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Total number of comments: 2431 (since 2010-05-21 23:21:46)

unverified__e248iii6

I am a lawyer with several degrees in Classics (Greek and Latin).

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  • American Zionist responses to Tel Aviv riots-- largely indifferent, but some outrage
    • lysias May 25, 2012 at 2:28 pm with 2 replies

      Netanyahu claims authorship of the term:

      Netanyahu: Look, I think the proof of this pudding is in the eating, and what they’re doing is, they’re not really recognizing these principles often when it comes to Israel. There’s , I call it the triple standard. There’s sort of an acceptable double standard in international relations. You have one standard for the dictatorships and one standard for the democracies. When it comes to Israel, there’s a triple standard because there’s still a third standard for the democracy called Israel. You never expect other democracies to accept what Israel has gone through. I mean, we’ve had – can you imagine another democracy with 12,000 rockets pounded on their cities and they’re asked to take special care, special caution, not to take action against the offending enemy’s rocketeers? I mean, that’s what Israel does.

  • Bob Simon misses the story on Tel Aviv
  • Turkish prosecutor recommends ten life sentences for Israeli generals behind Mavi Marmara attack
    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 2:48 pm with 2 replies

      Something else the Turkish prosecutor should consider is the PKK Kurdish rebel attack on the Turkish naval base in İskenderun, near the Syrian border, an attack that resulted in the death of eight Turkish sailors. Considering that that attack occurred two hours before the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla, that any Turkish naval assistance to the flotilla would have had to come from the İskenderun base, and that there have been repeated reports of Israelis working with Kurds, including the PKK, it's hard to believe the attack was not coordinated with the Israelis.

  • Day after pogroms, Likud MK calls for internment camp for African refugees
  • 'Obama will only go as far on Iran as AIPAC permits him to go'
    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 11:41 am

      Obama's commencement address at the Air Force Academy yesterday was full of the usual blather:

      After all this, you would think folks understand a basic truth -- never bet against the United States of America. (Applause.) And one of the reasons is that the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs. It's one of the many examples of why America is exceptional. It’s why I firmly believe that if we rise to this moment in history, if we meet our responsibilities, then -- just like the 20th century -- the 21st century will be another great American Century. That’s the future I see. That’s the future you can build. (Applause.)

      I see an American Century because we have the resilience to make it through these tough economic times. We're going to put America back to work by investing in the things that keep us competitive -- education and high-tech manufacturing, science and innovation. We'll pay down our deficits, reform our tax code and keep reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We need to get on with nation-building here at home. And I know we can, because we’re still the largest, most dynamic, most innovative economy in the world. And no matter what challenges we may face, we wouldn’t trade places with any other nation on Earth.

      I see an American Century because you are part of the finest, most capable military the world has ever known. No other nation even comes close. Yes, as today’s wars end, our military -- and our Air Force -- will be leaner. But as Commander-in-Chief, I will not allow us to make the mistakes of the past. We still face very serious threats. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, with al Qaeda in Yemen, there are still terrorists who seek to kill our citizens. So we need you to be ready for the full range of threats. From the conventional to the unconventional, from nations seeking weapons of mass destruction to the cell of terrorists planning the next attack, from the old danger of piracy to the new threat of cyber, we must be vigilant.

    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 11:33 am with 1 replies

      Obama is scheduled to award the Medal of Freedom to several individuals this afternoon. Reuters: Dylan, Albright to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom.

      Among the 13 people scheduled to receive the honor are Shimon Peres and Jan Karski, the Pole who revealed the Holocaust in the West in 1942-3. Karski died in 2000, and so his medal will be awarded posthumously. Peres will not attend today's ceremony, and so will receive his medal at a ceremony at a later date.

      Oddly, the White House press release on today's ceremony does not name the recipients.

    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 11:10 am

      The Australian is a Murdoch paper.

  • Aaron Sorkin's anachronism
    • lysias May 25, 2012 at 2:21 pm

      How do I change the search setting?

    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 2:10 pm with 3 replies

      Is Facebook just a Trojan horse to allow government and corporations to access all sorts of data about people?

    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 2:08 pm with 2 replies

      Speaking of Google, yesterday I wanted to read what the Naked Capitalism had to say on the JP Morgan losses, so I did a Google search on "naked capitalism". Google rejected the word "naked", and displayed the results of a search for "capitalism".

      Fortunately, Naked Capitalism's URL is www.nakedcapitalism.com, so I could access the site without any help from Google.

  • Why 'Brand Israel' is failing
    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 10:05 am

      Actually, I believe the NYT reported Deir Yassin at the time. And then proceeded to forget about it.

    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 10:03 am

      And what about all the media that hyped the Facebook IPO?

    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 3:40 pm

      It wasn't until Judge Richard Goldstone recommended that Israel and Hamas both investigate potential war crimes (14 Israelis were killed; four of them by friendly fire) that some people began to worry. But just a little. And not enough to prevent the killing of 9 unarmed Turkish human rights activists in international waters.

      Report: Turkey set to indict IDF officers over killing of Gaza flotilla activists.

      Will Turkey be able to get an Interpol arrest warrant for the Israeli officers? And will the EU countries extradite them to Turkey? (Fat chance of the U.S. or Canada doing so.)

  • Philip Roth on the Israel lobby
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 3:35 pm

      I wonder how quickly the German government will change its mind about providing Israel those submarines. Poll: Majority of Germans think Israel is 'aggressive':

      Germans have become markedly more critical of Israel over the past three years, with 59 percent describing it as aggressive, according to a survey for the weekly magazine Stern released on Wednesday.

      The survey was conducted shortly before President Joachim Gauck visits Israel and the Palestinian territories May 28-31.

      A similar Stern survey in 2009 found 49 percent considered Israel aggressive.

      The survey, conducted by Forsa pollsters, found 70 percent of Germans agree with the statement that Israel pursues its interests without consideration for other nations. Three years ago, 59 percent agreed.

  • If Obama really has things under control, then why the loose talk from CentCom's Mattis?
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm

      OT, Prof. Ali Shalal, the man behind the hood in the Abu Ghraib pictures, testified in the trial in Kuala Lumpur that condemned the Bush administration (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Addington, Haynes, Bybee, and Yoo) for war crimes. He confirmed that he was interrogated by an apparently official Israeli, who confessed he had tortured Palestinians and apparently participated in the torture of Shalal:

      Ali Shalah [sic], a renowned professor of theology, was tortured by both US and Israeli interrogators for allegedly being anti-semitic and anti-Zionist:

      "When I answered that I am an Iraqi Muslim, the interrogator refused to accept my answer and charged me for the following offence (a) That I am anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. ...

      "In the morning, an Israeli stood in front of me and took the bag from my head and told me in Arabic that he was an Israeli had interrogated and tortured detainees in Palestine. He told me that when detainees would not cooperate, they would be killed. He asked me repeatedly for names of resistance fighters. I told him that I do not know any resistance fighters but he would not believe me, and continued to beat me.

      This Israeli dressed in civilian clothes tortured me by inserting in turn first with a jagged wooden stick into my rectum and then with the barrel of a rifle. I was cut inside and bled profusely. During this time, when any guard walked past me, they would beat me. I had no food for 36 hours.

      The next morning, the Israeli interrogator came to my cell and tied me to the grill of the cell and he then played the pop song, "By the Rivers of Babylon" by Pop Group Boney M, continuously until the next morning. The effect on me was that I lost my hearing, and I lost my mind. It was very painful and I lost consciousness. I only woke up when the Israeli guard poured water on my head and face. When I regain consciousness, he started beating me again and demanded that I tell him of the names of resistance fighters and what activities that I did against the American soldiers. When I told him that I did not know any resistance fighters, he kicked me many times."

    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 2:05 pm

      Very odd that Mattis got that four-star CENTCOM command. Besides having gotten into hot water for his comments, Mattis is also not an Annapolis graduate. His undergraduate degree is from Central Washington University.

  • Passive-aggressive George Bush namechecks neocons for getting us into that mess
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 10:12 am

      Prime Minister Gillard publicly stated that Julian Assange had broken Australian law. It was left to Foreign Minister Rudd to publicly refute her, say that Assange had broken no Australian law, and that the Australian Foreign Ministry would offer Assange legal assistance.

      Not too long after that, Rudd was forced to resign from the cabinet.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 3:11 pm with 2 replies

      I don't think a genuine man of peace would have Wiesel's long history of resentment and bad behavior towards Gypsies:

      Apart from one brief public encounter, we never in fact spoke at all. In July, 1988, I was invited to present a paper entitled “Uniqueness of the victims” at the Remembering for the Future: Responses to the Holocaust conference at Oxford University. I was accompanied by a gentleman named Leland Robison who recently reminded me of a startling confrontation I had with Professor Wiesel at that event—though I’d scarcely forgotten it. It remains very clear in my mind to this day. Professor Wiesel, surrounded by cameras and journalists, was being interviewed on the university grounds. During a break between questioning, I approached him and said “Professor Wiesel, please don’t forget the Gypsies!” He turned aggressively towards me, glared, and barked “Mister Hancock! I have read what you have written! And I don’t like it! I don’t like it at all!!” and turned away. He never did mention the Gypsies. He was presumably referring to my piece on “uniqueness” in SHMATE, the only article on the Holocaust I then had in print and the one in which my correspondence with him was reproduced.

  • 'Foreign Policy' peddles productive Iranian war theory
  • Israeli judge to issue verdict in Rachel Corrie case
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 6:50 pm

      That's what the hasbarists do with the attack on the USS Liberty as well. Out of the blue, they invent the claim that Israel had to attack the ship because it was passing on military intelligence to the Egyptians. Even though there is zero evidence that that was being done, and, given the realities of the situation at the time (in particular, the sympathies of the LBJ administration,) it is simply not credible.

      I should mention that I was in U.S. military signals intelligence starting shortly after the attack, and I heard nothing about any such intelligence transfer. It could not have been done by the ship or the fleet (the capabilities did not exist to transfer intelligence to the Egyptians at that level, and it would have been flatly illegal). For it to be done at all, it would have had to be done by NSA at Fort Meade, MD or someplace even higher up the food chain in Washington. Which means delay. And battlefield intelligence has to be timely.

    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 5:08 pm

      The Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, of which Dr. Hiss is the director (and chief pathologist), is affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tel Aviv and is located in the Abu Kabir neighborhood of Tel Aviv.

    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 3:30 pm with 4 replies

      Israel is apparently continuing its organ harvesting ways. Israelis run organ trafficking network:

      An illegal network of organ harvesters and traffickers, which exploits both the organ donors and recipients, has been uncovered in Israel.

      According to Ha’aretz, at least 10 Israeli citizens were arrested for membership in the organ trafficking gang. Investigation into the ring began after representatives of several countries contacted the Israeli authorities and provided them with the names of suspects, who are all Israeli citizens.

      In a November report, CNN said that the organs of the individuals trying to enter Israel from the Sinai desert had been trafficked.

      The Italian New Generation Foundation for Human Rights and the Everyone Group has presented evidence indicating that Sinai locals harvest the organs of the people they transfer to Israel. In this connection, a number of mass graves have been found containing the corpses of Africans who were missing some of their organs.

      I couldn't find the Ha'aretz article this report cites, but I doubt if Press TV made it up.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 6:45 pm with 1 replies

      Can the Corrie family sue Caterpillar in this country?

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 6:41 pm

      Dr. Yehuda Hiss apparently was involved in trafficking in body parts:

      As director of the Institute at Abu Kabir, the only place in Israel authorized to conduct autopsies in cases of unnatural death, Hiss conducted the autopsies of and authored the pathology reports for notable figures, including Yitzhak Rabin and Rachel Corrie, among others.[5][6][7][8] His position as director was a subject of controversy.[9] He was dismissed from this position after the legal system took up some of the charges against him.[9][10] Investigations revealed that Hiss had removed organs, bones and other tissues from corpses, against the expressed wishes of family, and had sold many of the organs he removed to medical institutions and universities.[10] He remained the chief pathologist of the Institute and has since regained his position as director.[11][12]

  • March of the Flags
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 10:17 am

      The Crusaders wore crosses on their breastplates. I guess Israel really is the new Crusader state.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 2:34 pm with 2 replies

      “The Israeli flags stormed the empty old city, chanting “death to the Arabs”, “Mohammed is dead”, “may the temple be build and the mosque burned”, and all the while they were waving their flags.”

      Can't help but be reminded of "Deutschland erwache, Juda verreck'!"

  • Biden meets major Israel lobby group at White House
    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 2:54 pm

      They did the same thing to Cynthia McKinney (also in the 2002 primaries).

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 10:25 am

      And on the White House Web site: Readout of the Vice President's Meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations:

      Vice President Biden met today at the White House with representatives of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The Vice President addressed the Obama Administration’s unprecedented support for Israel’s security; our steadfast opposition to any attempts to delegitimize Israel; and our commitment to a lasting, secure peace that is in the interest of Israelis, Palestinians and the United States. The Vice President also discussed a range of regional issues, including Iran. The Vice President praised attendees for their support of a strong relationship between the United States and Israel and the broad range of policy, charitable and intellectual pursuits in which they are engaged.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 10:23 am with 3 replies

      A bigger reason Bush père lost his job was that the plutocrats saw that he could not get the Democratic Congress to accept NAFTA but believed Bill Clinton could. And events proved them right in that belief.

      Similarly, the Republicans lost the White House in 2008 after W. proved unable to privatize Social Security. And I think that is the task the plutocrats thought Obama would be able to achieve and that that is a big reason why they donated so much money to his 2008 campaign. Although another, possible even bigger reason was that they wanted someone on whom they could rely in the White House after the 2008-9 financial collapse, which a lot of them presumably saw coming, and not another FDR who would launch a new New Deal.

      Of course, a lot of the plutocrats are also supporters of Zionism.

    • Page: 24
  • Latest video'd settler shooting could defuse third rail in US discourse
    • lysias May 23, 2012 at 10:23 am

      I also recommend Bruno Pontecorvo's movie The Battle of Algiers.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 3:18 pm with 3 replies

      I recommend reading Alistair Horne's book about the Algerian war of independence, A Savage War of Peace. The pieds noirs European settlers were just as unreasonable, and over time they antagonized first their Muslim neighbors and then eventually more and more of French public opinion. (Pierre Leuillette's war memoir Saint Michel et le dragon, which I just read, confirms this.)

      The world was lucky that the pieds noirs did not have nukes.

  • Bill Kristol celebrates Republican Party purge of 'oldfashioned Arabists' Scowcroft, Baker and Bush I
    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 2:38 pm

      Does anyone who uses the word "Arabist" like this have any right to complain about people saying "Israel Firster"?

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 7:06 pm

      New French cabinet includes three Muslims. Vallaud-Belkacem is Minister for Women's Rights (a position long missing in French government) as well as government spokesperson, Benguigui (another woman) is Junior Minister for French Nationals Abroad, and Arif (who has been vocal in blaming Israel for French foreign affairs problems, saying Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Union was blocked by Israeli actions in Gaza, and who was born in Algiers in 1959 to a harki Algerian Muslim family that remained loyal to France and went into exile from Algeria) is Junior Minister for Veterans.

      Hollande owed it to them.

      French Muslims Give Hollande the Victory:

      Ninety-three percent of French Muslims voted for the Socialist Francois Hollande in the second round of the French presidential election, giving him the margin of victory over Nicolas Sarkozy. That, according to the French website la Vie.

      The final tally had Hollande winning by only 1.13 million votes. An estimated 2 million Muslims voted. So, do the math and Hollande wins, thanks to immigrants from Islamic countries.

      It would be interesting to know what proportion of French Jews voted for Sarkozy.

      By the way, speaking of the war in Algeria and the harkis, I just finished reading an extremely graphic war narrative about that war, Pierre Leuillette's Saint Michel et le dragon [Saint Michael and the Dragon].

  • Aharon Appelfeld's rage at the German language (and Arendt's need for it)
    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 5:36 pm

      @libra, Klaus Bloemker ,

      Well, now that I stop to think about it, Latin was just as much the official language of the Holy Roman Empire for most of its history as it was the official language of the earlier original Roman Empire. German didn't become the official language of the Holy Roman Empire until the reign of Joseph II late in the 18th century.

    • lysias May 22, 2012 at 10:08 am

      Germans consider the Holy Roman Empire their first Reich, the federal Hohenzollern construction of 1870-1918 their second, and the "third Reich" was only aspirational in the Weimar period until the Nazis established it in 1933.

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 6:51 pm

      Here's Lermontov's translation of the Goethe in Cyrillic:

      Горные вершины
      Спят во тьме ночной;
      Тихие долины
      Полны свежей мглой;
      Не пылит дорога,
      Не дрожат листы...
      Подожди немного,
      Отдохнёшь и ты.

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 5:44 pm

      Among my books are an Opernführer and an Operettenführer.

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 2:47 pm

      It’s a slur. Whether it is being used out of ignorance or racism is another question.

      If "Jonggworen" is not a slur -- something on which I hope we can agree -- how can a literal translation of the word into English be a slur?

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 2:16 pm

      I wonder if you could appreciate the beauty of a poem like Goethe's

      Über allen Gipfeln
      Ist Ruh'
      In allen Wipfeln
      Spürest Du
      Kaum einen Hauch;
      Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde
      Warte nur, balde
      Ruhest Du auch.

      without knowing the meaning.

      I don't think this English translation captures the music of the words at all, but it does give you the meaning (sort of):

      Up there all summits
      are still.
      In all the tree-tops
      you will
      feel but the dew.
      The birds in the forest stopped talking.
      Soon, done with walking,
      you shall rest, too.

      Interestingly, I have recently become aware of a translation into Russian by Mikhail Lermontov which reproduces the music while changing a good deal of the meaning (although not the marvelous ending):

      Gornye vershiny
      Spyat vo t'me nochnoy;
      Tihie doliny
      Polny svejey mgloy;
      Ne pylit doroga,
      Ne drojat listy...
      Podojdi nemnogo,
      Otdohnёsh' i ty.

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 2:01 pm

      Last weekend's Financial Times has a couple of letters from Chinese people complaining about a writer's use of the word "Chinaman," which they claim is racist. As an Irish-American, I have absolutely no objections to being called an "Irishman," and sometimes myself use the word for myself. And I assume Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotsmen, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen also do not object to those words about themselves.

      The irony is, the word in Mandarin Chinese for "Chinese person" is "Jonggworen", which, literally translated, means precisely "China-man". "Jonggwo" (Middle Kingdom) is "China," and "ren" is "man".

    • lysias May 21, 2012 at 12:48 pm with 6 replies

      Victor Klemperer, an assimilated German Jew, not only wrote his famous diaries but also the classic work on how the Nazis perverted the German Language LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. (I well remember how compelling a read LTI was, so that I stayed reading it several afternoons in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, from which books do not circulate. It's a relatively short book, but then German is not my first language, so it took a few afternoons.) Note that Klemperer, a scholar on French language and literature, who certainly could have written in another language than German, continued to write his diaries in German in and on the decades after 1945.

      To what extent have the Zionists perverted the Hebrew language, so that a new LTI would be required on their language?

  • Feeling the hate in Long Island
  • Danish right-wing: ‘Made in settlement’ labels preempt Israel’s expanding borders
  • WaPo's Walter Pincus says US is 'going above and beyond for Israel'
    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 1:55 pm

      Now that substantial cuts in our military (and intelligence?) budget appear imminent, our national security establishment is more willing to see cuts in aid to Israel than it has been in the past. Pincus reflects their thinking.

  • U. of Haifa stops Nakba commemoration, as prof writes hate post calling for 'Many Nakbas'
    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 7:15 pm with 2 replies

      The real Jeff Pezzati is indeed a musician but doesn't seem to have any connection with USC.

      Has anybody contacted him to see if he is any comment on this probable misuse of his name?

    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm

      The Zionuts were not at all happy about John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer. Funny they should use his name.

    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 2:03 pm with 10 replies

      Look at the sort of stuff Plaut has been doing:

      Plaut is critical of left wing figures such as Michael Lerner and Norman Finkelstein whom he describes as self-hating Jews and apologists for terrorism who are promoting the destruction of Israel.[3] Plaut is opposed to what he sees as left-wing extremism in Israeli universities, and is actively involved in Isracampus,[1] a website monitoring such activity.[4] In the Canadian Jewish Tribune, he denounced Anarchists Against the Wall, a group protesting the Israeli West Bank barrier which he says is composed of "violent hooligans and anarcho-fascist thugs."[5]

      Plaut was sued for libel by Neve Gordon, a faculty member at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Department of Politics and Government, claiming that Plaut slandered him in certain articles and alleged e-mails. In May 2006, the Israeli magistrate's court in Nazareth ruled in favour of Gordon, and ordered Plaut to pay Gordon 80,000 shekels in compensation plus 15,000 shekels in legal fees.[6] Both sides appealed to the District Court in Nazareth and in February 2008, the court upheld a libel judgment relating to a publication in which Plaut called Gordon a "Judenrat Wannabe" but reduced the damages to 10,000 shekels (about $2,700) on the basis that, in the court's view, Plaut was entitled to criticize Gordon.[7][8]

    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 1:59 pm

      Does a professor of economics count as an intellectual?

  • BDS victory: South Africa strips Ahava’s ‘made in Israel’ label
    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 5:11 pm

      I imagine that attack on the Danish cyclist has had an effect on Danish public opinion.

  • Nakba consciousness-raising... in our nation's capital
    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 5:17 pm

      Key figures prominently in Peter Kosminsky's Channel 4 Brit TV miniseries The Promise. (DVD available from amazon.co.uk -- in Region Two format -- but not from amazon.com.)

      Also figures prominently in the televised (now on DVD) version of John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer (DVD now available on amazon.com, but from third-party sellers, not from Amazon itself).

  • Rep. Pitts in damage control mode following call for Arafat-Sharon negotiations
    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 2:48 pm

      Here's Wikipedia's account of the events:

      Following the assassination of Lebanese Christian President Bashir Gemayel, tensions built as Phalangists called for revenge. By noon of September 15, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had completely surrounded the Sabra-Shatila camps, and controlled all entrances and exits by the means of checkpoints. The IDF also occupied a number of multi-story buildings as observation posts. Amongst those was the seven-story Kuwaiti embassy which, according to TIME magazine, had "an unobstructed and panoramic view" of the camps. Hours later, IDF tanks began shelling the camps.[18]

      Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan[20] met with the Lebanese Phalangist militia units, inviting them to enter the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and telling them the PLO fighters were responsible for the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel.[21] Under the Israeli plan, Israeli soldiers would control the perimeters of the refugee camps and provide logistical support while the Phalangists would enter the camps, find the PLO fighters and hand them over to Israeli forces.[citation needed] The meetings concluded at 3:00 p.m. September 16.[18]

      An hour later, 1,500 militiamen assembled at Beirut International Airport, then occupied by Israel. Under the command of Elie Hobeika, they began moving towards the camps in IDF supplied Jeeps, following Israeli guidance on how to enter the camps. The forces were mostly Phalangist, though there were some men from Saad Haddad's "Free Lebanon forces".[18] According to Ariel Sharon and Elie Hobeika's bodyguard, the Phalangists were given "harsh and clear" warnings about harming civilians.[19][22]

      The first unit of 150 Phalangists entered the camps at 6:00 p.m. A battle ensued that at times Palestinians claim involved lining up Palestinians for execution.[18] During the night the Israeli forces fired illuminating flares over the camps. According to a Dutch nurse, the camp was as bright as "a sports stadium during a football game".[23]

      At 11:00 p.m. a report was sent to the IDF headquarters in East Beirut, reporting the killings of 300 people, including civilians. The report was forwarded to headquarters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where it was seen by more than 20 senior Israeli officers.[18]

      Further reports of these killings followed through the night. Some of these reports were forwarded to the Israeli government in Jerusalem and were seen by a number of Israeli senior officials.

      For the next 36 to 48 hours, the Phalangists massacred the inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila, while Israeli troops guarded the exits and allegedly continued to fire flares at night.

      You must not think the Germans were responsible for the mass killings of Jews by Lithuanians after the Wehrmacht entered Lithuania.

    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 2:41 pm

      Yes, I was amazed to see this piece actually printed in this morning's print Washington Post.

      If Walter Pincus signed this piece, that's a sign that a lot of people in the Pentagon are very unhappy with the way Israel is being coddled, even as it looks as if the military budget may be about to take a severe hit.

  • More 'magnet than a mallet': RAND Corporation warns against striking Iran
    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 10:13 am

      If you fear a regional nuclear arms race, isn't the best course of action to accept the UN proposal (already accepted by Iran) of establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East?

    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 3:44 pm

      For those who do not know, "Тамбовский волк тебе товарищ " (literally, "The wolf of Tambov is your comrade") basically means "Don't call me 'comrade', I'm no comrade of yours."

      However, Oleg seems not to have realized that "comrade" has more than one meaning. Besides being more or less equivalent to "friend," it can also suggest that the person addressed is a member of a Communist or similar party.

  • Green Party candidate for President calls for end to Israeli apartheid
    • lysias May 18, 2012 at 5:22 pm

      The president can't do that much domestically without Congress, but a president can do an awful lot all by himself in foreign relations and military matters. He (or she, I should add in this case) could certainly end our current wars for all practical purposes (by withdrawing troops and ending military operations) even if the two AUMF's remain in effect as a matter of law.

    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 2:19 pm with 1 replies

      Dr. Jill Stein also calls for legalizing marijuana: Stein challenges Obama on marijuana policy (Apr. 22, 2012):

      In a speech to tens of thousands of marijuana reform advocates at the 420 rally in Denver, Colorado, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein took the Obama administration to task for its continuing assault on medical marijuana clinics in California, Colorado and other states.

      Dr. Stein, a physician and public health advocate, noted that hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from chronic pain and cancers are benefiting from the availability of medical marijuana under state laws. She said that one of her first actions as President would be to "order the DEA and the Justice Department to cease and desist all attempts to harass or prosecute medical marijuana clinics or other legitimate marijuana-related businesses that are operating under state laws."

      Stein advocates regulating marijuana in a similar way to alcohol, and has long supported legalization of that drug. According to Stein, this would prevent billions of dollars in profits from pouring into the black market, and would greatly reduce the violence associated with illegal marijuana sales. She feels it would also reduce underage marijuana use, as well as allowing the commercial operations to pay appropriate taxes, thus helping to balance budgets and fund programs to reduce drug abuse.

      Makes sense to me.

    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 10:41 am

      The Green Party is the perfect home for folks who don’t want to have any power, because if they did, it would mean they have compromised their principles.

      You mean like the Syriza party in Greece?

    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 10:35 am with 8 replies

      A physician born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, married to fellow physician Richard Rohrer, and their two sons are named Ben and Noah. I'd be willing to bet that she's Jewish.

      By the way, I think we should also have a truth commission here in the U.S. for our misdeeds during the so-called War on Terror. I was interested to read that former CIA executive Glenn Carle also calls for such a commission in his autobiographical book The Interrogator.

  • Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee appears to boycott International Writers Festival in Jerusalem
    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 6:55 pm

      Old English and Normans certainly settled in Ireland in considerable numbers in the centuries after the initial Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169-71. Now, it's true that these pre-Reformation settlers eventually became assimilated into Irish society, especially after the Reformation took place in England and was at any rate attempted in Ireland, with ever-increasing numbers of Protestants brought in, from whom the Old English, who remained Catholic like their Gaelic neighbors, felt estranged, but the fact remains that they were originally colonial settlers. (I am myself three-quarters Gaelic and one-quarter Old English/Norman, and the prevalence of Norman and English surnames among the present-day Irish shows how numerous these early settlers must have been.)

      Certainly the Protestant English (and eventually Scots) who were settled in Ireland from Tudor times onward exhibited a typical colonial settler mentality well before Cromwell. To see this, you have only to read a work like colonist/poet Edmund Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland of 1596, which is as racist (and genocidal) a work as one could well imagine.

    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 3:49 pm with 2 replies

      Ireland knows what it is to be the victim of a colonial settler enterprise. In Ireland, it lasted some 800 years.

      Ali Abunimah has recently written on the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland as a model for a possible peace deal in Israel/Palestine: Finkelstein, BDS and the destruction of Israel.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 3:44 pm with 1 replies

      Somebody else who knows firsthand what apartheid is.

  • Oren's defensive piece on 'sinister' delegitimization movement shows boycott is working
  • Peter Beinart's cognitive dissonance on 'threats to Israel's demographics'
    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 5:08 pm

      Ali Abunimah thinks Northern Ireland can be a model for the settlement of the Israel/Palestine dispute.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 1:57 pm with 2 replies

      At the time of the partition of Ireland, in 1921-22, the Protestants had a 2/3 majority in Northern Ireland. (Indeed, it was in order to provide Northern Ireland with as large a territory as possible with a reliable Protestant majority that the boundary was drawn by Britain where it was. Northern Ireland was and is made up of only six of the nine counties of Ulster, including two counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone, with bare Catholic majorities at the time.. If Northern Ireland had included all nine counties of Ulster, there would not have been that reliable Protestant majority.)

      After partition, and until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the government of Northern Ireland -- and private businesses as well -- adopted policies that discriminated against Catholics and were intended to encourage Catholic emigration, so that the Protestant majority could be maintained. Gerrymandering assured substantial Protestant majorities even in the county councils of Catholic-majority Fermanagh and Tyrone.

      However, since the Good Friday Agreement, the policies that encourage Catholic emigration have been abandoned, and the Catholic share of the population has gradually increased, as a result of a higher birth rate. In the 2001 census, 43.8% of the population came from a Catholic background (as opposed to 53.1% from a Protestant background). It seems that at some point in the not too distant future the Catholics will be a majority.

  • 'The Nakba is BS': Right-wing Israelis protest student-run Nakba commemoration at Tel Aviv U
    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 3:09 pm with 6 replies

      We Americans have only very slowly come to accept that what we did to the American Indians amounted to genocide, and some of us won't admit it yet.

      I remember on one of my first visits to Turkey, in the 1980's, I complained to a Turkish friend about what his people had done to the Armenians, and he told me it was only what Americans had done to the Indians. On the spot, I couldn't admit he was right. I could only admit it the next day, after I had thought about it.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 3:03 pm

      Im Tirzu tries to convince us that there were no Palestinians prior to the Zionist arrival, and that they showed up only following Jewish immigration in the early 20th century, tempted by the so-called prosperity brought by the Zionists.

      Sounds a lot like what apologists for apartheid used to say about when Bantus arrived in South Africa.

  • The left lacks an analysis of the neocon rise
    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 12:23 pm

      Speaking of Trita Parsi, looks like the neocons are about to win another one over Iran: MEK to Be Delisted as Terrorists in Reward for Engaging in Terrorism.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 12:17 pm with 1 replies

      To blame the "military establishment" is a cop-out. No doubt firms in the military-industrial complex welcome wars, as do officers whose chief concern is advancing their own careers. But a lot of officers put the welfare of their troops and their country above any selfish concern, as do an overwhelming proportion of the enlisted ranks, and they want nothing to do with further unending, unwinnable wars in the Middle East. That explains the extent of their donations to Ron Paul's campaign, and now to Obama's.

      I speak as a retired naval officer who has put time in in the Pentagon.

  • Hardline Israel backers gave cash to Rep. Joe Walsh, author of Op-Ed calling for Israeli apartheid
  • AIPAC's Iran resolution (What if Congress had told JFK he couldn't 'rely on containment' with Soviets?)
    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 3:19 pm

      Congressional Quarterly: Reid’s Effort to Pass Revised Iran Sanctions Bill Blocked by GOP (requires subscription):

      A late objection stalled Senate action Thursday on a new set of proposed sanctions against Iran that would add to the economic and diplomatic isolation of the regime.

      The further delay comes on the eve of a key round of negotiations between international leaders and Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program.

      Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sought unanimous consent to pass a modified version of a sanctions bill (S 2101) approved in February by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, but he faced Republican objection. That objection comes despite the recognition on the GOP side that the revised bill contained, as one senior Republican aide put it, “significant” revisions that addressed their earlier demands. But Republicans noted that Reid did not consult them on the changes.

      “There are members on my side of the aisle who are concerned that the way the measure is currently crafted could actually be a step in the wrong direction,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “It could have been a drafting error, but what is wrong with sitting down on a bipartisan basis, looking at the language, making sure we get it right?”

      South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., indicated that Republicans were expressing concern about not including the option of military force in a non-binding section of the measure.

      Language stating that the bill is not an authorization of the use of military force was to be included in a manger’s amendment at the request of Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. Graham vociferously opposes that change without language saying that military force is on the table.

  • The neocon machine
    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 5:42 pm

      Fortunately for me, I happen to live in Maryland, which Obama is going to carry whatever I do or do not do. So I am quite free to register a protest vote, either for a third-party or write-in candidate.

  • On the sidewalk in Hamburg-- 'Hier wohnte'
    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 4:29 pm

      Peter Elder, one of my professors when I was in graduate school at Harvard, used to tell us about one occasion in early 1939 when he was in Munich, eating at a restaurant (Vier Jahreszeiten, I believe), when a party including Hitler came in, sat down at the next table, and proceeded to eat. Elder said that, if he had had a gun, he could easily have shot Hitler (he had not been searched), and, after the fact, regretted the fact that he had not.

      This illustrates a number of things: one, Hitler's security was feeble enough that it would have been relatively easy to assassinate him; two, at that point, even a well-educated American never considered doing such a thing.

    • lysias May 16, 2012 at 3:01 pm

      Stalin killed a lot more than 100,000 in the 1930's. His imposed famine on the Ukraine in 1932-33 (Holodomor) killed between 2.4 and 7.5 million people. Add in the people killed in the purges and the people killed in the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and you're adding another couple of million, at least.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 6:57 pm

      I guess Rendell and the others aren't going to be prosecuted now. MEK to Be Delisted as Terrorists in Reward for Engaging in Terrorism.

      By the way, that NUMEC guy, Zalman Shapiro, I don't know why everybody assumes the statute of limitations has run on his crimes. For federal crimes that are subject to the death penalty, there is no statute of limitations, and, if I understand Grant Smith's book Divert! correctly, those crimes of which Shapiro is accused that were committed before some date in 1963 are potentially subject to the death penalty.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 3:12 pm

      I once read The Fire. It was one of the most harrowing books I have ever read.

    • lysias May 15, 2012 at 11:25 am

      A good book on children's experiences during World War Two is Nicholas Stargardt's Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis .

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 6:51 pm

      Apparently such commemorative plaques on buildings (". . . lived here") are called "blue plaques" in Britain.

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 5:28 pm with 2 replies

      I think Americans eventually are going to face questions about what they or their ancestors were doing during the War on Terror.

      Just as Israelis are going to face questions about what they or their ancestors were doing during the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 5:23 pm with 1 replies

      I think German "Flucht" can very well apply to the flight of so many German Jews from persecution in Germany during the 1930's.

      Here is "Flucht" applied to the flight of the Huguenots from France in the 17th century: Hugenotten:

      Ab 1530 wurde die Glaubensausübung der Protestanten durch den katholischen Klerus und den König stark unterdrückt. Mehrere Kirchen und Klöster wurden zerstört oder geplündert, so die Kathedrale von Soissons im Jahr 1567 und das Kloster Cîteaux 1589. Daraufhin begannen noch stärkere Verfolgungen, die unter Ludwig XIV. ab 1685 einen Höhepunkt erreichten (siehe insbesondere den Artikel Edikt von Fontainebleau) und eine Fluchtwelle von etwa einer Viertelmillion Hugenotten in alle umliegenden protestantischen Länder auslösten.

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 5:21 pm with 2 replies

      I wonder if the building in which the Schumm couple lived survived the war. Allied bombing of Hamburg -- especially "Operation Gomorrah" in the last week of July 1943, which created a terrible fire storm that is estimated to have killed 42,600 people -- did an awful lot of damage to buildings as well. Bombing of Hamburg in World War Two:

      Dwellings destroyed amounted to 214,350 destroyed out of 414,500. [Wikipedia is unclear whether this is just the destruction caused by Operation Gomorrah or the destruction caused by the bombing throughout the war, but I think the former is meant.]

  • Artifacts of the early Israel lobby: 1917 map for American consumption
    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 3:40 pm

      Thanks. Here's a Wikipedia article on the Templers (of whom I do not think I had ever heard) and their colonies: Templers. Also, in German, Tempelgesellschaft.

      Interesting that the last remaining German Templer colonists were expelled from Israel in 1948-50:

      Am 17. April 1948, einen Monat vor der israelischen Unabhängigkeitserklärung, besetzten bewaffnete jüdische Trupps die Siedlung Waldheim. Die dort verbliebenen Internierten werden durch die britischen Behörden in ein Zeltcamp für deutsche Displaced Persons nach Famagusta auf Zypern abtransportiert. Von Zypern aus wanderten viele nach Australien aus; einige kehrten jedoch ab 1949 in die württembergische Heimat ihrer Vorfahren zurück.

      1950 forderten die israelischen Behörden die letzten noch in Palästina verbliebenen Templer zum Verlassen des Landes auf. Am 13. April 1950 verließ der Tempelvorsteher Jerusalem mit Bestimmungsort Bentleigh (Australien). 80 Jahre Wirksamkeit der Templer in Palästina waren damit zu Ende.

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 12:13 pm with 3 replies

      Even though Germany was a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, I am surprised that there should have been one or more German colonies in Palestine at that point.

    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 12:09 pm

      In 525 B.C., Alexandria did not yet exist, and, while there were some Greeks in Egypt, they were not there in anything like the numbers they achieved after Alexander's conquests. I wonder how many Jews (perhaps better called Hebrews at that point) were then in Egypt.

  • Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov't down like Gulliver
    • lysias May 9, 2012 at 3:15 pm

      The Hill: US-Israel ties reaffirmed in House vote (Apr. 9, 2012):

      The House on Wednesday approved legislation aimed at reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Israel's security, in a unanimous vote that left no doubt where members of both parties stand on the issue.

      Members approved the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, H.R. 4133, in a 411-2 vote. One Republican and one Democrat voted "no," while one Republican and eight Democrats voted "present."

      Well, 411-2 isn't quite unanimous, but it is nevertheless quite an impressive vote.

  • A portrait of a former Zionist (Part 1)
    • lysias May 24, 2012 at 12:29 pm

      Taxpayers' money handed over by bribed politicians was not freely given by the taxpayers.

    • lysias May 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm

      Ireland has jus sanguinis too, in terms of who can get an Irish passport and Irish citizenship. (Although descendants of Irish Protestants can get them just as easily as descendants of Irish Catholics.)

      However, the treatment of those who have Irish citizenship, whatever their ethnicity, is absolutely equal, at any rate equal under the law.

  • Biden gives Israel the green light on Iran in speech to rabbinical convention
    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 7:17 pm with 1 replies

      Before he became vice president, Biden opposed war with Iran and called for negotiations: Joe Biden: Iran War "Would Be A Disaster".

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 7:15 pm with 1 replies

      Looks like Israeli nukes and U.S. intransigence may put the kibosh on the nuclear conference due to be held this year: Mideast nuclear conference in jeopardy:

      VIENNA (AP) — Hopes dimmed Tuesday for staging major nuclear talks later this year between Israel and its Muslim rivals, as Iran and Arab countries at a 189-nation conference accused Israel of being the greatest threat to peace in the region and Egypt warned that Arab states might rethink their opposition to atomic arms.

      Because Israel has not signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it was not present at Tuesday's gathering of treaty members. But the United States defended its ally, warning that singling out Israel for criticism diminished chances of a planned meeting between it and its Muslim neighbors to explore the prospect of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

  • Why no condolences from Obama to David Cameron?
    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 5:38 pm

      So why would the White House have put on its Web site the readout from the call Obama made to Cameron the day before his father died, the call in which he congratulated Cameron and his wife on the birth of a daughter?

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 3:51 pm

      Obama made a telephone call to Cameron the day before his father died, congratulating Cameron and his wife on the birth of a daughter and wishing their family well, but making no mention of the father. Obama's next call to Cameron was a couple of weeks later, at the end of the month. Again, no mention of the by now dead father.

      Readouts of both of these calls are to be found on the White House Web site.

      (Check the earlier MW thread about Obama phoning Netanyahu with condolences, and I give the links for the two calls to Cameron on a posting I make on that thread.)

  • It's Good to be the King: Netanyahu scraps elections, buys off opposition and cements power with new unity gov't
    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 5:40 pm

      It was, what?, a week or so between the time Levi Eshkol was forced to form a government of national unity and the time when Israel launched a sudden attack on Egypt and Syria?

  • Secrecy pact over Israel's nukes, reached by Nixon and Meir, serves policy of 'nuclear coercion' to avoid peace deal
    • lysias May 14, 2012 at 11:14 am

      I haven't quite finished reading Grant Smith's book yet, but my understanding from what I have read is that charges ended up being dropped against Shapiro of NUMEC because the statute of limitations had run.

      However, the book also suggests that the crimes Shapiro may have committed before a particular date in 1963 -- when the law changed -- were potentially subject to the death penalty, even after the change in the law. I believe federal law is that there is no statute of limitations for federal crimes that carry the death penalty.

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 6:58 pm

      Looks like Israel's nukes and U.S. intransigence with respect to them may derail the planned international nuclear conference. AP: Mideast nuclear conference in jeopardy:

      VIENNA (AP) — Hopes dimmed Tuesday for staging major nuclear talks later this year between Israel and its Muslim rivals, as Iran and Arab countries at a 189-nation conference accused Israel of being the greatest threat to peace in the region and Egypt warned that Arab states might rethink their opposition to atomic arms.

      Because Israel has not signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it was not present at Tuesday's gathering of treaty members. But the United States defended its ally, warning that singling out Israel for criticism diminished chances of a planned meeting between it and its Muslim neighbors to explore the prospect of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 5:46 pm

      Czechoslovakia, and I believe it was very shortly after the Feb. 1948 coup de Prague that gave the Communists a monopoly of power in the country.

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 5:44 pm

      CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton (who such books as John Newman's Oswald and the CIA (second edition) argue was the man who arranged the JFK assassination) was also the liaison man between the CIA and Mossad.

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 10:43 am with 1 replies

      Yes, it took a confluence of interests to produce the JFK assassination (just like it later took a confluence of interests to produce the Iraq war). The CIA and the military-industrial complex were almost certainly involved. LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover were probably at least complicit.

      But that wasn't all that was needed to make the plot succeed. It's necessary, for example, to explain why the mass media -- including most of the left -- immediately bought into the lone nut myth, and continued for years to be allergic to and dismissive of anyone who doubted that myth.

    • lysias May 7, 2012 at 6:31 pm

      When LBJ learned that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison had started to investigate the JFK assassination, LBJ's first phone call was to his old crony and adviser Abe Fortas (who had helped LBJ steal his Senate seat in 1948). The call survives on the LBJ tapes.

    • lysias May 7, 2012 at 4:50 pm

      The reactor at Dimona went critical on Dec. 26, 1963. Interesting date.

  • I always knew Nana was Jewish, but it only came up once
    • lysias May 10, 2012 at 3:55 pm

      The head of the leading nationalist veterans' organization, Theodor Duesterberg (who had even been the nationalists' candidate for president), quickly found his political career eclipsed once the Nazis came to power, because he was a half-Jew.

    • lysias May 9, 2012 at 3:49 pm

      I believe Hitler's admiration for the Jews during his Vienna period is attested in Brigitte Hamann's Hitler in Vienna, which cites sources. (Can't swear to it. It's been years since I read that book.) Another book I read more recently that says the same thing is Ralf Georg Reuth's Hitlers Judenhass [Hitler's Hatred of the Jews].

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 2:14 pm

      I happen to have a DVD of the Nazi Party rally in the Berlin Sportpalast on Feb. 10, 1933 that kicked off the party's electoral campaign before the March election. Goebbels speaks before Hitler, and in his speech he makes a lot of snide, threatening comments about the Tageblatt.

    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 12:51 pm with 2 replies

      Interesting that you should mention the Tageblatt. I assume Werner Eugen Mosse (the author of The German-Jewish Economic Elite 1820-1935 : A Socio-Cultural Profile, which is precisely on the subject of the extent of assimilation of the German Jews) is a member of the Mosse-Lachmann family.

      Review of the book here.

      UPDATE: I take it from this obituary of Werner Eugen Mosse that he was the son of the last owner of the Tageblatt before it was Nazified (and thus the brother of historian George Mosse).

  • 'Let go of two-state solution insanity' -- says Illinois congressman who supports transfer
    • lysias May 7, 2012 at 1:08 pm with 1 replies

      If Walsh thinks it would be morally acceptable to expel the Palestinians, what objection could he raise to the idea of expelling the Jews?

  • Beinart warns Jews that not talking to Palestinians and anti-Zionists 'makes us stupid'
    • lysias May 3, 2012 at 2:56 pm

      Ethnic cleansing is a crime under international law, and in particular a crime against humanity under the statutes of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

  • The benedictions of Benzion Netanyahu's racism
    • lysias May 3, 2012 at 12:39 pm with 1 replies

      Now I know, after having done a bit of Google searching, how Hitler saying that phrase got into my mind's ear. It's in one of his speeches in Triumph of the Will, the one to the political leaders of the Nazi Party:

      Und den Befehl gab uns kein irdischer Vorgesetzter, den gab uns der Gott, der unser Volk geschaffen hat. [And this order (to form the Nazi movement) was given to us not by any earthly superior, but by the God who created our people.]

    • lysias May 3, 2012 at 12:04 pm with 2 replies

      We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

      There is no other morality.

      With that logic, you could justify what the Nazis did. And in fact that just happens to be the logic with which the Nazis did justify what they did.

      And, with respect to American's comment above, Hitler and the Nazis did worship the German Volk. I can hear in my mind's ear Hitler appealing to der Gott, der unser Volk geschaffen hat [the God who created our people].

  • 'Shame on You': Why I interrupted Obama counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan
    • lysias May 8, 2012 at 5:02 pm

      The title of Sibel Edmonds's book is actually Classified Woman.

    • lysias May 3, 2012 at 4:29 pm with 1 replies

      I got on my Kindle Sibel Edmonds's new book Confidential Woman a couple of days ago, and have begun to read it. It is so engrossing that I am nearly halfway through it.

      It gives a Kafkaesque view of the American national security state.

      She hasn't said much about Israel in what I have read so far, but I have no doubt Israel was involved in some way in the corruption within the American government that she details. Certainly neoconservatives like Feith and Wolfowitz were (as well as Marc Grossman, Lantos, and Solarz).

      She has a lot more to say about Turkish involvement. But since we're talking about the time frame 2001-2, I think this was with the Turkish deep state, at a time when Turkey was very much still Israel's ally.

    • lysias May 2, 2012 at 2:15 pm

      Somewhat OT, the 9th Circuit has ruled that John Yoo has immunity for authorizing what was done to Padilla: Yoo Entitled to Immunity From Padilla Lawsuit, Court Rules.

  • Obama working to postpone UN investigation into settlements until after 2012 elections
  • Dershowitz gets booed for warning Israel supporters not to boo Obama
  • New petition challenges Horowitz smear invoking Nazi holocaust to attack BDS
    • lysias May 2, 2012 at 12:25 pm

      Are you saying that the contents of Edwin Black's The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (corroborated by Heinz Höhne's "Gebt mir vier Jahre Zeit": Hitler und die Anfänge des Dritten Reiches ["Give Me Four Years": Hitler and the Beginnings of the Third Reich]) are not true?

  • Obama nutmegs Romney with Netanyahu condolence call referencing 'the Jewish people'
    • lysias May 2, 2012 at 2:30 pm with 2 replies

      Ha'aretz has been reporting for years on the relationship between the elder Netanyahu and his son.

    • lysias May 2, 2012 at 12:42 pm

      Turns out Cameron has some Jewish forebears:

      His great-great grandfather Emil Levita, a German-Jewish financier who obtained British citizenship in 1871, was the director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China which became Standard Chartered Bank in 1969.[17] His wife, Cameron's great-great grandmother, was a descendant of the wealthy Danish Jewish Rée family, whose ancestors originated from Altona, Hamburg, Germany and Głogów, Poland.[18][19][20][21][22] One of Emile's sons, Arthur Francis Levita (d.1910) (brother of Sir Cecil Levita),[23] of Panmure Gordon stockbrokers [in which firm Cameron's father Ian was later senior partner], together with great-great-grandfather Sir Ewen Cameron,[24] London head of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, played key roles in arranging loans supplied by the Rothschilds to the Japanese central banker (later Prime Minister) Takahashi Korekiyo for the financing of the Japanese Government in the Russo-Japanese war.

    • lysias May 2, 2012 at 12:15 pm with 2 replies

      At which point I have no doubt President Obama called to offer condolences.

      Actually, he did not. Cameron's father died on Sept. 8, 2010. The White House Web site records a call Obama made to Cameron on Sept. 7 of that year, to congratulate Cameron and his wife on the birth of a daughter. It records no such call after Cameron's father died. (The next call to Cameron is on Sept. 30, and it makes no mention of Cameron's father.)

  • Hillary Clinton's invocation of 'our values' in Chen Guangcheng case highlights total abdication of that policy in Palestine
  • United Methodist Church rejects divestment
  • Another Christian apostasy on NPR (when will non-Zionist Jews get some air?)
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 2:09 pm with 2 replies

      Is it just a coincidence that NPR would air this piece about a former Methodist minister just when the Methodist conference is considering BDS?

  • Palestine solidarity activists to join Occupy's May Day of action
  • Yale Press's best of Jewish culture ends with a whimper, Dershowitz
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 12:55 pm

      The Posen Foundation sponsors a Judaic studies program at the University of Miami in which one of the readings is Dershowitz's "The Vanishing American Jew".

      Also a program at the University of Michigan in which one of the readings is Dershowitz's “Are Critics of Israel Anti-Semitic?", from The Case for Israel.

  • Jerusalem writers fest requires speakers to submit speeches for review in effort to avoid criticism of Israel
  • 'J Post' says David Remnick is 'conflicted' and 'born of Jewish parents'
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 4:15 pm

      The New Yorker went downhill under Tina Brown, but Remnick has brought it back.

    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 4:13 pm

      Remnick does consider himself a Jew, by the way, according to this Washington Post piece from just after he started editing The New Yorker:

      He had taken a year off from Princeton, part of which he spent playing guitar for handouts in the Paris subway. Now he took off for Japan, wangling a job teaching English at Sophia University in Tokyo ("a Jew in a Jesuit university teaching Shintoists and Buddhists") and traveling on "maybe $2 a day" through India, Russia, Thailand and Nepal.

      . . .

      "When we finally get back to the office he says, 'Did you want to talk to me about something?' I said I'd really like to get a job. And he started talking about this paper the Post owned in Everett, Washington. My eyes widened and my stomach dropped about a foot and I said, 'There are no Jews there.' And Howard Simons stopped laughing about 15 minutes later and put me on the night police beat. That's how I started at The Post. It was my first and last benefit of the Jewish media conspiracy."

    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 3:06 pm

      Wikipedia entry on Remnick makes his background sound pretty typical for an upper middle class kid from the suburbs:

      Remnick was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, the son of a dentist and an art teacher.[1] He was raised in Hillsdale, New Jersey, in a secular Jewish home with, he has said, "a lot of books around".[2] He is also childhood friends with comedian Bill Maher. He graduated from Princeton University in 1981 with an A. B. in comparative literature; there, he met writer John McPhee and helped found The Nassau Weekly.

    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 10:53 am with 2 replies

      What's the relevance of Hackensack, New Jersey?

  • When the Methodist Church decided that slavery was regrettable but none of our business
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 2:34 pm

      Roman law allowed the testimony of slaves (although only after they had been tortured). So obviously, the system of slavery that the New Testament was willing to tolerate was not a system of slavery that did not allow slaves' testimony.

      I wonder if Rev. Dr. Few was aware of this.

  • Romney beats Obama-- to the eulogy anyway
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 10:48 am with 1 replies

      Even the obituary for Ben-Zion Netanyahu that the Washington Post printed in its paper edition this morning mentions one of the elder Netanyahu's more notorious quotes:

      In newspaper interviews late in life, Ben-Zion Netanyahu forcefully questioned the feasibility of Mideast peace.

      “The tendency to conflict is in the essence of the Arab,” he told the Maariv daily in 2009. “He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war.

      “The Arab citizens’ goal is to destroy us. They don’t deny that they want to destroy us.”

      It's an AP piece by Aron Heller, but the neoconservative Washington Post ran it.

  • An account of the Guardian's racist endorsement of the Balfour Declaration
    • lysias May 1, 2012 at 6:41 pm

      Germany's manpower constraints in comparison with the Russian population made the terroristic nature of the German occupation a military necessity, as argued by Ben Shepherd in War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans.

      Of course, that terroristic occupation also suited the ideology of Hitler and the other Nazis.

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