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Total number of comments: 834 (since 2009-07-31 12:30:56)

Sin Nombre

An average schlub.

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• The kids are back, and it's not alright
  • Sin Nombre June 13, 2013 at 1:23 am with 1 replies

    I especially loved the weird, wonderful (if of course always self-congratulatory) invocation of the tikkun olam/"heal the world" mission alongside all the rest of it. Sort of delightfully head-snapping: Dispossession of Palestinians as a missionary endeavor!

    Now *there's* an instance of "tough-love" if I ever heard one.

    Wonderfully attractive kids though, they really ought not be used in this manner by either side.

• The education of Samantha Power
  • Sin Nombre June 9, 2013 at 10:15 pm with 2 replies

    Shmuley Boteach wrote:

    "I asked Michael if he would host Samantha at his office and he immediately agreed. About a month later Samantha arrived to address a closed-door meeting of about 40 American Jewish leaders...."

    Well of *course* she did. Of *course* she had to. No mere further silence on her part regarding the Israeli/Palestinian situation would do. Her book had made her too public and her comments concerning same were already too noticed. Nor even would any mere private recantation of this to some mere member of the tribe suffice. If she wanted to go anywhere on the coattails of her book—a professorial appointment, tenure, government service, use of the faculty restrooms—and above all as a person who saw herself dwelling on some moral Mount Olympus she most certainly wanted to go somewhere, she had to *crawl.* And not just via some simpering, pathetic paragraph in a letter to an editor somewhere saying she had been "misunderstood" with her previous comments, no matter how blatantly false or disingenuous or embarrassing. She had to *abase* herself in front of a Sanhedrin of sorts. Get down on her hands and knees and right in front of them and at their leisure and straight off the carpet eat up the shit she had previously emitted, with a smile on her face showing the sincerity of her acceptance to never ever ever come close to ever emitting anything like same again....

• End your illusion: Israeli government will never implement a two-state solution, top official says
  • Sin Nombre June 8, 2013 at 12:11 pm with 2 replies

    And tomorrow Obama and Kerry and whomever here will carry on blathering about the two-state solution and how the U.S. has to do X, Y and Z to facilitate it, including of course continuing and ever-increasing the fire-hose of money and support down the throat of our good friend Israel.

    One supposes some new word has to be invented for this. "Sham" ... "farce" ... they don't even begin to capture it, do they? Almost by definition they assume that their perpetrators believe there is someone left to fool. But who is left to fool as to this anymore? Who *possibly* believes that Israel will ever agree to any even near- reasonable two-state solution?

    So it's sort of a ... sham sham, as it were. A farcical farce. The U.S. pretends that it's not really just running interference for an on-going land grab and instead is working with Israel to get a two-state solution and ... the only people that applaud this are themselves shamming and instead are only farcically approving of same.

    Given the long history of this now and its durability—in the face of world-wide laughter even now—one suspects the question comes down to mere acreage.

    I.e., just how many few acres will be left un-colonized, un-ethnically cleansed, un-annexed before our American officials say "oh gee, it's sort of impossible to have a state the size of a football pitch, isn't it?"

    Gotta get down pretty damn small though: After all, the argument will go ... "Look at Monaco! Or the Holy See! See how the Palestinians think they're better than everyone else!"

    We oughta just ask Israel straight out now instead of prolonging the waiting: How many acres don't you want?

    Oh that's right though, Israel doesn't respond to same; that's why it doesn't declare its borders. (Despite constantly proclaiming it's just like every other state.) They're really secret from the rest of the world it seems. Expandable to utterly unstated and unknown limits, almost surely never to be formally declared.

    This entire situation has now reached some new height of ridiculousness never before seen in history. The degree of control exercised by a smaller state over its much bigger patron ... the blatantcy of the Israeli disingenuity about a two-state solution ... the utter laughability of official statements made about a situation by various governments (U.S. and Israel) ... and on and on.

• Understanding the Holocaust, and the Nakba, in the Jewish narrative
  • Sin Nombre June 10, 2013 at 11:40 pm

    In reply then to my invitation to tell us why he believes the Holocaust was "unique" in some significant if not great morally important manner hophmi wrote:

    "Number of deaths, volume of deaths in a short period, method of execution, and the fact that it took place in the 20th century, for starters."

    That's it? (I ignore the "for starters"; nobody is limiting you here, and indeed you just stopped here and then choose to expend all kinds of your time with some attempted diversionary verbiage.) That's *all*?

    The Holomodor, the purge spasms of Stalin, the mechanized-like butchery of the Chinese at the hands of the Japanese, the enforced starvation of zillions in the *second* half of the 20th by Mao, Pol Pot likewise in that second half, Rwanda in that second half ....

    And "the mechanism"? Being gassed to death you mean? As opposed to ... being starved into cannibalism? (Stalin and Mao.) As opposed to being lined up in queues for beheading-by-sword contests? (The Japanese.) As opposed to being worked to death digging ditches or trying to cut timber in the high arctic in mid-winter negative zero temperatures? (Stalin again.) As opposed to being buried up to your neck and the having your head beaten in while your family—who was next—watched? (Pol Pot.) As opposed to being put on a barge, towed out to the middle of a freezing river and then sunk? (Stalin, of course, yet again.)

    I don't want to say "you must be joking" because I know you are sincere in *feeling* that the Holocaust is unique and I my intent is not to hurt your feelings. But while you are entitled to your own feelings of some "specialness" you aren't entitled to your own facts. And I'm sorry but the facts here just blow away your assertion of some special, unique importance of the Holocaust. It was important. Maybe even cosmically so. But neither any less so nor moreso than any other, including those in the 20th Century.

    Moreover, as regards your claim of hypocrisy on the part of those of us who do not see the Holocaust as unique and yet focus somewhat on Israel's behavior due to our government's support of same, it frankly strikes me that once again your feelings of "specialness" are once again on display.

    After all, there are the people of your country asking the people of mine for help. And of course we have the absolute right to say no, *regardless* even of how we view your behavior, but *especially* if we find your behavior somehow objectionable to us. And thus it is only if you consider yourselves special that you could possibly feel aggrieved at those who would say no, including even those who would say no due to your behavior. In essence what you are saying is that we have some obligation to support you *regardless not only of our absolute right to say no for any reason,* but also regardless of our own standards.

    I.e., that you are somehow so special, that same trumps our right to say no for any reason as well as our right to say no due to our own standards.

    I will say this though hophmi: I think your original post here talking about how you feel the Holocaust was "unique" was right in one big sense: It explains alot. It gets to the nub of things in terms of that belief in its "specialness" and the belief in the alleged specialness therefore of Israel and jewry.

    But, as I said above, that belief just simply has no basis in fact, and so goes the feeling of specialness too.

  • Sin Nombre June 9, 2013 at 6:45 am

    C'mon, hophmi, in addition of course to the meme being lots trumpeted by others you yourself implicitly asserted that the idea that the Holocaust was unique was extremely important. So c'mon; seems to me you've got an obligation to say why you feel that way, or at least so say that you can't explain it but it just does. (Which, I'd add, is completely emotionally understandable at least.) But, either way, I'd like to hear you out.

  • Sin Nombre June 8, 2013 at 1:36 pm with 4 replies

    In addition to questioning hophmi on this "Holocaust uniqueness" issue I'd like to make another observation about it:

    As I understand it Phil and Adam and Co. have banned any talk that would seem to deny either the Holocaust or the Nakba.

    Fair enough. Again as I understand it the idea is that doing is just ... beyond the Pale, so to speak, and traffics in matters that are really unprovable and are deeply offensive to many.

    Well, not that I'm advocating the doing of same here because I'm not, but why isn't it considered equally beyond the Pale, trafficking in matters that are unprovable and are deeply offensive to many to allow people to talk about the alleged "uniqueness" of the Holocaust and so minimizing if not dismissing the terror and damage inflicted by other mass murders?

    Again I don't think it should be banned, but it does seem to me to highlight a certain unconscious ... deformation of the discourse. Merely because this "uniqueness of the Holocaust" meme has been so often and loudly trumpeted—despite having a clear self-serving nature—that we must accept that it has at least some significant amount of legitimacy? At the same time huffily rejecting that as to any number of other arguments/assertions cutting in favor of someone else?

    I don't think the uniqueness of the Holocaust to the point of it being more morally significant that other mass murders comes anywhere close to being provable, and indeed maybe only amounts to just being within the bounds of reasonable differences of opinion.

    So how come we see the allowance here of an assertion essentially minimizing all the other mass outrages committed against all the other human beings on the planet throughout all the ages?

  • Sin Nombre June 8, 2013 at 11:26 am with 4 replies

    hophmi wrote:

    "... unfortunately, not the view of many here, who do not acknowledge the uniqueness of the Holocaust in the first place."

    And just how was the Holocaust unique, hophmi? Just how was it *so* different and worse—and thus of some greater importance which you must believe else you wouldn't find it noteworthy—than other mass slayings?

    Or, to put it another way you obviously mean it, how was it ... unique unique?

    Of course, that is, *every* mass slaying has had its unique aspects. None could possibly have come any too close in resemblance to another. Not even those perpetrated by the same people, seriatim so to speak. Tamerlane, going from one town to another, obliterating the populace of one then another. Almost certainly were differences even then. The people in one town half burnt to death in fighting, the people in the other all surrendering and still being put to the sword ....

    So tell me, as I've heard this meme so often before and it can obviously seem such a desperate attempt at claiming some greater moral import, what exactly do you mean?

    Let's have a specific, detailed talk about this, because (to flip your observation over) you and so many others keep saying this and it seems to be the absolute plinth upon some claim to a greater moral status than other mass slayings' victims or other survivors ... just how is it anywhere even *importantly* uniquely different?

• UN nominee Power spoke of Israeli human rights abuses and US 'domestic constituency' with 'tremendous' financial clout
  • Sin Nombre June 5, 2013 at 5:18 pm with 2 replies

    Not that it matters because Power will eat her words about the irresponsibility of Israel faster than shot goes through a goose, but boy, what's not to like otherwise? The U.S. ought to not only expend more billions upon billions over there, but then, it's implied, even "massively" stick our troops in harms' way over there as well?

    Geez, I just can't wait for that. And of course whatever we'd do wouldn't end up being manipulated to serve Israel's interests.

    The problems might all be from hell, but per Power all the solutions must come out of the pockets or blood of us Americans.

    But of course oh how morally superior she is; she must be right.

• The 'double standards' issue and moral judgment of Israeli policies
  • Sin Nombre May 31, 2013 at 11:08 am with 2 replies

    "Why focus on the Shoah when Stalin murdered 20 million in the 1930s or Mao killed 40 million?"

    I was thinking along the lines of laughing at jews of all people condemning double standards when they want to run an ethno-racial supremicist state, but this is an even better retort. Indeed, brilliant.

    Plus, as opposed to launching into some tortured explanation, isn't it enough when Israelis cry "double-standard!" to just note that all this really represents is simply an admission of the allegations against it? Get accused of murder and walk into court and say "but others do it too!" and see how much weight anyone ascribes to same other *than* the admission part.

    This "double standard" cry you see so often strikes me as nothing other than the fantasy some jews seem to have that others are constantly concerned with jews or jewishness or give even one tiny damn for same. It's like someone raised with their momma telling them "now remember you're special and everyone's constantly going to be looking at you."

• In confab over 'Jewish democracy,' Goldberg says the U.S. has plenty of 'schmucks' and 'fascists' too
  • Sin Nombre May 30, 2013 at 6:00 pm with 3 replies

    Awww, what a nice ... solicitous little meeting they had there in the synagogue. Solicitude solicitude. Goldberg even for the disenfranchised Palestinians of Hebron. Shavit for the people in Syria. Tapper for Israel and young jews. Solicitude solicitude.

    Except—and I doubt this was talked about and just not mentioned by Mr. Voskamp—not a trace of solicitude that I see for *my* people and *my* country. You know, the one on whose land this synagogue sits. The one that shovels billions per year to the participants of all this Levantine fun. The one that one suspects Mr. Tapper and Mr. Goldberg are at least supposedly part citizens of.

    Nope. No mention that I could see. Just the total and yet utterly unconscious acceptance that for some reason of *course* the U.S. must just keep expending its blood and treasure over all these objects of solicitude in every way imaginable. Just the overwhelming sense that if someone had gotten up and said that the U.S. is getting screwed here eight ways from Sunday and ought to totally absent itself from all these issues as they have nothing to do with our vital interests that such person would have been regarded by everyone in that synagogue as some sort of extremist if not a monster.

    "The citizens of the U.S. should only be called upon to sacrifice their money or blood for their own interests???!!! Have you lost your mind? You you you ... anti-semite/anti-arab! Filthy nationalist! Racist! Only Israelis/jews and arabs have the right to watch out for their own interests, and certainly not you Americans! You are ... sheep! *Made* to be sheared!" (Just as both sides just did to us by getting Kerry to promise another $400 million to shovel to the P.A., thereby also rewarding Israel which is under int'l law actually responsible for the occupants there.) "So shut up and get out of here!"

    Indeed you can just *feel* the level of outrage this would engender, much less if supposed American citizen Jake Tapper with supposed concern for this country had even *hinted* of a concern for U.S. interests, as one might foolishly think given his job. *If* he was still able to keep his job at CNN by now he'd be the Permanent Special Correspondent For Reporting On The Weather In Outer Mongolia.

    But yeah, let's forget about this issue and go back to being the Great Stupid Enablers of all these parties (does anyone really believe that if the shoe were on the other foot the arabs would be treating the jews oh-so-gently?) mercilessly competing to rip us off by getting us talking about ... just where exactly the green line should go, and whether the arabs like homosexuals not enough and to just what degree "apartheid" is what Israel is now practicing and blah blah blah ad nauseum ad infinitum.

    Uh-oh though: Time for the next ... conference/confab/debate/symposium/whatever never coming within a zillion parsecs of talking about American interests in general. Gotta run and read up on the crucial question of ... what Herzl really said about the rocks on the other side of the planet from this country, and the intricacies of the Sunni/Shia split and other such issues so crucial to all Americans.

    What a larf. It'll never end. We're getting played like a stolen ukelele.

• Chas Freeman on Israel's self-inflicted existential crisis
  • Sin Nombre May 27, 2013 at 7:12 pm

    Chas Freeman wrote:

    "The first question is how long Israel can survive as a democracy or at all."

    Depends on how you define "first."

    In any event the more primary question from my point of view is whether the U.S. can avoid getting drawn into not only some more limited Israeli vs. arab wars (the answer to which is probably no), but some frightful cataclysmic general war Israel gets itself into with its neighbors. Say ... with Egypt, and say ... with the use of nuclear weapons.

    While Heilbrunn and Freeman are right that much is turning against Israel, and it's true that Israel is feeling this, what has to be taken into account is not only the increased hostility towards the arabs this is creating in Israel and some desire for some frightful conclusory war, but the huge discrepancy between the *popular* turn against Israel even in the U.S. and that which one cannot even see existing amongst our elites as of yet.

    Example: Netanyahu—like I think lots and lots if not all really possible Israeli P.M.'s now—conclude that the U.S. and the Euros are not going to stop an Iranian nuke program where they want it stopped. Not a whit of doubt in my mind that the reigning Israeli mindset is to force the issue, attack Iran itself, perhaps with tactical nukes to make sure it's effective, and from there just flatly count on the U.S. having to come to its aid in the ensuing chaos. And indeed right now and for as long as I at least can see into the future I think we *would* come to its aid. Our elites might not like it, but the AIPAC crowd would of course be absolutely putting them up to the wall to do so, and as usual the American people would prove sheepish.

    Can the U.S. extricate itself from the I/P conflict before getting itself drawn into some big, game-changing conflagration there is then to me the big question, and I'm not optimistic about the answer. Even right now it seems the region is far closer to any number of wars (e.g., Israel versus Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Israel versus Iran, with such wars having the potential to become general conflagrations...) than it is to any even *process* of peace.

    A more granular evaluation than Freeman's doth not make one sanguine I don't think.

• Why Palestine is different
  • Sin Nombre May 27, 2013 at 9:28 am

    A.)

    I love the way even well-intentioned people like Bahour get taken in by the various shams involved in all this. E.g., that Kerry is going all-out to relaunch the peace process. I would bet that not a single State Department or other foreign policy person in the U.S. government believes that any such genuine process is possible and that absolutely none were advising Kerry to go on such a fool's errand. What Kerry was there for purely and simply was to collude with the Israeli to keep the charade going especially to give the corrupted Euro leaders a fig leaf to hide behind to resist the growing pressure in Europe to commence a serious BDS program.

    And, as always—and I have no doubt this was Israel's idea—it turns out that this involves the U.S. paying for it. As in the $400 million Kerry just announced we are going to spend to help "build" the West Bank, so relieving Israel of course of its international legal obligation to provide for the care of those under its occupation.

    B.)

    I am sick to death of the constant, unexamined cries about how everyone owes the jews for historic discrimination practiced against them by some long-dead/maybe ancestors. Gimme one freaking tear cried by jewish figures for the massive jewish role in the Bolshevik decimation of Christian slavs—largely conducted way before the Holocaust and including a consciously planned famine that saw cannibalism being rife—and then maybe I'll listen. Right now, the last thing I saw was that when Poland requested the extradition of just one of the communist beasts there who tortured and murdered thousands and who then fled to Israel as recently as in the 1990's, Israel's response was nothing less than a hack of spittle directed at Warsaw.

    What is this "historical guilt" business, a fucking one-way street only? And the idea that *America* which took in jews by the millions from Europe, bears some fundamental, ineradicable scar due to the rather mild sort of discrimination practiced on damn near everyone who came here is worse than laughable. We took them in and even after seeing things like the Rosenbergs giving the atom bomb to the communists who we were actively fighting at the time still there were no pograms here or anything of the sort.

    I'm so sick of this crap it isn't funny. There is no such thing as "collective" guilt or "historical" guilt. There's personal guilt and that's that. Because if you want to extend it beyond that well then every freaking human being on earth is no doubt equally morally condemnable, and yes that includes every jew too.

• Ethnocracy on display: Cabinet ministers approve Israeli plan to forcibly displace Bedouin citizens
  • Sin Nombre May 9, 2013 at 1:34 pm

    Reminds me of the issue of whether there are such things as "jewish values."

    I mean ... in this day and age, bulldozing the shacks of itinerant, rural people and ramming them into some alleged "town" ... well I don't know of any modern non-jewish values that would countenance that and be considered anything other than harshly colonialist. So I guess the answer is that either there is no such thing as a discrete body of "jewish values," or this is indeed what jewish values consider okay.

    Just can't think of any other possible answer. Either they don't exist, or this is them in action.

    They can't even claim that the beduin are like the Palestinians presenting any sort of theoretical threat to them. It's just purely and simply jews first.

• Andrea Mitchell asks Michael Oren 7 questions. How many mention Palestinians?
  • Sin Nombre April 28, 2013 at 12:50 pm with 1 replies

    Sort of funny: In response to a post Phil made just the other day optimistically saying that maybe the Boston thing would jostle the nation into talking about "why they hate us," I responded that it essentially wasn't going to happen because you couldn't find any figure in the mainstream media to diligently pursue the question. Moreover I said that lots came down to the choke-point of the Sunday talk show people, ending by saying you've got a long wait if you're hoping on David Gregory.

    And now ... here's good old Andrea, affirming you got a long wait with her too. Had to laugh in fact: Her foot-licking of Oren became so bad along the lines of "what should *we* do?" that Oren himself had to (dishonestly) say "oh gee, we aren't urging the U.S. to do anything and we are separate countries you know Andrea...."

    Yeah, Andrea, try to remember that: We are separate countries. And oh yeah, remember too you've not yet pulled an Oren and renounced your U.S. citizenship so take care for appearances. Like Oren, maybe *after* the usefulness of appearing as an American citizen no longer exists then you don't have to be so careful about the "us" word. But in the meantime ... appearances appearances.

• Post-Boston vulnerability will at last force Americans to consider 'why they hate us'
  • Sin Nombre April 27, 2013 at 2:46 pm with 1 replies

    Maybe if Phil could identify even *one* major member of the reigning mainstream media that now, as opposed to before, openly, honestly and diligently pursued the question of "why they hate us," one could have some hope that Phil was right here. But I at least see absolutely no sign of this. No sign, say, of any reporter with the confidence of his bosses that time and again could push the politicos he or she interviewed about it, asking about our support for Israel. None.

    And the real chokepoints are very very small: It isn't just the universe of all political reporters: It really damn near comes down to ... those reporters/commentators who are moderators of the Sunday network T.V. shows and those reporters/commentators they allow on, period.

    So ... waiting for David Gregory here ... good luck.

    I'd also mention however that the almost non-existent public support for the program that Phil and most of his audience here seems to hold greatly contributes to the problem.

    That is, it seems to me that what Phil and most people here want is for the U.S. to essentially switch sides, and start putting the finger down on the Palestinian's side for a change.

    While that's all well and good as an opinion based on fairness or whatever, it doesn't seem to me to resonate one bit with the vast majority of Americans who aren't Israeli partisans and are therefore the real possible change agents.

    Start talking about the U.S. just getting out of the Mideast *totally,* and be neutral, and then I think you'd have something . Something even the media couldn't ignore. Just as with Vietnam, bugging out was the American public's big clear answer.

    The way things are now though, there's absolutely no pressure in that direction, with utterly predictable results. Even by pro-Palestinian lights, you've made the perfect the enemy of the good. Instead of allowing the average American the option of saying "I don't know about and don't care about the intricacies of all that ME history I just want us out," no the only options you've given him or her are "who do you support, the Israelis or the Palestinians?"

    And you've don't so in a country whose media that does the reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is just massively massively pro-Zionist.

    Bad calculation in my book. Ain't gonna work. Indeed, works against working.

    Wanna see the Israelis *really* get nervous/scared/serious? Argue U.S. neutrality, not U.S. turning pro-Palestinian.

• Like Geo Wallace, Upper Nazareth mayor calls for segregation 'for ever and ever'
  • Sin Nombre April 21, 2013 at 9:37 pm

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "Upper Nazareth mayor calls for segregation ‘for ever and ever’"

    And meanwhile on the homefront we get treated in Salon to an ex-AIPAC staffer's hope that the Boston bombers would have turned out to be white Americans in the course of an exegesis about how bad bad racists we white Americans are, generating a concerned response from a conservative jewish fellow making sure with the AIPAC'er to note that American jews of course aren't members of that beyond disgusting category.

    link to salon.com

    link to salon.com

• In bill discriminating against Arab- and Muslim-Americans, Boxer and 17 other senators serve Israeli gov't over their own -- Greenwald
  • Sin Nombre April 15, 2013 at 5:22 am with 1 replies

    Doubly ironic: Sumud not even being an American, showing a much more gimlet-eyed understanding of our politicos than those who are Americans and who think that mere complaining by them of their politico's actions is going to move the politicos in the face of AIPAC power, including those here who I suspect see themselves as even more tough-minded than the average American about politics.

    In any event, spot on Sumud. I don't like its reality, but it is reality.

  • Sin Nombre April 13, 2013 at 2:58 pm

    Good I say. Great even: Let no one *ever* again shy away from openly and bluntly saying AIPAC acts treacherously towards Americans and their interests so as to serve Israel. Let no-one be stymied any more by the argument that AIPAC or the politicians signing on to this just see Israel's interests as being the same as ours.

    It's crystal clear, and it's irrefutable.

• AIPAC president (tries to) defend Israel's rejection of WMD-free zone
  • Sin Nombre April 9, 2013 at 5:26 am

    Dan Fisher wrote:

    "Why couldn't Mr. Kassen answer a simple question?"

    Well of course because it would involve openly coming out and saying that what he and Israel are demanding is the double-standard right to be the only power in the region with the ability to obliterate everyone else, and because he's not schooled enough on this particular issue of Israeli double-talk to say the official Israeli baloney about oh-so-wanting a nuke-free accord but only after "peaceful relations exist for a reasonable period of time in the region."

    And you know something? While I (respectfully) think that most people in the commentariat on this site are far too starry-eyed and romantic about the arabs and Islamists (which is why I would just like the U.S. to be neutral in the I/P conflict), and do tend to downplay arab acts of terror and savagery, I will say that I wonder just how much of same has been caused just a sort of craziness over this sort of Israeli dealing.

    Put it this way: How long could you maintain your sanity trying to deal with someone who just constantly constantly dealt with you like Israel does the Palestinians and its neighbors? Always and forever demands upon you to do X, Y and Z immediately and always in exchange for mere promises on their part to do something in the future, which are never kept because there's just always some excuse used to avoid same, and when there's not even any excuse offered there's some brand new A, B and C demanded ("now that you've recognized us as a state, recognize us further as "the jewish state!"), and always always the insistence on a double-standard as to everything.

    After awhile of course I think it would drive you simply crazy, and indeed I think it was Henry Kissinger of all people who once said that he thought that was the true object of the Israeli negotiating style which obviously hasn't changed.

    How the hell do you deal with a party that regards "negotiating" in this way? As not really a means to an end of some conflict, but as just a means towards winning that conflict in toto?

    Of course this doesn't absolve the Palestinians for keeping on trying such negotiations now at least. It's way past the point of foolishness for them to keep trying and if they don't recognize they are losing by continuing nobody can save them. I see that Abbas has now got Kerry urging him to do X, Y or Z to re-start the "negotiations" with the Israelis and the fact that he hasn't thrown Kerry out on the street for bringing this message says it all.

    The Israelis wanna play for the whole enchilada the Palestinians ought to do the same and start demanding a One-State solution in full, in full-democratic form, in full stop, period. And if they don't, well, you might still end up sympathizing with them when they are left with nothing, but you can't save someone who refuses to save their own self.

• Questioning Israel's 'international legitimacy,' Siegman says two-state solution would require Kerry to reject 'robbery' beyond '67 lines
  • Sin Nombre April 3, 2013 at 6:23 pm with 15 replies

    It's funny but things move so fast and subtly and dishonestly on this issue that even Henry Siegman is behind the times. Thus he writes:

    "Obama's failure to address these well-known Israeli positions tells us how seriously to take his attempts to establish his evenhandedness in this conflict."

    But to me at least the whole *point* of Obama's recent address was to as openly as possible admit our *inability* to be evenhanded, phrased, of course, in the language of saying how much we all love to take Israel's side. Indeed he as much said that even no matter what Israel may do (ethnic cleansing being even mentioned elsewhere in his address), and no matter what Israel may become (ethno-supremacist, apartheid non-democracy), the U.S. would *still* support it.

    Thus it was that Obama laid the ground for his big pitch, made direct over the Israeli gov't to its people: "Please don't really want to go too far or become a non-democracy" he essentially (and pathetically) said, further essentially saying that while he himself doesn't have the cojones to object anymore the rest of the world would and would punish Israel.

    Even the great Henry Siegman then has let his hopes (that the U.S. would ever force Israel into a 2SS) blind him and let him get behind the curve. But ... Netanyahu has won, Henry. Time to admit it. The *only* faction in the U.S. that really could have stood in his way—Progressives, the Dem. Party—has thrown in the towel. Your Israel is gonna go ahead on its lebensraum project and is gonna get the U.S. to support, subsidize, fund and protect it, period. And the Dem Party is gonna continue to rake in jewish cash and votes because that's what's important to it, period.

    All we're doing right now is waiting for Netanyahu's new coalition to get its feet under it, address some other issues, and then turn to its lebensraum project. My bet: Not expressly but in effect Bennet's plan to concentrate on flooding Area C with settlements, putting special pressure on the arabs there to flee same, but at the same time never give up the legal stance that the entire West Bank belongs to it.

    Nothing's stopping it now.

    Interesting factoid vis a vis the recent talk here about dual citizenship and how we allow it and etc.: Bennett actually held American citizenry due his parents having held same when he was born. But, golly gee-whiz, did you know that upon being elected to the Knesset that isn't allowed? That he had to give that American citizenship up?

    Be an amusing thing to see the names you'd get called demanding that anyone entering our government give up any dual citizenship status. With "anti-semite" of course being one of the first on the list.

• Rashid Khalidi on the Israel lobby
  • Sin Nombre April 3, 2013 at 5:25 pm

    Hi Jim: Don't really have to say anything but that Citizen hit it on the head. The arabs/muslims may not mind us, but our government ....

    We oughta keep our distance, with a friendly hand out to all, but a partisan hand out to none.

  • Sin Nombre April 3, 2013 at 1:06 pm with 4 replies

    I smell some ideology at work here with Khalidi, perhaps a Marxisant one of, above all, wanting to say that economics is the real determinant of everything. (Like one smells with Chomsky.)

    His two examples of the U.S. supposedly "dismissing" the lobby for its own interests are laughable: Yes the U.S. had some interest in prying Egypt away from the Soviet sphere. But in the first place the Israelis had the far greater interest in eliminating their entire Western front threat. And in the second ... if it weren't for the U.S. feeling it had to have Israel's back why would we have cared much beyond a fig if Egypt liked the Soviet Union or not? Clearly, just as the money we send to Egypt is due to our concern about Israel, the vast preponderance of our interest in Egypt is due to our being shackled to Israel.

    And then as to the sale of weaponry to the Saudis, what is Khalidi saying other than ... "so long as I can find even one instance in which the Lobby lost, it means it's not powerful." That "loss" of course took place a long time ago, and I recall at the time there was considerable question whether Israel really opposed it: If I recall right Israel very soon said it would be soothed over the sale if it then got XY and Z more from the U.S., which it did.

    And then of course just blowing Khalidi out of the water here is the fact that in exchange for standing by Israel per the Lobby our entire country took it on the nose to tune of uncounted *trillions* of dollars when OPEC took after us for that support, and yet the Lobby was essentially entirely successful in blunting retreat from that support. And what Khalidi say about this? Some utter incoherence. That Kissinger at some point said something about the Saudis being willing to "play ball" with us, meaning absolutely nothing given that the only ball the Saudis played back then was as leaders of OPEC. So what does Khalidi *mean*? That the U.S. *wanted* the oil shock and the decades-long misery it inflicted?

    And what is Khalidi saying about what's going on right now with Iran, with the U.S. damn near making daily threats against a nation that, even if it *had* nukes, could easily be contained by us? Does he really believe Iran *does* have nukes that *do* threaten the U.S., so making the U.S.'s pressures and etc. on Iran out for our own interest?

    Pfui. Everyone who hasn't willfully closed their eyes knows its Israel and the Lobby here, and thus the only conclusion is that Khalidi *has* let something close his eyes.

    And this brings us to another point which is why I think it's a mistake to try to get the U.S. to side with the Palestinians instead of just being neutral and getting the hell out of the Mideast: Just as the Israelis are not really our friends despite all we've done for them neither will be the arabs. If the U.S. suddenly scooped up every jewish person in Israel and transported them to the U.S. and every vestige of anger or resentment at the U.S.'s past support for Israel evaporated there'd *still be damn little on terms of grounds for friendship between us and the arabs and persians. And remember, while bin Laden certainly did cite our support for Israel as a big motivation for his movement against us, it wasn't his *only* gripe.

    Nuts to Israel and nuts to Khalidi. Or, rather, the same to Israel and the same to Khalidi and the same to us: Let Israel pursue its own interests, let Khalidi pursue whosever interests he holds dearest, and let us pursue our own interests, period. No more "taking sides" for no reasons involved in our national interest.

• 'NYT' reporter's appeal to editor: young Jews raising money for IDF are 'just like your daughter'
  • Sin Nombre April 1, 2013 at 9:02 pm

    More than just a little funny: Newspaper reporter sort of aghast at anti-American nature of the idea anyone would discriminate against jews and/or jews gathering to raise money for the Israeli army.

    And yet, any speck of talk on the part of said reporter that if any arab or muslim were to go about trying to raise money for many if not any of the forces that *oppose* the IDF that not only would they very possibly encounter some discrimination but would be clapped into irons and sent to *prison* for giving material aid to terrorism.

    Sort of a funnily particular sense of outrage on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Cieply there, no?

• In enforcing DOMA, and in doing nothing against settlements -- Obama lacks 'courage of his convictions'
  • Sin Nombre March 30, 2013 at 7:32 am

    Well there's any number of other issues upon which Obama clearly doesn't have the courage of his convictions either: Closing Gitmo, continuing on with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, very possibly the drone wars, very possibly lots of the useless crap that the Homeland Security Department does, and on and on.

    The interesting difference with him is his unusual degree of honesty in admitting that this is the situation. And not that it means everything at least some degree of virtue has to be paid to any honesty it seems to me.

    I also think that he has to be given some credence when he says he can't do what he'd like to do: The political persuasion of most here would just naturally tend to see their prescriptions as those the populace supports, and maybe that's true. But let's face it: Who probably gets the more constant, research-supported briefings on what the politics are about this or that issue? You, or Obama?

    And so we see Obama on any number of venues essentially saying "hey, I'd *like* to do X, but if I do it I get so hurt politically in one way or another that it isn't worth it and so I'll stick with Y."

    Of course one can look at this feeling it's an excuse, or that even if it's true it's disgusting, or in another way that Obama just feels the way H.L. Mencken felt about democracy which is that it's a system in which the people are felt to know what's best for themselves ... and deserve to get it good and hard.

    I think at least some of it with Obama is that he does take that wide-angle Menckenesque sort of view, and also that he's a picker of battles but maybe too much an avoider of a fight.

    So he likes to be liked, and maybe too feels with some validity that it contributes to a less conflicted political atmosphere or at least less conflicted than it would otherwise be and that this is perhaps more important than the sum of the particular issues he's not fighting over.

    You gotta admit, we all want the bearers of our philosophies to be warriors, but God do we hate the warriors among those of the philosophies that we oppose and that's sort of hypocritical on our part. And I'm speaking as a libertarian who has only a very limited natural affection for Obama's politics.

    Not to say that I endorse what Obama's doing vis a vis the Palestinians, but then again I wouldn't endorse him trying to pressure the Israelis all that much either as I just think we ought to be out out out of supporting or subsidizing either of those two sides.

    But ... just sayin', if you want to have a handle on Obama I think it lies in one or more of the directions that I mentioned here.

• 'Better a battered dream than no dream at all' --liberal Zionist lament
  • Sin Nombre March 29, 2013 at 8:01 pm

    Well, I dunno about the "arrogance" aspect of Fein wishing for something for country he doesn't even live in. My focus is on the one he *is* living in and his feelings about *this* one.

    I guess I just don't understand. If Israel is his big dream, then why the hell is he still here distastefully rubbing shoulders with those of us he'd never have to deal with in his "dream"?

    What are we, chopped liver? How are we supposed to believe he's willing to treat us given his dream countrymen live elsewhere?

• NPR can't stop talking about Jews
  • Sin Nombre March 25, 2013 at 7:21 pm with 4 replies

    dimadok said to Henry Norr:

    "You [sic] obsession with us Jews...."

    *Norr's* obsession?!!

    Next it'll be *Unz's* obsession for showing what seems to be a 3000% preference for getting in a Harvard if you are jewish over a similarly credentialed gentile.

    Not Harvard's apparent obsession. Not NPR's. *Ours.*

    That double-standard stigmata, over and over again.

• New nationwide ad campaign to call for end of US aid to Israel
  • Sin Nombre March 25, 2013 at 3:39 pm

    Amar: Your point is well taken vis a vis lots of Americans, but I could see enough stuff like this still having an impact on elites in our media who at the very least are sensitive to claims of racism, with this sort of thing perhaps prodding them in yet one more way to recognize American domestic opposition to the present U.S. support of Israel. Enough of it, that is to say, and they might simply have to take notice.

    Same with drawing attention to the peaceful demonstrations in the Occupied Territories, esp. now that Obama has sort of officially recognized same.

    Not that I endorse it because in the U.S. especially I think it would be confused with the Nazi practice in the Holocaust camps which is unfair, but in Europe especially I think it's recognized that one of the first things the Nazi's did when they came to power way before the Holocaust was requiring German jews to go about with yellow stars on, and I've observed before that if the Palestinian population were to start doing this it would be one more very resonating non-violent way to show their non-violent bona fides and understanding of what they are living under. Especially resonate in Europe I think. A hard thing to ignore, and impossible to combat I would think.

    But I don't like any intent to draw any parallel with the Holocaust, that's for sure.

• Obama gets it
  • Sin Nombre March 25, 2013 at 10:33 am

    radkelt:

    (1)

    First, that's fine that there are *some* voices on the Palestinian side advocating for a 1SS, but until at least the PA does so—or at least *some* Palestinian body with at least some legitimacy and significant following does I don't see that mattering.

    Just to make clear, my point is really just sort of a prediction: That if the Palestinians—to a fairly en masse degree—don't soon switch to that 1SS they are dooming themselves and will neither get their own (second) state alongside Israel, nor get equal rights in a different Israel.

    Not saying it's right or fair or etc., just that same is my perception of the situation now, especially with Obama having said what he said. And I'd note that what I believe he effectively said—that the U.S. is no longer going to even bitch about the settlements nor even bitch about whatever non-democratic moves Israel makes or takes—is really just making explicit that which to only a slightly lesser degree has indeed been what the U.S. has been doing for a long time now. Thus, it has legs, and thus, having been made explicit, it's going have even stronger legs with any imaginable Obama successors as a sort of official U.S. policy. Certainly there's no Republican on the horizon (or on earth?) who is going to go out and be called harsher on Israel than Obama was. And Obama's idea here is I believe going to be almost rapturously embraced by any succeeding Democrats too: "Just give Israel what it wants vis a vis the Palestinians, why fight that, and let it drive itself into a ditch; perfect."

    Now of course as the situation deteriorates over there and there's violence or even war *during* same the U.S. will of course serve as an even more abject Israeli lickspittle, afterwards the present situation will re-establish itself and will highlight once again the damage supporting Israel does to the U.S. And this might *temporarily* persuade this or that U.S. President to try to detour from Obama's solution to this or that degree. But those detours have been tried before and never worked, so the political "smartness" of that formulation for our politicians will once again be made plain.

    Like I say, I think the major takeaway from Obama's speech is indeed its U.S. significance: It is that political "solution" for U.S. Presidents.

    (2)

    Your "rape" analogy doesn't seem to me to hold, even by your own lights: You seem to support a 1SS solution, so why is that akin to "rape" for the Palestinians?

    (3)

    As re the "Jewish State [being] bent on eradicating any possibility of ethnic Palestinian survival" being the difference between Israel and the Palestinians for a Palestinian-dominant state as I said in response to talknic, Donald and Taxi, I just don't think that matters enough to those who matter now that the U.S. has essentially given up and said it will just always support Israel no matter what. I.e., the Euros especially.

    So, now that the U.S. has done that, and indeed despite the obstacles the U.S. will continue to throw up against any Euro move to push a 2SS, my point is that at some very early point in them doing so to any effect Israel is going to scream that they are endorsing a judenrein scheme. And that alone is enough to scald the Germans and the French especially to ignore the non-democratic nature of what Israel is ultimately wanting.

    Thus I think at best it's a wash and you will *not* now in the wake of Obama's declarations suddenly see anyone else including the Euros step in strongly try to force a 2SS on Israel.

    And thus again this is why I believe it is now that the Palestinians just simply must switch to a 1SS agitation, or lose everything. With same, there just *might* be enough support generated to get countries to push Israel on same, boycott it and etc. Maybe even get the U.S. pushing in that direction in some significantly short period of time. It's exciting, it's new, it's logical, it's totally democratic, it's enticing in terms of settling this interminable conflict for everyone.

    But continuing down the 2SS for the Palestinians is worse than a dead-end for them I think: Wait too long and Israel will have arranged things so that not only is no 2SS solution is possible, but that it has irrevocably committed itself in a dozen ways to never being anything other than a jewish-dominated, non-democratic state.

    Just my analysis and prediction; that's just where the logic of the situation takes me.

  • Sin Nombre March 24, 2013 at 7:41 pm

    @talknic, Donald:

    Once again you are mistaking what I believe the situation is for the Palestinians for what you wrongly understand to be my belief is what situation they should be in.

    On the other hand I could have phrased things better.

    Regardless, with it being kept in mind that I don't think the Palestinians' situation is at all fair but that fate has nevertheless stuck them with same, I appreciate and even somewhat agree with Donald's differentiation between the Palestinians' desire for a Palestinian-dominated state and the Israelis for a jewish-dominated one, but my point was that I don't think others do or will.

    That is, for what trouble the Israelis have in the rest of the world outside the U.S. and esp. with Europe which counts the most (with the U.S. not even caring and so giving them no trouble over same) for wanting a jewish-dominated state, I think their response that, after all, what the Palestinians want is just a mirror-image "judenrein" state has a lot of resonance. *Especially* in Europe.

    Enough resonance at least, to blunt any great European push for a Two-State solution, which it might be noted they weren't even very prominently vocal about even when the *U.S.* was still pushing the hell out of it. (As opposed to now when Obama, at least to my ear, has said we've essentially given up.)

    As unfair as it might be as I said given Obama's position it's time for the Palestinians to grasp the nettle and start agitating for a One-State solution before even that's too late. And while that unfairness perspective may occupy us now, history is just simply ruthlessly indifferent to those who unfairness overwhelms and who let the perfect be the enemy of the better.

  • Sin Nombre March 24, 2013 at 7:16 pm with 2 replies

    @ Taxi:

    You're mistaking my belief in what I think the situation is with the erroneous belief that I think that's what the situation should be.

    A question for you however given your belief that the Palestinians can still get their own state: Given that this has been the U.S.'s position for 45+ years and they still don't have one, and the clear walking back from that position seen since Bush I got his nose pushed in trying to make even a little stink about same, and now what appears to be Obama's *express" disavowal of interest in the issue, by just what mechanism do you see as forcing the Israelis into any substantial withdrawal from the occupied territories? At a time when the trajectory of things is that they are *still* expanding, *faster* than ever before, and now house close to 1/2 million people? Do you really believe the BDS movement—as obstructed and even made illegal by the U.S. which will surely do so—is going to force that withdrawal before the Israelis have gobbled all they want?

    Not that one *can't* believe that, I just don't see *how* one does.

  • Sin Nombre March 24, 2013 at 9:49 am with 5 replies

    Ramzi Jaber wrote:

    "Onwards towards demanding our FULL rights in ONE DEMOCRATIC State of The Holy Land."

    Okay, Ramzi, except ... just how much longer can the Palestinian people keep *from* demanding their democratic rights in one state and continue instead to demand their dominated own before you start equating them with the Israeli jews wanting their own jewish-dominated state?

  • Sin Nombre March 23, 2013 at 10:03 pm

    "I agree that Jews evoking transnational membership also can do this and that it can be confusing."

    "Confusing." Yes, that's it. Us goys are just too stupid to get it. How dumb of us to actually ... take jewish exceptionalists at their word.

  • Sin Nombre March 23, 2013 at 6:12 pm with 4 replies

    While Obama's speech provides vast fodder for both praise and criticism it seems to me nobody is denying it was far more honest and *accurate* than we usually see. And one cannot doubt he has a good read on the American political situation. So what does that mean?

    First, that no, as officially as possible his administration at least is not going to pay any more attention to stopping settlement building beyond the pro-forma. He got his nose pushed in on same after Cairo and retreated from that position as clearly as imaginable since, and now it seems to me he's essentially verbally affirmed same.

    Second, that no matter *what* Israel is turning into and almost no matter *what* it does that this doesn't matter either: It's political stranglehold on the U.S. is unbreakable and unshakeable and so the U.S. will always support it, period. And again you have to grant the man a good perspective on the American political scene in making this analysis.

    Third, that despite the First and Second points, it isn't going to save Israel from continuing down its path. It might have the U.S. supporting it, but it and not the U.S. is going to bear the brunt of continuing its stupidities. (So ha ha ha.)

    Like it or not then, there it is, but instead of focusing all our attention on us or Israel it seems to me this means something for the Palestinians too, and that is ... if not now, when? Given these declarations by Obama you know exactly where you stand with the U.S., so stop your Two-State talk or take the consequences which is no state.

    After all, we here constantly criticize Israel for not being willing to have its jews share statehood with anyone else. But to the extent that the Palestinians reject a One-State solution isn't that exactly what *they* are doing too? Saying no no no they won't abide rubbing shoulders as fellow citizens with jews?

    Well of course they are, and for me at least their time is up. Obama has spoken and their choice is clear. It's now or never. Start agitating for a One-State solution or suffer the consequences, because without the U.S. you sure as hell ain't getting your own state.

    Not that I expect many others will take this lesson away from this visit of Obama's, but to me at least that's it. At *some*point the Palestinians just simply have to grasp the nettle, and if they don't do it now any sympathy I at least had for them has got to be tempered by reality: They aren't children, nor are they stupid. Before '48 at the most distant they never seem to have wanted a state of their own, and after '48 and up until just a few decades ago they *did* want a One State solution. Well, now's their chance, and anyone still sympathizing with their desire for their own "pure" Palestinian state has to explain why their sympathy doesn't also extend to the Israelis to have their own "pure" jewish state.

    Time to view this thing differently, I think. To be just as narrow-eyed when it comes to the Palestinians as we are to the Israelis. And the longer the Palestinians wait now (forgetting even the question of what they could possibly *now* be waiting for?), not only is their own state possibility going into utter impossibility, the less likely they will even get to be part of a bi-national state on their homeland.

    Time's up, Palestinians. Time to fish or get your bait cut for you.

  • Sin Nombre March 23, 2013 at 5:29 pm

    Ah, the invariable double-standard stigmata. All that we Americans (and indeed all others) are *constantly* told, so uniformly, by even the most mainstream jewish organizations and spokespeople, is that there *is* such a distinct category. So that we're constantly lectured on how our Presidents must be oh-so-sensitive when talking to Israelis. Or that we non-jewish Americans can't really understand the jewish perspective to the point where we are obviously and commonly highly excluded or limited from even speaking on issues such as Israel.

    And then of course what's *the* most fundamental aspect of humanity of all? Well of course it's their values.

    And what, again simply *constantly,* do we hear concerning same?

    Oh of course: That there's a distinct category of "jewish" values. Which indeed are so often mentioned, and mentioned in such as way as to make it clear typically that they are thought to be far far superior to just regular old American or any other values.

    Your criticism of American then might be taken with a grain of validity after seeing you renounce the idea of "jewish" values and go savagely taking off after those who hold to that conception.

    Not that you'll have to look far to find them. Nor that I'll be holding my breath.

    Do you have *any* idea of how clearly this appears to be nothing but just some sort of smirky, in-group trick? "We can go about constantly and openly and indeed joyously distinguishing ourselves from all others, but let anyone else ever take us at our word and ... anti-semite!"

    Or does the "chosenness" business extend to forbidding others from taking you at your word too?

  • Page: 8
• Vivian Gornick stashed book critical of Israel lest she 'commit literary suicide'
  • Sin Nombre March 16, 2013 at 1:44 pm

    It's career "suicide," and she's *jewish.*

    Just like I said contra all the happy talk in that recent thread about Mearsheimer: Yes, his freaking high-school doesn't have any/enough members in the network of the tribe to blackball him, but as he himself has said, he still isn't getting invites to write op/ed pieces the way he did before, he still feels he's getting blackballed by the media generally and certainly would never even be considered for a gov't post, and on and on.

    And like I said in that Mearsheimer thread, consider just how nasty the people participating in this network are ... not to just put up some public objection to what this or that person thinks on the Israel subject, but to happily and *grievously* wound them, deprive them of their very means of living.... As that one unidentified Congressional-staffer essentially and clearly happily said about Hagel's then-contemplated nomination: "Send him up here and just see how fast and thoroughly we are gonna make him out to be a moral pariah."

    This is just about as un-American as you can get, and is interesting given the vituperation the jewish groups display when anyone compares Israeli behavior with that of the Nazis. If this isn't at least fascistic in nature, then nothing is, and what's worse is that it's done in an underground, clandestine and even conspiratorial fashion.

    And it *does* now implicate not just this or that individual, but at the very least those jewish groups mentioned who purport to be so "American" which seems to not even notice much less object to this grossly un-American behavior.

    Everyone talks of course about how the "Israel Firster" American jews are actually injuring Israel in terms of helping it destroy a Two-State solution. Well, yet another issue that might be talked about how they are injuring American jewry itself by sure as shit making it appear to believe in if not participate in such grossly shitty, un-American behavior.

    Or, to put it another absolutely concrete and probably already-present way, who in hell in the media, academia or government is gonna trust any jew whatsoever who has any say whatsoever about their career to weigh them fairly regardless of how they feel about the Israel issue?

    And then we see Woody Allen, sobbing over the *non-ethnically*-related victims of the blacklist, whose numbers must pale next to all those noted above with careers in the media, academia or government and who have been cowed by fears of their own "career suicide" if they say the wrong thing.

• Anti-semitism charge against Mearsheimer failed
  • Sin Nombre March 15, 2013 at 3:00 am with 1 replies

    Actually I think this story just highlights something terrible.

    So okay, that is, Mearsheimer got an award from his high school.

    But otherwise Mearsheimer has spoken/written about how, since the book he and Walt wrote came out he has experienced *continued* massive shunning very different from what he got before.

    And I don't recall him saying anything to the effect that it's lessened one bit.

    And thus what's this seem to reveal given that plenty of time has elapsed so that a patently non-anti-semetic, non-hysterical, realistic understanding of his book and his views has been made clear?

    That despite all of same, despite it seeming that almost nobody would even *try* to call him an anti-semite anymore, the forces of protecting Israel especially in the media but also in academia are *still* blackballing and trying to hurt him.

    So *that's* the takeaway from this story, it seems to me. Not that the Croton-Harmon High School seems to be free of any figures, claques or cabals which wishes to blackball and inflict harm on John Mearsheimer; who ever would have believed that anyway?

    But let's then talk about CBS, and NBC, ABC and the PBS and The New Yorker, and the New York Times, and The Washington Post, and the elite universities who seem delighted to put on symposia concerning other authors of however controversial books or even simple articles about other subjects or etc.

    And let's talk about just how nasty such figures, claques and/or cabals can be given that enough time has passed so that it's clear that Mearsheimer is no anti-semite.

    I.e., that they *still* want to injure him. That they *still* want everyone to take note of same.

    And just as the case with, say, Senator Percy or others, this isn't something these folks are *ever* going to forgive or forget. *Ever.* And if they can find a way to grind a heel into your eye even when you're in the grave, you can bet your bottom dollar that'll be done with great glee as well.

• American Jews asking Netanyahu to end occupation are barking up wrong tree
  • Sin Nombre March 12, 2013 at 6:11 pm

    Jerome Slater wrote:

    "There's no chance for an end to the Israeli occupation and an Israeli agreement to allow the creation of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state, in the absence of serious and sustained US pressures on Israel."

    Ah yes, THE reasonable-sounding starting point that in fact has made the problem worse and promises to have it dragged out forever.

    The United States doesn't exist to serve the interests of the Palestinians. Either in "the creation of a genuinely independent and viable state" or in any other way either. It exists to serve the interests of the citizens of the United States.

    And just like extending ourselves to serve the interests of Israel is not in our interest, neither is extending ourselves to serve the interests of the Palestinians.

    Consequently, except for the basic humanitarian, and simply condemning both sides' violations of international law, the only sensible policy for the U.S. is to stay the hell out of the conflict.

    And given this is the only sensible policy for the U.S., it is also the only one that in either the short or the long run promises success in generating the support of the majority of the American people and extricating us from the self-inflicted wound of our involvement. Just like with Vietnam.

    But ... go ahead and overlook this and take Slater's prescription. Take the idea that for vague, gooey ideas we ought to be supporting *either* one side or the other and see where it gets you.

    And, to see where it gets you, just look at where it has gotten us now: Lip deep in the shit.

    And, to see just how further impossible Slater's prescription is that the U.S. essentially effect a 180-degree turn in its policy of supporting Israel to that of supporting the Palestinians, consider that the the Israeli lobby has apparently just convinced the U.S. Congress to blindly support any attack Israel might choose to launch against Iran.

    So instead of working towards the only realistically possible way of extricating the U.S. from the conflict by exhorting the American people to demand withdrawal and neutrality, work instead for some dream that couldn't possibly come true for half a century.

    And you know what you'll get? The same that the same got us so far, only after another 50 years has gone by.

    Or, to put it another way: Teleport yourself back to the mid-1960's or later and consider what the situation would be if, instead of urging the American people to just get the hell out of Vietnam, the only opposition to the war was from those urging that the U.S. switch sides and support North Vietnam against the South.

    We'd *still* be there.

• Palestinian advocates say Harvard Crimson has repeatedly shown bias (including typical 'nightmare' edits on op-ed)
  • Sin Nombre March 11, 2013 at 7:14 pm

    Well, given that Ron Unz has just looked at the statistics involved and estimated the degree of jewish favoritism at Harvard equating to a jewish kid having a 3000% percent better chance of gaining admittance over an equally credentialed white gentile, one can imagine there might just be a paucity of Palestinians affecting things there as well.

• Israeli drumbeat grows for Pollard's release ahead of Obama visit
  • Sin Nombre March 8, 2013 at 10:59 am

    One could think it's a matter of pragmatics: It's tough to keep your tribe thinking tribally if, when one of your tribe is in trouble, you throw them overboard.

    To me though I don't think that's it: If it was just pure pragmatics in this case especially it would be over-ruled by the stronger pragmatic of not appearing to endorse what Pollard did/inflame the belief in "dual loyalties" and etc.

    Instead I think it's just genuine: You are a member of the tribe, some non-tribe is imprisoning you ... for what you did for the tribe, and nothing else matters. The metric is the tribe, always.

    The funny thing is ... even if it's not exactly the height of humanism (ahem), one can at least argue that's the way the world does and should work. There is after all no stone found inarguably from God that says the I have to care for every single human being on earth; so what says it's wrong to care for those of your own tribe and your own tribe only and let others care for theirs?

    But the problem is of course that we are constantly told this is not just wrong but, per "jewish values" or "ethics," actually *evil.* "Tikkun olam!!" and all that jazz. Even if, when you dig just a touch deeper into jewish theology, that "we are chosen and better" idea does come screaming out. But that's really "old religion" stuff that I don't think many really follow, so of course all we hear of constantly is the "tikkun olam" business so that for all the *rest* of us, thinking tribally is once again the height of evil. Hitler, David Duke, you name it.

    I don't think it's a conscious hypocrisy or trick though, to their credit: I think they take the history of oppression and torment that's been inflicted on jews and say that this in essence validates whatever double standard that might exist. And certainly there's only a very very few jews who are full nutbags and don't care anything for anyone else. So that "tikkun olam" is genuine no doubt, it's just felt to be justifiably weighted so that jews can be first concerned with jews and then everyone else perhaps somewhat lower "down the list."

    Genuine as it may be however, it's still insulting to all the rest of us when it's employed beyond the bounds even of any defensible double-standard. Sure, that is, I think everyone understood world jewry's rather focused concern on the plight of Soviet jews after the Soviets turned rather anti-semitic and allowed such sentiments to afflict their jews. So sure, make a hero out of an Anatoly Sharansky, and make him someone to rally around.

    But a Jonathan Pollard? That's where my understanding stops and says to those shilling for him "fuck you and your tikkun olam too; I know now where you *really* put me on the list."

    And while not pretty or right it's also understandable when others say "well gee now we're gonna put jewish suffering or concerns way down on *our* tribe's list too, so there."

    Not that same is right, but ... geez, what the fuck can the "free Pollard" people *expect* after all? If that isn't spitting in the face of gentiles then what the hell is? (Especially given the tactics tried.)

    Just where in the hell does *any* list of priorities get off not only saying it *does* establish priorities, but that it then can positively spits on everyone else and they are just supposed to take it, like cattle or something?

  • Sin Nombre March 7, 2013 at 10:03 pm with 5 replies

    You know, the sickening aspect of this is that Pollard and many of his shills couldn't even have the fucking decency to just ask for his release on compassion grounds, period. Instead, using their standard operating procedure, they just couldn't resist trying lying first about this or that purely factual matter, then accusing those involved of lying themselves and/or anti-semitism and/or whatever, and on and on and on. The prosecutor, Weinberger, the Judge ... you name it.

    And then of course the unthinking insult against the entire U.S. and its justice system itself in screaming that there was some "travesty" perpetrated here, despite the full-bore appeals courts hearing their case and going against them even.

    It's like dealing with people who can't even recognize how to behave like decent human beings; even when their own best interest is to just say "sorry," they just can't restrain showing how utterly non-sorry they truly are by spewing venom on anyone and everyone else.

    Just what is it exactly that turns such Israeli partisans into such repulsive people?

• Biden says Jews can't be safe in the U.S. without a Jewish state
  • Sin Nombre March 5, 2013 at 1:53 pm

    Biden's father allegedly said:

    "My father would say, were he a Jew, he would never, never entrust the security of his people to any individual nation...."

    Okay, fair enough. And thus he was also presumably against us gentiles ever entrusting our security to any jews in any national security or indeed any important governmental post of ours, right?

    You gotta love the applause Biden got with this though: Militant American jews right on the brink of openly saying their secret heart which is their disdain if not hatred of gentile America.

    So first they spit on us as potential murderers, and then they cry "anti-semite" when notice and take offense.

    Nice work if you can get it.

• Dennis Ross says Israel should unilaterally take 8% of West Bank while stating 'it has no intention of expanding into future Palestinian state'
  • Sin Nombre March 4, 2013 at 10:11 pm with 2 replies

    You know, the real problem with this sort of thing from the Rosses of the world isn't in arguing against their substance. They are, after all, just one more step in an entire career of advocating such steps, all just privileging Israel and the Israelis of course. And while yesterday they said "mutually agreed upon swaps" (all the while delaying things while Israel was gobbling the pizza and never calling for the U.S. to demand that same stop), and today they are saying "8%," tomorrow as everyone knows it will be 12%, or 15%, or turning a blind eye to this bit of ethnic cleansing, and then that bit.

    In fact arguing their substance is just what keeps them going, especially since the vast majority of them are just delaying/diverting maneuvers. But even when not, what the responses that a Ross will get for this?

    Oh, just more polite versions of what we see here mostly: Earnest and endless dissection of the alleged idea/proposal, talking talking talking politely that implicitly accepts a Ross's bona fides. Does nothing but, if anything, bolstering the idea of Ross as being acceptable to listen to, and indeed be appointed to high positions in the U.S. government.

    And yet, right there in front of everyone's eyes—but coming out of no-body's mouth—is the blatant reality calling the Rosses out for what they are. Explaining what is really motivating them and why they ought not be accepted into polite society much less governmental service: They are jewish supremacists, pure and simple. And their records offer indisputable evidence that they have never acted as anything but, much less American patriots looking out for U.S. interests.

    But no ... don't call them out on this. Don't call out their ideas showing this as their basis. Never make them answer even the simplest, most fundamental questions such as ... "Do you or do you not believe in putting U.S. interests over the interests of Israel?" Or "do you or do you not believe that the U.S. should regard the arabs and the jewish Israelis as being of fundamental equal worth?"

    Allow them in essence to continue their masquerade. So that they can appear even before college crowds and no-one will call them a jewish supremacist, so alerting others to the kind of person they are.

    David Duke only wishes he could get this kind of treatment: The refusal to examine the man's beliefs and instead the never-ending polite debates after debates about the substance of his never-ending proposals. The inability of anyone to properly identify him. The studious pretense that he's coming from some acceptable premises.

    Wanna see the AIPAC crowd start to behave differently and things change? See them after the demonstrators outside start calling them jewish supremacists and that starts to get even a touch of major media attention. See them after *that* starts to get debated a bit and they have to respond to *that* instead of just the alleged substance of their latest demand.

    The supremacism is *the* fight here. The core of things. The explainer. The engine driving things. So how does anyone believe you are ever going to get a resolution of the problems it causes if that is never even *talked* about?

• The AIPAC ask-- US must support Israel if it decides to trigger war with Iran
  • Sin Nombre March 3, 2013 at 6:07 pm with 3 replies

    Even understanding that your analysis is "minimalist," while it talks about the chances of an attack on Iran by the U.S., it says nothing about such an attack carried out by *Israel,* also then necessarily ignoring the question of what the U.S. would do in that event.

    And isn't the question of an Israeli-led attack *really* suspiciously germane now given the terms of the AIPAC-pushed resolution?

    After all, it might be thought that Netanyahu pushed Obama as hard as he could to attack Iran before and Obama just proved to him that no, he wasn't going to do same. Thus Netanyahu just gambled on Romney winning, and now that he sees that result has resigned himself to having to at least initiate an attack himself, thus making perfect sense of what we are seeing with this Resolution and what we're told we can expect from the AIPAC conference.

    No?

  • Sin Nombre March 3, 2013 at 2:50 pm

    Exactly right, particularly on display here: Notice that this Resolution doesn't seem to address even in the least what *our* interests are. Instead, coming from the U.S. Congress, it's just a cause-and-cost free sentiment: Don't consider our interests, don't consider our costs, just ... support Israel, no matter what.

    And in this regard I wonder if we aren't seeing a subtle switch to this idea, with the Lobby and etc. just quietly choosing to not bring up U.S. interests because at least they may have to fight such a quarrel out.

    I.e., much easier to avoid that losing quarrel.

    And that's particularly so—as Russell notes—as the U.S. slips ever deeper into the economic pits. Can't have costs discussed when *that's* on the table.

    Very intriguing, and subtle if true.

• The false equivalence of liberal Zionists
  • Sin Nombre March 1, 2013 at 11:04 pm with 1 replies

    Not that this false equivalence employed by liberal Zionists doesn't deserve observation and ridicule, but frankly the hypocrisy is still that which gets me more.

    Show me, that is, another ethno-nationalist movement *aside* from Zionism that Cohen wouldn't positively vomit on and I'd be surprised. Show me any American or European ethno-nationalist movement that he hasn't poured the worst venom imaginable over and I'd be surprised. Show me any that, no matter how utterly lacking they are in any other way to Nazism that he hasn't instantly compared to Nazism anyway and I'd be surprised.

    But okay, one might say, if that's the extent of it. But it isn't of course. Any other country being concerned with its racial/ethnic "demographics" and the Cohens spew, not to mention their implicit approval of Israel having the right to take action to maintain an artificial demographic makeup.

    Or ... any other country not essentially having utterly open borders may likewise get the Cohens bubbling, much less openly discriminating on the basis of some alleged blood characteristic.

    Or ... any other country treating its minority population in any way inferior to its majority. (Not to mention actually having colonial *subjects.*)

    And on and on and on.

    It is hypocrisy on stilts, and the only thing other than a belief in jewish supremacy that I can see explaining it is the idea of jewish exceptionalism which amounts to the same thing, and it is then here that we see the second necessary prong of the Cohen world-view: The ability to read out of the discourse anyone who even observes this as being "anti-semitic."

    The indispensable two-prongs: The double-standard, and the condemnation of all who even observe same.

• The controversy over the Oscars joke that Jews run Hollywood
  • Sin Nombre February 26, 2013 at 5:52 pm

    Marco wrote ... *the* most acute comment possible concerning the issues raised by Phil's post.

    The most acute comment *possible.*

    As Unz has now shown, this is not just about ... the comedian-hiring record of the Catskill's supper clubs. And if you are distracted to the point of talking only about Hollywood, you're only being a trifle less blind.

• Dov Hikind dons blackface for Purim party (Updated)
  • Sin Nombre February 26, 2013 at 7:50 am with 1 replies

    Marco is exactly right: It isn't so much that this boob did this, it's the amazing silence that accompanies it from the media in the main, and indeed beyond just the news and commentary sections. If, say, some leading southern Baptist or big Catholic personage did this, my God the coverage. My God the material it would provide for SNL, the evening talk show monologueists, John Stewart, and on and on.

    Just like looking at the difference between the sex scandal in the Catholic Church and that in the Eastern orthodox jewish community. For all the public knows, there's no issue whatsoever with the former. "Scandal? Problem? Rabbi's regularly fleeing to Israel to escape prosecution? Ortho parents having their entire community put the arm on them to cover up the serial abuse of their kids over years? What they hell are you talking about?"

    Even *mention* the word "priest" now though on television and what do you get? The pre-joke giggle anticipating the punch-line.

• Autopsy reveals Arafat Jaradat died of extreme torture in Israeli custody
  • Sin Nombre February 24, 2013 at 9:42 pm with 5 replies

    seafroid wrote:

    "I wan’t aware that 2 millenia of Jews had prayed for a Lavrenti Beria style Jerusalem."

    That was exactly along the lines of what I thought when I read this. "So Israel has now nearly recapitulated in totality the features of Stalinism and Hitlerism. The regularization of torture and thus the Movement as Torturer, the ultimate expression of total dominion over individual humans. The torture cells, the table with their cuffs or walls with their rings and chains and belts, the special chairs .... The unnamed thugs in their coveralls or whatever they wear to avoid going home with blood spatters, sitting down to nice dinners with their nice wives and children, and up and out again the next morning, bored after awhile with checking in and reaching for their batons, their prods, their whatever, but proud nonetheless of their expertise. Their facility at quickly reducing another human to a shivering, huddled, whimpering broken thing."

    And then we hear the final defense: "At least we don't shovel people into ovens!"

    No, maybe not, but let's not hear anymore of how any objectionable behavior of Israel was only committed in its existential defense, in its fight to defend its establishment. Let us now recognize what appears to be the non-exceptional perception of such behavior by Israel, used to defend its very existence, but then too of course to be casually used to keep down its colonized and secure its land thieveries too.

    One can hardly think of anything as delegitimizing of Israel including its basic right to exist than this. Now that we see that this is Israel, all the time, for whatever cheap and even illegal gains....

• Former Israeli Amb to Obama on his visit: 'You cannot come to an area that exhibits signs of apartheid and ignore them'
  • Sin Nombre February 22, 2013 at 5:10 pm with 2 replies

    "Only professor Shimoni challenged the application of the term Apartheid with regard to Israeli policies which he said was 'rather unfair and lacks intellectual honesty.'"

    Rather funny for a group who so promiscuously applies the term "anti-semite" to a entire and indeed ever-expanding cosmos of different words and statements and actions to take such outrage over some perceived lack of existentially perfect terminological precision when it comes to terms applied to *them.*

• 'Commentary' says some elected Democrats 'pledged' to protect Israel
  • Sin Nombre February 19, 2013 at 7:28 am

    The recurring question I have about folks like Tobin and Co. is where they come to their beliefs such that they think that they can wage a vicious fight against a decorated and clearly patriotic U.S. veteran, solely and expressly for the sake of serving a foreign power—so as to have the U.S. military serve the interests of a foreign power—and that nobody can validly get mad at them for doing so. That ... nobody can consider them acting unpatriotically or subversively.

    And the only conclusion I can draw, especially when it touches on such fundamental issues, is that there's just an incredibly deep and possibly even unconscious contempt for gentile a and ideas and values and interests amongst such people. That, except perhaps for how they may be used to advance jewish interests, gentiles just simply have no valid, independent right to any worth of their own.

• Sen. Graham is merely enforcing Sen. Schumer's 'behind the scenes' deal with Hagel -- Fineman
  • Sin Nombre February 14, 2013 at 2:54 pm with 1 replies

    I can't even stand to watch these guys like Matthews and Fineman anymore. They remind me of those old official Soviet "spokesmen" and diplomats: Absolutely totally aware that they are sitting atop and facilitating a fundamentally corrupt (main-stream media) system, just daily making up whatever narratives that are necessary to keep it going, over-dressed, smug to the point of inviting people to spit at them, insanely proud of their insularity and security and money, and then ... oh-so-righteous and sanctimonious about those they oh-so-carefully have selected as their objects of scorn. Carefully selected, that is, to be people or organizations or movements that have no real power, no different than someone showing off by ... inveighing and ridiculing people who live in trailer-parks. "Cowards" is right Empericon.

• Chas Freeman to the Middle East Policy Council: 'American diplomacy has been running on fumes for some time. It is now totally out of gas'
  • Sin Nombre February 14, 2013 at 10:40 pm with 2 replies

    @ Citizen:

    No, not even that. Mostly because that's just a way to get sucked into the fog of "who is right and wrong" all over again and prevent Americans from seeing the clear choice of just getting us out, once and for all, period. Let our unconditionally withdrawn money do it's talking to let Israel decide to keep trying to hang on to its bloody settlements; my bet is that some reason would then come to them. Offer to keep money flowing if they do "something" about them is just an invite to them to play more games with us.

    Out out out out out. That's what our people understand, and want, because the only other option really is in in in in in, and haven't we had enough of that, damn it?

  • Sin Nombre February 14, 2013 at 2:48 am with 4 replies

    My problem with Freeman is that he doesn't really follow his own logic. If he doesn't quite believe that the U.S. has no real interest at stake in blindly supporting Israel, he at least clearly believes our greater interests would be served by severing our relationship with it, or putting it on the same level as it is with other ME states.

    Okay, but what does he then say? Oh, he talks for paragraphs in mourning for there being no U.S. led peace process and blah blah.

    Essentially, he's been subtly led off the tracks by the same sort of emotion that I see here in spades that, while mostly admirable, *is* still emotionally based, and that is having one's sympathies for the Palestinians lead one that, paradoxically, plays precisely into the hands of the neo-cons: That the U.S. *should* still stay involved ... only of course to weigh in on the Palestinian side.

    But we ain't ever gonna do that, nor *should* we outside of just simply standing by and saying international law ought be followed, period. (And offering humanitarian aid to both sides as both sides seem to need it.)

    Out out out out out, that oughta be our mantra. No subsidizing Israel, no subsidizing the Palestinians, no subsidizing Egypt, no ponderously opining from half a world away on who should ultimately be sitting on which dunams of land and who should be allowed to return to Israel and who should not and blah blah blah blah blah, endlessly, as if, insanely, God planted the "right" answers to these questions under the Washington monument.

    There ain't no absolute "right" answers down to the dunams and both parties have to fight to the point of where they will agree, and we have no interest in their fight other than to stay as far the hell out of the mess as possible, period.

    Again, even the title/lead-in to Freeman's talk is bad: "American diplomacy has been running on fumes...."

    No, it hasn't, it's been running on hurting the hell out of American interests like crazy, not least with the 3+ billion per year we are sending to Israel (some "fumes" Freeman has apparently overlooked), and the worst idea in the world is to ... gas us up again. Because everyone here I suspect knows exactly what the means again, which is yet another spectacular piece of sham that probably *both* parties over there are gonna start immediately violating and which in the end will just bring more disrepute on the U.S. most of all.

    Get out get out get out. Even a child knows that if you put your hand into a hornet's nest after you start getting stung you don't shove your hand in further, you get the hell out if at all possible. But no, even those who feel the sting worse like Freeman somehow let their sentiments overpower their reason, and despite their own words end up essentially saying "gee, just one more time if we shove our hand further in...."

    And, not just coincidentally ... wanna know what prescription that would, far beyond all others, clearly be most popular and understood by the American public? It ain't gonna be siding with the Palestinians to get this or that chunk of land, nor with the Israelis stealing this or that additional bit of land, it's gonna be ... get the hell out we got enough of our own problems.

• 'New York Daily News' distorts why student Israel advocates were tossed from Brooklyn College event (updated)
  • Sin Nombre February 13, 2013 at 6:42 pm

    While we're all at the mercy of events in terms of learning anything more/real about this there is one thing here that stands out and brings up an opportunity.

    Apparently this kid was the son of an Aussie guy who was big in the formal jewish Aussie organization(s), and at least the son held dual citizenship it seems and that's always seemed crap to me. Indeed I suspect it was pushed so as to allow mischief.

    While we also have little ability to directly change that law we do have the power to throw some wrenches in it, such as writing in where relevant and questionable, and demanding in response to news and opinion pieces that the media organizations reveal the *full* citizenship status of their reporters and opinion writers/columnists and etc. And doing so over and over so that the likely non-responses you get to same become obviously motivated by fear/bias/rejection of transparency and etc.

    And draw the parallels: They don't run editorials or news stories about guns by Wayne LaPierre without mentioning his NRA connection, why hide citizenship status when what's being talked about is potentially relevant to same?

    Enough people started doing this, over and over, especially to the major outlets/periodicals and I can easily see them feeling that they just have to cave to maintain any sort of credibility. Once again, the simple question they can't answer is just "what are you hiding otherwise?," and that's a devastating cloud hanging over your head day after day, time after time.

  • Sin Nombre February 13, 2013 at 4:05 pm with 1 replies

    A couple of additional thoughts:

    First, from what is ... quasi-known so to speak, it seems that the Israelis weren't keeping this kid to punish him so much as to make sure he never talked to anyone, period. A little different than Vanunu, to a degree.

    Second, I don't think that what he might have been able to say had to be of the ultimate, cosmic sort that threatened Israel's very survival; not much would do that I don't think, and I doubt Israel would engage in that kind of thing even knowing the risks of leakage. (E.g., plotting to kill an American president for instance, or at least any we've had in the past.) Maybe ... subornation of American politicos ... now that would be big enough, or something big nuke-wise; that seems more the likely scale to me at least. Or just jeopardizing some very important on-going scheme, like manufacturing and implanting false data regarding Iran's nuke project. Or perhaps the threat to unmask some very big Israeli agent, with Intell agencies all over absolutely wild keeping that kind of thing amongst its biggest secrets.

    Three: It's lack of bigness is not shown by them failing to kill this guy outright—if indeed they didn't kill him and he did commit suicide. (And if they didn't push him to the suicide.) There was some admission by some Israeli involved in the Vanunu biz who said that if Vanunu hadn't been jewish he definitely would have gotten the quadruple-tap solution (two in the chest, two in the head), so we know of their sensitivity to this. (Although that decision was made at the political level; at the operational level I recall Pollard's handler saying that if he had been on station when Pollard came running in to the embassy with the FBI on his heels he would have put a bullet in his head right then and there. But that would have been an on-the-spot decision; not the sort made here for prison.)

    Four: If one really wanted to try to possibly intuit more to reasonably consider to come to some better suspicions—since we'll never know the truth here I don't think—you'd go back to the timeline known on this and especially at the crucial stage (when he went from agent to danger) look at that point in time in context of what was going on with Israel, the U.S., Iran and etc. at the time.

    In other words as opposed to this guy being involved in something long-lasting deeply secretive as I noted above it may have had its time-sensitive nature about it too. So what was going on especially in 2010, I'd first take a look back to see. Or maybe 2009 leading up to 2010. Any funny little blips of this or that thing sticking out? Particularly anything that seemed potentially adverse to Israel that had to be quashed?

    Noting the good chance that this guy was put through this for his silence, that might indicate that there was a worry he was about to pull a Vanunu and tell his story in reaction to seeing Israel telling some particular big whopper right back then. So .. what potential big whoppers was Israel telling back then is the question?

    (A difficult one given Israel's *serial* telling of big whoppers, but you know what I mean.)

    Fifth, and again: Forget about ever really knowing the truth here in terms of reasonable probabilities. There is already a Disinformation team standing by watching all this, readying and updating Narrative Options A, B and C for how to divert the story from reality depending on what further comes out that's real. And indeed watch out for what just *seems* to come out further since early diverting can be the best, where you yourself put out so many wrong leads that later on nobody believes even the right leads.

    Sort of like ... you yourself planting all kinds of evidence to incriminate yourself in something in some way, but evidence that will lead nowhere or can be later disproved and can later be ridiculed, allowing you to ridicule whatever other true lines of inquiry there may be.

    But forget about ever really knowing the truth here, unless you are ten and expect to live another 90 years.

  • Sin Nombre February 13, 2013 at 6:11 am

    Nah, Annie, it's something bigger than that, much bigger. That Dubai biz is already out, everyone knows the Israelis practice such assassinations, and Israel is essentially insouciant about its right to use other country's nationals and their passports in their Intell operations so that's not it either. Neither are nearly big enough for the Israelis to go to this sort of ... Stalinist-Katyn/Schindleresque person-disappearing length, esp. given this guy was an Australian which always meant the possibility that Australia would become involved in some way, and then the consequent risk of having to admit it essentially tried to disappear the guy.

    And indeed when you think about it that latter aspect of it is breathtaking alone: In essence they've treated him in an even lesser manner than countries treat enemies of war or even their own traitors. As it reads now the only judicial aspect of this wasn't via any trial of the guy whatsoever, but just going to court to try to ban all mention of the guy and then all mention of the ban even.

    Really remarkable, with it having even more resonance with Stalinism that noted given this guy's alleged Mossad membership. Back under Stalin, that is, your membership in the fore-runners of the KGB—the Chekists/ OGPU/GPU/NKVD/GRU/whatever was seen as essentially subjecting you to extraordinary status so that if you betrayed that kind of employer you had no civil or criminal rights whatsoever. One story goes, for instance, that upon coming to the conclusion that one NKVD agent was a Western spy he was thrown into a blast furnace in front of a graduating class of NKVD guys to illustrate the philosophy. And in one spasm of Stalin's paranoia in the '30's Beria was wholesale recalling the most trusted NKVD guys from their overseas postings whereupon they—and often their entire families—just disappeared off the face of the earth. Caused any number to defect to the West when they got their "report back to Moscow for consultations" notice.

    But that was totalitarian Intell practice back in the '30's and '40's, so making this Aussie guy's story today so amazing. The Israelis aren't stupid and know that their handling this guy like they did—with its consequent ever-present risk of disclosure—had to be way way worth it as opposed to whatever reality they are protecting getting out. And when they did what they did to Vanunu so openly, that tells you about how relatively care-free they are about problems arising from treating their "traitors" harshly.

    After all, compared to this guy Vanunu was damn near treated with kid gloves.

    And then you've got the apparent truth that Israel has apparently even convinced this Aussie's *parents* to not make any waves, so you can imagine the enormity (but certainly no details) of the Israeli interest that the parents must have been told was at stake to just sit down and shut up about their boy's disappearance and now death.

    Whatever the story is behind this guy, it ain't some mere little beanbag like Dubai or goofing with other countries' passports. It's big. Really big I suspect. Israel ain't stupid about stuff like this especially, and for them to run this huge risk of simply disappearing the guy ... they didn't do it for crackers I don't think.

• Eric Alterman's bias revealed as he warns against the 'red menace' of BDS
  • Sin Nombre February 9, 2013 at 7:58 pm with 1 replies

    And just when are people going to cut through all the crap—such as actually debating the merits of Alterman on Alterman's terms via considering whether BDS is really Stalinist—and get to the bleeding obvious nitty gritty of so much of what's going on and observing that Alterman and guys like him are jewish supremacists, period?

    That ... what's sauce for every other goose in the world cannot touch the jewish gander, which, alone in the world apparently, has the supreme right to "their commitment to their history, their national identity and their understanding of [their] history"?

    Even to the point, as Alterman has said before and as has been noted here, that us gentiles here damn well ought to go expending our blood and treasure for Israel's interests.

    And so, again, when is this sort of jewish superiority gonna be called out? Just how explicit does it have to be? With anyone else it seems the slightest misuse of a word can damn near bring an instant indictment and even conviction on the charge of such biased feelings. E.g., saying "Jewish" lobby rather than "the Israel" lobby. And yet here you've got a guy as much as openly saying that gentile lives and fortunes ought be regarded as in the mere service to obviously superior jewish interests, and still, nobody says a word.

    When's the discussion gonna turn to the real nub at the center of so much of this? Or are we gonna keep pretending that somehow, jews and jews alone are entitled to regard everyone else as inferior and can't be even called on it much less be criticized for same?

• You could become 'another Goldstone' -- friendly warning to Yale prof whose study cleared Palestinian textbooks of demonization charge
  • Sin Nombre February 8, 2013 at 8:06 pm

    I saw that quote from Richter too, Woody, and think you've got it wrong. By it's very terms ("all along"), Richter is affirming that he was essentially trying to threaten Wexler in *coming* to his conclusions.

    And I thus nominate Richter for being the current holder of the David Duke Best Jewish Attempted Validator Of Historic Anti-Semetic Tropes Award for his blatant and heroic effort to persuade everyone that indeed no jew can be trusted saying anything about jewry or Israel due to likely attempted tribal threats/blackmail/suasion or etc. directed against them.

    Can anyone imagine the disgust that Wexler must feel? Geezus.

• On US television, Zuckerman, Ross and Remnick all refer to Israeli prime minister as 'Bibi' on first reference
  • Sin Nombre January 25, 2013 at 7:39 pm

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "P.S. All Rose's guests are Jewish...."

    Hey man, it's tikkun olam. Tikkun olam, man. Who *else* is qualified to be around the table? Indeed, given from whom it sprung, isn't everyone else positively *dis*qualified from being around the tikkun olam table?

  • Sin Nombre January 25, 2013 at 2:53 pm with 2 replies

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "Don't the goyim get to register an opinion, ever?"

    And of what even unimaginably microscopic importance would that be?

• Netanyahu out as PM?: Yair Lapid shocks Likud/Beiteinu in Israeli election
  • Sin Nombre January 22, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    Well even though I'm not a "media type" and don't think I've been "obsessing" about Bennett, I have been saying he's a coming man, and I stick by that. Hard to think of anyone else rising out of nowhere that fast, whose party is already matching the Knesset votes of Shas. I.e., it's early yet....

• When will liberal Zionists give up on their dream?
  • Sin Nombre January 22, 2013 at 1:11 pm with 1 replies

    You know, I really don't give a shit "when will liberal Zionists give up on their dream."

    What attracts my attention way way before that is how curious it is that gee, when we decide to impose some sanctions on Iran so as to help Israel, who just happens to get appointed to oversee same but a guy carrying a life-long torch for Israel?

    And when my country, having all sorts of its interests suffer by being enmeshed in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, sits down with the Israelis and Palestinians to try to get an end to that conflict—i.e. just when a true fair moderator is most needed, for the huge sake of the U.S. too—who is sitting there as the President's two top advisors other than Aaron David Miller and Dennis Ross? And who just happens to be our ambassador in Tel Aviv, tasked with giving our President advice on our interests over there? And on and on and on similarly everywhere one looks.

    And anyone who believes that all this kind of thing just happens to happen—and is seemingly never noticed by the media—and/or is due to merit, and is not the product of a wide, deep, systemic program of secret ethnic favoritism/self-help combined with corrupt political pressure, is a fool.

    So my question is more along the lines of ... when will the [alleged] liberal Zionists stop using the United States like a piece of toilet paper in the service of their own personal devotion to a foreign power?

    Only secondarily then does the question of *whether* these folks will "give up on their [alleged] dream [regarding Zion]," the answer to which I believe is anyway already apparent and which is "never" because what they are already jettisoning is the "liberal" aspect of same vis a vis Israel so they can go visit and not have to rub shoulders with any vile gentiles, while insisting that any other country following anywhere near the same ethnic idea is evil incarnate.

    Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former President of the Union for Reform Judaism of the United States, explaining why he wants to move to Israel ultimately: "I prefer to live with jews."

    So while for Phil the question is different, maybe the question for the rest of us gentiles is ... how long do we have to pretend not to notice what is flaunted right in front of our faces? You just don't *say* those kinds of things ... you just don't *do* those kinds of things ... to people (i.e., us) who you genuinely like; who you genuinely regard as your equals; who you genuinely believe to be of equal importance to you and yours. To people who don't deserve to be taken advantage of....

    How long do we have to pretend not to notice the deep, systemic contempt we are held in?

• Video: Naftali Bennett stands by party member who raised idea of destroying the Dome of the Rock
  • Sin Nombre January 21, 2013 at 6:44 pm

    With re: the question of whether he's slick, I think the question is whether he's slick enough, and without even understanding Hebrew I think the answer is you bet.

    After all, if one had been prescient enough one would have predicted the ultimate rise of someone like Bennett. Most people here, that is, seem to agree that for a good deal of time (if not for 45+ years) the locomotive power determining Israel's actions was essentially hiding its real project under one sham or another. (Most lately, a Two-State sham.)

    Well, at some point in time that sham had to be dropped, but the problem for the past carriers of same was that they were limited in their ability to claim that they were just conscious shammers. Even Sharon, after all, picked up the enmity of the crowd by vacating Gaza. And all the rest have all kinds of baggage of one sort or another, not least acquired when they tried to appease the U.S. on the settlements. (No matter how limited or in bad faith that appeasement was.)

    So eventually the force driving Israel was inevitably going to turn to some non-shammer, and it was likely that it would be some fresh face, with the kind of resume that was clean of past shamming, and be slick enough to present the land-aggrandizement project in some way short of appearing baldly Hitlerian.

    Thus and again the question is whether Bennett is slick enough, and again I think you bet. Absent some big big scandal, we're gonna be seeing lots and lots of this guy methinks, for a long time.

• No diversity: NPR's 'National Conversation' on US-Israel future includes 5 Zionists, no Palestinians
  • Sin Nombre January 19, 2013 at 6:46 pm

    Krauss wrote:

    "Therefore, I expect there to be a total status quo for years ahead. Simply because Israel cannot afford anything else."

    I don't think so, not at least if by "status quo" you mean the continuation of what has been a fair consensus that Israel has to at least claim to want a two-state solution.

    Bennett is the agent of the pressure wanting to openly discard that pantomime, and just look at how fast and forceful that pressure has propelled him.

    In addition I suspect we'll be seeing the "broken taboo" effect adding to the crumbling of that consensus. As is evident not only is Bennett not being shunned in Israel he's getting some nice soft treatment here already, teaching the lesson in Israel that it's now okay to come out and speak your secret heart.

    All that's left is to erase the already unlikely possibility that in reaction to an express repudiation of a two-state solution the U.S. won't actually take any serious, substantive negative action. And Netanyahu has already shown that all the U.S. needs is some airy talk about how someday in the far far far future, maybe just about when the sun runs out of fuel, there could possibly be a Palestinian state.

    Clearly a genie is popping out of the Israeli bottle, and I don't think it's the kind that can be put back.

    Walt, Mearsheimer, and lots of others have said that a 2SS is dead, and all we're seeing now is just the mechanics of how it will be declared dead.

    It'll take a little time yet, for sure, before we see overly open dancing on its grave in Israel, but I think we can now clearly see it on the horizon at least.

• Neocons never go away--Marco Rubio hires Jamie Fly, ultra-hawk on Iran
  • Sin Nombre January 19, 2013 at 2:43 am

    One could almost feel this coming and happening in a tectonic manner beneath one's feet: Romney loses, and the big, highly activist money behind the Republicans (such as Adelson) turns off the money firehose causing a tremblor and sits back waiting for bids. Rubio puts his hand up and indicates he's in the running for '16 and doesn't think Republican sucking up to Israel and advocating constant war in the ME hurt them, and the rumbling felt is big money turning to him and opening up the tap a bit saying "okay provisionally, but you gotta take one of our guys on the payroll so we can keep an eye on things and keep you in line," and, shazaam, like a mushroom sprouting from nowhere in the middle of the night, suddenly there's another neo-con presence right in the middle of yet another candidacy.

    The mob used to work exactly like this in places. Except that instead of donations to whomever it was backing it would refrain from wrecking its business(es) (perhaps via giving union trouble), or it would back it via giving its competitors trouble and etc. And, not infrequently, whoever it was backing was forced to accept people on its payroll, some to watch over it, some to just get paid for make-believe jobs.

    Might be called ... the Sicilian/modern American governmental theory of how to do business.

• Neocons' naked agenda (is shared by many Dems)
  • Sin Nombre January 16, 2013 at 3:05 pm with 1 replies

    gingershot wrote:

    "If an Iran attack is stopped, Israeli Apartheid is without any effective cover and will be taken care of...."

    Presumably you mean because the Iran issue is a diversion. But what's to stop other diversions from appearing? Say, an assault into Lebanon "to deal with Hezbullah" followed by an extended occupation? Or a renewed "need" to re-occupy Gaza?

• Think Hagel represents meaningful change for US foreign policy? Think again.
  • Sin Nombre January 11, 2013 at 6:15 pm with 1 replies

    All this piece demonstrates is simply how utterly bleak the situation was before, but it's just as clear that of all reasonably possible nominees Hagel is the one putting a war with Iran on the furthest backburner reasonably possible. And the one with the most guts to say what's going on in terms of our relationship with Israel.

    Even the longest trip begins with a single step, some Chinese sage once said.

• Sen. Kirk aide said to be point-man in campaign against Hagel
  • Sin Nombre January 11, 2013 at 2:47 pm

    Using a guy named "Goldberg" to do this ... makes you wonder if they just couldn't *find* anyone with a non-jewish name to be the point-person. It sure as hell ain't gonna go unnoticed.

• Where were Chuck Hagel and Bill Kristol in Vietnam era?
  • Sin Nombre January 10, 2013 at 11:07 am with 2 replies

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "My sense of service growing up in an academic Jewish family was very different from Hagel's."

    Well don't leave those of us who didn't grow up in an academic Jewish family hanging, Phil, tell us a bit about it.

• 'Atlantic' writer provides no evidence for allegation that Harvard professor is anti-Semitic
  • Sin Nombre January 3, 2013 at 10:41 am with 17 replies

    What bothers me stems from the facts that Goldberg obviously believes this (he knows full well that saying this promiscuously just devalues the charge, and doing so invalidly against a guy like Walt could only incite distrust of jews in the most elite of spheres), and that there seems to be lots of support for Goldberg's views.

    So ... what are gentiles supposed to think of jews if we are all just a moderate comment or observation or so away from being regarded by jews as "grubby" anti-semites?

    If indeed they feel themselves utterly surrounded by 300+ million either gross anti-semites or subtle ones or merely nascent ones, do they really feel themselves part of this nation? Part of this community?

    I wouldn't. Nor do I think any normal person would.

    And so again how are gentiles supposed to feel about this?

    I can well understand—and indeed agree with—the idea that because of the Holocaust especially, but also just because of simple human courtesy, politeness, consideration and etc. that one should avoid giving unnecessary offense. Be sensitive to natural and normal and even extra-sensitive feelings.

    But aren't we in essence being asked to say *nothing* unless it's laudatory? To avoid any and all comments or even questions—such as Walt and Mearsheimer made and asked—that might upset the hyper-sensitive too?

    Quite clearly that's not just the desired rule but indeed very close to the situation in the U.S. at least.

    It's funny, but all we can seem to hear in any discussion of jewish/gentile issues is the question of ... how jews feel. Not unlike reading about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where so often we're told that no, the Palestinians really don't care about the settlements, but that of course there's no question but that any peace deal has to accept the biggest of those settlements. (Because, apparently, what the Palestinians really want is up for grabs, and because what the Israelis want just has to happen as if God had decreed it.)

    Oddly though, I never seem to see any discussion of how jews feel that *gentiles* should feel about being regarded apparently as just one tiny step away from being genocidaires.

    Or, to put this another way simply reversing the Goldbergian sensibility: If I believed that jews—in the main and on the whole, and to some realistic degree—were really just a step away from wishing to kill or subjugate me as a gentile or a Christian, I don't think anyone would deny that this would be anti-semitism of the worst sort.

    So how come, when we merely flip that proposition, nobody's calling Goldberg or all the similar believers—which would seem to include whole rafts of mainstream jewish spokespeople at least—"anti-gentile," "anti-Christian," or "Christian-haters"?

    Seems intemperate, but why given the logic involved? Someone please tell me: Why are these labels invalid?

    Phil? Adam? Anyone?

• Consensus: Right wing govt minister says Israel is not a state of all its citizens; liberal Zionist icon calls for cantons to avoid bi-nationalism
  • Sin Nombre January 2, 2013 at 5:11 pm

    "The second bit of news comes today from none other than the so-called "dovish" Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua...."

    "I prefer to live with jews."

    *Reform* rabbi Eric Yoffie

• The Establishment fights back (Hagel gets nod from Volcker, Hills, Wolfensohn, Crocker)
  • Sin Nombre January 2, 2013 at 4:57 pm

    Apropos of Lobe's attempted explanation of why the neo-cons continue to get "traction" in the media, Krauss wrote:

    "this is complete bullshit."

    Hear hear. Great bit of bullshit detection. The only thing wrong is where Krauss notes that "[t]he left has far more gifted writers and intellectuals," in that the same is true of the Right as well, but that's niggling.

• David Gregory covers up for the Israel lobby (even as he fingers the NRA)
  • Sin Nombre January 3, 2013 at 5:27 am

    As to Clarence Thomas (and some other individuals) you totally elide the point. Sure, that is, *your* opposition to him was based on views. But you can't erase that there was indeed *some* loud voices raised against him from some on the Left on the grounds that he wasn't "authentically" black. Same as, from time to time, we've seen conservative women called "inauthentic" feminists by Leftie feminists.

    That being said, I surely don't deny that, over the last decade or so particularly, and increasingly, some on the Right have tried to use the "principles"—broadly speaking—of political correctness as to this or that proposition. But yes, this is the crux of a sub-issue between us: Overwhelmingly I think the phenomenon is one of the Left, with it only being natural (but no less condemnable) that we see some on the Right eventually try to hijack and use the same tactic.

    And I think this is particularly so as regards racial/ethnic/cultural matters and etc., which I think is clearly at the very heart of lots of our problem when speaking of Israel, our policies towards it and etc. Especially the inability to point out that those so considerably responsible for our policies in the ME are jewish and have been pushing Israel-First ideas. And the inability/unwillingness to point out the heavy jewish component in the media/in the media's ownership and etc.

    Or, to put it another way, take away all the related political correctness that has, just over the last 13 years, made it impossible to talk openly about ME affairs, and it's almost impossible to imagine things having gone anywhere near the way they did.

    In the very first place I don't think we'd have ever gotten into Iraq, and that's huge enough, but then think of all the rest that would be different too, such as the U.S. opposing U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state and etc., etc. Indeed I think the entire warp and woof of our relationship with and towards Israel would be very very significantly different, with consequent huge differences in our relations with other ME countries following.

  • Sin Nombre December 31, 2012 at 3:57 pm with 4 replies

    I stand by what I said: "The more you look at the situation the U.S. has gotten itself into in the ME the more can be laid at the door of political correctness in one or the other of its forms."

  • Sin Nombre December 31, 2012 at 1:28 pm with 7 replies

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "I don't know if Gregory is an Israel Firster, to use the phrase that Rosenberg has inserted into the discourse to signify people who think about Israel's security first...."

    I don't either, but given the clear reality that Gregory was consciously obfuscating this just points out that Israel Firsters are not the entire problem here. Thus, as opposed to not mentioning the real source of the Hagel opposition due to affection for Israel, it seems to me just as likely (if not more) that Gregory isn't doing so just as a tribal thing instead. E.g., "You don't put the finger on fellow jews who might come under attack by the Gentiles for acting tribal," so that it may not be an "Israel thing" at all.

    The sad thing is that this sort of tribal loyalty is something that the liberal/Left/Progressives sectors clearly approve of, as its political correctness is recognized and certainly never really criticized across the spectrum: Dershowitz and other jews just plain savaging of Goldstone after the latter's report ("Kapo!"); the idea that a Clarence Thomas is somehow not an "authentic" black ("Uncle Tom!"); and on and on and on.

    The more you look at the situation the U.S. has gotten itself into in the ME the more can be laid at the door of political correctness in one or the other of its forms, and yet, despite its great example of the incredible damage it can inflict, that never seems to garner any attention.

    In a world where politically correct propositions are welcomed, and those questioning or denying same are immediately denounced and read out of intelligent society (as "racists" or whatever), it's easy to why Israeli partisans above all adore the establishment of the meme that "Israel's interests are our interests" or that "criticizing Israel is being anti-semetic."

    In a sense, they get to set the outer limits within which "acceptable" commentary is heard, with all else being savagely repressed.

• NY mayoral hopeful Quinn urges Obama to free Pollard
  • Sin Nombre December 28, 2012 at 11:24 am

    ToivoS wrote:

    "This one case has to illustrate most clearly that US and Israel interests are not the same."

    And this is precisely why Quinn chose it. It's effectively saying to the New York Israeli partisans "Hey, look, see? I am *perfectly* okay with advocating the U.S. getting screwed over for Israel's benefit."

    Who, after all, would really be surprised to see some NY mayoral candidate, if the issue were hot, come out calling the U.S. Liberty survivors anti-semitic scum or etc.? Not I.

    After all what do we see already with Bloomberg? THE domestic Gun Control Advocate, not long ago threatening to stop supporting Obama because of his perception that Obama was insufficiently supporting the armed-to-the-teeth-with-American-made-and-American-paid-for-assault-rifles settlers so they can continue to steal and squat on Palestinian land.

    Does anyone believe that Bloomberg gets even a molecule of the irony here? Advocating the criminalizing of Americans while supporting Israelis doing worse?

    Does anyone believe Bloomberg or Quinn would hesitate for even a heartbeat sacrificing damn near any American interest for Israel?

• No surprise: Chuck Schumer refuses to stand up for Hagel
  • Sin Nombre December 24, 2012 at 8:08 am with 4 replies

    You know, Annie, I don't know that one can conclude any particular pro-Israeli or jewish sentiment on the part of the media by their "making a point of asking jewish representatives" about Hagel.

    Everyone knows the media feeds on controversy, so just as they are gonna go to big pro-NRA/pro-gun representatives or spokespersons for comments about any gun control measures proposed—to hopefully get some inflammatory comments or etc—they're gonna go to those who they see as very pro-Israel for comments on Hagel.

    My problem however is that so spectacularly illustrated by this David Gregory/Andrea Mitchell reporting (so-called): At least when they go to a big NRA/pro-gun person or etc. they won't be shy *identifying* that same is the case when reporting their comments. They won't be shy asking about whether they took NRA money for their elections, or are members of the NRA, or have lots of NRA backers in their districts.

    As seen with Gregory/Mitchell though, not a word as to *why* they went to Schumer. Not a word as to *why* Schumer may not be backing Hagel. Not a question to Schumer as to whether his pro-Israel leanings have anything to do with it.

    It's like ... the love that dare not speak its name.

    Not only is this a gross violation of journalistic ethics, and a gross disservice to the American public—as I noted, this is about war and peace for this country even—but it's just grossly stupid too on the part of the jewish Gregory's and Mitchell's out there.

    They think they're being invisible doing this, and instead all they are doing is playing into the anti-semetic meme that jews protect jews above all, no matter what. That no jews can really be trusted. That when it comes to jewish affairs, out go the normal rules and codes and ethics and standards and principles.

    As tiresome as it may be I'll say it again: This Hagel business isn't just some little thing. Given what he's said it's directly relevant to at the very least to the issue of war and peace for the U.S. (with Iran). And yet there's Gregory and Mitchell, playing their little pretend-ignorant game.

    You just want to scream at them: "Just how fucking stupid do you think we are? Just how fucking insulting can you be?"

    Unfortunately the inescapable answer is ... lots and lots.

    And then the mainstream media like NBC who employ folks like Gregory and Mitchell wrings its mind and hands over how come people are turning to other sources for their "news," and how come magazines like Newsweek is going down the crapper.

    It's all just so stupid....

  • Sin Nombre December 23, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    P.S. to my last:

    Nothing to see here with this particular issue and/or at this particular time, that is.

    We are after all only talking about who is to be the mere Secretary of our Defense, an entire step down or so in the entire bloody national chain of command, at a time when a foreign power is openly trying to get us to start a war with another, and with open partisans of that first foreign power trying to influence who is in that position.

    No no, nothing to see here. No reason for any *particular* attention to fullness of reporting, openness, honesty, candor.

    It's just ... the national security and national interests and national blood (mostly "redneck") and national treasure of the United States involved here.

    Certainly no reason to report or comment in such as way as to make sure one is putting aside one's own personal interests, beliefs, values, concerns or etc.

    No no, none at all....

  • Sin Nombre December 23, 2012 at 9:12 pm with 10 replies

    Perhaps not exactly attaining the height of candor and virtue here at least one can't accuse Schumer of doing anything positively wrong.

    What, however, of our brave, forthright journalists here? You know, the people who claim to be in the business of candor?

    Of Mr. Gregory? Fresh from opening up a discussion about how his judaism informs and inspires him, knowing full well the source and reason of the main attack on Hagel in the last weeks and carefully not mentioning it ...

    And Ms. Mitchell, synagogue-President daughter fresh (2008 not being all that long ago) from slurring non-urbanites as "rednecks" and knowing full well the same about Hagel as Gregory and then in fact going *beyond* Gregory by positively *misrepresenting* the situation by blaming gays and gays alone ...

    And Mr. Gregory, knowing full well Ms. Mitchell knew the truth of same and *was* positively misrepresenting things and then not mentioning this either ...

    Yessir; nothing to see here, just move along, move along.

• In 'Dissent' debate, Walzer hints that leftists who focus on Israel are anti-Semitic
  • Sin Nombre December 17, 2012 at 9:45 am with 4 replies

    I don't believe Walzer was or is really scared for jews in America. Instead he's concerned over just one jew in America, Michael Walzer, whose entire oeuvre has now been destroyed: Not only that of the superior intellectual who is free of gaping hypocrisy and blatant inconsistency, but that of the somehow morally superior demi-god. No more free pass to, say, thunderingly condemn the U.S. for restricting immigration while supporting Israel's damn near totally closed system, and on and on.

    Total destruction of same too: Given the nature of the sins he so loves condemning the U.S. and the West over, at least our societies have shown an ability to rectify same. With Israel, it simply can't, and never will. In fact in Israel they aren't sins at all, they're foundational tenets.

• Lieberman's wild claim that Europe is ignoring another Holocaust masks effort to rob Palestinians of $423 million
  • Sin Nombre December 13, 2012 at 3:42 am with 2 replies

    I suppose at some point shouting "the Holocaust! the Holocaust!" at every turn will indeed come to be seen as the cynical ruse it often is and thus its insult to the Holocaust's actual victims too. In the meantime though it still seems to have at least some magic, trump-card type of power in which, at its mention, the thought of the Palestinians just disappears.

    If I were the latter I'd get my West Bank and Gaza population to start wearing the yellow stars that Germany required jews to wear in Hitler's early days. See if that wouldn't change the perspective a bit.

• Wieseltier holds on to a 'lost cause,' Jewish support for Israel
  • Sin Nombre December 9, 2012 at 3:24 pm with 1 replies

    In another thread Phil notes a piece by Mitchell Plitnick saying that the building of Ma'ale Adumim was really the death blow to any peace deal to the Palestinians. But even this can be considered a little blinkered in not contesting the Israeli claim of its '67 war as being validly "pre-emptive."

    That is, just as Plitnick says everyone should do and take off their blinkers and see the building of Ma'ale Adumim now in the true light, maybe the truest light is yet to come via the widespread realization that no, '67 wasn't validly justifiable. (Not least in terms of who fired the first shot, which, tellingly, Israel originally did and originally lied about.)

    It is, after all, the nearest and dearest lies that are surrendered last. So just as Plitnick notes that only now the building of Ma'ale Adumim is being seen as a very well-aimed arrow at the heart of any real two-state solution, we can see Wieseltier essentially saying "I don't care the facts, I'm standing by the fundamental claim that Israel starting the '67 war was valid." Indeed by tying it to the idea of "lost causes" he's almost saying this expressly.

    It's a testament to how far people will go however out of logical necessity: To admit '67 wasn't valid means the occupation wasn't valid means the settlements aren't valid and ....

    But the "necessary untruth" held in such an iron-like way now wasn't nearly regarded as such originally, and couldn't have been. As noted, the historiography of it started almost immediately with Israel not claiming pre-emptiveness at all, but that instead, falsely, saying that it was fired upon first. And then you had Mordechai Bentov, the Israeli cabinet minister who attended the crucial June 4th Israeli Cabinet meeting deciding for war saying that the idea that the "danger of extermination" idea immediately voiced afterwards by Israel was "invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories." And Menachem Begin eventually admitting to the Israeli military college in 1982 that "[t]he Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

    No wonder Michael Oren, when he was in his guise as a "historian," put such effort into arguing about how validly Israel acted in launching '67.

• Israel could only survive by 'killing all the Arabs'-- Netanyahu's father
  • Sin Nombre December 8, 2012 at 7:18 pm

    Of course any number of the things that Benzion says regarding the arabs vis a vis jews or Israel could have (and probably were) the identical things one could find Hitler having said regarding the jews and vis a vis Germans or Germany, and so the question is what accounts for the blindness.

    I think the chosen-people-belief business is really the only answer as it offers the only ..."global" sort of double-standard justification that one sees.

    For instance if, say, you suggested to Sheldon Adelson that Israel grant amnesty/a "path to citizenship" to the Palestinians—or even to its African illegal immigrants—he'd almost certainly regard that as nothing less than the commission of jewish or at least Israeli ethno-cultural suicide. I see however in the Wall Street Journal just now him coming out big for amnesty for illegal immigrants to the U.S.

    E.g., what's ethno-cultural suicide for one is morally imperative for everyone else.

    I just don't see how you can account for this via any issue-by-issue blindness or bias. And it's too unconscious/"innocent" for that as well.

• Scott Roth joins Mondoweiss as publisher
  • Sin Nombre December 5, 2012 at 8:11 pm

    On the other hand, now that I see you have published my comment, I must add that same is to your enormous credit, and indeed lives up in this instance at least to the responsibility that you, again to your credit, expressed.

    Doesn't retract my feeling that your new comments policy is indeed still directly at odds with your statement about promoting different voices, but when credit is due credit ought be given.

  • Sin Nombre December 5, 2012 at 6:05 pm with 2 replies

    Phil and Adam wrote:

    "For those readers who say, That makes three Jewish partners, we say, You’re right, and we have been surprised ourselves by the degree to which this site has been shaped by a shadow Jewish community that wants nothing to do with religious nationalism and has demanded a place to express itself. That lack of diversity in our leadership only increases our obligation to provide a platform for other voices in the U.S. and in Palestine, from communities that have not been represented in the policy discussion. We feel tremendous responsibility to promote those voices and honor them. Please hold us accountable to those words."

    Okay, since you asked, I submit that there's simply no way you can square these words with your recent change to your comments policy, period. (Which change I now suspect had something to do with Mr. Roth coming on board.)

    Just my opinion.

• Bill Maher says Islam and Christianity are 'warlike religions' but Israel 'kicked ass' in its 'little war'
  • Sin Nombre December 2, 2012 at 5:42 pm with 2 replies

    Well well, a little example writ particularly blatant:

    After all, when one sees a jewish attack on Christianity it's invariably framed as being the result of the attacker feeling the terrible terrible weight of all the Christian tormenting of jews throughout history. I.e., absolutely and purely defensive.

    So ... Maher makes no pretense whatsoever of that here, clearly (and gleefully) setting out on the offensive to demean and degrade Christians especially (moslems obviously not being a big audience), obviously soft-shoeing it insofar as mainstream jews go and now actually admitting his deceitfulness. And ... who expects any condemnation of any of this from the Abe Foxmans of the world? And who denies that he is essentially being *lauded* by the Jewish Journal here, and regarded as oh so cool? Admirable? *The* kind of guy to promote?

    But no no no; no matter the offensive nature of the attacks upon them and their religion, Christians cannot conclude anything but that they are forever and eternally the oppressor/aggressor/offensive actor in relations with jews. That whenever they encounter any anti-Christian animus from jews, whenever they see their religion demeaned, degraded, ridiculed, that it stems only from the most innocent and indeed *rightful* of places. And when they see the jewish community remaining silent about it or even enjoying it as here; no no no, once again it can stem from only the most innocent and indeed rightful of places too. *They*—Christians—can *never* feel assaulted, insulted, under attack, or being victimized by vicious satire, smear, parody or ridicule. No no no: Never.

    Next up, Maher or his equivalent noting how absolutely delightful it's been in terms of getting laughs to link the word "priest" or the term "the Church" with the word "pedophile" for the last decade or so and all the smirking applause to be gotten from the word "alter-boy," and afterwards explaining the invisible-to-all-others reason why they chose to not mention all those rabbis from all those East Coast jewish communities who've protected them and who it's been discovered seem to have had a fondness for young boys and girls too. Gee, maybe cause those rabbis weren't "dangerous," ha ha ha....

• Exile and the Prophetic: Palestine in pieces
  • Sin Nombre October 31, 2012 at 7:09 pm

    Mooser wrote:

    "Yes, Jewish history has been...."

    I was going to say that Mooser touches on something deep here but despite the fact that it was going to be lauding that history and thus is clearly the kind of "exception" to same that this site's new comment policy clearly recognizes I don't think I wanna lend any credence to this new sandbox.

    Assuming this isn't censored then I suspect this is really just a good-bye to all those who I've been reading and interacting with here for all these years, almost invariably enjoyably. Thanks folks.

• Israel won't negotiate with anyone over Jerusalem, Lieberman says
  • Sin Nombre October 22, 2012 at 5:46 am

    Somewhat in line with what I wrote about Rabbi Boteach in that earlier thread, you just stand in awe a bit at the blatancy of it.

    For 40+ years Israel solicits and takes U.S. money on the express basis that it needs that money to defend itself while it is looking for someone to talk to as that is the only way there's going to be any final settlement on who owns what pieces of land.

    And now that it feels it can get away with it and still continue to get that money (and it will), it announces that of course it's not going to negotiate with anyone over the most important piece.

    And of course it's never really going to negotiate with anyone over any of the other important pieces either.

    In other words, one extended con game.

    "I know what America is," sneered Netanyahu famously, and along with Lieberman now becoming ever less concerned about people learning what Israel is.

    Extraordinary people, is all I can say. Really extraordinary. Although of course that's obviously how they think of themselves too, just in a different way.

    History is a funny thing though, albeit moving slowly, so often it just ineluctably strips the veneer off issues and lays bare the reality. And so much of what Netanyahu and Lieberman and clearly Israel itself is banking on is that in then end all this will just be viewed as a property dispute.

    But it won't, I don't think. Given that simply occupying that property doesn't get Israel what it ultimately wants because those pesky unwanted people will still be there, ever more I think it's becoming more and more clear it's going to end up being about jewish superiority/supremacy, and the we'll see how the world views that. No matter how captured and gagged the American congress may be.

    Israel thinks it's isolated now, just wait.

• Adelson doubles down on TV's most famous Republican sex-advice rabbi
  • Sin Nombre October 21, 2012 at 1:08 pm

    @ W.Jones:

    I'm afraid I didn't see that related video and am not really interested as it's not really related at all to what I found interesting in the one I noted. Unlike Dr. Phil and his audience I just wasn't all that interested or aghast at the substance of what his guest the time was talking about: I know about arranged marriages and know they go on all round the globe all the time, and all the other incidences of the kind of orthodox lifestyle she was describing. And while they ain't my cup of tea in the least I don't find myself clutching my heart and falling down when I hear about them. As you note, some women apparently like it, just like you find some not minding polygamy. Not to say that I don't feel for the women who grow up in it and find themselves somewhat trapped in those circumstances *not* liking it—because I do—but I'm just against it, not aghast at it.

    Thus my whole interest in the thing was just the non-substantive performance of the Rabbi there. Like I say I couldn't and still can't wrap my mind around the idea of a *religious* figure having *any* understanding whatsoever of right/wrong, or good/bad, or etc. believing in behaving like that in such a clearly conscious, deliberate, blatant and sustained way.

    From first to last, from beginning to end, it was just as consciously devious and deceitful as can be imagined. First the lying in denying knowledge of what this girl was saying, and then the lying saying it was rare, and then the strained, repetitive soliloquizing manifestly doing nothing but attempting to deny her any time to speak, and then the misrepresenting of what she had said, and then the grandiose expressions at the polar opposite of what he was so clearly covering up for ... it was disgraceful for any human being.

    But coming from a *religious* figure? One apparently recognized and accepted if not celebrated within his religion? (I see the J-Post publishes his articles even.)

    I remember thinking "if that's the jewish religion, man, right down to its very core it must regard all the rest of us as moronic inferiors to be played when necessary by any sort of game imaginable."

    Thus in addition to being as deceitful and devious as imaginable it was also as insulting as is imaginable given that it was clearly aimed at gentiles, since you know that jewish folks in general are at least somewhat more familiar with their orthodox and ultra-orthodox and haredim co-religionists and etc. and their lifestyles.

    A literally unbelievable performance. That this guy could get to be one of our elected representatives blows my mind.

  • Sin Nombre October 20, 2012 at 5:18 pm with 3 replies

    "i was completely flabberghasted"

    Yeah. I mean ... we've all seen all kinds of "public" religious figures; the stupid, the defensive, the aggressive, the blind and etc., etc. And even those fudging facts to some degree. But I'd never ever seen one anything like Boteach. Ever. It wasn't uneven, or just that this or that statement momentarily spiking him into blurting out something defensive or on the edge of conscious falsehood even; it was just simply like seeing a fully conscious and utterly unscrupulous propagandist out lying his ass off and doing whatever he could to obfuscate and dilute what those two others were saying. And not only wasn't there even a molecule of reserve or hesitation (much less shame) to it, you could see how proud this rabbi guy was of what he was doing. It was as fascinating as it was repellent, and that's saying something.

  • Sin Nombre October 20, 2012 at 1:47 pm with 1 replies

    Ah, I looked it up on YouTube. There seems to be 3 parts to it, with Part One leading you onto the link to part 2 and then 3 I guess. I hope all three cover the whole thing.

    So here's the link to Part I:

    link to youtube.com

  • Sin Nombre October 20, 2012 at 1:39 pm with 11 replies

    If you want to see just about the most obvious, blatant lying and misdirection you've ever seen in your life from a person go look up Rabbi Shmuley's recent appearance on Dr. Phil about a month or two ago only where Phil's main guest was a young woman (mid-20's or so) who had grown up in one of those very orthodox communities in New York or New Jersey (like Kiryas Joel or etc., though they didn't name it specifically here), and then tried divorcing the husband she had been set up to marry. His other guest then, confirming this young lady's story was a young man who had also fled one of same. Of course Phil and his audience were very naive about these communities, so much of what they were aghast at was the most banal and well-known even: That (gasp!) there are some arranged marriages going on in these communities! But even here watch and listen to Boteach: A guy who is from and very active in the jewish world in that very area, far more familiar than any of us possible with the every such community, at the very outset trying to derail the rest of the show by first suggesting it was "the most antisemitic thing" he'd ever heard on television, and then just outright claiming that arranged marriages within same are rare rare rare and etc. and so forth. And then, as to all the other stuff these ex-orthodox said, when Boteach wasn't just obviously trying to deprive them of air-time by going on extended Kumbaya speeches it was just the absolute height of obvious covering up for even the most well-known kind of stuff that goes on in those communities. Just as blatant as can be, all under the guise of trying to "help" this young woman and as if her experience was just a freakish rare thing he'd never heard of before.

    Even though this woman had never heard of Boteach before and was so innocent you could see she couldn't have imagined anyone at all trying to play such games with what she was saying you could see even just a few minutes in to the program that she was catching on to him trying to monopolize the time so she couldn't speak, or otherwise trying to simply deny the reality she was revealing. And poor stupid Dr. Phil even started to get what was going on after awhile with this interference with his guests.

    It's probably on Youtube or something, and it's really a spectacle. Like I said, I at least don't know that I've ever seen more a more blatant display than Boteach put on. I just sat there shaking my head thinking "and this guy's a *rabbi*?"

• Israeli ambassador Michael Oren gets hero's welcome in liberal enclave of Brooklyn
  • Sin Nombre October 18, 2012 at 6:57 am

    Les wrote:

    "Is this one of those synagogues that flies the flag of a foreign state?"

    I'm with you, Les. Amazing that you have here a supposed house of religion hosting an ambassador of a foreign state with whom we obviously have differing political interests, with that ambassador then indeed going on and talking extensively if not exclusively on political issues, and only Les found this worthy of remark.

    Rather amazing too the silence about this sort of thing, or the Israeli flag-flying by synagogues, from those typically hair-trigger groups or people—often jewish—who perceive violations of church/state separation at the drop of a hat. E.g., the Catholic church considering excommunicating some self-alleged Catholic candidate who supports abortion, typically spurring all kinds of negative commentary and reportage in the mainstream media. And that doesn't even involve such religions plumping for some foreign country.

    Back to basics, I say. The Israeli partisans want everyone to immediately jump into the endless minute substantive details of this and that and to forget things like this.

• J Street sells its soul, completes evolution to AIPAC lite
  • Sin Nombre October 14, 2012 at 11:59 pm

    Les wrote:

    "America, guess who’s coming to visit"

    Well, it's only stupid to not constantly attend to your milch cow, isn't it?

    After awhile though you'd think the Israelis get at least a bit ashamed of it, but no, not a trace that I've ever detected. Just ever more sentiment along the lines of we *owe* them it for whatever reason. (Including, of course "the Holocaust!," however the hell that thinking works.)

    Somewhat advanced rationalization then, and a two-fer: relieves 'em from the burden of being grateful too, which is yet another thing I perceive them to be in short supply of.

    Boy the American people ever wake up and Israel is gonna find itself about as much hated here as it is in its own neighborhood.

  • Sin Nombre October 14, 2012 at 4:14 pm

    This isn't new I don't think. I believe that since its inception J-Street rejected any cutting of the subsidy to Israel.

    (Including even what it repeated here which is that it's not only against cutting any subsidies to Israel, but even against putting any "condition" on same—categorically, and with no exceptions whatsoever.)

    The question then is what evidence exists that the organization ever was anything *but* a front organization, designed or supported from the start to blunt criticism of Israel and AIPAC and etc. for being extreme via pretending to agree with same and hopefully fooling those with such criticisms to join its fold, but then invariably use its institutional existence and strength to block or blunt the doing of anything to moderate Israel's behavior.

    After all, here you have an ostensibly *American* organization, saying it would be wrong for the U.S. to put *any* conditions whatsoever on its handing over billions upon billions or our money to a foreign power, knowing of course that the only kind of conditions likely to be considered would be those protecting American interests.

    And yet we are supposed to give Mr. ben Ami or whoever else is affiliated with J-Steet's founding and management the benefit of the doubt that ... they don't really *mean* that? That ... they're ever really been concerned with U.S. interests at all?

    And even if they were, there are such things as dupes. After all there are also such things as people who live by the idea that "By way of deception thou shall do war."

• 'Ecumenical deal' crumbles as Christian denominations press on US aid to Israel
  • Sin Nombre October 13, 2012 at 5:48 am with 3 replies

    American wrote:

    "How the Jewish orgs think they can win this is beyond me…"

    How anyone can think the Christian organizations are really gonna push this to any serious point is beyond me. After all they've kept very nicely silent lo all these years now, patiently not saying anything much through the Nakba, and then the Israeli starting of the '67 war (a "war of aggression" in Nuremberg terms that they should have condemned like mad), and then through the invasion and occupation of Lebanon for all those years, and the indiscriminate bombing of Beirut, and Sabra and Shatila, and the giant galloping settlements, and the intifadas ....

    But now, suddenly, after you got those 500,000 settlers already in place and it's already way too late ... oh yeah, sure ... they are gonna find their cohones. Just you see....

    Pfui.

    Where were their principles before, after all? Hiding?

    No, what's being misunderstood here is the fundamental nature of the leaders of these Christian religious groups. Marinated in Political Correctness, and indeed securing their very status by being PC sock puppets, it's guilt that's their stock in trade. And the more the better. "My oh my we Christians are just guilty guilty guilty of ... you name it historically." And no matter how clear it was that the very bonfire of evil that was communism and fascism was fueled by the very antithesis of Christian belief and faith, well, hell, of *course* they would buy into some guilt over that too, couldn't they? After all "Germany was Christian, wasn't it!," the bumper-sticker-shallow fact went, and indeed was more than enough. "And wasn't that Pope in it up to his eyeballs too?," goes the refrain, even if the scholarship behind that sort of thing could only at best say "he didn't do enough," as if that wasn't true about everyone.

    Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt, that's the tao of most of these people. That indeed is the very chant by which they secure and justify their positions: Telling their flocks—you know, the older masses that actually fought WWII, and opposed Stalin and the Soviets and Mao, and repugnantly repudiated Jim Crow and racism and etc.—how baaad they have been so that they need to be led unto the promised land by these somehow uniquely clear-sighted new, young activists. (Who were probably waving portraits of Ho Chi Minh and Mao back in the Sixties.)

    So what's the equation? Especially now that it's too late? Really really stand tall against Israel and advocate ... "ethnic cleansing of jews" from the occupied territories? 500,000 of them? Really? And repudiate all that guilt over the Holocaust and everything else including bad breath that's been dumping on Christianity since the Sixties? That wonderful guilt that is their very claim to fame or at least to their position?

    Nah.... You know what they'll settle for? Just a tad more twaddle about "the peace process" from the Israelis perhaps, and then it'll be "gee you know those Palestinians have to *realistic,* and my oh my of course they can't resort to any *violence*...."

    And when the next intifada/violence comes, as it inevitably will, no matter the deep theological validity of the right of self-defense, because these folks know only the validity of political correct shallowness they'll run to the nearest dark corner so as not to be noticed for some more decades.

    So no no, you can't indict "the Right" or "conservatism" or etc. solely for what we see. Despite their responsibility being great indeed in abandoning the idea of democracy, and not having the U.S. go about being the world's policeman and etc. and so forth. The Left and liberalism has its share of the responsibility to bear here too. When you elect mere polemical sloganeering to be your pole star, well what burns brighter than "the Holocaust! the Holocaust!"?

    Or, to put it another way, what card or even collection cards trumps *that* when laid on the table? No matter if neither the Palestinians nor you had a fucking thing to do with it, and indeed no matter if you were the one to put an end to it?

• Evangelical Lutheran Church calls for US inquest into human rights violations in Israel, and some Jewish groups are outraged
  • Sin Nombre October 9, 2012 at 8:46 pm

    Just as a matter of cataloging the ... taxonomy of reactions of folks like AJC, the JCPA, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Reform organizations and etc., it might be noted that while they get exercised over any moral criticism of Israel, *nothing* compares to the degree of their reaction to any calls to review the now obviously eternal showering of Israel with billions of American dollars.

    *Nothing.*

    No matter what Israel does, no matter how much it harms our interests, no matter how broke we are, no matter that it's *our* money ... goddamn it we just better keep those billions coming and keep our mouths about it.

• Israelis celebrating Sukkot beat Palestinians worshipers
  • Sin Nombre October 5, 2012 at 3:31 pm

    AMERICAN wrote:

    "I think you may be right about some pre existing ideology within the Jewish tribe or within some sects of Judaism being grafted onto zionism."

    Well of course when looking for what pre-existing ideology/idea(s)/world-view/self-conception might explain it it's awful hard to ignore the jewish claim to being "chosen" people by God. Especially given the literalness, seriousness and concreteness with which they take the seemingly related idea that God has "given" them a certain chunk of real estate too.

    But I don't know enough about that "choseness" concept, I don't think. I've often heard it said it's actually the imposition of a duty, but then have seen it claimed that that itself can be shown to have been a blatant bit of rabbinically-originated, in-tribe misdirection of gentiles. Along the lines of ... it being perfectly okay per the Torah to walk by a drowning gentile, unless doing so would rile up other gentiles against the tribe.

    I just dunno enough about that facet of things.

  • Sin Nombre October 5, 2012 at 10:30 am with 22 replies

    See? In the other recent thread entitled "The Crisis of the Israel Lobby" (link to mondoweiss.net) I noted that the more I thought of it the less Zionism was the explanation of lots of what we see today with Israel and the more it had to do with some sort of ... *jewish* "ideology",world-view or conception.

    Likewise then we have what happened here: How does Zionism explain this? Where does Zionism ever say it cannot tolerate even a few non jews within its bounds so that when they are found praying, as here, they must be attacked?

    Like I said in that older thread whatever it is it might be *called* "Zionism" now, and might even be thought of as "Zionist" in inspiration by those committing these acts, but that just pushes back the question because they don't seem explicable by original Zionism. Some *other* ideology/world-view/conception seems to me at play, very possibly grafted onto Zionism, but which wasn't there in original Zionism at all.

    Maybe it's not some "jewish" ideology/world-view/conception, I dunno, but at least to me it ain't Zionism I don't think.

• The crisis of the Israel lobby
  • Sin Nombre October 7, 2012 at 3:01 am with 1 replies

    Colin Wright wrote:

    "I’d say it all owes little to any ethnic peculiarities."

    Well that's right. Indeed it owes *nothing*to any ethnic peculiarities—intrinsically/genetically speaking.

    Again it's just ... ideology. Nurture. Affiliated with an ethnicity or nationality or whatever no different than one might be affiliated with some occupation. E.g., lawyers having some particular world-view.

    Nothing anyone is born with.

    Culture culture culture; seems like it's impossible these days to talk about same without folks immediately confusing it with race, genes, ethnicity or etc.

  • Sin Nombre October 4, 2012 at 4:03 pm with 1 replies

    No, I'm not. Or at least not in the way that you are defining "ethnicity."

    But in the first place I wasn't "ascribing" anything to anything definitely. I was simply wondering if, instead of the idea that it's the ideology of Zionism that has many jews supporting—as Phil puts it—"discriminatory policies in the Middle East that they would never tolerate in the U.S.," its some "ideology" or "world-view" or at least somewhat common understanding of jewishness itself that is responsible for same.

    I.e., the idea that it's okay for jews to push positions on others that they themselves feel utterly free to reject.

    And in the second place by talking about some "ideology/world-view/jewish understanding" I'm obviously talking nurture, not nature.

    Whereas, at least in my conception, by talking ethnicity you are talking something immutable, in the blood, and/or etc. E.g., my slavic ethnicity.

    And indeed the more I think about this the less strong the "Zionism" explanation seems to get to me at least.

    For instance, I don't see anything in just the simple idea of jews having homeland located in the ancient land of Israel that necessarily excludes or discriminates against arabs or anyone else, nor that requires jewish supremacy, nor even that requires a jewish *state.*

    And indeed and of course that *wasn't* what was originally asked: It was for a "homeland."

    And then there's the second component which is how this is supposed to translate into the "jews telling everyone else one thing but doing the opposite themselves" question. After all Zionism originally can be seen as just about the purest expression of opposition to supremacy and discrimination: It was simply the invention designed to distance and relieve jews from same at the hands of gentiles. And it hardly said "okay, give us a homeland away from you and we'll then applaud your continuing supremacist/discriminatory ideas."

    So we come back to the question of ... just what "ideology" or etc. *does* explain Phil's observation about jews supporting " discriminatory policies in the Middle East that they would never tolerate in the U.S."?

    Now of course whatever it is it may well have *come* to be called the ideology of Zionism, but that begs the question since, as noted, the original conception of Zionism did *not* seem to support the "discriminatory policies." So where did that *changed* conception come from? What "ideology" or "world-view" or whatever is responsible for that little addendum?

    And that's all I was asking.

• Tyler: US must defuse 'detonator' Israel's impetus for neverending war in Middle East
  • Sin Nombre September 27, 2012 at 7:23 pm with 1 replies

    I think it might have been helpful to have noted where Tyler got his "detonator" language from, not only to note it comes from Israel itself but also to note its fullness.

    As Tyler quoted, the phrase originated with Moshe Dayan who, way back when, argued for Israel to take up the following policy that is nothing but a form of sheer blackmail. So here's Dayan's statement:

    "When someone wishes to force on us things which are detrimental to our existence, there will be an explosion which will shake up wide areas, and realizing this, such elements in the international system will do their utmost to prevent damage to us."

• Anti-Semitism is alive and well (in the U.S. political discourse, anyway)
  • Sin Nombre September 22, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    Just a thought experiment here:

    Can anyone imagine, say, American palestinians or American Ukrainians who just happen to be host and guests on any national TV or radio program talking about some completely divorced subject such as Mitt Romney, and yet joking between themselves about being on "National Nakba Radio"? Or "The Holomodor Show" or etc.?

    Such a good joke though: A supposedly non-ethnically based national show, talking about contemporary politics that involves at the very least the possibility of war demanded of us by Israel, with the host being jewish, and then ... all the guests Left and Right being jewish too! With this sort of imbalance not being anything out of the ordinary.

    Ha ha ha though! Such a good joke one can openly laugh about it.

    As if to say ... "Fuck you."

    Not, of course, that there'd be anything to laugh about if one saw the similar thing all the time with a huge preponderance of palestinian Americans. Or Ukranian Americans. Or indeed any other variety of Americans. Instead of course it would be screaming about the lack of "diversity"! Of obvious discrimination!

    But ha ha ha for some.

• Walt, Munayyer, and Mearsheimer offer one state scenarios, and my response
  • Sin Nombre September 24, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    American said:

    "You’re reading too much into what I said."

    Understood. As I noted it was just some of the implications of what you had said before that I took from, but that you had not expressly signed on to them. (And they weren't *necessary* implications either.)

    "if [Israel] can be a half way normal or peaceful state 'on it’s own' without special behavior exemptions and special support it is in fact not owed , I see no problem."

    What about its artificially maintaining its jewish monopoly on power? That I think was the biggie I was getting at. (Clumsily for sure.)

  • Sin Nombre September 23, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    Lemme take issue on what is at least one implication of what you're saying, American, even though you don't quite come out and endorse that implication expressly.

    Of course there's nothing to disagree with in terms of most of what you say, however, the fact is that the world *did* see fit—inasmuch as "the world" can ever speak—to grant the jews a state. And even the Arab League now is ready to recognize that state.

    So while you observe that "the world" didn't owe the jews this, the fact is it essentially disagreed with you.

    Now, of course it's still true that this can be seen as a "special case," unfair to all the other ethnicities who once had land and/or a place of their own and were driven off or fled in terror or etc. But it goes without saying that just because you can't or don't do the "right" thing for everyone doesn't mean that it's wrong when you do it for one.

    And again I think the world has essentially said the initial creation of the jewish state was indeed the "right" thing to do.

    The implication then of what you have written is that one should work to strip Israel proper of its recognition, although again you haven't quite come out and said that and may indeed not endorse that. But it is the strong implication. And because of what I said above about the world having decided Israel proper was the "right" thing I believe doing what that implication tends to urge is wrong.

    I.e., people ought to support the existence of Israel proper. And not just because of the above ideas I have tried to articulate, but also—and this I think just cannot be over-emphasized in importance—because of the purely pragmatic benefits of recognizing some stability in the world by recognizing some precedent. It's been 50+ years now that the world has said Israel proper is okay; you overturn that now and what are you saying? What's your statute of limitations for overturning what you see as historical wrongs? You really, for instance, wanna throw open the borders of Europe again for dispute? And what about our *American* borders? Boy, the Mexicans would sure love that.

    Throwing such things open is like lifting the lid on Pandora's box, it seems to me. Which is why Bush, for instance, is to be so condemned. It was, after all, the *American* led idea after WWII and Stalin and Hitler that the worst thing in the world was aggressive war, usually launched for territorial aggrandizing or colonial/imperial reasons. That, as Judge Jackson said at Nuremberg, was *the* cardinal crime, from which the vast majority of other crimes and sins flowed.

    So Bush came along with invading Iraq and, fool that he is, on a whim essentially overthrew that hard-won wisdom like opening a pack of chewing gum.

    And if the world were to endorse the idea that we can re-jigger 50+ year-old history that Pandora's box would just be thrown even wider open. Wars here, there, everywhere, constantly, saying "we want to rectify this (fill in the blank # of years-old) historical wrong."

    I also endorse the idea of not questioning Israel's existence (Israel proper that is) even though it clearly was allowed as a "jewish" state, so meaning it's not necessarily democratic. There's lots of state's that aren't democratic in the world, and once again I think there's a sharp limit on trying to go back and redo history.

    This is not to say I have any great sympathy for Israel and the present questioning of its basic right to exist. (Although I think that questioning even makes the present situation worse.) It has essentially *invited* it by *not* remaining "Israel proper" and now trying to be Greater Israel, and absolutely none of that ought to tolerated. And Israel trying has been nothing less than *inviting* people to rail against its basic existence.

    But even though it's done that I don't think that invitation ought to be taken up. The world decided that Israel proper ought to exist and we ought to live with it. But the world also decided that nobody had the right to do what Israel did since outside its borders and the answer to this is similar in that Israel ought to be made to live with *that.*

    My 2 cents at least....

  • Sin Nombre September 23, 2012 at 11:35 am

    @ David Samel:

    Seems to me you've perceived a nice theoretical point, David, which however not only doesn't stand up in the face of further theorizing, but is, as the saying goes, killed by a single nasty stubborn fact.

    Your theoretical point, that is, is that because a One-SS would *not* entail the removal of the settlers of the land they are squatting on it would be far easier to get acceptance for than a Two-SS.

    On its face, sounds smart. But you're forgetting: Those settlers don't just covet that land because they live upon it ... like, say, the Westward-Ho American settlers did with their cabins out in Kansas Territory. They covet that land because of *where* it is. In Israel. The jewish state. The state that essentially oversees all the land of the jews.

    So asking them to "merely" move is one thing so long as it's asking them to move to another part of Israel (and so long as Israel doesn't give up any land—including esp. what was "theirs"—in the deal).

    But telling them they can stay but that hey ... they'd then lose the absolute entirety of what "Israel" means to them and what it means to be living where they are ... My God one can just imagine the reaction.

    And the nasty stubborn little fact your theory runs into is just simply reality:

    If, after all, a One-SS solution is so much more palatable than a Two-SS, then how come in all these years it's *never* seem to have attracted even a *molecule* of real support in Israel whatsoever? How come, when we look around at the Israeli discourse even today when the Two-SS solution seems doomed, there's *still* no such molecules of support for a One-SS?

    Indeed, contrast that stunning lack with what support there is to the logical option to a One-SS: I.e., apartheid or ethnic cleansing.

    I mean ... even despite everyone knowing the nastiness with which the world regards same—certainly tamping down lots of Israelis openly endorsing it—well my God there you have the Foreign Minister of Israel *himself* openly talking about his belief in ethnic cleansing. And entire political parties that this is clearly attractive too, and etc., etc.

    Like I say, you've made a keen theoretical observation, but haven't considered it in context, I don't think, nor in the light of what lots and lots of history and modern reality shows either.

  • Sin Nombre September 23, 2012 at 11:11 am

    Jerry Slater wrote:

    "Could you spell out what you think I’m disguising about my views?"

    Hello Mr. Slater:

    First off let me hasten to add that I should have said that my opinion is that you were *unconsciously* describing your view as being milder than it is—due, as you have indeed again asserted here, to your (understandable) remaining affection for liberal Zionism and your equally understandable affection for the other jews and Zionists like you who would be perfectly willing to be a part of a bi-national state.

    So: No offense meant whatsoever. I thought it was clear that I was not indicting you whatsoever for anything, but I see now I could have explained this further.

    And in terms of how your original words disguised things, let's first note that you don't seem to dispute my take on your views that what you were really saying was that your Israelis and their Diaspora supporters are simply too "racist/tribalist/insular/ethno-centric/etc. to ever ever ever consider sharing their state with any goyim.”

    And now go back and look at all the different ways you believe you said that, with perhaps the most pungent way that you put it was that "as I see it, every obstacle to the attainment of a two-state settlement makes a one-state settlement inconceivable."

    Thus, I don't think that formulation, nor any of the other ways you described it was as flat out harsh as I put it, and hence my observation that what you were saying was "disguised" somewhat.

    But and again I hasten to add that this wasn't out of any deliberate attempted distortion of yours; just a totally understandable desire to not hear things put in their harshest manner, that's all.

    And, like I said, I think your crystal-ball gazing here is correct over that of Walt & Mearsheimer and other One-State boosters. Just like Israel has repeatedly told the world to go pound salt for all of these last 50+ years on any number of things, one way or another it ain't gonna hesitate to practice whatever apartheid or ethnic cleansing or etc. it needs to so as to prevent a bi-national One State, period.

  • Sin Nombre September 22, 2012 at 7:24 pm with 65 replies

    libra wrote:

    "Sorry Jerry. You’re the one who’s got it backwards. The onus is on people like you."

    With all due respect I don't think so, libra.

    What, after all, is THE difference between Slater and One-Staters like W&M & Co.?

    Well I think while disguised by Slater for personal reasons, it's this: Unlike W&M & Co. he doesn't think the Israelis and their Diaspora support are gonna be moved by being called apartheidists, or are gonna be stopped from ethnically cleansing their One State of arabs and moslems, and that's a remarkable—but remarkably well-grounded assertion.

    While this may just be a matter of my judgment Slater seems to me to have the better of the knowledge and experience base than those others in terms of judging Israeli/jewish attitudes. But beyond that even what's the concrete *evidence* that Israel and its Diaspora supporters are going to prove susceptible to a bi-national One State solution? And, essentially, just give up what they say with lots of evidence has been their 2000 *year* longing for a uni-national state? A uni-national state they have militantly and indeed fanatically fought for and insisted upon and have never wavered in pledging allegiance to ever since its founding over 50+ years ago?

    Now, Slater I think disguises this difference with W&M & Co. because he has some considerable affection for the jewish cause and people, and thus he wants to avoid coming right out and saying "Oh no no no, my people are far too ... racist/tribalist/insular/ethno-centric/etc. to ever ever ever consider sharing their state with any goyim," but let's face it, that's *exactly* along the line that he's taking. Israelis and their Diaspora supporters are just never never never gonna agree to share power in a State of Israel with non-jews, period. No matter what.

    And note too the difficulty if not utter impossibility of *any* recent major Israeli/jewish figure standing up for bi-nationalism. *Any.* Indeed, along the lines of just how fanatical the opposite feeling goes one is reminded of the comment of the usually ultra-sober Martin Van Creveld talking about how, before Israel were to "go down" and stop being a State of the jews it would essentially pull down the entire *world's* house via the so-called Samson Option.

    So *that's* the kind of fanaticism one senses. And thus, forgetting even what might be called Slater's closer knowledge of Israeli/jewish thinking, we have that 2000 year and 50+ year history on his side. And during that last 50+ year history simply *tons* of times on various issues big and small that the Israelis and their supporters have told the world (and are still telling it) to go pound salt. Including re: occupying and developing illegally seized lands, war crimes, and possessing nuclear weapons.

    So how come the onus is upon those who say, essentially, that suddenly Israelis and their Diaspora supporters are gonna *change* and start thinking differently? Where indeed is the *whit* of evidence that suddenly they're gonna go all Desmond Tutu gooey over the world's opinion?

    (Note: While irrelevant, because all I'm saying is let's talk evidence here, I suppose to escape the charge anyway I should note that this doesn't make me a Two-Stater, because I'm not. Nor indeed am I a One-Stater really, but like I say, all this is irrelevant.)

• Exile and the Prophetic: Researching the Jewish future in the Israel State Archives
  • Sin Nombre September 22, 2012 at 2:20 am

    I forgot who it was I read some time ago—some European jewish intellectual who reminded me a bit of Abba Eban for some reason (the beautiful clarity of his writing maybe, or just the subtle manner of thinking)—but he was talking/worrying about the sort of subterranean lesson he thought continental Europe at least was taking from what was going on in the U.S. and the Middle East and to a lesser effect with Great Britain similarly. I.e., to the effect of persuading that yes, that's exactly what you get when you reach a certain concentration of jews in your government. (Some of which they supposedly already see in their own.) First, that is, jews practicing a constant quiet but unmistakeable self-help so that gradually in whatever niche or bureaucracy they're in—typically "key" ones of the greatest importance—eventually one looks and see their numbers astonishing if not often dominating. Simply unaccountable other than via some mischief. And then there's the ineluctable turn whenever and however possible to helping international jewish causes, especially Israel. To the point where even though the official position of the country may be absolutely and directly contrary to this or that Israeli interest or position, and the public position of the citizenry is even *wildly* hostile to that Israeli interest or position (such as is often the case in Great Britain, it was said), no, for some reason that's invariably obscure nothing *ever* really happens as a result of same. The Israelis do something—Cast Lead for instance—and there's the issuance of all kinds of outrage and everyone waits for the consequence and ... somehow nothing ever happens. Somewhere in the bureaucracy someone—some many ones it seems almost certain—have just ... smothered it up somehow. And somehow the actual *doing* of anything idea never makes it to the top or, if it does, is invariably argued down from all kinds of directions and sources with what seems boundless sudden energy and coordination. Thus there's some initial explosion/outrage, and at best if anyone's still asking a little "tsk tsk" a few weeks later in the vein of "yes that old bit of news was too bad then, wasn't it?," whereupon it just disappears.

    "Like a magic trick" the comparison comes to mind with some of the illustrations this guy alluded to, but then you feel guilty for not facing up to noting that no, it's more like the old meme of jews as engaged in some great conspiracy. But, regardless, this is indeed the alleged "lesson" that this guy says is being taken, and that don't auger well for the jewish future in Europe at least.

    And I would say that while it seems almost incomprehensible here now, we ought to now be accustomed to seeing the incomprehensible becoming the real after the last mere decade (a President proposing to kill Americans without trial?), and American public opinion could turn against jews here too.

    Certainly you read the comment section now below almost any news story touching on the issue, damn near in any publication, and my God the resentment out there. And now you got the Netanyahu ad for Romney: Well what the hell is that *other* than an acceptance into the give-and-take ring of our politics now? "You wanna play?," I think lots of people feel, "then you're fair game too goddamn it, no matter how much you want to say you're for Romney because he's good for 'America' instead of Israel."

    Of course if one could perceive the Middle East/Israel issue settling down in even the middling future none of this might matter. But I at least don't see it. What's Israel doing now but insisting that the world tell Iran—and presumably any others it designates too—that it has the obligation to limit Iran's scientific and technological advancement, period. No refining of uranium, period, and no doubt we'd hear the same about Syria if that was clearer there, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. Israel is just simply insisting that, ad infinitum, the arab/moslem world be put under the world's thumb in terms of what technology and/or etc. it will be allowed to have, and how crazy is that? (To this non-Israeli at least.)

    So no, there don't appear to be any end-game in sight here, and indeed I think one can easily smell war in the not-so-distant future.

    Mr. Prophetic might wanna turn his lens in this direction in thinking about the "jewish future direction" in the Diaspora at least.

• 3 NY Jewish groups condemn Pam Geller's 'savages' ad in subways
  • Sin Nombre September 21, 2012 at 10:19 am

    Scott wrote:

    "When will Foxman weigh in?"

    Right, that's considering this in its right context. When, say, the jewish reaction against this "savages" business reaches even 1/2 of the reaction it would if jews were described as, say, greedy, *then* okay, that would be saying something. Otherwise with anything less how come this shouldn't be regarded as utterly meaningless tokenism? Just as, say, an employer's excuse would be if charged with anti-semitic discrimination when they trotted out that they employed one jew ... in a workforce of one million?

• Pro-Israel ads suggesting Muslims are 'savage' set to arrive in NY subways next week
  • Sin Nombre September 20, 2012 at 11:21 am

    “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.”

    Gee, I'm conflicted. Here you got a people who once lived in nice little villages and ran nice little shops but mostly were peacefully engaged in tending little plots of land and goats and olive groves since time immemorial. And now they've been herded either into refugee camps or crowded, stinking towns, constantly surveilled from above by military technology, subject to instant death from above without notice, and being otherwise showered with white phosphorus, flechette weapons depleted uranium weapons and on and on and on.

    And yet we're told it's the man on the *firing* end of those weapons at those people that's the "civilized" one?

  • Sin Nombre September 19, 2012 at 6:10 pm with 2 replies

    So next in this elevation of the discourse is ads portraying jews as cunning, greedy manipulators?

    One wonders just what goes on in the heads of the Pamela Gellers of the world.

• In new leaked tapes, Romney rejects two-state solution - 'The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world'
  • Sin Nombre September 18, 2012 at 4:29 pm with 1 replies

    You guys aren't thinking this through. You should be *cheering* Romney on.

    "No second state? Well then of course you have to agree that Israel give the Palestinians the right to vote at least in whatever state they are in, right?"

    And thereby ask him if he also doesn't believe in democracy.

    That's the problem with the morons the Neo-cons use like Bush and Romney; at *some* point *some* daylight intrudes.

    And at least *something* is happening, instead of watching the Israelis and the U.S. keep paying off the P.A. to pretend it's doing anything, all the while watching the pizza it should be fighting over getting eaten by settlers.

• It's not about religion, says Gregory Harms. I say it is
  • Sin Nombre September 17, 2012 at 3:56 am with 3 replies

    I have of course seen this meme before—that the Balfour Declaration was an attempt to enlist jewish support for the allies in WWI—but I don't think I've ever seen MRW's reverse idea that Jewry wanted England on its side and so essentially was the dominant party there.

    Regardless, doesn't this more than flirt a little with Hitler's grand claim that indeed one of the big reasons German lost in WWI was because of world-wide jewry's machinations against it?

    From my readings—admittedly not directly on the meme issue, and mostly just having to do with Balfour—my sense is that Balfour was just honestly intellectually moved by the jews historic plight and was persuaded by Weizman (sic?) that a homeland in Palestine wasn't going to hurt anyone.

    Be glad to hear cites to contrary stuff for sure....

• Netanyahu's warmongering spells high noon for the Israel lobby
  • Sin Nombre September 13, 2012 at 9:07 am with 1 replies

    yonah freedman wrote:

    "Iran and a blow up with the US are definitely important issues, but they will not be enough to get Israel to vote for someone whom they view as giving away too much on the Palestinian front nor on the Syrian front."

    This sounds very much like the voice of considered opinion, and as such deserves a second thought for its importance.

    After all as I see it, albeit roughly speaking, what is it saying but that to the average Israeli the keeping of the West Bank and the Golan is worth endangering Israel's relationship with the U.S.

    To a great degree of course it just reveals the sham the average Israeli has wanted to perpetrate on the U.S.: I.e., pretending to be willing to negotiate away those things in one of the U.S.'s perpetual (and perpetually failed) "peace processes."

    Even more significant however ... just think about it: The attachment to that additional land has come to be regarded as so holy in Israel that it would even risk losing what it gets from the U.S. for same. Risk, indeed, even its existential existence and going it solely alone for those territories.

    The closer yonah's judgment is to the truth translates directly into the equation of just how far away we are from ever seeing any resolution to things over there, and then also just how cataclysmic things are going to have to get to see that resolution.

    Funny: I can see the ultimate end-game that the arabs/moslems may come to hold given as this becomes ever more evident–essentially the destruction of Israel.

    But what is *Israel's* end-game? How can *they* hope to ever win this thing? Beating the arabs in war after war hasn't helped. Indeed it can seem to have hurt. So how do they see this ever ending happily? Or are they content with the idea of war never-ending?

  • Sin Nombre September 12, 2012 at 5:54 pm with 1 replies

    In general in the U.S. Israel's power didn't stem from its popularity, it stemmed from hard-eyed campaign financing, and I don't see that changing in the future. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if we were to now see that effort being redoubled. At the very worst it ain't all that difficult to take a 100 million or 200 million or whatever it takes off $3.5 billion per year and recycle it back into the U.S. political system.

    There's a difference between seeing the limits of power, and seeing the end of same.

• Netanyahu once said 'America is a thing you can move very easily' -- where does he want to move it with his latest Iran outbursts?
  • Sin Nombre September 12, 2012 at 12:42 pm

    What makes me smile is the almost certain blatant untruth that Netanyahu uses in saying Israel is being "stopped" or prevented or etc. from attacking Iran.

    After all what's the purpose instead of saying what's far more likely the real truth which is that the U.S. and others just simply don't *approve* of an Israeli strike?

    Ah but of course, the latter conveys nothing other than mere disagreement with Israel attacking. The former, on the other hand, is just clearly due to anti-semitism.

    So it's now anti-semitic to not at least *join* Israel in its wars.

• 'Continuous settler violence' stirs EU condemnation, leaves 6-year-old boy sleepless
  • Sin Nombre September 7, 2012 at 2:17 pm

    I'd dispute that. From what I can gather there's a damn near *daily* and chronic number of "attacks" going on against some Palestinians in some areas, such as in Hebron. Palestinians kids and women—every day—being subjected to attacks in one form or another.

    And indeed when look at the reports of this kind of thing or see the videos driving the Palestinians out due to such daily harassment and etc. is quite clearly *the* goal they have in mind. Or, in other words, not the retributive-type you see on the Palestinian side now at least. (E.g., attacks to avenge this or that Palestinian death or attack on this or that Palestinian area.)

    True, in one sense an attack is an attack to the victims. On the other hand we are talking about intent here, and clearly the intent of the settlers in harassing the Hebron people, killing the livestock of others or cutting their olive trees or throwing rocks or poisoning their wells, is indeed ethnic cleansing.

    I know it's a horrible thing to consider for jews, but let's face it, they've got a nice little segment of their population that they cosset and subsidize and etc. that views the presence of non-jews amongst them an on "their" claimed lands no differently than the Nazis did the presence of jews amongst them, and while they are not acting like Nazis in doing their cleansing we don't just condemn the Nazis for their methods, do we?

  • Sin Nombre September 7, 2012 at 11:07 am with 4 replies

    And this "continuous settler violence" is exactly how Israel is gonna get a "one-state" solution it likes (*its* state alone basically), with the settlers, acting "independently," being the ethnic cleansers of the state.

• In caving on Jerusalem, Dems pulled back the curtain on the lobby
  • Sin Nombre September 6, 2012 at 11:29 am with 2 replies

    I'll admit to a secret love of seeing folks like Mark Shields doing stuff like this with regard to Israel. Oh so freaking moralistic and fearless and the need to talk forever about any and every other issue. Oh so ... transgressive, they see themselves as. So really ... radical, man. Like some Cong Truth Tellers.

    And then, suddenly, Israel is mentioned and ... they curl up into little hibernating balls of dormice.

    "Ooops!," they know, "one minor mis-statement here and that's my career, baby, and there goes my entree into The Swells' social circle too, and maybe they even go after my family's career too...."

    Oh so fearless and brave.... Oh so strident telling everyone else their duty to be the same....

• Obama talks to Iran and washes hands of Israeli attack, Ynet reports
  • Sin Nombre September 4, 2012 at 9:13 am with 1 replies

    Yet another thing to consider regarding the validity of this story of Iran "backchanneling" is whether any other news outlet eventually confirms it. So far at least I don't think I've seen that done, and of course you'd expect the Israeli papers in particular would be wildly going after that, and yet their majors haven't so confirmed yet. (Although it's admittedly a bit early in the story.)

    Still and all, one nice thing to see is that Dempsey hasn't been called on the carpet to reel back his "not complicit" talk.

    So take that, Bibi.

  • Sin Nombre September 4, 2012 at 3:32 am with 2 replies

    There are situations in which the evidence is just too slight, contradictory, confusing and/or etc. that, to be careful, one just has to say that no real conclusions can be drawn yet and I think this is one of them.

    On the one hand it makes a helluva lot of sense that hard on the heels of Dempsey's "not complicit" language the U.S. would be going and signaling Iran that if it's attacked the U.S. will indeed be ... non-complicit.

    And one can suspect that the Obama Admin is sensing Israel getting ready to attack and so is trying to pull the rug out from under same right now.

    Plus, all this would well account for the reports of Netanyahu going ballistic on our Ambassador just the other day.

    On the other hand however ... what's the use of the U.S. using intermediaries sending this message to Iran if the spokesperson for Obama is then going to immediately and categorically deny that message which he has seemed to do with Carney?

    Plus then there is the well-known Israel tactic of putting out a story like that so as to try to force U.S. admins to deny them and so fix us in a contrary policy.

    True, that's risky because Obama could have delightfully seized upon the story and just have said "no comment" to call Israel's bluff, but the fact is ... he didn't, did he? Carney was out there saying there's no truth whatsoever to same pretty categorically.

    It also seems to me to be way way out of character for Obama esp. but indeed for any US Pres. in the present circumstances to be so bold as to risk the politics of being revealed as secretly "cozying up to" the Iranians/"appeasing" them or etc. (I.e., just simply talking with them, even indirectly.) Just think of the resonance of the words "Irangate II" in the White House now, and they know that of course the Neo-cons would be using it in a second if true, and calling for Congressional investigations with AIPAC behind 'em all the way.

    And doing so now, after Obama's been doing nothing before but breaking his back appeasing Israel? And after just saying he's *increasing* sanctions on Iran and now allowing new covert operations against it?

    Something just doesn't ring right, and there's so many actors out there, with so many agendas, and this doesn't even begin to take into account rogue actors ....

    Plus then one has to take into account one's own hopes and now that affects one's beliefs. Mine is that of course I hope this report is true, which then makes me be more dubious about it automatically.

    For right now then I'd say at *best* the evidence is just too inconclusive to judge, if not in fact tilting away from the validity of this story.

    Just my .02 cents.

• American Jews who choose 'humanitarian values' over Zionism are tempting another Holocaust --Gordis's blackmail
  • Sin Nombre September 2, 2012 at 2:49 pm with 1 replies

    Daniel Gordis wrote:

    "Faced with a choice between loyalty to their humanitarian values or to their parents’ Zionism [read "tribalism"], they have chosen the former...."

    So let's see: Gordis is precisely the kind of guy to be praising to the skies the idea that jews have been at the forefront of going around the world telling everyone else what humanitarian, universalist values they have to follow or be damned forever. And yet here he admits that he knows damn well it means nothing less than national or ethnic suicide for those others. So too bad so sad, he's saying. It's only when it comes to *jews* that this result matters: Vis a vis everyone else it's just evil.

    Chosen indeed.

    And then Gordis writes further:

    "Without the State of Israel, the self-confidence and sense of belonging that American Jews now take for granted would quickly disappear...."

    So ... American jews just take for granted that they "belong" in Israel and not here?

    And how exactly is this different from arguing that their first loyalty is to Israel and only secondarily to the the United States and their fellow U.S. citizens?

    Or in other words if you cast it positively, you're a mensch, negatively, and you're an anti-semite.

    One gets so sick of this now, it's so blatant....

• WaPo on DC career game: 'If you want to get ahead, you protect Israel, you don't talk about illegal settlements'
  • Sin Nombre September 1, 2012 at 11:35 am

    Phil Weiss wrote:

    "Remember Les Gelb explaining why he supported the Iraq War?"

    No no no, Phil. Not the same thing at all. There were any number of reasons one could give for not supporting that war, remember, other than that it was for Israel's sake. Especially given that Israel was playing coy saying it *wasn't* behind it.

    Thus Gelb was merely talking about wanting to be a part of the herd of independent minds.

    What Pexton is talking about is far far worse and ought to be the reason for great outcry and that is fear: That is, the network of jewish individuals in power in Washington who will positively *hurt* (if they can't actually end) your Washington career if you speak out on such things as the settlements.

    A very very different thing I think; very much like the level of remembering and malice and vengefulness talked about by guys like Paul Findlay.

    And a very revealing one too given the sheer numbers who must be involved to have created and sustained that fear. Again like Findlay reported, with practically no secrets from any agency or institution in Washington, from the WH on down, that that the Israelis don't just happen to know almost immediately after we learn them.

    Indeed, quite a breakthrough to have this Pexton guy writing this as he's surely on the list forever now.

    Sort of convenient too: Wonder if this isn't Obama striking back a little now at Israel: Has put his foot in concrete on no attack for now; has Dempsey saying we don't even want to be complicit; is getting the predictable crap from the usual Israeli-inspired crowd not to mention Adelson and Yaweh-knows-who-else funding Romney instead of him ... and so as with Dempsey's comment is saying "enough, I'm going to start fighting back"?

    Sure is something that's overdue but still would be welcome, that's for sure.

• US scales back military exercise with Israel; Israeli official tells TIME, 'Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you''
  • Sin Nombre September 1, 2012 at 9:49 am

    Carowhat wrote:

    "Netanyahu will only strike Iran before the election if he thinks Obama will win (because after the election Obama will have a free hand to resist war with Iran). But if Netanyahu thinks Obama is going to lose, he might as well wait till Romney takes office to launch any strike, given Romney’s bellicosity on Iran and apparent willingness to fight Israel’s war for him."

    I suspect Israel/Netanyahu are very suspicious of Romney. Sure, lots of talk now from him, and certainly surrounding himself with neo-cons "helps," but as someone else here said with Romney having made the economy front-and-center of his campaign who lightly believes that right off the bat after getting elected he's gonna utterly tank it (via oil prices alone) by *either* participating in an attack on Iran or green-lighting Israel to attack?

    So Israel/Netanyahu is in a bind given the alternative of Obama being reelected and substantially out of reach of AIPAC and etc., which I suspect is why he let loose on our Ambassador in that meeting the other day.

    Really all this argues for is Israel attacking on its own before our election, daring Obama to not support it (after, of course, doing everything it first can to get Iran to retaliate against the U.S. and our other friends in the region to draw us in from the start).

    I say ... watch Romney now real close. Sure he talked about Obama throwing Israel under the bus, but that's just conventional, *general* talk. The question in my mind is whether he is now going to get any more specific criticizing Obama for not greenlighting Israel and ... I bet he will not. AIPAC/Adelson and etc. may have a lot of influence, and of course there are some hard-core congresspeople in their pocket, but most are just intimidated into their "support," and I suspect more intimidated by being tagged as helping start a war that tanks the US economy big-time.

    That's sort of the downside of Israel's fundamental tactic of believing in bullying rather than truly making friends: The second the fundamentals change, all those previously bullied walk away from you when the going is tough.

    It's been said that Netanyahu is only one or two cabinet votes away on attacking Iran right away and my betting still is he will get same—esp. now and then even more esp. if Romney doesn't come out ripping Obama for his redlighting.

    Of course if Israel does launch it'll be a horror—and man, *if* the radioactive fallout from Iran isn't too bad the worst will in fact probably be in Southern Lebanon which the Israelis are gonna just flatten—but right now one's gotta chuckle at its pickle.

• California State Assembly passes resolution equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism
  • Sin Nombre August 31, 2012 at 4:07 am with 1 replies

    dbroncos wrote:

    "There is huge silver lining potential in HR35. Prosecutors will have to explain how criticising Israeli fascism and apartheid is 'hate speech'..."

    No, as I somewhat alluded to earlier, this misapprehends the nature and potential of this Resolution, although I've now read that due to some folks in California's universities who still recognize the idea of free speech some of the lawmakers involved are promising to "fix" the Resolution during the next legislative session.

    Standing alone as it now does technically the nature of the Resolution is symbolic only: That is, it doesn't purport to create a crime out of criticizing Israel. Thus, no, you won't see prosecutors having to explain same.

    The problem really lies in the potential for this meme now being added to all the others that exist in all different sorts of contexts where it's either impossible to challenge, or where it's hugely effective given how hugely difficult it is to challenge it.

    For instance, in general if you work for a private employer you don't have the right to challenge what codes of speech or other conduct they might impose, unless those codes themselves discriminate against you in some narrowly protected way due to your race, color, creed or etc. But there's no protection for your freedom of speech vis a vis your private employer: The constitution just limits the government, and there's damn few if any legislative laws saying that private employers have to let their employees have this or that free speech right. So for instance you go ahead as an employee of damn near any company and start mouthing off about, say, how you think women are inferior to men and see what happens. See how far you get arguing your First Amendment rights ... because you have none there. And to whatever extent it even needs to—and it usually doesn't a bit—your employer can say it is imposing such a code on you to protect itself from discrimination suits, or from adverse customer reactions, and etc. and so forth.

    So you'll have *no* "prosecutors" nor indeed anyone else even needing to defend this meme in this vast context of private employment, and indeed *most* of the sort of privately prohibited talk has become privately prohibited not *even* due to anything as grand as an entire legislature's imprimatur, but instead due to some far less authoritative source, if indeed from any authoritative source at all.

    And then you have the public sector of employment, and while indeed because the employer there is the government and has to respect the First Amendment, as an employer it has far greater rights over you than it does, say, in trying to regulate your speech if you are just a citizen. And then you get into The Choice: You, along with tens if not hundreds of thousands of other governmental employees, feel this impinges on your free speech rights. Well okay, but are you so certain of same, and this it will be so clearly held to same in the precise context you wish to try to tempt its fate, that you are going to bet your career on it? Or even endanger it a little?

    Nuts, say you are a professor for a state college, and you are the sort who just normally and naturally interject your own strong feelings about things into your teaching, even if you announce right at the start that you do so but they are only your opinions.

    So here you want to talk about ... colonization, for instance. Well you may well believe that just saying "I hereby criticize Israel for being a colonizing power" is going to be found your right when one of your students later accuses you of using "hate/discriminatory speech" to create a "hostile environment" for learning.

    But first of all you gotta risk that you are right and that your university is going to stand up for you and pay your bills when that investigation and etc. comes down.

    But who talks in such one-sentence ways? So of course in talking about "colonization" and Israel you go a little further in criticizing Israel, as give-and-take and talking are wont to do, and you fail to name other colonizers, and etc. and so forth.

    And *now* you've *really* given your Israeli-partisan students or others a chance. Because with that simple backing of a vaunted *legislative* finding that anti-Israel criticism is racism, well my God now you get into *all* of what you've said, and then what you *didn't* say so that now maybe the "lesser" charge is that you've accused not *just* the State of Israel of wrongdoing but all or most *Israelis* of same and my God of *course* that's anti-semitic and racist and discriminatory ... and good luck getting your university defending you now: In fact it's likely *they* are gonna be the ones prosecuting you to get you fired or admonished.

    And while it's true that now you *can* bring the First Amendment up to a limited Employer/Employee degree, it's *you* who have to find a pay a lawyer to go fighting the resources of the state/university, month after month and maybe longer. All the while your job hangs in the balance.

    So okay, you think, I'm willing to go anyway and speak out and all that happens and you win and your lawyer's fees are paid. And still you sit knowing that anytime you open your mouth again, yet another accusation can be made, adding credence to the idea that you are a racist, and putting you through all this again.

    Frankly, at this stage I don't *think* this meme is gonna get going to do this kind of thing in the immediate future. But don't for a second believe that the idea has now been missed by Israeli partisans, and won't be massaged a bit this way or that to make it seem less objectionable, and pushed in other legislatures or university rules committees, or just in making the allegation in individual charges of racism/discrimination and etc., and so forth and so on. It took awhile for the "hostile environment" idea become a fixture in anti-discrimination law, but boy once it got a foothold it took off and is now there with a vengeance.

    First there's the rough germ of the idea making its way into the head of officialdom, and from there it's pushed and pushed and grows like topsy and suddenly it's nothing less than the status quo fixture, never once to be authoritatively challenged because it's so large and so multi-variant and used in so many contexts.

    No "golden opportunity" here then, except for Israeli partisans, who are not exactly known for their lack of zeal. You just watch.

  • Sin Nombre August 29, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    Amjad Faur wrote:

    "[this kind of thing] will only serve to give anti-semitism a good name and utterly cheapen real anti-semitism."

    No it won't. It will serve as an incredibly real, right-in-your-face-starting-tomorrow threat to all kinds of people—especially public employees such as teachers, professors, and etc. but also private employees whose employers follow the gov't in such things—to shut the fuck up ever making any statements about Israel that might be construed as critical, due to their already certain knowledge that they can and will almost certainly be fired or otherwise officially harmed by violating speech codes masquerading as "anti-discrimination" codes and etc., with this State resolution now providing specific authority backing the idea that criticism of Israel does indeed equal such a violation.

    So now, all you Progressive Lefties, you proud of all your "anti-hate speech" and "anti-discrimination" and "hostile environment" codes and regulations and laws and employee regulations and etc., huh? I.e., all the sneaky ways you tried to squash the freedom of speech?

    Gee, what a surprise. I mean, you guys were obviously just soo much smarter than the Framers of the First Amendment. You just *knew* what nobody should ever be able to say or be able to hear because your ethics are just sooo fine and certain.

    So ... go get a job now, say especially in government, especially now in California or New York say, and especially say in one of their colleges teaching but indeed in damn near any capacity, and go be heard sounding off against Israel. And see just how fast your ass is gonna be hauled up on charges of using hate speech/uttering racist comments and/or etc.

    And then go feel what you've inflicted on others so happily so that ... for people in such circumstances to save their jobs in the face of such accusations, they are made to grovel and apologize and undergo "sensitivity" training and therapy and classes and accept reprimands and demotions and the curtailment of any further career advancement and on and on.

    Gee, how pretty.

    And all because you found a way, instead of *advancing* the wisdom of the First Amendment, of denigrating and subverting it instead, of imposing your speech codes and etc. as employees regs or contractual matters instead of as laws, or as as private employer codes and etc., etc. and on and on, trying to muzzle as many people as possible.

    How perfect.

• Judith Butler responds to attack: 'I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence'
  • Sin Nombre August 27, 2012 at 8:45 pm

    Well, so as to put things in the accurate context what Butler and Ellis are doing isn't "dissenting" really; instead they're saying that they represent true jewish values and it's all the other jews who are supportive of what Israel has been doing who are the heretics.

    (And it's interesting that in this respect they seem different from what I at least have read of you, Phil, who have been very forthright in saying that what we have been seeing in Israel is somewhat of the logic consequence mainstream jewish thinking. E.g., your frank talk about being raised to believe in inferior goyish-type thinking, and etc. and so forth.)

    So Butler and Ellis aren't "dissenters" really, and given the circumstances provoke the stark question of the credibility of their claim: It has, after all, been more than forty years since Israel has been gobbling Palestinian land and sitting as colonizers if not worse on the Palestinians (not to mention driving 700,000-some off in the Nakba originally in '47-'48). And in all that forty-plus year period of time there's been lots of acceptance and approval of what Israel has done by the world jewish community.

    So at what precise or even general point do Butler/Ellis/et. al. concede that no, their view of jewish ethics just ain't really jewish ethics? Fifty years? 100? 200?

    Whatever you want to call this though—"dissenting" or whatever—wherever there's been the same thing done by moslems vis a vis claimed islamic ethics or catholics vis a vis claimed catholic ethics obviously there's no difference whatsoever.

    But I don't think you can deny, Phil, with either Butler or Ellis, that they aren't just sitting there saying they're just part of the hoi polloi criticizing Israel: Instead they are both clearly hanging onto their jewishness (elsewise why do they take such care to talk about it so obsessively?) as if that and their voices speaking from some perceived "jewish ethical tradition" makes their ethical criticisms in *general* something different and thus special as opposed to criticisms coming from that gentile hoi polloi mob. And not just different and special in relation to criticizing Israel ethically, but indeed in all things. And that's what I don't like; nobody's Chosen in that way in my book.

  • Sin Nombre August 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm with 9 replies

    Judith Butler wrote:

    "I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt."

    Ah, the nub of her misunderstanding. While Buber and Arendt certainly talked alot about ethics, it was really the ethics of everyone *else* they concentrated their critical fire on.

    Sure can seem that that vaunted Jewish ethical tradition had a convenient little hole right in the middle of it. Sort of funny though that despite the great bulk of her community essentially pointing that out Ms. Butler still soldiers on, unwilling to give up that great specialness she thinks being jewish and so being able to invoke "the Jewish ethical tradition" represents.

    Special special special; just oh so special.

    Pretty damned funny seeing these assorted jewish folks like Butler (or Marc Ellis) straining straining straining to say that their ethics, because they are informed by their jewish nature, are special, superior and etc., when the vast bulk of jews not only don't seem to share their ethics as to the substantive issues being discussed, but feel that jewish ethics also then extend to blackening and silencing them by calling them self-hating jews, anti-semites, terrorist sympathizers and etc., etc.

    Now, remembering Spinoza, *that's* more of the tradition, isn't it? Less like ... tikkun olam or any of that crap and more like ... Omerta, and the punishment for violating same.

    Still, hard to get over the humor. Sort of like seeing seeing two or three lone geese flying North in the Fall, against the uncountable skeins of all the other geese and indeed other birds flapping South, but nevertheless proclaiming how special and superior it is to be a goose because true geese fly North.

• Exile and the Prophetic: Where will Jews rise?
  • Sin Nombre August 21, 2012 at 3:16 am

    Marc Ellis wrote:

    "Where will Jews rise?"

    Memo to Mr. Ellis:

    Umm, they have: As everyone in the world without some ulterior motive would agree it's a place called Israel. So stop your desperate pretending that you, being jewish, are somehow superior, which is what is necessitating all your writhings suggesting that in some miraculous, unexplained, and indeed inexplicable way Israel is not behaving in some true jewish way.

    It's behaving like every other country and people are capable of behaving, showing jews are no different than everyone else, and that includes you, Mr. Prophetic.

    An obviously repulsive concept for you to embrace, but....

• Exile and the Prophetic: Decolonizing the Holocaust
  • Sin Nombre August 8, 2012 at 10:06 am with 1 replies

    Marc Ellis wrote:

    "I’ve already told you that the Holocaust was different. At least I think it was. Prejudice? Has to be, I think. Still want to be upfront about it. Can I confess this to the students without blowing my Jew of Conscience cover?"

    Here's my thesis: It's precisely people like Mr. Ellis—jewish, non-jewish, whatever—who have vastly contributed to the use of the Holocaust as an excuse to do whatever.

    If indeed they were universalists, or had any intellectual modesty, or dare I say with some if they weren't interested in making money or fame off of it, the answer is clear: The Holocaust shows what humans are capable of.

    And if that wasn't more than obvious enough to persuade them to not go trying to slice the baloney this way and that, in ways inevitably infected with special pleading and bias and etc., then you'd think that what the Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union (many of them jewish) and what Mao did in China would have convinced them.

    And indeed, what motivation could there even be *aside* from trying to sneak in some special pleading either for or against some group trying to slice that baloney at all?

    But no, you see, they think that can slice that one clear ugly chunk of baloney to make it ... smarter, or to grind this or that axe, or to make themselves seem smarter or more caring, or because it's a good gig going around being a Holocaust "studies" expert or etc.

    So whaddya end up with? All this oh-so-somber talk about how ... the Austrians and the French have yet to fully fess up to their contribution to the Big H (as if some Austrians and French haven't and some have), and then talk about how Christians feel about it and their responsibility or not, and how the Bantus perhaps might be criticized for not really realizing the full significance of the Big H in their literature, or art, or dance, or tic-tac-toe playing, and ... on and on and on in great big never-ending sickening and utterly vacuous roil.

    All secretly premised on the idea that oh, *some* humans ("me me me of course!") could never never never never do that to others. (Obviously in Mr. Ellis' case, jews, or "Jews of conscience" at least, or whomever.)

    And what's the result? Of course! This group priding itself on being two molecules less "responsible" for the Holocaust than that group, and that group noting it actually lost a few more members in the Holocaust than yet another group, and yet another group or two saying nobody in its group was involved so meaning their group walks on a higher plane than everyone else in the world, and on and on in a great mad stupid game ignoring that we are one species and long before the Holocaust we displayed our potential and all the Holocaust shows is that we haven't lost it.

    But you keep hacking away at this, Mr. Ellis. Indeed, plow some of that ever-new ground out there! What about the Eskimos/Inuit people, for instance? I'm sure that you keep whacking away and at first you can make 'em feel special because there were none as camp guards at Auschwitz, but that later you or your later Holocaust Studies children will be more than willing to go on endlessly about how, because the Eskimos/Inuit know about the horrors of cold, they should have been *especially* concerned about the stories of unheated camps that leaked out early in Hitler's days, and so dilate endlessly and happily about the new chi chi revisionist view of the *special* "responsibility" of the Eskimo/Inuit for jewish suffering and blah blah blah blah blah.

    What a joke. What a ... cultivating precisely that which you purport to be against joke.

• Dennis Ross's neutrality shows lobby is with Romney
  • Sin Nombre July 29, 2012 at 11:14 pm with 8 replies

    By my lights the question now of whether Israel will attack Iran before the election depends on Israel's conclusion of who will win said election. If they think it will be Obama, bombs away before November. His *only* choice then will be to approve of it if not help it if not join in for fear of endangering is re-election.

    If they think it's Romney, they'll wait as maybe they can get Mit to attack for them.

    One possible consolation here: Mit Romney would tell us he's been a life-long cannibal if he thought it would help him get elected, and the day after if politic he'd condemn all cannibals to hell, so Israel might just get itself a pig in a poke with him. On the other hand, doing so much to help him now, if he wins they've got that on him, and then there's always their ability to walk away from him 2016.

    Romney appearing to do so well now vis a vis Obama I'm getting nervous about my past prediction of an Israeli attack before the election, but what the hell I'll stick with it for awhile yet if only to not seem an opportunist flip-flopper. As the song say, go down gamblin.'

    (Plus I've noted the U.S. having just transferred lots of new assets into the Persian Gulf, keeping three carrier groups in that little puddle, now deploying drone mine detector/destroyers in the region, and just yesterday announcing that the've now got the bigger bunker buster bombs they been drooling for.

    Interesting times dead ahead I think.

• Krugman's coverup
  • Sin Nombre July 21, 2012 at 10:56 am

    Shmuel wrote:

    "[The pro-Israel crowd] can’t put their finger on any particular anti-Israel policy or decision [of Obama's] but...."

    Well but they're right in their ... gestalt-ish perception, aren't they? At least insofar as compared with just how servile to Israel's interests Romney has appeared to be.

    It's funny too—although not so much to Americans paying attention—since all this seems to have started with them for Obama with his Cairo speech saying America wanted good relations with the arabs and moslems.

    I mean, George Bush practically had to put a gun to Bibi's head to force him to utter the phrase "Two-State Solution," but Bush got a walk because the Israelis knew that only the version he would support would be ones they supported. In other words, he was seen as trying to do good for *them.* Where Obama starts to provoke drooling hatred is where he begins trying to do good by *Americans* in speaking politely and with respect to arabs and moslems.

    So that's the great divide and the Israeli's great nightmare: A United States with a good relationship with arabs and muslims. They didn't achieve dynamiting same way back in the Lavon Affair, but time and 9/11 has helped them immeasurably.

• Travels with a former Zionist in Israel and Palestine, part 2
  • Sin Nombre July 20, 2012 at 8:39 am with 1 replies

    It's funny but for some reason—the American hippie with the gun probably—it struck me that, so as to never be forgotten, the one big ultimate truth of all this ought to be printed as the headline on stories like this, and then indeed on big banners over all the gateways into this Israel:

    "None Of This—None—Would Have Been Possible Without American Jewry."

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