I like this post for some reason. Thanks, Andrew.

Joshua

"Likewise, Israel and Syria must tone down their rhetoric and make the hard choices necessary for peace, such as Syrian concessions on supplying weapons to Hezbollah and Israeli concessions on the Golan Heights."

Why on earth should Syria "tone down" anything when they are being REWARDED for sending suicide bombers into Iraq to kill our troops, and sending long-range missiles to Hizbullah, who has retaken Lebanon for them? And the investiation of the murder of Rafik Hariri, which Assad ordered, what happened to that? They'd be damn fools to tone down a thing, and though I don't think much of Boy Assad, he's knows when he's winning.

You reward Hizbullah, you kill the Cedar Coalition and give Lebanon back to Syria. What the hell is so hard to understand about that? But it's too much for today's liberals, apparently.

Nadine is pissed!!! Obama must have done something right!

But of course she can only lay out the usual litany of grievances, as the AIPAC/Likud/Kadima faction always does. Never could she imagine that Syria and Hizbullah have a similar list of grievances that you never hear about, such as the brutal Israeli occupation of Lebanon, immensely destructive air campaigns subsequently, occupation of Golan and Shebaa Farms. After all of that, Nadine can't conceive of why Syria and Hizbullah might possibly want some deterrent capability to prevent the next Israeli pogrom of their lands.

Positive rebound resulting the Hamas hit.

Unintended consequence?

"Why on earth should Syria "tone down" anything when they are being REWARDED for sending suicide bombers into Iraq to kill our troops......."

Those are OUR troops, Nadine. Cowards like yourself have no claim on them.

Trust me, they aren't intentionally dying for some cowardly Israel Firster like yourself whose loyalties lie offshore. YOUR troops are the IDF, and they've become little more than murderous jackboots.

"American isolation of Syria was a big waste of time and effort. It hurt Iraq. It hurt America. And it hurt Syria. Everyone lost...Isolation and sanctions on Syria were always bad policies."

Not that this belated realization will have any experiential impact whatsoever on the agile wits who guide our current affairs, since in the nearby Iran precinct we are about to embark on a decade-long detour into dumb. This new Persian excursion, however, is likely to have far more negative consequences for all concerned than the much less weighty Syrian digression.

Perhaps the Chinese will manage to hold onto their good sense, and resist the efforts of Washington's cowboys, and their eager ranch hands in Paris and Berlin, to stampede the whole world onto the trail of stupid. Otherwise, I don't see much hope for avoiding the completely unnecessary worst.

POS, you support "our troops" so much you are happy to see lots more of them killed by Syrian suicide bombers and Iranian shaped explosives while Obama does not utter a peep of protest and tries to appease Assad and Ahmedinejad. Our troops know how to value "support" like yours. They'd rather deal with honest enemies than pretend friends like you and your ilk.

Apparently the modern liberal mind is too nuanced to see that giving diplomatic rewards to someone who is killing our troops by the hundreds and thousands sends a signal of terrible weakness. Unfortunately for us, Boy Assad is not as nuanced. He gets it.

"Not that this belated realization will have any experiential impact whatsoever on the agile wits who guide our current affairs, since in the nearby Iran precinct we are about to embark on a decade-long detour into dumb" (Dan Kervick)

Which wits are those and what is the current Obama policy on Iran? Hillary seems to have noticed that engagement has failed, while Obama is still pretending it's working. But nobody is planning anything other than another round of milquetoast UN sanctions. Obama says he got Russia to think about sanctions. Well, Russia thought about them and still doesn't like the idea.

"...killing our troops by the hundreds and thousands"

I haven't seen that statistic in the MSM. Would I have to read The Washington Times, National Review or World Net Daily to find it?

" ... while Obama is still pretending it's working."

More accurately, Obama is still pretending that he has a policy of "engagement". There has never been a genuine policy of engagement with Iran. There is a policy of rhetorical gestures and low-level symbolic feelies aimed at gullible liberal audiences at home and abroad, so that when the administration moves onto the next stage, they can claim they tried. Honestly, Nadine, I don't understand why you don't support this policy. It seems to be right up your alley. You probably don't visit the same websites I do, but you wouldn't believe how many earnest believers can be taken in by this stuff.

Dan, there can never be an honest policy of engagement with Iran as long as Iran doesn't want to engage. It takes two to tango. What Obama didn't know, or pretended not to know, was that Bush wasn't refusing to talk to Iran; Iran was refusing to talk to Bush, or to Europe either, for that matter. Iran uses talks purely as a device to gain time. Therefore, no matter who tries, the result is the same.

Interesting to see your faith that failure just has to be the US' fault is still operative even when Obama is Prez. So, his failure proves that he didn't try either? Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Nadine, could you offer some examples of how the US has tried to engage with Iran? And don't cite that phony "give us all your enriched uranium and maybe we'll give you some back for the TRR" gambit.

As you say, there can never be an honest policy of engagement as long as the US doesn't want to engage.

It's all sticks and no carrots.

Well I have said for years and years that the US, if it thinks it's such a super power, and wants that "stable world" it claims it does,should facilate a sort of regional min UN for powers specifically in the ME after doing the necessary groundwork with each of the countries. Then offer them all a peace treaty and alliance with the US similar to what we have with other allies on the condition that they also sign mutual peace treaties with mechanisms for settling any disputes with each other.

But that would be too f'ing fair and might work and then where would the psuedo intellectual neos and interventionist be.

Well, we'll probably never know now, Nadine. But my contention is that if any high-ranking American official were to seek a public meeting with his or her Iranian counterpart, they could have that meeting any day of the week.

The problem is that, first Bush, and now Obama are both committed to the proposition that the dignity and hallowed majesty of the United States and its leaders is such that by no means may any of them be seen tarnishing their halo by relating as equals to some unclean and low-caste Persian. Only quiet and inconspicuous contacts between subaltern flunkies and pages are permissible.

Obama seemed to express some skepticism of this pompous notion during his campaign, but ever since he has put on the purple robes himself, he has seemed only too happy to wrap himself in the haughty airs and grandiose displays of his overrated office. I seem to recall reading about a time, before that moment in history when the US President was elevated to the the station of King of Kings and Great and Powerful Wizard, when presidents actually greeted ordinary folk and eager and assertive fellow-citizens on the White House lawn.

Dan, lots of high-ranking Americans met with high-ranking Iranians under Bush. Iranians will meet any day of the week. They'll gladly talk. They just won't ever do a deal. Michael Rubin wrote this in 2008:

"Despite the demonization of George W. Bush, the current president has been more open to diplomacy with the Islamic republic than any president since Carter. In 2001 and 2002, U.S. and Iranian diplomats met to discuss Afghanistan and, the next year, Iranian UN Ambassador Mohammad Javad-Zarif met senior U.S. officials Zalmay Khalilzad and Ryan Crocker in Geneva.

Indeed, Bush has found himself besieged from all sides. Proponents of diplomacy condemn Bush for the moral clarity inherent in the January 2002 "axis of evil" speech and argue that the president's State of the Union statements sidetracked diplomacy. Some say Bush missed a Grand Bargain opportunity in 2003, but, as even pro-engagement officials acknowledge, this is a myth that resulted from wrongly ascribing Iranian authorship to an attention-seeking Swiss diplomat's wish. Meanwhile, those with less tolerance for Iran's support of terrorism, its violent opposition to the Middle East peace process, and its nuclear-weapons ambitions condemn Bush for pursuing a policy of rapprochement they say is at odds with his rhetoric.

This gap between rhetoric and reality is the defining feature of Bush's approach toward Iran. On May 31, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. diplomats would meet with their Iranian counterparts if Tehran suspended uranium enrichment. Two years later, she directed a senior U.S. official to sit down with his Iranian counterpart and offer a generous incentive package, even though Iran remained defiant. Meanwhile, Crocker, now the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, has met his Iranian counterpart more than a half-dozen times.

Alas, engagement is no magic formula. First, it takes two to tango. What Carter, Bush the elder, Clinton, and Bush the younger learned -- but their domestic critics have not -- is that the impediment to engagement lies not in Washington but in Tehran. The day after Rice offered Iran an end to its isolation, Ahmadinejad dismissed Rice's offer as "a propaganda move." When Undersecretary of State William Burns sat down with his Iranian counterpart in Geneva in July 2008, Mohammad Ja'afi Assadi, commander of Iranian Republican Guards Corps ground forces, quipped that Washington's desperation showed that "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated." On October 12, 2008, Vice President Mehdi Kalhor said: "As U.S. forces have not left the Middle East region and continue their support for the Zionist regime, talks between Iran and U.S. are off the agenda."

Why not drop preconditions and engage -- as the National Iranian American Council, the Islamic republic's de facto lobby in Washington, recommends? There are several reasons. First, the demand for a cessation of Iran's uranium-enrichment program is not Washington's, but the UN Security Council's. To waive it would not only reaffirm the worst U.S. unilateralism and precondition the outcome of negotiations, but also obviate the possibility that any future UN resolution would mean anything to Tehran.

Second, embracing Tehran now would enable President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to claim, ahead of elections in his country, that his strategy succeeded where his predecessors' failed.

And, lastly, as Obama will learn when he assumes office, Iranian officials often approach diplomacy insincerely. As Abdollah Ramezanzadeh explained in June, looking back on nuclear developments during the Khatami administration: "We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities."

If all diplomacy required were Washington's good intentions, the world would be a magical place. It is ironic that some U.S. diplomats trust the Islamic republic more than many Iranians themselves do."
http://www.meforum.org/2013/tehran-is-the-obstacle-to-us-iran-talks

Maw, google the US Army's figures for the number of troops killed and wounded by suicide bombers in Iraq, of whom the great majority were foreigners, and by IEDs using shaped charges supplied by Iran.

I keep seeing this put forth by officials in Europe, the EU and various countries.
It's what I have long urged.
If Palestine did this they probably would have a much better chance of recouping their land and control of their resources that Israel has stolen.
This might also help solve the Palestine refugee problem. Regaining the land should allow for Palestine to take some or most of their refugees back into Palestine.
Originally Israel "considered" their borders 'fuzzy" (by design) so Palestine could adopt the same attitude at inception of statehood and then it would become a legal question for the UN to settle...not the US.

Palestinian state could be recognised before borders set: Kouchner

(AFP) – 9 hours ago

PARIS — France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he could envision the recognition of a Palestinian state even before its borders are drawn up, in an French newspaper interview to appear Saturday.

"The issue before us at the moment is the building of a reality: France is training Palestinian police, businesses are being created in the West Bank... It follows that one can envision the proclamation soon of a Palestinian state, and its immediate recognition by the international community, even before negotiating its borders," Kouchner told the Journal du Dimanche.

Kouchner's comments come ahead of a visit to Paris by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas next week, and after Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said he could see an independent Palestinian state in 2011 regardless of whether peace talks have advanced with Israel.

"If by mid-2011, the political process has not ended the (Israeli) occupation, I would bet that the developed state of Palestinian infrastructure and institutions will be such that the pressure will force Israel to give up its occupation," he said in an interview published in French media on Friday.

Abbas is due to meet with Kouchner in Paris on February 21 and with President Nicolas Sarkozy the following day, a senior Palestinian official said this week on condition of anonymity.

Abbas has agreed in principle to a US proposal that he hold indirect talks with Israel under Washington's mediation, but has requested a number of guarantees.

The Palestinians had broken off peace talks after Israel launched a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008

Nadine - You seem very adept with links when they suit your purpose. It is disingenuous and glib to simply say "the great majority were foreigners" without a specific citation proving such. Anecdotal doesn't cut it.

Googling troops killed and wounded is easy. Finding authoritative evidence that those thousands were directly due to Syrian actors is not... perhaps for good reason.

As a noteworthy American once said, trust but verify.

Maw, I get tired sometimes of spoon feeding everybody with information they deny exists because it never penetrated the Beltway liberal bubble. It wasn't I who said that the great majority of suicide bombers in Iraq were foreigners, it was Centcom -- the US Military. If you were paying attention to Centcom you heard about a very different war than was reported in the MSM.

Here's a report from the London Times from 2007 about the Damascus pipeline for suicide bombers
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2604119.ece

Michael Rubin!...oh my gawd!

You might as well quote Daniel Pipes.
See if you can some zionist who hasn't been discredited as a racist Muslim and Arab hating madman if you're gonna post opinions on Syria.

Carroll, Fatah doesn't want a state. They're far too busy stealing the $2 billion of aid that comes their way every year. If they had a state, the aid might slow down or stop. Somebody (horrors!) might expect them to raise their own money by collecting taxes.

Fatah tries to maintain their popularity by upping incitement against Israel and funding terrorism. But their massive corruption will eventually give the West Bank into Hamas' hands. Everybody is scared of that, so there is a general conspiracy to pretend that Fatah are "moderates", i.e. to preserve a fairy story about them.

One rather high up Fatah official, Fahmi Shabaneh, got sick of the corruption and tried to blow the whistle. But nobody wanted to print the story! Only the Jerusalem Post published it:

"On January 29, the Post published Abu Toameh’s interview with Shabaneh on our front page. Among other impressive scoops, Shabaneh related that Abbas’s associates purloined $3.2 million in cash that the US gave Abbas ahead of the 2006 elections. He told Abu Toameh how PA officials who were almost penniless in 1994 now have tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in their private accounts. He related how he watched in horror as Abbas promoted the very officials he reported on. And he showed Abu Toameh a video of Abbas’s chief of staff Rafik Husseini naked in the bedroom of a Christian woman who sought employment with the PA.

If Shabaneh’s stories were about Israeli or Western officials, there is no doubt that they would have been picked up by every self-respecting news organization in the world. If he had been talking about Israelis, officials from Washington to Brussels to the UN would be loudly calling for official investigations. But since he was talking about the Palestinians, no one cared."
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=169129

Carroll, someone who posts quotations on TWN that were forged by Nazi sympathizers and falsely attributed to George Washington, which claim Washington called the Jews a loathsome race and the enemies of mankind, has a lot of nerve calling other people racists.

Heheheh...I love to upset you nadine.
You're so easy to puncture....you puff up like a blow-fish.

I can't speak for all the quotes on that page I posted, if was the luck of the google spin, except for the ones by Washington which are in his papers at the Library of Congress and the ones by Churchill which were published by his historian in the UK Guardian and the Independent several years ago...which I happen to have read at the time it came out.

When I have time to spare I will go back and find the links and the Guardian and Independent articles...and post them again for you.

See how accomadating I am? ....I know you would like to see them verified by authority. Not. LOL

"And he showed Abu Toameh a video of Abbas’s chief of staff Rafik Husseini naked in the bedroom of a Christian woman who sought employment with the PA."

Naked in a bedroom auditioning for a job...oh my gawd!...sounds like Hollywood! How horrible!However thank God it was with a woman.

And not as horrible as this:

Israel will not extradite alleged sex offender to US
Jewish Chronicle - Paul Berger - ?Jan 28, 2010?

This year, the trial is due to begin of Brooklyn Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, charged with 75 counts of sexual assault involving three boys over four years. ...

What else you got?

While I am on a roll, here is more of the stuff you just can't make up...unless you are Israeli.

Israelis are always claiming they "invented' something.

The latest is a claim in the NYT that Israel invented the 'cherry tomatoe".
Well that set the net abuzzing and everyone on a search to see where the cherry T really came from ....actually the modern version of the cherry came from Greece and before that it came from Egypt.

LOL...it never ends...Israel invented the cell phone...Not...it was invented by Martin Cooper of Motoroal...Israel "invented voice mail...Not. Israel's pharm firm Teva invented wonder drugs...Not...all they make is generics and they have been sued by every drug make in the universe including American drug makers for patent infringment. And oh yea, they invented cancer sniffing dogs...Not also.

Two priceless comments in the tomatoe pie fight going on:

Avi February 19, 2010 at 8:37 pm
A few months ago I received an e-mail that listed all the Israeli inventions, including the cell phone and voicemail among other “inventions”. But, after a brief googling I found that the cellphone was invented by an American working for Motorola and voicemail was invented by a phone company in the US.
It seems those who desperately want to paint Israel in a favorable light, have no qualms inventing facts.

DisgustedOfTunbridgeWells February 19, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Yeah I know that list, a hasbarist tried to use it on me once too.

You're not big enough to upset me, Carroll. I'm just pointing out to the thread that you have already unmasked yourself as an anti-Semite, plain and simple. Your response only confirms it. The Washington quote you posted is not in his papers, since it is a 20th century forgery.

Washington's real attitude to the Jews was displayed in his letter to the Newport synagogue, where he proclaimed that the United States would give "to bigotry, no sanction".

The real point about Carroll's bag of anti-Semitic quotes is...who
cares if they're authentic or not?

Carroll has that sixth-grader's notion that if a "Big and Famous
Man" said something...it must be true. But that ridiculous idea is
self-evidently false as any seventh grader could tell you.

(Just for the record, it's pretty clear that we could find a bunch
of quotes from similarly illustrious personnages condemning
blacks, Arabs, the Irish for their racially based characterological
defects. But Jews have been targets for a long time.)

The companion notion--that if a lot of people say something is
true, then it must be true--was thrown on the trash heap of
falsehoods by none other than our man Kervick and his story
about Mr. Spino, a few threads back. But, of course, Dan isn't
the first and won't be the last person not to swallow whatever
swill Google, or the latest poll, or the current Big Man says.

Carroll grew up in the racist south as a debutante where
garbage like this was imbibed with one's mother's milk. Or was
it one's mammie's milk?

It's been a long time since she felt free enough to let her inner
racist out--now she has a target that gives her plausible
deniability--except, of course, with nonsense quotes like these,
which are blatant anti-Semitism.

I guess the ultimate irony is this: The more people believe and
repeat garbage like these quotes, the more Jews (and others) feel
the need for a Jewish state.

nadine,
It's all BS.

There is no evidence that US troops have been killed by suicide bombers from Syria or anywhere else, or that Syria has sent long-range missiles to Lebanon, or that President Assad was involved in Hariri's killing, or that Iran has furnished shaped charges to the Iraq resistance.

Where's the evidence? Let's see it.

"Washington's real attitude to the Jews was displayed in his letter to the Newport synagogue, where he proclaimed that the United States would give "to bigotry, no sanction"."

Then why are you shitting your bigotry all over this blogsite? Wouldn't you be more comfortable in Israel, where bigots like yourself are revered and gifted with weapons and plots of stolen land??

Nadine sure knows how to back pedal! After claiming that Bush was willing to meet with the Iranians anytime, she provided one--ONE--example!!! That was in 2001-2002 over the narrow issue of Afghanistan.

The ONLY OTHER EXAMPLE Nadine could provide was Condi saying that she WOULD MEET IF Iran capitulated in advance and stopped enriching uranium. Laying down unacceptable conditions in advance is a proven way to stymie whatever you claim to be proposing. And if Condi was good at anything, which was not much, it was throwing insurmountable obstacles in the way.

Fact is, Bush's policy was to not talk to "terrorists," and he barely ever did, except when the North Koreans forced him to. Obama has furthered the tradition of disingenuous offers of negotiations with the "we'll take all your enriched uranium and guarantee nothing in return" gambit.

It's painfully obvious to anyone following the situation that it is not the Iranians who are the impediment to negotiations.

If you feel the need for a Jewish state do it on your own f*cking
dime and leave the US alone.

Hello, it's me the racist southern debutante..fresh from consulting some Southern history in Virgina about Washington's letter to the Jews. Except it wasn't a letter to the Jews in that sense.
It was a letter to the Jewish synagogue in Newport in response to a letter they sent to Washington.
Washington was affirming as he should, that religious bigotry would not be tolerated in America.

This address was signed by the warden of the Congregation Yeshuat Israel of Newport, Moses Seixas (1744-1809), a leading town merchant and later cashier of the Bank of Rhode Island. Seixas probably presented it to Washington on the morning of 18 August 1790 when the town and Christian clergy of Newport also delivered addresses to the president.

*Washington's reply to the address of 18 August 1790 is usually considered as his opinion on religious toleration.
The receiver's copy of this address is in the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress. (The same collection, series 2, also contains two letter-book copies of the address.) The address was printed in the 8 October issue of the Connecticut Gazette (New London) 1790.
To the President of the United States of America
Newport Rhode Island August 17th 1790.
Sir
Permit the children of the Stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person & merits and to join with our fellow Citizens in welcoming you to New Port.
With pleasure we reflect on those days--those days of difficulty, & danger when the God of Israel, who delivered David from the peril of the sword, shielded your head in the day of battle: and we rejoice to think, that the same Spirit who rested in the Bosom of the greatly beloved Daniel enabling him to preside over the Provinces of the Babylonish Empire, rests and ever will rest upon you, enabling you to discharge the arduous duties of Chief Magistrate in these States.
Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People--a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance--but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine: This so ample and extensive Federal Union whose basis is Philanthropy, Mutual Confidence and Publick Virtue, we cannot but acknowledge to be the work of the Great God, who ruleth in the Armies Of Heaven and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, doing whatever seemeth him good.
For all the Blessings of civil and religious liberty which we enjoy under an equal and benign administration, we desire to send up our thanks to the Antient of Days, the great preserver of Men--beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness into the promised land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of this mortal life: and, when like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.
Done and Signed by Order of the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island
Moses Seixas, Warden

Adapted from The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, W. W. Abbot et al., eds., vol. 6, pp. 284-86 (Mark A. Mastromarino, volume editor), University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1996).
Address | Washington's Reply | Original of Address | Original of Reply

I don't have time to lecture Sweetness and nadine on the similarity of believing everything they and the virtualjewishlibrary says about Arabs and everything Ceasar said regarding Jews.

I'll just drop this history nugget for the time being...and be back later.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/diary/page21.htm
July 21:

[The entry for this day is written on three loose pages, interleaved in the diary
book.] 6:00 P. M. Monday July 21, 1947

Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine [sic]. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral] Marshall about it.
He'd no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs.
Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed. When the country went backward-and Republican in the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the D[isplaced] P[ersons] program.
The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment.

Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.
Look at the Congress[ional] attitude on D[isplaced] P[ersons]-and they all come from D[isplaced] P[erson]s.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/young.htm

YOUNG:
One point on which Acheson differed from Truman, and I think Acheson was one hundred percent right, was in the Middle East policy. I give President Truman very high marks for many of the things that he did; for his aid to Greece and Turkey; for intervening in Korea; for starting the Point IV program, although on that I think Dean Acheson deserves quite a lot of the credit for really putting the thing over in the first instance, and selling it to Marshall and getting Marshall to get back of it. I give Truman high marks for all those things.
But his Middle Eastern policy I think was in the Middle East policy. I give President Truman very high marks for many of the things that he did; for his aid to Greece and Turkey; for intervening in Korea; for starting the Point IV program, although on that I think Dean Acheson deserves quite a lot of the credit for really putting the thing over in the first instance, and selling it to Marshall and getting Marshall to get back of it. I give Truman high marks for all those things.
But his Middle Eastern policy I think was
[94-a]
a disaster, and will probably rank as one of the most serious blunders in American diplomacy and foreign policy--in backing Israel the way we have done. Our real interests lie more with the Arabs, who not merely have the oil, and the geography, and the numbers, but they have the ethics on their side, because they were robbed of their homeland quite unnecessarily. And I think the United States getting in on the wrong side, for which we are now paying so heavily, will rank as a major blunder. It is hard for Americans to get at the facts, because of the media being so slanted on the thing, and our people have been brainwashed. Right now most people blame the Arabs, and the oil companies, and almost everybody else for this crisis, when really they should look back and blame the policy, starting right at the end of World War II, to back Israel and not have an evenhanded policy.
We've lost much of the Arab friendship, they wanted to be friends with us and we had high
[95]
prestige in the Middle East. We couldn't have done more if we had tried, so far as I can figure it out, to help Russia to gain its ambitions of an entry into the Middle East. It's been a disaster, and those in authority will not come out and say that because they are afraid of the media which are partly Jewish controlled and they are afraid of losing the votes and political contributions of Beverley Hills and New York City; but someone in authority should come out and say just about what I have said. Not as a matter of anti-Semitism - 've got many Jewish friends, and…
FUCHS: Which is the charge you get right away.
YOUNG: That's right. I'm not anti-Semitic. I have many Jewish friends. But the interests of the United States are not the interests of Israel. Somebody should come out and say all these things; and sooner or later there is a severe risk that anti-Semitism in the bad sense of the word will come out of this thing, if and when people
[96]
get to realize what has been the American policy--that we've asked for this. The Europeans know that. It hurts our cooperation with Europe. It gives the Russians an opening. It's bad from so many points of view, but people just won't come out and recognize that.
FUCHS: What do you think Lord [Arthur] Balfour really intended in his declaration in respect to a home-land?
YOUNG: The part that has been ignored in the Balfour declaration is that the home for the Jews should be done in a manner consistent with the rights of the people living in the area.
My parents on their honeymoon visited the Holy Land in 1889 and they told about the Jews and the Arabs living together in harmony there in Israel, in the letters that my mother wrote, which we have. If you go back to the time of the Balfour declaration the Jews were
[97]
only about a fifth of the population of the area, and they were getting on fine with the Arabs. The Arabs had most of the business then. They had, I think it was 95 percent of the olive groves, and 50 percent of the orange groves, which were the biggest things there. They had thousands of businesses in Jerusalem and in the area, and they greatly outnumbered the Jews in their economic weight and their numbers.
Now that thing has been completely turned around. It is now mostly forgotten that the Jews relied much on terrorism in their drive for an independent Israel after World War II--terrorists assassinated the UN representative, and their violence contributed to the British giving up their mandate. Now Israel denounces terrorists (quite properly) when used against them, but they forget their past.
For the first twelve or fifteen years of the State of Israel, in effect for every Jewish
[98]
refugee taken in an Arab was driven out as a refugee. And nothing has really been done effectively yet for these Arab refugees. The Arabs are partly at fault, because they've tried to use them as a bargaining point and many Arab governments have resisted doing anything for the refugees apart from a settlement of the whole Middle East situation, so you can fault them for that. But it is a sore spot there, and we had better get on with doing something now, and bring the necessary pressure on Israel. We've got means of pressure on Israel through the arms and finances, and if we don't put the pressure on them and tell them they've got to make a reasonable settlement, and that soon, if we don't do that we will be in trouble. We'll never have a better chance than we have right now, and it really ought to be done. Time works against Israel and they can have no long-time security from a purely military solution. Of course things have gone so far now
[99]
that Israel should be assured of security in the pre-1967 territory.
I hope that the Watergate business doesn't put the Administration in so much trouble that they can't sufficiently press Israel. Perhaps if Mr. [Henry] Kissinger sees the light on it, and I imagine he may have, maybe he can do it. But it is hard because our people have been so brain-washed by years of propaganda and seem still to want to back Israel, although almost all the rest of the world does not like our policy. And the oil embargo has made it harder to see the basic justice of the Arab cause--not to speak of the terrorism.
FUCHS: It's a strange situation.
YOUNG: It's a terrible situation, and if I should write anything about it, it wouldn't be published. It would be rejected by the media, because of their fear for the advertisers and the support of the Jews and their sympathizers. The only way it could be
[100]
done would be by someone in high authority coming out and saying these things. Some of the professors have said it. There is a very good article in the current Reader's Digest by Professor Griffith of MIT on this situation. That has wide circulation, and perhaps will do some good. You'll find the State Department people--at least the Middle East experts--probably agreeing substantially with what I've just said. But repeatedly they have been rebuffed at the White House

Sweetness, I see Carroll is displaying her bigotry again. Is it now respectable on the Left to openly hate Jews because they are Jews?

I do disagree with you when you say, what does it matter if the quotes are real? It matters very much. It matters to our understanding of these men, to our understanding of our history, which is to say, our understanding of ourselves. It matters to our use of reason to understand the world.

One of the most dangerous, anti-reason notion that pervades the far Left is the idea that facts don't matter, only narratives do. That way lies the totalitarian state and its propaganda ministers.

You can see this thinking operate in IP. Hamas knows that the only 'fact' that really matters is submission to the will of Allah; facts and reason are superficialities by comparison. (This is why they are religious fanatics) So when they accuse Israel of something, they don't care if it's true or not; what does it matter, when Israel is intrinsically evil and contrary to the will of Allah? Hamas doesn't want Israel to be nicer to them, they want Israel to be destroyed. So charges are judged by utility in harming Israel, not by whether they are true or not.

How does the Left react? By adopting Hamas' narrative as their own. They 'know' Goldstone must be true, because it fits their narrative. Tell me if you if you have seen even one Leftist source wondering if all the charges could be true. I haven't. There hasn't been the slightest effort on the far Left to sort out the preposterous from the plausible. They just don't care about the facts. Even on the supposedly still rational liberal Left, I have only seen Halbertal's review, and he of course is an Israeli.

Surely, Sweetness, you do not mind Nadine inducting you into her warped narrative. As if those on the far right, christianist, firsters, birthers, tea partiers, birchers, climate deniers, etc., are the persecuted guardians of fact.

Yes, the earth is only 6000 years old, and early man roamed with the dinosaurs.

John Bolton is a great man, and Dick Cheney should be a candidate for sainthood except the left wont permit it.

This is our Nadine: bigoted, indefatigable, anti-Muslim, Israel First, and only.

Since I'm captcha phobic, I'll try for a two-fer here.

Carroll, if you are saying that there is a similarity between
bigoted statements about Jews and those about other peoples, I
have no argument. However, I've had the dubious benefit of
reading you for many years, and you are quite fond of quoting
these statements as though they were true and had basis in fact.

Here's the unfunny joke: You don't have to compile a bunch of
quotes from Churchill et al to prove to me that many illustrious
people have been anti-Semitic. I/we know that. So what's the
point? Go to Jew Watch and you can read that stuff all day long.

But you seem to be of the opinion that because many people
have said these things...and some number have been illustrious
personnages that somehow the charges must be true. Sorry; not
buying it.

The Truman quote isn't a problem in my book. I'm sure they
gave him fits. So what? Interest groups ALWAYS give presidents
and politicians fits. But when he says...

"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any
judgement on world affairs. The Jews, I find are very, very
selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns,
Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as
D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment.
Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither
Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or
mistreatment to the under dog."

...then he's engaging in pique and anti-Semitism. Who are "the
Jews" here? Who says "they" don't care? Who says "their" cruelty
is tantamount to Hitler's or Stalin's? It's an utter generalization
and an unfair accusation toward a entire people that had just
been decimated and was, understandably, looking out for No. 1.

Bess Truman didn't like Jews in her house, so writes presidential
historian Michael Beschloss, so I guess the apple didn't fall far
from the apricot.

I don't care what Harry said; I don't take it personally. It fills out
the picture of the man. But to quote these statements as if they
were anything other than what HE thought and said, as if his
thinking here sheds some light on who or what "the Jews" are is
utter nonsense...and anti-Semitic.

Sometimes, like everyone else on the planet, Jews do bad things.
So what? Jews have prejudices about other people, just as other
people have prejudices about other people. The thing that
makes anti-Semitism particularly bad, IMO, is that it's been
going on a long time and and a LOT of people have been killed
because of it. Then again, a lot of blacks and Indians were killed
by Americans like you. So the Jews do have some company in
that sorry spot.

Nadine, of course, from an historical perspective, it does matter
whether GW said X or didn't say X. I accept your point, and
didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Of course, we don't want to
spread falsehoods, and you're right to correct the record.

I was merely countering Carroll's implied point, which was: If
someone as honest as George Washington said nasty things
about Jews; if someone as learned as Churchill said nasty things
about Jews; if someone as smart as Mencken said nasty things
about Jews...those things mustn't be anti-Semitic--simple
prejudice--they are probably true.

My point is this is false reasoning, regardless of whether those
people said those things. And it isn't the first time she's pulled
this trick.

As to narratives, well, all sides use them to make sense of the
facts. Facts are important, but by themselves, they are mute and
atomistic. It takes interpretation to get the facts to speak and to
prove causation, accusations or exculpatory arguments. IMO.

As to "leftist" sources that have explored the Goldstone
question, take a look at the Magnes Zionist. I think he takes the
question of veracity seriously. He's Israeli and orthodox. As I
said elsewhere, I haven't looked into Goldstone that much and
can't comment on it. West Jerusalem is another site to try.

Both sides have their narrative and need, for the sake of
integrity, to consider the possibility that they are wrong--at
least when they first start exploring. And they need to stay open
to new revelations as they occur.

Neo...Nadine speaks for herself...as do I..and you, I'm sure.

Hi Sweetness, yes, it's good that you counter Carroll's open bigotry. Just trying to keep the facts in view. I'll look into this Magnes Zionist, though obviously, Israelis have a strong motive to defend themselves from the libels being spread about them. I was just wondering if you had come across any Leftist source with enough attachment to the truth to say, "hm, a report based almost entirely on the testimony of Gazans who were hand picked by Hamas and who testified under the watchful gaze of Hamas minders does not sound terribly credible." I haven't. Not saying one doesn't exist somewhere. But it's terribly dispiriting that nearly all the far left thinks this shoddy piece of Hamas-supporting propaganda is too good to check.

Nadine - When you throw out things like this,
"One of the most dangerous, anti-reason notion that pervades the far Left is the idea that facts don't matter, only narratives do."
I am compelled to call you out. How do you come to a conclusion like that? It's such a general statement that it could just as easily apply to the right, middle, and every other political stripe you can name. You paint with a very broad brush and it weakens whatever argument you're trying to make.

As demonstrated by my prior comments about your posts, detail and specificity are welcome and help me differentiate ad hominems from legitimate differences.

Sweetness, let's cut to the chase here, why should Israel exist?

Maw, have you ever heard of multi-culturalism? If so, can you tell me what its main tenets are?

Pardon the interruption in a delightful thread, but OA, why should Arizona exist?

Indeed, why should the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Zuni, Pima, etc. tribes not have Arizona back at once? Would OA support a campaign of "armed resistance" from them consisting of suicide bombing the malls and restaurants of Phoenix and Tempe? If not, what hypocrisy.

Sweetness, this story by Barry Rubin about why so many people today don't understand or recognize anti-Semitism is apropos to our discussion:

How a Forgery—Not the Protocols—Shows Us Why So Many Still Don’t Understand Antisemitism When They See (or Produce) It
Looking for subscriber number 9132! Don't miss lots of original and realtime analysis

By Barry Rubin

You won’t see where I’m going with this at first but trust me and you’ll hear a good story with a very timely point. And if you have time read the two short appendices at the end which add to the fun.

Bertram Wolfe, an expert on Communism and the USSR who died in 1977, wrote an obscure little book in 1965 entitled, Strange Communists I Have Known, with fascinating personal profiles and anecdotes about his experiences.

In “The Strange Case of Litvinov’s Diary,” Wolfe recounts a marvelous little scholarly mystery. Shortly after the death of former Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov in 1951, a manuscript purporting to be his secret diary surfaced. A prestigious British publisher asked Professor E.H. Carr, the famous historian, to examine it for authenticity. Carr strongly endorsed it as genuine, even offering to write the preface about its historical importance.

A well-known American publisher gave Wolfe the same task. Wolfe found dozens of flaws showing the manuscript was an obvious forgery. Moreover, by comparing it to things written earlier by the former Soviet diplomat who supplied the manuscript, Wolfe even proved that this man was the forger. If you read the details you can see that Wolfe’s case is air-tight.

But what interests me (and you) most is Wolfe’s first reason for finding the manuscript phony:

“The opening pages…began with the first of a series of visits from a rabbi…who comes to Litvinov as one Jew to another to complain [that Soviet authorities] had looted two synagogues and arrested the rabbi of Kiev….Litvinov promises to intervene, though he knows that Stalin `doesn’t like me to interfere in questions concerning the Jewish religion.’”

Indeed, the "diary" claimed, when Litvinov had previously tried to help imprisoned Jew, Stalin threatened to try him before a high Communist party committee. But, Litvinov supposedly wrote, “I couldn’t help smiling at the threat” because the committee’s head Soltz “is the son of the rabbi of Vilna.”

[Incidentally, that was untrue. Although Wolfe doesn't mention it, the father of Aaron Aleksandrovich Soltz was not a rabbi but a wealthy merchant. Soltz and Litvinov, too, actually has the same background as other anti-Jewish leftists of Jewish background, see Postscript 1.]

Wolfe was flabbergasted. He explains: “Thus, the opening passage presented Litvinov” as a loyal Jew, “ready to defend any and every Jew against his government and his party.” The same characteristics absurdly and falsely, are attributed to the committee's head, Soltz, a “fanatical” Communist.

But, Wolfe writes, “Litvinov and Soltz had rejected their Jewish heritage in their youth. Their Jewish origin tended to make them more rather than less hostile toward religious and anti-Communist Jews.” Yet Litvinov, Soltz, and other Soviet Communist leaders of Jewish background are portrayed throughout the diary as pro-Jewish and even pro-Zionist.

Jewish Communist officials in the USSR sent thousands of Jews to execution or slave labor camps; closed synagogues; forbade the teaching of Hebrew and Yiddish; and did everything possible to wipe out Jews as a community and Judaism as a religion.

Indeed, over the last hundred years, aside from fascists, no one has persecuted Jews and their aspirations as a group--be it to practice their religion, maintain their own communal organizations, or have their own homeland—more than left-wingers of Jewish origin.

Wolfe concludes, referring to the manuscript: “I realized I was dealing with something I have frequently met [a supposed revelation of]: the `international Jewish conspiracy,’ the myth of Jewish solidarity overriding all political and other differences.”

Wolfe warned the British publisher, which ignored him and published it, and the American publisher, which rejected the manuscript.

Carr was a fine scholar and no antisemite. Yet he had missed entirely Wolfe’s opening point, something Wolfe was more sensitive about being Jewish himself, though also a former Communist who had a great deal in common with Litvinov and Soltz. In contrast, the British scholar and publisher didn’t comprehend the book's antisemitic message, didn’t see how the claims made about Jews proved it to be a forgery, or didn’t care.

The contemporary point here is this: Despite decades of documentation and explanation about antisemitism, a large proportion of the Western intelligentsia doesn’t understand it. For them, Jews—at least those who aren’t almost totally assimilated intellectuals either indifferent or hostile to their backgrounds—are incomprehensible. They don’t subscribe to traditional antisemitic—that is, medieval Christian and Nazi--stereotypes but are blind to their permutations.

In other words, they don't know antisemitism when they see it--or even practice it--unless it is in the crudest historical forms which they understand better since they were right-wing. What they don't comprehend are the themes. If two American academics speak of pervasive behind-the-scenes Jewish influence using ridiculous sources, they can proclaim their innocence of antisemitism. If a former president uses traditional antisemitic themes but just changes the target from "Jews" to "Israelis," or others use the word "Zionist" instead of "Jew" but employ all the old stereotypes they are baffled when someone tries to explain this point.

This Carr-style response thus manifests itself in two ways. The more obvious is the mere substitution of the word “Israeli” or “Zionist” for Jewish, that is not just being critical of Israel but doing so in ways that mirror the old categories of antisemitism: seeking world domination; having massive power behind the scenes to twist countries’ governments against their own national interests; dominating the media; being evil in nature or having evil intentions; murdering little children for organs (instead of the traditional blood); hating non-Jews and holding their lives to be cheap; and so on and so on.

Second, beyond all the specifics, Jews (or Israelis or Zionists) are seen as some strange form of life to whom the usual rules don’t apply. You simply don’t need the same level of evidence; the same standard of right and wrong; the same level of balance when dealing with this group.

These are the kinds of transferences we see in such contemporary events as the spreading organ-stealing story, the Walt-Mearsheimer conspiracy theories, or the collected works of Jimmy Carter, or the Goldstone report, to name but a few. They don’t deal with Israel or Zionists or Jews as they really are but as they exist in the imagination of those making such portrayals.

We are, of course, aware—indeed, hyper-aware nowadays—of how such things have been applied to other groups, something which is close to being outlawed today. But Jews, in large part, are the one minority group in the world to which reverence for “the other” doesn’t apply among the Politically Correct, multicultural crowd.

But aren’t a lot of these people Jewish? And what about Goldstone and other Jews who defame Israel and the great majority of the world’s Jews who support it? Simple, go back and read what Wolfe wrote.

A few hours after I wrote this article the British journalist Gordon Thomas wrote in response to the alleged assassination of a leading Hamas terrorist in Dubai by Israel that of course Jews everywhere could be depended on to participate in such killing:
"...the role of the [helpers] is a striking example of the cohesiveness of the world Jewish community. In practical terms, a sayan who runs a car rental agency will provide a kidon with a vehicle on a no-questions basis. An estate agent sayan will provide a building for surveillance. A bank manager sayan will provide funds at any time of day or night, and a sayan doctor provides medical assistance."

In other words, all Jews are potential collaborators in killing people whenever Israel asks them. Wow. And I bet not a single person in the UK intellectual circles would catch that or understand why that is so objectionable. (By the way, how many Jewish car rental and real estate agents are there in Dubai?)

Thomas is still considered a credible expert on the subject although he previously wrote that the Mossad killed Princess Diana and publishing mogul Robert Maxwell. Such is expertise in today's world. An omnipotent Jewish secret organization operating behind the scenes and killing everyone it doesn't like. Now there's a venerable antisemitic theme!

In fact, the same theme is in the Hamas Charter:

"With money they have taken control of the world media - news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting services, etc. With money they sparked revolutions in various countries around the world in order to serve their interests and to reap profits. They were behind the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution....With money they have formed secret organizations, all over the world...."

Postscript 1: Two of Wolfe’s personality portraits are of Angelica Balabanoff, the first secretary of the Communist International, and Rosa Luxemburg, the virulent enemy of nationalism who led a Communist revolt in Germany and was murdered when it failed. Here is what he writes of Balabanoff:

“Her mother was determined to make [her] a ‘fine lady.’” She learned many languages and had governesses but absolutely no Jewish religious or cultural training. About Luxemburg, Wolf noted: “had broken out of the circle of ghetto culture and religion….This background had made the young girl take easily to [Communist] internationalism.”

I have seen precisely the same pattern in the background of Karl Radek, another Soviet Communist leader, and many others of more recent times. Having dispensed with everything Jewish in their own lives, they see it as a reactionary barrier. Either Jews are to disappear completely or, at most, they have a mission of selflessly pushing for revolution without any legitimate interest of their own as a community.

As Wolfe understood, both the ideology and selfish self-promoting (not “self-hating,” a major myth) interests of such people means that: “Their Jewish origin tended to make them more rather than less hostile toward religious and anti-Communist [whose contemporary equivalent means Israeli or pro-Israel] Jews.”

Postscript 2: Those who understand Jewish history might find it amusing for me to mention another give-away found by Wolfe. When referring to Soviet leaders of Jewish background, the manuscript called them by their patronyms (the name of their father). For example, Lev Davidovich Trotsky [originally Bronstein], that is his father was named David Bronstein, is called Davidovich. Litvinov would never make such a ridiculous mistake. --Barry Davidovich Rubin
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-forgerynot-protocolsshows-us-why-so.html

"Indeed, why should the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Zuni, Pima, etc. tribes not have Arizona back at once?"

Nadine - I hope you understand that the two situations are not analogous. It is without question that America treated native Americans very unfairly and cruelly and took their lands. However, that was more than 100 yers ago and "morality" has advanced since then. In addition, Native Americans enjoy citizenship, freedom to travel, economic liberty etc. Can the same be said for Palestinians?

Ah yes, Rubin, who has yet to see a bush that an anti-semite wasn't hiding under.

The ultimate victim, Rubin.

If you farted in an arena containing twenty thousand people of all religions and ethnicities, Rubin would accuse you of attacking the Jews.

You guys are Ashkenazi Jews, converts, and about as Semitic as I
am. Arizona is divided up into tribal nations Check your facts,
girlfriends.

"However, that was more than 100 yers ago and "morality" has advanced since then. "

Sounds like a convenient rationale for not giving back the land to natives. I'm sure the various tribes could point out that "morality" hasn't advanced enough to give them back their territories of 100 years ago.

"In addition, Native Americans enjoy citizenship, freedom to travel, economic liberty etc. Can the same be said for Palestinians? "

It can certainly be said for a million Israeli Arabs. As for the Palestinians, let's settle which country the ones in the West Bank and Gaza live in and make a treaty; this was always the sticking point. You can certainly argue that as they have been since 1967, the Palestinians under Israeli rule enjoyed far more of these good things than the Palestinians under Arab rule did. How are Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Hamas and Fatah doing on the liberty and citizenship front? None of those Palesitnians have citizenship, I notice, except some in Jordan, and even some of those citizenships are being stripped. What an uproar there would be if the Israelis did it. But the King of Jordan? Yawn.

You see how it is, questions. Every other state in the world is grandfathered in as the legitimate owners of their land, no matter how or when they came by it, or how they behave today; only the Jews are illegitimate and deserve to be killed and driven off. Not that this anything at all to do with anti-Semitism and Barry Rubin (who has more learning in his little fingernail than POA does in his whole pathetic head) is making things up to play the victim.

I think the Rubin essay is really interesting. Most of the stuff you ascribe to him turns me off, but this piece is an interesting read.

I have some vague memory of something either Freud or Zizek did on anti-semitism. I'll have to go hunting. But I think the basic theme of opacity to oneself was in the mix. But I'm really vague on this memory.

It's really akin to the treatment of Obama in this country. When Biden came out with the "he's articulate" line, many many white people just didn't get it. But African-Americans got it instantly.

It's not "meant" to be racist, but it borrows so heavily from the racist tradition that it's awfully hard to make a separation. The result of this similarity in rhetoric is the whole "PC" debate, and we know how much people (on the right, especially) just 'love' the whole PC thing.

The fact is that language that borrows from nasty tropes carries some of that nasty history with it. The borrowing acts as a laundering process and seems to "clean" the language up of its wicked history, but that history is really still there in the tropes.

Of course, asking people to watch their tropes is a sure fire way to enrage them, make them feel the can't even talk, make them feel utterly that they are the oppressed majority, the victims of the minority, the disempowered.... It's all over this comment section routinely.

And, on this point alone, Rubin does seem to have a valid reading.

"It's all over this comment section routinely"

Oh come on, Questions. Look Rubin's site over in its entirety. The guy has made "anti-semitism" his career, his mission.

And it is asinine to the extreme for Nadine to advance this straw garbage about Arizona and the various tribes. We aren't routinely sniping Navaho farmers as they attempt to till their fields. We have protections in place for Indian burial grounds. We aren't dumping white phosphorous on whole families of Navajos. We aren't destroying Navaho waterwells and orchards. We aren't sending warships to sink fishing boats manned by poverty stricken indians trying to feed their families. We aren't banning Navahos from using public thoroughfares. Did we trewat the natives despoicably? Of course. Is there still room for improvement? Yes. Are we frying them in white phosphorous??? Killing them in greast numbers?? Kidnapping and imprisoning them, even children? Evicting whole families out of their homes? Depriving them of medical care or basic needs such as food and medicines???

You want to pat the bigot Nadine on the head for her bullshit? Great. You want to find some yahoo like Rubin credible, despite the fact he's a proffessional One Trick Pony consigning his brethren to eternal victimhood in order to justify the murderous and inhumane policies of modern Israel???

Whatever.

I have huge sympathy for the following argument: "Why can't we
Jews be assholes just like everybody else on the planet? Why do
we have to behave like saints 24/7 not to be accused of being
the biggest monsters on the planet?"

But some fanatical bigots take this argument a step further,
more or less explicitly arguing along these lines: "Look, history
is full of people slaughtering each other, full of countries who
have exterminated and ethnically cleansed the territory they
want for themselves. So why the hell can't we Jews also
exterminate groups, slaughter people, etc - just like everybody
else?"

That's trespassing a line where a sound argument is
transformed into a truly monstrous argument. When someone
have to defend certain actions by referring to the most horrible
crimes committed by others, you know they're in deep shit.

"When someone have to defend certain actions by referring to the most horrible crimes committed by others, you know they're in deep shit"

Amen.

(BTW, Paul, try "has" where you put "have". But really, you are getting better and better with your command of the written english language.)

Thanks POA,

I KNOW it, but I often forget it, and curse myself when I read it -
too late!

questions, the PC question got especially tangled up when it collided with multi-culturalism. It used to be that PC had to do with whether you called somebody "black" or "African-American". Now it involves the whole multi-culturalist thing, where you get called a racist for pointing out that Hamas are genuine Islamic radicals. Musn't judge the "other", you see. You can only ascribe good or bad within your own cultural context. Judging the "other" is racist. You can call George W. Bush a religious fanatic anytime, but Hamas leaders or Ahmedinejad? Not allowed. Even when you quote them directly it is ruled out of bounds. Apparently there is doctrinaire duty to disbelieve that Hamas could mean what they say.

I'd be interested to see what you thought of Barry Rubin's columns on the education of his son, who is currently attending a public fourth-grade in Maryland. Apparently the Maryland schools teach American history as a saga of crime: first slavery then racism and oppression of minorities. Washington and Lincoln don't seem to be on the curriculum. Rubin says this is not an exaggeration.

Why can't we
Jews be assholes just like everybody else on the planet? Why do
we have to behave like saints 24/7 not to be accused of being
the biggest monsters on the planet?" (Paul Norheim)

That is the argument. I'd like to see any other nation of normal assholes deal with Palestinian missiles. The US would certainly make short work out of anybody who tried that tactic on us.

The argument is addressed especially to people who think it their duty to judge by an extreme double standard. For the Jews: perfection. For the Arabs: anything goes.

So avert your eyes from what Hamas says or does, the fanaticism, the incitement, the culture of death, the kiddie programs where the Hamas version of Mickey Mouse teaches tots to hate the Jews, the glorification of suicide bombers, the shabab, the human shields, the missiles, the rockets. Daintily say now and then that you don't like them -- that's as far as you are allowed to go.

But you can magnify every Israeli mistake by tenfold, and invent plenty of non-existent war crimes besides. When you are duty bound to notice only one side in the conflict, it's very easy. Airbrush one side out of the picture and nothing remains but war crimes against innocent civilians.

"The argument is addressed especially to people who think it their duty to judge by an extreme double standard. For the Jews: perfection. For the Arabs: anything goes"

124 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,441 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

1,072 Israelis and at least 6,348 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000.

8,864 Israelis and 39,019 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000.

1 Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 7,383 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.

0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,145 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967.

Israel currently has 223 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land.

http://www.ifamericansonlyknew.org/

From the farmers themselves

February 17, 2010

testimonies of farmers’ losses under Israeli aggressions and Zionist policies of land and water annexation.

how Israeli policies and attacks have ravaged Gaza’s agricultural sector
February 15, 2010

One of many destroyed water wells in Gaza’s border regions.

“If we didn’t get the wheat planted today, we would not have had crops this year,” says Abu Saleh Abu Taima, eyeing the two Israeli military jeeps parked along the border fence east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. Although his land is more than 300 meters away, technically outside of the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone,” Abu Taima has reason to be wary.

“They shot at us yesterday. I was here with my wife and nephews.”

Like many farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, Abu Taima has been delayed planting by the absence of water and the threat from Israeli soldiers along the border.

“In 1994, we made water lines from Khan Younis, over 10 km away, so that we could irrigate the land. But in winter we rely on the rains, and conserve water in cisterns,” he says.

With most of Gaza’s border region wells, cisterns and water lines destroyed by Israeli forces during last winter’s attacks, farmers have been largely left with no option but to wait for heavier rains.

Years ago, before his land was ravaged by Israeli bulldozers and tanks, Abu Taima grew a variety of melons, fruits, and vegetables. “I had many plum trees, also. Each tree produced 20 boxes of fruit.”

A metal pole on the edge of his 13 dunams [1 dunam is approximate to 1000 square metres] is the only remainder of the large tent he used as shelter from the sun and a place to rest at night. “I used to sleep here, eat here. It was the most relaxing place.”

The extended Abu Taima family owns land east of Khan Younis near and within the buffer zone. “And there are 60 dunams on the other side of the border,” he says, in what is now Israel.

“Israeli soldiers started intensively bulldozing the land in 2003. But they finished the job in the last war on Gaza,” says Hamdan Abu Taima, owner of 30 dunams dangerously close to the buffer zone.

Nasser Abu Taima has 15 dunams of land nearby. Another 15 dunams lie inaccessibly close to the border, rendered off-limits by the Israeli military. “My well was destroyed in the last Israeli war on Gaza. Five years ago I had hothouses for tomatoes, a house here, many trees. It’s all gone. Now I just plant wheat if I can. It’s the simplest.”

Nasser points out the rubble of his home, harvests some ripe cactus fruit and shakes his head. “Such a shame. Such a waste. I knew every inch of this area. Now, I feel sick much of the time because I cannot access my land. And I’ve got 23 in my family to provide for.”

In one 64 dunam area of the Abu Taima region alone, over 1 km from the border and which housed over 100 hothouses, only 2 survived Israeli bulldozing and bombing.

Abu Rayda Abu Taima, seeing farmers on their land near the border, approaches thinking there is coordination with the Israeli authorities. “I’ve got 50 dunams inside the buffer zone which I haven’t accessed in years,” he says, leaving immediately when he learns there is no coordination with Israeli authorities to be on the land, no safety.

Israel imposed the “buffer zone” along Gaza’s side of the internationally-recognized “Green Line” boundary nearly ten years ago. Israeli bulldozers continue to raze decades-old olive and fruit trees, farmland and irrigation piping, and demolish homes, greenhouses, water wells and cisterns, farm machinery and animal shelters.

Extending from Gaza’s most northwestern to southeastern points, the unclearly-marked buffer zone annexes more land than the 300 meters flanking the border. Israeli authorities say anyone found within risks being shot at by Israeli soldiers. At least 13 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 39 injured by Israeli shooting, shelling and aggressions in border regions in and outside of the buffer zone since the 18 January end of Israel’s attacks last year, among them children and women.

continues....... if you have the stomach to read what these racist monsters like Nadine are doing to the Palestinians....

http://ingaza.wordpress.com/

When your preferred tactics are the suicide bomber and the human shield, you are not only courting your own higher casualties, you are counting on them. Israelis have shelters. Gazans don't. And not because Hamas doesn't know how to dig! Suppose Israel really messed up and killed 200 civilians in a strike tomorrow - Hamas would be the one rejoicing - and then calling for vengeance.

Posted by nadine, Feb 20 2010, 10:52PM - Link
Why can't we
Jews be assholes just like everybody else on the planet? Why do
we have to behave like saints 24/7 not to be accused of being
the biggest monsters on the planet?" (Paul Norheim
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

As the resident anti semite on site I can answer that.

You can be assholes like everyone else, you are in fact assholes like everyone else. But the zionistas among the Jews, you for example, say how dare you call me,... a Jew!,... an asshole you anti semite!! You can't call us assholes or criticize me /us cause we have the get out of jail free holocaust card! We/me are "the eternally innocent victims" of the world you anti semite! And if you don't accept our exceptionalism and immunity from responsibility you are anti semite or self hating Jew.

Well now how dare you call me ...a Southerner!... a anti semite you anti gentile you!!...don't you know that we have the Civil War get out of jail free card!...We're totally innocent victims of Northern Agression!!...LOL

In short the zionistas are assholes ....and also nutcases.

I haven't bothered with this in a while but let's do a point by point:

Posted by Sweetness, Feb 20 2010, 6:02PM - Link
Since I'm captcha phobic, I'll try for a two-fer here.
Carroll, if you are saying that there is a similarity between
bigoted statements about Jews and those about other peoples, I
have no argument.

However, I've had the dubious benefit of
reading you for many years, and you are quite fond of quoting these statements as though they were true and had basis in fact.

Here's the unfunny joke: You don't have to compile a bunch of quotes from Churchill et al to prove to me that many illustrious people have been anti-Semitic. I/we know that. So what's the
point? Go to Jew Watch and you can read that stuff all day long. But you seem to be of the opinion that because many people have said these things...and some number have been illustrious
personnages that somehow the charges must be true. Sorry; not buying it.

The Truman quote isn't a problem in my book. I'm sure they gave him fits. So what? Interest groups ALWAYS give presidents and politicians fits. But when he says...
"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as
D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither
Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."
...then he's engaging in pique and anti-Semitism. Who are "the Jews" here? Who says "they" don't care? Who says "their" cruelty is tantamount to Hitler's or Stalin's? It's an utter gneralization and an unfair accusation toward a entire people that had just been decimated and was, understandably, looking out for No. 1.

But to quote these statements as if they
were anything other than what HE thought and said, as if his thinking here sheds some light on who or what "the Jews" are is utter
nonsense...and anti-Semitic.

Well, I'll try this again

Posted by Sweetness, Feb 20 2010, 6:02PM - Link
Since I'm captcha phobic, I'll try for a two-fer here.
Carroll, if you are saying that there is a similarity between
bigoted statements about Jews and those about other peoples, I
have no argument.

** Well give Sweetness a prize, that's exactly what I am saying.

However, I've had the dubious benefit of
reading you for many years, and you are quite fond of quoting these statements as though they were true and had basis in fact.

**I have been around far to long to believe everything I read. On the other hand some people read what they want to read into anything,:)

Here's the unfunny joke: You don't have to compile a bunch of quotes from Churchill et al to prove to me that many illustrious people have been anti-Semitic. I/we know that. So what's the
point? Go to Jew Watch and you can read that stuff all day long. But you seem to be of the opinion that because many people have said these things...and some number have been illustrious
personnages that somehow the charges must be true. Sorry; not buying it.

* Same answer as above...I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday as they say. Based on other historical accounts I think Truman was accurate in describing the jews behavior then.
On the other hand I don't believe Jews drink baby's blood and other assorted nonsense any more than I believe Germans made lamp shades and soap out of Jews.

The Truman quote isn't a problem in my book. I'm sure they gave him fits. So what? Interest groups ALWAYS give presidents and politicians fits. But when he says...
"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as
D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither
Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."
...then he's engaging in pique and anti-Semitism. Who are "the Jews" here? Who says "they" don't care? Who says "their" cruelty is tantamount to Hitler's or Stalin's? It's an utter gneralization and an unfair accusation toward a entire people that had just been decimated and was, understandably, looking out for No. 1.

*So then, you would agree that branding "all" of Germany and making yet another generation of Germans pay for what Hitler did is a "generalization". Pay attention...how many times have you seen me say what's good for goose is good for the gander.
If it's not true about the Jews it's not true about the Germans and it's not true about the scapegoat Arabs. You can't have it just one way.

But to quote these statements as if they
were anything other than what HE thought and said, as if his thinking here sheds some light on who or what "the Jews" are is utter
nonsense...and anti-Semitic.

** Did I attribute Truman's words to anyone but Truman? Nope. Do I think it is actually anti semitic? Nope. What do you suppose was said about "The Russians" or "The Italians"...similiar bad "generalizations" are made all the time like the one you made about Southerners. I don't know for a fact but I am pretty sure Truman was referring to the Jews behind Israel and their behavior here in the US and in Palestine.
You and some of your fellow travelers have a delusional belief that "anything" derogatory said about Jews is anti semitic. Do you know how nuts that is? Do you? Why do you think nothing can be said about Jews as a group when groups have been generalized about constantly as for example nadine's constant generalization about Palestine Hamas, Arabs, gentiles, Europeans, ad nausum.
If the day comes when you are going along minding your own business and doing no harm and someone stills wants to wipe you out just because you happen to be a Jew then you can call it anti semitism.

Sometimes, like everyone else on the planet, Jews do bad things. So what? Jews have prejudices about other people, just as other people have prejudices about other people. The thing that makes anti-Semitism particularly bad, IMO, is that it's been going on a long time and and a LOT of people have been killed because of it. Then again, a lot of blacks and Indians were killed by Americans like you. So the Jews do have some company in that sorry spot.

*Well now,,this gets to the real point doesn't it?
A lot of people have been killed because of anti semitism?
Are you referring to the Jews killed in Germany or the Palestines the Jews are currently killing?Which do you mean?
Or are you talking about both because the Jews of Israel are killing Palestines because someone else killed some Jews?
Yes indeed anti semitism has been going on for quite a while...the question you have to ponder is did/are the Jews or the zionist contribute/contributing to or cause/causing the dislike/hatred people and countries felt/feel for them.
Or are you claiming the Jews were the only totally innocent people on earth since time began and were hated for no reason and no fault of their own?
And everyone else on earth, except the Jews were and always have been/are wrong and guilty except the Jews in all the Jewish explusions thruout history?
If you believe that sceniro is even remotely possible please contact me I have some time share in Afghan to sell you.

Good morning!

Nadine, Barry Rubin's son's education in suburban Maryland sounds fine. A lot like my education in suburban Maryland public schools, come to think of it. I'm doing ok -- unless you ask my fellow posters around here. In which case my years in various classrooms in Montgomery County were a disservice to all humanity -- one more crime....

Anyway, the PC thing is to me a very significant issue. And your take on it is a fairly conservative take -- if it impinges on YOUR very own sense of righteousness and ability to speak, you freak. But when you're a victim of damaging, hurtful, historically loaded rhetoric, you cry out. The PC movement may have had some excesses, may have been less than full of a good sense of humor, but for all its faults, its adherents noted well that rhetoric, tropes, metaphors, words, ways of speaking, hints...all guide thinking in ways we need to be aware of. Lakoff has a diary up at kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/21/839150/-A-Good-Week-for-Scienceand-Insight-into-Politics

that, though I have some issues with, is still totally worth reading. The language/thought/embodied metaphor stuff is interesting if maybe a bit too deterministic. But it does seem to take some of the PC movement's insights and scientize them, well or badly I'm not sure!

And as for multi-culti stuff and the inability to judge -- well, there are versions of multi-culti stuff. So, quote, explain, critique the point, and repeat. Quote, explain, critique and repeat. Some multi-culti things I've been through have show paralysis on the judgment front, and some not so much. But one good thing that multi-culti discourse points out is that what seems bizarre from here seems natural when you're over there and the relativization of social mores is worth at least entertaining for a bit. Even if you end up back in Platonism, at least you've considered the possibility that other people are, well, other. As for Hamas, in this context PLEASE make distinctions between party elites and regular people! Harming a pregnant woman because the rulers of her country are nasty ideologues -- not so nice.

******
In my own personal analysis over the maybe two or three years I've been paying attention to or posting on this site, I have come to the conclusion that some very very strong rhetoric around here makes space for some of the stuff I think is over the top. This space-making is not at all equivalent to the worst we do, but it makes the worst more possible rather than less.

Rhetoric opens space for others to take what they want and run with it. The PC movement, however benighted it may have been, made clear the escalation possibilities in rhetoric.

Of course it's not fun to have to think through the consequences of one's language. It's an infringement on freedom of speech or something (though I think the way that one really works is something like "Congress shall make no law...") Really, of course, simple thoughtfulness isn't an infringement on freedom, it's simply the kind of sociality we should all be practicing (see Hobbes) to keep the peace.

Around here, there seem to be few or no limits on what people are comfortable saying to one another. Aside from the occasional post from ON HIGH, we're on our own. And the result is often over the top. I will include myself in the insultorama since I have definitely crossed lines in pique.

****
I'm not feeling bad for Barry Rubin's son. It's really important for kids to get the highlights of American history -- oligarchy, slavery, colonialism, disappearances in Latin America, death squads, drug dealing, racism, nativism, wars of choice, anti-immigration sentiments, lynchings, land grabs.... We're not the most lovely people, and it's better for us to realize this.

There's work to be done in the world, and if you get a kind of gauzy, gossamer reading of US history, you start to think the work is done and all one has to do is let people continue doing what they're doing. Conservatives like this notion near as I can tell. I don't. There's work to be done and in order to find a task to guide your life, you need a deep moral conscience, a focus on others, and a daily bowl of granola.

When Barry Rubin touches on the use of anti-semitic tropes, I see it. When he panics about his son's learning a few of the depredations of American history, I'm happy. Let him see the ungreatness and strive for better.

Carroll said to Sweetness:

"Yes indeed anti semitism has been going on for quite a
while...the question you have to ponder is did/are the Jews or
the zionist contribute/contributing to or cause/causing the
dislike/hatred people and countries felt/feel for them."

So, among the many alternative questions here, you're saying
that Sweetness should ask himself whether the Jews are/were
causing the dislike/hatred people and countries felt/feel for
them?

Why do you think Sweetness should ponder that question,
Carroll?

As you know, there are some assholes among black people as
well - both in America and in Africa. Murderers, rapers,
kleptocrats, some even guilty of genocide. And as we know,
many white people hate/hated black people. Do you think black
people in America and Africa should spend some time honestly
pondering the question whether black people are/were causing
the dislike/hatred white people feel/felt for them?

And there are some huge assholes among women too. Do you
think "the women" should ponder the question whether they may
be the cause of misogyny?

Carroll, as usual, you present a tangled mess...

But here is the heart of it: You want to say that generalizations
about "people" are false. OTOH, you also want to say that
generalizations about Jews, because they're oft-repeated and
said by important people, are "probably" true.

Let's take Truman. On the one hand, you say you are only
quoting Truman. OTOH, you are saying you agree with Truman.
So you aren't simply "quoting" Truman, you are quoting him to
supply EVIDENCE for something you believe.

So what of the other quotes from Washington, Mencken,
Napoleon, and Churchill? I think one of them referred to Jews as
"insects." Are you quoting them as EVIDENCE of something you
believe about Jews? I say, yes. Otherwise, what IS your point?
That a lot of bad stuff has been said about Jews? We know that.

So let's also cut through the "zionist" nonsense. Was
Washington responding to a bunch of "zionists" pestering him
for a national homeland? How about Napoleon? Maybe
Churchill was. But then, don't you think he would have said--in
this quote--zionism is a hateful ideology or something to that
effect? No, he is talking about THE JEWS.

And you are quoting it with pleasure as EVIDENCE of something
you believe, too. Otherwise, if it were something you didn't
believe, you'd point that out: "Boy, look at the nonsense
Mencken was spewing." But you don't do that.

The last time you tried this line of "thinking," you were quoting
Churchill on how the Jews like to keep themselves apart and not
participate in society and thereby bring all sorts of bad things
down on their own heads.

The problem with this "theory" is that: a) the German Jews were
extremely assimilated. As I recall, it was a Jew who wrote the
German constitution in the 19th century and a Jew who awarded
Hitler his Iron Cross for valor in WWI. b) While traditional
Judaism does encourage group cohesiveness and in some ways
makes it hard to mingle, it's pretty clear that Jews
overwhelmingly flocked to the larger society after Emancipation
and whenever and wherever they were allowed.

So the question to ponder is: Did Jews keep themselves
separate? Or were they kept separate?

Most importantly, does keeping oneself separate mean that a
person EARNS the hatred and punishment and death that may
follow?

I recall your telling us the story of how you once invited a Jewish
boy to a party--and he turned you down, or maybe his parents
forbade him from going. Somehow this event became
meaningful to you as emblematic of Jews and Jewish behavior. It
stuck with you.

Getting turned down isn't fun for anyone, and maybe it's
tougher for a debutante (I don't know). But here are some
possibilities that occur to me:

• His parents wanted him to marry a Jewish girl
• HIs parents were fearful of gentiles
• His family never got over the Leo Frank episode
• He was incredibly shy...especially around pretty girls
• He was gay
• He didn't like you for whatever reason
• He didn't want to run into someone else at your party
• He had his eye on another girl
• He was attracted to black girls
• He was attracted to Jewish girls
• He didn't like parties
• He was so flattered, he thought he'd have nothing to say
• He couldn't believe someone like you would be interested in
him and he freaked and froze and blamed it on his parents who
would have given anything for him to marry a debutant

Okay, there's a lot more to go into, but I'll stop there, because I
think it represents the core of our dispute.

P.S. If you want to condemn Jewish bigotry, I'm right there with
you. See Marcus, for example. As with the discussions on Israel,
though, we'll have to determine if a statement or line of
argument is a legitimate criticism of an Arab country or
government or the likelihood that it's going to change any time
soon, or if it's simply a bigoted statement about how Arabs are
lowly vermin and incapable of anything other than herding
sheep. You know, the equivalents of the quotes you posted.

Unfortunately, Israeli society, through the folly of its leaders actions, and the Palestinian's reactions, is becoming racist. It is beginning to permeate the Israeli societal infrastructure. Education, tranportation, access to human services, and basic interaction, all tinged by an underlying distrust and hatred. In that respect, yes, Carroll is right, the behaviour of the Jews in Israel is becoming a just gauge that will increase, and to some degree, justify anti-semitism. And if not "justify", at least explain and underscore its modern day roots.

Were I one of the farmers described above, I definitely would be anti-semitic, and any reasonably moral person should be able to understand WHY my bigotry would have a foundation.

Note how Nadine IGNORES the citation of the farmer's plight, choosing instead to turn back to an arghument of "defensive" nature. Why??? Because there is no defense for destroying the farmers wells, or orchards, and it is not a "defensive" act. It is simply raw oppression and aggression, aimed at stealing a people's ability to provide themselves with basic needs. And yes, were I treated as such, I would hate Jews. And as these acts of oppression become recognized in the global mainstream, due to modern media access and increased public awareness through mediums such as the internet, civilized society cannot help but note the actions, and be repulsed by the Israelis treatment of the Palestinians. It is inevitable, should the dynamic between the Palestinians and the Israelis fail to evolve into a more equal and humane interaction, that anti-semitism will continue to re-emerge as a strong global sentiment. If all Jews were as Nadine is, then I would have to confess to a strong feeling of anti-semitism. Fortunately, not only do I share my household with a Jew that is totally unlike Nadine, I know many Jews that are appalled at opinions such as those expressed by this bigot Nadine.

But when Israeli society becomes comprised of more and more Nadines's, as it appears is happening, then Israel has become its own worst enemy, and should look no further than the mirror to find the "why" behind anti-semitism.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Feb 21 2010, 8:43AM - Link >>>>>>>>>>>>

Nice try but no cigar.
Answer the question.
Do you believe that it is possible that there is one group, religion, tribe, ethnics of human beings who have been persecuted thruout history since time began thru no fault of their own, that were totally innocent of any wrongdoing or acts to justify their treatment by other thru history?

That in every instance of jewish expulsion and prejudice everyone else since time immemorial has been totally wrong and the Jews have totally right and innocent?

Because that is the "backbone" of their claim to victimhood and right to exceptionalism for the jews in all things. What is used to justify their beliefs and actions.

And don't go off on the 'some of Jews thing, we've already settled that..or the blacks, we are talking specifically about the Jews.

So answer the question. Is it possible for any group of humans beings, that just one group of people in all the peoples of the world, to have always been persecuted without any justification ever or whatsoever by the majority of the rest of the world?.

I don't believe that is possible for a group of humans.

"And don't go off on the 'some of Jews thing, we've already
settled that..or the blacks, we are talking specifically about the
Jews.

So answer the question...."

Nice try, but it's you who is going off. If you are unwilling to
relate to the logical consequences of your assumptions and
answer my question, I see no reason to answer your question.
If you answer my question first, I promise to answer your
question afterwards.

Carroll writes: "And don't go off on the 'some of Jews thing,
we've already settled that..or the blacks, we are talking
specifically about the Jews. So answer the question. Is it possible
for any group of humans beings, that just one group of people
in all the peoples of the world, to have always been persecuted
without any justification ever or whatsoever by the majority of
the rest of the world?. I don't believe that is possible for a group
of humans."

Carroll, here again, we need to clear up a couple of things. Your
question is...is it possible for "just one group of people in all the
peoples of the world to have been always persecuted without
any justification by the rest of the world?"

• The question, as stated, is general..."a people." But then it
turns out you only want to discuss the Jews. You forbid us from
discussing any other people to answer your own question. And
yet, bringing in another example is the obvious way to answer
your question.

Yes, it is possible, and I would say blacks and Africans pretty
much fit the bill. Their continent was colonized. They were
enslaved by several European countries and, wherever they go,
they are discriminated against based on their skin color. In fact,
Africans, as is well known, don't even constitute "a" people, but
are many different groups, and yet they are lumped together and
persecuted, pretty much wherever they go.

Maybe you can tell us what the justification for this is...

• The other issue is this: Does the punishment fit the crime?
There is no question that Africans have done bad things. Did
colonization and enslavement justify the punishment?

There is no question that Jews do bad things. Let's even say that
they've done some very bad things. Do you think that exclusion
from society, expulsion, being burned at the stake, pogromed,
gassed and burned is just deserts for whatever they've done?

If you do, maybe you can explain your reasoning...

You really can't answer the question you pose in the abstract.
You have to dig into the circumstances and make moral
judgements. You can't just say, well, the Jews must have done
SOMETHING really bad to be constantly persecuted because it's
just impossible for the contrary to be the case. That's bullshit
and the kind of nonsense non-thinking that leads to all kinds of
bad things.

This is why, as I've said in the past, you deal with anti-Semitism
by, essentially, denying its existence. And you're trying to do
that here again. You're saying that the phenomenon of anti-
Semitism which has been studied ad nauseum couldn't possibly
exist because, well, a blanket hatred and persecution of a people
can't happen...unless there's justification.

One final point...

Mein Kampf is filled with "justifications" for Jew hatred. Hitler
didn't just say, "I don't like the Jews." No, he had all kinds of
elaborate justifications. The question is, were they VALID and
TRUE justifications.

Is this your question?

"Do you think black
people in America and Africa should spend some time honestly pondering the question whether black people are/were causing the dislike/hatred white people feel/felt for them?

Answer..no.
And you can't compare the two cases.
Since I live in a 60% black population and always have I know more blacks and know more about blacks honey than you ever will.
The slavery of blacks was a CLEAR CUT CASE in America.

Blacks my dear, as a group, don't claim 'exceptional' rights based on victimhood.
They claimed 'Equal rights"....and asked to be brought up to snuff opportunity and rights and justice wise in society.
They don't claim slavery as a get out of jail free card for anything blacks anywhere might do.
They also don't claim the blacks in Rawanda slaughtering blacks or whites were justified.
As the militant semites like nadine claim victim justification in saughtering other semites.

Now answer my question with a yes or no.

Ok, here is my answer.

You are convinced that there is some justification for the fact
that the Jews "always" have been persecuted by "the majority of
the rest of the world."

That is obviously an anti-Semitic statement. But anti-Semitism
is not such a big issue for you, compared to the fact that the
eternal persecution is to some extent justified. The Jews must
one way or another have been, and still are, especially bad in
some mysterious way, you seem to think, because what else can
explain the fact that they have been persecuted through history?

What am I supposed to say to this lucid example of logical
fallacy, Carroll? They called him a thief, because they stole a
goat from him last summer?

No, I think I'll do "a Norheim" (as OA calls it) first, by quoting
myself:

As a non-Jew, I have huge sympathy for the following
argument: "Why can't we Jews be assholes just like everybody
else on the planet? Why do we have to behave like saints 24/7
not to be accused of being the biggest monsters on the planet?"

So to answer your question: The Jews are not innocent. Let's just
say that they are like the rest of us: assholes.

But that's not enough for you. You have spent decades of your
life studying the persecution of the Jews, the case against the
Jews, the evil deeds and crooked deals of the Jews, and you've
realized that they are bigger assholes than the rest of us. To
some extent they deserve it. And thus you don't mind quoting
anti-Semitic statements from famous men - because they
deserve to be reminded how much they are hated, and why.

Yes they are assholes. But if you ask me, I would say that those
who persecute are bigger assholes than those who are
persecuted.

So now maybe you may answer me: Why should an American
Jew like Sweetness, who opposes Israel's policies in the I/P
conflict, somehow feel obliged to reflect on the possibility that
he belongs to a group that is persecuted because they are and
always have been worse than other people on earth?

"Some multi-culti things I've been through have show paralysis on the judgment front, and some not so much. But one good thing that multi-culti discourse points out is that what seems bizarre from here seems natural when you're over there and the relativization of social mores is worth at least entertaining for a bit." (sweetness)

No, sweetness, the paralysis is an intrinsic part of the multi-cultural package. Let's try to think this through.

What puts the "multi" in "multi-culturalism" is not studying other cultures so that what seems bizarre at first becomes understandable as part of a cultural package. Ethnographers have been doing this forever.

The "multi" comes in when you say that good and evil just don't exist at all except relative to a certain culture. But you still have to believe in good and evil yourself, don't you? Everybody has to believe something to get through the day, right? So if you believe strongly that women should be the equals of men in society, for instance, what do you do when you are confronted by the way Pashtuns treat their women, which is as unclean livestock?

You have a massive conflict. You believe that this mistreatment of women is grossly unfair to the women and crippling to Pashtun society. But you also have to try to believe that it must be right for the Pashtuns because it's part of their cultural package. It is this cognitive dissonance which induces paralysis. You wind up repeating "mustn't judge! mustn't judge! mustn't judge! even as you judge anyway and try to do something to raise the status of the women" as we see the Americans trying in Afghanistan now.

The operational manifestation of multi-cultural belief is a pretense of thinking that all cultures are equally good, which nobody can actually believe deep down without jettisoning his own values, and an general prohibition on judging anybody who is an "other" by multi-cultural standards.

This is very difficult and tiring. It is much more fun to be able to judge. That is why multi-culturalists always want to snap back to the topic of Republicans or Israelis, who are "not other" and so can be judged with abandon.

We have seen this on TWN many times. I ask, "If Ahmedinejad really believes the hidden Imam will return soon, don't you think that might influence his decision-making?" and the other person won't address Ahmedinejad at all in return. They can't even say, "No I think he'll make rational decisions." They are not allowed to think about Ahmedinejad's religious fanaticism at all, so they look about for someone in the "religious fanatic" category whom they can talk about, and come up with...George W. Bush! Who has nothing to do with the case. Who is not even President anymore.

"I'm not feeling bad for Barry Rubin's son. It's really important for kids to get the highlights of American history -- oligarchy, slavery, colonialism, disappearances in Latin America, death squads, drug dealing, racism, nativism, wars of choice, anti-immigration sentiments, lynchings, land grabs.... We're not the most lovely people, and it's better for us to realize this."

So you think somebody is well educated if has has heard about slavery but not Washington or Lincoln or the Civil War? That explains quite a bit about your mode of thinking. As Rubin pointed out, Washington and Lincoln were not anywhere on the lesson plan.

"Since I live in a 60% black population and always have I know
more blacks and know more about blacks honey than you ever
will...." (Carroll)

If you say so. Personally, I've never seen a black person in my life.
Only on TV, if you my dear me to tell you so.

Hey Nadine,
That was from questions, not from Sweetness, fyi, but thanks for the compliment. I never mind if my stuff is confused with his postings. He's a clear and careful writer.

Nadine, I'm not gonna get into what I feel is a good education beyond saying that no 4th grader has one! And no one whose information comes largely from the Texas State Board of Education has one either (they review pretty much all the textbooks used in this country....) (Check out the NYT mag piece last week or the week before on the Tx bd ed and the banning of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"!!!!!!!!) (Texas brilliance!!!!!!)

I'm not into list-making or great-man-of-history picking.... I'm actually not at all into historigraphy that emphasizes great manness at all. In fact, it's likely that one needs something like a Ph.D. in history and a couple of decades of scholarship to be any good at it, and that good would be limited to a particular area of study. So Rubin can cope. He can always read to his son at bed about George's heroics.

And honestly, Washington doesn't fit a slavery lesson, and Lincoln would be in on day two or day three because 4th graders still need something upbeat by Friday of every week. So maybe Rubin is honest in the short run, but I kinda doubt that his entire 4th grade history curriculum, if it deals with American history, makes no mention of Lincoln, unless Lincoln is, say, a third grade issue. So the journalistically correct thing to do would be to get in touch with Rubin, find out the name of the school, give them a call, get in touch with the teacher and investigate. Otherwise, take a deep breath and don't worry. Rubin's son will be ok. The use of small anecdotes as if they were national trends destined to doom us all is a right wing technique that I just don't fall for. And even if poor young Rubin gets no Lincoln for dinner, his daddy can build him a log cabin out back....

And on the multi-culti thing, again, please chill. The issues, when dealt with properly, cover things like genital mutilation and oppression of women and how one can respect and condemn and what it means to do each and whether or not anyone should stop other people's cultural practices or not and whether or not people recognize their own barbarity, and whether or not people can actual choose on their own what another culture finds truly bizarre. These are discussion topics, worth discussing. Not so easy to answer as you might wish.

Remember, there are people on the planet who find bizarre: meat eating, non-meat eating, men and women's socializing together, men and women's not socializing together, literate women, illiterate women, usury, not charging interest, driving on the Sabbath, not driving on the Sabbath, marrying young, not marrying young, displaying hair, not displaying hair, dancing, not dancing..... Aristotle thought the flute was a wicked instrument. Plato thought that the rhythm of rock and roll was unacceptable as was the poetry of Homer. We teach flute in, umm, 4th grade!! Decadent!! WHAT are we thinking?! And Homer turns up in 9th grade or so. Oh my, the Greeks would condemn us, at least the Greeks who sided with Aristotle or Plato on these issues.

Tell me, please, how to negotiate all of this. Tell me which of your practices might be more oppressive to you in someone's eyes than you think -- you likely don't feel particularly oppressed, but someone else could think you live quite wickedly. A woman who finds it proper to give birth to vastnesses of children might find your reproduction choices (whatever they are) unthinkable, or deeply unfortunate.

Multi-culti issues are not simply dismissed, even if they are mishandled at times by some not-so-great thinkers. Probably all those 4th graders who are deprived of cherry trees and walks to the library to return overdue books during snow storms.... Probably all those poor souls are headed for multi-cultiDOOM!!!!!!

Try Susan Okin's collection on multi-culti issues and women. There are issues, even if she ends up siding against the multi-cultis. She does so with reason and discussion, not caricature and generalization.

And remember, ethnocentrism does have some issues, too!

And one more thing -- slavery without the Civil War???????? Ummm, let's get in touch with the teacher. Or maybe, let's stop inventing nonsense. Or maybe, Rubin's kid got a doozy of a teacher. I had a few who had a few things wrong here and there. Not often. But sometimes. Chances are, though, that the Civil War will make it into Baby Rubin's head by the end of 11th grade AP US Hist. So I'll be looking eager for an update in a few years! The kid'll probably end up with a 5 on the test and become a Lincoln scholar. Just you wait!

Instead, turn your irritation towards the Tx. Bd. of Ed. and deal with the lack of evolution, the presence of Phyllis Schlafly and Newt Gingrich.... Talk about politicization of history texts! And don't forget, really, the banning of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!!!! This one is for real!

Carroll writes: "Is this your question?

"Do you think black people in America and Africa should spend
some time honestly pondering the question whether black
people are/were causing the dislike/hatred white people
feel/felt for them?

SN: And also everywhere else they go. And it wasn't just
America, was it? Nor has it gone away. Talk to north Africans or
Africans in France about the racism they encounter. Have they
done something to deserve it?

Carroll: Answer..no.And you can't compare the two cases.
Since I live in a 60% black population and always have I know
more blacks and know more about blacks honey than you ever
will.

SN: Aside from similarities in your claim to "know more about
blacks" to what Bull Connor and his ilk used to say about
"knowing their negroes best," I'll ask this question: Why can't
you compare them? Here is another "people" or "group" who,
wherever they go, are discriminated against. Not just in the
South. Not just in America. Since you know so much about
blacks, you must know that.

Carroll: The slavery of blacks was a CLEAR CUT CASE in America.

SN: Yes. And why don't you think the Holocaust was a clear cut
case? Why don't you think the expulsion from Spain was a clear
cut case? Why don't you think the Inquisition was a clear cut
case? Your reasoning, please...

Carroll: Blacks my dear, as a group, don't claim 'exceptional'
rights based on victimhood.

SN: Not sure what you mean by exceptional rights, but there
was a whole slew of civil rights legislation devoted to them.
Perhaps you've slept through the last 60 years of the civil rights
movement--but blacks have FREQUENTLY claimed victimhood
based on racism. In fact, it's a huge conversation in the black
community right now. Think of what Bill Cosby and Juan
Williams have said. Since you know so much about blacks, I
can't believe you don't know this.

Moreover, as a matter of fact, Jews don't claim exceptional
rights. You'll have to show me which exceptional rights Jews
claim...

Carroll: They claimed 'Equal rights"....and asked to be brought
up to snuff opportunity and rights and justice wise in society.
They don't claim slavery as a get out of jail free card for
anything blacks anywhere might do.

SN: First of all, many blacks have blamed many of their troubles
and lack of progress on the continuing effects of racism and
legacy of slavery, including the violence and dissolution of the
family in the ghetto. 'Member the movement for reparations?

Second, most Jews don't claim a "get out of jail free card for
anything Jews anywhere might do." Just as one example, you
don't see Jews excusing Bernie Madoff by claiming he was a
victim of anti-Semitism.

Here, you've extrapolated from what extreme Zionists may say
to what "Jews" have or haven't said through the ages. Aside
from the Zionists, Carroll, what horrible things have Jews done
for which they've used anti-Semitism as a get out of jail free
card. Please enumerate...

See, you've moved off your safe zone--Zionism and Israel--and
are now attacking Jews. This, of course, confirms what the
Nadines of the world suspect--that anti-Zionism is just a cover
for anti-Semitism. And in your case, they appear to be right.

Carroll: They also don't claim the blacks in Rawanda
slaughtering blacks or whites were justified.

SN: I'm willing to bet that any number of African analysts blame
the troubles in African nations on the lingering effects of
colonialism. And actually black on black violence is often
blamed on the legacy of racism. But whatever, Jews don't blame
Jew on Jew violence on anti-Semites.

Carroll: As the militant semites like nadine claim victim
justification in saughtering other semites.

SN: I'd have to look at what she says in detail. She and I haven't
crossed swords on this topic yet. Moreover, if you're going to
extrapolate from "Nadine" to "Jews," well...

I've only recently encountered Nadine. I've read you for a long
time, so it was clear to me after my absence of a year or two
that your disease had progressed.

Oh, yeah, Paul, I think Barry Rubin's kid had a whole history class for a whole year on "Ethiopia: Land of the Really White People"!

POA said:

"Unfortunately, Israeli society, through the folly of its leaders
actions, and the Palestinian's reactions, is becoming racist. It is
beginning to permeate the Israeli societal infrastructure."

True

"Because there is no defense for destroying the farmers wells, or
orchards, and it is not a "defensive" act. It is simply raw
oppression and aggression, aimed at stealing a people's ability
to provide themselves with basic needs. And yes, were I treated
as such, I would hate Jews."

I'm sure I would too. Being victims in a war, you hate and you
generalize. And if you think in terms of collectives only, of
people, and your parents, teachers, and leaders teach you that
the enemy people are and always were bad people, you hate
them. When this goes on decade after decade, you have no
reason to think differently.

But that's a completely different case, compared to Carroll, or
ArthurDecco and others here, knowledgable, enlightened
Americans/Canadians, who live in a highly individualized
culture, and still believe that there are good reasons why the
Jews have been singled out and persecuted for thousands of
years. That's not only foolish. That's inexcusable, just like
Nadine's bigotry is inexcusable.

You, POA, and others here do some important work by
specifically documenting what the IDF or the Israeli leaders are
doing against the Palestinians in Gaza right now, and suddenly
Carroll shows up with his bloody Churchill quotes.

I rest my case.

Hello! An Israeli minister just confirmed out loud Jewish
exceptionalism. Don't blame Carroll, Norheim, this quote is
from a member of the tribe itself.

Israeli science and technology minister Daniel
Herschkowitz, warns that, "anyone who lifts a hand
against a Jew is putting his life on the line"

http://tinyurl.com/yazrbhh

Imagine if the Pope said that about Catholics.

I was raised a Catholic and have been car jacked and mugged
and knifed and the Pope didn't say bupkus about anyone raising
a hand against me.

Also, Paul, your statements about blacks make you seem racist,
because it appears to assume that all blacks share the same
cultural background. American blacks are not the same as
Ethiopians. Carroll, who I would guess is caucasian, is not the
same as you. We're shaped by a lot more than our skin color.

"...with HIS bloody Churchill quotes."

Her quotes. Guess I forgot for a moment that women can be
assholes too.

"Israeli science and technology minister Daniel
Herschkowitz, warns that, "anyone who lifts a hand
against a Jew is putting his life on the line""

And what's your point?

"We're shaped by a lot more than our skin color."

Thanks for reminding me, Outraged.

Posted by Sweetness, Feb 21 2010, 10:49AM - Link

On the contrary I asked a very simple question. specifically about the jewish issue.

Is it possible that one group of humans has eternally been totally innocent of provocation of any attitude, hatred or dislke toward them thruout all of recorded time?
I ask that question because that is the heart of all your claims..you either have to say yes, our totally unwarrented persecution makes us exceptions and justifies all our actions toward others.

Or you have to say no.

And you got the story wrong. I invited a classmate along with two dozen other classmates to a football game tailgate party my parents were giving and he asked me if .."my parenst knew he was jewish"?
IF my parents knew he was Jewish"?
What the hell kind of question was that?
Like he was going to be singled out or idenfied as jewish out of a group of 20 students? Actually I invited him becuase he was on the history team and was sort of a nerd as we called studious types back then and never got invited anywhere so I thought I was being nice. What made that incident memorable to me was that I had never encountered anyone who actually said or indicated they were afraid of not being liked because of their religion or whatever.
It was very strange to me. Sad that you are taught to practice premptive anti semite defense.

And once again you are trying obsfustace the Question"...which has nothing to do with the black's case.

By saying I deny anti semitism exist.
I don't.
I don't agree with your or the uber zionist definition of anti semitism.

I also don't claim the jews "Always did something" to justify their persecution. I claim it is not possible they "Never" did anything to justify others dislike or hatred.
I also don't claim that jews "deserved" what they got.
Do you think the Palestine deserve what they got?

And..."You can't just say, well, the Jews must have done
SOMETHING really bad to be constantly persecuted because it's
just impossible for the contrary to be the case. That's bullshit
and the kind of nonsense non-thinking that leads to all kinds of
bad things.

Yes I can..explain it not justify it...as in "some" jews like the neo zionist we have among us now in the US might "in some instances" have incured the rath of a country's leaders or population and resulted in anti semitism directed toward their 'group" among the masses and led to demand for their explusion. That is how it frequently comes about..."some leaders of a group" who proport to represent the "entire group" and "the group" which clings to the group, translates to the public, particulary a more primitive public back then as "all the group".
Wrong, yes but that's how it happens when individuals aren't individuals but a group. By constantly defending by talking, speaking for/as "The Jews" you yourself and those like nadine reinforce this. You accuse others of speaking of the Jews as a group but that is exactly what you do.
So basically you get back what you ask for..a circle of responses to "the group".

But....
to quote you.."Mein Kampf is filled with "justifications" for Jew hatred. Hitler
didn't just say, "I don't like the Jews." No, he had all kinds of
elaborate justifications. The question is, were they VALID and
TRUE justifications.

The question for you is the same...is the victimhood claim and are the justifications used by Jews as a group or individually for their actions toward others as in Palestine Israel VALID AND TRUE?
What you are afriad of is that the any inquiry into that might pull down the pillars of the basic Jewish narrative used to also justify jews doing what Hitler and others did to someone else...like the blacks or Palestines or any non jews that don't accept your narrative and justifications.
Bottom line I didn't accept Hitlers justification and don't accept yours either.

That's the catch isn't it?

We've discussed this a thousand times in your prior life on the site..so I am going not going to keep repeating my views.
I am going out to play...carry on

"Yes I can..explain it not justify it."

But that's not what you said in your question, Carroll. You
explicitly said "justify" - and that's what we've been responding
to. That, and your old Churchill and Truman quotes.

Carroll (and Questions):

it's a Western myth that Ethiopians are white. They are pink, like
salmon. Thinking about it, I guess I've spent 11 years of my life
in Africa, and 99,9 % of the population were pink, so I know more
salmon colored and know more about salmon colored honey than
you ever will...

Paul I am not a bigot. But you are a smug-minded prig. POS's stories are always written as if the Israelis decided to make a buffer zone because they picked some random Palestinian farmer to be sadistic to. Of course they did no such thing; they were responding to the very real rockets and missiles being launched at them from those fields, which you want to pretend never happened.

Now I'm sure the poor farmer would much rather Hamas didn't launch rockets from his field. But Hamas tends to shoot people who object, so the poor man really was caught between the sides. Of course, POS's sob story didn't mention that part, or call on Hamas to stop shooting. And you will call me "racist" again for mentioning it now, you Hamas-enabling dope.

Those who are kind to the cruel, are cruel to the kind.

Carroll writes: "On the contrary I asked a very simple question.
specifically about the jewish issue.

"Is it possible that one group of humans has eternally been
totally innocent of provocation of any attitude, hatred or dislke
toward them thruout all of recorded time?

I ask that question because that is the heart of all your
claims..you either have to say yes, our totally unwarrented
persecution makes us exceptions and justifies all our actions
toward others."

SN: Carroll, these questions are NONSENSE and they are not at
the heart of my claim at all. A group doesn't have to be some
sort of immaculate entity to be unfairly and unjustly persecuted.
You turn the whole thing into a nonsense in order to assert,
without proof, that the Jews have provoked the hatred they've
faced. All with a view to showing that anti-Semitism doesn't
exist; it's simply been a matter of Jews, or Jewish leaders fucking
up, and bringing the wrath of society down on them.

(Also, just as an aside, you can't ask, logically, if it's possible for
"one people to be blah, blah" and then limit your question to
Jews. That's because you're trying to say that, logically, it's
impossible for ANY people to have experienced what the Jews
claim to have experienced. Well, I've shown that it IS possible,
and it has happened. So now YOU have to show that this was, IN
FACT, not logically, but in fact, not the case with the Jews. And
that's when you haul out your Churchill and Mark Twain quotes.)

As to the boy you invited--I obviously don't know him--but
you could also have asked yourself, were you introspective, what
about his experience led him to ask the question. Maybe his
parents did infuse him with unnecessary caution. Maybe he had
experiences with other parents that were unpleasant. The fact
that you were then, and still are, unwilling to think this through
is telling to me. Apparently, this started long before you latched
onto Israel as your personal cause.

You are well defended in your ignorance and illogical thinking.

And those who are cruel to the kind are cruel to the kind, thus
spoke Zarathustra, addressing the bigots from the mountains.

Paul, I worry about the salmon influence and their bizarre cultural practice of swimming upstream. I think it's oppressive and I judge the salmon to be unworthy in their foolish upstreamedness. I think we need to go in and make them fish swim with the tide. Like all good fish!

Well, I was going to respond to OA's remark, but after giving it five
minutes thought, it's even more nonsensical--if such a thing is
possible-- than the garbage Carroll writes. Maybe it's a race to the
bottom? Anyway, time to move over to Nadine; at least she can put
together a coherent sentence.

Nadine...HOW DO YOU KNOW...AS IN K.N.O.W...that this is true?
"Of course they did no such thing; they were responding to the very
real rockets and missiles being launched at them from those fields,
which you want to pretend never happened."

Questions,

Whenever I visit the pink Abyssinians nowadays, I usually read
them some Roosevelt quotes.

My favorite quotes are from an account Teddy Roosevelt wrote in
his late teens, of traveling up Munsungan Stream in a dug out
canoe to fish for Atlantic Salmon.

You have no idea how provoked these Ethiopians get when I start
quoting Roosevelt, but they sure deserve it.

Upstreamèdness, I think it is.

Sweetness, I know because I read the Israeli papers, which still have near daily accounts of infiltrations or attempted infiltrations into Israel or IED plantings along the Gaza border, and last year had daily accounts of Qassams or missiles being launched from the border. There was an attempted infiltration reported on Friday. Thousands of rockets were launched from the area of the story, Khan Younis, into Israel.

Of course, if there are trees right up to the border fence, it is much easier to do, which is why Israel cleared the buffer zone. It was a non-lethal response to thousands of attacks and attempted attacks. The Israelis cleared the buffer zone ten years ago, which not coincidentally, was the start of the second intifada. The stories of Hamas shooting farmers who object I have from Khalid Abu Toameh of the Jpost and occasional Arab sources.

But airbrush the intifada and the attacks out of the picture, and you have the picture of mean Israelis destroying an innocent farmer's land because they are "racist". See, wasn't that easy? Piece of cake.

Sweetness, I question your ability to generate the accented e as you did above. It's unamerican! And you probably learned it from those salmon -- who, by the way, have problems with singular and plural forms. Likely, an inferior language stemming from an inferior brain.

My point is that Christians who truly follow the New Testament
live by the rule of "Turn the other cheek" . This as opposed to
"anyone who lifts a hand against a Jew is putting his life on the
line."

The not funny part of the latter is that Israel, in using the IDs of
British Jews for an extrajudicial assassination, have destroyed
the lives of Jews. So does Israel need to put her own life on the
line for lifting a hand against not one, but quite a few innocent
Jews?

Read the Talmud Paul. It's all there.

Hey Sweetness, girlfriend, since Vatican II I'm pretty sure the
Catholic Church has gone out of its way to not make truly
dumbsh*t remarks like Herschkowitz's.

I would have no problem with Zionism if IT WASN'T USING MY
TAX DOLLARS AND "MY" GOVERNMENT TO JUMP START WW III,
this after being responsible for IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN and
PAKISTAN. Oh, and the Gaza Strip. And Lebanon. And the siege
of the Church of the Nativity and...my fingers are tired.

And again, Sweetness, if you truly cared about your co-
religionists you would do your utmost to stop an attack on Iran,
because a good portion of the world is already convinced that
Israel and the US are the greatest threats to peace, and even the
numpties in the US will figure out eventually that Zionism
destroyed our country.

I'll dig up the polls if you want me to.

And again, why don't you Israel-firsters make FG-ing ALIYAH
and fight for Israel on what you claim to be your own soil?

Coward? Traitors? NO, BOTH.

Nadine, here's a thought. Differentiate between crazed settlers, actual threats to Israel's security, Knesset structure, re-election pressures, possible land grabs, the possibility that some border guards on Israel's side are crazed teenagers who thrill to their own private racism.... In other words, complexify the situation in Israel as much as I complexify the situation in Congress. (Ok, maybe no one can go as crazy on the complexity issue as I can, but give it a try!!)

What you might find is that even if POA's anecdotes need way more context, even if some kind of war-like state is really justified on security grounds, even if Hamas elites are havin' fun, there are still over the top acts of violence, daily struggles among people whose main interest is in getting through another day and keeping their kids alive.

Try for a moment to be empathetic, to walk in someone else's shoes.

See if you can put your imagination on the other side of the border walls.

Again, Sweetness and I and Paul have posted here over the years with a fair amount of sympathy for Israel and real concern with the security threats, but simultaneously with a sense that Palestinian grievances and grieving are real, too. None of us is overly partisan or ignorant of the issues on both sides. So you're not dealing with Carroll's crazed views of the world, OA's paranoia, POA's singular view, and the like.

Give it a try?! With a bowl of granola and a carrot?!

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/socialstd/curriculum/grade4.html

Here's a link to the 4th grade social science standards curriculum for Montgomery County, Maryland.

It's Maryland history, not slavery and the Civil War. Hmmm. Could Barry Rubin have used his kid in a fictional sense????????

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/socialstd/files/8-4-2.pdf

And here, in 8th grade is some detail on... LINCOLN and the Civil War -- hmmm. It's an 8th grade skill! Baby Rubin will be fine!!!!!!!

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/socialstd/files/1-1-2.pdf

OMG, George Washington comes up in FIRST GRADE. The nerve of them to wait so long!

Nadine...okay...but you need to post accounts that are directly
responsive. Otherwise, it's a bunch of generalities, and we have
to take your word for it.

But, for grins, let's look at part of POA's quote (why POS, BTW?):

"One of many destroyed water wells in Gaza’s border regions.

“If we didn’t get the wheat planted today, we would not have
had crops this year,” says Abu Saleh Abu Taima, eyeing the two
Israeli military jeeps parked along the border fence east of Khan
Younis, southern Gaza Strip. Although his land is more than 300
meters away, technically outside of the Israeli-imposed “buffer
zone,” Abu Taima has reason to be wary.

“They shot at us yesterday. I was here with my wife and
nephews.”

SN: So here we have an account of water wells being destroyed.
How does that help with countering the Qassams? Seems to me
that only deprives the Palestinian farmer of irrigation water.

Second, the claim is that the farmer was shot at even though his
land is 300 meters OUTSIDE the buffer zone. So, assuming the
buffer zone is necessary, this strikes me as outside the zone
that needs to stay clear.

In any event, why just shoot at the guy and his family? They
could've been killed. Were they shooting rockets? Not
apparently. Are they themselves militia? Not apparently. So
what's the point?

Now, maybe this account is wrong. Maybe the farmer is lying in
more ways than one.

But your blanket exoneration doesn't cut it...

You know what I'm tired of? People not arguing in good faith.
You force the rest of us to do a lot of work for you. Here, on the
face of it, your argument about buffer zones doesn't hold water.
If you're going to make an argument that really needs evidence
to stand on its own two feet, then you have to suck it up and
provide it. At least POA has a link. If you're going to say that
this story is wrong, then give us something other than the
assertion that you read the Israeli newspapers.

Oops! OA just came whizzing by. I'll have to start reading him
for the humor value. Careful Catholic boy, I'm armed with a
Jebbie education...and lots of angels on the head of my pen.

"Nadine, here's a thought. Differentiate between crazed settlers, actual threats to Israel's security, Knesset structure, re-election pressures, possible land grabs, the possibility that some border guards on Israel's side are crazed teenagers who thrill to their own private racism.... In other words, complexify the situation in Israel as much as I complexify the situation in Congress. (Ok, maybe no one can go as crazy on the complexity issue as I can, but give it a try!!)" (questions)

Whenever I receive this kind of word confetti from you I know I must have scored a point. I think you use it like the army uses white phosphorous, to obscure a change of direction by hiding your movements behind a cloud. The issues are plenty complex. They don't need more complexifying. They need sorting the essential points out from everything else.

In Gaza, the essential point is that Hamas rules and makes the decisions. If they don't care about the welfare of the farmers, no one else will. The Pew poll released a few days ago put Hamas' popularity inside Gaza at 37%. Don't hold your breath waiting for another election.

Sweetness, I don't have the time or interest to try to vet the details of every sob sister story POS drags in from his far left/pro Pal sites. I'm sure some details are true, some exaggerated, and others made up from whole cloth. What I was doing was providing some context with which to understand what is going on at the borders of Gaza, to put back both sides in the conflict. These sites airbrush out Hamas, et. al. so it's just mean nasty IDF getting its sadistic jollies at the expense of innocent civilians.

"Second, the claim is that the farmer was shot at even though his
land is 300 meters OUTSIDE the buffer zone. So, assuming the
buffer zone is necessary, this strikes me as outside the zone
that needs to stay clear.

In any event, why just shoot at the guy and his family? They
could've been killed. Were they shooting rockets? Not
apparently. Are they themselves militia? Not apparently. So
what's the point?

Now, maybe this account is wrong. Maybe the farmer is lying in
more ways than one." (sweetness)

Actually, this account sounds very plausible. It sounds like their movements made the soldiers get nervous, and they brushed them back. At that distance, if the soldiers had wanted to shoot them, they would have.

I don't know why you ask "what's the point?" Kidnapped soldiers are a real Achilles heel for Israel. Accordingly Hamas has tried to kidnap more soldiers (they've only got one at the moment) hundreds of times. Do you really think that Hamas kidnap teams look different from Palestinian farmers, or won't use farmers as shields and cover? Whatever the differences are, they are subtleties of movement and intent, nothing obvious. So I am not surprised if I hear that soldiers patrolling the Gaza border get nervous easily. Maybe they violated their ROE this time; maybe not, I don't know.

Nadine, "scoring a point" is not the phrase. First, it's not a competition. Second, I haven't at all backed away from a fairly consistent position that while there is certainly a security threat, there is also significant Israeli overreaction, unnecessary cruelty, poor strategizing, and a lot of culpability for unnecessary deaths. Israel gets a heap of blame from me, even as I don't think Hamas is doing anyone any favors.

But crushing civilians to punish them for their leaders is inhumane, and Israel is doing just this.

So, no, no white phosphorous, no change in direction.

Your postings generally fall into a narrow range of "Hamas is wicked. Israel has been forced to do what they do. Israel doesn't want to crush civilians but is forced to. Hamas is wicked. Radicalization of Palestinians is unrelated to Israeli treatment. Hamas is wicked. Israel really cares. There's no racism in Israel....."

And I would counter that Israel bears a fair amount of culpability, that Israel could likely do better in a lot of ways, that structures in Israel are problematic, that nutcases in the Knesset make things worse, crazed settlers make things worse -- and that worsening is part and parcel of Israeli culpability.

No one comes out of this smelling like roses, but you seem to want to hold on to Israeli rose-ness.

And by the way, any thoughts on Baby Rubin, or is that one dropped in the face of a fact or two about MCPS curriculum?

****
Sweetness, OA is a she, has been around for maybe a year now. "POS" is probably google-able. It's not a particularly nice abbreviation, but POA has such a long history of excremental outcries and insults that I don't really fault Nadine on this one. POA has been way over the top, and if you go back into the archives into, maybe Nov or Dec of last year, you might find the few days Steve got tired of us all and shut off the comments. We're all on pretty good behavior after the warning. But the tension slips through occasionally.

You've missed a lot of insults over the year!

Nadine - Just once I would like to see you acknowledge that Israel makes mistakes and some Jews are plain evil, just like other human tribes. I have spent literally thousands of days in the West Bank since 1967 and have seen many horrors committed by Jews.

I have seen IDF pissing on the feet of Palestinians waiting in line at checkpoints. I have seen the IDF shooting Palestinian farm animals for sport. I have seen the IDF laughing at sick or pregnant Palestinians trying to get through a checkpoint for medical care and then turning them away while a Palestinian ambulance waits 10 feet away. I have seen the IDF shoot and kill a 10 year old boy running towards his house because Israeli soldiers were arriving for an arrest.

I have seen settlers cut down olive trees, shoot holes in Palestinian water cisterns (Palestinians have stopped putting them on the roofs of houses because of this). I have seen probably a 100 brutal beatings of Palestinians, women and children included.I have seen every imaginable cruelty imposed on Palestinians by Jews, my people.

I have been to shul many places in the West Bank and everywhere the ugly language used by Jews to describe Palestinians and what to do with them turns the strongest stomach. You want to hear incitement to violence, then go to shul.

As I said earlier, I have been heavily involved with Israel since my bar mitzvah in Haifa in 1956. I have seen this conflict degrade the very soul of my people. Israel is a MUCH coarser place now than 30 years ago. If this conflict isn't solved soon then our souls have no hope, and G-d will once again turn His back to us.

It doesn't help Israel when you are constantly commenting that "our sh*t doesn't stink".

"Sweetness, I know because I read the Israeli papers, which still have near daily accounts of infiltrations or attempted infiltrations into Israel or IED plantings along the Gaza border"

Again, Nadine, you're a fuckin' liar. I too read the Israeli papers, and I challenge you to show us evidence of "near daily accounts of infiltrations or attempted infiltrations into Israel or IED plantings along the Gaza border".

And to justify the Israeli JACKBOOTED THUGS sniping at farmers trying to till their fdields, while feeding us some horseshit about it is being done because the farmers are firing at the jackboots IS PURE FUCKING PROPAGANDA. Are you really so dishonest that you are claiming the destruction of orchards, cisterns, wells, and hothouses is a "defensive" action? You disgust me. You are truly a despicable human being.

Nadine, you're a liar and a bigot. As a Jew, your words and your lies, as well as your contempt and disregard for the lives and the human rights of the Palestinians, are a rationale for anti-semitism. As I've said many times here, any Jew with a modicum of pride or human compassion would be well served by telling you to STFU.

Paranoia? I've interviewed Walt, Mearsheimer, Halper, and just
about every expert on Israel/ Pal.

Zionists define paranoia. Make peace --or rather, LOVE, given that
the Palestinians are a demographic time bomb the Jews in Israel
need to be doing the nasty nonstop, that is in between trafficking
in ecstasy and eastern European women. Otherwise Israel's done.

But you Israelites, especially the ones who refuse to leave your lives
of luxury in the US while you work for Israel, don't take the rest of
the world down with you now, ya hear? We know the score, kids.

An attack on Iran and you Zionists can kiss your tokhes good-bye.

"What I was doing was providing some context with which to understand what is going on at the borders of Gaza, to put back both sides in the conflict"

You have lied so many times here that you are not credibly sound, and completely unable to "provide some context with which to understand what is going on at the borders of Gaza". If you want to actually show us evidence through credible media accounts, fine. But most of us have caught you lying far too many times to simply take you at your word. Frankly, Nadine, you have an excuse for EVERYTHING Israel does, no matter how brutal or egregious. And that flies in the face of logic or common sense. I have NEVER seen you decry one single Israeli action, or show even an iota of compassion for the Palestinian people. Anyone that takes you serious, or believes anything that comes off your keyboard, is a damned fool.

Good post, jdledell.

These are things to think about Nadine and take to heart.

They are important.

-------------------------------------------

Questions, good for Steve. I remember when I first, first came
to this site. Lots of good discussions. Course that was YEARS
ago. Now, with a few exceptions, it's pretty much a slugfest with
strange, tormented bigotry folded in. I thought Carroll was
weird, but OA is an entirely new mutation.

We are living in whacked out times.

BTW, I know Montgomery County. Were you from Bethesda? I
used to know the high schools over there. Walter Johnson,
maybe. Kennedy, I think. BCC something.

jdledell, it is hard to discuss Israel's mistakes when surrounded by doctrinnare lefties who disbelieve on principle that Hamas (or anyone) could actually be a radical devoted to destroying Israel; they are sure that if Israel corrected its mistakes, and "engaged" Hamas, Hamas would become moderate and peace would break out. Meanwhile they have decided to ignore the actions of Hamas, which Israel unfortunately cannot afford to do. And those are the saner people on the thread, not the batshit crazy anti-Semites!

I can very well believe that Israelis can be pushy hard-nosed assholes. But when you are talking about cruelties, you can't just look at disgruntled eighteen year old soldiers humiliating people in checkpoints; you also have to look at the body parts strewn about by the suicide bombers who make the checkpoints necessary.

You are the one who can't get over his shock that Israelis sometimes become like the Arabs they fight and go blood for blood - and since you know the Mideast, you know I am not inventing things about the Arabs.(Intermission while the fainter hearts on the thread scream "racist" and faint dead away).

I guess I am not as easily shockeable as you. At any rate, I know that giving concessions to the likes of Hamas (or Fatah either, they only differ in tactics, not goals) is not the answer. They know they made a damn serious try at negotiating, and things only got worse. There is no partner for peace. That's why Meretz has only 3 seats in the Knesset. Your ideas have been tried and found wanting.

questions, before you can persuade me that you know how Israel could do better, you have to persuade me that you are sizing up the current situation reasonably well, not just sweeping all the intractable parts under the rug, then solving an easier problem that doesn't exist.

As for Baby Rubin, given a choice between an official school website and a report from the classroom, I'll take the report from the classroom every time. Now maybe Baby Rubin missed reporting a mention of Washington here and there, but I don't think he's misreporting the whole tenor of what he's being taught.

There is a very important background piece on Syria on Professor
Landis' own site, Syria Comment. It's called "The Case for Syria."

http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=5327

Posted by Paul Norheim, Feb 21 2010, 3:07PM - Link

Well it's obvious you know a thing or two about assholes from shaving every day.

And nadine and I actually agree on something...you're a prig and a flop who blows which ever way the thread goes.

But this is correct:
"So to answer your question: The Jews are not innocent. Let's just
say that they are like the rest of us: assholes."

Which is my complete premise regarding" the victim hood exceptionalism used by the Jewish hierarchy and jews to justify what they do to others.

And actually I haven't spent decades on the Jews...I just look into things and claims that don't make sense to any logical person to try and find the actual facts. But feel free to make up whatever you think you know about my interest if it helps you play your role. LOL

"So now maybe you may answer me: Why should an American Jew like Sweetness, who opposes Israel's policies in the I/P conflict, somehow feel obliged to reflect on the possibility that
he belongs to a group that is persecuted ......."because they are and always have been worse than other people on earth?"

There you go again...your words not mine. Amazing the dishonestly you stoop to maintain your facade of morality and reasonableness. Don't you know it's not nice to lie?

How did we justify interring the Japanese during WWII ....National Security. How did we justify the House hearings on UN American activities and communist....threat to the nation. How do we justify the Muslim Cleric we just deported for riling up Muslims in SF.....threat to the country. How did the Egyptians justify expelling the Jews...threat to the country during Egypt's war.
Is it possible that the culture of and the 'ways" the jews used to protect and advance themselves in countries were at times considered at threat to that country by that country's government and people? Yes it's entirely possible. Just as it was possible that the US gov and people considered the communist as threat to the country...silly as it seems now it may not have been silly then.
Did the communist with their political activities no doubt bring some of it on themselves. Of course. Did the Jewish attitudes and tactics bring some of it on themselves, also of course. Has the US attitude and actions brought terrorist activities down on us. Of course.

The US "they hate us because we are free" whine is as dishonest and childish as the Jews .."we never did anything wrong" whine.

BTW you never answered the Question. But I'll answer yours ....again.
I don't attack sweetness as an individual...don't call him a dirty jewish bigot as he calls me a racist Southerner...another generalization he says he's against except when he uses and of course when you use it.
So if we apply your judgement of my comment to what sweetness said, he is saying all southerners are racist.

I attack the premise of the historical victim justifications the Jewish hierarchy and zionist use for their actions toward others.
Sweetness then defends "The Group" and by extension the hierarchy, on the basis of ...drumroll...jewish victim history!
Which I don't accept any more than the Jews accepted Hitlers justifications.

BTW...let's see....looking thru the thread it appears that you and they are the only ones who have hurled personal slurs and insults over my question of...."Is the victim hood narrative used to JUSTIFY the zionist philosophy TOTALLY TRUE AND VALID IN ALL CASES.
I say that it' s highly improbable.

Actually I have to say you are worse than a bigot because you don't really have any values one way or another. You have nothing at stake that requires any honestly in the Jews-US-Israel issue. You are here for the entertainment and to interact and get responses even if you have to lie and misrepresent to do so.

You don't do critical and analytical thinking and like nadine resort to personal slurs instead of ever really responding to the QUESTION which was posed as A QUESTION.

You may be too dense to get the reasonfor the THE QUESTION but sweetness gets it even though he pretends not to get it. Because he cannot afford to let the Question be discussed, it must be discredited, as the answer might removed the "right" of Jews like congressman Ackerman to stand up and demand that the US attack a country that is no threat to the US for the sake of the 2% US jewish population and the foreign country of Israel which is a country in violation of every international law and whose hold on the US thru Jewish tactics in our political system has ruined the US reputation around the world. It would remove the audacity and Orwellington like thinking of Jews like Eric Alterman who said that as a Jew it is right and natural that US jews demand that Jews and Israel's welfare come ahead of America's and American's welfare.

Let's make the question even easier for sweetness and nadine..and you.
Do they think that Jews and Israel should be treated by the US exactly as we treat all our other citizens and other countries and people? No more, no less, exactly equal, held to the same standards required of most people and countries?

Their answer will be no, that as Jews they and Israel are exceptions and entitled to special consideration and protections "forever" because of their "historical" victimhood status.

Perhaps you do what you do on the threads concerning the Jews and Palestine because you consider yourself one of the guilty Europeans regarding the jews because Norway surrendered to the nazis.

I don't and most American don't share in the European guilt so we feel free to question anyone and anything we don't agree with or think is faulty reasoning where it impacts on our own country.
Maybe with your nazis surrendering heritage you don't get it...but most Americans do.

And let me repeat again to add to your phony outrage that if not for the US and allies defeating Hitler every Jew on earth would most likely have been slaughtered after his victory and you would be saluting pictures of Hitler in your government offices.

Now that is a Truthful fact... that of course you will call a anti semitic statement.
Which leaves intelligent logical people to conclude that you consider the truth to be anti semitic.

What an idiot you are.

Carroll said:

"You don't do critical and analytical thinking and like nadine
resort to personal slurs instead of ever really responding to the
QUESTION which was posed as A QUESTION."

Really? So tell me then, what the hell was the question?

In your last reply, you said:

"looking thru the thread it appears that you and they are the
only ones who have hurled personal slurs and insults over my
question of...."Is the victim hood narrative used to JUSTIFY the
zionist philosophy TOTALLY TRUE AND VALID IN ALL CASES.
I say that it' s highly improbable."

That's what they call chutzpah, Carroll. When I do "a Norheim", I
usually get my own quotes correct. When you pretend to quote
your original question, you omit the controversial part of it, and
pretend that the uncontroversial part was the whole question.

Most people around here would agree when you state the
obvious, that the victim hood narrative and claim of complete
innocence, used to justify zionist philosophy and actions, is a
false narrative. Israel, seen as a manifestation of the Zionist
project, is not credible in her role as innocent victim.

But let's have a look at your original question in its entirety, and
your own answer, a couple of posts later - and I'll add a time
and date for verification:

(Febr 21 2.24 AM)
"Yes indeed anti semitism has been going on for quite a
while...the question you have to ponder is did/are the Jews or
the zionist contribute/contributing to or cause/causing the
dislike/hatred people and countries felt/feel for them.
Or are you claiming the Jews were the only totally innocent
people on earth since time began and were hated for no reason
and no fault of their own?"

And in a reply to me, you answered the first and controversial
part of the question:

(Feb 21 2010, 1:38PM)
"So answer the question. Is it possible for any group of humans
beings, that just one group of people in all the peoples of the
world, to have always been persecuted without any justification
ever or whatsoever by the majority of the rest of the world?
I don't believe that is possible for a group of humans."

Is there some justification for the eternal persecution of the
Jews? That's the controversial part of your question, Carroll. And
your answer is unambiguous: Yes there is some justification for
that.

Now, let's ponder the logical implications of that positive
answer. If we agree that all groups are assholes, the ordinary
asshole-ness of the Jews can of course neither explain nor
justify the fact that they have been persecuted through the
centuries like no other people.

Why the permanent special treatment? That's the question. The
Jews have to be bigger assholes than the rest of us for the
question of justification to make any sense.

And this is the anti-Semtic core: The Jews have to be worse than
the rest of us for the question of justification to be answered
positively. It's as simple as that.

Not ad hominem. Pure logic. Which gives the theoretical
foundation for your fondness of anti-Semitic quotes.

But when we point this out to you after analyzing that part of
the question, you are backpedaling, as in a reply to Sweetness:

(Feb 21 2010, 4:19PM)
"Yes I can..explain it not justify it.."

So the readers of this thread are left with the impression that
you fear the implications of your original statement - a
justification for the eternal persecution - or perhaps lack the
guts to stand for your own conviction? Whatever the answer,
you now pretend that you never said that. That your only
question was whether the Zionist version of eternal victimhood
and innocence is correct.

Now you want the readers of TWN to believe that this was all
about the Jews' attempt to "JUSTIFY the zionist philosophy", and
not your attempt to justify the persecution of the Jews.

And you want the readers to believe that those of us who
reacted to your original position "don't do critical and analytical
thinking and like Nadine resort to personal slurs instead"

Nice try, Carroll. But I think there is a name for these tactics.

It's called intellectual dishonesty.

Nadine,
If Geo. Wash. is a first grade skill, maybe they don't go back to him in 4th grade??? And if Lincoln is an 8th grade skill, maybe they just touch on him in 4th grade???

And it wasn't some "official school website," it was the county standards website. If you know anything at all about schools, you should know that the standards list IS COVERED in the classroom. The standards list is tested pretty much every year. The standards list RULES.

So, yeah, I trust the standards list over anything Baby Rubin told his dad -- how many fourth graders remember what happened during the school day anyway? Usually they sleep, daydream, and hope for lunch and recess. And I seriously doubt that most essayists allow the truth to come between themselves and a nice essay about how horrible some things are. It's too narratively tempting to write about the horrors of a liberal county's schooling when in fact it's a pretty standard curriculum.... And Baby Rubin will be fine. Daddy Rubin can fill him in on the details anyway. Parents are supposed to continue talking to their kids til, say, 8th grade, when the big tune-out hits! Happily, 8th grade Rubin will get some serious Lincoln shit at school!

And as Ledell points out, seeing fault in the moments of Israeli brutality really is important. The fault-finding should be a wake up call -- not to concede victory, allow defeat and invite a new Holocaust, but rather to alter the discourse and feel of the culture. It shouldn't be fun to harass, name call, shoot randomly, beat people up. Teenagers should really have something planned other than this. Far better to be at a university planning computer viruses or writing passionate papers about injustice. Far better to be working a job and trying out some aspects of adult life. Far better to be traveling and seeing how other people live. But instead, in Israel, the siege mentality dominates, humiliates, causes the aggression levels to rise to unhealthy levels in many people.

Now, I know that this website is a pretty unsafe place for showing that you feel even the slightest compunction about this situation. Carroll and POA and OA et al. have set up a system in which any move by anyone will be met with triumphalism. It's not a really good dynamic at this point. Kind of like the Cold War meets I/P meets any intractable interpersonal relationship problem. So I will assume that your even noting that there might be some crazed teenagers is evidence that you can at least see that crazed teens with too many guns and too much ideology and too much anxiety is not a great combination for peace to break out. And this same bad combo exists on both sides of the wall.

The goal is to figure out how anyone ever exits this kind of dynamic. And that's where our thinking should be. What kind of systems therapy, orders of protection, and the like might give each side some breathing room. The random malicious shooting and encouragement of crazed teens and settlers -- not so good.

Paul, good and cogent comment. You get extra points for
untangling Carroll's incoherence. Of course, her wrath means
she actually respects your opinion a lot.

I'll only add this for Carroll:

Carroll: "I don't attack sweetness as an individual...don't call him
a dirty jewish bigot as he calls me a racist Southerner...another
generalization he says he's against except when he uses it."

SN: I call you a racist because you persist in posting racist
pseudo-charges against Jews. You repeatedly air your list of
bullshit quotes, which serves no purpose other than to repeat
the anti-Semitic charges that have been repeated down through
the ages. You seem to believe they are true or have something
to them, or something.

Insofar as you were born and bred in the segregationist south, I
opine that that's where your idiocy started--maybe when that
boy asked you a question--but only you can know for sure. I
certainly don't think all Southerners are like you any more than I
think all Southerners were like Bull Connor. I've known quite a
few. You do seem a bit touchy on this point, though.

Carroll: I attack the premise of the historical victim justifications
the Jewish hierarchy and zionist use for their actions toward
others. Sweetness then defends "The Group" and by extension
the hierarchy, on the basis of ...drumroll...jewish victim history!
Which I don't accept any more than the Jews accepted Hitlers
justifications.

SN: Actually, I don't do that. I flag the racist things you say.
You find that uncomfortable, of course. That said, what has
happened to "the group" is real, whether you're willing to accept
it or not. This doesn't mean that no Jew ever did a really bad
thing or ever cause anyone to dislike them. But that doesn't
mean they did things that "caused" or "justified" the treatment
they got.

In fact, for many centuries, the biggest problem was they
wouldn't convert to Christianity. Was that something the Jews
did (or didn't do)? Yes. Did that provoke the authorities? Yes.
Does that mean the Jews "caused" the Inquisition to come down
on their own heads? Ah no. It was OA's precious Catholic
Church that did that.

Carroll: "... my question...."Is the victim hood narrative used to
JUSTIFY the zionist philosophy TOTALLY TRUE AND VALID IN ALL
CASES. I say that it' s highly improbable."

SN: This is a garbled question, and it's at least two questions. Is
anti-Semitism real and has it been the cause down through the
ages of horrific violence, oppression and discrimination against
Jews? Yes. It's not a matter of probability or what you think is
likely, it's a matter of historical fact. You can look it up and read
about it. For you to sit there and deny it, or worse, repeat and
lend your voice to all the scurrilous charges that have been used
to JUSTIFY that violence is really sad. Sick and sad.

(It's interesting that you bring up the Japanese in WWII. They
actually didn't do anything wrong that would have made them
security threats except have slanty eyes. Sounds like you would
have been right there with Joe McCarthy and that Jew, Roy Cohn.
But I digress...)

So onto Zionism. I'm not a Zionist, but I'll say two things: I do
think that Zionism was ONE reasonable response to anti-
Semitism, to Jews' exclusion from society, and to its ultimate
expression. I think Judge Goldstone would agree with me, as
would reporter Roger Cohen--both critics of Israel--as would,
in their own way, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.

But it wasn't the only reasonable response--and many other
Jews chose other routes. Had I been living back then, I probably
would have been a Bundist. I tend, by temperament, to be a
rootless cosmopolitan. That wasn't too popular back then,
either, but so be it.

Do I think anti-Semitism justifies Jewish oppression of the
Palestinians and all the bad things that Jews have done to them
over time? No, I do not. And I don't say that they do.

Israel destroys Gaza boats and lives
Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada, 7 September 2009

All that remains of Omar and Khaled al-Habil's fishing trawler. (Eva Bartlett)
GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Until last Monday, Omar and Khaled al-Habil were the owners of a 20 meter fishing trawler staffed by five or six fishermen at a time, but employing around 18 in cycles. But that morning the vessel came under heavy Israeli navy machine-gun fire, and then shelling. The trawler caught fire.

"It's destroyed, completely destroyed," says al-Habil.

"They had left early in the morning and headed north," al-Habil said, of the crew of five fishermen that morning, including his son Adham al-Habil. He says the boat was well within a three-mile limit set by Israel.

"There were other fishing boats with them. The boat was about a kilometer out off Gaza's coast, and was at the southern end of Sudaniya (a coastal region of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza)."

An Israeli navy spokesperson reportedly said the boat "violated security boundaries off the coast of the Gaza Strip" and was "out of the permitted fishing zone." She said the boats failed to respond to warning shots.

Khaled al-Habil recalls differently.

"An Israeli navy boat approached them and opened fire. It was chaos. The firing was intense; it lasted 15 or 20 minutes. The fishing boat stopped, but the Israelis kept shooting. Finally, the Israelis shot a mortar at the boat. All the fishermen jumped into the water."

His son Adham al-Habil sustained burns from the fire, which broke out most likely as a result of the mortar shelling.

A charred hole on the front right-hand side of the boat marks where the mortar hit and exited. From that point down, the deck is blackened with soot. The metal steering wheel is all that remains of the cabin.

"Other fishermen came to help. They towed my boat back to Gaza port," said al-Habil. Once there, it took fire-fighters more than 20 minutes to put out the fires.

Palestinian fishers have the right to fish as far as 20 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, but Israeli authorities have over the years unilaterally reduced that limit to three miles. The more abundant catches are found past six miles.

The Palestinian fishing industry, employing more than 3,500, has been devastated by Israeli attacks on fishing boats, confiscation of boats and equipment, and the abduction of Palestinian fishers.

Under the Israeli-led siege, with the complicity of Egypt, Gaza is starved of basic goods to enable a functioning economy and society. This includes replacement parts for missing or broken fishing equipment.

While a reported 95 percent of Gaza's industries have shut down due to the siege, many unemployed Palestinians have turned to fishing, unviable as it is.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) August 2009 report details the devolution of the fishing industry.

OCHA cites the fishing catch for the month of April for the past three years. In 2007, fishers hauled in 292 tons. In 2008, the catch was 154 tons, and in 2009 it was reduced to 79 tons.

Reduced to fishing along the coast, many of the fish are caught in waters contaminated by the 80 million liters of raw or partially-treated sewage pumped daily into the sea "as a result of lack of maintenance and upgrading of the wastewater infrastructure," OCHA notes.

And now al-Habil does not have a fishing vessel at all.

This was not the first problem for his now destroyed boat. On 4 June, Israeli gunboats abducted six fishers and seized al-Habil's boat three miles off the northern coast of Gaza, holding it for 45 days before returning it. Al-Habil found equipment missing and significant damage done to the engine and cables.

continues.....

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10757.shtml

I challenge the lying bigot Nadine to provide us with one single act of terrorism carried out by the Palestinian fishing fleet, that justifies the CONSTANT harrassment, murder, and destruction of property that Israel inflicts upon this fleet.

Nadine writes: "jdledell, it is hard to discuss Israel's mistakes
when surrounded by doctrinnare lefties who disbelieve on
principle that Hamas (or anyone) could actually be a radical
devoted to destroying Israel.."

Okay, this is a good and honest response. However, in order to
have an HONEST discussion, and not one where you are simply
spouting the party line from behind the sandbags, then you
have to be willing to discuss Israel's mistakes, ALSO. Otherwise,
what's the point?

If you don't feel comfortable having an honest discussion here,
then you should go to a site where you do. No point in lifting all
those sandbags. Besides which, what we say here doesn't matter
all that much to what happens out there.

Of course, there are some people with whom you can't have an
honest discussion--and those people are well-known. So, just
talk to the sane people.

This is all unsolicited advice, I know, and I don't mean to tell you
what to do, but if it's helpful, great.

I have to say that those of you attacking Carroll for her alleged bigotry are doing so with extreme bias, failing to use equal force in underscoring the obvious bigotry Nadine exhibits here on a daily basis. In truth, Nadine has shown FAR MORE callous disregard for Muslim deaths and hardships than Carroll has for the Israelis and the lesser hardships inflicted upon them by the Palestinians. And Nadine's stereotyping of the Palestinian people, as well as her constant defense of the over-reaching punitive actions of the Israeli jackboots can ONLY be the result of a mindset that considers the Palestinian people inferior and undeserving of compassion or equal treatment.

If you are going to decry bigotry, and devote such volume of debate attempting to provide "evidence" of bigotry, than your lop-sided debate exposes a bias that doesn't exactly imply even-handedness.

Nadine writes: "jdledell, it is hard to discuss Israel's mistakes
when surrounded by doctrinnare lefties who disbelieve on principle that Hamas (or anyone) could actually be a radical devoted to destroying Israel.."

Sweetness lies; "Okay, this is a good and honest response"

Oh bullshit. Her comment is FAR from "good and honest", nor is your response. Its straw, pure crap. Who here hasn't admitted to or recognized Hamas' radical bent? Fact is, I have recognized and commented on it often over the course of the years here. Trouble is, this "good and honest" lying bigot Nadine refuses to recognize how Israel actually contributes to the radicalization of Palestinians through actions intended to oppress the Palestinians into full submission.

Its laughable that you would label Nadine's hasbarist CRAP as "good and honest", and really exposes BOTH of you as anything but.

where is the buffer zone?

At 8:30 on November 15, a number of young men went as usual to the land near Gaza’s northern border with Israel, intending to catch birds. Amjad Hassanain, 27, was among the bird-catchers hunting near the border fence when Israeli soldiers began shooting.

The shots which missed the other bird-catchers hit Hassanain, grazing his shoulder.

Cameraman Abdul Rahman Hussain, filming in the vicinity, reports having seen the group of bird-catches head north.

“We were near the former Israeli settlement of Doghit,” said Hussain, referring to the area northwest of Beit Lahia in Gaza’s north.

“I had gone to the border area to photograph a young bird-catcher. We were about 400 m from the border fence, but when we heard the shooting, we moved back to around 1 km.”

According to Hussain, the other men had to carry the wounded Hassanain 1 km from the site of injury, then transferred him to a motorcycle and finally to a car.

“He was covered in blood, I couldn’t tell where he was hit,” said Hussain.

Hussain, there to document the work of bird-catchers, was surprised by the shooting.

“They always go there to catch birds. They put their nets close to the fence in order to catch as many as possible.” Like the bird-catchers, Hussain believed the Israeli soldiers along the border were familiar enough with the bird catching activity that they wouldn’t shoot.

Two hours later, Mahmoud Mohammed Shawish Zaneen and seven other farmers took a break from their work plowing land east of Beit Hanoun.

“We had three tractors with us. We’d been working since 8 am, planting wheat. At first we worked about 450 metres from the border fence, but later we were 700 metres away.”

The farmers had paused to drink tea when Israeli soldiers began shooting.

“The tractors were stopped and we were sitting on them. There were about seven Israeli soldiers, on foot. They shot the other tractors and then shot mine. They didn’t give us any warning, just started shooting.”

The bullet which pierced Zaneen’s left calf continued into his right calf.

Since the end of the Israeli massacre of Gaza last winter, at least nine Palestinians have been killed, and another more than thirty-four injured, by Israeli shooting and shelling in the border areas in Gaza’s north and east.

Ahmed Sourani, of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) has long been aware of the impact the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”, a north-south width of 150 metres from the border fence at inception a decade ago. Currently, Israeli authorities warn that anyone within 300 metres of the border fence risks being shot.

Not only is the agricultural land within 300 metres of the border rendered off-limits, but also that of adjacent land, also subject to Israeli shooting.

Following the Israeli massacre of Gaza last winter, Sourani said that “PARC is fearful that the Israelis will extend that military zone to reach 2 km or more to the east and 3 km to the north, then turn it into a de facto situation.”

The impact on the agricultural industry of the Israeli-led siege on Gaza, the Israeli massacre of Gaza, and the imposition of the “buffer zone” has been profound:

International bodies cite 60,000-75,000 dunams [1 dunam is 1000 square metres] of farmland they say is now damaged or unusable.

World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said anywhere from 35 percent to 60 percent of the agriculture industry was destroyed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

continues...

http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/where-is-the-buffer-zone/

I suppose this waffling jackass Sweetness considers Nadine's refusal to admit to ANY Israeli wrongdoing as "sane". If there is anyone here that it is impossible to have an "honest" discussion with, it is NADINE.

"However, in order to have an HONEST discussion, and not one where you are simply spouting the party line from behind the sandbags, then you
have to be willing to discuss Israel's mistakes, ALSO"

Targeting farmers and fishing boats is NOT a "mistake", it is a willfull act of violence and oppression aimed at stealing an ENTIRE PEOPLE'S ability to provide themselves with basic human needs. You don't recognize your own hypocrisy in having the gall to opine about "good and honest discussion"???

Hey POA,

I know it's upsetting to see your friend, Carroll, revealed as an anti-
Semite. Or, at the very least, as someone who's willing to push all
kinds of anti-Semitic garbage as true.

As much time as you've put in with her, I don't blame you for
having a hard time with it and not being willing to admit it
yourself--it must be very hard to come to grips with, especially as
you pride yourself on knowing a horseshoe when you see one.

You've done a good job of puncturing other people's myths.
Unfortunately, you aren't willing to confront your own.

Its actually quite amusing reading the commentary of the posters that wish to convey an evenhandedness in the debate. When one takes note of the semantics they use to sugar-coat the gravity of what Israel is actually doing, one cannot help but assume the "even-handedness" is feigned. The truth is, any IDF troop that fires on an unarmed fishing boat, or a farmer, legally attempting to fullfill a peaceful purpose, is attempting MURDER, and should be arrested, taken out of the IDF, and punished accordingly.

There are far too many accounts, from far to many media sources and international human rights organizations, to discount the reports of Israeli IDF troops targeting Palestinian farmers and fisherman who pose no threat to Israel, or Israeli troops.

Seeing Sweetness use terms like "mistakes", or attributing Nadine's contributions as "good and honest" completely belies his desire for even-handed debate. His sacharin semantics, used to describe Israeli crimes and atrocities are designed to diminish the import of what Israel is actually doing. And his kudos cast in Nadine's direction are an attempt to place credibility in the lap of someone who has time and again proven herself to be a shameless liar and purveyor of blatantly disingenuous straw diversions.

Sweetness, your last post addresses NOTHING. It is merely a clumsy attempt to place me in a certain camp, hoping to establish "guilt by association". I have not wieghed in on Carroll's behalf, and I am uncomfortable with a couple of Carroll's premises, although I am not sure whether they are bigoted, or just poorly worded.

Regardless, you'll need to do better than your last bit of empty horseshit if you want to be taken seriously, or be seen as anything other than a glib apologist for Nadine's racist and lopsided nonsense.

POA writes: "Seeing Sweetness use terms like "mistakes", or
attributing Nadine's contributions as "good and honest"
completely belies his desire for even-handed debate. His
sacharin semantics, used to describe Israeli crimes and atrocities
are designed to diminish the import of what Israel is actually
doing."

Sorry, "mistakes" was poor wording on my part-:)

Then again, I wasn't referring to the subject of your posts as you
seem to suggest. You twisted it in that direction. You're free to
do that, but I don't take it seriously.

I did think Nadine's comment was movement in a good
direction, but clearly inadequate--and that was pretty clear
from what I said.

I don't comment on Israel's crimes. Nor do I post on Hamas's
crimes. There are plenty of other people, like you, Carroll, OA
and others doing that, nor am I not a score-keeper.

Nadine - Allow me to give you a little history lesson to disabuse you of your one sided perspectives. As you know my grandfather was Irgun and your postings have led me to drag out his old handwritten memoirs and photographs.

In June of 1946, my grandfather and his Irgun company captured 3 British soldiers, Spencer, Warburton and Taylor (his memoirs don't indicate their first names) to be held hostage for the release of Irgun prisoners held by the British. How is this different than Hamas holding Shalit for similar ransom. The technique worked for the Jews and it has worked in the past for Palestinians.

What about those suicide bombings done by the Palestinians? It's just a technique copied from the Jewish playbook. In April, 1947 the Irgun loaded a stolen mail truck full of explosives and drove it into the British Police station in Sharona, destoying the station and killing the police inside.

Summary executions of informers? It's an old Jewish trick? Ask the family of Leon Meshaih whom Begin shot in the head in March, 1947 causing Begin to laugh at my grandfather for throwing up his dinner.

Executing hostages because the other side doesn't come thru with results to demands? Again, two British soldiers, Paice and Martin were hung from a tree by the Irgun in July, 1947 when the British didn't release two Irgun prisoners.

My grandfather's memoirs contain descriptions of far too many examples of cold blooded Jewish terrorism. Bombings in arab marketplaces, snipings and ambushes and literally hundreds of deaths. I have an old photo of Begin standing over the bodies of a British soldier and two arab men who had the misfortune of walking along with the soldier into an Irgun ambush. Begin is standing over his kill like a hunter grinning from ear to ear. For the record, my grandfather thought Shamir was much crueler and cold blooded than Begin.

Smuggling weapons was, like Hamas, a lifeline for Jews. My grandfather who came from Aix en Provence, France was in 1946 and 1947 one of the chief weapons smugglers for the Jews. After WWII, France was awash with weapons, many left by the Germans. He would regularly buy them up, rent a ship in Marseilles and run the guns to the Lebanese coast (the French were far less vigilent than the Brits)and then the guns were smuggled south.

One of the things that the Brits did that Israel doesn't do is talk with the other side, ie Hamas. Irgun and Hagganah had numerous meetings with General Alan Cunningham, British high commissioner for Palestine. Since Begin's english was horrible, my grandfather participated in some of these meetings. They were always held on nuetral ground with mutual safe passage. In one meeting, Cunningham told Begin "you know after this meeting we're going to try to kill you" and Begin cocked his hand and finger like a gun and replied "the same with you" and turned heel and walked out. Nonetheless, both sides began to understand the parameters of the conflict. The British wanted some sort of mutual agreement between the arabs and jews in order to dismantle the occupation. Additionally they understood that the jews would never give up their fight. On the Jewish side, these meetings got through to the leadership that they could not have all of Palestine and would have to compromise on a partition.

Nadine, everything that Hamas and the Palestinians have done was also done by the jews. The polemics were the same, the jews would state publically that all of the territory belonged to them, from the river to the sea. Both are/were fighting off an occupation.

Aside from everything I wrote, I believe the Jewish fight for a homeland in Israel was right and moral. I firmly believe in a Jewish Israel as the homeland of the Jews. But a Jew should also understand that the Palestinians fight against the occupation and for a homeland is equally righteous. In both instantances, the tactics used to achieve this goal are the same. Shalom

questions, you can't properly discuss anyone's conduct apart from a reasonable context. That poor farmer is on a border in a hot zone, which is a miserable place to be. But the border is not a hot zone because Israel is trying to invade Gaza; it is a hot zone because Hamas keeps trying to invade Israel, with kidnap teams and rockets. Talking about the sufferings of the poor innocent farmer while airbrushing Hamas out of the picture produces heat but no light.

How can you respond at all without reminding people that this is a hot zone, it is hot because of Hamas, and what happens inside it cannot be evaluated as if it were happening in the middle of Peoria?

But of course that is the point of POS's sob stories, to play for sympathy as if it were Peoria, because everybody "knows" that Israel is all-powerful and can "control the temperature" as Steve Clemons phrased it. Well, no, they can't, not until they develop Star Trek technology and seal the Gaza Border with a force field so they don't have to use buffers or guns anymore. Then we'll hear sob stories about how the force field is ruining Palestinian crops.

Shalom, jdledell, thanks for the details. I didn't know the details but they fit in with what I did know. Ever read Collins & Lapierre's _O_Jerusalem!_? A very good history of the fight for Jerusalem at the end of the Mandate and during the War of Independence. That was a dirty little war.

Smuggling weapons and suicide bombings were used by the Irgun; however, one big difference, then and now, was that the Irgun targeted British soldiers and police, not marketplaces and restaurants (and yes, I know there were a few exceptions, no need to repeat them again). Another was that the Irgun was a splinter movement. How did the Hagganah feel about the Irgun? How did Ben Gurion feel about it? What did he do about the Irgun as soon as he took power? You know these answers.

Now, on the other side - whom did the Arab fighters target, both during the revolt of 1936-39 and the fighting of 47-49? Civilians or soldiers? How did the Mufti feel about it? Did anyone ever call a halt to these tactics? Did the Palestinians ever have an Altalena moment? You know these answers too.

Far from calling a halt, the Mufti was urging on the slaughter of civilians; you know that the Arab High Command was promising to slaughter the Jews. You know that one was factor creating the panic among the Arabs when the promised Arab victory didn't materialize; they expected the Jews to do to them what their side would have done to the Jews.

So let's keep a sense of proportion, and remember what each side is fighting for, and with what philosophy.

I'm glad you think the fight for Israel was moral (though you seem permanently shocked at the existence of the Irgun. It's like Jewish Original Sin for you). If I thought the Palestinians were fighting for a homeland next to Israel I too would regard that as moral. Unfortunately, that not what their leadership wants or is being paid for. So it's not going to happen. Fatah is still working on the "stages" (=destroy Israel in stages) plan that Arafat unveiled in 1974; and of course Hamas is more direct about their aims to destroy Israel.

Posted by PissedOffAmerican, Feb 22 2010, 9:17AM - Link >>>>>>>>>>

I can handle it.

What you are seeing is this:

1)It was and is my contention that it is humanly impossible for one certain group of human beings be they jews or anyone else to have been entirely innocent in all of history of any provocation that resulted in actions against them.

Which was "interpreted" by PN and Sweetie..
#) That I think the jews always deserved what they got.
#) That the Jews 'always' did something to deserve whatever they got.
#) That when I post equally bad crap about jews to nadines full out bigotry about Arabs I believe everything said about the Jews.
#) That the holocaust was the proportional response to the jews in Germany.
#) That I am anti semite for contending that totally and eternally innocent thruout history cannot be true of jews any more than any others.
# That I deny anti semitism exist.

2) The contention-question is a universal one concerning groups of human beings and infallibility and etc. that had I been applying it to the Catholics or to Spain or to any other group or country would not have raised the slightest interest from the Israeli quarter or sweeties or PN.

3) The REASON for putting forth that contention is because, and it is undeniable, that the Entirely Innocent Victimhood Narrative is the Main Political Tool of the jewish zionist and of even non zionist and of Israel for "special treatment" and for "immunity" from all rules that apply to others and other countries.

4)Were it to be found or admitted that indeed jews were not totally innocent in their history, it would affect their victimhood narrative and therefore their use of it for political purposes for Israel, the "Jewish" state.

This possibility of course can't be allowed or even thought of. To the sweeties it is the same as saying the holocaust never happened or the jews caused it. It would take the "eternal" out of the victimhood story and leave the Holocaust, which was bad enough on it's own but is wearing thin due to Israel's actions and the comparisons being made of the Jewish holocaust by the nazis to the Palestine holocaust by the Israelis. Therefore anything that threatens the narrative in any way must be discredited at all cost.

Hence the bloodletting at the idea that Jews and therefore Israel should be treated as all other people and all other countries.

The method of argument in this thread has been the same as always. Re direct,straw men, obfuscate and "interpret" the other person meanings. Sweetie and PN will say yes Jews can be assholes. But when anyone says these assholes might not have been innocent in all those expulsion they suffered that is anti semitism. What sends them over the edge in my arguments is it exposes the circular hypocrisy of their own statements.

I stand by my contention that the Jews, as a group, whether politically or culturally could not have possibility 'always' been totally innocent as opposed to those who opposed them. There isn't a sane person or sociological expert that would accept the possibility of any eternally innocent group of humans thruout history. It's a human nature impossibility.

Intellectual and universally established truths and logic however cannot be acknowledged by fanatic or cult thinking.

Posted by Sweetness, Feb 22 2010, 10:24AM -
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You haven't progressed any further than the early days several years ago when you called me...what was it?...oh yes...a "fucking bitch" and hoped I would die.

For saying the Israelis were treating the Palestines just like the nazis had treated them in the ghettos.

Well the Jewish state has gotten even worse in it's madness since then.

So answer the question.

Should the Jews, and therefore Israel, be treated by the US in it's foreign policy exactly as we would treat other similar people and other similar countries. No more, no less. Same standards we demand from other people and other countries. Same method of deciding foreign aid and favors and protection and punishment not influenced by the jewish holocaust justification for it's present behavior.

Yes or no?

"1)It was and is my contention that it is humanly impossible for one certain group of human beings be they jews or anyone else to have been entirely innocent in all of history of any provocation that resulted in actions against them."

Which I guess, Carroll, means that women just wanna be ra-aped (sung to the tune of Girls just wanna have fun).

Which means that Haitians deserve the after-effects of colonization.

Which means that Africans deserved their slavery.

Which means that groups bear the mark of any individual in that group.

Which means that I can hold any group responsible for the behavior of any individual I choose to put into that group. (octaroons, anyone??)

Which means that it's always clear who's in and who's not in any group.

Which means that the genetics of race and religion are crystal clear.

Which means that there is not distinction to be drawn between groups and individuals.

Which means that genes are destiny.

Which means that we really can distinguish between groups of people.

Which means that the infliction of suffering on others is actually caused by those others.

Which means that blaming the victim is precisely the right thing to do.

Which means that if the Palestinians are universally not loved, it's their own damned fault.

Which is the place where Carroll and Nadine would seem to meet????????

Which means that, say, self-control is less a virtue than is proper docility and knowing one's place in a hierarchy and accepting death should that be meted out.

Wow!

You go girl!

You are one SHARP thinker!!!!!

"3) The REASON for putting forth that contention is because, and it is undeniable, that the Entirely Innocent Victimhood Narrative is the Main Political Tool of the jewish zionist and of even non zionist and of Israel for "special treatment" and for "immunity" from all rules that apply to others and other countries."

Which means that no other country ever seeks exception.

Which means that EIVN is unique and is Israel's claim.

Which means that Israel doesn't see itself in a land grab for land it simply wants.

Which means that Carroll and POA part ways on this point. For POA thinks it's a land grab and Carroll thinks that Israel thinks of itself as an innocent victim.

Which also means that the passing of the generation of Holocaust survivors and the increased number of former Soviet citizens has no effect on anything in Israel.

Which means that being Jewish is monolithic.

Which means, once again, that Carroll is one SHARP thinker!!!!

questions, you'll be happy to hear that Daddy Rubin has a George Washington sighting in Baby Rubin's classroom to report:

Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington Sighting!
By Barry Rubin

For those following my blogging on a fourth-grade class, this morning during the opening "warm-up" period, the students read one page on George Washington's childhood. No discussion. This is apparently the total official county program to deal with the founder of the United States. One day after Abraham Lincoln's birthday, however, he still hasn't been mentioned at all. For an earlier "accidental" brief mention of Washington, see here.

"Should the Jews, and therefore Israel, be treated by the US in it's foreign policy exactly as we would treat other similar people and other similar countries. No more, no less. Same standards we demand from other people and other countries. Same method of deciding foreign aid and favors and protection and punishment not influenced by the jewish holocaust justification for it's present behavior."

Carroll is indeed a SHARP thinker!!!

Because there really is only one set way we treat any country in foreign policy!

And there are lots of similar people.

In lots of similar countries.

And we treat them all the same. Same to the similar!

And foreign policy is all about foreign countries. And about treating people the same regardless.

Very subtle understanding of American politics!

You go girl! You go! SHARP!

AAARGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Nadine do you read what I write??? Geo. Wash is positively 100% a first grade theme. It's in the county standards.

I realize that the proud poppa of a Baby Rubin 4th grader doesn't see 8th grade and APUSH lurking. But the time's they are a passin' and before Poppy Rubin knows it, Baby Rubin will have all sorts of pro-American factoids about the various prezzes in his Baby Rubin head.

8th grade will catch Lincoln with some detail. APUSH will give him more. Don' worry. The kid'll be fine. Go ahead and tell Poppy Rubin I sez so. I give my guarantee! The text books will be Texas-approved and the kid will get scouts' honor truths!

It's ok!

By the way, let Poppy Rubin know that the current American calendar no longer bothers with Lincoln's birthday as a holiday. They changed that shit! It's Presidents' Day, and you can celebrate your five faves!!! Or your Fave Fives. Whatever gets you through the night!

So "a day after Lincoln's birthday" is pretty meaningless with the new regime.

Besides, does Poppy Rubin really want another federal holiday?!

Posted by Paul Norheim, Feb 22 2010, 6:02AM - Link

Struck a nerve did I?

One of your problems is selective and defensive listening which produces counterfeit conclusions and counterfeit questions.
You are a lot like questions in that way.
Stick to your Literary hobby, ... intellectual analysis, evaluation and interpretation real world theories isn't your forte.
And no I haven't backed down, I stand by my original contention.
The eternally and always totally innocent victimhood of any group, including jews is an impossibility.
And further the 'eternal and always" claim is part of the claim, along with the holocaust, used for political purposes to justify the financial and military support of the Jewish State and it's internationaly illegal actions.
And as a matter of fact is what most states and most people accuse Israel and the US of, using this as an justification for avoiding responsibility for Israel's crimes.

Carroll, I guess the first place where your nonsense falls down is
this: Paul isn't a Jew, a Zionist, an American, or an Israeli and yet
clearly sees the folly of your bullshit. He doesn't hold any brief
for Israel, but any time he departs from your party line, you turn
into a harridan, like Cruella deVille.

Second your list is almost meaningless and is stuffed with
strawmen and retractions. Especially this...

#) That I think the jews always deserved what they got.

SN: But you clearly believe the Jews sometimes deserved what
they go, so it's up to you to say WHEN you think the Jews
deserved what they got. Otherwise, you're spouting poppycock.
Sure, I'll agree they "sometimes" deserved what they got--you
pick the times and back it up with something more than
generalities about how no one is perfect.

#) That the Jews 'always' did something to deserve whatever they
got.

SN: Well, if you're not saying this, what ARE you saying? You
clearly want to say that sometimes they brought their troubles
on themselves. That involves doing something--what did they
do? When did they do it? Why did they deserve what they got?
Put up or shut up.

#) That when I post equally bad crap about jews to nadines full
out bigotry about Arabs I believe everything said about the Jews.

SN: So you post stuff you don't believe is true? And hateful stuff
at that? And which bits of your famous lists DO you think are
true? I guess that's how a bigot gets his jollies. But seriously,
why do you think that that responds in any way to whatever
bigotry Nadine may be saying? It's incomprehensible. The right
response is, "Nadine, what you're saying is bigoted," not "Here's
a famous man who thought Jews were insects. Hahaha!"

#) That the holocaust was the proportional response to the jews
in Germany.

Well, what DO you believe? You seem happy to post stuff about
Jews being insects, a Nazi trope. You're willing to be
misunderstood pretty regularly, but are never willing to say what
you DO believe except as generalities.

#) That I am anti semite for contending that totally and eternally
innocent thruout history cannot be true of jews any more than
any others.

This is a nonsense contention and no one contends it. This is an
utter strawman. And Zionism in no way depends on this
argument. Moreover, when I brought up blacks, you seemed
willing to contend that they were innocent of the prejudice
they've suffered. So it's obviously not IMPOSSIBLE, logically or
otherwise, for a group of people to suffer long-standing and
widespread discrimination and persecution. It IS possible
because you yourself agree with this example. You're just
unwilling to accord Jews this status, and you're also unwilling to
show how the Jews caused their own problems. You just want to
spout generalities...and post hateful quotes.

# That I deny anti semitism exist.

That's what it basically boils down to. You want to say that
sometimes Jews brought on their own troubles. But you're
unwilling to get into specifics and prefer "logical" arguments
that no group is ever entirely innocent (a contention no one
makes). Well, let's try this: When WAS anti-Semitism the cause
of Jewish troubles? Pick your times. Does the Holocaust qualify?

Here's more of your nonsense...

Carroll: 2) The contention-question is a universal one
concerning groups of human beings and infallibility and etc. that
had I been applying it to the Catholics or to Spain or to any other
group or country would not have raised the slightest interest
from the Israeli quarter or sweeties or PN.

SN: Jews and Zionists do not as a rule claim they are infallible.
This is a myth YOU are pushing. You can't even argue this
question legitimately without respect to specific instances. Also,
and this is a small point, but Catholics and Spaniards were not
wiped off the face of a continent in a fast, grisly fashion--so
the two instances are utterly different. Even you, I guess, would
have to admit this. Or maybe not. Maybe, for you, the
Holocaust was an instance where, somehow, the Jews brought
destruction on themselves by doing heinous series of acts.

3) The REASON for putting forth that contention is because, and
it is undeniable, that the Entirely Innocent Victimhood Narrative
is the Main Political Tool of the jewish zionist and of even non
zionist and of Israel for "special treatment" and for "immunity"
from all rules that apply to others and other countries.

SN: Again, NO ONE puts forward that contention, except you. If
you can find me someone else who does, I'll call him an idiot,
too. Unfortunately, for your narrative, anti-Semitism LONG
predates Zionism, as do many of your quotes. Zionism was a
reaction to existing anti-Semitism (among other things). I will
say this, though, I think many Jews are hyper-vigilant, and
sometimes too vigilant, which is what happens (often) with this
kind of history. Blacks are hyper-sensitive to any hints of
racism, whether it's there or not.

4)Were it to be found or admitted that indeed jews were not
totally innocent in their history, it would affect their victimhood
narrative and therefore their use of it for political purposes for
Israel, the "Jewish" state.

SN: Again, no one is claiming the Jews are "totally innocent." In
fact, it's pretty much a meaningless idea. It's congealed in your
brain and you're pushing it. Even the notion of anti-Semitism
doesn't depend on the Jews being a "totally innocent" group of
people.

The sad thing, Carroll, is that valid criticism of Israel doesn't
depend on any of this garbage...and yet you're pushing it and
pushing it and spouting the most hateful crap in the process.
Perhaps because your aim is invalid and total criticism of Israel.
Sort of a zero-sum game.

To answer your last question...I hadn't noticed that all countries
get treated the same by the United States. But if you're asking if
I support the lobby's (such as it is) perspective on IP--I don't.

FWIW, I still don't think the Israelis treat the Palestinians "just
like" the Nazis did the Jews. Were that the case, there would be
no more Palestinians in Palestine...a long time ago. But hey, I'm
not much of a scorekeeper and don't go in for these
comparisons much unless they're forced down my throat by
idiots like you.

The conversation has moved on, Carroll, but you're still fighting
yesterday's battle...

Huummm.....according to Walt's article my techinque is pretty good.

I stated my contention. Didn't call you jewish nazi or fucking bitch for attacking my theory.
You made up a response, hurled your usual slurs, redirected and are still stuck in the same groove...making up the same stuff.

I notice you didn't answer the question either.LOL

Wanna know why you can't win? Because for you it's all personal, not moral or logical or intellectual. Any criticism or question of Jews, as a group or any individual or Israel..all of which when posted here is in relation to a politic issue ...is to you an attack on your personal 'identity".

Ciao..until next time.

Carroll writes: "You made up a response, hurled your usual slurs,
redirected and are still stuck in the same groove...making up the
same stuff."

Carroll, my contention that you are a bigot is based on the FACT
that you spew bigotry. This has been observed not only by me,
but by others. Is that what Walt suggests?

Here's your question: "Should the Jews, and therefore Israel, be
treated by the US in it's foreign policy exactly as we would treat
other similar people and other similar countries. No more, no
less. Same standards we demand from other people and other
countries. Same method of deciding foreign aid and favors and
protection and punishment not influenced by the jewish
holocaust justification for it's present behavior."

My answer is...yes. Is that clear enough?

We'll be looking for your answers to a number of questions...oh,
whenever you can spare some time.

Nadine - Your response was an improvement but it still leaves a lot to be desired. First, Haganah after WWII was not as innocent as you would like to believe. There was a lot of cooperation between Irgun and Haganah. It was Lehi that were the outcasts.

While Haganah concentrated mainly on sabotage, they certainly passed on intelligence to Irgun on potential human targets. The differentiation was Haganah personnel were squeamish about killing, Irgun was not. You don't want to hear tales of civilian deaths but I can assure you there were hundreds of arabs and british civilians killed. In the comfort of your American home and the distance of many decades, you blithely dismiss the episodes I described as "splinter groups". These were not splinter groups, they were integral to the Jewish victory in pushing the Brits out of Israel/Palestine.

As I'm sure you are aware, all the members of Haganah, Irgun and even Lehi were honored by Israel after Independence for their contributions.

I don't know all the figures from prior to WWII on arab vs jewish civilian deaths, but from 1943 to 1948 the Jewish underground made sure that arab deaths exceeded Jewish ones. You still have no answer why it was okay for Jews to capture soldiers for ransom but not okay for Hamas to do the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of all I am disappointed in your inability to see any redeeming qualities in Palestinians. If Begin and Shamir could be rehabilitated enough to assume Prime Minister roles in Israel, why not Haniyeh or Meshal? Are you sure they are fundementally different than Begin and Shamir?

I had to laugh when I read about Palestinians wanting to take over the land from the river to the sea in stages. Talk about projection - that was always what the Jewish hierarchy thought from Ben Gurion on down. That was always the talk amoung the Jewish leaders and it still is. You simply want to continue to see your tribe thru rose colored glasses and the Palestinian tribe thru eye nightshades.

I see that the lying bigot Nadine did not rise to my challenge, and produce any credible evidence that Palestinians place IEDs on the border "near daily", or rise to my challenge to produce credible evidence of a terrorist attack launched from Palestinian fishing boats, (which might supply a motive for the Israelis constant harrassment and murder of Palestinian fishermen).

Truth is, Nadine is just a bigoted liar, and makes shit up in knee jerk fashion responding to SPECIFIC AND SOURCED accounts of Israeli atrocities committed against the Palestinians.

Interesting that Questions, Sweetness, or Wig-wag can't be bothered to request that Nadine actually supply some substantive rebuttals to accounts of Israeli atrocities.

I see these assholes in Israel have chosen this week to drive one more wedge into the prospects for peace by provoking more animous over historical sites. One provocation after another is thrown at the Palestinians, and these bigots like Nadine rue the radicalization of the Palestinians? What the fuck does she expect then to do, roll over and play dead?

If Israel has "a right to defend itself" WHY DON'T THE PALESTINIANS HAVE THE SAME RIGHT???

If Israel can secretely build a nuclear arsenal outside of the monitoring of the IAEA, THEN WHY CAN'T IRAN????

If Israel can export arms in huge numbers, WHY CAN'T IRAN???

If Israel can send terrorists onto foreign soil to assassinate enemies, WHY CAN'T THE ARAB COUNTRIES DO THE SAME THING???

Why aren't Israeli murderers called "terrorists", if Muslim murderers are called "terrorists"?

jdledell, do you remember how the New York Times told us in 2005 that with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, it was a chance to see how the Palestinians would manage their own affairs? Remember how some Americans bought out the state-of-the-art greenhouses to leave them for Palestinian agriculture? How'd that work out? seen enough yet?

My contention is simple. Hamas says they are enemies who want to destroy Israel and I believe them. If it were just about occupation, how come Gaza isn't peaceful? It isn't occupied.

My objection to Hamas is that they want to destroy Israel. That ought to be your objection to them too. They are running an enemy statelet allied with Iran. Kidnapping soldiers, as a technique, is less objectionable than blowing up buses or siting rocket launchers in apartment buildings; but it is first and foremost the goal of destroying of destroying Israel which is objectionable, and renders all their tactics objectionable, even if they occasionally fight like soldiers.

"If Begin and Shamir could be rehabilitated enough to assume Prime Minister roles in Israel, why not Haniyeh or Meshal? Are you sure they are fundementally different than Begin and Shamir?"

Yes, I'm sure. Why? They haven't been rehabilitated one little bit. The trouble with your rose colored glasses is that you have to put on blinders and ear plugs to go with them. There has been no sign whatsoever of moderation from these guys. On the contrary, the rockets, the kidnapping, the Iranian alliance and the desperate smuggling in of missiles says that their plans are anything but peaceful. So do they! They are losing the support of the Gazans but they don't care. It's their sacred cause, the war against the Jews.

That goes for Fatah too, where we have two weak figures, Abu Mazen and Fayyad, held up as "moderates" to collect $2 Billion a year in aid. Meanwhile the Fatah Central Committee is stuffed with hardliners, one of whom, Mohammed Ghaneim, is Abu Mazen's chosen successor.

You show me any signs of moderation from these guys -- visible in Arabic to their publics, not just hints dropped in English to reporters and other useful idiots -- and I'll change my mind. So will Israelis, you know that. They changed their mind when Sadat offered to go to Jerusalem, and he had been a Nazi.

Aaargh, questions, by the time Baby Rubin reaches the 8th grade he will have received another 4 years of the proctologist's view of American history.

POS wants to know what those poor Gazan fishermen could possibly have to do with terrorism. To answer that, we need to talk about Iran's intense efforts to smuggle missiles to Hamas.

A year ago Israel bombed a caravan in the Sudan carrying missiles. There were reports the Iranians had set up a smuggling base on the Red Sea Coast to smuggle the arms over land:

"Israeli officials claimed anonymously that the convoy was carrying Fajr-3 rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv (Sunday Times, March 29; Jerusalem Post, March 29)"
"[Maariv] reported that Iran has already finished building a naval base at Assab and had “transferred to this base – by means of ships and submarines – troops, military equipment and long range-ballistic missiles… that can strike Israel.”
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34807

That convoy didn't get through, but some missiles did. Last November Hamas test fired a missile with a 60 km range:

"Military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said on Tuesday that Hamas has upgraded its missile capability and is now capable of shooting a rocket 60 kilometers from Gaza, enough to reach the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

In recent days, several successful tests of Iranian-made rockets have been carried out, he said, adding that the rockets have a range of up to 60 kilometers."

Now, missiles are very big and heavy, and hard to get through the smuggling tunnels even when Egypt was still turning a blind eye. The natural way to deliver missiles is by sea. So, the Israelis are blockading the coast of Gaza, maintaining the embargo and stopping arms smuggling. Now obviously a big heavy cargo ship won't make it past the Naval blockade. So, here's where the fishermen come in: they pick up the coastal drops of missiles. This report is from the Jpost in 2008, but I expect this has only intensified as Egypt closes the tunnels:

"Iran has stepped up its efforts to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip by using floatable devices that it drops near the waters off the Gaza coast to be picked up by Palestinian fisherman, senior defense officials have told The

According to defense officials, Iran is now sending rockets and other advanced weaponry to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip by sea as well as via tunnels dug under the Philadelphi Corridor and connecting the Sinai peninsula with Rafah.

Officials said that the Navy is doing a fairly effective job in curbing the smuggling by sea, but that there are some shipments Israeli forces did not succeed in intercepting.

"They throw the weapons overboard in waterproof, sealed tubes which then float into the Gaza waters and are picked up by fishermen," one official said. "Sometimes Navy boats intercept them and sometimes they get through."

In recent months, the IDF has noticed an increase in Iranian-made weaponry in the Gaza Strip, including rockets and mortars. Terror groups in Gaza recently were equipped by Teheran with two different types of mortar shells made in Iran - one 120 mm with a range of 10 kilometers like a Kassam rocket and another with a range of six kilometers. Defense officials told the Post that in recent weeks thousands of mortars have been smuggled into Gaza.

Officials in Jerusalem said some of the weaponry now in Gaza was far too large to have been smuggled through tunnels burrowed from Sinai into Gaza, and that there was obviously an alternative route that was being used to smuggle weaponry into the area"
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:zWnKIJTxf1UJ:www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite%3Fcid%3D1208422633228%26pagename%3DJPArticle%252FShowFull+Gaza+coast+missiles+Iran+smuggling&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Gee, that must mean we can win the War On Drugs if we just direct our Coast Guard to sink every fishing boat that strays more than a coupla miles offshore. Thanks for the tip, Nadine.

POS, you called me a lying bigot and demanded evidence of the involvement of Palestinian fisherman in terrorism. I provided it. You responded with more of your usual bilious spew. Let readers with more sense judge the evidence.

Now, I don't know if Omar and Khaled al-Habil got shot up by the Israeli Navy because they had missiles on board and tried to run for it, but I do know this: if they did, chances that they would tell the truth to electronicintifada.com, or that electronicintifada.com would print it if they did, are slim to none, and slim ain't feeling too good.

Anyway, it shows that your contention that Israel is committing atrocities by shooting at innocent fishermen who couldn't possibly have anything to do with terrorism, is just another of your many lying slanders. I am providing the missing half of the story for some context.

"POS, you called me a lying bigot...."

Yes I did. Is that a problem?

Not really. From someone as stupid and potty-mouthed as you are, it's practically a compliment.