...and this time it is indeed about Israel and Gaza. Depressing and fraught as the subject is, historically-minded as I am, I felt I had to touch on it. Let the accusations of anti-Semitism commence! (Ah, who am I kidding -- as i've said before, you're nobody in this business until David Horowitz has called you an anti-Semite, and I've already had that, so everything else is gravy.)
Welp, I got about as far as a man at a major paper arguing that maybe all Palestinians should be considered combatants, so isn't killing people in Gaza really just an act of war?
ReplyDeleteOf course, he said this in very calm way without cursing or hyperbole, so we have to take him seriously. That kind of civility is just what we need in modern discourse.
I cant joke about it. Its too awful.
ReplyDelete"Will some of the weapons that Qatar bought from American industry find
ReplyDeleteits way into the hands of terrorists from Hamas?" speculated Wood.
"...Could Qatar be financing the extensive tunnel networks that Israel
has discovered leading to children's schools and the like inside Israel?
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered."
I swear, if the Right didn't have "Just Asking Questions" and "It Would Be Irresponsible Not To Speculate" as literary crutches, they wouldn't be able to throw together a three word paragraph.
Mercifully we have Rick Moran for comic relief, with his
ReplyDelete" No one has ever accused Kerry of being the brightest bulb in the room, and this pretty much confirms everyone's previous opinion of him,"
Of course the only time anyone's accused Moran of being the brightest bulb in the room has been when said room was otherwise empty.
He thinks Palestinians have forfeited their right to be called "civilians"? I would suggest that the Wall St Journal has forfeited its right to be called "a major paper."
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing that's going to swing American Jews from (D) to (R) faster than the illiterate howling of bloodthirsty conservative rednecks intellectuals.
ReplyDeleteSo, voting for the wrong people makes you a de facto enemy combatant. Sounds like a plank for the 2016 GOP platform.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I drunkenly joked to a friend that if Israel pulled a Final Solution, and simply bulldozed all of Gaza into the Mediterranean, then nerve-gassed the rubble just to be sure, at least the rest of the world could finally toss out any residual guilt over the Holocaust. "No, I'm sorry, Israel, no more cutting to the front of the line for you. Take a number and have a seat."
ReplyDeleteIn my defense I was young and drunk. To see Rubin and McCarthy snuggling up to the genocide argument (without whispering its name) is beyond disgusting. It's obscene, a profaning of morals far beyond any stupid sex act or vile use of language. It is a denigration of the value of life in general, and the lives of Palestinians in particular.
And let's be realistic: the American right will never give up rooting for Israel, no matter what they do. Israel is the kind of "victim" they'd like to see themselves as: paranoid, heavily armed, willing to kill hundreds, and the recipient of an endless funnel of US dollars. If only they could all be so lucky--though you'll notice precious few of them moving to Jerusalem.
I'm pretty sure even then he came in second to his prized Snoopy nightlight.
ReplyDeleteEven the ones that are moving to Jerusalem aren't actually moving to Jerusalem. The chronic housing shortage in the city is exacerbated by the many many rich foreigners (mostly American and French) who buy apartments that stand empty except for the two weeks of Passover.
ReplyDeleteIt also leads to the kind of crime and unliveability associated with empty streets, as many of these apartments are concentrated together in blocks of crackerbox "luxury" units, the urban equivalent of McMansions.
Class an entire people as subhumans and you are basically at liberty to do what you want to them, or stand and cheer while someone else does. That's a privilege that neither McCarthy nor Rubin, nor any of the knuckledraggers at WND, are going to give up any time soon.
ReplyDeleteThere is almost nothing that the right-wingers believe that has turned out to be true in practice or in fact and, eventually, the country will figure out that their unwavering support of a right-wing Israel, right or wrong, has been in error, too. Most of the world already realizes this, but the United States still lags far behind, in large part due to some very effective propaganda. There are no small number of people suffering from kool-aid poisoning in the U.S. and yet, have no desire to be cured.
ReplyDeleteStill, a lot of this can be traced back to the U.S. arbitrarily divvying up the world into friends and enemies after WWII, and to the belief, once the CIA belatedly discovered that Israel had nuclear weapons, that we could make Israel our nuclear bulldog in the Middle East.
So, it's going to go on as long as Americans think it's okay.
1. It's not 1,000 civilians
ReplyDelete2. Hamas is hiding their shit near civilians
3. What would you do?
Seriously, I might do a lot of what both sides are doing. I know it's easy to hate the Israelis because the right likes them, but there's no transitive property of politics. It's not wrong because they like it.
I hate the right wing psychos, but dehumanizing the Israelis doesn't help things either
ReplyDeleteCan we talk about puppies or something? I'm getting tired of this argument.
ReplyDeleteNah. We're immune, but we do wonder why our erstwhile progressive allies are against us on this when there's nothing liberal about Hamas.
ReplyDelete1. Give it a day.
ReplyDelete2. There is nowhere in Gaza that is not near civilians.
3. How about "not start a war"?
For the same reason we don't want to see Republicans slaughtered. Like, because we're liberals.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's not the Israelis who get dehumanized in the US media.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see them coming around to the merits of better registration, tracking, and regulation of firearms.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are places you can go to see Israelis being dehumanized. It's a big 'net after all. But I wasn't doing that and neither was Roy.
ReplyDeleteActually I don't wonder that at all, since the reason seems pretty obvious to me. Thanks for speaking for me though.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it'll take another year, two at the most, for the institutional memory of how to put out a great paper dissipates (i.e,, the talent to flee). Then the Rupertization of the WSJ will be complete. I swear that man is Satan.
ReplyDeleteSCENE: A gunboat offshore.
ReplyDeletePalestinians on the beach, sir. I count four.
What are they doing?
They seem to be kicking at something, sir.
Hmm... read me some more of that Rosenbaum essay.
To qualify as a civilian one has to do more than simply look the part. How you came to find yourself in such a vulnerable state matters.
They certainly look like civilians.
Yes, but they elected Hamas. Listen...
What did Gazans think was going to happen? Surely they must have understood on election night that their lives would now be suspended in a state of utter chaos. Life expectancy would be miserably low; children would be without a future.
Right. Acquire terrorist targets!
Targets acquired!
Wait. Is that a soccer ball they're kicking? Read some more...
On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen...
That's it. Commence firing!
...invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room...
Damn, we only got one. The other three are running away. And look, they have blood on their hands...
Fire TWO!
"Enemy combatants," "theater of war," "innocent civilians," "casualties of war" all have ambiguous meaning in Gaza.
Got 'em! "Innocent civilians" really does have ambiguous meaning!
In Gaza, parents who place their children in the direct line of fire are rewarded with an interview on MSNBC where they can call Israel a genocidal murderer.
Someone call MSNBC.
(laughter)
Dehumanizing the Israelis? Do you have an...example, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteOddly, we oppose collective punishment and the ongoing self-Godwinization of Israel. Absurd, I know.
ReplyDeleteThe military force with the disproportionate capacity for force and destruction has the moral obligation to be as humane to the civilian population as possible.
ReplyDeleteThe Gaza Strip has a population density of 13,000 people per square mile, and Gaza City proper has 42,600 per square mile. Whatever your view of Hamas' activities, the IDF is performing the equivalent of dropping bunker busters all over Bed-Stuy to try to take out a street gang on Nostrand Avenue.
I'm just so disgusted with both the Palestinians and the Israelis at this point. I can't believe how right-wing Israel has gotten lately. Reading stories about bombing-viewing picnics and threats against "leftists", I wonder what the hell happened. Between Haredi assholes calling little girls "whores" if they're insufficiently covered up, and yahoo dudebros threatening "leftist" reporters, the real threat to Israel is going to come from their own right.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Palestinians, they really need to oust their leadership. They are a people suffering mightily, but the lunatics keep stoking the flames that will end up destroying them too.
Jeez, there just don't seem to be any "good guys" anywhere.
The righties in this country would love to see bunker busters dropped all over Bed-Stuy.
ReplyDeleteThe Israeli actions amount to a "shanda fur die goyim" on a national scale.
ReplyDeleteThey want to use this speculation to discredit Al Jazeera.
ReplyDeleteHave the Saudis even been mentioned once by these freaks?
A kill ratio of 100 to 1 seems a bit lopsided. I mean, you see those numbers and it starts looking less like a competitive fight and more like execution of people who are penned in by fences. Just sayin'.
ReplyDelete"It's not wrong because they like it."
ReplyDeleteThey've been wrong about everything else. I'd say that constitutes a track record worth keeping in mind.
As for your little checklist:
1. As of today, the Gaza hospitals put the count at 1,033 dead. And, if history is any guide, the Israelis will not stop until they've exceeded the toll exacted in Operation Cast Lead.
2. Gaza is 139 sq. mi. Kinda hard to find a place where there aren't civilians.
3. What would I do? The very first thing is that I wouldn't put several million people under military occupation for 47 years. That's number one. Number two, I wouldn't put 1.5 million people into the world's largest open-air prison and then systematically starve them of food, fuel and water.
Not doing those things makes much of what Israel has done and is doing unnecessary.
I know goddamned good and well you would not want the Israeli right wing in charge in this country, so why do you choose to defend them because they're in charge there? Hamas has, by the way, nothing to do with the Israeli government as constituted.
ReplyDeleteThey're not defending Israel. They're quite steadily and inexorably destroying it. They're mostly proto-fascists now, but, in a few years, without any pushback from the United States, the only country on which they can depend, they will be completely out of control, and what we're seeing at the present moment will be just a warm-up for the atrocities ahead.
Sure, you think you're defending Jews everywhere. Keep it up, and eventually you'll find yourself defending fascism, not out of honest sentiment, but, rather, out of habit.
Either way the Palestinians will be screwed over, so they go with somebody who at least gives them some chance of vengeance.
ReplyDeleteI sponsor a little girl in Gaza. I have no idea what has happened to her. I presume she is not directing Hamas military operations.
ReplyDeleteYour tiring of it doesn't change the reality of it.
ReplyDeleteDeal with it. Your country has supported these excesses--militarily and financially--for four decades. It's not pleasant, but, it's the policy of the country to which you pay taxes and nominally claim to be a voting citizen.
Grow up. Be a mensch.
This is basically turning into a replay of the Warsaw Ghetto. Small groups of armed fighters making pin-prick attacks against the surrounding army. And the surrounding army responding with overwhelming force and brutality.
ReplyDeleteThat the Israelis themselves do not see the parallel is quite disheartening; that American commenters cheer it on makes me want to weep openly.
The American Right's affection for Israel is no bearing on my feelings of disgust for Israel's present actions. Those actions are inhumane, and should be considered crimes against humanity.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the situation is more complex than this, but can the Palestinians at least convince their elected leaders to stop shooting at Israel for whatever reason they're doing it? I'm not using the rape-victim argument here, but when the result of your rocket-shooting policy is to bring down the wrath of Hell on your constituents, maybe you should rethink that policy.
ReplyDeleteAnd Israel, as the "wrath of Hell," well, not much more needs to be said about that.
What's liberal about the Israeli state? Is it:
ReplyDelete- De facto and de jure martial law?
- Endless war?
- Gender segregated buses?
- Ethnic grading and official discrimination on a par with apartheid?
- An official state religion?
- Conscription?
- Mass disenfranchisement based on ethnicity?
Seriously, I want to know. As a progressive, what is it the Israeli state does (other than be ethno-religiously correct in your opinion) that I should support?
Oh, as someone who grew up under apartheid (you may have heard of it. It was in Lethal Weapon II). I'd like to remind you that it was Israel that supported the Apartheid state to the very last and that it was Israel that helped them (and Pakistan) obtain nuclear weapons.
If you guys would stop sending dumptrucks of cash and political protection, Israel would sensibly make peace with its enemies because the consequences (in blood and treasure) would be too great. Instead we have this bizarre artificially fuelled war that pits a modern military state against civillians.
Who, exactly is dehumanizing whom here? For years, I've been hearing Israelis describing Arabs as "animals."
ReplyDeleteNow, you tell me what's responsible for this? You explain it, because you're fucking defending it:
but we do wonder why our erstwhile progressive allies are against us on this when there's nothing liberal about Hamas.
ReplyDeleteTwo wrongs don't make a right, sparky.
I have seen those arguments made. It was on a beach, near boats... Boats can be used in naval suicide-bomb attacks, so anyone near a boat is a legitimate target! They were kids... Kids could be used as human shields and are therefore legitimate targets!!
ReplyDeleteAlso too, "Anyone running away is behaving like an ill-disciplined gook terrorist, therefore legitimate target".
"...the Wall St Journal has forfeited its right to be called "a major paper."
ReplyDeleteThe editorial pages have always been pretty much of a boat anchor holding back any aspirations that the WSJ might have had to "greatness".
*Sigh*
ReplyDeleteIf only the Gazans could be more like those nice Palestinians in the West Bank, they might get a Soda Stream factory.
2016? So late?
ReplyDeleteClass an entire people as subhumans and you are basically at liberty to do what you want to themThe cause-and-effect relationship is clearer when your sentence is rephrased :"If you want the liberty to do what you want to an entire people, the first step is to class them as subhumans".
ReplyDeleteIn related news:
ReplyDeletehttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tmPEtQSvIUc/U9V8Sbkc1pI/AAAAAAAATYA/fomOLfc28CM/s640/tmw2014-07-23colorlarge.jpg
~
Sir, you are under some misapprehension. The Democratic Party has, for the past few decades, been every bit as supportive of Israel's crimes as the Republican Party. (In fact, the Republicans have been slightly more likely to rein in the Israelis than the Democrats.) Don't believe the Republican/Israeli propaganda that Obama is throwing Israel under the bus; he's been steadfastly supportive all along, and there's no indication he's going to change. And don't be fooled by a few fringe Democrats who've been trying to convince themselves for six years that Obama is really a progressive: they do not speak for the Party.
ReplyDeleteWell, I LIKE the idea of Thor as a woman...
ReplyDeleteUnimaginable restraint
ReplyDeletehttp://roarmag.org/2014/07/this-is-what-unimaginable-restraint-looks-like-for-israel/
~
thane's essay sounds like a transcript of the worst okcupid date ever.
ReplyDelete(Black Americans like me have known this for centuries.)
ReplyDeleteThere's still Ticking Time Bomb and We're the Real Victims!
ReplyDeleteIt's not pleasant, but, it's the policy of the country to which you pay taxes and nominally claim to be a voting citizen.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but as someone who isn't a closely held for-profit corporation controlled by theocratic psychopaths, what can I do?
Heck, you didn't even have to worry about voting for the wrong people for most of those centuries. Including this one, thanks to Roberts et al...
ReplyDeleteWell, admiting it publicly took a while
ReplyDeleteExcept no sane people are talking about hating the Israelis, that is citizens of Israel. And sane people know the right could give a fuck about Israel and its citizens once you get past:
ReplyDelete1. Their belief that Israel will be Ground Zero for Jesus II - The ReJesusing.
2. The country's leadership willingness to frag Muslims.
3. They think support for Israel's leadership (or more general pro-Israel statements) is going to get every Jewish person in America to drop them a wad of cash and a vote.
I dunno... we have to do what it takes to defend Israel's right to exist. Just because she's 8 is no guarantee she's not a Hamas commander. Better bomb her neighborhood to be sure.
ReplyDeleteUmm, as I suggested. If it's all you can do, be a mensch.
ReplyDeleteThat's the sort of thing that leads me to believe that "Yes" is the clear answer.
ReplyDeletePlus, the pattern of a soccer ball somewhat resembles the conventional explosives packed around the core of a fission nuke, so going by the standards of Dick "Iraq was totally cool until Obama fucked it up" Cheney, it counts as a WMD.
ReplyDeleteHe'd come in second to the background radiation of the universe.
ReplyDeleteYep... this is the living embodiment of the "One Per Cent Doctrine".
ReplyDeleteReactionaries are in charge on both sides, and as both societies are feeling increasingly beleaguered, authoritarianism is marching right in and finding itself quite welcome.
ReplyDelete"Jeez, there just don't seem to be any "good guys" anywhere."
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as though one side has a policy of assassinating the leadership of the other side and then complaining that they don't have anyone to negotiate with.
There are no Palestinian moderates because Israel has killed them all. All that's left are the people who are willing to accept near certain death for themselves and their families just to fight for a chance of a future. Unsurprisingly accepting a job whose previous incumbents are smeared all over the walls, incinerated in their car or being tortured in Israeli prisons requires a mindset that is less compatible with erudite statesmanship that one might hope.
The violence continues not because the side that lost 1000+ civilians this round and every other round wants it to. It continues because a modern nation state, with modern, overwhelming military power and the support of a superpower wants it to.
I could ask the same of the Israelis. Can they convince their leaders to stop acting like a terrorist organization? I would also really like it if we can convince our own government to stop sending billions of dollars to Israel. Our own citizens could use that money instead of every time a disaster happens, the conservatives have to check which social program will have their funds reduced to pay for the clean-up and rebuilding.
ReplyDeleteI read a lot of commentary critical of Israel that's clearly not anti-semitic (though in certain contexts, talking about the Palestinians being bombed on the one hand and "Israel" being shelled on the other -- a subtle way of avoiding the discomfort of Israel also having people in it, and bringing up individual Israelis only to the extent that they are villains, while ignoring the existence of ordinary people -- is problematic). What is undeniable, though, is that anti-semitism unfortunately rears its ugly head in any discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For one thing, any time there is an anti-semitic attack on Jews anywhere outside of Israel, it takes about three seconds for commentary to veer into the Israeli-Palestinian territory, putting in serious doubt the oft-repeated claim that anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are strictly separate systems of belief and that the latter is absolutely never ever combined with the former. Any time there is an anti-Israel protest, you can count on anti-semitic imagery and classic anti-semitic tropes to not only appear but be vigorously defended as legitimate political criticism.
ReplyDeleteI think accusing Jews and Israelis of hypersensitivity to anti-semitism is to ignore history. It's really, really unfortunate, but the experience of anti-semitism is part of the Jewish legacy and thus is a factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sure, some pro-Israel commentators invoke anti-semitism and the Holocaust cynically and gratuitously -- but by the same token, it's delusional to claim that anti-semitism, which wiped out so many Jews less than a century ago, has simply evaporated since, or that the fear in the back of minds of many Jews is without basis in history. So, yes, Jews are hypersensitive -- but I would submit it's not entirely Jews' fault.
You owe Satan an apology.
ReplyDeleteYou've never heard Arabs dehumanize Israelis or Jews? Really?
ReplyDeleteSo: you are saying Arabs never dehumanized Jews before the 1930's? Or that you've only heard Palestinians dehumanize Jews? Or that anti-semitism was just that one white German dude, that's it?
ReplyDeleteWith respect, what does European anti-semitism have to do with stealing the land of Christian, Jewish and Muslim Palestinians, who are all treated as second class citizens in Israel? The current Israeli state is not Judaism, you conflating the two is in itself anti-semitic. The idea that Jews have a 'place' is as offensive as imagining that African Americans should go back to Africa.
ReplyDeleteYou're thor? I'm tho thor I can hardly pith!
ReplyDelete"With respect, what does European anti-semitism have to do with stealing the land of Christian, jews and Muslim Palestinians, who are all treated as second class citizens in Israel?" ~ Other than the fact that Jews were forced out of Europe? Nothing, I suppose.
ReplyDelete"The current Israeli state is not Judaism, you conflating the two is in itself anti-semitic." ~Nice. This reminds me of how whenever I bring up the fact that Jews are treated as an ETHNIC group in many countries, rather than a religious group, I get accused of anti-semitism, too. Maybe I should be gassed for that.
"The idea that Jews have a 'place' is as offensive as imagining that African Americans should go back to Africa." ~Offensive to whom? Are you offended as a Jew, or are you offended for Jews? Personally, I've always found it offensive to hear that because Jews don't have a country, we don't have a right to live anywhere in the world, at least not on equal terms with "native" inhabitants, but that must be because I'm such an anti-semite.
There is some truth in what you say, but who are you talking about? We're talking about Israeli war crimes here, not about whether Jews are too sensitive about anti-semitism.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I am Jewish with close Israeli relatives. That would not stop some people from calling me an anti-semite, though I think the issue there is more dishonesty than hypersensitivity.
On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians
ReplyDeletewhen you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as
statesmen...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_%28group%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Shamir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan
But how does any of this justify or excuse the way the government of Israel and the IDF act in the occupied territory they have a legal and moral obligation to treat humanely?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't -- because my comments were not about that at all. My comments, while acknowledging that there is clearly plenty of criticism of Israel that isn't anti-semitic, also disputed the idea that criticism of Israel is never ever ever inspired or affected by anti-semitism.
ReplyDeleteI try to stay out of this discussion because it always ends up conflating Jews with Israelis and holding Jews responsible for Israel in a way which we tend not to do when talking about other groups. The Irish Republican Army was supported by Irish people in the US without Irish Americans ever being held responsible as a class, or Christians as a class for the matter of that, for those bombings.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm utterly dumfounded and bemused by people who say things like "the idea that Jews should have a place" is offensive or at all unusual on the world scene. Pakistan was founded, in a welter of blood and gore, precisely so that Indian Muslims could have their own state. Saudia Arabia is a Muslim State within which other religious communities and ethnic communities are only tolerated. Iraq threw out its Jewish population. The Turks massacred the Armenians and repress the Kurds. An ethnic/religious state is nothing new and if Israel disappeared tomorrow there would be plenty more--all Muslim, btw, to take her place.
I am not now, and never have been, a supporter of Israel--neither morally nor financially nor politically. But pretty much every time the issue of Israel comes up I find most online discussions heading straight into the gutter and I remember why Jews all over the world once thought that an actual state was the only way to guarantee some safe haven the next time our neighbors decide on a pogrom. I hasten to add that this discussion has, for the most part, really kept a bright line between criticism of Israel's political elite and its supporters within Israel and broad brush attacks on non Israeli Jews. I can speak only for the people I know but I know of no American Jews who are not disgusted with Isreal's actions in Gaza and who have not opposed them for years. Are we in the majority? I don't know. But I know we are not an insignificant number.
Then I'm not sure why you're bringing this up.
ReplyDeleteSo did the Norse.
ReplyDeleteI think AmusedAmused is bringing this up because its a problem for some of us. I'd like for once to be able to criticize Israel and its terroristic acts w/r/t the Palestinians without also having people tell me that the entire State of Israel shouldn't exist, or was born out of a bigger crime than any other state in history or without people pretending that infighting among other muslim groups and refusal to aid the Palestinians in being resettled hasn't had an enormous impact on the current situation.
ReplyDeleteSo your argument is that Jews should be allowed a big nation creating crime too? Fine by me. What about the Palestinian Jews currently being treated as second class citizens in Israel? What do they get?
ReplyDeleteDon't distract--of course I have--and I didn't say what you claim. I was responding to someone who was, typically, claiming that criticism of the Israeli government's actions somehow dehumanized them.
ReplyDeleteWhich is rank bullshit and typical of Americans determined to defend Israeli bad behavior, as you seem wont to do, as well.
Does any nation-state have an inherent right to exist, no matter what they do and how it affects those individuals living both inside and outside its borders? Is it a person in its own right, just like a corporation?
ReplyDeleteWhat's your take on right-wing Israelis' attacks on the Israeli left? Are calls for the expulsion of "leftists" acceptable?
ReplyDeleteI get that, I just thought it was weird to bring it up here where nobody's really saying any of that; it seems like everyone's doing a fair job of clearly distinguishing between the Israeli government/the Knesset/the IDF and Judaism as a whole, so bringing it up just felt like someone angling to start a rumble.
ReplyDeleteI am Jewish too with close Israeli relatives (who are very liberal, by the way). As you can see, I've already been accused of anti-semitism, and it's also been insinuated that I'm prejudiced against African-Americans somehow. Kind of makes me wonder who's playing the "anti-semitism card" here.
ReplyDeleteWhew! Thnatched that one from obthcurity!
ReplyDeleteWhat would be the reaction if the world began to refer to Gaza as the "Palestine Ghetto"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely not. Nothing justifies inciting violence against any group of people, as I've already said. I really don't see how anything in my comment can be interpreted to mean that I find calls for expulsion of "leftists" acceptable.
ReplyDeleteBecause it was brought up in the original post.
ReplyDeleteOkay -- since we are all about examples and proof here, please quote me where I supposedly defend Israeli bad behavior. And note, making that bullshit claim against someone is too an example of dehumanization.
ReplyDeleteThere would be no small number of right-wingers in this country filing trademark infringement suits.
ReplyDeleteAnd note, making that bullshit claim against someone is too an example of dehumanization.
ReplyDeleteNo, it really isn't.
Once again, since you've accused me of defending Israeli bad behavior, I call on you to substantiate your accusation with quotes. Or are you saying that simply mentioning that Arabs too have been heard dehumanizing Israelis and Jews is tantamount to defending Israeli bad behavior -- yes or no?
ReplyDeleteCould you please point me to the part of my comment that led you to believe I find the calls for the expulsion of any group acceptable? I'm just curious where you see that.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted your take on it. Nothing more, nothing less.
ReplyDeleteOkay. My take on it is no, I don't find it acceptable.
ReplyDeleteOkay. My take on it, no, I don't find it acceptable.
ReplyDeleteGet in line. I too am Jewish with close Israeli relatives (all of them leftists), and I've already been accused of anti-semitism AND had it insinuated that I am prejudiced against African-Americans somehow.
ReplyDeleteIt either does or it doesn't. The important thing is to apply the same standard to all. If Israel has a right to exist, so does a Palestinian state. If Israel doesn't have a right to exist, neither does a Palestinian state.
ReplyDeleteWhat is undeniable, though, is that anti-semitism unfortunately rears its ugly head in any discussion...
ReplyDeleteAnd since it seems that there wasn't any anti-semitism going on in this conversation, you've come charging in to make the conversation all about anti-semitism. Is that about right?
Careful. Talking about disproportionate body counts seems to evoke the thickheaded response, "Oh! So you're saying you don't think enough Jews are being killed!" Been seeing that kind of crap all over Facebook lately.
ReplyDeleteThe argument, as I see it, isn't that Jews should be "allowed" a nation-creating crime too. The argument is that we would like to not be singled out. I've never heard anyone refer to the creation Pakistan as a "nation-creating crime". Why is that? Or the creation of Greece, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteI didn't come "charging in". I commented just like everyone else. I didn't do anything to circumvent the comment policy, if there is one, I haven't called anyone names, and I haven't accused the author or any of the commenter here of anti-semitism. What I commented on refers to an observation in the original post.
ReplyDeleteSo no, it's not "about right". Quite the contrary, you are about as wrong as could be.
And an endless wave of settlers stealing their land. Lucky Gazans, they have so little land to steal.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well stupid people can always find reason to take offense. The analogy that comes to mind w/Gaza is that of "shooting fish in a barrel." Hundreds of thousands penned into a very small area with no way to escape, nowhere to run or hide, having bombs rained down on them.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with you; Israel's policy is using asymmetric warfare, while claiming it's use by the Palestinians is why they are allowed to do it, but at a much higher kill ratio. Collective punishment is exactly what is going on here, and Israel has never planned on doing anything except wasting time and building more illegal settlements in order to make concrete the facts on the ground. As the Israeli government has become more reactionary and right wing, the more this policy is being pursued.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what I WAS doing was agreeing with B4 that it doesn't help when the current Palestinian leadership keeps creating situations where Israel knows it can respond in exactly this manner and get away with it. The missiles that Hamas is randomly and ineffectively launching into Israel are just as capable of killing civilians as those sent by Israel, and aren't specially sanctified because the Palestinians are being collectively punished. Killing civilians is killing civilians, period.
When *I* was young(er) and drunk, I once suggested that Israel, in the long run, would not be able to exist as a Jewish state. Although religious hegemony worked for a few hundred years in Europe, the Catholic Church is no longer in charge in France, Spain, Italy, or even Ireland. It didn't work in the long run when Henry the Eighth created the Church of England, and it didn't work in the American colonies, though not for lack of trying. For the moment, Muslims are trying mightily to establish Islamic states, and to the extent they succeed, they're in places, like Saudi Arabia, where there is oil and the rest of the world humors them because they need it, or in places like Yemen or Sudan, who are too poor to bother about. And in case we've forgotten, Muslim factions are inflicting horrific abuses on each other in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. I understand that after WWII when the horror of the Holocaust was exposed, it was felt by a chagrined world that maybe Jews should have a homeland, and since Zionism had already prepared the ground in Palestine, that was the logical place for it, but that did not work out from day one, and sixty six years later, it is no closer to working out. So I guess, when I was younger and drunk, it could be said that I favored a single state solution with Greater Israel as a secular state. After sobering up and getting older, I'm not sure what the future of a secular Israel would look like, but the sentiment is still there.
ReplyDeletePollak further fantasized that Obama meant this as a "shot across the bow -- a deniable but very real signal to Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Obama administration's support for Israel's operation in Gaza has come to an end, and that there will be consequences for its continuation."
ReplyDeleteGeez, if only that were true. Y'know, if Obama only did half of what right-wingers accused him of doing, we'd be living in a socialist paradise with a sensible, humane foreign policy.
They'd have to be those "pointillism" ones that the WSJ is famous for.
ReplyDeleteMaybe even less than half. They've been really busy accusing him of stuff that even his most ardent supporter wouldn't expect him to do.
ReplyDeleteThus, if a Palestinian state doesn't have a right to exist, neither does Israel.
ReplyDeleteBetter inform the IDF.
Pointittillism?
ReplyDeleteNo, that's not my argument. But thanks for deciding that against all logic and my history on this or any other site I am a stone racist and supporter of Israeli right wing politicians.
ReplyDelete"...we do wonder why our erstwhile progressive allies are against us on this when there's nothing liberal about Hamas."
ReplyDeleteSo when I see dead kids, I'm supposed to check whether their parents are "liberal" enough before I care?
sj660 you are really not helping. You don't speak for me or any of the people I know at Workman's Circle. I have progressive Allies because I'm a progressive. But Israel doesn't, or ought not, to have progressive allies because its not progressive. Not by any stretch of the imagination at this point.
ReplyDeleteThe captains of industry, as you've never seen them before!
ReplyDeleteUsing the U.S. reaction to 9/11 as a rough guide I think the going rate is something like 1,056/1.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of blogs.
ReplyDelete"If they run, they're VC, and if they don't run, they're exceptionally well-trained VC!"
ReplyDeleteI'm speaking here of the short-term, what it's going to take to get Israel to put their fucking guns away. Yes, Israel appears bent on the total destruction of the Palestinians, at the pace it can do that in front of God and everybody. I just want Hamas to get a fucking clue and stop waving raw meat at the hungry lion that wants nothing more than to make the Palestinians its next meal.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to suspect that Netanyahu's main objective with the current incursion is just trolling. That is, the IDF is bombing hospitals and schools just for shits-'n'-giggles... to slap the world around, and make a point of their impunity, and to see how far their American supporters will go in justifying each atrocity.
ReplyDelete"The argument is that we would like to not be singled out."
ReplyDeleteOkay, let me get this straight. We Jews, or rather, the Zionists, sliding in on the backs of the British, then taking advantage of violence and bad-faith dealings, to basically steal a state for themselves, and all in the name of the Jews, right. Now this project, all ostensibly done in our names, and considered the flower of Jewish accomplishment, seems to be sliding into chaos, and brutal aggressiveness, in fact, atrocities. And with a significant contribution from the US.
But you don't want to be "singled out"? Okay, you keep hoping for that.
This is the bed Zionism made for us, and we all lay down in it.
Could we have a metaphorical slaughter?
ReplyDeleteI would've thought "Thora," but who knows?
ReplyDeleteI swear I recently read some troll (I think it was at LGM, but I'm not sure), liken current events in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, except in his version the Israeli's were the rebels in the ghetto and the Palestinians were the Nazis. I...have no words.
ReplyDeleteOk, maybe it's not 1000 civilians right this second, but at the rate Israel is dropping bombs, they should hit that number later this week. Is it ok with you if we have this conversation on Wednesday or Thursday, or can we just talk about the ongoing atrocity without having to hit an arbitrarily designated civilian body count first?
ReplyDeleteStipple nipples?
ReplyDeleteThey forcefully reject any such parallel.
ReplyDeleteI mean did "Rhodesia" have an inherent right to exist?
ReplyDeleteIDF HQ is near civilians, too.
ReplyDeletePrison guards sniping at prisoners in the yard. Or using flamethrowers. Whatever.
ReplyDeleteApparently Israel is turning much of Gaza into an uninhabitable no man's land. A 3km wide strip on the border.
ReplyDeleteIsrael may not intend to settle on that land, but they are definitely stealing it.