Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Even Noam Chomsky says BDS is Antisemitic
Any remaining readers of WD will likely know my opinion of the hugely famous leading left intellectual , 2011 Sydney Peace Prize recipient and scrawny old git, Noam Chomsky
Here's a video of the great man having a spray about BDS a while back. It's about fifteen minutes but well worth the listen. I've watched through three times now.
The underlying message is as disgusting as ever of course but anybody who regards themselves of the thinking left should at least listen to what this nasty old man has to say.
BDS is hypocritical to the high heavens. Anything that targets Israel alone can be attacked as antisemitism and "unfortunately this is with justice". It harms the "whole movement" It harms the Palestinians and this is so obvious it is probably intentional. It is a gift to the Israeli hardliners and their American supporters. "You may as well just join AIPAC and be done with it".
Exactly.
Those are not my words. This is what Noam Chomsky himself says!
There is something very strange about Chomsky at the very core of the man but no would deny the old goat is as cunning as a shtetl rat, as they say in Saudi Arabia. He knows when the dickheads are on a loser. They should listen to the man.
How on earth is this going to help those Israelis who still believe there is a chance for peace, and their foreign supporters? A global antisemitic campaign aimed at tearing down the Jewish state right on the eve of an UN general resolution "recognising Palestine" but not recognising any border to Palestine, explicitly or implicitly, between the "river and the sea".
A journalist in Libya reported the other day "an old Arabic saying" he picked up from fighters closing in on Tripoli.
"You can piss on me but don't tell me it's raining"
Says it all really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5hY-gffV0M
Everyone who has any remaining interest at all in this important subject need to be very clear about one central fact. Israel is not about to dissolve like a pillar of salt as if it was the old apartheid regime in South Africa. Israel is not the old apartheid regime in South Africa and those who would suggest this racist lie must be confronted.
Why not accept the Jewish state? It's been there for over sixty years now and it is one of the most successful and productive nations on the planet. That deluded old American man may actually believe that the US can be persuaded to abandon Israel as if it was the old apartheid regime in South Africa by some kind of American domestic campaign, but he of course is plain crazy. His job ultimately is to persuade Americans to abandon America. Israelis have their version. So does Australia. Every country does. It's just that in some countries they are free to say what they like and in other countries they get their heads chopped off and in America they arefreest of all. Surely that is the whole point on the subject of human rights.It is also at the very core of the relationship between the American and Israeli peoples and that's just for a start.
The nasty old hard core left just don't get that.
Sooner or later you must ask this question
Is there space for the Jewish state between the river and the sea?
BDS says no.
Fatah says no.
Hamas says kill all the Jews.
So do a lot of other people.
Where do you stand?
Why do the "friends" of Palestine not ask their "friends" that question? Whoever "they" are.
If you have listened to that video you may also be interested in the great man again on the subject here in an earlier discussion in a classroom.
Note the rapt girl in the red top who at one point "outs herself' as on some Jewish network of some kind. I couldn't catch the name because she garbled it but obviously she thought this was important.
These people fascinate me.
The great man is due in Sydney later this year to pick up his peace prize. November suddenly got interesting.
There might even be an opportunity for some one to put the question to the man himself.
Where does he stand?
 |
|
 |
 |
| © 2005-2011, Webdiary Pty Ltd |
| Disclaimer: | This site is home to many debates, and the views expressed on this site are not necessarily those of the site editors. Contributors submit comments on their own responsibility: if you believe that a comment is incorrect or offensive in any way, please submit a comment to that effect and we will make corrections or deletions as necessary. |
A global shift on the pivot
Something dramatic has happened in the world. At a strategic level it probably means little because the underlying event had already happened and anyone with an uncluttered mind had seen it coming long ago. However in the world of ideas and culture clashes, not to mention the party chat of the profound and stupid everywhere, it is an earthquake. The slow sneak up event of the year. Perhaps the decade. It is also really really scary.
The Palestinians have abandoned even the pretence of a two state solution and Condoleezza Rice has exposed the breathtaking scope and audacity of their bad faith. They are now out with it. No Jewish state. They had no choice really. They were offered everything and more. All but a few percent of Judea and Samaria with land swaps for that, a deal on Jerusalem which made it a shared capital, a multi billion dollar Norwegian administered fund for the benefit of the “refugees”, (can you believe this stuff? refugees from 1948? nothing for the Jewish refugees from Arab countries of course who ended up in Israel), some people taken back. Everything they could possibly conceivably want and so far more than what was reasonable it is on a different planet.
They simply could not take “yes” for an answer. They were cornered so they said “no”. They demand an unlimited Arab “right of return” and they say seven million people around the place and abroad are eligible. That means no Jewish state. It means no state at all really if it doesn’t have sovereignty over its borders.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=243917
We should have seen it coming with the Hamas Fatah shotgun wedding. The optimists thought the “moderates” might wean Hamas from their violent genocidal ways. They must have known in their hearts that the opposite was true but as is so often the case with Palestine is was just easier to think that.
Certainly it was obvious from the Abbas UN speech and more to the point the open speech to the American Palestinians that immediately preceded it.
Should there be any doubt they have put a figure on it. Seven million.
All those silly wet left/liberals who have deluded themselves that the Palestinians were not serious about this (“well they couldn’t be could they? it would mean the destruction of Israel.”) will now, if they are honest, dwell on the consequences of being so badly wrong for so long. They can no longer occupy the space that assumed the Palestinians were acting in good faith. They cannot. They will look like 9/11 truthers or worse. They will have to shift position.
They will have to accept the gut wrenching move that Israel was not the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East after all. They will have to turn on their beloved Palestinians and ask the question are these men helping or harming their people and therefore are we helping or harming their people by helping them. Or they can conclude they never believed in the Jewish state themselves really and that in any event the best solution is to rob the Jews of their democratic state and deliver the survivors to dhimmitude and say so just like the Palestinians.
Either that or they can abandon all pretence of honesty and good faith. Just like the Palestinians have.
A proportionate response
Global?
amen
Extraordinary, isn't it Jay?
Which trees should we hug?
So, to further the discussion, I tried to come up with a more rational basis to identify the countries we (e.g the Greens, Webdiary) should really focus on as needing world support/intervention, and came up with this. Very interesting, Afghanistan is number 5, Sri Lanka and Iraq are in the middle. Palestine, on the other hand, is near the bottom.
(These are, of course, statistics, and we need to be careful about what they actually mean and whether we are interpreting them correctly. On the other hand, numbers are these are less able to be twisted by bias and agendas.)
Up there Russia!
Africa is bad, very bad but we knew that. But Russia? A very low birth rate and serious public health issues is my diagnosis. Also a genetic predisposition for diabetes and heart disease.
That country needs to cut down on the vodka and fatty foods and take up indoor jogging as a national sport. Come on Russia, you can do it. We might need you.
They hug the Palestinians to death
Absolutely fascinating Jay. A real eye opener.
Jay has linked the crude death rate by country as measured by the two most authoritative sources available. There are one or two anomalies but where there is an inconsistency I prefer the CIA figures over the UN. The crude death rate in this case is the number of deaths in the five years between 2005 and 2010 divided by the person-years lived by the population of the country in those years.
Astonishing. The Palestinians have a much lower death rate than the Israelis of course, I knew that, but it is even much lower than Australians and that's just the start. Look at some of those other countries. As a trend Muslim countries are doing well in the bringing of human life into existence on this planet stakes.
It also explains why some of the sick political cultures that infest the planet have lives to burn.
What drives this of course are huge birth rates. It is a measure of human life. It is not a measure of human misery. Most of these people live lives in the human equivalent of chicken cages.
Quantity and quality?
I've never been there but the United Arab Emirates must be sinking under the weight of newborn babies and Israeli designed hospital terminal life support equipment.
Games People Play
Much more interesting than the current discussion are the games with Iran (though Wallerstein doesn't seem to think it's going anywhere).
Games - Magical Mushroom Clouds ?
More dope on games with Iran - from an insider:
10 minute video interview.
Arie declares "I deny!"
Arie, do you deny that vicious, crude and violent antisemitism is systematically fed to the populations of Gaza, the West Bank and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, often beginning at nursey school age, and that in Islamist controlled states in particular it is on a scale comparable to pre war Nazi Germany?
Do you deny that the Palestinian Hamas/Fatah leadership having to the last held out for an Arab right of return have now clearly and publicly rejected the notion of a continuing Jewish state?
Are you in favour of the destruction of the Jewish state?
Masturbation
For some reason, whenever I see a closed loop, I think of masturbation. Geoff, since Arabs and Palestenians are by definition Semites, are they busy teaching some sort of self-activation?
A Neon Sign Issue
Whenever I think of a closed loop I think of a circle. This is the strongest shape in both geometry and religion. Each to his own.
I agree Jay: there are multiple layers of strangeness on this scar on both the western and middle eastern civilisations and the easy deployment of language to obfuscate the bleeding obvious is one of the strangest of them all..
This spurious "argument" over "semites'" and "antisemitism" and the utter non connection of these two concepts is an argument over words and has no place in respectable discourse on these subjects. Those who don't get Arab antisemitism, and are blinded to this horrible reality by the words that are used to name it, perhaps should think of some other words but I doubt if it would help them. People don't think this way unless they don't want to get it. They think that way because it is easier. Look at Justin for example. The truth scares the hell out of him as well it may. He plows the internet for any scrap that helps him avoid it.
The "semite ... antisemitism" thing is one of those "neon sign issues" that I love because it saves so much time. Anybody who challenges the notion of profound and deep rooted Arab antisemitism by deploying an argument based on the meaning of the words used may as well carry a sign around flashing "Dickhead Here"
Birth-rights
Geoff, I think you've got to the root of the issue:
The underlying theme is to deny the Palestinians their birth-rights - that they are not Semites, that they have no right to return to their homeland, that they are not human beings, and have right to representation in the UN.
When resolving issues, the most common tactic is to build on agreement. All said and done, Palestinians and Jews are culturally and genetically very similar. Much more similar than say Jews and Buddhists (okay, in most places). So, is the converse also true, that when trying to sow discord, emphasise the differences?
Everybody has a birthright except ...
This is really very silly Jay. Genes and race have nothing to do with it and for you to read into my comment that I was denying that Arabs are Semites (whatever that means), or whatever, has left me flabbergasted. Fortunately not speechless.
Read what I said again. I am saying that it is irrelevant. Antisemitism means Jew hatred. It has nothing to do with Arabs, at least Muslim Arabs, except to the extent that it is bred into them by a sick political culture just like in Nazi Germany which often their countries, and Iran, increasingly resemble.
The belief that any of us has a birthright to the birthplace of our grandparents, or even just one grandparent, is one of the weirdest things you will hear from the Palestinian camp. A birthright. Insane. Think about it. In my case it would mean I had a birthright not just to Australia but England and Lithuania as well. Perhaps even Russia too given the Czar was in occupation at the time.
Every last one of us is a refugee many times over by that definition and in the case of the Jews far more profoundly than the Palestinians. Not just the Jews. The upheaval for the Arabs of Palestine in 1947 and 1948 (and the Jews of Palestine who were forced from Jerusalem and the West Bank in the same war) was tiny by European and Asian standards. It was small even by the standard of the vicious expulsion of robbed Jews from Arab countries who were not even refugees from war.
Jay you just linked to UN and CIA lists of 190 plus countries; all the countries in the world. Please go through that list and nominate one, just one, which would seriously entertain such a claim against its national will. It would be insane. It would be national suicide.
That's the point and the Palestinians know it.
Indeed everyone in the world must know Israel would never accept this and therefore its demand is a spitting invitation to war. That is what you support if you support the Palestinian cause as it now stands.
This is not about recognition of the Palestinian state. It seems most Palestinians would not recognise such a state even if it came into existence anyway. It is about recognition of the Jewish state and more important than that it is about recognition of the most basic and universal human rights, by any defintion, of the citizens of that state. Those same human rights that brought you and many others to this country.
How can you expect other people to give up more than you or any sane person would themself resist to the death to avoid for the sake of the generations?
Do you have any inkling of what life must be like under Islamist rule, for anyone,but especially if you were a woman.
Please do not lecture me about "culture". I'm not sure what you mean. Israel is a vibrant liberal democracy at the forefront of human progress in all endeavours including scholarship, science, technology and the arts, with free people, including the free-est Arabs in the world, that consistently measure as among the happiest in the world on international indices. Gaza and many other Arab countries, and Iran, are in the grip of one or another of the brands of Islamism, a hateful superstitious political ideology full of violence and intolerance, and a physical threat to women, gays, and religious and other minorities among them or within their grasp.
You talk about similar cultures. With respect Jay, we have very different understandings of what culture means or you need to do some more reading on this subject.
Oh we aren't loved
Geoff Pahoff wrote:
"do you deny that vicious, crude and violent antisemitism is systematically fed to the populations of Gaza, the West Bank and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, often beginning at nursey school age, and that in Islamist controlled states in particular it is on a scale comparable to pre war Nazi Germany?"
Oh don't I know this complaint. After all what they have inflicted on the Palestinians these folk apparenly want to be loved as well.
I don't know what 'vicious anti-semitism' is cultivated in the occupied territories and beyond but I would imagine that the Israelis are about as popular there as the Germans were in Holland during the war.
Of course GP doesn't know either exactly what is being said and written there. He just repeats the crudest hasbara arguments, Pat Condell stuff.
What I do know is this.There is MEMRI, the "Middle East Media Research Institute". It has its headquarters in Washington and branches in London, Rome, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Shanghai and Tokyo. Quite an expensive set up, one would think, and one wonders who pays for it.
In a recent Dutch tv-program a former Dutch ambassador to Israel relates how this so-called Research Institute concentrated on collecting the crudest statements in the Arab press they could find. Their results, such as they were, were regularly forwarded to, among others, high ranking officials at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the Minister, but not to those who could be presumed to have themselves specialist knowledge of the area. So he was regularly bothered by questions on this and then had to explain that these MEMRI hasbara warriors hardly provided a balanced picture.
For readers who can understand spoken Dutch here is the link.
Of course if MEMRI sends this to the Dutch ministry it sends it all over the world and apparently it has quite a detailed knowledge of whom specifically to target.
GP wrote:
"Do you deny that the Palestinian Hamas/Fatah leadership having to the last held out for an Arab right of return have now clearly and publicly rejected the notion of a continuing Jewish state?"
On the first of December last year Ismail Haniyeh declared on behalf of Hamas that it would "respect the results (of a referendum) regardless of whether it differs with its ideology and principles."
And now I have a question for you, framed in the same demagogic fashion. Do you deny that the Charter of Likud defines the Jordan as the permanent Eastern border of Israel, that, furthermore, it says that there can be no Palestinian state west of that border and that Jerusalem should be the undivided Israeli capital?
Hands off Arie, you can look but don't touch.
Understand one thing Arie if everything else remains forever beyond your intellectual reach. It is not about love. It is disgusting to suggest it is. We know what is expected of you to earn the love of Palestinians. For that matter Dutchmen as well. Just a bit less of this stuff from the Muslim regimes is all that is asked.
The 1999 Likud charter identifies Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. So does Israel. So do most Israelis. So do I. Anyone care to negotiate?
The 1999 Likud charter emphasizes the right of settlement of the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Sharon, a Likud PM, pulled the Jews out of Gaza against their will in 2005. Anyone care to negotiate? Not the Palestinians. That's for sure.
Who wants peace?
God the Israel bashers hate MEMRI. Especially the Euopean ones in my experience. I mean they really really hate it. You need no more evidence that they are doing a fantastic job. Anyone who wishes to donate to keep this important work going go do so here.
Arie, you missed something important. Are you favour of the destruction of the Jewish state?
The 'destruction of the Jewish state"
Geoff Pahoff keeps pestering me with the question whether I want the ‘destruction of the Jewish state’. He seems to attach great importance to my answer, perhaps because he believes that it will provide him with a ‘gotcha’ quote.
The question is of course wrongly formulated but not unintentionally so. The idea is to be able to accuse anyone who maintains, as I do, that Israel cannot retain an exclusively Jewish character seeing its large Arab minority (at present 22% of the population and growing) is actually advocating the destruction of the State as such. Pure demagogy but that is GP’s modus operandi.
Incidentally GP, you gave quite an inadequate rendering of the Likud Charter. You forgot these bits:
away
News for Geoff Pahoff:
Since I have to entertain visitors from overseas for the next few weeks I will not be able to entertain you.
Tot ziens
Have fun, Arie. Come back soon.
Don't forget to bring your charter...
And I will give you a more adequate rendering of the charter of a liberal democratic political party in a tiny multi-party, very multi-party, democratic little country on the other side of the world when you give a full and frank account of the charter of that Nazi inspired genocidal gang of Islamist cutthroats that rule Gaza.
Thus among other things confirming Jay's point about the obsession with what should be this tiny remote issue. Why have the Greens for example singled it out above all other "foreign affairs" matters, even apparently above anti-Americanism, (Greens please don't berate me about "the global mobilisation for global warming", or whatever, you know what I mean) in their public profile, if not their policies?
Why the sudden deathly silence from the Greens on this issue? Talk about sensitivity. They are as quiet on the subject as a meeting of mummies in a museum at midnight. Surely someone in that party has the courage of her convictions.
Why the goons in our streets? Isn't there something more important to march about? Why does Carter say this is the worst humans rights problem in the world? Is the man insane? Is he even in the same world? Look at the behaviour of the UN and especially its "human rights" abominations like Durban III. Are they on the same planet?
Where's the proportion in all this? Sure does beg the question of proportionate response.
None of this would have anything to do with Nazi inspired Islamist antisemitism, worse as it turns out even than we imagined, of course.
The Left
The armour-plated mind of a cast iron fanatic, a closed-minded and resolute supporter of evil, need not detain us. But there is something to be said as a caution against too easily believing everything we read that denounces Israel. There are two points.
The first is that anything written by a journalist needs to be treated with a degree of caution because journalists are all about sensationalism.
The second is that socialism has been discredited and largely disappeared as a political force, and the Left generally has been discredited, by a too-frequent lack of integrity on the part of Leftists.
The Left is about social justice, about loving our neighbours, as opposed to the Right which is all about preying on our neighbours.
The problem for the Left, and the source, I think, of its discredit and the general failure of socialism, is that compassion too easily slides into favouritism.
The problem is sometimes stark. A left-wing judge in a court of law may be biased to the point of absurdity. Such a thing is vanishingly unlikely with a right-wing judge.
Jesus Christ was a socialist. He did not lack integrity. There is something other than compassion, perhaps an additional moral quality, presumably not lacking in Jesus, that we often don't possess. It may be what in 16th century English was called meekness, not the modern sense of that word. Or it may be humility. I'd be interested if anyone can tell me the secret, the fence that prevents a slide into sentimentality and a gormless support of the cuddlier cause.
It doesn't follow that Israel is not a Nazi state. It does follow that we should not unthinkingly or instantly believe every piece of seeming evidence that it is a Nazi state.
Arie's List
I do recall now why I called Arie some bad names. It was because he had linked to one of those crude Israel hating chain e-letters that purport to be an official IDF document that has been "anonymously leaked" but is in fact a crude forgery based on one or more Facebook accounts (possibly hacked) and lifted public and media information.
Here it is
He did this in response to me publishing a partial list of the Jew hating indoctrinated killers that Israel released to save the life of that boy Hamas snatched.
I don't know whether Arie is a nasty evil person but the creation of this hateful virus was a nasty evil act and to link it, without the clear caveat that it is likely the creature of some rabid Israel hating loner with plenty of time on his hands (and therefore a student or perhaps an academic) but in any event is as authentic as The Protocols of Zion in the spirit of which it was clearly produced, is a nasty evil act.
I did not look through the list when Arie linked it, there was a risk of encountering a relative or someone else I know, but you may as well now. Look at the casual pictures. Having a beer with mates. There's one with a kid on his shoulders. At least one of those girls I wouldn't mind getting to know. If the driven assembler of this material had hoped to demonise and dehumanise the Israelis with this obscene forgery then I hope he has only managed to show they are as human as you. And the Palestinians.
You would have to really hate people to assemble a list like this and make a hate document out of it. Either that or really hate Jews.
Can you imagine if someone had concocted a thing like this featuring ADF officers and NCO's , based on pirated Facebook accounts, and circulated it like Arie just did? Can you imagine the public reaction? I can easily. So can Arie. That is why he would never do it.
The idiocy of Pat Condell
Geoff, Condell is an idiot. And, frankly, it would take other people of that sort to believe him. Now many of those, particularly in the USA, also regard atheism as something from the devil. This would diminish his influence somewhat among this particular audience.
His thesis that the conflict only came about because of undying Jew hatred among Arabs is laughable. As if the great land thefts of 1948/49 and 1967 had never taken place. As if not three quarter of a million Palestinians had been driven out in 1948 and robbed of everything they had. As if not since then millions of Palestinians have been oppressed on a daily basis by a system that seeks to control by countless roadblocks, Israelis only highways, house demolitions, land confiscation, harassment by settlers, blockades, and, oh yes, endless propaganda.
And the Palestinians could have had peace ten times over, could they? But they always want more concessions, do they? He does of course not provide a shred of evidence for these claims. Of the ‘generous offer’ allegedly made by Barak at Camp David in 2000 even then Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has said that he wouldn’t have accepted either if he had been a Palestinian. Furthermore, the Arab League proposed, at the Beirut Summit of 2002, a comprehensive peace plan based on UN Resolution 242, in which Israel was offered full recognition by and peace with its Arab neighbours in return for its withdrawal from occupied territories. This peace offer was repeated at the Ryadh summit of 2007. The Palestinian Authority has supported it and Khaled Meshal of Hamas indicated in July 2009 that Hamas was willing to cooperate but emphasized the right of return. This is an ambit claim. UN Resolution 242 speaks about a ‘just settlement of the refugee problem’.
Israel, the country that according to Condell, has offered peace ‘ten times over’ has shown no interest in the proposal. Likud’s Charter (the Israel Firsters always talk about the Hamas Charter, remaining discreetly silent about that of Likud) says explicitly that the Jordan should be the eastern border of Israel, that there should be no Palestinian State west of that border and that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. Israel now claims that the position of Hamas as the democratically elected Palestinian government prevents it from even talking about it - but it showed a similar lack of interest before Hamas had that position.
What more? Oh yes, Condell also talks about the ‘unprovoked attack’ on Israel in 1967 glossing over the fact that it was Israel that dealt the first blow (by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground) and not the other way round. Israeli bogus claims about having been continuously provoked in the foreplay to that war have also been shown up for what they were: bogus. See for this inter alia the testimony of then Dutch UN observer Jan Muhren in this two part television program.
A great deal has been made by Israel of Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran, as if it was a matter of Israel’s lifeline having been cut off. But compare this:
Moreover, President Johnson was planning to form an international naval squadron to break this blockade, such as it was, an enterprise for which, if I remember well, Holland and Australia volunteered. But Israel jumped the gun by going on the attack.
Yes, Nasser had massed his troops on the border in response to a false Soviet report that Israel was massing its troops on the Syrian border. In view of the Syrian-Egyptian defence pact he had to do something but I think the serious historical consensus is that he didn’t really want war at that stage. Israeli intelligence was presumably well aware of that, as it was of the fact that Israel was militarily much stronger (an opinion shared by American intelligence).
Normally I wouldn’t bother to comment on a fellow like Condell. There are so many idiots blathering on in Youtube space. At your special request I looked at one video (I couldn’t bring myself to watch that hate-filled face longer than that) but I pity you for taking your opinions, or seeking confirmation for those, from a fellow like him. Why don’t you read a decent book for a change?
Condell's perfect "Useful Idiot for Palestine"
I've read the books Arie, and more, and only modesty prevents me from saying more than I know at least as much about the Six Day War as you.
This ploy is not going to work Arie. Of course Nasser miscalculated when he committed himself to war. He got his arse kicked didn't he? Maybe he was duped into it by the Soviets for some demented reason yet to come to light but for certain he couldn't back down with his army now mobilised in the Sinai and his public in the streets baying for Jewish blood. Those are the breaks when you are a dictator and rule the people by xenophobia and the gun. It is one of the reasons why this form of government is not usually recommended and countries that adopt the model are notoriously bad neighbours.
But this is irrelevant as you know. Israel is not in occupation of a single square inch of the land it took from Egypt as a consequence of that war and hasn't been since Gaza officially became Judenfrei in 2005. To the extent that this is an argument over territory (and you and I both know it isn't) it is argument over land Jordan ceded to Israel in the war it began when it attacked Israel. No one can dispute that. Not even you.
It's a pity you won't listen to the videos. The second one in particular is especially for you. I invite all to listen to this video. You are listening to a perfect description of Arie Brand. It's uncanny.
Jordan in 1967
GP wrote:
"To the extent that this is an argument over territory (and you and I both know it isn't) it is argument over land Jordan ceded to Israel in the war it began when it attacked Israel. "
To give his guru Pat's lie that Israel was attacked unprovoked by the Arabs in 1967 a semblance of veracity, GP now talks about Jordan's attack. Britain declared war on Germany after that country had attacked Poland. Can we therefore say that Germany was attacked by Britain 'unprovoked'? Jordan came into the war after Israel had attacked Egypt by destroying its airforce on the ground in a 'Pearl Harbour style' attack. We have no less than the testimony of the Israeli-American historian of this war, Michael Oren, that Jordan didn't want this war (see the video with Dutch UN observer Jan Muhren of which I provided the link in a previous post - Oren also figures in it for a minute).
Israeli Prime Minister Eshkol declared, when Israel had started the war, that Israel would not retain any territory it might gain as a consequence of it. The then American Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, relates in his memoirs "As I saw it" how he reminded his Israeli counterpart, Abba Eban, of this after the war was over. Eban shrugged his shoulders and said simply "We have changed our mind".
I have told in detail how, after the war, Jordan was sold down the river by both Johnson and the Israeli cabinet (see my six part serties "The Olive Branch and Khartoum" that I wrote for this blog in late 2005).
GP is now bragging about Israel's vacation of Egyptian territory after the war as if this were a great feat of generosity on Israel's side, instead of it simply obeying international law (that prohibits retaining territory gained in war) for a change. Moreover, Israel's 'generosity' only came after the cold shower of the Yom Kippur War and the peace initiative by Sadat. Besides, one can't say that Israel has really vacated Gaza. It has turned it into an open air prison, a blockaded strip of misery.
Finally, GP, will you please stop this "wink wink nudge nudge" approach as in "you and I both know" that this is not a dispute over territory. "You and I" don't both know that. In one of your previous post you provided another instance of this confidence trick by saying that 'everyone knows' that Netanyahu wants peace and has come up with a 'peace plan'.
Unbelievable
Why thank you Geofff for the invitation (and enlightenment), this time iJustin watched and listened to Mr Condelll for over six very long painfull minutes. Poor chap sounds like he is a little bit emotional, or a bloody comedian, a bit like you m'love.
As we know, on the net one thing leads to another, and I happened to stumble on an ex-US President having his say. Not emotional at all, sounds reasonable, mature, and does get to the guts of the problem - you know THAT problem.
If Israelis stop stealing other people's stufff then their claims of wanting peace would be believable.
Too bad that at this stage of the game there is a supporter of Israel who proudly claims to be "a little bit fascist", after suggesting wipe a city off the map, no translation problems with that one. It makes one wonder how many closet fascists live among the Israelis?
And of course there are always those uncomplicated folk who simply don't get it, and never will.
You better believe
His brother would have made a better president. He couldn't have done more harm and at least it would have been fun.
Justin you're welcome to play this game too. Want to have a go at answering the questions? The ones Arie keeps dodging like blue bottles in the surf with a westerly at sundown.
Arie, do you deny that vicious, crude and violent antisemitism is systematically fed to the populations of Gaza, the West Bank and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, often beginning at nursey school age, and that in Islamist controlled states in particular it is on a scale comparable to pre war Nazi Germany?
Do you deny that the Palestinian Hamas/Fatah leadership having to the last held out for an Arab right of return have now clearly and publicly rejected the notion of a continuing Jewish state?
Are you in favour of the destruction of the Jewish state?
***My LOTUS***
Why Geofff, I thought you'd never ask. iJustin would be delighted have a go at answering the two questions you posed to Arie.
It is only fair that I declare I haven't got a bloody clue what is taught in the schools of Gaza and Palestine in general (or in Israel for that matter), but it would be safe to assume that the path to enlightenment you want us to travel is probably just the usual sound and fury.
Mmm, enlightening.
Now let's have a go at question 2.
Did the apart-hate government of South Africa deserve to exist? Is Neslon Mandela a terrorist?
You see, Geofff, no government deserves to exist if it bases its existence on the control and theft of others people's stuff, all underpinned by ideological bullshit, examples of which I posted earlier.
So let's strip out the bullshit, the legal manipulation, the religious rubbish, the cynical propaganda, along with those humorous agents of distraction you adore - and ask a very simple question:
You see, that's the guts of it; and that's what the ill-formed punters who support human rights for innocent Palestinians (not collective punishment that one of your own so enjoyed watching) understand most, and that's what is most important; there is a very simple answer to that question, that from a moral, ethical and common law point of view is hard to answer, other than in the negative - in this day and age.
We, The Lucky Country, got away with it two hundred years ago, and have justified (rationalised, sanitised) our collective punishment and theft of black fella stuff by using all sorts of legal and biblical interpretations of white fella law and religion - Terra Nullius, they didn't farm the land, blah blah blah. But that doesn't change what we did, and how we went about it - it doesn't change anything. But at least we now know how we got here and a number of Prime Ministers, in their wisdom, empathy (and because it was good for votes) have acknowledged the sins of the father. Fait accompli as far as The Lucky Country goes, but all that was a long time ago - and we won (with apologies).
Israeli settlers, Zionists and their manic supporters are playing an anachronistic game - they are on the wrong side of history. Israel is not The Lucky Country - and will lose (with tears).
In some of my past lives I was fond of gardening and plants - the lotus has always been a favourite, and a great addition to ones gastronomic repertoire.
I suppose Geoff, on my journey to Zionist "enlightenment" you have not been so much the rosebud, rather a naive, yet precious lotus.
There is a little bit of LOTUS in everyone - I hope.
Sorry editor/editortrix (that would be you dear Psych) iJustin forgot the lotus link:
The lotus eaters
Or perhaps, this description better articulates Justin's love of the plant:
Exactly the food needed for the middle east.
Killer Buddhists
Before you two guys get too smug here's a link to what strikes me as likely an interesting book that I stumbled on just yesterday.
I've been "just a little bit" skeptical of Buddhist pacifism since reading George Orwell's account of being spat on by Buddhist monks while serving as an imperial police officer in pre-war Burma. Still, it does cause one to ponder what sort of gentle culture can evolve among people if they live in the hills and mountains or otherwise beyond the reach of armies and enemies. At least until very recently.
It is a horror for the Tibetans because they have lost their country and many are now in exile along with their spiritual centre. Nothing can be done about it. Jews can understand this. All they have is the power of their belief structure and that will sustain them. They are fortunate. They have lost their homeland to authoritarian atheists with little or no respect for the life of an individual but it could have been worse. They could have been conquered by Muslims and forced to convert or live in dhimmitude.
Enlightenment
It sounds like a zen slap to me, Geoff, one that successfully contributed to insight-fullness of his subsequent writings.
BTW, please don't lecture me about being smug. I used to live here. I probably owe my life to both a Buddhist and a Muslim who, in turn, shouldered some personal risk to help me during one of the frequent blood-lettings.
I simply realise the world is neither black nor white, but rather a multicoloured spinning wheel. And that it is better to laugh than to cry.
Points taken
I take your point Jay. All of them.
Believing is indeed your only option
OK, Geoff, you can't recognize a point when you see one and you never answer a straight question though you demand of everybody else that they do so. So,basically, I am not writing for you though you are a useful foil.
Keep on believing the Pat Condell stuff - if it does you any good. Of course belief does not require evidence or rational argument.
Incidentally, for those others then: the Ambassador's testimony on the tv-video to which I provided the link starts at 19.50. Actually, there is quite a bit of English text on it, inter alia a sensible story by Ilan Pappe. Wilders is also allowed to come up with his 'world historical vision' about Israel - the 'canary in the coal mine', 'we are all Israel' and all that kind of stuff.
"Vicious anti-Semitism"?
Geoff Pahoff wanted me to deny that the Palestinians are fed a diet of 'vicious anti-Semitism". I am not in a position to deny this as he is not in a position to affirm it. Since he came up with the proposition the onus is on him to supply CREDIBLE evidence.
What I suspect is that any legitimate murmuring against the occupying power, or a reasonable political point, is blown up as 'vicious anti-Semitiism'. A useful example was recently provided by The Economist in an article entitled 'On Claims of Palestinian anti-Semitism'. I hope that the moderator will allow me to use a few lenthy fragments from it as it is quite a revealing article:
Richard Bernstein said:
(he had this from MEMRI but blew it up as we will see)
The Economist gave the context of this statement as it actually appeared in MEMRI:
The Economist says:
That is clear enough, I think. The Israelis have a hide to demand recognition by the Palestinians of its character as a Jewish State, while they themselves do everything in their power to prevent recognition of Palestinian statehood as such, let alone it having a specific character.
They only came up with this demand in 2007 because it provided another spoke in the wheel of the road map.
Vicious antisemitism it is
All the Palestinians have been asked to do is abandon the glib, offensive and profoundly dishonest claim to an Arab right of return. The Economist article reminds me why I let my subscription drop after twenty years and have easily resisted the urge to renew it. It's not that it's anti-Israel that offends me. It's that it's so bloody stupid. These guys are supposed to be smart.
This wasn't part of the treaties with Egypt and Jordan because neither country demanded an Arab right of return as a condition of peace. The Palestinians are. Is it really so difficult to understand?
The Israelis are demanding their state be recognised as the Jewish state and only an idiot or worse would think that this is a demand that the Palestinians define the character of the state for them. It is the exact opposite. It is a demand that they drop their demand to swamp the country with Muslims and hence define the character of the state for them.
Evidence of perusal
If you have " read the books" , as you claim, you provide very little evidence of it. Anyone who can recommend Condell as a source of information is either trying to deceive or has been himself massively deceived by the lowest level of hasbara. Take your pick.
The same alternative holds for Condell himself.
I notice that in going on about Egypt you have not come to grips with the two main points. Condell's 'thesis' that the whole conflict is due to undying Jew hatred among the Arabs is kindergarten stuff - good for those who haver never bothered to inform themselves in the slightest (unfortunately there are quite a few of those around).
His second point that it was Israel that was attacked "unprovoked" in 1967 is a straight out lie.
The last Jew in Palestine
I stand corrected. Gaza didn't become entirely Judenfrei until Gilad Shalit came home on 18 October 2011.
List
Geoff wrote: "I don't know whether Arie is a nasty evil person but the creation of this hateful virus was a nasty evil act and to link it, without the clear caveat that it is likely the creature of some rabid Israel hating loner with plenty of time on his hands (and therefore a student or perhaps an academic) but in any event is as authentic as The Protocols of Zion in the spirit of which it was clearly produced, is a nasty evil act."
Nasty evil act, huh? Protocols of the Elders of Zion, huh? Get on your bike.
You always scream blue murder as soon as you see the slightest hint of an anti Israeli government action (with terms such as anti semite, holocaust denier, protocols of Zion close at hand) but remain hatefully insensitive to the misery inflicted on the Palestinians - in fact often denying that this exists at all.
I don't know whether this was a leaked IDF-file or whether it was composed from snippets of facebook information as you claim (as usual without adducing any evidence) and I don't care. As far as I am concerned war crimes were committed in that Gaza operation, and not only according to the Goldstone report. In fact I regard the whole thing that you called the "Gaza war" (falsely suggesting that there were two militarily equivalent opponents here) as one great big war crime. And where there are war crimes, the world has accepted since Nuerenberg, there is personal responsibility and where there is personal responsibility there should be names. And that is exactly what this list provides.
We know that the IDF panjundrums don't want any of this information to be in the public realm - not because they fear to be targeted (they are much better at doing that to others) but because they fear arrest of their personnel, especially their high ranking officers, on trips abroad. An excellent reason, in my view, to have it widely published.
Pat Condell
Just so we are clear on those Pat Condell tapes I have referred to here they are in one place for convenience.
The great Palestinian lie.
Useful idiots for Palestine
Let's blame the Jews
Pat Condell is a militant atheist and approaches these issues from that angle. To be sure I am not a militant atheist. I am not any type of atheist at all and that means I have some different views.
But surely the point here is that this is not a religious conflict and I wish for chressake that Christians in particular stopped pretending it was..
waiting
Before I react further to any of your posts, Geoff, I would like an answer to my question whether you agree with the Condell propositions I mentioned in my previous letter.
Fiona, Arie, I suggest that you read Geoff's post this evening (which I published about five minutes ago). And - both of you - please try to maintain a degree of civility, as all the moderators are becoming tired of having to wield the red pen...
Red pen?
Fiona, where did you have to use the red pen in my post or posts?
Talking about a red pen, what I did notice is that it remarkably failed to function when Geoff Pahof wrote a while back under the heading "Brand": "what a nasty evil piece of works you are".
I decided to overlook it at the time but now you found it necessary to make a remark about civility under a perfectly neutral post of mine I thought that I should bring it up.
Oh yes, I do remember now that that red pen did function for one of my posts after all. It was after the "nasty evil piece of works" interlude when I thought it fitting to address Geoff Pahof no longer as "Geoff" but as "Pahof". That "Pahof" was scrapped as obviously not civil enough. I do wonder about your standards and hope that I am allowed to say so.
Fiona: Arie, of course you are permitted to remark upon my standards. As far as I can recall, I wasn't moderating during the period in question, as I was up to my eyeballs marking assignments. I agree that that post of Geoff's should not have been published without being cut severely. As for using a red pen on any of your posts, to be honest I think that there may have been the occasional deletion of a phrase, but otherwise nothing. Meanwhile, I shall extend my call for civility (which was made in light of what I saw as an increasingly heated atmosphere) to all contributors to this thread.
The red irony of enlightenment
Arie, mate, I hate to have to do this to you, but you have just been marked down on your spelling. "Pahof" is spelt Pahoff, as in something that is a little off par, so to speak, not something that is of par. It does make a diference in an ironic sort of way.
Now that has been cleared up allow an old wombat to offer a little comfort. Geofff is a good guy. iJustin has grown to love the obnoxious bastard over the years (even though I suspect he smells of elderberry) and along the way iJustin came to the conclusion that Geoff shows his love in mysterious ways.
Of course, his use of oral love as presented in the written form, on this site and others, does at times rely heavily on dirty talk mixed with a little bit of gentle humiliation, which for the less innocent may be a little affronting. But those who know Geoff think his verbality somewhat sexy. Hell, some joker recently set up a web-site totally dedicated to Geoff's romantic ravings, which says a lot about something (especially the besotted joker).
But the way I see it dear Geoff is simply doing what Geoff does; spreads the love. And if it wasn't for Geoff's love, punters such as myself, Michael and no doubt thousands of others who have read his oral adventures would be totally ignorant of many truths that underpin this Zionist thing.
Thank you Geofff for your love and enlightenment.
Ta mate
Why thank you Justin. How nice of you to say.
Red pen?
I agree with Arie. I don't exactly recall calling him a nasty piece of works, let alone evil, but I'm sure he deserved it and I can say with conviction that I've been called a lot worse than by my surname (even when misspelled).
Neither of us are children. We are discussing the most passionately divisive issue of our time. You can be certain we have both faced far worse than some bad names without flinching. I would prefer to know that when I reply to Arie I am responding to what he actually said in every detail.
Incidentally I haven't seen much evidence of the red pen either. A second post responding to Arie's second post inviting me to a diversion about what Condell said about Jerusalem in 2007, and inviting him back to the questions I put to him, was not published but it largely repeated what I said five minutes earlier anyway. That's about it I think.
Fiona: You did indeed describe Arie in those terms, Geoff, which IMO breached Webdiary's rule regarding personal abuse. And yes, your second post yestday evening was not published because it was almost identical to your post five minutes earlier.
Correction
The Guardian's CIF does have preventive moderation - but none of the other blogs I mentioned has.
Oh and Fiona I can't recall any 'occasional deletion of a phrase' in my posts - except for that apparently offensive name "Pahof".
Heated atmosphere - well yes ..
I have contributed to many blogs, and three in particular that have to do with Israel (the blogs of Philip Weiss, Richard Silverstein and Tony Karon). People polemicise there often more fiercely than is the case here but none of these blog owners finds it necessary to have a sort of preventive moderation. Silverstein keeps things on a tight rein by banning habitual offenders but, as said, he doesn't moderate in advance. Neither is that the case with other blogs I have contributed to (inter alia desmogblog, deltoid, jovanna, indonesiamatters, the Guardian's CIF etc.). I wonder why Webdiary deems this preventive moderation necessary. For one thing it creates a lot of delay between posts - it is as if you are writing each other via the penny post.
Geoff, I find it an excruciating task to have to watch Condell as I find it painful to have to listen to the rants of Geert Wilders. What does one do with that level of ignorance and wilful distortion? One has to take issue with almost every other sentence. The fellow is not worth that. But I might pick up some of the most obvious furphies here and there. But not tonight.
Campus Watch 2
Geoff, you wrote a propos of my post about Pipes’ Campus Watch:
This is an absurd notion of the freedom of speech. In the last analysis it would also cover the command “fire” in an execution squad. Isn’t that commander free to say what he has to say when he has to do away with somebody who naively believed in freedom of speech?
Also, you implicitly equate, yet again, criticism of Israel with anti Semitism. You know very well or should know that Daniel Pipes’ “Campus Watch” was in the first place designed to track down academics who made critical statements about Israel (Pipes knows, even if you don’t, that open anti semitic statements by academics in the lecture hall or elsewhere on campus are very rare).
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote in their “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”:
(Mearsheimer and Walt, 2007. Pp. 179-180).
New game. New definitions. New rules.
I'm not really interested in going over the "we're not antisemites we are just critics of Israel" stuff, Arie. Especially the version from Meirsheimer and Walt. It's the mother of all furphies and as dishonest as a Ponzi scheme on steroids. It's also been done to death here over a period of six years, not the least by me.
We are now at the point where no one can honestly claim that the two state solution is on offer to Israel and the Jews. That is the official Palestinian, indeed Arab and Muslim, position. No Jewish state. That changes the game for everyone including Israel bashing academics.
They should get used to it. After all, it was them as much as anybody who brought this situation upon us all.
That student demonstration
Geoff, you shouldn’t get away with your reaction to that tape of the student demonstration at Wayne State University. What I saw was that students staged a silent demonstration in front of a speaker presenting the Israeli line and then walked out.
What you saw was an action organized by the ‘local Muslim brotherhood cell’ ( a statement for which you did not provide the slightest evidence) and you saw even more than that. You wrote :
“I don't know what you see but I see yet another scrap of evidence that they mean to exterminate the Jews if they have to.”
It was not the first time that I had to shake my head on reading your over the top statements. Really.
I think those students followed this guideline:
“The Palestinian activist must make sure that he or she can control the terms of debate. If a debate is set up badly no Palestinian activist will be able to win it. In this situation the Palestinian activist is therefore better off not participating … The Palestinian activist should try to persuade the organizers to rename the debate, organize some sort of counter-event, or demonstration, or just walk away.”
That’s exactly what those students did. They organized ‘some sort of counter event’ and then ‘just walked away’. They did not prevent the speaker saying what he wanted to say (as you claim elsewhere of such activities). In fact those students who wanted to listen to him just remained where they were.
Now wait, where did I read that advice to student activists quoted above. It was in fact in the “Hasbara handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus”, put on the net by the World Union of Jewish Students. I just replaced the word ‘Israel’ by ‘Palestinian’.