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Total number of comments: 435 (since 2011-04-24 19:04:00)

Interested in finding helpful dialog on the Israeli/Palestinian conundrum since visiting Israel and the West Bank.

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• Another landmark: 'Boston Globe' honors Hawking's boycott as nonviolent effort to pressure Israel
  • richb May 13, 2013 at 10:40 am

    Another thing is this may push Hawking to boycott Intel also. Are there Palestinian organizations encouraging him to do so? It seems that he is receptive to listening to Palestinian civil society. Hawking boycotting a small conference is largely symbolic but tarnishing the Intel brand would be even more powerful since I've seen estimates that Intel contributes 2-3% of Israel's GDP.

  • richb May 13, 2013 at 10:09 am

    I work for a multinational semiconductor company. The key reason we operate outside the U.S. is cost. Intel was able to build Fab 28 on stolen land and uses stolen water. Israel's economic "miracle" was wrought on the backs of the occupied indigenous populace. I believe that it would be appropriate to boycott Intel and have them abandon Kiryat Gat. That being said who and what is boycotted is the up to those doing boycotting and even more so the Palestinians who are being oppressed.

    The reason why this is getting legs is because of the overreaction of the Hasbarists. People instinctively see that the accusations against Hawking were overblown and start considering that maybe the other talking points are similarly overwrought. For Dr. Hawking and myself it was our visiting Israel that changed our minds but most people cannot see things first hand so this helps. The real power of BDS is not economic but the moral contrast that it draws.

  • richb May 12, 2013 at 5:23 pm with 5 replies

    Much has been made here and elsewhere concerning how Israel does not make or design the Intel Core I7 supposedly inside of Hawking's communication device. Here's a smoking gun where it's clearly made and designed in Oregon and note the comment by the engineer that not only is the I7 designed in Oregon but also pretty much all of Intel's research and manufacturing process is in Oregon, too. (at 0:30 in).

    link to youtube.com

• Romney's Jerusalem 'gaffe' illustrates the relationship between anti-Jewish sentiment and racism against Palestinians
  • richb August 1, 2012 at 9:41 am

    Christian Zionists when they hear the cultural argument seem to think they have the same cultural superiority as the Jews vis-a-vis how much money is made. The facts speak otherwise. From this chart the "superior" cultures are not Jews and Evangelical Christians and Mormons but Jews and Hindus.

    link to awesome.good.is

    The difference between Hindus and Jews is Hindus have a more robust middle class in addition to having a greater percentage of wealthier individuals. Both communities have a tendency to be insular. Where they differ is the Jews are the hedge fund managers while the Hindus tend to be small business owners.

    Mormons are pretty average. Evangelical Christians and Muslims are below average. African American Christians are well below average.

    The graph I showed above was mentioned in the following story in The Economist. If you want a good handle on conservative British economic thought this is the place to go. This shows that Romney has lost the entire political spectrum in Britain.

    link to economist.com

    The reason most Palestinians have low third-world income levels is that they are born into impoverished towns or refugee camps inside the gerrymandered Bantustans of the Palestinian Authority, where border crossings are controlled by Israeli military authorities, water sources are tapped to feed Jewish settlements, Israeli-built infrastructure bypasses them, the education system is funded by paltry international contributions and paltrier taxes, agricultural land is periodically taken by Jewish settlers whose illegal seizures are retroactively approved by the government, land values are undermined because of the overhanging threat of expropriation by Israel, and on and on through all the savage indignities and economic violence of a 50-year-long occupation by people whose ultimate goal is to force you off as much of the territory as possible. Obviously, gross corruption by Palestinian officials and counterproductive political and economic attitudes on the part of Palestinian citizens, mainly typical adaptive behaviours that any people tend to develop when they're confined to massive donor-supported detention zones, have made the situation much worse. Palestine was not going to be a wealthy nation under any circumstances. But without the occupation they might have been as wealthy as, say, Jordanians, who have a per capita income (purchasing-power-adjusted) of $6,000.

    Comparing the income of the average Israeli to that of the average Palestinian, as though their prospects at birth had been equivalent and their fortunes today are largely the result of their own efforts and their "culture", is gratuitously insulting and wreaks damage to American diplomacy. Besides that, it's just wrong. Mr Romney may have noticed a rather large concrete wall running between many Palestinian towns and the roads that might otherwise connect them with markets. To coin a phrase, Palestinians didn't build that. If one were looking for a country in which citizens of different religions are born into relatively equal positions and have equivalent levels of economic freedom, one might try comparing income by religion in the United States. Perhaps at a fund-raising breakfast in New York, Mr Romney might compliment the city's wealthy Jews and Hindus on their culture of educational excellence, which has made them so much richer and more accomplished, on average, than America's evangelical Christians and Mormons. Maybe it's not just culture; perhaps the "hand of providence" plays a role, as well. With the political deft touch Mr Romney has displayed so far on his trip abroad, I wouldn't put such a remark entirely past him.

    The income disparity in Israel/Palestine puts our own income disparity in sharper relief. Thanks Mitt for helping bring up this topic and reminding us why we shouldn't be ruled by the 1% who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

• Why Obama shouldn't go to Israel
  • richb August 2, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    That's why I limited to talking about people behind the Green Line. The crazy distinction between nationality and citizenship allows for systemic discrimination behind the Green Line. Normally citizens are those who are inside a county's borders and it's the case for Israel too although these borders are deliberately undefined. Citizenship historically is how people had rights. But this is not the case in Israel. Rights really accrue to those who have Israeli nationality which applies only to Jews and they do not have to be born inside the borders of Israel.

  • richb August 2, 2012 at 1:57 pm

    You clueless about America too?

    link to securityinfowatch.com

    link to washingtonpost.com

    By law, major-party presidential nominees and their running mates receive Secret Service protection during the general election, but candidates may seek protection earlier in the cycle if they meet a series of polling and fundraising thresholds.

    In anticipation of another busy cycle, the Secret Service has requested $113.4 million to protect the eventual 2012 Republican nominee — a $4 million increase from the 2008 campaign and about two-thirds more than was spent for security during the 2004 election. [My note: the first election after 9/11] Security for President Obama and Vice President Biden will be paid for out of a separate account.

  • richb August 2, 2012 at 11:34 am

    You seem to think my guide told me all this. It was quite the opposite. I was on a Christian Zionist tour and all the propaganda was in full force. The problem was I deliberately sought out Palestinian Christians to talk to and that shattered the illusion. You ask why so many get the impression that Israel is so wonderful and it's a combination of two factors: massive propaganda and the people want to see what they want to see. The problem with me was I wanted to find out the truth. If you come with that perspective the propaganda is laughable. The guide would just point to a Palestinian village and tell people how wonderful it was and it was just believed. We were on a bypass road and the guide showed how "peaceful" the West Bank was. As I said previously I kept pestering my guide to show me a mixed city where Jews and Palestinians were side by side and all he could come up with was Nazareth Illit!

    Finally, you have to remember is the people who do not see apartheid in the Holy Land are the same ones who don't see global warming. Evangelical opinion can best be interpreted in a contrarian fashion to arrive at the truth.

  • richb August 2, 2012 at 10:46 am

    My guide was trying to make the same point you were but was unable to do so. I saw many examples of Christians and Muslims living side by side but the Jews were isolated from both of them. It was exactly as Blake describes. I was in the Gallilee on Land Day and I asked my guide about the protests. He just dismissed it. When I talked with a Christian in Nazareth she talked about internal displacement and the Nakba. There is a village called Saffiriya less than 10 miles from Nazareth which was razed to the ground and a forest was planted on top of it by the JNF so they cannot return. (I checked Google Earth and found the forest just as was described.) I later found out that this happened to over 500 other villages. The protesters march to the village where they used to live. The Christian went on to say why Nazareth is now majority Muslim because the Muslims fled the Nakba and sought refuge with the Christians. The Jews took over the land in a process know as judaization and live in isolated high places where no Palestinians are allowed. Nazareth is pinched in by these Jewish settlements. The mayor of Nazareth Illit is a bigot and a Baptist church has to worship underground because Nazareth Illit is to be for Jews only.

    This narrative was also confirmed by the evangelical relief organization World Vision which has been in the Holy Land for decades. Google the former director Tom Getman for his story. The documentary Occupation 101 interviewed him.

    link to occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com

  • richb August 1, 2012 at 6:34 pm with 3 replies

    A friend tells me that the Secret Service would clamp down for a president in ways that greatly outstrip the Romney security. I don't know-- why risk it?

    My wife's cousin is retired Secret Service and ran the Presidential Motor Pool. The security for the presumptive nominee of the opposition party would be the same as the President. One key difference is the President shows up unannounced when going to that part of the World. Still, there was an assassination attempt in Kuwait against George HW Bush in 1993. (Former Presidents also get full security retinues.) The bad blood caused by this contributed to our little adventure in Iraq by his son.

  • richb August 1, 2012 at 5:44 pm

    Winnica,

    Over and over and over again I asked my guide to show me where Palestinians and Jews were side by side together. He couldn't do it. Not once. When I talked to Palestinian Christians in Nazareth and Bethlehem they all mentioned the apartheid reality of Israel and the West Bank. I didn't even know about Mondoweiss until I came back. The reason I'm here is this is the only place that actually describes Israel and the West Bank as I experienced it. Before coming here I posted on Daily Kos where so-called progressives slandered Annie and called this site Mondofront (a slur referring to a neo-Nazi discussion board which I will not name). My own motives were called into question and I experienced first hand Hasbara where anyone with sympathy to Palestinians was hit-reced -- to use the DK parlance. (In fact, I experienced Hasbara before I know the term.) Then people were banned from DK while the Hasbarists flourished.

    So yes you will not convince me here for one simple reason. You spout lies. Please move along and leave us alone.

  • richb August 1, 2012 at 10:14 am

    George W. Bush visited Israel and the West Bank. From a review of Rice's Memoir in the New York Review of Books. Note Rice lived through Jim Crow.

    link to nybooks.com

    On a presidential visit to Israel in 2008, Bush travels to Bethlehem by car rather than helicopter against the wishes of the Israelis because Rice wants him to see “the ugliness of the occupation, including the checkpoints and the security wall…for himself and [because] it would have been an insult to the Palestinians if he didn’t.” The barriers were taken down, the convoy traveled at speed, but Bush got the point, according to Rice: “‘This is awful,’ he said quietly.”

    Sheldon Adelson deliberately was trying to block Rice's influence during the Bush Administration. Because of the influence of Adelson's money Bush listened to Netanyahu rather than his own Secretary of State! (I realize this sounds anachronistic since Olmert was a PM at the time but Adelson is not as much pro-Israel as he is pro-Likud and pro-Bibi.)

    link to newyorker.com

    Last October, Sheldon Adelson, the gaming multibillionaire, accompanied a group of Republican donors to the White House to meet with George W. Bush. They wanted to talk to the President about Israel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was organizing a major conference in the United States, in an effort to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and her initiative had provoked consternation among many rightward-leaning American Jews and their Christian evangelical allies. Most had seen Bush as a reliable friend of Israel, and one who had not pressured Israel to pursue the peace process. Adelson, who is seventy-four, owns two of Las Vegas’s giant casino resorts, the Venetian and the Palazzo, and is the third-richest person in the United States, according to Forbes. He is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution; and he had contributed so generously to Bush’s reëlection campaign that he qualified as a Bush Pioneer. A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.” (The White House denies this account.)

    Perhaps this exchange contributed to a growing resolve on Adelson’s part to try to force the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, out of office. Adelson and Olmert had been friendly since the nineteen-nineties, when Olmert was a member of the hard-line Likud Party. Olmert became Prime Minister in January, 2006, following Ariel Sharon’s stroke. He, like Sharon, came to recognize the inexorability of Jewish-Arab demographic trends. Olmert declared that a two-state solution was the only way of preserving Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and he said that he was ready to negotiate with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Adelson saw Olmert’s actions as a betrayal of principle. He had long wanted to see the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Prime Minister, but a revived peace process gave that goal new urgency.

    Adelson opposed both Olmert and the peace conference, which was held in Annapolis in late November. The Zionist Organization of America, to which Adelson is a major contributor, ran a full-page ad in the Times, headlined, “SECRETARY RICE: DON’T PROMOTE A STATE FOR PALESTINIANS WHILE THEIR 10 COMMANDMENTS PROMOTE TERRORISM AND ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION.” The “10 Commandments” referred to the constitution of Fatah, Abbas’s party. “Osama Bin-Laden and Hamas would be proud of Abbas’ Fatah Constitution,” the ad stated. Two weeks before the start of the conference, a Washington, D.C., think tank that shares office space and several board members with the Republican Jewish Coalition—another organization to which Adelson makes significant contributions—circulated an article on its Listserve which asserted, “Olmert is now chasing peace with the Palestinians at all costs, in a desperate attempt to secure his place in world history.”

  • richb July 31, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    Phil just documented how poor the security was when someone who has even odds of being the next President came to town. Given how your descriptions diverged from my experience when I was there I simply don't trust you. Rabin was assassinated with a semi-automatic Baretta 84F.

  • richb July 31, 2012 at 5:21 pm

    No the machine-gun-toting settlers are not violent at all. Yeah, right.

    link to telegraph.co.uk

    I live in Colorado and I've been to Israel and the West Bank. The settlers there are truly nuts.

  • richb July 31, 2012 at 4:52 pm with 5 replies

    Here's more context on the guns in the Western Wall complex photos. First go to my DailyKos diary I had after my trip to Israel. Look immediately after the orange squiggle.

    link to dailykos.com

    Now look at your Western Wall, part 3 picture. The private guard in my photos is on the same small stair case. What they are guarding is a door to the tunnels beneath the Western Wall immediately to the left of the sign in your picture. The private guards that guard this entrance are all settlers and are not IDF. (I know because they told me.) They are there even when foreign dignitaries are not in town. The metal detector you mentioned is the worst security on the planet. A pastor friend of mine had a metal hip and they didn't care about it because he was white. I placed my bag just outside the metal detector on a table and picked it up without anyone inspecting it because I am white.

    Check out the immediately following pictures in my diary. There you will see the model of the Second Temple and another model showing how a Third Temple could be built next to the Dome of Rock. I was also taken to another place in Jerusalem called the Temple Institute where they had solid gold pieces (I held them and they were damned heavy) to be used on the Temple Menorah.

    I swear one way or another those crazy settlers are going to start WWIII.

• Ben-Ami says divestment will alienate Christians from 'American Jewish community'
  • richb July 4, 2012 at 9:12 am

    Phil accidentally corrected Jeremy in his headline. What J Street is doing is alienating Christians. We have completely run out of patience and the tired old anti-Semitism charges don't work any more (at least for the young). At the start of the Obama administration Christians who cared about finding a solution saw J Street as part of the solution:

    link to youtube.com

    Now the scales have fallen and we see they are part of problem. This is not limited to J Street, however. What the PCUSA and others have also seen is that elective politics in the U.S. are not the answer. You can elect all the "right" people and the ball does not move forward. We as part of American civil society need to do what Palestinian civil society has already done: take this into our own hands because our government will not/cannot do it for us.

• We're still losing
  • richb May 13, 2012 at 11:15 am

    This is not quite the right question. Of the evangelicals that might vote Democrat what is important to them? See my analysis looking at the them from 2008: link to dailykos.com

    The short synopsys of my analysis is young evangelicals are more YOUNG evangelicals than they are young EVANGELICALS. These young evangelicals also share another important characteristic with their secular peers. They are much more anti-Zionist than their elders. So, if the Obama campaign wants to repeat their inroads into the evangelical vote they need to counter-intuitively to go to the left on I/P and be on the side of justice and human rights.

    Another thing I noticed was the composition of Obama donors from last week. The loss of funds from Wall Street -- read Jewish donors -- has been almost entirely replaced by GLBT donors, making 1/6 of his total intake. Netanyahu's gambit to manipulate our election may well result in much lower Jewish and Israeli influence if Obama wins another term.

  • richb May 13, 2012 at 9:32 am

    Here's some more details on how the propaganda of so-called "first-hand experience" works. You will be riding on a tour bus and your guide goes "don't trust CNN trust your own eyes". (Funny how he didn't mention Fox News which was in my Jerusalem hotel.) He specifically asked for us to tell people back home in the U.S. what we saw in order to undermine any critical media of Israel.

    But think about for a second. How relevant is looking at something from a tour bus window where your handler controls 100% of the context? So, he points at a Palestinian village and tells us how great their health care is. (This is a similar narrative to your friend, Phil. Economic prosperity, even pretend prosperity, somehow justifies taking away people's freedom.) I ask him where do Jews and Palestinians live together in Israel? He hems and haws and points at the courthouse in Nazareth Illit(!) and says there are Palestinian judges there. Never, ever, does he have the Palestinians speak for themselves, even the Christian ones.

    The West Bank "first-hand experience" is even more propagandistic. Our guide has the gaul to say this is the West Bank and see how safe it was while pointing out of our tour bus when we were on a bypass road! He pointed to the settlements which he refused to call settlements and noted how they had fences while the Palestinian villages did not. This was, according to him, because the settlers needed protection from the Palestinians but not vice versa.

    I understand how this works well for conservative Christians. They can easily be convinced to only listen to "approved" sources of Pravda and Izvestia. That liberal Jews will not use a wide array of information sources is especially disappointing. But it's not surprising. See Chris Mooney's new book the Republican Brain. In it he notes authoritarian brains fall easily into confirmation bias particularly when they perceive a threat. This is because they are thinking from their Amygdala. Even though liberal Zionists like to think of themselves as liberals, they in reality think like my Tea Party friends on the bus.

  • richb May 13, 2012 at 12:32 am

    Interesting how this first-hand experience works. My tour guide points to an Arab village and says how wonderful it is. The trouble is I had real first-hand experience when I talked to Palestinian Christians in Nazareth and they directly contradicted my Israeli guide. Pointing to an IBM plant and lying is faux first-hand experience and it's amazing how many people (on my tour Christian Zionists) fall for this crap all because it feeds their confirmation bias. First-hand experience means actually talking to people but that never, ever happens because people would come to conclusions different than their Soviet handlers, err, Israeli tour guides want.

  • richb May 12, 2012 at 8:45 pm

    I imagine that every facility, outside of Watson, probably describes itself as the “second most important” IBM facility. It makes the employees feel good.

    Which is why I asked Randy. As head of the number one facility he would have a more objective answer of who is number two. He picked the facility that does IBM's nanotechnology work. Before someone infers the wrong thing from Randy's name he is not Jewish. He's currently the executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation a fellowship of Christians who are career scientists and technologists.

  • richb May 12, 2012 at 6:18 pm with 1 replies

    link to globes.co.il

    IBM inventors received a record 5,896 US patents in 2010, marking the 18th consecutive year the company has topped the list of the world’s most inventive companies. Samsung was second, with 4,551 US patents, and Microsoft was third with 3,094.

    IBM’s Haifa Research Lab in Israel received 45 patents in 2010 making it the leading recipient of US patents in Israel, ahead of SanDisk-Israel (Nasdaq:SNDK) and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA). IBM in Israel exceeded the combined total of patents received by Technion and Hebrew Universities.

    So let me get this straight. Out of 5896 patents the Haifa labs got 45. And that was the leading patent recipient in Israel! Here's some more perspective: I personally have 10 U.S. patents. Maybe I'll start calling myself Startup Dude.

  • richb May 12, 2012 at 5:39 pm with 2 replies

    I'm good friends with Randy Isaac who is a retired head of IBM's TJ Watson laboratory. (See his APS fellowship citation here. link to aps.org Note that all the IBM fellows are either from Yorktown Heights or San Jose. ) So I put to him the following question:

    I heard a claim about a place being the second most important research facility for IBM. In your opinion where would that be? I'm not telling the answer I heard to not prejudice your answer.

    His response:

    I'll bet it was Albany.

    Randy Isaac

• After LGBT forum, Oren will headline for notorious homophobic pastor John Hagee
  • richb May 8, 2012 at 10:13 am

    Evangelicals with you until the end of the World? Don't bet on it. For older fundamentalists the gay issue trumps everything. Note how quickly a gay neo-con was dumped from the Romney campaign due to pressure from the Religious Right.

    link to youtube.com

    Younger evangelicals are even more problematic for you. They are for gay rights but the reason is important. They are pro peace, pro justice, and pro human rights. That in turn makes them also anti-Zionist. Here's an example:

    link to vimeo.com

    Here's some videos by evangelical students who went to the Christ at the Checkpoint conference. For non-evangelicals note that Wheaton is the most prestigious evangelical liberal arts college in the U.S. and thus where future evangelical leaders will be coming from.

    link to vimeo.com

    link to vimeo.com

  • richb May 7, 2012 at 12:43 pm

    Is it a diplomat's job to interfere with our media and our elections? No wonder Oren renounced his American citizenship to get his current job.

    link to renunciationguide.com

• The Methodist conference: Let’s call this victory what it is
  • richb May 7, 2012 at 12:04 pm

    After Peter had the vision that the ceremonial law concerning clean and unclean foods no longer applied, here was his application:

    Talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.

    ...

    Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. "

    So, as Christians, not only should we note that we are not under the Law but also why. Namely, God cares about people more than what we eat. Furthermore, God cares about all people and not just some chosen few. If God cares then our attitude should be Peter's:

    "So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?”

• Another Christian apostasy on NPR (when will non-Zionist Jews get some air?)
  • richb May 2, 2012 at 9:05 am

    I don't think it is a coincidence. While the money may be in the Jewish Zionist community the votes are in the Christian Zionist one. It sure looks like the narrative being crafted is Christian Zionists -- read evangelicals -- please don't follow the Methodists as they are just crypto-atheists. The danger to the Zionists is not the Methodists but young evangelicals who have jettisoned their Zionism without jettisoning their faith. That's why Christ at the Checkpoint conference has been so savaged by Christian Zionists. Not only were there some big names within the evangelical community speaking against Christian Zionism a new generation of evangelicals and evangelical leaders are being raised up. See here:

    link to vimeo.com

• '60 Minutes' profiles Palestinian Christians, Michael Oren falls on his face
  • richb April 23, 2012 at 10:07 pm

    Funny, when I visited Israel and talked with Palestinian Christians they said exactly the same thing (and no camera was running). In fact, they fill in details that Bob Simon did not. For example, when I was in Nazareth I asked about why it's majority Muslim. Our guide noted that the Muslims fled when the Israelis drove them out of their villages in 1948. The Christians in Nazareth gave them refuge. In honor of the Holocaust victims the Jewish National Fund planted forests on top of those villages so they couldn't return. The reason why Nazareth itself did not suffer that fate was because Ben Dunkelman refused to renege on the original promise not to harm the civilians in Nazareth even when ordered by General Laskov to evacuate them. My guide there also noted how Christians are second and even third class citizens and that Christians were emigrating in increasing numbers. My guide in Bethlehem also noted how the Christians and the Muslims got along but Christians were emigrating because of the occupation.

    So, I call bullshit on you. Name names or STFU.

  • richb April 23, 2012 at 7:21 pm

    I'm not trying to absolve any one of complicity but rather I am noting the brittleness of the relationship between Israel and Western Christians. Evangelicals in particular don't give a tinker's damn about what LIBERAL Jews think. This is where the brittleness happens. Adding the Haaretz reference in the story might make liberal Zionists feel better about themselves but when the break happens it will be a clean one.

  • richb April 23, 2012 at 8:23 am with 3 replies

    It's not that Western Christians don't care, it's because of the deliberate fear mongering done by the Israeli government. People may remember my piece trying to convince my evangelical friends.

    link to mondoweiss.net

    This didn't work at all. However, yesterday morning I sent a much shorter and much more well-received e-mail:

    60 Minutes will be running a story on Christians in the Holy Land this evening.

    Rich

    Unlike the first e-mail I got a number of responses of people that wanted to see the piece. It's not that they don't care about the Palestinian Christians but rather it's they have been lied to as to who are persecuting them. We'll see if my more "subtle" approach works better. One advantage this approach has is they have no opportunity for others to tell them what to think because their defenses are not up. Ambassador Oren knows the true state of Christians in the Holy Land. My friends don't and were probably expecting a completely different piece.

    As for Ari Shavit the Christians I know don't know what Haaretz is let alone pay attention to it. The reason why Ambassador Oren is panicking is he knows in his heart that a story like this will make Jewish elite opinion totally irrelevant. The evangelical monster you created may just as easily and just as quickly turn on you.

• NYT buries the lead-- Iranians halted weapons program in '03 and have not restarted it
  • richb March 18, 2012 at 2:28 pm with 1 replies

    Note that many papers carry NYT front page stories but only run the first 1/3 - 1/2 of the story. The paper can legitimately claim they told the whole story but people who read the story in syndication by other papers will not get the whole story at all irrespective of how diligently they read it. This appears to be a common practice and is why I never read NYT stories in other papers, e.g. The Denver Post.

• Blasting Obama as 'blurred,' McConnell assures Israel lobby that bipartisan Congress will authorize 'overwhelming force' against Iran
  • richb March 6, 2012 at 12:15 pm with 1 replies

    McConnell said his policy was necessary because Obama's policy had a "critical flaw"-- it was not coherent about when the U.S. would use force.

    At the same time the Republicans criticized the President for giving definitive withdrawal times, presumably that the enemy would take advantage of the situation. The same thing holds by showing where the red lines are. Iran would just go up to but not cross the line. Furthermore, by giving the Commander-in-Chief less flexibility it also makes stumbling into war more likely.

    Call me old school but shouldn't the process for declaring war be the President makes the request and the House passes the resolution? The Republicans claim to be all for the Constitution yet when the Constitution is both clear and explicit they conveniently ignore it. If the House chooses to put the cart before the horse the President should veto it saying if there are casus belli then he will make the request and not before. The House as representatives of the people will then determine whether a real red line was crossed. Any complaints about this being "inefficient" should note we were attacked on December 7, 1941 and declared war on December 11, 1941.

• Marc Ellis dismissal hearing begins today at Baylor University
  • richb March 5, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    Here's an interesting quote from a Houston Chronicle article describing Ellis' teaching style and why institutions like Baylor need professors like him to build true bridges of understanding between Christians and Jews -- not the phony ones based on Christian Zionism.

    link to chron.com

    Baylor President Robert Sloan said the center will enhance the university's Christian mission by encouraging students to ask tough questions about their religious identity, including Christian complicity in the Holocaust.

    "The truth is the truth, and no issues are off the table when it comes to seeking the truth in good faith," said Sloan, who hired Ellis in 1998, and in 1999 approved Ellis' idea to create the center. "The center will also raise theological questions about the Christian faith. It's very healthy for our students to know why Marc is Jewish and not Christian, and what does he believe about Jesus."

    The students in Ellis' class were unaware of the controversy surrounding him as they considered the question about why his Hebrew-school teacher was unhappy with him more than 30 years ago for refusing to deliver the knockout blow.

    After an awkward pause, a female student in the class tentatively offered the following explanation: "Because the other kid was possibly a Christian and you had a chance to knock him down."

    Ellis and the classroom erupted in laughter.

    To Ellis, such a moment can be an important step toward bridging the gap with his students.

    "I'm from a different background," Ellis said after class. "But I want to say to my students that I'm also here laughing; I'm also a human being; I'm not just a Jew."

    Yet the point Ellis was trying to make with his anecdote also illustrates why he is such a controversial figure.

    He explained to his students that his Hebrew-school teacher admonished him with the following advice: "Marc, be a proud Jew. If somebody steps on your toes, you knock them down."

    "A big part of my journey is I couldn't accept that cycle of violence," he said to the class.

  • richb March 5, 2012 at 5:30 pm

    There's been an ongoing war between the moderate General Baptists and the conservative Southern Baptists. President Sloan who brought in Marc Ellis had a vision that Baylor would become a Baptist Notre Dame. Interestingly enough the only religions that can be Baylor faculty are Christians and Jews but not Mormons. Right after Ellis was brought on there was a controversy over William Dembski setting up an Intelligent Design center around the year 2000. The science faculty revolted to this suggestion and was the bad blood that was behind the movie, Expelled as Dembski saw himself as persecuted by scientists, even Christian ones.

    What's relevant to this controversy is Texas General Baptists are less Zionist than the Southern Baptists. In the end, the vision of a world-class institution was jettisoned and Sloan was eventually fired. Ken Starr is of Clinton impeachment fame and had previously ran the very conservative Pepperdine Law School. Starr is a member of the Church of Christ and wasn't (until very recently) a Baptist. When he moved to Los Angeles he retained his church membership in a McClean VA non-denominational church. So, he isn't a regular attender of the church of which he is a member. Previous Presidents were Baptists so let's look at why he was chosen. What impressed the conservative wing at Baylor was the fundamentalist nature of Starr's church and his conservative political cred both from the Lewinski affair and IIRC representing Blackwater corporation.

    So, none of this is surprising at all. The Starr presidency shows the ascendency of fundamentalist purity and its concomitant wacko Zionism over the vision of a world-class evangelical university. Marc Ellis is one of the first casualties. Let's see if the usual suspects cry anti-semitism -- this time with some actual justification.

• 'Christ at the Checkpoint' conference brings Evangelical leaders to Bethlehem
  • richb February 28, 2012 at 11:37 am

    Since that's exactly as it happened with me it shows that such a thing is possible. What I still don't know is how often such an experience is replicated. Whether the issue is the Palestinians or climate change people on the reality side of the fence naively believe all that's necessary is to get the facts out. (I know I've tried that.) What many fail to appreciate is the power of motivated reasoning. Such a way of thinking is common with respect to political thought and religious thought and it's a near unbreakable combination in religio-political thought.

    Some handles that might be effective is to take advantage of two beliefs of evangelicals, namely, the belief in absolute truth, and the theology of conversion or repentance. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, literally means to change ones mind. Since truth is singular it's required that we change our minds to be in accord with external reality. We do not have the luxury of having "our" truth but "the" truth.

• 'Kissinger believes Israelis are in panic and will attack Iran' (2010)
  • richb February 27, 2012 at 12:43 pm with 1 replies

    Another interesting e-mail concerning Dubai murder

    6/14/2010

    I have VERY good information this was a contract job. The mission was
    contracted by the MOSSAD. In essence, subbed out under contract. The
    last few hits have been subbed out. I also have VERY good information
    that the Iranian physicist hit was also a subbed out job. More in
    person at the T meeting Tuesday, can't put anything in writing.

• Look over there! All eyes on Iran as Israel quietly devours Area C
  • richb February 27, 2012 at 8:53 am

    Note this article on Ynet concerning the Stratfor wikileaks. I always look at what they fail to quote.

    link to ynetnews.com

    The article talks about the destruction of Iranian infrastructure by Israeli commandos but doesn't mention that attacking Iran is a diversion from attcking Gaza. Here's the actual Stratfor e-mail.

    In the open media many are pushing and expecting Israel to launch a massive attack on Iran. Even if the Israelis have the capabilities and are ready to attack by air, sea and land, there is no need to attack the nuclear program at this point after the
    commandos destroyed a significant part of it.

    If a massive attack on Iran happens soon, then the attack will have political and oil reasons and not nuclear. It is also very hard to believe that the Israelis will initiate an attack unless they act as a contractor for other nations or if Iran or its proxies attack first. With the revealed of the new UN report the Israelis have green light to take care of the Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon now with the entire world watching Iran. I think that we should expect escalations on these fronts rather than an Israeli attack on Iran.

    On 11/7/11 8:09 AM, Chris Farnham wrote: Ah, what? Israel has already destroyed the Iranian prog/infra and this is all being
    engineered by Europeans so people forget about the economy
    crisis?!

    How and when did the Israelis destroy the infra on the ground?

    Why is that we see the vast majority of the increase in pressure
    coming from Israel (I mean straight from people’s mouths) and
    from the US (Such as Albright in the WaPo)?

    Would anyone actually accept that this could let the Europeans
    forget about the Euro crisis, something they have been
    experiencing every day for over a year?!

    Do we attribute any credibility to this item at all? I don’t
    even see what possible disinfo purposes this could serve.

    On 11/7/11 7:54 AM, Benjamin Preisler wrote:

    Code: IL701 Publication: for background Attribution: none Source Description - Confirmed Israeli Intelligence Agent Source reliability: Still testing
    Item credibility: untested
    Source handler: Fred

    Source was asked what he thought of reports that the Israelis
    were preparing a military offensive against Iran. Response:

    I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago. The current “let’s bomb Iran” campaign was ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their at home
    financial problems. It plays also well for the US since
    Pakistan, Russia and N. Korea are mentioned in the report.

    The result of this campaign will be massive attacks on Gaza and strikes on Hezbollah in both Lebanon and Syria.

    —

  • Page: 4
• Mark Perry: Israel and Iran's 'low-level war' is 'dangerous stuff'
  • richb February 19, 2012 at 11:47 pm

    I started using Twitter more heavily during the 2009 Iranian Presidential Elections. One of the handles I followed was an opposition news source known as Iran News Now. They had 25 related tweets today on recent events and showed insight that is desperately needed. I edited these tweets for continuity and style.

    Every Nowruz (Persian New Year) since 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama has addressed Iran and the Iranian people. Three months after Obama's 2009 Nowruz speech, in which he reached out to Iran, the people rose up against the regime during the Iran Election protests. Obama's outreach to Iran in 2009 removed 30 years of hostility and the threat of an attack on Iran, freeing the people to protest the regime.

    But in 2011, with immense pressure from Israel and the Israeli lobby in the U.S., Obama's policy on Iran turned towards the same old confrontations. With the 2012 U.S. elections imminent, Obama has had to appear tough on Iran, the current favorite bogeyman of the Republican party. Obama's political calculus vis-a-vis Iran, Israel, and the upcoming elections have left the Iranian people carrying the horrendous bill.

    Of course, any U.S. president has to contend with the powerful Israeli lobby in the U.S., which may explain Obama's current policy on Iran. But a policy of confrontation and pressure on Iran by U.S. administration is extremely risky, and could lead to huge unintended consequences for  the world. A much smarter policy on Iran: exploit divisions between the Ahmadinejad camp and the Supreme Leader's camp by being open to genuine talks. Whenever the U.S. has ratcheted down the confrontational tone with Iran, the hardliners in Iran have had a tougher time holding power.

    Current U.S. policy on Iran has been a huge gift to Khamenei and the hardline clerical/military industrial complex that controls Iran. The current U.S. policy on Iran harms primarily the Iranian people and empowers the hardliners holding them hostage. The current U.S. policy on Iran is hurting the one Ace in the pocket for Iran and the world--the Iranian people. Iranian people  are dealing with a cancer in their country--the regime. Only by empowering the Iranian people will the regime's behavior change.

     So how can the world empower the Iranian people? Not by sanctions and belligerence or by acknowledging the regime's exaggerated pomp. The world can empower the Iranian people by calling Khamenei's bluff and by (paradoxically) engaging the regime in real talks. Talks with the regime take away the regime's power--it's reliance on belligerence from the west to stifle opposition at home. It is only in a climate a lack of national security threat from the outside that Iranians can realistically confront their dictatorship. Using sanctions to force peace-loving Iranian people to scrounge for basic survival needs lets the regime continue to challenge the world. Threatening to attack Iran makes Iranians that want to change their country for the better stay relatively quiet. Nobody wants to be attacked. 

    I hope that Obama's 2012 Nowruz speech takes the dynamic outlined in the last 20 tweets into account. Iranians need the U.S. as their friend. I hope that the world recognizes the tremendous resource that is the Iranian people, and invests in them instead of forsaking them. Iran and the  U.S were friends and allies once.  It behooves both peoples to try to steer their goverments towards peace. The entire world will benefit.  Iranians in 1979 had a revolution because they wanted a real republic, a real democracy. They got a theocratic dictatorship instead. It is my hope that through smart diplomacy, barriers for the people of Iran to be able to change their own country are removed.

• Adelson dumps Gingrich and Santorum's star is rising
  • richb February 11, 2012 at 2:39 pm with 1 replies

    The Bloomberg article explains part of what happened in Colorado. While there was some support for Romney there was none for Gingrich amongst evangelicals in the Caucus. The biggest factor for the wide swings amongst evangelicals is how much money is spent by the SuperPACs.

  • richb February 11, 2012 at 2:18 pm with 1 replies

    Not only has already done that he also topped Gingrich by calling them Israelis rather than Arabs.

    link to youtube.com

• Organizers say pro-Israel filmmaker with controversial past deceives, disrupts Penn BDS conference (UPDATED)
  • richb February 5, 2012 at 11:06 am

    Sounds like Matin Himel uses the same tactic – interviewing a lot of people who don’t know who he is and cutting out anything that doesn’t help him prove his point (at least from the descriptions here, since I’ve never heard of him before).

    Really? They don't know who Max is? 2:47 in.

    "Are you Jewish?"

    Another woman looks at his press badge and says, "Blumenthal, yes"

    So we now have proof that Martin practices deception while Max does not.

  • richb February 5, 2012 at 10:12 am

    Here's James O'Keefe at Occupy Wallstreet

    link to gawker.com

  • richb February 5, 2012 at 9:55 am with 2 replies

    The better analogy would be to James O'Keefe who:

    A. Is more wed to a political agenda than journalistic integrity
    B. Edits deceptively
    C. Fraudulantly hides his true identity

    I'm an evangelical Christian and Max's reporting on CUFI was excellent and accurate and unlike Martin's full of intrigity. The only thing they have in common is they both got kicked out of a conference.

• Claptrap from Christian Israel lobby
  • richb January 30, 2012 at 1:21 pm

    Note his name: B. Hussein Obama. As for the Western Wall that won't work. The Second Coming is supposed to occur at the Eastern Gate. The resurrection will occur at the cemetery by the Mount of Olives nearby. My understanding of Judaism is they generally agree with this and the Messiah would come at the Eastern Gate. (Of course they disagree as to who the Messiah is and they contend he hasn't arrived yet.) Suleiman tried to block the coming of the Messiah by blocking the Golden Gate.

• Chris Hayes stunning 'Story of the Week' featuring Sheldon Adelson
  • richb January 30, 2012 at 11:55 am

    Some more on young evangelicals, particularly evangelical college students. Note this complaint about them and note what's happening on evangelical college campuses such as Wheaton and Moody.

    link to bibleprophecyblog.com

    For some time, I have been raising the alarm that evangelical Christianity has been infiltrated by theological leftists. Among other things, this impacts our nation’s view of Israel.

    Recently, I was made aware of a movement of young evangelicals who are embracing what the British lecturer Paul Wilkinson calls “Christian Palestinianism.” Loosely, this means a Christian who supports the Palestinian Arabs, and dismisses Jewish claims to the land. Obviously, these “Millennial Generation” Christians (18-34) do not embrace Bible prophecy. Their worldview is different.

    A battle for Israel is being fought in the United States right now. Traditionally, Americans have supported the Jewish state, and the U.S. has always been one of the few friendly havens for Jews. I believe that is changing.

    Chris LaTondresse, CEO of Recovering Evangelical (recoveringevangelical.com) is such a leader. By embracing new media and technologies, they are reaching vast numbers of young people. To be perfectly frank, while many of us in the Bible prophecy community cling to old models in presenting our worldview, young people aren’t paying attention at all. They are running to the “recovering evangelicals.” Listen to what LaTondresse posted on his website:

    “Our generation’s tutors are child-soldiers in Uganda, girls rescued from sex-slavery in Thailand and homeless youth living in the crumbling remains of America’s inner-cities. Our primary classrooms are Brazilian favelas, rural villages in Kenya and bombed-out neighborhoods in Gaza. These people aren’t our causes. They’re our friends.

    “For these reasons and more, we’re turned-off when faith becomes a bludgeon used to condemn those outside of our tribe. We think the world needs fewer culture warriors and more peacemakers, reconcilers and bridge builders.”

    Of course, he is interested in building bridges with those of like-mind. I seriously doubt the young evangelicals who consider themselves centrists or left-leaning are interested in building bridges with what I’d call Bible-believing Christians. And, it is perfectly acceptable for them and Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo — mentors of a sort — to use their faith as a bludgeon against those with whom they disagree. Amazingly, McLaren is considered to be a voice of reason and a compassionate voice, at the same time he lambasts Bible-believing Christians.

    LaTondresse has been impacted by the teachings of Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Catholic from the Galilee who promotes the “Palestinian narrative” which essentially blames the Arab refugee problem on Israel. As LaTondresse claims, Chacour “loves Jesus,” but one isn’t clear if these men acknowledge that Jesus is a Jew. Certainly, the godfather of modern terrorism, the self-proclaimed leader of the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat, absurdly identified Jesus as a Palestinian. This lie has also been peddled by such “evangelical icons” as Phillip Yancey.

    The leadership team of Recovering Evangelical, seven-strong, is comprised of college graduates — including one from Princeton Theological Seminary. One hundred years ago, Princeton was in the midst of a transformation from being a bastion of conservative scholarship, to a liberal school. That is why such wonderful teachers as Robert Dick Wilson departed Princeton. The spirit of the age was against them, and it is against us.

    Interestingly, one of Recovering Evangelical’s senior contributors, Brian Kammerzelt, currently serves on the faculty at Moody! He also taught at Wheaton, which many Christians do not realize is more liberal than conservative. He also attended Willow Creek, the seeker-friendly church in north Chicago started by Bill Hybels.

    Hybels’ wife, Lynne, has become more and more vocal about supporting the Palestinians. On her blog (lynnehybels.blogspot.com), she recently posted some comments about a sermon her husband had delivered the month following the 9/11 attacks.

    Predictably, Bill Hybels decried what he described as unfair characterizations of Muslims, by Americans. This after 19 Muslim terrorists had murdered more than 3,000 Americans. ABC’s Peter Jennings went down the same path, almost immediately holding a town-hall meeting to present Muslims as misunderstood peaceniks.

    Lynne Hybels wrote this about her husband’s message:

    “He talked about ‘hot reactors,’ people who ‘opinionate before they reflect, before they bow down and pray; who ventilate before they ask God for sober-mindedness and self-control; who indict whole races of people before they know the facts. Let’s call this what it is: not good. Not good behavior. Not good Christianity. This is Christianity gone awry.’”

    Lynne Hybels also spoke at the “Christ at the Checkpoint” International Conference, organized by Palestinians and Christians who oppose Christian Zionists. On the website (christatthecheckpoint.com), we also learn that Tony Campolo characterizes Christian Zionism as “theology that legitimates oppression.”

    Christian Zionism is a theology that legitimates oppression? That is a lie.

    These kinds of potshots and smear tactics against Christians who support Israel are growing in number. Christian Zionists, in my view, must determine to do two things:

    Read, study, and educate. Learn the arguments. Study the issues related to Israel and the Jewish people. Then use your brain to articulate these things to your circle of contacts. A word of caution: the nastiness of the proponents of “Christian Palestinianism” will be a continual problem. Yet we must engage these attacks, which are ultimately attacks on the Jewish people.
    Embrace the new technologies. Use tools like social networking, PowerPoint presentations if you speak to groups, etc. If you think you’re too old for Facebook, think again. “Tweet” on Twitter. Realize that cell phones are the new delivery systems for young people. While we are fumbling with overheard projectors and slides, our opponents are laughing, while providing the content they want young people to digest via new technology.

    Leftists will always present themselves as reasonable, compassionate, “careful thinkers.” They focus heavily on social justice issues, and love causes that would make the Pacifists’ Hall of Fame.

    Yet there is a malevolence associated with their loathing of Christian Zionists. Check it out for yourselves.

    We have work to do

  • richb January 30, 2012 at 10:04 am

    The best predictor of whether an evangelical is Zionist or not is age. Politically, young evangelicals are nearly identical to their secular peers. When interpreting these polls you have to take into account another demographic trend noted in American Grace and You Lost Me, the massive exodus of 18 to 29 year-olds from the church. In American Grace, the number one reason cited for leaving the church was right-wing politics. What this means is any trend towards Zionism within the evangelical cohort may simply be the case that non-Zionists are leaving the cohort.

    What this means for Democrats is they should not be chasing the evangelical vote but the young evangelical vote. That should be done by concentrating on increasing youth turnout. That means they should be dealing with a demonstrably more Palestinian-friendly policy. Note the difference between 2008 and 2010 where there was a big difference in youth turnout. You aren't going to change the minds of the older evangelicals and they WILL turnout. You need to get the younger evangelicals into the polling booth.

  • richb January 30, 2012 at 12:46 am

    Note the split between traditionalist and modernist evangelicals in the Pew poll but little difference between modernist evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Catholics.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    What's being said in the pulpit is not the issue. It can largely be silent. Why? Because it's not necessary. There isn't ANY knowledge of the other side. None. They don't know another evangelical viewpoint even exists and they get mad at me for disabusing their ignorance. . In early 21st Century I gave my non-evangelical friends comfort that a significant minority of evangelicals believed in good stewardship of the planet. I said that as late as 2008 where all the Republican candidates for President save Fred Thompson had similar views. I was able to give talks at my church on that, again until about 2008.

    So, If I sensed that I had anybody with me on the issue of Israel/Palestine I would say it here. But, it's not the case and my religion compels me to tell the truth even when it is painful. If things change and either evangelicals change their mind (It's happened in the past -- evangelicals were progressives in the early 20th Century -- so it's not impossible) or if the political strength of evangelicals is being overestimated I will certainly let people know. But, as of now I cannot do that.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    Newt Ginrich speaking at CUFI:

    link to youtube.com

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    Here's talk2action on Christian Right supporters of Gingrich. As an evangelical it makes me sick how easily they can dismiss and indeed give blessing to Gingrich's vile behaviors because it advances their political agenda. Note prominent Christian Zionists on the Faith Leader's Coalition list, particularly Tim and Beverly LaHaye:

    link to talk2action.org

    Sheets is an internationally known leader of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and one of the apostolic authorities over the 50-state prayer networks. Other NAR apostles, including Lance Wallnau, promoted Gingrich through these networks prior to the South Carolina primaries. Participants were encouraged to read an 18-page letter from Jim Garlow citing reasons for his support of Gingrich and the validity of his spiritual "restoration," and also directed participants to a link to audio of a January 12 conference call with Gingrich and South Carolina pastors.

    It's impossible to measure the impact of the NAR's support on the outcome in South Carolina, but it is becoming clear that NAR leadership is getting in line behind Gingrich despite the endorsement of Rick Santorum by James Dobson and other "old guard" of the Religious Right.

    Jim Garlow is a national co-chair for the Gingrich campaign's Faith Leaders Coalition which was formed prior to the South Carolina primary, and includes George Barna (chair), Don Wildmon, Matthew Staver, Richard Lee, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, and J.C. Watts. Michael Youseff was also added to the list this week.

    Garlow also heads Renewing American Leadership (ReAL) founded by Gingrich and Rick Tyler in 2009. David Barton, the nation's most prominent promoter of Christian nationalist history, is also on the board and has traveled around the nation with Gingrich speaking at Pastors Policy Briefings. Both Garlow and Barton have worked closely with the NAR apostles for years, as noted in previous Talk2action.org articles.  

    Garlow led a conference call on January 9, to introduce pastors "from South Carolina and across the country." Garlow introduced George Barna, chairman of the Faith Leaders Coalition, who remarked that in twenty-plus years he had never endorsed a person or a product, but that he was supporting Gingrich out of sense of urgency for the future of the nation. Barna was followed by Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association and then Gingrich, who began with testimony of his spiritual development.  Right Wing Watch has pulled a few short audio clips from the call.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    Romney is surging in recent polling. I will be digging through the cross tabs of the exit polls to see who voted and why.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    Speaking as a non-Zionist evangelical, I can safely say I am in an extreme minority. If you are not Dispensational like I am then there's a chance you are not a Zionist. What takes away from that, however, is for that group many are Republicans. Recent trends that I've seen is political worldviews of evangelical are more dominant than theological ones. For example, the Bible is clear that we should be good stewards of the planet. Republican orthodoxy on Global Warming trumps that amongst evangelicals.

    Almost no progressive evangelicals are Zionists. No PEPs here. The problem is progressive evangelicals are a smaller minority than non-Dispensational ones. For a quick estimate of evangelical support of Zionism you can pretty much count all of them. I haven't seen recent figures but the numbers cited above seem too big. The heyday of rapid evangelical growth is over, ending in the late 20th Century.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 4:10 pm

    I was thinking of that when I wrote my post. Note Max's interview with Tom DeLay. Money gets you access but you need that something extra for influence. For DeLay it was the propaganda from visiting Israel. The key to influence is the COFI trips and the Birthright trips. Adelson is a great businessman and he manages his "investments" well. He only spent $10 million on Gingrich but $60 million on Birthright.

    link to youtube.com

    Zionism's biggest opponent is the truth and that's why they invest more in groups that create a reality distortion field than in individual candidates. They take advantage of the religious impulse of Christians and Jews and by casting the debate in Manichean terms they innoculate religious folk from the truth. That's also why when following the money more emphasis should be on following the so-called educational foundations rather on purely political ones. Sourcewatch.org and talk2action.org are good places to start.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 12:06 pm

    It sounds like someone in the control room messed up. The bumper should have ended with the Rock Center piece at the start of the segment. Then someone caught it and stopped it. I seriously doubt it was intentional.

  • richb January 29, 2012 at 11:28 am with 6 replies

    Here's the link to the New Yorker article Chris is referring to:

    link to newyorker.com

    The story told in the New Yorker addressed DeLay's Christian Zionism:

    Weidner, in his deposition, described the relationship between DeLay—“a very religious guy”—and Adelson. “The link between Sheldon Adelson and right-wing religious Christians is the commonality of a strong Israel,” he said. “So it just happens to be Sheldon has taken Tom DeLay to Israel and he’s a friend.” DeLay told Adelson that he supported the resolution because of his concern about China’s record on human rights but added that he would be discussing the legislative agenda shortly. “Sheldon folds his cell phone up and says to the mayor of Beijing, ‘I’m going to do my best,’ ” Weidner said. “About three hours later DeLay calls and he tells Sheldon, ‘You’re in luck,’ ” he continued, “ ‘because we’ve got a military-spending bill. . . . We’re not going to be able to move the bill, so you tell your mayor that he can be assured that this bill will never see the light of day.’ So Sheldon goes and he goes to the mayor and he says, ‘The bill will never see the light of day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it.’ ” Weidner also instructed the Sands’s lobbyists in Washington, Patton Boggs, to suggest to the Chinese Embassy that Adelson and Las Vegas Sands were involved in the process that stalled the bill. (According to DeLay’s spokeswoman, DeLay does not recall the conversation and had no role in blocking the bill. Representative Lantos died last February.)

    Too much has been made with the money it's the Christian Zionism that's the central point of influence. Watch how Adelson deep-sixed Condi Rice's attempt to push forward the peace process:

    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was organizing a major conference in the United States, in an effort to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and her initiative had provoked consternation among many rightward-leaning American Jews and their Christian evangelical allies. Most had seen Bush as a reliable friend of Israel, and one who had not pressured Israel to pursue the peace process. Adelson, who is seventy-four, owns two of Las Vegas’s giant casino resorts, the Venetian and the Palazzo, and is the third-richest person in the United States, according to Forbes. He is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution; and he had contributed so generously to Bush’s reëlection campaign that he qualified as a Bush Pioneer. A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.” (The White House denies this account.)

    Now the anti-Iran angle where the Shah's son is too much of a pacifist:

    After Emerson’s presentation, Pooya Dayanim, a Jewish-Iranian democracy activist based in Los Angeles, chatted with Adelson. Recalling their conversation, Dayanim observed that Adelson was dismissive of Reza Pahlevi, the son of the former Shah, who had participated in the Prague conference, because, Adelson said, “he doesn’t want to attack Iran.” According to Dayanim, Adelson referred to another Iranian dissident at the conference, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, whom he said he would like to support, saying, “I like Fakhravar because he says that, if we attack, the Iranian people will be ecstatic.” Dayanim said that when he disputed that assumption Adelson responded, “I really don’t care what happens to Iran. I am for Israel.”

    Too much is made on the "Jewish vote". When Gingrich was talking to Florida Jews this week none brought up Israel. It's the Christian Zionists who are obsessing on this. Unlike the Jews the Christians really believe the propaganda. Thus you get comments like Santorum's that Palestinians on the West Bank are Israelis and Gingrich's invented people! So you have a significant portion of the electorate who believe things that are simply not true. This in turn results in economic crashes, environmental devastation, and stupid wars.

    I'll close with a fundraising video for CUFI on campus. (Note at 38 seconds in is the infamous Emily Schrader of the crying Ron Paul video.) Last week they tried to push a student resolution at the University of Colorado which sought to veto Palestinian statehood and as part of the resolution itself have CUFI publicized the coup. Due to the diligent work of CU-Divest and Palestinian students on campus the resolution went down 35-1.

    link to dailycamera.com

    link to youtube.com

• 'Center for American Progress' censors references to Israel from piece on Islamophobic film
  • richb January 27, 2012 at 11:27 am

    Here's the resolution which confuses whereas with resolved but I digress.

    Therefore let it be resolved by the Colorado University Student Government that the U.S.-Israel relationship should be maintained and strengthened according to the shared interests of both states. 

    Let it be further resolved by CUSG that the Colorado University Student Government that this resolution is not advocating against Palestine nor any student, community member, or administration who believes in Palestine’s right to exist.  

    Let it be further resolved by CUSG that the Colorado University Student Government will stand with its sister student governments across the country to support the U.S. - Israel relationship.    

    Let it be further resolved by the CUSG that the University of Colorado at Boulder will stand with President Obama’s decision to veto the Unilateral Declaration of Independence should the Palestine push for a vote in the U.N. Security Counsel.

     BE IT RESOLVED by the Legislative Council of the University of Colorado Student, THAT:

     Section 1: The University of Colorado Student Government Legislative Council hereby supports the US-Israeli Relationship.

     Section 2: Upon passage of this resolution Christians United for Israel will send this to the local news outlets and seek to further engage the student body about the US-Israel relationship.

     Section 3: This Resolution takes effect upon final passage and upon obtaining the signatures of the CUSG Legislative Council President and the Executives.

    CUFI was going to use politically. The fact they went down 35-1 I doubt they will take this to local news outlets.

  • richb January 27, 2012 at 10:56 am with 1 replies

    Meanwhile progress is being made on the ground.

    link to coloradodaily.com

    The University of Colorado Student Government rejected a resolution to support Israel-U.S. relations Thursday during the weekly Legislative Council meeting.

    About 15 people, including members of CU-Divest -- a student group urging CU to divest from Israel --encouraged CUSG to vote against the resolution, according to the group's founder Michael Rabb. About four people spoke in favor of the resolution during the open hearing portion of the meeting, he said.

    The resolution was supported by Christians United for Israel, Students for Israel and CUSG treasurer Aslinn Scott.

    The resolution also expressed opposition to admitting Palestine into the UN and called for a U.S. veto for the same. Palestinian students spoke eloquently for the cause, especially Mirvat Abdelhaq, PhD student from Palestine. The vote was roughly 35-1 against.

• Video: Atlanta Jewish Times publisher's tearful anti-apology
  • richb January 25, 2012 at 12:59 pm with 1 replies

    "Is Pollard some sort of a hero for Bibi?"

    It is to the settlers anyway. Many of us have discussed the City of David and it's connection with the settler organization, Elad. One thing to underscore from that conversation. The name of the settlement itself is named after Jonathan Pollard.

    link to silwanic.net

    When 60 Minutes went inside they were shown a plaque thanking the Rohr Family.

• Some elephants aren't fit to print: 'NYT' front-pages Adelson gift to Gingrich PAC without a word about Israel!
  • richb January 24, 2012 at 12:22 pm

    should the israel-firster abelson couple’s ten million dollar gift to a gingrich superpac help win the presidency for him, will the quid pro quo be an iran war?

    That's certainly part of it. Note the following from the New Yorker article I cited. [Emphasis and snarky delete keys mine]

    Adelson is also funding, with a $4.5-million grant, a think tank, the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, at the right-leaning Shalem Center, in Jerusalem. Netanyahu allies are on its staff. Natan Sharansky, the chairman of One Jerusalem, also chairs the Adelson Institute. Sharansky helped organize a “Democracy and Security” conference last June, in Prague, which was attended by President Bush. Iran was a major topic of discussion. A month after the Prague conference, Adelson attended a fund-raising event at the C.A.A. talent agency, in Los Angeles, for Steven Emerson, an investigative journalist specializing in Islamic extremism and terrorism, who was showing a ten-minute trailer for a film he wanted to make. Emerson introduced Sheldon and Miriam to the overflow crowd in C.A.A.’s two-hundred-seat theatre, saying that they were his generous supporters. After Emerson’s presentation, Pooya Dayanim, a Jewish-Iranian democracy activist based in Los Angeles, chatted with Adelson. Recalling their conversation, Dayanim observed that Adelson was dismissive of Reza Pahlevi, the son of the former Shah, who had participated in the Prague conference, because, Adelson said, “he doesn’t want to attack Iran.” According to Dayanim, Adelson referred to another Iranian dissident at the conference, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, whom he said he would like to support, saying, “I like Fakhravar because he says that, if we attack, the Iranian people will be ecstatic.” Dayanim said that when he disputed that assumption Adelson responded, “I really don’t care what happens to the United States^H^H^H^H^H ^H Iran. I am for Israel.”

    Say hello to WWIII folks...

  • richb January 24, 2012 at 10:55 am

    link to newyorker.com

    Read...it...all.

    Perhaps this exchange contributed to a growing resolve on Adelson’s part to try to force the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, out of office. Adelson and Olmert had been friendly since the nineteen-nineties, when Olmert was a member of the hard-line Likud Party. Olmert became Prime Minister in January, 2006, following Ariel Sharon’s stroke. He, like Sharon, came to recognize the inexorability of Jewish-Arab demographic trends. Olmert declared that a two-state solution was the only way of preserving Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and he said that he was ready to negotiate with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Adelson saw Olmert’s actions as a betrayal of principle. He had long wanted to see the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Prime Minister, but a revived peace process gave that goal new urgency.

    A revived peace process. We wouldn't want that. And he got his way:

    He is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution; and he had contributed so generously to Bush’s reëlection campaign that he qualified as a Bush Pioneer. A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.”

    Money doesn't buy influence does it? Nah:

    When Adelson was merely rich, he wrote checks for causes that he favored and for politicians whom he supported. Occasionally, he demanded to be heard. But he did not expect to play a significant role in U.S. foreign policy, or in Israel’s strategic decisions, or in the fate of a sitting Israeli Prime Minister. That was before he acquired many billions of dollars. (He has assets of twenty-six billion dollars, according to a Forbes list published in March.) His political expenditures and his expectations have increased proportionately. Not long after Bush’s encounter with Adelson last October, an Israeli government representative said that Bush, describing it to another Israeli official, had remarked wryly, “I had this crazy Jewish billionaire, yelling at me.”

    Quid meet quo. This shows both the power of money and the corrupting influence of Christian Zionism.

    In July, 2001, after arriving in Beijing, Adelson and Weidner saw Olympic banners flying along the streets. They soon learned that the country was waiting to find out whether it would be selected as the site for the 2008 Summer Games. In addition to seeing the Vice-Premier, Adelson and Weidner met with the mayor of Beijing, who asked Adelson for help with a matter pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he believed was threatening China’s chance to host the Olympics. (In the United States, China was widely perceived as the frontrunner, and it is not clear that Congress’s position would have had any impact on its chances.) Adelson said in court that he immediately made calls on his cell phone to Republican friends in Congress—including Tom DeLay, then the majority whip—who had received generous support from Adelson. DeLay told him that there was indeed a resolution pending about China and the Olympics. (Representative Tom Lantos, then the highest-ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution opposing China’s Olympic bid, saying, “China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration.”)

    Weidner, in his deposition, described the relationship between DeLay—“a very religious guy”—and Adelson. “The link between Sheldon Adelson and right-wing religious Christians is the commonality of a strong Israel,” he said. “So it just happens to be Sheldon has taken Tom DeLay to Israel and he’s a friend.” DeLay told Adelson that he supported the resolution because of his concern about China’s record on human rights but added that he would be discussing the legislative agenda shortly. “Sheldon folds his cell phone up and says to the mayor of Beijing, ‘I’m going to do my best,’ ” Weidner said. “About three hours later DeLay calls and he tells Sheldon, ‘You’re in luck,’ ” he continued, “ ‘because we’ve got a military-spending bill. . . . We’re not going to be able to move the bill, so you tell your mayor that he can be assured that this bill will never see the light of day.’ So Sheldon goes and he goes to the mayor and he says, ‘The bill will never see the light of day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it.’ ” Weidner also instructed the Sands’s lobbyists in Washington, Patton Boggs, to suggest to the Chinese Embassy that Adelson and Las Vegas Sands were involved in the process that stalled the bill. (According to DeLay’s spokeswoman, DeLay does not recall the conversation and had no role in blocking the bill. Representative Lantos died last February.)

    This was all in the New York Times article right? Uh..oh..nevermind. All the news that's fit to spike.

• Why Christian Zionism is nothing short of outright heresy
  • richb January 23, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    The historic Christian doctrine is of a General Resurrection not a separate Rapture. My description: Jesus returns, roll credits. The Biblical description of the same from Daniel 12 below. The Yom Kippur greeting G'mar chatimah tovah refers to being in the book of life referenced below. As we can see below only the tzaddikim (the righteous ones) are "the people". So Orthodox Jews and (little o) orthodox Christians agree. Zionism is heresy.

    At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

• Report: Israel to give US only 12-hour warning before attacking Iran because Netanyahu doesn't trust Obama
  • richb January 22, 2012 at 5:07 pm

    link to youtube.com

    Note I was the one who was critical of Christians Friends of Israel.

    link to mondoweiss.net

    Yet, when I was in Jerusalem they noted how desperate the situation was for the victims of the Shoah and they also noted how anti-proselytizing laws kept them from being as generous as they would like. In essence the laws forbid large material contributions because the recipients might be grateful and convert. Of course, a solution to all this is to not have the Shoah victims in need of our charity. Instead the Israeli government would rather use them as pawns for their propaganda. Disgusting...

• New book Palestinians in Israel explores the contradiction of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state
  • richb January 22, 2012 at 11:38 am

    I just finished Ben's book and providentially I was also helping my son study for his American Government class. The textbook gives five basic principles of a democracy. Ben's book ably shows Israel fails ALL of them.

    1. Equality in voting
    2. Individual freedom
    3. Equality of all persons
    4. Majority rule and minority rights
    5. Voluntary consent to be governed

  • richb January 21, 2012 at 4:03 pm with 12 replies

    I really enjoyed your book. You are really freaking out the Hasbarists. I wish I had read it prior to visiting Israel. I asked my guide for an example of a mixed city where Jews and Palestinians lived side by side. He said Nazareth and pointed to the courthouse at Nazareth Illit and said there were Palestinian judges there.

    link to jpost.com

• 'Tablet' calls 'The Israel Lobby' 'an intellectual landmark'
  • richb January 18, 2012 at 11:02 am

    You need to see the Atlantic article in print. Instead of the parenthetical "about some things" there's a giant asterisk instead. A giant "wink wink nudge nudge know what I mean" if you will.

    link to youtube.com

• 'Corporate Watch' publishes guide on targeting Israeli apartheid
  • richb January 19, 2012 at 9:00 am

    With respect to water all you need is to use your own eyes. The Dead Sea split in half because it went down over 25m. The road next to it had to be moved because of all the sink holes. Our guide tried to explain them by earthquakes rather than the effects of the National Water Carrier and unsustainable water use. Diverting one billion cubic meters of water a year has its effects.

  • richb January 18, 2012 at 3:12 pm

    I'm generally on the empire side of the empire vs. lobby debate. That being said, the most strident proponent of the lobby understands that the power of the lobby is almost all in the U.S. Since BDS is an international movement even if the lobby is successful to stymy BDS in the U.S., it's still not stopped. Furthermore, BDS is also a movement in civil society and does not require government support. Again, the most strident proponent of the lobby notes it's the American government more than the American people who are under the influence of the lobby. Finally, the Internet allows a diverse and international population to have solidarity with each other. This means that BDS when applied to Israel will be more successful than when it was applied to South Africa without the Internet.

• 'Christian Friends of Israel' supports criminal actions that place Americans at risk
  • richb January 17, 2012 at 10:27 pm

    Progress report. I got one e-mail asking for me to give a short summary to make sure I was understood. The rest were basically STFU. Basically complaints about their e-mail addresses being used for political purposes as if the CFI e-mail wasn't. That they cannot see how political this is is beyond me.

    "where’s the outrage by non-israel-first christians at the bad name that organizations such as the cfi give to christianity"

    Now you know why there's silence. My guess is there are more people like me but just on the down low.

  • richb January 17, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    This is generally true but I can think of one exception.

    link to www2.davidson.edu

    The Reverend Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA, spoke at Davidson College recently about the conflict in the Middle East from his Palestinian Christian perspective. Abu-Akel emphasized the need for a metaphorical “global village” where people of different cultures, nations, and languages can learn toleration for each other. “How do I affirm my faith, yet respect my Jewish or Muslim brother?” Abu-Akel asked. “That is the real test of faith, respecting your brother, not killing him. We cannot use God to oppress people any longer.”

    He also spoke of the common American misperception about the Middle East. “Not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs,” Abu-Akel said. “I challenge you to step out of your American box.”

    Abu Akel was born as the son of Christian Palestinian-Arab parents in the town of Yassif in Galilee in 1944, and was four years old when he and his father and siblings were forced out of their home into a mountain refugee camp by Israeli soldiers. He came to the United States in 1966 to attend seminary, was ordained to the ministry in 1978, and became a U.S. citizen in 1981. For 21 years he served on the staff of the First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. He then became the founder and executive director of the Atlanta Ministry with International Students. In June of 2002, he was elected to a one-year term as moderator, the highest elected office in the Presbyterian Church.

    Abu Akel acknowledged the major role of the Presbyterian Church in the Middle East. It began in 1823, when the church established a mission in Beirut, Lebanon, and continues today with Presbyterian support for every American university in the Middle East.

    Rev. Abu-Akel called for Western Christian churches to partner with Arabic Christian churches.

    The lecture in Tyler-Tallman Hall, sponsored by the chaplain’s office and the Lilly Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation, opened with a scripted prayer, “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” with Abu-Akel trading lines with the audience. After lightening the mood with a couple of anecdotes, he told students they will play an important role in his “global village.” “I think of Davidson College as a key institution,” he said. “You will be leaders in the United States, and that is why I am excited to speak to you.”

    He presented a video outlining the history and the current situation of Christians in the Middle East. The Middle Eastern Christians in the video asked to western Christians not to ignore them, and to look beyond the limits of western theology and media.

    Abu-Akel expanded on the message of the video, saying that there are close to fifteen-million Arab Christians today, a minority that should not be isolated. He encouraged Americans to travel to the Middle East to experience the issues and understand the conflict, and invited Western churches to develop one-on-one relationships with Arabic Christian churches. Western churches can help their counterparts in the Arab world through visits, correspondence, and prayer, and could also learn lessons about faith from the Arab churches. “Palestinian Christians can help North American Christians realize that they have skills to survive in a minority. We must understand that these churches have existed and persevered in the context of war and oppression,” Abu-Akel said.

  • richb January 17, 2012 at 11:48 am with 1 replies

    Here's their mission statement.

    Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) is a ministry that exists to:

    Comfort and support the People of Israel through practical means
    Inform Christians around the world of God's plan for Israel and the Church's responsibility towards the Jewish people
    Make the Jewish people aware of our solidarity with them

    If this is what they really focused on I wouldn't have a problem, particularly the first bullet. For example, they do have a ministry to the victims of the Shoah. The anti-proselytizing laws limits the amount of material aid they could give to them. Still, these precious people are so lonely and so without support in Israel that they are thrilled to death to get cheap blankets and someone to talk to.

    Where they went wrong in my opinion was they were bragging about how close they were to the Netanyahu government. As far as I can tell the only Christians they interact with are foreigners. Those of us who are religious should be careful anytime we are close to power because the temptation is simply too great. Theocracies not only hurt the oppressed they also corrupt the oppressors. If there are any evangelicals reading this I would suggest supporting ministries such as World Vision instead. They work with the indigenous churches and they particularly focus on the needs of children in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.

• Leveretts: False flag in Iranian hit likely disguises U.S.
  • richb January 16, 2012 at 10:26 am with 1 replies

    Here's the full response noting the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

    You say there is no evidence linking Jundallah to the assassination campaign. Is there any indication Israel is similarly using some other group, like the MEK? Was there any indication of what purpose the Jundallah recruits were used for? 

    My article was focused on a single story — that Mossad officers attempted to recruit Jundallah operatives under the guise of the American intelligence services. I stayed strictly focused on that. I have no idea who is responsible for the murder of Iranian scientists, I have no idea whether, at present, Israel is using Jundallah or MEK operatives to conduct these operations. Iran has plenty of enemies, and it could be any number of organizations — or perhaps the killings are simply an internal matter. In one way, I suppose, I don’t care, so long as my country is not responsible. Because if we are, then we are a state sponsor of terrorism, and the “war on terrorism” is a lie. I don’t think it is. I think the U.S. government, my country, has lots of problems. But joining with terrorist groups is not one of them.

• Bibi throws in with GOP, Democratic base turns critical, and Israel finally becomes partisan wedge issue like abortion -- Blumenthal
  • richb January 15, 2012 at 7:22 pm

    You pretty much have it nailed. Going by the megachurch(es) I attend it's heavy with white upper middle class professionals. That's why the Tea Party has traction because the deficit vs jobs priority crosses at $75000 a year. Also note how many trailer park folk could afford a $10000 a couple trip to Israel? We may not be the 1% but we are the 10%.

• Iran accuses CIA & Israel, US warns Israel to back off
  • richb January 15, 2012 at 10:22 am

    When the Hasbarists show up like this it shows that you or in this case I am on to something. What we are concerned with is the price of oil. The Obama administration contra the entire Senate understands the bellicose route will cause a spike in the price of oil and tank the economy. They also understand given CIA behavior in the 1950s we need to be circumspect in our support of the Iranian opposition. Everyone here will undoubtably recall how Obama was savaged by McCain and others for his tepid support of the Greens in the 2009 presidential elections in Iran. Note this was supporting the peaceful opposition and not the terrorists. Obama understood supporting the terrorists would cause Iranian nationalism and the extremists in Iran would win.

    Now we know why Israel moved from supporting bipartisan Zionism to Republican Zionism because the latter was the only one who was saying bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran. The American people now understand Israel leading us into war with Iraq contributed to the destruction of our economy. This was covert and indirect through Jewish neocons. Now the warmongering by Israel is direct and overt. Since our President isn't as receptive to this message as W was they are interfering with our democracy through the Citizen's United decision. Our founders were concerned about foreign influence with our democracy and was the reason why we have the natural born citizen clause in our constitution as a requirement for the president.

  • richb January 14, 2012 at 11:09 pm

    The water cooler conversations I had yesterday showed no one was interested in conflict with Iran. It's truly not a left vs right thing. Note W's reaction in the FP piece. We want the boat not rocked. Meanwhile Israel is rocking the boat. A harsh reaction against Israel then has little negative cost.The depth of Bibi's miscalculation is breathtaking. Even if we were in bed with the Mossad Israel broke the "rules" of plausible deniability. They are on the verge of their "burn notice".

  • richb January 14, 2012 at 5:36 pm with 3 replies

    Note who is releasing these stories because this may help us to resolve the empire vs lobby debate. Up to this point the moneyed interests and the lobby were in concert. Now with the attack on Bain Capital and this they are not. With the case of the former see how fast the establishment knocked down Newt and Adelson for daring to attack "capitalism" angering the Republican part of the establishment. Now with Bibi's overt attempt to take down Obama there is the equivalent attack on the Democratic establishment and they're pushing back, too. The clue is the fact that the story showed up in the WSJ with the resulting panic in the Jerusalem Post. If I'm right then Israel goes down. If not then the lobby hypothesis is correct.

• The headline you aren't seeing: Iran wants talks, Israel pushing for war
  • richb January 13, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    And the fact that Iran is still seeking negotiations means message received.

• Rick Santorum says murder of Iranian scientist was 'wonderful thing'
  • richb January 13, 2012 at 1:24 pm

    Ricky is not the only one scientifically clueless. The author of the The Note linked above is too:

    Iran announced today that it had created the country’s first nuclear fuel rod, a key component in a reactor that can also be used to produce weapons grade uranium.

    No it's a key component in a civilian reactor. We don't even know whether there's enough enriched Uranium for that or rather that this is a non-working prototype. The amount of enrichment needed for weapons grade Uranium is 85% while the enrichment for civilian reactors is 3-5%. The former takes SO much energy that we will know if the Iranians are doing it.

• Benny Morris dreams of a 'less Arab' Israel
  • richb January 12, 2012 at 4:22 pm with 4 replies

    "A little different meaning than your snippet of Morris. He does equate Arab society with misogyny, and with rejection of Israel. That’s what he says is the “less Arabs” that he’d like to see."

    See this from Suad Amiry (who will be participating in the upcoming occupy AIPAC):

    link to palestinevideo.blogspot.com

    According to her, the misogyny started in 2006 with Hamas. If you really went back in time you would have embroidered dresses and not hijabs. She also noted the secular history of the PLO and when she was involved with the peace negotiations in the 90s she was the only woman on either side. She also noted how truly unserious the Israelis were when she was willing not to return to her father's stolen home in Jaffa. The life of women in Palestine would be much better if the Israelis didn't decide to woo Hamas in the 80s in order to compete against the secular PLO. The blowback from that decision was truly tragic for all involved.

    link to online.wsj.com

• Ron Paul gets respect
  • richb January 12, 2012 at 8:40 pm

    There was a handful of Vietnam vets. But anything Vietnam and after doesn't seem to play into the rah rah of the event we had. The head of CU-Divest is a Vietnam Vet. He planned to say the following when the Israelis tried to show how "moral" their military was in Boulder:

    "Hi Sgt. Weinberg. My name’s Michael Rabb, I am former military, sort of like you. I served in the American Navy – fighter pilot, Vietnam. And I just wanted to ask you a question: What is it – is it chutzpah? You come into Boulder Colorado and try to tell us Israel’s military got “ethics”? Are you serious? Or is this a joke? Cause you know what happened just exactly 3 years ago? Cast Lead. Yep, Cast Lead is where you bombed this little piece of land (about 20 miles long 5 miles wide): the most densely populated piece of land on earth (1.5 million people) – with white phosphorous, cluster bomb units, (these would be anti-personnel weapons), not to mention the bunker busters, 2000 pound bombs that crushed homes, schools and hospitals. You killed over 1400 civilians (100s of children for god’s sake) – so my question to you is, what the fuck? what’s the ethics in that?

    You know Boulder? -- we don’t like weapons of mass destruction (like the nukes that Israel has) (we passed a law against nukes!) and warfare and white phosphorus, and crimes against humanity -- what on earth are you thinking coming here to make apology for IDF ethics? Well you know what, Sgt. Weinberg, -- fuck you! We don’t want your apology here.

    Here’s an idea: go back to Israel and apologize to the Palestinians."

    Whether he used those words here is what actually happened.

    We did civil disobedience action tonight at the Jewish Student Center at the Univ of Colorado. About 15 of our Palestine cohorts showed up to picket and disrupt IDF Sgt Weinberg who was doing a presentation on how ethical the Israeli military is. (Thanks to Jim, Jim, Dan, Fiore, Tom, Terrie, Stuart, John, Lynn, Zach, and all who attended!)

    Inside during the IDF presentation, about five of us stood up and mic checked him. Reading the script we accused the IDF of murder, massacre and war crimes. We told Sgt Weinberg that dropping white phosphorous on children isn't ethical.

    I guess they did not like hearing that. Three of the Zionist enforcers grabbed me and threw me out of the meeting hall. The police came and I asked that they charge the three who shoved and pushed me, with assault. But the the police said they didn't like my attitude. I told them they should arrest me for bad attitude and they just looked at me with disdain but said I could stand as a single picket outside the Student Center if I did not disturb the peace!

    Everyone else of our contingent were allowed to stay in the meeting hall and a few were able to ask pointed questions of the military propagandist. (Thanks Tom and Lynn!)

    it was a very enjoyable evening.

  • richb January 11, 2012 at 11:34 am with 4 replies

    There's a huge generational divide along with a huge divide between officers and enlisted in the U.S. military. Last Veteran's Day our church did a program honoring our veterans and current military. There was 8x as many WWII veterans than anyone who served since when Ford was President! There was only one active duty military soldier at the event. The speaker was a general officer (I forget his rank) who denigrated the occupy movement. He also got rich serving on boards of directors of corporations. He saw the military as part of the 1% rather than the 99%. The speech was a big hit.

    The right thinks they support the military but just as Israelis have no contact with Palestinians they have no contact with current military and recent veterans. Thus Paul confuses them and they don't understand why the younger military supports him. There is one sense where the speaker was correct. The neocons and the chickenhawks get us into unnecessary wars and the 0.4% pay the price, even the ultimate price. It's not a coincidence nor surprising that the younger military support Paul.

• Beinart and the crisis of liberal Zionism
  • richb January 13, 2012 at 9:42 pm

    Witty talking about integrity. BWAHAHAHAHA.

    Phil didn't make a mistake. Note this Borders web page. That has the original title (even in the URL) with the new cover:

    link to borders.com.au

  • richb January 12, 2012 at 12:15 pm

    I have no problem with Phil. Beinhart quietly changed the title of the book. And it's very recent or the Google blurb wouldn't have diverged and you wouldn't have event announcements with different titles. Perhaps it is in reaction to Phil and this site getting to the heart of the matter of the vacuousness of liberal Zionism.

  • richb January 12, 2012 at 11:07 am with 6 replies

    I thought you were just -- as is tediously typical -- have your facts wrong again but instead you accidentally revealed another Hasbara trick. If you Google for the The Crisis of Liberal Zionism you get a number of hits where the cached text differs from the current text. For example, the following web page of the New American Foundation. First the Google cached blurb:

    His latest book, The Crisis of Liberal Zionism, which expands his New York Review of Books essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” will be

    If you click on the link you get:

    link to newamerica.net

    His latest book, The Crisis of Zionism, which expands his New York Review of Books essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” will be published by Times Books in April 2012.

    Some people haven't gotten with the program such as the Jewish Community Center:

    link to events.sfgate.com

    The 92nd Street Y has however:

    link to 92y.org

    Hmm. Internal consumption in the Jewish community gets the topic right but for public consumption it's obfuscated. You don't want us to find out that Zionism is fundamentally illiberal do you?

• A personal appeal-- PennBDS needs your help
  • richb January 9, 2012 at 4:12 pm

    Oh that. From the back cover of this week's Economist of countries projected to grow faster than Israel in 2012:

    China, Russia, Turkey, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malyasia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Latvia, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Ukraine, and Vietnam.

  • richb January 9, 2012 at 2:08 pm with 3 replies

    Most developed nation? Ahead of Israel (in order as of November 2011):

    Norway Australia Netherlands United States New Zealand Canada Ireland Liechtenstein Germany Sweden Switzerland Japan Hong Kong Iceland South Korea Denmark

    The argument made in the Economist was referring to the book Start Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. I got sick of Senor's face when he was the chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq where he did a bang up job, NOT!, with the economic development in that country.

    When an economist reviewed their book, here's what he said:

    link to urdunmubdi3.ning.com

    I recently read with interest “The Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle”, a Council on Foreign Relations book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer.

    I wanted to glean, as an economist, whatever development advice and lessons from the book. The theme of the book was that successful Israeli entrepreneurs and innovators came from the Israeli army. There, they learned skills, refined their craft, gained ideas on entrepreneurship and established business contacts that later benefited them in their start-ups. This was the main thesis of the book that underpinned almost every chapter.

    The writers even went on to argue that ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews, who refuse to serve in the army, and Arab Israelis, who are exempted from military service are not as entrepreneurial as the rest of the population. The writers failed to mention, however, the many decades during which Arab Israelis were not allowed into Israeli universities, being allowed to do only menial jobs in the labour market.

    Neither did the writers mention the fact that their areas of residence and neighbourhoods were not well provided for in terms of infrastructure and services.

    The book only mentions that the majority of Arab Israelis are not able to find jobs that match their skills because they were not drafted in the army and thus, “are less likely to develop the entrepreneurial and improvisational skills that the army inculcates”, and that “they do not develop the business networks that young Israeli Jews build while serving in the military”. Can other countries follow the Israeli model? It is true that the Israeli army is the largest business in Israel, ranked the 11th strongest military power in the world. In 1984, Israel spent 24 per cent of its GDP on the military; in 2008, the figure was reduced to 7.3 per cent, or $11 billion, almost as much as the military spending of Turkey, a country whose population is 10 times that of Israel. But how could the start-up nation sustain such spending on the military and go on to do so well? Israel is the 50th largest economy in the world and ranked 31st in terms of income per capita.

    According to the CRS report for Congress, titled “US Foreign Aid to Israel”, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of the US foreign assistance since World War II. Between 1949 and 2007, Israel received $101 billion, of which $53 billion in military aid, $31 billion economic aid, $1.5 billion to support immigrants, and $15 billion to support other types of activities. Since 1985, the United States has been providing nearly $3 billion annually in grants to Israel; more than half of it went directly to the Israeli military.

    In other words, the start-up nation is receiving $429 per person (man, woman, child) from the US government. Of course this figure does not include the additional $1 billion that Israel receives annually, according to the IMF, from private organisations worldwide, with 70 per cent coming from the US. Should one recalculate the per capita aid with this additional $1 billion, every Israeli in the start-up nation is receiving $570 per year in aid. What a bonanza!

    On the other hand, the immigration of almost one million Soviet Jews to Israel between 1989 and 2003 was cited in one of the chapters as a boon to the economy, since many of the new immigrants were highly skilled, and were immediately accepted and provided for with quick orientation to integrate them into the Israeli society. Yet the book, again, fails to mention the over $4.2 billion Israel received in aid to help deal with the issue. No other country has received such funds to deal with immigrants, ever. So why not mention it?

    The authors assume a very high moral ground when they analyse the Dubai success story. They did the same when referring to the economic success of Singapore, and when referring to Israel’s largest benefactor, the US.

    Of course, the discriminatory policies of Israel against its Arab citizens and the plight of those under occupation receive no mention. The West Bank and Gaza, a $3 billion economy that is virtually closed to Jordanian exports, are not mentioned as a source of revenue for Israel.

    Could Israel have succeeded in becoming a start-up nation without such generous aid? I sincerely doubt it.

    Long story short, Israel is addicted to American aid. If BDS can successfully interrupt it they will be like any other strung-out junkie. Begone concern troll!

• Just wars-- and civilian casualties
  • richb January 11, 2012 at 10:41 am

    I can only think of one. Hezekiah's defense of Jerusalem from Sennacharib's invasion. As I stated in a previous comment archeological evidence has shown that only the rich were taken into exile. There was evidence of invasion and destruction only in the rich quarter. The poor were also leaving on their own starting a century previous to the Babylonian attack. The evidence also marked a guilded age with extreme inequality. This gives context of the prophets who blamed exile on how the poor were treated by the rich and as it turns out only the rich went into exile. For example note this from Ezekiel:

    As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.

    “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done. Bear your disgrace, for you have furnished some justification for your sisters. Because your sins were more vile than theirs, they appear more righteous than you. So then, be ashamed and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

    “‘However, I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and of Samaria and her daughters, and your fortunes along with them, so that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all you have done in giving them comfort. And your sisters, Sodom with her daughters and Samaria with her daughters, will return to what they were before; and you and your daughters will return to what you were before.

  • richb January 10, 2012 at 10:09 am with 2 replies

    "Furthermore, since you believe Israel is a nuclear power, initiating a war would be too dangerous since both countries could turn out losers."

    It's more than that. Given the Samson Option (referring to the verse in Judges that Samson took out more enemies in his death than his life) we need to take into consideration that Israel is a nuclear power and a crazed, terrorist state to boot. Attacking them militarily would not only be wrong but foolish to boot. It is in the best interests of all the World, however, to make sure that their military is as weak as possible to keep them from harming others. What Just War theory tells us is there are many things short of war that can be done and so far we've done nothing save operating as their enabler. Stopping that is where we should start.

  • richb January 10, 2012 at 8:34 am

    It's amazing how an emeritus poly sci prof doesn't get it but his Zionism blinds him. All the evils he rightly condemns stem from Zionism itself. The insistence by liberal Zionists that Israel be a Jewish nation is what drives the ethnic cleansing and war crimes etc. Israel should seek to become more like the U.S. as a secular country because that is what truly protects the rights of all religious minorities. Instead it's the other way around and because of it the rights that Jews here enjoy are being eroded.

    The rights we enjoy now is because in the past persecuted Christians decided to eschew power in order to protect the rights of everyone. They knew they needed to take advantage of being in the majority in order to protect their rights once they were no longer a majority. The Jews in Israel need to do the same and have a written constitution with a strong independent judiciary that protects not just Jews but everyone. Unlike Europe Palestine has a long history of the religions getting along but Zionism broke that. Liberal Zionists can -- if they so choose -- unilaterally restore Palestine to its former glory. That more than anything else will protect their fellow Jews which they rightly seek.

  • richb January 9, 2012 at 4:48 pm

    Let's put the real criteria on the table and see if Israel meets it:

    1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.

    Since Israel was the aggressor this doesn't even apply at all. Just war pre-supposes that the country is the victim. An aggressive war, particularly a war of conquest, is prima facie unjust.

    2. All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

    Since the ethnic cleansing started before the 1948 war not only was all other means not tried, but NO other means was tried.

    3. There must be serious prospects of success.

    Only one of the four you get a checkmark. On the other hand the Iraq War fails here.

    4. The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power as well as the precision of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

    Massive fail. Ethnic cleansing. Violations of the Geneva Convention. Phosphorous bombs. Cluster bombs. Massive civilian casualties. Massive casualties of women and children. Price tags. Deliberate economic privation. Collective punishment. Illegal settlements. Military occupation. Restricting free movement. Eliminating self-determination. Religious and political persecution. Illegal incarceration. Theft of natural resources. Complete razing of villages. Torture.

    Note, eee, the willingness to die is nowhere to be found here. The Crusaders were willing to die for their cause but it didn't make it just.

• Ron Paul's antiwar position is simpleminded
  • richb January 9, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    I had hoped to engage Jerry on what I think is the fundamental difference between us. This is the dialogue I promised last week. He believes in the endurance of anti-semitism, he lived through a period of real discrimination against Jews in the U.S.; I don’t see anti-semitism as a very important factor in American Jewish life today. I believe this is a period of philo-semitism. And it’s on that basis that I wanted to have a Ron Paul discussion. It looks like Jerry won’t stick around for that, and it’s my loss. Phil

    I share Jerome's concern vis-a-vis anti-semitism and I'm concerned that this period of philo-semitism may be short-lived. I am also more on the empire side of the empire vs. lobby debate. I believe our disagreements are due to the fact we are most familiar with the warts of our own respective communities and having these apparently conflicting concerns is healthy.

    Knowing evangelicals like I do I don't think either of you are right. Namely, there is a real threat of anti-semitism and the belligerent behavior amongst Zionists will be the proximate cause of the next wave. (I am not blaming people here and am following Paul's argumentation that this is just blowback or unintended consequences.)

    The good news is if you succeed in your endeavors I believe this worst case scenario would be avoided. The philo-semitism amongst evangelicals is honestly felt and will only reverse by a jolting disillusionment. By having you and others like you to show that a Jew and a Zionist are not coterminous will make all the difference in the World.

  • richb January 9, 2012 at 5:26 pm

    You don't get it:

    Let me remind you of what my argument was: if you want to change U.S. policy towards Israel, you need to change the attitudes of the American Jewish community, and to that end what so often appears on Mondoweiss is surely likely to have the opposite result.

    The way you change the U.S. policy towards Israel is to change the attitudes of the American evangelical community of which I am a part. Coming here I saw -- not from what Annie said -- but by the behavior of (mostly liberal) Zionists the moral bankruptcy of Zionism, both conservative and liberal. Ron Paul reflects the historic evangelical attitude towards foreign policy in general and Israel in particular. It's the current Religious Right that is a johnny-come-lately.

    Maybe I'm just weird but maybe, just maybe, I'm the canary in the coal mine and reflect the coming disaffection of evangelicals towards thoughtless support of Israel. If you lose us, you've lost completely. Ron Paul won't be a strange anomaly but the new normal. Good luck.

  • richb January 9, 2012 at 12:08 pm

    In 2008 I was a caucus chairman for the Republican party. In our caucus there was quite a bit of enthusiasm for Ron Paul mostly because of his anti-war stance. (I was supporting McCain because of his views on the environment.) In fact, our delegate to the state convention was pledged to Paul. Even amongst Republicans who show up for caucuses there was war fatigue. Perhaps it was because I was running the caucus but there was zero controversy concerning supporting Ron Paul. One of my friends at church who attended this caucus was a Ron Paul supporter then. (More on this below.)

    I suspect such a description would be shocking here since the current Republican party has no such diversity where there aren't any moderate Republicans left. I'm now neither a Republican nor a moderate but I was then. My take is the Republican party was more reasonable three years ago because Obama had not yet been elected and Obama derangement syndrome hadn't set in. Since no progress was made in the so-called peace process in the Bush Administration the I/P issue was deemed "unimportant" amongst Republican activists and thus Iraq was the only context for Paul's views. Not one peep about Israel.

    Glenn Beck, a Mormon BTW, has changed the game for the Republicans moving from Israel not being discussed to being the center of the Universe. My friend above when she found out that I agreed with many of Paul's foreign policy views retorted that she took the Bible literally. If you did take it literally, though, the nation-state of Israel cannot be part of Biblical prophesy. Jesus was supposed to return within one generation from when the Jews return. Given forty years from 1948 or 1967 gives 1988 or 2007 respectively.

    Getting to Jerome Slater's complaint vis-a-vis tone I contend that Zionism itself has contributed to the continued decay in civility in both major political parties. I decided to put my hip waders on this weekend and take another look at DK. The discussion vis-a-vis Ron Paul's FP and what it said about the left makes what's happening here appear to be pattycake. I, for one, think it's important to discuss this and contra Slater it increases my respect for this site and doesn't lessen it. It takes intellectual courage to listen to someone you consider 90-95% wrong to see where you're wrong. Academia should be the bastion of intellectual courage but this also shows the destructiveness of Zionism on that part of the culture. If you look down on the plebes you ossify and don't learn. Because of this his parting will be more harmful to him than us.

• F. W. de Klerk on why apartheid will fail in Israel/Palestine
  • richb January 11, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    "Go read the reviews of Anobit’s technology. It is the best in the world."

    Not according to Electronic Products Magazine. Anobit's chief competitor, Sandforce, was awarded their 2011 product of the year.

    link to wdrb.com

    “We knew there were a number of really impressive high-performance solid state drives that came out in the last year,” said Jim Harrison, west coast editor, Electronic Products. “When looking at these drives we said, ‘wait a minute, these all have one thing in common – the SF-2200 SSD processor from SandForce.’ When we looked a little further at the IC, we knew this was a winner.”

  • richb January 8, 2012 at 10:44 am

    Thanks, Taxi. I have the advantage of working with some ex-Intel engineers who have given me insight into their culture. The execs there are very paranoid. They do not want any one group to gain a critical mass of knowledge and become indispensable and thus negotiate for more money or better work conditions. The latter is particularly an issue where all the professionals complain bitterly about work life balance. Five years ago the "favored" group was Israel and now it appears to be Austin and five years from now it will be someone else. Ultimately this causes failures and so they played to Israeli arrogance that they were smart and others were not and not "needed". Someone other than the execs themselves needed to be blamed.

    Intel follows the historical pattern of fascism. Here I'm using the term not to be inflammatory but literally of an alliance between big business and military authoritarianism. The Israelis should take note how quickly the Jews moved from favored to murdered in Nazi Germany. The business interests needed to blame someone else for their failures. They should also note that the Nazis went after the left and the unions before they went after the Jews.

    Ron Paul points us to the future of American fascism where the scapegoat is rotated from the Muslims and the aaaarabs to the juuuuz. American Jews are being used just like American evangelicals like myself are. Both of our traditions go against the takeover by multi-national corporations. Israeli Jews should also go to the Davidson Center and see the destruction the Romans wrought on Jerusalem. Empires and the powers that be soon get tired of troublesome clients. The Jews should read their prophets and the Christians should listen to Jesus when he said that you cannot serve both God and money.

    Here's the bottom line. Despite what eee said we truly all need each other. We shouldn't let our arrogance and racism get in the way of that. If we don't hang together then we will all hang separately.

  • richb January 7, 2012 at 4:39 pm

    That article was written in 2007, btw.

    How about today's Economist instead?

    link to economist.com

    The article talks about how Intel is getting its lunch eaten by ARM in the mobile market. Funny, I remember someone here mentioning ARM. :-) The reason is Intel cannot provide a low power solution despite being "saved" by Israel. So, last month Intel reorganized all their mobile operation under Mike Bell from Silicon Valley.

    link to firstpost.com

    The response in part is to use the ultra-low voltage Medfield processor developed in Austin Texas. They are also partnering with the German chip manufacturer Infineon for their analog expertise. Israel were supposed to be the low power experts but they are nowhere to be found. That's because Intel Israel just thought about clock speed when deep submicron designs are dominated by leakage. This involves lowering the supply voltage and other more sophisticated tricks using advanced CAD tools that any undergraduate EE student knows. Eee says they don't need the Palestinians and the high tech world I live in doesn't need Israel. They are so 20th Century. Scratch that. They are so 19th Century.

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 10:30 pm

    I've been doing semiconductor design for over 28 years. The first chip I worked on is in the Smithsonian: link to smithsonianchips.si.edu I've had ten patents issued and I've served as a patent liaison to determine if the ideas of my colleagues are worthy to be patented. I know innovation when I see it. What eee has presented is all hat and no cattle. link to en.wiktionary.org

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    Well, duh. P = a*C*V^2*f. So, it stands to reason that lowering the frequency would consume less power. But also note that you can lower the power by lowering the activity factor through power switches and power islands or even more so by lowering the voltage through techniques such as AVS. If this is the mark of Israeli brilliance than all the sophomore EE students are also brilliant by extension. Getting back to Apple note there are no Intel processors in iPhones and iPads. That's because they consume too much power. They all use ARM processors. ARM is based in the UK.

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 4:15 pm

    Let's take a look at Intel's fab in Kiryat Gat. Adapted and edited from Electronic Intifada.

    link to electronicintifada.net

    Sixty years ago, there was no Kiryat Gat. The land it now occupies was divided between two Palestinian villages, al-Faluja and ‘Iraq al-Manshiya. While the area is well within the Green Line, Israel’s 1949-67 border, its history is in one way unique: Israeli forces never captured it during the 1948-49 war. Egyptian forces occupied it in late May 1948, and although later Israeli counter-offensives broke up their front and laid siege to the two villages — known at the time as the “Faluja pocket” — the 4,000 Egyptian troops deployed there (including a young officer named Gamal Abdel Nasser, soon to become president of his country) held out until Egypt and Israel agreed to an armistice on 24 February 1949.

    That’s when the Nakba befell al-Faluja and ‘Iraq al-Manshiya.*

    Stranded and surrounded, the Egyptians were in no position to stay in the area. To their credit, however, they insisted as a condition of their withdrawal that Israel guarantee the safety of the civilians in the area — about 2,000 locals and some 1,100 refugees from other parts of Palestine.

    As was typical the agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. Under the direction of Yitzhak Rabin the Israelis started a war of intimidation that one witness described as: "[they] created a situation of terror, entered the houses and beat the people with rifle butts.”

    Israel's FM Sharett objected not only to the overt violence, but also to what he said was a “whispering propaganda campaign” conducted covertly by the Israeli army, threatening the civilians with “attacks and acts of vengeance by the army” if they didn’t leave the area. “This whispering propaganda is not being done of itself,” Sharett continued. “There is no doubt that here there is a calculated action aimed at increasing the number of those going to the Hebron Hills [then controlled by Jordan] as if of their own free will, and, if possible, to bring about the evacuation of the whole civilian population” of the Faluja pocket.

    By mid-March all of al-Faluja’s residents had abandoned their homes; the residents of ‘Iraq al-Manshiya held out longer, but after several shootings by Israeli sentries, the last of them — some 1,160 people — left in Red Cross-organized convoys on 21 and 22 April. Five days later, Rabin ordered the demolition of both villages.

    As for the rightful owners of the land Intel now occupies, one recent analysis reported that 14,345 refugees from ‘Iraq al-Manshiya (including the descendants of those expelled in 1949) were registered with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees; of these more than 9,000 were living in Jordan, more than 5,000 in the West Bank, several dozen in the US, and others scattered around the world. From al-Faluja, a 1998 estimate put the total number of refugees at 33,267. For the Israelis billions but for the Palestinians bubkis. One more thing. A modern fab uses the same amount of water of a city of 30 - 40,000 people. So, Israel stole both the land and the water.

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 12:19 pm

    You say you are in high tech but I beginning to believe that you are a liar (on this topic not just in general). It's not cheap labor driving the outsourcing it's cheap engineering. You get five engineers from India for the price of one American one. Because of this management is tolerant of lower quality work. When startups get bought out only those at the top get wealthy while many of the engineers just get laid off.

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 10:19 am

    Yes the arrogance and racism is simply stunning. Eee's statement that they do not need the Palestinians brings to mind Pappe's book on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Pappe notes that up until this point previous invaders left the people on the land because they realized they needed the people. That changed with the Zionists when they sought to rid the land of all Arabs since their racism informed them that they didn't need the Palestinians. When I made my statement about the Zionists being worse than all other invaders I am including the Babylonians. I'll explain why below.

    There are three things archeologists found at the so-called City of David that the settler organization suppresses. The first was a substantial Jewish quarter during Caliphate rule. The second was the Babylonian exile was only of the elite and the common folk were left alone. The third was a huge difference in the economic classes during the time of the OT prophets. This part of the Bible was confirmed rather than the golden age of the United Kingdom. The prophets rightly railed against the Jewish elite oppressing the 99% of the day and predicted that the Jews -- or more specifically the Jewish elite as the common folk did not go into exile -- would go into exile and not return until they repented of their evil. Modern Zionists continue this practice of economic oppression today.

  • richb January 6, 2012 at 9:51 am

    We also have chosen to purchase Sandforce rather than license the technology too. Being in the fabless semiconductor business I know first hand how lean it is. Companies are bought for their patents and the employees are let go. Even if not you get by with small design teams that measure in the dozens. Apple is unique in that they have chosen to not purchase the product of the merchant semiconductor vendors and have their engineers in Cupertino do everything to maximize control. To continue their strategy they needed to buy somebody and take the technology back to Cupertino in order to have 20nm flash memories work. All flash controllers have some ECC (error correcting code) technology because everything starts getting noisy. The same is true for hard drive controllers which is what I do. The manufacturers buy cheap heads and media and the controller makes it up in SNR gains. This is exactly what the technology in question does in the flash domain and all their competitors do the same.

    Right now Marvell and LSI -- both American companies -- split up the hard drive controller business for all five major manufacturers. With the Apple acquisition the same will be true for flash memory controllers. Zionist hubris and racism keeps the Israelis from realizing that they are not chosen because they're smart when in reality they are chosen because they're cheap. This is the same impulse that drives things to India and China.

  • richb January 5, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    I know a thing or two about flash having been on team that did a flash memory controller. Back when Steve Jobs did his original flash deal with Samsung, Samsung insisted of doing the SOC as part of the deal. This purchase is a control thing because in the past Apple had semiconductor vendors -- we were one of them -- rather than their own in house design team. Their A5 processor is just bundled ARM cores with glue logic. It's not any better than my designs that have ARM processors in it. We all license the same technology. The reason why Apple acquired Anobit was not because it was better but it fits into its all captive strategy. In fact, since Anobit will not sell its controllers to competitors -- being part of Apple -- it makes companies like LSI and Marvell have more share in the overall market. Note this comment in MacWorld:

    Yang said while Anobit's intellectual property is key to Apple, it isn't unique. Flash controller makers Indilinx, Marvell and SandForce all have slightly different ECC technology that accomplishes the same thing: improving the resiliency and performance of NAND flash memory.

    Finally, you are terribly naive about acquisition strategy within large high tech firms. They may promise to hold onto jobs when they purchase startups but in a couple of years everything will be in Cupertino. Apple still has the personality of its dead founder, control is everything and having key technology in Israel interferes with that.

  • richb January 5, 2012 at 4:04 pm with 20 replies

    From the story on the Apple investment:

    Apple's deployment of R&D activities is in line with this policy and the company has only one technology development center, which is at company headquarters in Cupertino, California. All activities outside of company headquarters revolve around marketing, sales and support. Strategic development is carried out at home.

    You make it sound like Anobit is the only company that provides flash memory technology. The company I work for acquired a similar capability by acquiring U.S.-based Sandforce. Given the fact that Apple is notorious for having low R&D percentages I would be surprised if this operation hires more than a couple dozen people.

  • richb January 5, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    We didn't do that but in 1924 we gave Native Americans the choice to become American citizens. link to en.wikipedia.org

    Plan to do that soon or do you plan to remain stuck in the Nineteenth Century forever?

  • richb January 5, 2012 at 1:39 pm with 29 replies

    So let me get this straight. You have no need for Palestinians economically. So how come you have settlements in the West Bank then? Because if you truly had this wondrous high tech economy all you need is office parks in Tel Aviv. What you really are saying is you have no need for Palestinians just their land. So you take their land and water and leave them completely disenfranchised. This makes you morally worse than the white South Africans who at least admitted like F.W. de Klerk to needing the people in addition to their land.

• Real News Video: JNF 'Judaizes' expropriated land
  • richb January 3, 2012 at 9:27 am

    Hostage also note that the Palestinians are being denied self-determination for mutually contradictory reasons. So, according to PZ, the Palestinians should not have self-determination because they didn't shake off the Ottomans, or to use the Arabic word for shake off, have an Intifada. Now they are not to have self-determination because they are seeking to shake off their current oppressors. This is typical of an oppressor or tyrant, blame the victim.

    It's true that violence and oppression is deeply embedded into the human condition (and is why both Roman Catholics and Protestants hold to the doctrine of Original Sin). What's shocking about the latest Zionist form of this is the utter shamelessness of it. You start pushing me on the history of violence and anti-Semitism in the history of Christianity and I will readily admit it. (Those amongst my friends who deny the violence of Christianity are curiously enough also Christian Zionists. Hmm.) I will also add that the root cause of this corruption of Christianity is the same as what is currently corrupting Judaism, the conflation of faith and the sword of the state. Until Constantine Christianity was a religion of peace but after that it's been a (literally) bloody mess.

  • richb January 3, 2012 at 12:17 am

    Wow. Note how the Palestinians don't deserve self-determination, a basic human right. It's clear with such racism why the Israelis haven't done the right thing voluntarily for over 63 years and why Omar Barghouti is right about BDS. They need to be forced.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 7:23 pm

    Here's what gives. Given all that you said and adding that the Palestinians were called upon in WWI by the British to fight the Ottoman oppressors (in return for self-determination that they were shafted out of) they still would prefer that to Israeli occupation. I'm talking about Christians and even Armenian Christians. That's how bad the occupation is. I suggest you do what I did and go to Nazareth and Bethlehem and talk to the Christians who live there. While it sounds pessimistic there is a root of optimism in this. That's because the core of the problem is not Judaism nor Christianity nor Islam. It's Zionism. If Zionism is gone all of the three major monotheistic religions can live in peace like that did before Zionism showed up. Because of the Zionist oppression the Christians are leaving. Before they go please talk to them.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 12:28 pm

    Another way to visualize. This shows the land loss in a number of Arab municipalities inside Israel proper.

    link to i484.photobucket.com

    Source: David A. Wesley, State Practices & Zionist Images: Shaping Economic Development in Arab Towns in Israel, Berghahn Books: Oxford, 2006.

    During my tour entering into Kafr Kana was a very eye-opening experience. It was on Land Day. There was a huge line of police cars just outside the village. Once we got inside of Cana there was a very peaceful and orderly protest. There was also a general strike both there and in Nazareth. This meant many of the shops were shuttered. The Israeli guide tried to "explain" this by saying they were protesting for their "brothers" in the occupied territories and made a comment that this was Land Day. Not knowing what Land Day was I Googled it in my hotel room that night. There I found they were protesting not just about 1967 but also about 1948. Note the large land loss so they weren't just protesting for their brothers but also for themselves. Our guide also made a snide, racist, comment that the general strike would mean that there would less thieves. Note we were not in the Occupied Territories so this shows the typical racist Israeli attitude towards Arab Israelis.

    Another way to visualize. Here's Google Maps of Kafr Kana:

    link to maps.google.com

    Note how all the Jewish settlements are on the hills, e.g. Nazareth Illit and Tsipori and Givat Ela, that bottle in the Arab villages into the valley. Note the forest next to Tsipori which are the remains of Saffuriyya. The quarter in Nazareth where the refugees live is a mere 5 km away from their stolen land which they are forbidden to return.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 11:12 am

    Let's visualize this for a second. See these four maps:

    link to arenaofspeculation.org

    Source: Malkit Shoshan (of B'Tsalem which Witty supposedly loves)

    The first map is Jewish owned land in 1918. The second is Jewish owned land in 1947. Then we shift to the stolen so-called 'state land' which we have been discussing here. The third map is the state land from 1960 and the fourth map is the same from 2002.

    Imagine how much land the Palestinians would have had if it was purchased from them rather than taken from the point of a gun. Imagine.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 6:24 am

    A sure way to be put a Christian on the defensive is to invoke the Crusades. So, a comparison to the Crusaders is a very low bar. My Christian guide in Bethlehem longed for the day like when they were under the caliphate rather than Israeli occupation. That's because for all the invaders -- bar none -- none were more brutal and barbaric than the Zionists. For example, Saladin allowed free passage to the Holy City by Christian pilgrims following fighting Richard I. Saffariya was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city for centuries but the Zionists only allowed the Jews and destroyed the city and allowed no one to return which no other invader did.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 6:12 am

    Here's how the emergency regulations are used to steal land from the Palestinians by the use of the continuous state of emergency.

    Numerous other laws were used by the Israeli authorities to confiscate land. One example is the Emergency Land Requisition of 1949, which though giving the government the power to confiscate land in the case of ‘emergency’, by 1953 had been used for over 1,000 orders, ‘half of them for the purposes of settling new immigrants’. Other methods used depended on the military rule to which most Palestinian citizens were subjected after 1948, like Article 125 of the Emergency Regulations. This enabled an area to be declared ‘closed’ and then, using the Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953), the Ministry of Agriculture could declare the land ‘uncultivated’ and expropriate it for Jewish use. Shimon Peres praised the use of Article 125 as a means of ‘directly continu[ing] the struggle for Jewish settlement and Jewish immigration’.

    Ben White (2011-12-05). Palestinians in Israel (p. 25). Pluto Press.

    Why doesn't the state of emergency get revoked. Note these candid comments in Haaretz June 2005 [emphasis mine]

    link to haaretz.com

    The answer lies, therefore, in the Justice Ministry. Deputy Attorney General for Legislation Yehoshua Schoffman and his aides are wary of the immediate implication of replacing the old legislation with new laws. Unlike the existing laws, which are immune to High Court intervention, any new laws would be exposed to constitutional scrutiny under the basic laws.

    The legislation that would replace the old laws would require the establishment of arrangements that infringe on human rights and might not withstand the test of the High Court of Justice.

    Schoffman admitted as much in a Knesset discussion. "If we take the anti-terror order and erase the emergency clause, it would constitute new legislation subject to constitutional scrutiny," he said.

    "The government fears that amending legislation whose validity depends on the emergency state would open the way to examining these laws in light of the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom, while older laws would be immune to this scrutiny," says attorney Dan Yakir of ACRI. Yakir says that this consideration, which is the only reason for the government's repeated extension of the state of emergency, is invalid, improper and inappropriate.

  • richb January 2, 2012 at 5:36 am

    The necessary action is to work within the system to repair it. The only alternative is a revolutionary approach, which has far far worse likelihood of gross suppression of civil rights during wartime (if wartime extends for generations, that is whole generations of both Israelis and Palestinians living under the psychology of forced conformity to the party lines), and great risk of worse suppressions than existed and exist currently in the reactions to the reactions to the reactions.

    You act as if this some future threat. There has been a non-stop 63 year plus gross suppression of civil rights during alleged wartime due to the abuse of "emergency law". Note the following from May 24 of last year in Haaretz:

    link to haaretz.com

    The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday declared a "state of emergency" at the cabinet's request. This was not due to an expected outbreak of war or terrorism, but to ensure the state's continued supervision over such issues as ice cream production, show tickets and amniocentesis tests.

    Actually, the state of emergency was declared 63 years ago. But the committee extended it for another year, rejecting a request by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that the extension be limited to six months.

    What are these emergency regulations?

    They include, for example, regarding travelling abroad, the law to prevent infiltration, the law enabling the army to commandeer private property, the seafaring vessels law, the emergency laws for arrests, searches and land confiscation, the law supervising goods and services and the law prohibiting baking at night.

    The suppressions that exist within Israel proper are at most parallel to Jim Crow, which is reformable.

    A better parallel is with the other tyrants in the region such as Hosni Mubarek who also had decades of emergency law to take away the rights of the citizens and the solution to the "problem" is the same.

    I suggest that the path of remedy is statehood, viable self-determination, self-governance.

    Nope. The path of remedy is for the Jewish and democratic state to become a democratic state, period. Once that happens a host of one and two state solutions become suddenly viable.

  • richb January 1, 2012 at 12:51 am

    What in the world are you talking about? The 1952 Citizenship law established separate categories of citizenship and nationality. The latter is only reserved for Jews as stipulated in the 1950 Law of Return. Thus, the law enshrined discrimination from the very beginning and was Israel's original sin. All the issues we discuss must be resolved by insisting that Israel adopt a constitution with only one category of citizenship for all who reside inside her borders with equal protection under the law, as was insisted upon in Resolution 181 .

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 10:21 pm

    It's also not merely community between just Christians and Muslims but we all -- Christians and Jews and Muslims -- can live in harmony, too. See here for a way out. The conservative wings of Christianity and Judaism are captured by fear. Within the Christian tradition we have a saying, though, love conquers all fear.

    link to youtube.com

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 9:12 pm

    Annie, you may know that and I know that but my friends are being conned by this "clash of civilizations" BS. All the indigenous Christians we met kept trying to get through but alas it was for naught because of the Hasbara-inculcated fear of the scary brown Muslim. Since this is racially motivated these same Christians are also tarred as being terrorists. So at the risk of repeating myself I will speak for those who have no voice. See the upcoming Christ at the Checkpoint conference sponsored by the Bethlehem Bible College.

    link to christatthecheckpoint.org

    "If your end-times theology trumps the clear commands in Scripture to love neighbours and enemies, then it is time to rethink your theology.”

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 7:27 pm

    None of the above although there was some (understandable) conversions after the disastrous Battle of Hittin during the Crusades. Note that Nazareth is only a few miles away and it was majority Christian until the Muslims fled to it following the Nakba. Even so -- as was described to me by a Christian in Nazareth -- the Muslims and Christians got along historically and to this day. The mayor of Nazareth Illit has been having an ongoing war on Christmas and insists on it being a Jewish only city with no Christian symbols even though it is 15% Christian. The Christians there have underground worship services because of the persecution there.

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    See here for more details of the failure of the Moshav movement at Tzippori and the involvement of Moshe Dayan's father:

    link to books.google.com

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    Typical low information Hasbara. This was from a Wikipedia page which redirects from Saffuriyya. Note this on the mosaic:

    link to carnegiemuseums.org

    Zodiac Circle. The zodiac is depicted in a number of ancient synagogues, but the Sepphoris example is particularly rich and detailed. In the center of the zodiac section is a chariot of the sun god, Helios, with an image of the sun—possibly a symbol for the power of God. Surrounding the chariot are the seasons, months and celestial bodies, representing the divine order implicit in nature and the universe. The zodiac signs feature youths bearing symbols, and are labeled in Hebrew. The four seasons are personified by women, with their names inscribed in Hebrew and Greek.

    Back up the truck! A synagogue with a Zodiac? That's because Saffuriyya was not a Jewish monoculture. In the 14 centuries between the rule of Herod Antipas and the Ottoman empire, the city had a diverse, multiethnic and mutlireligious population of some 30,000 living in peaceful coexistence.

    Before the Wikipedia page was hijacked by the Hasbarists to point to Tzippori there was a section on the history of Saffuriyya which is still there:

    In the late nineteenth century, Saffuriyya was described as village built of stone and mud, situated along the slope of a hill. The village contained the remains of the Church of St. Anna and a square tower, said to have been built in the mid-eighteenth century. The village had an estimated 2,500 residents, who cultivated 150 faddans (1 faddan = 100-250 dunums), on some of this land they had planted olive trees.[25] In 1900, an elementary school for boys was founded, and later, a school for girls. A local council was established in 1923. The expenditure of the council grew from 74 Palestinian pounds in 1929 to 1,217 in 1944.[12]

    Though it lost its centrality and importance as a cultural centre under the Ottomans (1517-1918) and the British Mandate (1918–1948), the village thrived agriculturally. Saffuriyya's pomegranates, olives and wheat were famous throughout the Galilee.[26]

    In summer of 1931, archaeologist Leroy Waterman began the first excavations at Saffuriya, digging up part of the school playground, formerly the site of a Crusader fortress.[1]

    In 1944/45 a total of 21,841 dunums of village land was used for cereals, 5,310 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, mostly olive trees.[12][27] By 1948, Saffuriya was the largest village in the Galilee both by land size and population, which was estimated at 4,000 Arabs.[28]

    On July 1, 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the village was bombarded by Israeli planes.[28] It was captured by Israeli forces along with the rest of the lower Galilee in Operation Dekel. All but 80 of the villagers fled northwards toward Lebanon, some settling in the refugee camps of Ein al-Hilwa, Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. After the attack, the villagers returned but were evicted again in September 1948.[3] On January 7, 1949, 14 residents were deported and the remaining 550 were resettled in neighboring Arab villages such as 'Illut.[3] Many settled in Nazareth in a quarter now known as the al-Safafira quarter because of the large number of Saffuriyya natives living there.[26] As the Israeli government considers them absentees, they cannot go back to their old homes and have no legal recourse to recover them.[29]

    The site of the Arab village was planted with pine trees.[28] On February 20, 1949, the Israeli moshav of Tzippori was founded southeast of the former village.[28] The pomegranate and olive trees were replaced with crops for cattle fodder.[30]

    Cattle fodder? Making the desert bloom my ass.

  • richb December 31, 2011 at 10:17 am with 27 replies

    I still remember my visit to Yad Vashem where my guide mentioned how the JNF planted trees in honor of the "righteous Gentiles", while pointing to the Jerusalem Forest! As shown by Zochrot the real purpose of these artificial forests is to erase history. Ilan Pappe in the Ethnic Cleansing of Israel noted that the Forest of Birya, which is the largest man made forest in Israel, conceals the land of six Palestinian villages; Dishon, Alma, Qaddita, Amqa, Ayn al-Zaytun, and Birya.

    You don't have to trust Ilan Pappe, just your own eyes. Here's the village of Saffurriya just outside Nazareth with a photo of Saffurriya at ground level.

    link to i484.photobucket.com

    I decided to see what this looked like on Google Earth. Here's the screenshot.

    link to i484.photobucket.com

    While I was at it I also overlaid the ethnically cleansed villages on top of a map of the UN partition (border in blue).

    link to i484.photobucket.com

    Needless to say the shameless abuse of the Holocaust allowed me to endure any false charges of anti-Semitism and allowed me to speak up here and elsewhere. They don't care about the victims of the Shoah, it's just a talking point.

• Ron Paul prose on Israel allegedly makes woman cry
  • richb December 29, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    Here's her twitter profile picture. Note what's in the back.

    link to a0.twimg.com

• Ron Paul and the left
  • richb December 30, 2011 at 9:39 am

    Too much has been made about Paul's beliefs rather than his supporters. What Paul represents is the Religious Right absent Dispensational theology. I'm a non-Dispensational Evangelical. I readily admit it's possible to be non-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. So, I can grant that this may be the case for Ron Paul personally and even be the case -- though less likely -- with respect to the racism charge.

    That being said, if Paul is the apostle of non-Zionism I predict it will be the occasion of full-orbed anti-Semitism like his namesake. There is simply too much paranoia in his overall message. I've witnessed a lot of latent support for Paul amongst my friends in the Religious Right and a win in Iowa and beyond is not out of the question given that Romney is a Mormon.

• Riots over gender segregation. And silence over Palestinian segregation
  • richb December 29, 2011 at 10:15 am

    Note one of the suggestions in the panel discussions here:

    link to aljazeera.com

    One of the "solutions" mentioned was everybody including the Haredi should be in the army. It wasn't mentioned why there was an exception, namely that it violated the Three Oaths.

    The Three Oaths are not merely based on the Talmud but also the Song of Solomon and Jeremiah 29:7.

    "Seek out the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray for it to the Almighty, for through its welfare will you have welfare."

    Jeremiah continues:

    "Do not let your false prophets among you and your sorcerers seduce you, do not heed your dreamers which you cause them to dream. For they speak falsely to you in My name. I did not send them."

    The Haredi make an easy target but the root of the problem is the Jewish ethnocracy. All religious minorities -- whether they be Haredi or Palestinian Muslims or Palestinian Christians or Messianic Jews -- suffer discrimination because of the Zionist program of ethnocracy. Until Israel adopts real religious and political freedom inside the 1967 borders all we discuss relative to the conflict will fail. See Ben White's recent book, Palestinians in Israel, for more details.

• How a comic book healed the wounds of normalization
  • richb December 14, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    It's not merely the veto. The veto makes the U.S. effectively half of the Quartet. The U.S. blocks sanctions not only for itself but also as part of the UN. The State Department also labels any independent sanctions against Israel by an individual state as delegitimizing. This has a profound effect on Europe so now we are at three quarters of the Quartet. Thus, there is no hope for any governmental action on the part of the international community. Thus, it's left to individuals in civil society to do the heavy lifting here, particularly those of us who are Americans because our government does not express our wishes (as was the case in SA). Thanks, eee, for providing an excellent justification for why we need BDS!

  • richb December 14, 2011 at 10:57 am with 1 replies

    Thanks. This was very helpful. Coming from a conservative background I disagree with right-wing Zionism -- both Christian and Jewish -- but I believe I understand it. Left-wing Zionism was always confusing to me. That's why I was completely blindsided on Daily Kos after coming back from visiting Israel. On every other issue the left had stood for justice, the little guy, and was anti-war. After seeing the truth with my own eyes I had assumed that this would apply to the I/P conflict, also. But, there is another part of the left-wing psyche that contributes to this. As with all generalizations don't take this too far and your mileage may vary. Generally speaking, the right wants fear or respect and is authoritarian. The left wants to be liked or loved and is egalitarian.

    Right-wing Zionism is all about power, even Christian Zionism. In the case of the latter, the unconditional support of Israel is so Jesus returns and then roll credits. Left-wing Zionism more reflects the left's psyche. Asymmetrical relationships remind the left too much of the right's authoritarianism and furthermore cause issues with its innate egalitarianism. In cases such as climate change the left realizes the media's equal treatment of "both sides" is in and of itself biased. Even here as long as you belong to the oppressed group rather than an oppressing group falsely applying a bogus symmetry doesn't happen. But, what happens if you belong to an oppressing group like me being a modestly wealthy, white, male, evangelical Christian? Or in the case of left wing Zionism being a modestly wealthy, white, male Jew? Does being a generic liberal assuage the guilt? I say no.

    Fighting against oppression must be on the terms of the oppressed and not on the terms of the (feeling) guilty oppressors. It's not about how we feel or what people think of us. It's about justice and freedom. If pursuing those ends means we look like crap and we are dissed -- or to use a term of art from the conflict -- delegitimized so be it. In my opinion and speaking as a former right-winger this is where the left, whether Zionist or non-Zionist, needs a small right-wing injection. We need to not care what other people think of us. Until we do that we will have all these useless "conversations" that do nothing to relieve the oppression of the Palestinian people.

• Israeli gov't cancels oafish ad campaign targeting Christmas, US marriage
  • richb December 3, 2011 at 1:02 pm with 1 replies

    Note this:

    News from Goldblog Headquarters: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his country's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption to immediately shut down its ridiculous Diaspora-bashing ad campaign, which was meant to guilt Israeli expatriates in America into going home. I first wrote about this campaign here; the original post prompted Israel's Immigration Minister, Sofa Landver, to tell Shmuel Rosner that Goldblog is a know-nothing and to defend rather too vociferously the ad campaign.

    Goldblog just got off the phone with the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who had brought the campaign to the attention of the prime minister after my first post on the subject appeared. Oren read to me the following statement:

    "The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption's campaign clearly did not take into account American Jewish sensibilities, and we regret any offense it caused. The campaign, which aimed to encourage Israelis living abroad to return home, was a laudable one, and it was not meant to cause insult. The campaign was conducted without the knowledge or approval of the prime minister's office or of the Israeli embassy in Washington. Prime Minister Netanyahu, once made aware of the campaign, ordered the videos immediately removed from YouTube, and he ordered that the billboards be removed as well. The prime minister deeply values the American Jewish community and is committed to deepening ties between it and the State of Israel."

    So there you have it: Another Diaspora-Israel crisis averted. The prime minister has acted swiftly and correctly. Goldblog's work here is done. Shabbat Shalom.

    But I just went to Klita's channel and there was "Daddy" right on the front page:

    link to youtube.com

    I just took a screen grab just to prove it in case they pull it later. Note also that your ability to see the ad above is proof that the video wasn't pulled. Sounds like Goldberg had a W-style "mission accomplished".

  • richb December 3, 2011 at 12:19 pm with 5 replies

    See Al Jazeera's insightful take on this:

    link to aljazeera.com

    Yes, the Israelis are clueless in their messaging but they are not clueless in the need for the ads. At the end of the Al Jazeera piece the reporter noted the why for the ad campaign. Over the last few decades the flow of Jews is from Israel to the United States and not the other way around. The last question asked is particularly pointed:

    "... leaving many Israelis asking which place is really home."

    Let's compare the U.S. and Israel for a moment. One is a multi-cultural location where Jews can speak English and celebrate Christmas with their Christian friends if they chose. I celebrate Hanukkah with my Jewish friends. Respecting other religious traditions does not mean adopting other religions. Many American Jews understand this and is one reason why they were offended by the ads. Or, one where only Hebrew is spoken (but apparently read see the English-language Economist on the "abba's" chest), and only Judaism is respected and other religions effectively banned. American Jewry has spoken with their feet on this important question and like many other issues recently the Hasbara machine is panicking.

• Salon: Israel pushes US warmongering via neocon dog-tail-waggers
  • richb November 27, 2011 at 2:36 pm

    Connecting the dots...

    Here's how Dean is encouraged: speaking fees. Here's a list of the key speakers for the MEK:

    link to big.assets.huffingtonpost.com

    This in turn produces appearances as follows on MSNBC:

    link to youtube.com

    In March, one of the largest MEK support groups, the Iranian American Community of Northern California (IACNC) hosted a lavish conference on Capitol Hill with eight professional speakers, including Sec. Ridge, Gov. Dean and Mukasey, as well as nine members of Congress.

    link to iacnorcal.com

    Here come's the Israel connection. One month later, the group hired a prestigious D.C. law firm, Akin Gump, to lobby directly for delisting the MEK.

    link to thehill.com

    Who's a key member of Akin Gump? Former Congressman Bill Paxon.

    link to akingump.com

    Why is this important?

    While in Congress, Mr. Paxon also served as chair of the House leadership, founded the House Republican Israel Caucus and was a member of the following committees: Energy and Commerce, Banking, Budget, Small Business and Veterans Affairs.

    In a policy paper in 2001 the firm noted the following concerning sanctions against Iran:

    Diplomatic considerations are unlikely to sway members of Congress, however. Many members will be reluctant to allow ILSA to expire without a serious debate. The position of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other interested groups, which generally advocate a hard-line approach to both Iran and Libya, will be important factors in determining how events unfold. If this produces an initiative to extend ILSA in some form, a difficult debate on U.S. sanctions policy toward these countries is likely to ensue.

    link to akingump.com

  • richb November 27, 2011 at 11:59 am with 7 replies

    No kidding. See this morning's front page of the NY Times for all the congressional supporters of the terrorist cult, the MEK.

    link to nytimes.com

    The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.

    This is not the first time this was reported in the NYT:

    link to nytimes.com

    A FEW weeks ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance with the subject line: Have you seen the video everyone is talking about?

    I clicked play, and there was Howard Dean, on March 19 in Berlin, at his most impassioned, extolling the virtues of a woman named Maryam Rajavi and insisting that America should recognize her as the president of Iran.

    Ms. Rajavi and her husband, Massoud, are the leaders of a militant Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedeen Khalq, or Warriors of God. The group’s forces have been based for the last 25 years in Iraq, where I visited them shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

    Mr. Dean’s speech stunned me. But then came Rudolph W. Giuliani saying virtually the same thing. At a conference in Paris last December, an emotional Mr. Giuliani told Ms. Rajavi, “These are the most important yearnings of the human soul that you support, and for your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just simply a disgrace.” I thought I was watching The Onion News Network. Did Mr. Giuliani know whom he was talking about?

    Former DNC head, Howard Dean, even went so far as to offer an Op Ed with Tom Ridge on fox news.com!

    link to foxnews.com

    Dean's argument was that we should support the MEK because of the plot against the Saudi ambassador even though the co-conspirator is alleged by Iran to be a part of the MEK!

    link to nytimes.com

    Since the Republicans and Democrats disagree on everything including such minor things as JOBS all this unanimity means just one thing, Israel's involved. A quick Google search confirmed my suspicions.

    The Guardian reported that a recent "accident" in Iran was a covert Israeli operation in conjunction with the MEK:

    link to guardian.co.uk

    A series of news reports linking Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad to a blast at a military facility in Iran, in which 17 people were killed and a further 15 wounded, has gained widespread coverage in the Israeli media on Monday.

    While Iranian officials insist the explosion at the Bid Ganeh base was accidental, caused by the movement of ammunition, claims from anonymous western and Israeli officials that Saturday's blast was a covert Israeli operation have gained momentum.

    Leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot picked up a post by US blogger Richard Silverstein claiming the Mossad had teamed up with Iranian militant group Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to execute the alleged attack. MEK denies involvement in the attack.

    The MEK was also used to be a front for the Israelis to leak friendly info about the Iranian nuclear program without Israeli fingerprints. Note this cheerleading by Mrs. Rajavi:

    link to ncr-iran.org

    "It is delightful that the agency did not give in to pressure from some member states that wanted to continue to cover up the clerical regime's nuclear projects, and exposed part of the military aspects of the regime's nuclear drive. But the bulk of the information contained in the agency's report, had been exposed by the Iranian resistance since many years ago and made available to the IAEA who could have been published years ago", she added.

    Was the Iranian resistance finding out about the Iranian nuclear program or is this just a repeat concerning the so-called Iraqi resistance and Saddam's W.M.D.s. Note this March 2006 New Yorker piece showing it's the latter:
    link to newyorker.com

    An Iranian-American political activist told me, however, that the N.C.R.I.'s [MEK's] intelligence had actually come from Israel. This person said that Israel had earlier offered it to a monarchist group, but that that group's leaders had decided that "outing" the regime's nuclear program would be viewed negatively by Iranians, so they declined the offer. Shahriar Ahy, Reza Pahlavi's [the former Shah's son] adviser, confirmed that account up to a point. "That information came not from the M.E.K but from a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the mujahideen," he said. When I asked him if the "friendly government" was Israel, he smiled. "The friendly government did not want to be the source of it, publicly, If the friendly government gives it to the U.S. publicly, then it would be received differently. Better to come from an opposition group." Israel is said to have had a relationship with the M.E.K. at least since the late nineties, and to have supplied a satellite signal for N.C.R.I. broadcasts from Paris into Iran. When I asked an Israeli diplomat about Israel's relationship with the M.E.K., he said, "The M.E.K is useful," but declined to elaborate.

• 'In Hebron I felt that God had abandoned earth'
  • richb November 20, 2011 at 2:53 pm with 2 replies

    Annie when Ben is talking about the still, small voice this is what he is referring to (1 Kings 19):

    And the word of the LORD came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

    He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

    The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”

    Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. [Note: King James translates this as "still, small voice"] When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

    So, when Ben talks about God abandoning Earth he's not blaming God but rather noticing like Elijah did that the children of Israel abandoned the covenant. The Torah is also clear that if the children of Israel abandon the covenant the promise of the land is made null and void.

• NPR story on Dead Sea Scrolls makes listener feel like a goose being force-fed Israel propaganda
  • richb November 23, 2011 at 9:33 am

    Not only did he want a final say on Judaism remember the comment was directed at me and thus he also wanted a final say on my evangelical Christianity. I am not a relativist. Facts are not constructed for my personal convenience nor are they contingent on my belief in them. Most evangelicals crave certainty. A popular evangelism technique asks are you 100% certain that you are going to Heaven. Since most evangelicals also claim that Scripture is 100% true down to the minutest historical or scientific detail it makes them very susceptible to unscrupulous manipulation. This is why they so easily fall for things like Intelligent Design because you have "experts" that confirm their belief in the inerrancy of Scripture against a modern World that introduces fear, uncertainty, and doubts.

    The same thing happens with Christian Zionist tours. They are told when they see the landscape that archeological evidence confirms exactly what is recorded in Scripture. It doesn't matter which fact is confirmed but rather there are many facts that are done. This includes, by the way, confirming the historical claims of the New Testament. This happened so much there was some speculation that our guide was Christian. This illusion was shattered when he didn't know a thing about ahistorical things such as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Then they return saying how this was the most important spiritual event in their life because those nagging doubts are quelled all because the Israeli guides lie about the archeological evidence.

    The key difference between Christian and Jewish Zionists is as follows: The Christian Zionists care about the text of the Bible while the Jewish Zionists only care about the maps in the back, showing a United Monarchy from the River to the Sea. Israel has been lying about her borders now for over two and a half millennia.

    Here's how to take the facts above and use it to be influential with evangelicals. Expose the double game the Hasbarists are playing. What will be devastating about what Jonah said is not where he disagrees with me but where he agrees. He only cares about establishing the Kingdom of David and if Scripture is a little exaggerated, meh. With evangelicals this is a VERY BIG DEAL. So instead of trying to convince evangelicals of the archeological truth show how much the Harbarists are a bunch of shameless liars by showing what they say to us as contrasted with what they say to them. Evangelicals are no different than any other person here. They hate to be lied to. Furthermore, you have people that already are shown easy to convert. Not only will they flip but they will flip hard like I did this year.

  • richb November 20, 2011 at 7:04 pm

    Don't blame the girl. When you go on these tours the Israelis do not sound like Jonah. They keep telling the gullible Christians how all this archeology supports the Bible but it doesn't. But for people like Jonah all they want is a political David and not the religious one that my friends care about. So, they say one thing to me here and a different thing to my friends. Problem is I live in both worlds and I hear the two conflicting propaganda lines. Evangelical Christians care about confirming the Bible. So, they get used as useful idiots so that they will lobby their Congress critters back home.

  • richb November 20, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    Is the difference between monotheism and paganism clear to you?
    I can guess where your religious relativism wants to go …

    Yes. I know the difference.

    The earliest undisputed ritual find in Jerusalem is a fragment of a ceramic cult stand with molded human figures on it. The stand was made in the Canaanite tradition, and perhaps it should be attributed to a shrine that was built on the nearby hilltop. More evidence of early ritual practice is a small niche with a stela and two chalices found on the lower slope of the city and dated to the 10th–9th centuries B.C.E.

    Thousands of clay figurines and parts of clay figurines of women, as well as hundreds of figurines or parts of figurines of animals, were found in strata from the times of the kings of Judea. The number of figurines found in Judahite Jerusalem is the largest found in any site in Israel. The fragments of figurines were found in almost every structure excavated in the site, sometimes dozens in one place. These figurines tell us about a very widespread popular belief in the importance of female figures—an expression of an unofficial religious practice that may have been the exclusive realm of Jerusalem’s women.

    To this day no conclusive evidence has been found as to the existence of a temple in Jerusalem, even after the excavations around the Temple Mount/Haram al- Sharif and the sifting of the dirt fill from the hill. Thus my comment of no evidence of mono-theism.

  • richb November 20, 2011 at 4:18 pm

    It's a lot more honest than when I visited the so-called City of David. There was no evidence of David, nor Solomon, nor even monotheism in the Tenth Century BCE. The Jebusites had an impressive kingdom on the other hand. (To call David a king is a huge stretch.) Another item exaggerated is the Babylonian Captivity. This was only a crisis for the ruling elite. The common folk probably didn't notice much. The common part of Jerusalem was not attacked and they had already voluntarily leaving the city for over a century before the Babylonians came. In other words, most of the diaspora didn't happen and it could very well be the case that it's more likely that Palestinians have more ancient Jewish blood coursing through their veins than Jews do!

  • richb November 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    Here's some scientific teeth behind the issue of founder population.

    link to bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org

    The Two Common Mutations Causing Factor XI Deficiency in Jews Stem From Distinct Founders: One of Ancient Middle Eastern Origin and Another of More Recent European Origin
    Hava Peretz, Avital Mulai, Sali Usher, Ariella Zivelin, Avihai Segal, Zahavi Weisman, Moshe Mittelman, Hannah Lupo, Naomi Lanir, Benjamin Brenner, Ofer Shpilberg, and Uri Seligsohn
    + Author Affiliations

    1 From the Institute of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, Department of Hematology, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel; the Chemistry Laboratory, Sourasky Tel-Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel; the Rosh-Haayin Outpatient Clinic, Rosh-Haayin, Israel; the Department of Medicine, Hasharon Medical Center, Petah-Tiqua, Israel; and the Thrombosis and Hemostasis Unit, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
    Abstract

    Previous studies showed that factor XI (FXI) deficiency commonly observed in Ashkenazi Jews is caused by two similarly frequent mutations, type II (Glu117stop) and type III (Phe283Leu) with allele frequencies of 0.0217 and 0.0254, respectively. In Iraqi Jews, who represent the ancient gene pool of Jews, only the type II mutation was observed with an allele frequency of 0.0167. In this study we sought founder effects for each mutation by examination of four FXI gene polymorphisms enabling haplotype analysis in affected Jewish patients of Ashkenazi, Iraqi, and other origins and in Arab patients. Initial population surveys of 387 Middle Eastern Jews (excluding Iraqi Jews), 560 North African/Sephardic Jews, and 382 Arabs revealed allele frequencies for the type II mutation of 0.0026, 0.0027, and 0.0065, respectively. In contrast, the type III mutation was not detected in any of these populations. All 60 independent chromosomes bearing the type III mutation were solely observed in Ashkenazi Jewish patients and were characterized by a relatively rare haplotype. All 103 independent chromosomes bearing the type II mutation in patients of Ashkenazi, Iraqi, Yemenite, Syrian, and Moroccan Jewish origin and of Arab origin were characterized by another distinct haplotype that was rare among normal Ashkenazi Jewish, Iraqi Jewish, and Arab chromosomes. These findings constitute the first example of a mutation common to Ashkenazi Jews, non-Ashkenazi Jews, and Arabs and are consistent with the origin of type II mutation in a founder before the divergence of the major segments of Jews. Our findings also indicate that the type III mutation arose more recently in an Ashkenazi Jewish individual.

    In English it says that Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs had a common founder. The reason why it appears that Jews are distinct genetically is the focus on Ashkenazi Jews that due to cultural and religious reasons had huge genetic bottleneck effects which in turn caused large amounts of genetic drift. This is the primary reason why such Jews suffer disproportionately from genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs.

  • richb November 20, 2011 at 11:52 am

    There is enough written and archeological evidence now to objectively say that there was indeed a united kingdom of Israel under David and Salomon in the 10th century BCE, with capital Jerusalem, even though not to the extent as described in the Bible …

    First you quoted Wikipedia and is typical for any article dealing with Israel has all sorts of Hasbara fingerprints on it. The only source for the article is a non-peer-reviewed report from Eilat Mazar. Note that Mazar is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a foundation that was established in 1994 to promote Zionism and free market economics in Israel. Back when I was looking into the pseudo-science of climate change I saw the exact same M.O. with politically motivated organizations sponsoring research that sought to overturn the overwhelming consensus view. The only difference I can see is the bogus climate research was sponsored by rich Gentiles rather than rich Jews.

    Again, all the Wikipedia article quoted hinges on Mazel's work which to put it most charitably is extremely controversial. The attitude of the scientific community not captured by radical Zionism toward Mazel is best summed up by the following quote from Israel Finkelstein:

    The biblical text dominates this field operation, not archaeology. Had it not been for Mazar’s literal reading of the biblical text, she never would have dated the remains to the 10th century BCE with such confidence.

    Israel Finkelstein, Ze'ev Herzog, Lily Singer-Avitz and David Ussishkin (2007), Has King David's Palace in Jerusalem Been Found?, Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, 34(2), 142-164; p. 154

    Your citation of Nova is much better and again the archeological consensus is accurately portrayed by the following quote from your citation:

    But I think most archeologists today would argue that the United Monarchy was not much more than a kind of hill-country chiefdom. It was very small-scale.

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