Arlene from Israel: More Light, in the Midst of Darkness

Michael L.

Our friend Shirlee of Jews Down Under has published a piece by Arlene from Israel entitled, More Light, in the Midst of Darkness.

Here is the opening:

We here in Israel we speak a good deal these days about a world arrayed against us – a world ready to do business with Iran for self-serving reasons.  In doing my writing, I have been remiss in not mentioning Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minster Steven Harper (pictured below).  Israel has no better friend in the world.  What is more, Harper has come out against both Iran and Islamic State – refusing to lift sanction against the former, and sending troops against the latter.

 I recommend that you guys give this a read.

The Iran deal emphatically must be opposed.

My Radio Interview

Michael L.

Michael Burd of mighty J-AIR out of Melbourne, Australia, interviewed me early this month on his radio show Nothing Left.  We talked for about half an hour concerning American Jewry's relationship with Israel.  This was prior to the Trump Surge or the Sanders' Challenge and my assumption was that we were looking at another likely Clinton-Bush race for the presidency.

In any case, I can be heard on episode 67 that aired yesterday, August 25.  Also interviewed during this episode, I am proud to say, is Isi Liebler and political scientist, Emanuelle Ottolenghi, so I am in very fine company, indeed.

My segment begins at about the thirty minute mark.

It would not have happened were it not for Shirlee of Jews Down Under fame.

Matisyahu Excoriated and Redeemed

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

I was on the number 7 bus heading up Haight Street in San Francisco talking to one of my more interesting and edgy students from City College of SF a few years ago.

For reasons that elude me, now, I mentioned the great American Jewish Reggae musician, Matisyahu.

We were sitting opposite one another on a loud and bouncy MUNI bus and I said something like, "Matisyahu is an absolutely terrific Jewish performer who is merging Chasidic Judaism with Reggae music.  The man is unique."

At that moment, just as the bus was easing into my stop, at the corner of Haight and Broderick, some stranger, a black man, spit me straight in the face.

I have no idea what offended him other than the fact that a Jew was doing Reggae and, apparently, he did not appreciate it... which if you know a thing or two about Rasta is a little unusual.

It was a very weird moment.  The bus came to a halt, the guy spit on me, and cursed me, as I was rising to depart, and then my student, a young non-Jewish man in his twenties, arose to confront my assaulter.  I thought that he was going to slug him.  I stood up, wiping the phlegm from my face, and put myself between my student and the hideous schmuck.  I told him to not get into a fight and then I simply hopped off of the bus, heading home.

I probably should have slugged the racist in the face, myself, but G-d only knows what happened after that and we never spoke of it, afterward.

But I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.

I have no idea what upset that individual other than the fact that a Jewish man, Matisyahu, was excelling at a traditional black musical art-form.  Normally that kind of thing upsets no one but the racists.  Plus, of course, Matisyahu was not merely a Jew, but a hard-core practicing Jew dressed in black, although I understand that he has in recent years gone to a more secular style and has left the Chassids.

On the day that I write this, in the middle of last week, we learn from Douglas Murray that Matisyahu has been disinvited to the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae festival in Spain because he refused to endorse a political point-of-view concerning the Arab-Israel conflict.

The Spanish seem to be among the least friendly European people toward the Jewish people and polling data bares this out.

Murray writes:

This week the news came in that a Spanish music festival had cancelled a planned performance by Matisyahu, an American reggae star. Matisyahu became famous as the "hassidic reggae star," although he left Orthodox Judaism in 2011. He no longer has a beard of wears a skullcap, but he does remain proud of his Jewish identity. Next weekend, on August 22, he was due to perform at the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Benicassim, north of Valencia.

Unfortunately for anyone simply interested in music, a group of local Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists found out about Matisyahu's upcoming performance. They claimed that Matisyahu is a supporter of "an apartheid state that practices ethnic cleansing," and demanded that the festival cancel the performance.

If this was the US I would call them up and scream my bloody head off.  I harassed the Met over the The Death of Klinghoffer, so why not these guys?

Matisyahu is of course not the first Jew to suffer this type of pressure. In Europe, and increasingly in America too, any and all performers who come from Israel can be abused and vilified in the name of "progressive" values. In London, the Jerusalem String Quartet and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra have been the targets of attempts to cancel their performances. When the performances have gone ahead, they have had to suffer obscene and threatening performance interruptions by protesters.

The ironic thing is that Matisyahu is a deeply caring humanitarian.  This video, King Without A Crown, demonstrates that quite clearly, does it not?

Matisyahu is an American Jew who grew up in White Plains, New York, a stone's throw from my parents' house in Bardonia, New York, when I was a kid.

It is obvious that what we are seeing now - via BDS and western-left anti-Zionism - is an attack on Jewry, in general.

The good thing, of course, was that by overreaching BDS invited significant push-back which resulted in the music festival capitulating and re-inviting Matisyahu.  As Jared Samilow writes in the Jewish Journal:

Looking back, the whole episode seems dryly amusing. Spain’s BDS coterie should have known better, really. Discretion is the better part of valor. It was entirely predictable that openly discriminating against an American Jew would not fly in front of a broad public. Such garish anti-Semitism might cut it among certain benighted precincts, but was bound to get the cold shoulder from ordinary concert-goers and the political elite.

Well, I don't how amusing it is.

The Spanish Reggae festival spit Matisyahu straight in the face.  Unlike with my little encounter with flat-out physically hostile anti-Jewish racism on a bus in San Francisco, we know how this one ended up.

The good guy won.

{And I'm guessing that this may be the last we hear of this story.  Maybe.  In any case, I am bringing up the rear.}

More Daily Kos Jew Hatred

Michael L.

In one of David Harris-Gershon's anti-Israel / anti-Jewish hit pieces we get the following claim by someone who goes under the moniker rktect.

Speaking with a weak Daily Kos pro-Israel Jew, rktect says, in part, the following:

Now you want to blow up our homes, build walls through our fields, cut us off from our water, what gives you the right this time?

Every time people let you come to where they live and treat you with hospitality and commiserate with your suffering trust you to treat them the same way they end up getting removed in some way.

Let that statement sink in for a bit.  Every time Jews move into a community in large numbers, according to this vile schmuck, we are treated with hospitality and commiseration, but we inevitably turn around and give them a "stack in the back," which is what Germans thought about the 1 percent of Jews that made up the German population in the early twentieth-century.

These kinds of comments will only continue to increase because, in part, progressive-left Jews essentially agree with the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victimhood.  Progressive-left pro-Israel Jews have abandoned the field because they have no argument to make.  They agree that "Zionists" stole the land from the "native Palestinians" which is why they must morally oppose "settler activity" - i.e., Jews purchasing homes for themselves in Judea and Samaria.  If that is what they think then it's time to pack it in and that is essentially what they have done throughout progressive-left venues.

Well, in truth, they were chased out.

On Daily Kos almost no one bothers writing pro-Israel / pro-Jewish "diaries" anymore.  There are a number of reasons for this.  The pro-Israel Jews are well-outnumbered by anti-Semitic anti-Zionists.  When they do try to defend Israel they usually get malice spit into their faces.  And, most importantly, they do not honestly believe that the Jews are the rightful owners of Erez Israel.

Jewish Congressman Nadler supports the very bad deal

Michael L.

Erica Werner and Julie Pace, writing in the Times of Israel, tell us:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York announced Friday he is backing President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

"I bring to my analysis the full weight of my responsibilities as a member of Congress, and my perspective as an American Jew who is both a Democrat and a strong supporter of Israel,” Nadler said in a statement. He said that the agreement “gives us the best chance of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”

So, Nadler's view as-a-Jew is that the only way to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weaponry is to free it up to gain nuclear weaponry, if not in two years then maybe ten.  Yes, how comforting.

This Iran deal could very easily turn into an international disaster as the rest of the Middle East race to get their own nuclear weapons.  Barack Obama just a few years ago told the world that it was US policy to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weaponry.  Period.  End of story.

And then Obama marches right in to negotiations and capitulates on pretty much everything.

David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of the TOI, says that it is actually a terrific deal.  Not for the United States or the West, and certainly not for Israel, but for the Iranian regime it is toot-sweet.

Horovitz writes:

But one question can be answered with increasing confidence: Is this, as President Obama claims, the best possible deal?

Yes, indeed, it is. The best possible deal for the Iranians.

They continue enriching. They maintain their R&D to enable a speedier breakout to the bomb when they so choose. They can keep the inspectors at bay. They never have to come clean on past nuclear weapons work. They can continue missile development. They get their sanctions relief. Their coffers are swelled. The prospect of the regime being ousted by domestic reformers, already small, is reduced still further; they can now throw money at any domestic problems. They can merrily orchestrate terrorism and intimidate regional foes.

And if none of that particularly concerns you, what about this?

The editors over at Investor's Business Daily in an article entitled, Iran Is Serious About Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Warfare, are a bit concerned about Iran's potential plans:

The American Foreign Policy Council's Amanda Azinheira wrote of the risks in Defense News on Wednesday: "A nuclear warhead detonated 18 miles off the ground anywhere over the eastern seaboard could collapse the whole eastern grid, which generates 75% of the country's electricity. The recovery time from a nationwide EMP event might be anywhere from one to 10 years. In the meantime, tens of millions of Americans would likely die from starvation and/or societal collapse."

Can you imagine what the United States would look like after losing the electric grid for ten years?

And does it make the slightest bit of sense to gamble on the question?

In his letter to Nadler, Obama emphasized US support for Israel, saying he views the country’s security as sacrosanct. 

That is a lie and Nadler is a fool.  No one who has been following this administration's attitude toward the Jewish State of Israel could possibly believe that for Barack Obama Israeli security is "sacrosanct."

The deal, however, is not just bad for Israel, it's bad for all of humanity.

And the consequences could easily be dire.

Obama's partners in the PA-PLO and their American victims

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under, the Elder of Ziyon, and The Jewish Press.}

Writing in Israel National News last week, Tova Dvorin tell us:

The Obama administration has asked a judge Monday to “carefully consider” the size of the bond demanded from the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its role orchestrating years of terror attacks against Israelis and Jews - directly interfering in a US court case.

In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - the terror group behind the PA - was found liable to pay $218.5 million to victims of terror, a figure that was set to be tripled to $655.5 million according to the anti-terrorism laws under which the case was brought...

In a document entitled “Statement of Interest of the United States of America," the Obama administration expressed concerns over the payments hurting the PA's basic government services.

Forcing the PLO to pay “a significant portion of its revenues would likely severely compromise the P.A.’s ability to operate as a governmental authority,” deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrote.

It's hard to imagine that at this late date I am still capable of being disgusted by the Obama administration.  Yet there it is.  Just when I think that they can't sink even lower into the muck, we get stories like the one above.

So, the Obama administration is literally siding with the PA and the PLO over their American victims, despite an American court-ruling not in Palestinian-Arab favor.  The word "shocking" comes to mind, although I am certain that many of you will not be shocked.

And the reason for this interference in the ruling of the court is because Obama is concerned that the PA will not be able to pay its bills?  Well, he has a point.  Supporting terrorism does not necessarily come cheaply.  But if the PA cannot afford to pay its bills, whose fault is that?

{Oh, Israel's.  Naturally.  I forgot for a moment.}

We are to believe that the PA-PLO should be shielded by the President of the United States from having to suffer the predictable consequences of their own behavior?  A behavior that includes the murder of American citizens?  Or does Barack Obama honestly think that it is perpetually Jew hunting season in the Middle East?  If the PA can't afford to post bond to the court perhaps they should rethink their rather counterproductive Jew Killing Policy.

But, in truth, would it really be an unfortunate thing if the PA collapsed?  The EU and the US are bankrolling a gang of cutthroats who cry out for the genocide of the Jews, who despise the United States, and who name schools after murderers.  We should not be in the business of promoting these people, we should be in the business of actively opposing them.

The PA is not quite as heinous as Hamas, but it is close enough, and neither are democratic organizations.  Perhaps I am just old fashioned, and maybe my views on such matters are not nearly as sophisticated as our Genius in Chief's, but when I was growing up most people had the notion that one supports one's friends and opposes one's enemies.  On a personal level we supported those who supported our well-being and values and opposed those who opposed them.

From a practical foreign policy standpoint what this means is that we should support the secular democracies and not support the non-democratic governments.  Above all, we should not be giving financial aid to Islamist organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, because the Brotherhood oppresses women, oppresses gay people, and oppresses the Christian Copts.  They would oppress Jews there, but there are no Jews there, having been ethnically-cleansed from almost the entire region by the hostile majority population in the middle of the last century.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that having chased the Jews out of land that we lived on for millennia, they now wish to chase Jews out our historical homeland entirely.  There are many people out there - all evidence to the contrary - who honestly believe that the Palestinian National Movement is fundamentally grounded in social justice for the "indigenous Arab population," with two states for two peoples.  This is a lie on numerous levels.

The first lie is that the Palestinian-Arabs are the indigenous people of Israel.  They are not.  As it reads on the right side of Israel Thrives, courtesy of the Elder, "Jews are from Judah, Arabs are from Arabia."   The broad strokes of Jewish and Arab history in the Land of Israel are not in serious contention among western historians with professional credentials.  They all acknowledge that Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for at least three thousand years, but the Jewish presence predates written history and thereby floats back into the mists of time.  Muhammad's armies conquered Jerusalem in 637 CE from the Byzantines, thus the Muslims are rather late to the game by thousands of years.

The Jews are the only living people who can make claims of indigeneity to Eretz Israel.  Unless some Jebusites pop out of the ground, only the Jews can make that case.

The second lie is that the Palestinian-Arabs want a state for themselves in peace next to Israel. This is false.  What the the Palestinian National Movement wants is the elimination of the Jewish National Movement.  Palestinian-Arab national consciousness emerged as a significant social construct toward the end of the twentieth-century.  It did so for the express purpose of undermining Jewish well-being on historically Jewish land.  If they wanted a state for themselves they have a funny way of showing it, given that they have refused every single offer going back all the way to 1937, with the Peel Commission.

The third lie is that the Palestinian National Movement has any interest whatsoever in liberal notions of social justice.  If by "social justice" one means random acts of senseless violence combined with a campaign to spread hatred toward Jews all around the world, then the PA is interested in social justice.

And, sadly, one must wonder if President Barack Obama shares that sense of "social justice"?

Given that he is willing to prop up both the PA and the PLO at the direct expense of their American victims, so it would seem.

Daily Kos Israel Hate for the Day

Michael L.

IDF terrorizes children (0+ / 0-)

regularly arresting CHILDREN in the middle of the night. Water theft, land grabs, etc., etc

Yet almost solid bipartisan support of elected politicians in DC for sending taxmoney there

Israel govt does a very bad PR job of justifying the tax money they get, and I continue to tell my so-called "representatives".

by stargaze on Wed Aug 12, 2015 at 11:38:24 AM PDT

They always bring up the children. 

Don't they understand that when they constantly accuse Israel of murdering children that they are engaging in the contemporary blood libel?

Do they honestly think that Jewish Israelis have a blood-lust for non-Jewish children?

There is something akin to evil in this kind of commentary because it whips up hatred for Jews, in general.

It is practically medieval, in fact.

But there it is among those who claim to be anti-racists who allegedly care about social justice and universal human rights.

And, yet for some reason, they honestly seem to want Iran to get the bomb.

I thought that the Left was opposed to nuclear proliferation.

Apparently not.

Antecedents to today's talk of "Palestinian rights" in how Reconstruction was described

Sar Shalom

I finally got to start reading Eric Foner's Reconstruction, through which I learned of W. E. B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction in America. One of the topics of DuBois' work is the Dunning school's historiography of Reconstruction which was responsible for generations of Americans believing that Reconstruction was simply a tool for corrupt northerners to prop up incompetent negroes to which DuBois' contemporaries could happily say goodriddance. An example of DuBois' struggle with the zeitgeist at his time, from Chapter XVII "The Propaganda of History," and some commentary of how his struggle parallels our struggle with the zeitgeist of the Palestinian narrative:

Herein lies more than mere omission and difference of emphasis. The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans. The editors of the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica asked me for an article on the history of the American Negro. From my manuscript they cut out all my references to Reconstruction. I insisted on including the following statement:

White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools.

This the editor refused to print, although he said that the article otherwise was "in my judgment, and in the judgment of others in the office, an excellent one, and one with which it seems to me we may all be well satisfied." I was not satisfied and refused to allow the article to appear.

Just as the intelligentsia of DuBois' time refused to challenge its narrative about the freedmen being a bunch of incompetents, today's intelligentsia refuses to challenge its narrative about the uppity Jews dispossessing the native Palestinians so as to revive their abandoned and forgotten kingdom. Unlike American Reconstruction for DuBois, Middle Eastern reconstruction for us is a matter of the present and not just history. Thus, instead of historical works ignoring parts of the past complicating the desired narrative, today the news media, as documented by Matti Friedman, ignore events of the present that complicate their precious narrative.

War and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. It is the duty of humanity to heal them. It was therefore soon conceived as neither wise nor patriotic to speak of all the causes of strife and the terrible results to which sectional differences in the United States had led. And so, first of all, we minimized the slavery controversy which convulsed the nation from the Missouri Compromise down to the Civil War. On top of that, we passed by Reconstruction with a phrase of regret or disgust.

In most western discourse about the Middle East today, the role of the Holocaust is rightly recognized as justifying the need for a Jewish homeland. However, such discussion invariably devolves into questions of how much the "innocent" Palestinians should pay for the sins and crimes of Europe. What such questions ignore is the 13 centuries of the Pact of Umar in general and the half-century before the First Aliyah in the Levant and Arab resistance to the Yishuv in particular. Having whitewashed the Arab/Muslim crimes against Mizrahi Jewry out of our history, it is now permissible to publicize questions if Middle Eastern reconstruction should be brought to an end now the way American Reconstruction was ended 138 years ago.

But are these reasons of courtesy and philanthropy sufficient for denying Truth? If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with that accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations, there must be set some standards of ethics in research and interpretation.

If, on the other hand, we are going to use history for our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego, and giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment, then we must give up the idea of history either as a science or as an art using the results of science, and admit frankly that we are using a version of historic fact in order to influence and educate the new generation along the way we wish.

Now we get to the reason for why history was censored in DuBois' day. Today we recognize that allowing Jim Crow to emerge at the end of the 19th century is a stain on our nation's history. In DuBois' time, the stain would have been ever more real as Jim Crow was a present reality then. However, if the alternative to Jim Crow could be shown to be a perversion of justice, then Jim Crow could be tolerated as at worst the cost of righting a grave injustice and making it happen would have been a truly noble act. Such is also the case with Middle Eastern reconstruction. If it can be shown that the uppity Jews are guilty of unspeakable, unprovoked crimes against humanity, then giving them their comeuppance would not be such a terrible act. In fact, it would be a noble one. If the result of doing so is the reinstatement of the Islamic equivalent of Jim Crow, then it is at worst the unfortunate cost of seeing that justice is done. Such are the stakes of the narrative war.

The Immorality of the Jews

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

The recent firebomb attack by "extremist Jewish settlers" resulting in the death of 18-month old Ali Dawabsha, combined with the recent attack on the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem which saw the  murder of 16-year old Shira Banki, has Israeli-Jews nervous, sad, and introspective.

Many in the West will tell you that Israeli-Jews are deeply immoral people.  The Yishuv, after all, marched on the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948, driving between 600,000 and 700,000 innocent people from their homes and causing al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) which has, in large part, influenced Palestinian culture and politics ever since.

The Zionist Occupation of the Indigenous Palestinian People

Israeli-Jews are deeply racist toward Arabs who they oppress in a great variety of ways.

Jews humiliate the local Arabs by forcing them to go through check-points.  Israeli soldiers often use Palestinian children as human shields during military operations.  The Israeli-Jews continue settlement expansion and perpetually steal Palestinian land which they crisscross with "Jews Only" roads.  While settlers enjoy swimming pools their Palestinian neighbors are robbed of water by the Israeli Occupation Authorities.

The IDF targets journalists and peace activists - even murdering Rachel Corrie, a young American from the Pacific Northwest who fought for Palestinian-Arab rights and dignity.  For her troubles she was intentionally run-over by an IDF bulldozer, killing her.

Furthermore, the Security Wall (or Apartheid Wall) separates Palestinians from villages, farms, and ultimately employment, thus serving to further impoverish a people already poverty-stricken due to Zionist aggression.

Given the atrocities and war crimes regularly committed by Israeli-Jews against their Palestinian neighbors, is it any wonder that so many on the Western-Left have concluded that Israeli-Jews are immoral?  Is their any wonder that anti-Zionism and the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS) is gaining steam?  Furthermore, not only has much of the rest of the world concluded that Israeli-Jews - who represent about half the world's population of Jews - are immoral, but even the Israeli-Jews themselves are starting to believe it.

Crying in the Press

One need only survey some of the current introspection playing out in the Israeli and Jewish press to see that Israelis are losing faith in their own humanity.

In the Israel Hayom newspaper in Israel we see these headlines:

"Thou shalt not kill" by Nadav Shragai in which he is convinced that the murder of the toddler says something about the nature of Israeli-Jews and wherein he fears that the affliction of violence and hatred is now spreading among the Jews.

In "Fighting our inner racist", by Ran Reznick, we learn that homophobia and xenophobia are running amuck among Israeli-Jews.

In "A shameful day for Israel"  by Times of Israel editor David Horovits, he begs the people and the government that mere regret is insufficient and such regret must be matched with action.

Media personality and Israeli politician, Yair Lapid's contribution is "We are at war" and he thinks that the enemy comes from within.

In Ha'aretz, hard-left Gideon Levy is convinced that "We all torched the Dawabsheh family".

And, also it must be considered, if the Israeli-Jews are as immoral as even they are coming to believe, what does this tells us about their diaspora Jewish supporters all around the world?  Nothing good, I am afraid.  If Israeli-Jews are committing atrocities against the local Arabs then diaspora Jews are complicit in willingly supporting such atrocities and are, thereby, themselves morally compromised.

And then there is this:

The Truth

On Sunday in Israel, Imad Abu Sharikh was hospitalized after a severe beating.  We read:

Abu Sharikh told police he was heading to the mosque when three "right-wing extremists" attacking him, shouting "filthy Arab, expel all the Arabs!" 

The report quickly made the rounds in the Israeli and Palestinian media, along with pictures of a bloodied and battered Abu Sharikh.  The claim that he had been the victim of a racist attack by Jews was particularly sensitive, coming just two days after the death of Ali Dawabsha in an attack believed to have been carried out by Jewish extremists Friday. 

The leader of the Arab Joint List party MK, Ayman Odeh, rushed to issue a condemnation and blame right-wing "incitement."

There is only one little problem, however.  Sharikh lied:

But while Abu Sharikh's wounds were indeed real, his story quickly proved to have been fabricated

Police soon arrested the three suspects - all of whom were Arab residents of the city.

Not only did he lie, he lied specifically to defame Jews in order incite violence against us.

Furthermore, we have no idea who killed Ali Dawabsha.  It might have been Jews, but why would we be so quick to rush to judgment without significant evidence?   We were told that this was a "price tag" attack and that the word "revenge" was scrawled in Hebrew on a wall of the house.  Well, can we think of any reason why a Palestinian-Arab might ever want to commit violence against another Palestinian-Arab?  Is it possible that someone else in the Land of Israel may know enough Hebrew to scrawl a few words on a wall, besides a Jew?

Is it even possible that the culprit was a non-Jew?  According to what I read in the media they seem to have largely concluded that they know that the savages were Jewish.  Just how do they know this?

I do not know if Jews are innocent of this heinous crime and that is not what I am arguing.  What I am arguing is that you do not know either, but if one insists upon laying blame at Jewish feet with virtually no evidence, what does it say about ones inclinations toward Jews?  And what does it mean that so many Jews are eager to go along with it?

The Narrative

As for the narrative above concerning Israeli-Jewish crimes against the "innocent indigenous" population, it is pure bullshit, as we say in the United States.  It is the "Palestinian Narrative" comprised entirely of wild exaggerations and straight-up lies.  It is the kind toxic anti-Zionist / anti-Jewish gibberish that many on the Left, and within academe, love to fling around like confetti.

What is true, however, is that this so-called "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victim-hood is having its intended effect on much of the rest of the world and thereby, inevitably, upon the tiny Jewish population.  The Jews are among the most self-reflective people on the planet.  This is generally a good thing, but it is not always a good thing.  All virtues have their corresponding vices and the corresponding vice of "self-reflection" is paralysis and self-doubt.

The truth of the matter is that most peoples in the world are considerably more savage than are the Jews.  I apologize if that sounds self-congratulatory, but one need only take a quick gander at the neighborhood around Israel to determine the truthfulness of the claim.  But only the Jews fret to the degree that we do.  We are now convincing ourselves, with much encouragement in the Muslim world and the West, to think that the rare acts of political violence by random Jews represents some sort-of terrible stain on the Israeli Jewish soul.  There are all sorts-of "well-meaning" people who want to help the Jews overcome our alleged Nazi-like inclinations and they are perfectly happy to smack us over the head with a shovel in order to teach the lesson.

One thing is certain.  If the Palestinian-Arabs had one one-hundredth the inclination toward moral self-reflection as do the Jewish people the conflict would have been long over.

Arabs throw molotov cocktails at Jews practically on a daily basis in Israel.  Sometimes they throw them at houses, sometimes that throw them at cars, and sometimes they throw them at cops.  And sometimes they kill people.  When that happens do the Palestinian-Arabs, as a people, publicly choose to reflect upon their misgivings and misunderstandings of others?

I do not think so.

Handing out sweets to children, and dancing in the streets, in order to celebrate the murder of Jews is not the behavior of someone engaged in moral self-reflection.

The Jewish people, however, including most particularly, Israeli Jews, have nothing to apologize for.

If anything, as a people perpetually under siege by a much larger hostile majority, they are the ones who deserve the apologies.

Daily Kos: Hating All Things Jewish

Michael L.

Many in the progressive-left do not merely despise the Jewish State of Israel, but pretty much all things Jewish.  Thus it is not the least bit surprising that their hatred for AIPAC is only exceeded by their hatred for Israel, itself.

A recent "diary" by "gobacktotexas" is entitled, Finally! Obama 'Hit[s] back hard at AIPAC'.

Finally!  At long last Barack Obama is hitting back at those Jews hard!  Well, thank God for that.  We can't let those uppity Jews get too comfortable, now, can we?

According to the New York Times:

President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled.

So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard.

The following comments beneath the Daily Kos piece give an indication of just how "progressives" feel about the single most important pro-Israel / pro-Jewish organization in the United States.

I can't understand how any human being would have trouble understanding that. AIPAC and Israel WANT the United States to go to war with Iran, period.

by MargaretPOA on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 05:35:17 AM PDT 

The Jewish warmonger theme is an oldy but a goody.

Yes, Israel and AIPAC want war for no other reason than that Jews are warmongers.

We want war because we like war, period.  Besides, sometimes we profit from wars.  So there is that, as well.  Its a twofer!

You know what? (5+ / 0-)

There are some individuals in our government who actually do have compromised loyalties with regards to different interests. Most of them are on the Republican side of the aisle. Schumer is ostensibly one of ours and has all but come out and admitted that his loyalties are torn when it comes to foreign policy.

by beltane on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 07:10:58 AM PDT

Ah, so Chuck Schumer disagrees with Barack Obama on the deal and this means that his loyalties are compromised.  Got it.

I despise doing more for Israel's protection until they make an effort to act like a civilized state and act considerate of their neighbors instead of stealing land and committing genocide.

I'm all for Israel receiving their own sanctions.

by mjd in florida on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 07:31:57 AM PDT 

So, Israel, unlike its neighbors, apparently, is uncivilized.  Judea does not belong to the Jews, but to the conquering Arabs.  And Jewish Israelis are committing "genocide" against someone.

mjd in florida is a true progressive friend of the Jewish people.

He or she had also this to say:

Can you imagine how sick it made me last summer to see young Israelis partying on blankets on a hill to watch the bombs dropping on the helpless civilians in Gaza?  It was as if they were watching a rock concert.

I've fucking it had with the MIC, AIPAC right-wingers in our country.  Move your own kids to Israel and send them all off to fight their own selfish and genocidal wars for greed.  I'd rather make peace with Iran.

by mjd in florida on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 04:22:40 AM PDT

Well, they're Jews!  Naturally they love violence and seeing people suffer.  Or it could be that after two years of rocket fire into southern Israel giving their children PTSD they were happy to see their government do some fighting back on their behalf.

But, no, they were just cheering on a Jewish genocidal war against the innocent indigenous population which was undertaken for no other reason than financial gain.  You know how those people are, after all.

I worry Netanyahu & current AIPAC is damaging (32+ / 0-)

American people's good will for Israel

If the government of Israel can rein in Netanyahu's rank partisan meddling in American politics, perhaps the trust and kinship the people of the U.S. feel for the people of Israel won't be broken irretrievably.

by eztempo on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 02:27:11 AM PDT

eztempo is deeply concerned about the well-being of Israel and maybe someday, after the Israelis have apologized and made amends for something, then perhaps the American people will again look kindly upon the Jews of the Middle East... but not until they tend to their moral conscience.

The knowledge that the AIPAC crowd regards these young Americans as expendable tools in their political ambitions makes me physically ill.

by beltane on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 06:14:48 AM PDT

That's right.  All those Jews in AIPAC look upon the children of their fellow Americans as nothing more than cannon fodder in the service of Jewish Supremacism... clearly.

How aware are they of this? (8+ / 0-)

I'm sure your sons will give all they have to defend the United States of America. But to fight and die for Israel -- especially Netanyahu's Israel -- would be a tragic waste of young lives. I hope your sons and their classmates are never in such a position. But thanks to Chuck Schumer, they're that much closer.

by Buzzer on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 06:28:36 AM PDT 

No foreign power has ever fought a war for Israel, yet they continue to claim that Israel drags the US into wars for their own nefarious reasons.  Never mind that Ariel Sharon actually advised George W. Bush against attacking Iraq, they still tell one another that that was a war for Israel.

Current AIPAC? (11+ / 0-)

AIPAC has always been a right-wing hate group.

by Warren2016 on Sat Aug 08, 2015 at 06:21:52 AM PDT

Right-wing hate group?  Such pleasant people these "progressives" are.  So AIPAC is a hate organization like, say, the Klan or the Westboro Baptist Church. 

In any case, as you can plainly see, it is a river of contempt flowing out of progressive-left venues aimed squarely at Jewish well-being.  Criticism is one thing, but defamation is something else entirely.  One cannot defame Israel or AIPAC in the most vicious and outrageous terms possible and then turn around and claim to actually be a great friend to the Jewish people.

Uh, no, you are not.  So sorry.

The Syrian dead and basic human ethics

Michael L.

Sometimes the best posts are very brief and to the point.

The Elder has such a piece entitled, 5000 killed in Syria every month.

And that, really, is all you need to know.

According to conservative scholar, Daniel Pipes, the total dead from the Arab-Israel conflict between 1950 and the early part of the twenty-first century is around fifty-one thousand people, ranking it number 49 among significant conflicts in terms of war dead.  My understanding is that about two-thirds were Arab and one-third Jewish.

Between 1949 and 1976, the Red Chinese under Mao killed around forty million people.

40 million.

Ponder that for a moment, if you will.

Part of the problem that we have is that our opponents seem to have no sense of ethical proportionality.

They claim to stand for social justice and universal human rights, yet it is the Jews that they spit hatred towards.

How many are dead in the Syrian conflict?

Between two hundred and three hundred thousand within just the last few years,

A "Statement of Interest"

Michael L.

I find myself increasingly curious about this tussle between the PA-PLO and the Manhattan federal court.  Eric Tucker has an article in the Times of Israel in which he records the response of the victims to the possibility that the Obama Justice Department might intervene on behalf of the murderers of Americans.

According to attorney for the prosecution, Kent Yalowitz, "The Palestinians got a fair trial. The judgment was foreseeable, and they can afford to pay it over time.”

Indeed.  But what if they simply do not want to?  Given the fact that these heinous murderers have lost the trial the judge has required that they post bond pending appeal and, thus far, they have failed to do so.

In response to inquries concerning a possible US government "statement of interest" in the case, the Justice and State departments put out a joint statement:

“While we cannot comment on the substance of any possible filing, any filing would be a statement of the interests of the United States and not on behalf of the PA or any other party."

This is essentially a lie.  If the US government intervenes it will be on behalf of an Obama administration ally, the PA-PLO.  To suggest that bolstering the well-being of a terrorist organization that relishes the murder of Americans is in the interest of Americans is both irrational and mendacious.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch the plaintiffs requested that the government stay out of the matter:

“It causes us great pain to know that our Government might attempt to undermine the judgment in our case without taking into account the very real ability of the PLO and the PA to pay the judgment over time and stand accountable for their crimes,” the letter states.

There must come a point wherein clarity begins to prevail.

The truth is that the PA-PLO is an enemy to the Jewish people, an enemy to the Israeli people, and an enemy of the United States and the West.  They danced in the streets when the World Trade Center came down in Manhattan.  While we were mourning our dead they were handing out candy to their children and rejoicing in the comeuppance of the Great Satan.

{I lost one of my neighbors growing up that day.}

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the PA-PLO is entirely counterproductive to the national self-interests of Americans, Israelis, and the entire western world.  It was ex-US president Jimmy Carter that initially bolstered the career of PLO chieftain Yassir Arafat and we've been stuck with these guys ever since and they certainly are not helping anything.

How is it possibly in the best interest of the American people to support an organization that calls for the murder of Jews and Americans?  What kind of honest cooperation can we possibly expect from a group that names schools and public squares after the murderers of innocent civilians?

It is long past time for the US government to acknowledge the fact that the Oslo "peace process" is over.  It is done and it is now time to move on.

In my opinion, at this point the US should stay out of Israeli affairs vis-à-vis the internal Arab problem.  (Happy, Shirlee? )  Siding with terrorists against Jews - which seems to be an Obama administration forté - only makes things worse, but one would think that would be obvious.

If the US files a "statement of interest" on behalf of the PA-PLO it will do so this coming Monday, August 10.

I wonder, if it does so, will consistent American Jewish supporters of this president, such as Volleyboy1, continue their support?

The willingness to acknowledge a mistake is a sign of character.  While I have no character whatsoever, I am willing to acknowledge the mistake that I made when I voted for Barack Obama in 2008.  It was a mistake on my part and I was wrong to have made it.

I am pleased to discover that my old acquaintance, fizziks, from the Daily Kos "glory days," seems to have drawn similar conclusions.  In a piece entitled, I Was Wrong. On The Biggest Issue of Our Time, he writes:

There you have it.  I was wrong back then.  The biggest threat was not that we would over-react to terrorism.  It turned out that we would seriously under-react to terrorism, and begin the process of equivocating about it, and therefore ultimately surrendering to it.

I was wrong, as well.  I also concerned myself more, after 9/11, with potential American overreaction to political Islam, rather than with the rise of political Islam, itself.

Many of us made that mistake, but not everyone has the integrity of fizziks to acknowledge that mistake in public.

If the US intervenes in this lawsuit on behalf of the PA-PLO then it means we unquestionably have a government, under Barack Obama, that favors the enemies of Jews and the enemies of Americans.

Progressives and Democrats can justify it anyway they like, but that is the bottom line.

Tianenmen and the Iran deal

Sar Shalom

In 1989, the Chinese Communist Party responded to a student demonstration in Tianenmen Square by massacring the students occupying Tiananmen Square. In the wake of that massacre, both houses of Congress unanimously passed sanctions against China. President George H. W. Bush vetoed the bill and during the override attempt, 37 Republicans in the Senate changed their positions to sustain the president's veto. Since then, candidate Bill Clinton promised that he would not renew China's Most Favored Nation status the next time the issue came. The next time China's MFN status came up for renewal, Clinton was president, and he did not oppose. Same thing the following time China's MFN status came up. After that, Clinton made China's MFN status permanent, eliminating any future automatic review of that status.

The fate of MFN status for China in the years after Tiananmen provides a model for what would likely happen with the Iran nuclear deal if Obama's veto is sustained. Among President Obama's constant refrains supporting his deal is the claim that if Iran violates the terms of the agreement, we can always "snap back" the sanctions. The problem is that "snapping back" the sanctions after the deal is put into place will create the same disaster scenario that Obama claims would result now if the deal is rejected. The only difference is that rejecting the deal now would leave an outside chance to renegotiate a better deal while "snapping back" the sanctions would open no such opportunity. The result is that any argument used today to support the president's deal could be used to oppose "snapping back" the sanctions under any conceivable violation by Iran. In other words, any violation by Iran would give a choice of "let them get away with it" or war. If those are the choices the future will present to us, "snap back" will be as much of a paper tiger as the renewal process of China's MFN status.

US may support the PLO over its American victims

Michael L.

In a Reuters report from July 28, Nate Raymond tells us:

The U.S. government may weigh in on whether the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority must post a multimillion-dollar bond, which they have resisted doing, while the groups appeal a jury's finding that they supported terrorist attacks in Israel.

The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed its potential interest in the case in a letter filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, six months after 10 American families won a $655 million verdict against the PLO and Palestinian Authority.

If the Justice Department filed a so-called statement of interest, it would mark the U.S. government's first formal role in the diplomatically sensitive lawsuit, which was filed in 2004.

The Justice Department said it would decide by Aug. 10. A spokeswoman declined to comment.

I am not a lawyer, but you cannot swing a dead cat in my family without hitting one in the head.

Essentially what is going on here is that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO got smacked by a Manhattan federal court for a lot of money.  655 million dollars.  This would represent a major blow to the anti-Israel / anti-Jewish movement as it is represented by these two violently racist organizations.

The court is requiring that the defendant deposit several hundred million dollars into a bond pending appeal.  If they lose the appeal then the money automatically goes to the American victims.

The PA and PLO are resisting posting that bond for reasons that could not be more obvious.

The Obama Department of Justice is considering intervening in the matter and we will find if they do so on August 10.

If the Obama administration does intervene it will likely to do so in order to maintain and stabilize the PA and the PLO at the expense of their American victims.

From an Obama administration perspective the "peace process" must go on and that means that the Palestinian Authority must be defended against its American claimants because to do otherwise might, in some measure, inconvenience the ability of the PA and PLO to function.

If the Obama administration does weigh-in on the side of the PA and the PLO - which would not surprise me in the least - the court still has the option to deny the request.  This is why federal judges are given lifetime appointments, precisely so that they have no existential need to cave to executive demands.

Not surprisingly the main attorney for these enemies of the Jewish people is a guy named Mitchell Berger.

{Shocking, I know.}

I have no doubt that Mister Berger views his defense of his clients within the Western legal tradition which states that all defendants, however heinous, deserve a vigorous defense, and I would not argue against that.  But surely Berger understands that at least part of the reason that he was chosen to stand for that defense is because he has a Jewish name.

Were there no non-Jewish attorneys qualified to defend the PLO and the PA?

People make their own choices.  All I can tell you is that Mitchell Berger is not going to be invited to any of my Passover seders anytime soon.

Say hello to Lawrence

Michael L.

Every now and again I front page a commenter's thoughts at Israel Thrives.

I only do this rarely, but I think that Lawrence's perspective is an important one... I know because I share it!

In reference to the Dawabsha family firebombing, Lawrence writes.

Let's assume that it was Jews who are responsible, although there are suspicions it may have been Arabs; even if the former, the response from Israeli Jews has been pathetic and wincingly masochistic. Yes condemn it but get a proper perspective on the wider situation, a bird's eye view. Such murderous violence against Israelis, including our children is promoted weekly by the PA, its mosques, media, schools, never mind Hamas. There are daily attacks against Jews, or at least Jewish motorists, the Jerusalem light rail etc. Every day. Every day Muslims in the Middle-East slaughter, rape, torture and abduct their fellow Muslims and Christians on a terrible scale, look at Syria and Iraq, Egypt and Yemen. There are full-scale atrocities there. Every day.

The response from the Israeli media and govt is nothing less than pathetic self-loathing, as if we are all responsible (all mainstream Israeli institutions condemn it, unlike all Palestinian institutions which celebrate Palestinian terror against Jews) and ignoring the daily genocidal Jew-hatred from Palestinian and Muslim institutions. And that's assuming Jews are to blame, and we just don't know as of yet. I would go as far as calling our president Rivlin a self-hating Jew (and not just because of his reaction this time around. Ask yourselves why he got the Guardian man of the year award. The Guardian is a left-wing fascist hardcore Jew-hate rag). Israelis are almost as pathetic as American Jews, not quite but not far off.

I found it a little disconcerting, and a little sad, at how eagerly so many Israelis put on the "hair shirt" in order to make penance for their alleged sins.

If whoever killed that baby is Jewish then he or she (or they) is Jewish.

But we must not allow people to use such a crime to demean and attack the Jewish people in Israel, as a whole.  Nor should we allow people to use crimes like this to smear Israeli politicians.  To do so would be something akin to blaming Barack Obama for this or that murder in the United States.  It is simply not just.  And to use the murder of an innocent child to attack one's political enemies is a disgrace.

I am sure that Jewish people in the US also sometimes commit heinous political crimes, but when they do so you can be sure that I do not walk around, with my head bowed in shame, earnestly searching my soul for moral transgressions.

And that, ultimately, is my real concern at the moment.  The Arabs of Israel, in collusion with the Soviets, conjured the "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victim-hood and exported it to the West where it found a sympathetic audience.  Now this same false and malicious narrative of perfect victim-hood is encroaching not only onto the diasporic Jewish head, but looks to be riddling the Israeli Jewish head, as well.

It represents what I once referred to as the Palestinian Colonization of the Jewish Mind.

Of the various aspects of the long Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East, the least appreciated is what we might call "cognitive warfare."  Via the use of propaganda and toxic journalism the "pro-Palestinian" movement seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel.

Jews, sadly, are not immune, but I very much hope that Israeli Jews do not lose sight of the fact that their actual moral well-being, compared to the rest of the world, is doing just fine.

{Thanks.}

When Arabs frame Jews in Israel

Michael L.

There are two recent stories in the news, both of which are concerned with Arab attempts to blame Jews for crimes that those Jews did not commit.

There was the story of Imad Abu Sharikh who came to the hospital all bloodied up claiming that Jewish thugs had attacked him on his way to the mosque, yelling "Arabs out of Israel!"  The police investigated and it turned out that Sharikh was lying.  He did get beaten, but not by Jews, but by fellow Arabs.  His inclination to blame his attack on Jews may have something to do with rising tensions within Israel due to the recent Dawabsha family firebombing.

The second story is directly concerned with that firebombing.

Ari Yashar, writing in Arutz Sheva, tells us:

An announcement has been spreading around influential Palestinian Arab Facebook pages claiming that Yehuda Landsberg of Gilad Farm in Samaria committed the arson that killed an Arab infant and wounded four family members, reports Channel 10 on Monday.

The announcement includes a poster image with Landsberg's picture, and the word "wanted" in English, Arabic, and Hebrew - with a clear Google Translate-inducted mistake in the Hebrew reading ratziti, meaning "I wanted," instead of the correct mevukash.

There's just one problem: Landsberg has been in jail since last December serving a two-and-a-half year sentence, on charges of having committed "Price Tag" vandalism on the Arab village of Far'ata.

When you read enough stories like the two above, as I have, and if you are aware of the phenomenon of "Pallywood" in which Palestinian-Arabs seek to set Jews up before the cameras for defamation - as a form of cognitive warfare against Jewish Israelis, as a whole - then it becomes exceedingly difficult to trust any information that come from Palestinian-Arab sources when they make claims against Jews.

Dr. Richard Landes of Boston University defines "Pallywood" as follows:

The term “Pallywood” refers to the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression. They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath. Pallywood has led to astonishing lapses in Western journalistic standards in which badly staged scenes regularly appear on the news as “real events.” 

The fact that such tactics are used constantly by the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel means that we cannot trust their claims when they denounce Jews.

This raises the question of what to make of the Dawabsha family firebombing?  It may very well have been a "price-tag" attack committed by "Jewish extremists" or it might have been something else entirely.  It is very possible, perhaps even likely, that this crime was the handiwork of Jews.  However, it could also quite easily be a frame job.  It might be that the house caught fire for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with malice toward the Dawabsha family or toward Arabs as a group.  It might be that after the house burned down and little Ali Dawabsha was killed that someone came long and scrawled "revenge" in Hebrew on the side of the house.

The point is that we do not really know what happened and we certainly do not, at least not yet, know who did it.

What I do not understand is why so many people, including the great majority of Jews, leap to the assumption that this was a Jewish crime on such flimsy evidence?

And now, of course, Israel is subject to even more denunciations in which people actually blame the government of Israel for this crime or they blame Israeli Jewish culture in its entirety.  And we have all these Jews now seemingly involved in soul searching to determine just what the hell is wrong with themselves.

I find it shabby.

Tibetans aside, there are very few peoples on the planet less in need of soul-searching than the Jewish people, despite all the toxic accusations against Israel.  People are using the Dawabsha family firebombing as a club against Jewish-Israelis.  I would hate to see Jewish-Israelis use it as an emotional club against themselves.

Progressive-Left and Daily Kos Jew Hatred

Michael L.

In a piece published yesterday entitled, You aren't "shocked" Jewish settlers burned a Palestinian baby alive, Netanyahu. You're complicit., Jewish anti-Zionist Israel-Hater, David Harris-Gershon, indicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as largely responsible for the murder of Ali Dawabsha.

In the spirit of Mr. Harris-Gershon, I have therefore concluded that any time someone gets murdered in the United States, Barack Obama is complicit for helping to foster a atmosphere of violence and distrust among Americans.

In truth, it is hard for me to grasp the sheer malice and hypocrisy of someone who would use the murder of a toddler in order to smear a political enemy as willingly complicit in such an act.  In this piece, however, I am less interested in Harris-Gershon than I am in those who lap up his material and spread hatred toward Israel and, thus, inevitably toward Jews.

Let us see what some of the Kossacks have to say:

Must not have been clear. (3+ / 0-)

I meant those 500 children (couldn't remember the number) that were killed by uniformed Israelis while the citizens sat on the hillside and cheered. I'm far from anti semitic, but  killing isn't made "pure and righteous" just because it's approved of.

by Nannyberry on Sun Aug 02, 2015 at 08:23:07 AM PDT

One of the favorite games of racist anti-Jewish Leftists is pretending that they inhabit some high moral ground compared to the Jews who they are setting up for violence.  Ultimately when some makes the kind of claim above - that Jewish people are both violent and immoral -  they are setting us up first for condemnation and then for violence against us.

The people that she is talking about sitting on that hill during last year's Gaza fight are people who endured years of constant rocket fire into southern Israel.  Their children were given post-traumatic stress disorder, their economy suffered greatly, and they were constantly running into bomb shelters in the middle of the night.

No wonder some cheered.  I would have cheered also, because from their point of view the government was finally doing something to protect themselves and their families from Jihadi aggression from Hamas.

This goes back a long way. Tossing grenades (6+ / 0-)

into the windows of homes was a tactic commonly used by Jewish Militia/Terror groups during the Mandate period.

by JesseCW on Sun Aug 02, 2015 at 02:09:03 AM PDT

What a terrible thing to say about the Jewish people without giving the slightest bit of evidence.  Accusing the Jews of gratuitous murder is nothing less than the Christians did in the Medieval era during the Passion Plays before Easter and then, of course, filled with moral superiority and self-righteous indignation, they marched directly into the ghettos and started killing people.

JesseCW is making a brutally unjust claim against the Jews of the Mandate and also helping to whip up hatred toward our families and friends in that part of the world, if not toward Jews, more generally.

Know the worst part? (5+ / 0-)

They did it to everyone there, even Jews who were originally from there, rather than from Europe.

As is usual in human history, the oppressed turn into oppressors. The only difference is Israel hasn't built any ovens - white phosphorus is the replacement.

There's a wise old saying, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon we'll all be blind and toothless".  Even the Goyim understand that.

by Wzrd1 on Sun Aug 02, 2015 at 06:09:03 AM PDT

No, Wzrd1, what is the worst part?

So, we threw grenades into the windows of everyone there, including our fellow Jews.  Boy these Jews are pretty vile according to so many of "progressives" on Daily Kos.  One might even think that they dislike these immoral Jews.

By the way, notice the use of the word Goyim in the last sentence.  There are two ways to interpret that usage.  Wzrd1 is either anti-Jewish Jew or he's using the term in a sarcastic manner to highlight ways in which Jews reference non-Jews in order to suggest that it represents a type of insult or put-down.  It's just a little flourish of odium to put people in the proper mood.

They casually blow them to bits, casually dump (13+ / 0-)

incendiaries on them.

And the vast - overwhelming - majority of Jewish Israelis are cool with it.

JesseCW on Sun Aug 02, 2015 at 02:16:30 AM PDT

The good old days when a Muslim or a Christian could beat the holy crap out of the Jews are over and Jesse is not happy about it.  I understand that people are used to centuries of Jewish submission and the illegitimacy of Jewish self-defense.  And it is true that the vast majority of Israelis are very cool with protecting their children from the hostile Arab-Muslim majority around them.

I am sick of Settler Terrorism (79+ / 0-)

I have long thought the racism practiced by many Israelis against the Palestinians as a result of the occupation is destroying the soul of Israel.. and this latest terror attack is part of the pattern.

tsackton on Sat Aug 01, 2015 at 06:47:00 PM PDT

Yes.  All those Jews running around, chopping off heads and destroying antiquities and raping young women in the name of Jewish Supremacism... oh, wait, that's some other group of people, isn't it?

Also, of course, the term "settler" is meant to suggest that these Jews have no rights to inhabit the very land of their ancestors.

Furthermore, this guy's sense of moral proportionality is twisted.  He's sick of "Settler Terrorism"?  How much Islamic terrorism is their compared to Jewish Terrorism?  The ratio has got be somewhere around 1,000 to 1, yet its the virtually non-existent Jewish variety that these people are "sick of."

The much more bloody and brutal other kind is not of interest to these people.  But, then, they do not care about Muslim-on-Muslim violence and casually approve of Muslim-on-Jewish violence, no matter how much they may deny it, because they justify that violence as a righteous punch-back against Jewish land theft and alleged oppresssion.  It is only violence perpetrated by Jews, or any type of white western violence against anyone of another color, that fills their hearts with meaning.

This is what you might call "racism."

An Arab Baby Murdered in Israel

Michael L.

Israel Thrives unequivocally condemns the arson attack that resulted in the death of 18-month old Ali Dawabsha and concurs with editor David Horovitz of the Times of Israel that mere regret is not sufficient.

The government of Israel has a moral obligation to do whatever it can do to prevent this kind of activity.  If this was, indeed, a "price tag" attack the individual, or individuals, who conducted the attack should spend the rest of their lives in prison.