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So I haven't commented here for a while and this article is a few days old, but "Peter Beinart's wisdom"? ...the hell?
Recognizing the obvious a few decades too late isn't exactly "wise" and even if it was that wisdom would be negated by the delusional, mindblowingly arrogant quality of every word that follows. The guy doesn't even mention the Nakba in an article about Nakba Day protests. Not ONCE. I guess he was too busy "shaping history" with his mighty tribal prowess. As if being the "guiding force" of the 20th century onward was something to brag about.
It's not like I expect anything above the ramblings of a barely sentient automaton when it comes to the Daily Beast, but that article shoots past mediocrity at light speed and slams right into a brick wall of stupidity and - let's face it - bigotry. After all, says the Wise Beinart, "those recalcitrant Arabs can't possibly have actual grievances! They only 'stormed' the borders and violently attacked Israeli bullets with their bodies (Culture of Death!) because the 'War Criminals' in Syria and Lebanon told them to. Those primitive puppets need a benevolent puppetmaster - like me, Peter Beinart! Me and Thomas Friedman will save them from themselves!"
I guess another facet of his "wisdom" is conflating "war crimes" with "human rights abuses". Not that one is more forgivable than another, but al-Assad isn't at "war" with Syrian protesters.
And Daniel Pipes sues you for plagiarism in 5...4...3...2...just kidding. He could never write that well.
Well said. I'd also guess the second "state" in the agreement would eventually become Jordan when even the bantustans become too much of a concession for the settlers and too much of a hellhole for the Palestinians.
Wow...while the comment itself is quite stunning I'm even more surprised that Netanyahu's father is so adept at using the internet at his age. I'd SO follow him on Twitter.
Pundits seems to throw around "neocon" and "liberal" but I've yet to hear Matthews or any other bingo caller mention "neoliberals". It's as apt a label for Obama as it was for Clinton...Chicago School, anyone? Maybe because the Great God Capital and its only Earthly son Market Christ count the owners of MSNBC as but a few of their devout followers. It never even occurs to the Beltway or Wall Street mentalities that importing "markets" is as moronic as importing "democracy".
One example is Obama hoping the Iraqis will soon have a "thriving economy"...maybe when they have running water, electricity and less than a million horrific birth defects from our weapons they'll be as gung-ho as he is about shaking the Invisible Hand.
That was a good interview. They also had The Norman on today and he was his usual fantastic self. The Jewish Congress guy he was...'educating' (I'd call it a debate if there was a chance in hell of the other guy gaining a single point) brought up the League of Nations and said something like "the Palestinians had their chance for a state in 1947 and they blew it!" Good times.
As I've mentioned before, the irony of Israelis taking offense to BDS is that there's already a default boycott working in their favor when it comes to media coverage. RT is (I believe) funded by the Russian government so they don't need to worry about losing sponsors when they have the Finkelsteins and Bennises of the world on a show to discuss the sane version of things. How many advertisers would run screaming from the NYT or Hardball or Meet the Press if they had one of them as a guest of any kind?
Even discounting the biases those businesses have (not to say state-run media is bias free by any stretch), they know the bias of their benefactors would result in boycott and divestment if they failed to play the game.
"[I]t’s a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it’s primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror." - The Chomsky
Anyway, great article. It seems like even the most bilious hater of Zionists would be incapable of discounting #4 as a prime reason for nonviolent resistance. What has been counted as "victory" against the Israelis in recent battles can also attest to the futility of fighting. While Hezbollah certainly inflicted damage in 2006 and should be credited for proving self defense is universal, I'd have a hard time convincing a parent in Qana visiting the grave of their child that Lebanon "won" anything.
As for #5, the attack and the response to it vindicates that outlook. Once again, even looking at it from a cold, pragmatic perspective one has to admit that "hearts and minds" aren't won with dead pregnant women. Just ask the Afghans. And looking at it from a humanist perspective, if someone thinks they're superior to you and that your sole purpose in life is jealous retribution for being born a mere mortal surrounded by their Chosen Greatness, lashing out like an inner city gangbanger will hardly convince them or any outside party that there isn't "something to" that chauvinism.
It's easy for me to say "truth will out" to the Palestinians from the comfort of my American living room, but they deserve better and unfortunately the present onus is on them to show it. Israel has nothing but excuses, so remove those and you're one big step ahead. Also, how many people remember Nathuram Godse nowadays?
Ugh typos. My kingdom for a preview button.
I'm in awe of the restraint most Palestinians show on a daily basis. And Iraqis. And Afghans. For every attack by a small group, how many keep it inside despite how justifiable their blazing, boiling hatred may be?
This also reminds me of one of Bill Maher's fouler statements - shared no doubt by many or perhaps most of the "civilized West":
"Our religious fanatics act stupid, but their religious fanatics blow people up". Apparently the US military has no religious fanatics in its collective ranks...but I digress. The Israelis, to the minds of these people, have the implicit "right" to be angry and lash out. They're the "victims" no matter what. Just looks at the bruises they got on that evil flotilla! But someone loses a child or a parent or a brother or a sister to a drunk IDF soldier or a settler with a baseball bat? Shut up and take it, terrorist.
Americans have the luxury or taking out their spoiled, banal anger at Tea Party protests. When Palestinians protest peacefully in response to legitimate grievances, they run the serious risk of death by tear gas canister. To the uppity colonialists (Maher, Hitchens, 99.9% of US media) that see every act of anger as "terrorism", try giving people a useful outlet. Otherwise, shut your bourgeois mouths and thank your Great God Capitalism that you don't have to cross 10 checkpoints to get to your 10 shekel-a-day job.
"The Palestinian struggle has transitioned from Abu Nidal to Mustafa Barghouti. " Nice one.
While reading this and many other posts/articles/etc., (including several that make me wonder how direct the connection is to any top Hamas leadership, but that's another subject for another time) I did see one silver lining to the ugliness of it all...
Israel kills civilians aid workers - Israeli response (along with most in the West): "They were terrorists and had it coming! You're all out to destroy us and we must smite you!" No regret, no awkward discomfort...other than the Gideon Levys and Jonathon Cooks, of course. The media takes all Israel lies and excuses at face value and cares oh-so-much about context and deeper issues of security. Never Forget!
An arm of Hamas kills civilians - the response I see here and on several other pro-peace/pro-Palestinian sites: "What were you thinking? This is wrong whether they belonged to a group that is in the wrong or not. Collective punishment can never be excused." Or, as a Hamas spokesman said, "why would you need to throw a wrench in the works? There's already a big, fat wrench named Bibi that's been doing a fine job for several years now." (Paraphrased, obviously.)
The media (and Obama, who basically functions as an extension of the media's overall purpose) say "Hamas killed them: Cased Closed. Move along, nothing to see here. Evil Muslim Terrorists existing in a vacuum with no context." Never Remember!
This attack was unfortunate but it is telling how those on the opposite side of the Avigdor Kahane mentality are willing to show empathy and regret when someone they might normally support commits a crime against even the most vile adherents of said mentality (and I've seen and heard enough second or first hand accounts to believe the settlers in Hebron are a foul bunch.) Supporters of Israel never cease to amaze me with their hunger for death and lust for revenge but it seems most on the non-Right* side of the Palestinian movement can see the context while taking the high ground when someone on either side is killed and that gives me some small satisfaction.
*Right meaning garden variety Jew haters and random Salafist factions like those that recently caused trouble in Gaza.
43 years? someone find marty mcfly and tell him he sent us all to 1991 again. darn fool kid.
it's been 62 years and counting since the first ugliness and it's always telling when people start the apartheid clock at 1967.
i won't annoy everyone with a text wall outlining an argument against every point in this article (not that i assume anyone reads all the comments anyway), but i'll make a few points:
"most one state proponents live outside and in ivory towers". yeah, and so do a lot of israel's financial benefactors. i don't see anyone denying their influence. i'd also point out that the dearth of support for one state within israel/palestine is part of the problem. it's like saying "everyone that's opposed to guns in prisons lives outside of the correctional system so pish posh".
"too much bad blood". we dropped atomic weapons on japan and they got over it pretty fast. the states also went from jim crow to obama and a culture saturated with hip hop in a few generations. obviously, that means nothing when it comes to real life and anyone that sees those superficial blips on the radar as significant is either sheltered or uninformed, but the point is: you have to start somewhere. your argument actually reminds me of BP apologists:
"well, we need oil so bad we can't do anything to change now! i mean, if we'd started developing alternative technologies and fuels in the 60s or 70s we'd be fine, but that doesn't mean we should start now! that would rob the pundits of 2050 of their talking points and excuses!"
"vast socioeconomic differences": well, you may have noticed that's also an issue in the states and to and even greater degree in russia or china and to and even greater degree than that in saudi arabia or random developing countries. that doesn't mean we segregate the classes with checkpoints and walls. does it occur to anyone those very obstacles may have caused or at least exacerbated the division in the first place? maybe palestinians would make a good living if they didn't spend their days digging tunnels under the egyptian border to get to toilet paper.
i could go on. it's respectful disagreement on most of this, but disagreement nonetheless.
this makes me question my views on a one state solution...would any sane, rational human being want to share a country or even a planet with the THINGS that did this? not animals...things.
nigel parry: i think it was "goldfinger".
on the "human shields" bit: it's been acknowledged that whether or not hamas actively used civilians as shields, israel did as well by putting guns to the back of citizen noncombatants and making them open doors and walk into what may have been booby-trapped buildings. and in hamas' case, i'd also keep in mind what chomsky (or it may have been finkelstein, actually):
"are they supposed to run into an open field and say 'hey! we're over here! fight us!'?" there's also the matter of being crammed into a ghetto (let's call a spade a spade) where it's not exactly easy to spread out and get away from populated areas.
as for the rockets, quite a few have been fired by the al-aqsa brigade - an arm of fatah that doesn't exactly care for hamas. that might also explain some of the "collaborationist purges" after cast lead, since hamas admitted as much and claimed there were fatah members instigating and aiding the israelis. not an excuse at all, but i agree 100% with finkelstein that it's not fair to judge. desperate times, desperate measures and all that.
sorry if i beat any dead horses there; i haven't read all the previous comments.
not much to add to this one. nicely done. the charlie rose interview is an especially good rebuke to the typical propaganda since rose sounded like a stuck record at points and didn't leave much room for doubt (and i mean that in a good way for once since that interview was one of his "stopped clock" moments and he did a pretty decent job.)
the interview also references the hamas charter, but charters and resolutions have as much relevance in the region as the complaint box does at BP headquarters.
it's worth remembering that seyyid qutb and ayman al-zawahiri are two better known products of the egyptian prison system.
it would be interesting to see elbaradei's run for office produce any change but i don't see him getting very far in a climate that corrupt, paranoid and vicious. and the more israel flaunts its immunity from any real international consequences, the more paranoid they'll have to be as the "arab street" becomes increasingly sympathetic to hamas and hezbollah (to whatever degree they aren't already.) i've seen quite a few educated guesses about the blockade wall to the effect of "it's not about smuggling goods back and forth, it's about resistance leaking in and staying".
"convert your people"? okay.
anyway, while the evangelical "jesus camp" crowd is all about supporting israel, it's not for the benefits of the jewish residents. remember, they want the whole "gog and magog" conflagration that results in the jews and muslims and etc. being "left behind". as for the elites that implement the policies, let's not ignore the blood of many, many, many catholics on their hands due to decades (or even centuries) of vicious foreign policy in sotuh/central/latin america.
everyone has an agenda and debating which group of chauvinists has more pull is like wondering which bullet from the firing squad finished off the condemned prisoner.
my first thought as well. his wife was also a rabid hater of all things jewish and let's not forget how refugees from europe were turned back at our shores.
i thought both articles were great...so...yeah...
i will say that when it comes to framing the narrative after the fact, it's lose-lose; dead men tell no tales, but neither do those living in a dank israeli prison (just ask mordechai vanunu.)
it also comes down to proportion; for all the constant abuse by hasbara agents of the "david and goliath" analogy, israel has been the obvious giant in that contest for many years and it's futile to go up against them with conventional tactics if you're looking for anything but a pyrrhic "victory" (i.e. many neocons/zionists/etc. consider cast lead and lebanon 2006 to be "losses" because the IDF didn't reach certain objectives, but the body count comparisons say otherwise.) the flotilla activists didn't have m16s or apache gunships, so we'd be talking about casualties in the hundreds if they had gone for all out confrontation.
i want to share your optimism, but those sources have always been a better source than any of the MSM. the only thing that keeps 'western' outlets from parroting the official israeli military/gov't line is that they never covered the story at all. if you mean actively engaged citizens that care about these events, then yeah; i think anyone on the fence is slowly coming down on the side of the palestinians and israeli peace activists. i hope, anyway.
in regards to this and the other threads about the media, who in the MSM might start showing spine and so forth, i'd recommend the Russia Today channel. i recently switched cable providers and started checking out other news options and it's insane how much better they are than the US cable news outlets. example: norman finkelstein debating benny morris for 30 minutes with one commercial break. seen that on dylan ratigan's show lately? just a suggestion for anyone in the d.c. area.
actually, on twitter olbermann said "the only reason thomas wasn't the 'worst person in the world' is because she resigned and knows how horrible a person she is". plus, as i stated below, it was a few days after before he even mentioned the flotilla incident. at all. see also: my point about his sponsors.
you just summed it up for me as well. i used to watch maher when he had the "guts" to go after a president with a 20% approval rating, but now it's honestly more painful than ann coulter.
i definitely wouldn't count on matthews if that was anything but snark at the end. he's repeatedly expressed interest in returning to the "actions" part of politics after leaving the "words" sector and would never alienate any future donors.
as for MSNBC in general, the day after the flotilla incident i was switching back and forth between that channel and CNN and had a very telling and very irritating experience (well, more than when i usually watch them):
CNN went from "israeli sources say, israeli sources say, israeli sources say, etc." to an ad...from the israel project. starring none other than bibi and tony effing blair. after ensuring i hadn't been slipped some odd neocon form of LSD, i turned to MSNBC (which is only slightly more friendly to objective reality) and guess what was playing? the same freaking ad. with the same freaking tony blair and bibi.
i think most of the ubiquitous bias toward israel's side of the story is just ingrained and the bingo callers like olbermann might not even realize how truly awful they are (well, he skirted it entirely by not reporting on the flotilla AT ALL) and might be example of a chomsky anecdote: a new york times writer told him "hey, i'm free to write whatever i want!", to which chomsky replied "yes, and 'what you want' just happens to be the exact same narrative that the new york times wants to promote so it works out perfectly for both of you."
link to chomsky.info
maddow? she lost me when she cheered on dead pirate porn, but she was never anything but an obama PR agent. she just does it by negation as opposed to outright priase: report on c street and sarah palin and all the other flash-in-the-pan "crazy republican" stories and never mention anything obama does.
maher? one of the biggest d__kheads that ever walked the face of the earth and it was great seeing janeane garofalo call him out after he flatly stated "israel's impunity is worth the lives of american soldiers". granted, that's an unstated assumption on the part of many elites here, but from someone that tries to paint himself as "the smartest leftish guy in the class" every week it was simply repulsive.
link to youtube.com
great find and nice additions. too bad the so-called "left" (as in: establishment democrats and liberals) still shares the inane "he got bush elected! iraq is his fault!" opinion in significant numbers. but he knows of which he speaks when it comes to media assassinations. his was just more drawn out and nuanced...a sniper's bullet as opposed to helen thomas' sloppy drive by.
"semitic" was originally a linguistic distinction that then became a cultural one from the small amount of reading i've done on the subject. recently it applies to people in a common geographic area (palestine/israel) and has been linked to jews specifically, but at one point it was applied as far away as ethiopia and yemen. there were quite a few ethiopian and yemeni jews back in the day, but i'm pretty sure they bore little physical resemblance to your average khazar.
as for people hammering him with it, that just goes with the schism between "'jewish' = religious distinction" and "'jewish' = biological race". i tend to fall on the shlomo sand side of that one, but then i'm probably in the minority and have no agenda to speak of so oh well...
great article...the historical analogies were spot on and it's telling that they're so obscure in the amnesiac history of america.
the video game connection was also made by a u.n. official...i see that played out in actual video games, military ads ("join the marines and fight fire breathing dragons! save zelda from the insurgents!") and those repugnant training centers disguised as "arcades". the bread and circuses have melded so perfectly with industrial society's materialism that "the matrix", "metropolis" and "blade runner" are looking more like cautionary fables that straight fictional narratives. but i digress...
what i really wanted to comment with was: wait and see how the u.s. and israel react to iran's acquisition of drones. it'll happen and it will be unpleasant.
one of the better pieces i've seen on here.
it depends on whether you feel solidarity with gideon levy, neve gordon, jonathon cook and richard silverstein as well as norman finkelstein, noam chomsky and gilad atzmon (the latter three stated separately since they don't identify as "jewish" per se but have ties to judaism and, in atzmon's and chomsky's case, israel) or if you have the urge to feel it with the 94% of israelis that supported cast lead and had picnics while watching the carnage.
i would no more link their disparate views than i would those of the gestapo and the white rose (and no, that isn't an ad hominem "israelis = nazis" comparison, just a geographic analogy.) i understand the draw of identity and community, but it's a two edged sword as even the disturbingly pro-zionist anthony weiner discovered when he decided to marry a muslim.
before sand's book, i always thought of "jewish" as the religious distinction and "hebrew" and the biological race distinction. as for the genetics, there was a study regarding the khazars not too long ago and it was semi-conclusive but - as far as my limited knowledge of genetic research goes - the methodology is questionable by some standards. i saved the material a while back and don't have it handy, but it was something to do with mtDNA analysis.
in any case, it seems like the discussion should be less about what did or didn't happen after masada and more about the property rights of someone in hebron with direct lineage to the land dating back several generations vs the negation of those rights in the service of recent settlers from moldova or new jersey.
and, a bit off topic, but i read a book a while back that makes very interesting linkages between the gospels and the writings of josephus. if anyone wants to address the roman "diaspora" specifically those are worth looking at i suppose.
oops: i meant "interbreeding". though i'm sure there was quite a bit of both back then.
actually, the most recent finding suggest that inbreeding occurred in the 'middle east' and possibly northern africa. the "whiteness" came later as far as genetics go.
link to youtube.com
that is a good one. i like the instructions as well.
and weiner. and grayson.