Monday, August 11, 2014

The Mask Slips

Doodad

Edited to add:


Upon hearing Obama has blocked weapons requests from Israel.

23 comments:

  1. I first wrote about this in 2008.

    Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitic?

    I was not absolutely certain of the answer at that time.

    I am now.

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    Replies
    1. Martin Luther King was certain of it in 1967.

      We were reminded in 1975 at the UN with Resolution 3379.

      Then there was Durban in 2001.

      The proponents of anti-Zionism know they wear the mask.

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    2. I am not so sure that I agree with you on this one, School.

      It is not the least bit clear to me that the proponents of anti-Zionism know that they "wear the mask."

      On the contrary, from what I can tell it is us who they believe wear it.

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    3. The ones who always preemptively deny it certainly know what they are, at least.

      Delete
    4. "You cannot criticize Israel without being called an anti-Semite."

      Of course, were this true then Israel would be entirely crawling with anti-Semites.

      The people who make the above claim need to understand the difference between criticism and defamation. Certainly Lefty Coaster, for example, or Timaeus, do not know the difference and are more than happy to do what little that they can do to spread hatred toward the Jewish people via spreading hatred toward the Jewish State.

      At the end of the day they, and those like them on places like dkos, would not be Klansmen because, as bloggers, they probably would not want to get their hands dirty. Instead they would be members of the White Citizens Councils, merely encouraging and articulating the hatred.

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    5. Exactly. The response is, of course, that if you can't 'criticize Israel' without being called an antisemite, what you're doing is clearly much more than 'merely criticizing Israel.'

      Shit, I'm sure you and I would criticize Israel for not taking the opportunity to destroy Hamas once and for all.

      Nobody has called us antisemites, yet. ;)

      The two people you mention are particularly vicious examples of those who have long since crossed the line from anti-Zionist to antisemite, whether they know it or not. They've almost made a career out of demonizing Israel on Daily Kos, and creating an environment in which attacks on Jews are inevitable, and in which I can personally be accused of drinking the blood of Palestinian children, as happened there the other day.

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    6. Not that there is a 'line,' to clarify. Bad wording on my part. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. There is no distinction. The time for debate on Israel's existence ended in 1948, and even those who want to hold hands and sing kumbaya and erase all borders need to start with their own countries before they focus on the world's sole Jewish state.

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  2. You guys never seen this ?

    "SAY WHAT? ANTI-SEMITES?
    WHO, US ANTI-ZIONISTS?"

    By Steven Plaut

    http://www.freeman.org/m_online/oct03/plaut1.htm

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  3. How would you argue that anti-Israel Jews are not Jews?

    I simply do not see the argument.

    They may be schmucks, but that hardly prevents them from being Jewish.

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  4. Going to disagree with this. You are playing into a dangerous definition which does, in fact, grant the Satmarim, and others, legitimacy in their claims to deny Jewish peoplehood.

    Jews are Jews, even if we don't agree with their political positions.

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  5. The very last thing in this world that I want to get into is developing criteria on who may, or may not, consider themselves Jewish.

    Besides, I've decided that Robin Williams was Jewish.

    Why the hell not?

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  6. Robin Williams was not a Jew, but I'm quite glad he liked us, and I certainly know of his personal struggles, myself.

    Good WIll Hunting may not be the greatest film ever, but it's certainly my personal favorite film of all time.

    Some of Robin's scenes will never be the same to me again...

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  7. It's hard to imagine a guy that successful, that wealthy, and that popular being so miserable that he kills himself.

    Robin Williams was among the most beloved American entertainers of all time.

    Among my favorites was The World According to Garp.

    Terrific book and a terrific film.

    This is very, very sad.

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  8. One's measure to others does not always equal one's measure to oneself.

    In fact, comedy is often a shield some use, in order to get you off their ass in other ways.

    The guy you see on the screen is not always the guy who plays the character you see.

    Like him, I struggle with depression and alcoholism every day of my life, and paradoxically, my struggles get worse the better I seem to be doing in life.

    It's not always about success, wealth or popularity.

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  9. I really hate to further hijack an important topic....but this topic is just as important.

    Depression is not a function of success. It is not a function of wealth. It is not a function of popularity. It is an illness. A serious one, that kills almost 40,000 people a year in the US. There is no cure. There is treatment that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. No amount of money can guarantee that treatment will work.

    You would never find it hard to imagine someone successful, rich and popular being diagnosed with cancer. Yet there are as many people in the US with clinical depression as there are surviving with cancer.

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  10. Hard to know how to classify these people who care for every minority except the one in which they are members.

    Hard to understand how they can be so oblivious to antisemitism that is directed against them.

    Suppose they feel immune.

    As for the activist anti-Zionist, such person is usually open with their antisemitism in the way they express the anti-Zionism. In any event, as anti-racists they should see that it is a racist venture like King said, not to mention the antisemitic effect they help to produce.

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  11. Stuart,

    I know nothing of depression from a clinical standpoint.

    I think that my older sister suffers from it, but I never have.

    I almost never get bored either, because I find myself enormously entertaining.

    :O)

    But when you say that 40,000 American (US) citizens die every year from this, I have to wonder how you mean?

    Is that the number of US suicides every year, more or less?

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    Replies
    1. It is.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States

      Delete
  12. Depending on which text you use, between a third and 4/5ths of all the Hebrew slaves in Egypt refused to leave with Moshe. Are those Egyptians with 4000 year old roots in Egypt Jews too?

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    1. Do we next start to decide who are Americans, too?

      Unlike them, it is important to defend their right to speak, even if it's not exercised as one would prefer.

      In the end it is non-Jews that must be persuaded. Boko Haram and IS will do more to determine the issue than these Jewish voices that support the anti-Jewish, and hopefully they will be seen in the proper light of repudiation.

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  13. And now Obama's mask slips a bit more:

    What on earth? In the middle of a war this country’s president publicly says is justified owing to the relentlessness of the rocket fire against civilian populations, U.S. officials proudly tell the Wall Street Journal, they are holding up weapons transfers to Israel:

    They decided to require White House and State Department approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel, officials say.

    Instead of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case is now subject to review—slowing the approval process and signaling to Israel that military assistance once taken for granted is now under closer scrutiny."

    http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/08/14/obama-administration-makes-war-on-israel/

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    Replies
    1. It's interesting that whenever Obama is placed into a situation where he must choose between Islamists and non-Islamists, he always seems to go with the Islamist faction.

      He started to reverse that trend a tad with the Islamic State in Iraq, but even that has really yet to be seen.

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