Many people will say that Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was an act of self-defence, a prevention of supplies reaching those who would attack it. Maybe the Israelis merely intended to commandeer the leading Turkish vessel, but something has gone terribly wrong. The result has been Israeli Navy Seals firing guns at a boatload of civilians who defended themselves against the boarding party.
Depending on which reports you believe, the number of dead killed by the Israelis numbers between eight and fourteen, and many more wounded. The deaths have been condemned around the world The European Union has condemned the attack, and an emergency session of the UN Security Council is now debating a response.
Whatever your opinion, it's obvious that Israel is much less kindly regarded today than yesterday. No doubt, over the next few days, we're going to hear of many calls for revenge. I hope we don't hear reports of acts of retribution, but am afraid that the IDF's actions yesterday are going to be the catalyst for new levels of bloodshed in the Middle East.
Let's hope that the will for peace is strong enough to overcome this fiasco. I worry that it won't , and that much more blood is about to be spilled.
Going Pariah
"The Australian" sometimes surprises me, I start to wonder if their bias is real, or simply reflects a more active lobbying and article writing by one side.
Then I remember ... never mind.
On page 22 of the 21-22 August issue there is an article "Ugly face of Israel exposed in all its gory" in which Netanyahu's (okay, ...yahoo's) intrigues to defeat progress towards a solution of the Arab-Israel dispute and an end to the occupation are exposed.
The Israel media are widely discussing that Israel is almost a pariah state.
Non-fanatical Jews are talking about leaving Israel.
A year ago 63 percent of Americans believed the US needed to support Israel; this has dropped to 51 percent.
An anti-abuse society of Israeli soldiers says in Hebron soldiers would talk about "sanitising" the streets of Palestinians.
The problem that Israel has, I (not the paper) suggest, can be seen by comparing South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission with Holocaust museums and Simon Wiesenthal centres.
It is a problem of Judaism, a failure to advance morally beyond a religion of vengeance.
I was taught that if I kept hating it would be I and not the other person who was damaged.
However, Jews seem to want to forever immerse themselves in the Holocaust, and in the events in Germany 70 years ago, and how evil the Nazis were, and what they did.
They have spent so much time studying Nazi outrages that Nazism has become their school, and Israel's conduct sometimes carries a flavour of Nazism.
What Jews and what Israel need to do is forget. Shut up their Holocaust museums and their vengeance centres, bring their children up oblivious of the Holocaust instead of immersed in it.
And if there are Holocaust deniers, ignore them. The fact that this issue becomes important is perhaps diagnostic of the problem.
The settlement of Canaan by the Israelites was genocidal. Probably four million were systematically slaughtered. The Jews still sing gaily about how Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho but leave out how he proceeded to slaughter every last man, woman and child in the city. Perhaps today's soldiers remember that the same was done to the Canaanites of Hebron, the king, and every last man, woman and child of that city state and many others.
Forget the Holocaust. Forget, if you care about Israel. It is all about keeping yourselves separate, but the cost is too high. Today, only weirdos act like that.
Depleted intelligence
Incidence of cancer will, indeed, increase as exposure increases (water, soil, etc). The military uses DU for its density both in armour and in the piercing thereof. DU shells are easily capable of pierceng conventional armour due to this density. It is what becomes of the "atomised" DU - in both the shell and possible armour - that is the question.
Like "Agent Orange" its use might eventually be realised as "criminal". My grandchildren, as yet unborn, might be putting my children into a nursing home by that time... if ever.
Father Park
Unborn or disborn
It has been claimed that the rate of cancer in Iraki children under 15 in 2005 was more than five times the 1990 rate.
Free the Palestinians!
A history? What history? You are flattering yourself again, Scott Dunmore. I have no memory of you whatsoever.
If you fail to see a response from me it is likely because of either of two reasons. Either my response has infringed this site's moderation policy or it is simply infra dig. I do not believe in feeding raging crackpots whose only contribution to this subject is to remind any fair-minded observer why it is so critically important for Israel to remain forever a strong and independent state serving as it so ably does as the national homeland of the Jewish people.
In regard to Gaza, Israel has a stark choice. Either it can keep Gaza isolated with the blockade or it can allow Hamas to be become as lethally armed as Hezbollah. But ultimately, as far as the Israel haters are concerned, this is not about the Palestinians at all. I have said this before and I will say it again. They don't give a rat's arse about the Palestinians. If they did they would be hollering from the roof tops for the liberation of this tragic people from the claws of Hamas. This is all about hating Israel and the Jews. Full stop. I invite any fair-minded reader of this thread to see this for themselves.
For the love of God or anything that you hold sacred, free the Palestinians! That is my last word on this subject.
The last word
That's better, now we're getting somewhere or more to the point, establishing the fact that we're going nowhere.
No memory of me Geoff? I'm cut to quick and humiliated ... and you my friend look foolish. Flattering myself again?
No agreed premise, no dialogue. I'm not here to argue the toss, I just enjoy getting in your face. You can hurl allegations of bigotry and racism as much as you like, they don't wash. For every charge of atrocity committed by one side another can levelled at the other and disgustingly, most are believable. 181? There's the rub; wouldn't be so bad if the Israelis accepted it.
"This is all about hating Israel and the Jews."
Nothing of the sort Geoff; this is about belief systems; I don't share yours.
Isaacs and Eliyahu
Sir Isaac Isaacs, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, former Governor-General of Australia, had full and privileged information about what Hitler was doing and had done, and even at the end of World War Two, at the end of his life, he opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. He supported the Chamberlain White Paper of November 1939.
Quoting part of the same White Paper, perhaps paraphrased, from another source (Gordon): ``A limited number of Jews are to be admitted to Palestine up to March 1944, and, thereafter, not a single Jewish man, woman or child to be entitled to enter this `Jewish National Home'.''
Isaacs agreed with that. His own view (as I interpret it) was that Judaism is not racial, or had to pass beyond that. The theme of his letters [to the Hebrew Standard] was a denial that the Jewish people all over the world are one nation. He believed that the Jews were a religious community wherever they lived; in Australia a particularly fortunate community. To him, the Jews who were born and lived in a British country were British by nationality, Jewish by faith.
(Side note on "British". Prior to the post-war migration, Australians regarded themselves as belonging to the British nation. Isaacs' Polish father had adopted that nation as his own, lived in London, met and married Rebecca there. Isaac, born in Melbourne, would have said that he was British-born.)
In the 10 June 2010 issue of The Australian, on page 23, there appeared an obituary for Mordechai Eliyahu, a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
It is reported there that Eliyahu asserted, in a letter to prime minister Ehud Olmert, that, according to Jewish war ethics, an entire city (``Gaza City'') holds collective responsibility for the immoral behaviour of individuals.
This was before the destruction of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli ``Cast Lead'' attack.
Thus, wrote the former chief rabbi, there was no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of Palestine civilians during a potential massive military operation in Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket attacks.
Note that (unless there has been a translator's error) the word used by Eliyahu is ``indiscriminate'', not ``accidental''. Collective punishment by indiscriminate killing is punishment, it is no accident.
The re-invented Israel
In contrasting Isaacs and Eliyahu I was trying to put my finger on a sense of the disaster to Judaism that the attempt to re-establish a three thousand year old tribal society with a three thousand year old tribal morality, based on the Jewish religion (but modern technology and modern weaponry), has been.
There has been (if the Isaacs-Eliyahu contrast is representative) a terrible regression. It is arguable that the establishment of the modern Israel was a worse disaster for Judaism than the Holocaust was.
Now there is a pariah state which, I predict, the better Jews will not settle in and will leave. Such a languishing and final disappearance of Israel is virtually essential if their religion is to survive, I think.
Llecture notes?
I'm sorry.
I can't see that Geoff Pahoff's reading of Isaacs and his motives and views is more persuasive than Michael Talbot Smith's.
The view of Rabbi Eliyahu is reminiscint of the mentality of sturm und drang and nacht und nebel laws dispensed in an earlier era. To think that such a person could call himself a man of god is quite scandalous.
Wait up
Mostly Geoff I'd rather be a passive observer but some things I will not let pass.
Yes, it's not hard to find nutters of all persuasions and they do rational, neutral thinkers a dis-service by giving opportunists like you a lever.
I jamb you up and you go to ground only to re-emerge in response to someone else. You've got a problem as with all zionists. You know that the religious belief that underpins zionism and your defense of a pariah state is not shared by those you wish to convince of the righteouness of it's course.
Change tack; embark on an evangelical mission (if that can pertain to Judeaism,) to convince us all that the Israeli Jews were given carte blanche by God to behave as they please toward their neighbours. I'm not suggesting that it would be any more productive than your efforts to date but it would make a lot more sense.
Michael, pleased to make your acquaintance. Despite what Richard would have you believe I did not return to Wd to snipe from the sidelines, (we square on that now mine host?) but only popped in to rub some noses in it, (not management's). One thing lead to another and I'm still here. Harry and I are old acquaintances and his timing was awful, Geoff and I also have a history and I could never pass up easy pickings. Then Malcolm, quite delusional, mistook me for Christ. Understandable, just but all the same.
Cheers.
Dr Reynolds, I hesitate to quibble with someone as learned as yourself but from what I gather, the use of the apostophe in "it's" (possesive,) while unconventional, is grammatically correct.
Liberty
Scott, thanks; you too. I was less concerned with easy pickings, more outraged by Netanyahu's blaming the victims and calling the ship's defenders the attackers. It made me look for any defence of Israel that was not fraudulent, and I can say there is none.
The whole purpose of the Gaza blockade is to maintain hatreds in order to prevent the outbreak of a One-State Solution. Israel is using Hamas for that purpose. That was the purpose of the Gaza attack, too. The pretence that it was on account of Hamas rocket attacks I don't buy. The attacks were happening, the rockets were being fired, but they were ineffectual, there was already blockade, and blockade is an act of war. Incidentally, home-made "rockets", not "missiles".
But since the subject of USS Liberty came up in the thread, let me surprise Geoff by saying I don't blame Israel for the attack. I infer from the available data that the USA forced Israel to attack the Liberty, the Israelis were to ensure that there were no survivors, and then the USA would attack Egypt. There was no other way the USA could enter the war, which, reasonably, Israel was not going to survive. Hence the Liberty was placed near the Sinai coast, to make it obvious that Egyptian forces had attacked it so horribly.
They'd pulled a similar stunt to enter Word War Two. Japan was desperate to avoid a war with the USA, which it knew it could not win, but the USA refused to accept any reasonable terms, and was urgently and rapidly building runways in the northern Philippines. They knew virtually to the day when the attack would have to take place but there was no protective screen of surveillance vessels at sea out from Pearl Harbour to provide warning, there were no modern warships in the Harbour, they'd been removed to safety, and they didn't have there one of the new code-breaking machines, predecessors of the computer, although MacArthur had one at Manilla. The world's greatest fortress with the world's greatest moat around it, there is war in Europe, Japan it being forced into war, but there's nothing of any value there, and it's completely open, been completely opened, to attack.
So, that is the modus operandi of the United States. They can't enter a war unless the American public allows it, so such an attack is essential.
But today is today and there should be Boycott, Disvestment and Sanctions against Israel.
Fanatic
Israel hating fanatics often claim that Israel is an imperialist creature of the West. When it suits them. They cite the Balfour declaration and UN resolution 181 as some how evidence that Israel was foisted on the poor unsuspecting peace loving "Palestinians" by an arrogant Britain or US or something. As always, the lies vary to suit the audience of the day.
I can't be bothered to reply in full to this muck. It's all been done before, including on this site. Nothing changes. These guys hate any concept of truth almost as much as they hate Israel and "the Zionists". The Israel hating fanatics vomit their filth out on cue, like sick Pavlov dogs. One whistle and out it pours. It is beyond their intellects to come up with anything new.
I will say this. The British White Paper of 1939 was perhaps the ugliest and most cowardly betrayal of the last century and that's really saying somethng. People talk out about the sell out of Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. The Britsh policy on Palestine at the same time was much worse.
Think about it. Right on the eve of the Holocaust, when Hitler's intentions were already well known to anybody who could read, the British tore up their sacred war time promises under which thousands of Palestinian Jews fought alongside British troops (including, as it happened, at Gallipoli) and barred Jewish immigration to Palestine. They did this at the behest of the Nazi loving genocidal "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" who they had appointed.
Imagine for a moment if the gutless British appeasers had honoured their commitments and their was a strong and independent Zionist state allowed to prosper in Palestine by say 1925 allied firmly with Britian and the West. There also would have been a Palestinian Arab entity too of course, but there never would have been an independent Palestinian Arab state. For a start there was no discernable Palestinian Arab national identity. That didn't happen until well after the formation of Israel. In any event it would have been quickly swallowed up by Jordan, Syria and/or Egypt probably after a series of wars that would have left the Israeli/Arab wars in the shade for bloodiness and brutality.
Would there have been Nazi aggression in the Mediterranean? Would there have been a rise of Nazism at all? Above all, would there have been a Holocaust?
Of course not.
Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian born Governor General, died in 1948 some months before the declaration of the state of Israel, at the age of 93. Throughout his life he was a commited and loyal devotee of the British Empire. He was an opponent of Zionism because he saw the concept of an independent Jewish state in Palestine as an affront to the British Empire. He was right. It was. He was an opponent of Indian independence (not to mention independence for British colonies throughout Africa and the rest of Asia) for the same reason. He was a British imperialist of the old school. He was also a prominent jurist and no doubt would have also opposed the violent and vicious aggression aimed at undoing the lawful establishment of the state of Israel, or any other former British colony, had he lived to see it.
There is a huge difference between being a theoritical opponent of Zionism prior to the historical creation of the state of Israel and nursing a pro-violence anti-Israel hatred after its establishment. There is no doubt Isaacs would have been appalled by the on going relentless violent attacks on Israel and its citizens by bloodthirsty tyrants and life hating terrorist religious fanatics and "nationalist' murder gangs, and their grubby cheer squads in the West, as would any other half decent civilised human being
Oh the horror!
Images of the terrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza can be found here.
Warning. Some of you will find this unblinkingly honest portrayal of life in Gaza deeply distressing. You will be unable to stop yourselves flying into yet another "anti-Zionist" rage.
Counting. 10 9 8 7 ...
Webdiary
A post of mine, not the most recent, was censored by the moderators. Referring to collective punishment I wrote that it was "very Jewish", but the "very Jewish" was deleted by the moderators. Not to go to Bible references, look at the words of Mordecai Eliyahu. An undeniable fact, important to the interpretation of what has been happening in Palestine, was not allowed to appear.
But this disgusting racist joking, a concoction mocking the distressed of the Gaza Strip, the victims of Israeli attack and oppression, is normal Webdiary fare.
Torture of children
In an ABC Radio news commentary report transmitted at 5:45-5:50 in Adelaide today, 12 July 2005, it was reported that most Palestinian children arrested by the Israeli army are tortured. Typically to force them to confess to things they did not do.
One boy while in IDF custody had jumper leads attached to his genitals and was then threatened with destructive high voltage shocks if he didn't confess to something like stone thowing.
Many or most of the arrests are for stone throwing. I can't judge the seriousness of that crime or "crime". It might depend on the size of the stones or something.
These arrests are often collective punishment. A boy in a Palestinian village threw a stone at a wall or a tree trunk. No doubt also at a soldier, but the allegation that the punishment is often for a stone thown at property, not at a person, was prominent in the report.
About midnight there is a descent on the village and boys in bed who knew nothing aboout the incidenr are blindfolded, manacled, subjected to inhuman conditions of arrest, hauled off, and tortured. Sometimes signing confessions written in Hebrew when they don't understand or can't read that language.
Audio
This story starts at the 32:37 mark (minutes, seconds) on <http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/pm/201007/20100112-pm-fullprogram.mp3>.
It consists largely of a report by the ABC's Anne Barker recorded in Jerusalem where she interviews two lawyers, Gerard Horton of the organization Defence for Children International (DCI) and Haaled Oozma, and victims, and Israeli officials. Her story contains statistics, and statements supplied to "the ABC" by the Israel army / military court. Much or all of the detail is from affidavits being used to prepare a report to the United Nations.
Among the statistics: Horton states, "In the last 8 years or so I think around 600 complaints have been filed against Israeli security interrogators. There hasn't been a single criminal investigation."
Corrections to my first post:
Recently, says DCI, another 15-year-old boy accused of throwing stones reportedly had car jumper leads attached to his genitals under threat of electrification unless he confessed.
Gerard Horton says: Someone will have thrown stones at a by-pass road or the wall or some army facility or a settlement. The army will come into the nearest village to where the incident occurred and start arresting children. Arrests are usually made in the dead of night as a form of intimidation or deterrence. We have a number of cases where children have woken up at two in the morning with an M16 rifle at their head. Their hands are tied with plastic ties very tight behind their back. They're blindfolded. Generally they're not told why they've been arrested or where they're being taken to,
Torture of children
Michael Talbot, you'vé been reading the Palestinian Telegraph again. This is the sort of article they write:
Thousands of Nagasaki bombs dropped on Iraq and there are still Iraqis who let off bombs in market places?
Get real.
Torture of children
Dear Alan Curran,
I never read the Palestinian Telegraph. I'm far enough away that your dog whistle went unheard till I got out the amplifier. No, You should know that, on the contrary, I often read "The Israeli". You should know that because I've posted quotes from it, and attacked a Barry Cohen article that appeared in it. I'm sure that that's your favourite paper, and little Jeffie Pahoff's too. I know he's big enough to read newspapers because of his typical defamation of "The Age". If it's not fanatically fanatically pro-Israeli, fanatics lash out at it.
But I shouldn't call Geoff a fanatic. That's not fair. When he is a bigger boy, if he's still coming out with the same stuff, he'll deserve the name.
Thanks for the information that the Telegraph is a decent paper. A great surprise. I assumed that any Murdoch paper would be as biased as "The Israeli".
I take it back, mostly
Much that is in/on the Palestine Telegraph site is credible. I located them when looking up tactical nuclear weapons and found them saying that they were used in Irak, in other words that there had been nuclear explosions in Irak.
A projectile with a jacket or casing made of depleted uranium is not a tactical nuclear weapon. No nuclear explosion occurs when it is used.
I don't know whether this was deliberate deception, or confusion, or ignorant journalistic abuse of the language, as when a cartridge is called a bullet or a spring tide is called a king tide.
My foot's gone! This thing was loaded!
It turns out that there is a Palestine Telegraph on the Web. I thought it was a joke, but the joke's on me. I was being accused of being a nut case like the writers of that publication.
I hope my own absurdity is not quite as obvious as theirs. You can't see it, can you?
U-238
I have no quarrel with the PT on the subject of "Depleted Uranium" jacketing of projectiles. That is common knowledge.
And it is a deeply vicious crime against humanity perpetrated by the United States.
The absurdity is in the pretence that thousands of Nagasaki bombs, or even one, were dropped in Irak, and the entire deceptive runaround of the article.
But back to depleted uranium. It is ultrapure Uranium-238. It is ultrapure because the tiny proportion of Uranium-235 that naturally occurred with it has at great expense been extracted for use as nuclear fuel or in bombs.
So "depleted" uranium really means "concentrated" uranium, but concentrated to a tiny degree.
The U-235 is fissile. Slow neutrons can "split the atom" if it is a U-235 atom. That makes it valuable The other isotope, U-238, is not fissile.
But they are both about equally radioactive. U-235 is more so, but only relatively. Radioactivity, natural atomic decay with emission of ionising radiation and high-energy sub-atomic particles, is a different thing from fission under neutron bombardment. There is no chain reaction.
But radioactivity causes cancer. Wherever there were battles in either Gulf War the ground is contaminated with radioactive uranium but the people living there don't know. Cancer will be going through the roof all over Irak, or at many places within that country.
And the Guardian....
It's a photo finish
The Guardian owes a lot to the Melbourne Age. If it wasn't for The Age, The Guardian would be without question the worst newspaper in the English language in the world and quite possibly the worst newspaper in any language in all of history.
You will notice that on this occasion the horseshit in The Guardian differs markedly from the horseshit allegedly broadcast by the Adelaide ABC. That's the thing with the leftie/liberal media. They can't even get their horseshit together.
Putrid corruption
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8186905.stm?lsf
http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/friday-supplement/twilight-zone-a-night-in-hebron-1.299478
Let's not be naive, Geoff, or bury our head in the sand. Of course, this goes on, Geoff, there are no good guys and bad guys in war, just uniform, putrid evil corrupting everything it touches.
Why?
But Jay, why is there war? The Kibya massacre (collective punishment for what no-one in the village had done) was in 1953. Israel has been in control ever since. There has been time for generosity, for reconciliation, for friendship to emerge. Ample, ample time.
Is it the fault of the victims, who have been under the kind of brutal control, the kind of cruelty described in the BBC and Haaretz articles, with variations, for the past 43 years?
Is it the fault of Hamas, a guerilla movement of the defeated, which has been in existence for a mere 23 years and has in the past been financed by Israel to weaken the secular PA?
Is it because the defeated, the victims, unable to be friends, have twice rebelled?
Why is there war?
Blowin' in the wind
Your qustion deserves a measured response, Michael. I think different factors have triggered different wars, though economics seem s to be a fairly common thread. To wage a successful war, one needs to create a particular mindset in the population, and this mind-set self-perpetuates and grows. For example, even the US President (Bush) told Congress " Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"
More importantly, I think there is a fairly robust solution. An international police-military body coupled to a judicial system that operates quite independently of a political process to rapidly quench all wars by force. For example, in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, if the body felt that the conflict felt that the war was being fuelled by Iran or the US, it would walk into these countries and take the steps necessary to neutralise these activities.
In my dreams? I suspect it'll be politically easier to get agreement on something like this than on climate change.
Fertilizer
One man's horseshit is another man's fertilizer, so a wise old sano man once told me - dad told me was a pinko but he never looked pink to me. Maybe dad was colour blind.
Apparently flies have a similar quote; but since there are no flies on me I haven't had the chance to find out. I reckon the sano man would have known.
The Adelaide ABC.
Geoff, we live and learn.
I had you pegged for a banana bender, but above alludes to something so quintessentially "Adelaideian", the moribund state of the local ABC, that only an Adelaideian could comment on this and freely expect sympathy in return.
"If it wasn't for the Age, the Guardian would be without question the worst newspaper in the English language".
Not the English version of Haaretz?
Horseshit
Letter to The Australian
The clouds of history
In seeking to explain the double standard with which Europeans in particular insist on fitting up Israel, Ian Buruma writes:
The 1973 "Yom Kippur" war began on 6 October 1973 with an coordinated attack on Israel over the 1967 ceasefire lines by Egypt and Syria supported by Iraqi units. There is no controversy about this. It was as audacious an act of military aggression as any in the second half of the twentieth century. It took Israel completely by surprise and the little country suffered terrible casualties forcing a bloody stalemate.
Could it be that a professor of democracy and human rights at Bard College does not know this? Or has it reached the point in Europe where it is now unremarkable for an academic to project onto Israel (and "the Jews") a criminality founded in complete fantasy? It seems the sick psychology that Professor Buruma has diagnosed may be even worse than he suspects. Has the eagerness to "overcome guilt" (or whatever) spawned a demonology about Israel and "the Jews" that has only impatient contempt for facts, reason or truth? It would hardly be the first time in history such a thing has happened.
Double standards
The article by Ian Buruma is more of the usual deceptive Zionist propaganda but in this case the message lurks under a cover of pretended academic even-handedness, a false pretence of looking fairly at both sides. It is over-ingenious, the contra-Israel case is intended to be absurd and easily dismissed, leaving only the pro-Israel argument. But he is so tricky that he tricks himself.
Getting to what he is really about, his argument is that any criticism of Israel is the result of two kinds of double standard being at work. He writes:
So first we have the usual amusing and futile complaint, this time very mealy-mouthed, that anyone who condemns cruelty and crime is antisemitic. But only if Israel is the offender. Double standards, anyone?
The other pretended reason is a claimed guilt felt by the West for the Nazi genocide. His next sentence is:
And here is the other tired old weapon of injured self-righteousness. We raise yet again the subject of some war in history in which one side or (it is now insinuated) both sides treated Jews worse than the Jews of Palestine have so far treated the Arabs of Palestine.
The claim now is that the West is pleased, sighs with relief, when Israel behaves in a cruel or criminal manner. Never mind the yummy kippers particularly, that reference is only a deception within a deception.
It is interesting what foul defamations of others these people descend to as the only defence of their own case. Tells you something.
The injured pretence of a double standard has been the theme of many recent Zionist articles. I've examined one by Barry Cohen in another post in this thread.
But it is a rushing of blind fools over ground that angels would tread with fear. They are simply proclaiming, over and over again, that Israel is a pariah state. Think about it. That is what is implied by what the Zionists wish to perceive as double standards.
Once that point has been reached it serves no purpose to scream with rage about it, or to suppose that a suave defamation of others, who anyway have stopped listening, will make matters better. It can only further disgrace the reputation of Israel.
What you have to do, on the contrary, is pull your head in. If you haven't got a leg to stand on your jawbone is not going to help.
Same game - different match - same shit
Jay; thanks for the suggestion, but no thanks.
Jay, do you know what it feels like to be afraid?
How many Australians actually show signs of fear when discussing the refugee issue?
How many Australians show anger, mixed with self righteous national pride when discussing refugees?
What triggers these emotions?
60 million you say, I reckon we can expect a lot more they way this global show is going - but to speculate in the manner that you have done is a little bit reckless - at this point in time.
I suppose the best thing to do would be to dis-encourage refugees from seeking haven on our shores - by not bombing the crap out of their homeland in the interests of US foreign policy; that would help a little.
But that's not gunna happen because it's a lot easier for us simple minded folk to exercise our will to power over the victims of our depravity, rather than exercise (our democratic) will to power over a game called "full spectrum dominance" all dressed up as freedom and democracy. You know the story - it's called foreign policy.
If Australians can be conned into believing they fear a handful of desperate souls then I would suspect the game is up - the greedy bastards win; but we already know that, don't we.
It's all a game, a sick and convoluted game that is only going to get a worse before it gets better - if it ever does.
Live in fear if you wish but somehow I feel it ain't gunna be refugees that suck the heart and soul out of our Australia, rather, the greedy bastards.
I will never forgive John Howard for the cynical, dishonest and costly manner in which he led the Australian people with regards to boat people. What a bunch of mugs were we - to murder a million bucks just to show a handful of helpess people how tough we are.
And now we are at it again - who benefits, and who is really afraid?
Tik Tok
Barry Cohen article
An article on the subject of this thread by Barry Cohen, a former minister in the Hawke government, appeared on page 14 of ``The Australian'' for 18 June 2010.
The article is under the title or headline ``Where are the protests when Iran, North Korea or Sudan kill people?'' and has the sub-title ``Israel's critics forget that Hamas refuses to make peace or accept two states''.
In it, Barry expresses his grievance that there is criticism of Israel and her head of government that is not equally, and in the same breath, critical of the governments of Sudan, Iran, other -ans, an -anka, a Turkey...
He seems to think that a distinction is being being made, e.g. between Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad, the Gaza Strip and Darfur, Israel and Iran, that ought not to be made.
It is not completely clear who he is accusing, who the cause of the grievance is. Barry's piece might be seen as an attempt to shame or to blame the reader, make a nasty insinuation. But the reader knows whether or not he or she is antisemitic, probably is not, perhaps will not take kindly to the insinuation, will see at once that this is not a detached and simply informative article, that it is a self-serving whinge.
Barry has failed to provide a list of his own articles and letters on the other nasty events he mentions, doesn't tell us when he wrote on the Tamil killings or the Iranian elections, and which editors refused to publish.
A friend criticises. A co-conspirator echoes uncritically the principal's claims and pretences.
Newspapers publish what their readers want, not what Zionists want (with the possible exception of paper in which this article appeared).
We are more grief-stricken by an American plane bombing an Afghan wedding procession and killing them all than by a Taliban attack doing the same thing. I think that, or some equivalent emotion, is one of the factors involved in a readiness of many non-Jews in Europe, America, Australia, to demand accountability for Israeli cruelty and murder when that, rather than Darfur, is the issue at hand.
Cohen makes a number of specific complaints which do him no credit. The boarders were only armed with paintball guns, so the defenders are the more to be blamed. Histrionics here. ``Let me run that past you again: paintball guns.'' But the point is spurious. Paintball guns look like guns. The boarding took place in darkness or at first light. Who on the ship is going to understand what is going on, and know that the attackers' guns are really imitation guns? Or real guns made to look like imitation guns?
He attempts to quibble over the Gaza blockade, whether it is illegal as alleged in some of the media. But it might not break any law, yet legally be null and void. What an opportunity to boggle the reader's mind with flimsy rhetoric!
He is affronted by the proposition that the deaths of 1300 Palestinians during the destruction of the Gaza Strip (``Cast Lead''), claimed by the Israelis to be their response to the deaths of 20 Israelis by Hamas rocket attacks, is disproportionate. All the time he is dragging in misleading or bizarre irrelevances.
Barry concludes, ``Criticise Israel, by all means, but spare us from [sic] the hypocrisy of those whose hands are 100 times more bloodied.'' That is a nice line, but it has little connection with the rest of the article.
Barry would do better to criticise the Israeli tendency to blame the victims, as when Netanyahu, to justify the killings, accused the Mavi Marmara's defenders of being the attackers. Nothing discredits like intransigent defence of the indefensible.
Barry should have imagined and depicted the situation if it had been Australia and Australian forces that had attacked the Gaza Strip (``Cast Lead'') and crushed the enemy.
Rather than preventing building materials from getting in, and leaving buildings in ruin and people in misery for years, Australia would quickly have taken the initiative of sending in materials and started on getting the ruins rebuilt, would have done something for the suffering civilians.
A former member of the Hawke government would be hugely aware of that and his real assistance to Israel would be to convey that concept of humanity and that ethic to her government, rather than trying to invent a grievance. The Israelis in going directly to the people of the Strip would have weakened Hamas.
But I've just noticed what is going on. There is the Palestinian Problem, created by the foundation of the state of Israel in the land of Palestine. Unless there is official malice and a cultivation of hatred a One-State Solution to the Palestinian Problem will naturally emerge. Israel, to survive as the state manifestation of a tribal religion, must be forever the enemy of her neighbours. At least, that enmity must remain as long as there are Palestinians.
That's what it's all about, the Gaza blockade and so on. Consider. If Israel had wanted reconciliation it would have been achieved decades ago. If you are the victorious power, yet in the 43 the years since the Six Day War and the 57 years since the Kibya Massacre you have not achieved reconciliation or peaceful settlement with the defeated party, it was your intention to prevent and defeat such a conclusion to the conflict. There is no other explanation, not Islamic fanaticism, not the guerilla violence of the defeated, not anything, that can account for such vast expanses of time.
Which makes Barry Cohen's article totally, totally contemptible.
Richard: Welcome to Webdiary, Michael!
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1. Israel is a Western country. With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.
2. Israel´s right to exist should not be questioned.
Normal?
I hardly think so Geoff, unique is what I'd call it, another example of post colonial stuff ups where artificial borders were created
While I have addressed you, this is for the benefit of others; I dismissed you a long time ago as a suspected Zionist and there can be no dialogue without agreed premise. I'm a humanitarian atheist who, as far as my capabilities allow me, consider myself as a child of the universe no different to all other creatures.
You talk about the "right" of Israel to exist, such a foolish and naive concept.
Where are the rights of Orang Utans when a verminous species destroys there habitat? Where are the rights of Palestinians whose homes are bulldozed to make way for "Jews"?
I made use of the inverted commas to make the point that I hardly know what a Jew is. Well, that's not quite true. What do I think of Jews? Which Jew are we talking about? Charlie Jacobs, my first youth leader, salt of the earth. Einstein, one of the greatest men ever to grace this planet, (and someone who, at the creation of the state of Israel made the point that the Jews would be judged by the way they treated their Arab neighbours.) I could go on but the way I distinguish Jews from others is the rascist way they distinguish themselves. The "chosen of god" whatever the hell that is. Insufferable conceit, no different to the Nazis with their concept of a "herenvolk".
What other "race" sets up a body in this country based on their religious beliefs, other than Islamists; ie the Council of Australian Jewry? Are they Jews first and Australians second? You can surely see where the problem lies.
It is pointless calling on others the note the atrocities that happen in other parts of the world; a lot of them are primitives in a cultural sense. We expect better from a "normal Western country" though Christ knows why when we all have blood on our hands.
Zionists, Islamists all other ists except pacifisists and realists, a plague on all their houses.
Where are the boats
Scott Dunmore , Where are all the hundreds of flotilla boats that the Muslims promised?.
Perhaps Julia Gillard should ask the Israelis how they control this- she said in the paper today that she is going to stop the boats.
I know I'm being foolish and naive... but ...
"Zionists, Islamists all other ists except pacifisists and realists, a plague on all their houses."
...
"I'm a humanitarian atheist ...
A huh.
Well I can certainly agree with the last bit of that, at least, Scott and I guess that little intellectual bottom line of yours sure qualifies as consistent. Except for the exemptions for "pacifisists" and "realists". Why should those bastards get out of it plague-free?
"You talk about the "right" of Israel to exist, such a foolish and naive concept.
"Where are the rights of Orang Utans when a verminous species destroys there habitat? Where are the rights of Palestinians whose homes are bulldozed to make way for "Jews"?"
Well, where are they? You tell me. This is your little world, we are talking about, Scott. Do "Palestinians" have the right to exist there? Do Orang Utans? If so, then what's your problem? Or is it just "foolish and naive" to think Israel has a right to exist in your little world?
Ists and isms
Far be it for me to instruct you in rhetoric Geoff, it's all Greek to me. (Think about it.)
Now, where were we? Ah yes, "foolish and naive". No, just blinkered by your beliefs.
I thought I had myself perfectly clear that might is right but some people are slower than others. I don't have a problem, it's the Orang Utans and the Palestinians that have a problem, get it?
Why the use of the perjorative "little". You dare to provoke me, insolent wretch?
You should know better; I have a long memory and can recall a question I posed to you about your views. You prevaricatated; the long or the short version was your answer; I received neither and I'll tell you why. Supremiscists know their views are totally unacceptable to all rational and sophisticated people, that's why they hide behind charges of bias. Did I sting you Geoff? Denied the use of your favoured weapon of anti-semitism?
Just what do you believe in? The existence of Jahweh? Just what the hell did the poor bloody Jews do to piss it of so badly? What deserved the collective punishments of pogroms through the ages and the the atrocoties of seventy years ago? Simultaneously the chosen and the cursed. A curious mob the Jews. A glorious and at the same time, restrictive culture which has prevented them from fully integrating Into the societies that the diaspora led them; hence the persecution.
It's not my world that's little, I think universally. Maybe at some point in the next few years a mathematician will prove the existence of god. I'll accept it but understand it? Never. Who can fathom god? None of us with our clumsy primitive brains driven by massive electron particles. You don't fix a watch with a cold chisel and hammer. Do you now see from whence I come?
I've been charged with arrogance for as long as I can remember so it must be true. An unlovely trait but we all have our cross to bear. Whoops! that was a christian reference to the Essene mystic/philosopher, a Jew of course.
Nevertheless, I look to the stars every night and am humbled by my ignorance.
Not arrogance.
"...a christian reference to the Essene mystic/philosopher, a Jew of course."
Of course.
"I've been charged with arrogance for as long as I can remember so it must be true."
Arrogance? You? Why, Scott?
Because you write as if you're the first man in history to peer into the night sky and wonder about the universe?
No Scott. That's not arrogance. Arrogance isn't the word for it.
Amen
A personality trait as I mentioned, hopefully no more than a style of expression.
You're a poor judge. All right minded people understand their lack of knowledge. Only those who claim to know God and divine his purpose are the truly arrogant and ignorant.
You keep sniping from the edges but never address the issue and still haven't spelt out your position.
From your writings I can hazard a guess, (please correct me if I'm wrong,) your a Zionist. If that is the case then may I suggest that Israel is a country where your views will be far more acceptable, you won't get much sympathy in a largely secular and philosophically different society. Well, maybe Alan Curran but he hardly counts does he? A lot of us ran out of sympathy with Israel a long time ago and back in the sixties I had plenty; it was squandered.
Come to think of it, don't emigrate to Israel, I wouldn't want to inflict another Zionist on the benighted Palestinians; at least we have the rule of law here and you're more easily contained.
It's a wonder that God, (in the light of events over the last two thousand years ago,) hasn't revisited a latter day Abraham to affirm his "promised land" but then maybe it's not neccesary; you can go with the American notion of "manifest destiny", ie if God didn't want you to usurp Palestinian land he wouldn't have let you would he. Easy, C?
Most people believe in what they want to and might is always right. The "right" of Israel to exist? What authority confured it? Don't mention the UN, I squashed that remember. Not that I advocate the destruction of Israel or anything remotely like it. It's a fact of life, I just wish it would behave better.
Why I bother I don't know, I don't give our civilisation much more than a few hundred years and Israel is going to have plenty to worry about in the mean time. Without the patronage of Western nations it wouldn't exist in the first place or survive. There aren't too many Jews in the far east and that's where the power is shifting to. Their more likely to give their sympathies to the Arabs for their oil.
That's why I quit blogging.
Scott Dunmore
Scott Dunmore , You should really go and live in Israel for12 months, and find out what it is like to get on a bus or sitting having a coffee and find that some Palestinian has blown himself, all for a couple of dozen virgins.
As you say they are not many Jews in the far east so you would love the Muslims in Bali, nice peaceful lot for a quiete holiday.
So you are another one have who have run out of sympathy, I know this might come as a shock to you, but the Israelis have enough to do with out keeping you happy.
In years to come you will be dead and buried, and Israel will still be there except for a few bits of Palestinians bombers.
Doanfinkso
Validated
Scott Dunmore writes: Not that I advocate the destruction of Israel or anything remotely like it.
Still, the destruction of Gaza was Israel validating the destruction of Israel as an objective. If you can destroy one you can destroy the other.
And the world would be a better place.
The only problem is the practical one of where to put the Jews of Israel.
Read Joshua 10 and 11 for their own solution. A final one.
Given the economic praise of Israel by the Zionist protagonists, perhaps they could just buy up a few hundred large properties in Germany and the U.S., and all move there.
Hmmm
Yes Michael, "The only problem is the practical one of where to put the Jews of Israel."
I'd thought of that, that's why I'm not advocating the destuction, we don't want another load of boaties with weird ideas washing up on our shores do we?
Boaties
I have the impression that prejudice against refugees and illegal economic migrants is being officially encouraged to keep the heat off reckless immigration targets.
The Adelaide street scene has changed from European to Sino-Indian in the past 20 years. Today most bus passengers, at least at certain times of day, are Chinese. And maybe a few masked women, y-wimpled well. Really spectacular demographic change.
All the fault of boaties, swamping us.
Or is it?
Boaties
The point is that the number of boats per annum is a few hundred, and the number of passengers on each is a few tens to a couple of hundred. I haven't been watching and can't give good numbers, but suppose ten thousand boat people per annum, which is probably 5-10% of the annual legal Asiatic immigration including skilled perhaps-temporaries. Yet there is public outrage is over that 5-10%.
Someone said to me decades ago, as something well known, that there is an upsurge of racism in the community if the rate of immigration of persons of another race is too high. The immigrants become too visible. I think he was talking about Dagoes.
Well, the immigrants of another race, other races, are very visible today, very. The fact that it is the boat people who are being blamed, rather than the reckless incompetence or the secret malignancy of our immigration officials and our government in setting legal migration targets and limits suggests, well, secret malignancy.
Suggests. Perhaps someone has a better explanation. Perhaps cruelty to boat people is needed, perhaps not.
Education
Cathrynne Henshall Bungonia
Rational irrationalism
I could have guessed.
What is it about Adelaide? How come just about every drooling whackjob fascist ratbag in the country seems to be from Adelaide and its environs? It couldn't be the water. They don't have any of their own. Inbreeding? The pressure of constantly dodging the serial killers to survive? The fallout from the nuclear testing in the fifties? The flies? The beer? Some horrible genetic engineering experiment by Haliburton that they're not telling us about?
There has to be an explanation. This is a job for a citizen journalist.
Falsities all round
Scott, thanks for some sanity. Let me add...
His claim that Israel is a Western country is false. Israel is a Middle-Eastern counry. Of course "Western" has a racial (in context, racist) sense, and every Zionist is a racist by definition, but it is getting pretty incongruous to rely on the fact that Israel is populated by Jews to call Israel Western.
It is not "liberal" to imprison the people of the other race in ghettoes, to wall them off from their farms and orchards and steal the latter while reducing them to misery, etc.
His claim of rule of law does not account for the impunity attaching to the theft of Palestinian land for settlements and the theft or arbitrary bulldozing of Palestinian houses. That claim is manifestly false, in any reasonable sense.
A normal country is not based on the principle of discrimination on the grounds of religion. Israel very plainly is not a normal country.
Israel does not have a legal right to exist. The pretence that there is such a right, and the demand that the Palestinians acknowledge that right, was just a stunt to obstruct negotiations and assist in preventing an end to the conflict with the Palestinians. (Acknowledgements to Noam Chomsky.)
Zionists should learn something from the fact that everything they have to say in favour of Zionism, or in defence of Zionism, is false or deceptive.
If there is a exception or a pretence of an exception to the last statement, something truthful and honest that I have overlooked, I will be interested to learn of it.
.