Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 17 (since 2011-12-04 17:08:26)

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• Iranian nuke would balance Israel and produce stability -- Waltz
  • snowdrift June 22, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    Finally someone has the courage to say it. Nukes are essentially defensive weapons; not only would Iran having nuclear weapons be much less destabilizing than the present situation, as the constant threat of an Israeli or US attack would disappear, but the current brinkmanship and warmongering is probably the biggest incentive the Iranian government has to actually developing a military-grade enrichment program, in order to safeguard the regime from a much foretold attack. At this point it would be a perfectly rational choice on Iran's part (if they have in fact made that decision; the CIA and even the Mossad say they haven't) and would be entirely explained by Israel and America's aggressive posturing, not any devious 4,000-year plot against Israel/Ancient Hebrews.

• I left my hasbara in San Francisco
  • snowdrift June 22, 2012 at 5:16 pm

    What's the deal with Cap't Israel glowing like that? Is that some kind of subconscious Dimona metaphor? Did he derive his superpowers from plutonium?

• 100,000-strong Zionist youth brigade join settler opposition to Ulpana eviction
  • snowdrift June 15, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    So the legacy of the summer Tent Protests is cooptation by the settlers. Great work running away from the Palestinian issue, Tent Protesters! Now watch as the settlers get everything they want.

• Wright: Obama is 'drifting toward war with Iran' out of 'pathetic' fear of blowback from the lobby
  • snowdrift June 15, 2012 at 3:21 pm with 3 replies

    It is difficult to believe that only a few years ago it was verboten to mention the lobby in the mainstream media. The Iran story has totally shattered what was left of that taboo. The problem is that the increased exposure does not seem to have weakened the lobby’s power.

    That's because there are subjects which are Serious, and subjects that are unSerious. Talking about the lobby is now more or less allowed, but it's still rather unSerious.

    What I do like about this article is that it goes further than just talking about the lobby; it has an adversarial slant and says outright, "the lobby can be defeated."

    But I don't share the now-reflexive assumption that the Israel lobby is an awesome force that renders resistance futile. (Only last week the vaunted AIPAC machine faltered, as a congressional candidate strongly opposed by AIPAC defeated the AIPAC-approved candidate.)

    So the author is one step ahead -- he's not just saying there's a lobby, he's also saying that you can drive a stake in it. And for politicians, it's more of the latter message that's needed. Everyone that matters knows full well there's a lobby, it's the perception that they're unavoidable kingmakers that has to be shattered.

    But I think talking about the lobby will only become a Serious topic that might eventually gel into conventional wisdom when they're regularly talking about it on the TV networks.

• Jewish org's letter warns Presbyterians divestment from occupation 'taps into our deepest fears'
  • snowdrift June 7, 2012 at 5:56 am

    That letter is another case of turning the Palestinian human rights struggle into hand-wringing over the feelings of Jews; making it about the oppressor rather than the oppressed, while obfuscating the actual power relation by exploiting WWII-era victimhood that is completely unrelated to Palestinians. (WWII has really become the go-to reference for justifying all kinds of warmongering crap.)

    There's also the call for reconciliation on the oppressor's terms -- first we learn to get along, and then maybe we can fix your problem, which means that Palestinians have to assent to the current situation before even hoping for an improvement. This is just an extension of the Israeli practice of demanding that Palestinians meet certain conditions before negotiating -- the onus is on the Palestinians to make themselves presentable for Israel to consider not shooting/bulldozing/expropriating them.

    It's good that the response first starts by knocking down that obfuscation: Palestinians and not Jews are the targets of systematic violence by Israel. This is what your letter fails to grasp or acknowledge: the systematic violence of Israel's military occupation is driving the conflict. Only afterwards does it go to the we-can-work-together part, which isn't a bad thing but doesn't address the reconciliation nonsense by itself, and can even play into it. This isn't about some kind of awkward cohabitation between Jews and Muslims where they need to learn how to live together. In fact that will only become the issue to work through in a single state, so the JCPA should start supporting the 1SS any time now (hohoho!)

• 'Follow the money' rule suddenly applies when the issue is gay marriage
  • snowdrift May 10, 2012 at 11:59 am

    And I do think that with Wall Street being less generous than they were in 2008, gay donors and gay support is actually critical to fundraising.

    If we are to believe that Jewish donors are disgruntled with Obama according to the occasional news article that surfaces, and with Republicans trying to channel that disillusion into their own coffers, when will the pro-Palestinian vote become critical to fundraising? It's unfortunate that there isn't any well-organized and relatively well-off pro-Palestinian interest group that can compete -- the Democrats can only think of chasing after Jewish donors even more feverishly, as there isn't much of a countervailing lobby. This really is a case of human rights awareness vs big moola, and it seems that it will remain so unless the next generation of Palestinian Americans are all millionaires.

    How many Palestinian Americans are there in the US? And more generally, is there any Arab American organization similar in size and firepower to the big Jewish groups, at least on a 1-to-1 basis? (This kind of ethnic bean counting is rather distasteful, but the two parties are quite meticulous in classifying donors by their demographic group, racial or otherwise.)

• Israel will attack Iran-- and Obama gave tacit approval (Haaretz)
  • snowdrift March 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm with 1 replies

    How much of this is part of a concerted campaign to pressure the Iranians with ever increasing threats? Israel attacking alone is utterly pointless and I still have a hard time believing they would actually go through with it, unless Netanyahu is completely nuts (not to be dismissed) and hopes that Iran retaliates, thus forcing the US to intervene and maybe, in his view, helping the GOP in November. Which is really a long shot. If he thinks being chummy with the neocons and knowing his way around the Washington bubble makes him attuned to US political realities, I think he's in for a rude surprise since Iran is not an important issue for the non-AIPAC segments of the population.

• Hasbarapocalypse at Ynet: 'Zionism will only cease being demonized when the West stops demonizing colonialism'
  • snowdrift March 6, 2012 at 2:51 pm with 2 replies

    Amazing!

    As always, this kind of bluntness is a good sign -- the more the veil of propaganda surrounding the issue is torn down, the more Zionists will be forced to stake out these indefensible positions.

    Also, big admission:

    Leftist anti-Zionism is not bred by anti-Semitism. The secular intelligentsia that supports Palestinians abhors Christian anti-Semitism and Nazi racism. Their favorite thinkers are Jewish intellectuals like Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Noam Chomsky. These anti-Zionists gladly rally against neo-Nazis and have no qualms about socializing with or marrying Jews.

    It's funny how the writer is insightful/smart enough to realize that, and at the same delusional enough to embrace a policy of rehabilitating colonialism. Good luck with that! Even if Western countries try to downplay or whitewash their colonial pasts, no one is going to be favorable to present day colonialism.

    What's also amusing is that the cosmopolitan, leftist "secular intelligentsia" he identifies sounds a lot like the antisemite's Jew, including hints of race-mixing. Jewish minds are being corrupted by a sinister international cabal -- where's Captain Israel when you need him?

• Would you buy a used metaphor from this warmonger? (Niall Ferguson's 'creative destruction' echoes Rice's 'birth-pangs')
  • snowdrift February 6, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    Haha! This made me laugh.

    Niall Ferguson also wrote a book lauding British imperialism -- his whole career is one big reactionary schtick, and the appeal that pompous Brits of a certain mold have to Americans reminds me of the Exiled's takedown of the Economist, where that magazine's mostly American readership got the "sick thrill of being talked down to by a dirty old aristocratic prig."

• Report: Israel to give US only 12-hour warning before attacking Iran because Netanyahu doesn't trust Obama
  • snowdrift January 22, 2012 at 3:16 pm

    For what it's worth, the French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which is mostly concerned with domestic matters but has a small foreign affairs section that draws from sources in the diplomatic corps and French intelligence, also says that it's the US that cancelled the joint exercise, and that Dempsey was there to throw some cold water on the Israelis.

• A regular commenter on this site seeks a more temperate comment board
  • snowdrift January 17, 2012 at 2:09 pm with 2 replies

    The only comments that I find creepy are those involving any kind of victim-blaming on the issue of the Holocaust or the period leading up to it -- there's a desire in politics to discredit the entirety of an opponent's position and any grounds for legitimacy that it might have, and since Zionists have so wedded themselves to the Holocaust as one of the main sources of Israel's legitimacy (alongside the biblical claptrap), there seems to be a temptation among some to, if not outright deny the Holocaust, at least minimize it or claim that Jews somehow had it coming. And that's pretty bad, not to mention ignorant. But thankfully those comments are few and far between.

    When it comes to playing nice with liberal Zionists, I think that misses the point that as long as they think that Zionism -- the actual Zionism that developed in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, not an ideal, abstract Jewish nationalism -- was a legitimate form of nationalism and not the colonial ideology that it actually was from its inception, they will reject the democratic, binational solution and continue to believe in the mirage of the two-state solution while indulging in racist discourse (e.g., "demographic threats") that wouldn't be acceptable in any other context.

• Beinart and the crisis of liberal Zionism
  • snowdrift January 11, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    Shorter Beinart: "When it comes to my tribe, anything goes!" At least he's being honest. Liberal principles are nice and all but when it comes to Israel let's not get carried away now. So once again, under all the liberal Zionist contortions and heartwrenching personal questioning it all boils down to: be a little nicer to the Palestinians because you're making my double life as liberal by day, supremacist by night that much harder.

• VIDEO: Settler youth discuss conquering Jordan, destroying mosques and increasing attacks on the IDF with Israeli TV
  • snowdrift January 5, 2012 at 3:16 pm

    As they say in French, la vérité sort de la bouche des enfants -- truth comes from the mouth of children.

• Muslims ban Christmas and rape white women, in latest Latma satire
  • snowdrift December 30, 2011 at 11:43 am with 1 replies

    Very good and thorough post, thanks. This is all part of a larger trend where most of the far right in Europe and North America is shedding the old antisemitism and turning its guns on the new enemy du jour, Muslims. Even the French FN, led by the daughter of the party's historical leader, is reaching out to the leadership of French Jewish organizations and to Israel. She's been given the cold shoulder for now, but for how long?

• AIPAC-championed amendment pushes Obama into a corner on Iran
  • snowdrift December 30, 2011 at 11:55 am

    the Obama administration doesn't trust that the average voter is going to draw the distinction between the benefits of delaying Iran's nuclear program and the higher prices at the gas tank. It's really a tough one to explain

    God I love these euphemisms -- no shit, the average voter doesn't really care about Iran and is going to have a hard time grasping what are the benefits of sanctioning Iran, since there are none for the average American. Would you believe that! Voters don't care about hegemonic games taking place thousands of miles away, especially when they're being fueled by another country.

• Why did it take 6 years to talk about the Israel lobby?
  • snowdrift December 15, 2011 at 9:00 am

    That has been the most significant change of the last six years. Maybe because their own children are rejecting Israel, maybe because Israel has swung so far right and crazy, maybe because of Gaza, the Jewish establishment has at last shown some diversity on the Israel/Palestine issue.

    This focuses exclusively on Jewish agency; I think you overlook the effect of the Arab Spring. The Jewish establishment is a part of the larger establishment and has always sought to accomodate it, and I think the Arab Spring has made them all realize the game is up when it comes to Israel doing what it wants in the region without provoking severe backlash. That is also what motivates our Sober Liberal Journalists and others who carry water for the establishment.

    As for Jews in general turning against Israel, I'd wager the Arab Spring has had as much of an effect as what Israel itself is doing: Israel used to be "the only democracy in the Middle East," this dynamic, open-minded, high-tech Western country that just happened to be in the Levant, and it contrasted so favorably with the stultifying Arab dictatorships and their languishing people; now all of a sudden the situation is reversed and young Arabs are tweeting their various revolutions while it's Israel that looks like an anachronistic backwater full of religious fanatics backed by a brutal military. That's got to be embarassing, especially for younger Jews.

• Game changer: Hillary says Israeli restrictions on women remind her of Rosa Parks and Iran
  • snowdrift December 5, 2011 at 9:15 am with 3 replies

    How has Clinton called Israel an apartheid state? She's only talking about womens' rights -- no mention of Palestinians. In fact, making an analogy with Rosa Parks is rather awkward since Rosa Parks' action was part of the civil rights struggle. It's almost like Clinton subconsciously chose an example that fits the Palestinians' struggle while she's actually talking about an internal, liberal-vs-conservatives Israeli thing. I think it's an overoptimistic mistake to view her statement as a deliberate comparison with apartheid. This reads more as yet another argument about the need to make Israel more presentable so that the US has an easier time supporting them. "Be more liberal so we can send you more missiles!"

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