessly fueling anti-Jewish sentiment.

      Augstein: That is a serious allegation. What makes you say that?

      SPIEGEL: Is there a litmus test for anti-Semitism? Henryk Broder, a former SPIEGEL journalist who is now a regular columnist for the conservative daily Die Welt, summed it up as follows: From now on, I determine what constitutes an anti-Semite. Broder, whose expertise played a role in the Wiesenthal Center's rating ...
      Graumann: ... is a gifted polemicist. He has also sharply criticized me on occasion. I survived -- and I still think highly of him.

      Augstein: I can't take this quite so lightly. Broder wrote that I could have made my career with the Gestapo and been of service on the ramp (a reference to loading Jews onto rail cars headed for concentration camps). Is that what you mean when you say that he is a gifted polemicist?

      SPIEGEL: Let's get back to the definition of anti-Semitism.

      And here is a little more from Rabbi Abraham-Cooper. The German TV audience only got one sentence in the larger "Augstein case context". Anyway lame interview but interesting nevertheless and in English. We learn that France could have made it on the list too. Interesting to a certain extend it seems to be about Germany more than about Augstein. But to understand you have to listen to the very, very end.

      Hendryk M. Broder, by the way has apologized to Augstein by now. I haven't checked his "Axis of the Good" site, but it's reported.

  • Hagel prostrates himself before the lobby, gets votes
    • LeaNder January 17, 2013 at 11:07 am

      Observing an argument, (in the heat of a perceived superiority trait?) You judge:

      MRW seemingly asking if a political actor's positions and decisions represent his constituency statistically.

      Hopmi responding that this argument does not work, since Christians may support the same decisions and positions:

      Or maybe there are actually some Christians who support Israel too

      Mooser, Mooser responding that they may not be very bright and may have been given the run-around.

      Hophmi, really, as one Jew to another, is that any recommendation for the idea? Those people will believe anything if you package it right. They ain’t got no +15!

      Sean protecting Christians collectively that support Israel, ironically, to point out they may be more intelligent than Mooser:

      Mooser,

      You might be surprised by how many Christians beat you by 3o or 40 points in the IQ department — but they don’t brag about it.

  • 'NYT' (literally) erases the occupation from coverage of Bab al-Shams
    • LeaNder January 12, 2013 at 10:03 am

      Yes, good debate. Horton's interviews always seem more debates than pure interviews to me.

      Strictly, I am a bit more hesitant concerning the hope Phil and/or Akiva Eldar place into Europe. I even wonder to what extend it could be a reverse effect to the efforts to hammer the equation Europe = Antisemitic into American minds during the last decade.

      In any case, I am hesitant about Germany. Merkel is an Atlantiker, someone politically rooted in close relations between Germany and the US, and to Israel for the well known reason. As far as can tell that usually means the US leads, Europe follows. It also feels it means submission to US political dynamics. And Merkel is here to stay. If the social democrats had he man of the stature and charisma of a Gregor Gysi, it might look different. But strictly there is none, I far as I can see. Or if some social democrat opportunist like Schroeder was up for election. Yes, I know that is a bit cynical.

      But of course, one never should give up hope. In any case it may well depend on a changing attitudes among the European Jewish diaspora to a certain degree too. Or that Israel continues to overplay her hand.

      Maybe I trust more the fact that the times are a changing than Europe, really. Let's see, so far Phil was right more often than more pessimistic me. In this context it may indeed matter that the sentiment mirrored in the German empirical data, Lefty occasionally alludes to, may play indeed a bigger role in Merkel's decisions than I am willing to concede. There have been minor hints in that direction.

      This is an interesting portrait of Chuck Hagel from 2007.

    • LeaNder January 12, 2013 at 8:49 am with 2 replies

      Avi, Scott Horton interviewed Phil before. I guess you are alluding to this one:

      Phil Weiss on Scott Horton's Radio show 1/08/13

  • Palestinians establish new village-- Bab al-Shams, 'Gate of the Sun'-- in Occupied E1
    • LeaNder January 13, 2013 at 6:07 pm

      Every German speaker will understand it even more easily than Swiss German dialects. (Which I guess could also be called seperate,but related languages.)

      No, way Ellen. The Swiss language just as the Austrian has the same grammar German has. Yiddish hasn't. Already Goethe had to learn Yiddish to understand it.

      True, somebody from North Germany may have troubles to understand people in Switzerland if they do not modify their accents. But the same person would have the same problem with anybody from the South if he speaks his dialect strongly. The dialect in Southern Germany towards the Swiss border is similar to Swiss German. But strictly only very few people usually older ones speak a strong dialect today, since it is not used in media or very, very rarely. Some people worry about the Southern dialect getting lost and created Wikipedia Alemannic, the dialect in South West German and Switzerland among others . See the map, that's were this dialect is spoken with modifications and differences it crosses national borders.

      Yiddish has a different grammar. One can guess occasionally at least if the words have German origins but one could never understand or speak it without learning it like a foreign language. Similar really to Flemish or Dutch which are close like Austrian, German and Swiss German are. Germans can guess but do not necessarily understand or speak it, if they haven't learned it.

      No German has to learn Swiss German or Austrian German.

    • LeaNder January 12, 2013 at 12:11 pm

      which is a very old German

      no, it's not quite as easy as that. If you got the impression from my comment, than my comment was bad. It always contained Hebrew to start with, old German didn't. Besides I had more Middle High German in mind than Old German.

    • LeaNder January 12, 2013 at 7:12 am

      tgia, disgrace, embarrassment, shame, I would suggest. Since it is Yiddish not Hebrew. I am not aware Moose ever used Hebrew, but I may be mistaken.

      Mind you Yiddish contains quite a bit of Hebrew but this one seems to be derived from the German Schande, which means shame. The origins of Yiddish are much earlier than the German standard Luther's bible created. Before you had quite a bit of variant spellings from North to South from East to West, they most prominently show in the vowels. So the different vowel's don't really bother me. There are quite a few variant spellings in Yiddish too depending on it's specific context. "Webwise" some spell it shande. And there are quite a few Yiddish phrases reminiscent of Southern German dialect.

      This one is with Moose:

      Shondah: (rhymes with Honda) a shame, a pity...."

      Notice the bike surfaces, Moose's special sport's bike posse comes to mind.

  • '5 Broken Cameras' and 'The Gatekeepers' nominated for Best Documentary Oscar
    • LeaNder January 11, 2013 at 12:39 pm

      Thanks, Lefty, maybe one could get one of the teams of the culture programs to do something on both of them. Hmm or for that matter people working in the field. Interesting "5 broken cameras" made it anyway.

    • LeaNder January 11, 2013 at 8:44 am with 2 replies

      I wonder what channel you heard it on. When I read your note, I checked online the news section the main public channels the first, second, Arte, 3Sat, Phoenix. The nomination of "The Gatekeepers" was mentioned but not even a whisper about "Five Broken Cameras". Now in the case of Arte this may not have been too surprising since they were among the co-producers of The Gatekeepers, as they told us; but strictly they also used most of the culture space for Margrethe von Trotta's new Hannah Arendt movie.

      I am curious, honestly. I am not too much into the private channels and have no idea what your local third would be.

  • Wiesenthal Center calls leading German journalist 'anti-Semite' for criticizing Israel, then refuses to debate him
    • LeaNder January 10, 2013 at 8:21 am

      Besides, what makes you think that Augstein is a Christian or likes Christianity?

      Yes, I wanted to add that while proofreading, adding one missing "am" and one plural "s" and I think one missing "be" or something else somewhere. But then must have pushed to the wrong button.

      Thus, thanks Lefty for adding it. Although, I am not sure if it helps in Jonah's and Mayhem's case, a stereotype too deeply ingrained already? They could wiggle out of this argument by suggesting he may have had a religious education anyway and the stuff may have stuck. ;)

    • LeaNder January 10, 2013 at 7:56 am

      Mayhem, to what extend have you been raised with the idea of Muslim/"Arab" as the absolute other out there in the world. Thus the very, very last you want to be compared to?

    • LeaNder January 10, 2013 at 7:37 am

      yonah, there wouldn't have been any necessity to squeeze Matthew into your larger argument. I am basically with you concerning religion and bigotry, but that is not the topic here. The topic is the choice of Augstein as a leading antisemite.

      To simply erase the passage in Christian scripture from my perspective would both prevent scholars to look closer into the historical roots of this and education inside the church based on this type of scholarship. It may well be related to the struggle between Jewish Christians and Heathen Christians in the early Church. Some seem to suggest this struggle runs through the whole NT. I am no expert on this, but I find this an interesting field of study in the early church history. Wouldn't it be much better to develop an awareness for such struggles against "the other" inside religions, instead of censoring it?

      Considering your suggestion he could have chosen everything but the law of revenge, I would like to cite a favorite of mine again, if you don't mind. It's the German Egyptologist Jan Assman. I aware he is rather controversial over here too, but I did not bother to look into the larger debate.

      He states, all Monotheist religions contain two basic element, one should never be given up the other should be watched very, very carefully:

      a) to care for the less fortunate that need help.
      b) to fight the other

      Maybe Augstein is aware of Assman's Mosaic distinction"? If so, he wouldn't use Judeophobic or antisemitic prejudice but express a basic critical perspective concerning all Monotheist religions.

      Mind you I am basically with you sometimes there is a smooth transition between Judeopobia and antisemitism, but simply not in this case it feels. It is wrong to construct a connection, were it does not exist.

    • LeaNder January 10, 2013 at 6:59 am

      That's a very, very good question, eGuard. Maybe since Augstein didn't follow the consent of the vast majority in media? And SWC has realized that it might be more helpful to target a rather prominent media man?

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 8:32 pm

      Hmm, I got some of the context wrong, that alluded to the SWC, ooops I better shouldn't have pointed out the associations. That is somehow borderline, venting anger?

      Interesting that Augstein has made it even beyond Louis Farrakhan, supposing the statements are true.

      In his email response to the proposal, Cooper was even more adamantly opposed to the idea: "I will not participate in any face-to-face, simultaneous 'discussion' live, in the same room or digitally with Mr. Augstein unless he has apologized," Cooper wrote (italics in original). Instead, he added, he would prefer to have a page for himself in SPIEGEL, apparently so that he could tell its readers about his accusations without having to entertain any opposing arguments.

      SPIEGEL editors sent him another message on Friday afternoon asking whether he would be willing to participate in an ordinary interview, without Augstein sitting in the next room. He would, in principle, Cooper later replied. But by then it was too late, because the magazine was approaching its copy deadline. Besides, Cooper reiterated, he would prefer to have his own page in SPIEGEL.

      He also pointed out that he would be in Germany during the last week of January, and that he might be willing to talk then. We shall see.

      the "simultaneous" italics don't work in blockquote.

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 5:11 pm

      This is highly interesting imagery, considering DER SPIEGEL is considered a liberal news magazine. Imagery seems to cross from right to left effortlessly. This image should work better in the new technology, than the Carlos Latuff Cartoon I linked to above, concerning the Cologne Mosque polemics.

      A Nazi post-card: Pay attention to the combination of Antisemitism with Anti-Feminism, reminiscent of Otto Weininger's psychological struggles Gilead Atzmon hardly scratches the surface of.

      It seemed like a completely unexpected stab in the back -- a startling assault from someone who is generally considered to be harmless.

      harmless ;) But so you understand he may in fact be a Nazi, we add a little verbal imagery.

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 4:35 pm

      Let's give him a break, Mooser, at least for a while. ;) He is reflecting on how to get the SWC into his database.

      I have encountered many comparable missives or campaigns from the SWC, and I have to admit I lean towards Sean side concerning the SWC. What reached me were clearly always purely one-issue motivated politically, and it is often about denouncing people. I can't deny a degree of prejudice or negative expectations by now when I their name comes up somewhere. Its power lies in the fact that their stuff is usually distributed far and wide. Occasionally their emails reached me from the most different and unexpected senders at about the same time.

      Where I agree with you is, this may well a Ziocaine side-effect, the result of the new hawkish Jewish-Zionist believe system. In this context it is interesting that the "core column" of the "German Jewish Lobby" does not agree with Broder. I am not sure, but I am assuming that even the president Dieter Grauman, may be on his Augstein's side. ...

      My Axis of the Good "friend" Hendryk M. Broder on the other hand may have had some kind of apparition at one point in his life that led him to the conclusion the German Left in fact be the legacy of the Nazis on German ground.

      Hendryk M. Broder has shifted from left to right over the Landshut hijacking and has declared the German Left almost collectively antisemitic ever since. ... The hijacking was part of the "German Autumn" and closely related to the Martin Schleyer kidnapping.

      I wasn't part of the RAF/Bader-Meinhoff's support camp, but maybe occasionally felt a secret joy about well chosen target, like Schleyer. For whatever reason, there is no trace of Schleyer's involvement in the Aryanization of Jewish possessions in Czechoslovakia/Prague, neither about his involvement in the recruitment of forced labor for the Nazis in the English version of Wikipedia.

      During the last decade Broder surfaced prominently serving among sycophants at Bush junior's court (antisemitic?): He appeared during Jun's reelection in a talkshow produced in America for a German audience on election night, declaring We are all Americans Now, wearing a jacket made out of an US flag for the event. He founded a blog called the "Axis of the Good" to fight the ideological War Against Terrorism and for more conservative neo-imperialist politics abroad and at home in a circle of like minded friends.

      Politically Broder has become more and more hard to endure, for a long time I had made an exception with his articles on culture, because if he hits the right subject he can be very funny, but the last I read probably a decade ago turned ideologically to the hard right too more and more towards the end, one simply could not ignore it has become part of his psychological make-up. Broder is easy to predict, if one takes a look at his blog entries at specific events. He surely is no individualist, the talking points are always a given.

      He was among the polemicists associated with pro-NRW party in unison with other extreme right parties and supporters, including the occasional surprising, since basically liberal German Jew, in the polemics against the new Cologne Mosque.

      And yes, it is official now, we do not need to base it on our perception alone anymore, e.g. during the high time of polemics against the mosque here in Cologne, or based on our responses to his articles, he is Anti-Islamic, an academic study in which he surfaced concluded not too long ago. Due to the many lawsuits Broder had, there may be more that can be officially/legally said about him by now, but I had to concentrate much more to bring these matters to the surface.

  • Exchange on anti-Sephardi racism on the left
    • LeaNder January 10, 2013 at 5:25 pm

      What you got for The Resuurrection? The Transfiguration? How, exactly, does that wine change to blood? The wafer to flesh? Got a rational analysis for miracles? Yes, sir, a rational analysis, is needed!

      Thanks Moose, you got that perfectly well, although my list would be a little longer. ;)

      True, sounds like a pretty impossible enterprise. But not all theologians shy away from such enterprises. Some even manage to challenge the analytical rational mindset. Concerning the above they would consider this symbolical, and develop their ideas quite well, highly abstract no doubt. ...

      considering Siriak's response, tiring. I liked it.

    • Page: 20
    • LeaNder January 9, 2013 at 11:36 am

      The “religare” — “to bind fast” (cf. “ligament”)—root meaning always made sense to me.

      Maybe since it's the most frequently mentioned? I am afraid in this context Wikionary is rather too limited. Even my Latin school dictionary is better. I wonder where they get the "fast" from? Oh, I see what it relies on. This one is better Although yes, needs basics.

      I use Etymoline too occasionally, and realize I should be more careful in the future.

      According to Cicero derived from relegere “go through again, read again,” from re- “again” + legere “read” (see lecture (n.)).

      Hmm? The problem seems to be that there is no consent about the roots. And to cite Cicero in this context? I thought you weren't too fond of going back to classical approaches?

      Cicero wrote quite a lot. One usually encounters quotes were he uses the word in connection with the Roman patron saints too. But my knowledge of him is very, very, very, very limited.

      Could this be a passage that relates to Cicero's struggle with Catiline? His adultery with the vestal virginFabia? Reread to get a better grasp of the laws? This was meant to be joke, by the way.

    • LeaNder January 9, 2013 at 10:57 am

      but I certainly believe religious ideologies should be just as subject to rational critique as political ideologies (and the two are often entangled, as we well know.)

      This discussion is already taking place, if you care to ponder more deeply about what Shmuel writes you may even realize it took place over the centuries. The problem is that it may not be as focused on Judaism as you think it should be.

      This is one of the German scholars that deals with the subject from a sociological culture study perspective. There are many more from Egyptology (development of Monotheism), over cultural studies to philosophy from the top of my head, to leave out theology for a while.

    • LeaNder January 9, 2013 at 10:28 am

      Byzantium, I am a bit baffled by the strange combination of your aka and apparently not much historical awareness, or for that matter about religion beyond "(i.e. achieving harmony with the divine)". Maybe you start by looking up the semantic field the Latin noun religio covers? And if you like it's relation to the verb you used slightly narrowly. It may help to get a better grasp. I am aware that it is used rather frequently.

      But since you are so obsessed with law and sacrifice, let me tell you about my own encounter with the sublime sacrifice in Catholicism. I was eight when I had my Holy Communion, and I can assure you I felt pretty strange about the combination of "relating" to my spiritual brother Jesus, and at the same time eat him symbolically. Somehow didn't manage to chew the host. ...

      One of my favorite profs, a Shakespearean, once said something beautifully simple about religion, it contains the wisdom of people over the centuries about how to deal with dead. That's an important aspect I think. There are many more beyond "achieving harmony".

      It is also always related to life and that is were laws come in.

      A Zen scholar once amused me, by his comparison between Buddha and Jesus. It is a pretty easy observation really, since there is a strange difference between one group adoring or relating, if you like, a relaxed and rather well fed living human being, at least that is the way he is usually portrayed and a human being "the son of God" killed and nailed to a cross. There were many times, when I wondered if this is not ultimate source of Christian bigotry . It's no accident that the martyrs are worshiped in the Christian church. But what about the rest? Doesn't that mean the Catholic church needed sacrifices too. Human sacrifice? I only partly understood the basic idea much later considering more modern biographies, still bigotry is never quite absent, if you look at the larger context.

      So yes, we can concentrate of what peculiar customs the other religions have, we can also dissect the customs. But does it really matter on what special basis we can built up faith or accept the simply idea that some "truth" may be beyond our rational grasp?

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 7:24 pm

      But I think there are certain core values of Jewish civilization as a whole that should be protected and nurtured under any circumstances — and I have no doubt that they will in fact be protected and nurtured and thrive and lead the world in many endeavors and spheres. Visionary Jews will figure out how to sort all this out.

      Isn't there a contradiction between in the statement that they should or could leave and adopt any other believe system and the basic acception it contains something worth preserving? If so, why should they give it up?

      Can't you possibly envision change from the pressure below, over here Reform has returned. Late, but anyway. Or do you think this type of change is much too slow for the rest of "the nations"?

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 6:59 pm

      Focus, madame, focus.

      German, Italian and Japanese nationalists were not Old Testament cultists — quite the contrary. 19th century European nationalists in particular often viewed themselves as being in sharp conflict with Old Testament myths, symbols, beliefs and themes. Let’s not mince words: they were largely Judeophobic movements.

      Interesting statement. How could they have been, or considered themselves thus? German, Italian, Japanese? Explain how the Japanese could have been old testament cultists? Or what exactly it signifies? Only "Old Testament cultists" considered all other people, or nations ("the nations" in biblical parlance), or tribes around them as ultimately enemies at the time?

      Maybe you explain. What exactly are you trying to tell? I really have no time to look into other discussions here in this context. If you are trying to state that Zionism is far worse than 19th century nationalism since it is based on the Tanakh, than I would really like to see your argument?

      It doesn't necessarily mean European or Japanese nationalist were right, does it, you never gave me the impression you thought so. You think they are worse since they take over someone else's country and all these other nationalist only occupied their space and expanded or tried to expand from there?.

      I have tried to focus very much on your statement, I hope you respect that.

      How deeply have you read in the history of ancient Judaism? Do you have a bibliography of works you would like to recommend?

      Maybe we can start with your reading list in this context. Ideally, as I once asked you concerning articles you forwarded with a short summery or hint at what makes them important to read? That can be also done for a group of books if they relate to the same subject.

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 5:44 pm

      proves that Zionisn is not a modern national idea, like others.

      Klaus, I am flexible, you see. That is pretty obvious in 1950, don't you think. Buber surfaces in David Ohana's study too, I mentioned above, I think. I read it fast and decided it is not really the subject I want to dive more deeply in.

      Don't forget Buber only left in 1938, so his Zionism may be the result of something else in 1950, don't you think. We are shaped by events too.

      Besides, if you are interested, a British friend of mine used surnames too, pretty much the way I do, to signify a certain distance. But yes, it is not polite. On the other hand Mr. Bloemker would have a similar effect. Would you prefer that?

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 11:27 am

      I don’t see how a qualification that makes an assertion more precise is a form of obfuscation.

      take a closer look, besides without going back I think you combine two separate comments. That's not completely legitimate *logically* speaking.

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 11:16 am

      That is precisely what makes this particular form of Zionism “religious”. It is the meaning of the term religious in this assertion.

      It can't be denied that the *use* of religion plays a large role. I was absolutely startled when I first encountered the narrative in an exchange with an American-Israeli I actually had come to respect to a certain extend. It was also connected to my first encounter with "terra nullius". ;)

      Truism is just as fine. But obviously if you pick out a tradition and argue that at a later state of its existence it is somehow connected to earlier stages. or its origin, it feels to me too some type of tautology is involved. Since it wouldn't be a tradition if it wasn't somehow related to it's origins to start with. It feels the rest or the distinction between “ancient and classical Judaism” and rabbinic Judaism is simply playing with surfaces as long as the larger political power dynamics and Zeitgeist out of which it grew are ignored. In other words, if one looks for the origins and not at the context which resulted in the *use* of specific imagery:

      Short condensed look at the creation of Israel's foundation myth, pretty usable from the 99,9 percent non-Jewish perspective too, I guess:
      Political Theologies in the Holy Land: Israel Messianism and it's Critics

      Concerning context. Here is an interesting article about Max Nordau, who by the way at one point suffered "rationally" under the fact that at an earlier point in time married a non-Jewish Protestant women, as he confided to Herzl. Religion mattered much less at that point, just as nationalism or tribes, nations, blood and earth, and the whole rest mattered to him at this earlier stage:

      The idea of the Volk as a basis of nationalism was alien to his liberal thought; he suggested language as the criterion of nationality. Nordau even went so far as to reject the idea of the homeland that was later to play so important a role for his Zionist conceptions. Reviewing Barrès Les deracinés, he wrote, "Barrès maintains that man must put down roots in racially inherited ground in order to develop fully.... This is the view of conservatives in all countries who are against the right of choosing one's own domicile. ... When man puts down roots, this leads to a general standstill and then quickly to brutalization.... Movement accelerates development and progress in that it places the individual in a new relationship which forces him to adapt independently."

      Only trying to get beyond sloganeering by adding some context, as did Shmuel in his little fairytale-like narrative, which was pretty precise from my perspective.

    • LeaNder January 8, 2013 at 8:24 am

      Shmuel,
      To ‘take a certain step’ is something real life

      Of course Bloemker jumps in, at an indirect peak of Sean's argument.

      Mooser: And your readiness to admit mistakes, apologise and climb down instead of dodging, slipping and obfuscating and qualifying, will serve you well, in business and personal affairs.

      Can I add something? Arguments that can be easily declared misunderstanding, if someone responds taking them personally. I didn't say/mean that. I used that technique when i didn't speak for a years with my father directly. I used indirect statements to insult him. As a quid pro quo so to speak. I could also always rely on the fact that my mother and my siblings would jump in and declare: she didn't say that.

      Of course conversion as a solution to the "Jewish problem" has century old roots. And why would Kovel's conversion matter in our larger context? Thus no big surprise we meet it here here, it has been present between the lines for longer before it surfaced.

      Of course one could quibble again about non sequitur. Could it simply allude to the fact that there is ample historical data that it turned out to be no solution? Suspicion remained, something essential could possibly not changed? Could some gene be responsible for ethnocentrism, as Sean at one point pondered in our earlier exchanges?

      What are the deeper psychological dynamics below this type of confrontation, I keep asking myself for longer now. The pleasure of circling in on a member of a group in a very arbitrary fashion, since often he does not in the least resemble the declared enemy, simply because he is at hand. And then declaring it a discussion. To a certain extend similar to the dynamics in the controversy above.

    • LeaNder January 6, 2013 at 9:43 pm

      Sean, I appreciate your kind invitation into the ongoing discussion. But I wasn't even aware I entered an "ongoing discussion" to start with, and as happens occasionally, immediately regretted to have jumped into the debate (in support of a friend really), at least when I noticed I couldn't bear to read another of my meandering comments. To avoid that, let me get down to basics a bit:

      I am not sure if I want to enter a debate that has been framed by you anymore. There is something rigid and ideological about your position, I miss a certain degree of playfulness beyond sloganeering. It's not a discussion, it's an attempt to frame the debate from a specific rigidly defined perspective.

      Only to a rather limited degree, you are flexible in your responses, it's ultimately always about hammering in your message.

      I would need to rack my brain to get down to a vague memory trail of something you once wrote. It feels it went like this: In every academic debate you have to hammer in your points. I remember, it startled me at the time. I may have used it occasionally, but basically with ill-prepared co-students that were a waste of time, but I never found it satisfying to play the credit getting leader. I am not fond of leaders, that may be our basic distinction, I prefer teams.

      You avoid Shmuel's qualifier "mostly", you also avoid his hint at a trace of tautology. And in this context I am actually asking myself, if another memory trail may be correct. It's equally vague by now admittedly, and it would take time to look it up, but apart from the political now, would you still say that ultimately Judaism is the cradle of "ethnocentrism". That was your argument once, it feels. Didn't you once venture to suggest that Judaism may have in fact somehow have inspired European ethnocentrism, to put it crassly the Nazis copied the Jews and not the Zionists responded to the extreme European right embracing their racist theories: Yes indeed, we are a nation among foreign nations?

      In other words the world hates the Jews since they stand apart, and that would really be the Janusface of Goldberg's they hate us, if we are week or if we are powerful, so let us better stay powerful.

      You write below:

      Contemporary Judaism has fully embraced Zionism and Jewish nationalism and it is constructing its current ideology and belief system on symbols, myths and themes from ancient and classical Judaism, in combination with 19th century European nationalism.

      But this is the most important point: the biblical themes in Jewish religious Zionism greatly overshadow the European nationalist themes. In fact, most Jewish religious Zionists are extremely hostile to European nationalism.

      Are you challengeing Shmuel's use of nationalism, but not quite directly? Since yes indeed if Israel wouldn't figure in Jewish history and religion there wouldn't have been a Zionism or not quite the same type? And that is representative of analytical thought?

      I know you always wrote you are looking at ethnocentrism as a universal negative force, but it feels you have with a little nod to 19th century ideological political currents managed to lay the core blame at the door steps of Judaism.

      In other words, I am not so sure about your rigid focus, maybe I never was. But then you seem to be much more rigid in your argument in this intellectually much richer environment here, with less challenge you occasionally showed a softer part of yourself.

      As you know it's not that I am unaware of potentially dangerous matter in religion, dangerous readings. (What about the book of revelations?) but lately I sense something like glee beneath your long prognosticated urgent danger that has slightly mutated into the necessary coming demise. Could this be some kind of Janus Face of the constant threats from "the Hasbara" in the US post 911 universe, I ask myself.

      I hate the inquisitorial mindset that David Shasha's ill-advised responses above to a certain degree symbolizes for me just as UN Watch's much more mainstream type, as we have come to know it. But there you go, you invited me in. But strictly I am off again, I only came in to say hello and thank you to Shmuel.

    • LeaNder January 6, 2013 at 7:58 am

      Thanks for the little linguistic excursus Shmuel, very helpful. I wish Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin's work was translated much more than he seems to be, maybe you can you help a little? ;) Very fascinating scholar.

      I was deeply puzzled by this conflict between David Shasha and Rabbi Brant Rosen, admittedly. David may use Arab Jews instead of Oriental Jews but doesn't his attitude towards Rosen indirectly attack his more enlightened, less Orientalist, term?

      Is this a debate about racism or about ideology? Some type of hypersensitivity in search of evidence?

      I may be as hesitant about Atzmon and his latest book as you are, and thus may wonder why Richard Falk supported it, but I am afraid considering the clashes between Obama and Netanyahu I cannot consider the incriminating cartoon on Falk's website as purely antisemitic but in a way can't help but perceive the UN Watch's actions as censorship of a maybe cynical artistic response to reality? Additionally smearing Falk for the pure usage. Obviously they were lying in wait to find something to diminish his influence. In a way this reminds me of a debate between Amy Goodman and Norman Finkelstein about Human Rights Watch as defining the limits of discourse, or as far as the left may dare to advance. As we see one of the more critical left voices or influences of Human Right's Watch has just been effectively taken out of the discourse.

      Should I consider I am antisemitic just like Rabbi Rosen has to consider, according to Shasha, he is racist for my above take on the cartoon as maybe cynical but surely not purely antisemitic?

  • With conventional wisdom solidifying behind Hagel, will Obama finally declare on 'Meet the Press?'
    • LeaNder January 2, 2013 at 11:24 am

      another correction, and I won't check the rest:

      Mooser. So there are diverse aspects to him, just as to everybody else discussed above, as superficial as it necessarily had to be it may be.

      In other words I don't pretend to know them, it was a superficial discussion triggered by the simplistic "box", from my perspective, you suggested: analytic.

    • LeaNder January 2, 2013 at 11:13 am

      I changed this and obviously did not pay much attention on the outcome, so this is what I wanted to convery:

      Sean, I appreciate you manage to deal with such matters like this lightly. I always did. It's in fact a feature I appreciate about you. ;)

      Thanks for the response, no need to answer again. ...

    • LeaNder January 2, 2013 at 11:10 am

      Sean, I appreciate to deal with matters like this lightly. I always did.

      Concerning your special list of contributors, it's rather complex and I wouldn't like to put them all in the simple category of analytic.

      Let me start out with Phil, Adam and Alex and add Annie if you don't mind.
      Phil obviously comes from his own journalistic perspective and one of his most interesting abilities is to discover talent out there. Adam seems to be much closer to Annie than to Phil with her own activist perspective although, the abilities merge and I have been stunned in spite of the occasional disagreement by Alex and Annie's work. Strictly I wonder if Phil's abilities to pick people is purely analytical or more intuitively based on his experience as a journalist.

      I don't know to much about German Lefty to judge her analytic abilities or in fact anything about her beyond being drawn to the subject as many of us, since it is in the air post 911.

      I wouldn't put Dickerson into the category analytic, my image of him is more that of a diligent collector, although I have not paid attention lately and he may have moved beyond collection by now.

      Concerning Krauss, he managed to trigger some of my core instinctual internal defense reactions, I am hyper sensitive against prejudice parading as information, that was after he managed to get into the center of my attention due to his name. I have never completely overcome this early impression. It may be partly projective no doubt, but my utter disgust at the handling of the matter is stored anyway. Limited time to give him a second chance. But strictly there was nothing analytical about that comment.

      Hostage is the person in your list that would come closest to my personal definition of analytic, since he obviously relies on a deep knowledge concerning his core topic legal issues of the conflict. I have to admit I am not up in any way to the challenge that this expertise confronts me with. Beyond that special topic he is close to Shmuel in may ways, which makes Shmuel someone else I would consider analytic and deeply serious and with much knowlege on the topic at hand.

      Danaa is a favorite of mine too, but I am never sure if it has much to do with her enormous stylistic ablity. She obviously is basically not very analytic but acting out her own obsessions with Isaeli experience in a rather different way than Shmuel does. Intuitive and emotional?

      Sibiriak, at least to the extend he caught my attention is a very interesting thinker no doubt, but he is not a simplifier either.

      I have no special admiration for analytic work on a very narrow knowlege base. Thus analytic, important as it is, is not a value in itself, if other factors are missing, especially the larger humanitarian aspects. (not sure if this expresses exactly what I mean, or gets close to convey what is in the back of my mind in this context.)

      Last but not least: Mooser

      Mooser has always struck me as someone who is using Mideast politics as a platform to develop his comedy routine. And that’s fine — Mideast politics needs as much comedy as it can get. I like comedy.

      I appreciated Mooser's comments from the moment he appeared here, and I would advise you to not take him at face value, he in fact may have successfully created the character: Mooser. So there are diverse aspects to him, just as to everybody else above, as superficial as it may be.

      What I loved him for is that his wit always transcends ideology or whatever type of stereotypes. (OK not when it comes to Israelis, that's his sore spot!)

      He does not misuse Mideast politics for a simplistic comedy routine, he in fact created the character of the average Jew out there, facing the fact that even the average Jew is studied as a member of the group. That's why the "average Jew" may well have problems with both sides on the issue. They both try to define him. You too in this context try to tell him were he leaves the "correct path", so to speak. Were he may tend to become deviant according to your norms.

      I am admittedly occasionally wondering if the antagonism between Shmuel and Mooser, beyond his anti-Zionist position has in fact something to do with the fact that Mooser is more the artist type that tries to transcend ready preconceptions or simple explanations and Shmuel is the earnest, serious scholar and activist.

      I am assuming in fact for a long time now that Mooser is far too literate to be simply what he tells us he is, he can in fact be pretty analytic if try to look closer. The best humor does in fact demand quite a bit of intelligence and intelligence is the basic for analytic work too.

      but he is not providing us with any insights about the historical and political dimensions of Israeli politics

      That's quite a demand, isn't it? Who on your list above would be up to the challenge? Surely Hostage from his legal perspective, Danaa and Shmuel from their respective experience background which is temporarily limited. To not list many others above that share the human right activist perspective with the above, which touches historical dimensions without ever completely grasping the respective complete make up of the larger mental/ideological/philosophical/psychiatric/criminologial*/sociological ...

      * normal, however defined, versus abnormal, aberrant, deviant as defined in time and space, with quite a bit of professional analytical input that occasionally carries cherished stereotypes

      Let me pick a little nugget out of the ABC of Criminology, a series of lecture in Australia published with a grant in the US in 1941:

      It's from the chapter of Sex-offenders, they supposedly have 6 clearly defined "profiles" one of which is the epileptic that would need some different type of yellow, green maybe, star to be recognized from the outside:

      (5) By an epileptic whose primary seizure is so slight that it escapes recognition, but whose period of confusion following the seizure is so serious that he may commit the most abnormal deeds which frequently take the form of sex offenses.

      From the chapter on epileptics, random pick, it sticks out in its outrageous tone and "analytic discussion". The whole chapter is like that, the rest is pretty moderate really:

      Attitudes of unreasonableness and irritability are frequent. Epileptics are apt to be shallow, insincere and unreliable. They may be lazy and frequently are In the matter of unreliability, they often lie openly, and will express the ethical standards and moral tone they think the person they are with would like to have expressed, and yet they frequently show a complete opposite reaction later. This is partly hypocritical and partly due to shallowness and superficiality which cause the epileptic to demand appreciation and attention at all costs.

      Now here you have a different type of subject observed through the lens of an analytic (or analyst, B. Sc., M.D., PhD). This lady is a progressive on any other subject with her own limits of dealing with people with a low IQ beyond putting them away for their own and society's safety.

      And here seems to be the basis for her analytic treatment, or "analytic assessment" of the epileptic: Cesare Lambroso. She must have known this and few epileptics she met seemed to fit the profile. Lambroso was an Italian secular Jew by the way, whose books the Nazis did not burn but decided to in fact rely upon. Epileptics were among the victims. Complex, hmm?

      But be careful to not get too excited about this fact. Mooser will tell you that this coincidence could mean a very simple thing: Israelis/Jews are just like anybody else influenced by the world of thought they are born into. Hard to understand? Never mind that Mooser is not really so sure that this may be true of "Israeli's" too. ;)

      An interesting article about the history of profiling in the US, or the FBI's abilities in this context between facts and fictions. Only on the surface analytical by the way, it seems.

      How far have we really moved beyond earlier ages?

      Mooser's basic perspective is much closer to mine, since I am very aware of our limits to understand, "analytically" or "non-analytically". And you may remember that at one point in my life as a juvenile and/or young adult, I would have perfectly fitted the above 5th profile of a sexual criminal. ... ;)

      Now Mooser seems to fit your profile of somebody that may be at his core suspect, since he happened to be born Jewish. That simple fact at its core seems to make him suspicious to you, or hesitant about his real motives. And that is what Dan objected to, who drew me here.

      sorry, long response. I am always circling subjects since I am hesitant to judge, but this does not mean I cannot be analytic, it is simply due to a very realistic assessment of my capabilities to grasp every single aspect the way I would like to.

    • LeaNder January 1, 2013 at 6:39 pm

      And I get impatient when someone challenges me without pursuing a substantive discussion to back up the challenge. I love challenges, but, please, put some teeth into them.

      That's your self-perception, Sean, it may be even partially correct, but a part is not a whole.

      A couple of years ago while watching one of your challenging discussions, I suddenly had this word on my mind a friend uses for little dogs and figuratively for people too: calf biter, they make a lot of noise, he says, and develop a tunnel vision always aiming for their target: the calf. And once they bite they let not go again easy.

      You bite heavily into your subjects and you don't allow even a slight shift of perspective, you either ignore it or whisk if off swiftly. Ultimately you demand surrender to your perspective.

      You may consider yourself an analytic thinker but Mooser transcends you any time of the day. That's just a fact.

      As you know, I didn't arrive lightly at this judgment it took me years to see it more clearly.

  • Head of Israel lobby education group boasts of 'fear' political opponents feel
    • LeaNder December 14, 2012 at 8:17 am

      No way Avi, I can understand that Mr. Balance is still on your mind. But a comment by him would have been much less censorious, with much more love and understanding. 2000 years of antisemitism versus a partly justified Arabophobia, however evasively put.

      Very good additional information by Hostage above

  • Shlomo Sand on Zionism, post-Zionism, and the two-state solution
    • LeaNder December 14, 2012 at 11:31 am

      About "visual 'cultural imperialist' presence", hard to correct something while keeping the checking of all links in mind. In other words, good that Mondoweiss allows many links, but the time frame in addition to the missing preview option surely is a challenge:

      Josef Strzygowski and the Berlin Museums

      Whilst he was a pioneer in many areas of Byzantine art history, he became increasingly absorbed in ethnic and racial notions in his later years. On exhibit will be biographical documents, contemporary sources on his work for the Berlin Museums and objects that were acquired on account of his efforts.

    • LeaNder December 14, 2012 at 11:12 am

      I wonder about these things lately:

      not with his own incomparable way, but in his own, I guess.

      gone again

    • LeaNder December 14, 2012 at 11:05 am

      Sardellapasti, Castillo:

      The deepest impression from a visit in Berlin, which apart from a friend's birthday celebration had a main focus on the Berlin museum landscape, was that the peak of German political antisemitism and German Federation coincided in time, or culturally the acquisition of the most important cultural treasures, never mind that they were saved to a certain extend since marble can be burned to limestone, and limestone is more helpful in building things, the post revolution experience in France, facts that to a certain extend make me hesitant about revolutions. Anyway what is visible is the "late" strong nation followed the imperialist path in it's cultural acquisition policy. Not that I did not know or suspect that before, but it was date-wise everywhere visually present much more than it seems to have been ever before.

      Castellio:

      The attack on France was to forestall British and French attacks from the West while Germany dealt with and incorporated the Eastern lands it wanted.

      Basically, I would advise you to ignore Klaus Blömker, lysias to me seems to be the far better informed German source. If he is German at all, but for whatever reason I think he is.

      Strictly in their best case scenario the Nazis thought they would be able to keep England out when they started their expansion eastward beyond integrating Austria, another more difficult story. ... With the French they had a bone to pick considering the post WWI occupation of the Rhine-lands and some other supposedly German areas, but strictly the Brits for them seemed like some natural allies considering British imperialist expertise. Good "Germans" even the Norman French influence is "Germanic" after all.

      Anyway, Klaus Bloemker, is a specific type of German opportunist, the type that appreciated the US approved continuity and help to shift from Nazis reign to Cold War in its fight against communism doctrine. Didn't after all Americans understand the core problem? The Cold War helped his brethren to simply adjust the ultimate enemy from the Judeo-Bolshevik threat to the Bolshevik treat. So the Nazis had only been wrong by one half of the equation after all. Which helped him to never talk with his father about what had really happened. Mind you that would have been slightly more difficult than to to tyrannize his leftist night school students. They may have had questions he wasn't prepared to answer after all.

      It goes without question that Mooser without even knowing what my specific problems with people like Bloemker are, is absolute on point again, with his own incomparable way.

  • A binational state is actually a compromise -- ask Derrida
  • Exile and the Prophetic: Jewish warrior culture and Israel’s unraveling
    • LeaNder November 17, 2012 at 7:54 am with 1 replies

      Mooser, I have been studying the Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman case for a while now. On this issue I suddenly discovered from my limited perspective as outsider looking in, it too seemed to connect to the larger US atmosphere I have been watching post 911.

      I was puzzled to what extend the US citizen were manipulated into a huge exception of the Iraq war. Now of course that also means homeland security. Or the good fighting the evil on the home front.

      To cut things short. The web community most ardently active in painting Trayvon Martin as a criminal, drug user, and thug and George Zimmerman as their good and rightful national hero, is also ardently supporting Israel since fights started. I doubt they are all Jewish.

      Here they are: The conservative Treehouse, used to prominently exhibit the American flag, as Zimmerman did on his money collecting blog, look at the changed designs and their urgent rhetorical fight on Israel's side now. Israel right or wrong. The US warrior mindset.

      Now interestingly "the left", for which we have the term PEP here, also acts as a huge Zimmerman supporter in the person of lawyer, Jeralyn Merrit, on Talk Left, strictly following Alan Dershowitz' early comment. There was never probable cause to prosecute Zimmerman.

      Without the super power America Israel could not be the same type of warrior it is.

      Tell me how one should not get cynical once one starts to ponder the fact, that this new operation may well have to do with the elections again. Crushing the vermin: Exploding Islamists. Reminiscences of Nazi language for me.

      Over here on TV we are told that Hamas staged a coup, and took over power in Gaza. How many people remember what really happened, or ever realized?David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell has never made it into the larger public perception.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: The face of war
    • LeaNder November 15, 2012 at 12:03 pm

      Mooser, I am absolutely with you on that. Pretty much the same sentence encountered my deep resistance. On the other hand that phrase is both in this article by Marc and in the article he links to, somehow qualified.

      From the top of my head, COINS means nothing more than a lot of money, which also means you can buy supporters. Once the money shifts the supporters shift too towards other sources. The same tool was used later in Afghanistan, look into the context.

      I do not claim to understand the expertise of Pat Lang, I am struggling with him in fact, but I am sure his Patraeus the "hero status" is a qualified one. He is aware though, he would work to make people vote for the Grand Old Party.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: People have been predicting a 'game change' in Israel/Palestine since the early 80s. Why hasn't it happened?
    • LeaNder November 12, 2012 at 11:02 am with 2 replies

      seafroid, with all due respect, I don't like the usage of goys. I am pondering if should follow, at a ripe age that is, in Shmuel's footsteps and do translations. Problem is, I never liked it, although over the decades I also realized that it is something I liked to do a lot more than other job, even under enormous pressure, which I hate, since I love language, ultimately words that is.

      As far as I can tell goy is simply describing what every language must have in it's own variants. A goy is simple a non-Jew. While the word "goy" suggests, at least to me, if I assume that your usage has been reflected, that "the Jews" consider all non-Jews something ultimately alien. Shmuel surely would be able to deal with it much better than I do.

      But let's get back to your statement and a question. Statement first:

      I think the Oslo process meant that goys bought Israeli claims of good faith at face value.

      I could imagine in this context you strictly do not mean that everyone non-Jewish bought it at face value. How did Arabs to describe them as a unit respond? But at least some in every camp, American, European, Arab, Persians, South Americans, ... developed hope it would change to whole context. While others were hesitant.

      From my own "ripe age" perspective, 911 happened to be a paradigm shift. I suddenly saw bigotry and double standards anywhere, something I hoped in spite of the occasional continuity was firmly constricted to the 19th century society, were it seemed really hard to ignore. (if I leave out the Nazis, for a moment that is, but I didn't experience them, considering them some kind of 19th century blow back. I could even prove it, if someone forced me to, at least on German ground.) So in a way, the older among us, may be slightly more hesitant concerning "hope", a steady move forward to a better world, no matter how much we would want it. In a subject I follow for one group "our better world" or its adherents are considered tyranny, to me it feels like the warmed up threat of communism with it's diverse labels.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: Forget the 'fiscal cliff' -- could Israel fall off the American political cliff?
    • LeaNder November 11, 2012 at 1:51 pm with 1 replies

      It must exist in English too, I had Milton at the back of my mind, but I wasn't sure it really was the title, you and me just do not have the right type of dictionaries:

      John Milton, Samson Agonistes, there is a link to the word "agonist" too.

    • LeaNder November 11, 2012 at 1:34 pm with 1 replies

      shit, I noticed "jihahadist" too late, now that may well be a Freudian slip. ;)

      haha, I of course meant "jihadist".

    • LeaNder November 11, 2012 at 1:21 pm with 2 replies

      The word “agonist popped up today, and I needed to look that one up in a dictionary or two. I searched a bit longer, and the closest word that I know to agonism is jihad. But I’m ignorant to the jurisprudence and praxis of both words.”

      I wish, I knew were you encountered the word.

      αγω (Greek: ago, spelling? ) to lead, to drive forward, to head, αγωνιστής, (agonistes?) in old Greek the athlete, the contestant, the competitor, champion. In German it would be much easier to find the correspondent term, over here the word survives as a not much used word with the old Greek meaning. At least that is what my school Greek-Germany dictionary tells me.

      Jihad: From the US perspective or at least the temporary US usage, or perversion if you like, of "jihad" would be the one challenging the US actor champion. Thus: Agonistes would be the righteous leader, the good, the "jihahadist" would be the opponent from the righteous leader's perspective, and thus the evil.

      No idea, if that worked, I at least I tried.

      But strictly I met the word too twice, not too long ago and never wasted a thought on it. So thank you.

      Seems you are correct in English even my Webster classes it only with some kind of expert medical usage probably some type of "agent".

      But I’m ignorant to the jurisprudence and praxis of both words.

      Do words need jurisprudence? What they may have are sources [ if they look strange they may be Greek or Latin for us Germans, although in English you probably do not feel the Latin origins much any more, ] and usages.

      You make me check the OED.

  • Broadwell scandal not the first time Petraeus was sloppy with email -- in 2010 he leaked his own emails scheming with neocon Max Boot
    • LeaNder November 12, 2012 at 11:18 am

      Maybe we should try out a Jewish state in practice – if we could only find a people whom we don’t have to feel sorry about. – Who is this people?

      Interesting twist, Klaus. But shouldn't we consider the Palestinians in this context as the ones we should "feel sorry about"? How would that change your argument? Or do you think we shouldn't sympathize with them first and foremost? I may of course have missed the intricacies of your argument, as always.

  • Netanyahu's reliance on Arthur Finkelstein led him to completely misread the US presidential race
    • LeaNder November 9, 2012 at 4:08 pm

      Absolutely brilliant Adam, thanks a lot, I didn't have much time to follow the links lately, but I surely followed every single one here.

      Project Ocra is about the arrogance of power in its disrespect for humans, or "helping hands"

      Not that I haven't seen disrespect for volunteers before. But if the main source that lets us in on the details on the ground tells us the truth, this surely trumps it all.

      Strictly this explains the few scenario that puzzled us about the reports from the GOP base, ready for the party after.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: Obama’s (and our) Jewish politics
    • LeaNder November 9, 2012 at 11:36 am

      The alternative is to go the way of Clinton and bask in a political afterlife that is financially remunerative and egoistically gratifying.

      very good article, Mark, if I may, besides I am lately pondering how I should call it, article, series of reflections, anything else?

      This is a random pick, since we are on MW. And as I understand it, our dear host Phil, once clashed or was crunched between folk's feeling out there and US mainstream's take or media power. Long before he got interested in what we all more or less noticed, the prominent Jewish voices and their hero worship of George W. Bush in the neocon media during the run up to the Iraq war. Phil's little excursion in the larger Clinton universe was interesting only if you look at the aftermath, Clinton the lover of female groupies, or what was it he exactly? Why should it be interesting? Were his hunters really concerned about the decency of their public leader or did they want to exploit it for their own advantage and a GOP agenda?

      Which strictly leads us to Obama. Hard to believe he will disintegrate into oblivion. Over here the tale has been during the for me long election night, that he is ultimately a family man. His wife is the ultimate leader. In a nutshell: Obama the withdrawn, Michelle the ultimately outgoing, the leader. To what extend was this produced by the necessary presence of the wifes? Stereotypes, realities, a strong man always has a strong wife backing him? The average German does not know much about Merkel's husband. Last I knew or read he was a prof in the States. But strictly I wouldn't have learned from the usual media reports about Merkel. Concerning publicity he is absent.

      To leave out many, many more things that this brought up in my mind.

  • Palestinians circulate draft resolution at UN as Barak implores US to help Israel delay bid
    • LeaNder November 9, 2012 at 9:25 am

      Hostage, this would be a perfect chance you watch what happens, report on it and move "upstairs" and link to some of your distributed contributions.

      Personally I have not the time to follow you as closely as you deserve, but you surely are the MW expert in this field. And quite possibly with the support of e.g. Phil or Adam, Allister is busy, Alex, Annie? you would be the best to keep us nitwits in the larger field informed. Any chance?

  • Exile and the Prophetic: The Clinton Presidency(s)
    • LeaNder November 8, 2012 at 4:07 pm

      and OTHER big problem (BANKING and too big to fail, and bringing the world economy down on top of itself) without “jumping ship” and making himself independent of big-money

      As far as I know Obama had no big support from the banking sector in his reelection. They clearly supported Romney.

      I am not an expert on the topic, and needed quite a bit of time to accept Harper's perspective, but this was interesting. There seems to be movements in the right direction HARPER: ANOTHER GLASS STEAGALL MOMENT.

      You know, Obama the communist. ;)

    • LeaNder November 8, 2012 at 12:54 pm

      Ok, I get your point. If I had connected all the dots to your earlier articles, maybe I wouldn't have used the word melancholic for the the two-instead-of-four-years considering pressure from party politics, and while maybe still struggling with never quite gone hope would have preferred the term realistic?

  • 'A vision seen in a dream': A leading religious Zionist's 1956 call for the Palestinian refugees to return
    • LeaNder November 11, 2012 at 10:43 am

      November 1942.

      True, and not true. There is an order from Hitler to stick it out. In any case he left Africa only in March 1943.

      But yes the military is not my specialty. I always was always more interested in the "special forces" accompanying the Nazi's military, the Einsatzgruppen.

      That's a very special story in military history, I would guess.

    • LeaNder November 10, 2012 at 2:29 am with 3 replies

      Buber had to leave Germany in 1938, and in 1941 Rommel, the Desert Fox arrived in North Africa and as far as I know he only starts his retreat in 1943 after El Alamein.

      Rommel later was forced to commit suicide, since he was suspected to be involved in the assassination attempt against Hitler and after that got a pompous state funeral.

      I have no idea what time the passage you allude to above relates to but these surely weren't times during which high ideals had a chance to succeed. Nevertheless it is important to see that they existed.

      After 1945 the Holocaust cast a long shadow and the Zionists found themselves in very special circumstances.

      I think it is too easy to judge this Jewish generation too easily.

      In hindsight one can also argue that the West supported Israel too easily, but there you go. We can of cause blame it all on the people who had managed to escape to the land.

    • LeaNder November 9, 2012 at 5:20 pm with 1 replies

      Did you notice when Radler-Feldman left Russia in 1906? Unforunately we only have this, Three years after Pavel Krushevan, a central Black Hundrists published the protocols in his paper, and 1 years after Sergej Nilus had added it as an appendix to his book. The only question is, did he leave before or after the pogrom in 1906?

      Do you blame him, for looking for a place without increasing antisemitism? Wouldn't have happened if anyone in Russia, Germany, Austria behaved like the average Jew, Mooser? Yes, the Austrian Karl Krauss struggled too, too much noise and the wrong decisions about a case of blood libel in the Austrian empire, before that too much ado about Dreyfus he thought, but then he was lucky enough to die in 1936 in Vienna.

  • Comeuppance for Netanyahu? No, he might run against Obama-- and increase daylight between countries
    • LeaNder November 10, 2012 at 11:39 am

      Antidote, I have no idea at what time you were over here and at what place over here.

      I may in fact have responded to the "red light district" dollars in a similarly disgusted way you did.

      Fact is, that in the German village I grew up in from 14 on, if you actually happened to be interested in Greeks or Italians, the latter were more frequent, called "Itaker" derogatively, and talked to them learned a few words in their language on the way, you already were endangered to have secret male networks spread the lore that you in fact were a whore.

      Now interestingly on a more polite and political level this happened to me with GI friends in a town like Berlin as a young student too. It was a no-no to have an American visibly in army garb visit you on his way back to the barracks. By the way soldiers offered the best way to talk English in Berlin, liked music and went to discothèques too. So why pick out brothels here?

      Admittedly I was puzzled about that. In spite of the fact that the Cold War. as much as the re-militarization of Germany generally that happened before I grew up politically, not America's idea by the way, wasn't something I liked. Just as the idea of stationing atomic weapons on German ground wasn't. I didn't like it at all. I was obviously "left" in my anti-Vietnam war position, but I also learned about the-single-human-soldier-being, occasionally even what Vietnam had meant to them practically.

      I could imagine that US Soldiers also were on a look out for signs, at least after attacks of Baader Meinhof on the US military, signs Klaus maybe passed by without noticing?

      A good friend had a father who divorced his mother early. This man was constantly paranoid about Russian tanks arriving anytime now. But that may have been the response of someone that fled into esotericism post war, maybe to deal with the loss of his twin brother, or maybe he had enough war for lifetime? He never interested me very much.

      Not sure, if it was you who suggested, that Mooser thinks all the Germans were in prison, obviously they were not. In certain fields it occasionally took decades till continuity could be touched and talked about. But what was much more perceptible was the continuity of the atmosphere in which they succeeded, or what it felt like for someone growing up here.

      Now the paradox is, that while I didn't like Bader-Meinhof's attacks on the US army, I did not feel very sorry for their special target that survived de-Nazification although he had been involved prominently. Complex.

      It gets complicated on the ground, the closer you look, the closest are human beings caught in net of solutions offered around them.

    • LeaNder November 10, 2012 at 10:14 am with 1 replies

      It is easy to use Google to verify that the term “world Jewry” is used frequently by the worldwide Jewish establishment itself and by mainstream Jewish publications.

      Sean, this is the usual circle dance, you are also caught in occasionally.

      In a nutshell, a term you taught me, by the way, the Jews in post revolution times were caught in the same dynamics as anyone around. Remember our cia-drugs friend, who was enamored with 19th century conspiracy lores surrounding the masons? Now the antisemitic lores and the anti-mason lores in 19th century actually blended, it's no accident they also surface in the protocols. Notice too, the Nazis also prosecuted the Masons. Something you may not have noticed, "our dear friend" that put my private email on his list including my complete date block, claimed to also be an expert on German education in the 19th, I think you get the hint. Deeply enamored with fiction, he also managed to out you not only as someone trying to take over his list, and probably also a spy, a member of the secret services, and last but not least an antisemite. That was in fact were his love to lore had his frontiers, which I consider unstable. I may be old but I am also an IT and communications addict and thus strictly embrace free speech.

      Again in a nutshell, if we leave out the more complicated history of "anti" "Semitism", which is something that the right over here loved to play game with, in phrases like I have nothing against Semites, and that people that don't have any historical basis like to pick up often innocently, since it feels like a revelation to them ...

      Fact is that the Nazis somehow managed to taint language on everything surrounding Jewishness. Germans avoided the word "Jews", for instance, and preferred to use "Jewish". Now do you feel the Jewish people should surrender themselves to this kind of pressure? They are what they are after all. How should that work? The institutions? Could there be a basic tendency, if we leave alone the specific context we are facing in the here and now, that the get more conservative the older they get generally and preserving their own fields of expertise, which also means financial ground?

      I have my personal limits with the term "the Jew", in other words the zero-plural, which suggests "they" are all the same. But I also have to admit, that when I once sent an email to a Jewish "web friend", about a book that ended with "Jews", somehow doing a fast copy and past job missed the final "s", and after quite a few years of email-contact was earnestly instructed about this mistake. There obviously is a still a deep mistrust and languagewise something similar to the problems the "yellow star" tried to resolve. And yes, it somehow offended me.

    • LeaNder November 9, 2012 at 9:15 am

      Let's see how your argument works, you were initially responding to this:

      That’s why it is wrong – and I have been saying this all along on MW – to interpret the state of Israel as a colonial project. If it were it had a ‘natural’ parent-country to rely on. – But it has none. It’s supposed to be the parent-country of world Jewry.

      It's interesting that you respond to the statement the way you do. Since you in fact demand from the Jews something they obviously don't have, and that was in fact one of the reasons, why Zionism developed in a rather nationalist and religiously bigoted 19th century.

      What about the "little historical help" we Germans gave in this context, by the way?

      It's one thing to realize the instability due to the project's foundation, and dependency on outside support, a missing home base to which one could return after things go wrong, as happened with some Colonial states, but they all have their own very specific history.

      Would you accept that South Africa was a Colonial state too? How could they survive so long? Why didn't they leave and return to their home countries? If not why not? Since they had been there for quite a while, maybe?

      And especially what is the exact difference if Jewish Europeans or Protestant Europeans decide to colonize a specific part of the world, we don't even need to leave religion out of it, see. South Africa's settlers historically came from different nations too.

      They surely had financial and trade ties back to their homeland, some countries surface more prominently over the decades. If we leave out the late time of the Jewish enterprise and ignore the different contexts and motivations, what exactly makes them different?

      If it were it had a ‘natural’ parent-country to rely on.

      Would you accept, that in the South African case no specific "natural" parent country existed either? Or would you contradict?

    • LeaNder November 8, 2012 at 8:07 am

      Shmuel, the idea that one could use one's own Jewish citizen for colonizing Palestine and have them work as some kind of guardian for the country's own benefit surfaced before Zionism in some European countries. Palestine of course was also important for Christianity, remember the crusades. There obviously is a connection between the rise of European nationalism as a backlash against the more universal approaches post French revolution and the rise of religion as a counterforce to more universal rights. Is it any wonder that "the Jews" are caught in the struggles of their times too, with much delayed equal rights in some countries?

      It feels the German Wikipedia article on Zionism has more about of these early developments. One of the chapters is: European Nationalism and Colonialism. Strictly it would be interesting who influenced whom in this respect. It may not be as easy as one thinks.

      Moses Hess is very interesting in this context, initially he is a socialist and leans toward the idea of universal rights, then he develops into an early Zionist.

      One of the most recurring arguments on the Right is that "the Jews" resisted universal rights and the ideas of revolution. But on the end of the 19th century they had mutated into "the left" on the extreme German right, a universalizing force, "the Jews and their friends".

  • Exile and the prophetic: Two more years
    • LeaNder November 7, 2012 at 5:48 pm with 2 replies

      Gifts from heaven keep dropping into Israel’s lap. September 11th and its aftermath have already yielded Israel more than a decade of green lights. Israel needs one more decade to put the icing on the cake. If I was a betting man, I bet Israel finds another decade-long gift.

      Strictly, I like the melancholic tone of this item in the series a lot. And I can very, very much understand your question marks about the larger state of US (Western, our democracies?).

      This is the only passage, were I feel a slight resistance. Maybe since I am also drawn to the basic MW message of hope, never mind how hesitant and skeptic, but I think that 911 was only a gift for Israel looked at from the surface. For the very important reason that it's misuse for business as usual made a far larger amount of people take a closer look than had ever been the case before. Now attention was centered on the ME. Usually the vast Western majority simply moved on after another Israeli force and destruction endeavor.

      I don't think it was wise from a PR perspective that Israel added their own little war on Lebanon to the larger War on Terrorism, with Gaza it definitively went too far. The larger context created much too much world attention after everyone, who cared to know or understand, realized that Israelis were almost the only population on earth that supported the Machiavellian game of the Iraq war to an impressively high degree.

  • Netanyahu on election eve: Approves 1,200 new settlement homes while promising Israel won't wait for US to attack Iran
  • Peter 'Powder Keg' Beinart is disinvited from gig at Atlanta Jewish book festival
    • LeaNder November 6, 2012 at 10:07 am with 2 replies

      And from his perspective it shouldn't be. For the same reason that Marc Ellis argues from his own Jewish theological perspective.

      Reminds me I should visit an event by my friends the Jesuits in connection with the Cologne Jewish community post 1945, hopefully I did not miss it. I have to check.

      The so far only rebuilt synagogue, orthodox, is close to me. The much less dominant but reviving reform shares a place with Protestants. That may be - horror!!! - from an orthodox Jewish perspective. But there is a longer struggle surrounding this, which may well be the reason they do not have a synagogue of their own by now. I hate spreading rumors, but I think it had to do with superior support of the orthodox. Reform had no access to the system over here, according to which you pay a certain percentage of your income or tax if you are a member of a religious community. In other words you don't pay directly.

  • I am you
  • Exile and the Prophetic: How much justice will there be in a 'just' resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
    • LeaNder October 31, 2012 at 10:12 am with 1 replies

      it matters not at all to me what his dna is, although it may matter to some. i can’t recall ever thinking about chomsky being jewish til i read mark ellis.

      I noticed it first in a list about antisemitism, and then during the discussion about the Lobby. For the first group Chomsky was a scapegoat comparable to Hannah Arendt, which is another self-hating Jew. For the people discussing the Lobby, it was of utter importance that he was Jewish. It seemed to explain why he resisted the Lobby theory. Now one could argue it doesn't fit into his theory, but that was never considered. The main point was always that he obviously must resist it since he is Jewish. He didn't consider that fiction could turn into reality. Now, he is a linguist, not a scholar of literature. Had he been the second he may well have been better prepared.

      and when i read “His ‘absent’ Jewish is his Jewish ‘presence.’ “ it occurs to me that beauty, like most things of value, is in the eye of the beholder.

      You picked quite possibly my most favorite quote in the text, thus I can't resist.

      First let me admit I am a pretender, I try to look informed and well read while really being a nobody of no importance. But that you move beauty into the context of the quote is interesting. If e.g. the arts are about what humans in their respective times perceive as beautiful, Kant would contradict you, it's not simply in the eye of the beholder, it's deeply entangled in an underlying ethical system, a power beyond us, so to speak, something beyond our theoretical or practical means, and it is not in the eyes of the beholder. Ok, I am hesitant if he would still write this considering the art market, but there you go.

      I read this phrase in its "beautiful paradox" as hinting at the fact that the "Jewish ethical" base may well have influenced the political Chomsky, even though his political work is not about religion. But religion is the earliest ethical base or system he ultimately relies on, according to Mark Ellis. I find nothing wrong with this statement.

    • LeaNder October 30, 2012 at 4:35 pm with 3 replies

      World Net Daily:
      Could 'Frankenstorm' be a sign from God?
      'When we put pressure on Israel to divide their land, we have record-setting events'

      ...

      But could the “Frankenstorm” – the feared combined forces of a wintery land storm with Hurricane Sandy – actually be a message from the Almighty?

      Journalist and White House correspondent William Koenig explained to WND that some of the United States’ most catastrophic storms and events have correlated closely with the nation’s God-defying attempts to divide the land of Israel.

      “When we put pressure on Israel to divide their land, we have enormous, record-setting events, often within 24 hours,” Koenig told WND. “Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 – we have experienced over 90 record-setting, all-time events as we have acted against Israel. And the greater the pressure on Israel to ‘cooperate,’ the greater the catastrophe.”

      Some of Koenig’s examples are startling.

  • Advocates for overthrow of Iran's government educate American high school teachers
    • LeaNder October 31, 2012 at 11:03 am

      The left need to mobilise and do the same thing but better and bigger, less politically dogmatic .

      My humor is limited, I freely admit. I should leave it to our dear old Mooser. But I accidentally had the same idea concerning the larger context of a recent usage of the quote you used on my mind. prophilactic sequestration

      Accident really, no harm meant.

    • LeaNder October 31, 2012 at 4:55 am

      Hello, you really look like an exterminator! I am frightened! are you poisonous, accidentially?

      “all you need for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing”…..

      At least you don't attribute it to Edmund Burke. Consider the new meaning this quote has adopted in one of it's most famous recent usages or variations as a fundraising slogan/motto. Notice, you are "good" if you shoot the suspicious out there; you would be evil if you let him get away. Who is suspicious? Well that's actually not a big problem, as long as you stand your ground. That's the good message for every NRA member out there, who is constantly suspicous.

      How about this:
      "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." [Edmund Burke]

      welcome by the way. I always appreciate to get a little gravatar company. ;)

  • 'NYT' piece whitewashed occupation and Nakba
    • LeaNder October 30, 2012 at 9:49 am with 2 replies

      It wasn’t Sartre who praised Stalin in a poem after his death, it was Brecht.

      You are spreading disinformation, Bloemker, one has to consider that you may even be unaware of it. Didn't Brecht when he returned to Germany go East? That's all you need? Correct? So he must have been a Stalist? Nothing could be further from the truth.

      Could you give us the exact title of the poem? That already crossed over from Sartre's pen to Brecht's? Other items reminiscent of his Stalin "hero worship" in his work?

  • 'NYT' op-ed equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism relied on Nasrallah quote that is in all likelihood a fabrication
    • LeaNder October 30, 2012 at 11:34 am

      European socialists identify with Islamists

      Good pick Lefty, and I am gone again. So don't worry about answering. The core question is, can we in the West let regions whose main religion is Islam allow to decide how to develop on their own pace and in their own larger ethical system. Could it be if we simply accepted these core fact, without confronting them with our suspicions, they would have a chance to consider some from our perspective medieval legal customs? I am scratching the surface only of course.

      But strictly starting during the Bush jun (43?) reign, I am observing an "semi-accademic" trend to find the ultimate antisemites on the left. Luckily the German rulers -- I guess, I have to consider new comment rules--gaining power 79 years ago called themselves socialists too, didn't they?

  • Celebrating Chomsky's historic visit to Gaza
    • LeaNder October 28, 2012 at 12:48 pm

      Murad Abdulrahman, thanks for this. Take care, be well, or at least try to be. And survive, please! in other words, if I ever read about your being "occasionally near" one of the new tools, I won't believe it.

  • Exile and the prophetic: VIPs
    • LeaNder October 28, 2012 at 11:51 am

      much like little Black Sambo that was also part of the culture of my childhood.

      Isn't there an iconic Sports Icon Team trace of this type of icons that American Indians, maybe, I am sure that Canadian Indians do, object to? Much to the wonder of the larger public that love their team and the firmly rooted icon?

      To leave out the very special memory trail based on anecdotal knowledge of what the iconic Nazi image of "The Jew" left in German minds resulting from Germans looking into the mirror. Since what else could these memories mean but attempts at pleading for the non provable resistance, thus exculpation? What is really needed is an inquisition! The single ones in the larger public whose glance into the mirror made them hesitant of "beloved Hitler" maybe have to be subjected to inquisitorial tools? What were their real intension thoughts at the time? They can only pretend, since after all there was close to no resistance. ... Some of these unknown nobody's actually saved lives.

      Thanks for not stopping in spite of the mainly hostile responses.

  • An 'industry' built on hate: How the right-wing successfully brought anti-Muslim bigotry into the American mainstream
  • Lecture at NY's New School aims to place Nakba story 'on shared ground' with Holocaust
    • LeaNder October 26, 2012 at 12:30 pm

      There is, by contrast, widespread denial of the Nakba in this country and dishonor of its refugees. Goldberg refers to Arendt.

      Also good he updates it via Georgio Agamben, if you don't mind, for the larger politico-philosophical context we live in.

      I seriously hope us non-US, non NY State residents get a chance to be Internet witnesses to the event?

  • Exile and the Prophetic: Red lines
    • LeaNder October 27, 2012 at 9:09 am

      has left a memory trail

      from a comment on a different topic I am following:

      What has this country become when a presidential candidate can say 47 percent of American think that they are entitled to FOOD and he still be in the running. I for one I’m scared of what this country is becoming. We are allowed to lie, Cheat, steal, and kill without consequences

      Or this maybe, which I wasn't aware of, and still only vaguely are. Which would mean something happening in the US has left traces.

    • LeaNder October 27, 2012 at 7:09 am with 1 replies

      All religions are creations of people. What is sacred is not not the religion, but the creation of God. Without that we are left with worshiping the golden calf.

      The golden calf of course is deeply anchored in the Jewish religious history, would we want to miss it?

      Concerning nationalism and religion or group and/as nation, are you prepared for the challenge to dive into its history with all it's twists and bends over the centuries up to the highly religious (at least on the surface) 19th century? In Wikipedia this combination seems to be a rather recent enterprise: Religious Nationalism. Time moves on and steadily leaves us unprepared in certain topics, or registers the difference between idealism and reality.

      This seems to me to be a violation of the new guidelines. We do not expect more from Jews, and we do not expect less.

      Sounds rational on the surface, but if you ask me it only means that George McGovern, who has been on Marc Ellis' mind before, has left a memory trail. George McGovern, if I remember correctly, thought it would be possible to defeat hunger in the world by 2020. Does it look like that is going to happen?

  • Exile and the Prophetic: Chomsky’s absent ‘Jewish’
    • LeaNder October 26, 2012 at 5:36 pm

      More than enough, Bruce. I didn't know, never in the least wondered about it. Reading your exchange with Sean just reminded me of my earliest encounters with Sean, and my responses. ;)

      I like Berkeley both the image and the flair of the town. But then it is close to SF too, which I like too.

    • LeaNder October 26, 2012 at 11:15 am

      Concerning your questions to Bruce, Sean, and I was admittedly slightly amused, his rhetorical rifle fire of questions, questions, question, reminded me of our earliest encounters. Well, yes, I guess it has something inquisitorial. I hated it when my father was in this mode.

      But concerning, if you allow me to return to this:

      Provide some examples in which MW commenters have posited “a singular essential Jewishness.”

      Mooser just made a similar claim and when challenged to produce examples and URLs he fell silent.

      In what exact ways can Mooser and Bruce be compared?

      I liked the Bruce Wolman articles and mainly found myself on this side, but I never noticed he is Jewish. Is he? I had to go back and analyze the exchange but strictly it was triggered somewhere along the exchange, no idea how directly or indirectly.

      Why should we, if our central question is: are you Jewish, not simply ask that. But instead try to make it secondary, or actually only one fifth (20%) or the larger revelatory importance?

    • LeaNder October 25, 2012 at 12:21 pm with 1 replies

      Mooser just made a similar claim and when challenged to produce examples and URLs he fell silent.

      Mooser proposing a: “a singular essential Jewishness.”

      Now that would be a new aspect of Mooser to me and I already know several.

      Look, it's not the entertaining aspect I like in him, I am a true believer in the close association of humor and intelligence as the usage of the word "wit" suggested much more obviously at earlier stages. I am all too aware to the parts of our topic Danaa emphasizes, as much as the resulting anger.

      Thus: link please.

      How many hours ago, I wanted to give up this comment section?
      Notice we are still struggling? And I am sure you have the impression I never moved on?

    • LeaNder October 25, 2012 at 4:48 am with 1 replies

      These young Jews may have admired the Old Jewish Leftists, but they joined their fellow non-Jewish Americans in building a broad-based coalition that included all Americans. They left their Jewishness behind for a new American Left, even if the movement could not be sustained.

      What is Old Jewish Leftist? The Bundists? In the Bundist case you can pay closer attention on their, as Phil calls it, ethnocentric approach, you can also reflect the issue from the Menshevik Bolshevik perspective. Or leave the one-size fits all mindset, as I have come to lately call it. The much condemned Jeremiah Wright had exactly this ethnocentric approach, specific communities may well have specific needs. Something our bureaucracies find enormously hard to handle.

      Concerning the left, what has been often on my mind, admittedly, is the odd coinage on the German extreme late 19th century right "the Jews and their friends". Eg. Marx and Engels from a right perspective? I am aware I am moving into the Nazis mindset concerning Marx, once a Jew always a Jew. But from the right perspective that is exactly what he was.

      To return to the juxtaposition of Orthodox versus Jewish Left. Now this is a highly hypothetical question. Do you think the idea of changing the world for the better is at its core religious or secular?

    • LeaNder October 25, 2012 at 4:20 am

      hi Eva, long time no see. ;)

      You have to follow the Ellis series to understand, the articles depend on each other, not just this on the last. He doesn't really make ultimate value judgments. At least to me it doesn't feel that is his aim. He circles his topics, changes perspective and rhythms turns and returns from a different direction.

      But, Eva, I don't think it is only about communication skills, deep down Carter is indeed a politician something Chomsky is not. His own personality limits the ways he can represent or speak for the Palestinians.

      Obviously everybody has to get involved to the extend he can stand behind it, I do not think that's an ultimate value judgment.

      In a way, I respond the way I do, since exactly the same happened to me when I started to read the series, there was the occasional yes but, an inner resistance or rebellion. The same experience I had reading Freud. But as you continue he seems to pick up on the topic and lets you see it in a different light. By now I have completely surrendered, I am only trying to understand his specific perspective.

      No idea if that makes sense to you. I hope at least partially.

    • LeaNder October 24, 2012 at 4:02 pm with 3 replies

      bobsmith:

      Chomsky’s views are more politically radical and comprehensive in looking at how the American Empire works. Carter’s are based more on morality.

      His morality "stops short of" telling the truth, the whole truth:

      Carter’s simplicity about Israel? “I’ve known every prime minister since Golda Meir,” Carter remarked. “All the previous prime ministers have been so courageous in their own way. In the past all committed to the two states.” Thus, Carter’s public sense is that Netanyahu is different than the previous prime ministers.

      Does Carter actually believe his own words? In 1988, as the first Palestinian uprising was in full flush, I chatted with Carter about Menachem Begin over lunch. Carter’s private take was that Begin was more or less a snake in the grass. With regard to Palestinians, Begin never intended to carry out anything he promised. Carter was bitter about this. Carter spoke about Begin as if he had personally betrayed him.

  • Changes to the Mondoweiss comment policy
    • LeaNder October 25, 2012 at 8:21 am

      I feel an ambivalence between the first and the second paragraph.

      For the record, I don't think that Greta is necessarily an antisemite, all I can say she seems to be attracted to an extreme type of lore.

      I also think there are no right or wrong solutions, every "solutions" may well create new problems.

      When I responded the way I did, it was mainly to articulate a sigh of relieve that the recurring topics like e.g. the Boycott led to the Holocaust or the high numbers in of Jewish Russians in leading socialist, communist or even Cheka positions really in a way justified the Nazis (who exaggerated them up to 98 percent in some cases, but generally with quite flexible numbers) Admittedly it is usually not articulated that straightforwardly. And some of the debates may in fact be innocently ill informed.

      There are several other similar arguments, that from my own limited perspective seem to more or less surrender to an easy dot connection that at its extreme goes something like this: well if the Nazis already had problems with "the Jew", and we are now here again studying similar topics of Jewish influence, couldn't these two historical phases somehow be related? Could it be that the Nazis really were right after all and we are only censured from articulating this idea, since there is this powerful lobby.

      The core problem with this approach is that history never lends itself to easy conclusions, always has to be read in its specific time and place. The more you leave the macro and descend into the micro of a the human universe the more complex it gets. Just as the Nazi mental universe is an especially paranoid room full of mirrors.

      But what do I know. Fact is I like the desire to understand, and it may even be present in Greta's case, I don't like the easy assumptions the video represents. So what exactly attracts her to this stuff, and to such an extend that in her eagerness to pass it on she makes a mistake and gets herself into troubles? Something she cannot straightforwardly deal with, at least that is the impression I get. It was nobody else's mistake but hers, at least as far as her attraction to this type of matters in concerned. Why the haste when this type of lore is probably all over the American web universe as Sean somewhere suggests?

      On a more general level: Censorship may in fact create a desire to overstep it, some journalists in Nazi Germany tried to write "between the lines", with the help of not directly articulated suggestions. Just as in Phil's case his original motivation is connected to the taboo, and the desire to not shy away but to pull down artificially (???, really only?) erected facades. Or the idea this can only be discussed inside the community, best represented by Richard Witty. Maybe this is the more secure position, since many people are attracted to easy tales. Censorship may also indirectly feed the myth through secrecy. Secrecy and rumors are a close couple.

      The lobby surely has a distinct motivation, guarantee the survival or Israel, but it is also deeply American since shaped in that time and space. It has a highly valuable narrative to offer, America is the zenith of civilization since it freed the world of the Nazis. No other lobby can offer a narrative that helps its respective partners to celebrate themselves. I think many of the standing ovations during Netanyahu's senate speech were in fact self-celebrations.

    • LeaNder October 24, 2012 at 3:42 pm

      Bruce, could you be a bit more specific about the hoax. Are you alluding to a recent or much older story? Headlines in Israel and Norway? I am curious.

      Not that it matters: Several years ago a storm in the JP teacup concerning a Berlin institution caught my attention too. Not long ago I stumbled across a highly emotional debate about essentially the same core topic. Although stripped of the many misunderstandings, alleged motives and distortions concerning the Berlin institution that irritated me highly in the JP story.

    • LeaNder October 24, 2012 at 11:28 am

      I agree, somehow all the fights over the years, which I also consider pretty futile by now, could be easily classified under this category.

      concerning this:

      We’ll lose some casual comments inevitably and we understand this change will lead to a decline of the conversational nature of the comment section

      Strictly I anticipated this to happen, when the site changed into a more professional format, but it obviously did not happen.

      Good decision, Phil, Adam. I know, I am not representative, as Mooser, (thanks Danaa for bringing this to the surface of my gray cells) I wouldn't join any club that would accept me as a member. You always have to somehow surrender to the pressure of group dynamics. The last sentence was a random explanation. Fact is, in 62 years, I never was.

      Now I realize that will also indirectly banish his occasional humorist escapades into the topic, which quite honestly, I will miss. ;)

  • Exile and the Prophetic: Chomsky’s presidential debate appearance
    • LeaNder October 24, 2012 at 10:27 am

      Oh, dear, I should watch more carefully how many things are written too hastily. There is the occasional article missing, there seems to be at least one "the" which should be "they". And it all happened since I simply can't remember the special term for PR specialist in this political field, there is one, I am sure. I was much more concerned with this lacunae in my head than spelling, grammar or punctuation.

      Anyway psychops for the Muslim, to set their minds on the correct economical or religious path, that's an interesting idea. ;)

    • LeaNder October 24, 2012 at 10:03 am

      I am still pondering about what feels like a shift in the prophetic, or the encounter of the prophetic with uncertainty on one hand and US versus Jewish/Israeli exceptionalism on the other.

      anonymouscomments: chomsky would do his same, stale analysis, if he took a skype podium. half-truths and a narrow analysis. from the guy who wrote manufacturing consent, he will not speak of the concerted effort of some, who manufacture the consent (and support) for israeli criminality.

      I haven't read Chomsky's manufacturing consent, but it is obviously an important topic. There is a certain irony for me in your statement, since without knowing it, I assume it could be used for this context too, methodically, but why does he have to do it himself? I am assuming it is a general applicable theory. What is PR about but forming consent on one issue, and how much of money is spend to shape public opinion for the elections? The are among the specialist in the election circus. What can be sold and how to sell it. A lady from the university in Florida, if I remember correctly meditated about why Romney had tuned down his warrior rhetorics. Easy, after last encounter his polls went down rapidly. But interesting, Iran needs Syria according to Romney it's "Iran's route to the sea." I haven't watched it but this is interesting too. Pat Lang:

      Aside from the "horses and bayonets" moment, the most interesting thing said was Romney's insistence that a psyops effort should be mounted to change the mind of the Muslims about Islam. I wonder if he actually understood what he had been briefed to say. pl

      A more general remark. I am following Pat Lang's blog, a retired military intelligence man, for some time now. What is obvious he deeply dislikes the neoconservative influence on US foreign policy, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and obviously it's attempts to interfere with the US politics via special interests, he also would probably easily admit that yes there are shared interests too. Occasionally he mentions men in the Israeli army he worked with and respects.

      Concerning Iran, he has a simple answer. Israel cannot do it militarily, the US can, thus he simply wants them not to try to lead but to follow. He may forgive me for imprecisions in the above.

      I vaguely have this for me surprising and somehow provocative statement in mind, could even a prophet be wrong? From a Jewish point of view yes, since many have been considered thus:

      Yes, America is screwing up the world. Yet when you listen to Chomsky, you can’t help but ask the question: What if America got it right?

      But I agree with Marc Ellis ( I guess I may have spelled it Mark occasionally, since I almost did now) it would have been much more interesting to have a challenging voice like Chomsky on stage, but that is not exactly how the ritual works. It has to be watered down to the most easy common denominators.

      To return my earliest prophets, the musician, when I was young they seemed the only ones, who broke down these type of rituals and spoke about matters as they are, plain, easy to understand and straightforward

  • Exile and the prophetic: Remembering George McGovern
    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 5:14 pm

      you probably mean this one: McGovern's Progressive Leadership on Middle East Policy

      Here is another one that is quite good too. Remembering George McGovern

      Seems Stephen Zunes knew him quite well.

    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 1:31 pm

      But what makes Ellis truly iconic is his sheer, indeed awe inspiring, vanity in proclaiming himself “prophetic” and essentially redefining what this term means to suit himself.

      I never once noticed him declaring himself prophetic. Maybe you can help me out with a link?

      But when it comes to McGovern, suddenly the subject is not Jewish (and thankfully not German)

      Is Neil Young Jewish? I didn't know. Edward Said? Now that would be interesting! Is that why Said and Barenboim joined forces? ...

      By the way, if you ever read Witty’s other (non-Zionist) blog you’ll find that not only does his English transform itself but an entirely different, very humane, person emerges. It’s a shame he never got to visit Palestine with Phil.

      The transformation of RW's language does not surprise me very much. He doesn't have to fight all the antisemites on this list any longer. So obviously he is relieved from pressure, and I am sure in hindsight he is thankful to Phil for it. Unfortunately I am very unforgiving concerning the use of dirty tricks. Suffice it to say that he uses his editorial powers to leave a completely misleading impression in his comment section, by indirectly answering but deleting the respective comment. Not completely without his own type of soft-slander. Why should I want to read the articles of someone like that?

      aries

    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 6:18 am with 3 replies

      That said, I have to say once Professor Ellis abandoned the prophetic to talk about George McGovern his writing was transformed. It would seem the prophetic does to him what Zionism did to Witty.

      Richard Witty of course is iconic. He is the last person on earth that comes to mind while reading Mark Ellis.

      But be so kind and explain why you think he abandoned the prophetic to talk about George McGovern? I don't think he did.

      I didn't know much about George McGovern but from a short glimpse at Wikipedia it seems ethically he is closer to liberation theology then the odd marriage between religion and economics the neoconservatives seem to suggest.

      I always wanted to look closer into the ideas in the chapter on religion here. Strictly I wondered at the time, if these "neo-theological matters" ethically forcedGary Dorrien to make an incursion into politics outside his usual theological fields by writing about the Neoconservatives.

      But what do I know. I may be completely mistaken, but for me the image of Mark Ellis' prophetic gets more and more concrete, and it seems close to my own ethical centers beyond religious borders.

  • Jane Harman admits Jewish state's future is 'dicey'
    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 7:31 am

      Do you think militant Zionism can be defanged and live a normal civilian life?

      This was one of my more emotional unreflected responses. ... I am not even sure what exactly you are trying to suggest above, I realize now. The Holocaust is over, we can of course make comparisons or study parallels but ultimately they cannot help us in a changed world and in a completely different context.

      But considering your question. I do not have a crystal ball. All I know is that the US is very, very central in this respect, and seems to be rigidly restricted by many, many laws created for the issue.

      As I have to admit, I noticed again and again; and obviously took the Palestinian side confronted with images of destruction. But once the warriors were out of the headlines, I moved on to business as usual, partly yes, even retreated back to hasbara, as I realize now. And in this context I feel very grateful for all the work and study that has been done over the decades without me paying the least attention.

    • LeaNder October 22, 2012 at 11:44 am with 4 replies

      Yes, that's how easily the tale of the jews surfaces in the talk about the Jews. Although, strictly I should not judge why you choose the passage you choose.

      How lucky we are, that we can judge so easily. There are always some, way back then that seem to support us, we do not know the context slightly more precisely, do we? Ultimately neither Arendt and Hilberg can explain, are you realizing this? They hypothesise that is the murky region in which we are moving now. But surely we can simply declare it truth.

      There was no "allevation-compliance" response to "dead in front of its parents", man, women and children were separated in the camps.

      but that now seems incapable of leading anywhere other than Masada

      You are caught in tales seafroid, but interesting you respond to Phil's article with Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg. Arendt, by the way was one of Hilberg's most favorite female enemy. Read his autobiography.

  • On '60,' Stahl says Spielberg experienced 'serious anti-Semitic attacks'
    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 6:42 am

      Impeccable Talmudic reasoning, Klaus.

      If time were limitless, it might be interesting to read Peter Novick and than compare what specific passages draw his attention and why. There is something limited and obsessional about his usage.

      I am aware of your warning but as a study of the dynamics of the Holocaust in the Jewish American mind it may be interesting. Personally I liked Schindler's List a lot. For two reasons, the few people that in fact helped have been ignored till very recently even inside Germany, and of course I always understood it as a gesture of reconciliation, I also understand that there is a Jewish minority that responded to it critically exactly for that reason.

      As an aside: As a teacher over here Klaus struggled deeply with his pupils, if I remember correctly he had a partner who had the same problems. Imagine all these second-chance high school kids after work in his evening classes with all the left ideas in their heads, if my recollection is correct. I wonder what they would tell us about him as a teacher. ;)

  • Exile and the prophetic: Chomsky in Gaza
    • LeaNder October 22, 2012 at 6:27 am

      I never thought about an elliptical style, or in other words I never moved much beyond the ellipsis in a sentence. This one picks up on the tools he used to transfer Cage to the prophetic. That's all I can say. We may feel that this is powerful and in the end surrender, since deep down in our souls musicians were our early prophets. In our rebellion against the world as it is. As someone said on Annie's article about Chomsky in Gaza, he is one of the people that is fascinating, since he never surrendered to the world as it is, has never grown up, so to speak.

      Maybe one of the moderators can take a look at the formatting of the Ellis archive page, that's on my mind for longer now. Somehow the numbers don't show completely.

  • Extremist youth group storms French mosque after releasing anti-Arab manifesto
    • LeaNder October 21, 2012 at 10:30 am with 2 replies

      Thanks Allison, in March the imam of a mosque in Anderlecht was killed in an arson attack in the larger Brussels region. We of course had serial attacks against Turkish Germans already, propaganda against mosques from surprising circles too. That's why I fear this mindset so much. They are playing with fire.

      Strictly there is a law against incitement in French law too, as far as I know. Well yes, FrontPageMag, nothing to add in that context. Or maybe this?

      I am sure the mental arsonists both here in Europe and in the US are celebrating. Finally the right type of youth has got it. Do I have to add irony alert?

  • The Galilee First: Equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel is essential for peace and reconciliation
    • LeaNder October 23, 2012 at 8:06 am

      tree, this is a highly ironic development, if I may call it thus, considering the high percentage of Jewish Germans in the medical professions in the decades leading up to the Nazis. They also were among the first groups targeted next to clerks/civil servants. Which in turn saved the lives of those I know of from family history. They left for the US really early.

  • Adelson doubles down on TV's most famous Republican sex-advice rabbi
  • Exile and the prophetic: Distinguishing between Jews and The Jews
    • LeaNder October 20, 2012 at 5:35 pm

      I don’t understand much of this (to me hopelessly discursive and topic-hiding essay — if it has a topic), for instance:

      Stream of consciousness writing? Something like this, maybe?

      But as my mind wanders,

      I was struck by the first paragraph you cite too, maybe more by it's unusual perspective. Although strictly I love irony and paradoxes too. "The many" only discovered the abyss in the process of learning that "the Jew/Israeli" could be just as atrocious as any other people? Only in this process they realized they didn't want to fall into the abyss, pay back in kind "mentally". Hmmm? Maybe I do not understand.

      I was closer to the language you are more familiar with, if I remember correctly, wondering if I should enter a caveat concerning the reason for the secret Facebook 30 member space. True, her statements somehow suggest it exists to discuss propaganda and the video was meant to go there. But does it exist at all? Is the reason, why no one can be allowed in for inspection since it is a retreat for the lovers of conspiracy tales, or since it does not exists at all? I was closer to the latter so far. But the idea is interesting. Maybe? Secrecy because of fascination for the lore, but realizing dealt with openly people object to it? A little corner for the one attracted to conspiracy tales?

      Concerning conspiracy tales, what with the ones with non-Jewish actors, academic ones of the type of Laurie Mylroie, or the Mahdi conspiracy threat of Iran, well maybe that one does not quite fit, or the conspiracy of the Muslim take over of Europe, Londonistan, Europistan? Versus the reality of hardcore Islamist movements that seem to want to get the West out? Without the tiny dot's out there to connect the tales don't work. And where exactly is Israel situated in these mighty and clashing West - East grand conspiracy tale? Or matter of West and East? In other words what is real and what is politics or fiction?

  • Assassination by car bomb in Beirut follows warnings about Syrian 'spillover'
    • LeaNder October 21, 2012 at 6:38 am

      the arab (Sunni) spring started in morocco with the lighting of a match

      Wes, if one has a ready made ideology in mind, one should at least keep the dot's to prove one's narrative straight. No?

      What about Tunisia? That would be bad, since it wouldn't span all of Northern Africa for the future empire?

  • 'Daily Beast' crank against intermarriage pushes regime change in Iran on the side
    • LeaNder October 19, 2012 at 9:52 am

      By the way, the book you allude to doesn't satisfy my desires.

    • LeaNder October 19, 2012 at 9:49 am

      Interesting phrase: “racial fitness.” That is a concept that the Nazis shared and later fully developed.

      Yesterday I remembered an old statement by you, that went something like, correct me if I am wrong. The Nazis may in fact have based their ideology of racial purity on the Jews/Israelis. In a way copied it.

      Max Nordau is a very interesting and specific case, but can he be used as pars pro toto for Zionism in its time?

      I am not aware that anybody has written a biography of Max Nordau (or Simon Maximilian Süssfeld) or studied his "political genesis" apart from his literary one. If so, I surely would read it, just in case you can help me out.

      What I have in mind is reading Nordau's life in the context of the ideas around him, linguistically e.g. the Aryan language family versus the Semitic, for instance (when exactly did he change his name to Nordau, was it influenced by the Romantic revival or Northern myth?), or Darwinism, and related racial mental excursion, the rise of antisemitism, the big antisemitism dispute triggered by Treitschke?

      I have to admit that 19th century liberal thought in certain aspects is just as nauseating to me as our own mainly neo-liberal streams today, for instance. Even today the rare authentic liberal voices, from my perspective, not talking the left parties mind you, but in the German liberal party seem to be receding into pure neo-liberalism .

      To copy the approach of a perfect article by Phil meditating about what he would have been at a certain time in history: what streams of thought would have influenced me at the time depending on my background and influences, to what extend would I have been attracted to political romanticism myself? And "political romanticism" may actually have been one of the influences on Nordau at his time.

      But strictly I agree for the superficial person, that loves fast and easy categories it must be a revelation to discover Max Nordau's Degeneration.

      Sounds pretty similar to the Nazi's politics not only in culture, doesn't it?

  • If only it was just one tweet: One activist's experience in the 'Our Land' Facebook group
    • LeaNder October 22, 2012 at 7:11 pm

      Ooops, I only noticed now, sorry, that may have been confusing:

      I actually responded to your concise article comment.

      I am too tired to check if there is another Freudian slip, spelling errors et al.

    • LeaNder October 22, 2012 at 6:00 pm

      Bruce, first, I actually responded to your concise article, in my usual circling, meandering mode, that may in fact feel evasive. I am not too fond of fast judgments, although sometimes they happen.

      I remember the exchanges about Ahmadinejad's UN speech, plus the simplistic response along the enemy of my enemy, also Muhammad of Vancover. Ditto, I remember the hoax about Edwin Black, or the claim he was forced to reprint an earlier edition due to pressure from the lobby. That was one of the absurd peaks on the recurring Zionist Nazi theme, which seems the top item in the surely not always pure struggle with Zionism.

      Nobody on MW has since been able to show that, except for the added introduction and afterword, the two editions of the book differ.

      Did you honestly ever expect it? Maybe "he/she/it" did not even try to get a copy of the edition much less two to compare, since it dawned on her/him that s/he may have been duped that it existed at all? Since s/he never intended to go through that much trouble and compare the "suspicious new" editions with the supposedly different earlier one. There is a German joke which ends, no thanks, I already have a book.

      Did you witness RW's Hamas quote that forced Israel into Cast Lead? I think it can be compared. Think of a private strife as a kid, you have no more arguments, but you realize you are wrong. But are still in fighting mode, so you simply invent something. Or someone else did for you and you copy it.

      Was this research I did received well in the MW community. Hardly!

      I wish I could do a Mooser on that one. ;) Wasn't that obvious from the start? Look, I respect you. Of course no one could show the second edition.

      I only remember I found the story unlikely immediately. I may be using the same argument as I did then, what sense would it make to censor an already published book in a new edition? Strictly a changed edition should show at least in a high quality library data bases. I don't always trust Amazon on that. I remember though that I did take a look at the edition and there was a multitude, even different publishers, no? ... Maybe that triggered the idea in someone's head?

      Have you ever wondered the reasons that Phil and Adam almost never engage in the comments section, almost ignore it? Quite strange in my view.

      I actually notice them sometimes, Allison too, Annie anyway. I surely hope they spend most of their time reading, checking their mails and deciding what to put up next and generally stay connected with people and their stories that may interest the larger world.

    • LeaNder October 22, 2012 at 6:05 am

      I am somehow wondering, if you are Bruce Wolman.

      Let's suppose you come from the author's perspective, you may indeed feel it would be much better to have no comment section at all. Comments could shine a negative light on your article. Especially concerning a topic like this.

      A couple of days ago, I reflected on how some of Phil's lines of thought have been picked up and turned into an argumentative standard. It's usually only the ones that lent themselves to easy categorization, rarely the more thoughtful ones. So there is a connection between author and reader, no matter if it is visible or if it is not.

      I had a comment censored not too long ago, I made it easy for the moderator. I signaled, look this is antisemitic. Hint: not all comments may have this clear signal. Strictly it is possible to circumvent all discussion rules stylistically. It's hard work to look close at any one considering the amount of comments here. Are you willing to sponsor the task? No comments at all, surely would save a lot of time. The question is what signal would it sent?

      If I may return to my example. Jerralyn Merrit's Talk Left, which ultimately made me aware there are more "progressives with a bendable perception of human rights", a variation of PEP, in the US. Isn't it a part of becoming a professional in our world to loose your juvenile illusions? Always better to align with the interests that pay well.

      Jeralyn in her bombshell article, linked to one of the most visible pro-Zimmerman activists. Diwata Man. Interestingly calling his article--which suggests a police conspiracy against George Zimmerman--a summary of O'Mara's motion. [Is the handy found on the scene at all Trayvon's? Are there fingerprints to prove it?] Diwata Man doesn't allow comments. The box beneath his articles only serves to sent him a message. What message is he sending to the world in 2012 with this choice?

      Meandering further OT but trying to return later: Here is his collection of Evidence, Articles and blogs: George Zimmerman case.

      Allison yesterday had an article on La Génération Identitaire. I have stopped reading or monitoring FrontPageMag a long time ago. Thus I wasn't familiar with the author's name Allison linked to. But he surfaces in Diwata Man's collection He suggests that Zimmerman is only prosecuted because of his name, somehow elliptically. (Zimmerman=Carpenter; can be Jewish can be non-Jewish German) Take a look at Daniel Greenfeld's "about me", about his circles. Small world, isn't it?

      I am firmly behind Chomsky and Finkelstein. Israel is a firm part of the larger US "moral majority" deeply entangled and branching out into the hard right. That's why I start to feel uncomfortable when Americans left-right-center reduce the Israel connection to the only problem out there; in other words ignore the power block their own US "moral majority"/corporate/military complex represents, which have much more power to influence public opinion.

      Yes, from that perspective, I sometimes feel slightly uncomfortable here; but and that is a big but, I also like and respect the MW community. Not only Mooser, our court jester, and Danaa, the MW queen of rants. Even if we occasionally clash from our different perspectives. That's life.

      And now I shut up for a while again.

    • LeaNder October 21, 2012 at 12:33 pm

      tree, with one corner of my eye, I caught Sean struggling verbally with Colin Wright. I didn't pay closer attention on the context admittedly, but was somehow surprised.

      I've seen quite a few comments on Jeralyn Merrits, "Talk Left" George Zimmerman tag censured. In her case they go up, without moderator and disappear without leaving a trace. Sometimes she mentions a deletion, never in my case never. The rule behind my disappearing comments seems to be everything that even comes close to question her "left" position, e.g. by asking why she is so enamored with the right wing lore of poor prosecuted George Zimmerman, like in this "bomb shell" motion by O'Mara.

      Personally, I don't remember having seen a comment by Colin that I would object to, at least I don't remember, and my personal red lines may be much more restrictive than Sean's occasionally. But as him I have never asked for anyone to be censured.

      Maybe Colin reflects on what may have triggered it. I don't think we should make a martyr of him. If he has something really important to say, and feels it is absolutely urgent that the world at large knows about it but he does not get it through here. There is very much space and many tools to articulate himself on the web. I

      The problem administratively may well be, it might be more easy to ban someone than spent time on reading him closely all the time.

    • LeaNder October 19, 2012 at 2:07 pm

      I disagree about that. First, the Nazis believed the Jews already had two such power bases: in the USSR and in the USA. Second, I would gather that from a strategic standpoint, Hitler would have much rather have had the Jews concentrated than spread out, because it would have made his goal of murdering them all that much easier.

      I hesitate to go deeper into the topic. Obviously the evidence is mixed, to not repeat my favorite Henry Miller quote, in every statement there is a little error ...

      The Arab Revolt triggered some concerns and activities in the Nazi bureaucracy including interferences by the "Führer". But remember getting rid of Jewish and Austrian Germans by moving them to Palestine, from their perspective must not necessarily have meant they liked the idea of a Jewish state. ... It surely was multi voiced choir with Hitler as the final decider and some surely bothered more than others. But I think some did indeed feared it and warned of it.

      I can only access traces online: the specter of a Jewish state. The better pages are missing for me.

      Indeed, by the autumn of 1937, obstacles to increasing Jewish immigration were viewed with greater alarm than the specter of a Jewish state. p. 132:

      Second, I would gather that from a strategic standpoint, Hitler would have much rather have had the Jews concentrated than spread out, because it would have made his goal of murdering them all that much easier.

      Less logistics needed at some time in the future? You think? Firm believe in their invincibility? Look at the maps. One could no doubt try to confirm that, but why? Fact is Zionism already existed, it offered itself as a solution, the resulting concentration was helped but surely not invented by the Nazis. To play a bit with the imagery that started this debate.

      (And, indeed, if the Germans had won in North Africa, he would have immediately set out to occupy Palestine and murder all the Jews there; the Transfer Agreement certainly wouldn’t have stopped him.)

      Well, Rommel was stopped by the Allies. One of the war heroes. My knowledge is vague in this context. Although I am more and more interested in the Middle Eastern real war fronts, and planned ones.

      He would never be afraid of a Jewish state because, in his mind, the only way that the Jewish forces could defeat the superior Germans was if they sabotaged the German effort.

      I can't verify it, or Nicosia's sources, but I think they actually did. I can't confirm this is true for Hitler too, but to a larger extend they mirror their leader. You think it doesn't fit into their self-perception of invincibility? Remember the war and the war against Jewry merged in their heads.

      I am pretty sure I have read about fears in this context not only in Nicosia. But I am not a systematic scholar in this context. I hope you did not get the impression I tried to ever pretend that.

    • LeaNder October 19, 2012 at 8:20 am

      The academic article

      From the top of my head: It is written from the perspective to balance Israel's use of the Holocaust for it's own advantage, but it never states it's motives openly it hides them in context. Basically I can understand the interest in the topic, it's an attempt to challenge to "holier than thou/light unto the nation" image. But there are far better glimpses into the larger context around, e.g. hints in Raul Hilberg's biography.

      I have quite a few problems with the article. The first would be, Fevel Polkes is a slightly more complicated matter. I would warn people to exclusively rely on Eichmann in this context. [not really important, but it is highly funny to see Bertold Brecht compose music. Kurt Weill, maybe?]

      Then what is academic in suggestions like this?

      History might have been very different had the Zionists component of Jewry opposed Nazism and there might never have been a Holocaust. And there might never have been a state of Israel , as some Zionists well understood.

      Is the argument about what could have been academic? Is it a valid historical method?

      Couldn't--to look at it differently--the Nazi's rise to power and their treatment of German Jews have somehow led to the success of the equivalent extreme parts of Zionism versus the cultural Zionists? Even the rise of more conservative to right responses among American Jewry?

      You could in fact take many of the citations he uses and create a more complex narrative. Let's pick the idea, that antisemitism arises when the percentage of Jews in whatever nation gets too high? Couldn't some Zionists based on that ideological paradigm indeed have believed the more people they took out of the country would somehow have normalized the situation for the rest? And couldn't that in turn explain their ambivalence, or the idea among some that one day Germany and Israel would have quite normal relations. After all didn't they try to diminish the percentage, reduce the "Jewish problem" to a degree the state could bear?

      I see another irony in the concentration on the Zionist self-interest. [One of my next projects will be to look into the "pseudo-scientific" magazine dealing with "the Jewish question" distributed only in a very small number to Nazi elites and partly uproad it seems, this obviously includes their look at Zionism. Interestingly it was renamed at one point to appease the Arab world.]

      But back to the irony, if you suggest that Zionists could have saved much more persecuted Jews than they actually did, didn't "the Jews" to a certain extend have to be as powerful as the Nazis imagined them to be. How can any group controlling world finances not be able to help all? Obviously Zionists thought about saving their own project first. Obviously Zionist and American Jewish elites were leaning towards the conservative or right, probably like the elite of any other group at the time or even today?

      Ideologically their most extreme enemy the Nazis would have understood, why "they" wanted to concentrate their sources on that aim. The Nazis feared nothing more than the coming into existence of a Jewish state. Easy to see: Some kind of power base from were "the Jews" could plan revenge and more perfectly control and manipulate the world. But oddly enough, considering their own myth about the Jews, many thought didn't wouldn't make it.

      Let's take this quote from Yitzhak Gruenbaum, leader of the Jewish Agency's Vaad Hazalah (Rescue committee) who in 1942 also believed the reports of atrocities taking place in Europe were exaggerated

      How is it possible that in a meeting in Yerushalayim people will call: “If you don't have enough money you should take it from Keren Hayesod [the Palestine Foundation Fund], you should take the money from the bank, there is money there.” I thought it obligatory to stand before this wave … .

      If I may end on a anecdote from my late teens early twenties. My mother, who just called, at one point confronted my brother since he constantly overdrew his bank account, sometimes to buy her very expensive gifts. My brother answered her challenge: What's your problem, banks have enough money, no?

    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 9:00 pm

      American: Where does Berlin say that in the tweets?

      second screen shot top:

      Berlin
      link to countercurrents.org

      Finally people coming to confront what many of us know for many years.
      Not just that The H was exploited by the Zionists to create Israel, but that - in large measure - it was aided, abetted and to a large degree - created by them to create the ineluctable tide of world opinion for the establishment of a Jewish "safe heaven."

      **************************************************

      I don't read an article that starts like this:
      "Both Nazism and Zionism arose in tandem from small insignificant social movements, in the early part of the 20 th century, arguing, with equal force, that Jews were an alien and indigestible mass living in the midst of an otherwise pure Aryan population."

      I guess you know when Zionism arose. I can assure you though, that Hitler first had to fight WWI before he could start pondering about founding a party, so the suggested neat parallelism doesn't work. The rest is probably similar in it's tendentiousness and use of semi-truth.

    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 8:27 pm

      Absolutely perfect, Woody.

    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 5:04 pm

      Joachim, problematic but he presents researched arguments. I think we are grown ups and capable of divining facts from fiction. We are presented with a mountain of Zionist fiction and have been for years.

      LOL! "researched argument". Hi, Yani, (no?) what you call research is in fact reading in search of proof for his basic preconceptions.

      Strictly, I wondered if Joachim is the source of what feels like Greta's inner disunity (disjointedness) that seems to surface in the quotes cited above.

      In the early times of MW Martillo tried to spin people into his yarn here. He'll always finds people that consider his activities "research", a failed scholar in search of his little fame on the web.

      Greta:

      He has his good moments but his head is sometimes up his ass...ertions.

      I wouldn't go as far as that, but yes, he at least at one point mentioned an author and book I read since looked at closer it sounded interesting, but to find out he Martillo had squeezed him, as was to be expected, into his larger "Judonia tale".

  • Estelle and the freedom of association
    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 8:08 pm

      You really aren’t a good one to look at this objectively because you yourself know and have admitted, you are too emotional and involved in German guilt issues re the Jews and Israel to be objective.

      Well, I guess I accept that, since you called me "dear" ;)
      I don't think it's about guilt, since I wasn't born, it's slightly more complex. It's more an ethical responsibility, maybe.

      I would warn people not to take the route of neoconservative journalism, most strikingly expressed as: "We are feeding the rage". Feeding matters like the Eustace Mullins video into the larger already heated and justifiably angry activist context is pretty much the same for me.

      What I definitively don't like is labeling Gabriel Ash or any other contributor who happens to be Jewish or Israeli a "Jewish tribalist"; I would react exactly the same way if a Palestinian would be called terrorist.

      And my dear you might noticed that “I” have not declared Berlin either guilty or not guilty.

      Neither have I. I don't know Greta, and I doubt I know the whole story. Although yes, I have demanded that she deals openly with it, and steps back to not harm the cause. But by now I have the impression the stuff she tries to handle or to "digest" is way over her head. ...

      I have the highest respect for free speech. Better to allow it into the open than push ideas underground. But it is easy to see that the salesman with their lores or "hidden truth" often manage to pull the discussion into channels that satisfy their own desires. And from my perspective a Martillo was worse than a Witty to struggle with. Witty tried to fend people off with abstractions, balance and a religion he has never tried to understand, since for most of life he searched enlightenment in India; Martillo lures with hot semi-self knitted tales. One can be considered a nuisance the other it feels is dangerous.

      To return to the above, yes I am allergic to the type of "Judaism discovered" Joachim Martillo represents just as in his own way Eustace Mullins.

    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 7:45 am with 5 replies

      I agree with you, Ali, Gabriel Ash is one of the most valuable voices out there for me. I readily admit, I admire his sharp wit for a long time now. He has the ability to deal with controversial issues completely unexcitedly, generally it feels, not only in this instance.

      Concerning American below:

      And I am more convinced every time I see your kind of stuff that character assassinating slurers and Jewish tribalist like you should not be allowed with a thousand miles of Palestine activism.

      Ready made preconceptions, without any patience to listen. If someone has the ability to play my emotions like an electric organ, he must be correct. Since, don't my emotions tell me he is correct? After all I feel it: Isn't it a witch hunt, isn't it "guilt by association"? I have to admit I somehow surrendered myself to the meme--with all due respect to Henry's respect for Anne Wright--as I realized too late, emotionally. I only started to reflect once, I had pushed the "post comment" button .

      Thanks a lot, Gabriel, for this response.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: 'Body Worlds’ after life
    • LeaNder October 18, 2012 at 8:12 am

      I hope, we hear more about the interfaith ecumenical love fest.

      Strictly it doesn't matter, I never went to see any of the staged exhibitions here in Cologne or anywhere else.

      I can't really say why, I may have a certain resistance towards the spectacular in the arts, I am also slightly hesitant about innovation as core principle of the arts, or maybe as in his case of the thin line between "innovation" and "spectacle" Beyond that I found it interesting that artistic innovator Gunter von Hagens tried to copy Josef Beuy's apparel in his mutation from "doctor" to "artist". Thus the artistic innovator presented himself to the public as copyist of Joseph Beuys, not as an artist but as a human being.

  • Exile and the Prophetic: 'Body Worlds' and the prophetic
    • LeaNder October 16, 2012 at 2:02 pm

      1. The fact that the founder of Body Worlds is German is important to me – and the date of his birth – 1945 – is important, too, because the first images of the body I think of involves his German background and birth date – that is the Holocaust.

      For me his birth date trigger the images of the dead marches. Goebbels declared the Jewish question solved, in 1944.

      Gunter von Hagens (born: Liebchen = sweetheart), was born on January, 10, 1945 in Skalmierzyce. Did his family move into one of the houses in Poland of the ethnically cleansed Poles, that is did they live there before 1939, or did they belong to the Germans invited in from Russia?

      Yes somehow one automatically asks oneself this type of questions.

  • Free Gaza's Col. Ann Wright disinvited from Swedish Boat to Gaza
    • LeaNder October 17, 2012 at 8:04 am

      I am curious, but in a hurry. I was fiddling around too much it seems:

      the words that accompanied the video in the context she gives?

      the well less well know studies

      Thanks again to Annie for her alerts to Tip's responses.

      What I never quite understand, is that people don't realize and feel uncomfortable when they basically move into the direction of vindicating the Nazis. That's the ultimate aim of this type of lore.

    • LeaNder October 17, 2012 at 7:55 am

      perfectly said, TiP, and thanks to Annie for leading my attention to your responses. I do not have the time to follow all discussions carefully.

      I wasn't aware of the Facebook aftermath. I mostly try to avoid Facebook, admittedly.

      Hmm, Ali Ayatollah, fatwas? Strictly his demand for transparency is perfectly easy to understand, it's probably the first thing on everybody's mind. Well that is indeed a curious twist.

      Besides isn't there a paradox in the choice of the video, and a "secret FB group". Maybe it would make sense to discuss some matters secretly, but propaganda? Why would you want the study of propaganda secretly?

      The video too belongs to the type of "secret" revelatory lore claiming that everything you have ever been told by historians is wrong, and that the real facts are "secret". ...

    • LeaNder October 17, 2012 at 6:18 am

      not really. the discussion of the private FB group was not made public, ever.

      Hmm, I thought about this private FB group yesterday. I also would like to thank whoever censored a ill-reflected spontaneous reaction to one of the comments here. ;)

      Wouldn't one almost automatically assume that this private group includes the board members?

      This could well be the basis for the Swedish decision.

      Defending her in this case is no good substitution for transparency. As long as they don't come up clean, they are all somehow tainted by Greta Berlin's action or her attempt at "secret storage" gone public. If, as she states, she didn't event take a look at the video, why the hurried action? Doesn't one have to assume her interest was evoked by the words that accompanied the video in the context she gives?

      Besides, what I am still wondering about. If, as she writes, it was sent to her privately. Why the haste? It would have been available to her in her mailbox at a later time.

      If someone of the supposed propaganda study group is around, I can highly recommend Jeffrey Herf's studies on Nazi propaganda both his "The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust" and "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World".

      On Zionism and the Nazis, I would recommend the well less know studies of Francis R. Nicosia. Bottom line yes to a certain degree they profited compared to the larger assimilated Jewish community, but they also heavily underestimated the Nazis.

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