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RedditI spent yesterday afternoon at the J Street conference, the meeting of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobbying group that was founded last year. (A piece that I'd written on J Street and AIPAC appeared in Mother Jones in August.)
The conference was very well attended, with something like 1,500 people taking part. Many of them were liberal, mainstream Jewish activists who would appear to be J Street's real target audience. The J Street philosophy is that there is a kind of "silent majority" of US Jews who aren't happy with Israel's expansionist polices and intransigence, and who don't believe they're represented properly by right-leaning groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Milling around, I spoke to a number of those in attendance. A couple of rabbis, from Massachusetts and California, said that the conference was an opportunity to meet with like-minded, liberal, pro-peace Jews. "When I stand up in my pulpit, with any kind of criticism of Israel, over settlements, Gaza, to say anything other than, 'Go, bomb them when you want,' it's considered anti-Israel," saud Rabbi Joshua Levine-Grater from Pasadena. "So it's thrilling to be here, to say, 'We love Israel, we believe in Israel's security, but the status quo isn't acceptable."
That about sums up J Street's message. But it isn't enough to get even grudging support from Israel itself. Michael Oren, the American who serves as Israel's ambassador to the United States, rebuffed a J Street invite to attend or speak, saying that he was upset about "certain policies that caused concerns, aroused concerns," telling the Jerusalem Post: "I conveyed these concerns to J Street," but adding that his concerns were not "sufficiently allayed."
The highlight of the conference was an address by General James Jones, the US national security adviser, who pledged that the Obama administration will take part in future J Street events as well. "You can be sure this administration will be represented at all future conferences," said Jones. In his speech, Jones pronounced the standard boilerplate about the unbreakable bond between Israel and the US, but for the most part the liberal audience sat on its hands, erupting into applause instead when Jones spoke forcefully about the crisis in Gaza and about the importance of creating a "contiguous," viable, independent Palestinian state. Jones also said that if he could tell President Obama to solve any single one of the world's many problems, "This would be it." (Of course, Jones can tell that to Obama.) The Israel-Palestine conflict affects many, many other problems around the world. "This," he stressed, "is the epicenter."
Many pro-Israeli hardliners don't like hearing talk like that, since they reject the idea that solving the Israel-Palestine conflict would have what Jones called "ripples." But most diplomats consider it a no-brainer that getting Israel to accept a Palestinian state would make Obama's stated goal of rebuilding relations with the Muslim world a lot easier.
On the sidelines of the conference, I interviewed Ami Ayalon, a former director of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security agency, who told me that Obama made a mistake in going to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey so far to talk about peace -- but not to Israel. He said:
"Obama made a mistake by not coming to Israel. In Israel, Obama is not considered a friend, in the eyes of the Israelis. If you do not come to talk to us, people ask why. If you do come, tell us everything! Tell us things we do not want to hear. But say it in Jerusalem. And, go to Ramallah! But don't do it from Washington."
This is a point of view often heard from moderate Israelis and some J Street types: that, by going to Israel, Obama can reassure the security fears of ordinary Israelis who feel like Obama might abandon them. I'm not sure. There is a time when Obama certainly ought to go to Israel, and maybe a high profile trip there could be useful, at some point. But I'm not convinced it would have any real effect. Still, it's true that many fearful Israeli voters are flocking to far-right politicians precisely because they are panicked about the loss of American support. It may be that the threat of reduced American support for Israel, coupled with the announcement of a tough-minded US plan for a solution (borders, Jerusalem, right of return) is what's needed now. Earlier, right-wing Israeli governments have fallen apart or been voted out when faced with a possible deterioration of US-Israel relations.
For J Street, that is a key unanswered question: Will J Street support the White House if it decides to turn the screws on Israel, to pressure the Israeli government by threatening reduced US support for Israel's military, and so on? I wonder. At yesterday's J Street event, Representative Wexler, an outspoken Jewish-Zionist member of Congress who is close to Obama, litertally shouted into the microphone (while introducing Jones) about the presence of 1,300 US troops who've just arrived in Israel to take part in a huge military exercise having to do with anti-missile defense systems. They will be there, he shouted, for the "indefinite future."
In the end, a final deal between Israel and Palestine will indeed require US security guarantees for Israel. Nearly everyone agrees on that. But to get from here to there, it might be necessary to remind the Israelis that US support is not open-ended or infinite as long as Israel maintains its implacable hostility to a viable Palestinian state.
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Robert Dreyfuss
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'Representative Wexler, an outspoken Jewish-Zionist member of Congress who is close to Obama, litertally shouted into the microphone (while introducing Jones) about the presence of 1,300 US troops who've just arrived in Israel to take part in a huge military exercise having to do with anti-missile defense systems. They will be there, he shouted, for the "indefinite future."'
Hmmmm......1.300 troops for anti-missile defense....
My guess this has to do with standing up a puppet Palestinian Police favorable to Israel - our new model of nation building.
But each journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step - Kudos to J Street - "bad" on Israel for ignoring liberal US Jews - a source of support. But, Israel loves to bite the hand that feeds it.
Hopefully, J Street will grow.
If Obama wasn't a friend of Israel, he would have yanked the plug already. This is typical right wing extremism, and Obama should be giving the middle finger to these characters.
No matter how much you do, it is never enough. How many billions will US taxpayers pay for Israels new anti-missile defense system? There ya go.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 12:08pm
In the end, a final deal between Israel and Palestine
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 10/28/2009 @ 11:28am
Maybe. Maybe there is a way to clean up everything as, for instance, East and West Germany were united and lived happily ever after.
But maybe this conflict is more like India/Pakistan or Cyprus or Korea or Northern Ireland or Xinjiang or Kosovo if you want something really timeless. Maybe this conflict has barely BEGUN. Will this be in the morning newspaper the 144th US President reads, just the same as the 44th does?
Posted by Mistral at 10/28/2009 @ 12:36pm
I note that JStreet's position is no Palestinian right of return except for immediate family reunification, and a division of East Jerusalem with existing Jewish neighborhoods remaining with Israel. This essentially is the offer made by Olmert in September 2008, which Abbas rejected. (Abbas boasted of rejecting the offer in a January 2009 interview with the Washington Post.)
I agree with that position, as I have indicated in repeated posts here. But I wonder whether Dreyfuss, much less folks like Shingo and cripthink, considers that a sufficient position for peace, would support a demand by the US that Israel and the PA make peace on that basis, and would condemn the PA if it rejected such a peace offer if Israel was willing to make peace on that basis.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 12:52pm
Sure know where Larry/antisoc will come down on "J Street"... he'll say they're "not real Jews!"--
"Any Jew who believes in making Jerusalem an international city or a divided city, is not a Jew."---------Posted by antisocialist at 05/27/2009 @ 12:37pm
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 12:52pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Ah...Gren....didn't Abbas think that the "land trade" deal was "slightly unfair" as well - essentially Israel gets to keep West Bank settlements in exchange for a worthless piece of Negev Desert - and Gaza/West Bank corridor under Israeli control counts as part of land trade in favor of Israel?
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:14pm
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 12:52pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Oh....and BTW - Hamas has no seat at the table and must be "demilitarized" - kind of a sticky problem for a Abbas initiated unified Palestinian State.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:18pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:14pm | ignore this person | warn this person
The Israeli proposal kept only the settlement blocs adjacent to the Green Line, which amounted to approximately 4% of the West Bank. If the land transfer compensation was abbas' only objection, he could have and should have made a counter-offer. But my essential point, and the critical issue, is whether the PA would accept a peace treaty which gave it only the arab sections of East Jerusalem, and virtually no right of return. And if not, whether the folks here would blame the PA or Israel (assuming that Israel agrees to such a US peace proposal.)
I did not intend for my comment to raise the issue of blame for the current lack of a peace treaty. The past is done. Only the present counts for creating a better future.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:33pm
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Original thought is such a problem for cave dwellers like you mAsK. When you're off the net its like pulling the plug isn't it?
Posted by BigPasture at 10/28/2009 @ 1:36pm
Sure know where Larry/antisoc will come down on "J Street"... he'll say they're "not real Jews!"-- "Any Jew who believes in making Jerusalem an international city or a divided city, is not a Jew."---------Posted by antisocialist at 05/27/2009 @ 12:37pm Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm | ignore this person |
--"self-loathing jew"
Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 1:38pm
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm | ignore this person | warn this person Original thought is such a problem for cave dwellers like you mAsK. When you're off the net its like pulling the plug isn't it? Posted by BigPasture at 10/28/2009 @ 1:36pm | ignore this person | warn this person
--get a grip bigpasture. you're here and post as much as anyone else.
Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 1:39pm
Oh....and BTW - Hamas has no seat at the table and must be "demilitarized" - kind of a sticky problem for a Abbas initiated unified Palestinian State.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:18pm | ignore this person | warn this person
If Hamas refuses to accept a final peace accord that does not re-establish the 1948 armistice lines or provide a robust right of return (indeed Hamas says it will offer only a 10-year cease fire even for those terms), then there is no choice but to exclude Hamas from the table and either quarantine them in Gaza or disarm them. Otherwise you give Hamas a veto power over a peace treaty. If Hamas were to agree to the terms we are talking about as a permanent resolution of all claims, it would have a seat at the table.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:39pm
If Hamas were to agree to the terms we are talking about as a permanent resolution of all claims, it would have a seat at the table.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:39pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Was that in the Olmert "deal"?
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:43pm
Was that in the Olmert "deal"?
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:43pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Don't know. But I don't see how it could be otherwise.
But given the PA's inability to reconcile with Hamas despite 9 months of Egyptian mediation, I don't think that Hamas is an obstacle to the PA making peace if the terms otherwise were acceptable to it.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:47pm
<In his speech, Jones pronounced the standard boilerplate about the unbreakable bond between Israel and the US, but for the most part the liberal audience sat on its hands, erupting into applause instead when Jones spoke forcefully about the crisis in Gaza and about the importance of creating a "contiguous," viable, independent Palestinian state.>
Sure know where Larry/antisoc will come down on "J Street"... he'll say they're "not real Jews!"-- "Any Jew who believes in making Jerusalem an international city or a divided city, is not a Jew."---------Posted by antisocialist at 05/27/2009 @ 12:37pm Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm | ignore this person |
--"self-loathing jew"
Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 1:38pm
Of course they are either self-loathing Jews or they are like the fools who told their friends and family about Hitler
"Don't worry, he won't dare carry out his threats. He's just making political speeches."
These liberal Jews cannot bring themselves to accept the reality that the Arabs will not be satisfied with the continued existence of Israel in a so-called 2-state solution. The Arabs will only accept the complete destruction of the state of Israel.
this site meanwhile is filled with jihadist supporters who have been taught to speak and write like CAIR. Always appealing to fairness, their agenda is no different than Hamas, the death of the Jews and the elimination of the state of Israel
Obama will have to decide whether he is the first president since Roosevelt to turn his back on the Jews and repeat Roosevelts complicity in the Holocaust or be like every president after FDR (except Carter) who understands the true nature of the conflict.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm
J Street is a cover organizati0n of left wingers who cry crocodile tears for " Israeli democracy" but hold views of people, like Dreyfuss, completely out of sympathy with the Jewish state.
It links hands with those who brandish the "Zionism is Nazism" banner, who claim, 9-11 Was an Inside Job, and who consider criticism of Iran as racist and demonization.
J Street befriends people like Stephen Walt and John Meirsheimer. It favored every strategy and tactic, personality and group and world-view that emperils the Jewish homeland. Its idea of supporting Israel is deflecting Palestinian outrageous and being sympathetic to their demands.
They are a Trojan horse organization defended by those who understand that full well.
Posted by Pirovano at 10/28/2009 @ 1:49pm
I did not intend for my comment to raise the issue of blame for the current lack of a peace treaty. The past is done. Only the present counts for creating a better future.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:33pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Very true. But when I see the Olmert proposal brought up as "good faith" - I tend to believe the opposite.
And, it was my impression that Olmert's deal left Jerusalem undecided.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:50pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm | ignore this person | warn this person
You are entitled to your opinion. But I can assure you I am a proud Zionist who practices Judaism and is not self-loathing. Am I fool? I don't mind being one. But I do not believe that seeking peace instead of endless war is foolish.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:54pm
Don't know. But I don't see how it could be otherwise.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:47pm | ignore this person | warn this person
It was my impression that it was not. Olmert refused to put anything in writing. Testing the waters at best, or a legacy building political ploy.
And, Likud continues to use Olmert's proposal as cover to continue building.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:59pm
But I do not believe that seeking peace instead of endless war is foolish.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:54pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Hugs and Kisses to you Gren!
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 2:01pm
Why not an "A" Street Conference (A stands for Americans) where free for all open national debate on our lopsided relationship with Israel takes place? Imagine the cry of Anti-Semitism had this conference been organized by other than the J street folks.
If the only permitted players to any serious debate on the American/Israeli relationship are AIPAC and J Street, then we are in a zero sum game indeed.
America's blind support for an entity which existence is predicated on religious exclusion and racism was nothing short of catastrophic to our national interest. It will take more than J Street to remedy the damage. It is time for an open debate on our unholy alliance with Israel that is inclusive to all Americans.
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:04pm
--"self-loathing jew" Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 1:38pm Of course they are either self-loathing Jews or they are like the fools who told their friends and family about Hitler
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm | ignore this person | warn this person
--I told you Larry would go with this cliche. I'd love to see Larry David and Larry the Pastor together!
Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 2:07pm
Olmert refused to put anything in writing. Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 1:59pm | ignore this person | warn this person
The reason for and correctness of not putting anything in writing is evidenced by Abbas' current demand that negotiation continue where Olmert's offer left off. So far, the PA has "banked" Barak's offer, and now Olmert's offer, and each time demands more concessions without ever making a counter-offer which contains any concessions. Likud is an obstacle to peace, but unfortunately the PA has been also, in its failure to offer any compromises and to begin to prepare the Palestinian people for the compromises which peace will require. As you recall, Olmert very explicitly and expressly announced more than once to the Israeli people thaty peace would require "painful" compromises on Jerusalem. Indeed, Livni opposed Olmert's peace offer primarily because it did not retain a unified Jerusalem for Israel.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:12pm
Israel is a tiny country of 6 million people, yet look at all the $ and attention it gets.
No wonder - there are plenty of right wing Jews in positions of power who, frankly, are clearly guilty of dual loyalty.
I support Israel's right to exist, but not the right of American Jews to use their power and influence to improperly skew our foreign policy, diplomatic efforts, and press coverage.
I'm just sick of hearing about Israel - the tiny % of extremist muslims are largely inflamed by our sycophantic approach to Israel because US Jews have disproportionate power [which is not an assertion, but a fact!!!] and they simply aren't called on it in the mainstream press because the "anti-Semite card" remains perhaps the single-best rhetorical slander going. It's why the Jews can knock down Arab homes, expand settlements, and simultaneoously claim they want peace, only peace!
It's nonsense - Jewish "victimhood" is absurd in terms of American Jews' power and influence - one needn't be a racist to think this power and dual loyalty is against our interest.
Posted by An_Gael at 10/28/2009 @ 2:15pm
You are entitled to your opinion. But I can assure you I am a proud Zionist who practices Judaism and is not self-loathing. Am I fool? I don't mind being one. But I do not believe that seeking peace instead of endless war is foolish.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:54pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Certainly, blessed be the peacemakers. But peace is impossible in this situation and any effort by J Street or you to get Israel to move towards peace is fatuous. Israel will always be at war because Israel can not exist without war. The European-conceived two-state approach is hopeless and will never be realized. Until there is a position, among worldwide Jewry, that recognizes that a Jewish state will not (ultimately) protect the Jewish population and that turning to British-conceived Zionism (after WWII and the horror of the holocaust) was not simply a mistake but a blunder, there will NEVER be peace in the Levant. The ONLY path to peace is a single, secular, multi-ethnic, multi-religious state which Arabs can call Palestine if they want and Jews can can call Israel if they want and Christians can call it the Holy Land if they want.
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 2:18pm
The Israeli proposal kept only the settlement blocs adjacent to the Green Line, which amounted to approximately 4% of the West Bank.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:33pm
gren,
I wonder if this generous offer includes returning 80% of the West Bank water resources stolen by Israel from the Palestinians.
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:20pm
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 2:18pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Zionism was started by a German jew in the 1880s, and almost all of the first and second wave of jewish immigrants to what became Israel were Russian socialist Jews. Zionism was conceived as a resurrection of Jewish nationalism, on the pattern of the nationalism which formed and established Italy, Germany and other European states as national homelands. Israel was neither a mistake nor a blunder, but rather the realization of a 2000 year old dream. Given the development of Western liberal democracies in the past 100 years, if Israel did not now exist there would be little support for creating Israel amongst Jews. But it does exist, and there is no reason for Jews to abandon it.
I hope you are wrong in your analysis because neither Israel nor diaspora Jews will ever agree to the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and a Jewish homeland.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:26pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:20pm | ignore this person | warn this person
The equitable distribution of scarce water resources is an issue that needs to be resolved in a peace treaty. Realistically, a resolution probably requires a reservoir system which brings water from Turkey's mountains to Israel and the future Palestinian state.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:28pm
Olmert very explicitly and expressly announced more than once to the Israeli people thaty peace would require "painful" compromises on Jerusalem. Indeed, Livni opposed Olmert's peace offer primarily because it did not retain a unified Jerusalem for Israel.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:12pm | ignore this person | warn this person
"Painful" compromises - okay. But this is politiking isn't it? Jerusalem to decided later doesn't really spell out what those "painful compromises" might entail.
Livni knows a thing or two about painful compromises...lol...especially in relation to Olmert, and Likud's "gentle" push to the right. Don't get me wrong, she has to do what she has to do. She has seemed to lose some standing in the Middle East because of it - the advocate of a two state solution to the lesser of two evils.......
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 2:43pm
The equitable distribution of scarce water resources is an issue that needs to be resolved in a peace treaty. Realistically, a resolution probably requires a reservoir system which brings water from Turkey's mountains to Israel and the future Palestinian state.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:28pm
Yes, but what that has to do with allowing the Jewish settlers on the West Bank in to indulge in sparkling swimming pools and lush green lawns while Palestinians have to travel for miles to truck their drinking water.
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:47pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 2:43pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Not only did everyone in Israel understand that Olmert meant a division of jerusalem, but olmert expressly said so on more than one occassion. If you recall, those statements resulted in a campaign by Likudnick American jews to put pressure on israel not to divide Jerusalem. Imagine the chutzpa. American Jews telling Israeli Jews to forego peace for the sake of land. Israeli
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:50pm
I hope you are wrong in your analysis because neither Israel nor diaspora Jews will ever agree to the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and a Jewish homeland.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:26pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Actually, zionism was invented by Britain's Lord Palmerston around 1848 as part of his plan to undermine every other ethnic group & nation on the planet to achieve the British Empire. Palmerston and his agents found Moses Hess and worked with him to formulate "Zionism" and in turn Hess trained Theodore Herzl whom the Zionists of today falsely claim as their originator.
And if you are correct that "neither Israel nor diaspora Jews will EVER (my emphasis) agree to the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and a Jewish homeland", then, like I said, peace is impossible in the current situation. Peace will only come with the elimination of Zionism and its sister philosophies. If you are correct, then peace will have to be forced upon the Israel and the diaspora Jews. And that will probably be as bad for the Israelis as was the holocaust. Bottom line: Zionism equals suicide.
But there is an alternative. Most Jews prior to WWII were not zionists. Unlike you, I believe there is a chance for peace but only if Jews move away from Zionism in all its forms. Peace will not come from peace loving but not peace making Jews such as those at J Street.
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 2:50pm
If Hamas refuses to accept a final peace accord that does not re-establish the 1948 armistice lines or provide a robust right of return (indeed Hamas says it will offer only a 10-year cease fire even for those terms), then there is no choice but to exclude Hamas from the table and either quarantine them in Gaza or disarm them.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:39pm
gren,
Using your yard sticks of excluding the so-called terrorists from future settlements should go both ways. How about excluding terrorist Netanyahu, terrorist Lieberman, the Qana terrorist Shimon Peres, the terrorist of Gaza Ehud Barak, all the Israeli Generals who ordered the massacre in Gaza (Goldstone Report)?
Those who live in glass house should be very careful not to toss stones at others.
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:51pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:47pm | ignore this person | warn this person
The settlements are wrong and the inequitable use of water by the settlements is wrong. That's impl;icit in what I said before. Now you have it express.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:52pm
You are entitled to your opinion. But I can assure you I am a proud Zionist who practices Judaism and is not self-loathing. Am I fool? I don't mind being one. But I do not believe that seeking peace instead of endless war is foolish.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:54pm
it takes agreement by one's enemies to desire peace and Israel has no such desire by it's enemies. Nor do I believe that the Arabs will ever desire peace with the Jews because they would have to deny the Quran.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 2:53pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 2:51pm | ignore this person | warn this person
You apparently are using a definition of "terrorist" which is used only by pro-Palestinian anti-Israel propogandists, and materially different than that commonly recognized.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:55pm
The Israeli proposal kept only the settlement blocs adjacent to the Green Line, which amounted to approximately 4% of the West Bank.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:33pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Not to nitpick Gren, but I think the Olmert plan provided for Israel to keep approximately 7% of the West Bank.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 2:57pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 2:57pm | ignore this person | warn this person
In his January interview with the Washington Post, Abbas claimed that Olmert offered 97% of the west Bank.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:58pm
CrispThink is right. The J Street vs. AIPAC debate is a debate between the right and the fascist right. If this were a legitimate debate, we would start at the beginning, long before 1967, more like 1867, when the zionist enterprise was stealing the land 'legitimized' by the west in 1948. The Muslims don't consider it a legitimate state, just as we never considered the Third Reich to be legitimate. Israel has no more 'right to exist' than the Third Reich did and the similarities are far deeper than that. But by controlling the debate to post 1967 issues, talking about things like Israel's 'security' is already a de facto acknowledgment of Israel's legitimacy and the legitimacy of it's policies, tactics and 'success.' A rhetorical con job, to put it politely.
This was a good piece by Mr. Dreyfuss, but face it, one can't even start anything remotely resembling an even-handed discussion about Israel in ANY American media. There is no 'right' way to be wrong, but apparently there IS a 'right' way to control the debate and always avoid discussing the fundamental issues.
Posted by DejaVu at 10/28/2009 @ 3:00pm
and repeat Roosevelts complicity in the Holocaust or be like every president after FDR (except Carter) who understands the true nature of the conflict.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm
Not to omit, of course, the uber-complicity of Prescott Bush.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 3:05pm
If you recall, those statements resulted in a campaign by Likudnick American jews to put pressure on israel not to divide Jerusalem. Imagine the chutzpa. American Jews telling Israeli Jews to forego peace for the sake of land. Israeli
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:50pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Amazing isn't it!
I think Olmert had put forth the idea of some kind of international consortium to administer Jerusalem including Saudis, Jordanians, Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians? Maybe this was the reason that Olmert couldn't address Jerusalem directly, or what he meant by "to be decided later? I don't know either.
Okay - I am on board that at least Olmert was talking the talk - although this "consortium" sounds like a pretty wild balancing act.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 3:05pm
In his January interview with the Washington Post, Abbas claimed that Olmert offered 97% of the west Bank.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:58pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Olmert later corrected what Abbas claimed.
Posted by OneVote at 10/28/2009 @ 3:07pm
You apparently are using a definition of "terrorist" which is used only by pro-Palestinian anti-Israel propogandists, and materially different than that commonly recognized.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 2:55pm
gren,
Excuse me for not sticking to the Fox News' standard on the definition of terrorism. What do you call the carpet bombing of 146 square mile enclave (Gaza) with 2 million people trapped inside? What do you call shelling a UN school with white phosphor, the variety that sticks to the flesh? What do you call the shooting of unarmed civilians; women and children raising white flags, by Israeli soldiers during the Gaza massacre?
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 3:14pm
meanwhile,
the tracks on the bulldozers go round and round.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 3:15pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 3:14pm | ignore this person | warn this person
That issue has been exhautively argued and debated numerous times here since January. I'm not getting back on that merry-go-round.
BTW, at the very top of the comments (12:52 pm), I raised a question, and actually mentioned you as a person whose response I would be curious about. Any interest in answering that issue.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 3:19pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm
Not to omit, of course, the uber-complicity of Prescott Bush.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 3:05pm
That lie has been thoroughly debunked.
Prescott Bush did not help the Nazi's, nor did he make money helping them.
His father-in-law got him appointed to a director's position with UBC bank through a friend Averill Harriman (a life long Democrat and former UN ambassador). Bush owned one share of stock.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 3:24pm
Gren... Everyone, on both sides, knows what a "deal" would look like. The question is: is Israel willing to accept such a deal over the objections of people who say it would leave Israel vulnerable to attack and over the other objections of Israelis who say that the Bible gives Israel the permanent right to Judea and Samaria?
The "deal" would include the right of return, as you described it above, while acknowledging the PRINCIPLE of a complete right of return and compensating Palestinians who, in reality, won't be "returning." Dividing Jerusalem, of course. The precise amount of land surrounding Jerusalem that Israel gives up -- i.e., removing many settlements -- is to be negotiated, with Israel adding land to the W. Bank in exchange for land it continues to occupy near the capital.
It isn't that complicated.
Posted by RobertDreyfuss at 10/28/2009 @ 3:29pm
Posted by RobertDreyfuss at 10/28/2009 @ 3:29pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Not to argue with you, but as I indicated, the question is not only whether Israel will make that offer (it should, and I believe that Barak and Olmert have made offers which come substantially close to it), but whether the PA would accept it. You assume the PA would accept it, but given its refusal to ever make that offer, or a counter-offer to Barak and Olmert, I am nowhere near as confident as you appear to be. Thus, if Israel offers that deal, and the PA does not accept it, the question becomes: who would the leftists and progressives blame.
As I've indicated before, I think both Israel and the PA for the immediate future are each incapable of making that offer. If the US and the EU do not publicalkly and expressly announce their support for that particular peace plan (after trying private diplomacy with Israel and the PA), nothing constructive is going to happen. Settlement negotiations now would be a sham. Netanyahu is not going to offer what the PA could accept, and the PA is not going to make the demand that the world will insist that Israel accept.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 3:37pm
Posted by urmygyro at 10/28/2009 @ 1:38pm
You give him too much credit, urmy.
Larry distinctly said that any Jew who supported a "divided Jerusalem" was NOT a Jew at all.
And he knows...he's a "prophet of God" and anything he says about Israel or Israeli policy differs in no way from the way the Supreme Being feels about it.
((Here's where he'll deny he's ever said that, which is true...then under questioning...agree with that my statement is essentially correct!))
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 3:43pm
Not to omit, of course, the uber-complicity of Prescott Bush.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 3:05pm
That lie has been thoroughly debunked.
Prescott Bush did not help the Nazi's, nor did he make money helping them.
His father-in-law got him appointed to a director's position with UBC bank through a friend Averill Harriman (a life long Democrat and former UN ambassador). Bush owned one share of stock.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 3:24pm | ignore this person | warn this person
WHERE IS THE DEBUNKING, YOU CLAIM, OF PRESCOTT BUSH HELPING FUND THE NAZI RISE TO POWER?
AND I SUPPOSE YOU ALSO THINK THAT "SKULL & BONES" ( BUSH'S ARE PROMINENT MEMBERS) IS JUST A COLLEGE FRATERNAL ORGANIZATION AND NOT A CENTER FOR SUBVERSION OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND PURE EVIL?
AND I SUPPOSE YOU DON'T THINK G.W.H. BUSH IS INVOLVED WITH THE BLOOD DIAMOND TRADE & OTHER NEFARIOUS BLACK MARKET SCHEMES.
AND I SUPPOSE YOU DON'T THINK BARBARA BUSH COMES FROM A LONG LINE OF PIERCE'S WHO WERE FASCINATED WITH SATAN WORSHIP?
IF THESE LATTER THREE REPORTS HAVE BEEN DEBUNKED, PLEASE INCLUDE A REFERENCE TO THESE DEBUNKINGS ALSO.
THANK YOU.
Until I read & analyze these debunkings provided by you, I will continue to think that La Famiglia Bush are among the most evil sons of bitches on the planet.
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 3:51pm
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 3:51pm
Larry's right....Prescott was more liberal than his son, Bush-41...and even he was pro-choice until tapped by Reagan.
He favored Planned Parenthood, public housing, etc. An old school Robert Taft/Eisenhower Republican....not a Nazi.
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 3:56pm
BTW, at the very top of the comments (12:52 pm), I raised a question, and actually mentioned you as a person whose response I would be curious about. Any interest in answering that issue.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 3:19pm
gren,
It isn't that complicated indeed. Robert Dreyfuss offered a fair version of a potential agreement and dont_know posted an alternative view which is equally plausible (Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 2:18pm).
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 4:00pm
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 3:51pm
I'm heading out but I posted it yesterday I believe on another blog here at the Nation.
Not that a rabid and radical hater like yourself would worry about facts.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 4:02pm
Larry's right....Prescott was more liberal than his son, Bush-41...and even he was pro-choice until tapped by Reagan.
He favored Planned Parenthood, public housing, etc. An old school Robert Taft/Eisenhower Republican....not a Nazi.
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 3:56pm | ignore this person | warn this person
..not a Nazi.
At least after 1947. What about during the 20s, 30s and early 40s? The reports in the newspapers of those times and those recently disclosed documents re Brown Brothers (Prescott's firm) seem to indicate otherwise. I would very much like to read any debunking of these that exists. All I can find on the internet or in the library are just statements that Bush was "not a Nazi". If we wasn't, then we should lay this to rest once and for all. If he was, then you all should admit it.
P.S., Mask, curious to know what you think about Bush and the blood diamond trade and other black market activities, about Skull & Bones, or about Barbara Bush & her mother's involvement with A. Crowley and his loony Satan worshipers. Are you a believer or a denier?
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 4:06pm
"Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed" by John Buchanan
New Hampshire Gazette, Oct. 10, 2003
"WASHINGTON - After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners. "The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and FBI, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law. "Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial baron for nearly eight months after the U.S. entered the war... "
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:10pm
Not that a rabid and radical hater like yourself would worry about facts.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 4:02pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Just who do I rabidly and radically hate? Other than Nazis, Wall St. criminals, the Bush family, and neocon warmongers? I will freely admit to having some hate in my heart for those felonious folks. No apologies.
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 4:11pm
P.S.
I couldn't care less how many shares the man owned.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:12pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 4:00pm | ignore this person | warn this person
You didn't answer the question, but no matter.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 4:15pm
"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)
"The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."
"Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives.
"Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.)."
Source: http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:18pm
"…And the Birth Control League was there, which had long trumpeted the need for eugenical births--fewer births for parents with "inferior" bloodlines. Prescott [Bush's] partner Tighe was a Connecticut director of the league, and the Connecticut league's medical advisor was eugenics advocate Dr. Winternitz of Yale Medical School.
Now in 1950, people who knew something about Prescott Bush knew that he had very unsavory roots in the eugenics movement. There were then, just after the anti-Hitler war, few open advocates of sterilization of "unfit" or "unnecessary" people. (That would be revived later, with the help of General Draper and his friend George Bush
Then, very late in the 1950 senatorial campaign, Prescott Bush was publicly exposed for being an activist in that section of the old fascist eugenics movement. Prescott Bush lost the election by about 1,000 out of 862,000 votes
In his foreword to a population control propaganda book, George Bush wrote about that 1950 election: "My own first awareness of birth control as a public policy issue came with a jolt in 1950 when my father was running for United States Senate in Connecticut. Drew Pearson, on the Sunday before Election day, ‘revealed' that my father was involved with Planned Parenthood.... Many political observers felt a sufficient number of voters were swayed by his alleged contacts with the birth controllers to cost him the election...."
Source: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2412/eugenics/Bush.html
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:21pm
Those of you interested in the Bush - Nazi connection might also want to examine the history of the "skull & bones" symbol from the Jolly Roger used by British privateers (pirates) in the 17th century TO the founding of the three Skull & Bones organizations (at Nuremburg Germany -- as a prelude to right-wing occultism in Germany, at Charleston, South Carolina-- as an organization of the southern secession & the Civil War, and at opium-war funded Yale University) TO the Nazi SS uniform and flags.
The Bush families devotion to Skull & Bones is emblematic of their overall attitudes towards the rest of us in the human race.
The use of this symbol through history by pirates, opium dealers and death squads is no accident.
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 4:28pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar/print
(Lest we confuse the LEGALITY of what Prescott Bush did, when he did it, with its being COMPLICIT with the Nazi regime.)
Two way different things.
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:35pm
Silesian-American Corporation was the American holding company for Friedrich Flick's German steel empire; two thirds of which was controlled by Flick, Nazi Germany's largest arms supplier, with the remaining one third under the control of, initially, the Harriman Fifteen Corporation , and subsequent to its merger with Brown Brothers, the Brown Brothers Harriman Corporation. Friedrich Flick was the major co-owner of the German Steel Trust with Fritz Thyssen. The two men bankrolled the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany, through credit arrangements made with Dutch banks situated in Rotterdam to avoid entanglements with German banks and hoping to control the Nazi party's policy to their personal benefit. One of the main banks chosen for this credit arrangement was Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS), an Averrel Harriman - Prescott Bush affiliate.
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Silesian:American:Corporation.html
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:43pm
Posted by dont_know at 10/28/2009 @ 4:06pm |
There's a big difference between enabling and profiteering from Nazis...and actually being one.
Posted by snowball777 at 10/28/2009 @ 4:45pm
I've said it before, I'll say it again:
Virtually all Palestinians are primitive religious fascists and Israel should expel them from the West Bank and Gaza and incorporate those lands into Israel.
The Palestinians might be the most primitive savages and most savage primitives on the face of the earth.
Israel is as morally flawless as any nation could conceivably be expected to be.
Israel and the Palestinians are not culturally or morally equal. In both these respects, Israel is superior.
A Palestinian state would be a primitive Saddamite religious fascist totalitarian dictatorship run by genocidal maniacs who would torture their own people to death in concentration camps every day and who would sponsor terror attacks to kill Jews and Americans. It would endanger our security and escalate war with Israel. The Palestinians do not DESERVE independence. They are barbarians utterly without any sense of shame.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 4:54pm
Speak for yourself....
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/28/2009 @ 4:55pm
You didn't answer the question, but no matter.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 4:15pm
gren,
You know that it is a bit hypocritical for the J Streeters and others to expect the Palestinians to honor 3000 year Biblical event, while ignoring documented genocide committed against them in the past 60 years. Expecting Palestinians to honor the right of a Brooklyn-born Jew to go back to the West Bank to displace a Palestinian peasant out of his home is a far fetched human tragedy, even if God wants it. Why is it that a Warsaw-born Jew is more entitled to Haifa than the Palestinian who was born in Haifa?
Let Israel restores East Jerusalem to its 1967 status, Israel annexed 80% of it since, and the Palestinians will accept it as their capitol.
Just by pretending that you are an agreeable Zionist while ignoring facts on the grounds does not make you so. The UN resolution which created Israel gave the Israel 49% of original Palestine. Israel now owns 78% of Palestine and wants to negotiate on the remaining 22%.
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 5:02pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/28/2009 @ 5:02pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Now you answered the question.
BTW, I don't pretend anything. I am what I am, with no apologies. You are free to characterize and label me however I appear to you.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 5:07pm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 4:54pm | ignore this person | warn this person
you sound like a southerner denigrating blacks circa Reconstruction or Jim Crow. Israel neither needs nor desires that kind of chauvinistic and prejudiced support.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 5:12pm
I read most of the above. don't_know is right about Zionism. The Jews I know and respect hate it. One is an upstate Independant who is going to run against Schumer.
1. The Jewish problem in America 10.28.09 cannot be contained by the "Will J Street hold w/ Obama, if he squeezes Israel?" parry -- w/ grin guaranteeing solidarity of diasporas & Zionist.
2. By 'the Jewish problem in America' I am referring specifically, here, to Joe "the Jew" Lieberman, chairing the Senate committee on Homrland Security, announced proponent of swine flu vaccine, and killer of public option health care reform.
3. No Jews who are American first cannot not hate this Joe "the Jew" Liebermann for what he is doing to their name, and its Holy history. So they must renouce it, in him, for that reason -- that his total persona as Jewish politician from the State of Connecticut is a defilement to them, their heritage, and the history of their sufferings. If they do not, they deserve such to fall on themselves.
4. These people (Zionists, first; then all who align with them) have one goal and one goal only uppermost in every political idea they entertain: to identify U.S. interests with the hate state of Israel. "...litertally shouted into the microphone (while introducing Jones) about the presence of 1,300 US troops who've just arrived in Israel to take part in a huge military exercise having to do with anti-missile defense systems." We're all hostage to Netanyahoos now. Their Holy Grail is to get American blood shed, over there, for their way of being (sinful) That'll get Jesus by the balls. Tea bag that ol' Holy Ghost! lol
No, this one goes pretty far outside J street reality assumptions. You better go back, Dreyfuss, and tell them there's no Temople Mt. in Liebermann's
Posted by jones at 10/28/2009 @ 5:57pm
If Hamas refuses to accept a final peace accord that does not re-establish the 1948 armistice lines or provide a robust right of return (indeed Hamas says it will offer only a 10-year cease fire even for those terms), then there is no choice but to exclude Hamas from the table and either quarantine them in Gaza or disarm them. Otherwise you give Hamas a veto power over a peace treaty. If Hamas were to agree to the terms we are talking about as a permanent resolution of all claims, it would have a seat at the table.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 1:39pm
That's all just a mental exercise until Israel's current government agrees to a 2 state settlement. At this stage, they oppose it.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 6:22pm
These liberal Jews cannot bring themselves to accept the reality that the Arabs will not be satisfied with the continued existence of Israel in a so-called 2-state solution. The Arabs will only accept the complete destruction of the state of Israel.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 1:48pm
You keep repeating this mantra all you like Larry. We all know that you couldn't care less about Jews as see them as nothing but a means to an end ie. hastening the return of your make believe God.
It's highly ironic that you accuse those who want peace and a 2 state solutino to emerge, of wanting death to come to Jews, when the death of Jews is [precisely what you pray for and dream of every day.
Speaking of complicity on the Holocaust, the man that comes closest is the grad daddy of your hero, George Bush.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 6:28pm
you sound like a southerner denigrating blacks circa Reconstruction or Jim Crow. Israel neither needs nor desires that kind of chauvinistic and prejudiced support.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 5:12pm
Superbly put Gren.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 6:40pm
That lie has been thoroughly debunked.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 3:24pm
Correction, it was thoroughly spun, but never debunked.
Prescott Bush WAS found guilty under the trading with the enemy act. Yes, Prescott Bush did help the Nazi's, and made a lot of money in the process.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 6:44pm
"A Palestinian state would be a primitive Saddamite religious fascist totalitarian dictatorship run by genocidal maniacs who would torture their own people to death in concentration camps every day and who would sponsor terror attacks to kill Jews and Americans. It would endanger our security and escalate war with Israel. The Palestinians do not DESERVE independence. They are barbarians utterly without any sense of shame."
Who can dispute this? Most Palestinians DO want a religious fascist dictatorship. Most Palestinians DO believe in killing Jews. Most Palestinians DO support terrorism against America. Most Palestinians openly admit they want a state to escalate war with Israel.
The Palestinians say so every time they are polled.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 7:41pm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 7:41pm
As Gren has pointed out rightwingnutcase, even Jewish Israerli supporters find your view repugnant.
Whoever you are quoting is a rampant Islamophobe like yourself. yes we can dispute what he says because Jews and Palestinians got along fine before the European Jewish immigrants began arriving, especially the thuggish settlers from Eastern Europe.
No, the Palestinians do not want a dictatorship, in fact, they held the onyl democratic elections in the Arab world in 2006. Most Palestinians do not believe in killing Jews. Most Palestinians do not support terror, but are driven to it by the oppression they live under. Israel's founding fathers achieved their goals through the use of terrorism.
Israel's PM is the only leader, apart from Bin laden, that approved of the 911 attacks.
"Most Palestinians openly admit they want a state to escalate war with Israel. "
Do they really? According to which poll?
Be honest rightwingnutcase. You could care less about Jews or Israel, other than the fact that Israel fulfills your desire to see Arab's being bashed.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:11pm
Roberta Seid on why J Street is bad for Israel
How is J Street "frequently endorses anti-Israel, anti-Jewish narratives"?
In StandWithUs' extensive experience covering anti-Israel events, speakers, and organizations, we have found certain patterns: they exclude context, draw moral equivalencies, defend defamations and one-sided narratives under the banner of free speech, use half-truths and outright lies to stain Israel and Jews, or promote speakers who delegitimize Israel. Unfortunately, J Street has exhibited a pattern of doing some or all of these things.
http://tinyurl.com/yh4sjkb
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 8:14pm
Virtually all Palestinians are primitive religious fascists and Israel should expel them from the West Bank and Gaza and incorporate those lands into Israel.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 4:54pm
Virtually all Palestinians are decedents of the original Judeans, which makes them the progeny of the original Jews.
On other words, what you are advocating is another Holocaust and that makes you a filthy anti Semite.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:18pm
"For the past 13 years, since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, the contours of the State of Palestine have taken form in front of our eyes. ... Palestine exists already. ... Palestine is a terror state and an economic basket case fully funded by the international community. ... official Western aid to the Palestinians .. increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion. The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation. So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel. The multitude of protesters worldwide who demand an end to the so-called "occupation" and the establishment of Palestine should be made aware of the fact that Palestine already exists. ... This is Palestine. Enter at your own risk" - Caroline Glick on the hellhole of Gaza without Israel. What did we expect? The Palestinians to set up a parliamentary democracy?
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:21pm
Back in 2003: 72 percent of Palestinians supported Bin Laden.
Now in 2007: 57 percent of Palestinians support Bin Laden.
90 percent of Palestinians support killing American troops in Iraq. And yet America is giving the Palestinians $1 billion in aid!
Survey of Muslim world, Sept 2009 68 percent of Palestinian Muslims said suicide bombings of civilians were justifiable.
Palestinians dance in the streets to celebrate the 9/11 killings of thousands of innocent American civilians - 3000 men, women and children age from 2 to 85.
Supporting the killing of Jewish civilians The majority of Palestinians support suicide bombings (also here and here). The majority of Palestinians support the killing of Jewish civilians, including Jewish children (also here and here). The majority of Palestinians do not accept Israel's right to exist. Poll: Decrease in Palestinian support of terror, Dec. 8, 2004. After Arafat's death, a majority of Palestinians, for the first time, now oppose the intifada. Albeit this would be for strategic reasons - because the intifada is not working - not because they have suddenly discovered that killing civilians is wrong. But still, it's a start. It didn't last: Poll, Feb 2006 - 56 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing of Israeli civilians. Poll, July 2006 - 60 percent of Palestinians support rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. 67 percent support kidnapping and murdering Israeli civilians. Survey, July 2007: 70 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing of civilians. Poll of Palestinians, Mar 2008. 84 percent of Palestinians support killing Jewish civilians. Poll of Palestinians, Apr 2008. 51 percent of Palestinians support killing Jewish civilians. 65 percent support in Gaza.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:26pm
73% of Palestinians supported suicide attacks against USA in Nov. 2000 poll
Poll, Dec 2005 - 65 percent of Palestinians support Al Qaeda terror attacks on the US and Europe, such as 9/11, Madrid or London.
Poll in Egypt, think 2006 Which country do you most hate? Top answer - USA. In which country would you most like to live? Top answer - USA.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:29pm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:21pm
More Islamphobic bile.
Why don't you provide the source for thes quotes rightwingnutcase? Are you afraid that your sources will be exposed as right wing extremists?
There are of course, all lies.
Israel received the more aid per capita than any people on earth. 15 billion per annum at least, which includes the billions paid to Jordan and Egypt to be nice to Israel.
They are poor because they are denied a means of generating an income. They land is taken from them, their agricultural lands are destroyed or fenced off so that they cannot access them, their homes destroyed and the Palestinians themselvesa are routinely evicted and held up a check points.
Those in Gaza have been imposed to a brutal and inhumane blockade that denies then food and basic necessities. When Israel was blockaded by Egypt, Israel declared it an act of war.
Israel is an occupier, and stands in violation of UN res9lutinos demanding an end to the occupation. Those 57 percent of Palestinians support resistance to occupation, which is their legal right under international law.
Palestine exists, but Israel have blocked the creation of a Palestinian state.
"What did we expect? The Palestinians to set up a parliamentary democracy?"
Gaza tried that in 2006 and Israel rewarded them by attacking them, as they always do.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:33pm
"held the onyl democratic elections in the Arab world in 2006."
And they voted for slavery.
Iraq is a free country.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:33pm
Iraq is a free country.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:33pm
No, Iraq is another country under occupation.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:35pm
"Poll, Feb 2006 - 56 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing of Israeli civilians. Poll, July 2006 - 60 percent of Palestinians support rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. 67 percent support kidnapping and murdering Israeli civilians. Survey, July 2007: 70 percent of Palestinians support suicide bombing of civilians. Poll of Palestinians, Mar 2008. 84 percent of Palestinians support killing Jewish civilians. Poll of Palestinians, Apr 2008. 51 percent of Palestinians support killing Jewish civilians."
Clearly, the Israelis are superior to the Palestinians.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:36pm
Here's an explanation for why Gaza is a hell hole. Namely, because Israel has made it one.
The one and only comprehensive scholarly history of Israeli settlements n the occupied territories, recently translated into English, is called "Lords of the Land", by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.
This is what they say about Gaza.
"After Israel withdrew it's forces from Gaza, in August 2005, the ruined territory was not released for even a single day from Israel's military grip, or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day. Israel left behind scotched earth, devastated services, and people with nearly a present or a future. The Jewish settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass it's inhabitants, by means of it's formidable military might."
Thais doesn't even mention the fact that between 2005 and 2006, Israel fiored 7,700 shells into Gaza. That's what Israel means by a unilateral withdrawl.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:38pm
First ever poll of Irish Muslims, Dec 2006, shows that Shaheed Satardien was right. Like in Britain, there is a minority of Irish Muslims who are extremists: The majority (59 percent) of Irish Muslims disagree that "people in Ireland should be free to say whatever they want, even if it offends other people's religious beliefs". Though 35 percent agree. 37 percent of Irish Muslims would like Ireland to be governed as an Islamic state. Though 50 percent said they would not. The majority (57 percent) of young Irish Muslims (under 26) believe Ireland should become an Islamic State. 36 percent of Irish Muslims said they "respect" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 15 percent said they "respect" Osama Bin Laden. 11 percent said they "respect" Mullah Omar.
Deport 'em!
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:40pm
Outrage: Blasphemy law proposed in Ireland, Apr 2009. Fianna Fail proposes law to make it illegal to publish material "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion".
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:43pm
Deport 'em!
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:40pm
So why weren't you cheering Saddam when he was killing Arabs?
BTW. Your polls a bogus.
"Fianna Fail proposes law to make it illegal to publish material "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion"."
We have laws against hate speech too.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:50pm
"Your polls a bogus."
So I'm just making up these numbers?
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:52pm
"Clearly, the Israelis are superior to the Palestinians."
In fact, all people on earth are superior to the Palestinians.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:53pm
"So why weren't you cheering Saddam when he was killing Arabs?"
You know, Iraq is the only Arab country in which the majority polled don't support Saddam.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:55pm
So I'm just making up these numbers?
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:52pm
Of course you are. You haven't provided a single course.
BTW Caroline Glick is right wing Islamophobic extremist who thinks all Arabs are terrorists.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:55pm
You know, Iraq is the only Arab country in which the majority polled don't support Saddam.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:55pm
And your sources for that poll?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 8:57pm
http://markhumphrys.com/islamic.world.html#moderate
Palestinians are evil.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:58pm
Palestinians are evil.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:58pm
And you're a child.
None of those links on markhumphrys link to any polls. I knew you were lying.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:02pm
"Imagine that a sect of fanatical Jews blew up three American buildings, killing thousands. Imagine that this sect of Jews issued a declaration of holy war on the United States, in the name of Judaism. What do you think would have been the response of the rest of the Jews in America and around the world? Our ears would have been deafened by the roar of Jews' moral outrage, their resounding support for America, and their demands for the destruction of the radical sect. You wouldn't be able to turn around in NYC or any urban center without seeing Jews wearing some insignia to show their love for America and hatred for the sect. There would be endless TV spots sponsored by Jewish organizations, there would be T-shirts with "Those killers aren't Jews," there would be multitudes of young Jews volunteering to go into the military to fight the sect. Israel would be acting in the same way.
So where is any peep from the Muslims? Or the Muslim nations?"
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000389.html
Muslims need to civilize themselves.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:04pm
"Imagine that a sect of fanatical Jews blew up three American buildings, killing thousands. "
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:04pm
I'll do you one better.
Imagine a fanatical Muslim leader slaughtering 6 million Jews? Christians were behind that.
Imagine a Muslim country starting a world war that killed more than 50 million people? Christians were behind that.
Imagine a Muslim country doping 2 nuclear bombs on cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people? Christians were behind that.
So where is any peep from the Christian or Christian nations?
Now remind me, who needs to civilize themselves?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:09pm
You wouldn't be able to turn around in NYC or any urban center without seeing Jews wearing some insignia to show their love for America and hatred for the sect.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:04pm
In Iran, 1 million Muslims marched is solidarity to show their respect for the victims of the 911 attacks.
At the same time, the current leader of the Jewish state was quoted as saying that the 911 attacks were a good thing.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:12pm
Islamic jihadists have killed over 140 MILLION black Africans over the centuries.
The left wants WHITES to pay slavery reparations for their ancestors buying black slaves from black and Arab slave owners. They don't even want Islamic theocracies like Sudan to pay such reparations, even though THEY STILL PRACTICE SLAVERY.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:13pm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:29pm
"73% of Palestinians supported suicide attacks against USA in Nov. 2000 poll"
False.
"Poll, Dec 2005 - 65 percent of Palestinians support Al Qaeda terror attacks on the US and Europe, such as 9/11, Madrid or London."
False.
"Poll in Egypt, think 2006 Which country do you most hate? Top answer - USA. In which country would you most like to live? Top answer - USA."
False.
That's 3 strikes.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:14pm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:13pm
"Islamic jihadists have killed over 140 MILLION black Africans over the centuries."
Absolute rubbish. There is no facts to back up this insane claim.
"The left wants WHITES to pay slavery reparations for their ancestors buying black slaves from black and Arab slave owners. "
You obviously approve of slavery.
"They don't even want Islamic theocracies like Sudan to pay such reparations, even though THEY STILL PRACTICE SLAVERY."
Sad but true, but who is opposing the paying of reparations for such acts?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:17pm
http://markhumphrys.com/contents.html
From here, click "What is Wrong with the Islamic world" for the polls. They're under "Moderate" Islam - Opinion Polls in the Islamic world.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:18pm
From here, click "What is Wrong with the Islamic world" for the polls. They're under "Moderate" Islam - Opinion Polls in the Islamic world.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:18pm
No such poll exists.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:19pm
"Sad but true, but who is opposing the paying of reparations for such acts?"
When has the Nation called on Sudan and other ME nations to pay slavery reparations? I've only heard them demand them from the evil oppressive white man.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:20pm
"No such poll exists."
Shingo doesn't even need to look at the site to know it's lying.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:21pm
"However, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. As at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from the 14 centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Transsaharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people." http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimslavery.htm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:26pm
Where were the Muslim abolitionists?
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:27pm
Clearly, the Israelis are superior to the Palestinians.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:36pm
clearly, viceroy.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 9:37pm
Iraq is a free country.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:33pm
clearly, viceroy.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 9:37pm
you sound like a southerner denigrating blacks circa Reconstruction or Jim Crow. Israel neither needs nor desires that kind of chauvinistic and prejudiced support.
Posted by gren at 10/28/2009 @ 5:12pm
I'm no racist, but I couldn't help but think, "Yeah, sure. I'll be afraid once a single black country is militarily stronger than a single white country."
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/27/2009 @ 9:48pm
keep 'em comin', viceroy.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 9:40pm
When has the Nation called on Sudan and other ME nations to pay slavery reparations? I've only heard them demand them from the evil oppressive white man.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:20pm
When has any right wing new source called on Sudan and other ME nations to pay slavery reparations?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:40pm
Shingo doesn't even need to look at the site to know it's lying.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:21pm
The web site links to other web sites, which are either commentary (not actual polls) or no longer working.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:42pm
They don't even want Islamic theocracies like Sudan to pay such reparations, even though THEY STILL PRACTICE SLAVERY.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:13pm
hey, viceroy.
ever eat tomatoes?
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 9:43pm
http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimslavery.htm
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 9:26pm
This is pure gold.
From a web site called...wait for it......
A CHRISTIAN REVIEW OF BAD RELIGIONS AND BELIEFS!!
Hahaha hahah hahah.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:48pm
"Larry's right...."
No ... he's not.
Larry's correctness is (this comment providing the epihany-metaphore), as a rule is like unto a firt shot at billiards; a ball falling in a hole can be said to be, "correct."
I leave it up to his readers to judge wither or no said accuracy, be the fore-ordained end result product of adroit and deft calculation, or plain monkey luck.
Anyhow ... he's not.
"... not a Nazi."
Yeah I can agree on that one ... more like a gardner or a chef, than a creeping vine, or a waiter ...
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 3:56pm
Posted by V at 10/28/2009 @ 9:50pm
This web site is awesome rightwingnutcase.
Check this out!
MISSION STATEMENT We are endeavoring to lead men, women, and children out of bad religions and into a full relationship with the Father, by way of the Son, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are also endeavoring to build up the children of God in the Christian faith and encouraging Christians to step out in faith to be a witness for Jesus Christ in word and in deed.
And all this time I thought you were an atheist rightwingnutcase. Have you been moonlighting again?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:54pm
Hahaha hahah hahah.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:48pm
how dare you question the viceroy!
to the dungeons!
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/28/2009 @ 9:56pm
He favored Planned Parenthood, public housing, etc.
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 3:56pm | ignore this person
So did Hitler apparently. In fact, Hitler came up with the concept of Medicare.
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:57pm
The United States should get rid of lobbying, period, whether it be AIPAC or J Street. Lobbying and corporate political donations should be completely outlawed. In America, Democracy is only a garish store front with back room dealings done in the manager's office.
Posted by rybo1 at 10/29/2009 @ 01:32am
for the viceroy:
EU imposes Guinea arms embargo after protest massacre
Human Rights Watch accuses members of presidential guard of killing at least 150 people at peaceful rally last month
"Security forces surrounded and blockaded the stadium, then stormed in and fired at protesters in cold blood until they ran out of bullets," said Georgette Gagnon, the group's Africa director. "They carried out grisly gang rapes and murders of women in full sight of the commanders. That's no accident."
Most of the victims were from the Peuhl ethnic group, which is mainly Muslim, while most of the commanders at the stadium and key junta members, including Camara, belong to ethnic groups that are largely Christian or animist.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 01:50am
Posted by schnellerheinz at 10/28/2009 @ 4:21pm
Weird.
So, the same people who say "The Bush Family has a heredity of evil"....cite the "fact" that they (the Bushes) supposedly believe in eugenics?!??!?!
and we have liberals/leftists who are so intent on proving that....that they sound like "pro-lifers" on the subject of birth control?!???!?!
I think I'm on irony overload. Or else schneller has presented us with the "left-wing equivalent" of ...the "Birthers."
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 07:25am
that they (the Bushes) supposedly believe in eugenics?!??!?!
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 07:25am
alas, if only it were true...
heheh
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 08:33am
Imagine a fanatical Muslim leader slaughtering 6 million Jews? Christians were behind that.
Imagine a Muslim country starting a world war that killed more than 50 million people? Christians were behind that.
Imagine a Muslim country doping 2 nuclear bombs on cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people? Christians were behind that.
So where is any peep from the Christian or Christian nations?
Now remind me, who needs to civilize themselves?
Posted by Shingo at 10/28/2009 @ 9:09pm
Plenty of peeps about the nukes, just look at the protests, START, weapons reductions, etc. As for the Holocaust and WWII, the people who started that, whose imagery was rather more Wotan and Hirohito worship, they were ground into power by B-17s, T34s and HM Navy guns, not just peeps.
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 08:45am
BTW, can somebody please get rightwingnutcase to explain why he cares/cared so much about the "people of Iraq under Saddam's brutality"....or the "people of Afghanistan under the Taliban"....
if both those people are "evil Muslims"?!??!?!?!?!??
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 09:26am
Palestinians are evil.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/28/2009 @ 8:58pm
RW - recite to us the history of Hamas, or Taliban for that matter.
Dr. Frankenstein knew when to quit.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 09:36am
Wow these anti-semetic threads really bring out the bitterness, resentment, and psychosis of the Jew haters from their little dark holes! Great exposure of them to the world!
Posted by BigPasture at 10/29/2009 @ 09:36am
that they (the Bushes) supposedly believe in eugenics?!??!?!
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 07:25am
alas, if only it were true...
heheh
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 08:33am | ignore this person | warn this person
In other words, we would have been spared "Lil George" - hmmmm..........
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 09:39am
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm
Thus sayeth the Rebbe lol
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 10/29/2009 @ 09:59am
Israel is of no strategic value to the us . No more aide to Israel of anyone else . All lobbying in Congress that is attached to any type campaign contribution or money of any kind should be illegal . Its time to bring all the troops and all the money home, balance the budget and end the national debt .
Posted by VincentBracco at 10/29/2009 @ 10:21am
Israel is of no strategic value to the us . No more aide to Israel of anyone else . All lobbying in Congress that is attached to any type campaign contribution or money of any kind should be illegal . Its time to bring all the troops and all the money home, balance the budget and end the national debt .
Posted by VincentBracco at 10/29/2009 @ 10:21am
Israel is of no strategic value to the us . No more aide to Israel of anyone else . All lobbying in Congress that is attached to any type campaign contribution or money of any kind should be illegal . Its time to bring all the troops and all the money home, balance the budget and end the national debt .
Posted by VincentBracco at 10/29/2009 @ 10:21am
Posted by Mask at 10/28/2009 @ 12:54pm
Thus sayeth the Rebbe lol
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 10/29/2009 @ 09:59am | ignore this person | warn this person
You've noticed too.
"I am for peace, but don't f__k with Israel".................
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 10:25am
Israel is of no strategic value to the us . No more aide to Israel of anyone else . All lobbying in Congress that is attached to any type campaign contribution or money of any kind should be illegal . Its time to bring all the troops and all the money home, balance the budget and end the national debt .
Posted by VincentBracco at 10/29/2009 @ 10:21am | ignore this person | warn this person
While we are not looking, the US is stationing troops in Israel on a "permanent" basis -
This is Israel's reward for not attacking Iran....hahahaha..........
Any Iranian agression or response toward Israel will be considered an attack on the United States......you get the picture.....
The blogs are filled with stories about US troop presence in Israel during Gaza massacre.
The continued IDF infestation into the US military and our contracts for supply of weapons and equipment from Israeli military contractors for our Middle East nation building is an untold story.
Our military is being corrupted in the same manner that our Congress is.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 10:42am
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 10/29/2009 @ 09:59am
Larry's one end of the spectrum....OV and excalibur the other.
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 11:27am
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 11:27am | ignore this person | warn this person
Oh that "halo" shines so bright.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 11:39am
"....might be necessary to remind the Israelis that US support is not open-ended or infinite as long as Israel maintains its implacable hostility to a viable Palestinian state."
Might be, I think that's an understatement. While Israel may "need assurances of security", they appear to be capable of committing genocide quite well all on their own. Maybe if the US with held a portion of the $10 million daily that they receive they would be willing to come to the table and negotiate fairly! Part of the reason that the US has any problems in the Middle East is because we have not been fair in our dealings with the Israeli's and the Palestinians! Even when the Palestinians have conceded, their are always more conditions, enough! Time to go back to the 1967 borders and stop the theft of land that doesn't belong to Israel!
Posted by Spiritgirl2 at 10/29/2009 @ 12:19pm
Time to go back to the 1967 borders and stop the theft of land that doesn't belong to Israel!
Posted by Spiritgirl2 at 10/29/2009 @ 12:19pm
How do we demonstrate that a return to the 1967 borders would not be a return to the status quo as of 1967: demolition of synagogues in Jerusalem, shelling of Israeli villages from the Golan Heights, closure of the Strait of Tiran, fedayeen attacks from Jordan...?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 12:49pm
'How do we demonstrate that a return to the 1967 borders would not be a return to the status quo as of 1967' -- Mistral
Spiritgirl2 probably means the 11 June, 1967 borders, not the 4 June, 1967 borders.
Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/29/2009 @ 12:55pm
Spiritgirl2 probably means the 11 June, 1967 borders, not the 4 June, 1967 borders.
Posted by HonestLiberal at 10/29/2009 @ 12:55pm
You go, girl! I didn't think of that.
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 12:59pm
U.S. Troops Stationed in Israel Shoulder Unique Tax Burden By E.J. Kessler Published March 14, 2003, issue of March 14, 2003. - Excerpts
'The Patriots are in Israel to protect it from Iraq's Scud missiles. Saddam Hussein launched a number of such missiles in the 1991 Gulf conflict, when Patriots were first sent in defense of the Jewish state.
Some 800 servicemen are manning Patriot batteries in Israel, Ackerman said, adding that they each pay about $130 a month in federal taxes. "They would be tremendously grateful if we fixed that," he said.'
'Ackerman, the ranking Democrat on the House Middle East and South Asia subcommittee, told the Forward in a briefing March 7 that the troops were paying the federal taxes because, for bureaucratic reasons, Israel has not yet been declared a danger zone in the looming conflict.'
'Note - the issue here was that US soldiers in Israel were not considered to be in "harms way" and so they had to pay taxes. Our own Defense Department considered this a bullshit assignment.'
'Israeli intelligence sources believe, however, that only a very small likelihood that Saddam will try to attack Israel with missiles. The Israeli army's chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, told the daily Yediot Aharonot last month that "there would have to be a very extreme situation for Iraq to reach a decision to take action against us. It would have to be a situation of desperation." Israel's Arrow defense missile also would deflect most Scuds Saddam could launch, Israeli defense officials have said in press reports.'
March 20, 2003 - Bush invades Iraq.
Your tax dollars at work.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 1:37pm
Here's the kind of peace that the Arabs in Israel wish to bring to Jews and Americans
Palestinian Sermon on the Jews, the future rule of Islam over America and the destruction of all Jews
http://tinyurl.com/aymkj
Try these samples from your friends of "peace"
http://tinyurl.com/cvg3rb
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 1:39pm
How do we demonstrate that a return to the 1967 borders would not be a return to the status quo as of 1967: demolition of synagogues in Jerusalem?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 12:49pm
I can show you the daily demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. We can also take a tour of the demolished Mosques in Gaza by the Israeli soldiers last year. Show us the demolished Synagogues in Jerusalem. Put your Zionist urge to steal more Palestinian land in check and peace can be closer than you think.
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 1:47pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 11:39am
Halo-III actually...but have to wait for the PC version. Don't have Xbox.
heheh
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 1:47pm
Here's the kind of peace that the Arabs in Israel wish to bring to Jews and Americans "----Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 1:39pm
Larry tell us exactly WHERE "in Israel" those Arabs live?
((Yes, it's a trick to make you state your position again on what is "Israel proper"...want to just skip ahead and tell us?))
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 1:49pm
What is Israel's Proper (border)? Can anyone define these borders?
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 1:57pm
Halo-III actually...but have to wait for the PC version. Don't have Xbox.
heheh
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 1:47pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Ah....now there is some honesty. Your halo shines brighter even still. 'Bad Guys' are enemies of Israel right?
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 2:01pm
'Here are a few facts. Average daily water consumption on the Palestinian side is 70 litres per day, less than the World Health Organisation's recommended daily minimum of 100 litres. Israel's average is over four times higher, at 300 litres. (In the UK it's about 160).
Drill down a little deeper in places like the Jordan Valley or the southern Hebron Hills - which I visited just this Saturday - and the picture is even starker. Many Palestinian farmers, where they haven't been driven off their land because of "security" closures, are fighting a battle to hold onto water cisterns traditionally used to store rainwater. Israeli soldiers frequently destroy water tanks (snipers even use them as target practice) and the net result is that in some places Palestinian water usage is down to a catastrophic 20 litres per day - emergency humanitarian levels. Crops and animals are dying and farmers are giving up once productive land. To add insult to injury, these same Palestinians will often be able to see lush lawns, well-irrigated fields and even swimming pools - all owned by Israeli settlers who are literally siphoning off the water supply for their own use. In some places settlers are using 20 times more water than their neighbouring Palestinian communities.
The sole source of water for West Bank Palestinians is the Mountain Aquifer, entirely controlled by Israel. Israel uses at least 80% of the aquifer's water with the result that 450,000 settlers consume as much water or more than all of the 2.3 million Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank combined.'
Kate Allen: Swimming the Israeli settlements Posted by Eagle Eye Tuesday, 27 October 2009 at 11:45 am IndependentMinds UK
Kate Allen is director for Amnesty International UK
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 2:23pm
The "religion of peace"
Somalia: Militants Kill Elderly Christian for Carrying Bibles September 23, 2009
Militants from the Muslim extremist al Shabaab killed 69-year-old Omar Khalafe on Tuesday (Sept. 15) at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers from Merca, a Christian source told Compass. Leaving Mogadishu by bus at 7:30 a.m.,
Khalafe was carrying 25 Somali Bibles he hoped to deliver to an underground fellowship in Somalia.
A source in Somalia who spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass that the passengers were ordered to disembark from the bus for inspection. The Islamic militants found 25 Somali Bibles in one of the passengers' bags; when they asked to whom the Bibles belonged, the passengers responded with a chilled silence. As the search continued, the militants found several photos in the bag. The source told Compass that the militants began trying to match the photos with the faces of the passengers, who were all seized by fear as they knew the inevitable fate of the owner. The Islamic extremists saw that the elderly Khalafe resembled a face in one of the photos, the source said. They asked Khalafe if he was the owner of the Bibles; he kept quiet. They shot him to death.
The body was taken to Merca, according to the source, and there the al Shabaab militants placed the 25 Somali Bibles on top of Khalafe's body as a warning to others.
Khalafe was a Somali Bantu who had served with various Christian agencies.
He left behind a widow and seven children. His family was unable to participate in his burial due to the risk of being killed, according to the source, who said one of Khalafe's sons said, "It is unfortunate that we were not there to give our dad a decent burial. God knows how He will reward him."
continued
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:30pm
the "religion of peace" continued
<Last month al Shabaab extremists seeking evidence that a Somali man had converted from Islam to Christianity shot him dead near the Somali border with Kenya, according to underground Christians in the war-torn nation.
The militants reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10. Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and "spies." On Feb. 21 al shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader, according to Musa Mohammed Yusuf, the 55-year-old father who was living in a Kenya refugee camp when he spoke with Compass.>
http://tinyurl.com/muxmun
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:32pm
And of course, Islam has completely renounced it's history of enslaving Blacks (not)
Sudan: Aid Groups Frees 232 Christian Slaves
Michael Ireland Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
June 8, 2009
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) says the slaves -- Christian and traditionalist members of the Dinka tribe -- were liberated, with CSI's support, from Arab masters in Darfur and neighboring Kordofan.
The news release says: "The enslavement of these Black non-Muslim Sudanese took place during jihad raids undertaken by Arab militias backed by Sudan's Islamist government during the late North-South civil war (1983-2005).
"Interviews with all 232 slaves conducted by CSI representatives reveal a clear pattern of physical and psychological abuse. The liberated slaves reported having been subjected to beatings, death threats, rape, female genital mutilation, forced conversion to Islam, racial and religious insults and work without pay. Some slaves reported witnessing the execution of fellow captives."
According to CSI, "Slavery persists in Sudan, despite the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Islamist Government of Sudan (GOS) and the secular, Southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLM). The Agreement failed to include a mechanism for overseeing the liberation of slaves and their safe repatriation."
CSI states: "An estimated 35,000 Black Africans from the Dinka tribe remain enslaved today, according to a member of the Government of Sudan's Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), James Aguir. (Skye Wheeler, Reuters, 'Misseriya and Dinka Grapple with History of Child Abduction,' Aweil, November 14, 2008.)."
http://tinyurl.com/yjbjks2
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:44pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:44pm |
How many non-Christians did they save?
Posted by snowball777 at 10/29/2009 @ 2:48pm
Here's what life brings for Christians living with the "religion of peace" in Indonesia (pictures are not for the weak)
http://tinyurl.com/yz5aoe
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:51pm
A report on how "wonderful" life is for Christians in Iran
http://tinyurl.com/ylyqgdm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 3:07pm
What is Israel's Proper (border)? Can anyone define these borders?
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 1:57pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Proper? what's proper.
I refer you to Dreyfuss' response to me above for one opinion.
Remember that from 1948 -67, Jews were not allowed into East Jerusalem to worship at their holy sites, despite the fact that Jerusalem was designated as an international city, and not part of the Palestinian state, in the 1947 UN resolution. Moreover, the Jewish sacred sites were vandalized and in some cases destroyed. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which always has had a majority Jewish population, even before the modern advent of Zionism, has been restored. That's why a division of East Jerusalem is proper.
The settlement blocs adjacent to the Green Linecontained Jewish communities prior to the UN Resolutuion. The residents there were repeatedly attacked and ultimately massacred by Palestinian militia aftwer the UN resolution. Those areas are currently inhabited by approximately 170,000 Israelis. That's why a modification of the 1967 line to extend Israeli sovereignty to that 5 % of the West Bank, with an equal area land compensation back to the Palestinians, is proper.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 3:09pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 2:44pm |
How many non-Christians did they save?
Posted by snowball777 at 10/29/2009 @ 2:48pm
If you bothered to read, it was both Christian and non Christians. Secondly the group has been working with the Obama administration to pressure them to release all slaves in Sudan and Darfur.
This is just another example by your response of further religious bigotry rather than the bigger picture of the continuation by Muslims of enslaving anyone. That should have been the reaction of anyone who condemns slavery. It seems by your response, that slavery is no big deal.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 3:11pm
What is Israel's Proper (border)? Can anyone define these borders?
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 1:57pm
from the jordan river to the potomac.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 3:15pm
This is just another example by your response of further religious bigotry rather than the bigger picture of the continuation by Muslims of enslaving anyone.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 3:11pm
especially those muslim tomato farmers down in la florida
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 3:18pm
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 3:09pm
gren,
I recall that Muslims controlled Jerusalem continuously from the time of the crusaders 1147-1947. You stated that Jewish holy sites existed in Jerusalem in 1947. This implies that Muslims (Palestinians) protected these sacred sites for over 800 years. Let's compare that to the fate of Islamic Mosques and Christian holy sites inside the Israeli Green Line. Most of the Mosques and churches were demolished and many were converted to warehouses for livestock's and night clubs. Even Muslim graveyards did not escape Israeli vandalism. The Israeli Army converted the largest graveyard in Gaza to parking lot for its tanks during the invasion of Gaza last year.
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 3:45pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 3:45pm | ignore this person | warn this person
If you can back up that claim with a credible cite or 2, I'd be happy (well, actually not happy) to take a look at it.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 4:10pm
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 3:45pm | ignore this person | warn this person
BTW, inside the Green Line means Israel. Cites relating to allegations of damage caused by the Gaza War are not what I'm asking for.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 4:26pm
Show us the demolished Synagogues in Jerusalem. Put your Zionist urge to steal more Palestinian land in check and peace can be closer than you think.
Posted by CripThink at 10/29/2009 @ 1:47pm
Does that post mean you agree with the rest of the list?
"shelling of Israeli villages from the Golan Heights, closure of the Strait of Tiran, fedayeen attacks from Jordan..."
But of course history suggests this conflict is barely beginning. The current mess in the Balkans has its roots in the fourteenth century, hit its bloody climax when it ignited WWI and is still dragging out. It seems likely that many years from now the bullets will still be flying and the children of Gaza will still be handed candy when an "enemy" lies bleeding in the sand.
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 4:30pm
If you can back up that claim with a credible cite or 2, I'd be happy (well, actually not happy) to take a look at it.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 4:10pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Israeli Abuses of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine and Al Quds Al Sharif
By : Mr. Abdulaziz ‘Izzat Al Khayyat & Dr. Raouf Abu Jaber
http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/ publications/Protection%20of%20islamic %20and%20chrestian%20holy%20sites%20in %20Palestine/p10.php
The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - ISESCO-
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 4:43pm
"BTW, can somebody please get rightwingnutcase to explain why he cares/cared so much about the "people of Iraq under Saddam's brutality"....or the "people of Afghanistan under the Taliban"....
if both those people are "evil Muslims"?!??!?!?!?!??"
I've never said all Muslims are "evil". Quite the contrary. I've never met an American Muslim I didn't like. The people of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are actually heroically brave (though the Saudis and Afghans are barbarians).
My view is that most Palestinians are evil. 7 out of every 10 Palestinians openly admit to believing it is okay to kidnap, torture, and murder Israeli civilians. All Palestinians are in need of serious help and most should be put in a mental institution. They are dangerously out of touch with reality.
Islam is an evil religion. Its adherents may be good or evil, but they would certainly be better off without it. The truth is that the Taliban are simply following Mohammed's example when they abduct and repeatedly rape women, gas and throw acid in the faces of little girls for going to school, and crush gays with huge cement walls to kill them.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/29/2009 @ 4:44pm
Didn't mean to indicate a connection between the Balkans and the Israel/Gaza fighting.
Just meant it as an analogy: the Balkans has seen centuries of strife, the year 2448 will probably see just as much strife in Jerusalem as the year 1948 did.
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 4:44pm
Its adherents may be good or evil, but they would certainly be better off without it.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/29/2009 @ 4:44pm
.
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Careful...
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You're starting to sound like Christopher Hitchens!
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 4:47pm
Organization - ISESCO-
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 4:43pm | ignore this person | warn this person
With all due respect, I read through that publication. It's basically a bunch of BS propoganda. It does not document Israeli destruction of mosques and churches.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 5:06pm
My view is that most Palestinians are evil. 7 out of every 10 Palestinians openly admit to believing it is okay to kidnap, torture, and murder Israeli civilians.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/29/2009 @ 4:44pm
According to whom and according to what question? If you were asked, would you support the kidnap, torture, and murder of Iranian civilians if we weer at war with Iran, you'd probably say yes.
If you were to ask the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto if they believed it was okay to kidnap, torture, and murder Nazi supporters, they'd say yes.
You haven;t even left the United States, let alone traveled to Israel and the west Bank. It is you that is dangerously out of touch with reality.
Mohammed never preached that it was good to abduct and repeatedly rape women, gas and throw acid in the faces of little girls for going to school, and crush gays with huge cement walls to kill them.
Mind you the Bible does instruct men who rape women to marry them. Does that mean all rapists are adhereing to Christian teachings?
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:13pm
With all due respect, I read through that publication. It's basically a bunch of BS propoganda. It does not document Israeli destruction of mosques and churches.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 5:06pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Funny, thats what Bibi says about the Goldstone Report! United Nations is full of BS propaganda.
Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) – a wing of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and with strong links to UNESCO.....
Oh....that's right - UN has it in for Israel......
okay Gren......
I assume you won't be bothered to do further research.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 6:14pm
Remember that from 1948 -67, Jews were not allowed into East Jerusalem to worship at their holy sites, despite the fact that Jerusalem was designated as an international city, and not part of the Palestinian state, in the 1947 UN resolution.
Posted by gren at 10/29/2009 @ 3:09pm
Nor were the Palestinians, who were driven off their land in 1948, allowed to return to their homes.
if you want to argue that the Jewish settlement blocs adjacent to the Green Line should remain Jewish, then the right of return of Palestinians should also be recognized.
Can you enlighten me as to what massacre was carried out by Palestinian militia after the UN resolution?
I agree that a modification of the 1967 line to extend Israeli sovereignty to 5 % of the West Bank, with an equal area land compensation back to the Palestinians, is just.
I applaud your sense of justice and common sense Gren.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:20pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 3:07pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Here's what life brings for Christians living with the "religion of peace" in Indonesia (pictures are not for the weak)
That would be the same Indonesia that the US armed and supported, while it slaughtered the locals in East Timor. In fact, when the Tsunami hit the region, the UK supplied atatck aircraft to Indonesia to suppress an uprising in Ache.
"A report on how "wonderful" life is for Christians in Iran
It's not a bed of roses for Christians in Israel either. http://tinyurl.com/2m6w3o
Christians Under Attack http://tinyurl.com/y8mbh63
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:30pm
I assume you won't be bothered to do further research.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 6:14pm
Actually, you probably should do some research yourself. There are ISRAELI sources documenting crimes by Israelis during the conflict, just as there are French reports of crimes by French soldiers fighting in World War II or US reports of soldiers hanged for crimes during the Civil War.
But to what purpose would you quote them? Does it justify the extinction of the State of Israel because they cannot recruit soldiers from the rank of saints?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 6:31pm
This is just another example by your response of further religious bigotry rather than the bigger picture of the continuation by Muslims of enslaving anyone.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 3:11pm
Israel happens to be the epicenter of the sex slavery in the world. What's the best that wingnuts like Larry and rightwingnutcase will ignore it?
Is this an example of religious bigotry rather than the bigger picture of the continuation by Israelis enslaving anyone?
"Calling human trafficking one of the greatest human rights abuses of our time, Canadian journalist and social activist Victor Malarek addressed the Jewish community at a Montreal synagogue last Thursday.
Promoting a book he has written on the subject, Malarek said destitute Third World and Eastern European females as young as 12 are tricked into leaving their homelands with promises of wealth and prosperity in the West, as well as Israel. Instead, they are sold into the sex trade by organized crime, gangs, pimps and brothel owners.
"Newspaper ads from modelling and employment agencies promise exciting jobs, but the women are duped," Malarek told the Jewish Tribune. "They must submit, or they are raped, beaten and tortured. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone. It is a human rights issue the Jewish community knows about. They have a voice and they must use it." "
Julie Lesser – Jewish Tribune March 30, 2006
"Last year, the United Nations named Israel as one of the main destinations in the world for trafficked women, according to the BBC. "
"Up to 10000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone."
Sex slavery and Israel's failure to fight the growing trade http://tinyurl.com/5buqge
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:41pm
But to what purpose would you quote them? Does it justify the extinction of the State of Israel because they cannot recruit soldiers from the rank of saints?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 6:31pm
Who is justifying the extinction of the State of Israel?
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:43pm
In StandWithUs' extensive experience covering anti-Israel events, speakers, and organizations, we have found certain patterns: they exclude context, draw moral equivalencies, defend defamations and one-sided narratives under the banner of free speech, use half-truths and outright lies to stain Israel and Jews, or promote speakers who delegitimize Israel. Unfortunately, J Street has exhibited a pattern of doing some or all of these things.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/28/2009 @ 8:14pm
That's funny.
1. Excluding context, like the Israeli occupation. 2. Draw moral equivalencies - America committed acts of genocide centuries ago so it's OK for Israel to do it. 3. Defend defamations and one-sided narratives under the banner of free speech - eg. the ADL and AIPAC atackign any criticism of Israel as being motivated by anti Semitism 4. Use half-truths and outright lies - like arguing that the rockets from Gaza are being fired for no reason and that Hamas, rather than Israel, violated the ceasefire in 2008. 5. Promote speakers who delegitimize - take your pick.
The only unfortunately thing about J Street, is how similar it is to AIPAC.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:53pm
Oh....that's right - UN has it in for Israel......
okay Gren......
I assume you won't be bothered to do further research.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 6:14pm
Of course the UN has it in for Israel. That is obvious.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:11pm
Of course the UN has it in for Israel. That is obvious.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:11pm
That would be the same UN that created and legitimized Israel right Larry?
Typical right wing paranoia.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 7:24pm
BTW.
The sound of crickets you're hearing is Larry's and rightnigmutcase's response to Israel's sex slavery trade.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 7:29pm
But to what purpose would you quote them? Does it justify the extinction of the State of Israel because they cannot recruit soldiers from the rank of saints?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 6:31pm | ignore this person | warn this person
It is not the soldiers that I want to hold accountable - up the ladder if you will. They were carrying out orders.
Please don't compare Gaza to World War II.
And, Gren wanted to know (or not know really) about Israeli desecration of Christian and Islamic holy sites. He just says BS. He asked for a cite - he got one. Anything that isn't "kosher" on Israel, he rejects. The attitude from many in Israel is similar.
If we can't be honest, how are we ever going to live together?
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 7:35pm
The sound of crickets you're hearing is Larry's and rightnigmutcase's response to Israel's sex slavery trade.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 7:29pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Hmmmmm................
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 7:38pm
Of course the UN has it in for Israel. That is obvious.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:11pm
Maybe for cause Larry?
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 7:43pm
Of course the UN has it in for Israel. That is obvious.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:11pm
Maybe for cause Larry?
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 7:43pm
yes, the "cause" is because they are Jews
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:51pm
yes, the "cause" is because they are Jews
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:51pm
I guess the UN also had it in for Saddam right Larry? It's not like he did anything to warrant scrutiny or condemnation is it?
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 7:54pm
Posted by Mask at 10/29/2009 @ 11:27am |
Can "spectrum" occupy such a twisted bandwidth? I guess it surely can, my friend.
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 10/29/2009 @ 7:59pm
The significance of J Street is to a large extent overstated. Just take a look at their reaction to the Goldstone Report:http://www.jstreet.org/blog/?p=641.
Posted by nkurland at 10/29/2009 @ 8:00pm
The significance of J Street is to a large extent overstated. Just take a look at their reaction to the Goldstone Report:http://www.jstreet.org/blog/?p=641.
Posted by nkurland at 10/29/2009 @ 8:00pm
You summed it up pretty well nkurland. As usual, they present a false choice, like the choice between Republicans and Democrats. they are just 2 cheeks of the same backside.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 8:04pm
yes, the "cause" is because they are Jews
Posted by antisocialist at 10/29/2009 @ 7:51pm
so predictable Larry..........
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 8:10pm
The significance of J Street is to a large extent overstated. Just take a look at their reaction to the Goldstone Report:http://www.jstreet.org/blog/?p=641.
Posted by nkurland at 10/29/2009 @ 8:00pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Kind of looks that way.
Their rhetoric sounds good (as if platitudes were good), but practice is another story - as always.
I can see why Dreyfuss was less than enthusiastic about "change you can believe in."
The label of "Jewish liberals/moderates" may be a misnomer, and this may be public relations more than anything else.
Obviously, this isn't a Jewish problem to be left to the Jewish community to resolve.
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 8:23pm
"Pro-Israel and Pro-peace"
That's a good one.
Why not "Pro-Hitler and pro-peace," it makes about as much sense.
Anyone who believes the Israelis are capable of living in peace alongside anyone has obviously been asleep for 6o years.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:10pm
7 out of every 10 Palestinians openly admit to believing it is okay to kidnap, torture, and murder Israeli civilians.
Posted by rightwingnutcase at 10/29/2009 @ 4:44pm
so the viceroy humanely shoots rockets at them from helicopters.
my lord, you're just as insane as lady macbarbie.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 9:24pm
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:10pm
i think smashing this colonial mistake is akin to desiring the smashing of canada or the u.s..
after all, we too prospered thanks to an ever expanding ethnic scrub-a-dub.
perhaps israel
[well, their governmental policies; how much of what your government does meets your approval?]
needs to calm down, take a good look around, and understand they've got a pretty good deal going.
who needs more?
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 9:28pm
hi frosty
well...that's certainly Israel's relentless talking point, ie, the US was founded on the extermination of the indigenous population and why should Americans get to have all the fun?
I think there are innumerable and powerful counter-arguments to this excuse for policies of ethnic cleansing, which Israel continues to engage in as we type. The jewish state was founded on ethnic cleansing and terrorism and continues the policy. Justification for these abominations by way of referencing past crimes in other places is a blueprint for never-ending holocaust, obviously.
Israel certainly is not a state like America, Canada or any other. Indeed, Israel emphasizes this fact at every opportunity. They are a nuclear equipped menace to humankind. The real winners in the permanent shutdown of Israel are diaspora Jews, who created everything we admire in Jewish culture before a violent minority of Jews---gangsters and scum, founded Israel and disgraced world Jewry with their racism, stupidity and viciousness.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:41pm
who needs more?
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/29/2009 @ 9:28pm
In Israel's case, it's a case of viability. Even though it has annexed most of the fresh water from the occupied territories, Israel needs more supplies to survive.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 9:43pm
Hey, while we are all getting excited talking about the religions of peace and what not:
1. Anyone want to talk about the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NFLT), the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda, and the Ambonese Christian militias?
2. The history of the Christian church that includes Catholic vs. Protestant violence, Inquisitions, Crusades, witch hunts and the like?
Or is this just yet another case of double standards? It's rather rich for "Christians" to be talking about the problems of Islam extremism considering their living traditions of the same.
Posted by srjenkins at 10/29/2009 @ 9:46pm
I should have prefaced that with the following.
Israel's population needs to grow to remain viable. Not only are Israelis are deserting Israel at the same rate they are arriving, but those who are leaving are the skilled workers, while those arriving are unskilled and relatively poor.
Of those that have left, most have no plans to return and half of the youth polled in Israel said they woudl leave if they could maintain the same standard of living elsewhere.
Anyway, Israel's fresh water supplies are running out so it's eying off the Litani River in southern Lebanon.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 9:50pm
found the dreyfuss article full of bizarre claims.
"Still, it's true that many fearful Israeli voters are flocking to far-right politicians precisely because they are panicked about the loss of American support. "
Rubbish. Whether one looks at labor or Likud, the racism and exterminationist mindset is the same and it has always been this way in israel, despite what people like Uri Avnery would have you believe. It was the lovely Golda Meir who said "there is no such thing as a Palestinian" while the great "dove" Rabin actually presided over the largest ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Israeli history--the expulsions from Lyddah and Remleh.
" Earlier, right-wing Israeli governments have fallen apart or been voted out when faced with a possible deterioration of US-Israel relations."
Huh?
Who?
Nonsense.
The tel aviv poll after gaza tells you all you need to know about the Israeli in quotes "people"-- 94% were ecstatic at the napalming of schools and hospitals and the mass murder of police cadets. "Moderate Israeli" carries the same authority as "moderate nazi" --an absurd oxymoron.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:54pm
Or is this just yet another case of double standards? It's rather rich for "Christians" to be talking about the problems of Islam extremism considering their living traditions of the same. Posted by srjenkins at 10/29/2009 @ 9:46pm
quite.
Small wonder when the muslims left andalusian Spain, the Jews followed them, having enjoyed protection under Moslem rule and (rightly) fearing severe persecution from the Christians.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:00pm
The tel aviv poll after gaza tells you all you need to know about the Israeli in quotes "people"-- 94% were ecstatic at the napalming of schools and hospitals and the mass murder of police cadets. "Moderate Israeli" carries the same authority as "moderate nazi" --an absurd oxymoron.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:54pm
It wasn't napalm, it was White Phosphorous, 500/1000/2000 lb bombs, and dime bombs. Napalm is so 70's.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 10:03pm
Small wonder when the muslims left andalusian Spain, the Jews followed them, having enjoyed protection under Moslem rule and (rightly) fearing severe persecution from the Christians.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:00pm
Even more ironic is that the Jews were the victims of the worst crime in human history at the hands of Christians.
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 10:05pm
hi shingo
well..not exactly. israel undoubtedly used napalm in its recent massacre in lebanon. White phosphorus is usually talked about with respect to the gaza massacre, though it is hard for me to believe Israel would forego the temptation to use it on palestinians, Let's not forget, they used it on US when they attacked the USS Liberty, another atrocity I'm sure I needn't revisit.
Of course, credit where credit is due--the technique of adding white phosphorus to napalm so that it continues to burn human flesh even under water was due to yankee ingenuity:
"We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot – if the gooks [Vietnamese] were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene – now it sticks like shit to a blanket. But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so's to make it burn better. It'll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning."
http://www.thetruthaboutdow.org/article.php?id=1299
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:11pm
Of course the UN has it in for Israel. That is obvious. Posted by antisocialist
So does Amnesty International So does Human Rights Watch So do Physicians for Human Rights So does the Red Cross So does the Jewish jurist Goldstone So does Israel's leading daily ha'aretz So does Israel's own human rights bureau Bt'selem So do many Israeli journalists
all of whom document Israel's abominations and crimes against humanity in nauseating technicolor
gosh, antisocialist...what do you suggest we DO about all this "anti-semitism" ?
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:33pm
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:33pm
And that's not all. Even Jewish organizations such as B'Tselem and Rabbis for Human Rights have taken up anti-semitism, according to anti's definition. The charge of anti-semitism isn't intended to refute, but merely to deflect.
Posted by nkurland at 10/29/2009 @ 10:55pm
gosh, antisocialist...what do you suggest we DO about all this "anti-semitism" ?
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:33pm
Awesome comeback. Larry's head will be spinning for days with this reality overload.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 12:40am
So does Amnesty International So does Human Rights Watch So do Physicians for Human Rights So does the Red Cross So does the Jewish jurist Goldstone So does Israel's leading daily ha'aretz So does Israel's own human rights bureau Bt'selem So do many Israeli journalists
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 10:33pm
You forgot to mention the Jewish UN Human Rights Rappoteur, Richard Falk, Israeli historians, Illan Pappe and Tom Segev, Israeli journalist Idith Zertal, Akiva Eldar, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and Uri Avnery.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 12:50am
Finally!! American political leaders can be seen as supporting Israel without commiting to right wing fanatics in order to do so.
Posted by wvcole at 10/30/2009 @ 02:31am
"Finally!! American political leaders can be seen as supporting Israel without commiting to right wing fanatics in order to do so."
"Finally"? "Seen as"?
Posted by jones at 10/30/2009 @ 06:27am
Posted by A_Pax_On_Your_Houses at 10/29/2009 @ 7:59pm
The extremists feed each other, Pax.
They perpetuate each other in fact.
"Israel Right or Wrong/Palestinians are the problem" Righties like Larry feed the image to the Left of anything not vehemently anti-Israel means you are a "Zionist AIPAC stooge".
"Israel is Nazi Germany-redux" types like OneVote feed the image anything not vehemntly pro-Israel means you are a "anti-Semite who wants Israel destroyed."
If you see what I mean? One extreme allows no moderation, the other extreme allows no moderation....and they use the opposing extreme to justify criticisms of anybody who doesn't fully 100% agree with THEIR position.
Example- Call for an end to settlements? The Larry types say "It's Israel's land!...why can't they settle it! You just want to see Israel weakened!"....then the OV types say "Hell, yes...if they don't quit the settlements, embargo their ass!"....then a modest proposal means youu "want Israel destroyed" and Larry uses OV as "proof". Linking the extreme to the moderate.
Or the reverse. Propose Hamas must cut ties to Iran in exchange for more international aid? The OneVote types say "Why should they? They're battling for their survival! Cut US aid to Israel!". The Larry types then say "See? All you guys are interested in isn't peace, but destroying Israel's capacity to defend itself...OV proves it!" Thus linking the extreme to the moderates again.
Moderates get isolated...almost as if the extremists were actually ...working together...to do it.
Posted by Mask at 10/30/2009 @ 07:48am
Posted by OneVote at 10/29/2009 @ 6:14pm | ignore this person | warn this person
I expect more from you. I did not reject the report on the basis of its authorship or sponsorship. You raised those issues. I accurately responded that the substance is BS. The publication primarily identifies the Jewish worship at the Kotel, the Israeli clearing of the slum that Jordan erected in front of the kotel after 1948 to remove the kotel from sight, and the Israeli archeological digging and tunnelling at the kotel area as instances of mosque destruction -- which is nonsense. The publication further identifes the Israeli use of a church as a temporary garrison upon liberating Jerusalem in 1967 as a desstruction of a church. The "attempted" alleged destruction of a mosque near Tel Aviv, which the publication admits did not occur, is another "example" of mosque "destruction" identified by the report. The publication alleges some theft of icons from Jerusalem churches, but I have no idea if that is factual, and that doesn't constitute "destruction" of a church.
Thus, as I said, the substance of the publication is BS, lacks facts, and does not support the very serious allegation made against Israel. The publication is malicious propoganda.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 08:15am
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:20pm | ignore this person | warn this person
http://www.zionism-israel.com/Gush_Etzion_Massacre.htm
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 08:18am
But to what purpose would you quote them? Does it justify the extinction of the State of Israel because they cannot recruit soldiers from the rank of saints?
Posted by Mistral at 10/29/2009 @ 6:31pm
Who is justifying the extinction of the State of Israel?
Posted by Shingo at 10/29/2009 @ 6:43pm
Take a look at SmashIsrael's post of 10/29/2009 @ 9:41pm
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 08:33am
Moderates get isolated...almost as if the extremists were actually ...working together...to do it.
Posted by Mask at 10/30/2009 @ 07:48am | ignore this person | warn this person
Excellent point. The problem with our discussions is that it is not an exercise to develop and promote knowledge and understanding, but rather a game to try and win.
The problem with ideologues is that they come to each situation with a pre-existing paradigmatic narrative, which compels them to interpret, contextualize, oppose and ignore the situation-specific facts as necessary to preserve and promote the pre-existing narrative. Being "moderate" need not mean simply trying to be centrist, as located by the extremists. It can be "pragmatic", which seeks an effective, realistic and fair synthesis from competing claims and interests.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 08:48am
The real winners in the permanent shutdown of Israel are diaspora Jews, who created everything we admire in Jewish culture before a violent minority of Jews---gangsters and scum, founded Israel and disgraced world Jewry with their racism, stupidity and viciousness.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/29/2009 @ 9:4
Of course you are free to indulge in your hatred. But take ownership of it. The overwhelming majority (maybe 90%)of Diaspora Jews support the existence of the state of Israel, even if a significant minority of us oppose particular policies and actions of Israel. Do not invoke us in support of your hatred of Israel. We are fine without your "concern" or "admiration."
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 10:11am
Posted by Mask at 10/30/2009 @ 07:48am | ignore this person | warn this person
not an excellent point at all but but an absurd point that is completely free of facts.
ALL the concessions have been on the Palestinian side and absolutely NONE on the Israeli side. The Palestinians, including Hamas and backed by the entire Arab league, (not to mention virtually every other UN member state) have over and over called for a two state resolution under international law, with a "just resolution of the refugee problem." Israel flatly rejects this and attacks hospitals and schools with with bombs and phosphorus. Who are the moderates and who are the fanatics? It's quite obvious to any honest person.
What is the "moderate" approach to Israeli Nazism? Mask has no answer for that, but just posts the identical fabrications over and over and over again, as though they had some chance of gaining credibility through tiresome repetition.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:14am
posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 10:11am |
Rather than solicit the opinions of "90% of Jews" --so many of whom are pretty useless, we ought to select our subset of Jews with care. Einstein, Primo Levi, Israel Shahak, Philip Roth, Sara Roy, Noam Chomsky---all Jews of insight and character recognize "Judeo-Nazism" (as the great Jewish polymath Yeshayahu Leibowitz termed it) for what it is.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:22am
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:22am | ignore this person | warn this person
Must be hard for you to exist in a world with so many "useless" Jews. My heart bleeds for you.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 10:32am
Nothing unique about Jews, gren--either in terms of their talent or their mediocrity. Sadly, there are ten million Bernie Maddoffs for every Albert Einstein. That's pretty much true of any group you want to look at honestly, rather than through the distorting lens of zionism, which presents all Jews as a composite of a holocaust victim and Vladimir Horowitz. But most jews are neither. My point is that Jews of character revile Israel, because that is the only possible response of an informed individual--Jew or non-Jew, to this disgusting terror state that has caused so much horror and suffering in the world.
If as you say, 90% of Jews support Israel (a point I don't for a minute believe) then that is much to the general discredit of Jews. But so what? Do you want to stand with the 90% of Americans who reject evolution? I don't.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:52am
Rather than solicit the opinions of "90% of Jews" --so many of whom are pretty useless,....
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:22am
Sucks for you, the remaining 10% control the finance, fiscal policy, and a large part of the foreign policies of this country, huh?
Posted by Happy at 10/30/2009 @ 10:58am
I don't agree with that at all. Certainly, vermin are in control of our foreign policy. Some are Jewish vermin--many are not. In any case, it doesn't suck for me, but it certainly does for the children being burnt alive (or rounded up and tortured) by Israel and the children being torn to shreds in Obama's cowardly drone strikes in Afghanistan.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 11:06am
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:52am
another racist anti-semite has found the Nation blogs. I think the Aryan Brotherhood racist and islamic hate sites must be promoting the Nation as a good forum for their bigotry and to promote the destruction of Israel.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 11:10am
1. Anyone want to talk about the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NFLT), the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda, and the Ambonese Christian militias?
2. The history of the Christian church that includes Catholic vs. Protestant violence, Inquisitions, Crusades, witch hunts and the like?
Or is this just yet another case of double standards? It's rather rich for "Christians" to be talking about the problems of Islam extremism considering their living traditions of the same.
Posted by srjenkins at 10/29/2009 @ 9:46pm
Despite the fact that you KNOW that no NT scripture calls for violence against non Christians, you continue to defend people who would kill you if they met you, while you lie about Christianity.
the Quran is dedicated to either the death or subservient position of all non Muslims to be enforced by govts.
But you keep resorting to labelling people who were engaged in aberrant behavior that is not approved of by NT scripture. That helps re-enforce your bigotry towards Christianity (yeah, I know you deny it, but your words say differently).
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 11:16am
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 10:52am
another racist anti-semite has found the Nation blogs. I think the Aryan Brotherhood racist and islamic hate sites must be promoting the Nation as a good forum for their bigotry and to promote the destruction of Israel.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 11:10am
But what does SmashIsrael think the solution to the problem is? Return to the 1967 borders? Return to the 1948 borders? Return to the 1973 borders? Liquidate the state entirely? The handle "SmashIsrael" seems to indicate that there should be no Israeli state at all (the Arab position in 1948), as do the phrases SmashIsrael uses:
"menace to humankind"
"gangsters and scum"
"vermin"
"Anyone who believes the Israelis are capable of living in peace alongside anyone has obviously been asleep for 6o years."
What would Israel have to do to make SmashIsrael happy?
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 12:00pm
another racist anti-semite has found the Nation blogs. I think the Aryan Brotherhood racist and islamic hate sites must be promoting the Nation as a good forum for their bigotry and to promote the destruction of Israel. Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 11:10am | ignore this person | warn this person
anti
Please do me the courtesy of using the correct moronic slur.."self-hating Jew." I don't think it's too much to ask that lunatics like you stick rigorously to your own warped nomenclature.
Thanks in advance!
ps: The virulent hatred of non-Jews most certainly is a key factor in doctrinaire Judaism, reflected in many sacred texts, particularly, the halacha, as Israel Shahak and others have shown. Misogyny and racism are also central. You really ought to learn a bit about the religious culture you blindly defend.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:07pm
ps: The virulent hatred of non-Jews most certainly is a key factor in doctrinaire Judaism, reflected in many sacred texts, particularly, the halacha, as Israel Shahak and others have shown. Misogyny and racism are also central. You really ought to learn a bit about the religious culture you blindly defend.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:07pm
What's the matter, no cell meetings at the mosque this morning?
Or perhaps I mislabel you and you are simply a member of the aryan brotherhood and your 64 chevvy truck broke down?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 12:14pm
Oh great. Just what we need - another Israeli Lobby. American support for Israel - or more properly the termination of it - is not the exclusive business of American Jews. In fact it is their business no more and no less than that of other Americans. To claim otherwise is to be a Zionist. So in fact we have here another Zionist Lobby. We have a Dem/Republican Party to give us an illusion of differences in foreign policy, an illusion badly shattered in the last few months now that Obama has put more troops in Iraq/AfPak than there were under Bush in 2007. So I suppose we need an AIPAC/J-St. to create the same illusion of a "good" and "bad" Lobby. It is a sign of weakness of the Lobby in the US that they have had to go this route. But it is only more of the same as the J-St. position on Iran sanctions already shows. It is too late for a two state solution. There needs to be one secular state for all living in historic Palestine, including those forded out should they wish to return. But no more Jewish colonists from Euro-America. Colonialism is a thing of the past. And J St. is nothing but one of the last gasps of that past - pretttified, it is true, but as a whited sepulchre. john walsh
Posted by jvwalshmd at 10/30/2009 @ 12:17pm
What would Israel have to do to make SmashIsrael happy? Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 12:00pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Hi mistral
There are several possible ways to answer your question. Are you asking what I think OUGHT to happen? That's easy. I'm fine with the international consensus--full peace in exchange for full withdrawal to the pre-june 67 borders and a just resolution of the refugee crisis. The only additional proviso that I would add is that the newly minted state must be granted the means to defend itself from a violent, belligerent neighbor. That would mean that the Palestinians must have control of their airspace, a modern standing army and suitable anti-aircraft to prevent the continuation of the mindless Nazi aggression that has been waged against them for over 60 years.
Of course, no one believes that the Palestinians will be allowed to defend themselves in any future state, which I think renders the whole matter pretty much null and void.
I have great respect for courageous proponents of a one state resolution, where all citizens are granted equality under the law. Certainly, that is the best solution. Again, the chances of Israel ever agreeing to that are essentially zero.
In sum, the most likely scenario is that Israel successfully completes its oft-stated goal, advertised without shame by the zionist pioneers of the Jewish state, to throughly rid as much land as possible of the native inhabitants, through murder, starvation and aggression. I don't see anyone stopping them.
As for the Palestinians, I think they ought to face the fact that they need a miracle of the sort the Vietnamese managed, defeating through sheer force of will and perseverence, an enormously more powerful, and utterly ruthless foe.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:20pm
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:07pm
There is no shame that a 2500 year old Torah text, an 1800 year old Mishna text and a 1600 year old Talmud text contain provisions and statements which appear sexist and ethno-privileged by contemporary standards. Conservative and reform Judaism expressly reject those anachronisms; even Orthodox Judaism reinterprets and/or qualifies most of them. But compared the the then-existing standards when the Torah, Mishna and Talmud were produced, those texts reflect fairly progressive policies and values.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 12:35pm
hi gren
I'm not going to pretend to be a knowledgeable amateur, much less, an expert on Judaica. I'd only say that the problem--as with all religion--is that the ideology is set in place and can not be altered. You can't have a modern Seder that's really a Seder without referencing the angel of death who spares Jews and murders the first born Arab child. You can't can't celebrate Passover without perpetuating the ancient rancor between Arabs and Jews and casting Jews as eternal victims, with a whole lot of transparent hogwash about an expulsion from Egypt that never happened. We celebrate Rosh Hashana, but express no atonement for massacring hundreds of children in Gaza. and so forth.
Cool Jews freed themselves from this poisonous ideology a long time ago.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:48pm
I'm fine with the international consensus--full peace in exchange for full withdrawal to the pre-june 67 borders
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:20pm
It could work. Of course it would have saved a lot of pain if the Arabs had agreed to the 1967 border BACK IN 1967. But why do you pick 1967? Why not 1948? The Israelis increased the size of their state after they were attacked in 1948. Would you allow them to keep their gains from the War of Independence? Are you allowing them to keep those gains because it is necessary for their security? Why wouldn't you allow them to keep the territory they have now for their security?
What penalty should the Arabs pay for attacking Israel? Should they lose some territory, as the Nazis lost East Prussia?
Now suppose the settlement that you describe was reached. It might happen, Israelis have been slaughtered for 61 years, from Jerusalem to Buenos Aires to Munich, so they might be tired and desperate enough to agree.
Suppose the settlement that you describe was reached. Then suppose the Arabs attacked AGAIN. Would you then agree that Israel (assuming it survived) deserves a bit more territory as a buffer against perpetual aggression?
By the way, are you the same poster who wrote above that Israelis are "gangsters and scum"?
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 12:55pm
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:48pm | ignore this person | warn this person
It used to bother me that I was not cool, but I've learned to live without it.
I will talk only for myself, as an individual and a father. I have what I consider a fairly traditional seder, though my dad is unhappy that I skip the boring parts. As you know, when we recite the ten plagues, we spill a drop of wine out of our cups for each plague, and explain that even in our protection and freedom, our joy is diminished if it involves the suffering of others. Last year my family and I dropped two additional drops of wine out of our cups -- one for the people of Gaza, one for the people of Sderot. Judaism for me is not about victimization, and the ancient myth of the Egyptian Exodus (my sons understood it was a myth (though a classic) around the same age that their non-Jewish friends on the block understood that there was no Santa claus (myths have a time, place and role, and quite frankly are virtually unavoidable no matter how progressive and egalitarian and rational a culture).
Some individuals and community confuse myth with history, symbolism for fact. But there literal fundamentalism does not discredit the tradition or those who understand how to practice it lovingly.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:01pm
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 12:55pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Thx for your post. There's too much hate, not enough understanding and good faith. keep the faith.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:08pm
It used to bother me that I was not cool, but I've learned to live without it.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:01pm
Hey, this kid is engaging in nonconformity, let's take him out back and apply some peer pressure!
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 1:08pm
Hi mistral
yes..on a different computer now. I am also "smashisrael".. apologies for any confusion. (No apologies however for my characterization of people like Netanyahu, Olmert, Sharon, Barak, Jabotinsky, Livni, Leiberman and so on. I think "gangsters and scum" is perfectly descriptive of these individuals.)
If the point you make is that the land theft carried out by Israel in 1948 is really just as egregious as the theft carried out in 1967 or the theft that continues every hour today, then we are in agreement.
You rehearse the same shopworn mantra about Israel accepting and the Palestinians rejecting the original division of the land by the british mandate. Of course this popular trope is quite mad on the face of it. Why wouldn't Jews who had never set foot in the so called Holy Land agree to acquire, with the stroke of a pen, 50% of someone else's land? Kind of a no brainer, if you'll pardon the neologism. We do know that this was seen by the Zionists as merely a stepping stone. It is monstrously at odds with the historical record to claim that the Zionist founders saw the partition as defining the borders of their legitimate state. It was the first step in an expansionist settler enterprise, hell-bent on acquiring as much additional land as possible by force of arms. All the early zionists from ben Gurion onward are on record as stating this ambition quite candidly.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:11pm
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:11pm | ignore this person | warn this person
We could begin an argument about whether Ben Gurion and the other leading Zionists were practical and pragmatic enough to accept the reality of 1/2 their dream, and give up the other 1/2, but there would be no benefit so let's not and say we did. However, the fact, as opposed the the speculation, is that the Palestinian militias and the neighboring arab states launched an all-out war against the new state of Israel trying to destroy it immediately. You want to justify and/or excuse that rejectionist military aggression? That's your business how you want to spin it. But facts are facts.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:16pm
hi gren
The facts are not quite as pat as you imply. On the one hand, we have a premeditated plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, at least according to Ilan Pappe, who presents a pretty compelling case in his book. (As you probably know, he was forced out of the Jewish state by his lovely compatriots who responded to his scholarship by threatening to murder his two sons).
On the other hand, this business of the barbarian Arab hordes attacking poor little Israel, which managed by some miracle to fight them off despite the superiority of arab forces, has been thoroughly discredited. LBJ said "they won't attack and if they do, you'll whip the hell out of them" while Menachem Begin said of Nasser's supposed plans to attack in 67 " We must be honest. … We decided to attack him."
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:29pm
It was the first step in an expansionist settler enterprise, hell-bent on acquiring as much additional land as possible by force of arms. All the early zionists from ben Gurion onward are on record as stating this ambition quite candidly.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:11pm
Of course the Arabs did them a mighty big favour then, by attacking in 1948, giving the Israelis an excuse to acquire territory.
Also, you use the phrase "someone else's land." Does that mean NONE of the land in the Middle East should have become part of Israel?
Are there any Arab leaders you would classify as "gangsters and scum" and do they deserve to have their countries wiped out as well?
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 1:30pm
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:01pm
I feel sorry for you that you treat the pesach as myth. Without the pesach and the haggadah, there is no Israel, there is likely no Jewish faith. You are depriving your son of the greatness of his faith.
If it isn't true, then Israel is a lie and does not deserve the land occupies.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 1:35pm
Of course the Arabs did them a mighty big favour then, by attacking in 1948, giving the Israelis an excuse to acquire territory. Also, you use the phrase "someone else's land." Does that mean NONE of the land in the Middle East should have become part of Israel? Are there any Arab leaders you would classify as "gangsters and scum" and do they deserve to have their countries wiped out as well? Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 1:30pm
Since when did the israelis need an excuse to acquire territory? As i said, they are on record as saying they planned to force the Palestinians from their land and take it.
You present 1948 as an assault by Palestinians on Israel, though it was 750,000 Palestinians terrorized and forced from their homes in a premeditated ethnic cleansing.
Many arab leaders are scum. So what? Which among the Arab states rounds up children of the wrong religion and tortures them in their dungeons or bombs their hospitals and schools with US-supplied weapons? None that I'm aware of. If there are any, certainly they deserve to join Israel and Nazi Germany on the garbage heap of history.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:40pm
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:29pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Read the Benny Morris account of the 1948 war. Pappe's research is sound, but his conclusions are not sufficiently supported by the facts. Morris does a much better job, (in my wiorthless opinion and in the more valuable opinion of many professional historians) of keeping his conclusions closely tailored to the facts.
Re: LBJ and Begin -- first, my post was limited to the 1948 war, in keeping with the scope of your own comment to which I was responding. Second, LBJ was wrong about a lot of things. I hardly expect you to rely on his cowboy-like platitudes. Begin -- he was spinning for his purposes. The statement has to be seen in context. It is easy now to say that Israel did not have to launch a pre-emptive strike in self-defense, since by doing so it won a smashing victory. If israel had let the Arabs strike first, their initial assault might have made a similar headway as was the case in 1973. But in 67, even limited Arab advances would have split Israel in 2 and would have threatened Israel with a devastating destruction.
In any event, none of this significantly impacts the likely peace parameters, which of necessity have to be based on the existing reality and not historical arguments.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:40pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 1:35pm | ignore this person | warn this person
No need to feel sorry for me or my sons. Our spirituality is in a good place and we're doing fine.
BTW -- the historical fact of the first and second kingdoms of Judea are not dependent on the Exodus being history rather than myth. Also, until there is some independent evidence of the historical actuality of the Exodus, other than the Torah, I have no choice but to treat it as myth. I am happy to change my position if and when such evidence emerges.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 1:44pm
If it isn't true, then Israel is a lie and does not deserve the land occupies. Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 1:35pm
Actually, here I tend to agree with anti..
It's true that the only plausible claim that a rabbi from brooklyn should be permitted to steal the home in Palestine belonging to an arab who was born and grew up there rests on religious--certainly not moral or legal--grounds.
Granted, normal human beings regard such childish nonsense the same way we regard the rantings of the Heaven's Gate cult, but that's another matter.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:46pm
If it isn't true, then Israel is a lie and does not deserve the land occupies. Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 1:35pm
Actually, here I tend to agree with anti..
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:46pm
Just trying to figure out what your position is. Does this fit: "Israel is a lie and belongs on the garbage heap of history, but what ought to happen is a peace settlement at the 1967 borders"?
Also, does this mean Gaza goes back to Egypt and the West Bank goes back to Jordan?
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 2:00pm
"Israel is a lie"
hmm...that's a bit general. Clearly, an enormous amount of what Israel claims of itself and its history is a bald-faced lie. I don't think that's much in dispute among reasonable people.
..as I said, the fairest solution in my view is a single democratic state. Sooner or later, Arabs would probably become a majority. As I'm not an Israeli racist, I see no problem with that and of course, Jews and Arabs have lived together in the past.
Israelis ARE correct i suppose when they state that this would be the end of the Jewish state. Again, as I'm not a racist, I don't see any reason to be bothered by that. Why should any particular religion receive preferential treatment to the extreme detriment of the other people living there? The idea of Israel as currently construed is clearly, as Tony Judt stated, "an anachronism"
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 2:28pm
Are you asking what I think OUGHT to happen? That's easy. I'm fine with the international consensus--full peace in exchange for full withdrawal to the pre-june 67 borders
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 12:20pm
as I said, the fairest solution in my view is a single democratic state.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 2:28pm
Two states or one state...it's a knotty problem.
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 2:50pm
stated, "an anachronism"
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 2:28pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Diversity requires that there be an anachronism as part of the global bouquet. (not to be analyzed -- its beauty will wilt)
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 2:50pm
Israelis ARE correct i suppose when they state that this would be the end of the Jewish state. Again, as I'm not a racist, I don't see any reason to be bothered by that. Why should any particular religion receive preferential treatment to the extreme detriment of the other people living there? The idea of Israel as currently construed is clearly, as Tony Judt stated, "an anachronism"
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 2:28pm
I presume then that you favor the elimination of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Brunei, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Since their constitutions proclaim them to be Islamic states?
And these countries?
Iraq, under the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), has declared Islam to be the official state religion, but has not designated itself an Islamic state. The study placed eleven other countries in this category, including Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. In combination with the previous group, 22 states declare Islam as the official religion>
http://www.payvand.com/news/05/jul/1096.html
or is your view only true of Judaism?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 2:51pm
It's true that the only plausible claim that a rabbi from brooklyn should be permitted to steal the home in Palestine belonging to an arab who was born and grew up there rests on religious--certainly not moral or legal--grounds.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 1:46pm
Of course one could justify this without recourse to religious grounds: consider the Beneš decrees that excluded the Sudeten Germans from the Czech Republic, consider the adjustment of the Polish border and the displacement of population after WWII, consider the exchange of populations between India and Pakistan at partition, consider the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey at the end of WWI.
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 2:52pm
The problem with combining the Israelis and Palestinians in one state at the moment is that the 2 people have been warring and demonizing each other for the past 60 years. Kumbaya will not break out be declaring one state. Rather, you will hasve a civil war which recreates the existing situation.
when the British left the Indian subcontinent, there was a population exchanbe by the Hindus and Moslems -- part voluntary, part coerced. While the resulting 2 countries do not have warm relations, its works well enough and is far preferable to the "unity" that existed in Bosnia, or in Rawanda, or Sudan. Zimbabwae is a mess, and South Africa unfortunately may be backsliding towards those conditions as violence and class resentment rises quikly. Western Europe and The US and Canada are relative ideals, but not necessarily models which can be replicated by design. Those countries evolved, as will all other parts of the world.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 2:58pm
Moderates get isolated...almost as if the extremists were actually ...working together...to do it.
Posted by Mask at 10/30/2009 @ 07:48am
Alot of Germans would agree.
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:02pm
Thus, as I said, the substance of the publication is BS, lacks facts, and does not support the very serious allegation made against Israel. The publication is malicious propoganda.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 08:15am | ignore this person | warn this person
Well, I invite you to revisit the website and read the numerous presentations made at the 2004 conference.
Do you have a cite substantiating your refutations?
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:09pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:09pm | ignore this person | warn this person
My comment went through the majority of the alleged specific incidents, which on their face do not identify a destruction of a mosque. There are no citations to rebut a non-event; I can't prove a negative. The publication's main focus was the paranoid propofganda about Jews planning to steal the Temple Mount and establish the 3d Temple. I know that conspiracy theories appeal to you, but I'm off that bus.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:16pm
All that is required for extreme radicalism is to be fair. Their is nothing more radical than simple fairness.
If you decide not to be a racist, then your position is radical in the current climate. One only need look at the situation in the mid east today:
Country A has joined the world community as signatory to the NPT and has abided by this treaty, possessing no nuclear weapons, despite severe security concerns owing to its murderous and nuclear equipped neighbor.
Country B has told the world to go to hell, identified themselves as a rogue state which refuses to sign the NPT and gone on to develop a massive nuclear arsenal estimated at 200+ warheads which threaten the entire region.
Country A had never attacked a neighbor in its lengthy history
Country B has attacked virtually every country in the region causing massive destruction, tens of thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands maimed--the overwhelming majority, civilian.
Clearly, fairness would demand the world reward country A (Iran) and severely PUNISH country B (Israel) but for the fact that one country is Jewish and the other isn't. Obviously, this is just a tired rehash of National Socialism. It's unadulterated racism.
Promo Levy (an actual writer, as opposed to the hoaxer Elie Weisel) described the Palestinian situation perfectly:
"Everyone is someone's Jew. Today, the Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis."
Hard to get plainer than that.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:22pm
Hard to get plainer than that.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:22pm | ignore this person | warn this person
The world is giving Israel preferential treatment because it's Jewish!!! I don't believe in the end of days, but maybe the Mayans are onto something.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:26pm
I know that conspiracy theories appeal to you, but I'm off that bus.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:16pm | ignore this person | warn this person
A simple Google search reveals this to be far more than a conspiracy theory, and even pro-Jewish/Israel websites discuss these issues. The "Jewish State" by definition should give you a clue.
I'll give the cite again. Perhaps David Littman's little friends hijacked the other cite.
This is the 2004 Conference.
http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/ publications/Protection%20of%20islamic %20and%20chrestian%20holy%20sites%20in%20Palestine/Menu.php
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:37pm
Of course one could justify this without recourse to religious grounds: consider the Beneš decrees that excluded the Sudeten Germans from the Czech Republic
Let me see if I've got this. A dubious decree designed to punish civilians of German heritage for the crimes of the German government (by deporting them back to Germany and Austria) is held out as justification for punishing the Palestinians for these same crimes of the German government, by smashing Palestinian homes apart with D9 bulldozers and consigning the inhabitants to a life of misery in a refugee camp so that a wealthy Jewish piece of crap from Forest Hills can come steal his home?
Well--certainly a creative explanation!
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:37pm
The world is giving Israel preferential treatment because it's Jewish!!! I don't believe in the end of days, but maybe the Mayans are onto something. Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:26pm
Doubtless, you have a better explanation. Perhaps Israel's inspiring human rights record is responsible for the pro-Israel love fest?
For the record, if the world, (rather than the world as threatened and coerced by the US) had any say in the matter, the Israeli leadership would be handcuffed in a courtroom in the Hague right now.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:44pm
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:44pm | ignore this person | warn this person
You are correct that the overwhelming majority of governments would be more than willing to condemn the Israeli leaders as war criminals and revoke the 1947 UN Resolution. (See UN vote condemning Zionism as racism.) But I thought you despised, and had no interest in standing with, the "useless 90%." Apparently you make exceptions for the anti-Israel 90%. (Aw, that's a cheap shot. I take it back.)
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:50pm
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 3:26pm | ignore this person | warn this person
I am not sure we are reading the same thing.
The link appears to be coopted by "Jihad Watch" in priority using its URL in the web description. Very clever.
You can go home on the website without spam interference.
http://www.isesco.org.ma/index.php
If interested.
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:56pm
Well--certainly a creative explanation!
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:37pm
So the other examples, Turkey/Greece, India/Pakistan, etc. are good analogies?
The Beneš decrees are an example of the consequences of an unprovoked attack. The Arabs must live with the consequences of what they did in 1948, just as the Germans deal with the consequences of their 1939 attack. The other examples were the settling of borders and the exchange of populations at the end of war or decolonialization.
.
.
A simple Google search reveals...
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:37pm
A Google search can reveal a great number of things: try googling "tree octopus"
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 3:57pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 3:56pm | ignore this person | warn this person
not sure what you're referring to. yesterday evening I read the presentation by the 2 authors identified in your comment yesterday.: Israeli Abuses of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine and Al Quds Al Sharif By : Mr. Abdulaziz ‘Izzat Al Khayyat & Dr. Raouf Abu Jaber
That is what I'm dismissing as unsubstantiated propoganda. (I did not find it through the website you cited but by googling the authors.)
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 4:00pm
For the record, if the world, (rather than the world as threatened and coerced by the US) had any say in the matter, the Israeli leadership would be handcuffed in a courtroom in the Hague right now.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 3:44pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Look what they did to Abbas vis a vis The Goldstone Report......man.....just disgusting. And they want Abbas to unify? Bullshit!!
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 4:01pm
That is what I'm dismissing as unsubstantiated propoganda. (I did not find it through the website you cited but by googling the authors.)
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 4:00pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Okay - we did read the same thing then.
Thanks!!
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 4:04pm
Hi gren
Nothing wrong with standing with the majority when they happen to be right. In the case of evolution, the majority (at least in the US) is wrong. A similarly WRONG majority elected and re-elected a monster by the name of George Bush, who caused the death of over a million people in a war of aggression based exclusively on lies.
If as you claim, 90% of the world's jews support a gangster state that is terrorizing and bombing a defenseless populace from air sea and land then the majority of Jews are dead wrong.
you write:
"You are correct that the overwhelming majority of governments would be more than willing to condemn the Israeli leaders as war criminals and revoke the 1947 UN Resolution. (See UN vote condemning Zionism as racism.)
You try to sneak an unsupportable statement in with a supportable one but that wont wash. Where is the evidence that a majority of UN members would revoke the partition? On the other hand, obviously the majority of the world finds Israel in grotesque violation of international law and agrees that israel should be held culpable for its war crimes and abominations in Gaza. Now either one is a conspiracy -theorist loon who believes this is due to universal anti-Semitism (or Jewish "self-hatred" in the case of the illustrious jurist Goldstone) or one is honest enough to face facts, namely that the israelis ARE racist thugs, zionism--which denies fundamental rights to non-jews IS quite obviously a racist creed and israel is the country we should have in mind when we declare that "all options, including military" are on the table in order to deal with their stomach-turning transgressions.
again..fair is fair.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:06pm
A Google search can reveal a great number of things: try googling "tree octopus"
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 3:57pm | ignore this person | warn this person
I suppose CNN is going to tell about it hey Mistral - trusted MSM.....
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 4:07pm
My shabbat meditation for this evening.
One passion for peace and justice; a multiplicity of understandings, arguments, paradigms, judgments -- separating us and poisoning our minds into thinking the other is one's enemy. Silence my mind and open my heart, to allow me to respect the disagreements as different and not wrong.
Shabbat Shalom. Saalam.
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 4:12pm
The Arabs must live with the consequences of what they did in 1948, just as the Germans deal with the consequences of their 1939 attack.
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 3:57pm
but oddly enough, the premeditated ethnic cleansing of 750,000 people from their homes does not demand consequences for the perpetrators, nor should there be any punishment for the Israelis for bombing hospitals and schools. Or for massacring 20,000 people in Lebanon, nearly all of them, civilian. Palestinians should suffer the tortures of the damned for eternity for their crime of resisting their own dispossession, but Israel should pay no price whatsoever for 70 years of massacres, rapes, ethnic cleansing, torture, land theft and brutalization of a civilian population clearly protected under international law.
As I say, the racism is blatant and undisguised.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:16pm
Posted by gren at 10/30/2009 @ 4:12pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Maybe you will realize that criticism of Israel may actually benefit Jews worldwide.
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 4:19pm
resisting their own dispossession
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:16pm
I find it hard to picture Nasser's soldiers driving their tanks in the direction of Jerusalem and musing, "I'm resisting my own dispossession."
.
Maybe after a few centuries all the hatred will wear off: you don't hear much griping any more from the English about the French and that nastiness in 1066.
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 4:28pm
Posted by OneVote at 10/30/2009 @ 4:19pm
no question
I would say that no greater threat to Jews exists than Israel. It is thanks to Israel that Jewishness is increasingly equated with racism, stupidity and debauchery. Israel has dragged the Jewish name through the sewer and provoked worldwide revulsion to Jews, particularly, after the Gaza massacre. What have the Israelis contributed to Jewish culture? Zero. As Philip Roth says "This is their great jewish achievement. To turn Jewish children into jailers and jet bomber pilots."
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:35pm
Posted by Mistral at 10/30/2009 @ 4:28pm
Obviously, I was referring to the Palestinians, who were, according to both Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe (not to mention everyone else) resisting their dispossession. As to the attacks by Nasser as well as the Syrians, you are distorting the record--as told by the Zionists. I brought up Begin's remarks about attacking Nasser. I could just as well have brought up Moshe Dayan's comments or dozens of other zionists. They were PROUD of being the aggressors in the war. Dayan described the tactics of israeli aggression quite plainly.
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:42pm
"I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was."
--Moshe Dayan describing Israeli aggression against Syria
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 4:54pm
Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Palestinian Journalist in PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006
"...The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the "Catastrophe" in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those "Arkuvian" promises made by the leaders and the political elites."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006]
http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=4084
<British Police Report on the Arab Evacuation of Haifa (April 26, 1948)
An appeal has been made to the Arabs by the Jews to reopen their shops and businesses in order to relieve the difficulties of feeding the Arab population. Evacuation was still going on yesterday and several trips were made by 'Z' craft to Acre. Roads too, were crowded with people leaving Haifa with all their belongings. At a meeting yesterday afternoon Arab leaders reiterated their determination to evacuate the entire Arab population and they have been given the loan of ten 3-ton military trucks as from this morning to assist the evacuation.>
http://tinyurl.com/ye4jjnk
In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:
"Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return" (The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, Beirut, 1973, Part 1, pp. 386-387).
http://www.ujc.org/page.aspx?id=121275
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 5:48pm
In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:
". . . There are now only five hundred thousand Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)
Israel Zangwill, who had visited Palestine in 1897 and came face-to-face with the demographic reality. He stated in 1905 in a speech to a Zionist group in Manchester that:
"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7- 10, and Righteous Victims, p. 140)
In 1891Ahad Ha'Am similarly wrote of the Palestinians:
"If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:00pm
Moshe Smilansky wrote in Hapoel Hatzair in the spring edition of 1908:
"Either the Land of Israel of Israel belongs in the national sense to those Arabs who settled there in recent years [before 1908], and then we have no place there and we must say explicitly: The land of our fathers is lost to us. [Or] if the land of Israel belongs to us, the the Jewish people, then our national interests come before all else. . . . it is not possible for one country to serve as the homeland of two peoples." (Righteous Victims, p. 58)
Note that even when the Zionist presence in Palestine was negligible in 1908, they still looked at the Palestinian people as " recent immigrants". Ironically, many Zionists still propagate this myth to this date.
The socialist Zionist Hahman Syrkin, the ideological founder of Socialist Zionism, proposed in a pamphlet, titled "The Jewish Question and the Socialist Jewish State" published in 1898 , that:
"Palestine is thinly populated, in which the Jews constituted today 10 percent of the population, must be evacuated for the Jews." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7)
As late as 1947, after almost half a century of tireless and relentless effort, the collective ownership of the Jewish National Fund (which constituted one-half of all Zionists and Jewish land ownership) amounted to a mere 3.5% of Palestine. Yosef Weitz was in a good position to know that:
"without taking action to TRANSFER [the Palestinian Arab] population, we will not be able to solve our question by [land] buying." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 133)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:02pm
"I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it."
~David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938.
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves… politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.. .The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country…".
David Ben Gurion
"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
~David Ben-Gurion quotes (Polish born Israeli Statesman and Prime Minister (1948-53, 1955-63). Chief architect of the state of Israel and revered as Father of the Nation, 1886-1973)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:04pm
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
David Ben Gurion
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims, p. 144)
Ben-Gurion wrote in 1937:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas .... I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England .... Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. .... But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 117)
Ben-Gurion 1938.
"In my opinion we must insist on the Peel Commission proposal, which sees in the transfer the only solution to this problem. And I have now to say that it is worthwhile that the Jewish people should bear the greatest material sacrifices in order to ensure the success of transfer." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 70)
Ben-Gurion regarding the Peel Commission, on June 9, 1937.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:07pm
Ben-Gurion became obsessed about "transferring" the Palestinian Arabs out of Palestine, and he started to contemplate the mechanics and potential problems that could arise if "transfer" to be implemented. Ben-Gurion contemplated the "Arab Question" in "Eretz Yisrael" and wrote:
"We have to examine, first, if this transfer is practical, and secondly, if it is necessary. It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without compulsion, and brutal compulsion, There are of course sections of the non-Jewish population of the Land of Israel which will not resist transfer under adequate conditions to certain neighboring countries, such as the Druze, a number of Bedouin tribes in the Jordan Valley and the south, the Circassians and perhaps even the Metwalis [the Sh'ite of the Galilee]. But it would be very difficult to bring about resettlement of other sections of the [Palestinian] Arab populations such as the fellahin and the urban populations in neighboring Arab countries by transferring them voluntarily, whatever economic inducements are offered to them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians. 129)
Similarly, he also added
"The possibility of large-scale transfer of a population by force was demonstrated, when the Greeks and the Turks were transferred [after WW I]. In the present war [referring to WW II] the idea of transferring a population is gaining more sympathy as a practical and the most secure means of solving the dangerous and painful problem of national minorities. The war has already brought the resettlement of many people eastern and southern Europe, and in the plans for the postwar settlements the idea of a large-scale population transfer in central, eastern, and southern Europe increasingly occupies a respectable place." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians. 129)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:08pm
On December 19, 1947, Ben-Gurion advised the Haganah on the rules of engagement with the Palestinian population. He stated:
"we adopt the system of aggressive defense; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176-177 and Israel: A History, p. 156)
While addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947, Ben-Gurion stated:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:09pm
There's a lot more where that came from, but it shoudl suffice to debunk Larry's lame revisinism.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 8:10pm
shingo
It's interesting that ben gurion and that crop of early Zionists didn't really distort history the way contemporary advocates of israel do. They were absolutely plain about saying "We are the master -race. The Palestinians are untermenchen. We will drive them from their homes and take their places, because we are superior beings. " Among this group of violent aggressors, the claim of Israeli victimhood would have been laughed out of the kibbutz. You can only sell that bill of goods to the idiot Americans, for whom historical reality is a foreign language.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 8:21pm
There's a good reason for that SmashIsrael and it was best explained by Moshe Sharett as easrly as the mid-1950s, when he came to the conclusion that Israel cannot be ruled without deceit as if it's essential for the Jewish state's survival.
"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country" (Simha Flapan, p. 52-53). In other word, what Moshe Sharett is saying that the "Jewish state" is incapable of surviving without lying to its citizens and the rest of the world; in fact it has been national security for the "Jewish state" to do so. This form of carefully crafted deception and lies is known in Israel by its Hebrew name: The art of Hasbarah.
Ironically, Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, which included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's ironic how often Israelis and Zionists are selective in the interpretation of war crimes against humanity in a way that fits their political agenda.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 9:43pm
That's just it. For Israelis, there is no contradiction. It is a crime against humanity to expel Jews, but in the case of Arabs, not only is it not a crime to expel them--it's a mitzvah..a good deed.
I watched a youtube of recent ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. At the end of the clip, they ask an Israeli passerby what she thinks about what is going on. She says..why..what's going on? The cameraman explains that they re throwing a Palestinian family out of their home in Jerusalem, though they have lived there their whole lives. The woman says "excellent!" That's her reply. I think an American Jew would be likely to claim the expulsion wasn't happening--to lie in some way. For the Israelis, lies are not necessary because they are so depraved, they are such Nazi filth from the sewer, that to them, ethnic cleansing is great, provided Jews are not the victims. They'll tell you that point blank. In the US, racism has become something to at least try to conceal. In Israel, it's a point of pride--an essential ingredient in Israeli identity, and it's easy to see why. Without racism, you have equality and that means no preferential treatment for Jews, ie..no Israel.
This is why J street's mission statement is so preposterous. It's like saying "we're a pro-strip mining, pro-environmental group."
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 10:03pm
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/30/2009 @ 8:21pm
Shouldn't you be at your Klan meeting?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 10:13pm
This is why J street's mission statement is so preposterous. It's like saying "we're a pro-strip mining, pro-environmental group."
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 10:03pm
That's how the rightr wing brain works, and Zionism is ultimately a right wing condition. War is peace, death is liberation, torture is freedom and the rapist get's to claim self defense when the victim fights back.
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 10:17pm
Shouldn't you be at your Klan meeting?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 10:13pm
Why, are we holding you guys up?
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 10:18pm
Oh and here is another one for you Larry.
Your version of events, re the enthnic cleansing, was conclusively debunked, based on Israeli declassified documents. According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris:
'Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states' leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948]. It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities'. (Benny Morris, p. 66)
Posted by Shingo at 10/30/2009 @ 10:20pm
Shouldn't you be at your Klan meeting? Posted by antisocialist at 10/30/2009 @ 10:13pm
No..but you should:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/990228.html
Posted by rykart at 10/30/2009 @ 10:27pm
hello Shingo and rykart
Couple of points. It is not disputed that the Zionist vision was a state from sea to river. Also not disputed is that the the Zionists desired a population exchange/transfer. (just as occurred between India and Pakistan), as did the Brits. However, it is misleading, unfair and unaccurate to use quoes from the 19th century and 1939 as evidence for motivation and policy in 1948. The only time-relevant quote you provide clearly states that the IDF order to expel villages applied only in instances where and limited in scope to the village which was the source of a Palestinian attack on Jews.
Posted by gren2 at 10/31/2009 @ 11:40am
Here is the most revealing passage: In his speech, Jones pronounced the standard boilerplate about the unbreakable bond between Israel and the US, but for the most part the liberal audience sat on its hands, erupting into applause instead when Jones spoke forcefully about the crisis in Gaza and about the importance of creating a "contiguous," viable, independent Palestinian state. It shows the true nature of this J Street: Palestinian state is more important for them than Israel's security. How can Jews fall that low? And, of course, that's in tune with Mr. Dreyfuss consistently anti-Israeli position. This is also completely anti-common sense position as well but Mr. Dreyfuss doesn't bother to give his e-mail address so he can be challenged. Does he read the posts? Does he see that majority of his readers and admirers are Israeli haters? Or he doesn't care?
Posted by teasethegeese at 10/31/2009 @ 2:40pm
hi gren
If you're interested in such matters, do have a look at Ilan Pappe's book. It's very interesting and extremely well written. The evidence is not unequivocal but nevertheless, extremely persuasive that Plan Dalet was a premeditated blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a goal we know indisputably was close to the heart of the major zionist movers and shakers.
tease: all normal humans, providing they are informed, are Israel-haters. To love Israel is either to be uninformed or depraved. I'm sorry but there are no longer any alternatives to this formula.
Posted by rykart at 10/31/2009 @ 3:26pm
rykart: You wanted to say "provided they are misinformed", I suppose. Of course, the other option is being stupid.. To hate Israel is to love Osama and Ahmadinejad. I imagine you do but let's give mankind a credit - not everyone is like you.
Posted by teasethegeese at 10/31/2009 @ 4:23pm
Einstein called the Israelis Nazis and fascists.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Dissent/Einstein_NYTimes_Israel.html
I'm sure you're much smarter than he though, eh tease?
Israel has nauseated the globe. Only filth from the toilet support them these days.
Decent Jews want the place blown to bits. It's a disgrace.
Posted by rykart at 10/31/2009 @ 4:47pm
rykart: Einstein called Begin's party that, not all Israelis. Plus, he didn't know at that time what REAL terrorosm is. Anyway, you are just proving my point that only irrational Israeli haters agree with Mr. Dreyfuss. By the way, will you admit that you like Osama and Ahmadinejad?
Posted by teasethegeese at 10/31/2009 @ 6:18pm
in other words, he referred to the Israeli Prime Minister Begin as a Nazi, which of course, is exactly what he was. Ditto recent Israeli Nazi filth, like Tzipi Livni, daughter of the SAME Nazi organization identified by Einstein. Had Albert been alive today, there is little doubt he would wish to see Israel burnt to the ground, like most rational people.
Here's Gerald Kauffman, the Jewish MP of Parliament talking about the Nazi maggots of Israel, including Tzipi Livni--terrorist daughter of one of the leaders of Irgun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8
I repeat:
Filth support Israel, decent people revile Israel.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/31/2009 @ 8:28pm
Iran is the next Nazi Germany!
Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler!
Such is the rhetoric put forward my the paramecium scum of Israel.
Just one problem: Iran is host to the second largest Jewish population in the Mid East, and when israel tried to bribe the Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel, the Council of Iranian Jews wrote Israel and said "You Nazi scum can fuck yourselves. We are PROUD of being Iranian Jews, we have a deep history in this country and our national identity is not for sale. So go bleed to death, assholes!"
So that's how it is.
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/31/2009 @ 9:14pm
Obviously, Smash doesn't deserve an answer. By the way, anyone noted that rykart avoided answering a question about his love for Osama? However, these two are my case in point for Mr. Dreyfuss because they are typical repreentatives of the people who like and agree with Mr. Dreyfuss; these people are typical audience of Mr. Dreyfuss and he didn't do anything to distance himself from them. Will he ever?
Posted by teasethegeese at 11/01/2009 @ 11:23am
Obviously, Smash doesn't deserve an answer. By the way, anyone noted that rykart avoided answering a question about his love for Osama? However, these two are my case in point for Mr. Dreyfuss because they are typical repreentatives of the people who like and agree with Mr. Dreyfuss; these people are typical audience of Mr. Dreyfuss and he didn't do anything to distance himself from them. Will he ever?
Posted by teasethegeese at 11/01/2009 @ 11:23am
They represent the efforts of jihadist fronts like CAIR to infiltrate liberal media and sway public opinion with repeated lies.
This allows the jihadist cells to further develop towards their goal of converting the US to an Islamic state. This would remove the last all defender of Israel for their goal of implementing Hitler's final solution and the death of all remaining Jews in the world.
They are bound by the Quran towards this end and like the pedophile Mohammad, they will use every means of deceit in order to accomplish this end.
Posted by antisocialist at 11/01/2009 @ 12:01pm
I don't think Einstein was any more interested in the Quran than he was in Judaism, which he found to be an embarrassing clown act, not to be taken seriously by rational adults:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/983001.html
Nor do I think Einstein's assessment of the Israelis as Nazi and fascist scum required input from the Quran either.
Jews of character vomit at the mention of Israel.
The rest are hoodlums.
Posted by rykart at 11/01/2009 @ 1:21pm
They represent the efforts of jihadist fronts like CAIR to infiltrate liberal media and sway public opinion with repeated lies.
Posted by antisocialist at 11/01/2009 @ 12:01pm
This represents the paranoia and bigotry o the right, who assume any disagreement with their extremist ideals must be founded on foreign agents.
There are no goals of converting the US to an Islamic state, but ther are plenty of examples of Evangelical extremiosts trying to convert the US to an Christian state .
Larry is one of them. John Hagee, who believes Hitler was an agent of God, is another.
Posted by Shingo at 11/01/2009 @ 4:54pm
Here's Gerald Kauffman, the Jewish MP of Parliament talking about the Nazi maggots of Israel, including Tzipi Livni--terrorist daughter of one of the leaders of Irgun:
Posted by SmashIsrael at 10/31/2009 @ 8:28pm
Kauffman is a Holocaust survivor who supoorted and sent money to Israel, who has also been personal friend with almost every Israeli Prime Minister, including Ben Gurion.
Posted by Shingo at 11/01/2009 @ 4:59pm
To hate Israel is to love Osama and Ahmadinejad. I imagine you do but let's give mankind a credit - not everyone is like you. Posted by teasethegeese at 10/31/2009 @ 4:23pm | ignore this person | warn this person
nonsense. you're getting carried away.
Posted by emile duBois at 11/01/2009 @ 6:24pm
What have you got against Osama? In general, he's a reasonable guy..a diplomat. He repeatedly told the US 'stop murdering arab peoples in arab lands and we have no beef with you.. Endless war is not what we want--it's idiotic and unnecessary, but if you continue your bombings and massacres and invasions, if you continue to supply Israel with the means to brutalize the Palestinians, we are going to respond.'
The 9/11 commision was asked what the motivation for the attacks was. Their answer was immediate and unequivocal: we were attacked by people outraged at the treatment of Palestinians and those who are sympathetic to movements that resist oppression.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1bm2GPoFfg
Posted by rykart at 11/01/2009 @ 8:44pm
Former national director of the American Jewish Congress declares the vermin of Israel to be "pathological."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02iht-edsiegman.html?hpw
Posted by rykart at 11/01/2009 @ 10:05pm
Who speaks for America's Jews and what it means to be pro-Israel.
For decades, groups from the Zionist Organisation of America to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) have claimed to be the voice of the largest Jewish community outside Israel advocating unflinching support for the government in Jerusalem.
But in recent years, Aipac, the ZOA and other groups have drawn even closer to the hard-right in America, particularly the neocons and Christian evangelical organisations, as the conflict in Israel is framed largely in the context of terrorism while hardline governments pay little more than lip service to peace and a Palestinian state
Much of the legislation that emerges from the US Congress is heavily influenced by lobby groups wielding huge budgets for campaign contributions and advertising that can be turned for or against a legislator. . The main reason people no longer side with Israel. That being that they are now the aggressors. They continue to settle in the west bank and destroy Palestinian communities in the process. They no longer have any morale high ground, and it is for this reason the world now turns on them.But world as turned on America too,
Iran is hardly a "foe" to me, American. To Israel, yes - after all, Iran has opted not to recognize the Jewish state (as is its right). But why would that have to concern me as a non-Israeli? . There's a lot more people inside the US who want to bomb Iran, than there's Iranians wanting to do the reverse. If anything, the Iranian regime has made multiple attempts over the last decades to improve its relations with the US, only to be rebuffed by the pro-Israel and weapons lobbyists sponsored neoCon . inside the Pentagon. Sure, Iran would like the US to stop its . no-questions-a
Posted by mosses at 11/02/2009 @ 12:52pm