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Total number of comments: 28 (since 2010-05-08 02:06:51)

Tobias

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  • UNESCO votes to admit Palestine as a full member
  • IDF policy director on West Bank demos: 'we don't do Gandhi very well'
    • Tobias September 3, 2011 at 9:41 pm with 1 replies

      Annie, just awful. It’s like something from colonial anywhere at the turn of the century. Reading the cable, it’s clear he has no need to worry with his friends at the US Embassy; he’s among those he feels he thinks will understand.

      Outsiders, unfamiliar agitators. Sighs and sympathetic head will nod while he spins this bollocks - foreign and suspicious troublemakers exciting the pitiable villagers to demonstrate, often times without their knowledge. And the settlers? The villagers? Why they’re very happy neighbors? No problems. Villagers love them.

      You get the feeling that what this mental lunatic yearns for is the demonstrators to throw a couple of stones, and allow him unleash the violence and rage he feels against them. How dare they chant clap and sing in his face, who do these peasants think they are, don’t they know their place. He’ll show them, given half a chance, by God he will.

  • Independent: How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
    • Tobias August 27, 2011 at 5:12 pm with 1 replies

      Richard Witty, you should really meet the young children who have been abducted and tortured by the IDF and talk to them. Clearly you have an idea of what constitutes torture. But to say in your clever dick construction ‘that torture is less violent than terror’ is pure rubbish and you know it. You are intelligent enough to know how offensive that sounds. Willful provocation is one thing in the give and take on this site but here we are talking about children for God’s sake, children! Can you not drop the propaganda mask for one-second man? Everything as described in the original article would be absolutely terrifying to these poor children – who might have done what, if anything, thrown a few stones? You are a father; imagine your son enduring this nightmare, imagine your reaction, imagine being humane?

  • It took 4 Irish-Catholic leaders to stop the Irish lobby's support for violence in N. Ireland
    • Tobias August 26, 2011 at 10:37 pm

      I agree. The trouble with Matthews is that he he tends to see the world through a pair of made in American spectacles. What Irish America did in the end was to allow the British Government a face saving way out - Ted Kennedy's office got Jerry Adams a visa over the 'strong objections' of the British foreign office, one which allowed Adams to visit the US, the White House – and convince Irish American IRA hardliners to back his calls for a cease fire and allow him to begin negotiations .... and while this first cease fire broke down the next held and led to good Friday with the help of George Mitchell.

      Let’s not forget as well, that Britain had been secretly negotiating with the IRA through third parties for years prior looking for a way out so the ultimate end was somewhat choreographed. IMHO Britain came to the table because they were beyond fed up with Northern Ireland and wanted out because of the level of destruction wreaked on British cities by the IRA bombing campaign in the 90’s, because the weapons shipments Qadaffi had given the IRA in the 80’s had given the IRA enough hardware and military sophistication that the ‘war’ was going to drag on indefinitely and to end it would have required illiberal draconian measures that a democracy like Britain was simply unwilling to take.

  • The Lebanon war at 5-- 'We refuse to perish'
    • Tobias July 12, 2011 at 10:27 pm

      What a brilliant piece – so painful to read. Thank you.

      What is sticking is the fierce haunting pride of your closing; ‘We refuse to perish. We refuse to perish’.

      Your writing is such eloquent refusal.

  • Ron Paul blasts 'transparently one-sided' Congress on Israel/Palestine
    • Tobias July 7, 2011 at 8:52 pm

      He is absolutely right, a rare voice of reason inside the lunatic asylum.

      Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

  • Presidential
    • Tobias July 2, 2011 at 8:19 am

      Bart, have just read the exchange and thought I’d offer you some support. I think the other posters have been unfair to you. I am not an American but I believe you are. What convinces me Bart is how incredibly uninformed you are on the Israeli Palestinian issue which is a much more telling American trait than any of that bear hunting Vice Lombardi gosh darn stuff.

      This ignorance is hardly your fault Bart. Most Americans are just like you - bar those few who have also read Stalingrad. We can blame the dreadful US Israeli Palestinian media coverage or overall intellectual apathy (to your credit you have read a book) however rather than dwelling on the negative, let’s focus on the positive.

      Here at Mondoweiss you will find people who will help you, who will educate you, who will enable you to confront a worldview that in truth dear Bart you will find was never really yours.

      The process is very challenging; it requires the study of history, of law and of fact. It is not for the faint of heart.

  • This is a pogrom (first they demolished the shepherd's house, then they came to his tent and kicked his sheep, causing ewe to abort)
  • Palestinian child abuse
    • Tobias October 18, 2010 at 1:05 pm

      Seham, I have been visiting this site for a few months and I have to say your post, the comments and links are the saddest, most heart wrenching I have yet read. How sick is a society that can behave in such brutal ways to children, innocent young children!

  • Gosh, another American writing for a liberal magazine says lowering 'Arab' birthrate inside Israel is hunky-dory
  • Can the Israeli government kill Americans with impunity?
    • Tobias June 4, 2010 at 11:27 pm

      Pg, with all Jew respect, spare me the groupthink. I stand by what I said to Chaos.

    • Tobias June 4, 2010 at 2:32 am

      Hmm. So Frank Luntz is clearly more influential in Israel than I'd given him credit :) Thanks.

    • Tobias June 4, 2010 at 2:21 am

      Chaos, will you ever just leave Yonira alone? He has his points of view and he defends them. They differ from yours. He seems a reasonable chap. But yet you attack everything he says. You’re letting some weird resentment get the better of you. And it’s plain and painful to see. Imho, Yonira is just another imperfect human like the rest of us here. Try to calm the anger down. You’re better than that.

    • Tobias June 4, 2010 at 1:50 am with 2 replies

      Thanks for the link. I listened to the debate. Thought Ahmed Bedier was good as was the moderator. Guess if you let people talk their arguments raise or fall under their own weight. By the end the Israeli Consul was certainly struggling, having gone through the checklist. He also sounded flat, almost like he didn’t believe his own points of view. Kept hoping Bedier would ask him to compare the Apartheid, he grew up under in South Africa, to his adopted Israeli version. Btw, do you think the English-speaking Israeli spokesmen are coached to snuffle the h in Hamas and Hezbollah? I mean they’re fluent English speakers but seem to give both a sinister guttural emphasis. I noticed it first a few years ago with the Australian Regev, and thought; he’s just showing off. Now I’m beginning to think it might be a Frank Luntz idea.

  • MV Rachel Corrie heading for Gaza — with the full support of the Irish government
    • Tobias June 2, 2010 at 12:59 am with 1 replies

      MRW, with all due respect, and a bit off topic, but it sounds like you’ve watched The Quiet Man once too often. The Irish are a gentle people, and I sincerely doubt EVERY serial killer had Irish blood. Unless you mean their victims.

      Btw, believe the quote you’re possibly forgetting, wasn’t Freud but - per Anthony Burgess - Jung, who is said to have divided the world into, those that could be analyzed, and the Irish. Any truth to this may stem from when Jung treated Lucia Joyce and was quite eager to see her father, James, who was in equal measure not.

  • The trap
    • Tobias May 29, 2010 at 10:46 pm

      meant challenged but changelled has a nice ring

    • Tobias May 29, 2010 at 10:44 pm

      Thanks TG. I wasn't responding to you, mine was to the resident ethnic and ethically changelled specialist a couple of posts above you.

    • Tobias May 29, 2010 at 9:59 pm

      French is a language. So is English. So is Arabic. All spoken by many different ethnicities. Some similar. Some needing reform.

    • Tobias May 29, 2010 at 8:32 pm with 14 replies

      Rachel you should know that not addressing her questions does not leave them resolved.

      What you occur, may have already, is the dismissed opposite of her sincere and relevant questions.

      Better not to fester in such a state of suspicion, it rarely leads to good outcomes.

      Questions or their marks are not to be exclaimed.

      The melting pot of syntax will endorse not resolve. Agitate this ignorance to organize.

      You may fall in. You may not. Sit astride.

      I find peculiar in reading above you. And from you.

  • Lame Specter, Blumenthal and Kagan show-- the American Jewish revolution is over
  • Desch: Bloom misses the historical shift re anti-Semitism
    • Tobias May 9, 2010 at 8:41 pm

      " ..... ALL countries abide by international law if it helps their interests, otherwise they don’t ... "

      Gosh, all of them, trippy? The whole world's an outlaw. Certainly sums up settler Israel.

  • Harold Bloom says at least half the countries do worse things than Israel
    • Tobias May 9, 2010 at 11:27 am with 3 replies

      Zamazz, don't you think you are like the rest of us. Are we not all brothers and sisters, all Palestinians, all Israelis and everyone else. Our race, our creeds, our skin tones are accidents of birth, acts of biology. Welcome to the human race.

  • My Holocaust education
    • Tobias May 10, 2010 at 9:02 pm

      John, there is every reason to investigate and understand suicide bombing and what leads people to carry them out; and ultimately to try and rectify the root cause of such hopeless rage and anger.
      I think though this is totally different to the study of the Holocaust, which by the way is hardly a forlorn subject. I’m all for historical scholarship but my gripe is that the “historians” here are more political than professional, much more interested in scoring points than in revealing truth.
      I view the Holocaust as THE ultimate collective punishment with Jews undeserving of their Nazi cast role.
      In the same vein – while hardly the same league - I abhor modern day collective punishments, like those Israel regularly visits on Palestinians – particularly in Gaza.

    • Tobias May 8, 2010 at 8:16 pm

      meant to write .... when the Jewish role is identified, it will need be corrected or else another holocaust may occur ...

    • Tobias May 8, 2010 at 8:13 pm with 4 replies

      Chaos, I wish I could believe that but my sense is that this whole question - what did the Jews do to upset the Germans so badly - is nothing but anti-Semitic rubber necking, masquerading as historical investigation? If it is clear who was responsible for the mass murders? And it is. Then the case is closed. Period. The idea that history has overlooked the behavior of various elite Jews, which so enraged the Nazis, provoking the Holocaust and what is being posted here is an effort to prevent a future one doesn’t square. I think it speaks volumes that some would cut and pasted the drivel - that maybe - the Jews brought on their own misfortune. And forgive me if I am reading this wrong but in the context of what was the Jews role, the suggestion that this is ‘about learning history so that it doesn’t repeat’ has a sinister undertone; when the Jewish is identified, it will need be corrected or else another may occur. That sounds like a threat. I’m not suggesting you wrote with such malevolence but isn’t that the logic

    • Tobias May 8, 2010 at 4:47 pm with 6 replies

      Whatever power a relatively small Jewish elite held in Europe pre and post WW1 and no matter the contribution or influence Jewish intellect had in and on the Bolshevist revolution and post WW1 Communist agitation, surely this cannot be reason for the barbarism of the Holocaust. Isn’t this just the Goldhagen thesis in a sense? Germans with a grudge, genocide with a reason? And besides to tar all Germans with the broad brush of Holocaust responsibility ignores the fact that the last election in 1933 with Hitler already in power, and despite all the intimidation, the violence and arrests, the Nazis still couldn’t get a majority, with only 43% of the electorate voting Nazi. Stalin and Mao murdered millions of people. Have you spent as much time wondering what their victims did to deserve why?

    • Tobias May 8, 2010 at 10:15 am

      … “They didn’t have time to pick up huge groups of people to take them to Auschwitz after Stalingrad” …

      MRW you are forgetting about Hungarian Jewry? In May and June 1944, well after Stalingrad, Eichmann found time and trains to transport over 450,000 Jews – 75% of these poor unfortunates to their death – mostly in Auschwitz.

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