At Istanbul, Secretary of State makes jarring comparison between Boston Marathon terror victims, IHH terror activists killed by Israel.The problem here is not just that Obama's foreign policy is pro-Islamist and entirely unjust to the Jews of the Middle East, but that we go along with it like the dumb little lemmings that we are.
Speaking at Istanbul, Turkey, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a jarring comparison between the victims of the Boston Marathon terror bombs and terror activists from the IHH group who were killed when they attacked IDF forces aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010.
Kerry told his hosts in Turkey that he understands the pain of the families whose loved ones were killed aboard the Marmara – and added that he can understand their pain well, having just dealt with the families whose loved ones were slain in Boston.
Kerry said in his speech that he hopes the Israeli apology will lead to a thawing of Israel-Turkey relations.
For John Kerry to even think to compare the dead in Boston to the Jihadis aboard the Mavi Marmara is probably the most vile case of false moral equivalency that have I heard in an exceedingly long time - perhaps ever. The picture below is a picture of one of the "peace activists" aboard the Mavi Marmara.
We have to understand that when it comes to the Jewish people and when it comes to Middle East foreign policy the Obama administration does not only not know what the hell it is doing, but they honestly believe that Jewish self-defense is a form of aggression. This administration seems deeply enamored of the old medieval view that the only good Jew is a weak and defenseless Jew.
How else can we understand the fact that our new Secretary of State has just compared murderous anti-Semitic Jihadis to the completely innocent victims in Boston?
It's one thing to have voted for Barack Obama - I did, after all - but it's another thing entirely to continue supporting an obviously anti-Semitic regime. It was bad enough that Obama wrecked whatever potential that there may have been in the peace process and then blamed Israel for the predictable outcome of his own foreign policy stupidity, but this is just way, way beyond anything that can possibly be justified.
This is more than an insult. John Kerry has just stood on foreign soil and literally compared Jihadis who seek to murder Jews and Americans with the Jewish and American innocent victims of the Jihad. This is how lacking in understanding this administration is. This is how bigoted and racist this administration is.
It's just appalling, but so many diaspora Jews (particularly progressive-left Jews) are much like the proverbial frog in a pot of hot water slowly bring raised to a boil. Sadly enough, there seems to be nothing that will awaken them from their vegetable torpor.
If Barack Obama were to go on national television and piss on the Israeli flag while singing Hatikvah in backwards Latin, progressive "Zionists" would still tell us what a considerate and intelligent man Barack Obama is and how he is the very best friend that the State of Israel has ever had.
And John Kerry is just vile.
{Oh, and by the way, I voted for him, as well. I even phone-banked for the guy. Silly me.}
This strikes me as a rather not-too-bright thing to say.
ReplyDeleteTo say the least...
Vietcong Kerry is as nasty to Israel as he is to his own country. Gotta uprate him for consistency.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that his name always gets a laugh in Israel? It sounds like the Hebrew word (קרי) that means, among other things, "spontaneous ejaculation" (like the ones that can happen to a man in his sleep), a term that appears frequently in Jewish purity laws (a qeri would make a priest unfit for performing Temple services until he was purified).
I would rather have not known that.
DeleteSorry, geoffff. I thought it would insert some levity, I didn't think it would gross people out. My bad.
DeleteBut he feels your pain, Doodad!
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to "purify," Kerry. Perhaps a common sense enema would do it.
ReplyDeleteAfter stumbling across an old Useful Idiot buddy of ours and his all-too-predictable attempt to whitewash terrorism (I'm so sorry your obvious wish for it to have been a white, right-wing American didn't come true, David...), this Richard Landes piece turned out to be a particularly good read.
ReplyDelete*a white, right-wing American Christian
DeleteRichard Landes is one of my favorite analysts on the Arab-Israel conflict because analyzes meta and discourse and how we talk about the conflict.
DeleteI've been considering writing a piece on his concept of liberal cognitive egocentrism which is the false notion that everyone around the world is basically like us and we all want the same thing.
It's simply not the case.
Sounds about right to me. I need to read more of his writing on that, I think...
DeleteYou should, Jay.
DeleteCheck this guy out.
Landes is an original thinker and if you dig around Augean Stables you will find terrific insights - in my opinion.
The guy is a humanities scholar from Boston University, but his main contribution on the Arab-Israel conflict is on Pallywood and the al-Durah hoax.
He focuses mainly on the manipulation of the western media in creating an environment hostile toward the West and towards Jews, those of us who happen to live in the Middle East.
I gotta tell you, my man, the conversation is changing and that's a good thing.
One thing that you and I both have in common is a willingness to rethink old assumptions. It's very difficult to do because there are social prices to be paid and those social prices even inhibit our ability to think outside of socially approved ideological boundaries.
As I said not too long ago, I think there is a sea change in process.
DeleteWhat will fall especially flat are the claims by groups who seek to make this about Islamophobia.
I tell you, tho, this is just so typical of the heinous Obama administration.
ReplyDeleteHeinous? I would suggest they are clueless and ignorant in the way they pursue their agenda to achieve peace. It makes them negligent, perhaps grossly in some cases, but heinous indicates a discernible malicious intent.
DeleteTo believe trying to ingratiate with those who have no reciprocal intention is to be sorely mistaken and even foolish.
Obama, his team and supporters are far behind the curve in this matter.
Not to worry.
DeleteEventually, the 11th Dimensional Chess Strategery will be clear to everyone...
Heya School,
Deleteso you're not crazy about "heinous," eh?
How about "abominable" or "hideous" or "odious" or "atrocious" or "abhorent."
;O)
Sorry, I don't mean to be terribly flip, but you make a not unreasonable point.
I have never assigned malice to this president.
Obama's problem is not malice but an overrated intelligence combined with a severe case of ideological blinkertude.
Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi lurk in the background.
I'd vote for 'unfortunate,' myself.
DeleteAs in, unfortunately, there wasn't anyone else to vote for, either...
*as always...
DeleteYou know, I'm not writing off the possibility that it was a thoughtless mistake. The trouble is, things aren't much better if it is.
DeleteDiplomats usually exercise a lot of care, a good measure of vetting, before they deliver their texts; the checks are meant for avoiding a diplomatic faux pas that could cause a rupture between the two states. Unless, of course, the leaders of the one state think a rupture with the other state would be nothing consequential. In other words, the thinking in the Obama Admin that leads to such carelessness on Kerry's part will be something like, "We don't need the Israelis, they need us, so we shouldn't be worried too much about slighting them, they're going to take it like good little doggies."
After Netancoward's apology to Turkey, that kind of thinking is clearly not without foundation. If Kerry's statement is the result of sloppiness, it's just as bad as if it were out of malice, because it results from the perception that we have become a nation without honor—returned to the same abject state of living on our knees as in stateless Diaspora life, despite having the means to stand for ourselves. A bad outlook no matter how you slice it.
Sloppy and believing that the best way to influence is to almost always play nice.
DeleteI suspect the Turks laugh at both Kerry and Obama behind their backs and see them as weak, when they should make Turkey think twice before taking an aggressive or provocative posture.
Yes. This is outrageous.
ReplyDeleteBut who enabled this? The leaders of the government of Israel.
APOLOGIZING for being attacked by violent ideologically genocidal anti-Jewish racists?!
And this incident is just another in the long line of what has been happening for the past many decades. This is no different than the legitimization of a Nazi murderous terrorist ideologically genocidal anti-Jewish organization -- Fatah-PLO -- and the effort to create a second 'Palestinian' Arab state (in addition to the 'Palestinian' Arab state Jordan), headed by that Nazi murderous terrorist ideologically genocidal anti-Jewish organization, in the existentially strategically crucial highland heartland of the homeland of the Jewish people. And who has enabled this and participated in this? The leaders of the government of Israel. And who has been going along with this as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and who has even been fervently promoting it (because they have believed, and have wanted to believe, and have refuse to be dispelled of believing, insane imbecilic now-ubiquitously propagated intendedly genocidal anti-Jewish lies about the history and current reality of the situation that the intendedly genocidally besieged newly-refounded, liberal democratic, very small, sole nation of the Jewish people is in)? American Jewish people in general, and Israeli Jewish "cultural elites" (and, for a long time, until recently, most Jewish people in Israel).
THIS is outrageous.
And even the comments here about this particular outrageous evil detrimental action by the U.S. Secretary of State. Mild milquetoast remarks about "stupidity".
What is wrong with Jewish people? Seriously. What is wrong with Jewish people?
Will there soon be an anti-Jewish genocide in Israel? - A slide presentation of crucial evidence, by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/slide.htm
----
And this is the country that Western governments, and the Western mass-media, and Western academia, and Western contemporary so-called "Human Rights" organizations, etc. have been engaging in a racist bigoted deceitful potentially genocidal, and, in many cases, intendedly genocidal, war against; and this is the country that American Jewish people, in general, have be allowing that to happen against, and have been participating in that war against:
ISRAEL START-UP NATION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EQliG9Wsdo
Hi, Dan. Good to see you again!
DeletePersonally, I'd save charges of 'evil' for those who deserve them. Like the Boston Bombers, or the Iranian regime, etc etc...
Grouping Secretary Kerry and his astonishing ignorance in with those folks doesn't do much for our cause, in my opinion.
Nobody's ultimately making apologies for him here, as far as I can tell. I'm certainly not.
Jay, I didn't call Secretary Kerry evil. I called his actions evil.
DeleteYes, he is ignorant -- and bigoted (like very many people). And his actions are stupid.
And his actions are evil.
Please, Jay, and everyone else. The situation is serious.
Please watch and read the slide presentation by Francisco Gil-White that I listed.
(And, if you so wish, please watch the video about Israel that I listed.)
Fair enough, Dan.
DeleteI don't need to be convinced that we're right, and I don't need to be convinced that the situation is serious.
What I try to focus on is maintaining our credibility so that we can tell our story to others without being dismissed offhandedly as folks who call every person who disagrees with us, and every act done against our interests, as 'evil.' And the like.
Because when we do that, we run the risk of sounding like North Korea or the Mad Mullahs or the Westboro Baptist Church and abortion clinic bombers.
If you get what I'm saying. I suppose my point is that we need to play a bit more to the middle, while as you say, telling them the facts of the situation, without engaging in (or seeming to engage in) hyperbole.
I think that recent versions of Microsoft Powerpoint, both for Mac and for Windows, can read the slide presentation file.
DeleteAnd I think that the free software suite OpenOffice, and the free software suite NeoOffice, and maybe other free software suites, may be able to open the slide presentation file.
The text on the web page of the slide about technical requirements to read the slide is outdated.
I never said we don't have that right, and I certainly never said we haven't been repeatedly libeled, persecuted and murdered throughout history.
DeleteAnd I certainly am not opposed to standing up for ourselves, verbally and otherwise.
I just don't think that this one particular astonishingly ignorant statement qualifies as 'evil.'
Agree to disagree, then. Nobody here is defending what Mr. Kerry said, least of all me.
I'm referring to evil as being that which is exceedingly unwholesome, exceedingly harmful, exceedingly detrimental.
DeleteCalling evil actions evil doesn't mean calling people doing those evil actions evil.
One's calling evil actions that are being done to a group of people evil doesn't make one a bigot or a fanatic or a bad person.
Jewish people have no problem calling out evil that is done to other peoples.
It's a big problem that Jewish people, when evil is being done to their own people, don't recognize, and refuse to acknowledge, and refuse to call out, that evil that is being done to their own people.
And, please look at the overall situation that Israel and the Jewish people are in.
Yes, we have the right to verbally stand up for ourselves and for our own people. And, as part of that, we have the right to call out evil actions that are being done to our own people. And verbally standing up for ourselves and our own people and calling out evil actions that are being done to our own people is what we need to do.
And, if you yourself don't want to use the word "evil" to describe evil actions that are being done against the Jewish people that's fine.
But standing up for ourselves and our own people and calling out evil actions that are being done to our own people is what we need to do.
And I think that one doesn't need to use the word "evil" to call out evil actions that are being done against the Jewish people. But one's using the word "evil" to describe evil actions that are being done against the Jewish people is not wrong.
DeleteAnd standing up for ourselves and our own people and calling out evil actions that are being done to our own people is what we need to do.
So in other words, we agree to disagree on the use of the word 'evil' then.
DeleteSince I'm certainly not the person who ever argued that we don't have a right to stand up for ourselves, I'm not quite sure what you expect me to say about the rest.
If you want someone to present an argument in favor of the latter, you'll probably have to go visit a 'progressive Zionist' website, or something.
DeleteI've just been informed that someone there is currently melting down in yet another sputtering rage, and throwing an all-too-characteristic childish tantrum, while of course abusing the English language in all sorts of sadistic ways, over the fact that some people actually had the nerve (the nerve!) to report on what John Kerry said...
"So in other words, we agree to disagree on the use of the word 'evil' then."
DeleteWell, yes, sort of. But I think that there's even less disagreement between us than that.
I'm just saying that it's not wrong to use the word "evil" to describe the detrimental harmful wrong actions that I referred to as being evil.
And I realize that, in certain circumstances, it may not be beneficial to use the word "evil" in calling out certain evil wrong actions.
And I realize that one may not need to use the word "evil" to call out evil actions that are being done toward the Jewish people.
I was just trying to communicate, to Jewish people, the gravity of the situation.
And I felt badly for writing words to you which I think were harsh. (my saying "you yourself")
And I'm sorry for writing those words to you which I think were harsh.
And, in my replies to you, I felt uneasy in my continuing to use the word "evil" to describe other people's wrong harmful detrimental actions. Because I know that I'm a flawed human being -- a normal human being -- and I felt like my calling other people's wrong harmful detrimental actions evil was unwholesome and wrong. I feel like I need to cleanse my own mind before I can call other people's detrimental wrong harmful actions evil.
I strive to following the teachings of the Buddha. I don't always succeed at doing that, but I strive to do that.
"The non-doing of any evil,
the performance of what's skillful,
the cleansing of one's own mind:
this is the teaching
of the Awakened."
-- The Buddha
----
But, please, the main thing is:
Please watch and read the slide presentation that I listed a link to. This is the main thing that I wanted to communicate. This is what is crucial.
Sure thing, my friend. I'll try to get to it tomorrow. Though of course, I certainly don't need to be convinced of the righteousness of our cause or the seriousness of the situation we face.
DeleteAnd as always, don't worry about any of the rest! I didn't take anything personally, and you have nothing to apologize or feel bad for. :)
Thanks, Jay. :)
DeleteAll this tells me is that when you take people and move them to a role where they're no longer accountable to the public they revert quickly to type. Say what you will about JFK II's impeccable liberal credentials, he has a long history of him being him. You're not seeing a new John Kerry, you're seeing an unmoderated John Kerry, unrestrained by the political realities of having to hold on to his Senate seat. This is what Obama alluded to in his open mike moment to Putin when he mentioned he could be "More flexible" after he won re election.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Dan makes a good point about it being Jewish leaders who enable stuff like this. Maybe they think they are playing 11th dimensional chess too.
ReplyDelete