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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
Is there a difference between exposing the faces of the innocent and of the guilty?
Where is the obsession really coming from, clencher? Is it not coming from the Zionist apologists, in their guilt or defensiveness? Is the question not introduced far more often by the Zionist defenders insisting they are not racists, protesting too much, and defending the indefensible?
Yes, this is significant, when such a forceful statement is made is such an influential journal. Now, wait for the backpeddle.
Sounds just like a spy with his cover blown, doesn't he?
I'm sure Jonah is very happy to discover evidence that makes him think there is antisemitism. In the minds of the world's Jonah's, this excuses all crimes in the names of Jews and no one has to do anything differently.
Here's a clue for the Jonahs - people want other people to change all the time. Not just Jews. People want other people to stop selling their young daughters for sex, to stop burning crosses on their lawns, to stop throwing sewage into the waterways. Jews want nonJews to change, to stop defaming Jews. But Jews, according to Jonah, have no obligation to change any of their behaviors to accomodate others.
We call this exceptionalism.
Hophmi, Falashmura aren't refugees, they're attempting to exercise their self-determination as Jews by immigrating to the "Jewish state." Your comments about the Arab states are irrelevant, just a smokescreen to mask Israeli racism against dark-skinned Jews.
You always raise these screens when the facts of Israeli evils are undeniable. "The Arab states are worse, so why do you criticize Israel?" So if some mental patient on the streets is sleeping in his own shit, do you stop taking a shower, just because someone else smells worse?
Zionism was always about escape into persecution of others and preventing others from exercising their self-determination. Which makes it not only racist, but worse.
No, hophmi, what you're saying is completely dishonest, because you mean by it that Jews have the right to attack and oppress others in "defending their rights."
The Palestinians are learning not to let gentiles take care of them, too. Particularly the US gentiles.
What should the Arab states admit Ethiopians, who don't want to go there? Are you of the opinion that the entire population of North Africa is Arab?
The real question is: what is the difference between Ethiopians and any other Jews? Why are Ethiopian Jews subject to a quota when Israel invites every French Jew to immigrate? The only answer is racism.
Hophmi, the dispute between Germany and France was nationalist. The question was which state was to be sovereign over the territory, not what people would live there. The local population was not expelled, only transfered to different rule.
If Zionism simply meant a Jewish state, anywhere, Slater might have a better point. But Zionism has meant, almost uniformly, a Jewish-majority state in Palestine, and that necessarily means the expulsion of the Palestinian population that was living there already, before the Zionist project was conceived.
And this is absolutely is racist. It says that the two peoples are unequal in their claim to the same land, and the one people has the right to expel the other and to repress by force the remnant. By Slater's own definition, this is racism.
Prevail! Please prevail!
Antidote, I really don't think there'd be much of a difference.
I'm really cheering on Yesha this time. Best thing to illustrate Israeli intransigency.
ISRAELI security before Palestinian rights.
"Security, security, security" seems to be the preoccupation of Cohen's Fayyadstan. Whose security? Why, Israel's, of course.
There's a lot to unpack here, Shmuel. It's clear that the religious species of Zionist is indeed using these scriptures to justify their killing and stealing, using them selectively to justify their actions. So far, I think you're quite correct.
Yet as an atheist, I have to maintain that Deuteronomy and the other genocidal books are sick. It was in large part through reading this stuff that I came to the conclusion that, if such an entity as YWHA did exist, I could only curse and reject it. The god depicted there is an evil one, and I can't help believing it's not a coincidence that Israel's curent course so closely recapitulates this genocidal founding myth.
So, Shmuel, there is a difference, I maintain, between a group misusing their own scriptures for a political purpose and a group misusing someone else's. But when a group misuses its own, it is legitimate to point this out.
They really need to move the Report link back over to the right side.
Shmuel - those verses are used by the Zionist extremists to justify their treatment of the "Amelekites" today, so I'd say they're relevant.
Juan Cole says Obama is caving to the Zionist-controlled Congress.
link to juancole.com
I've seen nothing about arrests in this case - why not?
The promising thing is that these tactics will probably backfire.
Correct. It's the conquest that's 63 years old. Feel better?
What we need are Rosenbergs for Iran.
They've reacted angrily, and the Arab League says it will reject this deal. Although, since it's entirely between the US and Israel, this is mostly pro forma.
Neither reward nor bribe - total giveaway. Total betrayal of the Palestinians. Total.
And all for a 90 day PARTIAL freeze that won't be enforced, even less than the previous one was.
I look forward to seeing Zionist thugs arrested for felonious assault, showing the world their true ugly faces.
This is total betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Total.
Shmuel, you are perfect.
I see my comment disappeared
I think it indicts Congress that Baird's voice went so unheeded there. It is no place for an honest man.
When Glen Beck makes the most vile antisemitic attacks against Jewish George Soros, where is the condemnation?
Apparently they don't really share our values, after all.
If they won't, then who can pity them when the fire comes.
Right now I'm contemplating how this will play out in terms of even more erosion of American freedoms.
The TSA has been playing a very Israeli trick to force air travelers to pass through the nakedness machines. You can opt out, but then you are subjected to a near-rape at the hands of the TSA thugs. It's a deliberate punishment, meant to intimidate travelers and force them to do the government's will.
Something of the sort will happen soon to what remains of our freedom of speech.
I don't see why that has to be, Mooser. Jewish privilege in the US isn't based on Zionism; Zionism is based on US privilege.
The only way US Jews will be harmed is if they support the Zionist state to the bitter end and become implicated in the consequences.
It looks like Doctor D has gotten to Hillary: link to haaretz.com
Treason by the name of Zionism.
These projects make it easier to identify the hasbara regurgitated by the ignorant, as you see the same talking points repeated, over and over.
ANTISEMITE!
As well as: link to salon.com
And Greenwald is MUCH more influential than Sullivan. Methinks the Zionists have overreached.
Of course, to a Republican, betraying the US President is not treason when the President is Democrat.
The fact that a Jewish population in the U.S. equal to that in Israel resides and votes here — and this is to leave aside issues of wealth or influence —
Gellian, the problem is not the voting Jewish population, the problem is precisely the wealth and influence. While the majority of the Jewish voters lean left, the wealth and influence overwhelms it on the right. The increasing concentration of Jews in Congress do not represent their Jewish constituents on this issue, they represent the Lobby, that pays them.
Are these villagers Israeli citizens?
Zionism is the enemy of human rights, of justice and of truth.
"Know thine enemy."
Why people reply to this troll is beyond me.
3 now. He still keeps trying, keeps getting shot down.
Thumb up!
I wish we had thumbs here.
Comments were running strongly in your favor when I looked last.
Americans now generally realize the genocidal truth about their history and don't make a lot of excuses for it. Books and movies now made about this history show the white settlers as racist interlopers, breakers of treaties, stealers of land, murderers of innocents. There are very few in the audience who still cheer for Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
Now it only requires the additional step to see the Israeli settlers in the same light.
Israel could have ended the rocket attacks any time it chose to by accepting the ceasefire offered by Hamas. But they prefered the rockets, which give them the excuse for carnage.
You know, yonira, the Nazi soldiers firing on the Warsaw Ghetto probably made similar comments for similar reasons.
I thought it was obvious, Ismail.
And those soldiers were being fired on and in immiment danger, too.
They were only defending themselves. And other lies.
The fact is, the greatest danger to Israeli invasion troops in Gaza was the friendly fire from their own triggerhappy comrades, like the goons in the video.
In a moral army, moral soldiers reject such orders.
You know what the difference is, Jonah - which side is the oppressor and which side is the victim.
You project a false moral equivalence that ignores the fact that Palestinians have every reason and right to hate Israel, and lovers of justice and equalilty have every reason to hate injustice, inequality and the military machine that enforces it.
tgia - check your irony detector.
They're small, all right. Small of soul, shriveled away.
Soldiers in the IDF have become hardened to human suffering; it doesn't affect them because they don't care.
It's couched in terms of human rights because it's all about human rights.
Let us know whenever the Janjaweed come to campus to plead the righteousness of their cause, and I'm sure a protest will turn out against them, too. But it's a funny thing - the only oppressors we see come from the IDF.
Canada is Zionist-occupied territory, and I doubt if that is a coincidence.
You Tube censorship gets worse and worse. They blocked a clip posted by Juan Cole about a Republican climate denier.
This is the problem with monopolies, and YT is close to being a virtual monopoly - the opposite of what the internet is about.
The fact that BYahoo is pressing so hard for these surrender negotiations is sufficient proof that there is no real solution involved.
No, it just piles shame on Egypt, for betraying its brothers. There's no less shame for Israel. Shame is infinite.
The comments on Sales' site were not supportive of his position.
Send it to Waxman, he seems to need it.
Hollywood loves the Israel-kicks-ass genre so much, but you can put that shoe on the other foot.
No, Jonah. Repression of legitimate protest.
It doesn't matter how little terrorism comes from the Palestinians, the repression only escalates.
Would the Israelis stop their repression - but they won't.
Kucinich, Kaptur and Fudge - I think it is - were all targeted this year by the teabaggers and all survived. But it was closer than it ever has been.
Yeah, like "I'm a young Palestinian American" would have gotten him a lot more face time.
Hell, hophmi, why go to all that trouble? Just start peelling bills off a big fat roll.
Waytago!
I think Waxman could use to be reminded that the countries in the mideast, the Arab League, have been trying to make peace with Israel for almost a decade, with no response.
It's discouraging to think that Waxman and others might actually believe this line of bullshit. I'd rather think they were just totally corrupt and cynical.
How does it work, clencher? Are the organizations invited, or can they ask to attend? Was JVP refused a place, or did they not request one?
Where was Jewish Voices for Peace?
Hatred for warmongering neocons? You're damn straight it shines.
If you want to speak frankly about Israel's chokehold on US policy, just go to the comments section of the Israeli press. There, people have no hesitation to proclaim the truth, which is so universally acknowledged that no one ever thinks of disputing it.
To Zionists, this all makes perfect sense, and the revilers are antisemitic.
How many well-funded organization are there devoted to the protection of protesters at Jewish conventions?
It's called "assault," hophmi. As in, a criminal act.
I saw a report yesterday that there are no more names on Israel's wanted list of Palestine. They are all presumably dead or in prison.
So what is their excuse for these raids now?
It wouldn't seem so, given the way their elected representatives line up to cheer the occupation.
He needs to change that to "defending himself."
Not from the Talmud, obviously.
Hophmi knows so much about Judaism he says the Talmud isn't a holy book.
Which of course cuts down remarkably on how much you have to know.
That's a good one, hophmi. Judaism is a minority opinion these days. Now we have Zionism instead.
Impatience is a sin.
Bart would prefer the place be nuked?
Exodus 20:17 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour's."
THAT is Judaism.
Let Canada take over Israel's support if they like the place so well.
Here's someone who clearly sees the reality.
Zionists just want to see Palestinians suffer. Israel is a nation of sadists.
American politicians support Israel. As long as the money keeps flowing.
Neocons are above facts.
"not the right conditions" = Israel might have to give up something.
History is like that, Jonah. Throughout history, the size and extent of states change. Often, they disappear entirely.
You want to talk about "historic Israel"? The kingdom of David? A whole lot of Israelis would have to move out if modern Israel were restricted to the boundaries of that miniscule statelet.
The point is that the Palestinians have a claim to a certain territory, however it is defined. If Israel wants peace, they have to come up with compelling reasons that the Palestinians should give up their claim. But Israel wants the territory, not peace.
This ploy is as old as Tom Sawyer. You draw a line in the dirt with your toe and dare the other guy to step over it. He does. You draw another line, further on, dare the other guy to step over that one. Ad infinitum.
The map of historic Palestine is only the truth of the situation, illustrating that Israel has already taken 78% and still wants the remainder. It is perfectly natural for Palestinians to want it back.
The problem is that Israel is not willing to give any of it it, and in fact wants it all.
A peace agreement would be based on these facts, would start from that point. Pointing out the extent of historical Palestine is not a repudiation of peace, it is the potential beginning of it.
willing to give back the territories
No. They weren't and they aren't. They never would and never will. And that's why there is no real chance for peace.
The fact that Palestinians are opposed to the idea of a Jewish state taking over their land doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to accept the existence of that state, if their conditions are met. In fact, the official representatives of the Palestinians already have done this.
The intransigent party is Israel, which refuses to consider the Palestinian conditions and continues to make agreement impossible by confiscating the remaining Palestinian land.
Go read Miko Peled's article posted here today: link to mondoweiss.net
If there is any doubt in anyone’s mind, Israel has no intentions of ever letting go of any part of historic Israel.
It doesn't matter whether Palestinians and other Arabs are opposed to the idea of a Jewish state. The only thing that matters is whether Israel will accept the presence of a Palestinian state. Which they obviously will not.
You'd think Schumer could afford a fresher line of hasbara.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
It occurs to me that they would cover it up.
It occurs to me that BYahoo would rather have Biden as president than Obama. It occurs to me that there is a quick way to make this happen. It occurs to me that they may have done this before.
Does this worry anyone else?
If Israelis actually have such a fear, the product of their own crimes in puting all the Jews into one basket, the best solution would be to encourage massive Palestinian settlement in the Tel Aviv area instead of their current efforts to expel them. In case any Arab or Muslim power ever did consider a nuclear strike, the most effective deterrent would be the risk to Palestinian lives.
That might have made sense if the dude had won.
The encouraging thing about the teabaggers is their ability to hold contrary propositions at the same time. Nothing would stop them from being against Islam and Israel, both alien forces at once.
Palin, yes, with her dual loyalty flag has jumped on the TP coattails, but Palin is a neocon product. I have a sense that the TP base not only doesn't particularly care about Israel, but harbors a definite suspicion of it. This could be used, if anyone cared/dared to use it.
I may be wrong here, but I have the sense that the populist TP is likely to be disinclined to hare off on foreign adventurism, even on behalf of Israel. In a way, the TP is the in-house opposition to the spend-and-invade neocons.
Although Rubio rushing off to ass-kiss in Jerusalem isn't encouraging for my theory.
He's not on his own, he has the entire Congress with him. And Congress, lest we forget, has the power to declare war.
I think most of us here are focused on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but really this is just one symptom of the problem. Even if, somehow, for better or worse, the situation of the Palestinians is resolved, there will still be a Lobby-controlled Congress that will have no compunctions about starting WWIII in exchange for campaign contributions.
Well, yes.
The weakness of the US is not the power of Israel, it's the power of the Lobby over Congress, a body that consistently puts what it considers the intrests of Israel over the interests of the nation it supposedly serves.
Americans are all for wars that hurt other people but not themselves.
Written by antisemites, obviously. There isn't a clause that says "except for Jews."
It really does take chutzpah to new heights when the Zionist organizations start to complain about well financed opposition to their apartheid project.
The only thing that would be OK with the Federations is for the world to act like the 3 monkeys while Israel goes about completing its apartheid project.
I suspect we'll be seeing more clueless trolls showing up soon.
unique community-based infrastructure of the Jewish Federations movement to proactively promote a fair and balanced understanding of Israel and Middle East issues This probably translates into more pressure campaigns to prevent other points of view from being heard.
How do you go to court to throw out a treaty? This has to be the question.
Reading the discussion after Ahmed's post about Nir Rosen's book brings up once again the question of the Daytonikim. Where is their loyalty? Whose orders will they take? In the event of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence or the dissolution of the PA, where will they stand?
How possible is it that they would take the side of the Palestinians, when their job has been repressing them?
The purpose of the PA is to sign a surrender document giving up all Palestinian rights to Palestinian land. Better to eliminate it before this can occur.
But all that anyone still hears is "Palestinian terrorism" and "Israel has the right to defend itself."
I don't see that the curtailing of Palestinian terror activities has done the cause a damn bit of good.
I know other Native Americans who turn their backs on the indigenous people of Palestine. And of course the African-American politicians supporting a Jim Crow state.
I got mine, Jack.
It's really the pro-Israel lobby, but terms are always shortened. Usually to just "the Lobby."
You're avoiding the T word. Why is that?
Adding, headlines using the word "TERRORIST" to describe Kahane, not "victim of terrorism."
Not if they're Jewish, only if they're Arab.
What's needed is headlines.
This site needs a better class of Islamophobes.
The smear is in your taking James' simple skeptical question to be proof of duplicity in a single instance, which you then extend to proof of duplicity in toto. while behind our backs they are actively seeking and supporting our destruction
You just know this "inherently" so you can twist every statement or question as if it confirmed your Islamophobic prejudices. And yes, I tend to use this word whenever I encounter Islamophobes.
Bart, thanks for illustrating how Islamophobes are always using smear tactics and innuendo.
Somehow, I get the feeling that when some website puts up propaganda defaming Muslims you swallow it whole without checking, and when a website puts up propaganda defending Muslims, you reject it without checking.
What the posters here are aware of is how the internet is full of lies.
Good idea to have balance. They should get a Palestinian victim of the Naqba to balance the Jewish narrative from Epstein
Next Wednesday. There's still plenty of time for Zionists to raise a campaign to get it canceled.
So is it antisemitic to say that Jews control Israel?
And the Zionists will tell us that all the Arab states need to do is offer citizenship to the exiled Palestinians and they will make nice homes among the other nice Arabs and stay there and prosper and not ever try to come back home to bother the Jews.
Zionists will not face the enormity of the consequences of their worst crime. 1947 rolls through history on a tide of blood, rising, not receeding.
Lest anyone think this is exclusive to Muslims, look at the genocidal attacks in Rwanda. There's something wrong with the species.
This book is from Nation Books and available at Amazon. I have just purchased it. I'm happy to see such a book coming out from a source widely available.
Why are Gazans expected to sit back and let Israel bombard them with everything?
Jewish voters are irrelevant. The issue is Jewish money. When Rubio takes the pilgrimage to kiss the Zionist soil, he'll be paying his debt and making sure the money keeps flowing into his coffers.
Yes, hophmi, I do get a little bit worked up at the prospect of my country falling even further under the domination of a foreign state.
Wrong again, Jonah. The Arab population is hostile to the presence of Israel next door because it has destabilized their lives. You don't need "indoctrination" when your father is killed in an Israeli airstrike, when Israeli commandos come and shoot up your village, when Israeli fighter jets scream overhead.
I know its easier for you to haul out the clanking skeleton of the Nazis, but in fact, if you want to look for historical precedents, you need to focus on the Brits, who were the imperialist successors to the Ottomans and quashed Arab hopes of nationalist independence. And infidels, into the bargain. The present map of mideast war was drawn entirely by the Brits after WWI. And it was the Brits who allowed the migration of the Zionist Jews to destabilize the region and destroy the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinians. The fact that the Jews were sponsored by the Brits was reason enough to oppose them.
If there had never been an Israeli state, the Arab sales of Mein Kampf would have been pretty dismal, because the Arabs would have had less reason to give a damn about Jews. If there had never been a British Empire, they would have been even less reason for Arabs to concern themselves with the petty quarrels of European states.
Try saying "a state for all its citizens" to a Zionist. Then you'll see the difference.
Unlike you, Jonah, I am not afflicted with the paranoia that insists all Arabs in the world suck in "Jew-hatred" with the first drop of their mothers' milk.
And no, I don't believe what you said I believe, but then that's the kind of remark you tend to make. I believe that the world's Arab population has good reason to be hostile to the state that expelled so many Arabs from their homeland and continues to commit war crimes and repress the rest of the population.
If Israel withdraws from occupied territory, most of the Arab states have promised to recognize it, which will be a first step in the establishment of peace and the reduction of hatred.
But Israel won't do this, will they, Jonah? Because they would rather have the land with the hatred than the peace without the land.
And because Israelis are incapable of not committing war crimes and repression on an ongoing basis. Which was what I actually said.