Total number of comments: 23 (since 2009-09-04 17:31:26)
mobius1ski
Blogger, activist
Website: http://danielsieradski.com
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dear ideological puritans:
if you would like mainstream jewish organizations like the jcc in manhattan to screen films that expose american jewish audiences to the horrors of the israeli occupation and the plight of non-jewish citizens of israel, please stop shitting on their efforts and threatening to boycott them because their event sponsors are not explicitly anti-zionist.
this is why academic and cultural boycotts of israeli institutions are retarded: because you will go out of your way to cut off your nose to spite your face. you're not bringing the folks behind the other israel film festival closer to your cause. instead, you're pushing their audience further from the content that will bring them closer to you.
no one attending the other israel film festival is going to walk away saying, "isn't israel so open minded for allowing films like that to be made? i guess non-jews really aren't oppressed in israel after all! let's go donate to ateret cohanim!" and to act as if they will is the height of stupidity.
all that you will accomplish is to make it impossible for palestinian voices to be heard by jews in jewish settings. if you think that helps the palestinian cause, frankly, you should stop trying to help.
i think the article is completely off in its characterizations of phil, sullivan, et al. but i think it's completely spot on about the characterization of the commenters on their sites. you guys are raging bunch of antisemites, there's no question about it.
@david samel
a) i don't believe jews should assert superiority in israel/palestine over indigenous palestinian peoples. i believe jews and arabs should have their own states and be sovereign unto themselves. and i believe the israelis have a lot of atoning to do for the last 100 years, but that that doesn't invalidate our very legitimate and historic connection to our ancestral homeland.
b) jews are a distinct people who happen to have various ethnicities within our national group, but which nonetheless can trace their origins to the same source in the ancient middle east.
Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 June 6; 97(12): 6769–6774.
Published online 2000 May 9.
PMCID: PMC18733
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
c) if you deny the legitimacy of jewish peoplehood and claim that jews are no more than a faith community, and then impose that ignorant and false interpretation onto us, and thereby delegitimize our right to self-determination, you are an antisemite. that's not a hysterical claim. that's the european union's own working definition of antisemitism.
this isn't about controlling the conversation, this is about antisemitism. you don't believe that jews are legitimately a people. you're an antisemite. what's to argue? i don't have to convince you that my people are real and have legitimate rights. the reality of our peoplehood and our rights is self-evident. you represent a fringe minority of internet troll whackjobs. chances are, you're a white nationalist interloper using the palestinian solidarity movement as a cover to promote classical antisemitism. why should i be concerned about you?
hey shingo, congrats on making tablet's list today of notorious antisemites lurking on anti-israel blogs.
what can i say? you're not bringing legitimate criticism of illegitimate israeli policies. you're not expressing critical opposition to zionism. you're fundamentally denying my people's history and relegating it to myth. you're invalidating jewish peoplehood and the legitimacy of the jewish people's narrative. you, in essence, deny my being in total because you choose to believe that my history isn't true. so how can i possibly argue with you?
i have long protested against the wiesenthal center's deplorable museum of intolerance, thank you very much.
you keep shifting the goal posts of the conversation. i don't know why i'm wasting my time as you're clearly just screwing with me and treating me like a caricature.
isn't it awesome when imperialists conquer your country, chase you to the ends of the earth, murder or expel you from everywhere you live for the successive 2 thousand years, destroy everything you own, burn vast libraries, steal family heirlooms, turn synagogues and cemeteries into churches and parking lots, erase all of your connections to your past, and then demand you prove existed that which they destroyed? what good would evidence do? you would just allege a zionist conspiracy to falsify evidence. because you're not interested in truth or justice. just victory for your side.
balfour declaration? partition plan? u.n. ratification? all of it's irrelevant?
fuck you that's a biblical reference used to justify the zionist claim, etc. i have a family tree that stretches back to the kingdom of david hanging in my grandmother's house. you're denying my history, and erasing my connection to my heritage and my ancestral homeland. imagine if i said there's no such thing as a palestinian or palestinian identity -- that it's all an invention used to justify the arab claim to jewish land. you'd be skewering me. despicable. that is anti-semitism masquerading behind anti-zionism plain and simple.
the jewish people did get together and vote. it was called the world zionist congress. there've been about 35 of them in the last 100+ years. there probably would've been more vocal opposition to the decision to establish a state, except all the diasporists who believed in liberating the jewish people through the advancement of socialism were murdered by hitler.
"It was before thje Zionists decided they wanted to steal the land and make their own ethnocentric state."
The 1880s were a long fucking time ago.
"Keep telling yourself that. After all, the status quo has been spectacularly successful is preventing killing hasn’t it?"
Compare the current situation to 2001 and shit yeah, it is.
"You mean the bit about equality between Jews and Arabs? Real democracy? I’m not surprised."
Take one member of each faction: Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PRC, Hadash, Balad, Likud, UTJ, Shas, Yisrael Beitenu, Kadima, Labor, Meretz, etc. Put them all in one room and tell me they're not all going to kill each other. Then tell me you can do that with 13 million people just as full of rage and hate -- but also armed to the teeth -- and that everything's going to be rainbows and butterflies. And then I'll tell you that you live in a fantasy world.
I also do not believe in self-determination at the expense of others, and I oppose strongly any and all efforts by the Israeli government to block the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state. I agree that Israel is hypocritical and cruel in its denial of Palestinian self-determination. But even rank hypocrisy doesn't invalidate the Jewish people's own right to self-determination.
What alternative? A true democracy in which Jews and Arabs are equal citizens and fully respect each others rights and freedoms? If only that were within the realm of the possible. We tear down the borders and the killings from both sides will ensue. If that's the alternative you're proposing, certainly I cannot bear it.
If you lob off Gush Etzion and give up a comparable part of the Galilee, the West Bank needn't be Swiss cheese. All I was citing from the Geneva Accords was the territorial compensation as you had referenced "a bunch of bantustans." I was not addressing refugees or East Jerusalem.
Shingo, do you believe that self-defined national groupings have a right to self-determination? Or is the exercise of self-determination in the form of statehood universally illegitimate and unjust?
What's wrong with the Geneva Accords recommendation of comparable territorial compensation for large settlements blocks? Why is that completely off the table?
Sorry, but Cook is being completely disingenuous if he's suggesting that liberal Zionists are morally deficient for supporting a two-state solution. It is false and essentialist to say that self-determination in the form of statehood is innately racist and unjust.
If Cook knows that the one staters he's citing aren't genuinely supporting ideal binationalism, and still he's using their position as a stick with which to beat on the Zionist left as amoral for supporting what everyone outside the radical left considers a normal position, he is merely propagandizing for the downfall of his enemy, and not providing a reasoned analysis.
My reading comprehension isn't off, my tolerance for radical anti-Zionism has worn away.
Ah missed the second to last paragraph. Nevermind.
This is the height of stupidity. Does Cook genuinely believe that the Israeli right has any genuine interest in granting Palestinians full civil equality under a binational arrangement? If he bothered listening to the actual articulation of the right's vision of a one state solution, he would recognize that it is nothing other than the Feiglin plan: The subjugation of Arabs under Jewish rule. As Feiglin explains it, the vision is that of a state in which Arabs have "human rights but not civil rights." If this is what should be deemed as out-of-the-box thinking more progressive than that of the Zionist left, Cook's head is squarely up his ass.
the sun still publishes online at link to
Aw, come on Phil. Now you're just nitpicking.
Sorry but you're totally off. The video was commissioned before 5W came on board (and please sign my petition against Birthright's hiring of 5W at link to act.ly
My friend Will Levin, of link to
created the video. A cartoonist and animator known for his groaning punchlines, Will is a regular contributor to link to
the progressive Jewish blog I founded in 2001.
Will told me in an email yesterday that he conceptualized the video himself and pitched it to Birthright, who were disinterested in the content specifically, focusing instead on its potential reach:
Will said, "It came to be when I said, 'Iran is a hot topic, so picture this: Ahmadinejad applies to go on Birthright Israel.' Birthright said, 'Will it be a viral video?' and I was like, 'Maybe.'"
As a friend and colleague of many years, I take Will's word for it, though I obviously agree it's in poor taste and that the timing couldn't be worse. A coordinated attempt to promote hostility against Iran, however, it isn't.