Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 195 (since 2010-01-29 23:27:39)

PeaceThroughJustice

Mondoweiss.net supporter

Posted in the early years of Mondoweiss under the name "David," but that name was not available when I returned.

Showing comments 195 - 101
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  • Aharon Appelfeld's rage at the German language (and Arendt's need for it)
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 21, 2012 at 4:05 pm

      "One can become a Jew by converting to Judaism, just like you can become a Christian by converting to Christianity."

      In a sense, you're wrong on both counts. Actually, you can't become a Jew, even if you are (grudgingly) allowed to convert to Judaism. You can stand on your head for the rabbis, but OlegR is never going to think of you as a Jew in the same sense as he thinks of someone with the proper bloodlines (even a flaming atheist). And you don't "convert" to Christianity (unless you had already adopted another faith). Christianity is not something you're born into. It's something you elect to do.

    • PeaceThroughJustice May 20, 2012 at 8:11 pm

      "Hey, don't forget about me!" says Oleg.

    • This review of Appelfeld's latest, Until the Dawn's Light, by Gabriel Josipovici makes it sound distinctly creepy--

      "Blanca, who had been a brilliant pupil in the local high school, destined for a university career, 'converted to Christianity and married hastily, to avoid watching her mother's death from up close'. That brief sentence is elaborated in the course of the book. Adolf, her husband, turns out to be a boor and a bully. His instinctive anti-Semitism is fuelled by resentment at his Jewish teachers consistently giving him bad marks and eventually getting him expelled from the school.

      ...

      "Later, on the run by herself [after killing Adolph with an axe], she lights a fire to warm herself beneath a crucifix next to a church, and when it catches fire and the fire spreads to the wooden structure of the church, she finds the sight pleasing and goes on to burn down any church she comes across.

      ...

      "The richness of ambiguity, which was what made [Appelfeld's earlier books] so powerful, is singularly lacking here.Everything is black and white. Jews who have kept faith with the old ways have a strange light emanating from them, while the goyim are the embodiment of evil, which is always linked, rather unpleasantly for those who love animals, with animality; and Jews who renounce their roots always get what they deserve. This curious Manichaeism, one cannot help thinking, is merely the flip side of anti-Semitism, and is unworthy of a serious novelist. ...

  • In '92, AIPAC president raised $1 million for Bill Clinton -- and he supported the settlements
    • Katz told the Washington Times that he taped the conversation because "as someone Jewish, I am concerned when a small group has a disproportionate power. I think that hurts everyone, including Jews. If David Steiner wants to talk about the incredible, disproportionate clout AIPAC has, the public should know about it." Katz has a history of suing Jewish groups. He has been a low-level AIPAC donor.
      link to wrmea.com

      (Amazingly, this quote is also currently included in the Wikipdia entry for AIPAC. I bet it won't stay long.)

  • Nakba consciousness-raising... in our nation's capital
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 18, 2012 at 11:50 am

      "is there an actual enlightenment of the American population?"
      Not according to the latest BBC World Poll--

      "In the Western countries surveyed,views of Israel show improvement only in the US. Fifty per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Israel in 2012, and this proportion has increased by seven points. At the same time, the proportion of negative ratings has gone down six points to 35 per cent and, as a result, the US has gone from being divided in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012. These are the most positive views on Israel’s influence expressed in the US since tracking began in 2005." ...
      link to globescan.com

      The echo chamber effect is misleading a lot of Mondoweiss readers. But the truth is most of the pictures and stories seen here are only seen here. (And as I have pointed out before, even Pam Geller's site draws twice the viewer traffic that MW does.)

  • American's cartoon on Israeli site shows Netanyahu cannibalizing Obama and compelling him to service him sexually
  • Al Jazeera exposes 2nd anti-Islam class taught to US military officers
  • 'The Nakba is BS': Right-wing Israelis protest student-run Nakba commemoration at Tel Aviv U
    • Thanks for the link Blake. Phil wrote about the 2011 results last year--
      link to mondoweiss.net

      This year's results represent a further slide for the Light Unto the Nations. Interestingly however, in the U.S. opinion on Israel actually improved sharply--

      In the Western countries surveyed,views of Israel show improvement only in the US. Fifty per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Israel in 2012, and this proportion has increased by seven points. At the same time, the proportion of negative ratings has gone down six points to 35 per cent and, as a result, the US has gone from being divided in 2011 to leaning positive in 2012. These are the most positive views on Israel’s influence expressed in the US since tracking began in 2005.

  • The left lacks an analysis of the neocon rise
    • Annie, the only reason the neocons got away with it is because the so-called "liberal" Jewish community insulated them from attack. Think of the NYT in the run-up to the war, wringing their hands over whether it was "antisemitic" to even mention that all the neocons happened to be Jewish zionists. Think of Goldberg, Friedman, Pollack.

      "... is afraid to broach because it touches on uncomfortable issues, like the prevalence of conservative Jewish donors in our political system."

      Phil, why do you hide behind "conservative"? Is Haim Saban conservative? The media bigwigs? The Hollywood community?
      And speaking of the media, I'd argue that a discussion of Jewish power in our media is an even more sacred taboo than discussing its role in campaign finance. Even at this site, the minute this topic is broached we're back to accusations of "antisemitism" and talk of the Protocols.

  • Peter Berg: Israel attacking Iran is a more important issue than my board game-inspired film 'Battleship'
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 14, 2012 at 5:58 pm

      It's nice to see the people running our mass media still have the time and energy to keep abreast of the complex issues of American foreign policy. Whoever said Hollywood was self-absorbed?

  • Hardline Israel backers gave cash to Rep. Joe Walsh, author of Op-Ed calling for Israeli apartheid
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 14, 2012 at 5:33 pm

      BTW, Halpern's criticism of NPR was made from her position as chairwoman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (2005-2007).

  • Liberal Zionists are afraid their parents will reject them if they come out
    • I also didn't see much to admire here. More of the usual self-regarding lite liberalism. The most valuable part was the description of the intensity of the Birthright experience, that mix of hormones and tribal belonging that Kiera Feldman already spoke about in Nation.

      BTW, about the claim: "... the Holocaust Museum in Dallas has expanded the content of that museum from the the persecution of Jews in World War 2 to include the persecution of African Americans in Texas."

      Maybe they're still working on the transition, but right now the only people allowed on their front page are still all Jews--
      link to dallasholocaustmuseum.org
      If a Black story has been allowed to share space with the story of G-d's Chosen Victims, you have to drill down pretty far to find it. I gave up looking.

  • Why I Am Not a Liberal Zionist: A response to the Huffington Post's 'Liberal Zionists Speak Out'
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 9, 2012 at 7:11 pm

      Thanks, MHughes. I do hope people remember your comment. Whether you approach it from the perspective of restoring Palestinian human rights, or of mending U.S. corruption of the political system, this is really not a "left/right" issue. Treating it as one plays into the hands of those who want to divert and distract. One of the strengths of Mondoweiss is that Phil in the past has recognized this.

    • Finkelstein gets a full half-hour on BBC HardTalk--
      link to youtube.com

  • 'Liberal and enlightened'-- and all white
    • Great post, Dan, and I'm sorry Phil didn't seem to get it. What makes the output of our Hollywood industry such shit is not that it's about elites (although it usually is) but the elite attitude it takes towards the viewer. It's all about manipulating the viewer, and the more skillful the manipulation the more we praise it. Iris Murdoch once said that all art seems to be aspiring to the condition of pornography, and it's certainly come to pass in this country.

  • Secrecy pact over Israel's nukes, reached by Nixon and Meir, serves policy of 'nuclear coercion' to avoid peace deal
    • "Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon"
      NYTimes, November 29, 2007
      link to nytimes.com

      “The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 — part of a newly released trove of documents.

      ...

      “There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel’s weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965,” Mr. Kissinger noted in his long memorandum.

      He also said that one problem with trying to persuade Israel to freeze its nuclear program was that inspections would be useless, conceding that “we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places.”

      “This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.”

    • Johnson's chief campaign fundraiser was also the chief fundraiser for the Israeli nuclear weapons program in the United States?!!!

  • Operation Glass Houses: IDF agent provocateurs admit to throwing stones at the IDF in Bilin
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 7, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      "At the time, almost nobody believed what the activists had said."

      For the record, here is the original 2005 report from IMEMC--
      link to imemc.org

      “We noticed several unidentified persons, with their heads covered”, Falas stated, “they provoked the soldiers and hurled stones at them”.

      Falas added that when locals from the village asked the unidentified me who they are, they claimed that they are Palestinian from Lod, and that they arrived with the Anarchists.

      “We immediately knew they are lying, we knew they are soldiers disguised as Arabs as they did not arrive with us”, Falas added, “After they knew that we figured their true identity three army jeeps arrived fast to rescue them”.

  • Who's the anti-Semite?
    • "according to whom?"

      "[T]he longer Anti-Semitism lies in abeyance the more fiercely will it break out. ... The nations in whose midst Jews live are all either covertly or openly Anti-Semitic. ... Anti-Semitism increases day by day and hour by hour among the nations; indeed, it is bound to increase, because the causes of its growth continue to exist and cannot be removed." (Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State, 1896)

  • I always knew Nana was Jewish, but it only came up once
    • It's more than just the headline, Klaus. "From my earliest memory, I always knew my grandmother was Jewish -- but it only came up once. ... My grandmother's conditioning from her early childhood was to never let on that she was Jewish. It was a survival mechanism reinforced over and over again by her family and her environment in the first years of her life."

      I'd like to know how Jamie knew this was a "survival mechanism" and not just a lack of interest in the ideas of Jewishness. Considering that Nana never mentioned the subject to him, I'm wondering if Jamie might have inadvertently imposed his own narrative.

      (BTW Jamie please don't think I'm attacking you. I think your piece raises all kinds of interesting ideas about identity and historical narratives, and I'm very grateful. I'm just offering another interpretation. There's almost always more than one.)

    • Jamie, you talk as if being Jewish were a genetic condition. Doesn't Nana get to decide for herself?

  • Beinart warns Jews that not talking to Palestinians and anti-Zionists 'makes us stupid'
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 4, 2012 at 2:55 pm

      Mooser, the point (as I think you know) is the amount of power represented by "90% of U.S Jews", not their numbers.

      U.S. Jews, roughly speaking, run 80% of the mass media, fund 50% of the elections, and own 30% of the economy. Given how modern mass democracies function, having their collective weight behind any single issue is going to determine the outcome.

    • That's what caught my attention too. It's an eye-opener to see the word "tribal" used so frankly as a badge of honor, to the extent that Beinart must scurry to defend himself against the damning charge of being insufficiently tribal.

      "I remember in your response to my Jerusalem Post piece you said that you were a Zionist and a tribalist, and I'm willing to accept both. But why is it then in every single case in your book when the word "tribal" is used, ... it has a negative connotation?" (Gordis, 36:40)

      "It's not true that every reference in my book to tribalism is negative!" (Beinart, 38:50)

      "I think that American Jewish life is going through a great trauma. ... American Jews are reconstituting themselves more and more as a relgion and less and less as a people. ... We are turning Judaism into a faith and not into a people. I think that is an evisceration of what Judaism is. I think that yields a Jewish conception of the self which is weak, anemic, and not compelling and will utlimately render American Judaism so meaningless -- kind of a Hebrew style Protestantism -- that nobody is going to be terribly interested in it." (Gordis, 38:10)

      "Judaism at its most tribal is also it's most profound and most noble." (Gordis, 59:00)

      This is all fine, but it's very different from what gentiles have been taught Judaism is. NPR never mentioned this.

    • Gordis: "Our disagreement tonight fundamentally lies in the response to the following question: ... What does it mean to be loyal to your own people. That, it seems to me, is the fundamental question elicited by Peter's book."

  • Dershowitz gets booed for warning Israel supporters not to boo Obama
    • PeaceThroughJustice May 2, 2012 at 10:33 pm

      "Caroline Glick, Pamela Geller, Rachel Abrams, Debbie Schlussel, Melanie Phillips, Andrea Levin, Eliana Benador, Meyrav Wurmser, etc."

      Intriguing list, Sean. (I'd add Ruth Wisse.) Such a peculiar psychological type that it crys out for an exploration of just what makes them tick. But if that ever happens I think it's going to have to come from a woman. A lot of Phil's more personal work can be considered an investigation of the masculine dimension of this question. Is there a Jewish woman anywhere brave enough to cast her eye on the feminine side?

      Maybe they could start out with the question of whether there is a difference between male and female manifestations of extreme ethnic nationalism.

  • An account of the Guardian's racist endorsement of the Balfour Declaration
    • Jeffrey Blankfort posted this here a while back. It's a British cabinet paper from 1923, dealing with future policy in Palestine--

      ‘British policy in Palestine during the past five years has been based upon the Balfour Declaration of November 1917….

      ‘Briefly stated, the object [of the Declaration] was to enlist the sympathies on the allied side of influential Jews and Jewish organizations all over the world….It is arguable that the negotiations with the Zionists, which had been in progress for many months before the Declaration was actually published, did, in fact, have considerable effect in advancing the date in which the United States Government intervened in the war. However that may be, it must always be remembered that the Declaration was made at a time of extreme peril to the cause of the Allies…. The Balfour Declaration was a war measure…designed to secure tangible benefits which it was hoped could contribute to the ultimate victory of the Allies. These benefits may or may not have been worth securing and may or may not have been actually secured; but the objections to going back on a promise made under such conditions are obvious. The Jews would naturally regard it as an act of baseness if, having appealed to them in our hour of peril, we were to throw them over when the danger was past.’”

      quoted in “Palestine Papers 1917-1922 Seeds of Conflict.” by Doreen Ingrams, published by Braziller 1973 (p. 173)

      A similar point is made in Lloyd George's memoirs--
      link to mailstar.net

  • The push for divestment continues as the Methodist General Conference enters its second week
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 30, 2012 at 2:18 pm

      If Anna/Stuart see this, I'd like to know just how important is this issue to the delegates there. The conference must be dealing with many topics. We here see this vote as a crucial battle with powerful symbolic significance. But do the delegates see it this way, or is it just another administrative issue? In other words, are the delegates conscious that they are being watched by the world?

      (I heard Anna Balzer speak at a small church once. She was great. And check out her book--
      link to amazon.com
      )

  • Obama high-fives Jimmy Kimmel after he calls Netanyahu a warmongering 'yahoo'
    • There's no reason to apologize to Terryscott (and not just because no amount of apology will ever weaken his suspicion of gentiles). Your statement was a perfectly rational opinion (shared by me), based on plenty of empirical evidence, that most gentiles in our mass media try desperately to avoid touching on topics of Jewishness and Israel. By social convention, these are usually reserved for Jews if they're going to brought up at all. In fact, I imagine that's why Phil highlighted this otherwise pretty innocuous comment, to show that the broader community is beginning to talk about these things.

      (Now you're going to feel like you're being attacked from both sides! Sorry.)

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 29, 2012 at 2:01 pm

      Pretty timid. Colbert's 2006 roast was much more against the grain.
      link to video.google.com

  • Ozick, anti-Palestinian polemicist, is shortlisted for a big prize
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 27, 2012 at 2:02 pm

      That's the look of someone who has suffered deeply from "antisemitism" all her life, and is now starting to worry about the photographer. :)

  • Yoffie rallies American Jews to determine 'character of the Jewish state' without a word about our obligations as American citizens
  • Hollywood's glorifications of torture so influenced US soldiers that military officials appealed to producers to tone it down
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 26, 2012 at 2:04 pm

      "Would this have happened if the moguls in Hollywood had not been determined to normalize Israel’s dark deeds?"

      Would this have happened if the moguls of Hollywood did not regard gentile society as an adversary?

      About "24": we've already talked on this site about Surnow's politics--
      link to newyorker.com

      But the show's co-creator, Howard Gordon, is also Jewish and also an enthiusiastic booster for the back-up homeland.
      link to jewishjournal.com

  • Shmully and guilt
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 28, 2012 at 7:51 pm

      "I keep hearing about the pigs and apes ..."

      Everyone knows that Arabs think Jews are sons of pigs and apes. Jeffrey Goldberg has told us so--
      "Nizar Rayyan of Hamas on God's Hatred of Jews"
      link to theatlantic.com

      Goldberg says he interviewed a Hamas official who believed it, although he conveniently waited until after the man's death before reporting the discussion. And he has never explained why any Hamas official would have given an interview to such a notorious Zionist. And he has never exlained how the interview actually took place, since he does not know conversational Arabic.

      Still the story appears to have been good enough to scare TokyoBK.

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 28, 2012 at 4:13 pm

      Thanks MJ. There's not a lot of journalists left that conceive of their job as fighting power. We're lucky to have you.

    • "and . … in whom would that drivel inspire guilt or sympathy?"

      I think we're being a little too hard on Phil. You have to remember that the world view he was confronting at that dinner is the same world view as his mom's. And that's a difficult thing for any man to reject. In a sense (and I hope I'm not sounding too much like the dream analysts here), you could even say that the whole evening was really a symbolic confrontation with his mother.

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 27, 2012 at 5:42 pm

      Annie writes: "Most people are not prone towards hatred."

      Based on his comments here, I suspect it's too late for BK to ever accept this. He has too much invested in the notion of "antisemitism." All of his posts rely on this idea as their spoken or unspoken foundation. To start questioning that bogus concept now, to start regarding gentile and jewish behavior as symmetrical, would leave him completely adrift.

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 27, 2012 at 2:15 pm

      "Would you ever describe Jews - Chabad and otherwise - as inclined to hate Arabs/non-Jews?"

      Shmuel deserves an answer.

    • "I admire Phil’s courage, or is it recklessness, for accepting the invitation."

      Yes, this is what struck me, the oddness of anyone accepting that invitation. Obviously Phil was looking for something, but what? To be enveloped in the attention of 18 highly intelligent people, begging him to join them?

      I'm guessing that was a very lonely drive back home. Once again he was just a man, but the night before he had glimpsed what it was like to be a part of something bigger than an individual, something that never dies.

  • Widely-imitated, Beinart is giving Jews permission to be, unh, liberal Zionists
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 26, 2012 at 3:28 pm

      Just a technicality, but you describe Fein as "from the Forward." His J-mag was called the Moment. (But he's best know for his leadership of AfPN.)

      I was amused to discover that he also founded something called Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger. I'm still fully expecting to someday see "Jews against Global Warming."

  • Bernard Lewis revises Bernard Lewis (says he opposed invasion of Iraq!)
    • Dershowitz tried to pull the same thing, claiming that he was always against the war. Unfortunately for him, his op-ed from Sept. 2002 is available for all to read.

      A Hawk in Drag: Dershowitz and the Iraq War
      Tim Wilkinson, January 31, 2007
      link to counterpunch.org

  • '60 Minutes' profiles Palestinian Christians, Michael Oren falls on his face
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 27, 2012 at 1:06 am

      Hophmi is a dead end. There is nothing you can say that will bring him back to the “living”. I guess folks keep trying to reach him, reason with him, believing he’s another human being, but he is really a golem, a zionist automaton.

      Left to his own devices with no one to hate or fight with, he might just long for his own lost humanity … one can hope.

      Very nicely put, Miriam.

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 24, 2012 at 3:34 pm

      hopmi writes: "Arguing a source that is an Arab news source is biased is different from arguing that a source run by a parent company whose CEO is a Jew is biased. That’s comparing apples and oranges."

      Why don't you elaborate on this a little, for those of us who don't quite see the distinction, and in fact worry that it sounds just a little "nefarious."

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 24, 2012 at 12:57 pm

      As if ethnicity and religion mean anything, hopmi. I mean we only have to look at how you spend your days to know how silly that is. ;)

    • CBS is owned by National Amusements Inc., which is privately held by Sumner Redstone.
      ABC is owned by the Disney Co., whose Chairman & CEO is Robert Iger.
      NBC is majority owned by Comcast Corp., whose Chairman, President, & CEO is Brian L. Roberts.
      CNN is owned by Time Warner Inc., whose Chairman & CEO is Jeffrey Bewkes

      All of the above are Jewish. (The one remaining major news outlet in this country is Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) Jews represent 1 1/2% of the U.S. population. You should be celebrating your ethnic success, hophmi, not denying it.

    • I wish Simon had had the courage to tell his audience that Oren's call to Fager, the head of CBS, was a call to a fellow Jew, if only to illustrate the kind of tribal pressures that can be brought to bear on coverage of the Middle East. But then that could have opened a whole can of worms. Before you know it Americans might be told that the Chairman of ABC is Jewish too. And the Chairman of NBC. And the Chairman of CNN.

      And we all know that mentioning that amazing coincidence is "antisemitic."

  • Why did Washington Post and NYT lend themselves to 'unglued' 'angerfest' directed at Beinart?
    • Have any gentiles been allowed to speak on the book, anywhere? (Not that there's many who would dare.)

      Looks like we've just got to keep waiting for the Jewish-American awakening. Now I know Phil assures us this is just around the corner, but I do wish it would hurry up.

  • 1200 rabbis threaten an end to interfaith harmony if Methodists support divestment
    • "There’s no way that came from Rabbinical Judaism."

      I'm not following your logic. Rabbinical Judaism doesn't recognize a Jewish "people," membership in which is conferred by bloodlines?

      And even if it doesn't, modern secular Jewish identity certainly does.

    • PeaceThroughJustice April 20, 2012 at 9:57 pm

      "Much, Much higher than 50%."

      I have to agree with Fred here. I think Phil is trying to convince himself of something for which there is not really much evidence, at least yet. The point of about echo chambers is well taken. The internet misleads us because we self-select our news sources. Probably all the self-identifying Jews in the USA who oppose Zionism are here commenting on this site. (And even a Pam Geller can easily outpull Mondoweiss in the traffic statistics.)

  • 'Grass shattered the narrative' -- Refaat Alareer
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 20, 2012 at 2:24 pm

      Yes, the ordinary people have been saying this for some time. The EU's public opinion polls go back to at least 2003 and have all found that Israel is considered by the public to be the biggest threat to world peace. Here's last year's poll--

      November 01, 2011 Results of a new poll commissioned by the European Commission show that Israel is believed by Europeans in 15 countries to be the greatest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan.

      While the European Commission will release the full results of the poll on Monday, the International Herald Tribune reported that the 7,500 people polled living in the European Union (500 in each of the 15 E.U. member states) were presented with a list of 15 countries and asked if these countries present a threat to world peace. Shockingly, Israel was rated first.
      link to jewishfederations.org

      Now, hopefully, more and more elite voices (those that are embedded in the power structure and are the most indebted to editors, publishers, critics, etc.) will be rebelling.

  • Israeli celebrity says she enjoyed video of IDF attacking Danish activist because he looked like a Nazi
    • PeaceThroughJustice April 22, 2012 at 2:01 pm

      Remember when Phil asked "When is someone going to lose his job for calling someone an anti-Semite?" Why don't we we start here.

      Anyone who uses this highly problematic term as if it had a clear meaning is either a naive fool, or a scoundrel.

    • Remember the argument against BSD, that it would engender a "siege mentality" among Israelis? That first we must win their trust and then they will make concessions? Well just how long do you think it would take to win the trust of Irit Linur?

    • "because they were born anti-Semites and will die anti-Semites ..."

      It's important that gentiles get to see these glimpses into what "antisemitism" really means to many secular Jews. It's not just the word used to categorize prejudice against a minority when that minority happens to be Jewish. For the Irit Linurs, antisemitism is its own metaphysical category ("causeless hatred"), which is not caused by anything in history but is what causes history itself. It's a prime mover of the world, and she worships it.

      So when Dena Shunra calls this ranting a "slander," she's actually missing the point. A slander is a lie, and a lie is something that could at least conceivably be true. But here we're talking about something which exists only in the casebooks of aberrant psychology.

  • Rifle-bashing lieutenant-colonel solves Jewish problem created by Freud and my mother, says author of 'Indecent Proposal'
    • BTW, this yahoo is an American, writing from New Jersey.

      Engelhard's family escaped the Nazi invasion of France and found refuge first in Canada and later in the United States. Engelhard became an American citizen in 1961 and considers himself an American patriot. [Although the pictures on his site show him only in Israeli uniform.]

      He loves thoroughbred racing. His first book was on that subject, titled "The Horsemen." Engelhard roots for the Cincinnati Reds in basbeall and the Montreal Canadiens in hockey. He served as an American volunteer in Israel. Engelhard holds a brown belt in Krav Maga, Israeli martial arts. link to jackengelhard.com

      It's also interesting to note that the screenplay for Indecent Proposal differed a little from Jack's novel. From Wikipedia:

      Engelhard's novel contained cultural friction that the screenwriter left out of the movie: the main character, named Joshua, is a Jew and his billionaire foil is an Arab. In a review of the novel, the New York Times summarized its themes as “the sanctity of marriage versus the love of money, the Jew versus significant non-Jews such as shiksas and sheiks, skill versus luck, materialism versus spirituality, Israel versus the Arab countries, the past versus the future, and the religious world versus the secular one.

  • Jodi Rudoren heads for Jerusalem
  • Robert Lowell scooped Gunter Grass
    • "all the doves turning into hawks ..."

      Reminds me of the 2006 attack on Lebanon. ("We will turn Lebanon’s clock back twenty years.") I remember the Jewish community organizations out demonstrating from Manhattan to Seattle, screaming for more Arab blood. Whenever I hear the claim that the Jewish community has been hijacked by an old-school leadership, that it doesn't reflect their true values, I think of that and worry that the problem goes much deeper.

  • P5 +1 Iran nuclear talks went swimmingly! Netanyahu is fuming
    • Al Jazeera's interview yesterday with Dan Meridor was all about Israel's relations with Iran. It showed that Al Jazeera still has a little fight left in it and hasn't been completely emasculated--
      link to youtube.com

      "This idea that Iran supposedly wants to wipe Israel out -- as we know, Ahmadinejad didn't say that he plans to exterminate Israel. ..."

  • You won't have Ethan Bronner to kick around anymore . . .
    • PeaceThroughJustice February 18, 2012 at 2:31 pm

      "... or we wouldn’t pay attention to Palestinians reporting from Gaza or the West Bank or East Jerusalem."

      Where in the NYT are you seeing these reports? My copy doesn't have them. (Presumably because they haven't gotten through the Jerusalem Bureau Chief.)

    • PeaceThroughJustice February 14, 2012 at 2:08 pm

      Another media story:

      Roger Cohen has an op-ed in today's NYT, about "the manipulation of Jewish victimhood in the name of Israel’s domination of the Palestinians," etc. It was originally entitled "The Dilemmas of Jewish Power." Somehow that has gotten changed to "The Dilemmas of Israeli Power." Apparently some aspects of victimhood are just too hard to give up.
      link to nytimes.com

  • 'Free Beacon' reporter attacks Center for American Progress in misleading articles that push for Iran war
    • PeaceThroughJustice February 11, 2012 at 2:45 pm

      For those who were too lazy to follow Alex's link, here is reporter Adam Kredo's bio--

      Adam Kredo
      Adam Kredo is senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Formerly an award-winning political reporter for the Washington Jewish Week, where he frequently broke national news, Kredo’s work has been featured in outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and Politico, among others. He lives in Maryland with his comic books.

  • 'Tablet' says writers who talk about Israel Firsters are channeling Hitler
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 27, 2012 at 7:50 pm

      I notice Goldberg is now allowing comments at his Atlantic blog. Is this the first time? I assume they are being heavily edited, but the general tenor is critical of Goldberg's position.

    • ""Israel-firsters" are not those who put Israel first, but rather those who put an Israeli right-wing agenda first, even at the expense of American interests."

      Mairav Zonszein at +972 is tying himself into logical knots trying to make this into a left/right issue. Can't there be left-wingers who put Israel's interests ahead of American interests?

      It's about tribalism, not theories of government.

  • Josh Block is not an Israel firster! No way, man
  • Israel is at the heart of Jewish identity, Gorenberg says
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 23, 2012 at 10:46 pm

      About Sarkozy, Winnica was being too modest.
      "Who is Nocolas Sarkozy?"
      link to jewishworldreview.com

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 23, 2012 at 8:21 pm

      "Under these intolerant political circumstances, liberal Jews must imagine other political coalitions than ones of only Jews hanging on to the idea of a majority state."

      Is there any doubt that when Gorenberg's "universalist commitment to tikkun olam" comes up against the appeals of "Jewish communal life," it's the first that's going to go, just as it always has?

  • Following weeks of smears, Zaid Jilani resigns from Center for American Progress to take new job
    • OT:

      "More Intellectual Dishonesty at The New York Times"
      Michael Harrington
      link to original.antiwar.com

      ...

      "For years, we, the reporters who inform the American people about the goings-on in Israel and occupied Palestine, a group that — as Allison Weir and Jonathan Cook have shown — is overwhelmingly comprised of Jews with deep emotional, and quite often familial, attachments to Israeli society, have systematically downplayed the scale and impact of religious fundamentalism within the Zionist state.

      "Since its founding, and with ever-increasing intensity since the rise of the Likud Party under Begin in the late 1970s, the discourse of Israeli identity has been predicated on the idea that Israel is a bastion of Modernity, Rationality, and Democracy surrounded by a sea of essentially medieval people, savage beings beholden to the dark superstitions and violent dictates of the Quran.

      ...

  • Bibi throws in with GOP, Democratic base turns critical, and Israel finally becomes partisan wedge issue like abortion -- Blumenthal
    • I don't understand Blumenthal's idea of a "wedge issue." I've always seen opposition to the lobby as essentially an anti-corruption issue, with little to do with issues of left/right ideology. So unless you take the Christian Zionist movement seriously (which I see as essentially a trailer-park demographic lacking any real economic power), how are Bibi and the lobby going to make support for Israel into a broad "red team" issue. What's so "conservative" about it? It's either a good idea or not, to be decided on moral and economic grounds, but it's not like the abortion issue, which is already pre-decided on religious grounds.

      Also, wedges are supposed to have two sides. I have yet to see any significant "blue team" opposition to "America's plucky little ally."

  • Campaign within campaign was battle for Adelson's millions
  • Trying to save two-state consensus, 'Washington Post' invokes 'demographic' threat
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 9, 2012 at 6:44 pm

      Mndwss, your second link (the Santorum Q&A at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life) is a fascinating document. I imagine it could even trigger some debate in the MSM, a la the Ron Paul newsletters. (Assuming, of course, Santorum's fifteen minutes of fame aren't almost over.)

      BTW, it dates from a course on Religion & Politics that he presented at the OCRPL on August 1, 2008.

  • US millionaire Kenneth Abramowitz funds settlers linked to attacks on IDF
    • Slightly off topic: Speaking of the Diaspora Korps, I came across an interesting full-page ad in the Times Literary Supplement, where full-page ads are relatively rare and which normally confines itself to academic books--

      A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism
      by Phyllis Goldstein, with foreword by Sir Harold Evans

      There are a few blurbs ("A tour de force of the one the most intriguing and disturbing phenomena in history," says Brown University's Omer Bartov), and across the top is splashed this headline--
      "DO WE KNOW HATRED WHEN WE SEE IT?"
      (Apparently there's a hatred out there that doesn't look like hatred, but with training we'll be able to spot it. I'm guessing it sometimes looks a lot like criticism of Israel.)

      The publisher isn't a university press, but something called Facing History and Ourselves.
      link to facinghistory.org
      Their motto is "Combating racism, antisemitism, and prejudice and nurtures democracy through education programs worldwide."

      Oddly the "About Us" section doesn't give any names at all, but if you go to the annual report you can find the staff--
      link to facinghistory.org

      Chairman of the Board of Directors is Seth A. Klarman, among whose credentials is Chairman of the Board of The David Project, and Director of The Israel Project.

      Also on the board and chairman of the Board of Scholars is Martha Minow (Dean, Harvard Law School).

      Having gotten this far, I just couldn't bring myself to look up author Phyllis Goldstein's history.

  • Just wars-- and civilian casualties
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 9, 2012 at 10:53 pm

      "No, I don’t agree there should have been such an intervention–it would have been unthinkable for any number of obvious reasons."

      Jerome, could you spell out those reasons for us simpletons? Because I can't see why it would have been so different from those interventions that you applaud--Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Libya.

  • Gingrich got $5 million for saying Palestinians are invented people (lord, why am I so cynical?)
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 8, 2012 at 4:09 pm

      "Sheldon Adelson to Birthright group: Gingrich is right to call Palestinians 'invented people'"
      link to haaretz.com

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 8, 2012 at 3:07 pm

      "the kind of attention that will generate is primarily those trying to silence it."

      Exactly, just as in the run-up to Iraq the religious identity of the neocons was only mentioned by the MSM in the context of whether noticing it was "antisemitic." (Remember the uproar over the AdBusters article.)

      (P.S. I hate people who use "religious" like I did here. But it's the usage Phil favors.)

  • Ron Paul's foreign policy should be embraced
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 8, 2012 at 9:37 pm

      "Is anyone who is afraid to say no to our Israel Lobby, qualified to represent the US to the world?"

      Good point. This issue of integrity should be added to David Samel's excellent moral arguments against militarism. Part of the significance of Paul's anti-war position is his willingness to confront a powerful establishment. (Even those who don't agree with him never argue that he's chosen his position opportunistically.) And the real significance of Obama's pro-war position is the man's craven capitulation to power. Are we supposed to trust a man who shows no integrity in his foreign policy, when it comes to domestic policy? The problems the country faces -- socially, economically, domestically, abroad -- can all be seen as symptoms of a corrupted system. Sooner or later those forces are going to have to be confronted, so why not start the battle now?

      "Simpleminded" or corrupt, that's our choice.

      (But of course this assumes that you interpret Obama's foreign policy as a capitulation to the Israel Lobby and not an expression of his true convictions, and I'm not sure Prof. Slater acknowledges the existence of an Israel Lobby.)

  • The trespassing Jew
    • "I wouldn’t mind having these small recollections gathered by tags so you could revisit old stories you liked."

      I agree, but who could ever do justice to the tags? :)

      BTW, this brought a smile: "I was tucked under the eaves holding soffit strips for the taller guy to screw down, and grinning devilishly."

  • Cooking magazines dish on new trend: labeling Arabic food Israeli!
    • "I wonder if the cultural thievery is conscious and intentional or merely lazy."

      Editor Gabriella Gershenson is Jewish. I'm afraid this fact tilts the scales towards "intentional."

  • Emergency Committee for Israel goes after Ron Paul
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 6, 2012 at 5:44 pm

      With ads like these coming from an organization calling itself the Committee for Israel, it's going to make it almost impossible for anyone to deny any longer that there's such a thing as an Israel Lobby. And when their attacks focus on a candidate's anti-war position, it's also going to make it hard for anyone to deny that the Israel lobby is a pro-war lobby.

      On the other hand I don't accuse these people of stupidity and they must have thought of this too, and therefore must have decided that the Israel brand name is strong enough to take the hit. It's going to be interesting to see if they're right.

  • Jewish power + Jewish hubris = 'moral catastrophe of epic proportions'
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 7, 2012 at 4:54 pm

      “He is a poison”

      I'm guessing this required an heroic effort to suppress the A-word, which was just dying to get out. Bravo to both ToivoS and Mooser for finding new ways to express the old cliche.

      And thanks to both of you, from the community, for protecting our impressionable minds from all dangerous ideas. Dangerous ideas are the last things we want around here.

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 5, 2012 at 9:18 pm

      That's a fascinating document, MRW. Thanks.

      I'm struck by the length and depth of the coverage of the topic, on what was just a local nightly news report. That was in 1984. It's amazing how quickly our media's treatment of any subject touching on Jewishness became infantilized and trivialized.

      And I agree with you, the fact that Jewish groups can succeed in segregating that clip as "inappropriate" is infuriating.

  • 'NYT' dissembles about Sembler, Fox and Adelson's interest in Romney Super PAC
    • The Christian Post article is SPECIFICALLY about Jewish Romney supporters. The NY Times article is about Romney’s Super PAC."

      Yeah, any day now the NYT will be running its own report on Jewish money in the Romney campaign.

  • Anti-Paulism
    • "Jerry Slater and I are probably going to have a dialogue about this in weeks to come..."

      Be sure to ask him how he distinguishes an "antisemite" from someone who finds some of the ideas of Jewishness unappealing, or socially harmful.

  • Paul's challenge to progressives
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 3, 2012 at 6:11 pm

      Phil wrote: "Obama will be a better policymaker the longer Ron Paul is in the process."

      If you're registered as an Independent or Democrat, you might want to change your voter registration so that you can participate in your state's Republican primary. It's an easy process, and for most states there's still time.

  • Arendt: Born in conflict, Israel will degenerate into Sparta, and American Jews will need to back away
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 5, 2012 at 6:19 pm

      The structure of Jeffrey's post is a little complicated, so to make sure Robert Werdine doesn't misunderstand let me point out that the statement "The Jews would naturally regard it as an act of baseness if, having appealed to them in our hour of peril, we were to throw them over when the danger was past," are the exact words of a British cabinet minister, writing in 1923, and not merely an historian's interpretation of British motives.

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 4, 2012 at 4:36 pm

      Werdine, you don't have to believe Jeffrey. You can read it directly from Lloyd George's memoirs--

      The Balfour Declaration represented the convinced policy of all parties in our country and also in America, but the launching of it in 1917 was due, as I have said, to propagandist reasons. I should like once more to remind the British public, who may be hesitating about the burdens of our Zionist Declaration to-day, of the actual war position at the time of that Declaration. We are now looking at the War through the dazzling glow of a triumphant end, but in 1917 the issue of the War was still very much in doubt. ... For the Allies there were two paramount problems at that time. The first was that the Central Powers should be broken by the blockade before our supplies of food and essential raw material were cut off by sinkings of our own ships. The other was that the war preparations in the United States should be speeded up to such an extent as to enable the Allies to be adequately reinforced in the critical campaign of 1918 by American troops. In the solution of these two problems, public opinion in Russia and America played a great part, and we had every reason at that time to believe that in both countries the friendliness or hostility of the Jewish race might make a considerable difference.
      link to mailstar.net
      Memoirs of Lloyd George

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 3, 2012 at 2:19 pm

      Mooser writes that the statement “jews who refused to allow their children to marry a non-jews” is "very hard to understand." Presumably he means that all those Jews (still roughly half, today in the twenty-first century in one of the most secular societies on the planet) who refuse to marry any of the 98% of the people around them because of their bloodlines, are doing it from choice and not out of duress. But what's worse?

    • PeaceThroughJustice January 1, 2012 at 7:58 pm

      RoHa writes: "It seems to me ... that Jewish separatism has frequently been so extreme as to alienate the rest of the community."

      But it isn't really separatism by itself which is so alienating. It's the combination of on the one hand refusing to break bread with the crowd while at the same time insisting on participating in the ruling power structure. This is almost unique and is what constitutes the "Jewish problem." Think of other separatist groups, like the Amish, who believe the ways of the broad society are harmful and so insulate themselves by keeping apart. But they keep completely apart (or as completely as they can). They suffer from the prejudice that all minorites must suffer from, but there is no need for new concepts like "anti-Amishness" to explain it.

  • 'Settlements in Palestine' reports U.S. charities violate tax laws
    • PeaceThroughJustice December 31, 2011 at 9:00 pm

      BTW, 501(c)(3)'s are not just "tax exempt," they are "tax deductible." The difference is important. It means that when Irving Moskowitz makes a contribution, you and I and all American taxpayers are effectively boosting his contribution by another 35%.

      (We have a CPA on this forum. Maybe Richard can explain to everyone just how this works. I'm sure he's as indignant as anybody about this abuse of power.)

  • Kampeas: Jewish neocons are more than 2 degrees removed from Bush's decision to invade Iraq
    • PeaceThroughJustice January 1, 2012 at 8:46 pm

      I think you've got it right, MRW.

      Here's the classic clip from the 2000 campaign--
      "The George Bush You Forgot"
      link to youtube.com

    • PeaceThroughJustice December 31, 2011 at 8:35 pm

      Annie wrote: "who could forget the line in the rolling stone..ron s..brain malfunctioning..argh..about the people just watching what happens of finding out and they write history or something."

      You didn't give us much to go on, but perhaps you were thinking of this from Karl Rove?

      "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
      link to en.wikipedia.org

    • PeaceThroughJustice December 31, 2011 at 8:24 pm

      There is actually very little difference between the positions of Kampeas and Phil. Kampeas writes that the administration wanted a war and "tailored the sales pitch to the target." So the media got WMD, liberals got the Kurds (Hitch got that assignment), and "Jews got the threat to Israel." But isn't that exactly what we're talking about? (Leaving aside for the moment the intellectually interesting question that Phil wants to ask of just how the different hawks in the administration arrived at their pro-war positions.)

      The fact that Kampeas can write that American Jews were sold on the basis that it was good for Israel, while at the same time arguing that there was no Israel Lobby, might seem to be a contradiction. But you would be overlooking a key assumption in the worldview of people like Kampeas: JEWS HAVE NO POWER, EVER! To be Jewish is to suffer passively from that fundamental building block of the universe, "antisemitism," and victims can't hold power. The whole difference between Kampeas and Weiss boils down to this assumption, which is at the very center of the idea of Zionism.

  • Thanks, my enemy. I love Palestine
    • PeaceThroughJustice December 30, 2011 at 3:30 pm

      "our new zio poster ambv linked to a youtube of david duke the other day."

      I don't remember Krauss lashing out that time. Oh well, maybe he missed it.

      Strange people indeed.

  • Ron Paul and the left
    • PeaceThroughJustice December 31, 2011 at 2:35 pm

      "does anyone have this JB interview?"

      This may be it. I remember it also influenced me. (It was orignally published in SFIndymedia, but this blogger has put up a copy.)--
      "Jeffrey Blankfort: Jewish-American anti-Zionist journalist"
      SF-IMC, Nov. 20, 2006
      link to bleiersblog.blogspot.com

    • PeaceThroughJustice December 30, 2011 at 10:54 pm

      "Now, does anyone else here think that this incoherent Blankfort rant might be legitimately labeled as “anti-Semitic?” Just a little?"

      Not me, not at all. Particularly since you don't even attempt to point to anything "antisemitic" about it. Just bald assertion. That doesn't work any more, Mr. Slater.

    • "Paul’s response thus far has been about as flimsy as the paper his Newsletter was printed on. “I didn't write them. I didn't read them at the time and I disavow them.”"

      Doesn't sound all that flimsy to me, but I suppose it depends on where you're coming from. I imagine a nose dedicated to a lifetime of sniffing out "antisemitism" can eventually grow hypersensitive from all the exercise.

      If Ron Paul is such a monster, why can't Lizzy Rattner can't find anthing to get indignant over which doesn't date from the early nineties? What happened in the last twenty years?

  • Netanyahu gets to play Superman in case of 7-year-old harassed by orthodox Jews
    • PeaceThroughJustice December 27, 2011 at 2:03 pm

      Postville, not Pottsville. And the interesting part, the part relevant to the theme of this blog, occurred well before the animal cruelty scandal broke or the illegal immigrant scandal broke. Here's from the afterword to the 2001 edition:

      "The Hasidim [ultra-Orthodox] were waging a cultural holy war, in Postville, Jerusalem, New York, Los Angeles, Paris -- everywhere. The world was Jew vs. non-Jew, and the dichotomy existed in everything they did. Hasidic children went to separate schools, their parents arduously stayed among themselves. If the city of Postville tried to enforce an ordinance the Jews disagreed with, the immediate cry was anti-Semitism. If a local complained about noise from the shul [religious center], if anyone disagreed about annexation [into the town of a local Jewish-owned slaughterhouse], he or she was quickly branded an anti-Semite. Ultimately, I discovered, carrying on a conversation with any of the Postville Hasidim was virtually impossible. If you didn't agree, you were at fault, part of the problem. You were paving the way for the ultimate destruction of the Jews, the world's Chosen People. There was no room for compromise, no room for negotiation, no room for anything but total and complete submission." (p. 197)

      I've always thought "When Victims Rule" should have been the title for the book.

  • Liberal thinktank sacks Block, saying 'Your actions cause many to fear' criticizing Israel
    • PeaceThroughJustice December 23, 2011 at 3:58 pm

      Perhaps he'll join Scooter and Judy at the Hudson Institute. Isn't that why Weinstein bought it, to provide a home for fellow landsmen?

      (BTW, I'd love to see the list of names who were on that "Freedom Community" listserv. Why hasn't this been made public? I'm guessing the one common thread you'd find would not be ideological position, but just old-fashioned ethnic identity.)

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