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- International Criminal Court opens preliminary investigation into attack on Mavi … 96
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- ‘Forward’piece on destruction of Palestinian neighborhood fronting Western Wall not embraced by all ‘Forward’ readers http://t.co/a8nvXYynM6, 1 hour ago
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- Bradley Manning rally to feature, Ellsberg, Ann Wright, Dan Choi, Sarah Shourd http://t.co/C1C7G1DXJ6, 2 hours ago
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
"How does this pandering play among his audience?"
I, for one, find myself hard pressed to justify a vote for Biden, in light of his rabid zionism. This is even worse.
Because it had nothing to do with their Jewishness, per se. It had to do with the culture they grew up in. American Jewish culture (save on the Palestine question) is very liberal on civil rights. israeli Jewish culture is very reactionary on civil rights.
The other think that Biden's ass-kissing horseshit overlooks is the fact that the contributions he cites were done by individuals. If progress in women's right, for example, is a credit to Jews and Judaism because of Jews who participated in it, then would not Jews and Judaism also be responsible for oppressing women because there are Jews who spit on girls, segregate religious ceremonies, and so forth?
And this is absolutely vile:
"So many notions that are embraced by this nation that particularly emanate from over 5,000 years of Jewish history, tradition and culture: independence, individualism, fairness, decency, justice, charity."
The notion that common virtues such as these "particularly emanate" from Jewish culture is, frankly, racist to the core. Someone needs to tell this pandering boob that these are not Jewish notions, but human ones, which Jewish culture has, like all cultures, reflected and dealt with, to greater or lesser degrees.
"support for Israel for our one friend in the Middle East"
Funny, though. Before we supported israel, we had many friends in the Middle East...
Sad, but true.
Hmmm, I wonder: does the former slave-holding, Jim-Crow-enforcing, Japanese-interring government of the US of A have a Special Envoy on Racism??? Seems like it would be the kind of problem that the USA should be particularly concerned about.
"to make aliya."
Jesus Christ, can't you people use the plain, simple words for things that we have in English -- like "immigrate" -- instead of your stupid racist dog-whistle phrases?
Yup. When Ed Koch died, it was disgusting to see Democratic politicians (not only from NYC) praising the guy, when he stabbed the party in the back to elect a Republican, over the candidates views over this alien state of israel.
"Ben-Gurion went on to explain what Israel must tell the world: '...[T]his was of their own free will, because they were told the country would soon be conquered and you will return to be its lord and masters and not just return to your homes.'"
This claim -- that a people who were fleeing for their lives were, in fact, engaging in an offensive act against those who were actually terrorizing them -- is easily among the greatest blood libels and ethnic slanders of all time.
"The “not great situation” is the situation that causes innocent Palestinians to bear the consequences of their terrorist neighbors. "
No, the thing that "causes innocent Palestinians to bear the consequences of their terrorist [sic] neighbors" is the racist ideology of zionism, nothing else. Your blood libel of blaming the victim is disgusting.
"hops, are you justifying the collective punishment and submission of millions of Palestinians for perpetuity?"
Of course he is. Scratch a zionist, uncover a fascist.
"It’s not a great situation. But this is what happens when Palestinians dress as civilians, strap on suicide belts, and kill Israelis, Jew and Arab alike. It creates lots of fear. Maha would have had less trouble making this trip 25 years ago."
No, it's what happens when a foreign ideology imposes an ethno-religious apartheid regime, enacting an ethnic cleansing and slow-motion cultural genocide on a people in their land. There's never been a moment since the zionists started this phase of their war, in 1947, that they haven't been stomping on the faces of the native people.
"Maha could have driven from her home in Umm al Fahm to meet her friend nearer to Gaza."
And Jews occupying Palestine can go live in Brooklyn, Poland and Russia and let the Palestinians go anywhere in their land of Palestine that they wish.
My one day all of the Palestinians lands be free of occupation and this evil will no longer stalk that land.
"Israeli panel: Palestinian boy ‘killed’ by IDF at start of intifada did not actually die. "
Neo-nazi panel: "The 'holocaust' did not actually happen; consisted solely of 6 Jews who caught the flu from being outside without a sweater."
Galloway was absolutely in the right. Israelis, save those actively working for Palestinian freedom, and zionists, should treated like pariahs and all contact, of any kind, should be eliminated.
"Taxi, what’s wrong with you? Why are you so aggressive whenever I disagree with you? "
That's Taxi's M.O. Whenever he gets anyone dare disagree with his opinion, he goes into attack mode, because, I guess, he can't stomach an exchange of ideas and/or can't keep up.
"I’m not sure about that since, although there is a healthy and active Jewish population in CA, the majority are left-leaning as far as I can read the situation"
It's my perception that even self-described left-leaners in the American Jewish community are PEPs, by and large. It's changing, and the quicker the better.
"We need some humor around here."
And after reading that post, we still do...
"Of course the hardest line PalArabs and their supporters still demand “River to to the Sea” plus the extinction of the state of Israel and most of its current inhabitants, for peace."
"PalArabs"?? Can we speak of "HeebJews"?
And as disgusting as your gutter-level slur is your gutter-level blood libel, excusing the ongoing ethnic cleansing by accusing the Palestinian victims of harboring murderous desire against the zionist villains. Damn your parents for not teaching you manners or damn you for not learning them.
Yonah,
You demonstrate the same kind of irrationality as you appear to attack when that irrationality is directed towards Jews.
"There were and are political elements to anti Yehudi feelings: anti Bolshevik, anti capitalist (contradictory but true) and today anti Zionist."
First, they were not really contradictory claims. They made perfect sense and were quite rational to those who espoused them. To them, the Jews were after power, and had no real care as to what system it was that was doing their work for them; so long as they had the power. So, to the antisemite (especially one in interwar Germany), it made perfect sense that the Jews would attempt to take over, from the inside, both the Communist East and the Capitalist West, so that there would be no one to oppose the Jews. He saw Jews in power in the USSR; saw Eugen Leviné try to make Bavaria a Soviet Republic; saw Léon Blum in Paris; saw the Jews who were successful in the finance industry and reached a conclusion that was wrong, but which was consistent with his suppositions.
Further, linking antisemitism to anti-zionist feeling is both inane and morally corrupt, as it attempts to blame the victims of zionist aggression and crime with wrongdoing for opposing that aggression and crime. Those people who hate zionism because they hate Jews are a small, insignificant minority and it is a bush-league play to even reference such non-entities.
"There was an element of the Jews are smarter and more clever (and more devious, have better connections with their fellow tribesmen) and therefore we cannot compete with them and therefore there must be a quota on them. "
I understand that the impulse for one who is bullied to cry "You're just jealous" to his tormentor, but the quota on the Jews had little if anything to do with a fear that the Jews were smarter and that the non-Jews couldn't compete. Rather, the quotas were put in place because of religious and cultural factors. Those same factors, for example, kept quotas on Asians and Italians, to name just two examples.
The religious reasoning is a big one that is so often overlooked or ignored. From the Christian perspective, if one takes the religion seriously, as many have and do, the rejection of the Christ by the Jews is the ultimate spit in the face. Imagine if you offered someone a gift literally beyond measure; worth more than everything else in the world, including more than your life, the lives of your children, you family, worth more than the lives of all who live or have lived or who will live, the Earth and the Universe combined. You offered someone that gift and they rejected it in a most horrible way. That is the core of the Christian enmity towards Jews, not some notion that Jews will out-compete the Christians.
"The Islamic population of the world is about a billion and even if Shlomo Sand is right in attributing irrationality to the fear of Islam when Islamic countries are primarily powerless... , the fear of a billion people compared to a fear of 18 million people (Jewish world population in 1939) are two totally different things."
Nonsense. They are both completely irrational. The notion that you have to fear a billion people (who speak untold number of languages, in dozens of countries, and hundreds of ethnicities, who live under an umbrella of different political systems, and espouse many different views of the same religion, often antagonistically) is as irrational as fearing that a small cabal will pervert the world's powers to their own ends. It's nothing other than putting a blind eye to reality and fearing a hobgoblin you create in your own mind. It's different, but not in any relevant respect.
"these were Muslims who saw their duty as Muslims to attack and murder en masse Americans qua Americans"
Wrong. They saw it as their duty to attack Americans as the perpetrators of murder, terror and oppression against their fellow Muslims. They may or may not be wrong in that, but it's clear that they did not simply pick Americans at random.
"...no attack by Jews qua Jews against Americans qua Americans comes to mind. So the irrationality of anti Yehudi feeling is much greater than the irrationality of anti Muslim feelings."
Yes, and just as you are selectively picking through the facts to make any-Muslim animus seem reasonable, the antisemite will pick though the facts (real or not) to make his pathology seem reasonable. If you really, truly believed that the Jews stabbed Germany in the back in 1918, would antisemitism in 1935 be justified?? No, of course not. And if you believe that Muslims attack Americans "qua Americans" for no reason, or "because they hate us because of our freedoms" you would be as wrong and as unjustified in anti-Muslim feelings.
"There are commonalities between anti Yehudi feelings and anti Muslim feelings and it may be useful in pointing out these commonalities. But there are differences as well."
And the commonalities are relevant and the differences are not on the important questions.
It seems that that an israeli like Simmons can move out of occupied Palestine, change his name, and yet the racism of zionism remains.
"With Islamophobia it’s a minority (Jewish Zionists) driving it forward."
Baloney. Right wing Christians are, on average, more Islamophobic.
"Calling Zionism midget Nazis does not seem nearly as useful."
Only if one thinks that the be-all and end-all of Nazi criminality was the industrialized murder. That was the end of the spectrum, not the entirety of it.
James Canning: No, there are a lot of people in the US that are flat out bigots. They usually don't limit themselves to race, but include religion and ethnicity, as well.
There are some class conflicts in the US, to be sure, but the people I'm talking about simple hate people who people who aren't like them.
It depends on who you ask and what part of the country. There's racism in the USA, for sure, but it's not like it used to be. (also, it's self reporting, so there's that.)
LOL. The Jews in Occupied Palestine are among the most bigoted people in the world. Typical zios were the soccer fans who protested a goal by their own team because the scorer was a Muslim from Chechnya. Bigots and ingrates to boot.
"Rees speaks of worshipers with 'Slavic' faces in the church. "
Did he mention all the Jews with "Slavic" faces who came from Europe to steal this land from its rightful owners, the Palestinians?
"In my view once they start killing innocent civilians they won’t get any sympathy or 'understanding' from me."
Well, that raises the big question of when civilians are "innocent." The Israeli people, as a whole, repeatedly elect governments which promulgate oppressive and inhumane conditions on the Palestinians (and they often do so when the parties vie for office promising how brutal they will be to the Palestinians [although they don't have the balls to actually say this...]). Are those people "innocent"?
"I suppose you then you must then be FULLY ACCEPTING that 9/11 and Pearl harbour and the bombing of the Murrah building was a case of AMERICA reaping what IT has sown.."
First, it's Pearl Harbor. There is no "u" in Harbor. It's a proper name. It's also of no consequence in this conversation because it was a military assault on a military target. Further, while the real reason it will "live in infamy" was because a non-white nation had dared attack a white nation; the Japanese most likely intended that the attack be preceded by the notification to Hull that negotiations were at an end. So that's irrelevant.
Second, the Murrah building was a crime committed because a bunch of losers in the US disagreed with the manner in which the Federal Government carried out its legitimate police powers. Nothing is the equal here, because no actions by the zionist entity are legitimate, and they're not police actions, but criminal terrorism against the native Palestinian population who are the sole legitimate occupants of the land. So that's irrelevant.
Third, yes, of course 9/11 was a case of America reaping what it had sown. Absolutely. It has caused far worse for far longer in the Arab and Islamic worlds that such an attack was utterly predictable.
And as for Jahjah, only a fool would have expected someone from Lebanon -- a people who've suffered so greatly at the hands of the demonic zionist beast to it's south -- not to feel satisfaction that the state which has supported the zionist beast that inflicted so much horror, fear and unimaginable grief on his own state would suffer a small taste of that which the US, through its vomitous proxy, has inflicted on Lebanon. (The only shame is that those who suffered were in NYC and not in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem and were not those actually in control of the zionist entity which committed the crimes in the first place.)
Really, what do you expect? The USA has done the devil's work in every way it can to prop up the illegitimate occupiers who've made the lives of those in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon a living hell over the last 50+ years. Are you so stupid, foolish or naive that you expect that he would feel affection for the US, who bankrolls and protects the zionist entity that has caused nothing but evil, death and destruction for generations?
"Aside from the Lod Airport massacre, the PFLP was responsible for numerous bloody terrorist attacks aimed at Israelis, Jews, and Western interests ."
At least have the decency to mention the fact that the majority of the deceased at the airport were not israelis, were not Jews, but were Puerto Rican Christians who were caught up in the retaliation for the zionists crimes against the native Palestinians. But I guess to you zionists, the death of Christians can just be lumped together as "Western interests" and are not as important as the people you consider to be really worthy of noting, like "Israelis [and] Jews."
Go jump in a lake. when you zionist swear off the use of force in inflicting you ideology of hate and racism - zionism - on the Palestinians in their land, then maybe you get to call the expected retaliation against you for your crimes "terrorism." Until then it's just your community reaping what you've sown.
Richard Engel is a Jew from the Upper West Side of New York, whose father worked for Goldman Sachs. The odds that someone from that demographic is not a zionist is so small that one is justified holding a rebuttable presumption that his ignorant statements are merely the result of his ideology. He wouldn't be the first person to abandon his stated principles, stab a fellow in the back out of allegiance to the zionist ideology.
"This will be a correct comparison. Otherwise, the statement is meaningless."
Nonsense. You're proposal assumes that land owned by the Jewish state is equally available or unavailable to Jews and Palestinians alike. That's a lie, as your Judeo-supremacist state privileges Jews based on their ancestry. It matters not how the zios title the land they hold as Jew-only preserves.
"As it turns out, 'Nakba day' Is bullshit."
Nope, the only bullshit is you, your fascist state, and the ideology behind it.
The fact that the supporters of israel have to lay down in the filth and attack the virtuous like Bishop Tutu in this way, in order to support their apartheid state, they demonstrate the utter depravity of israel and its supporters. Unless Dershowitz is simply a racist.
"And I accept that rooting for Palestinian freedom means not worrying about what will happen to the Jews living in I/P."
Jesus, yonah, stop being such a drama queen. People of good faith are concerned with the rights of all people. But more to the point, if the zionists don't care about what is happening now to the Palestinians under the Hamas-equivalent of israeli military rule, why would you expect them to care?
Great article. But I would argue that there"s nothing "liberal" about either of these people; on this issue, they're merely reactionaries of varying degrees. You know it by the fact that their list of horribles -- civil war, renaming the land, non-secular government -- are all things which the Jewish community and the state of israel have imposed on the Palestinians since the 1940s, but these supposed "liberals" are fine with it, so long as it's Jews doing it to Palestinians.
Only on this issue can one favor different and separate treatment under the law based on their ethnicity and still be called "liberal."
That is a stupid comment. Mondoweiss exists to discuss the Palestine issue and the crimes against the Palestinians, from American, Jewish and/or Jewish-American perspectives. The president's role is not so limited and his comments should reflect the interests of Americans, not the personal prejudices of some NYC donors in an ethno-religious apartheid state.
Sounds like what was said (apocryphal, no doubt) in Ukraine during the famine: "If only Comrade Stalin knew about our plight, surely he would do the right thing..."
Quit kidding yourself. This guy is in the bag for the zionists as much as any other politician of any party. For pete's sakes, he made a I"D"F'er fifth-columnist like Emmanuel -- a guy who ran out on his country in a time of war to serve an alien state -- his Chief of Staff. This is not a guy who's secretly sorry he has to serve the interests of the Israelis. He's happy to do it.
Go Rajoub!! He's saying nothing compared to what the israelis and its supporters have said about the Palestinians, all the while oppressing the Palestinians on racist grounds. What do you expect? You kill his family, you torture his wife, you steal his land, you imprison his son, you rape his daughter and you expect him to love you? To accept you? To pretend that you didn't commit your crimes?
Hopefully his wish for the Palestinians to have the ability protect themselves from the depravity of the israelis occupying their land will come true. Sooner rather than later. Not that they be used, but the risk might shake some sense into the occupiers.
"I would prefer to see a breakthrough that will bring to negotiation."
Thus what passes for "morality" among the zionist. Your preference is for nothing other than negotiations, which means that the Palestinians talk while the Jewish colonies spread like a virus across the West Bank.
Correction: "This is bad for israel and the usual libels, slanders, slurs, blackmail and other assorted villainy by the zionists that happen whenever anyone criticizes their criminal enterprise or tells the truth about their ethno-religious Apartheid state just isn't working on Hawking."
"All I know is the single me-voice in my head: nothing else exists inside me except for my me-voice analyzing and deciding this and that. Believe me I’ve looked and looked hard."
The "single me-voice" is the conscious mind. What about all the non-conscious-mind parts of the brain's work? Ever made a decision out of fear? Regret? Anxiety? Anticipation? Did you consciously choose to have those feelings? No, of course not. But they are there, inside you, causing and often dictating your decisions,
" Otherwise, anyone can commit evil and claim that the ‘book’ made me do it (which ironically, religious zealots actually do). "
Yes, and they'd be right. Why is that fact so threatening to your worldview?
"There’s no going round it Woody: individuals are still responsible for their actions, above all and beyond – whatever their 'influences'."
We're talking about two different things. You're making a claim about moral judgement: that the person is morally responsible. Fine. (It's one of the more pointless conclusions one can reach subject, in my opinion, because it's merely a restatement of the premises used to reach that judgment and, as such, says more about the moral judge than the subject of the judgment.) I'm talking about causation, not moral judgment. If a person hates gay people because his religious texts tells him to, the religious text has caused the hatred. And that's true even if the person would have otherwise found another reason to support the hatred. Now you may or may not find the hatred to be morally wrong (sadly, a lot of people don't) but there is no doubt, as a factual matter, that the text caused the hatred.
"Ya think, Woody, if nobody ever read the bible, koran, torah, etc – that these books were just lying on the shelve collecting dust, the world then would have no evil?"
Of course not. Religious thinking is merely one species of irrationality that fuels the evil in the world. My point is simply that it is foolish to ignore the causal relationship that religious thinking has to evil, or to pretend that the cause is something other than the religious thinking.
"Aren’t you here giving undue and non-existant powers to inane objects like books, money etc.?"
No, I'm giving proper power to those things as they exist in the context of human societies and human psychology. These things influence human behavior and human thinking even if they, of themselves, are incapable of agency.
"And also aren’t you here excusing the evil that man does by blaming the literature they’re reading?"
Not at all. "Blame" is a moral judgment. Inanimate objects have no autonomy or agency and, therefore, are not subject to moral judgment. It is, however, amenable to assessments of causation. Literature can cause evil in the world, even if there is no rational basis to make a moral judgment of the literature itself.
"You know we do have this little thing called ‘free will’ – the free will to do this, and the free will to do that. Our choice. Our individual choice."
Not in the sense you mean. It's a pleasant illusion but it is an illusion. One's choices are determined by the working of the brain, which are shaped by many things, including our histories and our experiences. People do not make choices based on a blank canvas, making evaluations of their choices free of any influences save axiomatic principles. The choices people make are heavily influenced by what they've read, learned, talked about with others, experienced and have been exposed to, coupled with things like the psychology evolution gifted them and the mores of their societies. If this wasn't so, the multi-billion dollar advertising industry would not exist.
Religion is there to influence those decision, to a powerful degree, because it taps into and co-opts many, many, many pre-existing psychological facts and functions of the human mind, such as our preference for proscribing agency to phenomena, our acceptance of hierarchical social structures, our difficulty in intuitively assessing probabilities accurately, our inquisitiveness and our anxiety of existential issues. Religion doesn't dictate choices, but it influences them, often to a dispositive degree.
"Religion is just a collection of stories. Some stupid, some profound. Dangerous interpretations of these stories by humans is the problem, in my view."
I think that this position presupposes that if something evil comes out of religion, that it is a poor interpretation; that, absent bad interpretations, religions are good. I'd dispute that.
"religion itself is not the cause of violence or repression, but rather the people."
Baloney. Ask the people doing the violence and repression and they'll tell you they're doing it because the religion demands it. That the religion doesn't cause violence and repression from every believer doesn't mean that it's not the cause in those cases where believers DO act in that manner.
" I would submit that the basic tenets of Christianity are good, but the powerful institution that became known as the Roman Catholic church, was often used as a tool to maintain that power and control over a population."
I would submit that unless you are generalizing those tenets to an unrecognizable level, in which it becomes a mush of humanism and basic manners devoid of anything uniquely Christian, yours is a hard statement to back up. In contemporary America, the basic tenets of Christianity -- to look at the actions of the majority of Christians in the country -- consists of hating gay folks, suppressing women and their rights and interests, throwing poor folks into the pool to sink and swim without any help from the government, and inflicting their religion on children in schools and in public in violation of the separation of church and state. And you can't just blame the Catholics on this one, because many of these things are the product of Protestant Christianity.
"No. It is because individuals in power have chosen to betray its principles, to misuse it, all in an effort to further political agendas."
Yes, and often those agendas are religious tenets which the politician is attempting to enact into law simply because the religion tells him it is what he, as an adherent of that religion, should be doing as a believer.
In sum: sometimes it's the person, but often it's the religion.
"Conference boycotted by Hawking has hosted Palestinian speakers every year "
Who cares? Until the Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza have free and unfettered access to all of Palestine -- including those areas presently controlled by the zionist invaders, areas such as al-Quds and Jaffa -- those in charge of the ethno-religious apartheid state should be ostracized as the criminals they are, regardless of what PR stunts they pull and regardless of how many tokens they present in their programs.
W. Jones,
I wouldn't use "satanic" (although I may have, if the mood struck) because I have no religious need to do so, as Kovel apparently does. Whatever. I'm not too concerned about whether someone thinks I've adequately policed my vocabulary to protect them from psychological injury caused by an idiosyncratic connection they may make between said word and some psychological pathology from which they're suffering. I use "evil" because the acts are evil. No more.
As for Christians, while there are many individual Christians who've done the right thing, they are far outweighed by those who've not only supported the occupying force by, for example, traveling to the israeli state for sight seeing, etc., but also those Christians who have used their considerable political power as Christians to steer the US into supporting the zionist entity in its quest of regional dominance and ethnic cleansing.
I wish the problem was merely that the Christian's protests were not as strong as it should be. In fact, the US Christian population have actively cheered on the crimes against the Palestinians and have assisted them.
Perhaps, but I see very few Christians taking the right position and many, too many, stabbing their brethren in the back and supporting the zionist occupation of Palestine. American Christians, more than most, are responsible for supporting this evil.
And I use "evil" because the israelis are committing evil. I have not been following Kovel's articles, so, please, explain further or cite to Kovel.
Compare this stance with Hawkin's and the point is clear: if you're looking for someone to call evil by its name, you're better off looking to an atheist - even one who lost his voice decades ago - than to an organized Christian church.
Fresh air?? hardly. Typical self-indulgent Zionist/American Jewish bullshit. This female's "celebration" is only made possible by the evil that the abomination of zionism had inflicted on its victims. This person, too, is guilty of those crimes.
"Applause for Beinart? Only when compared to Dershowitz. Don’t forget he’s a Zionist. And a bad one."
Very true. Never forget that he claims to be a "liberal zionist" (as if such a thing were possible) but it's a lie. He stated he would jettison his supposed principles of liberalism if necessary for israel. He's not to be trusted to do the right or liberal thing any more than ANY zionist can be trusted.
"Well what can I tell you real peaceful coexistence with Jews."
The Jews who were invading Palestine had no intention of "peaceful coexistence" with the Palestinians, but intended to establish a Jewish homeland in a non-Jewish land, Palestine, and destroy the existing Palestinian society and genociding or ethnically cleansing the native Palestinian population. Those people are wholly responsible for any reaction which they instigated by their schemes.
"What was before the occupation in 1967, peace and nirvana……"
No, before 1967 there were the aforementioned evils of zionism and colonialism. Destroy those evils and peace is possible.
"In April 1920,"
1920 was already many years into the zionist invasion of Palestine. If they caused problems, the zionists are to blame. They had no business being there, and they get the blame for the problems their presence in the Palestinians' land caused.
So you curse the rest of us?
"Woody- You’re entitled to your opinion, but what you’re saying is that crying wolf and being a wolf are equally bad. (no offense meant to the wolf)"
No, it isn't. If it were, I would have said so. What I'm saying is that falsely calling someone an antisemite is being a wolf as much as being an antisemite is being a wolf. Falsely calling someone an antisemite is not an act of warning, akin to crying wolf, it is an action of attack, no less than hating someone because of their heritage. (Your position might be true for someone who mistakenly calls someone an antisemite. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about someone who calling someone an antisemite while knowing that they are not, such as Dershbag did to Professor Hawking here.)
How convenient it is for Dershowitz that he can blame criticism of the country to which he places his primary allegiance to the critic's bigotry. It excuses him from having to actually think and to do any mature self-reflection. Rather, he gets to engage in the infantile self-obsession which is at the heart of the psyche of zionists and defenders of the regime of Jewish Apartheid.
Further, falsely calling someone an antisemite, as Dershowitz called Hawking, is as bad as actually being an antisemite, in my opinion.
"Now the Simon wiesenthal center is attacking stephen hawking with the help of fox news of course."
Of course it is. The SWC has devolved into a PR assault and terror squad for the Apartheid state occupying Palestine.
"Sixth-generation Jerusalemite, recalls what life was like in the Holy City during the time the Jordanians were in control of East Jerusalem."
So what? If you Jews don't give a damn about how you're treating the Palestinians worse then why should I give a damn how the Jordanians treated Jews during this time of war?
"Also, Jews were denied access to the Old City and Jewish holy sites such as the Temple Mount and the Western Wall."
So what? If the Jews are going to stop Christians and Muslims from accessing Jerusalem simply because they're Christians and Muslim who are Palestinian, especially if they're from West Bank and Gaza, why should I give a damn that the Jordanians prevented Jews from going to these places during that time of war?
Attend to the beam in your eye and don't worry about the mote in your neighbor's eye.
"Israel is surrounded by a hostile sea of Arabs (whether you admit it or not)"
What a racist you are to describe a native population of human beings as a "hostile sea."
James Canning -- Morganthau's lacked more than merely an understanding of history. That was the least of his faults.
" If not for the fact that current prejudices against converting others to Judaism were part of my upbringing, my preferred attitude towards nonJews, whether in America or anywhere else where Jews live, would be marry our daughters and marry our sons, but first take on the laws and the Sabbath and the kosher rules and men, get a minor operation on your genitals, and men and women take a dip in a baptism pool (called a mikva) and then “sully the purity of our tribe” all you want."
This bigotry is frankly distasteful. Who are you to ask anyone to abandon their religion, undergo a ritual genital mutilation and adopt your religion in order to marry someone, simply because that person's a Jew and so are you. It's none of your business.
"It was fortunate that the plan to impoverish Germany was not necessary to stop Germany from starting any more wars. But Morgenthau’s instinct was not wrong and I do not hold his plan as infamous, but unfortunate."
That's a load of absolute utter ignorance. Not only was Morgenthau's "instinct" (id-induced rage, more like it) wrong, it probably cost the lives of Allied soldiers and civilians by hardening the German's desire to fight. Moreover, reducing Germany to agrarian poverty would have been a crime against humanity that would have killed millions, as turning an industrialized nation into an agrarian land would have predictably and unavoidably cost the lives of millions of people.
Further, the notion behind it -- that Germans were someone predisposed to start war -- was as racist (or perhaps merely stupid) as it gets, and informed by the nonsensical notion that Germany single-handedly was responsible for both wars. (Absolute garbage regarding the First War and false regarding the second, as the USSR was also responsible for the Second, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty and the USSR's agreement to attack Poland along with the USSR's Nazi Allies was a necessary precondition to the war.)
Further, Morganthau's plan was publicized by the Nazi media and predictably had the effect of strengthening Germany's resistance and lengthening the war. This costs the lives of Allied troops and civilian lives.
"As Judt proves in Postwar- the fact that Europe survived the post war without again engaging in more wars was partially a matter of luck. We were lucky and Morgenthau did not wish to depend on luck."
Again, rubbish. Morganthau's plan was sheer stupidity and it probably would been difficult to actually design a plan more likely to generate a population hell-bent on revenge than what would have developed from this plan had it been put into effect.
Further, there was no luck involved. There was a massive crime against humanity as the Allies ethnically cleansed millions of Germans, (mostly women, children and old people) from their homes in USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.; there was a dismemberment of German lands into ten different sections, under various schemes of authority (only seven of which are a part of the modern German state); but above all, there was the Cold War, whereby about 1/3 of what would become modern Germany was held by the USSR through local proxies and the other 2/3 was brought into the West's orbit through the Marshall Plan, reconstruction and integration into the European market.
Morgenthau was an idiot and the world should be thankful that the worst excesses of his plan were scrapped.
Yes, and an old school racist, to judge by his writing.
"You’re right. Anything Israel has done pales in comparison to the destruction of Native American culture and society and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans."
Typical zionist genocide envy.
Well, what do you expect?? They lie to themselves about what is going on there to protect that abomination of a racist state and this is the result.
I'm rather heartened and overjoyed. It is awesome that a wonderfully sharp and intelligent man like Hawking can see the truth of the evil brutality that the zionists inflict on the Palestinians. Too bad the likes of you cannot.
"It looks like it was a lie!"
Nope. The hasbara excuse that it was for "health" reasons is the lie.
"How tragic that apparently Hawking..."
No, what's tragic is the oppression that the israeli Jews have been inflicting on the Palestinians in their native land of Palestine since 1947 and before.
"It is particularly dumb and ironic that any intellectual would embrace a boycott that seeks to curtail freedom of expression and exchange of ideas and interaction between people – interaction that could change things for the better."
When the Goddamned israeli Jews who are keeping the Palestinians in ghettos after stealing 3/4 of their land show ANY inclination to dismantle their demonic ethno-religious apartheid state, then you can talk about whether treating the israelis as a normal decent society, rather than enablers of evil, is the proper way to go. Until then, every israeli and israeli supporter, of any degree, anywhere should be made to fell shame and put upon until they atone for their crimes.
Even when a US politician is "good," they're bad. "Edwards: No, a secure state of Israel and an independent Palestinian state. " I guess to Ms. Edwards, there's no point in wishing that the Palestinian state be "secure" give the fact that it will be bordering the israelis and we can't expect those jackals not to commit crimes against humanity every day of the year....
It's really disheartening to me that the American Christian community has not only turned its back on the oppression of fellow Christians in Jesus' own Holy Land, but have actively aided the oppressors. Christendom used to not take this kind of oppression of its own by other religions without swords and crusades. Would be that it could tap that spirit a little bit once again.
I wouldn't put too much stock in this. Netanyahu's playing a much more satanic game: his final solution of the Palestinian question (a.k.a. "dealing" with the Palestinians) isn't either the 1ss or 2ss, but 1 ethno-religious apartheid state and zone of occupation.
He will always claim to be ready to pull the israeli terror forces out of the zone of occupation, just as soon as the Kafkaesque ever-changing and purposefully-never-reachable set of conditions are reached by the Palestinians. Thus, he can paint himself as a man respectful of human rights while denying to Palestinian people their right to be regarded as human beings.
If you want Netanyahu's vision of the future, imagine a Jewish boot stamping on a Palestinian face - forever.
"‘It’s good to be back in the land of Israel,’ Obama says in Hebrew"
Let me guess, when he went to Ramallah, the meat puppet never quite got around to saying, "It's good to be back in the land of Palestine" in Arabic.
Your belief that the murder carried out by your government in your name is fiction tells us all we need to know about your lack of humanity.
"They’ve also launched several rockets from Gaza- just for fun , you know. So they wouldn’t be forgotten during the visit."
Tell me, has the israeli terror forces stopped murdering Gazans in cold blood for no reason other than their "evil" non-Jewishness?
But didn't these same child abusers just welcome ol' Hopey Changey in Jaffa Int'l Airport? Surely someone so dedicated to "helping our fellow human beings around the world," such as Nobel Barry, would raise a stink about this... Oh, that would take courage. Something this moron lacks in spades. Dance, meat puppet, dance.
Susan, lassy, please stick your concern trolling into a haggis and stuff it. Your inability to comprehend a simple comparison to what your reaction would be if the tables were turned does not constitute a trivialization of anything on my part. It simply means you are unable to understand a simple argument.
"“Am Yisrael Hai” is sinister only if you regard the survival of the Jewish people as sinister."
No, it's sinister (or worse) when it is used as it was here, as a vile and racist insult to the memorial to those who suffered and died at the hands of a state that uses that very expression as its marching song in committing its ethnic cleansing.
Context is everything.
"'So you chose to answer with yet another “whatabout” – this time trying to shift the topic from the attack on Ms.Larson to the children in Hebron. Looks like a tactic to avoid any kind of condemnation."
Yes, because god forbid we concentrate on your abomination of a state arresting and torturing children instead of bemoaning that some stupid punk got the ass kicking she so richly deserved.
"I have no explanation for today’s rockets"
Really? See, I would assume that it has something to do with you people holding them as prisoners in their own land for a couple generations, killing them at will and without punishment and destroying their lives and the lives of their children. You know, something like that.
And don't ask me to cry for you and your daughter, because you choose to live and work in a war zone. You have the luxury to move, something your state continues to steal from the people upon whose land your country is squatting.
German Lefty,
I appreciate that very much. But the point I was making was that there can be little doubt that if someone were to chalk that on a Holocaust memorial in the US, there could be little doubt that that person was invoking Hitler's use of the song and not it's intent as a call for German unification.
Annie, I think in another context, the phrase would not be evil and would even be an inspiring thing. (Such as your quote suggests before it wanders off into the woods of being self-aggrandizing, theological, near-masturbatory pap about Jews being the conscience of humanity.)
If I failed to make that clear, by specifying that I was speak of the phrase "[i]n this context," then I apologize for my sloppy writing. Nevertheless, when used as it was here, in that context, it is, in my opinion, a pretty sinister thing.
"The I/P conflict doesn’t BELONG to you people, it belongs to the Palestinians and Israelis."
Well, Scotswoman, please be the first among us non-Palestinians and non-Israelis to stfu. Please.
"Silverman, like many of her fellow “activists” unable or too lazy to construct and argue their case. At the same time she tries to deny others the right to free speech."
I'll remember that the next time a neo-Nazi asks to address a Holocaust memorial.
"The message was Am Yirael Hai – “the people of Israel live”. An affirmation of life, of survival , certainly a “positive message”."
It's a slogan of hate and death aimed at Palestinians and a warning that the zionists are going to steal their land, murder them and their families, and oppress anyone they don't manage to kill. In this context, it's the equal to "Gott Mit Uns" on an SS belt buckle.