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• The Messiah's Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the Israeli military watches
  • tree May 21, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    Feel free to look at 1:28 on the far left corner. It then spread towards Yitzhar.

    I see no fire in the far left corner or elsewhere in the very first video, where the settlers are already approaching Asira. In the second video, the fire is spreading to the left, which is in the opposite direction from Yitzhar which is visible in the first video on the hilltop TO THE RIGHT.

  • tree May 21, 2012 at 4:44 pm with 4 replies

    3. There is no doubt that it was the Arabs who set the fires because:

    a. Jews can be seen in the videos trying to put the fires out. Arabs are not. They are busy attacking those trying to put out the fires.

    b. The winds in Israel- especially in the later afternoon when the incident occurred, blow from west to east; FROM Asira al-Qibliya TOWARDS Yitzhar.

    c. The terrain where the fires were is UPHILL towards Yitzhar, whereas it is DOWNHILL towards Asira al-Qibliya, and as we all know, fire will rage uphill- especially with the wind blowing it; as we see in the videos.

    Several of your points and conclusions are faulty and in contradiction to the videos seen, including the first video, where the settlers are approaching the Palestinian village and no fire is present. The fact that Jewish settlers are fighting the fire proves nothing about who or what started it, as many, if not most, brush fires are caused by accident rather than purposely set. Accidentally set fires are often fought by the very ones who start the fire. In any case, it would be impossible for the Palestinian villagers to fight the fire, as they were already blocked from it by the settlers before the fire erupted. And of course, it would be hard to come up with any logical reasoning that would establish how and why Palestinian villagers could set a fire at some distance from their immediate location that threatens their own village more than it does Yitzhar.

    Despite your assurance that all winds blow from west to east in Israel, its well known that wind is often variable, no matter where one is on earth. In the video, the active fire is heading toward the left of screen, which also appears to be slightly uphill (and away from Yitzhar). The wind at this time is clearly not going from west to east as you insist, since Yitzhar, to the east of Asira, is off screen to the right, not to the left. You can also tell the direction of the wind from the direction of the smoke(to the left, or west), as well as by looking at the way the white shirt of the leftmost settler with the rifle ripples to the left (also west). In fact the wind, and the fire is actually heading more towards Asira than it it towards Yitzhar. And it is quite far from Yitzhar, which is not even in view in the later videos.

    In an attempt to locate Yitzhar I came upon this from Wikipedia, which leads me to take any assurance by the settlers there that they were simply fighting a fire set by others with a mammoth sized grain of salt. Actually, it does more than that. It leads me to believe that they are simply racist liars:

    Education is a priority of the community and several institutions operate locally: a daycare center, preschools, the boy's Zilberman Talmud Torah, and the Od Yosef Chai (Joseph Still Lives) institutions headed by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, comprising the Dorshei Yichudcha yeshiva high school, a post-high school yeshiva gedola, previously located in Joseph's Tomb Nablus, headed by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, and a kollel. The yeshiva, built illegally according to the IDF military prosecutor,[13] supports the so called "price tag" policy, and senior rabbis of the yeshiva are suspected to encourage students to attack Palestinians and Palestinian property and the Israeli security forces. Several students affiliated with the yeshiva were forbidden to enter the West Bank on "well-founded suspicions that these students had been involved in attacks on Arabs, including "price tag" attacks on Arab property".[14]

    In 2003, rabbi Ginzburg who is a member of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement, was indicted for incitement to racism in his book "Tipul Shoresh" ("Root Treatment"), which contains calls for the Arabs to be expelled from Israel and for the land to be "cleansed" of foreigners and compares the Arabs to a cancer. Previous demands to indict Ginzburg had been rejected by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein in 2001 and following the 1998 publication of Ginzburg's book "Baruch Hagever" ("Baruch the Man"), which praised the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein.[15] Ginzburg was offered an end to all criminal proceedings against him in return for his explicitly and publicly retracting his offensive statements about Arabs.[16]

    In January 2010, rabbi Shapira was arrested for alleged involvement in the torching of a Palestinian mosque in the village of Yasuf, after five of his students had been arrested on suspicion of torching the mosque's carpet and book closet and obstructing the investigation. Shapira, who refused to say which of his students had taken part in the attack, was released a day after his arrest.[17]

    According to Haaretz, Israeli security service Shin Bet is urging the Education Ministry to stop funding the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in Yitzhar. In 2009, the yeshiva high school received NIS 468,000 and the yeshiva gedola received NIS 847,000 from the Education Ministry. The yeshiva also got NIS 707,000 from the Social Affairs Ministry for a project to rehabilitate ultra-Orthodox drop-outs, and an additional NIS 156,000 to operate a dormitory. In January 2011, it was decided not to transfer funds to the yeshiva gedola, but after political pressure was applied, the yeshiva received a letter saying funding would be restored. Od Yosef Chai, for its part, is preparing to petition the High Court of Justice if its funding is halted.[14]
    In November 2011, Israel's Education Ministry decided to withhold funds from the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva and close down the Dorshei Yehudcha Yeshiva high school. The decision was based on information received from the defense establishment of extensive involvement by students and rabbis in violent acts against Palestinian residents and Israeli security forces.[18]

    ........

    Yitzhar has been called "an extremist bastion on the hilltops commanding the Palestinian city of Nablus ... [where] a local war is ... being waged" by the New York Times.[12] On Saturday, 13 September 2008, a Palestinian entered the illegal Yitzhar-outpost Shalhevet, set fire to an abandoned building and stabbed a nine-year-old boy who had spotted him and tried to call for help, wounding him lightly.[19] Dozens of settlers from Yitzhar responded by marching through the adjacent Palestinian village of Asira al-Qibliya where the attacker was thought to live, using live fire and wounding eight people and torching dozens of Palestinian homes and buildings, with Israeli soldiers present, in what then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called a "pogrom".[20] One week later, a forteen year old teenager from Asira al-Qibliya, was shot dead by Israeli border police while walking toward Yitzhar, intending to throw a Molotov cocktail at the settlement. Police later said they had identified him as the attacker of the boy, thanks to forensic evidence.[21]

    Four inhabitants of Yitzhar were arrested on 14 June 2011 on suspicion of "attacks on public order", including arson attacks on Palestinian property.[22]

    link to en.wikipedia.org

• U. of Haifa stops Nakba commemoration, as prof writes hate post calling for 'Many Nakbas'
  • tree May 19, 2012 at 4:54 am

    TS has used that lame line at least twice before. You'd think he'd have some shame in complaining about someone else using a phrase twice.

• Killing Without Consequence: New campaign challenges Israeli impunity
  • tree May 19, 2012 at 3:43 pm

    I doubt they checked his ID before they shot him
    or had a conversation to make sure he was an Arab.

    All the had to do to know his ethnicity was look at his license plate, which would be the first thing a police officer would do after witnessing a hit and run accident.

• More 'magnet than a mallet': RAND Corporation warns against striking Iran
  • tree May 16, 2012 at 4:20 pm

    Of course, because Oleg’s statement is gibbish. It’s the babblings of a moron who can’t get over the fact that it’s not the 1930s anymore.

    Yes, and it occurred to me last night when I read this from Oleg....

    Well Klaus we don't remember the Holocaust for the early years
    now do we?

    that its simply another instance of Zionist hypocrisy. Israel and Zionist Jews are allowed to historically compare everything they find offensive today, from human rights complaints to BDS to Iran, to 1938, and imply ( or simply state outright) that if they aren't forcefully quashed they will lead to a Holocaust. But if anyone points out that racist and anti-democratic developments in Israel bear a resemblance to what happened in pre-WWII Nazi Germany, suddenly the rules change and "We don't remember the Holocaust for the early years" and how dare anyone compare Israel to Nazi Germany! Comparisons to Nazi Germany are reserved for every other nation. Israel alone is exempt from such comparisons in their minds. Another example of exceptionalist thinking.

• On the sidewalk in Hamburg-- 'Hier wohnte'
  • tree May 16, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    Its parody, GL.

  • tree May 16, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    Well being a Jew i answered a question with a question,
    so here we are.

    No, you just deflected the question, rather than answer it, because your direct answer might have damaged your argument. Your religion or ethnicity had nothing to do with it.

  • tree May 14, 2012 at 5:35 pm

    Unfortunately there were nowhere to run even for those that saw the oncoming storm…

    Over two thirds of Germany's Jews were able to flee Germany for other countries prior to 1939. Over 400,000 of the 600,000 German Jews had escaped, with only ten percent of those (40,000) going to Palestine.

• In power shortages, cuts should go to 'Gaza first,' says Israeli minister
  • tree May 17, 2012 at 4:45 am

    I agree that if I was simply trying to convince asherpat, I would be wasting my time. You're right, he or she wishes to remain willfully ignorant and will never read any report. But I figure there are others out there that might in fact be willing to overcome their ignorance and read the reports. And besides, I think its worth it just to point out how totally wrong asherpat is on so many things. His/her credibility is non-existent at the moment.

  • tree May 16, 2012 at 3:52 am

    No asherpat, its your understanding that is feeble. If Israel didn't restrict the fuel that Gaza could import, Gaza could be paying someone other than Israel for its fuel and have a measure of independence from Israel's control of its electricity. Israel doesn't simply refuse to sell fuel to Gaza, it prevents anyone else from doing so as well. This has been explained to you repeatedly.

    Gaza is dependent on Israeli electricity, which it can not get elsewhere and which it has to pay Israel for. Its a captive market, which benefits Israel's economy as such. And Israel can choose at any moment to cut off the supply, thereby immediately cutting off electricity. If Israel allowed fuel to enter Gaza from other sources than Israel, then it would not benefit from the sale of electricity to Gaza and it would not have immediate control over the electricity, as a reserve of fuel for the generators could be kept to keep them running if fuel were again cut off.

    And why dont you (and most other commenters here) dont blame Egypt – after all, it can supply the “Zionist-restricted” fuel to the brothers in Gaza?

    Again, this has been explained to you. According to the agreement between the Israel, the PA and Egypt, all goods to Gaza have to go through the Israeli crossings, not the one at Rafah, which is only a pedestrian crossing according to the terms of the agreement.

    2. Control over Movement of Goods

    Israel completely controls the import of goods into Gaza and exercises
    substantial control over exports from Gaza to third countries and to the West Bank.

    Imports

    With the exception of personal effects brought by travelers, imports through Rafah, the only crossing into Gaza not directly controlled by Israel, are not permitted.40 Israel has said it will allow imports to Gaza from Egypt through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom Crossing, located near the meeting point of Israel, Egypt, and Gaza.41 Thus far, imports from Egypt have been limited to sporadic shipments of humanitarian supplies.
    The Karni Crossing between Israel and Gaza is the lifeline through which commercial goods enter the Gaza Strip. Because imports to Gaza are not permitted via air, sea, or Rafah Crossing, only goods arriving first in Israel and inspected there can be brought into Gaza.

    During the first year following the signing of the Agreement on Movement and Access, Karni was open for just 222 days, and for 166 of the days in which it was open, it was open partially, for limited hours and using only a small number of available commercial lanes.42

    The restrictions on imports via Karni Crossing have, at various points, caused severe shortages of basic goods that threatened the health and welfare of Gaza residents, especially in March 2006 and during the military operations that ensued following the capture of an Israeli soldier on June 25, 2006.43 In the course of those operations, Israel destroyed Gaza's only powerplant by bombing six transformers that provided 43% of the electricity to Gaza. The remainder of the electricity is purchased from Israel. Gaza was plunged into darkness, and the functioning of critical institutions such as the medical and water systems was crippled by the lack of electricity and restrictions on the supply of fuel and spare parts through Karni Crossing and the fuel crossing at Nahal Oz, which was closed by the Israeli military in late June and early July 2006.

    Among other things, the sewage and water systems broke down because of the lack of electricity and the shortages of fuel and spare parts needed to operate generators and repair pipes. The director of the Gaza Coastal Municipal Water Utility, Maher Najjar, explains how water supply and the functioning of Gaza's sanitation system depend on Israel's willingness to permit goods and supplies to enter Gaza:

    "We do not have enough spare parts to repair pipes and other equipment. We were trying to get spare parts to repair pipes through Karni Crossing, but we have yet to receive them. We are waiting to hear whether the Israeli side has let them in …
    If we do not get more fuel in the next few days, we will be facing a catastrophe. There is not enough fuel in the local market to provide for our needs ...
    The chlorine and chemicals for water wells and desalination have not entered Gaza, and their absence endangers the life of the population. We are awaiting the approval of Israeli side."44

    link to gisha.org

    This link to the report from the Israeli NGO, Gisha, has been posted before. It might help you to actually read these things and not simply repeat ignorant arguments that bear no relationship to reality.

  • tree May 15, 2012 at 9:13 am with 5 replies

    Asherpat,

    MW stands for "Megawatt". Its a unit of electrical power, not a measure of fuel. Israel restricts the import of fuel into Gaza (as well as the importation of spare parts and equipment), so Gaza cannot produce as much of its own electricity as it otherwise could. Gaza is forced then to buy electricity (120 MegaWatts) from Israel, giving Israel a profit out of its restrictions on Gaza importations. There's nothing "kinky" about it. Its just another way for Israel to exploit occupied territory for its own gain.

• We're still losing
  • tree May 13, 2012 at 2:55 am

    Your link also says that "over 22%" of IBM's patents were made by inventors outside of the US. Twenty-two percent of 5896 is 1297. Forty five divided by 1297 means that a whopping 4% (generously rounding upwards) of IBM's 2010 patents came from its Israel facilities. Not a very impressive total coming from the "second most important" R & D lab at IBM.

  • tree May 12, 2012 at 7:20 pm with 1 replies

    According to their website, IBM has research labs around the world. The one in Haifa was set up in 1972. All of the rest, with the exception of those in the US and Zurich, were opened later than that, including labs in China, Japan, Brazil, Ireland, Australia and India. Looks like IBM thinks that innovation and research is a global phenomenon, not something particular to Haifa.

    link to research.ibm.com

    From the descriptions of their "focus", it seems like more of the cutting edge stuff is being done elsewhere, not at Haifa. I imagine that every facility, outside of Watson, probably describes itself as the "second most important" IBM facility. It makes the employees feel good.

• Liberal Zionists are afraid their parents will reject them if they come out
  • tree May 11, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    So, who was filling your wine glass when you wrote this?

    LOL. Phil's the proverbial optimistic child digging through the mound of horse manure, looking for the pony he's sure must be there somewhere.

  • tree May 11, 2012 at 6:03 pm with 1 replies

    Mandy Patinkin. Tony Award winning actor. His favorite movie role was Inigo Montoya, from The Princess Bride.

    Phil should post that speech. Much more poignant, and to the point, than Hogue's speech. Love his statement on fear.

• Right of Return key goes on tour
  • tree May 12, 2012 at 5:00 am

    No, they weren’t!

    Talback, I was trying to be gentle and diplomatic in correcting talknic, who was claiming that Jews outnumbered Palestinian Arabs in the proposed "Jewish State". Population figures are rarely exact enough to claim conclusively that there were more non-Jews than Jews in the proposed state, but its likely that there were. Certainly within the area conquered by Israel, which greatly exceeded the part the UN allotted to the "Jewish State", the majority of the population was Palestinian, until they were ethnically cleansed and refused their right to return to their homes.

  • tree May 11, 2012 at 3:39 pm with 6 replies

    Those who had their usual place of residence within Israel’s actual borders of 1948 and who fled, were A) not the entire non-Jewish Arab population in the area encompassed by Israel’s territory B) even combined, they were still a smaller in number than the Jewish population C) If this PART of the non-Jewish Arab population who fled, had returned in 1948, combined with those who didn’t flee, they’d still have been smaller in number than the Jewish population = no demographic threat by returning in 1948.

    Talknic, your math is wrong. Of the "Jewish State" in the Partition Plan, the UN counted roughly 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs, but also listed 100,000 Bedouins, who were counted separately from those 400,000 Arabs. So even in the 55% allotted, Jews were just barely the majority, if that. In Jerusalem, which was slated to be an international city, the numbers were approximately 100,000 Jews and 100,000 Arabs. In the UN "Arab State" there were only 10,000 or so Jews, with the vast majority of the population being Arab.

    Since Israel grabbed more than its allotted amount, and conquered an additional 23% (roughly half of the "Arab State") of Mandate Palestine, that means that the territory it conquered totally shifted the real demographic balance in the new state of Israel in favor of the Palestinian Arabs. That is why Israel ethnically cleansed them in the first place, and why Israel can never be considered a true democracy. Estimates of those who fled or were expelled and not allowed to return range from 750,000 to 900,000. Estimates of the number remaining in Israel after 1950 are around 150,000, with the number being roughly divided between 50,000 who had never left, 50,000 who had managed to return undetected to their homes, and 50,000 who were included in the territory that Jordan turned over to Israel under an armistice agreement. If Israel had kept all its claimed territory and not expelled its Palestinian inhabitants, Israeli demographics would have been roughly on the order of at least 900,000 Palestinian Arabs (using the low figure for refugees) and only 600,000 Jews. Even with unlimited Jewish immigration, Israel would have had a very significant non-Jewish population. Hence the ethnic cleansing, which the Zionist leadership always knew would be necessary.

• 'NYT' exposes pattern of Ultra Orthodox community covering up sexual abuse, punishing accusers
  • tree May 10, 2012 at 2:40 pm

    This post makes it seems like he’s mainly interested in injustice (or abuse) committed by Jews.

    Clue for you here. This is also showing a concern for injustice committed AGAINST Jews. Who do you think the victims are here? Christian Scientists? Presbyterians? Sikhs? Muslims? No, the sexual abuse was perpetrated against Orthodox Jewish children.

• A portrait of a former Zionist (Part 1)
  • tree May 25, 2012 at 4:24 am

    What name was that, and why we’re you banned?

    My money's on GuiltyFeat, with a tad more hasbara training. Pfp's not verbose enough to be Werdine. The broad ignorance about of the extent of Israel's ongoing criminal actions, plus the overweaning singular focus on violence against Israelis matches GF's modus operandi.

    To Pfp, the second intifada was ALL about two members of the Duvdevan IDF unit getting butchered in Ramallah. All the rest of the death and destruction was small potatoes and not worthy of remembering, certainly not any of it perpetrated against Palestinians.

  • tree May 17, 2012 at 6:00 am

    Thanks for the reply, Shmuel!

  • tree May 17, 2012 at 3:20 am

    For example, the second intifada began as a violent reaction to Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount.

    Actually, the second intifada started as a Palestinian protest on the day following Sharon's visit. Israel responded by shooting at the protesters, as well as Muslim worshipers at Al-Aqsa, killing seven Palestinians. Israel then proceeded to violently invade every Palestinian city with troops, tanks and helicopters, and firing, by their own admission, over 1 million bullets in the month of October. At the end of 2000, over 275 Palestinians had been killed, and just 24 Israelis, with only 5 of those being Israeli civilians. A car bomb panted by a Palestinian exploded in November in Jerusalem, but the first actual suicide bombing didn't happen until February of 2001. Apparently 275 Palestinians killed by Israel in 3 months means nothing to you.

    link to aljazeera.com

    Your other examples are likewise wrong, but I don't have time now to discuss those. Perhaps someone else can pick it up, or you could search the archives under my comments, using the word "greenhouses" to get the real history. Short form is, the Jewish settlers were amply remunerated by Bill Gates, not Israel, for the greenhouses, some of the settlers had already dismantled and taken some of the greenhouse equipment, and the Palestinian "destruction" was overstated.

  • tree May 17, 2012 at 3:01 am

    The Arab states happily disenfranchised the Palestinians and either ruled over them in a colonial fashion (Egypt in Gaza) or actively tried to take the land for themselves (Jordan in the West Bank.)

    No Egyptians moved into Gaza, so your "colonial fashion" statement is incorrect. The Gazans weren't given any Egyptian voting rights however, but it still put them in better condition than they have been under Israeli rule since 1967. Egypt never attacked the Gazans, and in fact were attacked, in Gaza, by Israel in 1954 and 1956.

    link to mondoweiss.net

    In Jordan, all West Bank Palestinians were given full citizenship rights and were not only allowed to vote but had direct representation in the Jordanian Parliament. At one point, there were more Palestinians in the Jordanian Parliament then there were Hashemites. No Jordanian confiscated Palestinian land, and the West Bank was under the same civilian administration as the rest of Jordan. This is in great contrast to Israeli rule over the West Bank, where Israel has the same civilian rule for the Jewish settlers in the WB as within the green line, and a different and extremely harsh military rule over the Palestinians living there; Palestinian land has been continually confiscated for the benefit of Jewish settlers; and of course Palestinians have no right to vote or have representation in the country, Israel, that totally controls their lives.

    In other words, “Israeli actions in 1948, immediately following the declaration of independence” were not to perpetuate a war of expansion but to defend itself against an attack initiated by the Arabs. Land was taken during the war, certainly. But you simply can’t label any state’s actions “a war solely for territorial expansion” if the other side attacked it first.

    You seem to have a knack for missing the point. Israel had already attacked and claimed territory OUTSIDE of the area set aside to be the UN Partition Plan's Jewish State. It had already expanded its territory through violent attacks on areas that were designated part of the "Arab State". It had also already violated the terms of the Partition Plan by violently expelling Palestinians from their homes within the designated Jewish State. The aggressor was Israel. Claiming that Israel was "attacked first" is equivalent to insisting that Britain attacked Nazi Germany first, because Britain declared war after Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

  • tree May 17, 2012 at 2:25 am

    Shmuel,

    So, if I'm understanding what you and Hostage are saying, Italy's "jus sanguinis", if implemented in Israel, would mean that all descendants of Palestinians who were born and lived in what became Israel would have the right to apply for citizenship under this rule, and any Jew that applied for citizenship under the rule would need to prove that his/her parent or grandparent was born in Palesstine/Israel, rather than simply being given automatic citizenship purely because of his/her status as a Jew?

  • tree May 16, 2012 at 3:13 am

    During the Intifada these attempts to cross the fence would have been met with armed patrols and people ready to shoot.That’s the whole point of it. What you are doing is showing a security measure during peace time
    and saying there is no point to it.It’s like pointing to a policemen
    sitting in his squad car eating donuts and saying there is no need
    for him carry a weapon since he doesn’t use it at the moment.

    No, what I'm doing is pointing to the policeman eating donuts and refuting your insistence that the donuts are some kind of "security measure". The donuts don't stop any crime from happening but you, by analogy, are presuming that because there isn't any crime happening at this moment, it must be because the policeman is eating donuts. The separation barrier is there: it isn't an "un-carried weapon". It exists. It's simply an ineffective security measure for keeping out any Palestinian who really wants to get into Israel. Tens of thousands of Palestinians get in weekly. If a Palestinian suicide bomber wanted to get through it or around it he could do that just as easily as the incredible number of illegal Palestinian workers do. The barrier is a failure at its falsely stated purpose. But it happens to be a great land grab and Palestinian economy squasher and that is why it is there.

  • tree May 16, 2012 at 3:01 am

    Terryscott,

    Anyway, that article is from five years ago, and the photos probably even earlier. Don’t try climbing over the fence today.

    A similar number of illegal Palestinian workers are in Israel today. The fence doesn't provide any more "security" than it did 5 years ago.

    link to middleeastmonitor.org.uk

    link to haaretz.com

    link to thenational.ae

  • tree May 16, 2012 at 2:43 am

    pfp,

    Israel had already attacked and expelled Palestinians from areas that were to be part of the UN Partition Plan's Arab State, as well as Palestinians who wer by all rights citizens of the proposed Jewish State. The vast majority of the fighting that involved the armies of the adjacent Arab states in the 1948 war occurred in the area that was designated as part of the proposed Arab State that Israel conquered by war and aggression, including ethnic cleansing. Pre-state Israel had already managed to ethnically cleanse somewhere between 350 to 450 thousand Palestinian civilians prior to May 15th, 1948. The actions of the other Arab states were a response to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that Israel created in its brutal conquest.

  • tree May 13, 2012 at 7:25 am

    Now Judaism is a nation?

    I bet its a dessert topping and a floor wax, too, right?

    link to hulu.com

    You are confusing the nation, which is Japan, with the ethnicity, which is Japanese. An American of Japanese ancestry is NOT a nation, nor is he or she a member of the nation of Japan.

    And then you further mix up the religion with the ethnicity in describing Judaism, which is purely a religion, not an ethnicity OR a nation. Israel is the nation. A member of that nation is an Israeli. Israel simply treats some of its citizen/members(Jews) as more important ( or more equal, as Orwell would say) than others, and treats yet others, who by all rights should be citizen/members, as vassal subjects instead. You're twisting yourself and the accepted meaning of words into knots in order to justify the unjustifiable.

  • tree May 9, 2012 at 4:32 pm with 5 replies

    The driver shrugged. ‘Why not? This is Jewish land. You are American so you don’t understand. They could have had peace twenty times already. But they don’t want it.”

    He dropped us off with the warning that we shouldn’t tell any Palestinian we were from America, we could get in trouble.

    We walked 100 yards around the circle at Tappuah junction to get to the Nablus road. A service was there, and the driver opened the back door so we could put in our suitcases.

    “Where are you from?” he asked.

    Bill said, “We’re Americans.”

    “Welcome,” the driver said, and shook our hands.

    This is the point at which I fell in love with Bill. :-)

  • tree May 9, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    Checkpoints and closure existed as an Israeli policy long before the first suicide bomber hit Israel. From Amira Hass:

    On the eve of the Gulf War in 1991, an Israeli military order canceled an earlier order that granted all Palestinian inhabitants a "general exit permit" to Israel. Issued in the West Bank in the early 1970s, the general exit permit, which in effect assured Palestinians free movement in Israel, was extended to Gaza only in the mid-1980s, but in practice Gazans had enjoyed a similar freedom of movement almost since the West Bank order. This free movement was not "conferred" in the interests of equality-Jews were allowed and, indeed, encouraged to settle in the 1967 occupied territories, but Palestinians had no reciprocal right in Israel-but was one of Moshe Dayan's measures for economically integrating the OPT into Israel with the aim of toning down Palestinian national aspirations and undermining the feasibility of an independent Palestinian state. But whatever the motives, freedom of movement meant a great deal for the individual Palestinian, both economically and socially. It also proved extremely valuable to the three hitherto separated Palestinian communities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel proper, allowing them to reestablish direct contacts and reconsolidate the national and cultural common ground that endured despite the differences that had developed or been accentuated during the years of separation.

    It is true that even at the outset there were exceptions to the blanket rule of general exit permit: "security" suspects were prevented from free movement at various times, as were criminals, unless they joined Israel's army of collaborators. But these were exceptions, and in general the Palestinian right to freedom of movement was respected by the Israeli authorities. Even when there were fierce Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians in Israel, no one demanded that entrances to Israel be sealed off.

    Some broader exceptions to the rule were introduced with the first intifada as of 1988. In Gaza, a magnetic card was imposed on anyone wishing to travel to Israel. This second identity card, renewable yearly for a fee to Palestinians presumed not to represent a security threat, tightened control over the Gazan population. Meanwhile, at about the same time in the West Bank, the "green identity card" (as opposed to the ordinary orange one) was introduced for "security cases"--former prisoners and activists--preventing them from crossing the Green Line. But the majority of the population continued to be able to exercise their right to free movement throughout the entire territory, just as Israelis did.

    It was the Gulf War that provided the occasion to reverse this situation of free movement for the many and prohibition for the few. From then on, there was a blanket denial of the right for all Palestinians, with exceptions being made for certain explicit categories--including workers, merchants, people in need of medical treatment, collaborators, and important Palestinian personalities--which were granted passes. In principle, this has been the rule since then, though its practice has been modified and tightened with time.

    Between the revocation of the general exit permit in 1991 and March 1993, when Israeli police began launching relentless pursuits to capture and arrest "infiltrators" and military courts started imposing heavy fines on those caught without the proper pass, the regulations were still vague. Checkpoints were not systematic and there were no "borders" per se; it was still fairly easy to sneak out, even from the Strip. Moreover, the new rules seemed to be enforced mainly concerning entry into Israel, with travel between the West Bank and Gaza being more tolerated. Still, during those first two years of closure, the number of Palestinian workers in Israel was slashed, setting off a chain of economic blows to individual Palestinian families and the community. Trips to Israel for shopping or other normal activities were already becoming a thing of the past. Gradually, travel between the West Bank and Gaza also became increasingly difficult and, finally, almost impossible.

    A second "novelty" was introduced in March 1993: the entire municipality of East Jerusalem, which Israel greatly expanded and annexed in 1967, was incorporated de facto into the no-entry Israeli territory. Ever since that time, the Palestinian cultural, religious, institutional, economic, and commercial capital has been encircled, with ever-expanding bureaucratic measures and regulations forbidding or "thinning" Palestinian entry into the city. At first, only men under forty needed permits, then women as well, and finally everybody of all ages required them.

    The Israeli pass system, introduced not long before the Madrid peace conference and at a time when the Palestinian-Israeli negotiating process was already in the planning stages, was consolidated during the Oslo years. Indeed, it was with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 that the special bureaucratic-military machinery of the pass system was developed, with heavy input from Shin Bet. Palestinian officials became the middlemen who either transferred the Israeli-approved permits to their fellow Palestinians or transmitted the rejection.

    The pass system turned a universal basic right into a coveted privilege--or portion of a privilege--allotted to a minority on a case-by-case basis. For the privilege was not whole: it had gradations. Some passes permitted an overnight stay in Israel, others required return by dusk, a few were for an entire month. Some restricted means of transport to the special group taxis parked outside the Erez checkpoint in the Gaza Strip; a handful allowed the use of private cars from door to door. The hand that giveth also taketh away: some months as many as 1,000 businessmen might be granted passes, other months only 300; sometimes the passes for Gazans would be for Israel and the West Bank, sometimes only for the West Bank. It was thus that an entire society was stratified and segmented on the basis of whether one had access, and in what portion, to the "privilege" of freedom of movement.

    The societal segmentation resulting from the pass system accompanied the territorial segmentation Israel initiated immediately after the 1967 war when it began colonizing the occupied territories. And like the curtailment of Palestinian movement, the process of territorial fragmentation intensified during the "decade of peace." Not only did the settlements continue to grow, but a huge and ever-expanding network of high-quality bypass roads was built in the OPT linking Israeli settlements to each other and to Israel proper, while circumventing Palestinian communities and cutting Palestinian villages off from each other, from the larger towns, and even from their own fields and orchards.

    With the Oslo II (Taba) agreement of September 1995, the final stage of the segmentation was achieved with the division of the West Bank, like the Gaza Strip before it, into a confusing mosaic of pieces of territory with differing status depending on the nature of the security control over them. Area A enclaves were to have "full" (in fact, limited) Palestinian security and civil control, area B had Israeli security and Palestinian civil control, and area C, the great mass of the land, was under full Israeli control. As the Palestinians understood it, the area under "full" Palestinian control, initially limited to the main towns, was gradually to be increased so that by the end of the interim period (originally set for May 1999) it would cover "most" of the West Bank apart from the built-up areas of the settlements and the military installations (as stipulated vaguely in the accords). But as the transfer of territory was contingent upon the PA's good behavior and delivery of security goods (fighting terror and preventing anti-Israeli violence), Israel alone could decide the land transfers. By September 2000, then, the area A enclaves totaled 18 percent, whereas area C--the agricultural and development land reservoir--covered a full 60 percent. In Gaza, meanwhile, 20 percent of the narrow Strip was set aside for the Israeli army and the settlers, representing 0.5 percent of the population.

    In retrospect, the most significant feature of the zoning was not its delineation according to security control, which the PA had seen as the primary achievement. The second intifada demonstrates daily how the A zoning is no buffer against Israeli attacks and incursions. Indeed, it was only with the outbreak of the current uprising that the extraordinary ingenuity of the "zoning" system, backed by the network of bypass roads, could be fully appreciated: with most of the population living in the scattered islands of A and B, separated from each other by the vast ocean of C lands, hundreds of villages and half a dozen towns could be totally paralyzed by strategically placed barricades and ditches, tanks, and IDF sharpshooters, thereby devastating an entire economy and disrupting all social life. At the same time, the fact that the great majority of the Palestinians live under ostensible PA civil responsibility enables Israel to disclaim its obligations toward the civilian population (even though legally it remains the occupier). With astonishing success, Israel, both before and during the current uprising, has managed to portray the dire economic and other civil repercussions of the closure-induced fragmentation, its own invention as the occupying power, as none of its concern.

    The whole article is worth a read, and a bookmarking, for when the willfully ignorant trot out the old hasbara lines about the "necessity" of the checkpoints for "security".

    link to fromoccupiedpalestine.org

  • tree May 9, 2012 at 3:20 pm with 6 replies

    For Terry, who must have missed it. And for Fred, too.

    One Thousand Two Hundred Seventy Six People Per Week

    That's the average number of West Bank Palestinians arrested each week IN ISRAEL, for working there without a permit. Everyone of them had to find a way around the Separation Barrier and the checkpoints in order to get to their work in Israel. That's the minimum number of people that made it past Israeli "security measures"each week. Suicide bombers, if there were any, could have easily used the same paths and tactics.

    Your statement belies a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy on your part, Terry.

    Read the article. Look at all the pictures of Palestinians crossing the barriers. Read Diane Mason's (lawrence of Cyberia) earlier article, Western News Media and the Manufacture of Conventional Wisdom

    Up until now, this might just be ignorance on your part. After this, I will take it as your wish to remain willfully stupid if you repeat your falsities.

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, Terry.

• 'Battle of the Empty Stomachs': Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab surpass 70 days on hunger strike
  • tree May 14, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    Fred,

    If the accused doesn't know the charge against him then he can't enter any evidence to refute the charge, which means that the "evidence" that the court is reviewing in incomplete and one-sided( and even possibly false). In other words, the court is NOT really reviewing the complete evidence because the system precludes it.

    You've complained in the past about what you see as one-sided-ness expressed verbally on a blog, and yet you seem to be just fine with imprisoning people on exactly this basis, as long as they are Palestinian, of course.

• Palestinian students at Israeli college say they were forced to stand to honor war dead
  • tree May 7, 2012 at 5:19 am

    From Wikipedia:

    Yom Hazikaron (Hebrew: יום הזיכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל ולנפגעי פעולות האיבה‎, lit. Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day) is Israel's official Memorial Day.[1] The national observance was enacted into law in 1963.[2] While Yom Hazikaron has been traditionally dedicated to fallen soldiers, commemoration has now been extended to civilian victims of the ongoing armed dispute.[3]

    History

    In 1949 and 1950, the first two years after the declaration of the State, memorial services for soldiers who fell in the War of Independence were held on Independence Day.[4] Services at military cemeteries were coordinated between the IDF and the Ministry of Defense. A concern arose, expressed by families of fallen soldiers, to establish a separate memorial day observance distinct from the festive celebrations of national independence. In response, and in light of public debate on the issue, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion - also serving as Minister of Defense - established in January 1951 the "Public Council for Soldiers' Commemoration". This council recommended establishing the 4th of Iyyar, the day preceding Independence Day, as the "General Memorial Day for the Heroes of the War of Independence". This proposal won government approval that same year.[4]

    link to en.wikipedia.org

• Who's the anti-Semite?
  • tree May 17, 2012 at 2:12 am

    “Go to israel if you like, and see for yourself what zionism has wrought – one of the most bigoted, cliquish, arrogant, querrelous, corrupt-to-the-bones places on earth. ”

    No it’s not. I have been there, have you?

    Danaa was born and grew up in Israel. She's now a US citizen, and trying, last I heard, to relinquish her Israeli citizenship. She speaks from decades of experience there.

  • tree May 11, 2012 at 5:42 am

    There's an even more direct connection of the massacre to the US, in that the US brokered the truce that sent the Palestinian PLO militants out of Beirut with the US's assurance that no harm would come to the women, children and other civilians left behind there. The IDF was likewise, as part of the truce, supposed to leave West Beirut. The IDF broke its part of the bargain by invading West Beirut and the US, which had already pulled out of Lebanon by that time, did little to nothing besides making stern diplomatic requests for Israel to stop the massacre.

    link to mediamonitors.net

• I always knew Nana was Jewish, but it only came up once
  • tree May 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm with 2 replies

    I suspect that it depended on where and when you lived in the US. My paternal grandfather's family came from Alsace-Loraine, which was alternately German and French, repeatedly. He made a point of always insisting that they were French, even going so far as to give all his children obviously French names, although the surnames in his lineage clearly showed some German ancestry. My father said he did this because of anti-German feeling in the US in the early 20th century.

    I once met a lawyer who had two quite interesting stories about growing up in LA during WWII. He was Jewish and grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Two of the exceptions to that predominance were, respectively, a child of Japanese heritage and a recent immigrant child from Germany, who was not Jewish.

    The young Japanese heritage child was forced into internment at Manzanar with his family at age 5. The lawyer I met said that the experience of his young friend having to leave his neighborhood so abruptly to be imprisoned for nothing so deeply affected the lawyer that he spent much of his adult life trying to help the internees receive an official apology and compensation from the US.

    His story about the young German child was also fascinating. He and a few of his friends were chasing the boy one day when the boy's father came out and asked them why they were chasing his son. They said that the boy had called them "dirty Jews". The father immediately slapped his son's face and said in exasperation to his son, "This is why we left Germany." The lawyer said he felt a tinge of guilt at that point, because what had gone unmentioned was that he and his friends had taunted the boy for his German heritage, calling him names, before he had called them all "dirty Jews" in response. Later on, he said, they all became good friends, helped by the fact that the German boy's family was the first on the block to have a television.

• Israeli police use new force on Palestinians as protests mount in support of hunger strikers
  • tree May 5, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    In Israel, because the protesters usually throw rocks, or otherwise attack the soldiers.

    That can't be the reason, because when Jewish settlers rioted and attacked an IDF base, not only did the IDF NOT use rubber bullets and tear gas and electric shock on the rock throwers, they only detained a single one of the rioters during the attack.

    link to jpost.com

    The Jewish rioters in this case were most definitely violent, but yet they were treated with kid gloves by the IDF. But they were Jewish, so they were treated differently (with much more consideration) than non-violent Palestinians. That's racism, Fred.

    A large number (some 300, we’re told) of yarmulke-wearing pogromchiks stoned Palestinian vehicles, stormed a military base, caused severe damage to equipment there, stoned a brigade commander and his XO – the stones were thrown into their command vehicle, no less – and managed to get away with it without any pogromchik being shot in the face by a gas grenade. Actually, the IDF only managed to detain one of them. When military reporter Carmela Menashe asked the IDF Spokesman, Brigadier Yoav Mordechai, this morning how the brigade commander would react of he was stoned by a Palestinian, Mordechai answered (Hebrew recording, circa 12:00) that “I assume, Carmela, that you wouldn’t expect the brigade commander to open fire on a Jew standing in front of him, I am certain you didn’t mean that.”

    And there you have it. The IDF’s official spokesman defines the apartheid regime in the West Bank. There are stone-throwers who may be shot, and there are some, those of the Chosen People, who can’t be. Same offence, same region, different reaction.

    link to 972mag.com

    Or try to get into closed military areas.

    "Closed military areas", otherwise know as your own home or village if you are a Palestinian. An actual IDF base, however, is not considered a "closed military area", liable to get you shot for entering it, if you just happen to be a Jewish settler.

• Egypt grants travel permits to Palfest participants to enter Gaza
  • tree May 4, 2012 at 7:07 pm

    Am I correct in yr post you are saying that the Israelis monitor the Gaza side of the border at Rafah?

    They do more than just monitor. They still have ultimate control over who may enter and when.

    Despite disengagement, Israel retains control over Gaza's land crossings, including:

    • Complete control over the entrance of foreigners;
    • Complete control over the entrance of Palestinians not listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry;
    • Complete control over import of goods;
    • Substantial control over export of goods;
    • Limited control over the entrance of Palestinian residents listed in the Israeli-controlled population registry (Palestinian ID-card holders);
    • Ultimate control over the entrance and exit of all persons and goods by virtue of the ability to close all crossings into and out of Gaza.

    1. Control over Movement of People

    The Gaza Strip has land crossings into two countries: Israel and Egypt. As would be expected, Israel controls movement into Israel from Gaza. However, Israel also controls the movement of people between Gaza and Egypt via Rafah Crossing, the only operational Egypt-Gaza Crossing.24
    In the two months following completion of Israel's disengagement plan, the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt remained closed pending a U.S.-and the West Bank.25 Under the terms of that agreement, the Palestinian Authority operates Rafah Crossing under the supervision of European Union monitors present at the crossing and Israeli security officials who monitor the operations via video footage and supervision of passenger lists.
    With few exceptions, travel via Rafah is restricted to Palestinians registered in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian Population Registry, Also, Israel reserves the right to block the entrance of holders of Palestinian ID cards whom it considers to be "terrorist activists".26

    In the excepted categories – diplomats, foreign investors, foreign representatives of recognized international organizations and humanitarian cases – the ability of a foreigner to cross is subject to veto by Israel, which has 48 hours to register its objection.27

    Israeli security officials monitor the crossing at Rafah via cameras which receive real-time video and data feed of operations.28 An objection by Israel to the entrance of a foreigner in one of the exceptional categories triggers aprocess of consultation between Israeli, Palestinian, and EU representatives, during which time the person may not enter Gaza.29

    Israel makes the final decision whether a foreigner may enter Gaza,despite the fact that the language of the agreement suggests that Israel's role is advisory.30 According to the Israeli Defense Ministry:
    "In accordance with the Interim Agreements [Oslo Accord-ed], requests for the passage of foreigners who do not hold Palestinian documentation are brought to the Israeli side for approval after they have been approved by the Palestinian side …

    We do not know of cases in which residents who do not hold Palestinian documentation requested to cross, were refused, and crossed.

    ..........

    2. Control over Movement of Goods

    Israel completely controls the import of goods into Gaza and exercises substantial control over exports from Gaza to third countries and to the West Bank.

    Imports

    With the exception of personal effects brought by travelers, imports through Rafah, the only crossing into Gaza not directly controlled by Israel, are not permitted.40 Israel has said it will allow imports to Gaza from Egypt through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom Crossing, located near the meeting point of Israel, Egypt, and Gaza.41 Thus far, imports from Egypt have been limited to sporadic shipments of humanitarian supplies.

    The Karni Crossing between Israel and Gaza is the lifeline through which commercial goods enter the Gaza Strip. Because imports to Gaza are not permitted via air, sea, or Rafah Crossing, only goods arriving firstinIsraeland inspected there can be brought into Gaza. During the firstyearfollowing the signing of the Agreement on Movement and Access, Karni was open for just 222 days, and for 166 of the days in which it was open, it was open partially, for limited hours and using only a small number of available commercial lanes.42

    Much more at link below. Thanks to Shmuel for originally providing this link.

    link to gisha.org

• The Methodist conference: Let’s call this victory what it is
  • tree May 7, 2012 at 5:10 am

    “Just that if you are going to boycott, you are going to have trouble finding a computer or phone that doesn’t have chips that trace back to Israel.”

    (CNN) -- Apple's A5 chip, which powers the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, is now being produced in a Texas factory owned by Samsung, Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the operation.
    Until now, Apple has mainly relied on Korean and Chinese manufacturers that produced the chips for Apple's products on their soil.
    Samsung's new $3.6 billion plant in Austin is the size of nine football fields (1.6 million square feet), and it's almost solely dedicated to producing Apple chips.

    link to cnn.com

    Please, Fred, give up that silly hasbara shtick about computer chips. Its just incredibly stupid as well as untrue.

• Video: #Flagwoman protester raises Palestinian flag on Israeli military vehicle outside Ofer prison
  • tree May 17, 2012 at 5:52 am

    Why don’t you POST exactly what I wrote AND let the reader decide?

    I did post exactly what you said, but it really wasn't necessary for the reader to decide anything from my comments because everyone can read exactly what you said from your own comments here. The only person here who seemed unaware of what you wrote was yourself.

    In your second post you insisted that you didn't say exactly what you did in fact say in your first post. You went on to insist that the problem was my own bias, in that I was putting words in your mouth. Then when I quoted back to you exactly what you had said, you insisted it was merely a proofreading problem. It wasn't. A proofreading problem would be an error in grammar or spelling. What you exhibited was a very blatant bias problem on your part in your first post that you tried to project upon me in your second post. You claimed in your first post, the one in which you were "amazed" at how beliefs could create indoctrination, that

    What happens in this video, is a stunt, it isn’t civil disobedience. It was antagonistic, pure and simple and yet hard to see for the uninitiated. The authorities were provoked by a spray bomb,, their instructions were disregarded and the incident, the catalyst that caused one soldier to pursue was, yes EDITED from the content. This is Propaganda, not journalism, it is NOT part of a “war of ideas” it is deliberate and misleading and for a desired affect.

    I encourage you to open your eyes, your minds and your hearts toward what is TRUE. Not what supports a particular, even twisted, contrived perspective.

    You set yourself up in this instance as an unbiased observer. That was the whole gist of your "play-by-play", while at the same time you insisted that you could detect that it was all a "stunt" and you knew what was "TRUE". So to insist that this was simply a proofreading error on your part is a weak and false excuse.

    That’s called taking responsibility, ownership and demonstrating integrity.

    No, that's called making lame excuses for your bias, rather than admitting it. If you want to insist that your original point was that you too have biases and here's a play by play example of your own bias, that's your prerogative, but its simply another example of you NOT owning up to what you were doing.

    “I am amazed. Truly amazed at how: personal, or political, or religious, (or otherwise) beliefs can create indoctrination, dispose of critical thinking and deny any premise of objectivity. ”

    Thank you, tree

    “He couldn’t even acknowledge that he clearly exhibited a bias…”
    (WE) all have [bias] that is influenced by our belief systems.
    That was my original point. Did you miss that?

    The first sentence in quotes is your own. If you were trying to make the point that you too have a bias in this instance then you wouldn't have claimed that you are "truly amazed".... You'd take it as a given, for yourself and for everyone else. You didn't acknowledge a bias. You excused it as a "proofreading error." You spun the video according to your bias and then insisted to Annie that "I can’t spin the video."

    Now, if you are of the belief, that regardless of what I write, it really means “something else” and given your heightened perception that I am [APPLY LABEL HERE] then you have once again provided clear, concise evidence to support my initial Concept or IDEA as follows.

    Samuel, you are still making excuses and in denial about your own bias. I reported back exactly what you wrote. I didn't claim it meant "something else", and I have no perception, heightened or otherwise, that you are "[APPLY LABEL HERE]". You are in fact the one who is claiming I said or thought things I never said or thought. ("Heightened" perception on your part???) I'm simply someone who could read your comment and recognize the bias in it, and in your evaluation of what was actually seen in the video. And then I pointed that bias out to you, using your own words.

  • tree May 7, 2012 at 12:07 am with 2 replies

    I am amazed that in 109 responses no one here has challenged your assertions of what is in the video.

    You obviously missed my remark made two and a half days before yours, where I made many of the same criticisms you did, although in a slightly different manner. But repetition of valid criticism is not a bad thing. Samuel responded to my criticism by falsely insisting he did not say what he said, and then when I pointed that out he claimed it was a "proofreading " error on his part. At that point, conversation with him seemed pointless when he couldn't even acknowledge that he clearly exhibited a bias that couldn't have been negated merely by better "proofreading".

  • tree May 2, 2012 at 3:13 pm

    Samuel, you are being extremely dishonest here.

    I described what appeared to be red spray paint with solvent dripping from it. I did not say>THE protestors threw a spray bomb at the military vehicle< I observed something and asked questions, I did not form conclusions

    Complete denial on your part. This is what you said in your earlier comment.

    " There is a red spray bomb that has been just recently released on the white truck. Take a look. It’s fresh. See the red paint, o.k., now, notice the slight pinkish trail running down the side of the truck? That is solvent. That is how I know, it’s a fresh red spray bomb. THINK"

    Not only did you assert that you KNEW it was was a "red spray bomb", you also asserted that you knew it was freshly made. You weren't asking questions. You were drawing conclusions that fit your preconceived notions. And now you insist that you weren't forming conclusions. Sorry, Samuel, but that is exactly what you did.

    Tree, you speculate that the spray bomb may actually be pepper spray. Did you take into account the height of the spray area in relation to a person, or ask yourself; Why would a pattern from pepper spray be so high up on a vehicle? I'm calling for deductive reasoning. If someone deploys pepper spray high above their head, drift will occur and the spray will possibly come down upon the person who deployed it. That would be a theory based on probabilities.

    I offered up the possibility of pepper spray to make clear to you that your conclusion -yes, conclusion-that it was a "fresh red spray bomb" was not the only possibility as to the origin of the red mark. The fact that you even consider the red mark important indicates your bias. Its just as probable that its red pepper spray that was deployed at some time that we did not see towards the woman on top of the truck but could not reach high enough. It is way above head height at and a location in line with where the woman was. Pepper spray does not usually drift in a wide pattern as you insist, otherwise anyone deploying it would easily risk getting it on themselves no matter what the scenario and you can see from later in the video that none of the soldiers deploying it get it on themselves. I'm not insisting on the pepper spray theory, its merely an alternative I brought up to point out that one can not objectively conclude anything about the red mark. You were the one that claimed you KNEW it was a red spray bomb, with no evidence to back it up, complete with faulty deductive reasoning on your part.

    I didn't say that there was anything nefarious going on.

    Of course you did. Again, complete obliviousness, or blatant dishonesty, on your part about what you truly did and said in your first comment. This is from your first comment:

    "What happens in this video, is a stunt, it isn’t civil disobedience. It was antagonistic, pure and simple and yet hard to see for the uninitiated. The authorities were provoked by a spray bomb,, their instructions were disregarded and the incident, the catalyst that caused one soldier to pursue was, yes EDITED from the content. This is Propaganda, not journalism, it is NOT part of a “war of ideas” it is deliberate and misleading and for a desired affect."

    And continued with this comment: "This was a stunt, self-promotion and wreaks with the same authenticity of “reality TV shows” featuring Kim Kardashian and Company."

    Again, you assume a spray bomb was fired to "provoke", although now you claim you didn't say that, and claim that "the catalyst" was edited out when you have no way of knowing that. The catalyst could have been the woman getting down from the top of the truck, or anything else that occurred while the camera was running but on the opposite side of the truck from the camera operator. Not only did you claim that something nefarious was going on, you insisted on the basis of non-existent "facts" that it must have been pure "antagonistic" and "deliberate and misleading" propaganda and we are all just too ignorant to notice.

    Tree, you also actually assist in proving my point. You are arguing against things I did not write. In your mind you have placed me as an anti-protester and you draw the conclusions that support your point of view and characterize my observations or my questions as being a product of my imagination.

    As I have pointed out repeatedly, you did write things from your imagination-the "provocation" of a spray bomb, the "importance" of an edit, unheard instructions being disregarded, a camera flash that wasn't, a man grabbing a rifle-and now you have the cluelessness to claim you never said those things. You aren't doing your case any good. Stop digging. I drew no conclusions about what your bias was, except when you clearly stated it, as in your paragraph above but notedthe instances when what you claimed to know or see was not on the video.

    Tree, you claimed to be in Editing. Did you look at the video frame by frame? If you did you would have seen that a man grabbed the shoulder strap that was attached to the rifle. Also I mentioned a flash, apparently from a camera because I could not see a canister.

    Yes.I was the one that mentioned to you that it was not in fact a man but two women that grabbed the shoulder strap. You originally insisted that "at 33 seconds in we can observe that a man grabs the “Police Officer’s” rifle." I corrected you on both points. I see that at least you have admitted that no one grabbed the rifle now, just the strap. I pointed that discrepancy out to you because you claimed you were merely watching objectively and truly seeing all that was there, but in fact you missed quite a few things. As for the "camera flash" , you assumed a camera flash merely by the light but ignored both the sound (camera flashes haven't made that kind of sound since the 1930's!) and the smoke visible immediately after the deployment of the small concussive grenade. These were some of he obvious things you missed.

    Tree, you draw conclusions on what I did not say. I did not comment on the pepper spray attacks and you cast that as a "fail" on my part.

    Samuel, you insisted that we needed to look at the whole video objectively and then proceeded to do a play by play of your own, complete with your imaginings about things that clearly weren't on the video, and then abruptly stopped your play by play well in advance on any of the pepper spray attacks, and diverged off into your opinion of what a Canadian police officer would have done at that exact point. The fact that you stopped your play by play ahead of the pepper spray reeks of non-objectivity on your part.

    I don't talk about a "fail". I pointed out that your stopping the play by play at exactly that moment showed a total lack of the objectivity that you claimed you had. I was also pointing out that most of the posters here were upset most specifically about the pepper spraying, which seemed punitive rather than necessary. You didn't address their concerns in your post at all.

    I find it very hard to "converse" with someone who says one thing and then immediately denies that he said that. I suggest you look objectively at your own two posts here and question why you either felt it necessary to lie about what you said previously, or, alternatively, why you are so unaware of what you actually said so as to mischaracterize your very own statements in your next breath.

  • tree May 2, 2012 at 4:30 am with 1 replies

    I'm not sure whether you are simply so caught up in your own bias that you can't see how self=delusional you are, or if you are simply trying to pretend an objectivity you simply don't have here. You've made numerous assumptions about the video that have gone well beyond what you actually saw into the realm of mind reading and have in fact seen things in the video (a man reaching for the soldiers gun, and a camera flash) that are not there. You really need to stop lecturing others and question your own bias, Samuel. It may not be apparent to you, but it certainly is to everyone else.

  • tree May 2, 2012 at 3:25 am with 12 replies

    Samuel,

    You seem to be projecting and making unsupported assumptions about edits that are not that significant. 3 edits in 15 seconds is not some grand conspiracy. Trust me, editing is my field, and 3 edits in 15 seconds is not a large number. Most likely the edits were made because the original video shots panned off of the woman to other areas, or the shots themselves were simply so short that there was no footage in between, and the edits were made to give a better understanding of the fact that time had passed, rather than disguise the fact. Jump cuts clearly indicate that time has passed between cuts. Its a given.

    You mention the red mark on the left side of the vehicle, which is not shown in any previous shot. You posit that a "red spray bomb" was directed at the vehicle and yet there is really no support for that idea. Why "spray bomb" a vehicle with one of your compatriots on the roof of it? Why spray bomb a vehicle at all when such an action is most likely to get you killed if someone thinks you are firing a lethal weapon and not paint? If you look at it, it appears more reddish orange than simply red . Its just as possible that the red splotch is a pepper spray mark and streaking of the resin below that. The pattern is actually quite similar in color and spray area to what you see on the pepper-sprayed demonstrators. And even if it were in fact a paint spray mark, there is no indication that it was made immediately prior to the camera shot, or even that day. If you are immediately making assumptions like you did, and not at least acknowledging to yourself that you are doing so, then you aren't watching objectively.

    As for the people you thought were soldiers, they were clearly photojournalists, who regularly wear vest and helmets to set themselves apart from any demonstrators when covering events such as these. The fact that you think this is something nefarious is an obvious indication that you approached the video with a prejudged viewpoint of what you were seeing, rather than an objective look. Then you really start imagining things. First off, its obvious it isn't 8 MEN surrounding the woman but an equal number of men and women. The two that grab at the back of the soldier are clearly women and they are not grabbing his rifle but the strap on his rifle so as to help pull him away from the woman he is attempting to grab. None of the men are grabbing at him. They are all grabbing at the woman, in order to shield her. You aren't seeing. You are imagining. And then you claim that a flash goes off from a camera. But if you were really looking instead of making up things in you head, you would see that it is not a flash from a camera but some kind of small smoke or concussive grenade fired from the army jeep. You can see the flash there, as well as hear it, and then there is very obvious smoke. Its vividly clear that the smoke device was fired in order to break up the group surrounding the soldier and the woman, which it clearly did quite immediately. At this point its clear that despite your insistence that one needs to look at the video objectively, you have completely failed to do so.

    And then of course you fail to comment at all on the repeated pepper spray attacks, when clearly those are the ones that are most disturbing to watch for people here, more so than the rest of the video you felt compelled to erroneously dissect. You should perhaps take your own advice and question why you felt a need to prejudge what you were seeing rather than simply see it for what it was.

    Also, in Canada, One Police Officer would not be in such a ratio of 1 to 8, neither would he enter into such close proximity with a group of protestors.

    So are you claiming that the soldier/policeman was a fake? Or just incredibly poorly trained? What's clear is that the soldier had no real fear for his life, regardless of his apparent recklessness. Its also clear that he immediately had a large number of fellow soldier/policemen surrounding him (I counted at least 8 to 10), none of whom appeared to fear for their lives either.

• An account of the Guardian's racist endorsement of the Balfour Declaration
  • tree April 30, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    the Nazis just didn’t have the “good sense” to hold them about Indians or American Natives, or Africans or Australian aborigines.

    My theory is that when Germany lost its colonial "rights" to Africa after WWI, it simply tried to "colonize" Eastern Europe with the same kinds of genocidal tactics it used in Southwest Africa. What what the Nazi "Hunger Plan" and "Generalplan Ost" for Poland and parts east but the starvation of the Herero on a much more grandiose scale?

• Major olive producing village ordered to uproot 1,400 trees by May 1
  • tree April 30, 2012 at 4:53 am

    Asherpat, you are the one ignoring the facts.

    Hey, just think about, what a field-day you guys can have here on the blog if you can show that there was no due process or that the process was tainted.

    Read the links that Shmuel gave you. The links prove the process is tainted. If you won't even do that, why should we take you seriously?

    So come-on, humiliate me with facts...

    We've already provided you with facts that you continue to ignore or deny. You humiliate yourself, you don't need any help with it.

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 4:14 am

    An, in case you missed it, Fred, I posted a refutation of your insistence that most of the land taken by Israel in 1948 was state owned land, here:

    link to mondoweiss.net

    Note that the refutation comes not from "the Palestinian side" but from the British Mandate Government and the Jewish National Fund.

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 3:58 am

    Because the article does not mention the reason for the order, does not explain the relative size of the order – is it really a big one or a small one relative to what the relevant parties already own and whether there was a legal callenge in courts.

    You didn't even read the article, at least not so as to understand what it said, so why complain about what it "didn't say". Shmuel filled you in and gave you a link to a report from B'Tselem which would allow you to do the "research" you needed and you ignored that as well. So, really, why does everyone here need to spoonfeed you people. This information is easily found if you want to find it. Start with ICAHD, B'Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and others. They are all Israeli sources. Read. Learn.

    And, seriously, 1400 trees is a lot of trees. Period. Your insistence that maybe it really isn't a lot is ludicrous. Give it up. It only makes you look silly clutching at straws.

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 3:42 am

    Take here for example. The Palestinian side of the story was just that the Palestinians were ordered to uproot 1400 trees for no reason other than “4 teh evulz”. The Israeli side of the story is (according to another poster here) that the trees were planted on a nature reserve.

    The "other poster" here (Shmuel) made clear that the legal "excuse" was that the area was designated a nature preserve(despite the fact that it is privately owned village land), but he also pointed out that the GOI has no problem with Jewish incursions on designated natural preserves. And he backed it up with a report from B'Tselem, an independent source, and not a "Palestinian" one. The excuse is a mere fig leaf to cover the dispossession of Palestinian land by the Israeli government and if you didn't have your hands so firmly planted over your eyes you could easily see this. But you refuse to see what you don't want to see. The only other possibility is that your head is so firmly planted where the sun don't shine that we'd need a crane to remove it.

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 2:11 am

    For the number of Palestinian political prisoners, see here:

    link to addameer.org

    As of 1 April 2012, there were 4,610 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 322 administrative detainees, 6 women and 203 children.

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 2:04 am

    PFP,

    ICAHD, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, has a series of maps, here:
    link to icahd.org

    You might want to particularly notice this series of maps here:

    link to icahd.org.dolphin.nethost.co.il

  • tree April 30, 2012 at 1:43 am

    For pfp, from the Goldstone report:

    942. On or around the night of 3 January 2009 Israeli troops arrived at a number of houses on al-Sekka Road in Zeytoun. The Mission interviewed four people who were direct witnesses to and victims of the events that occurred in the aftermath of their arrival. One witness was interviewed three times for a total of five hours and testified at the public hearings in Gaza.499 Another three were interviewed for an hour each. The Mission also visited the site of the Sawafeary chicken farms. Finally, the Mission addressed questions to the Government of Israel with regard to the military advantage pursued in attacking Mr. Sawafeary’s chicken farms, but
    received no reply. The following narrative reflects the eyewitness accounts.

    943. Sameh Sawafeary is a chicken farmer. His family has been in the egg production business for many years. He indicated that he, his brothers and his children owned 11 chicken farms in Zeytoun as of December 2008. The farms housed more than 100,000 chickens.

    944. On 3 January, Mr. Sawafeary, who was in his home on al-Sekka Road in the al-Samouni neighbourhood of Zeytoun with his family, was alerted by an al-Jazeera television news broadcast at around 8 p.m. that an Israeli ground invasion was imminent.500 As a result, he took a number of precautions, including hiding money and other valuables. He then gathered around 11 members of his family on the upper floor of the two-storey concrete house. At around 10 p.m. a missile struck the house, entering through the rear of the upper floor and exiting near the
    window of the living room opposite. The missile passed over several of Mr. Sawafeary’s children and grandchildren, who were lying on the floor. No one was injured.

    945. At around 11 p.m., Mr. Sawafeary heard the sound of helicopters flying over his house followed by soldiers landing on his roof. The soldiers remained there until 7 a.m. the next morning, firing what he described as “a rain of bullets”. The family stayed, terrified, on the floor of an upstairs room.

    946. At around 7.15 a.m. on 4 January, soldiers came into the upstairs room where the family was sheltering. They separated the men from the women and put the women in another room. The hands of the men and the boys were tied behind their backs, except for one of Mr. Sawafeary’s sons who has only one arm. After some time the commander told Mr. Sawafeary that they should walk south and “go to Rafah”. The soldiers then searched the house. The 11 members of the household there at the time left the house as instructed.

    947. The Sawafeary family spent the following five days in terror. Together with neighbouring families they spent one night in the Abu Zur house and the following three in the nearby house of Mr. Rajab Mughrabi. During that time they suffered a number of violations at the hands of the Israeli armed forces, including the killing of the child Ibrahim Juha (see chap. XI).

    948. For the purposes of this section the Mission refers to the information it received about the systematic destruction that occurred for several days and which the witnesses were able to see during the time they were forced by the circumstances to remain in the house of Mr. Mughrabi.

    949. Mr. Sawafeary and Mr. Mughrabi informed the Mission that they had watched Israeli armoured bulldozers systematically destroy land, crops, chickens and farm infrastructure. Mr. Mughrabi stated that he watched the bulldozers plough through fields with crops and trees, destroying everything in their path. Mr. Sawafeary stated that he saw less, as he was watching through a small opening because he was afraid of being seen and shot. He stated that he saw only two or three “tanks”, but was not in a position to say whether there were more. He watched as the armoured bulldozers destroyed the chicken farms, crushing the wire mesh coops with the chickens inside. He could not see his own farms and the chickens he could see being destroyed were not his. He noted that the drivers of the tanks would spend hours flattening the chicken coops, sometimes stopping for coffee breaks, before resuming their work.

    950. When he left Mr. Mughrabi’s house on 8 January, Mr. Sawafeary was able to see that his own farms did not appear to have been subjected to the destruction he had witnessed from inside the house. However, when he was able to return to his home after the Israeli withdrawal all 31,000 of his chickens had been killed and the coops systematically flattened.

    951. The Mission visited the site and saw the still flattened mesh coops, which had been covered with corrugated iron, as well as the remains of water tanks and machinery. The Mission was also shown the remnants of a small mosque near the end of one of the lines of the coops that had been destroyed. The remains of some dead chickens were still visible and Mr. Sawafeary stated that it had been a mammoth task to clean up the area when he returned. He pointed out that, in addition to the loss of livestock, the farm had been completely automated with significant investment in machinery, all of which had been destroyed, as had the plant for packaging the eggs. In short, the business had been razed to the ground. A protective grille, believed to be part of a D-9 armoured bulldozer, was found at the site.

    952. The Mission notes comments from one soldier to Breaking the Silence that appears to broadly corroborate the destruction in Zeytoun, probably at the hands of the Givati Brigade.501

    953. The Mission inspected the inside of Mr. Sawafeary’s house and noted damage to the upper floor, where a missile had penetrated. It also observed a number of graffiti that appeared to have been written by Israeli troops. One said “424 Givati”. There were others apparently written in Russian.

    954. Mr. Sawafeary told the Mission that he and his family together supplied approximately 35 per cent of the egg market in Gaza. His own farms supplied over 10 per cent. He noted that it was not only his farms that had been destroyed but also most of his family’s farms had been
    destroyed in the same way as his. He estimated that close to 100,000 chickens were killed in the process.

    955. The Mission has reviewed the relevant UNOSAT report and satellite imagery. One satellite image shows the Sawafeary chicken farms in June 2007 and another shows the area in January 2009. The images depict clearly the size of the farms and the surrounding area. The destruction is plainly visible in the second image.502

    1. Factual findings

    956. The systematic destruction along with the large numbers of killings of civilians suggest premeditation and a high level of planning. Even in the context of a campaign that had many serious violations of international humanitarian law, the events in Zeytoun at this time stand out.

    957. The Mission finds that the destruction of the land and farms in the area was not justified by the pursuit of any military objective. The Israeli armed forces that arrived took control of the area within a matter of hours. They remained there until 18 January. The destruction of the land was not necessary to move the tanks or equipment or gain any particular visual advantage.

    958. An inspection of the scene indicates that the area is relatively sparsely populated. The Mission rejects the idea that the Sawafeary farm was destroyed in the pursuit of any military objective.

    959. The destruction of the farms appears to have been wanton and not militarily necessary. Not only were the coops with the chickens destroyed, but all of the plant and machinery of the farms as well.

    960. From the facts ascertained by it, the Mission finds that the Sawafeary chicken farms, the 31,000 chickens and the plant and material necessary for the business were systematically and deliberately destroyed, and that this constituted a deliberate act of wanton destruction not justified by any military necessity.

    link to www2.ohchr.org

• Israel responds to Palestinian call to restart talks by legalizing three West Bank settlement outposts
  • tree April 29, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    And thank you, Blake for adding that information on the Negev. It matches my perception, but I didn't have the sources you provided.

  • tree April 29, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    Most of the land that was state owned by the British, and before that state owned by the Ottoman empire.

    Oh no, its time yet again to dust out an old post or two of mine.

    Fred, you are totally wrong in that statement and the two following it. The majority of land that Israel claimed in 1948 was privately held by Palestinians, with only around 7% per cent owned by Jews. And, according to the British Mandate Government in Palestine, only around 5% of it was previous government land held by the British.

    To reiterate my comment from February of this year:

    According to the official British Survey of Mandate Palestine, issued in 1945, private ownership of land by non-Jewish Palestinians encompassed 24 million dunams (approximately 90% of Mandate Palestine), while Jewish land ownership was only 1.5 million dunams ( approximately 5%).

    Even the Jewish National Fund admitted this in 1949:

    The Jewish National Fund made a study of Jewish villages in Israel in 1949 and stated:(9)

    Of the entire area of the State of Israel only about 300,000- 400,000 dunams - apart from the desolate rocky area of the southern Negev, at present quite unfit for cultivation - are State Domain which the Israel Government took over from the Mandatory regime. The J.N.F. and private Jewish owners possess under two million dunams. Almost all the rest belongs at law to Arab owners, many of whom have left the country. The fate of these Arabs will be settled when the terms of the peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbours are finally drawn up. The J.N.F., however, cannot wait until then to obtain the land it requires for its pressing needs. It is, therefore, acquiring part of the land abandoned by the Arab owners, through the Government of Israel, the sovereign authority in Israel.

    link to palestine-encyclopedia.com

    So the British said the majority of land in Mandate Palestine was privately owned by Palestinian Arabs, and so did the JNF at the time. I think your assertion is a new form of Nakba denial going around, attempting to rewrite history and claim that most of the land confiscated was not privately owned, as if that would excuse the ethnic cleansing.

    All Palestinian land owned by the "external refugees" was confiscated, and over 65% of the "internal refugees" land was likewise confiscated by the mid 1950's, according to Quigley .

    This land and the capital assets of Palestinians seized by Israel in the 1950's added a significant amount to the Israeli GDP in those early years and beyond.

    As for the kibbutzes, the myth is not reality. They were, for the most part heavily subsidized by the government and benefited greatly from seized fertile Palestinian land, but they were never a large contributor to Israel's economic success, and were more valuable as a source of myth and pride than income.

    From "The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective", by John Quigley:

    Through market and price controls, the government prevented the modest Arab agriculture that survived the land confiscations from competing with Jewish agriculture. Government purchasing agencies paid more to Jewish farmers than to Arab farmers for similar products.
    ...
    A tobacco-purchasing agency (Alei Tabak) was established, owned jointly by the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and the government. It was given a monopoly in tobacco purchasing and marketing and bought tobacco from Jewish growers at a price higher than that at which Arab farmers could sell- a lower price set by the government. The agency and Histadrut provided financial assistance to kibbutzim or moshavim, but not to Arab farmers. Arab farmers were, and still are, excluded from membership in kibbutzim and moshavim.

    .....

    The provisional government used the Arabs' land, dwellings, and possessions for its Jewish population, and primarily for recent immigrants. Ben Gurion ordered that abandoned Arab housing be allocated to Jews. By April 1949, he reported to the Knesset, the government had settled 150,000 Jews in Arab housing.

    ....

    The government also took housing from Arabs who remained inside the armistice lines. In Haifa in July 1948 the IDF forced out Arab residents of the Carmel ridge area to make room for Jews. It forced Arabs from their homes in Acre into what became an Arab ghetto. Many "internal refugees" tried to return to their homes. Their land, like that of the Arab "external refugees", was considered "absentee" property and was controlled by the custodian of absentee property, who rented it to Jews-the rent money going to the government.

    .....

    The value of the land taken from the Palestine Arabs was estimated at 100 million Palestinian pounds. It included stone quarries, 10,000 acres of vineyards, 25, 000 acres of citrus groves, 10.000 business establishments, 95 percent of what became Israel's olive groves, and 50,000 apartments.

    .....

    The government took over fully equipped plants. In Ramleh, it distributed 600 shops to Jewish immigrants. In Lydda it seized 1800 truckloads of property, including a button factory, a carbonated drinks plant, a sausage factory, 7000 retail shops, 500 workshops, and 1000 warehouses. It confiscated cabinetmaking shops, locksmith works, turneries, ironworks, and tinworks, which it then leased and sold to Jews.

    My original comments are here:

    link to mondoweiss.net

    link to mondoweiss.net

• Shmully and guilt
  • tree April 30, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    Citizen, one thing that occurred to me was if it was OK to leave the stove on continuously, would it be OK to set a timer to have the stove come on at a prearranged time during the Sabbath as long as you did the work to set it outside the Sabbath.

    Current models of stoves often have a so-named "Sabbath mode" which allows you do do exactly that.

  • tree April 28, 2012 at 8:36 pm

    Someone who thinks a document is obviously bogus because he realizes it is bogus shouldn’t lecture someone who studies history, btw.

    That's a rather blatant appeal to your own supposed authority there, but someone who studies history should probably be a bit more clear in his writing. I doubt that you are trying to say that the Protocols are not "obviously bogus", although that is the gist of your sentence. I would guess that you meant to say that simply because something is obviously bogus does not mean that it won't be believed to be true by some.

    And BTW, someone who co-founds a private club with a religious bigot really ought not to lecture anyone on "ranters about sons of pigs and apes" and the Protocols, lest he be seen as a hypocrite. Especially when he excuses his co-founder's bigotry as merely a "shtick" which doesn't concern him,

  • tree April 27, 2012 at 6:50 am

    the nakba not denied of course – a human tragedy that Jews deny at the peril of our collective soul

    And yet it seems you stood silent while others did just that, and preferred instead to focus on whether some people have said "anti-semitic" things in the comment section here, and whether the Jewish community was "divided" or not. This isn't a particularly auspicious omen for the health of your own soul.

    And, lastly the theme that gets me to post here sometimes: Jews are a natural and normal part of the middle east and north Africa.

    I'd certainly agree, but have you read the books by Shabti and others, that point out that it was, and is, the Ashkenazi elite that chose to alienate the Arab Jews from their own Arabic culture, and remake them in a European mold, yet still relegated to an inferior status, never quite achieving the same lofty heights above the reviled Arab non-Jew that the elite choose to claim as their birthright? Do you ever bring this up in your evenings? Or do you rely on others to avoid the echo chamber?

    And do you really think that the ongoing I/P conflict is equivalent to urban renewal in New Haven? Would you have made the same comparison between apartheid South Africa and New Haven?

  • tree April 27, 2012 at 6:20 am

    I think he means "2-d cutout" as in 2 dimensional. See, it doesn't matter what kind of racist lying blather was spoken at the Sabbath dinner because "people of all backgrounds" are allowed to grace the club. Why some of their best friends...! He's offended that Dan dared to call people who expressed simplistic racist thoughts "racists".

  • tree April 27, 2012 at 6:09 am

    You seem to be missing the point, tokyobk. The people at the meeting, at least the ones who spoke up in argument with Phil, and apparently with Phil alone, were giving voice to very bigoted and racist myths, and promoting the repugnant idea that Phil, by standing up for human rights, was responsible for undermining Jews. Whether or not "people of all backgrounds" are let into Eliezer is entirely irrelevant to the racism and bigotry, and the cult-like attitudes, on display that evening in January. You seem to be clinging to this "people of all backgrounds" meme to distract from this fact, or to pretend that it negates the overall repellent racism, and willful cluelessness of some of the participants of that evening.

  • tree April 27, 2012 at 4:48 am

    You're especially sharp today, Shmuel! Great analysis of Phil's dream and now this revelation. I'd likewise be interested in bk's explanation of his thought processes and reasoning - and his take on MW.

• Widely-imitated, Beinart is giving Jews permission to be, unh, liberal Zionists
  • tree April 27, 2012 at 4:56 am

    Inflammatory language such as this is the reason why many Jews feel threatened by BDS and other anti-Zionist ideologies.

    Who knew that advocating for universal human rights could be considered "inflammatory"? Maybe you should rethink your philosophy if you believe that mere talk of human rights, not to mention the actual observance of those rights, threatens your "existence".

• Jerusalem's 'center of life' policy imprisons Palestinians
  • tree April 25, 2012 at 5:46 am with 1 replies

    Multiple articles and references have been made here to what the Israeli government itself has referred to as Jewish only settlements, or Jewish only housing, where non-Jewish Israeli citizens have been prohibited from living, and yet you still need more proof of this? Are you that blind? If yo haven't figured it out by now, that you purposely don't want to know. There's no excuse for willful ignorance.

• Knesset members celebrate latest E. Jerusalem settlement by posing on evicted Palestinian family's sofa
  • tree April 25, 2012 at 3:46 am with 2 replies

    Fredblogs, despite your attempt to paint the evicters as victims, this kind of land fraud has a long history in Israel. It has nothing to do with the "purported" owner being Jewish, except in so far as Israel, as a Jewish ethnocracy, discriminatively favors Jews over non-Jews, and particularly Israeli Jews over the occupied Palestinians of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

    Ignoring for the moment the massive land theft that Israel executed in 1948 and the following years from its own Palestinian citizens as well as the ethnically cleansed Palestinians, and also ignoring the land theft associated with the 1967 occupation, there have been numerous articles in Israeli papers and elsewhere documenting the land fraud in the last several years. Fraud and forgery of this type are rampant, and Israeli government officials have been directly involved, or turned a blind eye. And since Aryeh King has already been implicated in this kind of activity, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that its likely he's at it again. Big pockets, unsurprisingly, have been able to prevail over poor Palestinians with inadequate access to Israeli courts.

    "Israel's Ulpana Neighborhood is Built on Years of Land Theft and Forgery"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Ring Suspected of Trading in Stolen Palestinian Land"
    link to haaretz.com

    "This land is your land, this land is my land
    Jewish settlement organizations, criminal Palestinian elements, the Israel Border Police, the attorney general, the Interior Ministry - all have a role in the complex land-confiscation drama being played out in East Jerusalem these days. The so-called `state land' in question is actually property belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank."
    link to haaretz.com

    "Settler Land Scam Results in injury of 11 Palestinian civilians"
    link to electronicintifada.net

    "Land deals from beyond the grave"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Company that bought Hebron house already in fraud probe"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Civil Administration officials indicted in West Bank land steal"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Murky Dealings over Migron"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Police suspect bills of land sale at West Bank outpost were forged"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Police probing rightist MK over fake West Bank outpost deal"
    link to haaretz.com

    "Court rules settler, not Palestinian, can work field"
    link to haaretz.com

    "In West Bank,buying land isn't always what it seems"
    "Having built their homes on privately owned Palestinian lands, residents of the outposts employ subterfuge to camouflage their nonexistent land purchases."
    link to haaretz.com

• '60 Minutes' profiles Palestinian Christians, Michael Oren falls on his face
  • tree April 24, 2012 at 4:11 pm

    “You always Jew-count when it supports your arguments”

    When is that?

    Here, for one:

    link to mondoweiss.net

    OK, OK. It's just that Ashkenazi Jews score high and are hugely overrepresented at every major higher educational institution in the United States. And then, of course, there's the whole Nobel Prize thing.

    Most of us don't think we're any better than anyone else. But neither do we think we should talk down our accomplishments so we are less conspicuous.

    Hophmi, December 10, 2011, searched under keyword "Nobel".

    So its OK for you to mention when particular Jews get Nobel Prizes and assume that it means something positive about the group overall ("...our accomplishments"), but not OK to mention when Jews are in major positions in corporate media and posit that their backgrounds and relationships to their community might influence their decisions.

  • tree April 23, 2012 at 3:48 am with 4 replies

    W. Jones,

    To get more info on #3, I'd suggest reading this piece by Lawrence of Cyberia (Diane Mason), from 2007, called "One thousand Two hundred and Seventy Six People Per Week". That's the number of Palestinians who are arrested by Israeli police per week for illegally entering Israel for work. All those people crossed the Separation Wall at some point, or managed their way around it. If a suicide bomber wanted to get past the Separation Barrier, he or she could do exactly the same thing those 1276 Palestinians have done week in and week out. It's not an effective security measure and the Israeli government knows it.

    The Palestinian independent news agency, Maan News, reported last Sunday on a news item that was broadcast the previous evening on Israel’s Channel Two:

    "Last night, Israeli television broadcast a report showing Tel Aviv police hunting Palestinian workers who bypass the Wall to look for work.
    A Channel Two camera crew accompanied Israeli police patrols as they raided construction sites and arrested workers who were sleeping outside or in builders’ workshops…

    The report revealed that Israeli police said they arrested 17,620 Palestinian workers inside the Green Line during the last two months. It also reported that 2,552 were arrested in the past two weeks…

    The report said in conclusion: "The wall, siege, security cordon, police patrols and border guards have not prevented tens of thousands of workers from reaching Tel Aviv every month”. "

    (translation mine)

    Two thousand, five hundred and fifty-two arrests in just two weeks adds up to an awful lot of people circumventing Israel’s Wall. And of course those numbers reflect the absolute minimum number of Palestinians who successfully bypass it, as they count only those who are arrested while working inside Israel, not those who remain there undetected.

    Israelis can believe if they want to their own propaganda about how the dreadful things they do to the Palestinian people are necessary for “security needs”. If they are more comfortable believing that the Wall in the West Bank is a defensive measure that has stopped the suicide attacks, rather than a land-grabbing measure which - from a security perspective - leaks like a sieve, I guess they have that right. But they don’t have the right to expect the rest of us to be stupid enough to believe it too.

    The next time Israeli apologists tell you that the Wall is a security measure that keeps suicide bombers out of Israel, just remember the number 1,276. One thousand, two hundred and seventy six is – at a minimum - the average number of permit-less Palestinians who bypass the Wall on a weekly basis to work in Israel. They are asking you to believe that the destitution Israel’s West Bank land grab inflicts on some of the poorest people on earth is justified because a wall which is breached at least 1,276 times a week by undocumented workers is nevertheless impermeable to suicide bombers. That’s what they’re asking you to believe.

    link to lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com

    And read this Haaretz article linked in the LOC piece:

    "Shin Bet: Palestinian truce main cause for reduced terror"

    link to haaretz.com

• Judge rules against Minnesota 'Break the Bonds' campaign
  • tree April 23, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    Or more directly, “your father was a criminal therefore you must be a criminal”.

    Which is exactly the kind of logical fallacy YOUR biased source, "onlyinisrael" used, Fred.

    The easiest thing would be to look at the people who make that magazine. Just at a first look the name of Laila Al-Arian pops up. That ought to ring a bell. You see, her father, Sami Al-Arian is the leader of the Islamic Jihad in the US. He's currently in court for directing funds and leading the Palestinian Islamic Jihad

    And the rest is similar in vein. That's what Hostage was pointing out to you. Apparently you don't even bother to read your own sources.

  • tree April 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm

    So, now that the answer has been spoonfed to you, are you grown-up enough to admit that when you said:

    "That’s probably because Israel always pays its debts. They are also one of a very few countries that the U.S. has lent money to that have always paid it back."

    ...that you were speaking out of ignorance and now know that your statement was false?

    Or do you want to allege that the truth is anti-semitic?

  • tree April 23, 2012 at 5:26 pm

    That’s not so much better as it is a complete waste of time. What you basically did there was say “I’m right, the proof is in one of these articles somewhere in this encyclopedia”.

    So, 17 pages is an "encyclopedia" to you, Fred? That's how long the CRS report is. Who knew you were such a lazy reader. Here's some spoon feeding for you:

    Loans with Repayment Waived

    The United States has not canceled any of Israel’s debts to the U.S. government, but the U.S. government has waived repayment of aid to Israel that originally was categorized as loans. Following the 1973 war, President Nixon asked Congress for emergency aid for Israel, including loans for which repayment would be waived. Israel preferred that the aid be in the form of loans, rather than grants, to avoid having a U.S. military contingent in Israel to oversee a grant program. Since 1974, some or all of U.S. military aid to Israel has been in the form of loans for which repayment is waived. Technically, the assistance is called loans, but as a practical matter, the military aid is grant. From FY1974 through FY2003, Israel has received more than $45 billion in waived loans. (Egypt also receives some of its U.S. military assistance in the form of loans with repayment waived. In 1990, the United States canceled $6.7 billion in past military debts that Egypt owed to the United States.)

    from page 6, easily found through a skim of the table of contents.

    Also from page 6:

    “Cranston Amendment”
    The Cranston Amendment, named after its Senate sponsor, was added to the foreign aid legislation in 1984 (Section 534, P.L. 98-473) and was repeated each year in the annual aid appropriation bill through FY1998 (Section 517 of H.R. 2159, P.L. 105-118). The Cranston amendment was not repeated in the FY1999 appropriations, H.R. 4328, P.L. 105-277, and was not repeated in subsequent appropriations bills. The amendment stated that it was “the policy and the intention” of the United States to provide Israel with economic assistance “not less than” the amount Israel owed the United States in annual debt service payments (principal and interest). For 1998, Israel received $1.2 billion in ESF and owed the U.S. government about $328 million in debt service for direct loans, so it was apparent that the Cranston Amendment was no longer needed. The Cranston amendment was a statement of U.S. policy and intent and may not have been binding. Contingent liabilities — guaranteed loans, such as housing guarantees, the $10 billion for immigrant settlement, or the $9 billionfor economic recovery — apparently were not included under the Cranston amendment because the debts were not owed to the U.S. government.

    It took me longer to write this than it did to find the quotes from Hostage's link. You can be incredibly lazy when you don't want to know the answer, Fred.

• 'Dear activist, first solve the real problems of the region' -- Netanyahu's sophomoric letter to visitors to Palestine
  • tree April 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm with 1 replies

    “HOLDER OF PASSPOTT”?

    Definitely needed a spell-checker. I'm sure they meant PISSPOT instead, which is obviously what the Israeli authorities think a valid passport is worth.

    English editor must have gotten held up at the airport or something.

    Tee-hee.

• Jewish press concoct threat against 200 Jewish students in Florida university
  • tree April 11, 2012 at 6:54 pm

    If it was up to me I would expell all of them

    If it was up to me I would urge every parent of a student who COULDN'T READ and comprehend the meaning and point of the fake eviction notice to withdraw their child from the University and seek help for their child with remedial reading instruction. Such a child is clearly not ready for the intellectual rigors of University study.

    Read the fake notice yourself, robineyes. It's clear enough to notice that it states it is not a real eviction notice, and is meant to "spread awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people" who are subject to real evictions from their houses by the Israeli government based solely on their ethnicity. Maybe you should get some remedial reading help as well.

• 'I've been duped' -- America's travel guide Rick Steves says our media black out the brutal occupation
  • tree April 7, 2012 at 10:16 pm

    I think Denis is talking about a different "why".

    ...55 minutes of bashing the US MSM for not reporting objectively on the Occupation. Not one time do they ask “Why is that?” How can you possibly begin fixing a problem without discussing its cause?

    I think he's talking about the film not asking the question, why does the MSM not report objectively on the occupation, not why is Israel occupying the territory.

  • tree April 7, 2012 at 6:27 pm

    I take it that your idiotic response. pz, means that you will no longer mention Iran in any of your posts, since you have never visited there? Or are we seeing yet another of your hypocritical stances manifesting itself here? Please let us know all the places you haven't visited so we will know by your own admittance that you consider yourself unqualified to speak about them.

• MJ Rosenberg is leaving 'Media Matters' to start his own blog
  • tree April 7, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Consider it a ranking of how many people read the site (or more accurately, I think, how many hits a site gets). The lower the number in ranking , the higher the popularity, so to speak. Salon is much more popular than mediamatters which is much, much more popular than Mondoweiss.

    link to alexa.com

• With 'last ink,' Gunter Grass breaks silence on Israeli nuclear program threatening world peace
  • tree April 6, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    Don't be sad! Mooser's simply showing that he is content. ;-)

  • tree April 5, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    At a slight tangent to this topic, I noticed this below while perusing coverage of the Gunter Grass poem. It's old news, from November 2010, but may have helped pave the way for Grass' poem:

    Jewish Critic of Israel Chosen to Speak at Frankfurt’s Kristallnacht Commemoration

    An Israeli diplomat in Germany condemned the city of Frankfurt on Sunday for inviting a Jewish intellectual who has been critical of Israel to speak at a ceremony marking the 72nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nov. 9, 1938, attacks on Jewish synagogues and businesses in Nazi Germany.

    The keynote address at Tuesday’s commemoration of the pogrom at Paulskirche, a former church in Frankfurt that is a symbol of German democracy, will be delivered by Alfred Grosser, who was born in the city 85 years ago, before fleeing to France with his family at the age of 8. Last year, he published a book called “From Auschwitz to Jerusalem,” in which he suggested that Germany was not critical enough of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians because of the legacy of the Holocaust.

    “From the German side they don’t say anything because of Auschwitz,” Mr. Grosser told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle last year. He added, “When the Israelis want something from the Germans, they like to remind them of Auschwitz.”

    Mr. Grosser, a retired professor of political science who was considered one of the architects of postwar reconciliation between France and Germany, also said last year that he was pro-Palestinian, “because the Palestinians are despised, are occupied, and I think that the majority of Israel’s citizens despise Palestinians.”

    In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Germany, Emmanuel Nahshon, said that Frankfurt’s decision to invite Mr. Grosser to speak at the memorial “casts an unfortunate and unnecessary shadow on the event.” He also said that Mr. Grosser’s criticism of Israel was “illegitimate and immoral,” and suggested that his “extreme opinions are tainted by self-hatred.”

    Mr. Grosser responded by telling the Post that “criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism have nothing to do with each other. It is rather Israel’s policies that promote anti-Semitism globally.” He also told the Israeli newspaper that he plans to criticize Israel during his speech on Tuesday and will refer to the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, to support his argument that there should be “no discrimination by sex and religion” in Israel.

    In a letter to Frankfurt’s mayor, Petra Roth, Germany’s Central Council of Jews condemned the invitation to Mr. Grosser, saying that he “does not tire [of] equating the situation of the Palestinian population with the fate of millions of Jewish men, women and children during the Shoah… and for this reason plays down the Holocaust and the unspeakable suffering of the victims of National Socialism.”

    As the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, last year Mr. Grosser accused the Central Council of silencing any criticism of Israel. Mr. Grosser told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, “As soon as a voice against Israel rises up, it’s immediately called ‘anti-Semitic.’” He added, “the worst is the Central Council of Jews.”

    more at link...

    link to thelede.blogs.nytimes.com

• The liberal Zionist predicament
  • tree April 9, 2012 at 3:20 pm

    Danaa,

    And listen to tree who says it so much clearer than the rest of us (which makes me thinks she is Jewish or just smart-in-the-Jewish-way, which statement should totally prove my own inadequacy as debater, as well as serious ethical lapses as a human*).

    Thanks for the complement, including the one about being Jewish, which although admittedly a stereotypical one (kind of like "mighty white of you" or "how Christian of you", I guess) was intended as a sincere one and so I take it that way.

    Or was it just a clever way to find out my chosen self identity? ;-)

    I have some Jewish background, one generation too far removed to help my Israeli sister, who gained entrance there by Orthodox conversion here, rather than by a bogus "right of return" to a place she'd never been. I also have Methodist and Episcopalian backgrounds, and probably others I've never heard about, and grew up going to Unitarian Sunday School until I was old enough to opt out, had a very short fling with Catholicism (I loved the churches and the singing, but not enough to put up with the dogma), a longer fling with paganism, and settled on good ol' agnosticism with an atheistic bent.

    Interestingly, on my non-Jewish mother's side, my DNA puts my ancestors in the Middle East at some point, allowing me, of course, to dispossess anyone of my choice there, or in Africa or a few places in Europe as well. Decisions, decisions!

    As for intelligence, if the little bit I possess, which you generously overrate, has a genetic basis I'd trace it back to my mother's side (all non-Jewish as far as I know), as one of my great aunts was a physicist in a time that very few women were. However, I'm often reminded of two studies on intelligence. One had to do with Asian women who took a math tests after being told that they were expected to do well because they were Asian and Asians do well in math. All other things being equal, they did better on the test than when they were told that they weren't expected to do that well because they were women and women don't do well in math. Expectations influenced intelligence. The other study was similar in that ordinary students chosen completely at random were told they were highly intelligent and put in special classes and their test scores all improved. So is it nature or nurture or both?

  • tree April 9, 2012 at 3:14 pm

    Andrew,

    I've appreciated our time to debate but I am reaching a point in time when I will again have little spare time to comment here. Sometime in the near future I will again have time to comment but this post will be long dead by then I woud imagine. In any case its apparent by now that we will have to agree to disagree on this.

    However, perhaps I can add a few more points in my limited time. When Atzmon uses the term "Jewish Marxists" or "Tribal Marxists" he is not using "Jewish" as a pejorative, as you describe. He is talking about what he sees as an oxymoronic self-identity of certain self-declared "Jewish Marxists", and NOT Marxists who just happen to be of Jewish ethnicity. A lot of Atzmon's animosity here goes back to his feud with Tony Greenstein, who has acted as a gatekeeper and sought to censor and ban people who disagree with his analysis, that disagreement includes any mention of the Israel Lobby as a force in US politics. (Greenstein in England is the equivalent of the leftist gatekeepers in the US that Jeffrey Blankfort has discussed.) I used to frequent JSF years ago, before MW, and I can attest to the smallness of Greenstein on this matter, who seems to be quite vindictive and more interested in his own brand of intellectual purity than he is in helping the Palestinian cause. This particular piece of Atzmon's is weak and poorly written, and I would venture a guess that one of the reasons for this is its wrapped up in his personal dislike of those 3 or 4 people he mentions who have gone out of their way to silence him and attempted to force everyone else to silence him. Anger usually interferes with good analysis and that's the case here. However, his point that Machover's insistence that Islam is backward and the Palestinians must throw it off in order to achieve their goals is in fact a rather bigoted idea. Atzmon sometimes gets it wrong, and puts force weak or faulty arguments like the "no motherland" one here, but that doesn't make him anti-semitic.

    I think Jean Bricmont summed up the problem with interpretations of Atzmon's work as "anti-semitic" quite cogently here.

    It is ever so easy to “demonstrate” the alleged anti-Semitism of Atzmon. Frequently, including at the very start of his book, Atzmon makes a distinction between three meanings of the word “Jewish.” It can apply to persons who adhere to the Jewish religion, with whom he has no quarrel; to people of Jewish origin, with whom he has also no problem; and, finally, to what he calls the third category, that is, those who, without being particularly religious, constantly stress their Jewish “identity” and set it before and above their simple membership in the human race. It suffices thereupon to interpret in the first sense (people of Jewish origin) the word “Jewish” when Atzmon uses it in the third sense, in a style that is often extremely polemical, to “prove” that he is anti-Semitic.
    [ my note: I suspect that is what you are doing, subconsciously or consciously. You can't understand the his of the term as a third category and instead continue to see it as only a first or second category descriptor. ]

    However, when a French essayist, Bernard-Henri Lévy, uses all his immense influence to push his country into a war against Libya and then declares afterward that he did so “as a Jew” and “faithful” to his name – which is not exactly a rational argument, but are wars ever waged for rational reasons? – people who are not of Jewish origin should at least be allowed to wonder about that Jewish identity in whose name they are dragged into a war which, whatever one may think about it, was clearly not a war of self-defense for France.

    Is it legitimate to criticize Jews in the sense of Atzmon’s third category? To start with, it is obvious that each individual has a perfect right to “feel” a sense of belonging to a group of which he or she is proud, or which he or she thinks contributes something important to the idea the person has of himself or herself, whether Jewish, Breton, French, Catholic, Black, Muslim, etc. Since all these identities stem from the hazards of birth, such feelings of pride are irrational, but who would try to force human beings to be rational?

    The problem arises when these identities acquire a privileged political status, exactly as when religions acquire such a status. When a community, grouped around its “identity,” demands certain rights – or compensations, or privileges – others who do not share that identity should be allowed to challenge the justification of those claims. Just as when a religion seeks to impose its own morality on society as a whole. Identity politics is to be found among blacks, Muslims, women, etc. One may even suggest that politics today is more and more reduced to a conflict between identities, socioeconomic questions having been relegated to the management of nonelected experts. But there is also a Jewish identity politics, whose implications go far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which affects, among other things, freedom of expression or relations with Muslims.

    But whereas identity demands, especially by Muslims, are regularly attacked in public, the great merit of Atzmon is to recognize the existence of Jewish identity politics and to criticize it – something practically nobody else dares to do.

    I suggest reading the whole piece, which is exemplary, I think, and is the forward to the French edition of Atzmon's book.

    link to gilad.co.uk

    I'd also like to pass along Alison Weir's take on all this, also well worth the read, which includes a comment from Jeffrey Blankfort as well.

    link to alisonweir.org

    Both of them state the argument much more clearly than I can. As can David Rovics, whom I linked to in a post up above, and is also well worth the read.

  • tree April 9, 2012 at 12:16 am

    There’s no meaningful distinction between Jews as a group and subsets of Jews divided into categories as imposed by him.

    Of course there is. If I am talking about the KKK and upper class white snobs, those are two subsets of whites. They are not the sum total of all whites, and Atzmon has no more said that his two categories are the sum total of all Jews than you or I would say that the KKK and upper class white snobs are the sum total of all whites. Atzmon ties the two, tribal Marxists and Zionists, together through their sense that their "Jewish" identity puts them on some higher plane, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, than their individual identities as human beings. A subset of whites, a subset of Jews. Same shit, different "identity". Neither discussion is condemning anyone because of their genetics, or even their religion. Its their tribal sense of identity he's talking about, and I am illustrating with my comparative example.

    Even though Israeli Jews are doing the dirty work, I haven’t found anything to indicate it’s limited to them. And of course the first category Atzmon attacks are Zionists and neoconservatives, who are understood to be Americans.

    Zionists are certainly not necessarily American, although neo-cons probably are. The fact is that Atzmon is right on this point. Most of the major Jewish institutions ARE supporting this and so deserve to be called Zionist and called on their bigotry. (Just as the majority of white institutions in the US a century ago supported and excused segregation and inequality. This didn't mean that there was some genetic defect in whites, just that the culture was racist and had to be called out, questioned and changed. That's the equivalent of what Atzmon is doing.)

    “Jewish supremacist” is still problematic because secular Zionists do not think Jews are superior to gentiles; they view themselves among those who are superior to Orientals.

    Many of the Ashkenazim Zionists think they are superior to both, although its probably more their sense of "whiteness" that makes them think they are superior to Sephardim, rather then their sense of their "Jewishness". Most Zionists I've heard expound on their beliefs think its perfectly alright for Jews in Israel to do things that they would rightfully condemn if done by Christians or others against Jews. And many of those who might object to such things if they recognized them, have an uncanny ability to disbelieve "their lying eyes". Both of these are indicators of a sense of Jewish superiority, although I think "exceptionalism" is a better, but not perfect, descriptor, since the superiority belief is usually accompanied by a sense of supreme collective suffering that has eclipsed anyone else's suffering, which is total hogwash if one knows anything about the history of human suffering, and of course another aspect of a superiority complex. 'My suffering, even if it isn't my personal suffering, is so much more significant than some one else's suffering who doesn't share my ethno-religious background.'

    Agreed on the last point. However, I don’t understand how shunning him creates that impression because anyone who is overtly racist against Arabs has already been shunned by default.

    Not true. Peter Beinart is overtly racist against Arabs and people are willing to congratulate him for the small steps he's made in questioning Zionism's results, although his questioning is apparently mostly from the viewpoint of "Is it good for the Jews". People have critiqued his book but no one has suggested that he must be banned or shunned. (At least not from the anti-Zionist or Palestinian solidarity side.) And this is a guy who is to some extent responsible for urging on a murderous war. Atzmon hasn't urged violence on anyone and he's just a jazz musician. The double standard is obvious. Beinart is applauded for baby steps despite his obvious racism. Atzmon must be condemned, even if he gets some things right. (And I would bet that even you would admit that he's gotten some things right. )

    The "big tent" that gets called for on occasion only exists to welcome those with a bias against Palestinians. This is, in its essence, an affirmation that anti-Jewish bias is still considered much worse than anti-Arab bias, despite the deadlier outcome of this anti-Arab bias.

    Of course you realize my interpretations of Atzmon are informed by other writings of his that for reasons of sanity are going unmentioned. This time.

    I understand completely. If you don't get his writing, you don't get his writing. Not at all surprising.

  • tree April 8, 2012 at 10:08 pm

    ,unless you unite the disparate themes into being about Jews in general, as he does in the last paragraph.

    ...because all Jews are either Zionists or Tribal Marxists??? Why, andrew, what an anti-semitic stereotype you've just uttered.

    Atzmon doesn't think that all Jews are either Zionists or Jewish Marxists and has clearly said so on numerous occasions which you seem to repeatedly ignore. Atzmon's tie between the two groups is that, in his analysis, both Zionists and what he refers to as "tribal Marxists" or "Jewish Marxists" (as opposed to just plain Marxists, whatever their ethnic background) treat their identity as "Jews" as more important than their identity as humans. Its the same kind of tie that one could make between the white supremacy of the KKK and the 'white man's burden' kind of racism of Winston Churchill, although its quite likely Churchill and the KK have little else in common, besides their whiteness. But both took their "whiteness" to be more significant than their humanity. (And Churchill was probably responsible for killing more brown and black people than the KKK.) Will I now be accused of defaming all whites because I mentioned Winston Churchill and the KKK together? What other reason could I have to tie the two disparate themes together?

  • tree April 8, 2012 at 2:51 pm

    In other words, Danaa took Atzmon’s writing that I am calling antisemitic to be about how Jewish Israelis are educated, and in no way does he set out to explain that.

    How students are educated in a country usually matches how the country explains and justifies its actions. Atzmon isn't just describing how Israeli students are being educated, he's describing how Israel justifies itself. That's exactly what Atzmon was upfront about.

    What I’m calling anti-semitic is that Atzmon explains Jewish behavior with reference to the Torah the exact same way Islamophobes explain Muslim behavior with reference to the Koran.

    No, Atzmon is not referring to "Jewish behavior" but to Zionist and neoconservative behavior, where as Islamophobes are referring to all Muslims. He makes clear repeatedly, though not in that article per se, that he is not talking about all Jews, and that his critique is not of an ethnicity or religion, but of an attitude or ideology not shared by all.

    He also throws in Jewish Maxists, by which he does not mean Marxist who happen to be Jews, but a particular group of Marxists who in oxymoronic fashion think their Jewishness is an important adjunct to their Marxism, or perhaps the other way around. This, for one, is a reaction to the subset of Marxists in Britain that have hounded him and sought to have him and others shunned for disagreeing with their take on things.

    . He’s saying that peculiar Jewish traits can explain the behavior of Jews as a group. And the “Judaic spiritual and religious heritage” is one of those traits.

    A religious heritage is not a "trait" as I would define it. A 'trait" is something that is genetically defined, and a religious heritage is no such thing. He's also not describing "Jews as a group", but subsets of Jews, who have supremacist attitudes which they feel are justified by Judaic religious texts.

    I agree with Dana for the most part that his use of the word "Jewish-ness' is problematical from a logistically point of view. His use of the term "third-category Jew" was a bit more accurate but clunky nevertheless. He'd probably get his points across better if he used the term "Jewish supremacist" or "Jewish exceptionalist" when describing the behaviors he's critiquing.

    And, again, I think its perfectly fine to criticize him for his failings in his writings. Even say you think his writing is anti-semitic if you believe it, but to ban him or shun him is wrong. It gives the impression that, yet again, overt racism towards Arabs is allowed in polite society, but the mere suggestion or "whiff" of anti-Jewish racism is a banning offense, thus reinforcing the idea that despite the fact that anti-Arab racism is killing tens or hundreds of thousands of Arabs, saying something negative about Jews is so much worse. It isn't.

    From the outset, Atzmon makes it clear that his criticism of various aspects of Jewish tribal identity(s) for the past couple millenia is not aimed at the many people who happen to be born Jewish, but to what he identifies as “third category” Jews – Jews who identify primarily as Jewish, first and foremost. Growing up in the New York area with my eyes open and being of Jewish lineage myself, it is not hard to see that this third category exists, and in abundance, so it’s also not hard to see why it’s such an interesting subject to write a book about.

    link to songwritersnotebook.blogspot.co.uk

  • tree April 8, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    so we’re to accept the premise that jewish anti-gentile attitudes led to and justified both the inquistion and the holocaust?

    No, and that wasn't what Atzmon said.

    For a study of anti Semitism to become scholarly and valuable, instead of merely a form of hyper-emotional hysterical ranting, the researcher would also be advised to first assume that, perhaps, anti Jewish feelings might well have root causes which could be rational, and could be explained and understood — yet not justified — in terms of causality and reason.

    Instead of assuming that the Goyim are just a bunch of crazy blood thirsty lunatics that periodically just went mad again and again throughout history in their dislike for Jews, the scholars would rather be advised to look for the root causes that may well have lead to an anti Semitic event, ideology or text.

    That second paragraph resonates with quite a few "anti-semitism" studies and comments I've seen. And it coincides with the Israeli experience, which cannot comprehend the hostility felt towards Israel by its neighboring Arabs because, as Atzmon states,

    (t)hese countless studies on anti Semitism rarely look into the causes, and rarely try to understand why anti Semitism arose in so many places throughout history.

    Instead of elaborating on the causes that may lead to anti Semitism, the discourse on anti Semitism is a unique chronological account that only ‘starts to tick’ as soon as an ‘anti Semitic’ event is detected. Everything prior to that is a blank slate – and so we are left, once more, none the wiser as to why people ‘turned against the Jews’ yet again.

    I've just finished reading "Bloodlands". Incredibly depressing reading about the wholesale slaughter there, in the end perpetrated by every nation to one extent or the other. Ukranians, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Germans all were slaughtered simply because of their nationalities, as of course were Jews, simply because of their ethnicity or religion. Absolutely none of it was "justified" but it is now more understandable, though terrifying in the depths of its murderous "logic". That kind of study is what Atzmon is calling for in studies of "anti-semtism". Understanding causality is not the same as justifying and its a weakness of logic to claim that it is.

  • tree April 8, 2012 at 1:18 am

    if that bit about the continuum between Deuteronomy and Israel is supposed to be about the Israeli experience, he has to be upfront about it.

    He was very upfront about it.

    The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948 makes Deuteronomy 6:10 look like a prophecy has come true. On a daily basis the Israelis rob the indigenous Palestinians of their land, cities, villages, fields, orchards and wells. In fact this robbery has never stopped for over a century.

    For the last sixty years, Moses’ call for theft is put into a legal praxis. The Israeli looting of Palestinian cities, homes, fields and wells found its way into the Israeli legal system. Already in 1950-51 Israel legislators approved the ‘Absentee Property Law’, a racially orientated law that is there to prevent Palestinians from returning to their lands, cities and villages. A law that is there to allow the new Israelites to live in houses and cities they didn’t build.

    The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures.

    How can he be any more clear that he is talking about the "Israeli experience"?

    “there can be absolutely no doubt that zionism did intend to “rob the land” so they can “work the land” and in doing so found justification in both jewish and socialist texts”

    Nobody disputes this.

    But that is exactly what Atzmon is saying, and you dispute this by calling it anti-semitic.

  • tree April 7, 2012 at 6:36 pm

    Why did my comment with the link to David Rovics' piece get deleted?

    There was nothing incendiary or hateful in it.

    Well, all the attention Atzmon was getting prompted me to fork up $9.99 for my first electronic book (and I'm very thankful that something got me to read a book again, as somehow or other it's been ages). I'm not a scholar, but I am an avid student of history and politics, and I thought Atzmon's book, The Wandering Who?, was a very thought-provoking read. There weren't any particularly new ideas in it, but it was a very well-organized, well-articulated, contemporary and at times, humorous 200-page analysis of Jewish identity.

    From the outset, Atzmon makes it clear that his criticism of various aspects of Jewish tribal identity(s) for the past couple millenia is not aimed at the many people who happen to be born Jewish, but to what he identifies as "third category" Jews – Jews who identify primarily as Jewish, first and foremost. Growing up in the New York area with my eyes open and being of Jewish lineage myself, it is not hard to see that this third category exists, and in abundance, so it's also not hard to see why it's such an interesting subject to write a book about.

    A cursory glance at history tells me that narrow tribal identity politics usually suck. Whether it's people defining themselves in terms of their nation, their region, their ethnicity, their football team, their religion, if people have convinced themselves that they're better than you, watch out. What Atzmon is doing here is deconstructing (to use a word he probably doesn't like) Jewish identity politics, specifically. He is not analyzing or denouncing tribalism in general, I assume because you gotta stop somewhere, but maybe he has other reasons, like just wanting to stick to the point, or perhaps a little bit of self-preservation.

    Why, then, is Atzmon's intellectual exercise here getting both the Anti-Defamation League and even various good activists so riled up? Well, for different reasons, depending on who's feeling riled. In the case of people involved with Palestine solidarity in one form or another, I'd say it is not Atzmon's non-existent hatred of Jews that is the problem here. It is the fact that, in his position as an accomplished jazz musician and writer, he keeps talking about his views and upsetting people who identify with other narratives of Jewish religion, history and identity than Atzmon's. Some of these people he's pissing off include Jews and others who are involved with the movement to boycott Israeli products, etc. Because he's pissing them off, it doesn't really matter whether he's right, he should just shut up and stop rocking the boat, because he's distracting people from the very worthy cause of Palestinian self-determination.

    Now there's where I can sympathize with Atzmon's detractors. There is, I'm sure, great strategic value in as united a front as possible. I'm not an organizer – just a musical cheerleader – so I don't know much first-hand about building a solid movement and that sort of thing, and I'm sure it's extremely difficult. I'm also sure it's extremely necessary. But as someone who has been studying history and politics for many decades, I have to say that Atzmon is only saying the things that so many people already know, and I, for one, am not going to pretend otherwise because shunning someone for stating the self-evident is more convenient for the movement in the short-term. If he is to be shunned for being unnecessarily divisive, or for having too dark a sense of humor, or for being overly confrontational or critical, fine, shun away. But if he is to be shunned because he is an anti-Semite, no, that's just nonsense.

    I'm not going to lay out Atzmon's whole thing here. If you're curious, read the book – at least read the first two chapters before you decide to join in the shunning. But as a big fan of world history and the similarities and differences between the development of different societies over the millenia, as I was reading his book I kept thinking of other examples of tribal identity politics through the ages. One of the things I love about the US, despite a perennially despicable government committing one holocaust after another – the African holocaust, the Native American holocaust, the Korea holocaust, the Vietnam holocaust, not to mention the German and Japanese holocausts committed by the USAF – and despite all the efforts of racist pricks in power who do their best to maintain all sorts of divisions within American society – in the end, the US is full of hopelessly assimilated mutts like myself. It is, in fact, to no small extent, a melting pot, and although the bigotry that often is one of the factors that leads to assimilation must certainly be condemned, the fact that the country is full of people who, like me, can trace their ancestry to at least a dozen countries, tribes and historic religious affiliations, is a beautiful thing. It leaves many of us, especially those of us living comfortable lives, who are broadly accepted as part of a given society, perplexed by tribalism. For us assimilated types it doesn't come naturally, and if it is to exist it must be very purposefully ingrained. (Which is why the ADL hates Atzmon – he's interfering with the ingraining process with his book.)

    link to songwritersnotebook.blogspot.co.uk

  • tree April 7, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    "if we are to even begin to understand the roots of anti Semitism, then primary attention must surely also be dedicated to the considerable body of anti-gentile views expressed within the Torah, Talmud"

    Comes from this, quoted in part here:

    The new programme will be led by Yale professor Maurice Samuels, who states that Yale has some of the leading scholars in the world working on anti-Semitism and interfaith relations. He intends to focus on contemporary and historical anti-Semitism.

    However, for all Yale’s efforts, I remain convinced that Samuels will not be able to produce any valuable scholarly work either - the reason is simple: almost the entire body of research on ‘anti Semitism ’ conducted in recent decades is solely concerned and obsessed with recording the historical points at which hatred of the Jews manifests itself. And yet, for some bizarre reason, such scholarly work on anti Semitism never seeks to understand, and is totally impervious to the socio-economic, the ideological, theological and historical contexts, motivations, causes and reasoning that have existed behind such outbursts of hatred against the Jews.

    These countless studies on anti Semitism rarely look into the causes, and rarely try to understand why anti Semitism arose in so many places throughout history.

    Instead of elaborating on the causes that may lead to anti Semitism, the discourse on anti Semitism is a unique chronological account that only ‘starts to tick’ as soon as an ‘anti Semitic’ event is detected. Everything prior to that is a blank slate - and so we are left, once more, none the wiser as to why people ‘turned against the Jews’ yet again.

    I’d like to suggest here, that for an academic study of anti Semitism to be scholarly and comprehensive, and if we are to even begin to understand the roots of anti Semitism, then primary attention must surely also be dedicated to the considerable body of anti-gentile views expressed within the Torah, Talmud, and within contemporary Jewish ideology and politics (Zionist and Jewish anti-Zionist alike).

    The institute’s scholars would also be well advised to elaborate on Jewish cultural supremacy, and Jewish political lobbying, from Purim to AIPAC.

    For a study of anti Semitism to become scholarly and valuable, instead of merely a form of hyper-emotional hysterical ranting, the researcher would also be advised to first assume that, perhaps, anti Jewish feelings might well have root causes which could be rational, and could be explained and understood -- yet not justified -- in terms of causality and reason.

    Instead of assuming that the Goyim are just a bunch of crazy blood thirsty lunatics that periodically just went mad again and again throughout history in their dislike for Jews, the scholars would rather be advised to look for the root causes that may well have lead to an anti Semitic event, ideology or text.

    Such a study then, would surely be academically and socially valuable, and I believe it would also be crucial for Jews and Israelis, so they may be enabled to understand the world they live in, and to grasp their role in it.

    Some commendable studies by Jewish academics have already been done in that area : The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine, The Pity Of It All by Amos Elon and Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak and even early Zionist texts by Max Nordau, Ber Borochov and others all provide some adequate answers to questions regarding the origins of anti Semitism. Interestingly enough, none of the above studies were produced or sponsored by ‘anti-Semitism research institutions’ . The above scholars attempted to grasp the origins of animosity towards the Jews, instead of looking for a symposium in which they could moan about being hated. The three former at least, were driven by genuine intellectual curiosity rather than by a need for collective therapy.

    Full piece here:

    link to gilad.co.uk

  • tree April 7, 2012 at 4:39 pm

    I really wish that anyone seeking to prove Atzmon's alleged anti-semitism would actually link to the exact article itself. I've been around this kind of thing long enough to know that its always best to read the entire source before accepting someone else's take on it.

    Here is the Atzmon piece in full:

    link to gilad.co.uk

    I'd be curious to know what you think of it, Woody. I don't see it the way andrew r does. Do you?

  • tree April 4, 2012 at 6:02 pm with 43 replies

    paabrhm are you white? — havn’t the white people been telling the brown people for the last 300 years who their leaders should be.

    According to his self-description on his comment page, he's of Syrian descent. I don't think that qualifies as white these days. The rejection of Atzmon was probably to some extent the result of white (and Jewish) people telling the Palestinians who they should and should not associate with. Same shit, different year.

• 'Prawer Plan' to uproot Bedouins shows folly of the phrase 'democratic Israel'
  • tree April 4, 2012 at 3:42 pm

    Taking land for the purposes of integration and your spin on it is that they are just integrating for the evuls. Wow, just wow. I love how anything that would be seen as a positive development in the U.S. by the supposed liberals here is seen as negative in Israel.

    Wow, talk about spinning! You take the cake. Here, spin this:

    The Koenig Memorandum (also known as The Koenig Report) was a confidential and internal Israeli government document authored in April 1976 by Yisrael Koenig, a member of the Alignment (then the ruling party), who served as the Northern District Commissioner of the Ministry of the Interior for 26 years.[1][2]

    The document put forward a number of strategic goals and tactical steps aimed at reducing the number and influence of Arab citizens of Israel in the Galilee region. Outlining what he viewed as "objective thought that ensures the long-term Jewish national interests," Koenig stressed the need to "examine the possibility of diluting existing Arab population concentrations".[3]

    The leaking of the report by the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar is frequently referred to as "a major turning point in the relationship between the Israeli State and the Palestinian minority."[4]

    ....

    On September 9, Haaretz newspaper reported that Amos Eiran, Director General of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, deplored the "leaking" of the Koenig Report by Al-Hamishmar, but no governmental figures repudiated its recommendations.[7]

    ...

    The first section of Koenig's report is entitled, "The Demographic Problem and the Manifestations of Arab Nationalism."[2] In this section, Koenig claims that the Arab population of the Galilee region would constitute a majority (51%) of the population there by 1978 and that this, along with rising "nationalistic" sentiments "will endanger our control of that area."[2] He then proceeds to review the organizational capabilities of the Rakah party, foreshadowing and reflecting the important role they played in Land Day demonstrations that took place on March 30, 1976, in which six Arab citizens of Israel were killed by the IDF and Israel Police.

    In her book, "The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics", Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht summarizes some of the major strategic objectives and tactical steps endorsed by The Koenig Memorandum, as follows:

    To preclude any possibility of an (independent, Arab) political union, Koenig recommended building more Jewish settlements in areas that are predominantly Arab.

    Hostile Arab leaders should be replaced by compliant ones, whom Israel was to ‘create.’ Koenig wanted the number of Arab intellectuals reduced, because their frustration is potentially dangerous. He would encourage "the channeling of [Arab] students into technical professions, the physical and natural sciences. These studies leave less time for dabbling in nationalism and the dropout rate is higher." Koenig wanted to make it easier for Arabs to study abroad and harder for them to return and find jobs. Graduates who did remain in Israel were to be coopted.

    Koenig also proposed mounting a smear campaign against Arab activists, reducing liquid savings to limit funds available in the Arab community to support political causes, and reducing the effectiveness of Arab student organizations.[10]

    Further elements in the memorandum included Koenig's reflection that, "Social and economic security free[s] the individual and the family from economic worries ... and give[s] him, consciously and subconsciously, leisure time for social and nationalistic thoughts that are exploited by hostile elements to generate ferment and bitterness." As one practical measure to help obviate this end, Koenig proposed "neutralizing grants to large families."[1]

    link to en.wikipedia.org

    Go ahead, Fred. Substitute black and white for Arab and Jew in that memorandum and try to spin that into "promoting integration". You've certainly got the hack-titude to do it.

    Israel has a long track record of expropriating privately owned Palestinian land and handing it over to Jewish settlements, whether its within the green line or in the occupied territories. Its not "integration"that Israel is after. Its a slow and methodical ethnic cleansing. That's why Israel refers to "Judaizing the Galilee" and "Judaizing the Negev" and "Judaizing East Jerusalem", and never talks about "Arabizing" any parts of Israel that have a small or non-existent Palestinian demographic.

• The Israel/Palestine conflict will be resolved when Arab countries kick the U.S. out of the region
  • tree April 4, 2012 at 2:29 pm

    Blaming the Ashkenazim for the decision of Arab run governments to expell their Jews is enfeebling, nearly racist, and by the way the exactly of excuse used to excuse the nakba:

    Yes, it would be, but since no Arab government did that (with the exception of Jewish foreign citizens in Egypt) its likewise enfeebling, racist and most of all dishonest to continue to claim that they did.

  • tree April 4, 2012 at 8:14 am

    The only place Jews were forcibly expelled was from Egypt after Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt in 1956, and the only Jews expelled were those who had British or French citizenship (along with other non-Jews who had similar citizenship) and not Egyptian citizenship. You might want to read Joel Beinin on Egyptian Jews.

    In all other Arab countries, although some Jews may have had bad times and feared for their lives because they were associated in the minds of some Arabs with the actions of Israel, no Jews were forcibly expelled from any other Arab country. In many cases, Arab countries had laws against their Jewish citizens immigrating to Israel, and only relented under considerable pressure from Western countries, only to be later falsely accused of expelling them instead.

    We've had numerous Zionist apologists here proclaim that all Jews have a strong attachment to Jerusalem and Israel, that Jews everywhere constitute a nation, and that Jews naturally have an overriding concern for other Jews, and yet at the same time they insist that all the Arab Jews came to Israel because they were "expelled". You can't logically believe in both. I understand that belief in Zionism defies logic, but think about it for the moment. A large number of Arab Jews went to Israel because of messianic feelings, attachment to other Jews and concerns for Jewish safety in Israel, because they were induced with promises and monetary rewards, or because they wished to join relatives there. Some may have likewise felt insecure in their home countries, most specifically because they were mentally associated with a country that was grossly mistreating Arabs in the name of being "the state of all Jews", and sometimes even because that same country, Israel, sought to make their lives more insecure so as to push them to "make aliyah".

    The largest number of Arab Jews came from Morocco, over a span of ten or so years from the 50's to the sixties , and yet there are few to no reports of any attempts to push them out of Morocco and there are reports of attempts to retain them in Morocco, and to get them to return. The King of Morocco was, after all, the one who refused to turn over the names of his Jewish subjects to the Vichy government that ruled Morocco during WWII. Most of those Jews who first left for Israel were younger, and more adventuresome, and they were eventually followed by their parents who wished to retain family ties. Eventually, with a shrinking demographic steeped in endogamy, the population reached a point of unsustainability.

    In Iraq, during and immediately after the 1948 War, Jews were banished from government jobs. Reprehensible, yes,, but it pales in comparison to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and even compared to the US internment of our own Japanese American citizens. Interestingly, I've read numerous books and articles by Iraqi Jews and they all, to some extent retain a fondness for the Iraq in which they had lived, and many of them display a resentment of Israel which would not be present if they were expelled by Iraq and welcomed by Israel. You might want to try reading Shiblak's "Lure of Zion", Shabti's "We Look Like the Enemy" , Rejwan's "The Last Jews in Baghdad", and Woolfson's "Prophets in Babylon", or even the writings of Avi Shlaim , whose parents came from Iraq, on his life growing up in Israel. And David Shasha and Ella Shohat are also worth a read.

• In pictures: Gaza welcomes Hana Shalabi
  • tree April 3, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    Nope, Woody and Shmuel have it right. Your bigotry and your ignorance of the Geneva Conventions are what you highlight in your hypocritical arguments.

    First off, from the International Red Cross list of signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention:

    Palestine : On 21 June 1989, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs received a letter from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Office at Geneva informing the Swiss Federal Council "that the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, entrusted with the functions of the Government of the State of Palestine by decision of the Palestine National Council, decided, on 4 May 1989, to adhere to the Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the two Protocols additional thereto".

    On 13 September 1989, the Swiss Federal Council informed the States that it was not in a position to decide whether the letter constituted an instrument of accession, "due to the uncertainty within the international community as to the existence or non-existence of a State of Palestine".

    link to icrc.org

    So, Palestinian governments have signed the Geneva Convention. Your ignorance of this easily Googled fact shows your argumentative laziness.

    And secondly, your carping about Shalit's lack of Red Cross visits as a violation of the Convention that somehow in your mind negates any GC protection for Palestinian civilians under occupation shows your glaring hypocrisy.

    Israel, and Israeli high ranking military officers, have admitted to killing numerous unarmed Egyptian POWs (some soldiers, some civilians) during the 1956 and 1967 Wars, a major violation of the Geneva Conventions that makes denied Red Cross visits absolutely pale in comparison. If your logic was not a hypocritical one, then these egregious violations by Israel should elicit a similar response from you, as, after all, Israelis ..

    " chose the Labor Party to govern them in a free election, The IDF, under the auspices of the ruling Labor Party, chose to violate the GCs when it came to Egyptian POWs and on many other matters, therefore the Israelis are not protected persons because of what their chosen government does."

    So, since Israel violated and continues to violate the Geneva Conventions for multiple decades now, then Shalit is not a protected person, right? He had no right to Red Cross visits? He's damn lucky he wasn't just summarily executed, right? That's what your argument would say, if you weren't such an obvious bigot. But of course it can't say that because then it would fall in on itself. You couldn't whine and moan about missing Red Cross visits if you really believed that being a citizen of a country that violates the GC's actually negates any protection it provides, because you could never bring up the GC in relation to the treatment of Israeli citizens due to Israel's continuing violations of it.

    If you can't say the very same stupid comment about Israelis that you just made about Palestinians, they you've just made your bigotry crystal clear to one and all here. Not that most of us couldn't already spot your hypocrisy a mile away.

    So, seriously, Fred, do you honestly believe that Israelis deserve no protection under the Geneva Conventions because they have repeatedly elected governments that violated them? Or do Israelis once again get separate, more favorable, rules?

• A twitter debate on Israel/Palestine and racism
  • tree April 4, 2012 at 6:52 am

    Terry sweetie, German Nazis were the ones who killed 3 million Polish Jews, as well as killing 3 million non-Jewish Poles during the same time period, while the Soviet Union had killed hundreds of thousands of Poles, most of them non-Jews, simply because they were Polish. Nazi Germany doesn't exist anymore. Poland is the one that is allowing Polish Jews to repatriate if they wish. The action deserves commendation. You're plainly just upset that your attempt at hasbara failed because of your ignorance. The fact is that Poland is granting rights to Jews (as it should) that Jews in Israel are refusing to grant to Palestinians, while Israel is at the same time continuing with more slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

• My spirit is American (a religious manifesto)
  • tree April 4, 2012 at 1:13 am

    I agree. The new color coding is great. You can still see the old comments and yet differentiate the old from the new. Best solution yet.

  • tree April 2, 2012 at 5:10 pm

    Way more than the number of Jews in the Saudi Army.

    Maybe you need to re-read Phil's column, or at least the headline. It doesn't not say
    "My spirit is Saudi."

    If your defense of Israel is that its better than Saudi Arabia, and you can't even prove that point, maybe you should stop digging the hole you've created for yourself.

    Israel conscripts Jewish and Druze Israelis. It refuses to conscript other Arab non-Jews, although it allows them to volunteer but reserves the right to refuse them. Most don't volunteer because they would be forced to fight and oppress fellow Palestinians. The Israeli state conditions certain benefits on being subject to conscription; a requirement which most Palestinian Israelis can never meet, due to the discrimination of Israeli state law. That's racism.

    The Saudi Army isn't recruiting Jewish volunteers to fight and oppress fellow Jews. Nor is it conditioning benefits on military service that some of its citizens can never meet. Even Saudi Arabia, with its myriad faults, comes out better than Israel on this score.

  • tree April 2, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    Leading Israeli intellectual Danny Danon...

    Ouch. That's got to be one of the more cutting jabs at Israel!

• The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience
  • tree April 1, 2012 at 3:19 am

    Mayhem,

    Jordan had obligated itself within the framework of the 3 April 1949 Armistice Agreement to allow ‘free access to the holy sites and cultural institutions and use of the cemeteries on the Mount of Olives.’ Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit the Temple Mount, but Jews of all countries and non-Jewish Israelis were barred from entering Jordan and therefore could not travel to the area. Tourists entering East Jerusalem had to present baptismal certificates or other proof they were not Jewish.

    from Wikipedia, is a false and misleading reading of the sources it cites. One of its claimed sources is from Karen Armstrong's "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths" and they quote from her book thusly: "Only clergy, diplomats, UN personnel, and a few privileged tourists were permitted to go from one side to the other. The Jordanians required most tourists to produce baptismal certificates — to prove they were not Jewish ... " Notice the ellipses...

    But that is only a part of the full quote, taken out of context to imply that she is talking about entry into Jordan in general, or into East Jerusalem from anywhere other than from Israeli West Jerusalem. But the quote in context shows that she is clearly only talking about travel from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem.

    Here's a full quote in context:

    Jerusalem, which had so frequently been divided internally, was now split by more than one and a half miles of fortified frontier, barbed-wire fences, and massive defensive ramparts. On both sided, snipers shot into the territory on the other side of No Man's Land. In No Man's Land itself were deserted streets and 150 abandoned buildings. Three of the gates of the Old City (New Gate, Jaffa Gate, and Zion Gate) were blocked and reinforced by concrete walls. The city was now divided by tall barriers and tens of thousands of mines laid by both sides. The only crossing point was the so called Mandelbaum Gate, an open roadway near a house belonging to a Mr. Mandelbaum, which now had a barrier across it. Only clergy, diplomats, UN personnel, and a few privileged tourists were permitted to go from one side to the other. The Jordanians required most tourists to produce baptismal certificates-to prove they were not Jewish- before they were allowed to enter East Jerusalem from Israel. They could not then go back into Israel but had to return to their countries of origin from Jordan.

    So its clear that Armstrong was only referring to passage from Israeli occupied West Jerusalem into Jordanian occupied East Jerusalem when she noted these restrictions ,and the restrictions were intended to keep ALL Israelis out of East Jerusalem, due to the tense nature of the armistice during that time. The restrictions on Jews would be a necessity only because any Jew in Israel, even if born in another country, was allowed instant citizenship if they so desired, and, with dual citizenship a factor, a foreign passport would not be sufficient proof that a Jew entering East Jerusalem from Israeli controlled territory was not also an Israeli citizen. Jordan did not restrict foreign, non-Israeli, Jews from entering Jordan from any other embarkation point besides Israel, and had no way of doing so even if were to try, which it didn't.

    Also, on another point, as Wkipedia notes, the Hurva Synogogue was destroyed after diplomatic attempts were made by the Jordanian army to get the Haganah, which was using it as a base to attack Jordanian forces, to abandon it as a military outpost. When they refused to do so, the Jordanian Army attacked and destroyed it.
    link to en.wikipedia.org

    If you want to read a discussion on the desecration of Muslim and Christian holy places in Israel, I would point you to this report from 2004 from the Arab Association for Human Rights, an Israeli NGO.

    link to scribd.com

    Israel's record is nothing to be proud of.

• Ethnocentrism and journalism (Beinart's double standard for Israel and Iraq)
  • tree March 29, 2012 at 4:25 am

    Why did you lie? Stormfront does that all the time.

    I suspect you totally misunderstood what American was saying, optimax. He didn't lie. American was describing HIMSELF as a southern white, NOT Zimmerman. Re-read his comment. I think you owe him an apology.

• Brandeis students disrupt town-hall meeting with Israeli Knesset members
  • tree March 30, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    I think that “chauvinist” is Israeli-speak for “uppity.”

    LOL. Spot on.

  • tree March 29, 2012 at 4:37 am with 3 replies

    I noticed the same thing, Inanna. The protesters were obviously protesting the MK's who were responsible for the racist legislation, but PZ and dimadok totally missed that in their need to find an excuse to criticize the article. I chalk it up to a failure of reading comprehension by Zionists. They are so busy looking for minutia among the trees with which to distract themselves and others, that they can't see the forest right in front of their faces.

• The Toulouse killings and the false specter of European anti-Semitism
  • tree March 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm

    antisemite is an efficient way to quickly describe someone who tries to justify his animus toward Jews

    "Anti-Jewish" is just as quick or quicker and doesn't lead to misunderstandings about whom one is referring to. And the "attachment" seems to come, not from anti-semites, but from others who seem to think that only Jews can suffer from "anti-semitism" when that prejudice is based on an attitude of superiority towards all Semites. If prejudice towards Jews deserves its own special word ( and I doubt it should, anymore than any other ethnic or religious prejudice should), then the word should most clearly refer only to Jews.

  • tree March 28, 2012 at 3:54 pm with 3 replies

    That’s bullshit: anti-semite is a term that the anti-Jew biggots themselves chosed to use during the 19th because they believed it sounded smart.

    Actually, "anti-semite" was a word chosen because it implied that Jews were not of Europe, but rather Middle Eastern, and foreign or alien to Europe. If someone had decided that Jews were "negroid" and he were to use the term "anti-negroid" to describe himself, we would understand that the term was just as deprecating to other "negroids" as it is to Jews. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that the point of using the term "anti-semitic" was originally intended to put Jews in the same supposed inferior class that the European bigots put other Middle Easterners(Arabs)?

• Israeli diplomat chased out of Morocco after mass protest
  • tree March 27, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    This film might be useful for anyone who realy cares about how "open" Jerusalem is and was. "Jerusalem: An Occupation Set in Stone?" was released in 1995 by Marty Rosenbluth, an American Jew who became a right wing settler in Israel and then reality changed his whole outlook and he became a researcher for Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights Organization. Remember when you are watching this that it was filmed in 1994, during the Oslo period, six years prior to the Second Intifada, and 18 years ago.

    Part One: link to youtube.com

    Part Two: link to youtube.com

    Part Three: link to youtube.com

    Part Four: link to youtube.com

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