After serving as the key protector of South Africa’s apartheid regime, the U.S. is playing the same role for Israel.
In 2010, Israel’s then-defense minister, Ehud Barak, explicitly warned that Israel would become a permanent “apartheid” state if it failed to reach a peace agreement with Palestinians that creates their own sovereign nation and vests them with full political rights. “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic,” Barak said. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Honest observers on both sides of the conflict have long acknowledged that the prospects for a two-state solution are virtually non-existent: another way of saying that Israel’s status as a permanent apartheid regime is inevitable. Indeed, U.S. intelligence agencies as early as 45 years ago explicitly warned that Israeli occupation would become permanent if it did not end quickly.
All relevant evidence makes clear this is what has happened. There has been no progress toward a two-state solution for many years. The composition of Israel’s Jewish population — which has become far more belligerent and right-wing than previous generations — has increasingly moved the country further away from that goal. There are key ministers in Israel’s government, including its genuinely extremist justice minister, who are openly and expressly opposed to a two-state solution. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself repeatedly made clear he opposes such an agreement, both in words and in deeds. In sum, Israel intends to continue to rule over and occupy Palestinians and deny them self-governance, political liberties, and voting rights indefinitely.
Whether despite this aggression and oppression, or because of it, the Obama administration has continually protected Israel with unstinting loyalty and lavished it with arms and money. This rewarding of Israeli behavior culminated in the administration’s announcement just three weeks ago that it has signed a “memorandum of understanding” to significantly increase the amount of money the U.S. gives to Israel every year, even though Israel was already by far the biggest recipient of U.S. aid. Under this agreement, the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion over 10 years, by far a new record for U.S. aid commitments, even though Israeli citizens enjoy all sorts of state benefits that Americans (whose money is being given to Israel) are told are too costly for them, including universal health care coverage, and tout superior life expectancy and infant mortality rates.
This week, with its fresh new $38 billion commitment in hand, the Israeli government announced the approval of an all new settlement in the West Bank, one that is particularly hostile to ostensible U.S. policy, the international consensus, and any prospects for an end to occupation. The new settlement, “one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank,” as the New York Times put it this morning, “is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished.” This new settlement extends far into the West Bank: closer to Jordan, in fact, than to Israel.
In response to this announcement, the U.S. State Department yesterday issued an unusually harsh denunciation of Israel’s actions. “We strongly condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to advance a plan that would create a significant new settlement deep in the West Bank,” it began. It suggested Netanyahu has been publicly lying, noting that the “approval contradicts previous public statements by the government of Israel that it had no intention of creating new settlements.” The State Department invoked the aid package the U.S. just lavished to describe it as “deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel’s security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long-term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians.”
Much of that, while a bit more rhetorically clear than usual, is par for the course: The U.S. — in vintage Obama fashion — issues pretty, pleasing statements claiming to be upset at Israel’s settlements while taking continuous actions to protect and enable the very policies Obama pretends to oppose. But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned:
Israelis must ultimately decide between expanding settlements and preserving the possibility of a peaceful two state solution. Since the recent Quartet report called on both sides to take affirmative steps to reverse current trends and advance the two state solution on the ground, we have unfortunately seen just the opposite. Proceeding with this new settlement is another step towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation that is fundamentally inconsistent with Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state. Such moves will only draw condemnation from the international community, distance Israel from many of its partners, and further call into question Israel’s commitment to achieving a negotiated peace.
So Israel — in the words of its most loyal benefactor — is moving inexorably “towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation” that is anti-democratic: i.e., the equivalent of apartheid. And the leading protector and enabler of this apartheid regime is the U.S. — just as was true of the apartheid regime of the 1980s in South Africa.
Worse still, the person highly likely to be the next U.S. president, Hillary Clinton, has not only vowed to continue all this but to increase U.S. protection of both Israel generally and Netanyahu specifically; indeed, her only critique of U.S. policy is that it has been insufficiently loyal to Israel. Her leading opponent, Donald Trump, early on spouted a bit of off-the-cuff dissent on Israel policy but since then has snapped fully into line. The utter lack of political dissent about all of this in the U.S. political class is reflected by the fact that the only opposition to the $38 billion aid package came from U.S. senators who — echoing Netanyahu — were angry that it was not even more generous to Israel on the backs of American citizens. In sum, unstinting support for an apartheid Israel is the virtually unbroken consensus among U.S. political elites.
Worst of all is that U.S. political orthodoxy has not only funded, fueled, and protected this apartheid state, but has attempted to render illegitimate all forms of resistance to it. Just as it did with the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela, the U.S. denounces as “terrorism” all groups and individuals that use force against Israel’s occupying armies. It has formally maligned non-violent programs against the occupation — such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement — as bigotry and anti-Semitism (a position Clinton has advocated with particular vehemence), and that boycott movement has been increasingly targeted throughout the West with censorship and even criminalization. Under U.S. political orthodoxy, the only acceptable course for Palestinians and supporters of their right to be free of occupation is complete submission.
Even as Western consensus continues to revere the most stalwart supporters of South Africa’s apartheid regime — Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Shimon Peres — it at least now regards apartheid itself in that country as a historic disgrace. History should regard those enabling Israel’s own march to permanent apartheid in exactly the same light. The most aggressive and consistent enablers of this apartheid are found at the top of the U.S. political class.
A country for “the white man”; Israeli Teens Gripped by Virulent Racism
The ethno-religious nationalism and Jewish supremacy on which Israel was founded is inherently racist; its people, including public officials, often slip in their public statements and reveal reality. A prime example would be Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai.
In a mid-2012 interview, Minister Yishai said that Africans, “along with the Palestinians, will bring a quick end to the Zionist dream,” since “[m]ost of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” Referring to refugees from Sudan and Eritrea as an “infiltrator threat,” he told the press he was eager to deport all African immigrants for, in his words, “the benefit of the Zionist dream.”
The “necessity” of a Jewish majority in Israel suffuses the culture with racism. To quote from the article I linked above:
Semantic arguments over the definition of “apartheid” should be the least worry of Israel apologists. The reality of the Israeli people, and what goes on there in that nation, how they oppress Palestinians, is going to make Israel the pariah of the Western world.
Israel is well on the way to that pariah status and there can be no turning it back except an end to apartheid — or the conditions that cause increasing numbers of reasonable people to call it apartheid. The conditions — whatever one calls the situation — are destroying the souls of the Israeli people, and soon there will be no redeeming them.
Israel is an apartheid state according to most victim-activists of South African apartheid
The African National Congress has long held that Israel is an apartheid state (or worse). This has precedent.
In 1961 Israel had a brief period of opposition to South African apartheid, and the then prime minister of apartheid South Africa stated: “Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude … they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” (Please note that the analysis of the legal definition of apartheid just below — vis-a-vis the facts of the Israeli state — does not involved only settlements. Israel manifests apartheid also in Israel proper.)
ANC Chairperson, Baleka Mbete, says that she has been to Palestine herself and that the Israeli regime is not only comparable but “far worse than Apartheid South Africa.” Last March, the ANC was one of 65 organizations in South Africa that hosted “ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK 2014.” The other 64 were these:
So, it’s not just prominent Israelis, past and present, who admit that theirs is an apartheid state. The majority of activist blacks in South Africa insist on it as well.
How many of these people have lived in Israel?
Here’s someone who lived in both place:
Benjamin Pogrund
“…during 26 years as a journalist in South Africa I investigated and reported the evil that was apartheid. I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison.
I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid…”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/israel-injustices-not-apartheid-state
Pogrund is a South African-born Israeli and Zionist Jew. Moreover, he is overwhelmingly outnumbered by activist South African blacks who have no vested interest.
http://www.itisapartheid.org/get_informed.html
http://www.itisapartheid.org/get_informed.html
Defining Apartheid: Israel’s Record
The following is an excerpt from document that was compiled by Israeli Uri Strauss for the Electronic Intifada. The document presents the internationally-accepted definition of ‘Apartheid’ alongside relevant examples of Israel’s human rights record in the occupied territories.
“… for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons…”
Israel’s purpose is self-defense.
“racial” Israelis are not a racial group.
If “race” were involved, then Israel would treat Arab Israelis the same way they treat Palestinians, but it doesn’t.
You are a hasbara troll. You spew the same stuff in every Israel-related thread — often verbatim – -and have seen it all debunked many, many times.
Yet you come back and spew the identical material again and again. Because you are a hasbara troll.
It doesn’t matter why a country discriminates against a racial group; it’s racist to do it. Israel is an ethno-religious, supremacist state explicitly for a Jewish majority. And an apartheid one — for all the reasons described above and that have been set forth in this comments space since it’s inception.
Was it racist to treat Germans differently from Americans when the US occupied Germany?
We didn’t invade Germany to steal it’s land, ethnically cleanse the indigenous population, and then occupy part of it for 50 years. Becasue of what Zionists did and do to Palestinians, many Israeli Jews, most South African black activists, and growing numbers all over the world, say Israel is an apartheid state.
Is it “racist” to treat rapture-ready Christian-zio window lickers differently from hella frum zio-Jew window lickers while the Zionism occupies their brains?
ROFL…Yea, you ridiculous little Christian-zio window licker, except that Arabs aren’t a “race” and your “Arab Israelis” are Palestinians, but thank you for playing.
So if Arabs aren’t a “race”
then when Mona said “It doesn’t matter why a country discriminates against a racial group; it’s racist to do it.” doesn’t apply to the Palestinians. Right?
Many, many Zionist say modern Jew hatred is racist. And it is. So is Zionist hatred and/or bigotry toward Arabs, including Palestinains.
The occupation is not motivated by hatred or bigotry towards Arabs. It’s motivated by self-defense. Israel has not withdrawn from the West Bank because Israel remembers what happened when Israel withdrew from Gaza.
I agree, the ongoing occupation, colonization, dispossession, land theft, subjugation, hatred and bigotry towards “Arabs” is motivated by Zionism and the insatiable Zionist lust for more lebensraum.
No, the ongoing occupation, colonization, dispossession, land theft, subjugation, hatred and bigotry towards “Arabs” is motivated by Zionism and the insatiable Zionist lust for more lebensraum. Moreover, a belligerent occupying power cannot be “motivated by self-defense” when dealing with the people and/or territory it’s belligerently occupying, any more than a belligerent home invader can be “motivated by self-defense” when dealing with a home owner who refuses to share his living space with a violent trespasser who insists on squatting.
No, “israel” has NOT “withdrawn” from Gaza.
Yes, “israel” is the belligerent occupying power in Gaza.
No, Egypt is NOT the belligerent occupying power in Gaza.
The patently obvious fact that the hasbara troll constantly ignores.
Wrong! You don’t matter, you atrocious little Christian-zio bottom feeder.
Haaretz: Welcome aboard Israel’s apartheid bus
Only thing I’d add to this is that Gazan laborers have been riding apartheid buses to work in Israel for some time now; this isn’t new.
Hi Mona,
My source cited this as a temporary measure to tamp down on the recent attacks in Israel. Since world opinion is favoring Palestinians, wouldn’t it be beneficial if these attacks, which give a legitimacy or pretense of legitimacy to Israel responses, didn’t occur? I love old adages, “you got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them” is applicable here. The women on the yacht heading towards Gaza ended peacefully.
Israel often cites its grotesque measures as “temporary.” But if they go away, they come back. Usually they don’t go away. The 50-year-old occupation has always been “temporary.”
If you are saying Israel should be more concerned about optics, I don’t think that’s really possible. Much that I’ve read, including from Israelis themselves, strongly suggests that Israelis largely live in a sealed bubble of their own reality. Hence, Netanyahu most anstonishingly had ot move to the right to win his last election.
He’s had to publicly reject the 2-state solution (which has long been dead anyway, but the optics called for pretending otherwise).
All of which is to say: The general population in Israel doesn’t perceive reality in a way that allows it to accurately gauge or care about world opinion when determining actions. That population is increasingly trending fascist. (“Fascist” is an over-used word — I seldom employ it save for this context. I mean it literally vis-a-vis Israel.)
Every time Israel offers to end the occupation, the Palestinians say “No!”
Even Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia (certainly not a Zionist) said that Arafat’s refusal to accept the January 2001 offer was a crime. Thousands of people would die because of Arafat’s decision & not one of those deaths could be justified.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/24/the-prince-3
Israel is the oppressor, the land thief, the ethnic cleanser, the slaughterer, the ethno-religious apartheid state. The burden is on Israel to end the occupation on terms that are fair and just as judged by their victims, the Palestinians.
They have entirely failed to offer such terms.
Palestinians have been oppressing Jews for centuries.
Some Jews and some Arabs have both been attacking one another for centuries. Often Christians are in the mix.
That all, however, has nothing to do with deep, bloody, vicious and ongoing Zionist oppression of Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
Evidence that some Jews have been attacking Arabs for centuries?
”
Palestinian-hating Jew-baiting Christian-zio sociopaths like “Jack Green” have been spewing vile anti-Semitic blood libels about Jews and murdering Jews for millennia.
Jack – hahaha, where do you get your mythical stories from?
All countries treat foreign enemies differently from their own citizens, but no one calls them apartheid. If the Jewish state does the same thing, it’s called apartheid.
You are a hasbara troll who has been shown many, many times why this same crap you always spew is just that – crap. In this thread, see my comment here on how Yitzhak Rabin predicted apartheid and it happened. That’s in addition to former defense minister Ehud Barak. David Ben-Gurion also feared apartheid, which happened (my discussion of that is also below).
The evidence, including from Israeli Zionists, that Israel is an apartheid state is overwhelming.
Evidence that Ehud Barak thinks that Israel is currently apartheid?
Evidence that Jesus hasn’t already raptured your stupid Zionist brain?
Read the article above you to learn what Barak thinks is apartheid.
Please provide the quote.
Red the above article. The author is very clear.
Please stop wasting oxygen.
Evidence that Jesus Christ Superstar thinks that Christian-zio window lickers are currently worth saving?
Agreed, the Palestinians are only reacting to the violent invasion and ongoing violent colonization of their homeland in the exact same way that any other indigenous people would have reacted had your gang of foreign zio-Jew invaders, occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers and pigs chosen to target, invade, occupy, ethnically cleanse and colonize their homeland instead of the Palestinian people’s homeland. And the way your foreign zio-Jew invaders, occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers and pigs treat the indigenous Palestinian population is arguably worse than apartheid.
The early Zionists arrived as legal immigrants. We don’t call legal immigrants invaders. These immigrants did not attack Palestinians. It was Palestinians shouting “The Jews are our dogs! & “Israel was spread by the sword” that attacked Jews in 1920, 1921 & 1929.
Jack Green is a hasbara troll. He spews the same stuff in every Israel-related thread — often verbatim –- and has seen it all debunked many, many times — including the above crap.
He will always come back and spew the identical material again and again. Because he is a hasbara troll.
I will not debunk all of that yet again unless requested to do so by a new reader asking in good faith.
Agreed, you should call your precious foreign zio-Jews: occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers, pigs and invaders.
Your precious “israel” didn’t exist in 1920, 1921 or 1929, you delusional Christian-zio window licker.
That creature is a hasbara troll who has no understanding of the relevant history. There was a riot in Palestine in 1920 in which both Jews and Arabs attacked each other; the British undertook an official inquiry, which resulted in the Palin Report.
The Jews were making it clear they were taking over Palestine and were not respecting the promise the Allied powers had made to the indigenous Arabs — that they would have right to self-determination, and that the land was theirs.
After dozens of findings of fact, this was the Palin Reports conclusions. Note the great extent to which it is the Zionists found to be the troublemakers:
In 1920, invading European Jews had long been fucking over the indigenous population.
If someone announces that he’s taking over the country, does he deserve to die?
If someone is a braindead Christian-zio mouth breather, does he deserve oxygen?
“…The [1929] riots took the form, in the most part, of attacks by Arabs on Jews…”
“…110 Arabs were killed and 232 were injured, the vast majority by the British police while trying to suppress the riots…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
And if your foreign zio-Jew invaders, occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers and pigs didn’t want to have to deal with any “attacks by Arabs”, they were always free to board their little boats and return to their little homelands back in Europe, both before and after 1929.
Jews came to Palestine because they were being murdered in Europe.
If they had gone back to Europe they would have been murdered.
No, your foreign zio-Jew assholes “came to Palestine” because they’re invaders, occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers and pigs.
No, you want all Jews to be murdered, just not in Europe, you sick little Christian Zionist sociopath.
Zionists gave the word modern terrorism and continues to be a depraved ideology
Imagine being a Palestinian in Israel or in the apartheid territories and observing that a very popular, state-funded rabbi , Yitzhak Shapira, publishes a popular book which includes such rancid claims as this:
The same Rabbi Shapira is strongly supported by Dov Lior, the former Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces. Imagine the average Palestinian seeing this guy is a good pal of Rabbi Shapira’s:
The. IDF’s. Chief. Rabbi.
It’s surpassingly common for deceitful Israel apologists (a redundancy; defending Israel requires lies) to withhold the fact that Palestinian terrorism is a reaction to ZIONIST TERRORISM.
Zionism destroys Jewish souls. Having done so, having made many Jews into monsters, Zionism’s victims then also commit atrocities. Zionists then have the fucking gall to blame the Palestinian victims for theirbad acts.
Jewish terrorism is a reaction to Palestinian terrorism.
In 1920, 1921 & 1929 Palestinians shouting “The Jews are our dogs!
& “Islam was spread by the sword.” were murdering innocent Jews.
Jewish terrorism didn’t start until the 1930’s.
And no one forced your foreign Zio-Jew invaders, terrorists, ethnic cleansers, colonizers, criminals and murderers to board their little boats and travel the hundreds if not thousands of miles required for them to reach Palestine and provide any kind of “reaction” to Palestinian “terrorism”.
If your foreign Zio-Jew invaders, terrorists, ethnic cleansers, colonizers, criminals and murderers didn’t want any innocent Palestinians “shouting” at them or “murdering” them, and if they didn’t like Islam or approve of swords, they were always free to board their little boats again and return to their little homelands in 1920, 1921 or 1929.
Zio colonialism began in the 1800s, but thank you for affirming that your precious foreign zio-Jew invaders, colonizers and murderers were also terrorists.
Jews were being murdered in Europe.
That’s why they left.
That’s why they couldn’t go back.
ROFL…Yea, you atrocious little window licker, and if your foreign zio-Jew invaders, occupiers, terrorists, colonizers, ethnic cleansers, thieves, criminals, rapists, murderers, usurpers and pigs didn’t want to be “murdered” in Palestine, they were always free to board their little boats again in order to return to their little homelands in Europe to be “murdered”.
Jack Green is a hasbara troll. He spews the same stuff in every Israel-related thread — often verbatim –- and has seen it all debunked many, many times — including the above crap.
He will always come back and spew the identical material again and again. Because he is a hasbara troll.
I will not debunk all of that yet again unless requested to do so by a new reader asking in good faith.
IDF demolishes the home of Palestinian terrorist (JP, this morning):
“……..IDF forces on Tuesday morning demolished the Nablus home of terrorist Amjad Aliwa who acted within the framework of an armed terror cell that murdered a Jewish couple in October 2015…… After striking the Henkins’ vehicle, injuring both parents, members of the shooting cell approached it and fired on the couple again, from very close range, as the terrified four children sat in the backseat, the investigation revealed……During the attack, one of the cell members was accidentally shot by a friend, causing the terrorists to flee, and enabling the four children huddling in the backseat to survive the shooting…….”
Palestinian terrorism kills the Jewish body and nourishes the Palestinian soul.
Er…Yea, of course, you mindless and soulless israel-worshiping Christian Zionist cuck, if your Jesus says so…LMAO!
Zionist lies moves on to Zionist embrace of monstrosities
As many here know, I am 60 and until about ten years ago had always been an ardent Zionist. Many have also seen me cite Max Blumenthal many times for this proposition; “Zionism kills Palestinian bodies and Jewish souls.” These two thoughts are related.
The narrative that permeated the West, especially the United States, in my young- and mid-adulthood went like this:
Because of the Holocaust, after WWII, Jews went searching for an empty land to start a Jewish state. They chose Palestine, which was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Nothing had been there but desert, and the Zionist Jews “made that desert bloom.”
For utterly bigoted and irrational reasons, savage Arabs in surrounding nations attacked the new Jewish State; lots people wrote books and made movies — to which I thrilled — about how the plucky Jews fought these crazy savages to defend their homeland. Only an antisemite, I was convinced, would oppose the Jews founding Israel and support any Arab viewpoint on the subject.
That was the standard Zionist story until very recently, then two things happened: 1. the Internet, and 2. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s 2006 book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Pappe and others
What were Zionists then to do?
They embraced and baptized their monstrous history, insisting the atrocities and horrors were necessary and justified:
Hi Mona,
You might be interested in these websites as well, Presstv.ir and TheUglyTruth. They didn’t move me, but they seem to support your narrative. I’II continue to cling to the old adage, “the jailer is as much imprisoned as the jailed”, and hope for a cooperative 2 state solution. Such beautiful land and ALL its inhabitants deserve peace and the fruits of cooperation and building.
I don’t cite PressTV. I believe I’ve done so exactly once, and that was because it was the sole location of a controversial Cynthia McKinney interview. And I’ve never heard of the latter.
I’m extremely careful with the sources I use. I had read Electronic Intifada for some time before I began citing it. In due time it became apparent they were meticulous with their fact claims — on the rare occasion they made a material error, they issued a correction.
It’s the Internet. One must take care.
There are people who believe that if they die fighting, then they will go straight to heaven. Those people don’t want peace because peace denies them the opportunity to die as a martyr.
The Shin Bet prevented another potential civilian-targeting bus bombing from a would be Palestinian terrorist (JP today):
“……..Israeli security authorities announced Tuesday morning that they have arrested a Hamas operative who planned a number of terror attacks in the Jerusalem area, including a suicide bombing on a bus in the capital’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood……Muhammad Fuaz Ibrahim Julani, of the Shuafat refugee camp on the outskirts of Jerusalem, was arrested last month while planning the attack at the behest of his Hamas handlers in the Gaza Strip, according to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency)…….The investigation of Julani revealed that he had discussed a number of potential attacks with his handlers, including a shooting attack at the Hizme checkpoint, a bombing at a store in Jerusalem he had formerly worked at, and bombing attacks at high profile sites in Jerusalem that would cause mass casualties, such as the Central Bus Station and the Malha Mall……Such high profile targets was ruled out amid heavy Israeli security presence and the Hamas terrorists settled on the Pisgat Ze’ev bus bombing, the Shin Bet said. Julani was instructed to gather the materials necessary to construct the bomb for the attack, many of which he turned over to Israeli authorities after his arrest…….”
Palestinian terrorism kills the Jewish body and nourishes the Palestinian soul
As if my post at 1:33 below on how Israel and Israelis intimidate the press, — and even kill journalists — isn’t bad enough, here’s the NYT: How Benjamin Netanyahu Is Crushing Israel’s Free Press:
Boycott Israel!
Below, a hasbara troll hilariously advises:
Absolutely — and Israel and Israelis should stop it right now!
After a report on Israeli troops moving into Gaza, CNN international correspondent Diana Magnay went to an Israeli hilltop to report, and: “Israelis on the hill above Sderot as bombs land on Gaza threatened to ‘destroy our car if I said wrong word.‘” (Magnay called them “scum” on Twitter.)
Depraved Israelis gathered at the “Sderot Cinema” with sofas, beer, wine and snack foods to watch their country bomb the shit out of the trapped Palestinians of Gaza. (Google it to see the nauseating pictures of this scum celebrating the carnage like Fourth of July fireworks display, sitting on comfy sofas and popping chips into their mouths.) And there they regularly menaced, intimidated and threatened reporters from all over the world.
These soulless Zionists cheer and applaud as every lethal bombs exploded, and they threatened journalists:
The government also threatens to revoke visas of any journalists whose reporting it doesn’t like.
Israel should also stop killing journalists:
Oh yes, Israel targets journalists and radio and TV stations:
Yes, indeed, it’s just awful to threaten and do bad things to journalists. Israel should cut it out.
Do you condemn Palestinians’ threatening journalists?
To the same degree you condemn Israel for ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and killing journalists.
Palestinians win, and win big, when the endless crimes and wrongdoings of Israel and Zionists are exposed. For decades the West has been suffocated with a narrative of Zionist purity and nobleness that was always bullshit, while grossly demonizing the oppressed Palestinians.
Thank gods for the Internet. The truth is getting out more and more, and changing world opinion.
The putrid Zionist narrative is essentially dead.
The IDF uses Arab children as human shields. And remember, that is The Most Moral Army.™
Haaretz: ‘IDF Troops Used 11-year-old Boy as Human Shield in Gaza’
The IDF routinely does this even tho it is a war crime — Israel’s Supreme Court found it had done so at least 1200 times, and ordered it to stop. It has not. And nothing will be done about it.
Israel apologists used to rant about Palestinians supposedly using their children as human shields; there’s been a steep decline in that claim as more and more people become familiar with the truth that Israel is overwhelmingly the party that does this.
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.735206Haaretz: Black Lives Matter Endorses BDS: Israel Is ‘Apartheid State’
The accusation of “genocide” caused a great deal of controversy. I do not use that word to describe what Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinians. But several of the defenses I read cite international legal definitions and standards that arguably bring Israeli behavior within the word.
In Israel, fascist thugs and the government don’t only attack and silence Palestinians — they also attack and silence those considered “on the left.” NYT: How Israel Silences Dissent:
This is not remotely an isolated incident. Israeli thugs have threatened Western journalists as well, telling reporters they better not write like
“leftists” and that sort of thing. Human rights workers in Israel are threatened with great frequency. Both human rights workers and journalist have hired body guards.
This is standard fare in The Only Democracy.™
Hamas Rules: Journalists in Gaza Have to Play by Them
By Clifford D. May | August 8, 2014 | 10:11 AM EDT
… Hamas threatens and intimidates journalists …the conditions under which they are operating: conditions of coercion, manipulation, restriction and censorship.
… Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati on July 29 tweeted: “Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children [today] in Shati.” In other words: having left Gaza he can now say what he would not dare report while in the territory: that it was a Hamas rocket, not an Israeli rocket, that killed 10 people, 8 of them children…a Spanish journalist who had just left Gaza ……we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dared pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us.”
…after TV reporter Peter Stefanovic tweeted that he had seen rockets fired into Israel from near his hotel, a pro-Hama tweeter warned: “in WWII spies got shot.” French-Palestinian journalist Radjaa Abu Dagga was “detained and interrogated by members of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigade at a room in Shifa hospital next to the emergency room.” He published an account of his treatment in the French newspaper Liberation – but that article has since been “unpublished” at Dagga’s request.” Why do you suppose?
John Reed of the Financial Times was threatened after he tweeted about rockets being fired from near that same hospital. The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Casey posted a photo of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed from a room in the hospital along with this tweet: “You have to wonder (with) the shelling how patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see media.”After “a flood of online threats,” the tweet was deleted. …On any day, any foreign reporter could be abducted, handcuffed and hooded, while their captors reviewed their dispatches. If not satisfied with what they see, that could be all she wrote – literally.
Most reporters know that in 2006 Fox reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were kidnapped in Gaza by a group calling themselves the Holy Jihad Brigades. Both were eventually released but not before, as Mr. Centanni stated, they were “forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/hamas-rules-reporters-control-news
Palestinians win by getting out the truth of the move toward fascism and the deep, virulent racism in Israel. Demonization of Palestinians is ho-hum; the truth about Israel is only recently getting traction.
Really, I don’t doubt that Hamas has threatened some Western journalists. For good reason, Palestinians don’t trust Western media, which has overwhelmingly been in the tank for Israel.
Gazans are a besieged people locked in an open air prison who have been demonized or ignored by Western media for decades. It’s time to take a long, hard look at the past and present reality of Zionism and Israel.
There’s no justification for threatening journalists.
Except that “Hamas” isn’t the belligerent occupying power in Gaza, you stupid Jew-hating XXXian-zio freak, your Zionist apartheid “israel” is.
Israel does not occupy Gaza.
Your precious Zionist apartheid “israel” is the belligerent occupying power in Gaza, you delusional Christ-loving Jew-hating freak.
You are a hasbara troll — the whole world knows that Israel is still occupying Gaza. It has it enclosed in an open air prison and controls what goes in and out, and with frequency raids it militarily, terrorizing and killing men, women anc children. Only hasbara trolls like you fail to admit it.
Is Egypt also occupying Gaza?
Egypt helps Israel occupy Gaza.
The Zionist faith “helps” inane Christian restorationist sociopath and rapture-ready zio anti-Semite bigot “Jack Green” to be a “better” Bible basher and window licker.
Is it correct to say the Egypt occupies Gaza?
Is it correct to say that “Jack Green” is a comprehension-challenged, rapture-ready, Christian-zio window licker?
Mona is the only one allowed to post at the top of the thread – so you are crapflooding according to her definition which Mona made up for political reasons. Oh I forgot, you two agree politically so I was wrong, you aren’t crapflooding (by definition).
Oops, I accidently posted at the top of the thread. She is going to send a complaint to the Intercept. I could be deleted. By the way, thanks for your post. IT WAS REALLY GOOD – right up there with some of your better posts.
Damn….to DocHollywood
Jesus hates you….to Herrsommer
The various claims lightly [edited] for accuracy:
“As I have [repeated ad nauseum because endless repetition can make it true,] there are two different [contradictory straw men I have employed to simultaneously defend and deny] Israel “apartheid”.
The first is Israeli Arabs clearly face discrimination and racism, but that doesn’t define apartheid [and] Israel has land and immigration laws which favor Jews only because they are a small minority world-wide. [I’m contradicting the actual Zionist claims about the ‘promises made by God’ and the like. I’m also contradicting myself by making-up excuses for Israeli apartheid while at the same time claiming that] the laws are discriminatory [and by definition* apartheid], but don’t define apartheid.
Apartheid South Africa was a system of legal separation based on race. Laws were passed to enforce the separation of races. [So South Africa was apartheid because of its apartheid laws, but Israel is not apartheid despite its apartheid laws, but I also think I’ve invented a good excuse for Israeli apartheid.
I may feel the need to repeat that a few more times.]”
*The crime of Apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
On November 30, 1973, the United Nations General Assembly opened for signature and ratification the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. It defined the crime of apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”
That’s what he does, all the time. Massive blocks of text saying essentially the same thing, or several things, over and over.
The U.S. knew from the start that Zionists had committed crimes founding Israel
The CIA issued a report in 1949 on the crimes committed by Zionists and the new State of Israel, and the dire situation facing the Palestinians:
Read the whole thing. Zionist terrorists murdered the UN mediator and would not reveal the names of the murderers. The Zionist terrorists would not abide by most UN requirements, and treated the ethnically cleansed Palestinians worse than animals.
Israel was founded in Zionist terror and criminality. It is an apartheid state maintained that way. Zionists used gross lies and deception from the outset, and that continues.
Mona
What the report leaves out is that after Israel accepted the UN partition plan while the Palestinians rejected the proposal with violence (Bennie Morris; Haaretz, 10-9-2016):
“……..the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts in which 1,800 Jews were killed between November 1947 and mid-May 1948……”
In mid May, the British left and Israel declared independence. This was followed shortly by the invasion of Arab Armies from several Arab States The Arabs had threatened to invade and destroy Israel in 1947 if Israel declared independence.
As has been documented by Morris, the “ethnic cleansing” which occurred prior to the Arab invasions was not a policy of the Jews fighting the Palestinian militias:
“…….Regarding minimizing the number of Arabs, at no stage of the 1948 war was there a decision by the leadership of the Yishuv or the state to “expel the Arabs” – neither in the Jewish Agency nor in the Israeli government; neither in the Haganah General Staff nor in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff. Nor did any important party in the Yishuv, including the Revisionists, adopt such a policy in its platform…….”
As Bennie Morris documented in his book “1948”, this was a military decision based on the impending invasion of the Arab armies.
“…….Israel was founded in Zionist terror and criminality…..”
A gun attack killed two Israelis in East Jerusalem yesterday. As usual, Hamas praised the gunman (JP):
“…….Hamas praised the attacker who perpetrated a terrorist attack in Jerusalem ……….Israel Radio reported…….The organization [Hamas] said the attack was a “natural” response to the “occupation.”….” my insert in brackets
What Blumenthal left out :Terrorism kills the Jewish body and nourishes the Palestinian mind.
About 95% of the time I do not reply to Craig Summers, who is an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter. Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of redundant, pointless drivel-text, which pollutes the board.
Where was the UN when In 1947, the scholars at Al-Azhar University (The highest authority in Sunni Islam.) declared holy war to return Palestine to Islamic rule?
Where was the UN when Palestinians were attacking innocent Jews the day after the UN Partition resolution violating the UN’s own resolution?
Where was the UN when Arabs attacked Israel in 1948 killing 6,000 Jews?
Where was the UN when Jordan invaded Jerusalem disrespecting the international character of the Jerusalem area?
Where was the UN when Arabs ethnically cleansed the West Bank of its Jews?
Where was the UN when Arab countries ethnically cleansed themselves of their Jewish citizens, most of whom were anti-Zionist?
You are a hasbara troll and a proven liar who relies on demonstrably lying sources. Your fact claims are a mish-mash of outright lies, half-truths and inscrutable shit. I will substantively address any of them that another reader — whom I deem to be asking in good faith — might request that I address. But I will not do it for a troll such as you.
Death threats: Zionists’ major silencing tool
As discussed just below, Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt are just two Jews who were ardently opposed to political, nationalist Zionism of the sort that founded the State of Israel. The political Zionism that was founded by terrorist fascists and which has resulted in an apartheid state.
The truth of Israel’s bestial founding and current apartheid has been spreading exponentially since the Internet blossomed, and crucial books are being written and read, often by Jews. One such author is Ben Ehrenreich, whose latest book is: The Way to Spring: Life and Death in Palestine. (Reviewed at The Intercept here.)
Soulless Zionists are punishing Ehrenreich, as they do all Israel critics of any significance. He’s receiving death threats, as many do:
As Ehrenreich observes, this “normal” for Western discourse is similar to what has long been normal in apartheid Israel:
This is also endured by several writers at this site, by Max Blumenthal and by a litany of others.
As Blumenthal has said, Zionism kills Palestinian bodies and Jewish souls.
Ha! I knew you would post over me Mona. You are simply doing exactly what you accused me of doing on the Hussain thread. – and you have been doing this for awhile (as I stated then). You should report yourself to the Intercept, but you do hold an entitled position here. Even the Guardian would allow the first post to disagree with an article and even the last post before the moderators shut the thread down for a night. You practice a form of censorship Mona. You hypocritically do exactly what you accuse others are doing – and for political reasons.
What is the difference between Trump, Hillary Clinton and you Mona? Trump is a chronic liar whereas you and Hillary are calculated liars.
Thanks Mona.
About 95% of the time I do not reply to Craig Summers, who is an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter. Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of redundant, pointless drivel-text, which pollutes the board.
How petty to worry about who posts over whom. In your 4:46 post you remind us that the Arabs didn’t accept the deal they were offered in 1947. Can you really mean that because of this their grandchildren in Gaza deserve what happened to them in Cast Lead and Protective Edge? Also you are wrong about who attacked whom in 1967. And again, skipping ahead, while Arafat could have made life better for his people and chose not to, are you really justifying punishing innocents years after his death? It wasn’t their fault even while he was alive. It is only natural to expect people to rebel when they are kept in terrible conditions with no hope of improvement for decades at a time and you are very clueless to equate Palestinians rebellions with military attacks.
Apartheid and BDS
As I have posted, there are two different approaches to calling Israel “apartheid”. The first which has been long used by radical leftists to delegitimize the Jewish state is that a Jewish majority state is inherently racist replicating the conditions in apartheid South Africa to maintain a Jewish majority. This idea was supported by UN resolution 3379 (1975) which effectively called Israel a racist, colonial state in the mold of South Africa. This has nothing to do with an entirely different accusation of “apartheid” in the settlements where Israel maintains a system of separation from Arabs who are not citizens of Israel as opposed to the 1.5 million Israeli Arabs who live in a less than perfect democracy. Radical leftists like Mona have seized on the opportunity to use the settlements to call Israel “apartheid”, but still strongly believe that a Jewish-majority state is a racist endeavor i.e., apartheid (Zionism equals racism).
The BDS campaign against Israel was founded by Palestinians – and their goal is to dismantle the Jewish-majority state. It is not driven by Israel’s settlement activity, or a desire to create a Palestinian state east of the green line. That is an illusion created by the movement – and this is the main reason there is so much push-back in the west. One of the co-founders of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, was interviewed by the Intercept (Greenwald) and his language explicitly calls for the end of the Jewish majority state (5-13-2016):
“………I think racism is inherent in any colonial society and Israel is no exception. As a regime of settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid, racism is not coincidental. It’s a pillar of the system. Look at how Israel treats BDS. BDS calls for boycott, divestment, and sanctions to achieve Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality and they see that as a major threat. But freedom, justice, and equality only threaten lack of freedom, injustice, and inequality. It doesn’t threaten anyone else who isn’t premised on the existence of racism………Racism was always there [in Israel] but it was always very couched, very hidden by a supposedly liberal Zionist façade that projects to the world Israeli scientific miracles and cultural miracles and whitewashing very well Israel’s deeply rooted racist colonial society……..All refugees, be they Jewish refugees from World War II to refugees from Kosovo, have that right. This is in international law and Palestinians should not be excluded. It’s quite racist to say that the return of Palestinian refugees would end Israeli apartheid and that’s bad because? What is so wrong about refugees having the right to return home? If that disturbs an apartheid system that’s premised on being exclusionary and racist and that does not want to see people gain their rights, what’s the argument there?…….”
He doesn’t beat around the bush. He is essentially repeating UN resolution 3379 calling Israel a racist, colonial state and essentially states there is no argument for maintaining a Jewish majority state.
@Lisa
And I had had no idea that this was so, and had been from the beginning. Many, many American and European Jews — including many fleeing the Nazis — were viscerally opposed to the political Zionism that led to the founding of the State of Israel. This information was as much as hidden!
Then the Internet happened. And, lo, I find that Albert Einstein detested the horrors of political Zionism and what Jews did in 1948 to Palestinians, using terrorism and ethnic cleansing to steal the land on which they founded Israel. Everyone had always told me Einstein was a Zionist but never that there had been multiple Zionisms — that the genius scientist opposed the one that prevailed and founded Israel.
Einstein, and many other Jews, advocated a spiritual/cultural Zionism in which Jewish centers and projects were established in the Holy Land. But not a nation-state, and definitely not by means of force. This article is amazing:
Einstein foresaw the moral devastation political Zionism would inflict on Jews. Many of them are morally depraved, severely infected by Zionism. It is only now, in the generation of the millennials, that the collective Jewish body is beginning to expel the toxin.
Thank you, Mona.
I didn’t know that.
It still astonishes me, the information I find online vis-a-vis Zionism and Israel. I only ran across that Einstein stuff about a year ago. (I had known for 6-7 years he and 25 other prominent Jews had signed a letter in the NYT opposing Menachem Begin’s visit to the U.S. in 1948, calling him a fascist and terrorist, but that was it.)
The extent to which the “Exodus” narrative was utter horseshit also continues to amaze.
In answer to Zionist propagandists who routinely conflate “Jews” with grotesquely inhuman, mass-murderous monsters:
They do so in the context of falsely accusing decent people of being anti-Semitic, but it is their conflation itself that is anti-Semitic.
Furthermore, telling people who criticize Israel that they “must hate Jews,” is as much a directive as an accusation. Given the zealousness with which that directive has been disseminated, it’s entirely likely that a significant number of people acquiesce.
Since Zionists’ exploitative conflation implies that they have no way of knowing:
1) “Jews” are people who share a common RELIGION; not people who share a common compulsion to brutally annex Palestine.
2) Zionists have no right to promote hatred of innocent Jewish people who have nothing to do with Zionism.
3) Zionists have no right to implicitly deny the existence of the many Jewish people who explicitly reject and criticize Zionism.
There are more Jewish people who do NOT live in Israel, than who live in Israel, and it is NOT the case that they all support Israel’s savagery.
It is not even the case that all Jewish Israelis support Israel’s savagery.
“……In answer to Zionist propagandists who routinely conflate “Jews” with grotesquely inhuman, mass-murderous monsters…..”
That is an idiotic characterization of Jews who support the Jewish right to self-determination, and it places the blame for the current predicament of the Palestinians entirely on the Israelis. It denies that the Zionist Jews accepted the UN partition plan while the Palestinian Arabs and Arab countries rejected the partition plan with violence. It denies that the Arab armies attacked the Jewish state in 1948, 1967 and 1973. It denies the terrorism of Arafat and the PLO conducted against Israeli citizens. It denies the failure of the Palestinian Arabs and Arab countries for leading the Palestinians down the road to complete destruction since 1947. Palestinian Arab and Arab leadership has been absolutely a disaster for the Palestinian people. It denies that during the entire time of the occupation of Palestine by Jordan, there was no attempt to create a Palestinian state before the 1967 Six Days War. Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews from the Palestinian territories (including East Jerusalem) and denied Jews access to Jewish Holy sites. It denies that Arafat when faced with the decision to make peace with Israel at Camp David in 2000 or go to war, he chose war. About 5500 people died including 1000 Jews during the second Intifada. This was the most important factor leading to the disillusionment with the peace process for Israelis after Camp David in 2000. It denies that the Palestinians elected a terrorist organization to power that continues to launch rockets toward Israel to this day.
In short, your attempt to blame Israel for everything is completely idiotic, but par for the course. The Palestinians are not quite the victims you claim they are. There is plenty of blame to go around and the Palestinian have done their fair share to undermine the peace process.
Thanks.
“…….Furthermore, telling people who criticize Israel that they “must hate Jews,”…..”
That is complete bullshit.
You are the kind of imbecile that fails to inspire any pity.
Lisa
“……..You are the kind of imbecile that fails to inspire any pity…….”
It is hard to rebut the truth, but you did make a valiant attempt…..
Craig, then you think what Einstien said was “bullshit”, to use your term. Just for a moment could you please read the article and note that what Einstien had warned against has now become true?
And it wasn’t just Einstein. One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt, was fiercely opposed to Zionism of the political, nationalist variety. She, too, fled the Nazis.
Zionist extremist have denounced her as “not loving the Jewish people” and bullshit such as that. Arendt was Jewish, but not at all a tribalist.
GERRY
Can you show many any place in any comment that I have ever made that suggest that I support the settlements constructed by Israel in the West Bank? I just have seen Mona lie for the past 4 years calling Israel an inherently racist state (apartheid) – and disagree. I also do not believe that the two state solution is dead. Olmert and Abbas nearly came to terms in 2008. However, a two state solution is clearly dead if the right of return is a demand by the Palestinians (BDS).
Thanks.
Canary Mission and Zionist McCarthyism
Zionist behave like McCarthyite slime, both in Israel, and here in the United States. As I’ve written of before, their “Canary Mission” site causes the names of pro-Palestinian college students to show up after a search search, and be identified as supposedly “antisemitic.”
Canary Mission’s overt, explicit purpose is to make these young people unemployable, and for them to know they are being made unemployable before their careers have even begun. This is how Zionists are trying to silence critics of Israel on campus.
For that reason, several weeks ago:
These repugnant, vile Zionists have gone this far, according to the 1000 faculty who signed the letter:
The cowardly people funding and administering Canary Mission remain largely and carefully anonymous. As of several weeks ago, however,
As Max Blumenthal has said, Zionism kills Palestinian bodies and the Jewish soul.
A gun attack killed two Israelis in East Jerusalem. As ususal, Hamas praised the gunman (JP):
“…….Hamas praised the attacker who perpetrated a terrorist attack in Jerusalem ……….Israel Radio reported…….The organization [Hamas] said the attack was a “natural” response to the “occupation.”….” my insert in brackets
If the connection can be made to Hamas, we are one step closer to another war in Gaza – then suddenly dead children will become the rage at the Intercept again.
Anyone checked in on the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa lately, ever since we were promised a brighter tomorrow when it ended?
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Ok! You’re back! One of the most violent places in the world, with a wretched economy, and corruption around every bush. Good, good.
It should be clear why the U.S. supports what is essentially an apartheid state in Israel.
I appreciate your candor. An honest racist and imperialist who overtly claims the “white man’s burden” is more commendable than the Israel apologists who lie and deceive, who deny what Israel is. Who throw up inane hasbara points to misdirect, or who will go to the mat denying the obviousness of Israel’s apartheid status.
You are very honest. Repugnant, but honest.
White supremacist parasites always follow the same pattern.
Invade, exploit, corrupt, and then mock the disarray they leave in their criminal wake.
Your kind would perpetrate a home invasion, tie up the family, set the house on fire after you rob it, and then mock your victims for burning to death.
And yes, it IS clear why the U.S. supports white supremacist thug-states.
The point (for humans) is that that shameless thuggery is wrong.
David Ben-Gurion predicted Israel would be an apartheid state
In addition to Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and the editorial staff at Haaretz, David Ben-Gurion, decades ago, warned that if the occupation continued as it now has that would be APARTHEID. And it is.
Philip Weiss:
Zionists are many things, but like so many Jews they are not usually stupid. So it’s not the least surprising Rabin, Ben-Gurion and others saw that occupation must inevitably become apartheid if it wasn’t ended very promptly.
I wasn’t ended. It’s now permanent and declared to be that by the current Prime Minister (“for the foreseeable future’) and an increasing number of popular elected officials.
Israel is an apartheid state: BDS
“……..Zionists are many things, but like so many Jews they are not usually stupid. So it’s not the least surprising Rabin, Ben-Gurion and others saw that occupation must inevitably become apartheid if it wasn’t ended very promptly……”
Of course, the over-reliance on “promptly” – even though Abbas and Olmert nearly reached a two state agreement in 2008 and both fully believe that a two state solution is achievable.
About 95% of the time I do not reply to Craig Summers, who is an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter. Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of drivel-text, which pollute the board.
“…….Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of drivel-text, which pollute the board…….”
references to Craigsummers on the thread – 64
references to Mona on the thread – 211
Mona once again proving Mona is a hypocrite.
DocHollywood
Where’s the beef Doc?
“……Consider my claim that t]he comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa originated at least by 1975 [though the article I cited (Wikipedia) says…..” – craigsummers
“In 1961, the South African prime minister, and the architect of South Africa’s apartheid policies, Hendrik Verwoerd…….Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”……” – response by DocHollywood
That was exactly my point, Doc. I said at least by 1975 which indicates it could have been much earlier. In 1961, there were no Israeli settlements in the West Bank or East Jerusalem so the mischaracterization of Israel as “apartheid” similar to South Africa had nothing to do with the settlements. The radical left has moved the goal post on defining apartheid from a fundamental aspect of Zionism to the settlement issue. Again, this is for political reasons since the ICJ ruled the settlements illegal and the Geneva Convention covers the illegal transfer of a populations.
“……It is unlawful under the Fourth Geneva Convention for an occupying power to transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies…….”
Mona will still maintain that Israel is an apartheid state, but she cannot reconcile the laws of Apartheid South Africa with Israel. Israel interprets the “occupation” in the West Bank differently and the Oslo Accords allow some wiggle room for the final borders of Israel (not the Green Line). You should have read a little further Doc. Obviously, Hendrik Verwoerd (1961) referred to Israel as an apartheid state for political reasons (Wikipedia):
“……..In 1961, the South African prime minister, and the architect of South Africa’s apartheid policies, Hendrik Verwoerd, dismissed an Israeli vote against South African apartheid at the United Nations, saying, “Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude … they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”[27] ……..”
By 1961, apartheid was already viewed unfavorably so Hendrik tried to apply this to Israel – for political reasons (as I have maintained). This is a classic example of using the derogatory term “apartheid” for political reasons very much consistent with the radical left, the indistinguishable far right (when it comes to anti-Jewish bigotry) and UN Resolution 3379. The UN resolution was later overturned by the same UN body. The reason it is used to characterize Israel is because it is such an explosive political term which literally brought down the South African and former Rhodesian governments. For people who oppose a Jewish majority state (like Mona), “apartheid” – internally and in the West Bank – is a far greater indictment on Israel than “illegal settlements”. In Rhodesia and South Africa, it was the internal laws and legislation which provided the legal basis for maintaining white minority rule. Another good example is how in the above article, Greenwald mischaracterized the statement by the US State Department to call Israel “apartheid”. The term “apartheid” is only (and always) a political term when applied to Israel (to delegitimize Israel).
“…….Of course, the main reason that [I keep trying to bring in yet another straw man; this one about] the LAWS of apartheid South Africa – which [doesn’t legally] define apartheid – is because they are not applicable to [why] Israel [is called an apartheid state…….”
The laws (and legislation) used by the South African government to maintain “apartheid” is a strawman? It was the laws of South Africa which defined South Africa as an apartheid state – and they were critical to maintaining a legal basis for apartheid. It is hardly a strawman, but when comparing Israel to South Africa, it is important to recognize that Israel doesn’t have anything similar to the laws which defined South African apartheid (since “apartheid” is a separation of races). As Richard Goldstone said (author of the report on Operation Cast Lead for the UN):
“………according to former Judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Richard Goldstone, the situation in Israel does not conform to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute. As examples, Goldstone pointed to the facts that Israeli Arabs vote, have political representation in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on the Israeli Supreme Court, and that Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment. According to Goldstone, in Israel equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal, and inequities are often successfully challenged in court……”
The internal government structure in Israel is not “apartheid”. Of course, this isn’t to deny there is racism and religious discrimination by Israelis, but it is a two way street with Arab racism as well– the expected result of 100 years of conflict, wars and terrorism.
“……..Some of the earliest founders of the [Zionist] movement also believe[d] Israel is a racist state (by definition) – and s[ought] to [preserve] the Jewish majority state [through whatever means necessary]…….”
The Zionism equals racism argument included in UN resolution 3379 completely denies (purposely) the reasons behind the Zionist movement and – for political reasons – is connected falsely to calling the founding of Israel “colonialism”. Israel was not a colonial endeavor. All of these terms of endearment are used for political reasons to delegitimize Israel.
I am not sure what you mean by “through whatever means necessary”, but Israel has land and immigration laws which favor Jews because Jews are a small minority world-wide. Of course, if there were a billion Jews, this wouldn’t be necessary. Israel is the only Jewish-majority state in the world.
“……[So has my usual hypocrisy: I have been wailing about how] the term “apartheid” is used for political propaganda [while using my own political propaganda term,] “radical leftists” [ad nauseum]…….”
HaHaHaHa. That is pathetic Doc.
Thanks Doc
Even some Israeli Jews are rejecting Zionism
I follow several of them on Twitter. But one of the most interesting is Meron Benvenisti. The New Yorkers’s David Remnick interviewed Benvenisti for his 2015 long-form piece, The One State Reality.
There can only be one state. Benvenisti knew this in 1989 — it was already irreversible then. And calling the West Bank and Gaza an “occupation” was already nonsense then — it was already permanent in 1989 — that, by the way, makes it apartheid.
As Benvenisti further says, liberal Zionists who want to make the problem all about settlements are wrong. Zionism is wrong:
The liberal Zionist attempt to reject racism and occupation while retaining political Zionism is the moral equivalent of trying to square the circle.
DocHollywood
“……..As Benvenisti further says, liberal Zionists who want to make the problem all about settlements are wrong. Zionism is wrong…….”
Just another way of saying Zionism is racism. As I said in my response to you, the goal is to delegitimize the Zionist movement and deny the reasons behind Zionism. Burying the truth is part and parcel to their strategy – or outright lying as in comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa.
“…….There can only be one state. Benvenisti knew this in 1989 — it was already irreversible then……”
Yet in 2008, Olmert and Abbas nearly reached a two state agreement. Both maintain that a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is achievable.
About 95% of the time I do not reply to Craig Summers, who is an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter. Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of drivel-text, which pollute the board.
“…….Multiple commenters asked that I not reply to Craig because doing so causes him to post yet more walls of drivel-text, which pollute the board…….”
references to Craigsummers on the thread – 64
references to Mona on the thread – 211
Mona once again proving Mona is a hypocrite.
Many prominent Zionists morally reason like Osama bin Laden
As Max Blumenthal has put it, Zionism kills Palestinian bodies and Jewish souls.
Hi again Mona. I was just trolling the site with my hasbara self and found you’re postings here too. Wow, I really underestimated your commitment to your narrative. I envy your certainty and reliance on articles which help support it, but, not your avoidance of those that don’t. Got to go, Native Americans at my front door. They want my property.
Linda I don’t “avoid” any articles. I don’t have to, even if I were so inclined. You see, I started as a fierce Zionist and I know that narrative. What I didn’t know, however, was the truth.
It was only about 10 years ago I began seriously reconsidering my ardent support for Israel. What changed was: the Internet. The actual facts are all over out here.
It was hard to do a complete volte face. But I did. Because that’s where the facts forced me to go.
My minor in school was philosophy and that’s how I tend to approach my inquiries. Is the US an apartheid nation as well? Many Indians in reservations to this date. Florida has a section of land that is governed by them because they never signed a peace treaty. No US laws are applicable there.
OMG, who gives a sh#t?
Cut all foreign aid and let the chips fall.
End
Israel cannot survive the sea change in world opinion, especially the change among younger American Jews
Zionists are literally panicked that the pro-BDS Jewish Voice for Peace is the fastest growing group on U.S. campuses. The panicked includes former Israeli prison guard , now Atlantic writer, Jeffrey Goldberg:
There’s no stopping it, especially since there’s no stopping the Internet where the truth is found all over. (I and others contribute to that truth-spreading dynamic here and on Twitter.)
At the same conference where Goldberg spoke the above words I quoted, Israeli politician Yitzhak Herzog lamented:
That “influence over American policy” where Israel is concerned is going to be radically dissipated within a generation — when those now in college are in leadership roles and elected office. Young American Jews know what Jewish Zionists did and do to Palestinians, and in increasing numbers they are not having it. Many are overtly anti-Zionist.
It’s just a matter of time before the Palestinians see deep justice – and not a lot of time.
#BDS
craigsummers v craigsummers
The post lightly [edited] for accuracy
There [is very little confusion] surrounding the use of “apartheid” to describe Israel [because my falsehoods are as obvious as usual. Consider my claim that t]he comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa originated at least by 1975 [though the article I cited (Wikipedia) says:
My attempts to relate] the construction of the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank which began after the Six Days War [was at least 6 years after the apartheid state of Israel reference in the source I provided, yet I went even further and] latched on to [a] resolution [passed yet another 8 years after that, and I have been trying to argue my straw man] ever since. M[y m]any [attempts to pass off] this (false) characterization of [the reasons Israel has been labeled an apartheid state have failed]. This has continued until this day. [So has my usual hypocrisy: I have been wailing about how] the term “apartheid” is used for political propaganda [while using my own political propaganda term,] “radical leftists” [ad nauseum].
Some of the earliest founders of the [Zionist] movement also believe[d] Israel is a racist state (by definition) – and s[ought] to [preserve] the Jewish majority state [through whatever means necessary]. Of course, the main reason that [I keep trying to bring in yet another straw man; this one about] the LAWS of apartheid South Africa – which [doesn’t legally] define apartheid – is because they are not applicable to [why] Israel [is called an apartheid state.
From Wikipedia – the reference I cite even though it refutes what I claim:
It is that simple.”
Doc, that is outstanding. Not so much this time for the satire, as for the fact finds. I hadn’t known about South Africa’s PM Verwoerd saying in 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”
I did know about The Rome Statute, but declined to get into it with Craig because he bobs, weaves and dodges until you realize you’re spending all your time here replying to him. He will never, ever admit that Israel fits the definition of apartheid. No. Matter. What.
If Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Knesset acknowledged that Israel is an apartheid state, Craig would still deny it. I’m done wasting my time with him on that one.
Again, great job, Doc.
Thanks, Mona; you’re too kind, to both me and craigsummers. What you refer to as his “bobs, weaves and dodges” I call dishonesty.
I didn’t find the Verwoerd quote; craigsummers did: the whole paragraph is right there in the article he quoted. You can’t miss it, and neither could he.
It doesn’t matter what he admits: everyone knows he’s dishonest, and he knows it too.
Craig found that? Lord have mercy. Well, I don’t read most of his longer posts. The most I do is scan, if even that.
There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the use of “apartheid” to describe Israel. The comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa originated at least by 1975 when the UN passed resolution 3379 which in part stated (Wikipedia):
“…….Taking note also of resolution 77 (XII) adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity at its twelfth ordinary session, held at Kampala from 28 July to 1 August 1975, which considered “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being”…..”
This had nothing to do with the construction of the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank which began after the Six Days War. The resolution says a Jewish-majority state is inherently racist and apartheid. The radical left and the far right latched on to the resolution and have used the comparison to delegitimize the Jewish-majority state ever since. Many on the far left have used this (false) characterization of Israel to promote the one-state solution to the conflict using the fall of apartheid South Africa as the model. This has continued until this day. Mona and most other radical leftists support this characterization of Israel. The founders of the BDS movement also believe Israel is a racist state (by definition) – and seek to end the Jewish majority state. Of course, the main reason that Mona will not reply to the LAWS of apartheid South Africa – which define apartheid – is because they are not applicable to Israel. It is that simple.
In addition, continued settlement construction by successive Israeli governments has led to a completely different use of the term “apartheid” to describe the political rights for Jews within the settlements (who are obviously citizens of Israel) versus the Palestinian Arabs (who are obviously not citizens of Israel) within the West Bank. This is what the Heraatz described in their editorial. This is what Greenwald and the state department referenced in the above article (only the state department made it clear that Israel was moving “towards” a one state solution – or apartheid). In the minds of the different commentators (including Mona), Israel has constructed so many settlements, roads and barriers, that there is no chance for a two state solution leaving either a one state solution to end the conflict where all Palestinians have political rights or apartheid (which would not end the conflict). This is disputed by Olmert and Abbas. This has nothing to do with the Israeli Arabs, who already have political rights, form political parties, serve in the Knesset, serve on the highest court and live in a democracy. It is ridiculous to call the state of Israel “apartheid”.
Many on the radical left have seized the settlement construction in the West Bank to advance the idea that Israel is an apartheid state although this moves the goal post from the original UN resolution. Even if Israel didn’t have any settlements across the Green Line (like before 1967), radical leftists still oppose a Jewish-majority-state and falsely accuse Israel of apartheid (for example, UN resolution 3379). Most extreme leftists like Mona purposely muddy the waters regarding the rights of Israeli-Arab citizens and Palestinian Arabs that are not citizens and live in the West Bank. Palestinian Arabs vote in Palestinian elections when they hold them (remember Hamas being elected to power?). For political purposes, the entire Jewish-majority state is labeled apartheid because of the settlements (like Greenwald), but no one can deny that opposition to a Jewish majority state is underpinned by far left wing political activists falsely calling “Zionism equivalent to racism” and falsely labeling Israel “apartheid” as outlined under UN resolution 3379. The LAWS which defined Apartheid South Africa simply are non-existent in Israel.
Finally, the succession of Israeli governments has allowed opposition to a Jewish majority state to gain traction by allowing the settlement enterprise to continue unabated for decades. The IJC ruled the settlements illegal (although the Oslo Accords allowed some wiggle room for the final borders), and the Israelis are clearly denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination. Israelis are losing the international propaganda war – and no one can be blamed, but Israel.
Abbas and Olmert rightly believe a two state solution is still achievable, but it is not going to happen while Netanyahu is leading the Jewish people. For that reason, the term “apartheid” is incorrectly used for political propaganda.
http://www.itisapartheid.org/get_informed.html
The paper’s name is Haaretz.
At least get the names of you sources straight.
Craig simply cannot abide the reality that Israel is an apartheid state. Myriad Israelis themselves say it is. Really, for any in doubt I set forth below all they need to know. Coupled with what Greenwald wrote above re: what Ehud Barak said about “permanent occupation” (which Netanyahu has declared) equaling apartheid.
Israel is certainly an apartheid state in a sense far surpassing the premise of that article. That is, if apartheid can be viewed as the systemic political racial discrimination of a particular race in a multi racial context, Israel has been an apartheid state from its inception in 1948: while the Arab community has had voting rights since the 50’s, there has always been a discrepancy between government monetary support of Jewish and Arab communities. For every dollar payed to an Arab community, an equivalent Jewish one would receive 10 or more; while, since 1948, the number of Jewish centers – villages, towns, and cities – had multiplied tenfold, not a single new Arab settlement had been established.
Israel’s myth of entitlement to Palestinian land doesn’t hold up to ANY form of scrutiny.
1) There is no validity to the notion that everything any of your ancestors ever owned, now belongs to you. That fraudulent assertion ignores all of the families who have had rightful ownership of the (hypothetical) property in the thousands of years SINCE then, and PRIOR TO then.
2) There is no foundation to presume that a 2000 year old ancestor owned anything AT ALL (let alone nearly all of Palestine).
3) The Jewish Middle Easterners of two millennia ago are NOT ancestors to the Jewish Europeans and Americans who have violently annexed Palestine, so even if a person is stupid enough to embrace a fraud that asserts that descendants of people who left two thousand years ago should be allowed to come back and take over a country, that STILL wouldn’t validate the European-American takeover of Palestine.
4) There is no validity to the notion that a group of hostile foreigners are entitled to take over a country on the basis that they are members of a religion that has a history in that region. If a collection of foreigners worshiped Odin, that wouldn’t give them the right to perpetrate a genocidal annexation of Norway, on the basis that the current inhabitants are a bunch of Christians who don’t belong on their ancient Viking land (nor would Israel or America support them in such an attempt).
There is no justification for Israel’s genocidal annexation of Palestine; the Israeli occupation of Palestine is based on nothing but the sense of entitlement of a group of Europeans, and the violent FORCE of the English-American Empire.
“genocidal annexation?”
Palestinians attacked the Jews!
Jews defended themselves.
I am long past being surprised by how crudely dishonest Zionists are.
Palestinians shouting “The Jews are our dogs!” & “Islam was spread by the sword.” were murdering innocent Jews in 1920, 1921 & 1929.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
That’s because Europeans (Jewish Europeans) were taking over their land, villages and cities in an explicitly European colonial project. Jewish Europeans were taking over and kicking all Arabs out of local employment.
All indigenous peoples respond with aggression toward invading colonial settlers — Native Americans did vis-a-vis the European settlers here in what would become the United States. (And for some time after it was the U.S.)
The Jews were buying land from Arabs happy to sell.
Jewish money boosted the economy creating lots of new jobs.
Arabs migrated to Jewish areas from surrounding countries.
Most of the land the Jews bought was of poor quality.
Jews drained the swamps which eliminated insects thereby increasing health & life expectancy of both Jew & Arab.
Why did these Jews deserve to die?
Palestinians were also murdering indigenous Jews.
Why did those Jews deserve to die?
Europeans (Jewish Europeans) were taking over all the Arab land, villages and cities in an explicitly European colonial project. Jewish Europeans were taking over and kicking all Arabs out of local employment. (The Arabs “happy to sell” were absentee landlords. The Jews exploited the greed of the wealthy Arabs who didn’t live there.)
But buying land was never going to be enough. By 1923 Jabotisnsky made clear there would have to be ethnic cleansing and force. The Arabs, as Jabotisnsky insisted, understood the Zionist Jews would do this. And they did. They couldn’t get it all from buying land from wealthy, absentee, Arab landlords.
All indigenous peoples respond with aggression toward invading colonial settlers — Native Americans did vis-a-vis the European settlers here in what would become the United States. (And for some time after it was the U.S.)
Evidence that buying land wasn’t going to be enough?
@Jack Green:
I’m not sure whether you’re a professional troll or just an idiot with far too much time on your hands.
Just about everyquestion you float here has already been answered ad nauseam by many here. At best what you’re doing here is trolling: trying to disrupt things by endlessly repeating the same already debunked crap.
Yes, initially Zionists bought land from absentee land lords.
But ultimately the Zionists resorted to forcible evictions during the 1948 war. This is a simple matter of record, not in dispute by any major historian, including Zionist ones.
Benny Morris, one of the New Historians instrumental in exposing the ethnic cleansing now mainly regrets that it didn’t go far enough!
Palestinians started the war in 1947. The Jewish army was trying to bring supplies to Jews under attack, but these convoys were being attacked from Arab villages near the roads. In self-defense, the Jewish army forced the eviction of the Arabs who lived in those villages. No one would have been killed & no one would have been displaced if Palestinians had not been murdering innocent Jews.
For the same reason(s) that German Nazis “deserve to die”.
Palestinians “were also murdering” Palestinians? That’s not very Christian.
Because your zios murdered the English language.
For what reason(s) did German Nazis deserve to die?
Why did 6,000,000 Jews deserve to die and for what reason(s) do 10,000,000+ Palestinians deserve to remain ethnically cleansed or be subjected to Zionist grand apartheid indefinitely?
Your unsurprisingly dishonest reference is to indigenous Palestinian Jewish people.
Zionists call them far worse than anything their fellow Palestinians have ever called them, even during the course of those riots, where BOTH sides killed over a hundred people.
Israel’s monstrous lies are no match for Israel’s monstrous truth:
Israelis chanting, “There’s no school tomorrow, there’s no children left in Gaza!”
In CELEBRATION of Israel’s mass-murder of innocent Palestinian children.
In 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7qFACSfd_k
What is dishonest about my reference is to indigenous Palestinian Jewish people?
“The riots took the form, in the most part, of attacks by Arabs on Jews ”
” 110 Arabs were killed and 232 were injured, the vast majority by the British police while trying to suppress the riots”
I bestowed Zionist invaders with false legitimacy.
I can only apologize.
But while you’re at it, read the rest.
The early Zionists were legal immigrants.
We don’t use the term “invaders” to refer to legal immigrants.
Yes you do.
Only a fool relies on Wikipedia regarding events in Palestine.
Reality:
On May 1, 1921 large scale violence broke out in Jaffa and elsewhere in which 90 Jews and 62 Arabs were killed and many more wounded. The clashes were ignited in Tel Aviv and spread to Jaffa when Jewish socialists began protesting against Jewish communists who were parading in support of a Soviet Palestine. These disturbances by a foreign minority that espoused alien ideologies and showed little respect for local customs and mores (e.g. Jewish women dressing immodestly in public) were an unacceptable affront to Palestinians. As they saw it, their country and way of life were under siege from within by interlopers who as the 1919 King-Crane Commission had asserted, intended to dispossess them. They could take no more and vented their rage by attacking Zionists in their midst.
In 1925, Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Zionist zealot from Poland, founded the fascistic Betar or Brown Shirts along with the Revisionist Party (origin of today’s Likud) which advocated “revision” of the British Mandate to include forcible Jewish colonization of then Transjordan in addition to Palestine. Such Jewish extremism, along with the racist rants of Rabbi Kook and threats against the Dome of the Rock by Revisionist demonstrators led to the terrible and bloody riots of 1929, resulting in the deaths of 133 Jews in Hebron and elsewhere.
Although never acknowledged by Israel and its supporters, hundreds of Hebron’s Jews were taken in and protected by Muslims. Tragically, 64 of Hebron’s Jews died, but 650 were saved. Throughout the country 133 Jews were killed and 339 wounded while Palestinians suffered 116 dead and 232 wounded.
Vincent Sheean, an eminent American journalist who arrived in Palestine as a pro-Zionist just days before the riots erupted, was shocked at what he saw: As he later wrote: “I was bitterly indignant with the Zionists for having, as I believed, brought on the disaster…. [W]hy couldn’t the Zionists leave it [Palestine] alone, it would never hold enough Jews to make even a beginning towards the solution of the Jewish problem; it would always be a prey to such ghastly horrors as those I saw everyday and every night….” (Vincent Sheean, Personal History, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. 1935)
Bitterly ironic is the fact that most Jews living in Hebron in 1929 were anti-Zionist. They were the descendants of the Sephardim who had founded the city’s Jewish Quarter near the tomb of the Patriarchs in the 1500’s after Jews were expelled from Spain and then welcomed and given sanctuary in the Arab world. Their numbers increased somewhat during the early 1900’s with the arrival of Hasidim from Poland who came to study. Many Muslims who were driven out of Spain by the Christians also moved to Hebron. Prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived together harmoniously in Hebron for 400 years with the Jews always forming a small minority. There were very few if any Christians in the city.
The friendship that existed between Muslims and Jews in Hebron was attested to by Israeli journalist Chaim Hanegbi, whose great grandfather was the city’s last Rabbi: “My grandfather lived very peacefully with his Arab neighbours…. His family joined the grape harvest every year, and the [Muslim] neighbours cooked kosher food so the Jews could share the feasts with them.” (Canada’s Globe and Mail, February 18, 1997)
It should also be noted that in the spirit of reconciliation, Hebron’s mayor has stated publicly that he and his fellow Muslims would welcome the descendants of the city’s Jews if they chose to return and replace the Zionist fanatics who are presently there.
So it’s OK to murder Jews, even indigenous Jews, because some Jewish women exposed their arms?
You are a hasbara troll, as I explain and describe here. That’s been debunked to you many, many times. I won’t debunk it yet it again, not unless asked by someone else in good faith. You are lying.
Jack Green
Utter nonsense.
To wit:
The UNGA Partition Plan (Res. 181, 29 Nov. 1947) and subsequent events:
Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan (UNGA Res. 181, Nov. 29/47) for entirely justified reasons based on international law. While Jews made up just 31% of the population (90% of foreign origin, only 30% had become citizens, thousands were illegal immigrants) and privately owned only between 6% and 7% of the land, the Partition Plan (recommendatory only, no legal foundation, contrary to the British Class A Mandate and the Atlantic Charter, never adopted by the UNSC) outrageously recommended they receive 56% of Palestine (including its most fertile areas) in which Palestinians made up 45% of the population. (10% of Palestine’s Jewish population consisted of native Palestinian/Arab Jews who were vehemently anti-Zionist.)
48% of the total land area of mandated Palestine was privately owned (‘mulk khaas’) by Palestinian Arabs. As noted, total Jewish privately owned land was only between 6% and 7%. About 45% of the total land area was state owned, i.e. by citizens of Palestine, and it was comprised of Communal Property (‘mashaa’), Endowment Property, (‘waqf’), and Government Property, (‘miri’.) (The British Mandate kept an extensive land registry and the UN used the registry during its early deliberations. It has in its archives 453,000 records of individual Palestinian owners defined by name, location & area.)
Although Palestinian Arab citizens made up at least 69% of the population and to repeat, privately owned 48% of the land, the Partition Plan recommended they receive only 42% as a state. (The 2% of Palestine comprised of Jerusalem and Bethlehem was to be placed under international control, a corpus separatum.)
No wonder Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan. Indeed, it proved so unworkable that when Polish born David Ben-Gurion (nee, David Gruen) et al. declared the “Jewish State” of Israel effective 15 May 1948 (after Jewish forces had already dispossessed and expelled 400,000 Palestinians – e.g., 30,000 from West Jerusalem in March (and a further 30,000 in May), 60,000 from Haifa in April, 75,000 from Jaffa in late April and early May), the UNGA was in the process of shelving the Partition Plan in favor of a UN Trusteeship.
When war erupted due to necessary intervention by reluctant outnumbered/outgunned Arab state armies to stem the accelerating expulsion of Palestinians, a US proposed cease-fire was accepted by the Arab League but rejected by Israel.
During the war Israel seized 78% of Palestine (22% more than the Partition Plan recommended, including large portions of the proposed Palestinian state, e.g., Jaffa), expelled 400,000 more Palestinians for a total of about 800,000 and went on to destroy over 500 of their towns and villages, including churches, mosques and cemeteries. It was only the beginning.
The June 1967 War:
At 7:45 AM on 5 June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt and thereby, Jordan and Syria who each shared a mutual defense pact with Egypt. The attack took place just hours before Egypt’s VP was to fly to Washington for a prearranged June 7th meeting with the Johnson administration to defuse the crisis between Egypt and Israel based on an agreement worked out in Cairo between Nasser and Johnson’s envoy, Robert Anderson. In a cable sent to Johnson on May 30, Israel’s PM Eshkol promised not to attack Egypt until June 11 to give diplomacy a chance to succeed. However, on June 4, when it heard about the June 7th meeting and the distinct possibility that it would rule out war, Israel’s cabinet ordered its armed forces to attack Egypt the next day. In short, the war was another massive land grab by Israel.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Minister without portfolio in Eshkol’s cabinet, while addressing Israel’s National Defence College on 8 August 1982: “In June, 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” (New York Times, 21 August 1982)
Meir Amit, chief of Israel’s Mossad: “Egypt was not ready for a war and Nasser did not want a war.”
Prime Minister Eshkol: “The Egyptian layout in the Sinai and the general military buildup there testified to a military defensive Egyptian set-up south of Israel.” (Yediot Aharonot, l8 October 1967)
BTW, as the UN Emergency Force (UNEF)Commander, Major General Idar Jit Rikhye, revealed, Nasser was not enforcing the blockade of the Tiran straits: “[The Egyptian] navy had searched a couple of ships after the establishment of the blockade and thereafter relaxed its implementation.”
In 1947, the scholars at Al-Azhar University (The highest authority in Sunni Islam.) declared holy war to return Palestine to Islamic rule.
The Arabs weren’t willing to let the Jews rule over even one square inch of land.
The Palestinians didn’t owe your filthy foreign zio-Jew invader colonizer terrorist murderer pigs even one square inch of Palestine.
Just because gentiles were the majority, that doesn’t mean that the gentiles have a right to rule ALL the land. The principle of …self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations’ embraces the right of all peoples ‘freely to determine, without external interference, their political status.” That means that the Jews living in Palestine had the right to govern themselves. Also, Jews have an historic claim to Palestine. If you dig in Palestine, you will find ancient Jewish synagogues, ancient Jewish ritual baths & ancient Jewish coins.
Even if several millennia were not enough to extinguish any claim (it is in any Western legal system), they are not the Jews that colonized Palestine and founded Israel. European Jews — almost entirely Ashkenazim — began an aggressive colonial enterprise to take over Palestine.
Ashkenazim DNA carries markers that originated in Poland (or Eastern Europe) 600-800 years ago. Benjamin Netanyahu is of Polish ethnicity; his father’s surname for most of his life was Mileikowsky.
If Ashkenazi Jews are actually Eastern European, why is it that on average European Jews have darker hair & darker eyes than the gentiles? For example, in Lithuania, 84% of Jews have dark hair, but only 16% of Lithuanians have dark hair. 63% of Jews have dark eyes, but only 14% of Lithuanians have dark eyes.
Zionism attacked your brain!
Your brain cells genocided themselves.
Below, Zionist Jonah claims pre-State Israel was land that was also the Jews and so they couldn’t have “stolen” it or “oppressed” the Palestinians.
Unfortunately for Jonah, the historical record on that is clear and he is either mistaken or lying. Vladimir Jabotinsky is the second father of Zionism (Herzl being the first). Writing in Palestine throughout the 1920s, Jabotinsky was adamant that ethnic cleansing — theft of land — of the “savage” indigenous Arabs was crucial to political Zionism. In his Iron Wall speech he wrote:
And we’ve been seeing Zionist notions of a “civilized world” ever since. The Arabs, Jabotinsky admitted, were “the native population” — Jewish terrorists evacuated them and stole the land. The Zionist “civilized world” includes apartheid. It includes maintaining its victims in an open air prison and regularly bombing them. It includes burning their homes down and murdering an Arab infant in the fire, and leaving his 4-year-old brother an orphan, and severely burned.
Zionist terrorists were Jabotinsky disciples, as was Benjamin Netanyahu’s father. They made sure the ethnic cleansing did take place, and along the way got their pictures posted on Palestine Police wanted posters (wanted for terrorism).
It would happen that Israel elected two men on these wanted posters as Prime Minister: Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
Dozens of streets in Israel are named in honor of Zionist terrorists. Israel does not reject terrorism, except when its victims turn to it.
#BDS
How can Jabotinsky be a father of Zionism when Zionists were already arriving in Palestine when Jabotinsky was only 2 years old?
You cannot read. I wrote: “Jabotinsky is the second father of Zionism.” Theodor Herzl was the first.
Herzl was an advocate of settler colonialism, but not all of his followers were. There were multiple Zionisms in Palestine and around the world. Some, such as Judah Magnes (the first president of Hebrew University) rejected political Zionism, and wanted to co-exist peacefully with the indigenous Arabs.
Magnes and the rest of the spiritual Zionists lost — Jabotinsky’s violent, thieving Zionism prevailed.
Jabotinsky would not have won if Palestinians had not been murdering innocent Jews.
There’s no evidence for that, at all. Both sides were killing one another, but only one side was invading and trying to take over the other side’s land — the Zionist side was invading and trying to take all the Palestinian land.
The Arabs knew Jabotinsky was right that to get the land the Zionists would have to steal and ethnically cleanse — they would never be able to get it all by buying. They were European invaders and terrorists — they even committed terrorism against the British and politically “wrong” fellow Jews.
“…The riots took the form, in the most part, of attacks by Arabs…”
“… while 110 Arabs were killed and 232 were injured, the vast majority by the British police while trying to suppress the riots…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
The 2 sides were not equally guilty. Palestinians were clearly the aggressors.
The early Zionists arrived as legal immigrants. We don’t use the term “invaders” with reference to legal immigrants.
The Zionists were trying to take Palestinian land by BUYING it. People don’t deserve to be murdered for BUYING land.
Jews didn’t need ALL the land. There was still plenty of land available for sale. Evidence that Jews would have to steal? Evidence that Jews would have to ethnically cleanse? Evidence that the Jews who were murdered were terrorists?
Divesting is best way way to move the U.S. away from Israel. Universities and private corps. and lead the way. Changing the conversation about the U.S being a friend of Israel to one is that”palling around with with a terrorist nation”DIVEST,DIVEST,DIVEST NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
terrorist nation?
Once again, the US Criticizes Israel stale threat. How about finding out what does Donald and Hillary have to say about the continued West Bank expansion and retaliation crimes. Right now, they will say nothing meaningful, but when one of them is elected, their administration public relations song will again be the same. When it comes to Israel, all US politicians are a bunch of lying hypocrites.
Michael Chabon is arguably the best U.S. novelist in a generation; I certainly like his work. Jewish identity and culture, as well as Israel, have had been themes in his books.
Chabon and his wife, fellow novelist Ayelet Waldman, recently returned from touring the East Bank. Chabon is having a crisis of conscience; his support for Israel is in serious question.
He and his wife are two of two dozen U.S. novelists who are in the process of compiling a collection of essays on the occupation. Chabon has said he doesn’t care if Zionist readers will now refuse to read him.
An excerpt from his interview in the Jewish magazine, Forward:
Note the last two words: “at least.” Often, intellectually honest people such as Chabon sure seems to be, realize it goes back to 1948, not 1967. The “at least” leaves him room to end up there.
Brain fart: when I wrote “from touring the East Bank” I meant WEST.
Below, AtheistinChief tells me something I truly did not know, to wit, that the new $38 billion aid package to Israel no longer permits Israel to spend any of that amount on its own defense industry. AiC cites as a trustworthy source an Israeli economist now living and doing graduate work in Berlin, Shir Hever.
I found an interview of Hever at The RealNews. The military aid to Israel we American taxpayers pay for is even more evil than it sounds. When we give that money and the Israelis buy from our defense industry, we then expect the Israelis to showcase how well our stuff works by killing people with it, including Palestinians:
Critically, tho, Hever points out that Obama really did get some revenge on Netanyahu with this deal, shoving down his throat some conditions Netanyahu detests:
It’s still morally repugnant, arming the murderous Israeli regime and using it to enrich our own rotted and corrupt defense industry. But it does still keep Israel very well armed to kill Palestinians and others. It’s disgusting.
Thank you AiC for bringing this point, and Mr. Hever, to my attention. I agree that Glenn needs to read this.
Israel has not been invaded since 1973 because Israel has become strong thanks to us. By arming Israel we have prevented an invasion thereby preventing thousands of deaths.
Revoking this privilege may help the US arms companies, but it’s bad for the US because Israel develops weapons that we need faster & cheaper than American arms companies.
Jack Green is a hasbara troll as I have explained below. The gross immorality of Zionists is on display in this troll.
Not to mention being a schmuck as well.
THIS Jew knows the difference between the Zionists ( with their blasphemous flag) and TRUE Jews (who follow Torah)!
It’s hard to accuse Israel of apartheid when it already has accepted immigrants of many different racial and ethnic backgrounds and enabled them to attain financial and even political success.
On the other hand, despite Arafat’s promises of a “nonsectarian” Palestine, the very instant that the Palestinian Authority got land and autonomy under the Oslo Agreement, it promptly re-instated the old Muslim law of Dhimmitude — permanent second-class citizenship of all non-Muslims; they cannot be civil servants, they cannot be bosses of Muslim employees, they cannot be military officers, they cannot enroll in colleges, their churches must be small and cannot preach various teachings, they must wear or not wear certain clothes, etc. etc. The former South African apartheid at least pretended that Blacks could attain some separate-but-equal prosperity but Islamic dhimmitude is intended to grind down non-Muslims in misery forever.
1. The title is fallacious: the US warns of “a one-state reality of perpetual occupation”, not apartheid.
2. Israels DO NOT have a universal health care, but a public-private combination, where to receive health care one must be a member of a health organization (there are 3 or 4), which oblige all to pay a membership fees ranging from $100 upward, depending on the coverage they wish to guarantee. Without the fee one has no access, and the minimal fees incur the equivalent of a meeting with a nurse and perhaps aspirin.
3. The section about Clinton is completely political and has nothing to do with the topic.
News people can and should have a political agenda, but should be wary of spreading falsehoods or political propaganda.
A one-state reality of perpetual occupation is apartheid. I’ll just repost part of a post I posted below.
Yitzhak Rabin, when he was prime minister of Israel, gave a secret interview in stating that the situation that has now come to exist would be apartheid. He rejected and was appalled by the settlement movement of his time of 1976. Since then, the settlements have — as Rabin feared feared, and to quote him — shown they are “a cancer in the tissue of Israel’s democratic society.” And they’ve entrenched undeniable apartheid.
Rabin:
That’s what Israel has. The West Bank is de facto Israel now, because of the settlement movement. (A former Shin Bit director, Yuval Diskin, has said this, and that settler Jews themselves have created “two states,” one of them under one law for Jews, and another for Arabs.)
In 2015 Netanyahu told the Knesset that with regard to the occupied territories, Israel “must control the entire area for the foreseeable future.” The Israeli paper Haaretz then editorialized that Netanyahu had thus:
As for your nonsense about the article’s observations regarding Clinton being “political,” you are amusing. I promise you, her position has everything to do with Israel and it’s apartheid status; everything about Israel/U.S.-Palestine is “political,” all the way down.
I did not and do not say Israel is not an apartheid state, only that the US DID NOT admit to it, and the attempt of Greenwald to associate the financial support with the US response to Israel’s increase of settlements is interpretive, not factual, and because of it, unnecessarily incendiary and misleading.
As to the Clinton comment in the article, I do not see the relevancy to the issue of Israel receiving financial support (probably the majority of which will be in the form of military equipment, not civilian expanses; another issue that the article fails to divulge, except with the inaccurate comment about free health care, is what the money might be used for, or why it is given in the first place).
Oh please, it’s entirely factual: For decades the U.S. has muttered tepid things about Israel needing to also be a peace partner, and oh gee, maybe it shouldn’t build any more settlements. Now it’s getting stronger in the denunciations AND Israel is getting more money.
There’s a standing joke online to the effect that if Israel wants $100 billion or some other outrageous amount, it should take over all of the West Bank and maybe start on Jordan. Because the U.S. fucking rewards it every time with more money to not be peaceful.
Glenn’s factual argument on that point is actually standard fare. Moreover, journalists interpret facts every day.
Finally, the headline to the above article is not literally true. However, what Glenn wrote in the piece is: What the State Department described and condemned is a description of apartheid; State simply didn’t use the word. But many, many others do, including many Israelis.
” it’s entirely factual”
If it is, why doesn’t he even try to give some numerical support as to the connection between US money and settlements? If it is a known fact, as you say (“standard fare”), where are the references to those facts?
if “the headline to the above article is not literally true”, what purpose does it serve?
The apartheid in Israel goes far beyond the settlements and the military occupation in the west bank and Gaza; it is a systemic discrimination against any non-Jew communities in Israel, and it is puzzling that Greenwald fails to mention that.
Finally, ” journalists interpret facts every day”, yes, but I expect better from people whose views I generally accept, and certainly more than the rudimentary description of the situation in Israel (not to mentions the heath-care falsehood, or the child mortality and life expectancy, both of which can be explained as a result of different priorities, or the less predatory capitalism and the socialist past of Israel).
Now you’re just being tendentious and silly:
You appear to think all points require “numerical” support, but this is not so. Logical reasoning does not depend upon numbers. Neither does irony. Greenwald is reasoning logically to make an ironic point — this has all clearly sailed right over your head.
As for the rest of your nonsense, I don’t care enough about the nature of the Israeli healthcare system to determine whether you are accurate, but suspect you are not based on the poor reasoning your otherwise demonstrate where I do know the terrain. Your complaint about the disparate child mortality rates and life expectancy rates for Israel and the U.S. do not undermine Greenwald’s claim.
In sum, your arguments are simply not well thought out; they are very poor.
If you argue the US aid to Israel support settlements and/or apartheid, establishing that claim is irrelevant? I thought reasoning means giving reasons, not putting unrelated statements in a single sentence.
My knowledge of the healthcare situation in Israel comes from being born and living there for the first half of my life, and from personal experience in the past ten years, when visiting there. Greenwald tries to associate US aid with heath care, life expectancy and child mortality; the fact that the first is false and the other two can be explained in other ways than US taxpayers money certainly undermine his claims, or in the least question them.
I am not sure what’s the purpose of “tendentious and silly”, or “your nonsense” or “your arguments are simply not well thought out; they are very poor.”. In other words, how is your attitude towards my comments relevant to pressing your views?
Not my attitude. Your commentary has devolved into tendentious and silly. Usually, I ignore that sort of thing, so I’m making clear, mostly for other readers, that I now grasp that’s the nature of your “arguments.”
Only a moron would fail to see the logical relevance when writing of a country supposedly strongly objecting to Nation A doing X, of also writing that the same country then gives Nation A TONS OF MONEY that will in part be used to do X. Or, a troll posting tendentious and silly distractions. S/he would also post claims not to see logical relevance.
If you have counter arguments, please present them. “moron”, however, is not.
The fact that the state of Israel is dependent on US aid does not establish a direct support of the US of anything Israel does. That Israel abuse that aid to propagate an agenda of its own does not in itself make that (Israeli) agenda a US objective.
Like Glenn, you also assume that a statement is a fact: how is my commentary “tendentious and silly”? How are my comments irrelevant?
That’s right, “moron” is not an argument — it’s a descriptor. Of you. The argument is:
If reducing the argument to form still can’t help it penetrate your skull, you cannot be helped.
“and the military occupation in the west bank and Gaza”
There is no military occupation in the West Bank. Try to keep up, people, Israel withdrew in 2005. By which point, interestingly, the rocket attacks increased.
The military enclosure of Gaza and the absolute control of comings and goings on three sides (and a hostile Egyptian military on the fourth) IS an occupation. Remember that Gaza is roughly 7km x 50km in size, with no port or airport. While the IDF does not roam the roads of Gaza, it is definitely present i many real and oppressive aspects.
“The apartheid in Israel goes far beyond the settlements and the military occupation in the west bank and Gaza”
Gaza is not occupied! Israel withdrew in 2005. By which point, interestingly, Palestianian rocket attacks against Israel intensified.
“it is a systemic discrimination against any non-Jew communities in Israel, and it is puzzling that Greenwald fails to mention that.”
Are you sure? As far as I’ve heard, Arab citizens of Israel have far less of a dislike against their state than Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank. They are equal citizens de jure, but discriminated against de facto, in a way similar to the situation of African-Americans in the US. That’s not a pleasant situation, but it does not by a long shot call for the term apartheid.
Arabs in Israel are limited in where they can live, where they can work, and where they be entertained. Since the inception of Israel in 1948 NOT A SINGLE new Arab settlement was built, despite a similar population growth. In terms of government services – education, infrastructure, healthcare, and so on – Arab cities and villages get much less than Jewish ones. Similar to the US Stop ‘n Frisk, Arabs walking in Jewish neighborhoods are habitually accosted by Jewish policemen, looked suspiciously by all or most Jews, and when a terror attack occurs, are sometimes attacked by Jewish mobs.
You are right that the discrimination is de-facto, but it is far worst than being unpleasant, and its pervasiveness in all social levels – from governmental discrimination to street level attacks – makes it, in the least, a de-facto apartheid. (I also doubt that describing the systemic discrimination against African-American as “not a pleasant situation”) is an adequate designation.)
NIr, The occupation thing is a red herring that could be solved if the Palestinian National leadership was “more representative of its body politic. So far, it is corrupt and even if I were a Palestinian, any kind of Palestinian state that would be in place, the current state of affairs, as “not good” as it is, is better than being lead by the people that run it at this time. Sounds strange, but that is the truth.
As to the Health services. Prior to the nationalization of the HMOs if you weren’t a subscriber, you didn’t have any medical insurance. Now, all the plans are subsidized so that it is covered by your taxes. Since then, there have been surcharges and co-pays that didn’t exist then, but they are hardly as much as you seem to insinuate. For the record, though, all the HMOs have added “other services” that do cost extra that were never in the plans such as Complimentary Alternative Medical service, Dental Insurance, Cosmetic surgery, and other services. Even with those, it is not exorbitant. Indeed, it has come to a point where the “alternatives”. such as Acupuncture, Homeopathy, and Naturopathy, are a preferred way for many subscribers of the plans over Conventional Medicine–and the cost is quite reasonable. Nir, it is universal, with surcharges and copays, and those that chose the for-pay services participate willingly
The fact that 4 million Palestinian leave with almost no political rights, under a military occupation (or surrounded by a hostile military in Gaza) is a red Herring?
As to health services, in the last time I worked in Israel, I paid nearly $5,000 a year in health taxes, on top of income tax. On top of that, if you want full health coverage you are required to pay more than $300 a month. even If the care is subsidized beyond that, it is not free. It is understandable why Americans might mistake it for a free health care, though it is anything but.
Mona
“…….When so many prominent Israelis say “apartheid,” you have already lost the argument……..”
The term “apartheid” is used for political purposes and has no application to Israel. That should be fairly obvious since Israel was compared to South Africa even before there were any significant settlements (see UN resolution 3379, for example). Should I post the laws passed in South Africa one more time so you can see (again and again and again etc.) what apartheid really looks like Mona? It’s understandable why you refuse to address the “laws”.
Readers: I respond to Mona 99.999% of the time, but I reserve the right not to respond .001% of the time (if I know she is going to win the argument).
In this thread I have addressed Craig Summers several times for the limited purpose of the apartheid topic. In this comment I definitively demonstrate that reasonable people admit that Israel is an apartheid state, and that includes admissions from prominent Israeli Jews such as the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
About 95% of the time, however, and at the request of multiple other commenters, I ignore Craig Summers for being an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter who posts massive walls of drivel. Substantively replying to him causes him to post yet more of the walls of text
Again without addressing the LAWS of apartheid…….oh well, details.
In this comment I definitively demonstrate that reasonable people admit that Israel is an apartheid state, and that includes admissions from prominent Israeli Jews such as the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. (Rabin was not a moron, neither is Ehud Barak. Craig should go scream at them about “the LAWS of apartheid…..oh well, details.”)
“………(Rabin was not a moron, neither is Ehud Barak. Craig should go scream at them about “the LAWS of apartheid…..oh well, details.”)…..”
That is where politics takes over. Regardless, they aren’t here, you are. So I am asking you. Oh never mind Mona. But you better start searching for a response to that. So far you have fallen woefully short. The main reason is that you have no answer. Find me the laws in Israel that show Israel is identical to Apartheid South Africa.
No Phenomenon X is ever “identical” to another Phenomenon X in human affairs. You are loading your questions, asking for evidence of things I never claimed.
You also tap dance around Rabin, Barak and so many other Israelis by simply spewing: “politics.” Which makes no sense –Rabin’s comments were given off the record, in secret, not intended for public consumption. That’s the opposite of saying anything for political reasons — that’s when people tell the most truth. It’s just a truth you deeply dislike.
This is how you are. This is why so many beg me to ignore you — to avoid yet more inane and fallacious rants from you swamping the board.
So, now I shall revert to entirely ignoring you in this thread, with the possible exception of linking to any replies I’ve already made, and/or stating that I’m otherwise ignoring you.
Jonah write:
1. Those who benefit in the US are the defense contractors and those politicians they contribute to, as well as others in the chain, not the US people as a whole.
2. The money could be spent in the US on things that benefit US citizens. Therefore it causes harm to the US people by depriving them of the benefit of their efforts.
3. The arms Israel buys increase anger at the US, with various consequences.
4. These weapons become part of the package that allows Israel to continue suppression of the Palestinians.
Draw your own conclusions about those who make this happen.
What Jonah wrote isn’t even true. Alone among those nations to whom the U.S. gives military aid, Israel is allowed to spend a large amount of it enriching THEIR OWN DEFENSE INDUSTRY.
Apparently Jonah actually is — and for once — right about his claim. Israel forced this change on Netanyahu as I posted about here.
I am right about everything, Mona. You should also read about some of the onerous conditions imposed on Israel in exchange for the Military credits.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-one-Time-to-walk-away-from-US-aid-462677
No, actually, you are ususally wrong, and never admit it when that’s demonstrated. (I, by contrast, immediately admit it on the relatively rare occasions when I’m wrong in my fact claims. The great care I take to avoid factual errros isn’t foolproof.)
@Nuf Said
Dude,
I read your posts. It is absolutely clear to me that you’re a highly intelligent person who’s knowledgeable about many issues. I can almost always follow your logic on any given subject. But when it comes to the subject of Jews, your brain becomes an abject fucking racist mess, and I can’t believe you can’t see how you twist your own logic into any convoluted bullshit you want to spew.
Shylock
What the fuck is wrong with Shylock exactly? Shylock “the character” was a prisoner of his time. As a Jew in Venice (in the play), he is not allowed to practice a trade, and has no chance to make a living other than to be a moneylender. And in any given society, whether there was a Jew there or not, money-lending that is unregulated (which it almost always was), automatically led to usury. Money-lending and usury has nothing to do with Jews. It’s the nature of the fucking trade. And Jews were forced into that money-lending trade by the racist laws in Europe.
And what exactly did Shakespeare know about Jews? Had he ever met one? Go ahead and tell me there was a Jew in England in the 16th Century. He was relying on stereotypes to tell his story. That’s your expert, who you tout as your authority on Jews? Next you’ll be telling me Shakespeare was an expert on Roman history because he wrote Julius Caesar. You know it’s bullshit. You know it. I know you know it. And yet you keep repeating the same horseshit about Shylock every chance you get. It’s quite literally the pettiest form of anti-semitism I’ve come across. I heard it as a fucking child, and you’re still talking about it.
In many ways, Shylock is a genius character by Shakespeare, of a marginalized citizen seeking justice, angry justice. Read Max Blumenthal’s 51 Day war. Near the end, you will discover that Palestinian students who read The Merchant of Venice identify the most with Shylock in his quest for Justice. Yes Justice. Palestinian students identify not with Antonio, but with Shylock. Shylock is not a fucking villain, if you read the Play carefully.
Jews and Judaism
The other thing you do is you assign a premeditation and a purpose to Jewish behavior, according to you, determined by an accurate knowledge and understanding of their scripture. The only other person that I know of that does this shit constantly is Sam Harris, who gives every Muslim a similar behavioral pattern. According to Sam Harris every Muslim is acutely aware of their scripture and is seeking the Caliphate and planning on killing all Non-Muslims. I will fucking guarantee you that the vast majority of Muslims (yes, the vast majority of Muslims) on this fucked up planet have never heard of the goddamn Caliphate and don’t know what the fuck it is. I remember it from fairy tales like Arabian Nights and Scheherazade, of some Kingdom in Arabia in the fairy tale past (a long, long, time ago… kind of past), not some future destination. Sam Harris is probably more of an expert on whatever the hell “the Caliphate” is, than any Muslim alive. And you do the same thing. You pretend that Israel was born out of scripture. They almost accepted Israel in South fucking America. So don’t tell me Israel happened because of Scripture.
If you tell Europeans, that if they kill the savages and settle the lands, it’ll be there property, you can conquer the West. And if you tell somebody that they’ll get subsidized housing, if they settle in the land of some dirty Arab, they’ll become settlers. What’s the difference?? Yet, when it comes to Jews, you assign this behavior to their knowledge of their scripture. You know it’s bullshit. You know it. I know you know it. Sam Harris, in my opinion, is of limited intelligence, and I’m sure he doesn’t know it. But I’m pretty sure you’re a lot smarter than Sam Harris. I know you know it. So fucking stop it.
If you have a pro-Palestinian bone in your body, or a pro-any-marginalized-group bone in your body, great. But just fucking stop it with the “Jews do this, and Jews do that because of what’s in their book.” It’s fucking embarrassing.
That shit is in everybody’s book.
And then there’s your comment about 14 million Jews vs billions of Muslims and Christians. That’s because Jews don’t proselytize. It’s not a missionary religion. You know it. Yet you pose this number as some form of evidence that this is because the religion is greedy. You know better.
Judaism is not a missionary religion. Hinduism is also not a missionary religion, which is why Hinduism is primarily restricted to India. You know all this. I know you know all this, but you twist it into some other shit.
Please stop it.
I’ve made that same point to nuf many times, with extensive quotes from scholars of the period in Europe. He doesn’t care.
He insists Jews and their religions and culture are inherently [fill in the blank with nasty adjectives]. He’s an antisemite.
How can a people occupy a land their ancestors are buried in?
Abraham is buried in Hebron, in the cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank. His sons Isaac and Jacob (Israel) are also buried there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs
Jacob’s wife Rachel is buried in Bethlehem, also in the West Bank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel%27s_Tomb
Joseph, the youngest of Jacob’s children is buried near Nablus, again in the West Bank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph%27s_Tomb
To demand that the people who once lived on the land that Israel now occupies “recognize Israel’s right to exist” is a sadistic conceit.
If Israel ever IS successful in violently coercing its victims into saying those words, those words will not change the fact that Israel does NOT have MORE of a right to exist than Palestine does.
“Under U.S. political orthodoxy, the only acceptable course for Palestinians and supporters of their right to be free of occupation is complete submission”.
That is correct. Denounce terror and recognize the state of Israel and the army will withdraw. None of this is by design. Israel made peace with Jordan. Israel made peace with Egypt. Israel has not fired a shot at those nations in decades. It has not attempted to “occupy” their land. They are capable of making peace. But attempts at genocide and the destruction of a sovereign nation state will not occur with impunity. Israel is remarkably forgiving and benevolent but Israel will defend itself from Islamic colonization at all costs. Put down your weapons and accept the simple fact that Jewish self-determination is not conditional on anyone’s approval. The State of Israel isn’t going anywhere, nor should it. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. This conflict is comically uncomplicated
Ok. I denounce the terrorists who founded the State of Israel, and the two terrorists Israel elected prime minister — Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin. They slaughtered thousands of Arabs and ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands more.
In our era it is common to associate terrorism with Muslims, but Zionist Jews actually introduced a great deal of terrorist methods and ideology to modernity. Zionist terrorists in Mandate Palestine refined the letter bomb, in 1954 Israel hijacked a Syrian airways civilian jet to obtain hostages, and in 1956 shot down an Egyptian civilian airplane, killing 16 civilians, in order to assassinate a military leader.
Moreover, without terrorism the State of Israel likely would not have come to exist in 1948. Zionist terrorism demonstrated that “terrorism can, in the right conditions and with the appropriate strategy and tactics, succeed in attaining at least some of its practitioners’ fundamental aims.” Indeed, “[i]n the end, the [Zionist] terrorists got what they wanted.” (Citations on request.)
Pre-state Zionists carried out extensive terror against Arab civilians, the British and politically unacceptable Jews. They also murdered UN mediator Folke Bernadotte, who as head of the Swedish Red Cross during WWII had rescued thousands of concentration camp survivors.
In 1943 Yitzhak Shamir wrote the article Terror for the journal of Lehi — the terrorist organization he headed — and therein advocated the “dismiss[al of] all the ‘phobia’ and babble against terror with simple, obvious arguments.” “Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war,” he wrote, and “We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle.” “First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one: it demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this country, our war against the occupier…”
Dozens, if not hundreds, of Israeli streets are named for Jewish terrorists. Israel literally would not have been founded without these terrorists. Ironically, then, Zionist Jews taught the world that terror pays.
Those who see Palestinians as no less human than Israelis will add with equal conviction, “Denounce terror and recognize the Palestinian state and withdraw the army.”
Israel has withdrawn their army in the past and made numerous offers of Palestinian statehood.
Israel is the ethnic cleanser and oppressor who is morally obligated to return the land it stole, or if truly infeasible, to make expensive reparations and bend over backwards to get peace by giving Palestinians what they justly demand. Again: Israel is the criminal oppressor who killed many Palestinians often via terrorism, and otherwise cleansed them and stole their land, and continues to steal the land.
The burden is entirely on Israel to make restitution to the Palestinian people whom they have grossly exploited and victimized, and continue to exploit and victimize.
The land was also theirs. Everyone understood two peoples were living in Mandatory Palestine. The creation of Jordan was in recognition of the fact that other people have claims to land. In fact, the country was created solely to give Arabs in Mandatory Palestine the option of not living with Jews. There’s nothing “oppressive” or “stolen” about a Hebrew speaking, Jewish Majority soverign nation state sandwiched between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea
Johah
Reality:
In 1988, the PLO recognized Israel as a sovereign state within the borders of the 1947 recommendatory only UNGA Partition Plan, Res. 181 (which, for the record, violated the terms of the Class A British Mandate for Palestine and the Atlantic Charter, was never adopted by the UNSC and was grossly unfair to the indigenous Palestinian Arab inhabitants.)
By signing the 1993 Oslo Accords, the PLO accepted UNSC Res. 242 and thereby agreed to recognize a sovereign Israel within the 1949 armistice lines, i.e., as of 4 June 1967 – 78% of mandated Palestine.
The PLO also agreed to the US/EU/UN supported 2002 Arab League Beirut Summit Peace Initiative, which offers Israel full recognition as a sovereign state (per UNSC Res. 242, i.e., within its June 4/67 boundaries with possible minor and mutually agreed land swaps), exchange of ambassadors, trade, tourism, etc., if Israel complies with international law and its previous commitments. Fully aware of Israel’s demographic concerns, the Beirut initiative does not demand the return of all Palestinian refugees. In accordance with Israel’s pledge given to the UNGA in 1949 and by signing the 1949 Lausanne Peace Conference Protocol to abide by UNGA Res. 194 regarding the then 800,000 Palestinian refugees as a precondition for admittance to the UN (after being rejected twice), the Arab League’s Initiative “calls upon Israel to affirm” that it agrees to help pursue the “achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem…”
Along with all Arab states and the PLO, Hezbollah and Iran have accepted the Arab League’s 2002 Beirut Summit Peace Initiative. Hamas has also indicated its acceptance subject to a Palestinian plebiscite and a corridor connecting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Regrettably, then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon summarily dismissed the Arab League’s peace overture, as did Israel in 2008 and thereafter.
For the record, other peace initiatives that Israeli governments have rebuffed include: U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers’ The Rogers Plan (1969); The Scranton Mission on behalf of President Nixon (1970); Egyptian President Sadat’s land for peace and mutual recognition proposal (1971); U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s call for a Geneva international conference (1977); Saudi Arabian King Fahd’s peace offer (1981); U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s Reagan Plan (1982); U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz’s Schultz Plan (1988); U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s Baker Plan (1989); and the previously noted 1993 Oslo accords signed by Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that unravelled following the latter’s assassination and subsequent return to power of the Likud party from 1996-1999 under Benjamin Netanyahu; continuation of the Taba II negotiations (2001); the unofficial Geneva Peace Initiative of November/December 2003; and the 2014 Kerry Initiative.
BTW, As for the much touted 2000 Camp David Summit, working in tandem, Barak and Clinton tried to shove a very bad deal down Arafat’s throat. It could only be rejected. Suffice to quote Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel’s foreign minister and lead negotiator at Camp David: “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.” (National Public Radio, 14 February 2006.)
Also, the “offer” made in 2008 by then Israeli PM Ehud Olmert was never seen as serious because it lacked cabinet approval, he was under indictment with only a few weeks left in office, had a 6% favorable rating, and, therefore, couldn’t have closed the deal, even if the Palestinians had accepted it. (Olmert is now imprisoned.)
Unfortunately, Israel’s response to every peace overture from the Palestinians and Arab states, has been an escalation of illegal settlement construction in belligerently/illegally/brutally occupied Palestinian and other Arab lands.
It was 38 billion dollars in Military credits which Israel has to use on American defense contractors. How does that detail go unmentioned? American aid to Israel isn’t charity. Both countries benefit from the arrangement.
“Under this agreement, the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion over 10 years, by far a new record for U.S. aid commitments, even though Israeli citizens enjoy all sorts of state benefits that Americans (whose money is being given to Israel) are told are too costly for them, including universal health care coverage, and tout superior life expectancy and infant mortality rates.”
In other words, those parasitic Jews are sucking the blood out of America. At what point does a media outlet become responsible for the dissemination of classic anti-semitic tropes, no matter how inadvertent they may be. The inference is loud and clear
No. Alone among all the nations to whom the United States gives military aid, Israel is allowed to spend a large amount on it own defense industry. The U.S. taxpayer is socked for $38 billion, for Israel.
If you find that accurately describing this sordid state of affairs sounds antisemitic, I would suggest Israel and Zionists stop behaving in a manner that conforms to antisemitic tropes.
This privilege was revoked in this new deal. 100% of the money has to be spent on US companies. This new deal might effectively diminish Israeli arms industry.
The video below explains this deal from a slightly different perspective. The person explaining it is Shir Hever, an Israeli economist, who studied and now lives and works in Germany. He is one of very few people I trust implicitly when it comes to Israel/Palestine issues. He has a slightly different take on the deal. I think it’s interesting. It’s a perspective I personally think Glenn should be aware of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmcn-hQAoiE
It’s $38 billion worth of military hardware paid for by the American taxpayer, period. The fact that Israel must spend it on American corporations does not in anyway change the simple fact that $38 billion was taken from Americans and given to Israel. Any anti-Semitic “trope” or “inference” you construed is purely imaginary.
The money is effectively an economic stimulus package. It is better to create jobs and productivity than to just throw money at a problem
Israel should stop “throwing money” at its healthcare, its safety net, its educational system, the rabbinate it subsidizes, and pay for its own defense. Then we Americans should take that $38 billion and “throw it at our healthcare, our safety net and our educational system.” (Unlike Israel we have separation of church and state, so we have no clergy to stop throwing money at, discounting the military chaplains.)
Well put.
Taqiyya
While I agree with virtually everything Glenn writes, his article is pretty much a statement of what’s wrong with the U.S. positions and policies, without much, if anything, said about what the U.S. should be doing differently. There are way too many such articles already out there. Please start writing about what needs to be done.
Independent journalism makes all the difference in the matter of Israel/Palestine.
Without non-corporate news, it would be impossible to gain ANY perspective on the subject at all, let alone enough to form an opinion.
The annoying pest: The hasbara troll
Jack Green is a hasbara troll, but there are and have been quite a few others of them infesting this site.
At any reasonably prominent site, there are always a number of accounts who make it their mission to post vacuous, misleading and disruptive Zionist bullshit. Often, they are following talking points issued by both formal and informal “hasbara” projects. (Hasbara means “explaining” in Hebrew; in practice it means “propaganda.”)
Max Blumenthal has described these annoying creatures and their programs thus:
Israel and Zionist organizations publish “hasbara manuals,” many of which are available online.
Hasbara trolls have also been assigned to comments sections, such as at the Guardian. They are likely here as well — JackGreen almost certainly is one.
Excellent Mona. However, you shouldn’t forget the Russia-bots which serve the same function for the Russian government. Only Russian-bots generally agree with the radical left – so there is no need to expose them. They are actually political Allies. Both are driven by anti-Americanism. In fact, Russian-bots are quite welcome at the Intercept. Regardless, according to the Guardian (May 4, 2014):
“…….Trolling covers a multitude of sins but a particularly nasty strain has emerged in the midst of the armed conflict in Ukraine, which infests comment threads on the Guardian and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of moderators. Readers and reporters alike are concerned that these are from those paid to troll, and to denigrate in abusive terms anyone criticising Russia or President Vladimir Putin……”
In addition, according to the New York Times (August 28, 2016):
“…….In Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now Syria, Mr. Putin has flaunted a modernized and more muscular military. But he lacks the economic strength and overall might to openly confront NATO, the European Union or the United States. Instead, he has invested heavily in a program of “weaponized” information, using a variety of means to sow doubt and division. The goal is to weaken cohesion among member states, stir discord in their domestic politics and blunt opposition to Russia……”
So the Russians are not JUST good at hacking Hillary, influencing elections and tapping phones. They are also good at spreading propaganda online – like at the Intercept (only it is a major challenge to out propagandize the Intercept).
About 95% of the time, and at the request of multiple other commenters, I ignore Craig Summers for being an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter who posts massive walls of drivel. Substantively replying to him causes him to post yet more of the walls of text.
The West Bank has always been Judea and most all of rhe JEWISH holy sites are there. The Palestinians are Arabs from Jordan that Arafat named Palestinian in the late 1960s..they have zero history or claim to Israel.
You really have to enjoy all the ranting when Israel is the topic. The most important tactic used for propaganda is to compare Israel to Apartheid South Africa. This almost solely based on Israel maintaining a Jewish majority state. Israel has land and immigration laws which favor Jews only because they are a small minority world-wide. The laws are discriminatory, but don’t define apartheid. Applying “apartheid” to Israel is strictly done for propaganda purposes by the radical left and far right to delegitimize the Jewish state.
Apartheid South Africa was a system of legal separation based on race. Laws were passed to enforce the separation of races. From Wikipedia:
1. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races
2. the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence.
3 The Population Registration Act of 1950 formalised racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of eighteen, specifying their racial group.
4. Also in 1950 the Group Areas Act partitioned the country into areas allocated to different racial groups. This law was the basis upon which political and social separation was constructed.
5. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and was the first piece of legislation established to support the government’s plan of separate development in the Bantustans.
6. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953 prohibited people of different races from using the same public amenities, such as restaurants, public swimming pools, and restrooms.
7. An act of 1956 formalised racial discrimination in employment
8. in 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1958 entrenched the National Party’s policy of nominally independent “homelands” for black people. So-called “self?governing Bantu units” were proposed, which would have devolved administrative powers, with the promise later of autonomy and self-government.
9. In 1953, the Bantu Education Act crafted a separate system of education for African students and in 1959 separate universities were created for blacks, coloureds and Indians. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students.
10. The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in the Bantustan strategy. It changed the status of the black so that they were no longer citizens of South Africa, but became citizens of one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure whites became the demographic majority within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans choose “independence”.
These laws are obviously not present in Israel. In addition Benjamen Pogrund writes at the Guardian:
“……I have now lived in Israel for 17 years, doing what I can to promote dialogue across lines of division. To an extent that I believe is rare, I straddle both societies. I know Israel today – and I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid…….The Arabs of Israel are full citizens. Crucially, they have the vote and Israeli Arab MPs sit in parliament. An Arab judge sits on the country’s highest court; an Arab is chief surgeon at a leading hospital; an Arab commands a brigade of the Israeli army; others head university departments. Arab and Jewish babies are born in the same delivery rooms, attended by the same doctors and nurses, and mothers recover in adjoining beds. Jews and Arabs travel on the same trains, taxis and – yes – buses. Universities, theatres, cinemas, beaches and restaurants are open to all……..”
Israeli Arabs clearly face discrimination and racism, but that doesn’t define apartheid. So go ahead and keep propagating lies about “apartheid Israel”. I have been seeing those same lies for decades and it has never gained any traction because the designation is used for political purposes to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish-majority state. Yet, there clearly is no applicability to Israel.
I definitely show that even Israelis know that Israel is an apartheid state. That is the only topic on which I have replied to Craig Summers in this thread. It is likely the only topic I shall address in reply to him, for I ignore him 95% of the time.
That is classic Mona. Quote a person or two and therefore it must be true. Quoted anyone lately on the laws of Israel versus Apartheid South Africa, Mona? “Apartheid” is a loaded political term critical to the far left’s assault on the legitimacy of Israel.
By the way, on this thread, you have replied to me about 50-75% of the time. Typically (albeit indirectly), you reply probably about 25-50% of the time. That is a more realistic figure rather than the 5% you tout.
Yup, and only about apartheid. Most threads I ignore you entirely, notwithstanding your delusions about anything “indirect.” It works out to about 5%.
A person or two? HAHAHA Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, and the editorial staff at the Israeli paper, Haaretz. (There are other Israelis as well, but that would be overkill.)
All I’ll do from now is link to the several times I’ve addressed you on the apartheid matter (if, in this thread, you for whatever reason raise that topic again), and will otherwise ignore you, as I do 95% of the time.
“………A person or two? HAHAHA Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, and the editorial staff at the Israeli paper, Haaretz. (There are other Israelis as well, but that would be overkill.)….”
Hmmmm. What if the editorial staff at the Jerusalem Post or the Times of Israel says Israel is not an apartheid state? Who is right? And I can find a whole slew of people that say Israel is not an apartheid state. Finally, you have not addressed the LAWS which defined the apartheid in South Africa.
Thanks.
Rabin, Barak and the Haaretz staff are all making statements against interest* — that is why courts admit those into evidence rather than rule them out as hearsay. Such statements are highly reliable. By contrast, there’s nothing at all remarkable about The Times of Israel denying that Israel is an apartheid state.
When so many prominent Israelis say “apartheid,” you have already lost the argument.
*Rabin’s declarations against interest were secret, off the record — and only revealed a few years ago.
Regarding Israel, i.e., west of the green line:
Hendrik Verwoerd, then prime minister of South Africa and the architect of South Africa’s apartheid policies, 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” (Rand Daily Mail, November 23, 1961)
Ronnie Kasrils, a key player in the struggle against the former South African apartheid regime, minister for intelligence and a devout Jew: “The Palestinian minority in Israel has for decades been denied basic equality in health, education, housing and land possession, solely because it is not Jewish. The fact that this minority is allowed to vote hardly redresses the rampant injustice in all other basic human rights. They are excluded from the very definition of the ‘Jewish state’, and have virtually no influence on the laws, or political, social and economic policies. Hence, their similarity to the black South Africans [under apartheid].” (The Guardian, 25 May 2005)
“Former Foreign Ministry director-general invokes South Africa comparisons. ‘Joint Israel-West Bank’ reality is an apartheid state”
EXCERPT: “Similarities between the ‘original apartheid’ as it was practiced in South Africa and the situation in ISRAEL [my emphasis] and the West Bank today ‘scream to the heavens,’ added [Alon] Liel, who was Israel’s ambassador in Pretoria from 1992 to 1994. There can be little doubt that the suffering of Palestinians is not less intense than that of blacks during apartheid-era South Africa, he asserted.” (Times of Israel, February 21, 2013)
Shlomo Gazit, retired IDF Major General: “[Israel’s] legal system that enforces the law in a discriminatory way on the basis of national identity, is actually maintaining an apartheid regime.” (Haaretz, July 19, 2011)
One example of apartheid within Israel:
Ha’aretz, Dec. 14/09: “Jewish town won’t let Arab build home on his own land ”
Excerpt: “Aadel Suad first came to the planning and construction committee of the Misgav Local Council in 1997. Suad, an educator, was seeking a construction permit to build a home on a plot of land he owns in the community of Mitzpeh Kamon. The reply he got, from a senior official on the committee, was a memorable one. ‘Don’t waste your time,’ he reportedly told Suad. ‘We’ll keep you waiting for 30 years.’”
“…EU broadside over plight of Israel’s Arabs”
EXCERPT: “The confidential 27-page draft prepared by European diplomats… [shows] that Israeli Arabs suffer ‘economic disparities… unequal access to land and housing… discriminatory draft legislation and a political climate in which discriminatory rhetoric and practice go unsanctioned.'” (The Independent, Dec. 27/2011)
The U.S. State Department’s report on International Religious Freedom: “Arabs in Israel…are subject to various forms of discrimination [and the government] does not provide Israeli Arabs…with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities as Jews.”
In its 2015 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor acknowledges the “institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel.” (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 Israel and The Occupied Territories)
To the best of my knowledge, Israel is the only country in the world that differentiates between citizenship and nationality, i.e., “Israeli” nationality does not exist, only Jews and non-Jews, and each citizen carries an appropriate identity card. While the implications of this absurdity for discrimination and racism against non-Jews are obvious, it has been upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court:
“Supreme Court rejects ‘Israeli’ nationality status'”
EXCERPTS:
“Allowing citizens to relinquish ethnic or religious identity in the population registry would undermine Israel’s Jewishness, ruling says.
“Israel’s population registry lists a slew of ‘nationalities’ and ethnicities, among them Jew, Arab, Druse and more. But one word is conspicuously absent from the list: Israeli.
“Residents cannot identify themselves as Israelis in the national registry because the move could have far-reaching consequences for the country’s Jewish character, the Israeli Supreme Court wrote in documents obtained Thursday.” (Times of Israel, October 4, 2013)
“Even in death, Ethiopian Jews face racism from other Jews”
Middle East Monitor, December 28, 2010.
Excerpt: “An Israeli newspaper has claimed that the racism prevalent between Israeli Jews extends to Ethiopian Jews even after their death. According to Ma’ariv, graves in a Jewish cemetery are separated according to the colour of the corpses; a fence has been built between the graves of Ethiopian Jews and the others in the graveyard.”
Israel’s Jewish citizens of Ethiopian origin/ancestry also suffer from discrimination and human rights violations:
Haaretz, January 27, 2013 – “Israel admits Ethiopian women were given birth control shots.”
EXCERPTS: “A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera.”
“The women’s testimony could help explain the almost 50-percent decline over the past 10 years in the birth rate of Israel’s Ethiopian community.”
Eminent Jewish Israeli journalist Bradley Burston aptly sums up the racist horrors Israel inflicts on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem:
“Occupation is Slavery”
EXCERPT:
“In the name of occupation, generation after generation of Palestinians have been treated as property. They can be moved at will, shackled at will, tortured at will, have their families separated at will. They can be denied the right to vote, to own property, to meet or speak to family and friends. They can be hounded or even shot dead by their masters, who claim their position by biblical right, and also use them to build and work on the plantations the toilers cannot themselves ever hope to own. The masters dehumanize them, call them by the names of beasts.” (Haaretz, Feb. 26/13)
Do Israeli Arabs want Jews & gentiles treated exactly the same?
Do they want gentile men & women drafted?
Should the US government treat all Americans the same?
Should affirmative action be abolished?
Is the US apartheid?
Jack Green
A feeble response. Unworthy of further comment.
“Is the US apartheid?”
Yes, and much like Israelis, have an entire philosophy in place to justify it.
Basic construct of formulaic justification: pious and contempt manufacture.
Most typical form of contempt, “criminal and violent”.
Important point (and well supported).
A powerful and well-documented post, David. Thank you.
Excellent article Glenn. I think some investigative journalism into just who is at the top driving our insane complicity into the israeli apartheid, occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. Who are the zionists in our congress, senate, NSA, FBI, EPA, FEC, etc.? Which ones have dual US/israeli citizenship? I think it a worthy and most relevant topic, now more than ever, for our media, meaning independent media such as The Intercept to shed some light on. Thanks in advance!
I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.
Todays zionists are probably all lineal descendants of McCarthy’s targets.
He just fingered the wrong ideology.
Well, that’s certainly fewer than are currently serving in Congress, ostensibly representing the American people, while in fact endlessly tripping over their own feet to appease and “service” the Lobby.
See this Saturday Night Live Skit inspired by various Sentors’ preposterous and ostentatious dedication to that country, in the context of the Chuck Hagel nomination. It didn’t air on TeeVee, but SNL released it online.
That’s quite a signal that even among NYC hipsters people are getting a clue that the Israel Lobby is fucking out of control.
And was Chuck Hagel confirmed? Maybe the “lobby” needs to tighten their control……
I love the word “ostensibly”, but I think in the case of Israel, Congress is representing the American people. Despite Israel constantly shooting herself in the foot with settlement expansion, Israel remains relatively popular with mainstream America.
So you are saying you are in favor of an investigation to determine duel citizenship in congress?
Abusive, deceitful Zionists attacking and harming pro-Palestinians, Part 7,387
Smear tactics targeting Palestine activists get personal:
I have my suspicions about a newish commenter here as possibly a Zionist plant, posing as pro-Palestinian. Still watching this account.
Mere hasbara trolls may soon seem quaint.
Jordan, Egypt and Israel should all cede a little territory to create a 23rd Arab majority state. It’s win-win for everyone. Israelis can maintain security and a sustain a presence in their ancestral homeland of Judea and Samaria, and the involvement of Jordan and Egypt will ensure that the Palestinians have enough territory to create a viable state. Jordan already has millions of Palestinians. All anyone wants to see is the right opportunity for Palestinians to self-determine. What better way to facilitate cooperation between all the parties in the region. This may be the best way to create a lasting peace. The Hashemite kingdom will have to make some sacrifices too
Sure thing. Those Polish, Ethiopian and Russian Jews have a lotta dead buried in “Judea” and “Samaria.” [eyes rolling]
The archeological and genetic evidence would disagree but I wouldn’t expect crazy cat ladies to understand science
The first father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote to Cecil fucking Rhodes that Zionism was a colonial project. In 1900, Arabs in Palestine were 96% of the population. European Jews — almost entirely Ashkenazim — began an aggressive colonial enterprise to take over Palestine.
Ashkenazim DNA carries markers that originated in Poland (or Eastern Europe) 600-800 years ago. Benjamin Netanyahu is of Polish ethnicity; his father’s surname for most of his life was Mileikowsky.
Every-time I post this
You never respond, Jonah. Why is that?
Israel is a real country and a democracy. If you want to send aid to Gaza, send it to Israel first. They will vet your aid and then redirect it to the Palestinians
They will vet it for anything they don’t want Palestinians to have; like concrete for the buildings shattered by Israel.
And why a tax deduction for money sent to Israel when Israel just asks Congress for $38 billion. Cuz $38 billion isn’t enough for a greedy people.
not a bad idea, compromise redo borders which is what needs to be done in most of the middle east however the fact remains that Israel is like general Custer, surrounded by in this case 10,000,000 pissed off indians making the out come inevitable short of using nukes.
????There have been absolutely no outside attacks by the surrounding peoples in years,outside of Palestinian civilians,and very very rare Hezbollah and Hamas commando type raids.
There are thousands of terrorists in Syria,and not one attack.
One would think something fishy about the whole thing if they thought about it a little.
15,000-36,000 war-related deaths in Afghanistan in 2015
190 war-related deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2015
cue the greenwaldian zio-phobes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
You neglect the role of Israel in the ME conflagration which began in Afghanistan.
Do you still have a bridge over your head these days?
no, i’ve upgraded to a hundred sq ft walk-up with shared bath in the hall
but its cool because they did the full neutrino rebuild on my dna
Same old Sergeant Schultz.Or is it Mr.Nopithy?
Why is anyone surprised?
Imagine you go into a coma today, and awake in the year 4014. The first headline you read is:
——- Persecuted, Peaceloving, NAZIS battle for their “God/Thor Given Homeland of Europe”. —
You then read how their “Holy book, (Mien Kampf)” GAVE them the land and anyone who objects is an antiARYAN bigot.
That is EXACTLY what is happening in PALESTINE.
Today we witness the SECOND Israeli HOLOCAUST of Palestinians.
The Canaanites/Amorites/Philistines/Midianites/PALESTINIANS were in PALESTINE long before ABRAHAM passed through from Babylon/Ur ……Israel’s “claim” to Palestine is based entirely on War Crimes and GENOCIDE.
Their monotheistic ONE & ONLY god is a WAR god.
The Jews BRAG about and SELF DOCUMENT THEIR “holocausting” others and then “PLACE A YOKE” on Gentiles for SUPPOSEDLY doing the exact same thing to them.
FUNNY that everything they claim the nazis did is an EXACT COPY of their own book..
Deuteronomy 7:16, 20:16 “And thou shalt consume all the peoples which the Lord thy God shall deliver unto thee; thine eye shall not pity them…thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.”
KILL THE SICK and CRIPPLED
Numbers c.5 v.2-4
KILL HOMOSEXUALS & UNDESIRABLES
Leviticus c.20 v.13 well, really the whole chapter
KILL ALL DISSIDENTS:
Exodus c.32 v.27
Numbers c.11 v.1-2
Numbers c.16 all
Numbers c.21 v.5-6
Numbers v.26 v.10
KILL anyone who engages in “DIVERSITY” or “INTEGRATION”
Numbers v25 v.4-8
Deuteronomy c.14 v.2
DEHUMANIZE and then EXTERMINATE ALL NON-MEMBERS:
a very brief selection, many more in THEIR book.
Numbers c.21 v.03 Canaanites
Numbers c.21 v.24 Amorites
Numbers c.21 v.33-35 Bashan
Numbers c.31 all Midianites
Numbers c.32 v. more Amorites
Deuteronomy c.2 v.34 People of Heshbon
Deuteronomy c.3 v.6 really the whole chapter. threescore cities
Joshua c.12 A list of victims of Israeli GENOCIDE
OCCUPY YOUR VICTIM’S DWELLINGS/LAND
Numbers c.21 v.25
Numbers c.32 v.39
Numbers c.33 v.53
(just to name a FEW)
GENOCIDE CODIFIED IN THEIR RELIGION
Numbers c.33 v.31-34
Deuteronomy c.7 v.2
Deuteronomy c.12 v.28-30
Deuteronomy c.20 v.11-16
TERRORISM CODIFIED IN THEIR RELIGION
Deuteronomy c.2 v.2
Deuteronomy c.7 v.1
Jews SELF-anointed “The CHOSEN People of GOD”
Nazis SELF-anointed “The CHOSEN People of GENETICS”.
TODAY Israel states that it is creating “A PURE Jewish State”
YESTERDAY the Nazis were creating “A PURE German State”
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword . . . (Joshua 6:21)
For modern day reinforcement of these “rules” research/google “the KINGS TORAH”
“Why is anyone surprised?”
I dare anyone to read this whole comment word for word without skipping.
“I dare anyone to read this whole comment word for word without skipping.”
I know. It reads like a bible.
Found the kook!
Israel IS NOT an occupier, the Jewish people own Israel, they also own the land the so called Palestinians are on. There is no tribe of people called Palestians, they are Arabs that were originally refugees from other Muslim Nations. They took the name from Palestine that Rome had called Israel after Rome had demolished Israel. No Nation wanted Israel when it was a desert but since the Jews came back to Israel after the Holocaust and Israel’s desert bloomed like a rose (as the Bible said it would) THEN the greedy, hateful Arab Muslims all of a sudden wanted the land. The U.N. agreed the Jews should have the land of Israel back again, AS THE JEWS HAVE HAD ISRAEL SINCE JOSHUA’S TIME B.C., so get off this lie that Israel is an occupier. This is just more garbage from the Democrats and the left Israel is a Nation, the U.S. should keep their nose out of a sovereign Nation, the ONLY DEMOCRATIC NATION in the midst of hostile Arab, Muslim Nations.
ROFL! Wow, that is so funny my eyes are tearing. Really, you have truly outdone Benito with this one.
On the other hand, if you are serious, and believe even one word that you posted, here is something to contemplate: As recently as 7,000 years ago there were no Jews, ok? And the region between the Jordan river and the Med was occupied by various tribes of the very same ethnicity. So the land “belongs” to all of them, to the extent it belongs to anyone. Personally I take the view that land ownership is a concept invented by humans, who being human have a very short memory even compared to our pitifully short life spans. What is mine today will be someone else’s when I’m gone, and yet someone else’s a generation hence. To base a political system or religion on the concept of permanence of ownership is not only historically untenable, it is just plain stupid.
That’s steaming pile of ahistorical horseshit and I can debunk it all (and will if anyone asks) but for now I’ll just go with a few points about this:
It was called Palestine well before the Romans, who did not name it that, including for the Jews. As for the rest of that bit, I’ll let Moshe Dayan answer via his eulogy delivered in 1956 for a dead Israeli soldier killed by a Gazan:
The clear-eyed (and monstrous) Dayan understood that no people would passively accept what Zionists did and do to the Palestinians.
While giving it $4 billion a year?
That obviously depends upon “what your definition of ‘democracy’ is,” eh, what?
This one isn’t a hasbara troll, unless they have a new division staffed by 8th grade dropouts from the Bible Belt.
patty
Patent nonsense.
To be brief:
The first known written reference to Palestinians (Peleset) was c.1150 BCE at the temple of Medinet Habut. They were among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III’s reign.
The region between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea was first referred to as “Palestine” by the Greek historian Herodotus (“the father of history”) during the 5th century BCE.
100 years later, in the mid-4th Century BCE, Aristotle referred to Palestine while discussing the Dead Sea in his Meteorology. “Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine….”
Jewish historian Josephus’s (c.37-100 CE) The Jewish War, Antiquities of the Jews contains copious references to both “Palestine” and “Palestinians.”
Contemporaries of Jesus also routinely referred to Palestine as “Palestine.” In the first decade of the 1st Century, the Roman poet Ovid mentioned Palestine in both his famed mythological poem Metamorphoses and his erotic elegy The Art of Love. He also wrote of “the waters of Palestine” in his calendrical poem Fasti. Around the same time, another Latin poet, Tibullus wrote of “the crowded cities of Palestine” in the section “Messalla’s Triumph” in his poem Delia.
BTW, the claim that the Roman emperor Hadrian officially changed the name of the region to “Syria Palaestina” or simply “Palestine,” in 135 CE is contradicted by the fact that by then, the terms “Syrian Palestine” and “Palestine” had already been in use for over 600 years.
Also, for the record, when the Muslim Arabs arrived in Palestine in the 7th century CE (and liberated its Jewish population from Byzantine oppression), they retained the administrative organization of the territory of Palestine as it had been under the Romans and later, the Byzantines. They referred to the territory as Filastin (no “P” in Arabic.)
To quote the opening sentence of the section entitled “Filastin” that appears in the book “Dictionary of the Lands,” written by geographer Yaqut ibn Abdullah al-Hamawi in 1225: “Filastin: It is the last one of the regions of Syria in the direction of Egypt. Its most famous cities are Ashkelon, Ramle, Gaza, Arsuf, Caesaria, Nablus, Jericho, Amman, Jaffa and Beit Guvrin.”
In 1603, Shakespeare wrote in his play Othello: “Emilia: I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.” (Act IV, Scene iii.)
In 1863, The Religious Tract Society of London published its “Pictorial Journey Through the Holy Land; or Scenes of Palestine.” In this work Beersheba is described as the southern limit of Palestine. Beersheba lies south-east of Gaza on the northern edge of the Negev desert. Palestine is described as “south of Lebanon”.
European tourist books of the nineteenth century refer to “Palestine,” as did Theodor Herzl in his correspondence and the 1917 Balfour Declaration as well as the 1922 Class A League of Nations British Mandate.
You wrote: “There is no tribe of people called Palestinians, they are Arabs that were originally refugees from other Muslim Nations.”
It seems you have been duped by Joan Peters’ long since debunked mountain of mendacity, “From Time Immemorial…”
To wit:
Dr. Porath, one of Israel’s leading demographic historians, called Peters’ book a “forgery… [that] was almost universally dismissed [in Israel] as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon.” (New York Times, Nov.28, 1985)
Rabbi Arthur Herzberg, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, agreed: “I think that she’s cooked the statistics…. The scholarship is phony and tendentious. I do not believe that she has read the Arabic sources that she quotes.”(ibid)
To again quote Professor Porath: “The precise demographic history of modern Palestine cannot be summed up briefly, but its main features are clear enough and they are very different from the fanciful description Mrs. Peters gives…. [S]he has apparently searched through documents for any statement to the effect that Arabs entered Palestine. But even if we put together all the cases she cites, one cannot escape the conclusion that most of the growth of the Palestinian Arab community resulted from a process of natural increase.” (“Mrs. Peters’ Palestine” New York Review of Books, 16 January 1986.)
To quote the renowned historian/anthropologist and “Holy Land” specialist, Professor Ilene Beatty:
“When we speak of ‘Palestinians’ or of the ‘Arab population [of Palestine]‘, we must bear in mind their Canaanite origin. This is important because their legal right to the country stems…from the fact that the Canaanites were first, which gives them priority; their descendants have continued to live there, which gives them continuity; and (except for the 800,000 dispossessed refugees [of 1948 along with the further hundreds of thousands expelled before and after the war Israel launched on 5 June 1967]) they are still living there, which gives them present possession. Thus we see that on purely statistical grounds they have a proven legal right to their own land.” (“Arab and Jew in the Land of
Canaan,” 1957)
In short, today’s Palestinians and their ancestors have been living continuously in Palestine for 9,000 years.
To state what should be obvious to any thinking person and setting aside the fact that the Bible’s Old Testament is hardly a reliable source of history, that there was a brief (about 73 years) Jewish Kingdom in historic Palestine 2,000 years ago hardly gave Ashkenazi Jews of the 20th century AD the right to use their political clout in Europe and America to eventually colonize historic Palestine, dispossess and expel well over one million of its indigenous inhabitants between late 1947 and 1967 through armed might, several massacres, mass rape and intimidation and create therein an expansionist, racist, “Jewish state” that 68 years later, has yet to officially declare its borders and have them recognized as such by the international community.
U.S. Zionist authoritarians arrest Jewish man for asking questions at a LIBRARY
It’s no accident that the most ardent Israel apologist in comments here are also rightwing authoritarians. The political Zionism that drove the founding of Israel and which characterizes that state is inherently racist and authoritarian. It contained the seeds for the full-blown fascism now suffusing that country.
The fascist impulse is also obvious in many actions Zionists take in the United States.
Last May, Jeremy Rothe-Kushel attended a talk at the Kansas City Library given by author and diplomat Dennis Ross. When the talk ended and it was time for Q&A, Ross took a question from Rothe-Kushel who stated the U.S. and Israel engage in what amounts to “state-sponsored terrorism” and asked: “When are we going to stand up and be ethical Jews and Americans?” Then he tried to ask another question.
Whereupon the off-duty cops the organizers of the talk — the Jewish Community Foundation — had hired arrested Rothe-Kushel. As Haaretz reports:
If Zionism is inherently authoritarian, why is Israel a democracy?
It’s not. It’s an ethno-religious apartheid state. It ethnically cleansed enough Arabs to make sure Jews are not outnumbered when voting in Israel proper, and that the Arabs locked up in Gaza and in the West Bank cannot vote in the elections for the Israeli-government that controls them.
And you are a hasbara troll.
“It’s an ethno-religious apartheid state. ”
Bullshit. Israel is a crime-state centered on the Jewish religion. The Jewish religion is the reason Israel exists. The ethnicity of Jews is little different than the ethnicity of Catholics or Aryans …
It’s a fucking crime-state first and foremost. One need only look at their actions as a Jewish state, 70+ years of slaughter and theft; on-going theft of land and money. With no end in sight.
nuf said thinks an “ethno-religious apartheid state” is a compliment so he writes “BUSLLSHSIIITHSI” as if he were taking a big old crap on television and then calls it a “crime state” as if Mona had said something nice and as if the two weren’t essentially the same thing
But seriously. What’s a crime state? Florida?
ah, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhaaaa
ah
aaahhha
a
nuf’s just an antisemite. The idea that the problem with Israel is rooted in the Jewish religion is preposterous. The political Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky — the Zionism that prevailed — draws from ethnic, blood-and-soil nationalism that was tremendously popular in Europe in the 19th and early 20th century.
Catholics did something similar in Spain. Hindus do it in India. (Clerical fascists can be found in all three Abrahamic religions, and in many non-Abrahamic ones as well.) Nuf’s claims are just antisemitic claptrap.
I’d like to believe at least one of them is here to discredit the Intercept by making it seem like it is an anti-Semitic publication.
Or at least I would happily, jokingly (ha ha) accuse them of that because in effect all real anti-Semites have the effect of discrediting sincere criticism of American policies toward Israel.
Let them deny it, they are no help and I wish they would go away whether they are sincere or not.
Do tell us about that most-famous anti Semite, William Shakespeare.
Jews are the first Travellers or crime family. That was Europe’s opinion of Jews long before the “zionist” stirred things up. Compare the idea of tithing and Jewishness; Polar opposites by definition. That is part of the reason there are only 14 million Jews yet there are billions of Muslims and Christians.
Which religions could be considered more altruistic?
Which religion could be considered greedy?
You’re gonna hide behind William Shakespeare now? It’s gonna be tough, the man wrote characters, not op-eds.
You are seriously a fucking racist creep. You have way too much company around these parts too. It’s disgusting.
“the man wrote characters, not op-eds.”
That’s funny. Shakespeare wrote some of the most telling works known to man.
They were better than op-eds. And more accurate than the op-eds we get from WaPoop etc.
Why don’t you declare this place a cesspool , aka Gator, and leave? Seems like you’re out of your league here.
Cuz I ain’t the one making it a cesspool obviously. You first.
And yeah, you can’t enlist Shakespeare in your dreadful cause. Shakespeare did not make any directly anti-Semitic statements because he wrote characters — he didn’t sign off on social commentary under his own name. You might as well claim that the play King Lear is pro eye-gouging.
“Shakespeare did not make any directly anti-Semitic statements because he wrote characters ”
WTF?
You aren’t any brighter than Nate.
Shylock was not a whole-cloth invention of Shakespeare.
Money changers are leeches on society.
Do you deny Israel just sucked $38 billion from our roads, schools, hospitals, etc while they maintain a longer life due to good healthcare?
Yes I do deny that Israel just “sucked” anything: it was a choice that loads of non-Jewish people – literally anti-Semitic evangelist Christians who think Israel is part of their weird ass plan and — OH YEAH I FORGOT — THEY HATE MUSLIMS MORE THAN JEWS made right here in the U S of A.
Yeah, it’s really inscrutable of them, they had to use mind control I guess with their Super Jewish Powers or something. You dork. You are such a shitty arguer. You should stop posting here because I keep embarrassing you just by paying attention to you. Quit now, leave with a shred of dignity intact.
Oh, and stop acting like you are some kind of friend to Palestinians: scratch an anti-Semite and pretty soon one is fondling a garden variety “whites-only” racist of the most petty Klux-y type. See Embarrabus and duh-hoit for examples of this trend in action, which I am sure would apply to you to if you just keep talking and prove it…..
““ethno-religious apartheid state” is a compliment ”
It furthers the meme Jews are a race unto themselves.
I know you try, Vic. You score points on Nate with ease but, well, who doesn’t?
Israel is the crime state which resulted from the staggering prohibition profits laundered by Lansky and friends. They took the methods of Chicago and applied it.
They never stopped buying police and politicians. They are all bought and now it’s time to expand Israel with the world’s largest army behind it.
Why would Rahm Emmanuel be chosen as Obama’s Chief of Staff? Where did Rahm come from? His dad was a member of the original Stern/Irgun terrorists in Israel. Now he’s running Chicago … nice.
Don’t you dare quote me out of context: I said YOU think it’s a compliment.
Rahm was chosen because he is good at being an asshole, and those people come from all around.
That’s quite the sophisticated world picture you are developing there, you should write a book. Might keep you off the internet for awhile, a twofer.
“nuf said thinks an “ethno-religious apartheid state” is a compliment ”
The context directly followed your comment.
I’ll try to slow things down for you, next time.
And of course, there could be no coincidence that the son of the founding terrorist of Israel shows up as Obama’s CoS and then on to Mayor of Chicago.
Like you said, lots of assholes around … why are you comfortable with that?
I know you’re not as blissful as Nate, but, really; next you’ll be demanding motive or something.
lame karate move #28: “why are you comfortable with that?” give up dweeb you can’t beat me in an argument
Wonder which is worse — at least he quoted you. He repeatedly and falsely claimed I said a specific, horrible thing. And just as often swore he was going to “find it,” (several times adding he’d do it when it was raining that day). He didn’t find it, because it doesn’t exist.
I think I should revert to ignoring him.
“He didn’t find it, because it doesn’t exist.”
I said I was loathe to look for it since I remember it verbatim.
Don’t you have anything else to do? I’m sure your webpage mocking the mentally ill could be polished, or something.
On July 17 you posted this to me:
On August 8 you again said you’d look for it, and again said if it rained. Except you have never found it, because it does not exist. You have also bigotedly claimed I hold terrible views because I was raised Catholic. Nothing you write about me is true.
You are a liar and an antisemite.
kinda sounds like american gettos and jails. lock them up and deny a vote.
Name even one occupying power that lets the occupied vote in the occupiers elections.
Ethnically cleansing and then occupying for over half a century — with the present government declaring it will occupy for the “foreseeable future” — is apartheid. See Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, the editorial board at Haaretz and many other Israelis I could cite.
Jack, you are so stupid you don’t see that you perform very poorly — doing no more than giving me and others fodder to fill the board with myriad facts that are devastating to the Zionist narrative. The very best thing you could do for the cause of Israel apologia is to shut up.
I’m honestly amazed that you — or at least any handlers you may have — do not see this.
Please show me a quote from Ehud Barak saying that Israel is an apartheid state.
Spare us.
Anyone reasonably well informed regarding Israel knows full well it is a “democracy” for Jews, but not for its Arab citizens who can vote, but are treated as lesser beings. As is thoroughly documented, Israel, i.e., west of the green line, is an apartheid state and a bloodthirsty monster in the lands it belligerently/illegally/brutally occupies that belong to Palestinians and other Arabs.
Was the US a democracy when women couldn’t vote?
“illegally…occupies.”
What law is Israel breaking by its occupation?
Your defenses are so feeble Jack Green. In effect they work as accusations.
This article does what Glenn does best that is propaganda regarding Hillary. The article leads with a picture of Hillary and the nefarious warmonger Netanyahu, and does so to malign Hillary and take out of context her and Bill’s extraordinary diplomatic skills, and her and Bill’s clear mission to make the world a more peaceful and equitable place as demonstrated by 1) the Clinton parameters, which will surely be resurrected and perhaps finally agreed upon under Hillary and Bill and which Mr. Greenwald surely knows that Noam Chomsky later imitated and which Mr. Netanyahu will do everything in his power to destroy. So, despite the misleading photo that Greenwald posted, the opposite will likely unfold. 2) the Clinton Foundation which is a massive force of good that Glenn would never write a line about except in regards to some of its funding 3) the Iran treaty 4) Kosovo. The list goes on and on. Yes, Hillary, thinking it necessary to win the presidency, made mistakes, such as voting to give Bush the authority to bomb Iraq. And yes, that was a shame and cost many lives. But if if even somebody else who was trying to affect positive change, Mr. Sanders voted for an equally egregious action: attacking and destroying the tenth poorest nation in the world, Afghanistan.
Still, if you’re going to do good in the world, especially at the level of the Clinton’s, you need to compromise and in so doing you may make mistakes, and your detractors will take those mistakes and try to color your entire career with them.
Unfortunately, the US is a vast country with many hard right and violent constituencies that cannot be ignored, certainly not by somebody who wants to win the presidency in order to further goals such as world peace, income equity, women and minority rights and carbon reduction. The country also has massive pockets of wealth, all of which can prosecute an agenda that is antithetical to peace. The strange thing about Mr. Greenwald is that he doesn’t seem to quite want to acknowledge that he is being propped up and supported by a single billionaire, who by the way is highly supportive of Clinton and has given at least a million dollar to the Clinton Foundation.
The true radical is not Mr. Greenwald and his agenda. Mr. Greenwald with his disgust for the Clinton’s, his propaganda and maligning of the good work they do, has become mainstream America. He has nothing more to offer in this regards, he’s heading to the basement that the silly caricature of his former self, Julian Assange occupies. No, the true radical is somebody who would uncover the evidence of the massive amount of good Hillary and Bill will attempt to do for this planet if they are indeed restored to power.
Putting any trust in the two most corrupt pos in American history(Clintons)is an exercise in blind faith.
Seeing eye dogs would piss down both their legs.
Karen, honey, great to see you! Is it your shift now? Do you and Jimmy take turns by day of week, or is it broken down by time of day? Are you first shift? Is he second?
How does Hillary’s Revise the Record troll project set you all up? (That LA Times exposé doesn’t explain it all!) And will your paycheck end in November?
“take out of context her and Bill’s extraordinary diplomatic skills, and her and Bill’s clear mission to make the world a more peaceful and equitable place ”
NO. Hillary is like the wife of Bill Cosby. They both probably watched the videos.
Enablers are worse than the victimizer in many ways; as the assassin …
Hillary will cement the death of the constitution. The Jewish billionaires want her picking the next Justice and they are getting their way. Israel first; always.
Which “Jewish billionaires” and what does the SCOUS have to do with Israel.
Who do you want picking the next supreme court justice, Trump?
Nuf said is an actual antisemite. I’ve denounced him as such many times.
Thank you, Mona. I’ll just have to wait a little longer for you to stop worshiping the so-called Semites of today, apparently.
Was Shakespeare an anti-Semite for exposing the thievery inherent in the Jewish religion? I mean, a good Christian company runs on net 10% and invests in the community. A good Jewish company charges for every single sheet of toilet paper. They can’t toss you a life ring but how much money are you worth? They’ll sell you one. Just like the Epi-pen rip-off; gouge the customer a deep as you can without killing him. Wells-Fargo defrauding millions (again) and apologizing?
That is the Jewish religion in a nutshell; greed. How is Israel not like that?
I will not debate your obscene antisemitic bilge. I’ve addressed that kind of “point” from you and others before, and won’t do it now.
“I will not debate your obscene antisemitic bilge.”
OK. Just answer the bit about William …
Shylock has literally got his pound of flesh.
A religion centered on Shakespeare would certainly be more realistic than any of the Abrahimic crap.
props on that Mona
Nah, mindless BilGe is an actual anti-Semite. And I’ve denounced the psychotic comprehension-challenged israel-worshiping Palestinian-hating ziopath as such many times.
“Who do you want picking the next supreme court justice, Trump?”
He’s already been selected but the AIPAC-controlled congress won’t allow the vote on Merritt. Saban wants Hillary to pick a judge.
(Saban founded AIPAC and he’s Hillary’s big funder)
Remember, Israel-First! This is America after all.
I asked you three questions. You answered 0.
All you do is make unfounded accusations.
“I asked you three questions. You answered 0.”
I answered you , as you note …
Say, Karen, to echo novelist Barry Eisler, it seems the Dems took a huge risk in nominating Hillary Clinton: Washington Post-ABC Poll: Hillary Clinton’s Unpopularity Hits Record High And Majority of Women Now Hold Unfavorable Views:
We could have had the extremely popular Bernie Sanders who continues to be popular. Every single poll showed Bernie beatin that freak Donald Trump by leaps and bounds. But nooooooo, the DNC had to sabotage his campaign (and even with THAT the man won 22 primaries!).
Bernie crushed Hillary in Washington state by more than 3 to 1. There are virtually no Hillary signs anywhere around Seattle. She is despised here.
There are a few Trump signs around southwestern Michigan, but almost no Hillary signs. (This is a red county.) They’re both greatly unpopular.
Sorry, pal, but Washington State was a perfect example of the difference between the caucus and the popular vote. Hil actually won the popular vote by large numbers, in fact, Hil trounced her because people who could vote for her without taking a day off from work and without being intimidated did so. Not so in the caucus. The caucus reflects those who have the monetary means of avoiding work and therefore have nothing better to do than that.
And how low was the turnout?
Seattle Bernie fans will not support her. They hate her for good reason.
Hillary is shit on a shingle.
Jill Stein is looking stronger and stronger.
Of course, she’s going to be attacked and maligned by the main stream media, which I consider you a part of Mona, though I’m not sure you whether the likes of you would be found on Fox or CNN, I guess you lean more toward Fox, a bit like Assange. You’re too young and too green and too wealthy to remember MLK’s popularity when it was in the toilet when the MSM told lies about him. Oh, and by the way, MLK was unfaithful to his wife. So, you should take that and run with it too. Meanwhile, you only fancy yourself an insightful, cutting edge politico, but your opinions fall squarely with the vast majority of Americans who do not understand that law enforcement is not allowed to express opinions about a case, particularly when no wrong doing is found. All you’re doing, my guess of course, is protecting your inheritance.
HAHAHAHA. The Revise the Record troll says this about me:
Sweetheart, I’m a 60-year-old grandma and had to retire early from the practice of law due to health. As a result, I was only able to practice for about 5 years — I went to school, both undergrad and law, while raising three kids in poverty so got my degrees when older.
Hillary Clinton is despicable for many reasons, not the least that she’s the well-paid darling of Goldman Sachs. The author of the above article, Glenn Greenwald, is my former law partner who left a Wall Street law firm that is Goldman Sach’s premier law firm — Glenn didn’t want to be representing such corrupt assholes. You know, the corrupt assholes that have paid Hillary Clinton millions in speaking fees for speeches she won’t release.
I’m protecting my grandsons and country. You, by contrast, are promoting absurd glowing lies about a vile woman. You. Are. A. Paid. Hack.
Raising three kids in poverty? Then you would understand what CHIP is and it was Hill’s idea originally, though Teddy did a lot of the work. It came out of the failure of getting single payer through, about 20 years before anyone knew what that was. So, evidently, you have little understanding of raising children in poverty.
Fuck. You. And fuck the vile, warmongering Wall St. whore, Hillary Clinton. The woman on whose behalf you are paid to post here.
What was true for African-Americans vis-a-vis the Clintons is also largely true for us poor whites. Michelle Alexander addressed it all here: Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote:
And don’t think that’s just about Bill. Alexander makes clear Hillary played a big role in all of it, supporting and promoting it all.
Oh, and: Fuck you.
Wow, you’re not sounding very old come up out of poverty granny with all that language… Nah, you sound a bit like a Trump supporter. Case closed. Next….
Sorry Karen, but you are a paid propagandist.
Mona did a pretty thorough job of rounding-up you juvenile bleatings for Hillary.
Just FOAD
Karen, sweets, I came of age when the hippies were doing their thing, and picked up many of their habits. Including potty mouth when I’m pissed.
And you, Karen, are a foul paid hack for a foul and depraved woman. that pisses me off. So, as I said, pleas fuck right off.
BTW, Karen, I can’t lie about myself here because there are multiple people who have long known me in meat space. So you’re just SOL — what I said about my life is entirely true, as is well known to several here. Including the author of the above article, Glenn Greenwald.
“Of course, she’s going to be attacked and maligned by the main stream media, ”
You are a paid Hillshill. Fuck off.
You’re so in line with the MSM that you post misleading figures, like the link you provide. Those figures are quite old and the result of the lies told about her over and over. But she’s done great work in undoing people like you since then.
The paid hack from Revise the Record thinks results from August 31 are “old”:
Sure thing Jimmy, er, Karen. In the last five weeks love and admiration for Hillary Clinton has just exploded. It’s miracle of god!
I literally could not do your job. Don’t you need to shower for an hour after every shift?
Hillary has the figure and health of a raging alcoholic.
But then Haim Saban will be calling the shots with Rahm Emanuel back in as CoS. With all that training as corrupt mayor of the century, he’ll fit in well in a Clinton White House.
Karen, you sound as if the photo of Clinton and Netanyahu is a post-production image, photo-shopped to make Clinton look bad, a nice compliment to that photo a few years ago of Clinton having tea with Assad. I’ll take a chance here, and say it’s an actual photo of the good buddies exchanging pleasantries, probably not even chosen by Greenwald, but by an editor, possibly being a shot of Clinton sharing with her old friend how she is going to take the American-Israeli relationship to, in her own words, quoted in The Intercept a few weeks ago, “the next level.”
As I’ve commented before, I shudder to think what the next level in this increasingly unholy alliance will be, but I’m certain it will be primarily President Clinton funnelling, unchallenged, even more massive amounts of U.S. taxpayer money to Israel beyond the unprecedented 38 billion Obama just promised, in addition to who knows what else. All in exchange for…what, exactly? Pray tell, Karen.
I’d love to go on, but, it’s Friday. Have a weekend.
Time to get Yuval Diskin’s recent piece in the Jewish journal, Tablet in this discussion. Duskin is the former director of Israel’s version of the FBI. He sees fascism descending on Israel, led by the settlers in the West Bank whose far-right, religiously unhinged Zionism is spreading throughout the country. (Diskin doesn’t drop the F word, but it’s what he’s fearfully describing.)
For anyone to argue with a straight face that the West Bank is not in apartheid status means they are self-deluded, Zionist ideologues. The West Bank occupation is never going to end, and is many-decades old. It’s a Bantustan in which there is one set of leniently applied laws for Jews, and a far harsher set of laws applied to Arabs.
Just read Diskin: The Two Jewish State Solution
Excerpt:
This is apartheid jacked up on steroids by a strong dose of clerical fascism. And do note, speculation or characterizations of Diskin’s motives in publishing this piece are irrelevant, because what he describes is accurate and is also described by many others, including many other Jews, e.g., such as the brilliant Jewish-American novelist, Michael Chabon.
“one set of leniently applied laws for Jews, and a far harsher set of laws applied to Arabs.”
Name even one country who treats its citizens the same way it treats enemy citizens.
Stalin said every leader has to deal firmly with insubordination. All he did was deal firmly with insubordination.
What does Stalin have to do with Israel?
Hmmm. I seem to recall suggesting, a couple years ago when Secretary Kerry first said the apartheid word publicly, Israel might not care the world’s using that label if it allows them to continue ethnic cleansing and settling of the occupied territories for another 20 years. I still doubt that label bothers Israel compared to eventually losing U.S. favor$ – or the thought of EVER being forced to honor UN242 in a two-state solution.
And – they’ll still get to starve Gaza with siege, find need to mow the lawn, steal land and resources not theirs, then be honored and provided BDS-subsidies in Washington DC for doing so. Perhaps most importantly though is just by accepting that label for a while they’re effectively given a pass on ever again using the words, “two-state solution,” probably with the hope in a short while and with enough settlements that’s no longer possible.
Israel should probably change that “sticks and stones” saying for their children though.
“Stone throwers near any settlement are terrorists, but words can never hurt me.”
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.746266?
Education minister and Habayit Hayehudi leader says will act to legalize Amona outpost, set to be evicted by year’s end.
‘We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel,’ he says.
@Sufi Muslim
It saddens me to see the defensive tone you are taking recently. I for one enjoy your distinctive input into these comments.
I certainly see the beating that Muslims take in America, Europe, and even those sympathetic to things multicultural and cosmopolitan, may underestimate the continuous stream of abuse Muslims take in social media and mass media. If you hear “Islamic” on the TV, it probably was followed by the word “terror”. Americans, at least respectable ones, may think anti-Jewish thoughts but they have the brains not to be proud of their anti-Semitism in public. But being Islamophobic in America, it’s part of “free speech”, it’s trending.
If you’ve read anything I’ve written here, you’ve probably guessed that I don’t fall into the main-stream of public opinion on many issues. I’m coming to terms with that. Being a minority, being an outsider, I try not to take it personally when “the greatest nation on Earth” plunders Iraq, kills millions in Vietnam, tortures, spies on everybody, threatens to elect a man with orange hair. And when there is an opportunity for a sliver of the American media to look at things in a way that comes closer to my point of view, I appreciate that. And I’ve appreciated your insights into how you approach all these topics with your explicitly Muslim outlook.
Sufi,
I hold you in the highest esteem also. Most things you write talk about positive things and are not judgmental. But religious people (whatever the religion) can become extremely preachy and not realize that they’re talking to people of other faiths or no faiths, and believe that everybody is views what they are saying from their perspective, which is the farthest thing from the truth. Sometimes people of faith have NO perspective on other people’s perspectives. That’s what Wasi is doing here. He has a view of the world, informed by his upbringing, and he thinks everybody else should fall in line. That’s the thinking of an 18 year old, who has not met enough different kinds of people, or hasn’t had the time or the inclination to absorb other kinds of people. My sympathy for that kind of thinking is limited. I’ll give it some space, but I’m not obliged to give it any.
I don’t have anything against religious Muslims. My mother is the most religious Muslim I know. But she doesn’t judge anybody other than herself. But if she started judging me or anybody else, based on HER faith, then yes, I’d have an issue with that.
True. I have experienced that a lot, both from those who call themselves Muslims and those who do not.
But, from my perspective, this is also true of non-religious people, as this sense of “I’m the only one who has an accurate grasp of the realities of life,” is primarily due to not realizing that There are as many paths to understanding the realities of life as there are hearts, that is, everyone is on a unique journey and develops an understanding of the realities of life based on very complex processes (upbringing, inner and outer experiences, reflection, environment, reading, level of consciousness, etc., etc.), transcends religious, cultural and non-religious boundaries.
Moreover, this sense of self-righteousness (and again, it is not exclusive to religious people), leads to judgemental-ism.
“Americans, at least respectable ones, may think anti-Jewish thoughts but they have the brains not to be proud of their anti-Semitism in public. ”
Nice backhand, pal.
Has it occurred to you that Israel is acting perfectly Jewish?
Israel just got their pound of flesh after 500 years. Yes, a pound of flesh, demanded by Israel to the tune of $38 billion – all while slaughtering Arabs for decades. Israelis are stealing with impunity. That means the Jewish State, run by Jews, is a thieving entity. Where has that meme been heard before?
Everything horrible that Israel could be is happening with no end in sight.
A handful of Jewish billionaires are responsible for the shit-show election of 2016.
What country is getting fucked and who is getting billions while maintaining better healthcare and longer life expectancy?
And according to Sam Harris, ISIS is behaving perfectly Islamic…
You and Sam Harris should be sitting in a tree…
“And according to Sam Harris, ISIS is behaving perfectly Islamic…”
They’re both behaving as religious zealots do. That’s the problem.
But there are only ~14 million Jews worldwide and a billion+ Muslims.
So which religion has the greatest percentage of wackos?
Jews have killed at an unprecedented rate. That fits well with Jewish law.
The IDF Head Rabbi said something to the effect that “1000 Arabs are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”
The Jewish religion is centered on greed. Always has been. That was the message from Shakespeare.
What’s changed?
So, the greater the population, the greater the percentage?
Or did you mean the number “of wackos”?
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. It gives me something to reflect upon.
On one hand, we Muslims are under assault from some very misguided Muslims, and, on the other hand, we are under assault from those non-Muslims who think we’re one huge monolithic beast, that we have all come out of the same assembly line, and think and act the same way, that we must all be feared.
There’s never any discussion of what we Sufis call “Transformative Islam.” Islam is only discussed as part of terrorism and “beating the sh** out of those moZlems,” or “Creeping Shariah,” with absolutely no understanding of even the most essentials of what an overwhelming majority of peace-loving Muslims adhere to.
And, then, we have these idiot so-called Muslims, the caretakers of Mecca and Medina:
“UN Tells Saudi Arabia To Stop Stoning And Executing Kids”, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-stoning-executions-children_us_57f77373e4b0e655eab373aa?section=&
Excerpt:
…
Yet, Islam’s primary source calls for respecting treaties.
Absolutely, no understanding of Islam’s primary source and Shariah. No wonder, the term, Shariah, is now a slogan to spread fear of Muslims.
Poor Glen. It looks like the Pallies are going to actually have to negotiate a State as required in UNSC Res 242.
But in the meantime, keep whining that the Pals won’t be getting a Pre-Judenrein State as they’re demanding as you spew bs about “apartheid”.
You poor sod.
The rest of the world should put the wall around both Israel and the USA.
For me this is the strongest point:
Anyone from any group can understand it. Just as a South Africa that maintains a “white democracy” (by not allowing Blacks to vote in the national elections…is far from our understanding of a democracy…An Israel that seeks to maintain political control for a minority Jewish population….isn’t a real democracy either. Or perhaps Americans should take the vote away from Blacks and Latinos and declare themselves the greatest democracy on Earth?
…Then I guess the question is, how is it that so many Americans need a refresher course on the merits of democracy? Because plenty of people, plenty of Americans understand that things like “white rule” aren’t democracy…they just don’t care. To throw Godwin’s Law to the wind…Hitler didn’t care about democracy, Stalin didn’t care…it seems many Democratics and Republicans don’t care about democracy (judging by the dictatorships they support, and the number of disenfranchised Blacks and Latinos in America)
Judging by the laughable attempts to present Israel as a democracy, it seems many Israelis too, judge democracy to be expendable in their holy battle for the sacred real estate.
Well, yesterday Glenn, old school honorary Hawaiian Pot Club member President Obama commuted the sentences of another 100+ non-violent low-level drug offenders (now, more than all the other Presidents combined) languishing in the U.S. penal colony … but it won’t take effect until Oct. 2018.
AtheistInChief ? Mudbone
Oct. 7 2016, 10:37 a.m.
…
Factually incorrect.
You are mixing up Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
P.S. Your two outbursts in this thread proves that it is pointless for Muslims to comment on this site, even though there do exist those who throw garbage at Islam, one way or the other, based on their understanding of Islam.
Sufi, with all due respect, you are over-reacting. AtheistInChief is a former Muslim but not one of those warmongering, Islamophobic New Atheist types.
For quite some time after I left the Roman Catholic Church (my background was in an especially authoritarian, dogmatic version of it) I was unreasonably hostile to any priests who ended up in my presence and extremely sour on all religion. AiC apparently had a similarly bad experience in Islam.
Moreover, he’s engaging that “Wasi” person who is, indeed, most annoying because of all the absolute drivel s/he posts, including stupid fact claims. Wrong doesn’t even begin to describe Wasi.
In sum, please don’t conclude that AiC’s interactions with Wasi mean anything in general about the environment for Muslims here. I know I always jump on bigots when I see it posted. I also know you are a great asset to the ongoing discussion.
Finally, I think religionists of all faiths, such as yourself, need to understand it’s difficult for atheists like me or AiC to state our actual opinions on religion and in a manner that passes the “politeness” test. My actual opinion on the beliefs of all three Abrahamic religions is nuanced, but ultimately I think most of the mtyhs and doctrine are horshit that sometimes are harmful to individuals and groups, even as religion also serves as a benign cultural glue.
You are correct.
I wasn’t implying that.
“Finally, I think religionists of all faiths, such as yourself, need to understand it’s difficult for atheists like me or AiC to state our actual opinions on religion and in a manner that passes the “politeness” test”
Niel deGrasse Tyson put it best when he said (paraphrasing) ‘Scientology is no less legitimate than Christianity’.
Mysticism and ritual, ancient scrolls and virgin births, attributing fermentation to a miracle from god …
go ahead, stay detached from reality.
Create realities within realities to describe perception.
The bible was meant to be interpreted by the heart … if you feel something it must be real …
why can’t we just get along?
Everything must be interpreted from the higher consciousness, to produce good and positive results.
“Everything must be interpreted from the higher consciousness, to produce good and positive results.”
Existential bullshit. Whirling emotions do not correlate which much of anything.
Well, there are the Dervish …
and we are right back to one hand pointing to god while the other hand points to the ground. Ahh, a connection!
Pffft. If you wish to put reality into an amulet, please go right ahead. You could jam it in a crack in a wall somewhere and maybe god will pick it up. Bwahahaha!
I hear there is a good business in silver sheet for inscribing your message. god appreciates the donation.
Foolishness is always good for a laugh. Just as is your attempt to engage me or RR in any meaningful way. Knock yourself out …
I said:
To which you replied:
I was merely sharing my thoughts and ideas on the cosmology of the self (aka consciousness).
If you had reflected on my brief response, you would’ve realized that I was actually agreeing with you. How come you didn’t see that?
So, in other words, responding to you and RR in any meaningful way is foolish.
So, what you are saying is that you are not interested in a meaningful discussion, right?
“If you had reflected on my brief response, you would’ve realized that I was actually agreeing with you. How come you didn’t see that?”
You weave a web of mysticism. Your emotional swings have meaning to you and only you. You were not rational in your response to RR so I just tossed in a comment to that affect.
Religion is not an answer; it’s a diversion. Opiate of the masses and such,
hence the implausibility of meaningful dialog.
Would you attempt to talk with a Scientologist about their perceptions?
I view all religion as coming through a single, clear, lens and I’m not buying it.
That is correct. I try to present a Sufi perspective, as I understand it, and adhere to.
Do you think I’m being inappropriate?
Not sure why you’d refer my thoughts and perspectives as “emotional swings”, but are you bothered by my perspectives?
I was asked to provide a scientific proof of what someone referred to as “God”.
I have no such proof.
Is it irrational to admit that?
I shared my thoughts, I am not sure if I was being irrational about it. If I was, please point out specifics and I’ll try to be more rational next time. It will be a good learning experience for me, and I will be grateful to you.
That’s your view and I respect that.
I also accept the view that organized religion is not the answer. Spirituality is.
Religion has certainly been used as an opiate, but it has also been used in thoughtful, intellectual and spiritual manner, especially when enough attention is paid to self-purification.
It is very much possible to share our thoughts and ideas with each other in a courteous and thoughtful manner. But it is not possible to provide a scientific proof of what is termed as “God”.
Yes, and I have shared perceptions, “beliefs”, and ideas with many, many non-Muslims. Discussions can be very illuminating and result in a good understanding of each other, so long as it’s sharing, and one is not being self-righteous and judgmental.
Through these discussions (with other religious people, as well as with agnostics and atheists), I realized the underlying commonality amongst us all as humans.
That’s your view, and I respect that.
Interesting choice of words. You seem annoyed.
All I said was that if we interpreted (things) from the higher consciousness, that’d yield positive and good results.
The higher consciousness reflects, by our definition, qualities, such as love, peace, generosity, humility, selflessness, forgiveness, not doing unto others what one doesn’t want done unto one, seeing no other-ness, compassion, lack of lust for power and control, etc.
The lower consciousness reflects qualities that are opposite (hatred, violence, arrogance, selfishness, vengeance, doing unto others what one doesn’t want done unto one, lust for power and control, etc.)
Human beings reflect a wide range of qualities from the highest to the lowest, individually as well as collectively.
I did not bring up God.
What do you dispute, with what I have presented above?
I’m just trying to figure it out.
But if you are not interested in a meaningful discussion to develop a better understanding of each other, that’s your choice; I’m fine with it.
“Interesting choice of words. You seem annoyed.
All I said was that if we interpreted (things) from the higher consciousness, that’d yield positive and good results.”
You seem to feel a need to state the obvious.
I apologize for it.
However, it has resulted in the realization that we agree on that matter.
“it has resulted in the realization that we agree on that matter.”
So you see substance in everything and nothing.
That sounds like religion.
I said:
To which you replied:
You can call it whatever you prefer, I try to see purpose and opportunity for self-growth and realization in every situation and encounter.
In this particular instance, I essentially agreed with you on a matter, and I acknowledged that.
I think it was a positive thing, don’t you?
@ sis …
Didn’t know AtheistinChief was ex-Muslim. Interesting… but there’s no good reason for y’all to squabble over the title \../
Ain’t made up my mind on Wasi, yet, but I’m still willing to hear him/her out… to some degree.
I think Sufi, basically, is sweeter than tupelo honey … and some of the more crude and more vulgar and more violent language hereabouts just hurts her heart.
Now … sis
… you’re in over your head here. In reality, there ain’t but one religion.
But alas, a man can never hope to ‘attain unto the knowledge of the Ancient Beauty, can never quaff from the stream of divine knowledge and wisdom, can never enter the abode of favour, unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets.’
ps… and forever is a long time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlE8YzLRlcI
Let me put it this way:
I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be commenting here since:
1. I have nothing new to say — I essentially say the same things over and over again, and
2. My comments annoy some people, something I hadn’t realized before, and that makes me feel bad, and
3. This is not a religious website, or a website on spirituality. — it’s a political website, and I tend to be apolitical.
AtheistInChief ? Wasi
Oct. 7 2016, 10:09 a.m.
Thank you for put us in our place.
Sufi,
I’m not putting anybody in his or her place. I admit that I was harsh. But that’s because he was preaching. He said things like “The Quran says this and Muhammad said that” like a justification for things. Israelis can also say that the Talmud says that land is theirs. This is not the way to argue for violations of human rights. That’s my point.
Also most people reading this are not Muslims. They’re not going to have any sympathy for what the Quran says or what Muhammad said. Bringing in religion to argue for the rights of Palestinians is a wrong-headed way to argue for Palestinian rights. Palestinians will die, despite whatever it is Muhammad said. So my point is, lets talk about human rights, International Law, and the laws of war. And let’s not bring in religion into it.
And yes you’re correct, I mixed up the two Eids. So Muslims don’t fast before they commemorate Abraham’s attempt to kill his son. That’s the other eid. But they do, do it. My point was, that the Israelites, whom Mudbone is depicting as some sort of evil, are not that different from Christians and Muslims. That’s my point. My point is not to vilify Muslims. I’m just saying that to depict the Israelites as different is bigoted, when everybody else thinks highly of that event.
My apologies to any faithful Muslim who’s offended. But I’d pick on any Christian or Jew who tried to justify their actions because God said this or God said that, if I didn’t think the argument was solid. I have all the sympathy in the world for Muslims who feel marginalized in a comments section. But I also feel sympathy for people who were brought up as Christians or Jews who feel that they have to hold their tongue while Wasi lectures them on what’s right and what’s wrong according to HIS religion, not theirs.
That was the reason for my torrent. I apologize to you and to anybody else who feels it was harsh, but I’m trying to explain why I was being harsh. My intentions are not malicious in any way. I’m trying to steer the conversation to what I feel would be more fruitful. That’s all. I’m not trying to be personal.
He said this (from the Quran):
Then he said this (from Muhammad):
He then said this:
His whole comment is here: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/?comments=1#comment-291698
It’s clear that you objected to him quoting the Quran and Muhammad (S), but what was he trying to justify?
What I read from what he quoted are:
1. The Muslims are enjoined to do good and not evil.
2. That, at the very least, a Muslim should recognize the difference between good and evil, even when s/he finds her/him-self in a position of helplessness regarding preventing an evil.
These are the kinds of things I myself have stated here (this website).
And that’s why I felt, taken into consideration other things and comments, that it is pointless, and even inappropriate, for a Muslim to be commenting here (on matters of Islam).
I’ll see if I should address other things you’ve stated in your reply to me.
That whole story has very deep spiritual significance, way beyond the literal narration and understanding.
There’s huge philosophical and metaphysical discussion on that.
It has to do with the self’s tendency to attach itself to the (unreal) transient instead of to the Permanent (the Supreme Consciousness).
Most Muslims these days are not well-educated on cosmology of the self.
No need to apologize. There’s no problem.
When the madness stop?
Salute our flag, fellow Americans! For our so-called democracy’s latest 38-billion-dollar contribution to the world’s latest “adolph-ian” leader of a nation based on racial hatred while our own innocent children of poverty,( resultant of our free gifts laid at the feet of the tyrant Netan-yahoo) are denied a hot lunch at their grammar school because they cannot pay. For half of my 82 years of life, my stomach has turned as I’ve observed one POTUS after the other bowing and scrapping to Israel at all cost…even that of the denial of the pursuit of happiness for each generation’s children’s health, education and, now, general welfare.
CHECKMATE: Queen Hillary on a AIPAC Horse
New York Times editorial today ‘Israel at the boiling point’
Naftali Bennett coming out with what many heard as (and later forced to attempt to clarify as) a call for a ‘Israeli Civil War’ against the CIS Commanders for Israeli Security/Ehud Barak
It’s Hillary and the CIS vs Bibi, Adelson, and the Settlers
Let the INDYKING* of Hillary begin!
*(Eponymously after Martin Indyk: like ‘Fisking’ but deeper, and from members of your own tribe)
The Lieberman appointment was Hillary’s gamechanger – and she will reap the whirlwind now as she tries to get off the collapsing apartheid horse
Glad you acknowledged and made the distinction about who propped up apartheid SA and enabled it.
“…they are going to follow the path of apartheid South Africa…step by step they are going to become isolated, a pariah state, delegitimized, very much like South Africa, they are going to be able to survive as long as US supports them. It’s very interesting to look at the history of South Africa. You could pretty much replace the word South Africa with Israel through the history. Back in 1960 roughly, the apartheid regime recognized that it was becoming an international pariah. We know now from declassified documents that the foreign minister called the American ambassador and told him that he knew everyone was voting against them, but that as long as the US was backing them, they did not care. That’s pretty much what happened. By 1988 and a few years beyond, the US was still supporting S.A., strongly. Thatcher too, but it was mainly Reagan & the US……US foreign policy will have to change because of pressure from the bottom. Take South Africa. It was popular pressure which finally induced Congress & even businesses to begin to pull out of SA. It could not get to the executive. Reagan vetoed congressional sanctions, but there was enough popular pressure for Congress to override the vetoes. Reagan had then to violate the congressional legislature. Popular pressure did make a difference. ” – Noam Chomsky in discussion with Ilan Pappe and Frank Barat in “On Palestine.”
The “two-state solution” is bullshit. If the Palestinians ever had true sovereignty they could let all their exiles back in and vastly outnumber the Israelis, and they’d import lots of arms, and somebody would use one of them, and then there would be war. And the Israelis know this.
The “one-state solution” is bullshit. The Jews would be outnumbered, and soon they’d be illegal.
The “let them wither away like the Indians” solution is bullshit, because modern states won’t treat them as brutally as the tribes of elder days of America, nor are the Palestinians known for a low birth rate. Things will just get more complicated.
The “Escape from New York” solution is their top candidate. The problem is, in the movie people eventually *do* escape from New York. You can’t herd the Palestinians all the way to a slaughterhouse gate without things falling apart eventually.
That leaves war, but in war all bets are off and this would be a lot like the fall of Saigon all over again.
I think the Israelis have only one solution, one so incredibly non-obvious that I would never in a million years have thought of it if I hadn’t read the prophet Isaiah’s description of it (11:15-16):
In other words, we build the Red Sea Dam – by “we” I mean the U.S. and/or other budding superpowers lending capital with expectation of repayment. The Red Sea evaporates, the difference in sea level generates power, the power creates desalinated water, and the water turns parts of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt into well-watered productive populous land that stretches ever further and further down where the Red Sea used to be. It will be a miracle to beat Moses. And in exchange for all this new land, they will arrange to set aside from the beginning an area of former desert larger than the entire Israel and Palestine, where the Palestinians can resettle and build a prosperous new country, aided in their transition by all that superpower capital. And maybe with some wetness the whole area will become at least a little less harsh in other ways.
It’s crazy, but it’s the only way, it’s the way that was fore ordained. You can spin around the hamster wheel of peace plans and settlements and mortars and rockets and security zones and buffer zones all you want, but you’ll never get anywhere until you start here.
I think we all know who went where; were given refuge by whom but to repay that hospitality all the time were amassing weapons to dispossess the natives of their land and resulted in the longest/largest suffering refugee population in the world as we have today – and it wasnt the Palestinians who have an inalienable right to return home.
This is a joke, right? Isaiah…huh? Let me think. Oh, yeah, he was one of the boys in the band who wrote the word of God . Yeah, your solution is ‘crazy but it’s the only way…fore ordained” as you say. Now, think about your rational source. Remember, it was Abraham who, when he was finally blessed with nice Hebrew baby Isaac, announced that God had ordered him to kick out his bed-mate Hagar and their son Ismael into the desert. “Don’t worry. Abe, God supposedly said, ‘Isshy will do fine and build great nations, don’t worry about him and his Mommy…you’ve got what you always wanted, right?” That’s the way it has trickled down to America’s favorite bully in the Middle East playground. We know it’s evil to support fascism, but after all when “God” has “fore ordained” and Isiah then, as you say, it behooves the “U.S. and/or other budding superpowers” to support God little postage stamp of fascism that can foster the “miracle to beat Moses.” The major purpose of America is to keep our little pet bully to manifest the “fore ordained.” My stomach turns.
There are parts of the Old Testament I can’t accept – just because you put a bunch of books in a binder doesn’t make them all true or all false. There are people who say that every word of the Bible is the absolute truth and no mistakes or bad ideas ever made it in there; then again, the same people believe the Apostle Judas was a traitor! To me, I’d call that “more than slightly infallible”, sort of like the contradictory genealogies of Joseph. But Isaiah, well, he seems like one of the more plausible prophets to have had a look into a thing or two that people don’t normally see. I can’t tell you what to think about him; but I’ll say that the universe has a pattern, a plan, reasons why things happen beyond random luck. We would not be on Earth if Earth were not a place where sentient beings could be – from our minds this planet has congealed, and from our eyes the state-vectors of the stars collapsed into their places. And I think his idea in this case would WORK, however impossible it must have seemed back when he wrote it, and for the next two thousand years, and how could you explain that?
Indoctrination, I expect, would be a good explanation. At least, we have progressed to an understanding that child welfare workers are on hand in the event God wants to use another child murder as an example of proof that one “loves” the Omniscient Being best. I realize you and I, both seemingly tied to bible history are coming from different directions. Thanks for your thoughts…mine are those of a curriculum developer for the good book as “literature”…Oops! of the subject, sorry.
whoops, we have some negative issues here. I meant “more than slightly not infallible”, and I’m not quite sure what you mean either. Actually, I was a damn near clone of Richard Dawkins around 1985 or so. One thing that pushed for a change of heart was that I went to a “clinic defense”, got into an argument, and realized the other guy had some points. Also, I was forced to recognize that precognition is a real (and dangerous) phenomenon, which had a wide range of implications. (That’s not actually related to Isaiah at all, because he didn’t actually live to see the future and remember it in the past. Prophecy is something else again, with only superficial similarity) More to the point, many Christians surprised me with their willingness to show that their religion isn’t just some cold doctrine of sex-obsession after all, but comes in a real variety that opposes injustice and underpins high ideals.
It doesn’t really require a religion I’d call true to come up with a true prophecy. I mean, look at the Dresden Codex, the famous 2012 “end of the world” prediction: http://www.crystalinks.com/dresdencodex.html Look at the center two panels in the upper illustration – one is a depiction of the greenhouse effect (i.e. absorption of a high frequency light and emission of a low frequency light); the other is an illustration of a methane clathrate. The text description talks about “Black Earth”, and the figure as a whole shows water being poured out onto the world. I mean, I think some of this stuff really does seem to go beyond confirmation bias. Not so far that you can submit it as scientific evidence maybe, but far enough that if you can see a prophecy that lays out a solution to a major problem in the history of a country that the prophet cared about, you might want to give it serious consideration.
I give every concept of “light” serious consideration. Nikola Tesla (his work my mentor)) provided a fairly impressive “confirmation basis”” of the realities and miracles of light and its emissions. I am familiar with the Dresden Codex but not as committed as I should be because, as you say, some of it “seems to go beyond confirmation basis” and I need that. I guess I choose Tesla ‘s scientific evidence of “light’s” form, shape, and measurable substance over “prophecy”. As the Taoist philosophers state, “In the absence of reality (matter), the real (eternal light ) is real: In the absence of the real (eternal light ), reality (matter ) is real.” I appreciate your comments and envy your ability to bring logic and surprising substance to the mythical. Thanks.
Greenwald (falsely) writes that the US state department effective said “…….that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned….”. He confirms that this was his intention when he later in the article refers to Israel as “apartheid”. This is critical in the ongoing campaign to delegitimize the Jewish-majority state, and it is critical for the legitimization of the BDS campaign. If the US government believes that Israel is an apartheid state and is just providing cover for their government’s activities (as they did with South Africa), then why not boycott Israel like the world did to bring down Apartheid South Africa?
The Palestinians behind the BDS campaign compare Israel to Apartheid South Africa despite the obvious differences in the founding of the two states – and the laws which govern Israel today versus Apartheid South Africa. The primary goal of the BDS campaign is to end the Jewish-majority state, but that cannot be achieved without resorting to propaganda and lies. The US government does not believe that Israel is “irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity” as Greenwald suggested – so the idea that the US is again supporting apartheid is false.
The differences between to the funding of the 2 states is that ‘israel’ was created on illegally appropriated ethnically cleansed under the barrel of a terrorist gun and SA never created any refugees – in fact at the time had over a million refugees from neighbouring states and from all over Africa. Of course there are many other differences like SA apartheid funded/armed itself and never got the ones they oppressed to pay tax for health care/education and so on. I can go on for days but trying to whitewash this apartheid entity claiming its a wonderful fair state is surreal. Only privileged settlers would claim as much.
Israel is an apartheid state. If it delegitimizes Israel to say so then Israel should stop being an apartheid state.My comment here demonstrates the futility of arguing agasint the fact that Israel is an apartheid state — given the Israelis, past and present, who acknowledge the fact.
As discussed below, solely on this issue of “apartheid” and what Greenwald wrote on that matter will I reply to Craig Summers.
“……..My comment here demonstrates the futility of arguing agasint the fact that Israel is an apartheid state — given the Israelis, past and present, who acknowledge the fact……”
Sorry Mona. That proves nothing. If Israel annexes the West bank and refuses to give Palestinians political rights (essentially a one state solution), then it is an apartheid system. Currently, Palestinians living in the West Bank do have political rights – just not in Israel BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT CITIZENS OF ISRAEL. They would be voting in the Palestinian elections if the elections had not been suspended. The West Bank is occupied (in part) illegally by Israeli settlers.
This is worse than a joke; “Currently, Palestinians living in the West Bank do have political rights.” Former Shin Bet (Israel’s FBI) director Yuval Diskin.
LMAO…Yea, you rapture-ready Xtian-zio mouth-breather, and you don’t get to define what apartheid is, so you can go get fucked. And you will.
The radical left is driven by anti-Americanism. They couch their anti-Americanism in a fake concern for human rights (in this case the Palestinians). See Murtaza Hussain’s recent article on Syria, for example. If the Israelis were Russian-supported instead of US-supported, it is likely that the below the line commentators at the Intercept would be accusing the aid workers in Gaza of being US-funded while supporting the one state solution (despite saving the lives of numerous victims). In fact, the Intercept likely would not even carry an article on the conflict (instead of the dozens that have been published since the Intercept opened for business).
The hypocrisy of the extreme left is on full display at the Intercept – and you can view this for yourself by reading the below the line commentary during Operation Protective Edge and the current conflict in Syria – for which there is only ONE serious article published in the Intercept. The Intercept has published numerous articles about the racism in the west directed at the Syrian refugees while ignoring almost entirely the brutal campaign carried on by Assad against his people.
“…the brutal campaign carried on by Assad against his people.” So you prefer ISIS then, but the leftists are anti-American. What a dipshit!
Sorry, but I am not a big fan of Islamic terrorism, but in this case, Assad’s record in Syria indicates he is by far the biggest terrorist operating in the Syrian-Iraq theater.
Thanks.
ROFL…Yea, you rapture-ready Jesus freak, but you’re a real big fan of state-sanctioned Christian and Jew terrorism, ain’tcha?
Yea, and “Thanks” for nuffin, Jesus boy.
“State-sanctioned terrorism.” Betcha, he didn’t raise a finger when Saint Ronnie and Blessed Maggie Thatcher supported and armed Saddam with chemicals and biologicals for over a decade. But it’s fine cause he’s not a ‘big’ fan…
So I assume that you hold to the original definition of terrorism (One who supported the Jacobins) instead of the US State Department’s definition (subnational groups engaged in political violence) or the Code of Federal Regulations (“The unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”)?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92340&page=1
Not all concern for human rights is necessarily fake. We may not take human rights seriously, but that doesn’t mean everyone is equally enlightened. Study to understand the perspective of the enemy; only then can you defeat them.
Sorry Benito. I need some kind of clarification so I don’t misinterpret what you mean.
Thanks
By all means go ahead and misinterpret it. It’s always a pleasure to see how other people will misinterpret what I write. That’s why I made a cryptic comment in the first place.
Some folks here are way too anti-American, but in this case I’m only seeing anti-Israelism. Keeping $38 billion and spending it on Americans is, by definition, a pro-American attitude.
“…….Some folks here are way too anti-American, but in this case I’m only seeing anti-Israelism……”
I believe they are conjoined at the hip, Wnt.
C’mon,spending on Americans?The MIC might employ Americans(its all we’ve got left of viable export-a fiasco in itself)but most of that dough will subsidize the occupation and the well being of the Israelis.
Check out Craig Murrays speech at ICH.Very interesting.
I truly appreciate the integrity of this objective and factual reporting.
Israel’s genocidal annexation of Palestine is a horror.
The fact that the American government, and the American media, have lied to their own people, for decades, in order to facilitate Israel’s brutal thuggery, is also a horror.
The current land-grab is belligerently criminal and entirely inhuman.
ON TOP of THAT: On Wednesday, Israel launched MORE AIRSTRIKES against the defenceless civilian population of Gaza.
It did so shortly after it forcibly DETAINED HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS for attempting to bring food, medicine and humanitarian aid to the innocent victims of Israel’s savagery and oppression:
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/6/headlines/womens_boat_to_gaza_seized_by_israeli_military
This week marks a new low point in that low country’s low history, and the American government – despite its feeble protestations – is as criminally complicit as ever.
If the citizens of the world’s only “super-power” must suffer, in order to gift the likes of Israel with even greater wealth, privilege, military might, and lawless impunity, then the empire’s citizens have EVERY RIGHT TO KNOW WHY that terrorist state has such power over them.
The LEAST we can do, for now, is to support the BDS movement.
American government political class are so despised the Philippines have told America “YOU’RE FIRED”.
http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/10/07/487994/Philippines-Duterte-US-EU-aid-Yasay-Lorenzana
Drones, murder, regime change, genocide support, coup backing, corruption, weapons to anyone for bribes, wallstreet thieves, massive spy network, a government that lies to its citizens, robs them and assists wallstreet in robbing the citizens, war fraud, more lies than ants on the planet, and a congress that writes laws so the corporations can screw the people and rake them over the controls. And the nerve to call it a legitimate democracy. BE SERIOUS.
President Duterte was prepared to dress obama down.
Duterte is (proudly and admittedly) a killer, so I don’t really care what he has to say. Nor do I have much personal reason to care if kids from the western side of the Phillipines have to buy a license from the Chinese to go wading in the surf. Mostly, I’d prefer not to have a TPP trade deal that allows “fair competition” where people from the Philippines compete with whoever they want here and anybody there who imports from the U.S. might turn up dead tomorrow with a “drug user” placard stuck on their back.
This whole business of playing superpower and striving for integration with the rest of the world is getting really old. Some of it, sure, but there really are places you shouldn’t go.
Duterte is responding to the massive importation of bad drugs into the Philippines by criminal drug networks operating in fellow Asian corrupt nations.
The ensuing chaos created Duterte,and the Philippine people are behind him totally,except the Western whores.
As always,its up to the people of a nation to decide their future,not outside people.
Very simple.And when he steps outside his nations boundaries to impose his views on others,he will imitate US.
Final Jeopardy;the final jeopardy answer is related to SSs.Sheesh,I said to the wife,Clinton, Rice or Albright.Question;What two SSs graduated from Wellesley 10 years apart.Answer Clinton and Albright.Like we didn’t know?
Jill Bitem,take the floor!
TMC;This months Thurs stars of the month;Women trailblazers.
Nah,just coincidence.
Letterman;Trump is damaged.oy.
Trump says he will sit down and talk to Putin.How gauche.
Putin’s image as peacemaker over Manhattan Bridge.hauled down by NYC police.Some zionist must have alerted the cops.Mona?
Duterte is truly horrible, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that the American government’s preferentially-eternal “War On Terror” has served to strip America of influence and esteem.
Being horrible doesn’t even diminish the validity of Duterte’s assertions. How he characterizes America is perfectly fair.
The fact that Duterte is horrible, is only relevant in so much as it demonstrates the fact that the US has been so overwhelmingly awful that even horrible people can now look down on it and tell it where to go.
The post lightly [edited] for clarity:
“[My] hypocrisy is on full display.
We are on an IP thread now so nothing changes for [me. I just got done puking] the outrag[eous claim] that “Saddam Hussein was solely responsible for [the 500, 000] deaths due to the sanctions that [preceded the US war of aggression] – not the US” [even though it was Washington’s “deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq” according to the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq who resigned in protest over its “genocidal” policies] The US initiated the war in Iraq and therefore is responsible for a lot of deaths. No one can deny that [this is a war crime, or that I really, really don’t care].
Below [any concern I have is that for decades] the US [has been repeatedly and brazenly violating the UN Charter – in other words, committing war crimes]. [I have] absolutely no anguish for the tens of thousands of children killed; no pain for the [more than 1,0]00,000 people killed (mostly civilians); no accusations of war crimes directed at the brutal [American, Turkish,] and S[audi] bombing of civilian areas; no outrage at the targeting of hospitals, clinics[, markets, schools, weddings, and funeral processions (especially by the Americans with their drones); and no condemnation for the tens of thousands of detainees that died in the custody of [regimes backed by the US].
The [decent people] (for much more obvious reasons) are concerned about the [support given] by the White H[ouse and] the West [to terrorist groups such as ISIS]. [The US may] start WWIII [with its single-minded and cruel pursuit of] regime change [in violation of the UN Charter] and a no fly zone in Syria [which would also be in violation of the UN Charter]. All of this [is completely im]material [to me].”
I am glad Glen wrote about this issue right away. What next, start petitions we want our money back?
Israel killed another Palestinian kid, a 15-year old starting his hair on fire with a flare
Palestinians are not the White Helmets founded by Westerners and supported by sophisticated PR firms — trained by a British mercenary to lug video equipment and record all they do and endure. So when they have a graphic of the slaughter and abuse they suffer it’s happenstance. They have a far-picture of the fallen teen with his hair ablaze with this report .
Zionist cowards have a long history of killing children. It’s what they excel at.
‘Snipers with children in their sights': https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/28/comment.israelandthepalestinians
‘Israeli officer: I was right to shoot 13-year-old child': https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/24/israel
The Zionist cowards have a long history of killing children. It’s what they excel at.
Google: ‘Snipers with children in their sights’ – Chris McGreal
Google: ‘Israeli officer: I was right to shoot 13-year-old child ‘
They fired it right at him. They intended to hit him and burn him. This is a sadistic act. Sadism is a mark of evil. What’s it going to take, a bunch of bozos like barack obama who live in denial of war crimes because he wants to look forward? What a fool to think he can drag rubbish into the future without fowling it up. What a fool to believe that this situation is going to magically go away by giving $38 billion to Likuds.
And then these sadistic morons will tell their children to feel good about what they did and then encourage the children to feel the same to honor and respect their ways. And so on.
i certainly hope that mr obama, whose reputation in my eyes has crashed, sees this and reads it and reconsiders the hell that he is financing. Certainly those moron sadists will not be on a no fly list.
and here is another gem
http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/10/06/487961/Muslim-man-plane-inshallah
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, the 26-year-old political science graduate, had enjoyed a dinner with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the day before the incident. (Photo from social media)
I certainly do hope that the moderators of this Sunday’s Presidential debate will ask Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump to comment on Israel’s continued march forward with their illegal settlements, especially in light of the ten year $38 billion dollar aid package.
Clinton would simply evade and deflect and make no mention of the words ‘settlements’ or ‘occupation’, and would then talk about Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, and about how the U.S-Israel relationship will never be broken, and how BDS is anti-Semitic and needs to be defeated.
Anyone hear how much of a KICKBACK mr obama is getting on this deal? Not in Quid Pro Quo cash of course, but promises of speeches and fees and maybe exclusive quarters no charge and maybe a specially managed wallstreet retirement account. Or a position on Lying Hellary’s TPP TRIBUNAL where he can sit in judgement for the corpo-rats and help wallstreet bilk America for sums that the IRS can collect.
Mona writes:
“…….That’s what they have. The West Bank is de facto Israel now, because of the settlement movement. (A former Shin Bit director, Yuval Diskin, has said this, and that settler Jews themselves have created “two states,” one of them under one law for Jews, and another for Arabs.)…..”
This is all just political point making. In 2008, Olmert and Abbas nearly pulled off a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. That was only eight years ago. According to the Times of Israel (11-19-2015; “Abbas admits he rejected 2008 peace offer from Olmert”):
“……..Olmert said he had offered a near-total withdrawal from the West Bank — proposing that Israel retain 6.3 percent of the territory in order to keep control of major Jewish settlements. He said he offered to compensate the Palestinians with Israeli land equivalent to 5.8 percent of the West Bank, along with a link to the Gaza Strip — another territory meant to be part of Palestine……..he offered to withdraw from Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and place the Old City — home to Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy sites — under international control. He described the offer to give up Israeli control of the Old City as the hardest day of his life……. Abbas said he supported the idea of territorial swaps……. Abbas said he also felt Olmert’s offer to accept a symbolic number of Palestinian refugees into Israel did not resolve the issue — because descendants of Palestinian refugees now number in the millions, many scattered across the region………”
Abbas and Olmert were interviewed for this article:
“………Interviewed separately by Israel’s Channel 10 TV, both men described the negotiations as serious and said a peace deal was achievable……”
So despite the naysayers and one-state supporters on this site, an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis is achievable. However, it will not occur while Netanyahu is President. Putin is only kidding himself if he believes he can achieve peace while Netanyahu is President.
I answered Craig Summers in one specific sub-thread below, but 95% of the time I ignore him — at the request of multiple other commenters. Craig is an authoritarian, pro-torture, Republican Trump-voter who posts massive walls of drivel. My substantively replying to him causes him to do so even more.
So I usually don’t substantively reply and shall not do so here vis-a-vis his above “response” to my comment here.
“Abbas admits he rejected 2008 peace offer from Olmert”
And just what did that so-called ‘peace offer’ consist of? Did it call for a carving up of the West Bank into a series of discontiguous apartheid South Africa-style bantustans ala the Camp David offer?
You throw out the term ‘peace offer’ without any clarification at all and just expect it to stick. This isn’t Youtube’s comments section pal.
You are such a fundamentally dishonest cretin, Craig.
From the fucking lede of the report you cite:
Emphasis added.
wild guess here.. i am getting the idea that israel is worse than china because in israel you cannot simply lie about things, you have to tell the correct lie.
Doug
“…….because he was not allowed to study the map……..”
That’s ridiculous of course. How could Olmert make an offer of peace which included an exchange of land without showing Abbas the map? He couldn’t of course. According to the JP (“Revealed: Olmert’s 2008 peace offer to Palestinians, 5-24-2013):
“…….Abbas silenced those present at the late hour meeting so that he could concentrate. He asked for the map that Olmert described to be drawn from what he remembered because Olmert refused to give him a copy. The Israeli prime minister told him that he would not give Abbas the map until the Palestinian leader was willing to ink his initials on it, or in other words, agree to the borders that Israel offered. ……The Palestinian leader took a piece of the Presidential Office stationery and sketched the borders of the Palestinian state from memory…….“We [Erakat and Abbas] also presented a map to Olmert that would transfer 1.9% of West Bank territory to Israeli sovereignty. On December 18, 2008 we deposited our map and Olmert’s map as we remembered it with President Bush at the White House in the presence of Rice and [National Security Advisor Stephen] Hadley……..”
Abbas was not allowed to take a copy, but he drew a sketch from memory of the Olmert map. I would not call that a great policy by Olmert, but he must have had his reasons.
Thanks.
You are so beyond fucking ridiculous, you stupid fucking Christian zio cretin.
By not making an offer of peace which included an exchange of land or properly showing Abbas the “map”, you stupid fucking Christian zio cretin.
If Abbas truly wanted peace he would have accepted this more than generous offer.The only reason to not accept this offer ? Does not want peace.They were fortunate that the dome of the rock was not destroyed after the destruction of many churches and synagogues when they illegally occupied the area.When the Romans took over Jerusalem they named the land Palestine to mock the Jews.Arafat was the one to claim the area called Palestine belonged to the Arabs.You will find no historical proof of a country called Palestine.No flag,no books s written about the culture or people,nothing.Just land occupied by many different people over the years until 1948 when Israel became a country in one day.A desert land that nobody wanted.
The foreign zio anti-Semite terrorist filth were the asshole invader occupier colonizer murderers who claimed that the Land of Palestine belonged to teh joooooooooos, to mock the indigenous Palestinian people. You will find no historical proof of a country called “israel” prior to 1948. No flag, no books written about the culture or people, no nothing. Just illegally occupied and colonized Palestine, which unlike this fucking
“israel”fakejooistan, has existed for millennia. Fakejooistan: an apartheid terrorist criminal shithole that nobody wanted.Widely known and popular blogger (as “The Angry Arab”) As’ad AbuKhalil, my emphasis:
The Talking Points Memos went out, and The Syria Campaign’s sophisticated PR agency told all their minions to rant about the supposed hypocrisy of Max Blumenthal and others of us for supporting BDS on the one hand, and on the other opposing flirtation with WWIII by imposing a No Fly Zone against Russia in Syria. The Zionists love it.
The Zionists will not like it at all if the madness next door blows totally out of control.
Of course, like American jingoists and teenagers everywhere, they think they’re invincible and immortal.
Perhaps recollecting the words of Solomon would be. . . wise:
OT: What are the tags for block quotes, bold, italics, etc? There used to be buttons for them under the message box, but I noticed they disappeared several weeks ago. Unfortunately, I don’t recall what the manual tags are, and there’s nothing in the FAQs or anywhere else on the site to indicate what they are.
[blockquote]…[/blockquote]
[i]…[/i] that’s italics
[strong]…[/strong] that’s bold
Obviously all of those would be this < instead of this [
Kitt, many thanks.
Sillyputty, that site will be useful for me when posting on other boards. Thanks.
Try this comment edit preview site – it cuts down on typing and you can see your post side-by-side as editing takes place. Most tags seem to work just fine here, as does inserting hyperlinks, etc.
But do not include more than one per comment, or it will take anywhere from 2 -24 hours before the comment shows up.
Good point. In other news: when is the commenting section getting “fixed” again?
I’ve relegated any notion that will happen to the status of urban legend.
“Such moves will…distance Israel from many of its partners…, “
Not if you can buy their politicians and judges.
One bully gives another bully 38 billion dollars to further brutalize a people exiled from their homeland, whose homes and property was stolen, subjected to mass murder, and treated like the lowest of the low.
When Christ said “The poor will always be with us” they may have ignored the essence of what he may have meant like “The poor will always be with us as long as the greedy and amoral are also with us and in control”.
They also may have modified the essence of his words “The meek shall inherit the earth” meaning like after they are dead, when he actually may have meant “The meek shall inherit the earth once they stop letting themselves be inculcated by despotic propaganda, so that they can then gain enough presence of mind to realize they can obtain what is meant to be theirs, and help their most oppressed earthly brothers and sisters to also obtain what is rightfully theirs “in this lifetime”, by freeing themselves of earthly tyrannical chains.”
This is a great and very frustrating story, Mr Greenwald.
It’s hard to get a handle on what is below the surface, when the evidence on top is convincingly negative and awful. Thank you for all the context-providing links.
Our positions are increasingly disgusting.
The Atlantic piece on the Obama Doctrine was a very illuminating: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ story. Here Mr Goldberg provides good background into what Mr Obama felt – this is from his 2009 Cairo speech: “What drew the most attention, though, was his promise to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was then thought to be the central animating concern of Arab Muslims. His sympathy for the Palestinians moved the audience, but complicated his relations with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister…” On Mr Netanyahu: “Obama has long believed that Netanyahu could bring about a two-state solution that would protect Israel’s status as a Jewish-majority democracy, but is too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so. Obama has also not had much patience for Netanyahu and other Middle Eastern leaders who question his understanding of the region.”
Do I believe the stories that I read or the ones that Mr Obama tells through his hand-picked journalists?
Which, of course, could only be a real democracy if the Jewish majority were not compelled by law and maintained by government machination.
How can ‘protecting a Jewish-majority’ be considered democractic? Since when did ethnic engineering become democratic?
We should have seen the back of such odious racist ideolgies as ethnic nationalism with the defeat of the Nazis.
In the words of (Jewish) Professor Michael Neumann: ‘So a miracle appears among us. The very ideology of homelands and peoples under whose auspices the Jews were all but exterminated has become the sustaining ideology of Israel, a state devoted to Jewish ethnic sovereignty…When Zionists suggest that the French and Germans have a right to their states, they conveniently forget that this means the *inhabitants* of France and Germany, not those of some French or German *ancestry*, not a ‘people’ in the sense of an ethnic group. (The world was outraged when it suspected that Britain’s ‘patrial’ immigration laws were designed to favor those of ethnically British ancestry.) But ‘the Jewish people’ have a right to their state, and this is supposed to be some lofty ideal. Why? Because ethnic nationalism has taken on the cloak of civic nationalism, and we are too stupid to notice.’ http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/10/14/fearsome-words/
The hypocrisy of the extreme left is on full display between two above the line articles published by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain.
We are on an IP thread now so everything changes for the radical leftists on this site from the article about the White Helmets on Syria. Suddenly they revert to humanitarians – and they are outraged by the following; targeting of civilians is a war crime; children are being murdered, and videos surface of IDF brutality; ambulances are targeted by the IDF; entire apartment complexes are wiped out while water is cut off and the electrical plants are leveled (leading to charges of collective punishment). All of this is posted with great anguish by the far left wing (and Russian-bot posters).
Below the line at the article on the White Helmets, the radical left is focused on the US role in the conflict. There is absolutely no anguish for the tens of thousands of children killed; no pain for the 400,000 people killed (mostly civilians); no accusations of war crimes directed at the brutal Russian and Syrian bombing of civilian areas; no outrage at the targeting of hospitals, clinics and aid convoys (especially by the Russians); and no condemnation for the tens of thousands of detainees that died in the custody of Assad. The radical left and Russian-bots (for much more obvious reasons) are concerned about the funding of the White Helmets by the west and by the absurd idea that the White Helmets will start WWIII because they (possibly) support regime change and a no fly zone in Syria. All of this material on the White Helmets is posted with great anguish by the extreme left and Russian-bots.
Richard Pearce represents a classic example to the above.
On Israel-Palestinian conflict:
“……..So, Gilg, can you suggest a better starting place than a crime against humanity that has been allowed to continue for over 30 years? What tops YOUR list?…….”
On Syria:
“…….Secondly, you have answered my question despite your attempt at burying it under the campaign to demonize the Syrian government for daring to not let the US dictate who governs Syria…..”
@RJ Steele replying to Craig Summers
Craig is so far out there in his ardent Zionism that he argues against the obvious. Israelis have been wringing their hands to the effect that “we need to stop this right no or there will be apartheid” since at least the 70s.
Yitzhak Rabin gave a secret interview in 1976 stating that the situation that now exists would be apartheid. He rejected and was appalled by the settlement movement then. Since then, the settlements have — as Rabin feared feared, and to quote him — shown they are “a cancer in the tissue of Israel’s democratic society.” And they’ve caused undeniable apartheid.
Rabin:
That’s what they have. The West Bank is de facto Israel now, because of the settlement movement. (A former Shin Bit director, Yuval Diskin, has said this, and that settler Jews themselves have created “two states,” one of them under one law for Jews, and another for Arabs.)
In 2015 Netanyahu told the Knesset that with regard to the occupied territories, Israel “must control the entire area for the foreseeable future.” The Israeli paper Haaretz then editorialized that Netanyahu had thus:
Exactly.
Imagine California’s Republican Governor George Deukmejian signing into law a divestment package against the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1986:
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/31/weekinreview/california-s-tough-line-on-apartheid.html
Now we have the Democrat Governor of California, Jerry Brown, signing into law strong anti-BDS legislation aimed at protecting the apartheid state of Israel just a few weeks ago. (I won’t put a link because I want this comment to be posted).
The fact that the Obama administration and Congress made a ten year deal with Israel to give them $38 BILLION with no restrictions on more illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is a travesty.
The logical move for Congress would be to put a freeze on all monies to Israel until the illegal settlements are frozen and REVERSED.
But because Israel has such a stranglehold on Congress and all of the Presidential candidates (save Jill Stein), this will not be happening.
We know what will happen if Hillary Clinton is elected President. Not too sure regarding Mr. Trump as he might grow a spine (and a conscience) and make an attempt to confront Israel in a meaningful way that will FORCE Israel to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians to return to the 1967 borders and to return all the illegal settlements to the Palestinians.
Most of the civilized world would cheer to see the keys taken from the illegal settlers and given to various Palestinian families who have been patiently waiting for the “right to return” for seventy plus years. They can exchange their saved keys from stolen houses over the decades for new keys to newer, much fancier digs.
Not to mention Hillary Clinton’s bellicose rantings about “obliterating Iran militarily” at the first sign of Iran breaking the nuclear deal negotiated by the P5+1 countries (the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, China and Germany).
At this point, considering the flagrant corruption of the DNC in order to install Mrs. Clinton, the un-indicted criminal, pathological lying Neocon, into the presidency, I am hoping that if Mr. Trump is elected he will decide to put his premiere negotiating skills to use with Israel and will create part of his legacy in doing the “deal” no one else has been able to cut over the decades.
You said, ” Not too sure regarding Mr. Trump as he might grow a spine (and a conscience) and make an attempt to confront Israel”, and why?
What makes you even remotely unsure when you yourself said all candidates save Jill Stein, are under the “stranglehold” of Israelis?
Probably based on the statements he made at the beginning of his campaign for President when he said he would remain “neutral” regarding the Israeli/Palestinian quagmire:
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-will-remain-neutral-israeli-palestinian-conflict-if-428000
Who knows what his policies might evolve into if elected??’
But we do know for a FACT what Hillary Clinton’s policy toward Israel was/is and always will be, eh?
“Apartheid” has the word “apart” in it.
Jews lived in the West Bank, East Jerusalem & Gaza for centuries.
Arabs expelled all Jews from those areas.
That was apartheid. That was like those lily white towns in America. That was segregation.
The settlers integrated the West Bank & East Jerusalem.
Integration is the opposite of apartheid.
Sure, Jack. Yitzhak Rabin was a moron, Ehud Barak is a moron, and all the folks on the editorial board at Haaretz are morons — none of them understand what apartheid is.
I’ll get around to my usual hasbara troll announcement about you in due course.
Evidence that Yitzhak Rabin & Ehud Barak said that Israel is an apartheid state?
Let’s see if the ‘international hour’ of the diane rehm mention this.
or – how about NPR and The NewsHour or Washington Week or …..
Somewhere in the Old Testament it says :
—–Ruth ( or was it Sara) gave Abraham a son named Isaac ( or was it Jacob )
—–Who the hell was willing to butcher his son for his God ?
—–Only an Israelite would contemplate such a Sacrilege .
Tune in for answers at Dialing-for-Dollars USA .
That’s as ridiculous as it is offensive. Among other things, it’s always an error to take any religion’s sacred text as literally as a fundamentalist, perhaps more so.
The Hebrew Bible is heavily influenced by pagan religions and draws extensively from them. The origins — as well as the original meaning and significance — of the Isaac myth are not well-established, but it’s unlikely the entire idea was original with the Hebrews.
Mudbone specializes in the offensive and the ridiculous. This would be a good one to start ignoring early.
S/he hasn’t really registered much with me. I’ve seen the moniker, but I hadn’t retained much because it wasn’t especially compelling, whatever it was.
I hadn’t paid much attention until the past couple of days. Crude and offensive seem to be its preferred mode of operation — unlike our sophisticated regulars who only flip the C&O switch when it’s called for. ;^)
You know what Non-Israelites like Christians do? They venerate this event and teach it to their children.
You know what Muslims do? They fast for 30 days (or 29, depending on the Moon) and then they butcher (slit throats of live animals) millions of domesticated farm animals in commemoration of that event.
Total HS.I grew up Christian and we learned about JC and his gospel,no one spouted OT crap.
Maybe heretic moonie loonies do,but they are not Christians.
Did you hear that 50,000 chickens headed for the ritual Jewish slaughter?
You atheists sure seem full of zionist BS.It must be a prerequisite.
Thanks for shining light on this unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship. More US citizens are waking up to human rights violations (directly and indirectly), thanks to articles like this.
The Israeli regime has been building a permanent Apartheid state from the day it declared the majority of its legal population, the refugees, to be noncitizens, with no voting or residency rights. And the US has been funding it with complete indifference, and complete official denial, for a long time. The only thing that makes this any different than all the other follow ups to the other US funding is a few tweaks in the language.
I would like to see current polling of Jewish Americans that specifically raises these issues/quotes/conclusions… and on TV or the internet like the focus groups after debates.
In fact, a new round of polling every time such nonsense arises would be useful.
The generalized questions (support/oppose) aren’t getting to the meat of the matter, and are allowing a vacuum to exist. Supporters can assume that widespread ignorance is shielding them from personal responsibility in maintaining the ugly reality we are witnessing and detractors can remain on the sidelines as if opposition absolves them of the same. I think requiring respondents to address the specifics would be enlightening for both sides.
I’m not surprised it’s not happening, but some new approaches other than BDS couldn’t hurt.
The lights will soon be going out across large swaths of the southeastern U.S. because it is too costly (around $38 billion) to put our entire electrical grid underground. The number of people in the U.S. expected to lose power due to Hurricane Mathew is roughly twice the entire population of Israel.
Americans have, quite literally, subordinated their own wellbeing to that of another country. Go figure.
Mr. Greenwald
It is entirely bullshit that the US State Department concluded that “Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned”. In the article, without any basis, you refer to Israel as an apartheid state as if it is a foregone conclusion (Greenwald):
“…….Honest observers on both sides of the conflict have long acknowledged that the prospects for a two-state solution are virtually non-existent: another way of saying that Israel’s status as a permanent apartheid regime is inevitable……. But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned……..”
You write:
“…….Worst of all is that U.S. political orthodoxy has not only funded, fueled, and protected this apartheid state, but has attempted to render illegitimate all forms of resistance to it……”
This Apartheid state? Your attempt to manipulate the statement by the state department to apply a politically explosive, false label to Israel is disingenuous at best. Indeed, it is laughable how you attempt to manipulate the reader. Only “honest” observers of the IP conflict are credible (Greenwald), and they are only credible if they accept that the two state solution is dead (Greenwald). Did the US State Department actually call Israel an “irreversible” apartheid state as you suggested, Glenn (State Department)?
“…….Israelis must ultimately decide between expanding settlements and preserving the possibility of a peaceful two state solution.……..Proceeding with this new settlement is another step towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation……”
The US state department statement clearly did not draw the conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state or that the one state solution is inevitable. In fact, just the opposite: “Israelis must ultimately decide” as in the future, Mr. Greenwald.
killed any Palestinians lately?
got plans to kill any?
are they occupying your land?
Obviously no one in this country no one gives a FLYING F-U-C-K !!
It’s all a matter of $$$$$ !
Money will solve every problem .
Yuk,, yuk ,,,,,yuk !
In the first paragraph, Greenwald quoted former Israeli defensed minister, Barak, who defined an apartheid state in this case as one in which millions of Palestinians have no voting rights.
That most surely will be the case. Is this former high level Israeli official’s definition not accurate enough for you?
RJ Steele
“……In the first paragraph, Greenwald quoted former Israeli defensed minister, Barak, who defined an apartheid state in this case as one in which millions of Palestinians have no voting rights……”
They DO have voting rights – in Palestine. Only the elections have been suspended in Gaza and the West Bank (al Jazeera, 9-10-2016):
“……Exactly one month before the long-awaited local elections were set to take place across the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian high court in Ramallah suspended the vote – and it is now unclear whether polling will go ahead at all……”
Palestinians are not citizens of Israel. The land is legally occupied (if you believe the 2004 ICJ decision). They have no voting rights in Israel for that reason. Remember that Hamas was elected to power in Gaza. My main point, however, is that Greenwald falsely indicated the US called Israel an irreversible Apartheid state. They did no such thing.
Craig, I’m exploiting the 5% window I give myself for replying to you, because I think this merits it:
Just the headline, and I personally wouldn’t have done it. But the article makes clear the State Department is simply describing Israel as what is an apartheid state (which is true):
Every word of that is true.
Mona
I am only taking issue with Greenwald putting words into the State department’s mouth which are not true and Greenwald calling the two state solution dead (nothing else for the moment).
Greenwald said:
“…….But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which Barak warned…..”
That is NOW Mona – then Greenwald refers to Israel as “apartheid” later in the article (“…..Worst of all is that U.S. political orthodoxy has not only funded, fueled, and protected this apartheid state….” which is false IMHO). But as you and the state department said, they are headed in that direction (as in future):
“……“towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation” that is anti-democratic: i.e., the equivalent of apartheid……”
The key word is “towards” (or a one state solution). That’s my take. Again, the two state solution is by no means dead in my opinion as I posted above.
My comment here is more than sufficient to definitevly rebut you or just about any Zionist on the apartheid matter. I’m not engaging you on issue of the long-dead 2-state solution, or likely on anything else in this thread.
From the L.A Times: ‘Does the term ‘apartheid’ fit Israel? Of course it does’ http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-makdisi-israel-apartheid-20140518-story.html by Saree Makdisi, 2014
“Apartheid” isn’t just a term of insult; it’s a word with a very specific legal meaning, as defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1973 and ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions, to their shame).
According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts “committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Denying those others the right to life and liberty, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, expropriating their property, depriving them of the right to leave and return to their country or the right to freedom of movement and of residence, creating separate reserves and ghettos for the members of different racial groups, preventing mixed marriages — these are all examples of the crime of apartheid specifically mentioned in the convention.
…And so it goes in all domains of life, from birth to death: a systematic, vigilantly policed separation of the two populations and utter contempt for the principle of equality. One group — stripped of property and rights, expelled, humiliated, punished, demolished, imprisoned and at times driven to the edge of starvation (down to the meticulously calculated last calorie) — has withered. The other group — its freedom of movement and of development not merely unrestricted but actively encouraged — has flourished, and its religious and cultural symbols adorn the regalia of the state and are emblazoned on the state flag.
The question is not whether the term “apartheid” applies here. It is why it should cause such an outcry when it is used.’
From Saree Makdisi in the L.A Times, 2014: ‘Does the term ‘apartheid’ fit Israel? Of course it does’
“Apartheid” isn’t just a term of insult; it’s a word with a very specific legal meaning, as defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1973 and ratified by most United Nations member states (Israel and the United States are exceptions, to their shame).
According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts “committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Denying those others the right to life and liberty, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest, expropriating their property, depriving them of the right to leave and return to their country or the right to freedom of movement and of residence, creating separate reserves and ghettos for the members of different racial groups, preventing mixed marriages — these are all examples of the crime of apartheid specifically mentioned in the convention.
…And so it goes in all domains of life, from birth to death: a systematic, vigilantly policed separation of the two populations and utter contempt for the principle of equality. One group — stripped of property and rights, expelled, humiliated, punished, demolished, imprisoned and at times driven to the edge of starvation (down to the meticulously calculated last calorie) — has withered. The other group — its freedom of movement and of development not merely unrestricted but actively encouraged — has flourished, and its religious and cultural symbols adorn the regalia of the state and are emblazoned on the state flag.
The question is not whether the term “apartheid” applies here. It is why it should cause such an outcry when it is used.’
Which is why so many democrats are sick of their own party establishment.
The funny thing is that according to the Israeli press, the US under Obama has been hostile to Israel. He has not bowed down to Netanyahu. Apparently, the military aid and diplomatic cover that we give to them is not enough.
There is nothing wrong with giving. But you have to know what you are contributing to. Are you supporting truth and justice or lies and injustice? That is the fundamental question.
Pre election softening of the Hell Bitches fealty to zion by implying her fellow traveler was not good for Zion,to obscure the obvious blow jobs both do repeatedly,as a counterweight to Trumps nationalist support.
The monsters never sleep.
“…the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion over 10 years, by far a new record for U.S. aid commitments, even though Israeli citizens enjoy all sorts of state benefits that Americans (whose money is being given to Israel) are told are too costly for them, including universal health care coverage, and tout superior life expectancy and infant mortality rates.”
Indeed. However, How much pleasure do people – gangsters – really have in living in fear of each other and their state? As Glenn notes, and to paraphrase, the Israeli state has by now ruined Israeli citizens’ intellectually and spiritually. That’s why I call it Nazi Israel. That’s what it is.
When the bullies are not somehow stopped, they will not only dominate, but they will also, over time, ruin all those dominated, while creating additional bullies via moral support and ‘naturally’. You can be happy being happy or you can be happy being miserable. And misery loves company.
In the Edward Snowden movies (both which I have seen), Mention is made of the good life that Edward had and then sacrificed. Yes and no. If it was truly good, Edward would have had no reason to sacrifice it. Edward’s work conditions were nightmarish, and those were a part of, and stemmed from, a culture of dangerous criminality that, under Obama, has gotten worse. Just think on his Insider Threats program.
“Stasi-Like”: Obama’s Program To Thwart Unwanted Links Not Only Creepy, It Won’t Work” – Jon Queally (http://bit.ly/2dOcyGO)
Check out this YouTube video (while it exists) showing Israeli rightwing bullies (I call them Nazis) attacking some of the few caring Israeli citizens protesting Israel’s murderous assaults on Gazans: http://bit.ly/2cVvCX0. The vid is titled “Stop The Massacre In Gaza Demo.”
The darkness has spread throughout the world. You seem the same rise of fascism, brutality and unreason in many corporatocracy states. Greece’s Golden Dawn members take to the streets to sort out ‘wayward’ citizens. Indonesia’s population is largely ruined by the same sort of fascist leadership and influence that has been there for some time, as Andre Vltcheck reminds us in his article titled “Indonesia, A Proudly Nazi Nation?” (http://bit.ly/2dOf7ZG). How many nations, besides Nazi Ukraine (Obama, following in the footsteps of JFK, who helped establish Nazi police states in South America), in Europe are now neo-nazi? (Europe is barbaric and has been for many years, as Michael Parenti reminds us in his article titled “The Nobel Peace Prize For War.” – http://bit.ly/2dOfwLu; Fascist media and ignorant leftwing journos like to tell us that post WWII, No European country has waged war with another. It isn’t exactly true. And it’s a little bit beside the point, if European leaders aid and abet non European states in attacking and destroying one of their countries.) Just call them Nazi. The far right is in the ascendancy everywhere and people are being intellectually and spiritually ruined everywhere. I had an interesting cab ride the other day. The elderly Indian gentleman was letting me out at a subway stop, per my request. Before I exited his cab, he offered to take me my whole distance for nothing, because, as he said, he was enjoying our (political) conversation. So far so good. But it went all downhill from there as he proceeded to share with me his Hindu views. And they were utterly fascist, which I tried to tell him. He thinks Nerendra Modi is exactly what India needs. I tried to tell him about Nerendra’s background, that he is a fascist (http://bit.ly/1JPwrbX). The man was not only impervious to facts, but he dismissed all those (and I quoted books and authors, Indian, who could have shown some interest in investigating had he genuinely cared about democracy and the fate of the Indian people.) He went on about the identity of the Indian people and how that was paramount and how Modi could be counted on to protect it. I told him that people care more about jobs, being able to feed themselves and their families and security. And I directed him to Arundhati Roy’s Democracy Now video in which she reports (and is hated by a LARGE number of Indians for it) how the Indian government has all these memorandums of understanding with foreign mining companies who covet the resources of the land that some Indians are living on. The problem is, as it is in so many places in the world run by the gangster corporatocracy, is that people are living in places that powerful special interests want to steal. The Indian government’s solution? Call those innocent Indians ‘Maoists’ and send in paramilitary to kill them and force them to leave their home. How nice. Nothing fascist about that.
Yes, Some are doing okay in the gangster corporatocracy. But a lot of their goons and groupies are not doing so well. I always point out that this dark world’s paradigm, or operating principle, is ‘riches for the strongest’, a (neoliberal/neoconservative) game in which there ‘has to be’ losers and a sad fact about that is that so many victims of that game are so ruined mentally and spiritually that they can’t grasp that. They are trying to win in that godless game rather than join with a (very) few others in calling for a new game, namely one in which there are no losers. Jesus Christ pointed to it long ago, when he gave people his paradigm, known as the golden rule. ‘Love your neighbor as you would have him love you’.
Israel has totally stopped caring about pretending to be concerned for peace or justice: [Education minister
Naftali] Bennett We Must Act Now and ‘Give Our Lives’ for the Annexation of the West Bank
BDS now, more than ever.