Neither is an army real as you depend on the US for your defense. You are a beggar with your hand out saying "Look what I did."
The unworkable philosophy is 10% of the total population paying 87% of the income taxes. 60% of tax payers get back more in Deductions and CREDITS than they paid in taxes.
This is the Communistic influence. Why work when the Government will take care of me.
Ayn Rand came to the US from Russia during the Cold War. Her books were a warning that we did not heed. "Fountainhead" was based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright (a gifted visionary who is now canceled because of his skin color). We are living "Atlas Shrugged" as all the money went OFF SHORE just as she predicted. Very good for 3rd rate.
Yes I am a troll. I love America and I hate watching it die.
That is the kind of troll I am. America saved my life and I am trying to do all I can to save America.
Shitheads like yourself refuse to open your fucking eyes. I am a one eyed troll but whether one eye or two I refuse to keep them shut.
I know what real democracy looks like in 2022 and too little remains south of our border.
I feel the pain of so many family that moved south for the opportunity to contribute back to society what they were given only to feel robbed and cheated by pricks like yourself.
Burning Man is only about me in a world where there is only us.
I understand why you feel that way. I think the better way is not to fire people like Katie for such a reason. This was not a case of non-woke firing someone who is woke. It is a case of one version of woke firing a different version of woke.
As long as it is acceptable to fire people for having unpopular political views, none of us will be safe to have heterodox views. This is not easy. I know that there are some statements or actions that might get me to say that a person should be fired. But we really need to have a set of rules that allow people to be different.
In my myth and legends Sodom was destroyed for how it welcomed the stranger.
We had an election Monday.
We re-elected an old fart we knew 30 years ago.
On Tuesday he started apologizing for the campaign rhetoric.
We are a secular humanist liberal democracy and every four years we need to clear the air. Then we hug and work together.
The major thing on our political agenda is Universal Dental Care and whether we can train enough dentists, dental surgeons, technicians, technologists, secretaries, and hygenists.
My dentist is a beautiful young women who keeps going on maternity leave every couple of years.
Quebec is ridiculously pro family.
Affordable DAYCARE GUARANTEED. HEALTH EDUCATION AND WELFARE GUARANTEED.
a HIGH FLOOR AND THE SKY IS THE LIMIT ON OUR CEILINGS.
We are Horatio Alger somebody needs to help us with our bootstraps. We generate more small business per capita than ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE aMERICAN eMPIRE.
It is our money and OUR government invests wisely.
Education, education, education education.
Evolution, evolution, evolution evolution.
Conservatism is Armageddon.
I know my Mythology my ancestors wrote your mythology.
The econo.y of the "nation" of Quebec is 351 billion with a per capita GDP of ~55,000. The US has an economy of 23 trillion and 74,000 gdp per capita.
You have 8.5 million people , no single ethnic minority over 1% , 13% foreign born, with avg 40K immigrants a year when we have 245ak legal and over 1 million illegal, quebec though does not even participate in the country's provincial nominee program, 30% of quebec population believe they have enough sovereignty and should stay Canadian. 79 % believe they should have more autonomy.
Where’s the ridiculous all caps ad infinitum repeats? This is weak, just does not have the same effect. You’re losing your touch man. Not even a single asterisk...? Sad pathetic troll damaged ass butt poopoo
Jann Wenner was on JRE. I love you here, of course, but I felt something like nostalgia.
America This Week has been a real surprise and I've listened every week. Walter is perfect for you; it's quite the double act: The Godfather/horse head joke had me dying. I've tuned in to real time and other places to see/hear you, but it never quite worked like it did in your writing. But with Walter, I dig it.
Any chance you bring the band back together and we see some Victor Juhasz? If you read this and remember, which story was it where he drew Obama as a teacher and all of the Republicans were acting up in class, lighting farts and stuff?
Katie should descend into the comments at some point. I had hoped that SS would be for more than the old "listen while I tell you a story..." It doesn't have to be.
I agree too. Was going to jump in and make this point, but you made it better. The View, from the bit i know about it, is shitlib Hillary "leftists". Briahna and Katie are Bernie left. Big difference.
Is a Shitlib like a Shidiot? Or a Shit Apple? Captain Shitacular? Do they start out as tiny little Shit larvae who become Shiterpillars - a whole pandemic of Shiterpillars - who then turn into Shitmoths?
I never lived in the suburbs. I know my trailer parks. They have their rules. The people are civilized we are the barbarians. We hire mercenaries to do our dirty work.
Make an actual point and cite your sources.... what is wrong with you? Throwing meaningless words around without substance has zero value in terms of public discourse. Learn how to actually pump a loaf, dear sir. Your comment has no substance.
He's referencing a show called Trailer Park Boys, a Canadian cult classic. A character in the show would routinely throw the prefix 'shit' on random words. Instead of calling someone a broken record, he'd call them a broken shitrecord.
So the point being made is whether shitlib is actually any different from a liberal, or if it's just a redundant Laheyism.
That is the Canadian I know well. I spoke it. At 74 I am starting to write it. It was the Lingua Franca. I speak many Canadians both French and English and some Dene and some Cree. I don't watch television I guess I am missing a lot . I watch baseball and haven't watched a hockey game in 30 years.
I live in Hockeytown Canada. Hockey is the religion and I am an Atheist.
A liberal is some one free to change direction. In science we call this evolution. In science we call conservatism extinction.
We teach propaganda in our schools not mythology.
There is no such thing as gender, race and religion in science.
There is no Empirical evidence of their existence.
Do they frequently advocate for workers rights, socialized medicine and a less warlike foreign policy? If not, then they're progressive Democrats, not progressive left.
I live in a Full Democracy. We had a real revolution during my life time. Power is bottom up.
I went to St Albans and Burlington during the summer as a child. Vermont was rather poor . It was the reddest and the poorest state in the Union as opposed to the Confederacy.
We border Maine , New Hampshire , Vermont and New York.
Vermont seems poor but I remember when New York21 was rich and today Vermont seems poor but NY, Maine and New Hampshire seem second Worldish.
I am 74 and I remember what was. My wife went to University of Chicago before Senator Sanders. She thinks the Senator walks on water.
We know America from Alaska to Florida and we believe the UN when it says Cuba has a higher Quality of life than the USA.
I would rather live in Vermont.
Syracuse , Buffalo, Albany or Binghampton? I'll take Havana.
Miami ? I 'll take Havana eight days a week.
I am 74 and 5-10 extra years of healthy productive years of life, a better education and more security of person that is the prism through which I see America.
I've been through Orlando but not the tourist Orlando. I imagine what kind of Hell it must be to grow up poor in Florida and when I think Florida I think poverty and oligarchy and stupid ignorant assholes running the show.
I know Tallahassee
Florida State is where I look for basket weavers, burger flippers and Republican know nothings.
And Mafia shills from Vegas and New Jersey.
Get a passport we are an inch from Vermont.
The more I look at the decay and corruption the more I believe Bernie walks on water.
Between Stalin/Lenin and the Hillary crowd of The View is a MASSIVE space. Lots of thoughtful policy ideas that can't even see communism, as it's too far away.
Dude, where in the world would you even come up with that question? I don't believe in God, so likely not evangelical. Thanks for the crisp guidance on Lenin vs. Stalin. Perhaps you'd also like to elucidate the differences between Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin, and who really should have taken over for Lenin. Both Leninism and Stalinism are quite communist, and both are well away from thoughtful leftists. Pretty simple point.
This is where Matt’s commentariat confuses me. I too hate the semantic debates but c’mon.
I don’t even know who’s on the View to be honest but I’ll bet my house they’re not leftists.
Abby Martin, Rania Khalek are leftists. People here seem to think leftist and liberal are interchangeable. Is it ignorance or a tactic to flatten the variety of thought and perspectives they might disagree with?
It's more that "liberals" constantly try to be farther to the left than "leftists" on social/culture war issues (e.g. # of different genders/pronouns), so it's an open debate which camp is winning the leftward footrace.
To anyone not sprinting leftward at top speed, Liberal vs. Leftist can very easily look like Communists vs. Marxist-Leninists; a distinction without a difference.
The Veiw, with their authoritarian view of vaccine and mask mandates, pro-regime change wars, advocacy for right-wing Israel and calls for limits on free speech, are well to the right of Tulsi Gabbard. Maybe even Donald Trump.
I'm sure that is basically what she meant. 'A version that more accurately reflects the views of a thoughtful leftist'. She did just get smacked by a major media corporation, probably best to not get your name on those crazy ladies' lips just now.
No, because The View loves people like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi. Leftists absolutely do not like those people. I think Rania Khalek and Abby Martin have been wrong about a few very important things (not Israel IMO though) and therefore I don't respect them as much as I used to. But neither of them will ever tell you that Democrats are everyone's saviors the way The View does. In fact, before the 2016 election Rania wrote a piece saying that Trump might actually be the lesser evil since his foreign policy rhetoric was less hawkish than Clinton's. I forget whether or not she walked that back after seeing him in office for a while, but does that sound like the kind of thing they'd say on The View? And would anyone on The View even share Katie's take on Israel?
Gandhi said non-violence was superior to violence, but violence was superior to non-violent cowardice: "My method of nonviolence can never lead to loss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.
My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once....that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting."
WOW! I just read this article and you read my mind 20 hrs before I read it lol. Don't know all that much detail about the subject, but reading that told me something about this young lady. Made me chuckle
The Hill should have run Halper’s piece and then done another segment on why she’s over simplifying the situation to simply parrot the likes of Tlaib who is in no doubt as anti-Semitic as anyone can be.
Then they could have run a piece taking apart what actually happens with Hamas in Palestine and Israel and who attacks whom and why.
Then, in a random act of journalism, they could have looked into how and why the journalist was killed and informed us of the circumstances.
And then as an aside they could have looked into what would happen to you if you’re LGBTQ in Palestine.
After that perhaps they could also look at which country besides Israel is a democracy in the Middle East and how women are treated in Arab countries as opposed to Israel.
Maybe after that some more actual journalism could have helped us all to understand how Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) is being used against Israel by Palestine.
That would have gone some small way to reassuring us we were enjoying some professional journalism.
This way, the way this is all being presented, including disappointingly by Mr Taibi, is not telling the whole story and consequently as journalism is as guilty of omission as commission.
Agreed. I was frankly surprised to see this article. I think Clever Pseudonym (above) says it best. It's arrogant soccer Moms and latte drinking entitled pundits on another campaign to save someone with brown skin in a situation much more complex than is ever properly recited/reported in media. I believe there's got to be another reason woke pundits are focused so strongly on Israel yet ignore basics, like someone killed a fucking bomber and instead only report/lamenting it as 'genocide' when the guy/woman was going to blow a bunch of people up! What do we do when faced with a bomber - you stop them. Until I see something not actually slanted, including from Jews who perform their own version of self immolating "I'm the guilty entitled" narrative when discussing Israel. I don't buy it. There's something else going on.
Who benefits? That's always the question. Someone care to answer?
Perhaps seen through the prism of unending violence against Jews in whatever country they found themselves in, possible extermination tends to focus the mind.
"..incoherence.." seems to be the point. Americans forever riding a pendulum swinging between distorted and manipulated political extremes, baksheesh and largesse providing the only metric of political economy. Social institutions and human consequence be damned.
This week in my city, two boys, 14 and 15 years old, carjacked a woman and her child, committed several robberies and, looking to "party", tried to enter a residence where a birthday celebration was underway. Refused admittance they opened fire killing the celebrant. The ensuing police chase ended in a car crash and arrest. The Chief of Police admitted complete perplexity. They were from "good" homes. There was no apparent cause or reason. No WHY at all.
The boys were taken to children's court. The only discussion and solution forthcoming was the newscasters implication that vengeance was in order and trying them as adults would send the proper message.
The American psyche has clearly crossed some line of demarcation into the realm of the pathological. The disconnect between the illusion of the way American reality should be and the violent social disintegration and human trauma we witness through the windshield every day is swallowing us alive.
Explain how it’s apartheid then. But don’t leave out the bit about 5% of the population of Israel being Arabs living lives far more freely than they would in most other parts of the ME.
Oh my! First of all, the correct number is 20%. That’s the percentage of Israeli Arabs living in Israel. That they all benefit from far more rights in a far more stable country than the neighboring Arab states is shown by the nearly universal rejection of redrawing borders as part of any peace proposal that puts them suddenly under Arab rule.
As to WEVA, I recommend you read the UN convention on the crime of apartheid, focusing specifically on the definition and then compare it to what is actually going on over there. To start your education, here’s the link. Go and learn, as the sages were wont to say.
i cant even read this article when it quotes (unironically) sources like "Amnesty International" and "Human Rights Watch" as though both of these organizations haven't been infiltrated by the far left. Anyone who calls Israel "aparthied" or refers to Judea and Samaria as "occupied" lands, clearly does not know either the history of the region, nor the facts on the ground. Try taking a look at UN Watch and Hillel Neuer if you want facts. The UN has been taken over by literal dictator regimes and is a political game - not truth.. Stop trying to tell American Jews that they are responsible for Israeli Government policy, but more importantly, stop trying to use Zionism (literally self-determination of indigenous people in their homeland) as a way to discriminate against American Jews. Just stop it.
I think Katie nailed it in her video that got her canceled/fired, and I don't agree with her on many of her lefty socialist ideas, but its hard to dispute that Israel is practicing apartheid. But that doesn't dismiss that the PA and Hamas are also destroying their own people for power and religious zealotry. Both things can be true, they are not mutually exclusive.
As for a small percentage of Israeli Arabs "living more freely" than other parts of the ME, I guess it depends on who you are--the royal familes in much of the ME live free everywhere they go, including the west. If you're saying that much of the ME is autocratic, I get that, but they're only autocratic because we (the American Empire) want them to be.
Did you honestly just state the the freedoms that ME royalty enjoy somehow makes the freedoms that Israeli Arabs enjoy as compared to their non-Israeli counterparts less germaine? That's ludicrous.
You should talk to an Israeli Palestinian someday and then you might realize that the Israeli government and citizens calling them “Israeli Arabs” is just one of many minor examples of Israeli apartheid.
"they're only autocratic because we (the American Empire) want them to be." You sure about this? Cuz, it kinda sorta seems like they just want to be autocratic on their own. Please explain. Thx.
Autocrats serve the empire's interest. Free elections have consequences, often undesirable to the subjugation doctrine of empire. Take the Arab Spring, for example, ousting Mubarak who the US considered a 'good friend' and voting in the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi who pushed socialist and populist ideas (religion aside). The Egyptian military then sabotaged their own nation to undermine the duly elected president, arrested him and effectively put their country back under military, autocratic rule. Whether Morsi was a decent leader/person is moot here--he was elected, much as Trump or Biden here.
Take the suppression in Bahrain--we endorse and support the autocrat ruler there and say nothing when they murder the minority Shia because it serves our interests (the Fifth Fleet). Saudi is the same, we empower them with logistics, weapons to terrorize Yemeni as it serves our interest to quash popular uprising even if it is funded/supported by outside influence (Iran).
The Arab people are simply cannon fodder for the Great Game as all non-elites have been for thousands of years. Look at Ukraine--whomever you support there, the people are the ones who suffer while the MIC and politicians profit--again, at the American Empire's behest.
I would think Nelson Mandela might have a good insight into what is apartheid. Do you feel he was wrong to call it so in Palestine? If you think he was wrong, could you possibly read more of his opinions before replying?
I feel he was wrong, yes. Not sure of his motivations for saying this (nor are you) but please tell us all exactly how Israel is an "Apartheid state" without a simple appeal to authority. Cheers.
Except Mandela never said that Israel was an apartheid state … and one of his grandson’s strongly disagrees with a comparison that makes light of the sufferings of black South Africans under the real thing.
Haaretz, a paper that could be trusted to find that quote, couldn’t. Here’s a link to real quotes by Mandela on the general topic.
I have read his opinions and he’s entitled to them. He was very much in favor of a two state solution, which initially put him at odds with Palestine given they have not agreed to that to this day. But in the end he became increasingly anti-Semitic, he openly encouraged PLO violence against Israel which led to the second intifada in 1999 and the deaths of thousands. And the bloodshed continues to this day doesn’t it.
There’s a lot to admire in Mandela no doubt. But he was only human, he didn’t always get it right. Mandela laid a wreath on the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution, warmly greeting his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We are indebted to the Islamic Revolution”, Mandela proclaimed.
In 2000, the American Jewish Committee canceled a Washington luncheon scheduled to honor Mandela after he said that 13 Jews tried for “espionage” in Iran were receiving a “fair trial”.
That aside there’s no claiming Israel is not at fault here, they most definitely bear blame and should face the ramifications for many of their actions against Palestine. But to be completely with one side or the other perpetuates the notion one is the victim the other aggressor. That’s simply not the case. Except of course in the minds of the extreme on either side, like Tlaib. I’m sure she has many Israeli counterparts.
Goodness gracious you’re quite the anti-Semite aren’t you. You accuse others of exactly what you yourself are guilty of, open bigotry towards others in another tribe.
Exactly, it defies logic to me to in any way to sympathize with “Palestinians” versus Israelis. One willingly sacrifices it’s children as suicide bombers, the other is a civilized democracy with a thriving, innovative economy. The Palestinians lob missiles indiscriminately at Israeli civilians while Israel takes great care to precision bomb those sites from which the missiles come. Arabs in Israel can be full citizens, not quite the same as a Jew in “Palestine”.
But, you think rationally and point out obvious truths, therefore, that apparently doesn't qualify you to know anything about Israel according to the woke crowd ranting on this page.
While there are people who support BDS but are not anti-Semitic, the campaign is founded on a rejection of Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state. It denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination – a right universally afforded to other groups.
This is tiresome. The Israelis have the military to completely destroy the “Palestinians “ if they wished. They do not, credit them with that much restraint at least. Have a nice life, enjoy your embrace of terrorist thugs. I will disengage from this conversation, as rational discourse appears to be impossible with the supporters of “Palestine”.
"Israel takes great care" is a bit propagandistic. They've been known to be fairly indiscriminate in what they blow up. Granted, Hamas loves to store & launch rockets from schools, hospitals, and any other locations where they can score PR points from Israeli counter-fire
The facts speak for themselves, I am free to chose what I believe to be true as are you. The thing I love about the US is you have the absolute right to be an idiot.
I came to make these points and am glad to have found them so well laid out. I too am disappointed by this reductionist, pseudo intellectual perspective on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
Bahaha tell me more about how you're a foolish, narrow minded racist prog who wrongly thinks you have a firm grasp on global politics. Keep promoting the "Zionist colonizer" tripe as Palestinians allow themselves to be pawns to radically anti-Semitic and racist groups like Hezbollah. 😂🤣😂
Does not Geneva convention state that any people occupied by a foreign nation has the right to resist by any means necessary? And suggesting Israel as a “democracy”? I would love to hear that argument just as we, the American taxpayer, never got to vote on the $10M/day that makes its way in the form of weapons & cash to an apartheid country (that’s not always LGBTQ friendly, if i recall) so it can “mow the lawn” every every few years. The question is always, who has the power? We already have the so-called journalism on Israel you prefer: mainstream media. Also known as hasbara.
The “by any means necessary” argument is false and it’s constant, mindless repetition does not make it “true”. International law is clear that terrorist attacks against civilians is never lawful and cannot be justified.
Even the UNSC rejects the concept that there is some national liberation exception to terrorism and has passed numerous binding resolutions to that effect as part of its international effort to suppress terrorism.
And speaking of national liberation movements, the uniqueness of the Palestinian one is that it is the only such movement that has no indigenous (in this case Arabic) name for its supposed historical homeland, importing instead a Western name that is Arabicized. It’s certainly suggestive that something very different is afoot.
Great post. I have to laugh at the “girl power” Toyota Land Cruiser commercial where they brag about rallying in the Empty Quarter and I was like “that was totally illegal for women in SA until 2018 or whenever”.
A true exchange of ideas means getting factual realities straight first!
Settling in a land with the end goal of ridding it of its people to take it over under the pretext of a divine mission defining you as a chosen people.
Giving yourself the right to commit ethnic cleansing and depicting yourself as a victim in the process. The world is seeing the truth more and more clearly.
You're occupying a land that you conquered by a war of agression and the only reason you don't annex it is because you don't want to give civil rights to the people living there. That's exactly apartheid
I’m an Irish Christian. No ties to Israel other than what happens there has a ripple effect in the world. Although I should say I did live in the Arab ME for 10 years.
Suggestion for you. You need to do more reading on the origins of this conflict, and not from a left wing viewpoint perhaps. Your understanding is quite narrow based on your comments. All the best.
No one on the planet is unaware of the official Israel narrative bullshit. As narrow understanding goes, you're incapable of providing opposing facts to what I wrote because you're the one who needs to do more reading on this topic
Whatever, it’s clear you really don’t have any interest in having a decent discussion or seeing anything from another perspective. Like a couple of other commenters on here your anti-semitic hatred runs deep judging from your vitriol towards the subject. Let’s just agree to disagree. All the best. Bye.
Wack job. Yeah, all colonialists stop taking over more territory because they don't want the world police to make them give the people civil rights. Makes complete sense.
Well, they could annex the territories and decide the people already living there wouldn't have the right to vote. Although it wouldn't change anything much to the reality, it would make it
Thanks, this is a typical example of leftist antisemitism - portraying the Jews' fight to keep the only democracy in the Middle East as sinister. All their neighbors want them dead for the "crime" of being Jews. That alone should make any democracy-minded person question the hatred towards Israel.
President Carter is a very well meaning man, full of good intentions. But we know what the path to hell is paved with, don’t we. Carter was one of the most ineffectual and misguided presidents the US has ever had, he brought about enormous misery for his country. So as a source of wisdom and leadership he’s sadly, and without doubt, lacking in too many aspects.
Here, here. I also find that looking at the current situation of the Israeil-Palestinian conflict in the here and now without historical context to be extremely disingenuous at the very least. Probably more likely there is a lot of willfully ignoring of the facts that got us to where we are today.
Hahahaha, so according to you we shouldn’t strive for more nuanced journalism, and journalists should be believed and not questioned if it corresponds to a certain worldview. That smacks of the very thing you’re accusing the AIPAC of doing.
Not sure what the “5,000” year comment as it pertains to Israel/Palestine in the present day. But I would suggest you get a broader perspective on the ME, from your comments your thinking sounds quite narrow. For example consider the rights of women and the LGBTQ community in Israel as opposed to the rest of the ME, start there perhaps. And then do reference in law the legitimacy of being attacked by a warring aggressor and the accumulation of land ownership by the party who’s attacked. It’s interesting stuff.
Israelis would probably dispute that taking statements from Amnesty International/Human Rights Watch at face value really counts as "approaching the subject with great care". They're about as impartial regarding Israel as the Kremlin is regarding Ukraine.
That said, Katie absolutely should not have been fired over it.
Yeah, no one at The NY Times would publish Gideon Levy or Amira Hass. I keep a subscription to English-language Haaretz just for that reason. They are occupation-critical left-liberal, but it’s articles are well informed on the region and topics.
The Israel/Palestine debate in US media on the other hand offers just the same stifling shallow talking points and propaganda from both sides that everyone knows by heart by now. Go read the comments under this article for instance-- behold the sheer tedium of it.
I remember reading a Chomsky opinion - a part about how whenever the USA has completed their use of Israel they will “chuck them in the ocean” or something similar - like they do with any entity after it has served their purpose.
Better to befriend your neighbour and make peace before your super power “friend” tosses you overboard. Peace.
Now that’s interesting. I always wonder where the best places to get Russian news would be; I read RT and Sputnik, but I have no way of knowing how much it’s been f’d with. What a strange time.
I kinda want solid opinions from Israel, Germany, Britain, China, and certainly Russia. But I don’t even know how to cut through the BS in my home countries media so I don’t even know where to start.
Want to know the truth about the USA and the western world? Read the official Russian translation of President Putins speech. It's all factual and it ain't pretty. We're as evil as anyone in the history of the world.
1) “In 1991, at Belovezh Forest, without asking the will of common citizens, representatives of the then-party elites decided to destroy the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their motherland. This tore apart and dismembered our nation, becoming a national catastrophe"
As if the common citizens didn't absolutely want the fuck out of USSR control.
2) “We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014"
Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, not the other way around
3) “The West … began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages"
Medieval Europe had its issues, but colonialism wasn't one of them
Not sure if it's "news" or just information and analysis from the Russian perspective, but check out Gilbert Doctorow, The Saker and Big Serge's Substack for the views on Ukraine, for news TASS, the Moscow Times and a more anti-Putin stance, Meduza.
and with a rather small and decreasing readership. It is not a significant factor in Israeli society or politics, and it’s journalistic integrity has been questioned on many occasions, but none of that has stopped The NY Times and others from relying on its reporting as if it were Israel’s newspaper of record.
Agreed. I don't know if Israel has a real newspaper of record. Times of Israel plays it pretty straight, but it's a smallish operation. Haaretz is pretty far left; Jerusalem Post is to the right. Can't think of any others.
There is a level of duplicity on the part of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Both redefined the legally accepted, and popularly understood, crime of “apartheid” to fit Israeli actions (and frankly those of many Western states too). They did this knowing that Israel was not close to committing apartheid as defined in the international convention outlawing it. Freedom House and the Democracy Index, hardly bastions of Zionist thought, both rate Israel highly in their metrics, in some cases ahead of the US and some EU countries. But AI and HRW went ahead anyway, confident that many would leap on the word without recognizing - or perhaps caring - that it now meant something very different. It’s a disingenuous gambit unworthy of any human rights monitor.
Given the arrant nonsense, misinformation and basic lack of historical knowledge that permeates our media when Israel is concerned, I find it hard to believe that this “radar” alone constituted a firing offense. The story seems a bit too tidy.
I lived in South Africa during apartheid. What is happening in Israel is actually worse. Maybe apartheid is not the right term, as you say, but it is an effort to quantify how badly the occupied terrorizes are treated. Maybe we should come up with a term worse than apartheid. Of course, that would immediately get one smeared with the anti-Semite gun. As does anything critical of Israel.
Having lived in apartheid South Africa, perhaps you should spend some time living in Israel. It is evident from your comment that you know nothing about the reality on the ground there. As I mentioned earlier both Freedom House and the Democracy Index put the lid to your claim.
I will also volunteer some advice: if you want to be taken seriously, you should abjure what is known as the Livingstone formulation. It’s always a bad look and reeks of bad faith argument. Your description of Israel comes from a place of lack of knowledge or malice. Only you know which it is, and that’s between you and your own conscience.
Thank you for proving my point so eloquently in this and your other responses. I understand your frustration at having to face facts with your various convenient, but historically unsupported, narratives, but lashing out so histrionically is always a bad tactic in adult argument.
Israel has a robust and thriving democracy for its citizens. It has over 3M people in a fictitious "occupied zone" which has now existed for over 50 years where the residents don't have any say in their occupiers political decisions. That's what apartheid is. That's what the South Africans did too. Palestinians are second class "citizens", not even citizens of the nation that controls their borders, their economy, their freedom of movement and their natural resources.
Dictionary definition:
a·part·heid
/əˈpärtˌ(h)āt,əˈpärtˌ(h)īt/
noun
HISTORICAL
(in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
segregation on grounds other than race.
Another definition:
specifically : a former policy of segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority in the Republic of South Africa
NOTE: The extreme racial segregation of apartheid lasted from 1948 to 1994 and included such restrictions as where people of certain races (see RACE entry 1 sense 1a) could live or own land, what jobs they could hold, and who could and couldn't participate in government.
Aside from the fact that international law prohibits Israel from extending its laws throughout the former Mandate territories illegally seized by Jordan and taken back by Israel in 1967, you missed the Oslo Accords which left 95% of Palestinians ruled by the PA or Hamas. So even under your broader definition either Israel is not an apartheid state or international law requires any state that occupies territory of another to follow an apartheid system. And even then, as the Palestinians were never sovereign over any part of the land, to call them “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is a political not a legal term.
As an aside, are you suggesting the existence of a Jewish race? I thought such deluded foolishness ended with WWII.
Palestinians absolutely used to be citizens of a state, before Israel took that from them. What history book do you read where they have always been stateless?
You are the person who called it "Occupied Palestinian Territory” not me.
"Palestinians" were citizens of a state, all right. It was called the Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was only a geographic region. And Palestinians were both Jews and Arabs, not just Arabs.
Jewish residents of Palestine were as entitled as Arab residents of Palestine to have a state of their own on that land as part of the post-WWI Mandate process. Jews accepted the UN's proposal of only half of Palestine for their state, leaving the other half for Arabs. Arabs rejected the concept of sharing a land rightfully claimed by TWO people, invaded the Jewish half, lost the war and then their land.
Okay that’s all true. But they are currently denied citizenship of any nation, which is a basic violation of human rights. Who else in the world is denied citizenship?
I write that Palestinians considered themselves to be South Syrians, not a part of something called the Mandate of Palestine. Under Ottoman rule, of course, the Arabs were subjects of the Sultan, not citizens of some democratic state.
In any case, this is a red herring. The issue remains that at no time in history did a group then identifying itself as “Palestinians” ever exercise sovereignty in any portion of what was determined by the League of Nations to have been the historical homeland of the Jewish people.
It’s pretty straightforward claim and so far no so-called pro-Palestinian advocate has been able to refute it - something that has sent follower commenter epierce into paroxysms of rage and abusive name because the case he would like to present is at best a distortion when it is not evidence-free altogether.
I don't agree that occupation=apartheid; the US should never have invaded Iraq but that doesn't mean they imposed an "apartheid regime" on the Iraqis. Or the Afghans for that matter.
It’s not the occupation that makes it apartheid, it’s the setting up of a fake pseudo state with none of the real powers of a state and pretending that this is valid.
If we had colonized Iraq and set up two partitions, one where the American’s lived with full rights and a distinct with no real rights, then we would have been guilty of apartheid too.
Also, the time of occupation matters. Generations after generation are living in some soet of suspended animation in Palestine, to the point where it is obvious Israel prefers the status quo.
"it’s the setting up of a fake pseudo state with none of the real powers of a state and pretending that this is valid."
That's.... occupation. Maybe colonization if you're feeling uncharitable. Still not apartheid by a long shot. Otherwise Russia is imposing apartheid on Belarus and Crimea, and China is imposing apartheid on Hong Kong. Apartheid is everywhere if you define it loosely enough.
Arab/Muslim inhabitants of the Israel side of the partition have full rights, so again, not apartheid.
"it is obvious Israel prefers the status quo". Sure, but "prefer" is a relative term. Israel prefers occupying the West Bank over being on the receiving end of rocket fire. The core motivation for the occupation is self preservation.
No one claims that the rights of Arab Israeli citizens are being violated so you are using a red herring here.
The Arab/Muslims on the Palestinian side do not have full rights, in fact many of their rights are violated, including many of those listed in the definition of apartheid by the ICC.
I will quote extensively from the "International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid" UN resolution 3068
I will quote at length as it is really informative how many of these rights are being abridged.
"Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or
groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and
the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or
groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights
and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;"
"any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the population
along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of
a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of
various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial
group or groups or to members thereof;"
Israel denies citizenship to Palestinians, limits their freedom of movement, denies them the right to leave and reenter their land, destroys their housing, takes their land with no compensation, and deny them the right to participation in work and other fundamental rights.
They even have a racist law that punishes Jewish people who marry Palestinians!
Is Russia committing apartheid in Crimea? Do Crimeans have their rights systematically denied by Russia and does Russia deny them the right to citizenship, the right to movement, and all the other hallmarks of apartheid?
Or the United Nations, for that matter! Her opinion is bullshit, but she should not have been censored or fired for it. The Hill wants opinion journalism, she gave it to them good and hard.
Why is her opinion bullshit If that's what she was pushing? If that were the case there would be justification for The Hill to let her go, but she was speaking the truth, and the truth got her fired, and that is the wrongness of what happened.
Your opinion is simply not true. Your response implies that to be critical of Israel means you're an anti-Semite, no. I'm critical of many things that America has done in it's past and continues to do, like it's many illegal wars carried out in this 21st century. I admire those who can bear the truth, speak the truth, and try to make their country better. Those that hide from it are cowards.
I did not say or imply that Halper's opinion was antisemitic, Fran, because it wasn't. It was anti-Israeli propaganda. Israel is not a racist apartheid state, so her claim otherwise is a propagandistic lie.
I also admire those who speak and bear the truth about their country or anyone else's. A shame that Halper failed so miserably on that score.
You actually seem to be stuck in a binary view of the world as opposed to the nuanced position that many are more comfortable with. Kind of a "both and" view of the world.
Shane, I've paid close attention to Israeli policies and it's history. It is an apartheid state, Has been from it's inception. Look, what did they do to the Indian population when they came to America? We practically annihilated them, then sent them off to reservations, or took them for long walks that killed some thousand of them in the Trial of Tears, etc. What she said was not anti-Israeli propaganda, but the truth. Look you change nothing unless you acknowledge the truth. Even if you are taking about dysfunctional families, you can't change, or improve anything unless the truth be told. Do you take the position Russia bad, America good? That position could get us into a nuclear war.
Read this Shane. I remember reading about it at the time and searched it out. Many examples of this kind of thing going on in the Palestinian territories over which they seem to have little, if any control. You don't think this is okay?
Really! You pay the Piper, you call the tune. It's called "employment at will!" It's really arbitrary power and the real reason The boss' classes hate unions so much, they limit arbitrary power. The amerikan working classes are so indoctrinated and so beaten down they're mostly against union's. It's breathtaking the level of mind control in the US and its getting that way western world wide in Oceania where all animals are equal but some are more equal..
I've never understood the insistence on using "Apartheid" as an epithet against Israel. AFAIK, Arabs can and do vote in Israel and serve in Knesset. However Amnesty or other Progressive-captured NGOs define Apartheid to make use of it in this case must be tortured. So I stopped reading there.
It's too bad Katie got fired but maybe she shouldn't parrot stupid arguments. If Israel is some horrible bad actor tell me why, don't try to trick me into thinking Arabs in Israel have no rights.
The Progs despise Israel because it is the final and most recent example of the European colonization and it hits all their Oppression erogenous zones: European over African, Judeo-Christian over Muslim, White over Brown, rich country v poor country, colonizer vs colonized etc.
Israel is the last plausible place they can act out all their fantasies of liberation, where the heroic revolutionary Leftist rescues a poor oppressed Brown person and defeats the evil White Europeans.
That's why they don't care about how much the Arabs hate women and gays or their crazy anti-Semitic propaganda and indoctrination: no nuance or context must be allowed to interfere w their sacred narrative.
And what is funny about that is Israel is the one place in the Middle East/Central Asia/Africa/ etc. that women's rights, LGB rights, and actual democracy take place. All of those strongly leftist values are subordinate to what is really puffery.
It’s simple talking point that can be used as a moral bludgeon for policy goals. Do you oppose clean water ? The second you accept the legitimacy of my question I won no matter the end result
Why don't you have the psychological courage to reference it as an apartheid state, which it is. Why don't you look at a map and see what is identified as Israel now was called Palestine, or referencing Britain's earlier role, British Mandate Palestine with a vast majority of Palestinians occupying this country. Why don't you read up on how all of that changed after WWII and the role many in the US played that handed a country populated by Palestinians over to the Jewish people. Read about the Nakba that displaced almost a million Palestinians by Zionists. Over 400 Palestinian cities and towns were destroyed by Jewish forces within 2 years, Those Palestinians that remained, some 20 percent. and their descents now live in Gaza, or the West Bank, and in many ways, like South Africa, Israel imposed on this population a rigid policy of segregation, and economic and political oppression. Not to mention Israel's military assaults, and land grabbing, etc, etc. If you want to be honest of the many injustices and wars the US has perpetrated as well as taking over the land from indigenous people and marginalizing them, why not Israel, or do you deny that too.
Burt you choose to remain totally ignorant on this subject. There must be a reason for it, and like you there are many Americans who will justify all of our illegal wars to feel better about America. I care about America, but I can face the truth of the many wrongs it has done and continues to do.
Because I don't accept sophomoric attempts to redefine words? The only argument I've made here is Israel is not an Apartheid state. Look at what a distraction Orwellian tactics bring to everything.
What makes me chuckle is when people delineate one group by religion, and the other by territory. At least stick to one method of classification Fran...
I'm pretty certain that if you did DNA tests on both sides, you'd find that they're all related! Anyone who stigmatizes people in Israel as all being Jewish has been brainwashed, and it's clear that's you.
Where did she say everyone in Israel was Jewish? I don't see it in the post you're responding to. She talks about the original settlers and army being Jewish or at least majority Jewish, back in 1948 when the Nakba happened, and that's correct.
Look what you are doing is to side track what I am saying and it's validity, and no doubt you lack the knowledge to do so. When you disagree at least say something with some substance.
I guess the profound realization that everyone in the middle east is probably related is too "deep" for you and you don't consider that a statement of substance. I'm sorry, but I can't help you with your comprehension challenge.
The standard litany. What it leaves out is that the Jews (who had been there every bit as much as the Arab populations had for the entire Muslim era) were ready to share the land with the Palestinian Arabs in 1947. Those Arabs were TOLD in 1948 to leave by their own leadership, which expected to wipe out the Jews and then bring the Arabs back in. It didn't work out that way. Of course, once the Arab nations attacked Israel and fought to annihilate them, they fought back and drove many remaining Palestinians out. 1947 was a chance at a two-state solution, which the Arabs turned down, not the Jews. It would not be the last time they did so. The first self-chosen Nakba for them, with many more to come.
I'm sorry Johnathan but your account is quite flawed. In the time frame you are referencing Palestine was inhabited by Arabs, and only a small fraction of the population were Jews, and they got along. Your account in general is total fiction with absolutely no basis in fact. Why don't you make a concerted effort to use sources that present a non biased account of what happened instead of searching out a fictional account which simply makes you feel more comfortable. The Brits who had control over Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire turned everything over to the UN after WWII to garner a solution, which becomes even another story which is quite interesting.
Sorry, but he's correct. Jews have lived in Canaan/Palestine/Israel from 1000 BCE to now with no break in population. The first sovereign "nations" on that land were Jewish: the kingdoms of Israel and Judea. Sovereignty changed over the centuries--Jewish, Roman, Muslim, Ottoman, British, Israeli--but Palestine was always home to the Jewish people, who sprang to life out of the Canaanite tribes on that very piece of land.
Arabs didn't move to Palestine in the 600s. But they've been there ever since, earning them a legitimate claim to a state in geographic Palestine.
After WWI, the League of Nations decided to give the vast lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire to local residents to create sovereign states of their own. It was an astonishing break from colonialism: for the first time, the conquering British and French empires would hand their conquests to locals residents rather than keep it for themselves.
To administer the handover, the Mandate system was created. With it, 99 percent of Ottoman land was given to the Arabs who lived on those territories, and Arab states were created. The final 1 percent of Mandate land--Palestine--was tricker because it belonged to two people, not just one: Jews and Arabs.
In 1948, Britain tossed its Mandate responsibility back to United Nations and marched on home. The UN chose to offer half of Palestine to Jews and half to Arabs. It was a sensible, moral, and LEGAL decision: two people, two states.
Jews said yes to the proposal and declared the State of Israel. Arabs said no and declared war and invasion. Arabs lost, Jews won, and the State of Israel became the sovereign over 75 percent of former Mandate Palestine. In 1967, Arabs invaded Israel and lost again. Israel became sovereign over the rest, including "West Bank" and Gaza.
And here we are today. Arab Gazans rule themselves under Israeli sovereignty; Arabs in the West Bank rule themselves under Israeli sovereignty. If and when Hamas and the PA/PLO want to turn their property into sovereign states with fixed borders, they can negotiate that with Israel. Just as Egypt and Jordan did after the 1973 war.
Moral of the story: don't bet what you can't afford to lose. Arab Palestinians bet their future on their certainty Jewish Palestinians were easy to defeat, and that in just a few weeks Arabs would take both halves for an entirely Arab state. But their dice turned up snake eyes, and they lost everything.
THAT is the factual and non-biased account of what happened. Israel is the legal sovereign of everything west of the Jordan River, and happened only because Arabs wanted all the land instead of taking their rightful half.
When countries are on the losing side after war, things happen and agreements are made. Binding agreements. Would you like Ukraine to go back to Russia where it used to be? And the Baltic states too? Maybe this will help you: It's like taking something back to Walmart after the 90 day return period has expired.
Since you bring up Russia, I've heard a different analogy about Israel involving Russia.
The position of every Israel defender I've talked to about this, and also the Israeli government if I'm not mistaken, is that the land they took in the Six Day War is theirs. As in "We conquered it fair and square, so it belongs to us now. It's that simple." There was no agreement or anything, they just won the war and kept the land.
All right, by that standard, Russia has every right to keep Crimea, and now it also has every right to keep the parts of Ukraine it's annexed; after all, it conquered those places fair and square, and if you're consistent then you'll say that conquering a piece of land means that it belongs to the conquering nation and that anybody demanding the conquering nation stop occupying that land is out of line.
Either acknowledge that nations should not be allowed to just take land from other nations when the mood strikes them, or say that you believe nations *should* be allowed to just take land whether we're talking about Israel, Russia, Germany, or whoever.
If Russia can conquer Ukraine and keep it, then yes, Ukraine becomes part of Russia. But conquering means winning AND enforcing that victory, and I see no indication that Russia will be able to do that.
Israel did not "conquer" anything. It took that land in a defensive war against invaders, and keeping it is absolutely legitimate. Israel was not the aggressor in any of the three wars--1948, 1967, 1973. But it WAS the winner, and as such, is now the legal sovereign.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is right on target, and very sensitive on this issue. That article was written in 2010 and little has changed, or maybe it's even worse. That's depressing. Excellent article.
You're misguided. Show us another middle-eastern country where women aren't oppressed and LBGTQ aren't killed and victimized? Are you going to throw women and LBGTQ under the bus so you can be "right" on an internet blog? Maybe you're just a male supremicist then.
What does any of that have to do with whether Israel provides special rights and privileges to Jews? I am not comparing Israel to Iran. I think Iran is worse than Israel. That doesn't change what Israel is. How is pointing out that Israel is currently a Jewish Supremacist state imperil the lives of women, gay people and trans people? I am bisexual myself. Please explain to me how me saying this on an internet blog imperils me because I am bisexual? Given that the more orthodox a Jewish community is, the less accepting of gay people and trans people it seems it is, if anything I'd anticipate if Israel rejected Jewish Supremacism, the more welcoming Israel would be for gay and trans people. Israel can be better. Why would the fact that other Middle Eastern countries are worse make a person want other people to avoid suggesting that Israel should be better?
You seem very invested in the goings on in a nation of 9 million that is half a world a way. You might wish to ask yourself why or at least why you hold Israel to some uniquely different and always higher standards of conduct.
Compared to other states in the world, even those not constantly threatened, Israel acquits itself quite well. Just look at Freedom House and the Democracy Index (published by The Economist).
Saying you're pro-woman just because you sometimes fuck them is like Harvey Weinstein saying he's a supporter of feminists. My point is that you're a supremacist, a reverse racist. Very typical one to be honest, and an opportunistic one.
For you and McMohanski: any country that allows women and LGBTQ normal freedoms and allows Palestinians and other ME brothers into their parliament isn't "supremacist." Supremacist is Asian countries killing the muslims and incarcerating them.
exactly. this disingenuous deflection from the points at hand is so common among Israel's ardent online warriors. its meant to shut down the conversation.
"It's fine with me that Arabs and Christians have sovereign nations that support their own religions and cultures, but Jews doing the same thing in their own homeland is immoral and wrong and icky and How Dare Those Evil Zionists."
Two separate issues, and I addressed them separately.
1. Katie Halper should not have been fired for airing her opinion of Israel. Her bosses wanted opinions, she gave one to them good and hard. They didn’t want her opinion, they should not have asked for one.
2. That her opinion was antiI-Israeli propaganda is also correct, and I have every right to say so.
3. You can’t fire me, so you’ll have to suffer my views just like I had to suffer Halper’s.
Gonna break exile to note how badly you stepped on your dick with this post:
"Carter wrote that the letter’s purpose was to reiterate that his use of “apartheid” did not apply to circumstances within Israel, that Israelis are deeply concerned about terrorism from “some Palestinians,” and that a majority of Israelis want peace with their neighbors . . ."
"HIS USE OF 'APARTHEID' DID NOT APPLY TO CIRCUMSTANCES IN ISRAEL." But he used the term anyway, for God knows what reason.
Fuck Jimmy Carter. But that he made you post this absurdity makes me laugh. Carry on, Soldier of Palestine!
Like Guam? Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Samoan Islands? Please don't plan any vacations in any of these places otherwise, that'd make you a hypocrite.
Yup, 2 million of their friends, neighbors and acquaintances have poured over the border in the last 18 months. I wonder how many are actually looking for citizenship versus a paycheck to send home.
What does that have to do with the fact that if I was a citizen there I'd be a second class citizen without the right to "national self determination"(according to the nation state law) because I am not Jewish either by mythical blood or religion? I'm not Muslim or Arab. And Muslims are not necessarily relevant to whether Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state.
There are very obvious and specific reasons why Jews felt the need to have their own homeland, and to have it in their original homeland, where David beat Goliath and Moses laid down the law all those yrs ago.
You can ignore those reasons, or wave them away, or believe that your "rights" trump the actual codified rights of the people who founded the country and gave their lives so it could flourish, but at least admit Israel is a special case and the Jews have a special history (to say the least) and that whatever "rights" you believe you have are in no way universal.
Moses ordered his people to murder all the males and enslave the female virgins of the territory thousands of years ago because he believed a god commanded him to on behalf of a promise to acquire it for the offspring of some random guy. That reason is grotesque. Jewish history provides no justification for modern Israel to give special rights to Jews or for Jews to have conquered and setup a Jewish Supremacist state in Roman Palestine.
You are welcome to think otherwise, and we clearly have a different moral sense.
I have absolutely no moral sense at all, i just try to see both sides, not be an angry partisan, and stick to whatever strikes me as true and factual. (Also, I'm old enough to know that whatever "moral sense" I may have entitles me to nothing and may be as reliable as a divining rod.)
As for the Israelis and Palestinians? They are both right and both wrong, just like the rest of us.
If you look to the League of Nations, it created a series of Mandates for former Ottoman and German colonial holdings whose overall purpose was to eventually allow the inhabitants to exercise their right to self-determination. What made the Mandate for Palestine unique was that the people for whom this was their historical homeland were a minority at the time but the expectation was that those returning from the Diaspora would eventually create a majority and independence would follow.
You may not like that only the Jewish people were granted national rights while everyone was to benefit from equal civil and religious rights. But given the reality on the ground, to speak of a Jewish supremacist state is rather overblown rhetoric.
Israel gives rights as it sees fit because it has nukes. The Middle East is not an ethnic studies seminar where one gets woke points for casually dropping vapid comments about bisexuality or “a Jewish supremacist state.” The strong win. Period. Israel is strong. Deal with it.
This is a sickening sob story. Israel is an apartheid nation? How then is it that the Arabs called Palestinians are members of the ruling Knesset coalition that was finally able to dispatch Netanyahu?
How is it that they even have voting rights?
Show me an Arab nation with Jews in their ruling legislature/government? Let alone a substantial Jewish population. Members of my family were born in Iraq and Syria and were chased out after 1948. They weren’t paid for their homes. They aren’t allowed back in.
And what about the Arabs who started wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 to erase Israel from the map? Even today, the common refrain among Arabs is a “Palestine” from the river to the sea. Their operating charters say their goal is to destroy Israel. They shoot thousands of rockets without provocation. They blow up busses with innocents on them. They are terrorists.
But these idiots who criticize Israel never address these facts. They never address that the so-called occupied territories were taken in WAR and were considered strategically important to serve as a buffer from which three wars of annihilation had previously been launched from?
Where are the urgings to boycott and sanction these murderous people?
Arabs were given many opportunities (foolishly offered in my opinion) to have their own state. At the end of the Clinton presidency, Arafat was offered 90% of what he wanted. (It’s common for Israel to make concessions and Arabs to not. But he didn’t take it and went home and intentionally touched off a violent “intifada”.
There is no sympathetic view of the Arabs in the occupied territories from fair minded people. Unless you just don’t give a shit.
Hear-hear, Rick, very well said. I'm particularly disappointed that Matt published Katie's attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. It wouldn't have hurt the cause to run it tomorrow instead.
If Israel were half the "racist apartheid genocide Zionist state" of Harper's and Tlaib's dark fantasies, not one single Palestinian Arab would be alive between river and sea. They would have exiled or killed outright, as Arab nations did to their Jewish populations in 1948, making Israel an Arab-free nation.
To the contrary, the Arab population in what was Palestine until 1948, when Israel assumed sovereignty and changed the name, has increased twelvefold. And, as you said, Palestinians serve at all levels of Israeli government, local to national.
Matt did not publish an attack on Israel. He published a story about a media figure being cancelled (a friend of his no less) for doing her job. The story isn't whether Katie is right or wrong (of which I have no opinion, because I don't know enough about it). It is about whether she should be fired for doing her job.
Since I didn't say Matt published an attack on Israel, we agree.
I don't believe she should have been censored or fired, because these "Radar" pieces that The Hill wants are opinions, not straight journalism. She gave them exactly what they asked for, her opinion. That her opinion of Israel is bullshit for all the reasons I laid out is irrelevant; that The Hill dumped her over it is appalling.
" I'm particularly disappointed that Matt published this attack on Israel ". That is a direct quote from your comment. Perhaps the phrasing had a different tone when you wrote it than when I read it. That's fine, I just want to be clear that I wasn't inventing my criticism.
Oh, okay, I see what you mean now. i think we're both right, Unset. I didn't say Matt attacked Israel---he did not. But he did publish Katie's attack on Israel, which is what I was trying to say, however inelegantly. I'll see if I can re-tone it to make that distinction clear, and thank you for this followup.
Because basic fairness to an employee requires a whole lot more effort than The Hill put in.
They wouldn't air her video, but when she asked why not, they wouldn't say. They wouldn't explain to her what specifically was wrong about her reporting. That's ridiculous--Editing 101 requires that you tell your reporter your objections, let them air theirs, and work it out.
Instead of doing that, they just fired her. Not face to face as befits professionals, but via text message or email. That's a rotten thing to do to an employee with whom they had a good working relationship.
That may be true, but we actually don't know the entire story. We're only getting her side here in a short article. Perhaps there were other things said and done. Maybe they didn't like her perfume or eating habits... who knows. I've seen people ousted before and 99.9% of the time, it's not over just one incident, there's a trajectory that people see and a pattern. That's more typical and I'm thinking there's more to this story.
I am sorry, but I do not believe Matt was anywhere near careful enough to be let off the hook entirely on this. I can't see why the Hill fired Katie, and am willing to grant it was a dishonorable thing to do. But unlike the tech monsters, the Hill is not even close to being a common carrier and has every right to publish or not, hire or fire or not, as it sees fit. So the question then is why it is newsworthy that this ordinary publication fired someone for not providing the material it wants.
2. Please explain how I am “corrupting free speech” by listing my objections to the Halper story. I did not deny her the right to speak her mind, and would not have killed her video even if I’d had the power to do so—I would have published it and let the audience respond.
She is free to say what she wants, and I am free to object to her points. That is the definition of free speech.
If that’s considered a “corrupt Zionist goon” in e world, I’ll wear that badge with honor.
You have a low bar for political evolution. Your standards for the state of Israel are low. The fact that the state of Israel has its law of return and the nation state law is sufficient to view Israel with low regard. Whether it is an apartheid state is irrelevant. That it is better than Iran is irrelevant. If I lived there, I'd be a second class citizen, even if I had citizenship, simply because I'm not Jewish. That's enough for me to dislike it. The fact that it was conquered to fulfill an ancient racist, barbaric, imperialistic religious delusion just adds to my dislike. As do other aspects of its current political reality. Pointing out other nations are no better or worse doesn't exonerate Israel.
I don't recall saying anything about Israel's existence. I don't mind Israel existing. I just don't like it existing as a racial and/or religious supremacist/nationalist state. I'd be pleased if it simply changed some of its laws. It seems like people have an instinctual reaction to accuse people of wanting Israel to cease existing if the person criticizes Israel. Some people reeeeallly want critics of Israel to be hateful of semites and hebrews so they can hate the critics for a more legitimate reason than simply hating people who don't support religious or racial nationalism.
But it's not. If you read other comments here, they have Palistinians in their parliament. How is that racist? I'd like to see proof of what you'd be considered "second class" there. What rights wouldn't you have? Provide some real facts.
The Nation State law explicitly grants the right to national self determination to Jews exclusively. Taxes, drawn from the population at large, are explicitly used to support the Jewish population particularly. If I were forced in the US to support the Christian population or the "white" population(people are considered Jewish by genetic lineage in Israeli law) through taxes from my labor because of their "right " to national self determination, yah that would be correctly considered racist and religious discrimination. The fact that I could still larp as a minority in congress while there was also a law of return that consciously kept the population of white Christians the majority, wouldn't mean too much.
Everyone not a Jew in Israel is second class. The lower caste. If I wanted to be in the first class, I'd have to convert to Judaism and at least pretend to worship its cruel deity or discover I had a Jewish grandparent, in which case I could be a flaming atheist but since I came from the loins of a Jew, be accepted as a Jew by the state.
If you think that your precious California doesn't do the same thing -- tax everyone and then give the money only to a few, you're deluded. You can live in your victim mentality all you like, but I don't buy your "righteous" attitude. Anyone can do what you're doing which is manufacture rhetoric by speaking in generalities. That doesn't move anything forward in the political arena except foment hate, which you seem pretty good at (that and being a reverse bigot).
Look at your leftist friends who constantly cancel people who don’t toe the leftist line. The Princeton professor, the outrage when someone says ALL LIVES MATTER, the denial of conservative speakers at many campuses, the recent Berkeley Law School decision by several organizations to ban pro Israel speakers, the inability of conservative actors to find work, the failure to prosecute liberal rioters/killers in the summer of 2020 the extreme leftward bias of social media and more.
Where is your vitriol - and that’s what it is - against any if that?
I suppose you’d like Israel to be an open polyglot where Arabs can outnumber them, change the name to Palestine and erase the existence of a Jewish state., which is the natural consequences of your policy positions.
There are Arab Jews. Judaism is a religion, not a race or ethnicity. Albeit like you, anti-semites, the state of Israel, and the religion itself racializes Jews (e.g the seed of Abraham, any Jew can “return” to Israel even if they don’t believe in a god and dislike Moses if they have a “Jewish” grandparent).
I don’t care about the name of the country. And removing the nation state law and right of return and their accompanying policies wouldn’t erase the country, it would just make it a more virtuous state, and no longer a Jewish Supremacist state. It could still control immigration, and limit new citizenship to people who demonstrated / expressed a commitment to particular values, like a robust freedom of speech, sexual freedom, the freedom of women, etc.
I’m as opposed to a “Jewish State” as much as I am opposed to a “Christian State” or a “Muslim State” or a “Buddhist State.” None of those religions deserve to rule a country. Likewise I’m opposed to a “white state” or a “black state.” A race of people have no right to rule a country in exclusion of people of other races.
When the US abolished slavery, it didn’t cease to exist as a country, it just stopped being a slave state. When it adopted more strict laws forbidding discrimination based on race, it didn’t cease to exist. When Israel stops discriminating based on whether people are Jewish or not, it will still exist. But just not the way Jewish supremacists would like.
So how come you don’t yap about all the Arab countries where they don’t need a constitution because they have the Koran? How come you are so silent about that?
Every nation in that region is a hundred times worse yet it’s Israel you object to the most ? In Iran they are beating women and gunning down crowds but crickets , give me a break about Israel’s human rights record
Part of it has to do with how even living in Canada, I still got bombarded with propaganda for my entire life about how evil Iran was and how even Libya was and so on, while simultaneously being told that Israel was the opposite. That Israel were the good guys, just like the United States (haha, I guess the second part of that sentence is true). That Israel would never mistreat people inside its borders or commit war crimes.
So maybe you can guess how I felt when I read that Israel had killed hundreds of civilians when bombing the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008. And you know what my source was? None other than the Israel Defense Forces! They released their own body count that said (paraphrased) "We killed 295 civilians during Operation Cast Lead. Other people will tell you that we killed more than that, and those people are liars. We killed 295 civilians, and we are happy to admit that we did, because killing hundreds--or thousands--of civilians is 100% justified sometimes and we don't feel the tiniest bit bad about it."
What am I supposed to do when I read that, huh? Am I supposed to say "Well, since they're better than other countries in the region when it comes to women's rights and things like that, I fully support them killing all of those civilians." Fuck no. I don't support anybody killing civilians whether it's the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or whoever. And I admit to being extra pissed off at countries who I was told were better than that when I find out that they do it. That's why I'm pissed off at America as well.
He is not referencing other countries since the article is addressing what happened to Katie Halper, and their letting her go because of her comments on Israel. Not to worry about Iran, since we maintain a non stop attack on that country. We impose sanctions, and we overturned Obama's Iran deal. All of which I do not support. Keep in mind that it was Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit, high up in the CIA that was responsible for the overthrow of a democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh. Why? He wanted a bigger share of the profits from the oil Britain extracted from his country for his people.
I do recall the original post about how a journalistic critic of Israel was fired for criticizing Israel. Hence the reason I am talking about Israel. When Matt writes about a journalist being fired for criticizing Iran, I'll be glad to mention that at Israel isn't as bad as Iran today.
You don't know that that's why they fired her. That's what she's claiming - it could be false. Most firings don't happen in a vacuum, there's typically a pattern and a trajectory before that happens. They could've thought she had body odor and fired her for that and only making this article the nail in the coffin.
Interesting that you don’t feel the same way about other countries. You’d be a third class citizen in any Arab country. Any Asian country. Japan has never had an Anglo in their Diet. Do you advocate BDS against them? How about the Arab countries, where women are fifth class citizens? BDS? Your singleminded focus against Israel and your lamentations about what your status would be as a gentile is very interesting.
You should reread what I wrote more carefully and without letting your prejudice lead you to miss sentences.
“That it is better than Iran is irrelevant.”
I wrote that, which would imply I think Israel is better than Iran, another country, and specifically an Arab one. And it is irrelevant to the case of Israel. When a thief comes into a court, it is no argument to his innocence that someone else is a thief or a murderer.
Japan, by the way, has no laws equivalent to that of Israel’s Nation State law and law of return. There is no law that states only people of Japanese or Buddhist or whatever decent have a right to national determination. There are no laws that specifically privilege people who have Japanese or Buddhist grandparents. If it did, I’d say they are just as bad as Israel.
I don’t have a “single minded focus against Israel” -- I have a focus about whatever topic is being discussed. And the topic was a journalist being fired because of criticizing Israel. And here you are complaining about me criticizing Israel. From my knowledge there aren’t powerful organizations that have much sway at suppressing criticism of Iran or Japan for that matter and no journalist has been fired for it.
A journalist though was murdered on behest of Saudi Arabia’s state, and particularly the prince, which I’d like more journalists focusing on, specifically how powerful US politicians still treat Saudi Arabia with such honor.
As for BDS, I don’t even support that for Israel, so why would I support it for Japan, which I have more current respect for? You made so many assumptions about me simply because I had a critical opinion about Israel.
“lamentations about what your status would be as a gentile is very interesting.”
Lamentation is a bit of an exaggeration for my expression of judgement based on how I would be treated in Israel, no? Perhaps you have never read Lamentations in the Bible? Would you expect me to embrace an inferior status in Israel? Would you expect me to embrace an inferior status in Pakistan as well? Do you share the same sentiment toward women who don’t like the way they are treated in Iran? Or for women who are not living in Iran but says something critical of their laws? “Oh you American woman expressing anger at the laws of Iran! Such a busybody! You have it great in America! And at least Iranian women don’t live like North Korean women! Why aren’t you critical of North Korea! Very suspicious!”
"Don't feel the same way about other countries..."
Ask any critic of Israel how they feel about Saudi Arabia's ongoing genocide in Yemen. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of them, if not literally all of them, will tell you that what Saudi Arabia is doing there is evil. They are consistently anti-genocide.
Also, how well or poorly I would be treated in certain Middle Eastern countries is beside the point. Whenever I tell this story I always wish I had saved a link to the tweet, but I remember somebody telling Glenn Greenwald "You know that if you lived in Gaza, you'd probably be killed because you're gay, right?" And Glenn, to his immense credit IMO, said something like "Doesn't matter. I'm not going to turn a blind eye to people there being killed and almost starved, no matter how they might feel about me."
Yes let’s start here. The UN declared the portion. The Jews accepted it, the Arab League refused to. Thereafter, the so-called Palestinians touched off a civil war during which the Jews initially played defense, before launching offensive REACTIONS. Sound familiar? Like when the Arabs from Gaza and lawless Lebanon toss rockets and only THEN does Israel retaliate?
Then in 1948, the Arab League - made up of many neighboring Arab countries sent in warriors to seek to destroy the new,y declared Israel (which had been instantly been recognized by both spheres of ideology - the US and the USSR).
After the Arab countries had been fought to a standstill, a truce was declared by the UN, which the Arabs promptly violated.
Hostilities resumed by Arab violations of the truce and the Arabs were once again defeated leading to truces with the surrounding Arab nations, none of which should have set foot into the contested territory as it was not their affair.
Roy your story of what happened is vague. There was a Zionist movement long before, decades before, WWII in which they discussed this very issue, that is, the removal of the Arab population which lived in Palestine. No matter who in the movement discussed these plans for expulsion it basically goes like this, all Arabs have to go. In the late forties they brutally removed Palestinian Arabs, the indigenous population, from their homes and their lands leaving some 20,000 behind to live in what is now called Gaza and the West Bank. You claim they simply had a right to do this. No they did not. This is little different then Europeans coming to the America's and forcing the indigenous people's off their land, and they even had a papal bull from the 15th century which gave them the Godly right to do it. Children in America watched movies of Indians fighting to retain their land and they were portrayed as bad, and the cowboys good. Of course it was nothing but propaganda, a lie I even caught on to as a child. In the state of Israel, yes, there is an Arab population which constitutes 20 percent of the population living there, but basically they live in segregated communities, and yes they do have representation in government, but have little to no political clout.
This is such a dumb argument that I'm sick of reading and refuting, but I'll do it again.
For starters, I don't own the land I live on. One private citizen who doesn't even own the land can't return jack shit. And if I did have a deed to the land, I could give it to someone from the First Nations here in Canada, sure, but that would barely make a difference concerning that particular problem.
I would need to be in government to make any meaningful difference. And if the Canadian government decided to give land to its remaining First Nations population, I'd be all for that, even if it was land that I lived on. Moving is a pain in the ass, but I'd be willing to move because it would be the right thing to do. But since Trudeau has pretty much betrayed the First Nations people who had their land stolen all those years ago, I'm not holding my breath that he'll ever do right by them, any more than I'm holding my breath that Israel will do so much as return to the 1967 borders.
I'm not saying Israel should return the land, nor the USA, but both need to acknowledge how it was acquired. Israel can't undo it's past, but it can atone and acknowledge it, and create a more inclusive and equatable society. If you listened to the clip with Aron Mate's father he is someone who has done exactly that and has gained an honest and objective perspective. The failure to recognize one's misdeeds is the main reason they continue and even make things worse.
It’s all a function of when you’d like to walk into the movie. I was in Jerusalem not long ago and they were excavating under the Arab quarter - only to find an older a Jewish quarter.
Rick your response is trying to rationalize what has happened and continues to happen to the Palestinians, which was brutal, and is brutal now. Nothing changes unless you can acknowledge the truth. I wish I could find it for you, a tape of Aron Mate's father who survived the holocaust and at first saw Palestine as a refuge from all he and his family went through, but he cried over what had happened to the indigenous people of Palestine when he came to understand how they were brutally removed from their homeland. In my book that is a man to be admired.
Matt, there is no "Occupied Palestine". 1) there is no "Palestine"--there never has been an Arab state called that, and there isn't one now. If there were, what is its capital? Its' borders? Its currency? Etc. Also, the "Territories" are not "occupied". Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. And Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which Egypt is welcome to allow them to cross. The reason that they very much don't want Palestinians in is something you could dig into further, perhaps.
Israel does make incursions into the WB and Gaza when necessary. It might have something to do with the murderous, antisemitic terror coming from those regions. Wouldn't call it "occupation" though.
Excellent. My guess is you have now gone back and actually seen where you misread what I wrote, so have gone full spastic antisemite in hopes of covering it up. Please, continue.
The next substantive point you make will be your first. You began the ad hominems with an inaccurate assessment of my intellectual capabilities. I continued the theme you set with an ad hominem you well know to be true, as does virtually everyone bored enough to be reading this thread--you are not only an antisemite, but an obvious one at that.
I know you were so terribly proud of all those irrelevant links you painstakingly assembled, and how crestfallen you are now to have been shown up. If it's any consolation to you, this is one thing bad life event you can *fairly* blame on teh joooos!
Wow Matt. Super disappointed. First of all greenblatt is right - it’s not apartheid, unless you don’t know what apartheid is. Second what Tlaib said is exactly what all progressives believe so why is that so surprising. Third, no one knows what happened to Abu Akleh and we probably never will, so this lady needs to stop acting like it’s a foregone conclusion. Given how Pallywood treats every other event, including exhuming dead bodies in Jenin to increase death counts, I don’t believe a thing they say. Maybe she shouldn’t lose her job over this but calling Israel an apartheid state is antisemitism.
No, it isn't anti semitism. Israel isn't a race. Everyone who doesn't like the some of the state policies or laws of Israel doesn't have racial hostility to Hebrews or semites. Judaism also isn't a race. Everyone who is critical of the Jewish religion isn't hostile to Hebrews or semites. It's not that hard to understand, but it seems people who support zionism are either typically stupid or just use the anti semite charge to shut people up rather than actually putting forth coherent arguments. I suspect it is almost always the latter. Which one is it for you?
I gather you support the racist imperialistic religious delusion of Zionism originally spearheaded by the murderous and possibly fictitious Moses thousands of year ago?
No, I support the State of Israel as the legally reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people. The rest of your anti-Israel delusions are yours to keep. But yeah, Moses was almost surely a character in the novel that is The Bible.
Israel was never anymore the homeland of the "Jewish people" than the people who were forcefully removed when it was violently constituted in the 20th century. The notion of a "Jewish homeland" is another myth that stems from that novel, the Torah. People belonging to the Jewish religion at sometime in history conquered and ruled at various times the territory, but that gave them no "legal' right to conquer it in the 20th century and make it a Jewish Supremacist state. Otherwise, the same right would apply to Muslims, who also conquered the territory at various times.
Unfortunately for people who support Jewish Supremacism in Israel today, their claim for Jewish Supremacism-aka Zionism--ultimately has its roots in the perverse murderous and rapacious fantasies of the men who wrote the Torah.
" And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. 15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? 16 Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Pe′or, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Numbers 31:17
That is what the Nation State Law commemorates. The so called natural, historical, and religious right to self determination of the Jewish people. The right to kill every male and enslave the female virgins while conquering Canaan.
"“When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir′gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them." Deuteronomy 7
The "reconstituted homeland"? According to the Torah, the "homeland" of the Jewish people was originally constituted with genocide. Jews have no "natural " right to Israel. To claim otherwise, given the myths and history portrayed in the Torah itself, is quite naturally obscene.
Legally constituted by the sovereign of Palestine, whose vote was the only one that counted.
Arabic/Islamic law was irrelevant. So was Jewish law, for that matter. Nations exist under sovereign powers, and Palestine was the sovereign territory of the Ottoman Turks from the 1600s to WWI. Ottomans were defeated by the British and French, who assumed sovereignty over the defeated empire, which included the geographic region (not state) Palestine.
As the new sovereign, British and French were free to keep things that way--"our land, our rules"--but acquiesced to the new League of Nations' notion that it was better to hand control of the land back to its residents to form self-ruled states than to continue the colonial system. Brits and French agreed, and after WWI, handing 99 percent of former Ottoman lands to its Arab residents. Those residents formed Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, among others.
WWII held up the land transfers in Palestine. After the war, when Jewish and Arab Palestinians, each of whom had legitimate rights to states in the Mandate, couldn't agree to live together in a single state, the United Nations, enforcer of the Mandate for Palestine, proposed splitting the baby: half to Jews for Jewish Israel, half to Arabs for Arab Palestine. It was a good solution. Unless you don't believe Jews had ANY right to a state on land in which they'd lived without population break since the Iron Age.
What you and other Israel-bashers on this thread fail to grasp--or choose to ignore--that that Palestine WAS NEVER ONLY ARAB LAND. It was a land with two people, the Jews since 1500 BCE, the Arabs since 700 CE. Two people had to be accommodated. Arabs had a right to a state of their own in Palestine, BUT SO DID THE JEWS.
The UN proposal gave each people their due: a large tract of land, enforceable borders, Med frontage, farmland, all of it. Jews said yes and said they'd call their half Israel. Arabs said no, and invaded Israel to take both halves for an entirely Arab State of Palestine. They lost, tried again in 1967 and 1973, lost again and again, and with that, forfeited any right to an Arab State of Palestine unless they negotiate the borders with the sovereign Israel.
The disingenuous rhetorical bullshit in this thread is yours, not mine. You don't like that Israel exists, or that it exists as a Jewish state? Tough shit. You aren't bitching that the Arab nations created by the same Mandate system exist, only that the Jewish one exists. If you support one, you have to support the others; that's how logic works.
Israel is there to stay and there's nothing you can do about it.
1. I addressed this in another reply. Short version: she should not have been fired for expressing her opinion of Israel; her opinion was full of shit.
2. Since I'm letting you throw thunder and lightning at me without calling you names, "subverting free speech" is a laughter.
2a. I am a Zionist, but neither corrupt nor a goon.
3. Your opinion.
4. King David Hotel bombing addressed in depth in another answer.
"That argument has been used to justify violating the rights of Jewish dissidents that are Israeli citizens (inside Israel)."
What argument? I didn't make an argument.
And this is the fourth time you've demanded I answer your three questions. I answered them the first time, and told you the second and third to read my answers if you're interested. You don't want to read them, fine, I'll quit making the effort.
For the record: People can, and should, criticize Israel for whatever misdeeds they believe it has committed. Israel should listen to that criticism and respond legally and morally. That includes "brutal suppression of domestic dissent by Jewish Israelis by the State of Israel," whatever you mean by that. But that does not give the world carte blanche to make up lies about Israel because they don't believe the Jewish state should exist.
What?? You made my point for me. If you oppose the existence of the only wholly Jewish state in the world (as Tlaib states you must do in order to be a Good Progressive) then you are against the Jews, which is colloquially known as antisemitism. It has nothing to do with Jews being a race or not, or disagreeing with this or that policy. It’s about believing the Jews shouldn’t have a homeland. Somehow this tiny speck of land has become the focal point of most of the Arab world’s ire and the United Nations. That’s not because of their policies. It’s because it’s a Jewish state. Ergo: antisemitism.
Israel isn't "wholly Jewish" -- that point seems to be stressed by pro-Zionists ad nauseam. Non-Jews make up a significant part of the population of Israel. Jews are a significant majority of the Israeli population. There are no doubt many Zionists who would *like* Israel to be wholly Jewish. But it is not.
I am not opposed to the existence of Israel. I am opposed to particular laws of Israel.
Being against those laws doesn't make a person "against the Jews." Jews are not a monolith. There are Jews who oppose the same laws I do. Just like opposing Black Lives Matter doesn't make person "against the Blacks." Perhaps you can infer from that statement, I am not a "Progressive." Just because someone has a critical opinion of Israel doesn't mean they are a progressive.
"Anti-semitism" has quite a bit to do with Jews being a race, as anti-semites have historically racialized Jews and hated Jews as if they were a race. The Nazis, for example, conceived Jews as a race--a person Nazis conceived as Jewish was Jewish by genetic lineage, not choice. The negative traits of Jews, as perceived by Nazis, derived from their genetic heritage. And of course, the word itself includes "semite", which is racial.
Simply believing Jews "shouldn't have a homeland" is a form of anti-Zionism. Jews, though certainly have no right to a homeland, anymore than Christians, or Muslims, or black people or white people. Religious and racial groups have no right to conquer a territory and expel natives because of some mythological claim to the territory.
The ire toward Israel is more complex than it simply being a "Jewish state" -- if those Jews who conquered Palestine were to have instead found some uninhabited island in the Atlantic ocean to live, there wouldn't be such ire. But instead, they chose an already inhabited place that is conceived as "holy land" by multiple religious factions. "Somehow" it became a focal point? It is not surprising at all from a religious and historical perspective.
Their "homeland" is a mythical promise by a supposed god to the imaginary racial lineage of a fictional character; and it was originally conquered by ancient men who committed genocide on the people who already lived there. Its recorded in the Torah. To support the view that modern Jews have the right to rule Israel because their religious or racial ancestors murdered and enslaved the people living in ancient Israel is perverse. Their "homeland" was purchased through genocide. Palestine has been largely inhabited and ruled by people other than Jews for more time throughout history than it has been largely inhabited and ruled by Jews.
Read the Torah. What you are supporting is grotesque.
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir′gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. " Deuteronomy 7
Your history is wrong. Based on ancient history alone Jews have more right to be there than anyone else. The notion that they “conquered a territory and expelled natives because of some mythological claim to the territory” is false. Likewise if you want to get into the weeds there are no historical “Palestinian people” just as there aren’t more “Palestinians refugees” today than there were in 1948. Jews received the right to live there the same way anyone else in any other country on earth did and they bought land and there was a war. That’s the same story as every other country on earth. And if the G-d bit bothers you not sure why you are quoting from the Torah. Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??
“Your history is wrong. Based on ancient history alone Jews have more right to be there than anyone else. “
Could you explain how?
“The notion that they “conquered a territory and expelled natives because of some mythological claim to the territory” is false.”
Did you not read the quote I provided? Have you not read the Torah? Could you give us some explanation for why you think it is false? Can you give us an explanation for why the Jews who decided to colonize the territory of Israel in the 20th century specifically chose Israel and not any other place? Perhaps just maybe it had to do with a return to *Zion*, hence “Zionism”? Zion being the land superstitiously promised to the ancient Jews by Jehovah and at times briefly possessed by genocidal men? Is it that you don’t disagree genocidal men conquered the land, but that it was their right because allegedly some guy who enslaved women talked to a burning bush told them so? Are you yourself a Christian or a Jew? I sometimes forget that so many pro Zionists are Christians who fantasize about the end times and think it’s so important to prophecies that Jews rule Israel.
“Likewise if you want to get into the weeds there are no historical “Palestinian people” just as there aren’t more “Palestinians refugees” today than there were in 1948. “
There were people who weren’t Jews who were expelled from the territory conquered in the 20th century. Doesn’t matter if they were “a people”. They were people.
“Jews received the right to live there the same way anyone else in any other country on earth did and they bought land and there was a war. That’s the same story as every other country on earth. “
If you think war justifies the right of people to occupy land, then every enemy of Israel is on good moral ground to do the same thing to the people living in Israel now that ancient Jews did to the Canaanites. I personally don’t.
“And if the G-d bit bothers you not sure why you are quoting from the Torah. Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??”
Ah, you dropped the o in god. That implies you think Jehovah, the character who allegedly encouraged the men in the Torah, like Moses, to murder innocent people, is the actual god of our reality. That probably makes it a bit difficult for you to reason about this.
“Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??”
What is “this” you are talking about? I am not a Muslim, and nothing I have said has suggested the Quran is any better than the Torah. After all, like Jews and Christians, Muslims supposedly esteem the Torah. The religious war between Islam and Judaism has nothing to do with my main point: that Israel is currently a Jewish Supremacist state that gives special rights and privileges to Jews. Those who don’t get those rights are everyone who isn’t a Jew, not just Muslims. Buddhists don’t get them either. And that the motivation and justification for conquering and possessing the territory of Israel derives from the rapacious fantasies of murderous men recorded very clearly in the Torah. Talking about Islam with regard to any of *this* is completely irrelevant.
FFS, non-sequitur much? There's a HUGE difference between being against the Israeli government's Zionist policies (read: NOT anti-semitic) and being prejudiced against the Jewish people (i.e. anti-semitic). Everyone you (and many others here) are reflexively slapping the "anti-semite" label on is against the Israeli GOVERNMENT, not its people. Why are you all so incapable of making that distinction?!
The Palestinian’s never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Their leadership is divided between an President who hasn’t stood for election for over a decade and a terrorist organization.
Hey Ben and Jerry, nice anti-Semitic screed. Bill Clinton was right when he told Arafat that if he didn’t take advantage of the Camp David and Oslo Accords and negotiate in good faith with Israel he would die Mayor of Palestine. The leadership has simply said Israel has no right to exist.
Well now the rest of the Middle East that isn’t aligned with Iran is lining up with Israel. The enemy of my enemy and all that. Hamas is just a Iran proxy. So like I said the Palestinian never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
You can’t be progressive if you aren’t a River to the sea card carrying BDS member. Apartheid. Nice? Sounds Antisemitic to many. Israel, while not perfect, is the only inclusive Democracy in the Mideast. Palestine sadly has been used as a Proxy enemy of opponents of both Jews and Israel presence in the region. Violent strikes against Jews and the Israeli state happen routinely and emanate from Palestine. Crazed. Make no mistake, the Democratic Party has taken a blind eye to growing Antisemitism in the Progressive wing of the party. I imagine it’s ok because it’s a requirement. ;) Groovy.
Gosh. I guess you are a Progressive ;). Katie should not have been fired. But you and she are delusional that BDS BS is not Antisemitism clothed as “ activism.’ Islamism is the victim ;)
I think its time to resign the phrase "quiet part out loud" to the dustbin of history. There's no quiet parts anymore, everybody's just bat shit crazy out loud. Its like we're all living in a South Park episode.
It's not about Israel. It's about the right to speak or think independently. That's no longer tolerated, and this intolerance is practiced by the most annoying, self-proclaimed "tolerators." You know, the "nice" people with the virtue-signaling lawn sign proclaiming their awesomeness who routinely curse out some old guy wearing the wrong hat.
Please, the woman who got fired WAS virtue-signaling with her piece. End of story. And if you're worried about people not getting to speak or think independently, then go educate yourself about what happened to doctors like Paul Marik, Pierre Kory, Peter McCullough, Aaron Kheriarty, and others, all highly decorated and out of jobs from questioning the safety of the recent mandated shots with new information coming out DAILY that safety signals (which were blown) were suppressed. If you're not outraged about something as huge as that after properly researching the topic, then please don't mourn one person's firing as indicative of anything. People get fired all the time if their company deems them a bad fit.
Since these "Radar" pieces appear to be opinions, not straight journalism, Katie Harper's was fair game, and The Hill should not have censored it or fired her. You want opinion journalism, Hill executives, opinions come in all flavors.
That said, Katie Halper's opinion is full of shit. Israel is not the "racist apartheid state" she claims; if it were, there would not be one single Palestinian Arabs alive between the river and the sea. To the contrary: the Palestinian population has increased a dozenfold since the founding of Israel. Some racist apartheid genociders those Zionists are, huh, destroying the Arab population like that.
As for "who often tiptoe around the subject of occupied Palestine," seriously, Matt? Israel does not occupy Palestine; the latter disappeared in 1948-49 when Arabs lost the war they started to steal both halves of then-geographic Palestine for a Jew-free Arab State of Palestine. Arab invasions in 1967 and 1973 to accomplish the same theft backfired even more spectacularly, enlarging Israel's legal land space to what it has now.
I call them Palestinian neighborhoods within the State of Israel, because that’s what they are.
The political leaders of Gaza and WB manage the day to day affairs of their residents, but only because Israel allows it. Israel is the legal sovereign over all the land between river and sea, which was Ottoman Syria from 1500 to 1920, British Palestine from 1920 to 1948, and Israel ever since.
Just seeing if the haloperidol I shipped you arrived. I see from your psychopathic scribbling here it did not. Oh, well, that's FedEx for ya. Last time I offer to help; I'll leave it to others to call the psych ward. Bye forever.
I'm just gonna say it. We have a problem with primarily young female college graduates who end up in jounalism and are motivated to push a radical left and cultural Marxism ideology. I would prefer we don't censor, but when so much of this opinion is out there masquerading as fact, some counter is needed.
What I love most is that the people who respect them enough to pay for their content are calling them out on their Israel Apartheid bullshit.
For the life of me I have no idea where the support for all of that adolescent crap comes from. There is no country in the ME, or most of the world that treats it citizens in a more gender/race equal and democratic manner than Israel. How is that even in question?
Don't know about this. I like Katie Halper. I hate seeing people getting fired because of opinions. But labeling Israel as an "apartheit" state? Right now there is an election going on there, and Arab parties could determine the next governing coalition (if they turn out and vote). Of course, in Arab states Jews are always welcomed into the governing party, right? But strangely, it's only Israel that gets that label. You offer no evidence that Israel is an "apartheit" state, other than the opinions of assorted individuals and groups, many of whose track records on this subject are well known.
The Hill has first amendment rights, too. Maybe their wish not to be associated with this sort of rhetoric has to be respected.
Well, she says she did her homework, but clearly did no such thing. Here are some facts: Israel is not a race. Judaism is not a race. Jews are not a race. Palestine is not and has never been a race. Palestinians are not a race. Since the definition of "apartheid" includes the concepts of inequality and oppression by one race against another race, and since none of the players in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are differentiated or oppressed on the basis of race, Israel cannot be an apartheid state. We can all identify many things that both sides to that conflict have done wrong, but none of it can be called apartheid. Tlaib is wrong. So is Halper.
blow me. Judaism is awefully hard to define as it melds elements of ethnicity, religion and race according to standards only those who know the secret handshake can decipher.
Seriously, Judaism is a religion. You can look it up. There are countless ethnicities with Jewish members. And Jews may be black, white or Asian. You can look that up too. You may be happy calling Israel an apartheid state, but that doesn't make it one. The definition of aprtheid under international law that Halper recited in her video is based on race. Judaism is not.
Secret handshake? Try going into any ethnic neighborhood anywhere in the world - people have their own 'ways' that someone else can't decipher. Even age groups have their own ways. Teenagers call older people Boomer because they can't relate so disparage them. Just like you're doing here. You're probably religious yourself and here you come to spew hate.
I am not dispensing hate, you idiot. I am responding to somebody who protests that Israeli/Palestine can´t be called apartheid because Judaism isn´t defined by ethnicity. Although being Jewish certainly is. They have rules about what makes one jewish that nobody else shares. It is a mystery wrapped in a metaphorical secret handshake.
And the Crips gang also has rules that makes one a Crip that nobody else shares. It's not a mystery... it's a phenomenon of anthropology/sociology/biology and has been going on since before humans walked on two legs. All animals have their "mysterious" secret codes/morays that they abide by. That's life. Denying the fact that it's a part of living and ascribing this "sin" exclusively to Jewish people is a subtle form of bigotry.
No! You are wrong. Katie gave the meaning of the word apartheid = apartness. Anything to say about the brutal murder & attacks during her funeral on the female journalist that was admired by many?
“which was like a leftist version of The View“…
Wait, what?
Wouldn’t that just be “The View”?
I left a comment out of the piece but Katie may share it at some point 🧐
Katie sounds like a crazy version of Alex Jones.
She's just another kind of woke. Woke is getting fired now, thank God.
You have no understanding of being always the stranger in a strange land.
Ayn Rand was a third rate novelist and lacked a logical foundation for her pseudo philosophy.
Without a social contract libertarianism is insanity.
Katie knows this. Lots of we humans know this but you believe superstitious nonsense.
Here in Quebec Gender, race and religion are not real.
Neither is an army real as you depend on the US for your defense. You are a beggar with your hand out saying "Look what I did."
The unworkable philosophy is 10% of the total population paying 87% of the income taxes. 60% of tax payers get back more in Deductions and CREDITS than they paid in taxes.
This is the Communistic influence. Why work when the Government will take care of me.
Ayn Rand came to the US from Russia during the Cold War. Her books were a warning that we did not heed. "Fountainhead" was based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright (a gifted visionary who is now canceled because of his skin color). We are living "Atlas Shrugged" as all the money went OFF SHORE just as she predicted. Very good for 3rd rate.
Sorry, I'm with Hank Rearden. He was a producer.
There are NO COMMUNISTS waiting in the bushes.
You are a victim.
The enemy is manufactured nonsense to keep the citizens under control.
I was brought up in Quebec .
The pad lock laws created enemies of the state like librairies and Jehoval Witness Kingdom Halls.
I know 80 years of Bullshit ha\s its affects but please Ayn Rand was a libertine and Chomsky is a libertarian.
Padlock Laws
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padlock_Law#:~:text=The%20Act%20to%20Protect%20the%20Province%20Against%20Communistic,used%20to%20propagate%20or%20disseminate%20communist%20propaganda.%20
Moe, you are pretty clearly an idiotic douche bag. Otherwise known as a troll.
Yes I am a troll. I love America and I hate watching it die.
That is the kind of troll I am. America saved my life and I am trying to do all I can to save America.
Shitheads like yourself refuse to open your fucking eyes. I am a one eyed troll but whether one eye or two I refuse to keep them shut.
I know what real democracy looks like in 2022 and too little remains south of our border.
I feel the pain of so many family that moved south for the opportunity to contribute back to society what they were given only to feel robbed and cheated by pricks like yourself.
Burning Man is only about me in a world where there is only us.
I understand why you feel that way. I think the better way is not to fire people like Katie for such a reason. This was not a case of non-woke firing someone who is woke. It is a case of one version of woke firing a different version of woke.
As long as it is acceptable to fire people for having unpopular political views, none of us will be safe to have heterodox views. This is not easy. I know that there are some statements or actions that might get me to say that a person should be fired. But we really need to have a set of rules that allow people to be different.
Pinche mekote. lmao
It has been a long time Since Pierre Valliere wrote Les Negre Blanch de L'Amerique de Nord.
We had a revolution and Quebec is the freest most democratic, wealthiest and most optimistic nation in the Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Valli%C3%A8res
Explain to me Texas.
Why would an alien want to visit Texas?
In my myth and legends Sodom was destroyed for how it welcomed the stranger.
We had an election Monday.
We re-elected an old fart we knew 30 years ago.
On Tuesday he started apologizing for the campaign rhetoric.
We are a secular humanist liberal democracy and every four years we need to clear the air. Then we hug and work together.
The major thing on our political agenda is Universal Dental Care and whether we can train enough dentists, dental surgeons, technicians, technologists, secretaries, and hygenists.
My dentist is a beautiful young women who keeps going on maternity leave every couple of years.
Quebec is ridiculously pro family.
Affordable DAYCARE GUARANTEED. HEALTH EDUCATION AND WELFARE GUARANTEED.
a HIGH FLOOR AND THE SKY IS THE LIMIT ON OUR CEILINGS.
We are Horatio Alger somebody needs to help us with our bootstraps. We generate more small business per capita than ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE aMERICAN eMPIRE.
It is our money and OUR government invests wisely.
Education, education, education education.
Evolution, evolution, evolution evolution.
Conservatism is Armageddon.
I know my Mythology my ancestors wrote your mythology.
The econo.y of the "nation" of Quebec is 351 billion with a per capita GDP of ~55,000. The US has an economy of 23 trillion and 74,000 gdp per capita.
You have 8.5 million people , no single ethnic minority over 1% , 13% foreign born, with avg 40K immigrants a year when we have 245ak legal and over 1 million illegal, quebec though does not even participate in the country's provincial nominee program, 30% of quebec population believe they have enough sovereignty and should stay Canadian. 79 % believe they should have more autonomy.
Don't preach the virtues of quebec.
You really should read this, because it seems you missed it the first time. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-miserable-necessity-of-doing
Still a shithead eh e.pierce?
That person spammed me like 60 times yesterday over a 12 hour period. I think any word to describe them will be found in the DSM.
I am 74 .
My father thought like Katie. I think like Katie it goes back three thousand years.
Cynicism is Socratic.
Cynicism is knowing as bad as it is it is only going to get worse.
This is Cynicism
Tragedy tomorrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv7oljeCJaw
Where’s the ridiculous all caps ad infinitum repeats? This is weak, just does not have the same effect. You’re losing your touch man. Not even a single asterisk...? Sad pathetic troll damaged ass butt poopoo
What can I say?
Victoria sounds very reasonably to this imbecilic psychotic troll.
Of course I have been listening to Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys for 50 years and I have given up joining Kinky and Willie on the bus.
The leaves are turning colours and soon I will look for Pearls in the Snow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpvC7U42rlo&list=PLTikj5vuFrcFAbZzY1bjgmQm3OAFph7
I am a Zionist. My father was a Zionist and his his father was Zionist. We believe all life is sacred and all land is holy land.
We fled your inquisition. We lived in the Basque Country. Our legends tell St Ignatius Loyola was family.
Our legends tell us we fled the Basque region during your inquisition. They tell us St Ignatius Loyola was family. He taught people like you to read.
I beginning to think what a great mistake that was.
Time to resign from the human race.
Before all Hell breaks loose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzUQNnCuUqs&list=PLTikj5vuFrcFAbZzY1bjgmQm3OAFph7Pr&index=6
Jann Wenner was on JRE. I love you here, of course, but I felt something like nostalgia.
America This Week has been a real surprise and I've listened every week. Walter is perfect for you; it's quite the double act: The Godfather/horse head joke had me dying. I've tuned in to real time and other places to see/hear you, but it never quite worked like it did in your writing. But with Walter, I dig it.
Any chance you bring the band back together and we see some Victor Juhasz? If you read this and remember, which story was it where he drew Obama as a teacher and all of the Republicans were acting up in class, lighting farts and stuff?
Katie should descend into the comments at some point. I had hoped that SS would be for more than the old "listen while I tell you a story..." It doesn't have to be.
Thanks!
I think Katie makes a distinction between “Shitlib” and “Leftist”, and I agree
I agree too. Was going to jump in and make this point, but you made it better. The View, from the bit i know about it, is shitlib Hillary "leftists". Briahna and Katie are Bernie left. Big difference.
No wonder Matt likes her. He is a Bernie bro.
So am i, albeit a female one. Or so was I, until he threw in with the Dems and got neutered.
Is a Shitlib like a Shidiot? Or a Shit Apple? Captain Shitacular? Do they start out as tiny little Shit larvae who become Shiterpillars - a whole pandemic of Shiterpillars - who then turn into Shitmoths?
Asking for Jim Lahey
A shitleopard never changes its spots
The Shit Blizzard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56G4c9FEvZQ
I never lived in the suburbs. I know my trailer parks. They have their rules. The people are civilized we are the barbarians. We hire mercenaries to do our dirty work.
Make an actual point and cite your sources.... what is wrong with you? Throwing meaningless words around without substance has zero value in terms of public discourse. Learn how to actually pump a loaf, dear sir. Your comment has no substance.
He's referencing a show called Trailer Park Boys, a Canadian cult classic. A character in the show would routinely throw the prefix 'shit' on random words. Instead of calling someone a broken record, he'd call them a broken shitrecord.
So the point being made is whether shitlib is actually any different from a liberal, or if it's just a redundant Laheyism.
TPB was made in my hometown. It's basically a documentary. lol
My brudder is an actor and tried to get on the show, but "Lahey" hated him so no way.
Fuck you Lahey!
I ve seen trailer parks from San Diego California to St John's NFLD.
People who live in trailer Parks spell brother brudder. They can't read scripts. I lived there with them . You are full of shit.
I know Bill there is never any parking at Trader Joes in Burlington. Sad
I remember when nobody could afford hamburgers. The good old days in Vermont.
I am 75.
We are talking the same Vermont we once called Mississippi north and the Same New York State we once called the promised land.
I remember when you went from Ottawa to Ogdensburg and the promised land.
Ottawa is rich, dynamic and growing and Ogdensburg is just waiting to be put out of its misery along with Binghamton and Syracuse.
Burlington has a higher quality of life than Copenhagen.
Senators are representatives of their States. Leahy and Sanders are beyond reproach.
America as a hole is full of shit. The once upon time light to the world. A promising Empire turned into a shithole country.
This is what Milton called ruling in Hell.
This is what John Donne called decay and corruption.
I am confident Lahey would have called Katie's show "Useful Shitiots"
Watch out for the Shit Hawks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_belm6apc
That is the Canadian I know well. I spoke it. At 74 I am starting to write it. It was the Lingua Franca. I speak many Canadians both French and English and some Dene and some Cree. I don't watch television I guess I am missing a lot . I watch baseball and haven't watched a hockey game in 30 years.
I live in Hockeytown Canada. Hockey is the religion and I am an Atheist.
A liberal is some one free to change direction. In science we call this evolution. In science we call conservatism extinction.
We teach propaganda in our schools not mythology.
There is no such thing as gender, race and religion in science.
There is no Empirical evidence of their existence.
Laugh and the whole world laughs with you.
Eye of a shitticane
Wrong continent. Ireland . It is the language of the Shanty Irish
Here in Appalachia it is a song of joy and freedom.
It is using words that mean whatever WE want them to mean.
A sea shanty is Chant as in chanson a song a shanty is a shack a hovel.
Ha, thank you for that
You can never have too much Lahey
Frankly my dear I don't give shit. I am 74 and spoke shit fluently 60 years ago.
We called it merde. Here is our mascot singing shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpRmGxoqCYc
Let us not forget gas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NT02a-L6OY
The View supports the Empire, Israel and Hillary. They've attacked Bernie Sanders.
They aren't The Left.
They’re definitely Progressive Left these days- which is basically all of those things and more.
Hell, In light of his recent voting record, I don’t even think Bernie Sanders is very leftist these days.
Do they frequently advocate for workers rights, socialized medicine and a less warlike foreign policy? If not, then they're progressive Democrats, not progressive left.
Yes, you're right about Bernie – these days. He's a neocon on foreign policy. He's called Venezuela's Maduro a dictator.
He voted for the CARES Act, the greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history.
Maybe he is just being honest. I live north of Vermont they are family.
I agree totally with Bernie even though he is a conservative.
I'd vote for him. I donated and voted for him when he reached the primary.
I would have voted for him if he won the nomination, but he's just a lesser evil with his hawkish foreign-policy stance.
Sanders just loves some F35s.
He voted to fund the war on Iraq too. The list just goes on and on.
I live in a Full Democracy. We had a real revolution during my life time. Power is bottom up.
I went to St Albans and Burlington during the summer as a child. Vermont was rather poor . It was the reddest and the poorest state in the Union as opposed to the Confederacy.
We border Maine , New Hampshire , Vermont and New York.
Vermont seems poor but I remember when New York21 was rich and today Vermont seems poor but NY, Maine and New Hampshire seem second Worldish.
I am 74 and I remember what was. My wife went to University of Chicago before Senator Sanders. She thinks the Senator walks on water.
We know America from Alaska to Florida and we believe the UN when it says Cuba has a higher Quality of life than the USA.
I would rather live in Vermont.
Syracuse , Buffalo, Albany or Binghampton? I'll take Havana.
Miami ? I 'll take Havana eight days a week.
I am 74 and 5-10 extra years of healthy productive years of life, a better education and more security of person that is the prism through which I see America.
I've been through Orlando but not the tourist Orlando. I imagine what kind of Hell it must be to grow up poor in Florida and when I think Florida I think poverty and oligarchy and stupid ignorant assholes running the show.
I know Tallahassee
Florida State is where I look for basket weavers, burger flippers and Republican know nothings.
And Mafia shills from Vegas and New Jersey.
Get a passport we are an inch from Vermont.
The more I look at the decay and corruption the more I believe Bernie walks on water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
I agree. Sadly. About Bernie.
Bernie supported HIllary, on bended knee.
Literally just jumped into the Comments to say this 🤣
LOL me too, I thought I was all witty
I read that 3 times. How left can you go??
I just came here to comment on that. So, that would mean digging up Stalin?
Between Stalin/Lenin and the Hillary crowd of The View is a MASSIVE space. Lots of thoughtful policy ideas that can't even see communism, as it's too far away.
Stalin was Stalin and Lenin was a totally different dude.
Are you w=one of those Southern Evangelical Satanists?
Dude, where in the world would you even come up with that question? I don't believe in God, so likely not evangelical. Thanks for the crisp guidance on Lenin vs. Stalin. Perhaps you'd also like to elucidate the differences between Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin, and who really should have taken over for Lenin. Both Leninism and Stalinism are quite communist, and both are well away from thoughtful leftists. Pretty simple point.
It was Atlee, Stalin and Truman who divided up Europe in 1945 at Potsdam New York.
That is why we have a war in central Europe . It was all Ukraine till the 80 years war and the decree of The Holy Roman Empire.
Israel was pretty much the same.
The people belonged to the land and Britain was the Landlord.
This is where Matt’s commentariat confuses me. I too hate the semantic debates but c’mon.
I don’t even know who’s on the View to be honest but I’ll bet my house they’re not leftists.
Abby Martin, Rania Khalek are leftists. People here seem to think leftist and liberal are interchangeable. Is it ignorance or a tactic to flatten the variety of thought and perspectives they might disagree with?
It's more that "liberals" constantly try to be farther to the left than "leftists" on social/culture war issues (e.g. # of different genders/pronouns), so it's an open debate which camp is winning the leftward footrace.
To anyone not sprinting leftward at top speed, Liberal vs. Leftist can very easily look like Communists vs. Marxist-Leninists; a distinction without a difference.
When such labels become so confusing, it is better to define your stances issue by issue.
I believe the clinical term for the wymxn on the “View” is bat shit crazy
🤣🤣🤣
AOC is just a grifter who will say and do whatever it takes to get moar power.
Pelosi is a monster.
Cortez now calls Pelosis "Mama Bear".
Oh howdy, that caught my eye too....how far left do you have to be to consider “The View” right wing?
The Veiw, with their authoritarian view of vaccine and mask mandates, pro-regime change wars, advocacy for right-wing Israel and calls for limits on free speech, are well to the right of Tulsi Gabbard. Maybe even Donald Trump.
That’s also the reason I came to the comment section. I was completely with her until that moment.
You beat me to it by a few minutes, but yes.
Maybe if she’d said
“…an *intelligent* version of The View.”. Then there’d be some clear differentiation.
I'm sure that is basically what she meant. 'A version that more accurately reflects the views of a thoughtful leftist'. She did just get smacked by a major media corporation, probably best to not get your name on those crazy ladies' lips just now.
No, because The View loves people like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi. Leftists absolutely do not like those people. I think Rania Khalek and Abby Martin have been wrong about a few very important things (not Israel IMO though) and therefore I don't respect them as much as I used to. But neither of them will ever tell you that Democrats are everyone's saviors the way The View does. In fact, before the 2016 election Rania wrote a piece saying that Trump might actually be the lesser evil since his foreign policy rhetoric was less hawkish than Clinton's. I forget whether or not she walked that back after seeing him in office for a while, but does that sound like the kind of thing they'd say on The View? And would anyone on The View even share Katie's take on Israel?
Gandhi said non-violence was superior to violence, but violence was superior to non-violent cowardice: "My method of nonviolence can never lead to loss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.
My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once....that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting."
I thought the same.
WOW! I just read this article and you read my mind 20 hrs before I read it lol. Don't know all that much detail about the subject, but reading that told me something about this young lady. Made me chuckle
I came here for *that*. Thank you.
LOL - very true. Maybe s/b "hopefully intelligent leftist version of The View" as opposed to "Hollywood moronic leftist"
Not even fucking close.
The Hill should have run Halper’s piece and then done another segment on why she’s over simplifying the situation to simply parrot the likes of Tlaib who is in no doubt as anti-Semitic as anyone can be.
Then they could have run a piece taking apart what actually happens with Hamas in Palestine and Israel and who attacks whom and why.
Then, in a random act of journalism, they could have looked into how and why the journalist was killed and informed us of the circumstances.
And then as an aside they could have looked into what would happen to you if you’re LGBTQ in Palestine.
After that perhaps they could also look at which country besides Israel is a democracy in the Middle East and how women are treated in Arab countries as opposed to Israel.
Maybe after that some more actual journalism could have helped us all to understand how Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) is being used against Israel by Palestine.
That would have gone some small way to reassuring us we were enjoying some professional journalism.
This way, the way this is all being presented, including disappointingly by Mr Taibi, is not telling the whole story and consequently as journalism is as guilty of omission as commission.
Agreed. I was frankly surprised to see this article. I think Clever Pseudonym (above) says it best. It's arrogant soccer Moms and latte drinking entitled pundits on another campaign to save someone with brown skin in a situation much more complex than is ever properly recited/reported in media. I believe there's got to be another reason woke pundits are focused so strongly on Israel yet ignore basics, like someone killed a fucking bomber and instead only report/lamenting it as 'genocide' when the guy/woman was going to blow a bunch of people up! What do we do when faced with a bomber - you stop them. Until I see something not actually slanted, including from Jews who perform their own version of self immolating "I'm the guilty entitled" narrative when discussing Israel. I don't buy it. There's something else going on.
Who benefits? That's always the question. Someone care to answer?
Perhaps seen through the prism of unending violence against Jews in whatever country they found themselves in, possible extermination tends to focus the mind.
You get points for a sort of manic determination, but Carter, really? I still bless the day that fool left office, not a moment too soon.
As always: Sans knee-jerk. Thanks!!
"..incoherence.." seems to be the point. Americans forever riding a pendulum swinging between distorted and manipulated political extremes, baksheesh and largesse providing the only metric of political economy. Social institutions and human consequence be damned.
This week in my city, two boys, 14 and 15 years old, carjacked a woman and her child, committed several robberies and, looking to "party", tried to enter a residence where a birthday celebration was underway. Refused admittance they opened fire killing the celebrant. The ensuing police chase ended in a car crash and arrest. The Chief of Police admitted complete perplexity. They were from "good" homes. There was no apparent cause or reason. No WHY at all.
The boys were taken to children's court. The only discussion and solution forthcoming was the newscasters implication that vengeance was in order and trying them as adults would send the proper message.
The American psyche has clearly crossed some line of demarcation into the realm of the pathological. The disconnect between the illusion of the way American reality should be and the violent social disintegration and human trauma we witness through the windshield every day is swallowing us alive.
I was just saying thank's for the history and perspective.
what u say sounds adult, intelligent and reasonable; of course this is what disqualifies it!
What?!
None of your statements above refute that Israel is an Apartheid State. Was this all some kind of mass distraction?
Explain how it’s apartheid then. But don’t leave out the bit about 5% of the population of Israel being Arabs living lives far more freely than they would in most other parts of the ME.
Oh my! First of all, the correct number is 20%. That’s the percentage of Israeli Arabs living in Israel. That they all benefit from far more rights in a far more stable country than the neighboring Arab states is shown by the nearly universal rejection of redrawing borders as part of any peace proposal that puts them suddenly under Arab rule.
As to WEVA, I recommend you read the UN convention on the crime of apartheid, focusing specifically on the definition and then compare it to what is actually going on over there. To start your education, here’s the link. Go and learn, as the sages were wont to say.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf
i cant even read this article when it quotes (unironically) sources like "Amnesty International" and "Human Rights Watch" as though both of these organizations haven't been infiltrated by the far left. Anyone who calls Israel "aparthied" or refers to Judea and Samaria as "occupied" lands, clearly does not know either the history of the region, nor the facts on the ground. Try taking a look at UN Watch and Hillel Neuer if you want facts. The UN has been taken over by literal dictator regimes and is a political game - not truth.. Stop trying to tell American Jews that they are responsible for Israeli Government policy, but more importantly, stop trying to use Zionism (literally self-determination of indigenous people in their homeland) as a way to discriminate against American Jews. Just stop it.
Your “literal” definition of Zionism indicates your ignorance. You might begin overcoming it by reading Jabotinsky.
👏🏼👏🏼
I think Katie nailed it in her video that got her canceled/fired, and I don't agree with her on many of her lefty socialist ideas, but its hard to dispute that Israel is practicing apartheid. But that doesn't dismiss that the PA and Hamas are also destroying their own people for power and religious zealotry. Both things can be true, they are not mutually exclusive.
As for a small percentage of Israeli Arabs "living more freely" than other parts of the ME, I guess it depends on who you are--the royal familes in much of the ME live free everywhere they go, including the west. If you're saying that much of the ME is autocratic, I get that, but they're only autocratic because we (the American Empire) want them to be.
Did you honestly just state the the freedoms that ME royalty enjoy somehow makes the freedoms that Israeli Arabs enjoy as compared to their non-Israeli counterparts less germaine? That's ludicrous.
You should talk to an Israeli Palestinian someday and then you might realize that the Israeli government and citizens calling them “Israeli Arabs” is just one of many minor examples of Israeli apartheid.
"they're only autocratic because we (the American Empire) want them to be." You sure about this? Cuz, it kinda sorta seems like they just want to be autocratic on their own. Please explain. Thx.
Autocrats serve the empire's interest. Free elections have consequences, often undesirable to the subjugation doctrine of empire. Take the Arab Spring, for example, ousting Mubarak who the US considered a 'good friend' and voting in the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi who pushed socialist and populist ideas (religion aside). The Egyptian military then sabotaged their own nation to undermine the duly elected president, arrested him and effectively put their country back under military, autocratic rule. Whether Morsi was a decent leader/person is moot here--he was elected, much as Trump or Biden here.
Take the suppression in Bahrain--we endorse and support the autocrat ruler there and say nothing when they murder the minority Shia because it serves our interests (the Fifth Fleet). Saudi is the same, we empower them with logistics, weapons to terrorize Yemeni as it serves our interest to quash popular uprising even if it is funded/supported by outside influence (Iran).
The Arab people are simply cannon fodder for the Great Game as all non-elites have been for thousands of years. Look at Ukraine--whomever you support there, the people are the ones who suffer while the MIC and politicians profit--again, at the American Empire's behest.
Not sure how this is a response to me, but ok..
We are their lap dogs because we're dependent on their oil, not the other way around.
I would think Nelson Mandela might have a good insight into what is apartheid. Do you feel he was wrong to call it so in Palestine? If you think he was wrong, could you possibly read more of his opinions before replying?
I feel he was wrong, yes. Not sure of his motivations for saying this (nor are you) but please tell us all exactly how Israel is an "Apartheid state" without a simple appeal to authority. Cheers.
Except Mandela never said that Israel was an apartheid state … and one of his grandson’s strongly disagrees with a comparison that makes light of the sufferings of black South Africans under the real thing.
Haaretz, a paper that could be trusted to find that quote, couldn’t. Here’s a link to real quotes by Mandela on the general topic.
https://www.haaretz.com/2013-12-09/ty-article/.premium/mandela-tough-but-fair-on-israel/0000017f-e108-d38f-a57f-e75a345c0000?_amp=true
I don't care what Mandela thought
Easy to say now, after the claim that Mandela said Israel was an apartheid state has been refuted.
You might want to think about why it is that much of the anti-Israel (or anti-Zionist) talking points fall apart upon the merest fact-checking.
I have read his opinions and he’s entitled to them. He was very much in favor of a two state solution, which initially put him at odds with Palestine given they have not agreed to that to this day. But in the end he became increasingly anti-Semitic, he openly encouraged PLO violence against Israel which led to the second intifada in 1999 and the deaths of thousands. And the bloodshed continues to this day doesn’t it.
There’s a lot to admire in Mandela no doubt. But he was only human, he didn’t always get it right. Mandela laid a wreath on the grave of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution, warmly greeting his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We are indebted to the Islamic Revolution”, Mandela proclaimed.
In 2000, the American Jewish Committee canceled a Washington luncheon scheduled to honor Mandela after he said that 13 Jews tried for “espionage” in Iran were receiving a “fair trial”.
That aside there’s no claiming Israel is not at fault here, they most definitely bear blame and should face the ramifications for many of their actions against Palestine. But to be completely with one side or the other perpetuates the notion one is the victim the other aggressor. That’s simply not the case. Except of course in the minds of the extreme on either side, like Tlaib. I’m sure she has many Israeli counterparts.
Goodness gracious you’re quite the anti-Semite aren’t you. You accuse others of exactly what you yourself are guilty of, open bigotry towards others in another tribe.
You mean under the Nation State Law?
No, but you're sounding a lot like a troll now.
Gave you a heart for "a random act of journalism"
Exactly, it defies logic to me to in any way to sympathize with “Palestinians” versus Israelis. One willingly sacrifices it’s children as suicide bombers, the other is a civilized democracy with a thriving, innovative economy. The Palestinians lob missiles indiscriminately at Israeli civilians while Israel takes great care to precision bomb those sites from which the missiles come. Arabs in Israel can be full citizens, not quite the same as a Jew in “Palestine”.
But, you think rationally and point out obvious truths, therefore, that apparently doesn't qualify you to know anything about Israel according to the woke crowd ranting on this page.
While there are people who support BDS but are not anti-Semitic, the campaign is founded on a rejection of Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state. It denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination – a right universally afforded to other groups.
BDS is celebrated and encouraged by the left..
Did you copy and paste your comment from Haaretz?
Like they take great care to shoot Pals in the knees? Just the knees, you know to cripple them. That kind of care?
This is tiresome. The Israelis have the military to completely destroy the “Palestinians “ if they wished. They do not, credit them with that much restraint at least. Have a nice life, enjoy your embrace of terrorist thugs. I will disengage from this conversation, as rational discourse appears to be impossible with the supporters of “Palestine”.
Credit them with not committing genocide, you mean? Laughable.
"Israel takes great care" is a bit propagandistic. They've been known to be fairly indiscriminate in what they blow up. Granted, Hamas loves to store & launch rockets from schools, hospitals, and any other locations where they can score PR points from Israeli counter-fire
The only source that I have seen on where Hamas stores its weapons is from US/Isreali media.
That aside, "don't shell schools"
The facts speak for themselves, I am free to chose what I believe to be true as are you. The thing I love about the US is you have the absolute right to be an idiot.
I came to make these points and am glad to have found them so well laid out. I too am disappointed by this reductionist, pseudo intellectual perspective on the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
Bahaha tell me more about how you're a foolish, narrow minded racist prog who wrongly thinks you have a firm grasp on global politics. Keep promoting the "Zionist colonizer" tripe as Palestinians allow themselves to be pawns to radically anti-Semitic and racist groups like Hezbollah. 😂🤣😂
Does not Geneva convention state that any people occupied by a foreign nation has the right to resist by any means necessary? And suggesting Israel as a “democracy”? I would love to hear that argument just as we, the American taxpayer, never got to vote on the $10M/day that makes its way in the form of weapons & cash to an apartheid country (that’s not always LGBTQ friendly, if i recall) so it can “mow the lawn” every every few years. The question is always, who has the power? We already have the so-called journalism on Israel you prefer: mainstream media. Also known as hasbara.
The “by any means necessary” argument is false and it’s constant, mindless repetition does not make it “true”. International law is clear that terrorist attacks against civilians is never lawful and cannot be justified.
Even the UNSC rejects the concept that there is some national liberation exception to terrorism and has passed numerous binding resolutions to that effect as part of its international effort to suppress terrorism.
And speaking of national liberation movements, the uniqueness of the Palestinian one is that it is the only such movement that has no indigenous (in this case Arabic) name for its supposed historical homeland, importing instead a Western name that is Arabicized. It’s certainly suggestive that something very different is afoot.
Hold on, that sounds like work.
Great post. I have to laugh at the “girl power” Toyota Land Cruiser commercial where they brag about rallying in the Empty Quarter and I was like “that was totally illegal for women in SA until 2018 or whenever”.
A true exchange of ideas means getting factual realities straight first!
You really take the cake when it comes to omissions. Like the whole history of that colonial enterprise called Israel
So explain to us what the “colonial” beginnings of Israel are then?
Settling in a land with the end goal of ridding it of its people to take it over under the pretext of a divine mission defining you as a chosen people.
Giving yourself the right to commit ethnic cleansing and depicting yourself as a victim in the process. The world is seeing the truth more and more clearly.
You're occupying a land that you conquered by a war of agression and the only reason you don't annex it is because you don't want to give civil rights to the people living there. That's exactly apartheid
I’m an Irish Christian. No ties to Israel other than what happens there has a ripple effect in the world. Although I should say I did live in the Arab ME for 10 years.
Suggestion for you. You need to do more reading on the origins of this conflict, and not from a left wing viewpoint perhaps. Your understanding is quite narrow based on your comments. All the best.
No one on the planet is unaware of the official Israel narrative bullshit. As narrow understanding goes, you're incapable of providing opposing facts to what I wrote because you're the one who needs to do more reading on this topic
Whatever, it’s clear you really don’t have any interest in having a decent discussion or seeing anything from another perspective. Like a couple of other commenters on here your anti-semitic hatred runs deep judging from your vitriol towards the subject. Let’s just agree to disagree. All the best. Bye.
Wack job. Yeah, all colonialists stop taking over more territory because they don't want the world police to make them give the people civil rights. Makes complete sense.
Well, they could annex the territories and decide the people already living there wouldn't have the right to vote. Although it wouldn't change anything much to the reality, it would make it
a little too obvious
Nice JAE. Matt????
Yes. This is the comment I was looking for. The demonization of Israel is antisemitic at it's core.
Thanks, this is a typical example of leftist antisemitism - portraying the Jews' fight to keep the only democracy in the Middle East as sinister. All their neighbors want them dead for the "crime" of being Jews. That alone should make any democracy-minded person question the hatred towards Israel.
Too much work
What?!
President Carter is a very well meaning man, full of good intentions. But we know what the path to hell is paved with, don’t we. Carter was one of the most ineffectual and misguided presidents the US has ever had, he brought about enormous misery for his country. So as a source of wisdom and leadership he’s sadly, and without doubt, lacking in too many aspects.
Here, here. I also find that looking at the current situation of the Israeil-Palestinian conflict in the here and now without historical context to be extremely disingenuous at the very least. Probably more likely there is a lot of willfully ignoring of the facts that got us to where we are today.
Hahahaha, so according to you we shouldn’t strive for more nuanced journalism, and journalists should be believed and not questioned if it corresponds to a certain worldview. That smacks of the very thing you’re accusing the AIPAC of doing.
Not sure what the “5,000” year comment as it pertains to Israel/Palestine in the present day. But I would suggest you get a broader perspective on the ME, from your comments your thinking sounds quite narrow. For example consider the rights of women and the LGBTQ community in Israel as opposed to the rest of the ME, start there perhaps. And then do reference in law the legitimacy of being attacked by a warring aggressor and the accumulation of land ownership by the party who’s attacked. It’s interesting stuff.
Israelis would probably dispute that taking statements from Amnesty International/Human Rights Watch at face value really counts as "approaching the subject with great care". They're about as impartial regarding Israel as the Kremlin is regarding Ukraine.
That said, Katie absolutely should not have been fired over it.
On the other hand, I have read stuff in Haaretz critical of Israel that, if published in an American news outlet, would get the editor fired.
In Israel, they can and do discuss policies we are not allowed to discuss here.
Yeah, no one at The NY Times would publish Gideon Levy or Amira Hass. I keep a subscription to English-language Haaretz just for that reason. They are occupation-critical left-liberal, but it’s articles are well informed on the region and topics.
The Israel/Palestine debate in US media on the other hand offers just the same stifling shallow talking points and propaganda from both sides that everyone knows by heart by now. Go read the comments under this article for instance-- behold the sheer tedium of it.
I remember reading a Chomsky opinion - a part about how whenever the USA has completed their use of Israel they will “chuck them in the ocean” or something similar - like they do with any entity after it has served their purpose.
Better to befriend your neighbour and make peace before your super power “friend” tosses you overboard. Peace.
and when the US stops serving Israels agenda they too will be tossed aside
Politics don´t love, they suffer arranged marriages of convenience
Hasn't that process already started? Wasn't Obama obvious?
there was a brief geopolitical moment when it seemed like ME oil didn´t matter anymore, yes.
You mean he never bowed low enough?
Now that’s interesting. I always wonder where the best places to get Russian news would be; I read RT and Sputnik, but I have no way of knowing how much it’s been f’d with. What a strange time.
I kinda want solid opinions from Israel, Germany, Britain, China, and certainly Russia. But I don’t even know how to cut through the BS in my home countries media so I don’t even know where to start.
Want to know the truth about the USA and the western world? Read the official Russian translation of President Putins speech. It's all factual and it ain't pretty. We're as evil as anyone in the history of the world.
LMAO, ah yes everyone knows Putin as the politician who never told a lie. Eat your heart out Abe Lincoln.
Please cite a lie in his speech.
1) “In 1991, at Belovezh Forest, without asking the will of common citizens, representatives of the then-party elites decided to destroy the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their motherland. This tore apart and dismembered our nation, becoming a national catastrophe"
As if the common citizens didn't absolutely want the fuck out of USSR control.
2) “We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014"
Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, not the other way around
3) “The West … began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages"
Medieval Europe had its issues, but colonialism wasn't one of them
Should I continue?
Not sure if it's "news" or just information and analysis from the Russian perspective, but check out Gilbert Doctorow, The Saker and Big Serge's Substack for the views on Ukraine, for news TASS, the Moscow Times and a more anti-Putin stance, Meduza.
I might be way off on this, but I perceive Haaretz as a sort of Israeli version of the Guardian. Better informed readers should jump in to correct me.
I don't know if I'd say they're as far left as the Guardian, but definitely a left-leaning Israeli publication.
Left as the Guardian? You’re twenty years behind on that one. They become raving neocons after the raid on their offices.
And Jonathan Friedland held control.
and with a rather small and decreasing readership. It is not a significant factor in Israeli society or politics, and it’s journalistic integrity has been questioned on many occasions, but none of that has stopped The NY Times and others from relying on its reporting as if it were Israel’s newspaper of record.
Agreed. I don't know if Israel has a real newspaper of record. Times of Israel plays it pretty straight, but it's a smallish operation. Haaretz is pretty far left; Jerusalem Post is to the right. Can't think of any others.
I'd put them roughly on par with NPR/MSNBC
I could not agree more with your take on this.
This is true and to their credit. None the less the same assholes remain in power and the same bloody wars drag on for decades.
That's true, but it's also true that Gideon Levy needs an armed guard to go shopping.
There is a level of duplicity on the part of both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Both redefined the legally accepted, and popularly understood, crime of “apartheid” to fit Israeli actions (and frankly those of many Western states too). They did this knowing that Israel was not close to committing apartheid as defined in the international convention outlawing it. Freedom House and the Democracy Index, hardly bastions of Zionist thought, both rate Israel highly in their metrics, in some cases ahead of the US and some EU countries. But AI and HRW went ahead anyway, confident that many would leap on the word without recognizing - or perhaps caring - that it now meant something very different. It’s a disingenuous gambit unworthy of any human rights monitor.
Given the arrant nonsense, misinformation and basic lack of historical knowledge that permeates our media when Israel is concerned, I find it hard to believe that this “radar” alone constituted a firing offense. The story seems a bit too tidy.
I lived in South Africa during apartheid. What is happening in Israel is actually worse. Maybe apartheid is not the right term, as you say, but it is an effort to quantify how badly the occupied terrorizes are treated. Maybe we should come up with a term worse than apartheid. Of course, that would immediately get one smeared with the anti-Semite gun. As does anything critical of Israel.
Having lived in apartheid South Africa, perhaps you should spend some time living in Israel. It is evident from your comment that you know nothing about the reality on the ground there. As I mentioned earlier both Freedom House and the Democracy Index put the lid to your claim.
I will also volunteer some advice: if you want to be taken seriously, you should abjure what is known as the Livingstone formulation. It’s always a bad look and reeks of bad faith argument. Your description of Israel comes from a place of lack of knowledge or malice. Only you know which it is, and that’s between you and your own conscience.
Thank you for proving my point so eloquently in this and your other responses. I understand your frustration at having to face facts with your various convenient, but historically unsupported, narratives, but lashing out so histrionically is always a bad tactic in adult argument.
If you think occupied Palestinians have it bad read about the non occupied ones
Almost certain you did not.
You are delusional. It’s fine to be critical. What are your thoughts on Islamism and the Islamist hatred of all things Israel ? Groovy?
Israel has a robust and thriving democracy for its citizens. It has over 3M people in a fictitious "occupied zone" which has now existed for over 50 years where the residents don't have any say in their occupiers political decisions. That's what apartheid is. That's what the South Africans did too. Palestinians are second class "citizens", not even citizens of the nation that controls their borders, their economy, their freedom of movement and their natural resources.
Dictionary definition:
a·part·heid
/əˈpärtˌ(h)āt,əˈpärtˌ(h)īt/
noun
HISTORICAL
(in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
segregation on grounds other than race.
Another definition:
specifically : a former policy of segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority in the Republic of South Africa
NOTE: The extreme racial segregation of apartheid lasted from 1948 to 1994 and included such restrictions as where people of certain races (see RACE entry 1 sense 1a) could live or own land, what jobs they could hold, and who could and couldn't participate in government.
Aside from the fact that international law prohibits Israel from extending its laws throughout the former Mandate territories illegally seized by Jordan and taken back by Israel in 1967, you missed the Oslo Accords which left 95% of Palestinians ruled by the PA or Hamas. So even under your broader definition either Israel is not an apartheid state or international law requires any state that occupies territory of another to follow an apartheid system. And even then, as the Palestinians were never sovereign over any part of the land, to call them “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is a political not a legal term.
As an aside, are you suggesting the existence of a Jewish race? I thought such deluded foolishness ended with WWII.
Palestinians absolutely used to be citizens of a state, before Israel took that from them. What history book do you read where they have always been stateless?
You are the person who called it "Occupied Palestinian Territory” not me.
"Palestinians" were citizens of a state, all right. It was called the Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was only a geographic region. And Palestinians were both Jews and Arabs, not just Arabs.
Jewish residents of Palestine were as entitled as Arab residents of Palestine to have a state of their own on that land as part of the post-WWI Mandate process. Jews accepted the UN's proposal of only half of Palestine for their state, leaving the other half for Arabs. Arabs rejected the concept of sharing a land rightfully claimed by TWO people, invaded the Jewish half, lost the war and then their land.
Okay that’s all true. But they are currently denied citizenship of any nation, which is a basic violation of human rights. Who else in the world is denied citizenship?
I write that Palestinians considered themselves to be South Syrians, not a part of something called the Mandate of Palestine. Under Ottoman rule, of course, the Arabs were subjects of the Sultan, not citizens of some democratic state.
In any case, this is a red herring. The issue remains that at no time in history did a group then identifying itself as “Palestinians” ever exercise sovereignty in any portion of what was determined by the League of Nations to have been the historical homeland of the Jewish people.
It’s pretty straightforward claim and so far no so-called pro-Palestinian advocate has been able to refute it - something that has sent follower commenter epierce into paroxysms of rage and abusive name because the case he would like to present is at best a distortion when it is not evidence-free altogether.
Zionists suffer collective PTSD. It happens to traumatized groups just like "shell shock" effects a certain number of soldiers in any war.
I don't agree that occupation=apartheid; the US should never have invaded Iraq but that doesn't mean they imposed an "apartheid regime" on the Iraqis. Or the Afghans for that matter.
It’s not the occupation that makes it apartheid, it’s the setting up of a fake pseudo state with none of the real powers of a state and pretending that this is valid.
If we had colonized Iraq and set up two partitions, one where the American’s lived with full rights and a distinct with no real rights, then we would have been guilty of apartheid too.
Also, the time of occupation matters. Generations after generation are living in some soet of suspended animation in Palestine, to the point where it is obvious Israel prefers the status quo.
"it’s the setting up of a fake pseudo state with none of the real powers of a state and pretending that this is valid."
That's.... occupation. Maybe colonization if you're feeling uncharitable. Still not apartheid by a long shot. Otherwise Russia is imposing apartheid on Belarus and Crimea, and China is imposing apartheid on Hong Kong. Apartheid is everywhere if you define it loosely enough.
Arab/Muslim inhabitants of the Israel side of the partition have full rights, so again, not apartheid.
"it is obvious Israel prefers the status quo". Sure, but "prefer" is a relative term. Israel prefers occupying the West Bank over being on the receiving end of rocket fire. The core motivation for the occupation is self preservation.
No one claims that the rights of Arab Israeli citizens are being violated so you are using a red herring here.
The Arab/Muslims on the Palestinian side do not have full rights, in fact many of their rights are violated, including many of those listed in the definition of apartheid by the ICC.
I will quote extensively from the "International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid" UN resolution 3068
I will quote at length as it is really informative how many of these rights are being abridged.
"Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or
groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and
the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or
groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights
and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;"
"any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the population
along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of
a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of
various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial
group or groups or to members thereof;"
Israel denies citizenship to Palestinians, limits their freedom of movement, denies them the right to leave and reenter their land, destroys their housing, takes their land with no compensation, and deny them the right to participation in work and other fundamental rights.
They even have a racist law that punishes Jewish people who marry Palestinians!
Is Russia committing apartheid in Crimea? Do Crimeans have their rights systematically denied by Russia and does Russia deny them the right to citizenship, the right to movement, and all the other hallmarks of apartheid?
Or the United Nations, for that matter! Her opinion is bullshit, but she should not have been censored or fired for it. The Hill wants opinion journalism, she gave it to them good and hard.
Why is her opinion bullshit If that's what she was pushing? If that were the case there would be justification for The Hill to let her go, but she was speaking the truth, and the truth got her fired, and that is the wrongness of what happened.
She wasn't "speaking the truth," her piece was one long piece of anti-Israel propaganda. That's why it was bullshit.
Your opinion is simply not true. Your response implies that to be critical of Israel means you're an anti-Semite, no. I'm critical of many things that America has done in it's past and continues to do, like it's many illegal wars carried out in this 21st century. I admire those who can bear the truth, speak the truth, and try to make their country better. Those that hide from it are cowards.
I did not say or imply that Halper's opinion was antisemitic, Fran, because it wasn't. It was anti-Israeli propaganda. Israel is not a racist apartheid state, so her claim otherwise is a propagandistic lie.
I also admire those who speak and bear the truth about their country or anyone else's. A shame that Halper failed so miserably on that score.
You actually seem to be stuck in a binary view of the world as opposed to the nuanced position that many are more comfortable with. Kind of a "both and" view of the world.
Shane, I've paid close attention to Israeli policies and it's history. It is an apartheid state, Has been from it's inception. Look, what did they do to the Indian population when they came to America? We practically annihilated them, then sent them off to reservations, or took them for long walks that killed some thousand of them in the Trial of Tears, etc. What she said was not anti-Israeli propaganda, but the truth. Look you change nothing unless you acknowledge the truth. Even if you are taking about dysfunctional families, you can't change, or improve anything unless the truth be told. Do you take the position Russia bad, America good? That position could get us into a nuclear war.
Is there any negative opinion of Israel you don’t see that way? Or is the truth itself anti-Semitic?
Read this Shane. I remember reading about it at the time and searched it out. Many examples of this kind of thing going on in the Palestinian territories over which they seem to have little, if any control. You don't think this is okay?
https://www.rt.com/news/505991-ireland-blast-israel-west-bank-palestine/
Don't give me backlash that's it's published in RT.
Really! You pay the Piper, you call the tune. It's called "employment at will!" It's really arbitrary power and the real reason The boss' classes hate unions so much, they limit arbitrary power. The amerikan working classes are so indoctrinated and so beaten down they're mostly against union's. It's breathtaking the level of mind control in the US and its getting that way western world wide in Oceania where all animals are equal but some are more equal..
Reminds me of The Golden Rule of Wall Street:
Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Wall Street is a place where your money and their experience becomes their money and your experience.
Or they are as impartial as the US is in regard to Ukraine.
I've never understood the insistence on using "Apartheid" as an epithet against Israel. AFAIK, Arabs can and do vote in Israel and serve in Knesset. However Amnesty or other Progressive-captured NGOs define Apartheid to make use of it in this case must be tortured. So I stopped reading there.
It's too bad Katie got fired but maybe she shouldn't parrot stupid arguments. If Israel is some horrible bad actor tell me why, don't try to trick me into thinking Arabs in Israel have no rights.
The Progs despise Israel because it is the final and most recent example of the European colonization and it hits all their Oppression erogenous zones: European over African, Judeo-Christian over Muslim, White over Brown, rich country v poor country, colonizer vs colonized etc.
Israel is the last plausible place they can act out all their fantasies of liberation, where the heroic revolutionary Leftist rescues a poor oppressed Brown person and defeats the evil White Europeans.
That's why they don't care about how much the Arabs hate women and gays or their crazy anti-Semitic propaganda and indoctrination: no nuance or context must be allowed to interfere w their sacred narrative.
And what is funny about that is Israel is the one place in the Middle East/Central Asia/Africa/ etc. that women's rights, LGB rights, and actual democracy take place. All of those strongly leftist values are subordinate to what is really puffery.
Nothing matters but the eternal (yet imaginary) Revolution. It is the Leftist version of the Messiah leading them to the Promised Land.
Point.
And there are many Israeli Jews with dark skin. Sorry, progressives, your narrative is problematic here.
You had me at "Oppression erogenous zone."
LOL!!
Thank you! I wish I were as eloquent as you. You nailed it. Brilliant.
thx! u very kind :)
“Oppression erogenous zones”
Brilliant
thx!
well said, 3 years ago the Iranian government killed about 400 people over gasoline protests and for progressives it never happened.
I agree with your post, but Israel is actually in Asia.
thx! i deleted that, and learned something new...cheers!
It’s simple talking point that can be used as a moral bludgeon for policy goals. Do you oppose clean water ? The second you accept the legitimacy of my question I won no matter the end result
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Calling Israel an apartheid state
How is that Rob's problem? 🤣🤣🤣 I kid, I kid.
Somebody call the wambulance, we got a whiner over here. Do you need your safety blanket?
Antisemitism BDS bull personified. You get your Progressive Card ;)
Why don't you have the psychological courage to reference it as an apartheid state, which it is. Why don't you look at a map and see what is identified as Israel now was called Palestine, or referencing Britain's earlier role, British Mandate Palestine with a vast majority of Palestinians occupying this country. Why don't you read up on how all of that changed after WWII and the role many in the US played that handed a country populated by Palestinians over to the Jewish people. Read about the Nakba that displaced almost a million Palestinians by Zionists. Over 400 Palestinian cities and towns were destroyed by Jewish forces within 2 years, Those Palestinians that remained, some 20 percent. and their descents now live in Gaza, or the West Bank, and in many ways, like South Africa, Israel imposed on this population a rigid policy of segregation, and economic and political oppression. Not to mention Israel's military assaults, and land grabbing, etc, etc. If you want to be honest of the many injustices and wars the US has perpetrated as well as taking over the land from indigenous people and marginalizing them, why not Israel, or do you deny that too.
'
Psychological courage?
LOL.
Apartheid is a word with an accepted meaning that does not apply to Israel. Make up a new word.
Burt you choose to remain totally ignorant on this subject. There must be a reason for it, and like you there are many Americans who will justify all of our illegal wars to feel better about America. I care about America, but I can face the truth of the many wrongs it has done and continues to do.
Because I don't accept sophomoric attempts to redefine words? The only argument I've made here is Israel is not an Apartheid state. Look at what a distraction Orwellian tactics bring to everything.
What makes me chuckle is when people delineate one group by religion, and the other by territory. At least stick to one method of classification Fran...
I'm pretty certain that if you did DNA tests on both sides, you'd find that they're all related! Anyone who stigmatizes people in Israel as all being Jewish has been brainwashed, and it's clear that's you.
Where did she say everyone in Israel was Jewish? I don't see it in the post you're responding to. She talks about the original settlers and army being Jewish or at least majority Jewish, back in 1948 when the Nakba happened, and that's correct.
Look what you are doing is to side track what I am saying and it's validity, and no doubt you lack the knowledge to do so. When you disagree at least say something with some substance.
I guess the profound realization that everyone in the middle east is probably related is too "deep" for you and you don't consider that a statement of substance. I'm sorry, but I can't help you with your comprehension challenge.
They're all Semites, yes, which makes it inaccurate to call Palestinians "anti-Semitic".
The standard litany. What it leaves out is that the Jews (who had been there every bit as much as the Arab populations had for the entire Muslim era) were ready to share the land with the Palestinian Arabs in 1947. Those Arabs were TOLD in 1948 to leave by their own leadership, which expected to wipe out the Jews and then bring the Arabs back in. It didn't work out that way. Of course, once the Arab nations attacked Israel and fought to annihilate them, they fought back and drove many remaining Palestinians out. 1947 was a chance at a two-state solution, which the Arabs turned down, not the Jews. It would not be the last time they did so. The first self-chosen Nakba for them, with many more to come.
I'm sorry Johnathan but your account is quite flawed. In the time frame you are referencing Palestine was inhabited by Arabs, and only a small fraction of the population were Jews, and they got along. Your account in general is total fiction with absolutely no basis in fact. Why don't you make a concerted effort to use sources that present a non biased account of what happened instead of searching out a fictional account which simply makes you feel more comfortable. The Brits who had control over Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire turned everything over to the UN after WWII to garner a solution, which becomes even another story which is quite interesting.
Sorry, but he's correct. Jews have lived in Canaan/Palestine/Israel from 1000 BCE to now with no break in population. The first sovereign "nations" on that land were Jewish: the kingdoms of Israel and Judea. Sovereignty changed over the centuries--Jewish, Roman, Muslim, Ottoman, British, Israeli--but Palestine was always home to the Jewish people, who sprang to life out of the Canaanite tribes on that very piece of land.
Arabs didn't move to Palestine in the 600s. But they've been there ever since, earning them a legitimate claim to a state in geographic Palestine.
After WWI, the League of Nations decided to give the vast lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire to local residents to create sovereign states of their own. It was an astonishing break from colonialism: for the first time, the conquering British and French empires would hand their conquests to locals residents rather than keep it for themselves.
To administer the handover, the Mandate system was created. With it, 99 percent of Ottoman land was given to the Arabs who lived on those territories, and Arab states were created. The final 1 percent of Mandate land--Palestine--was tricker because it belonged to two people, not just one: Jews and Arabs.
In 1948, Britain tossed its Mandate responsibility back to United Nations and marched on home. The UN chose to offer half of Palestine to Jews and half to Arabs. It was a sensible, moral, and LEGAL decision: two people, two states.
Jews said yes to the proposal and declared the State of Israel. Arabs said no and declared war and invasion. Arabs lost, Jews won, and the State of Israel became the sovereign over 75 percent of former Mandate Palestine. In 1967, Arabs invaded Israel and lost again. Israel became sovereign over the rest, including "West Bank" and Gaza.
And here we are today. Arab Gazans rule themselves under Israeli sovereignty; Arabs in the West Bank rule themselves under Israeli sovereignty. If and when Hamas and the PA/PLO want to turn their property into sovereign states with fixed borders, they can negotiate that with Israel. Just as Egypt and Jordan did after the 1973 war.
Moral of the story: don't bet what you can't afford to lose. Arab Palestinians bet their future on their certainty Jewish Palestinians were easy to defeat, and that in just a few weeks Arabs would take both halves for an entirely Arab state. But their dice turned up snake eyes, and they lost everything.
THAT is the factual and non-biased account of what happened. Israel is the legal sovereign of everything west of the Jordan River, and happened only because Arabs wanted all the land instead of taking their rightful half.
When countries are on the losing side after war, things happen and agreements are made. Binding agreements. Would you like Ukraine to go back to Russia where it used to be? And the Baltic states too? Maybe this will help you: It's like taking something back to Walmart after the 90 day return period has expired.
Since you bring up Russia, I've heard a different analogy about Israel involving Russia.
The position of every Israel defender I've talked to about this, and also the Israeli government if I'm not mistaken, is that the land they took in the Six Day War is theirs. As in "We conquered it fair and square, so it belongs to us now. It's that simple." There was no agreement or anything, they just won the war and kept the land.
All right, by that standard, Russia has every right to keep Crimea, and now it also has every right to keep the parts of Ukraine it's annexed; after all, it conquered those places fair and square, and if you're consistent then you'll say that conquering a piece of land means that it belongs to the conquering nation and that anybody demanding the conquering nation stop occupying that land is out of line.
Either acknowledge that nations should not be allowed to just take land from other nations when the mood strikes them, or say that you believe nations *should* be allowed to just take land whether we're talking about Israel, Russia, Germany, or whoever.
If Russia can conquer Ukraine and keep it, then yes, Ukraine becomes part of Russia. But conquering means winning AND enforcing that victory, and I see no indication that Russia will be able to do that.
Israel did not "conquer" anything. It took that land in a defensive war against invaders, and keeping it is absolutely legitimate. Israel was not the aggressor in any of the three wars--1948, 1967, 1973. But it WAS the winner, and as such, is now the legal sovereign.
Ah, good. Be nice if the other trolls followed her example.
In your childish attempt to talk down to me you're only making an ass of yourself.
That's about the level of your rhetoric so it was a fitting comment. Own it and grow or stay in your box.
God, and your sense of logic also sucks. Save your comments, since I just hate talking down to people especially when they leave me no choice.
All you've been doing is talking down to me. You've forgotten already what you called me? I so enjoy you Fran.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is right on target, and very sensitive on this issue. That article was written in 2010 and little has changed, or maybe it's even worse. That's depressing. Excellent article.
People should maybe ditch apartheid state and just say Jewish Supremacist state. Or Jewish Nationalist state if they want to be euphemistic.
We already call it the Jewish state, because it is. What more do you want?
Jewish Supremacist State. It adds nuance.
You're misguided. Show us another middle-eastern country where women aren't oppressed and LBGTQ aren't killed and victimized? Are you going to throw women and LBGTQ under the bus so you can be "right" on an internet blog? Maybe you're just a male supremicist then.
Are you being sarcastic?
What does any of that have to do with whether Israel provides special rights and privileges to Jews? I am not comparing Israel to Iran. I think Iran is worse than Israel. That doesn't change what Israel is. How is pointing out that Israel is currently a Jewish Supremacist state imperil the lives of women, gay people and trans people? I am bisexual myself. Please explain to me how me saying this on an internet blog imperils me because I am bisexual? Given that the more orthodox a Jewish community is, the less accepting of gay people and trans people it seems it is, if anything I'd anticipate if Israel rejected Jewish Supremacism, the more welcoming Israel would be for gay and trans people. Israel can be better. Why would the fact that other Middle Eastern countries are worse make a person want other people to avoid suggesting that Israel should be better?
You seem very invested in the goings on in a nation of 9 million that is half a world a way. You might wish to ask yourself why or at least why you hold Israel to some uniquely different and always higher standards of conduct.
Compared to other states in the world, even those not constantly threatened, Israel acquits itself quite well. Just look at Freedom House and the Democracy Index (published by The Economist).
Perhaps you need to find a new obsession.
Saying you're pro-woman just because you sometimes fuck them is like Harvey Weinstein saying he's a supporter of feminists. My point is that you're a supremacist, a reverse racist. Very typical one to be honest, and an opportunistic one.
For you and McMohanski: any country that allows women and LGBTQ normal freedoms and allows Palestinians and other ME brothers into their parliament isn't "supremacist." Supremacist is Asian countries killing the muslims and incarcerating them.
exactly. this disingenuous deflection from the points at hand is so common among Israel's ardent online warriors. its meant to shut down the conversation.
"Jewish state" suffices nicely.
perhaps systemically jewish patriarchy oppressor?
Perhaps this:
"It's fine with me that Arabs and Christians have sovereign nations that support their own religions and cultures, but Jews doing the same thing in their own homeland is immoral and wrong and icky and How Dare Those Evil Zionists."
Two separate issues, and I addressed them separately.
1. Katie Halper should not have been fired for airing her opinion of Israel. Her bosses wanted opinions, she gave one to them good and hard. They didn’t want her opinion, they should not have asked for one.
2. That her opinion was antiI-Israeli propaganda is also correct, and I have every right to say so.
3. You can’t fire me, so you’ll have to suffer my views just like I had to suffer Halper’s.
“Corrupt Zionist goon.”
Naw. I’m not corrupt.
Gonna break exile to note how badly you stepped on your dick with this post:
"Carter wrote that the letter’s purpose was to reiterate that his use of “apartheid” did not apply to circumstances within Israel, that Israelis are deeply concerned about terrorism from “some Palestinians,” and that a majority of Israelis want peace with their neighbors . . ."
"HIS USE OF 'APARTHEID' DID NOT APPLY TO CIRCUMSTANCES IN ISRAEL." But he used the term anyway, for God knows what reason.
Fuck Jimmy Carter. But that he made you post this absurdity makes me laugh. Carry on, Soldier of Palestine!
Ultra-MIGA
“ Except Israel has Muslim citizens and when they annex territory the Muslims involved are offered Israeli citizenship and most decline”.
Puzzling not to accept citizenship of the country who annexes your territory. What are they thinking those ungrateful fiends.
Like Guam? Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Samoan Islands? Please don't plan any vacations in any of these places otherwise, that'd make you a hypocrite.
Yup, 2 million of their friends, neighbors and acquaintances have poured over the border in the last 18 months. I wonder how many are actually looking for citizenship versus a paycheck to send home.
Yes, I'm sure they would all turn down citizenship in a hot minute. lol.
What does that have to do with the fact that if I was a citizen there I'd be a second class citizen without the right to "national self determination"(according to the nation state law) because I am not Jewish either by mythical blood or religion? I'm not Muslim or Arab. And Muslims are not necessarily relevant to whether Israel is a Jewish Supremacist state.
There are very obvious and specific reasons why Jews felt the need to have their own homeland, and to have it in their original homeland, where David beat Goliath and Moses laid down the law all those yrs ago.
You can ignore those reasons, or wave them away, or believe that your "rights" trump the actual codified rights of the people who founded the country and gave their lives so it could flourish, but at least admit Israel is a special case and the Jews have a special history (to say the least) and that whatever "rights" you believe you have are in no way universal.
Moses ordered his people to murder all the males and enslave the female virgins of the territory thousands of years ago because he believed a god commanded him to on behalf of a promise to acquire it for the offspring of some random guy. That reason is grotesque. Jewish history provides no justification for modern Israel to give special rights to Jews or for Jews to have conquered and setup a Jewish Supremacist state in Roman Palestine.
You are welcome to think otherwise, and we clearly have a different moral sense.
I have absolutely no moral sense at all, i just try to see both sides, not be an angry partisan, and stick to whatever strikes me as true and factual. (Also, I'm old enough to know that whatever "moral sense" I may have entitles me to nothing and may be as reliable as a divining rod.)
As for the Israelis and Palestinians? They are both right and both wrong, just like the rest of us.
Cheers!
If you look to the League of Nations, it created a series of Mandates for former Ottoman and German colonial holdings whose overall purpose was to eventually allow the inhabitants to exercise their right to self-determination. What made the Mandate for Palestine unique was that the people for whom this was their historical homeland were a minority at the time but the expectation was that those returning from the Diaspora would eventually create a majority and independence would follow.
You may not like that only the Jewish people were granted national rights while everyone was to benefit from equal civil and religious rights. But given the reality on the ground, to speak of a Jewish supremacist state is rather overblown rhetoric.
Israel gives rights as it sees fit because it has nukes. The Middle East is not an ethnic studies seminar where one gets woke points for casually dropping vapid comments about bisexuality or “a Jewish supremacist state.” The strong win. Period. Israel is strong. Deal with it.
You said in another answer that Moses didn't exist, Which is it, fictional character, or bloodthirsty warlord of the Hebrewz?
"Roman Palestine?" Why do you assign Rome as the only legitimate sovereign of Palestine?
Prove you'd be a second class citizen, you reverse supremacist. What a troll otherwise.
Obama chose Christianity as an adult because he made a political calculation. Do you actually believe Obama believes Jesus is a god? Ridiculous.
And why are you still talking about Islam? It's irrelevant to whether Israel is a Jewish Superemacist state.
I declare Jeffrey Peoples to be in a supremacist state 24/7.
This is a sickening sob story. Israel is an apartheid nation? How then is it that the Arabs called Palestinians are members of the ruling Knesset coalition that was finally able to dispatch Netanyahu?
How is it that they even have voting rights?
Show me an Arab nation with Jews in their ruling legislature/government? Let alone a substantial Jewish population. Members of my family were born in Iraq and Syria and were chased out after 1948. They weren’t paid for their homes. They aren’t allowed back in.
And what about the Arabs who started wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973 to erase Israel from the map? Even today, the common refrain among Arabs is a “Palestine” from the river to the sea. Their operating charters say their goal is to destroy Israel. They shoot thousands of rockets without provocation. They blow up busses with innocents on them. They are terrorists.
But these idiots who criticize Israel never address these facts. They never address that the so-called occupied territories were taken in WAR and were considered strategically important to serve as a buffer from which three wars of annihilation had previously been launched from?
Where are the urgings to boycott and sanction these murderous people?
Arabs were given many opportunities (foolishly offered in my opinion) to have their own state. At the end of the Clinton presidency, Arafat was offered 90% of what he wanted. (It’s common for Israel to make concessions and Arabs to not. But he didn’t take it and went home and intentionally touched off a violent “intifada”.
There is no sympathetic view of the Arabs in the occupied territories from fair minded people. Unless you just don’t give a shit.
Hear-hear, Rick, very well said. I'm particularly disappointed that Matt published Katie's attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. It wouldn't have hurt the cause to run it tomorrow instead.
If Israel were half the "racist apartheid genocide Zionist state" of Harper's and Tlaib's dark fantasies, not one single Palestinian Arab would be alive between river and sea. They would have exiled or killed outright, as Arab nations did to their Jewish populations in 1948, making Israel an Arab-free nation.
To the contrary, the Arab population in what was Palestine until 1948, when Israel assumed sovereignty and changed the name, has increased twelvefold. And, as you said, Palestinians serve at all levels of Israeli government, local to national.
Some "apartheid."
Matt did not publish an attack on Israel. He published a story about a media figure being cancelled (a friend of his no less) for doing her job. The story isn't whether Katie is right or wrong (of which I have no opinion, because I don't know enough about it). It is about whether she should be fired for doing her job.
Since I didn't say Matt published an attack on Israel, we agree.
I don't believe she should have been censored or fired, because these "Radar" pieces that The Hill wants are opinions, not straight journalism. She gave them exactly what they asked for, her opinion. That her opinion of Israel is bullshit for all the reasons I laid out is irrelevant; that The Hill dumped her over it is appalling.
" I'm particularly disappointed that Matt published this attack on Israel ". That is a direct quote from your comment. Perhaps the phrasing had a different tone when you wrote it than when I read it. That's fine, I just want to be clear that I wasn't inventing my criticism.
Oh, okay, I see what you mean now. i think we're both right, Unset. I didn't say Matt attacked Israel---he did not. But he did publish Katie's attack on Israel, which is what I was trying to say, however inelegantly. I'll see if I can re-tone it to make that distinction clear, and thank you for this followup.
I think I fixed it. Thanks again.
Why shouldn't someone get fired if their company finds them a "bad fit?"
Because basic fairness to an employee requires a whole lot more effort than The Hill put in.
They wouldn't air her video, but when she asked why not, they wouldn't say. They wouldn't explain to her what specifically was wrong about her reporting. That's ridiculous--Editing 101 requires that you tell your reporter your objections, let them air theirs, and work it out.
Instead of doing that, they just fired her. Not face to face as befits professionals, but via text message or email. That's a rotten thing to do to an employee with whom they had a good working relationship.
That may be true, but we actually don't know the entire story. We're only getting her side here in a short article. Perhaps there were other things said and done. Maybe they didn't like her perfume or eating habits... who knows. I've seen people ousted before and 99.9% of the time, it's not over just one incident, there's a trajectory that people see and a pattern. That's more typical and I'm thinking there's more to this story.
Sorry, but you did day that Matt published an attack on Israel. “…Matt published Katie’s attack on Israel.…”
Yes, I did, because it's true: Matt published Katie Halper's attack on Israel.
Why do you ask?
I am sorry, but I do not believe Matt was anywhere near careful enough to be let off the hook entirely on this. I can't see why the Hill fired Katie, and am willing to grant it was a dishonorable thing to do. But unlike the tech monsters, the Hill is not even close to being a common carrier and has every right to publish or not, hire or fire or not, as it sees fit. So the question then is why it is newsworthy that this ordinary publication fired someone for not providing the material it wants.
Key word….. atonement.
What's your point, Jala? Every year on Yom Kippur, Jews atone for their religious sins.
2. Please explain how I am “corrupting free speech” by listing my objections to the Halper story. I did not deny her the right to speak her mind, and would not have killed her video even if I’d had the power to do so—I would have published it and let the audience respond.
She is free to say what she wants, and I am free to object to her points. That is the definition of free speech.
If that’s considered a “corrupt Zionist goon” in e world, I’ll wear that badge with honor.
I'm a gentile, but could not agree with you more.
You have a low bar for political evolution. Your standards for the state of Israel are low. The fact that the state of Israel has its law of return and the nation state law is sufficient to view Israel with low regard. Whether it is an apartheid state is irrelevant. That it is better than Iran is irrelevant. If I lived there, I'd be a second class citizen, even if I had citizenship, simply because I'm not Jewish. That's enough for me to dislike it. The fact that it was conquered to fulfill an ancient racist, barbaric, imperialistic religious delusion just adds to my dislike. As do other aspects of its current political reality. Pointing out other nations are no better or worse doesn't exonerate Israel.
"The fact that it was conquered to fulfill an ancient racist, barbaric, imperialistic religious delusion just adds to my dislike."
The fact that Israel's existence bothers you so much just adds to my joy.
I don't recall saying anything about Israel's existence. I don't mind Israel existing. I just don't like it existing as a racial and/or religious supremacist/nationalist state. I'd be pleased if it simply changed some of its laws. It seems like people have an instinctual reaction to accuse people of wanting Israel to cease existing if the person criticizes Israel. Some people reeeeallly want critics of Israel to be hateful of semites and hebrews so they can hate the critics for a more legitimate reason than simply hating people who don't support religious or racial nationalism.
"I don't mind Israel existing."
Israel thanks you profusely, having stayed awake nights hoping for your approval.
I have never insulted you, e. Lay off.
But it's not. If you read other comments here, they have Palistinians in their parliament. How is that racist? I'd like to see proof of what you'd be considered "second class" there. What rights wouldn't you have? Provide some real facts.
The Nation State law explicitly grants the right to national self determination to Jews exclusively. Taxes, drawn from the population at large, are explicitly used to support the Jewish population particularly. If I were forced in the US to support the Christian population or the "white" population(people are considered Jewish by genetic lineage in Israeli law) through taxes from my labor because of their "right " to national self determination, yah that would be correctly considered racist and religious discrimination. The fact that I could still larp as a minority in congress while there was also a law of return that consciously kept the population of white Christians the majority, wouldn't mean too much.
Everyone not a Jew in Israel is second class. The lower caste. If I wanted to be in the first class, I'd have to convert to Judaism and at least pretend to worship its cruel deity or discover I had a Jewish grandparent, in which case I could be a flaming atheist but since I came from the loins of a Jew, be accepted as a Jew by the state.
If you think that your precious California doesn't do the same thing -- tax everyone and then give the money only to a few, you're deluded. You can live in your victim mentality all you like, but I don't buy your "righteous" attitude. Anyone can do what you're doing which is manufacture rhetoric by speaking in generalities. That doesn't move anything forward in the political arena except foment hate, which you seem pretty good at (that and being a reverse bigot).
You are out of control.
Look at your leftist friends who constantly cancel people who don’t toe the leftist line. The Princeton professor, the outrage when someone says ALL LIVES MATTER, the denial of conservative speakers at many campuses, the recent Berkeley Law School decision by several organizations to ban pro Israel speakers, the inability of conservative actors to find work, the failure to prosecute liberal rioters/killers in the summer of 2020 the extreme leftward bias of social media and more.
Where is your vitriol - and that’s what it is - against any if that?
I suppose you’d like Israel to be an open polyglot where Arabs can outnumber them, change the name to Palestine and erase the existence of a Jewish state., which is the natural consequences of your policy positions.
There are Arab Jews. Judaism is a religion, not a race or ethnicity. Albeit like you, anti-semites, the state of Israel, and the religion itself racializes Jews (e.g the seed of Abraham, any Jew can “return” to Israel even if they don’t believe in a god and dislike Moses if they have a “Jewish” grandparent).
I don’t care about the name of the country. And removing the nation state law and right of return and their accompanying policies wouldn’t erase the country, it would just make it a more virtuous state, and no longer a Jewish Supremacist state. It could still control immigration, and limit new citizenship to people who demonstrated / expressed a commitment to particular values, like a robust freedom of speech, sexual freedom, the freedom of women, etc.
I’m as opposed to a “Jewish State” as much as I am opposed to a “Christian State” or a “Muslim State” or a “Buddhist State.” None of those religions deserve to rule a country. Likewise I’m opposed to a “white state” or a “black state.” A race of people have no right to rule a country in exclusion of people of other races.
When the US abolished slavery, it didn’t cease to exist as a country, it just stopped being a slave state. When it adopted more strict laws forbidding discrimination based on race, it didn’t cease to exist. When Israel stops discriminating based on whether people are Jewish or not, it will still exist. But just not the way Jewish supremacists would like.
So how come you don’t yap about all the Arab countries where they don’t need a constitution because they have the Koran? How come you are so silent about that?
Every nation in that region is a hundred times worse yet it’s Israel you object to the most ? In Iran they are beating women and gunning down crowds but crickets , give me a break about Israel’s human rights record
Part of it has to do with how even living in Canada, I still got bombarded with propaganda for my entire life about how evil Iran was and how even Libya was and so on, while simultaneously being told that Israel was the opposite. That Israel were the good guys, just like the United States (haha, I guess the second part of that sentence is true). That Israel would never mistreat people inside its borders or commit war crimes.
So maybe you can guess how I felt when I read that Israel had killed hundreds of civilians when bombing the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008. And you know what my source was? None other than the Israel Defense Forces! They released their own body count that said (paraphrased) "We killed 295 civilians during Operation Cast Lead. Other people will tell you that we killed more than that, and those people are liars. We killed 295 civilians, and we are happy to admit that we did, because killing hundreds--or thousands--of civilians is 100% justified sometimes and we don't feel the tiniest bit bad about it."
What am I supposed to do when I read that, huh? Am I supposed to say "Well, since they're better than other countries in the region when it comes to women's rights and things like that, I fully support them killing all of those civilians." Fuck no. I don't support anybody killing civilians whether it's the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, or whoever. And I admit to being extra pissed off at countries who I was told were better than that when I find out that they do it. That's why I'm pissed off at America as well.
He is not referencing other countries since the article is addressing what happened to Katie Halper, and their letting her go because of her comments on Israel. Not to worry about Iran, since we maintain a non stop attack on that country. We impose sanctions, and we overturned Obama's Iran deal. All of which I do not support. Keep in mind that it was Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit, high up in the CIA that was responsible for the overthrow of a democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh. Why? He wanted a bigger share of the profits from the oil Britain extracted from his country for his people.
No nation on the planet kills more children than Israel, and you know it. https://www.mintpressnews.com/israels-idf-sets-new-annual-record-for-killing-palestinian-children/247403/
I do recall the original post about how a journalistic critic of Israel was fired for criticizing Israel. Hence the reason I am talking about Israel. When Matt writes about a journalist being fired for criticizing Iran, I'll be glad to mention that at Israel isn't as bad as Iran today.
You don't know that that's why they fired her. That's what she's claiming - it could be false. Most firings don't happen in a vacuum, there's typically a pattern and a trajectory before that happens. They could've thought she had body odor and fired her for that and only making this article the nail in the coffin.
Europe was a frothing tribal hellhole until the world wars. You want them to nuke each other as well?
What gives all white supremacists joy is taking other people's property then endlessly reminding themselves about how they have civilised the world .
What does that have to do with my comment? I despite white supremacists. But they have nothing to do with Israel, The Hill, or Katie Harper.
And for the record, colonial imperialism did not civilize anybody. It only conquered them.
Interesting that you don’t feel the same way about other countries. You’d be a third class citizen in any Arab country. Any Asian country. Japan has never had an Anglo in their Diet. Do you advocate BDS against them? How about the Arab countries, where women are fifth class citizens? BDS? Your singleminded focus against Israel and your lamentations about what your status would be as a gentile is very interesting.
You should reread what I wrote more carefully and without letting your prejudice lead you to miss sentences.
“That it is better than Iran is irrelevant.”
I wrote that, which would imply I think Israel is better than Iran, another country, and specifically an Arab one. And it is irrelevant to the case of Israel. When a thief comes into a court, it is no argument to his innocence that someone else is a thief or a murderer.
Japan, by the way, has no laws equivalent to that of Israel’s Nation State law and law of return. There is no law that states only people of Japanese or Buddhist or whatever decent have a right to national determination. There are no laws that specifically privilege people who have Japanese or Buddhist grandparents. If it did, I’d say they are just as bad as Israel.
I don’t have a “single minded focus against Israel” -- I have a focus about whatever topic is being discussed. And the topic was a journalist being fired because of criticizing Israel. And here you are complaining about me criticizing Israel. From my knowledge there aren’t powerful organizations that have much sway at suppressing criticism of Iran or Japan for that matter and no journalist has been fired for it.
A journalist though was murdered on behest of Saudi Arabia’s state, and particularly the prince, which I’d like more journalists focusing on, specifically how powerful US politicians still treat Saudi Arabia with such honor.
As for BDS, I don’t even support that for Israel, so why would I support it for Japan, which I have more current respect for? You made so many assumptions about me simply because I had a critical opinion about Israel.
“lamentations about what your status would be as a gentile is very interesting.”
Lamentation is a bit of an exaggeration for my expression of judgement based on how I would be treated in Israel, no? Perhaps you have never read Lamentations in the Bible? Would you expect me to embrace an inferior status in Israel? Would you expect me to embrace an inferior status in Pakistan as well? Do you share the same sentiment toward women who don’t like the way they are treated in Iran? Or for women who are not living in Iran but says something critical of their laws? “Oh you American woman expressing anger at the laws of Iran! Such a busybody! You have it great in America! And at least Iranian women don’t live like North Korean women! Why aren’t you critical of North Korea! Very suspicious!”
"Don't feel the same way about other countries..."
Ask any critic of Israel how they feel about Saudi Arabia's ongoing genocide in Yemen. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of them, if not literally all of them, will tell you that what Saudi Arabia is doing there is evil. They are consistently anti-genocide.
Also, how well or poorly I would be treated in certain Middle Eastern countries is beside the point. Whenever I tell this story I always wish I had saved a link to the tweet, but I remember somebody telling Glenn Greenwald "You know that if you lived in Gaza, you'd probably be killed because you're gay, right?" And Glenn, to his immense credit IMO, said something like "Doesn't matter. I'm not going to turn a blind eye to people there being killed and almost starved, no matter how they might feel about me."
Rick, I wrote what I did here before seeing this. You have said it very well already, I see. Good.
There is a lot to confront here, but lets start with 1948 and the war you claimed the Arabs started.
Yes let’s start here. The UN declared the portion. The Jews accepted it, the Arab League refused to. Thereafter, the so-called Palestinians touched off a civil war during which the Jews initially played defense, before launching offensive REACTIONS. Sound familiar? Like when the Arabs from Gaza and lawless Lebanon toss rockets and only THEN does Israel retaliate?
Then in 1948, the Arab League - made up of many neighboring Arab countries sent in warriors to seek to destroy the new,y declared Israel (which had been instantly been recognized by both spheres of ideology - the US and the USSR).
After the Arab countries had been fought to a standstill, a truce was declared by the UN, which the Arabs promptly violated.
Hostilities resumed by Arab violations of the truce and the Arabs were once again defeated leading to truces with the surrounding Arab nations, none of which should have set foot into the contested territory as it was not their affair.
Roy your story of what happened is vague. There was a Zionist movement long before, decades before, WWII in which they discussed this very issue, that is, the removal of the Arab population which lived in Palestine. No matter who in the movement discussed these plans for expulsion it basically goes like this, all Arabs have to go. In the late forties they brutally removed Palestinian Arabs, the indigenous population, from their homes and their lands leaving some 20,000 behind to live in what is now called Gaza and the West Bank. You claim they simply had a right to do this. No they did not. This is little different then Europeans coming to the America's and forcing the indigenous people's off their land, and they even had a papal bull from the 15th century which gave them the Godly right to do it. Children in America watched movies of Indians fighting to retain their land and they were portrayed as bad, and the cowboys good. Of course it was nothing but propaganda, a lie I even caught on to as a child. In the state of Israel, yes, there is an Arab population which constitutes 20 percent of the population living there, but basically they live in segregated communities, and yes they do have representation in government, but have little to no political clout.
By the way, when do you plan on returning the stolen land that you live on?
This is such a dumb argument that I'm sick of reading and refuting, but I'll do it again.
For starters, I don't own the land I live on. One private citizen who doesn't even own the land can't return jack shit. And if I did have a deed to the land, I could give it to someone from the First Nations here in Canada, sure, but that would barely make a difference concerning that particular problem.
I would need to be in government to make any meaningful difference. And if the Canadian government decided to give land to its remaining First Nations population, I'd be all for that, even if it was land that I lived on. Moving is a pain in the ass, but I'd be willing to move because it would be the right thing to do. But since Trudeau has pretty much betrayed the First Nations people who had their land stolen all those years ago, I'm not holding my breath that he'll ever do right by them, any more than I'm holding my breath that Israel will do so much as return to the 1967 borders.
I'm not saying Israel should return the land, nor the USA, but both need to acknowledge how it was acquired. Israel can't undo it's past, but it can atone and acknowledge it, and create a more inclusive and equatable society. If you listened to the clip with Aron Mate's father he is someone who has done exactly that and has gained an honest and objective perspective. The failure to recognize one's misdeeds is the main reason they continue and even make things worse.
Again, your coming into the middle of the movie
Antisemite
It’s all a function of when you’d like to walk into the movie. I was in Jerusalem not long ago and they were excavating under the Arab quarter - only to find an older a Jewish quarter.
I found it. https://www.greanvillepost.com/2021/05/11/aaron-mate-gabor-mate-real-vs-fake-anti-semitism/
Rick your response is trying to rationalize what has happened and continues to happen to the Palestinians, which was brutal, and is brutal now. Nothing changes unless you can acknowledge the truth. I wish I could find it for you, a tape of Aron Mate's father who survived the holocaust and at first saw Palestine as a refuge from all he and his family went through, but he cried over what had happened to the indigenous people of Palestine when he came to understand how they were brutally removed from their homeland. In my book that is a man to be admired.
HY not just aspdmit that you are an amtisemite
And you are an antinsemite
Matt, there is no "Occupied Palestine". 1) there is no "Palestine"--there never has been an Arab state called that, and there isn't one now. If there were, what is its capital? Its' borders? Its currency? Etc. Also, the "Territories" are not "occupied". Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. And Gaza shares a border with Egypt, which Egypt is welcome to allow them to cross. The reason that they very much don't want Palestinians in is something you could dig into further, perhaps.
Israel does make incursions into the WB and Gaza when necessary. It might have something to do with the murderous, antisemitic terror coming from those regions. Wouldn't call it "occupation" though.
Thank you.
You really, really need to learn to read more carefully before you start throwing around the word "stupidity".
Excellent. My guess is you have now gone back and actually seen where you misread what I wrote, so have gone full spastic antisemite in hopes of covering it up. Please, continue.
The next substantive point you make will be your first. You began the ad hominems with an inaccurate assessment of my intellectual capabilities. I continued the theme you set with an ad hominem you well know to be true, as does virtually everyone bored enough to be reading this thread--you are not only an antisemite, but an obvious one at that.
I know you were so terribly proud of all those irrelevant links you painstakingly assembled, and how crestfallen you are now to have been shown up. If it's any consolation to you, this is one thing bad life event you can *fairly* blame on teh joooos!
Wow Matt. Super disappointed. First of all greenblatt is right - it’s not apartheid, unless you don’t know what apartheid is. Second what Tlaib said is exactly what all progressives believe so why is that so surprising. Third, no one knows what happened to Abu Akleh and we probably never will, so this lady needs to stop acting like it’s a foregone conclusion. Given how Pallywood treats every other event, including exhuming dead bodies in Jenin to increase death counts, I don’t believe a thing they say. Maybe she shouldn’t lose her job over this but calling Israel an apartheid state is antisemitism.
No, it isn't anti semitism. Israel isn't a race. Everyone who doesn't like the some of the state policies or laws of Israel doesn't have racial hostility to Hebrews or semites. Judaism also isn't a race. Everyone who is critical of the Jewish religion isn't hostile to Hebrews or semites. It's not that hard to understand, but it seems people who support zionism are either typically stupid or just use the anti semite charge to shut people up rather than actually putting forth coherent arguments. I suspect it is almost always the latter. Which one is it for you?
"people who support zionism are either typically stupid . . ."
Asshole. If that's not too stupid of me.
I gather you support the racist imperialistic religious delusion of Zionism originally spearheaded by the murderous and possibly fictitious Moses thousands of year ago?
No, I support the State of Israel as the legally reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people. The rest of your anti-Israel delusions are yours to keep. But yeah, Moses was almost surely a character in the novel that is The Bible.
Israel was never anymore the homeland of the "Jewish people" than the people who were forcefully removed when it was violently constituted in the 20th century. The notion of a "Jewish homeland" is another myth that stems from that novel, the Torah. People belonging to the Jewish religion at sometime in history conquered and ruled at various times the territory, but that gave them no "legal' right to conquer it in the 20th century and make it a Jewish Supremacist state. Otherwise, the same right would apply to Muslims, who also conquered the territory at various times.
Unfortunately for people who support Jewish Supremacism in Israel today, their claim for Jewish Supremacism-aka Zionism--ultimately has its roots in the perverse murderous and rapacious fantasies of the men who wrote the Torah.
" And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. 15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? 16 Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Pe′or, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Numbers 31:17
That is what the Nation State Law commemorates. The so called natural, historical, and religious right to self determination of the Jewish people. The right to kill every male and enslave the female virgins while conquering Canaan.
"“When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir′gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them." Deuteronomy 7
The "reconstituted homeland"? According to the Torah, the "homeland" of the Jewish people was originally constituted with genocide. Jews have no "natural " right to Israel. To claim otherwise, given the myths and history portrayed in the Torah itself, is quite naturally obscene.
Legally constituted by the sovereign of Palestine, whose vote was the only one that counted.
Arabic/Islamic law was irrelevant. So was Jewish law, for that matter. Nations exist under sovereign powers, and Palestine was the sovereign territory of the Ottoman Turks from the 1600s to WWI. Ottomans were defeated by the British and French, who assumed sovereignty over the defeated empire, which included the geographic region (not state) Palestine.
As the new sovereign, British and French were free to keep things that way--"our land, our rules"--but acquiesced to the new League of Nations' notion that it was better to hand control of the land back to its residents to form self-ruled states than to continue the colonial system. Brits and French agreed, and after WWI, handing 99 percent of former Ottoman lands to its Arab residents. Those residents formed Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, among others.
WWII held up the land transfers in Palestine. After the war, when Jewish and Arab Palestinians, each of whom had legitimate rights to states in the Mandate, couldn't agree to live together in a single state, the United Nations, enforcer of the Mandate for Palestine, proposed splitting the baby: half to Jews for Jewish Israel, half to Arabs for Arab Palestine. It was a good solution. Unless you don't believe Jews had ANY right to a state on land in which they'd lived without population break since the Iron Age.
What you and other Israel-bashers on this thread fail to grasp--or choose to ignore--that that Palestine WAS NEVER ONLY ARAB LAND. It was a land with two people, the Jews since 1500 BCE, the Arabs since 700 CE. Two people had to be accommodated. Arabs had a right to a state of their own in Palestine, BUT SO DID THE JEWS.
The UN proposal gave each people their due: a large tract of land, enforceable borders, Med frontage, farmland, all of it. Jews said yes and said they'd call their half Israel. Arabs said no, and invaded Israel to take both halves for an entirely Arab State of Palestine. They lost, tried again in 1967 and 1973, lost again and again, and with that, forfeited any right to an Arab State of Palestine unless they negotiate the borders with the sovereign Israel.
The disingenuous rhetorical bullshit in this thread is yours, not mine. You don't like that Israel exists, or that it exists as a Jewish state? Tough shit. You aren't bitching that the Arab nations created by the same Mandate system exist, only that the Jewish one exists. If you support one, you have to support the others; that's how logic works.
Israel is there to stay and there's nothing you can do about it.
1. I addressed this in another reply. Short version: she should not have been fired for expressing her opinion of Israel; her opinion was full of shit.
2. Since I'm letting you throw thunder and lightning at me without calling you names, "subverting free speech" is a laughter.
2a. I am a Zionist, but neither corrupt nor a goon.
3. Your opinion.
4. King David Hotel bombing addressed in depth in another answer.
"That argument has been used to justify violating the rights of Jewish dissidents that are Israeli citizens (inside Israel)."
What argument? I didn't make an argument.
And this is the fourth time you've demanded I answer your three questions. I answered them the first time, and told you the second and third to read my answers if you're interested. You don't want to read them, fine, I'll quit making the effort.
For the record: People can, and should, criticize Israel for whatever misdeeds they believe it has committed. Israel should listen to that criticism and respond legally and morally. That includes "brutal suppression of domestic dissent by Jewish Israelis by the State of Israel," whatever you mean by that. But that does not give the world carte blanche to make up lies about Israel because they don't believe the Jewish state should exist.
Thank you.
What?? You made my point for me. If you oppose the existence of the only wholly Jewish state in the world (as Tlaib states you must do in order to be a Good Progressive) then you are against the Jews, which is colloquially known as antisemitism. It has nothing to do with Jews being a race or not, or disagreeing with this or that policy. It’s about believing the Jews shouldn’t have a homeland. Somehow this tiny speck of land has become the focal point of most of the Arab world’s ire and the United Nations. That’s not because of their policies. It’s because it’s a Jewish state. Ergo: antisemitism.
You made many errors in your statement.
Israel isn't "wholly Jewish" -- that point seems to be stressed by pro-Zionists ad nauseam. Non-Jews make up a significant part of the population of Israel. Jews are a significant majority of the Israeli population. There are no doubt many Zionists who would *like* Israel to be wholly Jewish. But it is not.
I am not opposed to the existence of Israel. I am opposed to particular laws of Israel.
Being against those laws doesn't make a person "against the Jews." Jews are not a monolith. There are Jews who oppose the same laws I do. Just like opposing Black Lives Matter doesn't make person "against the Blacks." Perhaps you can infer from that statement, I am not a "Progressive." Just because someone has a critical opinion of Israel doesn't mean they are a progressive.
"Anti-semitism" has quite a bit to do with Jews being a race, as anti-semites have historically racialized Jews and hated Jews as if they were a race. The Nazis, for example, conceived Jews as a race--a person Nazis conceived as Jewish was Jewish by genetic lineage, not choice. The negative traits of Jews, as perceived by Nazis, derived from their genetic heritage. And of course, the word itself includes "semite", which is racial.
Simply believing Jews "shouldn't have a homeland" is a form of anti-Zionism. Jews, though certainly have no right to a homeland, anymore than Christians, or Muslims, or black people or white people. Religious and racial groups have no right to conquer a territory and expel natives because of some mythological claim to the territory.
The ire toward Israel is more complex than it simply being a "Jewish state" -- if those Jews who conquered Palestine were to have instead found some uninhabited island in the Atlantic ocean to live, there wouldn't be such ire. But instead, they chose an already inhabited place that is conceived as "holy land" by multiple religious factions. "Somehow" it became a focal point? It is not surprising at all from a religious and historical perspective.
Their "homeland" is a mythical promise by a supposed god to the imaginary racial lineage of a fictional character; and it was originally conquered by ancient men who committed genocide on the people who already lived there. Its recorded in the Torah. To support the view that modern Jews have the right to rule Israel because their religious or racial ancestors murdered and enslaved the people living in ancient Israel is perverse. Their "homeland" was purchased through genocide. Palestine has been largely inhabited and ruled by people other than Jews for more time throughout history than it has been largely inhabited and ruled by Jews.
Read the Torah. What you are supporting is grotesque.
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir′gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. " Deuteronomy 7
Your history is wrong. Based on ancient history alone Jews have more right to be there than anyone else. The notion that they “conquered a territory and expelled natives because of some mythological claim to the territory” is false. Likewise if you want to get into the weeds there are no historical “Palestinian people” just as there aren’t more “Palestinians refugees” today than there were in 1948. Jews received the right to live there the same way anyone else in any other country on earth did and they bought land and there was a war. That’s the same story as every other country on earth. And if the G-d bit bothers you not sure why you are quoting from the Torah. Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??
“Your history is wrong. Based on ancient history alone Jews have more right to be there than anyone else. “
Could you explain how?
“The notion that they “conquered a territory and expelled natives because of some mythological claim to the territory” is false.”
Did you not read the quote I provided? Have you not read the Torah? Could you give us some explanation for why you think it is false? Can you give us an explanation for why the Jews who decided to colonize the territory of Israel in the 20th century specifically chose Israel and not any other place? Perhaps just maybe it had to do with a return to *Zion*, hence “Zionism”? Zion being the land superstitiously promised to the ancient Jews by Jehovah and at times briefly possessed by genocidal men? Is it that you don’t disagree genocidal men conquered the land, but that it was their right because allegedly some guy who enslaved women talked to a burning bush told them so? Are you yourself a Christian or a Jew? I sometimes forget that so many pro Zionists are Christians who fantasize about the end times and think it’s so important to prophecies that Jews rule Israel.
“Likewise if you want to get into the weeds there are no historical “Palestinian people” just as there aren’t more “Palestinians refugees” today than there were in 1948. “
There were people who weren’t Jews who were expelled from the territory conquered in the 20th century. Doesn’t matter if they were “a people”. They were people.
“Jews received the right to live there the same way anyone else in any other country on earth did and they bought land and there was a war. That’s the same story as every other country on earth. “
If you think war justifies the right of people to occupy land, then every enemy of Israel is on good moral ground to do the same thing to the people living in Israel now that ancient Jews did to the Canaanites. I personally don’t.
“And if the G-d bit bothers you not sure why you are quoting from the Torah. Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??”
Ah, you dropped the o in god. That implies you think Jehovah, the character who allegedly encouraged the men in the Torah, like Moses, to murder innocent people, is the actual god of our reality. That probably makes it a bit difficult for you to reason about this.
“Let’s have a park and Quran and see what it tells us about killing Jews. Might help us understand what this is really about??”
What is “this” you are talking about? I am not a Muslim, and nothing I have said has suggested the Quran is any better than the Torah. After all, like Jews and Christians, Muslims supposedly esteem the Torah. The religious war between Islam and Judaism has nothing to do with my main point: that Israel is currently a Jewish Supremacist state that gives special rights and privileges to Jews. Those who don’t get those rights are everyone who isn’t a Jew, not just Muslims. Buddhists don’t get them either. And that the motivation and justification for conquering and possessing the territory of Israel derives from the rapacious fantasies of murderous men recorded very clearly in the Torah. Talking about Islam with regard to any of *this* is completely irrelevant.
FFS, non-sequitur much? There's a HUGE difference between being against the Israeli government's Zionist policies (read: NOT anti-semitic) and being prejudiced against the Jewish people (i.e. anti-semitic). Everyone you (and many others here) are reflexively slapping the "anti-semite" label on is against the Israeli GOVERNMENT, not its people. Why are you all so incapable of making that distinction?!
The Palestinian’s never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Their leadership is divided between an President who hasn’t stood for election for over a decade and a terrorist organization.
So, apartheid, I don’t think so.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Hey Ben and Jerry, nice anti-Semitic screed. Bill Clinton was right when he told Arafat that if he didn’t take advantage of the Camp David and Oslo Accords and negotiate in good faith with Israel he would die Mayor of Palestine. The leadership has simply said Israel has no right to exist.
Well now the rest of the Middle East that isn’t aligned with Iran is lining up with Israel. The enemy of my enemy and all that. Hamas is just a Iran proxy. So like I said the Palestinian never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Now their irrelevant
WOW. I feel like my hymen got violated. Your my first internet psycho
Facts don’t care about your feelings
You can’t be progressive if you aren’t a River to the sea card carrying BDS member. Apartheid. Nice? Sounds Antisemitic to many. Israel, while not perfect, is the only inclusive Democracy in the Mideast. Palestine sadly has been used as a Proxy enemy of opponents of both Jews and Israel presence in the region. Violent strikes against Jews and the Israeli state happen routinely and emanate from Palestine. Crazed. Make no mistake, the Democratic Party has taken a blind eye to growing Antisemitism in the Progressive wing of the party. I imagine it’s ok because it’s a requirement. ;) Groovy.
Jews are routinely beaten in progressive strongholds , that’s reality
Gosh. I guess you are a Progressive ;). Katie should not have been fired. But you and she are delusional that BDS BS is not Antisemitism clothed as “ activism.’ Islamism is the victim ;)
I think its time to resign the phrase "quiet part out loud" to the dustbin of history. There's no quiet parts anymore, everybody's just bat shit crazy out loud. Its like we're all living in a South Park episode.
Yes x infinity
If only it was as funny.
It's not about Israel. It's about the right to speak or think independently. That's no longer tolerated, and this intolerance is practiced by the most annoying, self-proclaimed "tolerators." You know, the "nice" people with the virtue-signaling lawn sign proclaiming their awesomeness who routinely curse out some old guy wearing the wrong hat.
Please, the woman who got fired WAS virtue-signaling with her piece. End of story. And if you're worried about people not getting to speak or think independently, then go educate yourself about what happened to doctors like Paul Marik, Pierre Kory, Peter McCullough, Aaron Kheriarty, and others, all highly decorated and out of jobs from questioning the safety of the recent mandated shots with new information coming out DAILY that safety signals (which were blown) were suppressed. If you're not outraged about something as huge as that after properly researching the topic, then please don't mourn one person's firing as indicative of anything. People get fired all the time if their company deems them a bad fit.
Nothing I posted disagrees with what you just said.
Indeed
Since these "Radar" pieces appear to be opinions, not straight journalism, Katie Harper's was fair game, and The Hill should not have censored it or fired her. You want opinion journalism, Hill executives, opinions come in all flavors.
That said, Katie Halper's opinion is full of shit. Israel is not the "racist apartheid state" she claims; if it were, there would not be one single Palestinian Arabs alive between the river and the sea. To the contrary: the Palestinian population has increased a dozenfold since the founding of Israel. Some racist apartheid genociders those Zionists are, huh, destroying the Arab population like that.
As for "who often tiptoe around the subject of occupied Palestine," seriously, Matt? Israel does not occupy Palestine; the latter disappeared in 1948-49 when Arabs lost the war they started to steal both halves of then-geographic Palestine for a Jew-free Arab State of Palestine. Arab invasions in 1967 and 1973 to accomplish the same theft backfired even more spectacularly, enlarging Israel's legal land space to what it has now.
Rep. Tlaib remains a racist.
"Israel does not occupy Palestine..." - Then what would you call Gaza and the West Bank?
I call them Palestinian neighborhoods within the State of Israel, because that’s what they are.
The political leaders of Gaza and WB manage the day to day affairs of their residents, but only because Israel allows it. Israel is the legal sovereign over all the land between river and sea, which was Ottoman Syria from 1500 to 1920, British Palestine from 1920 to 1948, and Israel ever since.
Thanks for asking, I know it’s complicated.
You don’t even have Katie’s last name right.
Oh, dear me, the world as we know it is ending.
But, for the record, it's Halper, and I fixed it. Thanks for the correction.
Enjoying talking to yourself? Get back on your meds.
Just seeing if the haloperidol I shipped you arrived. I see from your psychopathic scribbling here it did not. Oh, well, that's FedEx for ya. Last time I offer to help; I'll leave it to others to call the psych ward. Bye forever.
Oh, dear, psychotic, irrational, disingenuous, AND fact-averse? How will I sleep at night?
Quit projecting your unpleasant personality onto me. I didn't call you psychotic, irrational, disingenuous, or fact-averse.
I'm just gonna say it. We have a problem with primarily young female college graduates who end up in jounalism and are motivated to push a radical left and cultural Marxism ideology. I would prefer we don't censor, but when so much of this opinion is out there masquerading as fact, some counter is needed.
Maybe that's what her employers thought too.
vive la différence
I don't have a quibble with that assessment of history... but look at those Zionists now.
Their faith provides them the luxury of being idiot liberals.
I love Matt. I love Katie.
What I love most is that the people who respect them enough to pay for their content are calling them out on their Israel Apartheid bullshit.
For the life of me I have no idea where the support for all of that adolescent crap comes from. There is no country in the ME, or most of the world that treats it citizens in a more gender/race equal and democratic manner than Israel. How is that even in question?
That's not the question. The REAL question is how Israel treats the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank.
💯
Don't know about this. I like Katie Halper. I hate seeing people getting fired because of opinions. But labeling Israel as an "apartheit" state? Right now there is an election going on there, and Arab parties could determine the next governing coalition (if they turn out and vote). Of course, in Arab states Jews are always welcomed into the governing party, right? But strangely, it's only Israel that gets that label. You offer no evidence that Israel is an "apartheit" state, other than the opinions of assorted individuals and groups, many of whose track records on this subject are well known.
The Hill has first amendment rights, too. Maybe their wish not to be associated with this sort of rhetoric has to be respected.
Being called a "corrupt Zionist Goon" by the likes of you actually feels sort of like a compliment.
yeah, yeah, go tell it someone who's interested.
Well, she says she did her homework, but clearly did no such thing. Here are some facts: Israel is not a race. Judaism is not a race. Jews are not a race. Palestine is not and has never been a race. Palestinians are not a race. Since the definition of "apartheid" includes the concepts of inequality and oppression by one race against another race, and since none of the players in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are differentiated or oppressed on the basis of race, Israel cannot be an apartheid state. We can all identify many things that both sides to that conflict have done wrong, but none of it can be called apartheid. Tlaib is wrong. So is Halper.
blow me. Judaism is awefully hard to define as it melds elements of ethnicity, religion and race according to standards only those who know the secret handshake can decipher.
Apartheid works for me.
Seriously, Judaism is a religion. You can look it up. There are countless ethnicities with Jewish members. And Jews may be black, white or Asian. You can look that up too. You may be happy calling Israel an apartheid state, but that doesn't make it one. The definition of aprtheid under international law that Halper recited in her video is based on race. Judaism is not.
You are an idiot.
Agreed. Thank you for saying it.
Only those with no cogent argument resort to ad hominems.
Secret handshake? Try going into any ethnic neighborhood anywhere in the world - people have their own 'ways' that someone else can't decipher. Even age groups have their own ways. Teenagers call older people Boomer because they can't relate so disparage them. Just like you're doing here. You're probably religious yourself and here you come to spew hate.
I am not dispensing hate, you idiot. I am responding to somebody who protests that Israeli/Palestine can´t be called apartheid because Judaism isn´t defined by ethnicity. Although being Jewish certainly is. They have rules about what makes one jewish that nobody else shares. It is a mystery wrapped in a metaphorical secret handshake.
And the Crips gang also has rules that makes one a Crip that nobody else shares. It's not a mystery... it's a phenomenon of anthropology/sociology/biology and has been going on since before humans walked on two legs. All animals have their "mysterious" secret codes/morays that they abide by. That's life. Denying the fact that it's a part of living and ascribing this "sin" exclusively to Jewish people is a subtle form of bigotry.
No! You are wrong. Katie gave the meaning of the word apartheid = apartness. Anything to say about the brutal murder & attacks during her funeral on the female journalist that was admired by many?
Well, she very patiently quoted international law defining apartheid as race-based. Did you listen to the video?
I can agree with Carter who defined "apartheid" differently from its definition in international law that Halper and Tlaib relied on.