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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
So "(MK) Moshe Feiglin" will boycott Obama. Oh, my! Could serve as a mini example of one third of what Israel should be now facing; namely, BDS. Also, as to Pollard, why not some quid pro quo here: release the jerk on condition that Israel complete an open and thorough investigation, monitored by an independent party, of the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which resulted in the slaughter of 34 American sailors, well over a hundred wounded, and a ship beyond repair. There was, and continues to be, an obscene cover-up both in the U.S. and Israel. I often wonder if Israel's official intention was to sink the Liberty and make sure there were no survivors; after all, dead men tell no tales.
Thank you for an obviously heartfelt response. I do take some exception, however, to your "It [facts-on-the-ground exposé] gets old after a while." It's old because it is old, before, during and after the establishment of Israel, in fact, both through legalisms and physical force, and it is an ongoing method of land theft and concomitant injustices that I truly believe must be laid bare over and over again without cessation. Whether Israel's brilliantly choreographed land-grab of '67 or the continuing Settler Movement largely growing out of that action, it must be exposed for the huge and seemingly endless injustice that it is. But again, Avi, my appreciation for your thoughtful response.
Why were you visiting Israel in the first place, spending your money there, etc.? Given your apparent point of view, I must assume you could not do other than visit, that you had overwhelming obligations, etc., although I do think there are countries whose policies render them unworthy of receiving the compliment of being visited. Or maybe you were doing research on Israel's notorious modus operandi called "facts-on-the-ground"? Just wondering.
To err is human, Avi_G, to forgive is difficult, but I do forgive, and I also suspect that were that fugitive from the evolutionary process, Sarah Whatever, hired by al-Jazeera, the organization would become very popular indeed!
Shame on the New York Historical Society for hosting this blood-soaked, far-right ideologue, an Israel-Firster contemptuous of Congress, and who, were it not for a disgraceful pardon, would have deservedly served some hard time in prison. That he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations speaks very poorly for that organization, to say the least.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why all these hostile comments about our brave little ally.
And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, let the latest facts-on-the-ground commence.
How right you are, doug. Hagel does not seem like quite the right person to be Israel's Minister of Defense.
Damned interesting, W. Jones, and of course enough to make any Israel-Firster do his all to torpedo Hagel's nomination.
Maybe it's time, long overdue, to title things properly. Maybe the U.S. should be named Israel's leading client. This way we can do without all the confusion and game-playing on this issue. I mean, after all, doesn't it make sense that a tiny, right-wing warrior entity should enter into the political processes of the most powerful nation the world has ever known and shape its destiny? As I see it, the major problem arising from all this is that so many of our politicians will suffer chapped lips from all the ass-kissing of the Israeli behind that they might find it rather painful to do the bloviating their M.O.s demand.
Kristol is, was and will doubtless remain a vile, moronic chicken hawk, who, like a number of others of his ilk, though probably more intelligent and thus more dangerous, are awash in Iraqi blood, which, like dogs lapping up their own vomit, they thirst for and which seems not in any way to deter them as they go about their latest advocacy; namely, bomb Iran because Israel wants us to. I wonder if Kristol ever underwent surgery to make his grin perpetual or if it's simply an unwitting jack-o'lantern manifestation of his neocon morality?
Trump at a Passover Seder: "Next year in Jerusalem and the entire West Bank!"
Avi_G, you write that "Zionist American Jews like to pretend that they are hardcore liberals...". They do? I don't know many card-carrying Zionists, but the few I do know I would hardly think would so pretend, even those who drop a few charity bucks here and there in the right places. I suspect most of them, at least the ones I know, would be alarmed if tarred with the word "liberal", which they likely associate with lefty Antisemitism either of the self-hating kind or the more traditional sort.
The very fact that Elliot Abrams is associated with the Council on Foreign Relations should tell you something about the Council. This vile man, absolutely awash in Central American blood, is a liar and a cheat, treasonous in defying a Congressional ruling (the Bohlen Amendment), and an escapee from prison through a foolish Presidential pardon from Bush elder. And this is the person attacking former Senator Hagel. Incredible! Elliot Abrams is a cynic of proven disloyalty to this country who continues to thirst for the blood of others. The man's a walking emetic.
Oh, boy, Abdul-Rahman, I'm reminded of that wise saw: "Lie down with dogs and get up with fleas."
How I detest such as Bill Kristol, he of the ever-mounted grin, ever eager and willing to shed the blood of others, always so very neat and well groomed, no doubt his underarms well sprayed, as he pushes for death and encourages any outrage Israel might wish to effect.
More and more does Israel remind me of the protagonist of that tired old joke about the man on trial for the murder of his parents, who, as an orphan, requests that he be treated mercifully. For forty-five years following Israel's 1967 brilliantly choreographed and just as brilliantly propagandized land grab have Israeli "facts on the ground" provided those self-fulfilling prophecies enabling Israel to render permanent its contravention of international law.
Seanmcbride, "Increasingly Zionism — the whole shebang, not just religious Zionism — is beginning to look like a classic cult..." is a sadly unfortunate bit of semantic wisdom. I really find the situation quite hopeless, one locked into an inexorable pattern of unchallengeable, even non-discussable denial, requiring its adherents, even including such as secular Jews like myself, to be willing to be tossed into a vat of shit should they be so unthinkably rash as to point out the naked emperor. It seems to me that it all represents the most profound brain-washing in the history of such process and activity, and thus it, this process, is a major part of the crime, preventing even the thought of a just solution. Hitler and his sundry minions physically murdered millions of Jews, and now we can see, at least in large part, a reactive destruction of the very soul of Judaism and its once all-consuming ethics, as extolled by Micah and his ilk.
Even as we who are appalled at this criminal, apartheid, über-dangerous state should be working ceaselessly for a total BDS, we should just as ceaselessly be proclaiming for all to hear that, yes, Israel is a non-NPT possessor of nuclear weapons and is thus per se one of the world's greatest war-mongering hypocrites. Our nation may continue to fund, arm and abet a society it would better threaten with a discontinuance of diplomatic relations, but we the concerned and appalled needn't remain silent and comatose.
Interesting and, sadly enough, probably a very valid observation.
BillM, "liberal Zionism"? An oxymoron.
That upstanding Jewish lad must be a member of the HY (Hasbara Youth). Such as he bode well for the future of the once highly touted Jewish devotion to ethics. And on horseback at that! Racism turned romantic.
Your reference to Rabbi Boteach as one who "comes off unhinged and fanatical" strikes me, Annie, as a bit excessive and overly selective. At times he seems more intense than the others, but he remains throughout equally articulate with them. And by the way, I think all of them are thoroughly ridiculous, each a powerful exemplar for avoiding a theocentric focus and modus vivendi. All of these debaters seem like reasonable, intelligent, and probably more or less educated human beings who for whatever reasons have had logic excised from their systems. They might all even make great neighbors, but, among other thoughts, as that great contemporary philosopher Woody Allen once observed (and I paraphrase), Jews should launch a class-action suit against God for nonfeasance. Now here are several grown-ups - at least, they look like grown-ups - jabbering away like automatons about some extraterrestrial omnipotent, omniscient being thoroughly involved in promoting our well-being or letting us have it if we step out of bounds, etc., but it seems to me that the most mature and intelligent way to react is either switch the thing off or quote good old Puck: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
The 1967 action was a brilliantly choreographed land grab both in the military and propaganda sense, the latter still actively in play, never having ceased, even unto the point now where said propaganda has morphed into historic truth barely ever challenged.
So much for a society based on ethnicity. And when it's a religious ethnicity, then please consider membership in the local insane asylum, where folks are normal. You'll be more comfortable unless, of course, your ethnicity was the right one all along.
I think a better name for this putative Museum of Tolerance would be Museum of Rabbi Marvin Hier. I have no idea how adept the good Rabbi is in parsing Talmud and such, but he's always been masterful in the pursuit of publicity regarding his good works and photo ops regarding him. To offer a lousy pun, Hier today and Hier tomorrow.
What is it, then, giladg, if not a theme park? And if it's related to religion, then it might be thought of as Fantasyland.
Your post, tony, is short, sweet, and downright brilliant. I say this not in spite of my being a Jew, but because I am, one naive enough to believe that, yes, once upon a time Judaism, at least Judaism sans Zionism, meant, seems to me, an ethical commitment second to none.
Never, Fredblogs, may you be accused of brevity, but of chop-logic thou art a master. "Disrupting a performance, not legitimate." Here legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder, or the heart, if one considers it morally legitimate; apparently you don't. Apartheid über alles, and all that, you might say. Ever heard of civil disobedience? It's might not be very civil, but it's done for a reason.
"Refusing to buy Israeli products? Legitimate protest against a target that you are foolish to be protesting unless you are also boycotting every country with worse records than Israel." That really makes sense; namely, do not even consider boycotting a state in contravention of international law, and a racist one at that, unless it can be shown that its record of abuses is worse than...etc. Instead of BDS, then, would you prefer military action?
"People go to listen to what the players say, not to listen to some egomaniacal protester who just has to have his say at the expense of everyone who actually wants to listen to the play." But the purpose of a protest is neither to sustain a status quo nor to provide comfort for those within hearing and seeing range of said protest. You seem to miss the point, deliberately I presume. What's you take on BDS, and I mean full, complete, and potentially effective BDS?
Yeah, right, incremental, as in 45 years incremental, or is it 64 years? I take it Eric Alterman believes fully in evolution and watches grass grow as his favorite sport!
Justicewillprevail, you have said it so succinctly and right. My God, if you were to draw some sort of political cartoon condemning this outrage you could find no better graphic reference to help you along than this photograph. And to think that these two criminals are representative of the governmental policy of a nation influencing American political discourse and action. I really can't understand how a decent person can any longer be a card-carrying Zionist.
I assume that there will be a strong, largely unpublicized attempt to remove MEK from the terrorism list and declare it a basically benign organization. In fact, if I recall correctly, there already is afoot such a push to make MEK, presently our very own de facto terrorist organization, a quite morally acceptable and strategic advantage to American foreign policy - with AIPAC no doubt rubbing its hands in glee. But after all, there was that Cuban criminal a while past who was known to be responsible for destroying a civilian airliner with complete loss of life and who nevertheless was eventually allowed to lead an open and normal life in this country. Once again our very own terrorist and thus not only tolerable, but downright ethical and necessary. Plus ça change....
Interesting and at the same time an obvious thought, yourstruly.
Carowhat, I'm afraid I must agree with your "especially if it were done slowly", as per the old boiling-frog analogy, and I'm also afraid that goes for many liberal American Jews, too.
Par for an apartheid regime.
"So why is Israel doing this? The planned destruction of the Mamilla cemetery is part of Israel’s long-term plan to erase any trace or memory of non-Jews in Jerusalem." A very cogent observation which, if accurate, as it undoubtedly is in light of Israel's history, suggests that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is yet another means whereby, a thoroughly willing tool in the ongoing, highly creative crime of facts-on-the-ground-before-installation-in-the-soul. In this case, though, it becomes facts-below-ground.
You call Bloomberg a progressive? I hope you're being sarcastic. One daisy or so does not a meadow make.
I'm not sure exactly who has "underwhelmed" you vis a vis Foxman, whom I never referenced and most likely never will. You seem to have a case either of mistaken identity or extrapolationism. I was discussing the concepts of "Chosen People, Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny" as they might impact political and other strategies, as I believe that you could relate all three of these concepts, however they're identified, to Israeli facts on the ground, those already accomplished from years back and those that likely will be tomorrow and thereafter, not unlike what has been so in American history and to some extent still is.
Are you deliberately being obtuse or do you sincerely misunderstand what a belief in the Chosen People concept might mean beyond people normally having their illusions, especially when people actually believe such a concept even as in the United States even now all too many insist on American Exceptionalism and without a doubt accept that historic illusion (if you wish to call it that) of Manifest Destiny? Seems to me the three, Chosen People, Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, are blood brothers, and I do mean "blood". I mean assigning to oneself with innumerable justifications a god-like significance that enables one to do as he bloody well pleases, whether steal the land of Native Americans and kill them with impunity or establish also with impunity facts on the ground stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan and perhaps beyond. I hardly think the Nazis attacked and slaughtered Jews because of an historical Jewish Chosen People conviction - they needed no excuses - but I do think that as has been demonstrated through Zionist philosophy, at least as it has been playing out now for decades, this ordinarily unstated conviction might well underly Israel's continuing and indeed daily expanding contravention of international law and account for its apartheid and the indispensible racism associated with such a practice.
Oh, boy, I sometimes think that the parsing and the over-parsing of various nuances of the meanings of phrases from people who are more or less of the same ethno-political persuasion could make an impatient soul like myself downright antisemantic. How many angels can balance on the point of a pin, or, as per the Lilliputians, should we crack the egg from the small or the large end? In reality, aren't we here jousting over what Annie Robbins or Klaus Bloemker means by simply revisiting the Chosen People concept, another way of expressing uniqueness? Maybe not, and certainly I wouldn't dare speak for either of these posters, but I do think that if indeed we are examining yet again what the Chosen People means, or has meant, in the 20th and now the 21st Centuries, we might be on to something in terms of what it implies for Israeli attitudes, intentions and activities. I cannot help but think of that appalling American Manifest Destiny of the 19th Century and the apparent political requirement today, at least among the GOP buffoons, of recognizing and proclaiming American Exceptionalism come hell or high water. Dangerous stuff.
Klaus Bloemker, I think your succinct response to Annie's implied criticism of a post of yours is both wise and justified, and especially your "...what does my thinking tell you about me?". This statement of hers I also find puzzling. And btw I more often than not find myself in agreement with Annie Robbins.
Totally simple and totally true, yours truly.
You ask "...but should we take it seriously that the Workmen’s Circle and the Union for Reform Judaism has officially endorsed Islamophobia?" We should indeed. Poison is poison is poison whether in teaspoon or tablespoon size, and in this case represents the easy corruption even of at least supposedly liberal organizations.
I rarely watch Rachel Maddow anymore - liberal about most things decidedly so, but she's too often too cute by far and more prolix than profound. On the other hand, I am somewhat surprised that she would so obviously play the AIPAC game. I thought that usually political commentators like her just remain silent about things Israeli, whether direct or otherwise, as if no problem existed.
"Most of the commentators here expressed a desire to see Israel destroyed." I don't recall one single statement to that effect. As to Israel's being destroyed, in all too many ways it already has been ethically through moral suicide, or, to coin a phrase, moralicide, an activity in which Israel has become tragically adept., Where, oh where the hell are you, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all you other noisy nuisances of old?
Yes!
"I wonder for how many more years it will be socially acceptable for the Israeli army to raise money at a hub of the rich and famous of New York." As long, I suspect, as the IDF successfully continues to kill people, occupy someone else's territory, and help its nation contravene international law. Easy answer.
A wise and very grown-up observation. To expect total renunciations, total reversals, total anything is perhaps understandable, but neither very useful nor necessarily desirable. When I read Remnick's piece I was amazed, happily so, because of its shift of whatever size in opinion and attitude.
As I read the Remnick piece in our New Yorker, I could easily have been floored by that proverbial feather, having in the past encountered him as a highly articulate, urbane
apologist for most things Israeli. Here he seems to be confronting a reality he previously
chose to deny or simply and viscerally couldn't help doing so. Possibly from 1948 and
even well before, and certainly since 1967, year of that brilliantly choreographed land
-grab euphemistically titled "The Six-Day War", Zionism in the de facto sense has
emerged not as a movement principally of social democrats but of colonial and often
right-wing religious fundamentalists and racists determined through facts-on-the-ground and to achieve under any circumstances a permanent nation extending from the
Mediterranean to the Jordan and cleansed of its former inhabitants. Perhaps such a
nation will deem itself a democracy, but it will of course at best be an oxymoronic
exclusionary democracy that might ultimately evolve into an honest theocracy.
A very small step, indeed, but at least, by God, one in the right direction.
Call it an extraordinary display of chutzpah in a just cause or call it heroism by a young and courageous person with a very loud voice, doesn't matter. Liza stands as an example for those of us, Jew and otherwise, to do what should and must be done on behalf of simple decency, human rights, international law, and, yes, sanity.
Unlike our other neocons, all, seemingly, of bloodthirsty bent, Jeffrey Goldberg did at least once wear a uniform, not an American one, to be sure, but fortunately for us this patriotic experience didn't diminish his Israeli Firstness and ardor for such a wholesome activity as war; indeed, might even have helped advance them.
Interesting thoughts, but how true we'll never know. Still, logical as all hell. Teddy absolutely adored war - bully stuff and all that, best of all ways to prove your testicular superiority. Until, of course, his beloved Quentin, his youngest, who, because of poor eyesight should never have been an aviator in the first place, was shot down and killed.
Hell yes they are, but what can they do about it? The problem is that the swaying cobra won't stop its swaying, and how and when it will strike is not definitively known. Besides, it would take political courage even unto political suicide to respond preemptively. I wonder if Bibi will again receive dozens of standing ovations should he address Congress as one of America's most remarkable leaders.
Methinks AIPAC doth make cowards of us all.
Yes, pure and simple!