An interesting item I haven’t seen anywhere in the news: Al Jazeera reports that Israeli forces yesterday raided and vandalized the Freedom Theatre of Jenin, arresting its two codirectors without charge (or even accusation), holding them for the better part of a day, and then releasing them the next day. Read the article for the backstory, but what’s of interest to me are the particular details of the arrest. Mustafa Sheta, one of the co-directors of the theater (and a Facebook friend of mine),
told Al Jazeera how he was handcuffed and blindfolded before soldiers kicked him in the head and stomach. He was then taken to the Al-Jalama checkpoint, north of Jenin, where he was held in the cold, rain and mud for about 14 hours before being released.
“They did not tell me why they were there,” he said. “They did not tell me if I was wanted for any crime. No questions asked. They just took me.”
Jenin, of course, is the northernmost city in the West Bank.
At almost the same time, I got news (a few hours prior to the publication of Al Jazeera’s story) from a friend in the southern part of the West Bank some hundred miles away from Jenin. He, too, was arrested out of the blue, taken to a military detention center, and held without explanation in absolute silence–for eight hours in his case. When one of the arrestees with him asked why they were being held, the questioner was beaten bloody with a rifle butt–but beaten in dead silence. Apparently, the soldiers thought it an unforgivable sin to break this particular silence.
The “interesting item I haven’t seen anywhere in the news” is not, of course, that the co-directors of the Freedom Theatre of Jenin were arrested without explanation. As I’ve said, I saw that item in Al Jazeera–though not in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, or any other “Western” publication. The “interesting item I haven’t seen anywhere” is three-fold: that the arrests in the north were mirrored by simultaneous arrests in the south; that these arrests lacked discernible legal basis or purpose; and strangest of all, that they were conducted in odd, ominous silence.
When I worked in a hospital operating room, we were, despite the ubiquitous presence of blood and gore, big noisemakers: the OR was always a place of raucous music, overbearing chatter, and inappropriate laughter–even when (maybe especially when) we were wading ankle-deep in blood or body parts. Only one thing ever shut us up: death. The quietest two hours I spent in the OR was the time I spent cleaning up after an organ procurement. We started that job with some feeble attempts at gallows humor, but the jokes soon petered out. There seemed something incongruous about noise in such close proximity to death. So we turned off the music, shut our mouths, and cleaned the room in dead silence. Finished, we quietly turned out the lights, shut the door behind us, and left.
I’ve also had my share of troubles with law enforcement, both in the US and in Israel/Palestine. In my experience, encounters with law enforcement are rarely if ever silent affairs. They tend to involve a lot of superfluous shouting, pedantic lecturing, insistent hectoring, and rapid-fire questioning. I plead some inexperience–I don’t live under military occupation–but I’m hardly a law enforcement virgin: in forty-seven years of encounters, I’ve never once had a perfectly silent encounter with cops or soldiers.
I don’t have iron-clad evidence of a coordinated series of silent arrests across the whole of the West Bank yesterday, just independent evidence of two apparently coordinated ones at its northern and southern ends. A quick search of the news merely says that the Israelis have “dramatically stepped up arrests” in the past few days, not that the arrests were conducted in any eerily dramatic silence.*
But it seems to me that silence sometimes speaks volumes, and that this silence does. To arrest someone in silence, and beat those who ask why, is as much as to say that there is no reason why. An arrest under any circumstances is an exercise in domination. When an arrest is detached from any legal rationale, it becomes a pure exercise in domination, power exercised for its own sake. Power exercised for its own sake is power divorced from reason. Power divorced from reason is a prelude to death. I don’t know how long it will be before silent arrests become mass killings in the West Bank. But that, I think, is where we’re headed.
There’s a famous passage in Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, his memoir of life and death in Auschwitz. Levi recounts breaking an icicle to quench his unbearable thirst, when a Nazi guard grabs it from him. “Warum?” he asks. “Why?” “Hier ist kein warum,” the guard replies. “There is no why here.”
For fifty years we’ve been told never, ever to compare the piddling tribulations of the Palestinians to the world historical trials of the Jews. The Holocaust, it’s intoned, is a metaphysically unique event, never to be compared with any other: beyond comparison, beyond conception, beyond our merely mortal categories of good and evil. It’s sui generis; nothing resembles it, and it bears no similarity relations to anything beyond it. Despite being an event rather than a person, the Holocaust has become a kind of deity personifying specifically Jewish suffering and redemption: an august presence we’re to keep at worshipful distance, a moral mystery we’re to invoke in tones of prayerful reverence and awe. It has, through that metamorphosis, become a kind of blank check that keeps on giving–because it confers the authority to keep on taking. You can’t learn very much about history by thinking about the Holocaust in this way. But you can rationalize almost any crime.
The Jewish State that was created as a response to the Holocaust has now reached a kind of moral dead end, the knowing, willful reproduction of the very evil it was founded to escape. Maybe that’s the inevitable fate of something built so adamantly and insistently in reaction to something else, without ever finding an authentic common good for which to strive. The point is not that Israel is the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany, or that the genocide in Gaza is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, or that the “free world” or anyone else is now entitled to impose the kind of unconstrained violence on Israel that was visited on the Third Reich. The point is that when a country commits some version–any version–of the crime it was founded to escape, it loses whatever reason it ever had to come into existence in the first place.
And Israel has. It is essentially beside the point to ask whether Israel has a “right to exist.” You might as well ask whether apartheid and genocide have rights. What it lacks is a reason to exist. The reason can’t be safety. It can’t be moral redemption. It can’t be the cultivation of some distinctively Jewish culture or civilization. There is no sense in which Israel promotes or embodies any of these things any more, if it ever did. At this point, Israel is just one more murderous state in a murderous neighborhood–the only one I suppose, with Western delusions of grandeur, along with Western weapons, Western money, Western allies, and an undying attachment to the dogma that The West is better than The Rest. But that’s not saying much. It’s just to regurgitate the catechism of Western imperialism from time immemorial.
There is no why to Israel any more. That is the meaning of the silence of its soldiers as they carry out their senseless assaults on human rights and dignity. The IDF can fill Palestine with graves–the only thing they really know how to do–but every grave it fills brings Israel more peril than safety, and grave by grave, spells the death knell of the Zionist enterprise. The moral impulse that once animated Israel is now irreversibly dead; it died, not at Hamas’s hands, but at Israel’s own. “Operation Iron Swords” is as much a dagger pointed at Palestinian throats as a boomerang flung by Israeli hands. For all their bravado and bluster–all the shameless intimidations and shit-eating lies–they don’t seem to grasp that the boomerang they’ve flung is coming right back at them. They’ll learn.
I’ve been an anti-Zionist for as long as I can remember, but until recently had a certain respect and even paradoxical affection for Israel. I could sign onto the spirit but not the letter of the place. It pains me to see an adversary so lost in self-delusion, so lacking in basic honesty, humanity, or self-respect–the ethno-nationalist equivalent of the Headless Horseman running wild in graveyards of its own making. But that’s what Israel has become. There is no why there any more, if ever there was: just an awful, yawning silence straining to conceal a conspicuous moral void.
*See further documentation in the comments, December 22-25.
Policy of Truth 
Irfan, incisive and insightful as always, my friend, but I disagree that the creation of Israel ever had anything to do with the Holocaust. Aside from the fact that Zionism predates Nazism, the Holocaust has served as an excuse for, not a reason for, the existence of this parasitical, war criminal regime. Unlike you, I never harbored any positive feelings for it. Though Jewish (so I had Israel rammed down my throat), I was entirely indifferent to it. When, as an activist, I learned the sordid history of Zionism, I hated it and wanted to see this fascist, ethno-nationalist, settler colonialist monster smashed into oblivion (with the Zionists given the choice, if Palestinians, whose land it is, wish to give them the choice, of living in a one-state democracy with Palestinians, or hauling their evil asses to whatever country supported their 100 years of atrocities–though, frankly, the last thing we need in the US is yet more fascists). [apologies if this comment posts twice–having difficulty posting it]
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I think it’s an overstatement to say that creation of Israel had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Israel was conceived as a refuge against anti-Semitism on the premise that only a State could keep the Jews safe. Zionism preceded the Holocaust because anti-Semitism did, but the Holocaust did give Israel an intensified version of the original Zionist rationale: it intensified the desire for a State that would guarantee Jewish security. That may have been a mistake, and it ended up rationalizing a long series of ethnic cleansings, but I don’t think Zionism can simply be reduced to a desire for criminality, full stop. You have to exhaust the possibilities of error before you invoke evil.
I’ve always opposed Zionism but regarded it as having better and worse aspects. The better aspects inspired rejection, not hatred. I can understand the attractions of Labor Zionism a la David Gordon, and wouldn’t anathematize someone who was attracted to it. I suppose that my internal jury is out on what these people really thought about human equality. Did they ever take up the first-person perspective on Palestinians the way I’ve found it incumbent to take up theirs? I understand their attraction to Zionism. Do they understand non-Jews’ aspiration to equal rights? Or do they just believe that Palestinians were too backward and irrelevant to value or have equal rights? I’m not enough of an expert to say, “They were pure racists all the way down.” I’m willing to consider them innocent before proven guilty.
In any case, there’s a difference between what I think of Zionism and whatever good I’ve found in Israel as a place. As you know, I’ve spent time in Israel, and liked it there. There were many places in Israel I’d still wanted to visit, and I was looking forward to spending more time with Israelis and figuring them out. The few conversations I’d had were either with leftists who agreed with me, or with people whose views were hopelessly ill-conceived for reasons I didn’t really understand. Anyway, it seemed possible to have Israel and Palestine grow into a one-state regime based on equal rights without having to destroy anything. It would take a long political struggle, I thought, but not necessarily any destruction.
How to solve that now is anyone’s guess.
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Irfan, the history of Zionism is too rife with depraved efforts, such as working with the Nazis, not to save Jews, but to make sure to get more Jewish bodies into Palestine, not for the benefit of those people, but for the benefit of setting up a Zionist project, to believe that it was created as a safe place for Jews. Zionists maneuvered emigration/expulsion of Jews from other countries (Morocco and Yemen, for instance), while attempting to expel or and murder everyone else in Palestine, in order to create a larger population of Jews than Arabs and Christians. And then, they proceeded to oppress these Black and Brown Jews, in Palestine, because they were not Ashekenazi Jews, which is the only population that has ever been given primacy in Israel. Black and brown Jews are forced to demonstrate their Israeliness by turning the oppression against them, onto those of even lower stature, Palestinians.
Zionist Israel has never cared about Holocaust survivors (or helping to make sure that there were more survivors). They sure don’t care about even Askenazi Jews who give even the mildest support for not committing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They don’t care about their own soldiers or the detainees, either, as has been demonstrated (Hannibal Directive).
You are more charitable than I am. I absolutely hate them—with a passion. Maybe because their atrocities are, ostensibly, being done in my name. I have not the slightest admiration for anything regarding Israel—as its goals have always been as rotten as their actions. Whatever early Zionists wanted to live in harmony with the indigenous Arab, Christian, and Jewish population did not, obviously, carry the day.
It was never about a refuge for Jews. The existence of Israel has made the world a more unsafe place for Jews, in so many ways. They created an entity, the consequences of which, are fear and hatred in that entire section of the planet. They ignore actual antisemitism (about which they do not care), such as that of the US Christian fascists and antisemitic world leaders whom they court—they will ally with anyone who supports Israel, even if they hate Jews. But, fake antisemitism—conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism–they weaponize, endlessly. Their decades of terrorist actions (not just in Palestine, but their weapon sales to oppressive regimes around the globe) have fomented antisemitism.
Their lobbying efforts have increased the spread of fascism in the west—censorship, criminalization of speech, employment interference, and the proliferation of unconstitutional laws to protect Israel. Israel and the US have also decimated the UN’s ability/willingness to stop war crimes and genocide, anywhere, except when done by enemies of the US.
I don’t have to exhaust the possibilities—their actions have done the job for us.
Did they think about human equality? Since they did not consider anyone who was not a Zionist Ashkenazi Jew as human, how does one even answer that question? It is such a sick society, that is so removed from resemblance to ever being a “normal” society—their kids are trained from early childhood to hate and fear Arabs. Every influence on them reinforces this. Whatever basic decency remains is battered (sometimes, literally) out of them. No, I’m not willing to consider them innocent, when they have endlessly demonstrated shocking, society-wide, evil—cartoon level evil. How could you hope to figure out people who have been indoctrinated into being automatons, taught to squelch every decent instinct—as the goal is ethno-nationalism, not any notion of rarefied, or even common, human empathy.
Since Israel (the government, and almost the entire populace) do not want peace with Palestinians (at best, they want dominance—but more than that, they want all Palestinians gone from their plan of Greater Israel), it has to be forced on them, from the outside. I saw a tweet, today from James Zogby: : 7 years ago we polled Israelis & Palestinians. A strong plurality in both favored 1 state. When asked how that would look: Israelis said it meant expelling all Palestinians. Palestinians said it meant equal rights in one state.”
In a Time poll: 57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the IDF were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower, while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power, while 4.2% were not sure.
Israel has created a population of psychopaths. What few escape the condition end up attacked, imprisoned, or they leave.
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My post was about what Israel has now become, so I agree with much of what you say about that. Israel has created a population of psychopaths, and of the delusional enablers of psychopaths. But my personal jury is out on how far back that goes, and how deeply entrenched in the Zionist project as such.
That said, it’s hard to deny that Israel was founded in ethnic cleansing and has been sustained by it. So I’m not disputing that culpability was there all along. The question is whether culpability was the only thing that was there all along. Zionism had to interact with a set of Arab nationalist and Islamic movements, all reactionary in their own way. I don’t think we can discount that Zionism was structured in part by its interactions with those movements. Zionism would never have had the opportunity for expropriation if not for the fact that it was preceded by an Arab form of feudalism. If so, the culpability has to be shared. The leaders of the Zionist movement may have been culpable, but I find it easy to see how their followers might without culpability have been fooled into following them–and then fixated obsessively on the (real) threats around them. There is less room for exculpation now, but perhaps more then.
I don’t have a fully-decided view on that. I could go either way. But I haven’t yet decided it one way or the other.
Not that it matters, I guess, to my friends over there, patiently awaiting expulsion or death.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/15/biden-extremist-jewish-settlers-travel-ban-loophole
Good to know that we’ve denied these settlers visas for entry into the United States when it turns out that they’re citizens who don’t need visas, and will no doubt come home, not to prosecution but to a hero’s welcome. O Pioneers! The perfect crime. It’s enough to make you laugh, if it didn’t make you cry.
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Oy vey—just what we need in the US—the return of fascists.
Well, we mostly agree, but I think the fascism was baked into Zionism before it even infected Palestine. But, then again, I am probably grumpier than you are.
Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was a veteran member of Meir Kahane’s Kach Party. For many years, he hung at his home a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the settler from Kiryat Arba who in 1994 murdered 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque. So, Kahane’s hate still lives.
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When I was at Princeton, Yoram Hazony, now a well-known “nationalist conservative” intellectual, invited Meir Kahane to speak on campus. I believe this was February 1990; it might have been 1989, but 1990 seems more likely. In any case, it was well after Hazony had graduated in 1986. Hazony had no official affiliation with the university at the time, but he was enough of a Big Man on Campus to be permitted to preside over an invitation of this sort, commandeer a large lecture hall (McCosh 50), and get Kahane a bodyguard (who, ironically enough, was black).
Kahane was at the time promoting the argument of his book, They Must Go, which defends the claim that “the Arabs of Eretz Israel” must either accept permanent subjugation or be forced out. In general, his talk was well-received by the audience of maybe 300 people (some of them Kach Party supporters bused in from Brooklyn). People laughed at his jokes, applauded, and furrowed their brows over his various suggestions.
In the Q&A, I asked Kahane directly what would be done with those who accepted neither subjugation nor expulsion. He said, clearly and without equivocation, that they would be killed en masse. I called him a fascist. There was a minor uproar in the hall. The Arab students cheered. The Kach Party supporters began to yell. Hazony acted as though nothing had happened, and moved on. People later complained about my “rudeness” to the rabbi. Not long afterwards, Kahane was assassinated, and the joke on campus was that Irfan had ordered it. If only.
Fast forward. Hazony wrote Kahane’s eulogy for the Jerusalem Post.
Click to access Farewell-from-a-Non-Kahanist-Nov-8-1990.pdf
He served as Netanyahu’s intellectual adviser at Madrid in 1991. He wrote a commentary on the biblical book of Esther, contemporaneous with the Hebron Mosque Massacre (which took place during Purim), defending the idea that Jews should target and destroy their enemies on the model provided in Esther (meaning: by genocide, which is what Esther illustrates).
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-dawn-political-teachings-of-the-book-of-esther-9789657052068?shipto=US&curcode=USD&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqYewo7mmgwMVVVtHAR0sYACBEAYYAyABEgIlDvD_BwE
He founded a college. He joined a think tank. He wrote books. He ran conferences. He networked within the American and European academic and governmental communities. He engaged in fund raising here and in Europe. He waited decades for the opportune moment to put his Kahanist ideas into practice. That moment arrived with the most recent Netanyahu government. So here we are.
So I’m not that charitable or naive. I knew back then that we might very well end up exactly where we are. People willing to applaud Meir Kahane and laugh at his jokes, and willing to promote the careers of his proteges, were fully capable of pushing lesser beings into the gas chambers while piously reciting mantras about how they would never allow the Holocaust to happen again.
Gil Steinlauf, the executive director of the Center for Jewish Life, graduated the same year as me. In other words, he was at Princeton when Kahane spoke. This is what he had to say about Mohammed El Kurd’s recent appearance on campus:
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/case-study-civil-discourse
Steinlauf “respectfully” asks me to consider. I respectfully ask him to remember. Kahane wasn’t just “tolerated” at Princeton. His talk was presided over by someone with zero official standing in the university. He was given the biggest lecture hall on campus. He was given a bodyguard. He explicitly called for genocide. People laughed and applauded. The heavens did not darken.
Now that genocide has come–not a hypothetical, verbal, metaphorical feared-for genocide, but a real one. The heavens still have not darkened, not over Princeton. Meanwhile, people like Gil Steinlauf are still wringing their hands over the phantom of anti-Semitism on campus. In the universe they inhabit, anti-Semitism is a problem, no matter how thin the evidence for its actual existence; genocide and its advocacy are not, no matter how many actual people die from it. I’m on campus at least as often as Steinlauf is. (I’m on campus right now.) I can say with confidence: there is no substantial anti-Semitism here. The only substantial thing to be found at Princeton are the double standards and self-delusion of the people who want the killing in Gaza to continue.
In a very real sense, the mass murders we’re seeing in Gaza started right here, where I am right now, in sedate little Princeton. So many people here are complicit in that carnage, having spent lifetimes and careers trying to bring it about. They may have forgotten the role they played, or want others to forget. But I haven’t, and won’t.
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Postscript:
https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/140237
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Another postscript:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna130797
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Like a grotesquely inverted Kristallnacht:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/20/no-safe-place-jenins-freedom-theatre-raided-daubed-with-star-of-david
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“Massacres Await”:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/features/2023/12/5/massacres-await-palestinians-in-nablus-warn-of-deadly-settler-attacks
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This very typical NYT article implies that because Jenin is “the focal point” of Israeli military efforts in the West Bank, and Jenin is full of militants, the efforts are themselves motivated by a desire to defend Israel against militants. But if the militants are themselves self-defense forces, and the Israeli operations cover the whole West Bank (whethere militants are targeted or not), we get a radically different picture of what’s actually happening. What you can’t do is rely on the Times or comparable outlets to distinguish aggressor from defender to decide between the two interpretations. Their reporting is practically designed to evade that task.
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https://www.palestinechronicle.com/clashes-erupt-as-israeli-forces-storm-towns-refugee-camps-across-west-bank/
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https://www.npr.org/2023/12/23/1220073353/palestinian-olive-harvest-west-bank-israel-hamas-war
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From B’Tselem, “Forcible transfer of isolated communities and families in Area C under cover of Gaza fighting,” 1,009 persons as of December 19, 2023:
https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/20231019_forcible_transfer_of_isolated_communities_and_families_in_area_c_under_the_cover_of_gaza_fighting
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From B’Tselem, link displaying 1-20 of 1,233 incidents, with incident from December 2, 2023:
https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence_updates_list
https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence_updates_list#215487
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Israel must up-root the primitive caste/feudal culture which defines the Arab world. Israel rejects as a political fraud – the White-Wash forms of democratic elections – while a 2% elite of Arabs living within Gaza and PA territories, while 98% of the Arab common man exist as a Xtian-like serf banana republic feudal economy dominated by terrorist leaderships.
Feudal Arab dictatorships, which defines all Arab civilizations, Hezbollah serves as a clear example of this pathetic political insanity, defines the Arab world. Israel must ensure that no Caste system functions in any Arab government administration post the Oct 7th total victory over Gaza.
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Perhaps the next Prime Minister of Israel: the South African Chief Rabbi. An interesting post war Israeli government after Bibi. From strength to strength, this double First Born Cohen Nation Avraham Yitzak Yaacov Moshe transition from Bibi to Warren Goldstein as Prime Minister.
The leadership of Bibi and his people/team\family/ friends\team: Oct 7th, that Mensch did not overreact. For two weeks following the Abomination, Bibi stopped and gathered Intelligence. The enemy did not expect, nor did they plan for this move.
Hizbollah failed to repeat the Oct 7th abomination surprise attack. This wisdom by which Bibi did not overreact and commit the IDF immediately all into Gaza, Hamas nor its allies expected this surprise move made by the government in Jerusalem.Hamas Oct 7th crossed the line. Israel slandered. The South African enemy accuses Israel of genocide like the 1975 UN 3379: ‘Zionism is Racism’. UN Resolution 3379, it defines the propaganda harnessed by enemy states. Israel today stands in a fight. And the IDF fights this war on our terms. Jerusalem dictates…the unconditional Surrender of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Israel “permits” some aid into Gaza? Propaganda. Egypt has sealed its border with Gaza. But Hamas bandits commandeer the international aid trucks, which Israel “permits” into southern Gaza. The dhimmi Arab feudal refugees, starving for food and thirst for water, their plight does not concern the feudal aristocratic lords of Hamas & Islamic. Their propaganda condemns Israel for the Palestinian casualties, used as human shields by their aristocratic Feudal Hamas & Islamic Jihad Lords.
The UN remains silent. UN Silence, its failure to condemn the Hamas Oct 7th abomination exemplifies the structurally biased UN plurality of states voting system which results in UN bad-faith against Israel.
A subtle nuance of international racism. The UN disproportionately condemns Israel; it refuses to recognize Israel as a country within the community of Nations in the Middle East region of the world. Like when the Islam Jihad missile struck the parking lot of a Gaza hospital – MSM Yellow Journalism Pravda Press Headlined: Israel bombs Hospital! No.
An Islamic Jihad errant missile hit that hospital parking lot. Not: “500 killed as the MSM Yellow Journalism Pravda Press parroted Arab propaganda lies!” Arabs lie, just that simple.The pathway by which the Arab people walk: a lie. This defined Arab destiny, best proven by the Second Sinai Commandment: do not prostrate to other Gods.
Free Will requires options, no less than two. Like the two opposing trees in the Garden of Eden. Yet never once does the Koran bring the first Sinai commandment Name revelation. The breath of this living Spirit Name. No word pronounced by human lips can pronounce. This Spirit Name revealed in the first Sinai commandment.
Israel simply not Shoah Europe. Because no Israel ruled as a nation in the Middle East prior to WWII, the Shoah cursed our People with genocide death.
Never Again. Expressed by Israelis post Oct 7th, a completely different “Red-Line” color-shade. Wisdom requires discernment, the awareness of subtle color-shade/nuances. The mitzva of ק”ש, known as the שמע, it requires for ones’ ear: “to listen”. This יסוד, fear of heaven, dedicates the סוד כוונה of this time-oriented commandment, which dedicates a defined tohor middah as holy to השם לשמה. What tohor spirit, dedicated holy לשמה, does a person sanctify as most holy, in all other time-oriented commandments? How can Human lips pronounce the Spirit Name? Spirits not words. A simple observation example of this requirement nuance distinction of fundamental terms.Arab lie: this metaphor, perhaps best described with: the silence of one hand clapping. The Evil Eye blood libel slander of Israel. Evil Eye Compares to the metaphor word known as: antisemitism. Antisemitism – inclusive of Zionism.
The Arab lie: Zionism is Racism – the Evil EyE of Goyim. Nazi SS barbaric racism against Jews, serves to define this metaphor phrase: ‘Evil Eye’. South Africa publicly accuses Israel of Genocide before a UN Court. Observe the speed that quick to blame Nations & self-righteous individuals jump onto their moral soap-boxes & condemn Israel. This antisemitic tendency compares to the News Paper Headlines selling copy: The Titanic Sank Headlines.
This Oct 7th Abomination War, immediately spread into an International conflict. Because Israeli victory: the unconditional surrender of the Hamas Government in Gaza, it radically changes the balance of power in the Middle East.
Hence the US & British naval involvement in the Mediterranean & Red Seas. Sales of Western military equipment & arms to the Ukraine international war. That war too/likewise changes the balance of power in the region if Russia loses.
Wars change the balance of power in any region the war fought. War comparable to how an Earth-quake can change the natural course by which a river flows. This earth-quake/war, it determines separates the borders of two countries. The river Jordan Britain established as the border of Trans-Joran and the Palestine mandate territory in 1922. The Rio Grand river the US dictated the terms of the 1848 Mexican American war. Both rivers serve as excellent examples of this tendency between nation state international diplomacy to use rivers as nation states international borders.War: Beware of enemy surprise traps. War its a Very risky – Red Alert – business. Great Power imperialism as a rule seeks to impose its economic dominance, forced upon weaker foreign governments & regions, just as Arabs – lie.
The British/French, their ’56 attempt to seize the Suez Canal from Nasser’s Egypt. This Great Power imperialist attempt at domination, it would have greatly impacted not just Egypt alone, but the entire Middle East. It would have made Britain and France co-equal to the US and Russian post WWII domination as the two super-powers.
This Great Power imperialism: the 19th Century British Empire’s forced-sale of opium to Chinese, addicted to that expensive British drug. The American pharmaceutical corporate monopoly makes ‘war on drugs’, its domination over the American market.
An opposite, yet similar case-example of British imperialism: The American “Tea-Party”, which functioned as the genesis of the American revolt against British rule in 1775. Casting British tea into the Sea, those American revolutionaries rejected the Crown’s Tea dominance over American tea-consumption.
Ghandi, prior to the outbreak of WWII, attacked the Crown’s domination over the Indian Salt trade. Times change, but the strategic National interests of nation state foreign Great Power imperialism, these strategic ‘Big Picture’ of any Nation State’s great power strategic interests. They remain a fixed constant, inherited by each and every government of that great power empire, they define imperialist policies of state which empires operate their imperial foreign policy.
The 1956 war, Britain and France sought to impose their control over the Suez Canal. This war goal of the 1956 war, the US Government made null and void; Britain and France placed into a permanent 2nd tier status.
Nevertheless, it reveals the EU imperialist appetite toward the Middle East, when 19th Century Britain ruled as the First among equals across the World.
EU seizure of that canal would have radically shattered the balance of power in the Middle East. Post the ’67 Six Day War, France, driven by the ambitions of great power status, dictated UN Resolution 242 to the UN Security Council. EU imperialism which seeks to dominate the Middle East like the US dominates trade in Central and South America.
Israel permitted [[[no say no vote]]] in that, and many all other, UN Security Council decisions. Denied the right to confront its accusers face to face. This UN Two-Faced = lie, shaped an alliance between the majority of world powers with the Arab world. Arafat openly lied, in his alliance with the Western Media Corporate Monopolies. A master propaganda manipulator, he restricted reality into a completely distorted revisionist history. And the press published his lies, repeated over again and again. Arabs lie & the UN General Assembly condemns Israel repeatedly every year.
Despite most countries who make up the African non-aligned states not having diplomatic relations with Israel. Yet this democratic plurality of nations has the UN charter which permits them to condemn the lone Jewish state.
But the UN General Assembly of Nation-States coalition against Israel, includes all oil producing nations other than the US. All governments employ propaganda to cover their crimes, and promote their strategic interes.
Propaganda used as soundless one-handed hand-claps. Which tar and feather the enemy – Israel – in repeated UN General Assembly condemnations. A type of ‘blood libel’, not limited only to Xtians during the Middle Ages.
New York Reform Jews recently protested against the Oct 7th Abomination war with: “Not in our Name” mass protests. These anti-Israel anti-war chants, thousands of Jews made alliance with Hamas Arabs who murdered some 1200 Jews in a day.
These Neturie Karta – like – liberal New York assimilated Jews,,, who have also intermarried with Goyim spouses … these two: Do Not Do: Torah Commandments, they lay the foundation of intent/the k’vanna\ of the 2nd Sinai commandment, which forbids the worship of other Gods.
Post this Abomination War, Israel needs to restructure the Courts of Israel and restore a Capital Crimes Sanhedrin lateral common law courtrooms to Judge Capital Crimes Cases, beginning with the Case against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar war-criminal. He must hang for his Oct 7th Abomination war guilt.
Bibi correctly understood that Israel needs to change the Israeli courts, prior to the outbreak of the Oct 7th Abomination war. No Arab permitted to sit as a judge in the restructured lateral Sanhedrin Federal courtrooms. Post the Oct 7th Abomination war, Israel’s relationship with Arab residents living within the borders of Israel has permanently changed.
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שלום! Shalom! I’ve carried out my periodic survey of the PoT trash, and found seven of your comments lodged there, “Trash” being the default setting for your comments, and indeed, all off-topic diatribes. Four clearly were trash, so they’re still there. I’ve approved three as vaguely related to the original post, two of them on this post.
בבקשה.
–Coordinator of Blog-Related Activities in the Territories, Goyim Evil Eye Ministry of Defense
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Israel’s relationship with everyone around it has changed. It’s glorious to see the toddler regime in Israel realize, if only dimly, how coddled and spoiled they have been
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Xtian & Islamic revisionist history, to what does it compare? To the stench of a saloon full of vomit. The theology of Monotheism violates the 2nd Sinai commandment. The Gods of both Xtianity and Islam: Gods of avoda zarah.
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The Israeli attempt to shatter the “Ethical Containment Force” which maintains the culture/customs of Arab and Muslim, even Xtian civilizations.
For example: the shattering of the “Ethical Containment Force” of revolutionary France, Bolshevik Russia, Nazi revolution which cast the Weimar Republic upon the dung heaps of history, and the Iranian revolution which did the same to the Shah of Iran. In all these Cases the “Ethical Containment Force” shattered which witnessed the ensuing chaos and anarchy that followed.
No Universal God lives. Monotheism לא לשמה flagrantly rapes the 2nd Sinai commandment. The 10 plagues judged the Gods of Egypt just as the Armies of Israel judged the Gods of Canaan. The UN whore of the pre-WWII defunct League of Nations, tits on a boar hog. Prophets command mussar…they do NOT predict the future.
Israeli National Independence in 1948 NOT a Genesis creation story. Belief in dead gods, just a different form of gospels revisionist history that perverted Mankind till the Shoah. G’lut Jews abandoned the wisdom to obey משנה תורה\common law לשמה.
The תרי”ג commandments כלל, inclusive of all the halachic mitzvot in the whole of Talmud and Midrashim; the B’hag & Rashi פרט, ruled the lights of shabbat and visiting the sick – mitzvot דאורייתא. Purim: the Torah commandment not to assimilate and intermarry with Goyim. Removal of חמץ to up-root avoda zarah from the hearts of Israel.
The תרי”ג commandments NOT mitzvot organized into a positive/negative egg-crate carton. To observe shabbat requires the הבדלה which separates מלאכה from עבודה. To daven tefillat kre’a shma requires the k’vanna to duplicate the oaths sworn by the Avot. Hence the p’suk holds 3 Divine Names and requires both tefillin & tallit tzitzit.
Tohor time-oriented commandments NOT restricted to watching the clock. But arouse the fear of heaven כלל to dedicate a tohor middah to confront a national crisis. פרט Moshiach does NOT build a catholic cathedral but restores the cities of refuge, small Sanhedrin Federal courtrooms of the Torah Constitutional Republic. Faith defined: justice, justice pursue.
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Excellent comment. My hope is that eventually “liberal Zionists” and their “Western” apologists and enablers will see that your comment is the true face of Israel, the vomitorium of so-called “Judeo-Christian civilization.” The same Christians who are always blathering on about Islamic anti-Semitism should find your sentiments about Christianity deeply endearing, and with their lack of self-respect will undoubtedly find a way to excuse it and explain it away. But keep it up—your comments are increasingly on topic for a change.
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Bad blood lasting 2000+ years of Xtian oppression and evil merits the total destruction of Xtianity.
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Good to know. Another item for the Genocidaire To-Do List, I reckon.
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Blood libels followed up with pogroms almost every Xtian easter. The 3 Century illegal imprisonment of Western European Jews into ghetto war crimes. Taxation without representation popular among British and German kingdoms which pauperized all the Jewish populations in those lands. When the Jews had nothing then the governments would unilaterally expel the Jewish refugee populations from those lands. Public book burnings of the Talmud, the most famous where the Poop and the King of France burned all the Talmudic texts in that land in 1242, Centuries before the discovery of the printing press.
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OK, that’s the last anti-Christian rant I approve for awhile. You have to come up with some new form of sociopathy before I approve another one of these comments. There are diminishing returns to belaboring how unhinged you are. A reader who hasn’t gotten it yet will not get it by dint of repetition. And you’re boring me.
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Today is Purim, a holiday on which we celebrate having escaped destruction, and one need not (and should not) adopt the worldview of a Baruch Goldstein in order to see the struggle of Israel writ large as a struggle against annihilation that, as the Passover liturgy has it, recurs in every generation. The idea that God wants us to kill people is repellent whether it comes from Muslims or Jews – or Christians. Presumably the common denominator of the faiths is agreement on this point, or so any good interpreter of any and all of the traditions should say, for surely there is no God above as He is popularly conceived to be.
But to suggest that there could be a reason why a nation should exist seems odd. No one asks why Jordan exists, or should exist, or why Iceland exists, or should exist. Israel is misconceived if conceived of in relation to the disaster that befell the Jews in the twentieth century. Rather, Israel should be conceived of as a response to circumstances, called into being for reasons about which we must be agnostic in good Socratic fashion, and fought for in the same way that the Jews have always struggled for existence. There is no “why” to the struggle for existence apart from antipathy to the alternative. Half of all the Jews in the world live in Israel, and it would be unnatural to be unsympathetic to their plight; you clearly are unwilling to write off the Israelis as the personification of evil. But in view of this, it is surprising that you should turn to the daily news to make arguments for or against Zionism, whatever that might be, or Israel, or indeed anything having to do with philosophy and religion, both of which pertain to the case at hand and strike roots much deeper into the psyche of any of us than the doings of the twentieth century.
I’m new to this place, and don’t intend to irk or offend; I just have time and thought to weigh in. I commented on a 2015 comment you made on someone’s post about Rousseau, and appreciated your send-up of ethical theories as notably falling short of self-critique, so thought to follow up with this here.
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I reject the premise of your comment. People ask all the time whether nations that didn’t previously exist should exist. Obviously, the question raged about the United States before its independence from Britain. Mutatis mutandis, same with the Confederacy. Similarly, should Native American tribes, which regard themselves as nations, be regarded as nations entitled to statehood? The United States has decided not, but whether it has or not, the question remains. People have asked exactly the same question about Pakistan as anti-Zionists ask about Israel: should Pakistan have come into existence? Half of my Pakistani family says “no”–including me. On this view, India should never have been partitioned (or Pakistan created), much less partitioned the way it was (into East and West Pakistan minus Kashmir).
Should Kashmir become a nation? The question was supposed to be decided decades ago, but hasn’t. Why? Because Kashmiri statehood is sufficiently contestable that no one finds it odd to question its non-existence. What about Kurdistan? Same. What about Khalistan, considered as a nation? Same. What about Baluchistan, considered as a nation? Same. Is post-apartheid South Africa the same nation as apartheid South Africa? Arguably not. The Union of South Africa gave way to the Republic of South Africa, and the apartheid Republic gave way to the post-apartheid one. It’s not odd to think that two of those nations need no longer exist. Should Taiwan exist? The rulers of the PRC don’t think so, not as an independent nation. So the question arises.
In short, nations have come into existence; when they do, their existence is questioned. Coming the other way around, ethnic groupings claiming to be nations clamor for political existence, and don’t get it because their candidacy for statehood is questioned. Nothing odd about any of that. For a lifetime, I’ve encountered American Zionists who (to this day) refuse to use the name “Palestine,” for fear that the use of the name confers nationhood-status on Palestine itself. When I visit the West Bank, they will, on my return, ask about my trip to “the Middle East,” as though I had taken a thousand mile jaunt across the Levant, from Cairo to Baghdad. They know where I went. They just can’t bring themselves to say it. That’s because they can’t bring themselves to contemplate the existence of a nation called “Palestine.” If I were to press them on why not, they would say that its existence is questionable to them. In other words, they’ve been raising the question you find “odd” for the last fifty years without anyone finding it odd.
What strikes me as odd is to hear from Zionists who profess to be completely baffled why anyone could conceivably question the legitimacy of the State of Israel. I don’t think it’s that hard to question the legitimacy of an entity whose existence required ethnic cleansing–which is what Israel is. So I question it. But even apart from the ethnic cleansing that constituted Israel’s existence, there’s nothing odd about questioning why any given nation that does exist, should exist. If it might have been otherwise, we can legitimately ask why it is the way it is.
Purim is a holiday that celebrates both an escape from genocide and a totally unapologetic commission of genocide. I’ve lived twelve years in a Jewish household, never celebrated it, and never will. I don’t celebrate genocide, and have nothing in common with people who do.
It’s not plausible to believe that Jewish existence requires a commitment to Zionism or the State of Israel. Plenty of Jews live outside of Israel, and do just fine where they are–frankly, a lot better than they are in Israel. As I’ve said, I’ve lived 12 years in a Jewish household. None of us is eager to make aliya, none of us claims a “Birthright” in Israel, and none of us is interested in identifying with a country engaged in a headlong flight into mass sociopathy.
I’ve lost all patience with and sympathy for Zionism and Israel. I make no apologies for to it anyone. You’re welcome to comment here as you please, but my attitudes and tone on this subject aren’t likely to change any time soon.
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You misunderstand my above remark. No one suggests that Jordan has a reason for existing, or that Iceland has a reason for existing; so why does the existence of Israel entail a reason? You tacitly concede the view, insofar as you take it as the standard by which to judge, that the Biblically-mandated moral exemplarity of Israel is such a reason. But what is the metric by which you judge this good, except preference? And if so, then don’t you take on board the whole raft of religious virtues, including a charitable disposition, justice tempered by mercy, and the like? It doesn’t seem to me to do to let a whole class of people sheer off from those who are included in the circle of such consideration; indeed, it seems something, coming from another angle, you would condemn.
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I don’t think I’ve misunderstood your previous comment. As I said, I simply reject the premise from which it proceeds. You claim that no one asks for a reason for the existence of various states besides Israel. I deny that. Yes they have, and yes they do. I made that claim about a variety of states. Now you’ve brought up Jordan and Iceland. But those two examples don’t change anything.
Jordan was once a part of the Ottoman Empire. It then became the Emirate of Transjordan. It then became the Kingdom of Jordan. In 1970, Palestinian insurgents tried to turn it into a Palestinian state. Since 1967, right-wing Israelis have called for the expulsion of the West Bank Palestinian population (and even the Arab population of Israel) so that Jordan can be turned into a Palestinian state. In every one of these cases stretching across a century, people have both asserted and denied that “Jordan” (in whatever form) has a reason for existing. Even if we could somehow delete all of these facts from the universe, I would deny that the Kingdom of Jordan has a reason for existing, at least in the form of an absolute monarchy. If you ask advocates of the Hashemite monarchy whether Jordan has a “reason for existing” (I happen to know one), they will regurgitate a series of self-serving reasons why it does. So it’s not true that “no one suggests that Jordan has a reason for existing.” Yes, they do.
Iceland was once part of Denmark. Its existence as “Iceland” is the product of an Icelandic nationalist movement that argued that Iceland had a reason for existing independently of its being attached to Denmark. Iceland achieved full self-rule in 1918, and full independence in 1944. In order to make the transition from “part of Denmark” to self-rule to full independence, the Icelandic nationalists had to cite and struggle for Iceland’s “reasons for existing.” So obviously people do suggest (and deny) that Iceland has a reason for existing. If they didn’t explicitly make the suggestion and make demands based on it, Iceland would still be a part of Denmark. Yet it’s not. If the whole issue of Icelandic nationalism was obvious to everyone, it wouldn’t have taken a century for Iceland to become a state. Yet that’s what it took.
Suppose there was a state with the following features:
Israel satisfies that description.
Without denying that people do ask about the reasons for Iceland’s or Jordan’s existence, the preceding suggests why the issue of Israel’s “reasons for existence” is more acute than those of Jordan or Iceland. Neither Iceland nor Jordan satisfies the preceding description. And no one expects us to pledge “ironclad” support for those countries. If they did, their reasons for existence would quickly become as acute as Israel’s.
Right now, I am sitting in Firestone Library, on the campus of Princeton University. As I write, there is a federal investigation into anti-Semitism at Princeton, initiated by someone who doesn’t attend Princeton, and is nowhere near the university. He has made a federal complaint (which has been taken up by the federal government) because someone chanted something on campus last October that (supposedly) called Israel’s national existence into question, and that fact somehow merits a federal investigation into the university (not the first such investigation, and not the last).
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2024/04/princeton-news-adpol-federal-investigation-antisemitism-complaint-zachary-marschall
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/02/15/education-department-closes-princeton-investigation
The whole thing is complete nonsense. Even the head of the Center for Jewish Life on campus thinks it’s nonsense. Yet the show must go on. There really is no business like Shoah Business, and this is a perfect example of it.
Such insanity is uniquely inspired by Israel’s existence, not by Jordan’s or Iceland’s. It therefore uniquely raises the question: why are we saddled with the existence of a country whose very existence is like a millstone around our necks? What other country is undermining our freedom in the insidious way that this one is? How is it that we inhabit a milieu in which asking why we must live this way, as the moral and intellectual slaves of an apartheid-genocidal state, has become so awe-inspiring a conundrum that when the question is posed, people try their best to tie everyone in knots about the very act of posing it? How is it that we are being pulled into a war over a country with which we lack any formalized security agreement, simply because its existence is some kind of moral imperative for us? How can a country’s sheer existence constitute a categorical imperative of this kind without raising the question: why?
The answer is right there in the title of my post. Because there is no why here. Apparently, ours is just to do, die, subsidize, and kill, not to ask why. But I demand a reason why.
That’s my response to the first two sentences of your comment. It obviates the need for a response to the rest. I haven’t conceded anything. I feel no sense of charity towards Israel, and no sense of obligation to uphold its existence as a state.
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You insist on approaching a question with its roots in a politics much deeper than that of the present day with examples cited from newspapers. I respect that the well-being of your loved ones is at issue, but you seem not to accord the same respect mine, which seems self-contradictory, from the standpoint of any conventionally recognized moral framework. I think I and those who are like me think and speak fairly in asking that this be a baseline assumption. If you have no respect for Jewish life, you can say so openly, and I will cease to engage you.
There is a joke about a Jew who goes to the Western Wall and prays fervently, day in and day out. I’m not very good at telling jokes, Jewish or otherwise, but suffice it to say that after a passerby has observed him doing so over a long duration, he approaches him and asks what he prays for. The man answered that he prays for peace. And the other replies, asking what has come of it. And he says, “It’s like talking to a wall.”
The logic of your position is that no country has the right to exist, which is one that I can sympathize with, but that isn’t practical. Likewise, questioning Israel’s existence tends to connote a bloodbath as the solution, which I can’t think you seriously contemplate, begging the question just what it is you would expect a rational counterpart to counterpose. I take it you don’t think Hamas is the answer. I would venture to say that a lot of Palestinians feel the same way, but are constrained to keep silent for fear of their lives.
But why should anybody have the right to exist? If a country is thought to be a corporate body, it makes sense to recapitulate the question at a micro-level. Why should I be enslaved by the notion that my neighbor has a right to the expectation of bodily integrity, when after all, people are born and die all the time, and there is no objective reason why he should live if I can arrogate his property to myself? The presence of the Jews in the Land of Israel is an accomplished fact, and even if the right to exist of the state of Israel is contested (an odd locution – no one talks of “the state of France”), that of the people who live there certainly cannot be. Quid pro quo – if you would expect me to be mortified that someone who has done no wrong should be arrested, blindfolded, and beaten, presumably in the name of national security, I should be able to expect you to be likewise mortified at what is done in the name of Palestinian freedom and circularly blamed upon the people to whom it is done.
Finally, to throw a new line of argument into the mix – being anti-Israeli, or anti-Zionist, and stridently so, throwing all kinds of furious arguments into the dispute that disregard the right to life of the others who are the presumed antagonists, results in visible Jews in the Diaspora getting attacked on the street in the name of outrage at what Israel is alleged to have done, or in synagogues’ getting Molotov cocktails thrown at them without, if I may say so facetiously, the congregants’ first being polled as to their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making it difficult to allege in good faith that anti-Zionism is a purely political matter, and that there is not an issue with Jewish life more generally.
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…that there is not an issue with Jewish life more generally that is brought into play, even if unintentionally.
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If you think you can find something I’ve actually written, as opposed to something you’ve confabulated, that says or implies that I deny Jews’ or anyone else’s rights to life, find it and quote it. It’s a specialty of Zionist discourse to invent claims that no one has made, and find implications that don’t exist, to ascribe them to actual people, and to think that some great moral argument has been made. You are just another practitioner of this incredibly tiresome game. I used to have patience for it, but the patience has now run out. You are your fellow co-ideologists are going to have to learn, the hard way, that when you spend a century engaged in unapologetic ethnic cleansing, pretend that you haven’t, and then insist, against eighty years of fact, that your aggression is really a form of victimization, people like me lose patience. And we lose our susceptibility to your pointed fingers, your strawman arguments, and your faux accusations.
When you conspicuously pretend that an apartheid state isn’t one, that ethnic cleansing isn’t happening, that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza, that a couple of million people indefinitely under military occupation is just a natural fact to which we must all accommodate ourselves, at a certain point, people will just tell you to fuck yourselves and move on. That is the point at which you now find yourself. I have grown tired of this narcissistic game endemic to the Zionist enterprise. You want to defend a state that has spent the last eighty years destroying another people, but you want to pretend that resistance to destruction is some great sin. It isn’t. Fuck Israel. And fuck you. I don’t, at this point, have a minute further to spend on your evasions. I’ve wasted too much of my life giving people like you the benefit of the doubt. It’s painfully apparent that you don’t deserve it. It should have been apparent earlier on that you never did. It’s time for people like you to hear that loud and clear. Feel free to get the message, or not. It’s all the same to me.
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It is always a pity when someone who is intelligent is also bad. You have no reason to think anything of the kind you have suggested of me based on what I have written, and have falsely accused me of having accused you of having disrespect for Jewish life, when I merely asked you to affirm your respect, using coarse language to tell me what you think of me. Typical of intellectuals such as yourself is that you say one thing and do another when it comes to ethical conduct. I find it amazing that you cannot perceive the contrast between my measured tones and your overblown rhetoric, which would be comical if it did not also conduce to murdered lives. I am sorry that you have influence over an audience of fellows, even if only a small number, and encourage you to rethink whether you are on the right side of events. There are Arabs and Muslims who have made their peace with Israel, and it is an obligation of neither to take hatred to heart.
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To paraphrase Frankenstein’s monster in the novel: I expected this reception. If I had a dime for every half-assed, more-in-sorrow-than-anger speech of this sort I’ve heard in my life, I’d be rich. Too bad I haven’t charged a fee for it. But you accused me of devaluing Jewish life, and I asked for an example from something I actually said. What did Mr Measured Tones come up with in the way of actual textual evidence of that accusation? He didn’t fucking come up with anything.
But that’s a summary description of all of your comments here. Maximum hand-waving, zero substance. It is absolutely typical of Zionism that first we get the accusation, and then, in response to a demand for evidence of the accusation, we get a demand for a defense against the accusation, as though the accusation had been proved. Except that it hadn’t. Maybe it’s time for your dumb, privileged Zionist ass to learn something, Brad: I’m not here to give you something for nothing, and certainly not here to defend myself against an accusation you haven’t done shit to bear out. Life doesn’t work that way. I certainly don’t.
It is way past time for Israel’s defenders to get clear on my larger point: no one has any moral obligation at all to give a flying fuck about their Jewish State. And they should stop pretending that concern for Zionism is a proxy for respect for rights, or respect for justice, or respect for morality. It’s none of those things. I don’t need to prove anything to you. If you make an accusation against me, you bear the burden of proof. If you suddenly feel that it’s beneath your dignity to bear it out, then I am certainly within my rights to tell you to fuck yourself. The coarseness of my language is the only appropriate response to the coarseness of your character.
I don’t have any respect for Zionism. I don’t have any respect for Israel. I don’t have any respect for their defenders, and I don’t have any respect for you. The only obligation that really governs this interaction on my end is candor. That’s what I’m giving you, Brad. Take it or leave it.
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Remember when British propaganda rag Guardian & BBC continuously referred to Gaza, prior to the Oct 7th Abomination war, as an “open-air prison”. Now during the siege of Rafah these worthless rags depict the contrast between Gaza before and after Oct 7th. Only problem, the pictures of Gaza prior to the current war hardly depict an open-air prison!!! Or to quote the kapo Mondoweiss: “16 year siege and blockade of Gaza”.
This modern day ”Tokyo Rose” rag refers to post Oct 7th, according to what the Arab contributor to this bloody rag wrote on November 18th, 2023: Rashid Khalidi – “” It is apparent that the Israeli leadership has no clear political objective in waging this war, beyond revenge for the civilian casualty toll and the humiliating military defeat of October 7, which is presented as restoring ‘deterrence’.”” This same opinion piece refers to the Jewish state as: “a settler colonial (as well as a national) project.” This psycho mentality goes hand in glove with “From the River to the Sea Balestine will be free”.
This Jew-hating Mondoweiss rag sports the political-porn which depicts Hamas terrorism to “Irish, Algerian, Vietnamese, and South African liberation movements”. Less than a month following the Oct 7th abomination by Hamas, the Mondoweiss kapo rag referred to the war as a “genocide” war-crime. Before the month of October ended, New York CUNY ‘Not in our Name’ Jews protested for a ‘cease-fire’. 11 days after the attack, Mondoweiss propaganda decried a famine in Gaza!
Only a week after Oct 7th, this same rag described the Israel response as: “A war of extermination”, even before Israel began its ground invasion! Its slander referred to Gaza, described as a “Ghetto”. It already condemns Israel for “ethnic cleansing” & “genocide”. Four days after the Oct 7th abomination, Mondoweiss described Gaza as a “Human Catastrophe”.
Only 3 days after the slaughter carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Rev Graylan Scott Hagler puked his condemnation for this massacre preaching from his moral soap box: “The blame rests with organizations and Zionist groups that have manipulated tax-exempt laws to fund ethnic cleansing initiatives.
Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian-born Ugandan academic, author, and political commentator. In 1996 he published: Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism. Mamdani contributes to the Mondoweiss propaganda rag. Mamdani embraces the Arab propaganda rhetoric which refers to Israel as a Crusader State. He states: “Israeli settlement organizations…use that funding to continue the history of expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories…”
This kapo bloody rag abhors the current Israeli government. It slanders Bibi as readily as does post Israeli Independence Arab leaders despised Ben Gurion. But these “Liberal American Jews” likewise express their contempt for the pre-Oct 7th anti-government protestors as equally guilty for forcing Hamas to commit the Oct 7th atrocities.
Rev. Graylan Hagler writes: “Also, every Israeli who stood out and marched against Netanyahu and his ultra-racist right-wing coalition’s initiatives to weaken the judiciary in Israel and didn’t connect it to Israel’s war on Palestinians is to blame. They marched, rallied, and spoke out against Netanyahu’s move towards fascist authoritarianism in relationship to Israeli civil society but did not equate the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands with fascist authoritarianism. They are to blame for failing to open the discussion and protest wide enough to include and demand a resolution for Palestinian grievances.”
A Mondoweiss Head Line of Oct 9th: “Support BDS to stop Israeli war crimes in Gaza”.
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I’m happy to restore the preceding comment from the trash. I agree with just about every quotation you offer. I’d just point out that invective and defamation aside, you haven’t said a word to rebut anything you quote. Nazi accusations come easily to you, in just the way that big checks come easily to a check-kiter.
I agree with this claim, as well, except that I regard it as a problem for you, not for your interlocutors:
“Only problem, the pictures of Gaza prior to the current war hardly depict an open-air prison!!!”
Correct. The pictures of Gaza now depict a death camp, not a prison. But that doesn’t help your “argument,” or fill the gap where you’re supposed to have one.
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The pictures of post WWII germany compare to the destruction of Gaza. Confusing the destruction of Gaza cities with death camps… that’s rather funny. :)))
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There is no way of to infer the culpability or innocence of people by looking at pictures of the destruction they’ve suffered. The destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto looked a lot like the destruction of Dresden. Were the Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto therefore morally equivalent to the specifically Nazi inhabitants of Dresden? If you judge by the sheer physical appearance of both places, the answer is “yes.” If you judge by justice, the answer is “no.” Naturally, you’ve chosen appearance over justice. No surprises there.
The fact that Gaza City today looks like Dresden after it was bombed doesn’t prove anything except that people like you will equate anything with anything, including 2+2 with 5. Gaza City also looks like the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazis destroyed the latter. Judging by appearances, then, the Palestinians of Gaza City are morally equivalent to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. Right?
The presupposition of your comment is: Since the result of every destruction looks the same, morally speaking, every destruction must be the same. That’s pretty stupid. It’s not a laughing matter, but if it was, I think I’d get the last laugh.
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Irfan, I don’t know whom this massive turd, Mosckerr, is, but this Jew challenges him to read Ilan Pappe’s “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” No one can read this book, written about 18 years before the current genocide even commenced, and remain a Zionist—well, that is assuming that they are not a psychopath.
I was at a pro-Palestine rally today. We received a massive amount of support from those driving by. At the end, however, some unhinged individual leapt out of his car, and started shrieking and ranting, which is what one can expect from a Zionist. The police came, summoned an ambulance, and they actually had to haul him away.
The amount of mental gymnastics that one must master, in order to support an ongoing genocide, cannot be good for one’s mental health—though that outcome can’t compare to how disastrous it is for Palestinians—and for Jews. If Judaism survives Zionism, it will be because of anti-Zionist Jews.
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Susan! So good to hear from a nice, sardonic voice of sanity. I saw you at the Finkelstein-Hedges talk at Princeton the other day, but we were on opposite sides of the room, and there was a big crush at the exits afterwards, so I couldn’t yell “hi”. I sat in the same seat (stage left) where I sat to watch Kahane back in 1988: February 11, 1988, to be exact. At some point, I’ll have to write up what he said.
I allow Moshe Kerr to go on here when he’s approximately on topic (he often isn’t), no matter how unhinged his commentary. Eventually, the Western liberals who equate this or that anti-Semite with “Palestine” will come to grasp that Moshe Kerr is in fact entirely representative of Zionism. He’s not an outlier; he’s right there under the bell of the bell curve. If Jonathan Greenblatt can equate the keffiyeh with the swastika, and Tim Walberg can casually suggest that we annihilate Gaza as we did Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing distinguishes the mainstream from the fringe.
I just hope no one asks for my sympathy–or a condemnation–when the eventual blowback takes place. With any luck, I’ll be in another country. But if not, I can’t wait to hear from the people who are currently telling me that they really don’t understand what Gaza–that distant, irrelevant place–has to do with their charmed lives here. It won’t be very long before we get to re-visit that question from an unexpected angle. Suddenly, it’ll become all too obvious what Gaza has to do with us over here. But as usual, the question will get an answer when it’s too late to do anything about it. Oh well.
I have some thoughts on the “mental gymnastics” you mention, but I want to hold off before sounding off on them. When the weather gets warmer, maybe we can meet up again? I’ll contact you offline.
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Irfan, I surmise Moshe would be more tolerable off-topic. At least his bad opinions in, say, movies, would not be in service of genocide. While they might raise hackles, there’d be no complicity, on his part, in genocide—he would just be contributing to cultural bad taste, instead of cultural genocide.
You have an inimitable way of connecting free-floating concepts. One that I might add is the puzzle of how the Holocaust (why do just Jews get a capital “H”?) was the raisin d’etre for Israel, when Zionism pre-dated Nazism by decades. Also, how does one rail against antisemitism, while partnering with shockingly obvious antisemites (whether John Hagee or Orban or Bolsonaro or Christian fascists, who support Israel for their own agendas, whether apocalyptic Jesus fantasies or for imperialist geopolitical reasons). It cannot escape notice that Zionism is the most potent fomenter of actual antisemitism (as opposed to the intentionally fictional IHRA one), as people take Zios at their word, that the 100+ years of war crimes, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, atrocities of every kind and, now, genocide, are being perpetrated by, and for, Jews (instead of the reality of them being done by, and for, Zionists), thereby conflating Zionism and Judaism into an indivisible block of Kryptonite. A major question is whether this is just a cost/consequence of doing Zionist business, or whether it is an end, in itself—there would be no need for Zionism, if there were not antisemitism, so it is in the self-interest of those who profit from Zionism that there be an unending supply of intentionally manufactured antisemitism. Adding Palestine activism into the stats on the supposed increase in antisemitic incidents in the UAss, fits in with this. Complain, bitterly, about the very thing that is mostly (not completely, as there has always been, and still is, actual antisemitism) your creation, and blame those who question it. The fact that Zionism/Israel clearly cares nothing about actual antisemitism (as they are too smitten with their invented, ever-evolving definition—this week, let’s add depictions of watermelons to what we mislabel as antisemitism—to bother with the actual kind), is as obvious as their lack of concern for the hostages that they keep (accidentally? intentionally?) murdering.
It would be a winning strategy (and has been, if you measure winning by the number of murdered babies and destroyed hospitals) if, as you noted, the public had not, FINALLY, praise Jesus, started to catch on.
One thing I hammer home, continually, is the Zionist lobby’s direct responsibility for the onrush of fascism in the west: censorship; criminalization of speech; a media (including social media) controlled by the Zio lobby; employment interference; electoral interference; educational interference; and a proliferation of unconstitutional laws, at every level of government, in service to Zionism.
This was the 3rd time I’ve seen Chris Hedges speak, in about as many months. He spoke at a mosque in Middlesex County—and was back, again, the following week, with Noura Erakat. And, a month or so before that, I went to see Noura Erakat with Nick Estes and Marc Lamont Hill, at Rutgers. During that same period, I saw Miko Peled. I bought, and read, his 2 books, after that. I find that his views on Palestine line up with mine. I was disappointed in just hearing UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestine Territories, Francesca Albanese, say that she is not against the existence of Israel, which I, most assuredly, am. Scott Ritter, who previously was not, now feels that that the ethno-national, white supremacist, state must end. I do, however, still respect Albanese, and she is facing severe threats for having the audacity to publicly state the facts that resulted from her investigations. Craig Mokhiber named her as one of those connected to the UN whom he respects. While the other side throws out lies by the container ship-full, with full backing by western governments and media, and with full impunity when they are debunked, I have found that those on the side of justice for Palestine, whether Albanese or, say, Aaron Mate, consciously avoid overstating the case, even when it seems, just from casual observation, that it is obvious, if they have not specifically researched it, themselves. BTW, I want to know how to get adopted into the Mate family. I follow not just Aaron, but his brother, Daniel (do check him out, if you have not), and their father, Gabor.
At the 2nd Hedges talk, he told the audience that they must read Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza.” I had some trouble locating a new copy (I had learned not to buy used books, online, as they can be musty, and none of the home remedies remedies that condition), so had to order it from India. It appears to be out of stock. It finally arrived, and I read it. I’ve been reading a lot, the last several months. I had never stopped reading political articles (and listening to political podcasts), but after the pandemic started, I did not have the concentration for books. But, after 10/7, I started attending an online, weekly class, taught by Danny Shaw (who just got fired from CUNY for his activism for Palestine), and the first reading was any chapters we chose from Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath,” so I read the entire thing, and then went into my bookshelves, and have been going through books I’ve been intending to read, for years.
I’m finishing “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” and will move on to 2 other Pappe books, on my shelves, and I’m reading a trilogy on Trotsky. One fascinating read was, “Science, Marxism and the Big Bang.” I read some Khalidi, Kanafani, and others, over the past several months.
BTW, the previous time I saw Norman Finkelstein speak was at the bookstore in Princeton, several years ago. Apparently, the Zios clutched their pearls over that, and the bookstore cowardly chose to stop having such events. Another writer/speaker, whom I had also seen, at the bookstore, was James Whitman, who wrote “Hitler’s American Model,” which I bought, and read, at the time. Western culture, as you noted, is just so darn good, that the Germans could just research what the UAss did to Black and indigenous people, and not have to cook up atrocities and racism from scratch. Israel has done a masterful job at learning that lesson.
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Response to various comments from Brad Rappaport:
Brad, I’m Jewish, ragingly anti-Zionist/anti-Israel, and full disclosure, a friend of Irfan’s (in fact, we first met, some years ago, at a Palestinian community center).
You seek, at best, an equivalency where there is none.
Yeah, sure it is “fair” to make the “baseline” assumption that lives should be respected on both sides—but, and this is central, there is a difference between the group who has been subjected to ethnic cleansing, and every atrocity imaginable (including the entire destruction of their land and culture, in every aspect) for over 100 years, and those who have been negatively impacted by the resistance movement spawned by the actions of their own group (and their support of these actions). Given the monstrousness of the majority of Zionist Israelis, almost all are the latter. Israel has created a population of monsters. In the US, and in most countries, the younger people are the most leftist, and most concerned with justice. But not in Israel, where the younger they are, the more fascist they are.
plurality in both favored 1 state. When asked how that would look: Israelis said it meant expelling all Palestinians; Palestinians said it mean equal rights in 1 state.”
“Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza: 57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower, while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power, while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower.”
preferential treatment over Arab citizens (AND THIS IS WAY PRIOR TO 10/7):
https://www.timesofisrael.com/plurality-of-jewish-israelis-want-to-expel-arabs-study-shows/
10/7)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/almost-half-of-israeli-jews-want-ethnic-cleansing-palestinians-wake-up-call-survey-finds-a6919271.html
“Likewise, questioning Israel’s existence tends to connote a bloodbath as the solution…”
The only ones who think that are the ones who have, historically, acted that way toward any individual/group that got in their way. In other words, projection.
“I take it you don’t think Hamas is the answer. I would venture to say that a lot of Palestinians feel the same way, but are constrained to keep silent for fear of their lives.”
This is akin the saying that Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto feared for their lives, not from the Nazis, but from The Resistance.
“Why should I be enslaved by the notion that my neighbor has a right to the expectation of bodily integrity, when after all, people are born and die all the time, and there is no objective reason why he should live if I can arrogate his property to myself?”
Indeed. That should have been the question asked of Zionism from Day One.
“The presence of the Jews in the Land of Israel is an accomplished fact, and even if the right to exist of the state of Israel is contested (an odd locution – no one talks of “the state of France”), that of the people who live there certainly cannot be.”
Again, WHO is acting AGAINST the assumption that people who exist on a land have the right to remain existing on THEIR land? As for calling Israel a “state”—truth be told, I have trouble even giving it that degree of recognized existence. It should, more accurately, be called an ethno-nationalist, White Supremacist, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and now, genocidal “project.” I think of it as an indescribably evil, hopefully temporary, nightmare that the world will soon be rid of.
So, you no doubt will ask, what about the Zionists who live there, if Israel self-immolates, or is finally taken down by the rest of the world, sick of their demonic actions? If I were to follow the example of Zios (and kill me, Irfan, if you ever see that happening), I’d say to send them to live in tents in the Sinai Desert. Or, when I am really angry, shoot them into the center of the sun. But, not being even remotely like a Zionist, that is not what I would suggest. While what happens to Occupied Palestine must be 100% up to Palestinians (don’t I just love the Zios who say that Hamas has no right to be “at the table,” but the country that has perpetrated 100+ years of terrorism is, by default, assumed to have that right?), I would, personally, see a One-State, secular, democracy being the answer. While the only ones with the inherent right to stay would be Palestinians (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist, or any other religion), the Palestinians have in abundance what the Zios lack—compassion–and I think they would allow anyone who wants to remain, to remain, as long as the Zios (hopefully, ex-Zios/cured Zios) would acknowledge that they would have equal, not despotic, rights. I do not think there will be a significant number of Zionists, given their overblown sense of self, and their diabolic love of power, who would agree to live in peace, instead of being subjugators. So, let the countries that were complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, take them in. As much as I would not want these worst, literally worst, of all humans presently on earth, coming to the US, I’d rather deal with them, here, than force the Palestinians to have to continue to suffer under them, in Occupied Palestine.
“Quid pro quo – if you would expect me to be mortified that someone who has done no wrong should be arrested, blindfolded, and beaten, presumably in the name of national security, I should be able to expect you to be likewise mortified at what is done in the name of Palestinian freedom and circularly blamed upon the people to whom it is done.”
Well, until the last part, you almost had it. Innocent civilians, whose families have been subjected to decades of every atrocity of which humans are capable, all for the purpose of a land grab vs. what you admit is violence caused by those fighting for freedom—fighting for their lives and land. And, yeah, the blame belongs squarely on those committing the decades of atrocities. THE VIOLENCE OF THE OPPRESSED CAN NEVER BE COMPARED TO THE VIOLENCE OF THE OPPRESSORS. No matter how much Israel wants it to be so, no matter how much these vicious war criminals claim to be the victims.
“…results in visible Jews in the Diaspora getting attacked on the street in the name of outrage at what Israel is alleged to have done, or in synagogues’ getting Molotov cocktails thrown at them without, if I may say so facetiously, the congregants’ first being polled as to their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, making it difficult to allege in good faith that anti-Zionism is a purely political matter, and that there is not an issue with Jewish life more generally.”
There has always been actual antisemitism, but the Zios have demonstrated total lack of concern for actual antisemitism. I am not going to spend time here discussing, at length, the well documented early history of Zionist focus, NEVER on actual Jews, but only on the Jewish state, but we know that the early Zios actually hated their fellow Jews, and saw them as weaklings. They decided it was better to be feared than loved, when proceeding with their ethnic cleansing project. Ubermenschen, not untermenschen.
They cared nothing about the Jews in the diaspora, and still don’t. It is well known that Zionists were complicit in working with the Nazis, to make sure that Jews were only allowed to escape by coming to Palestine, as demographics, not saving Jews, was always the goal. Zionism FEEDS on the existence of antisemitism. Without antisemitism, there would be no excuse for the existence of Zionism/Israel. By its very existence, Israel makes the world a less safe space for Jews in the diaspora, as their dual loyalty is questioned. While the Zio lobby ignores, literally ignores, actual antisemitism, it has invented the fake, useful, antisemitism of conflating anti-Zionism, with antisemitism, even though Zionism, a fascist political ideology, is not a religion. Who are the best friends to Isreal (and who were, from the beginning, such as Lord Balfour)? Actual antisemites, who were glad to have Jews go to Palestine, instead of having to allow them in their own countries. Today, who are the most powerful, non-Jewish, allies of Israel? Every antisemite you could name, from Trump to John Hagee (and the rest of the Christian fascists) to Orban? Who are the enemies of Israel, other than the Palestinians (who are not even considered important enough, human enough, to be actual enemies)? It is the anti-Zio activists, including us Jewish anti-Zio activists. Never, in my many years of life, have I ever been as proud of Jews as when I see them, out in the street, organizing against the genocide being done, ostensibly, in our name.
The data on supposed incidents of antisemitism include activism for Palestine, including by Jews. These inflated figures are used, not to protect Jews, but to get Jews frightened enough to support a genocidal state. As stated above, the more fake antisemitism is pushed on the public, and the more the data is falsified to make it look like antisemitism is on the rise, the more support Israel thinks it can garner. Antisemitism is the bread and butter of Zionism. While there has always been actual antisemitism, and there still is, it is infinitely less significant (in numbers, in effect) than it is dishonestly portrayed to be. I dare say that Jews are the very least of all minority groups, in the US, to face discrimination. Quite the opposite—they are committing the discrimination. I think I have mentioned, elsewhere, on this thread, that Zionism is the most powerful force for the spread of fascism in the west, today—what with censorship, criminalization of speech, employment interference, educational interference, electoral interference, social media interference, and the proliferation of unconstitutional laws at every level of government.
And, the Zio lobby is THE MOST POTENT FOMENTER OF ANTISEMITISM in the world, today. By conflating the evil that Israel commits daily (and has committed for over 100 years) with Judaism, despite the fact that Zionism and Judaism are 2 different entities that should never be conflated, people believe the Zios, and therefore assume that all of these atrocities are being committed by Jews, instead of by Zios. So, all Jews get blamed, fomenting antisemitism. They intentionally create antisemitism, and then offer themselves as the only cure. That is Edward Bernays-level PR. But, again, while the Zios wring their hands about the antisemitism—that they have intentionally created, in so many ways—it suits their agenda that Israel is needed because of antisemitism. As if the antisemitism spontaneously generated and exploded, without their lighting the match.
I agree with my friend, Irfan: “You are your fellow co-ideologists are going to have to learn, the hard way, that when you spend a century engaged in unapologetic ethnic cleansing, pretend that you haven’t, and then insist, against eighty years of fact, that your aggression is really a form of victimization, people like me lose patience. And we lose our susceptibility to your pointed fingers, your strawman arguments, and your faux accusations.
“When you conspicuously pretend that an apartheid state isn’t one, that ethnic cleansing isn’t happening, that there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza, that a couple of million people indefinitely under military occupation is just a natural fact to which we must all accommodate ourselves, at a certain point, people will just tell you to fuck yourselves and move on.”
You derided his “overblown rhetoric,” as compared to your “measured tones.” The world needs far more overblown rhetoric in service to stopping genocide, than it needs the all-too abundant measured tones of support for/acquiescence to/silence in the face of genocide.
You said, to the detriment of your argument, “There are Arabs and Muslims who have made their peace with Israel, and it is an obligation of neither to take hatred to heart.”
My late, great friend, Glen Ford (co-founder or Black Agenda Report, and one of the greatest writers/thinkers/orators of the last 100 years) used to opine about the “Black Misleadership Class,” who sell their souls to the White power establishment for their own careerism. There will always be people from abused communities who choose to identify with the perpetrators, rather than the victims of, the abuse. They are impediments to ethical progress and peace. Presenting them as an ideal, as part of your measured tones, says it all.
I will end with a personal note. I’ve been a vegan, entirely for the animals, for almost 40 years. I’ve done both human rights and animal rights advocacy for the better part of my life. While I am a devoted human rights activist, animals were always the issue that was visceral for me. I did not think I could ever hate a group as much as I hate animal abusers. Well, Zionists/Israel has won that distinction. Since 10/7, I have almost entirely put all other activism, including animal activism, aside, to concentrate on solidarity work with my Palestinian brothers and sisters. Zio Jews are not my people; I look at them as I look at Nazis. They are the adversary. Blood/shared religion is not the glue; shared ethical principles are. I’ve made many mistakes in life, but the 2 things of which I am most proud are becoming vegan and declaring “Not in my name.”
Jews of dishonor stand with Israel. Jews of conscience stand with Palestine.
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