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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
"I have a book on American history written about 80 years ago, and in one chapter describing the society of southern states it mentions that they also had an indolent hookworm ridden population variously called as crackers, hillybillies or rednecks, subsisting on produce from indifferent attempts at farming, hunting vermin and most of all, hogs that were running everywhere."
Are you joking? What's the title?
As a general rule that sounds like it makes sense.
But in reality, the "war" was over in 1967 and since then the victor has been in control of everything. It's kind of like saying some Mayan tribes are still "at war" with the Mexican government. There are probably even more Mexicans descended from the Indians from than the Spanish conquerers, and in fact there are occasional small rebellions to this day.
Furthermore, even while the British empire and its colonies were still at war with eachother, I assume some civilians could go to Britain. But no matter how much Palestinians may like the victor in this case, no matter how peaceful or submissive, the victor does not allow their civilians to enter. There is, however, an exception if they convert to the dominant religion.
What made Jon Stewart decide to do a skit like this? After all, it was an unusual segment for Comedy Central's Daily Show. My guess would be that he might be trying to appease his large pro-Israel following after a show this past Fall in which he appeared overly critical of Israel. As CAMERA documents on their website: "In a segment dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Stewart hosted Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti and anti-Israel agitator Anna Baltzer. Barghouti presented a familiar narrative of Palestinian grievances of the kind often heard. But it was the pairing with Baltzer that sparked indignation among many viewers. Fortunately, the segment's producers edited out much of Baltzer's misinformation about Israel, making the version that was broadcast substantially less objectionable than the original taping."
link to blog.rabbijason.com
I find Appelfield's rejection of German understandable, especially because his home region had other languages, and the official language would've been Romanian. It reminds me of someone who had a traumatic experience at a location, like a certain block corner, and avoids the location out of bad memories.
In fact, there were alot of Russians who didn't want to learn German after WWII because of the bad experiences. And to me, German language reminds me of WWII movies.
However, from the viewpoint of Reason I disagree, and think it is healthier to overcome the instinctual rejection. You can reason that German was also the language of German Jews, such as those in Appelfield's hometown. And one can point out that Aramaic was the language of the Rabbinical Targums and the everyday language of Jews in Jesus' time, and yet it was taken from the Assyrian conquerers of ancient Israel.
Piotr,
It's like in Russian, and I assume Polish- the geographic location is "on", like "on a mountain", "on a hill", "on an island."
The political location is "in", like "in Mount Holly", "in Cherry Hill" (south New Jersey).
Don't you have the same thing in Polish?
Paying football "on" a field ("polye")
Living "in" a country (eg. Poland)
By the way, in English you can say "in a field" or "on a field". :)
But if you say "in a mountain" or "in an island", it means underground. Yes, it's confusing.
If 62% of J.voters are going for Obama, then a movie showing only anti-obama discussions by them is misrepresentative.
That sounds much worse. Strangling takes time, but cutting off the head is pretty fast. Some people don't seem to get that. Of course, one of the worst may be the poison injections used in assassinations, but that's another topic.
Are P.E.P.s liberal?
I think I would partly disagree that Judaism itself was the central, direct cause for common leftist politics.
According to Einstein, "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by lack of power."
Another philosopher I think suggested that if they had an ethnic state, they would do discriminatory things like other nation states.
My perception is that as a social phenomenon, Jewish people held more leftist perspectives because they were an ethnic or religious minority. They were reacting against a non-Jewish establishment and dominant non-Jewish social mores, and in some cases in Europe, a history of institutions that discriminated against minorities.
That Judaism wasn't a central, direct cause of the community's progressive perspectives is suggested by the fact that the least religious were more frequently the most leftist. Instead, like blacks and working class minorities like Italian Americans, they often took leftist perspectives because of their own societal position and background. Judaism could be used as a source of justifications for social justice positions because it is still a moral code.
Now you could go beyond what I am saying and assert that although there was commonly a stand-offishness about those outside the religion, the religion had underneath itself in its roots the idea of a universalism and universal mission for all mankind. But if you are going to assert this, you might as well assert that Christianity, with its Messianism and universal evangelizing was the logical outcome of Judaism.
In any case, I don't think that in the case of America's minorities, it is primarily each group's religion that mainly decides whether the group is progressive, but rather the group's backgrounds of its position in society. You might as well use societal mobility and lack of discrimination to explain why there is less of a strong progressive motivating impulse.
This is the Pitts.
Piotr,
I think you know what you are talking about, being Polish :)
In any case, I would add that it is probably better that the Allies didn't attack Germany first. If the Allies were the aggressors, it would have been harder to rally popular morale for the war in the Allied countries. People could blame the war on their leaders, asking Who attacked first? It could also add more morale among Axis allies, like Italy, which in real life had partisan groups that attacked the fascists.
This is just one example. It would have been better if the Allied countries were better prepared for WWII (USSR purged its own officers), rather than wildly attacking Axis countries.
It's like invading Iraq- a preemptive attack is still an attack, not "fighting back." It's also like the 1967 war, which Norman Finkelstein has shown wasn't a war of defense, even though Isr.PR from time to time claims things like Arabs attacked Israel in 1967.
W.T.,
Having in mind the example of German pacifists like Bonhoffer, I disagree that in WWII Pacifism is necessarily pro-fascist. If your government is playing a leading role in aggression, I doubt that pacifism is objectively supporting the aggression. Similarly, if your country is conquered, then I doubt that taking a pacifist form of resistance is supporting the conquest.
WT,
Tentatively agreeing with what you have just said, I still think Ron Paul probably disagrees with G.O.I. policy.
So that's Ron Paul (independent right- libertarian) and Green Party (independent left- social democrat) disagree with Israeli policy.
I didn't have a subscriber status and could view the comments. On the first page that came up for me, 9 comments were supportive of Oren's position, 4 were critical.
I'm sure you guys are generally aware of the range of discussion that goes, eg:
PRO: We make the desert bloom, Israel is disliked in the media because they stopped being socialist, Palestinian governments don't tolerate diversity, Israel started as socialist but that didn't bring peace so they need the right to survive, the media's views are based on anti-semitism, and a citation from a book says that Arab pscyhology is about fighting eachother. CON: The comment about it being due to anti-semitism is exagerrated, and that citation is taken from a book by a poor author. etc.
"why have anti-Israel libels... become media mainstays? How can we explain the assertion that... Israel oppresses Christians?"
Because an occupation of 40+ years doesn't appear temporary anymore? Because those Christians say it does?
Somehow I have a hard time picturing 45 Palestinian Americans or Solidarity activists doing this together on a trip in a huge tent. It seems they have enough psychological stimulation, of a different kind, from the guards who the birthright visitors date.
It isn't worth it just for the sex, because it decreases performance.
Some people get several homelands to choose to live in, while others get practically none.
Yeah, what are you talking about, no happy ending?
What is it with all of these MidEast leaders going comatose- Sharon, Tunisia's president Abidine, Mubarak?
I liked his story about Hebron. Are there similar stories of celebrities going back to Israel proper after 1948, going to some Palestinian villages, and asking "Where is everybody"?
Yes, you are at least partly mistaken, BigBill. In the clip, the only attacks he mentions are the hostile emails and the verbal attack while naked, which occurred in the US.
Inigo Montoya joins Peace Now.
Why wouldn't they want him to make a movie?
At :56 he says most people at Nor Samaia were discouraging his production. What is Nor Samaia?
NickJOCW,
You are making a good point, but it's also important to ask how many of the evan. supproters vote Democrat, and how much the Democrats vie for their votes.
For what it's worth, the lady went and saw what she wanted to see.
Imagine if you wanted to go to the American West after reading stories about the cowboys, since your relatives are cowboys. You have a friend who sympathizes with Indians. That's nice, now I go to the West and see the cowboys and see how romantic it is. A nice trip to the Open Range where the deer and the antelope play. It's exactly what I wanted to see.
You would basically have to be visiting a fort and be conscripted into massacering an Indian village for you to recognize that a problem exists. And then of course you could make justifications about how the cowboys are good, but that particular fort was bad, etc. etc.
Or to give another example, how about people from the North who visited the pre-war South. They could be treated with Southern Hospitality and fail to recognize anything was wrong. The black slaves they saw were fed enough, well cared for, so what's the problem? It's just if they are lazy or run away that they are brutally punished, but hey that was their choice to be lazy. etc etc. This is obviously an unfortunate pscyhological problem that someone goes to a place or lives there and fails to realize there is anything wrong because they themselves are treated well by the unequal society.
Phil Harris,
You do realize he left out one of the main "target audiences": "Christian Zionists?"
Sometimes Burston has discussed real problems, unlike this speech, whose only progressive point is her main one, basically: I am pro-J Street and ask hard questions.
If your expectation is that these kinds of guys are going to have a huge major reversal when they find out about white phosphorous and that their reversal is "the answer", is that like relying on Americans in the 17th-19th centuries to "wake up" to dispossesion of the Native Americans?
It would be nice, of course.
"This is the greatest collective Jewish moral collapse in a very long time."
Since when, would you say?
Yes, unfortunately.
What she said was that she is rebelling against people "hunkering down" and preventing questioning about the State and its policies. And she is rebelling by being for J Street instead of AIPAC.
Unfortunately, her talk didn't really say what policies or aspects of the State she is "questioning." One of the problems she mentioned is:
But she doesn't say why they can't. eg. Is it because of Israeli restrictions, or because Palestinians are getting poorer and this adds to crime?
In fact, I would say that her other critical statement is reactionary to a big extent:
In other words, she is complaining that the State is losing ground because in her view it is giving up too much in one of the few major deals it made with Hamas. Rather than mention the thousands of prisoners in Israeli jails, including children, her position is basically a more militaristic one- that the State isn't being tough enough in negotiating about prisoners!
The conclusion is that this stirring J-Street speaker has a sense there are problems, and based on being generally liberal, she wants to be in a liberal group. But when it comes to Reconciliation and deciding what is wrong and what to do, she doesn't say anything, except sense that there is a problem.
"What of the gay prep school teacher who liked to try to tickle boys when they had lights out at 10:30?"
I think it's pushing the boundaries.
And how about the even worse stuff that apparently straight males, like coaches, do in school. Our macho band teacher I heard on a band trip put an acting-up highschool kid over his shoulder and was spanking him. On the outside it is friendly, but actually it is bad.
Or to give another example, in many southern Schools in the US, the discipline is beating highstudents' rear ends with wooden boards. The sexual nature of this would be obvious to everyone, except that it is covered with the veneer of punishment, which in fact makes it more traumatic. This is not to mention that beating with boards often bruises them.
We are talking about almost 10% of students in Mississippi and Alabama get this kind of beating every year, many more than once.
This is also something there is media silence about. In a supposedly democratic country, a big portion, if not the majority of people, are unaware about this.
I disagree about circumcision- it is performed as a central religious ritual and based on medical reasons (although the reasons are arguable). Corporal punishment, on the other hand, is punishment and done as an adverse action with the purpose of causing pain.
Now, the Old Testament does give advice on both (Proverbs for the latter), so you could argue that there is an inconsistency in widely practicing one and banning the other. In any case, this is a different kind of "split".
Oh, another thing. Do you know Israel is one of the few countries in the world to ban spanking? That is an extremely progressive step. It means giving children of all ages the same respect from physical pain assaults as adults. In America, you can't hit your dog or spouse, criminals, or anyone except for defenseless little children, who are half the size of adults. Here, Israel is at the forefront of rights for its vulnerable citizens.
Now remember back to the movie Miral, where the beautiful girl is tied and caned in a prison cell. Julian Schnabel, the director, said he knows it's real, because he has seen the whip scars on her. Plus, there are the hundreds of children locked away in prison, taken at night from their homes with no representation, for resisting the military police. Or the children tied to the front of military vehicles.
Things on one side of the wall can be at the forefront of Western progress, while on the other side they are at the edge of what Western society will turn its face away from and allow. And the same group performs both.
I don't know. Before I knew about the "other side" of the IP Conflict, I had a generally positive view of the country. It was inspiring for me that they had kibbutzes and communal ownership, work, living, in the 1950's. This was an important progressive part of the state's foundation.
Granted, I figured that this progressive part of the system had become less and less, but it left me with a nice feeling. So I think it's effective to get out images like this to the public.
As for the Autobahn, it was a government project I think, and some people (generally anti-Socialists) make the claim that "national socialism" was partly "socialist." I am pretty doubftul of that, because their country had big companies like VW. But I think PR still has a small effect on a person's mentality, and it can mislead people into thinking a country is more "progressive" than it is.
Well, I for one am at least alittle surprised that someone who isn't Christian would focus his report on Christians. On a sidenote, if most Jewish Americans consider themselves pro-Israel, would they consider Groening ("Most American Jews, they say, are... not pro-Israel") as smearing them in his article "60 Minutes Smears Israel"?
By the way relatively few Pal.Christians are Evangelical despite the claim that "many of [them] take the Bible literally".
Scott,
The film focused on Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, rather than in Israel proper. All over the Holy Land, the percent of Pal.Christians is decreasing.
Quantitatively:
In Israel proper, the number of Pal.Christians is increasing.
In the Christian town of Taybeh in the West Bank (one of the very few), the number is drastically decreasing- by half or 3/4.
In Jerusalem, the number of Christians fell by about half in 1948 and 1967. The Christians would ascribe this to the Nakba and Naksa.
Since then, in the West Bank, their numbers are generally in stagnant flux, sometimes increasing and other times decreasing by several thousand every few years (out of a population of about 40-55,000, so this means alot).
Unfortunately, I have alot of trouble finding yearly survey information for the Palestinian Christian population of Jerusalem- the surveys I found talk about Jerusalem's general Christian population, which is buttressed by immigrants. For example, I read that in 2005 off the top of my head there were 15,800 Christians there, and then in 2010 there were 15,100. However, in 2010, of them only 11,600 or so were Christians.
What someone would need to answer your question would be surveys from past decades of Palestinian Christians.
Dear Allenbee,
Imagine you have $100 to spend, you need to buy a wig, and have two choices. The two choices cost the same and have the same quality.
It has recently come to your attention that one wig is made from the shaved heads of women in the Prison-Industrial Complex in a brutal third world country. The other wig is made from normal hair in America, which you assumed both were.
Since you have this information, is there a moral impulse to stop buying wigs, the purchase of which stimulates a market that forcibly humiliates thousands of women?
If you know that choosing to invest millions of dollars without placing conditions on companies that forcibly destroy the homes and livelihoods of tens of thousands of native people in the Holy Land will futher destroy their livelihoods, do you bear indirect responsibility for those thousands' humiliation and loss of their homes?
From the UN Document (OCHA OPT)
64
24
114
70
166
RESPECTIVELY:
CHECKPOINTS A barrier manned by IDF and/or Border Police.
PARTIAL CHECKPOINTS An established checkpoint operating periodically.
ROAD GATES A metal gate, often manned by IDF, to control movement along roads.
ROADBLOCKS A series of 1 metre high concrete blocks used to obstruct vehicle access.
EARTHMOUNDS A mound of rubble, dirt and/or rocks used to obstruct vehicle access.
10
46
20
RESPECTIVELY:
TRENCHES A ditch used to prevent vehicle crossing.
ROAD BARRIERS
Road barriers placed alongside major roads prevent movement across the roads.
EARTH WALLS A continuous wall or series of earth mounds used to restrict access.
Mistake
"The MOI further refuses to grant recognized legal status to several old churches in Israel, all of them Protestant. Four Christian churches are waiting years for recognition of their legal status: the Ethiopian-Orthodox Church, the Coptic-Orthodox Church, the Evangelic Lutheran Church, and the United Christian Council."
The Ethiopian-Orthodox Church and the Coptic-Orthodox Church are not Protestant, they are "Oriental Orthodox Christian."
The Protestant Reformation happened in the "Occident" out of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century or so, whereas the Coptic and Ethiopian "Oriental Orthodox" separated from the Greek/Roman Church in the 6th century or so, in Egypt and Ethiopia.
This unintentional mistake is a reflection of the small awareness in Western countries that millions of Christians exist in and around Middle Eastern countries, and this in turn has led to misunderstanding, stereotyping of Middle Easterners as radical Muslims, etc.
How is this conceivably a terror incident?
The announcement never specified that the peasants "who saw their living slip from their hands" targeted the home because they hated Jewish people. In fact, it just says that the peasants were very poor. Obviously the person targeted had money. Even if it was another Palestinian trying to chase after them it seems likely they would try to stop their pursuer with force, in this case too deadly. My point is that it doesn't seem like an attack for the sake of racism, nor for political or religious goals.
And what is the point the author is trying to make in the last paragraph?
Thanks for sharing with us a very good story.
I really liked it. It was very heartfelt, descriptive, and revealing.
Do you feel like Hercules?
One thing helpful for me at these kinds of discussions is to bring a notepad in case good points or new information are brought up I can think about later.
I think that despite the ideological claims, knowing what the State is doing would really hurt funding.
Right now the justification is, you describe, helping the state to bring on the End Times. OK, but they still have to decide what part they are going to play in the End Times. Who is going to donate to something they have come to believe is harmful, in order to bring on the Last Judgment at which their actions would look bad?
I am confused. If the Nazis thought what they were doing was so good and moral and the will of the German people, why not show what they were doing?
If on the other hand, they thought it would be bad to treat Jewish prisoners well, with cafe's, etc., why make a propaganda movie showing that? If the Reich was going to be a thousand years, eventually people would get trained thinking one way from the propaganda films and then be more likely to object if they were going to be ordered to do these bad things.
Even 1000 years later the Nazis would still have undesirables, like disabled people. Yet apparently the Nazis told everyone they were doing one thing and did another.
This suggests to me that at some level they knew what they were doing was wrong and then chose to do what they realized was wrong. How else to explain it? How could this "false show" be justified from even a German nationalist viewpoint? They would have to claim that the Nazis were ahead of their time and the german people themselves weren't ready to know this "good" way. But then, it really isn't the German people's will after all.
Or imagine a poor school that brings in pets and rents sports supplies to show parents, and yet the kids never get to play with those things. Maybe they would try to justify it by saying they don't have the money and are just showing their ideal? Maybe.
But in the Nazi case, I don't think nice camps was really their ideal...
Don't you guess the two (Oren's WSJ letter and his 60 minutes appearance) were related?
English uses the Latin Alphabet.
Hebrew uses the Aramaic Alphabet.
Hence, I am not sure it is correct to speak of English or Hebrew letters.
"At the conference itself, a friend of mine who attended told me how Niall Ferguson, Harvard history professor and one of the keynote speakers, engaged in the classic game of listing Arab versus Jewish inventions, proving the point (as if that needed to be done) that the conference is nothing but a political propaganda tool."
From Nation A conference at University A.
"And when we come to Nations belonging to ethnicity B, we find that they have less technology and inventions. They are clearly an inferior ethnicity. We on the other hand, the Civilized ethnicity A, are clearly far superior."
Or perhaps Nation A isn't really calling itself superior, they are just pointing out facts, which could by coincidence happen to suggest they are superior?
WOW!
OK, YOU WIN.
I did not realize it was that many workers coming in and out. Wow.
I hope I remember this the next time the claim comes up.
At 10:35, columnist Ari Sharvit explained that Israel doesn't persecute Christians as Christians, and that Christians suffer from Israeli policies that are the result of the overall tragic situation.
Now this makes sense to some extent. It's hard to think of the country's early leaders saying "We want the Xtians to leave" or something during the Nakba. They didn't couch things in religious terms. Plus, as Oren suggested in his interview, Israeli citizens who are Christians- like relatives from Eastern Europe- don't seem to undergo state persecution for religion.
But imagine if during the Taming of the West, the US army only rounded up Indian villages that hadn't become Christian. In that case, the Indians probably weren't rounded up for being pagan, but it seems that for Christian Indians they would rather be making an exception to the "overall situation" of the Indian wars.
Or imagine a boss has to lay off nearly all his staff, and he chose to make an exception for people who had joined his church. In that case, the mass layoffs aren't due to failure to belong to his church, but to the "overall situation."
Yet still, in these cases, doesn't it seem like people are being treated differently based on religion, even if it's not the religion itself that is being directly targeted?
If everything was about the ethnicity of "two peoples" and nothing was about religion, the policies would be more careful about people, because alot of the inhabitants are from a common ethnicity from the Holy Land.
I don't know. East Germany was authoritarian and had egalitarian principles.
Although Israel was founded with alot of Socialist economic ideas, they seem to have fallen away, although apparently the government still owns a huge percent of the land.
I think the country is more rightwing than it was when it was founded in its attitudes.
The end result of East Germany on the other hand seemed to be a people with liberal humanitarian ideas, when they became united with West Germany.
Anon,
Can you please write more about #3?
I get that even if the wall was made to stop terrorism and succeeded, it was still PLACED in a bad way that obviously captured land deep inside the West Bank. Plus it does other bad things like create a Separation (Afrikaans for "Apartheid") mentality.
As for #3, you make a good point that the PLO abandoned terrorism and does policing. But it seems that they could also claim that the Separation Wall does also serve to stop terrorism in case some small extremist groups wanted to do it. I think in 2009 or 2010 for example, Hamas assaulted a car of settlers with kids inside.
Now it seems you could still come back and say "Yes, the Separation Wall helped reduce terrorism in the short run, but in the long run it created barriers between people and the annexation created alot more unnecessary longterm hostility."
.
Dear Fredblogs,
"Alot" is a military acronym for an allotment.
link to history.navy.mil
In the case at hand, I understand that there were an allotment of 4 major issues in the case.
However, I meant to say that "I understand there were a lot of issues in the case." I made a spelling error, which due to your diligence I shall probably make less frequently in the future.
I understand there were alot of issues in the case, like whether the Plaintiffs had standing to sue. But assuming they did, I think it is pretty strong that
"Minnesota statutes Section 11A.24, specifically prohibit investments in non-Canadian foreign government securities".
That seems to go pretty strong against the judge's/government's decision/claim "that the SBI is authorized by statute to purchase government bonds, including those of Israel".
Finkelstein's main point is that views among young Jewish Americans are changing to be more dedicated to human rights and critical when viewing Israeli policies.
And in the opposite direction: particularly shocking to me is how much another younger generation is becoming intolerant compared to the generation of the State's founders. A survey by the Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies showed among young people(18-29 years old):
34% expressed the view that Christian clergy should not be permitted to live anywhere in Israel (as compared with 25% of those in the 30-49 age bracket and 14% of those over 50)... 52% maintained that immigrants from the FSU who define themselves as Christians should not be permitted to practice their Christianity in Israel (as compared with 43% of those in the 30-49 age bracket and 25% of those over 50), and 31% expressed the view that the activities of the Churches in Israel should be restricted as much as possible (as compared with 20% of those in the 30-49 age bracket and 13% of those over 50).
link to jcjcr.org
There should be streets named after people like that.
Streets in our hearts.
"Cohen is universally admired... he's actually a gentleman" Um, really?
The commentary... has generated more than 300 comments on the CBS site.
Hmmm....
===================================================
© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
266 Comments
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Win Ben Stein's Mind, by Roger Ebert
link to blogs.suntimes.com
"when Walt and Mearsheimer start generalizing about the influence of the lobby on Iraq, Iran policy and elsewhere - that's where I think they get it wrong. I just can't find any evidence for it."
"Any" evidence? All you would need to do is find a statement by such an advocacy organization supporting the war to find "any" evidence.
If M.W. posted the rejection letter about Atzmon, will it at least link to his response?
More safe, I guess. It has overwhelming military supremacy even without the nukes, but still has bad relations. How would you answer your question?
Take for example Jordan, a US ally and a comparably western-oriented country. They really are at peace with the Israeli state, right? But it is also filled with a huge number of Palestinian refugees from the state. And can we say that the state really feels "comfort" towards this neighbor? I think the Israeli state is probably one of the most "western" oriented, but in any case the refugee problem and cultural differences seem to play a role.
But to answer your question more directly, wouldn't you say that military superiority has in a way made it feel safe, but it still is not comfortable. Has it always been this way, even before the 1960's when they developed it?
In my opinion to overcome the situation, they would need cultural exchanges, take big steps to integrate into the region and develop good, friendly relations with everyday people in the surrounding countries.
Dear Phil,
You ask a good question. The best reason I can think of is the people's security. That is, as Prof. J.Slater claims, the people are more secure if they have an ethnic state. And if it does make them secure, then it may be worthwhile, considering past persecution.
However, I would very much like to read an article, or see a discussion on Mondoweiss, on whether this is really the case. That is, does having a single-ethnic state in the Holy Land actually provide more security for the people?
Or would the people be more secure if they lived in multiethnic, tolerant states spread across the world, rather than gathered into a small space on top of, and surrounded by, another group of temporarily weaker people with whom there are hostile relations? I am not sure of the answer, but think it is an important discussion.
What about "Do Not Commit Adultery"?
It sounds like he is saying in the second paragraph that prohibitions don't matter as long as "the success of the whole" can be rationally used as a justification.
Zionism by itself simply means a return to Zion, the people's homeland. One can have this idea without ideas about a state system. And by itself, this return after centuries seems like a nice idea.
One question you can ask is why this idea is important: Are the people safer in the homeland? More likely, it seems that the people care alot about their national identity and thus want to have a community in their homeland.
So far OK.
A big problem arises though when a big portion of those dedicated to this idea want a state dedicated to their own people and not to other native people who share the same homeland.
Another big problem seems to be that the Zionist movement defines the people based on religous background rather than actual ethnic background, since alot of Palestinians are ethnically Jewish.
And then the term Zionism becomes incorrectly equated in common discourse with dedication to a specific single-ethnic state system in Zion.
Yes.
How do Indian massacres of settlers in the US West compare to US army massacres of Indian villages?
On the face it seems like the same thing, except it occurs within the larger context of the Indians being expelled and deprived of their land. Plus, I assume the casualty rate was pretty lopsided.
I learned recently Pakistan has many more people than America does. America simply cannot occupy the Middle East. Oh and Pakistan is pretty rightwing- an ally of the Taliban in the 1990's and has nukes.
Iran is a big country too, and has alot of influence in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The long-term plan is to treat the Middle East like the West Bank and Gaza are treated?
The "soft power" tactics used in Tunisia and Libya are more effective from an imperialistic standpoint.
Globalization is easier to manage I assume than direct colonialism. But the Iraq war appeared more of the latter. So it's not too surprising that even those who seek strong US world dominance would object to the Iraq war.
From the "Progressive Voices Against BDS" event website
(link to voicesagainstbds.com
Jo-Ann Mort
National Vice Chair, Americans for Peace Now
"APN continues to oppose boycotts and other forms of BDS against Israel and the Israeli people as a whole, and urges people to continue buying Israeli products. However, we join Peace Now in urging all those who care about Israel's character as a democracy to boycott settlements and products made in settlements. Settlements are not Israel. Such a boycott is the best way to show our support for Israel and to register our commitment to Israeli democracy."
So in other words, one of the sponsors actually supports one version of BDS.
The former engineer eventually summarised his key campaign issues as "mutual responsibility. And not leaving soldiers behind or any Israeli who is in any trouble." He also said he would be prepared to negotiate with Hamas if he were an MP, something the Israeli government, along with Britain and the US, refuses to do.
This is someone who has suffered from losing his son for 5 years and yet he is able to empathize with the "other", see their viewpoint, and seek reconciliation. A hard task.
The Lord bless and keep him.
Jerusalem had 31,400 Palestinian Christians in 1946.
Those Christians claim there were mass expulsions in 1948 and in mid-1967 by the Israeli army.
The number of Pal. Christians there were surveyed as 12,900 in Dec. 1967, 11,800 in 1972, and 15,700 in 2005. The surveys reflect not only those claims of expulsions, but the decline between 1967-1972 suggests significant problems under Israeli rule.
I hope M.W. will run Atzmon's response.
agreed.
"But no such letter exists against Chomsky as far as I know."
And that's good of course. But what does the context of Spinoza suggest?
If I am American, and engage in exagerrated and sometimes incorrect stereotypes about Americans, like saying we are too fat, lazy, not intelligent, uneducated, militaristic, etc., am I anti-American?
What about Bill Crosby criticizing African Americans? I think it is presumptively offensive when someone who doesn't belong to a group stereotypes it, but perhaps the opposite is true when it is about one's own background, because it is ultimately about oneself.
What do you think?
OK, so to recap:
Chomsky is a foremost activist for Palestinian rights, strongly downplays the lobby, associates himself with old-school anarchist Zionism (having an ethnic non-governmental community in the Holy Land), defines the State as basically only a colony of Britain and the US, and rejects the boycott movement as hypocritical. His biography compares him to Spinoza for being a dissident within his own community.
Atzmon is an Israeli dissident and strong supporter of Palestinian independence, but expresses strong criticisms of his own community, which apparently include some stereotypical mischaracterizations. Here we are presented with two chain letters by Palestinian Solidarity activists denouncing him as making stereotypes. But no such letter exists against Chomsky as far as I know.
Hmmm what would you think about "White Boers United Against Apartheid"?
One difference of course is that Dutch Boers were not discriminated historically. But maybe they were oppressed by the British empire who controlled their land? So maybe you have a similar situation where Boers are progressive in demanding their own country, but reactionary in their ethnic-oriented politics?
Or maybe I shouldn't even consider comparisons?
The first letter isn't persuasive to those familiar with Atzmon's main thesis that there are in fact a broad range of views among Jews and that many are in fact not Zionist.
But on the other hand, he does cause controversy unnecessarily- this is someone who writes in his book that he intentionally played bad-sounding music to be disruptive of the military he was in. In other words, I feel part of his psychology enjoys being disruptive of what he feels around him is an authoritarian system. And what comes out in this context does seem to me to be at times inherently "bad music."
In any case, I think one standard in judging his works could be: what would it look like if it was a white person or African American criticizing white society or black society in a similar way?
Personally, I find Atzmon's quote marked [6] offensive, as you could replace the word "Jewish" with the word "Italian", and it would be equally applicable, as you can find many fascists and radical socialists in Italian society too.
And yet it is important I think to remember- I feel a danger in this kind of group-attack on Atzmon, because it lacks any positive appreciation of his good parts- that he is a dissident too. In pouncing on him, the situation can develop into a witch-hunt where everyone is condemned who approved/es of any good things he has said. And this has already happened sometimes.
Chomsky spent time on a kibbutz, practically is an anarchist Zionist (as Finkelstein has said), and opposes any boycott. Yet the progressive community has not signed such a mass letter against Chomsky. And I don't think they should denounce him or others, either, for the same reason.
Otherwise it is dissenters silencing dissent for dissenting from their collective view- right or wrong.
And finally- one interviewer asked Atzmon pointedly if he wants Israel's destruction, and he became very sad and emotional saying no he does not want this, he wants them to change from the mistreatment and the bad ways.
"So it seems to me the first letter is mischaracterizing Atzmon in describing what it sees as his mischaracterizations."
I mean that it sounded like in reality Atzmon's thesis wasn't equating all Jews with the nation-State as the first letter's third paragraph said, but rather explained that there are many people with many different views about the State who are Jewish by religion or ethnicity.
In the first letter, only the third paragraph, out of nine paragraphs, directly explains what it disagrees with about G.Atzmon. The rest of the first letter is mostly general, progressive statements rejecting racist anti-semitism, and are good statements.
From what I read on his site, one of his main points is that many, like the religious group Neturei Kartei, are Jewish by religion or simply by ethnicity, and as such are separate from any nation-State idea. So it seems to me the first letter is mischaracterizing Atzmon in describing what it sees as his mischaracterizations.
Was Egypt attacking to retake the Sinai only, or to destroy Israel as Mizrahi said?
I thought in the first half, Ms. Mizrahi had strong eyes and also she made a strong point when she said Egypt's people only agreed to peace because they repeatedly tried to destroy Israel but couldn't. This reminds me of the wars of 1948 and 1973, in which I think this happened. Offhand, a rebuttal doesn't come to mind.
On the other hand, when Jubrea started talking about growing up and her family getting blankets at night for the casualties foreseen due to the bombings, it was like someone suddenly describing the 800 pound gorilla in the corner that the room isn't discussing. Except that she was speaking from personal experience.
to give an example, if you have a little town and other people's hill next to it, it seems helpful militarily to occupy the hill too. But a big strategic problem could be all the people in between who are occupied or expelled.
Well, one reason that is claimed is that it provides a better defensive position. In other words, it is easier to militarily defend Tel Aviv when the army is occupying significant swathes of land miles away, like the Golan, the Sinai, Gaza, the Jordan River, and the West Bank. To me this seems like a good justification, and would like to know what you think of it.
One counterargument I can think of is that even if it's true that occupying so much surrounding territory is a better military position, it can actually make the military position weaker, since so many occupied peoples are living on the territory. Expulsion isn't helpful so much, because the there are masses of expelled people on the borders.
Pixel,
There is a British movie about 1948 called "the Promise" by Channel 4 UK TV that you can see on the internet for free but you cannot see it in America on the internet. Perhaps similarly we can refigure our proxies to make it a european one somehow to do this?
After posting this I read that 75000 Persians were killed as a result of this event in the Bible?
I would like to address other people like myself who value the Jewish scriptures: for me the story about Esther is at least partly traumatic.
In the story, Haman wants to hang many or all Jews, which is very gruesome. And then he himself is hanged, which is very gruesome. And then there is apparently a command for the Jewish people to completely genocide the Amalekites. In fact, God punishes Saul because he didn't kill all the Amalekites.
I am happy that the Jewish people escaped genocide and it is liberating that Esther helped and caused their liberation. But the story is also traumatic for me because of the awful killing of Haman, which in my view was at least partly bad to a big extent because he didn't actually commit the genocide he wanted to.
I mean, if someone is a really bad person and wants "cruel and unusual" things, it still seems sad to me if the cruel and unusual things he wants happen to him, especially if he didn't commit them as he wanted.
I repeat that I say this while I myself value the Jewish scriptures as they appear generally to be moral and uplifting writings.
I could compare it a good parent telling his kids to beat up all of the bad kids and punishing them if they don't, and when one of the bad kids starts to try to beat up the good kids he gets beat up himself. Except that completely killing an ethnicity seems alot worse to me than just beating kids up.
Lord have mercy.
I just read the comments' titles this time.
25% of the comments on the Ynet site seem to think it is satire or stupid and funny.
What do you think of this claim?
link to rense.com
To a big extent Mondoweiss is a light in the darkness.
may your candle burn forever.
"Regev, what is your feeble, whining excuse this time?"
Does it really matter?
I feel sympathy for Khader Adnan.
Not without Iceland.
How about when he says that if you talk about Palestinian Israelis' rights you open yourself up to the charge of hypocrisy because there's discrimination in other countries too? This is a comment heard in accusations against Palestinian activists when they discuss the issue of Palestine in general.
The answer can be similar- our country is sending billions of dollars there, more than to any other country, so we have a special responsibility.
They could have the 2 ethnic-states and also right of return if they draw the borders based on where people live so that each state has the ethnic majority.
Why don't my comments above appear in my Commenter profile?
I think you are right. He says:
"in a period in which the BDS campaign against Israel is faltering, leading to internal debates over its usefulness as a tactic... many progressive Zionists have played key roles in defeating BDS efforts."
So when he talks about internal debates it sounds like he means internal within what he sees as the progressive community. He sees "progressive" Zionists as part of the "progressive" community, and sees them as making a strong reaction inside the progressive community against BDS.
In the article posted above, The only Israel boycott that's actually working / Bradley Burston, Bradley Burston writes: the government and its hard-line adherents abroad have done everything they could to demonize and boycott NGOs, the New Israel Fund, J Street, Peace Now and other groups and individuals who strongly support Israel but take issue with its policies and its current direction.
The irony is that in a period in which the BDS campaign against Israel is faltering, leading to internal debates over its usefulness as a tactic, the official Israeli campaign to boycott and delegitimize progressive and liberal Zionists rolls on.
The irony is also that many progressive Zionists have played key roles in defeating BDS efforts. No matter. As it turns off and repels moderate Jews from Boston to Berkeley, the "pro-Israel" Inquisition has become the only Israel boycott that is actually having an effect.
What is the faltering he is talking about? I don't think BDS was ever massive to begin with, so in what way is it faltering, leading to debates about its usefulness?
If corporations put their interests before the interests of the rest of Americans (the 99%), is it OK to emphasize this?
When the lady at the beginning shouts about "what is going on here?", talking about the refugees selling goods, part of me feels that I would do something similar, meaning look how poor these poor refugees are, our good society should be helping them so they don't live on the streets.
Doesn't anyone else here feel that way? When you want to have a nice modern society and you see people being very poor and selling things on the street, doesn't it make you feel that the society should be doing something to organize the poor sellers and help their economic situation? Part of me even feels that's what she could mean, saying it's worse than Gaza and Nablus, meaning it's morally worse to have people living within your own borders and being very poor. But I don't think she means that.
It's sad that the Atlantic has apparently gone to the level of approving U.S. imperialist massacres. What was the U.S. invasion about? WMDs? Where were they, and if they didn't exist, why didn't such good intelligence services the U.S. know that? The invasion resulted in spreading economic and military control over the Middle East, and in that sense it appears imperialist either by design or accident.
My impression was that back in the 1960's the Atlantic was in fact a leftist publication. I think one of the editors was Harry Braverman, a strong democratic Socialist. How far it appears to have fallen! :(
And how to explain this shift? Was it like some of the supposedly leftist neocons of today, whose background was radical because they belonged to a minority that had previously been discriminated against?
Simple assimilation and acceptance in the dominant society isn't enough of an explanation though. After all, there exists a large swath of leftist, liberal, or antiwar opinion in American society, especially among minorities. And to their credit, a higher portion of American Jews opposed the mistake of the Iraq war than other Americans.
Or does the Atlantic in fact have a wide range of backgrounds, and the conclusion is that some publications randomly change views over time, or choose to include more and more a range of opinions?
"As the Iranian parliament debates the bill on banning oil exports to the European Union, Germany has now urged Tehran to “exercise restrain.”"
I am confused. The EU just decided that it will ban Iranian oil imports. Now Germany is urging Iran to show caution as it debates the bill banning Iranian exports to the EU. I am confused- why does Germany, a EU member, care about the Iranians banning oil imports to the EU since the EU has banned Iranian oil anyway?
Dear Vegetarian,
You know who else was a vegetarian, don’t you?
I remember reading one of the Israeli green movement periodicals where they expressed a negative attitude toward people using the Jordan River for Baptisms. Part of it was concern for the bathers' health, but another part seemed negative too...
Then also there was the negative attitude toward the large numbers of pilgrims, also based on their pollution.
That's a catchy, pretty song.
I heard that during segregation in the US, African officials were allowed into segregated places if they wore their national costumes, showing they were exotic I guess.
BRIC countries are the fastest growing in the World and are huge. The US and Europe are more advanced, but stagnant.
If it comes down to whether BRIC can use Mideast Oil or stay relying on the dollar, it is not hard to figure stuff out. The UNESCO vote was really a surpriser- it really showed the US is isolated and the more it works to prop up military occupation(s) of Middle East peoples, the more it acts against it own interests, because those people are going to go another way.
Yes it sucks, maybe we are not going to have the OK lifestyle we now have and will end up living more like people in BRIC countries, because that's where the economy is. Running rampant over the mideast countries and trying to force them to obey just makes the Ship of State go down faster. True, conquest can be a way to spread power and get resources, but sometimes conquest can lose. They should try a policy of building people up rather than trying to suppress others. That way we could all benefit.
Yes, Adam you do a good job with the site- so good it can be addicting, with so many new articles. Good job.
And by the way, Slater's view on the Nakba is that compulsory relocation of a signifciant part of the native population was necessary, except he only approves "acceptable" mandatory relocation, meaning financial compensation. He distinguishes this from the Nakba, which he considers to be the abuses carried out during the compulsory relocation of 1948.
Yes, I agree with An.C. here. We should allow Nakba denial comments so long as we are able to address them and we are talking about people who at least seriously consider the evidence for Nakba.
Remember the girl on Shalom TV who said she found out that Nakba existed even though she was brought up hearing the opposite? Rather than shutting down serious honest discussion we should allow it when the person is open to considering viewpoints and the comments are decent. I disagree with closing down all discussion of a question.
"Deniers SHOULD BE exposed and not gagged and kicked down the basement stairs. It serves the cause of intellectual vigilance to know the shadows that lurk in the same room/world."
Good point.