[Do Not Disturb]As a friend of the righteous and oppressed Palestinian people I agree with the widespread criticism leveled against Israel. The bombing and invasion of Gaza in response to only a few thousand rockets against the people of Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and now Beersheva IS disproportionate. Even including the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and the attempted kidnapping of others.
It is important to understand the strategy of our Zionist enemies in making a deliberately disproportionate response. I think it is called 'deterrence.'
When one tweaks the tiger, if she tweaks you back you are free to tweak her again whenever you please. If instead, she rises up and tears you to pieces, the lesson is clear -- NEVER tweak the tiger.
You really are a heartless person using a tiger as a metaphor for acts of genocide. Almost half of the now 500+ casualties are women and children. We should not waste time arguing about the illegitimacy of Israel, thats not even up for debate, but I do find it very rich for someone who supports the aggressive zionist Israeli's position, which has rightfully received universal condemnation, to call someone else bigoted. Ironic and self-righteous rolled into one so be proud of that. Maybe you should join your barbarous friends in Israel, after all most Israeli over there are first and second generation Americans and Europeans with no right whatsoever to be in them displaced Palestinian lands. Thats my 2 cents seeing as you've know problem throwing slurs at people with a different viewpoint to your own one.
ReplyDeleteI think D. is in a poor position to complain of the heartlessness or barbarism of others. He condones the deliberate bombardment of civilians. He gets agitated and self-righteous only when he and his friends are held to account for their actions.
ReplyDeleteThe way to avoid being mauled by a tiger is to leave it alone. D. and his friends are responsible for the deaths in Gaza. They had a free choice to desist from rocketing Israeli civilians. It would have cost them nothing but foregoing the acting out of their hatred and bigotry.
Israel had little or no choice in the face of almost 11,000 rockets launched at its people to take every effort to stop that rocket fire.
D. and his friends are the heartless murderers who have brought about the deaths in both Israel and Gaza.
He and his friends expressed nothing but satisfaction when Jews were being killed by their rockets. And he has the hypocrisy and audacity to accuse others of bigotry, heartlessness, and barbarism? You should be ashamed of yourself D., thoroughly ashamed. First you and your friends rain down murder on your neighbors, and now on yourselves in reprisal. And then you have the gall to complain of others?
If you are capable of self-examination, which I doubt you are, you should be ashamed, very ashamed.
By the way D., you do realize that Hamas has effectively ended Palestinian history don't you?
The people of Gaza have proven that the worst fears of what a Palestinian state would be like were fully justified. There were warnings that a Palestinian state would degenerate into a terrorist state run by religious fanatics. It was feared that it would be incapable of living in peace with its neighbors. That is exactly what has happened isn't it?
Others said that Palestinians would be able to behave with maturity and self-restraint like other nations. Gaza was to be an experiment to see which side was right. It is now clear what the outcome of the experiment has been.
No one in the world will now take seriously Palestinian desires for a state. Not the Europeans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not India, not even other Arabs. You will get lip service and small handouts from the UN. But no one will take your desire for a state seriously ever again. There will be no Palestinian state. You have burned every bridge that might have led to statehood.
You will find that the high point in your history was the career of Yasser Arafat. Everything that comes after will be a descent into ever more impotence, rage, and insignificance.
And you have only yourselves to blame. The more you scream and rail and shout your hatred, the more you prove that those who predicted this would happen were right. You have only yourselves to blame. Only yourselves.
On the other hand, by definition I am wasting my time. If D. and his friends were capable of understanding that they are responsible for the consequences of their actions, none of this would have happened.
Why is that D.? Why can't you make a connection between the 11,000 rockets Hamas fired at Israeli civilians and Israeli efforts to stop the rocket fire? Why can't you connect the two?
Does being a Palestinian make you incapable of understanding cause and effect?
Ok, I will make the connection. Out of sheer desperation, and the product of 60 years of oppression, occupation and embargoes, the desperate extremists among the Palestinians fired rockets at Israel. Rocket attacks are inevitable in these conditions with the lack of sovereign Palestine, an essential component for peace in the region. These attacks were about as strong as a slingshot in comparison to Israeli attacks. The true root of the problem is Israeli aggression and ongoing oppression. That is why there is rockets attacks, that is your precious connection and that is why Israel is currently committing acts of genocide in a bid to oust the democratically elected representatives of Gaza. Yet, Very few deaths from rocket attacks is in stark contrast to over 1 million people living and confined in Gaza without water, food, electricity and continuous daily bombardment. Countless dead women and children and still Israel terrorizes in the face of international condemnation. Im sorry Jack, but there can be no justification for Israel's actions. And I am not Palestinian and I choose not to follow any religion as I believe that it is irrational and often causes war, so I have no preconceptions or clouded bias like yourself. Maybe it is you that needs to self examine?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-death-un
ReplyDeleteI hope every single imaginable sanction is placed on Israeli by the international community. These disgusting acts of genocide must not go on without consequences. And you try to justify Israel's actions? Can you justify the reckless bombing of a U.N shelter for refugees which can only be described as war crimes.
Well, I am glad you posted that comment D.
ReplyDeleteYou have recited the usual Palestinian narrative. And it is riddled with the usual outright falsehoods and rationalizations.
You claim that you and your friends are entitled to shoot eleven thousand rockets at Israeli civilians. You aren't.
You imply that your killing Israeli civilians is some sort of game and that there is somewhere a rule that says that your murderous attacks must only be met with attacks of similar nature. It is no game. Israel is not playing a game with you. They are trying to stop the rocket attacks, not to play a game. Whether you call them slingshots or not, they are murderous attacks and they are have to stop.
Palestinians who condone the rocket attacks in the same act also condone the reprisals. You are responsible for them D., for the very airstrikes and invasion you are complaining of so piteously.
The dishonesty of your shabby rationalization is shown when you refer to the Palestinians as living under "daily bombardment".
As to the conditions of the Palestinians, you have merely extended your denial of cause and effect further back in time. What Gaza lacks is not water, food, or electricity, but peace. With peace all those things are available, as they are in Jordan.
As always, you are blaming others for what you yourselves have done. What has caused the conditions in Gaza is Palestinian Rejectionism. So long as you will not live in peace with your neighbors, your neighbors will defend themselves with force.
When Palestinians stop attacking their neighbors peace will come. And with it water, food, and electricity.
Who is responsible for conditions in Gaza? You are, D., not the Israelis. That is why Gaza is a hellhole and Jordan is a safe pleasant country. Because the Jordanians are willing to live in peace with their neighbors and you are not.
And you are right that the government of Gaza is democratically elected. That is why the people of Gaza themselves, not some small dictatorial group, are responsible for the conditions you have created for yourselves.
I am delighted that you even trotted out the standard lie about genocide. You yourself acknowledge that there are over a million people in Gaza, people with one of the highest birthrates in the world. Gaza use to be a series of small towns. As our joke goes about the doubling, then doubling again, of Gaza's population goes, "That's what happens when you let Jews manage a genocide." The fact that you continue to say these things just shows your indifference to facts, even to facts you cite yourself.
You write that there were very few deaths from rocket attacks, as though that were OK, as though deliberate murder were acceptable. And you have the shameless gall to speak of others as heartless?
This war is a teaching experience as much as anything. When you grasp the idea that you are NOT entitled to kill your neighbors, not many, not a few, none at all, then your neighbors will stop killing you in return. Why is that so very difficult for you to understand?
I am toying with you here, because I already know the answer. The reason is in your saying, "The Jews are our dogs." Your problem is your racism. That is why you feel entitled to kill Jews.
But you are not entitled to kill Jews, and you as you are finding out now, these dogs have sharp teeth.
Gaza will be as good a place to live as Jordan is today when and only when Palestinians can live in peace with their neighbors, when they can accept the consequences of their own actions.
When will that be, D.?
"Can you justify the reckless bombing of a U.N shelter for refugees which can only be described as war crimes."
ReplyDeleteIf you consider the accidental bombing of a refugee shelter a war crime, what do you consider the deliberate bombing of schools in Sderot, in Ashkelon, in Ashdod, and now in Beersheva?
Since you have excused and justified those school bombings, what does that make you personally D.? You personally.
What sanctions should you personally suffer?
I am not in the slightest bit racist, I never once referred to Jews, you invented that, maybe it is you that has race on their mind just like it is you who needs to self examine like I previously stated, don't judge everyone by your own weak standards, that is narrow minded prejudices. I refer to Zionism and the illegitimate state of Israel so please don't try and use the race card to support your failing argument, its a very low move.
ReplyDeleteI love this pathetic Jordan analagy you keep throwing out too. Jordan has sovereignty, it controls it borders one of the key proponents of any sovereign peaceful state. It is recognised as a Sovereign state in the International Community, it possesses domestic sovereignty, limited Westphalian sovereignty and international Sovereignty. It is not subject to Israeli oppression. Palestine on the other hand has none of these and has been subject to Israeli oppression since the League of Nations mandate allowed for the creation of Israel and Palestinians were displaced from their lands.
You give out to me for understanding the rocket attacks, I understand the motivations behind them considering the geopolitical climate in the region, the lack of a sovereign Palestinian state and the consequences of continued oppression from Israel, this is inevitable in any realist framework. Rocket attacks are inevitable considering Israeli actions and the geopolitical climate, the root cause of the problem is the lack of a free Palestinian state. Therefore, your twisted logic that "I" (Im not linked to either side or from the area or subscribe to any religion) am responsible for them attacks (or war crimes as I'd call them) on Gaza shelters is invalid. Israel is responsible, it perpetrated the attacks and Israel is also responsible for all casual variables of the attacks too. Israel is to be blamed and should be sanctioned
You just aren't strong on cause and effect are you, D.?
ReplyDeleteThe reason Jordan has all the nice things you mention is that they live in peace with their neighbors. The reason Palestine doesn't have them is that they refuse to live in peace with their neighbors.
You can refer to Israel as illegitimate if you want to, but it isn't and it is just name-calling to say that it is. It is no more true or meaningful than calling it a giraffe. But call it whatever you like.
But so long as you and your friends insist that you have a right to attack Israel, there will be reprisals and you and your friends will live in misery. Your continuing to insist on a supposed right to attack Israel continues just that much longer the miserable conditions in Gaza.
Not a racist? You claim to have a right to kill Jews. Can there be anything more Nazi-Hamas-racist than that? Your denial just means you don't like being told what you are.
You claim the root cause of Palestinian attacks is the lack of a state. Again you confuse, apparently dishonestly, cause with effect. The Palestinians have been offered a state repeatedly, at least four time publicly, from 1947 onward, each time on condition they live in peace with their neighbors.
Each time they have rejected having a state because they were unwilling to live in peace. Whose fault is that? Yours, D. The fault is yours and of your fellow rejectionists.
It is you and your who have brought the conditions of Gaza to what it is today. Rather than act like adults and accept responsibility for what you have done, you blame exactly those whom you have harmed repeatedly.
What will it take for you and your friends to change, D.?
Israel has an absolute right to respond to Hamas attacks; this D. fellow, for all his or her sturm und drang, neglects to point out that Hamas has taken the coward's route and ensconced its would-be militants behind women and children - hoping that these are fed into the maw of war in full technicolor. This strategy, if this foul practice can be elevated to the term, should itself be seen by the inhabitants of Gaza as the crime it is. Why would the world even consider giving Palestinian's an independent state?
ReplyDeleteI have written here before that this present struggle in Gaza is not just about Hamas, it is also about Iran using Hamas to fashion a platform out of Gaza to attack Israel with progressively more sophisticated standoff weapons. During the last Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between Hamas and Isreal, Hamas used its time, aid, and tunnels to increase the range of its rocket mechanisms. Thus, the operational strike zone for this ordnance increased from 20km to approximately 40km. Improvements to payloads also increased. This experiment in using standoff weapons against Israel by non-state or quasi-state proxies (Hezbollah and Hamas)continues to progress in steady technological increments.
The lessons in cause and effect are pretty clear in this case. Israel and the United States, despite our pluralistic societies, are not going to be duped by the sick charade that is Hamas-run Gaza.
Jack is correct - the Palestinians may have peace anytime they commit to it and abandon the rejectionist policies that are responsible for killing both Israelis and, by their own hand, Palestinians in large numbers.
The battle against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is not for the weak-willed, nor is the time neigh for humanitarian relief beyond the barest minimum, if that. The voting population of Gaza elected a terrorist organization to guide its very unseaworthy ship of state. This act approaches and echos Germany's election of the NAZI party to power in 1933. This is to say that the Palestinian voting population in Gaza is complicit in the election of Hamas and the policies that have shaped recent events. There are no innocents above voting age in Gaza.
In 1936, had France or England confronted Hitler's move into the Rhineland, the world may have been spared much tragedy and bloodshed, not to mention the Holocaust. Many observers have written that Israel is a state that is always one battle away from potential destruction; by the same token, it may be said that the Middle-East is always one Rhineland-like gamble away from having a genocidal-regime establishing itself on a democracy's doorstep.
Never again.
The state of Israel will continue to act decisively against Hamas and its attempt to occupy and militarize the Gaza Strip.
When people are in despair they will fight. Its the one universal of human nature.
ReplyDeleteThe ordinary Palestinian views the very existence of Israel as a sort of modern Crusader state. Whether they are right or wrong, they feel they have a legitimate right to resist what they see as an occupying force.
The problem is far more complex than simplistic ramblings about peace and the comparison with Jordan. The problem lies in human nature itself and I can't see any solution being reached here, on a random Zionist nut's blog.
This is going around in circles. You are clueless to the situtation it would seem Jack, shrowded in your own bath of ignorance and not actually reading what I am saying as you go on your pro-Isreal rants. As I have explained and any political analysis done on the area will reveal is that rocket attacks and being bad neighbours as you say, is merely a correlation to true problem, Isreali oppression. You and Fig Newton keep avoiding any points I make and skip on to how Isreal has the right to protect itself. Your judgments are ill-founded and fail to recognise the bigger picture. And you call me a Nazi? you self-righteous smug little man, I never once made a racist comment, Godwin's law is certainly apt here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_Law, Nazi references are clearly the last resort of a failed argument. I will reiterate for the dumb, I never once referred to a Jew, I referred to Zionism and the illegitimate state of Isreal, and thats not name-calling Jack, from a political perspective it is true, due to Isreals own actions, the violence in its territories, its foundations, its internal strife and how its neighbors view Isreal, it is undermined as a democratic state and therefore illegitimate. Isreal is the cause of this problem and Isreal is committing war crimes. After being branded a Nazi, I realise that I am not arguing with level headed people that wish to engage in political discourse but rather mindless narrow-minded bigots so Im not going to continue debating with this any further. I refer you to reread my earlier posts, if you can combat them properly with coherent argument instead of name calling and going around in circles fair enough, how could you though to be fair? Defending Isreal is defending the indefensible.
ReplyDelete+ what Christy said.
ReplyDeleteHello Christy,
ReplyDeleteI am a U.S. citizen and a supporter of Israel and its right to exist. I am also a veteran of this countries wars in the Middle East.
I experienced the fighting capabilities of Hezbollah first-hand, up-close. People in despair do not fight - disparate people might fight; however, only the calculating make war.
The terms for setting up a dialogue for peace between Israel and the Palestinians are very simple; particularly because most of the groundwork has been laid.
The Palestinians must abandon rejectionism and abide to existing international agreements concerning the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, the chances for long-term peace in the PA are arguably greater than they are for American-occupied Iraq - if Hamas and other rejectionists are dispensed with in Gaza.
The amount of money that Israel, the United States, as well as the international community has poured into the West Bank and Gaza in the hope that peace would take root by inducement gives one pause.
For example, and this is but one example, the US Department of State in conjunction with the USDA, undertakes an agricultural grant program for sustainable agriculture in both the West Bank and Gaza (these are the USDA 416(b)programs). Of interest is that the basis of the program's funding rests on the monetization of portions of the U.S. wheat crop set aside each year for the purpose. Wheat forms the basis of the monetization program because it is renewable and calculated to provide steady funding for the long-term development of these programs in the PA. Here is an excerpt from the NGO associated website:
"Under the most recent USDA 416 (b) program, which began in 2002 and ended in 2007, ACDI/VOCA generated $10 million in proceeds, which were used to fund projects through more than 20 local NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs) to establish systems and build capacity to meet the needs of at-risk and food insecure Palestinian communities. The program supported broad-based agricultural and agribusiness growth in conjunction with natural resource management initiatives. ACDI/VOCA-West Bank & Gaza’s grants management program awarded grants based on the technical and financial merits of local organizations."
Link:http://www.acdivoca.org/acdivoca/PortalHub.nsf/ID/westbankgazagrantsmanagement
Significant portions of the funds raised under the USDA 4169(b)program went directly into Gaza. As a result of the Hamas election victory, this important infrastructure has largely been destroyed by the predictable effects of Hamas policy and conflict. Needless to say, Fatah played a major role in husbanding these projects along, as did U.S. tax dollars. All of this has been wasted as a result of a terrorist party coming to power in the enclave of Gaza.
If you are able to pierce through the gossamer veil of your misplaced cultural-relativism,you may find on investigation that there is much more to this complex situation than you in fact present in your dismissive comments regarding human nature.
Setting aside your soft-core Relativism for a moment, if you enjoy any of the benefits of humanistic culture, economy, and education, I assure you, you do not have Islamist extremists to thank for that.
Simple enough question to D. here, what can Israel do? Fair enough, its foundations are clearly illegitmate in terms of what a modern democratic nation state should be founded on, but what can Israel actually do? Clearly it can't just vanish into thin air, its there, and any debate on the Palestinian situation should start and end with the assumption of Israel's right to exist. Otherwise the cycle of violence will just continue and radical groups like Hamas will continue to have political leverage, winning the popular vote like they did at the last election.
ReplyDeleteLet no-one forget that Hamas won a slim victory over Fatah, a secularist party which does recognise Israel. And the Palestinians only voted Hamas in due to a failure by Fatah (And in other words, competant, democratic governance) to do its job. Hamas clearly doesn't have a strong democratic mandate, its tetchy at best. And besides, the likes of Hamas care little for things like democratic mandates anyway.
Fig Newton,
ReplyDeleteMy comments were more an expression of discontent with how these debates invariably play out. One person claims Israel can do pretty much whatever it wants in terms of military assualts and defends it all costs and the other regards Israel as a regional military state which exists solely as a military outpost in a clash of civilisations between the Imperialist west and the Arab east...
I'm far from being a relativist, just find these debates somewhat repititious.
Hello Christy,
ReplyDeleteWell enough clarified; however, in my personal and admittedly small view, we in the humanist West share constituencies in the Arab east and have set in motion plans, policies, capital outlays, etc., designed to make peace viable.
Hamas must not be allowed to hijack the process or whatever painful progress has been made.
@ Christy,
ReplyDeleteI accept Isreal's right to exist for peace's sake. Firstly, an immediate withdrawal from Gaza and complete ceasefire is essential, a cessation to its war crimes. Personally, I think Isreal has gone too far and has committed war crimes so the question what is Isreal to do has become very difficult and there are other questions like how should they be sanctioned that are also relevant, what Isreal can do has been limited by their actions. Embargos and blocks which essentially suffocate Gaza must be removed. People of Gaza have not voted for a terrorist organisation like Hamas because they are bad people, they have moved to extremity because of Isreali oppression, a lack of alternatives - (this is the root of the problem on which Isreal and the International Community pressurising them must look to when pondering what Isreal it to do), so to use Jack's logic, then Isreal can blame itself for rocket attacks, this is not the case however, such a logic is ridiculous and narrow-minded. It is only without confinement and oppression that Isreal inflicts on the people of Gaza, that a peaceful two-state solution can be drawn up. Zionism and Isreali expansion must halt. Only with dramatic institutional change can there be an identity shift in Gaza making extremists like Hamas redundant. There are huge problems which must be overcome and it is incredibly difficult for any state-building on illegitimate grounds to survive peacefully, so what is Isreal to do, an awful lot.
D. is right at last. This is going round and round. How about asking for a prediction?
ReplyDeleteIf Hamas stops shooting rockets at Israel and stops sending suicide bombers to kill Israelis, what will happen?
I would like D. and Chrtisty to answer that.
Good answer. And I agree 99%.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one of you can explain why accidentally bombing a school is a war crime to you and deliberately bomving one is not?
ReplyDeleteI am curious also as to the tone which entitles you to demand and order Israel to do this and to do that and Israel must....
ReplyDeleteThat Israel must kiss your hand and beg for your acceptance?
Have you noticed that is not the relationship between the parties?
When will you get over the notion that we are dhimmis? We aren't. You are not our masters. You are the ones fleeing when we approach, not the other way around.
Your refusal to live in peace hasn't ruined our lives, it has ruined yours. You are the ones who should be begging for peace. And yet you remanin so crazy and hostile that you can't see it.
Oh shut up Jack and get your head out of your ass. Take a little walk around and try to put your feet in someone else's shoes. What do people do when they are in a corner? What do poor people do, in any part of the world, when people up the road from them live in paradise and they live in shit-hole ghetto's? You get this inter-relation as much in the United States, France, and the UK (With the very poor ethnic minority neighbourhoods) as you do in Israel.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is at its very core a fight between resentment and possession. Israel possesses land which by any estimation is not legitimately theirs. In the interests of a relatively peaceful world however humanity must bow to the reality and the reality is that Israel must exist. But try to tell someone who has been displaced and who has had a wall built keeping them away from their rightful homeland that they must 'live in peace' and 'recognise Israel'. Its all so easy saying this self-righteous crap in your comfertable and pathetic little westernised existence, but you don't the first idea of what it is like to live in crippling and abject poverty.
Not that I do either by the way, and like you, I lead a relatively comfertable and pathetic western life, but at least I try to understand how those who live in despair may react to what may seem to you to be superficially a non-problem.
One not infrequently reads the phrase “Israel possesses land which by any estimation is not legitimately theirs”. This phrase contains a logical fallacy of a false appeal to authority, viz. “by any estimation.” I for one can find no basis for such an assertion, particularly from an American context.
ReplyDeleteThe United States formalized its last territorial acquisitions after the modern state of Israel came into existence. The United States, in fact, pursued a complex methodology of sovereign territorial acquisition through purchase, ruse, genocide, and conquest. Here are our last two acquisitions:
The Alaska Statehood Act was signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 7, 1958, allowing Alaska to become the 49th U.S. state on January 3, 1959.
In March 1959, both houses of Congress passed the Hawaii Admission Act and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law. (The act excluded Palmyra Atoll, part of the Kingdom and Territory of Hawaii, from the new state.) On June 27 of that year, a referendum was held asking residents of Hawaii to vote on accepting the statehood bill. Hawaii voted at a ratio of 17 to 1 to accept. There has been criticism, however, of the Statehood plebiscite, because the only choices were to accept the Act or to remain a territory, without addressing the issues of legality surrounding the overthrow.[34][35][36] Despite the criticism, the United Nations decolonization committee later removed Hawaii from the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. (both excerpts from Wiki)
If one applies the rule that the land must be legitimately “theirs” [belonging to the current sovereign state] one is forced to legally and morally define what the lexeme legitimate means. Where does one draw the line in time, place, and history for a determination of legitimacy?
In the case of Alaska, should we compensate the successor state of Tsarist Russia for hoodwinking them out of what proved to be an oil-rich territory? In the case of Hawai’i should we return the island to its rightful Polynesian royal house and independent sovereignty? Should we carry the idea of legitimacy further and return much of the western portion of the United States to Mexico? If we go that far should be push Mexico to deliver the reacquired land back to the Apache, Pima, Hopi, Luiseno, Chumash, Salinan, etc.?
If one takes an objective look at the legitimacy with which modern sovereign states hold territory, it is not a wholesome picture. One might argue that the United States holds much of the land that it did not purchase because our forefathers systematically annihilated the indigenous inhabitants and moved the remnant population of survivors to marginal reservation territories.
Who are we to tell the Jewish people – especially the Jewish people – who have never ceased to inhabit their historic lands in Judea (now Israel) that their means of acquisition is not legitimate. A close examination is sobering. Israel has more of a right to its land than we European-American have to ours.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"Oh shut up Jack and get your head out of your ass."
Most ingenious reasoning. What exactly have you convinced me of? That you are crude and have become abusive because your position is indefensible?
Christy writes --
"What do poor people do, in any part of the world, when people up the road from them live in paradise and they live in shit-hole ghetto's?"
Sane poor people do two things. If they are creating their own poverty by unceasing violence, they stop the violence.
Sane poor people do all they can to improve their own standards of living.
Unlike sane poor people, Palestinians who are creating their own poverty by their unceasing violence, increase their violence.
Unlike sane poor people, Palestinians try to destroy their neighbors' wealth rather than try to create their own.
Christy writes --
"Israel possesses land which by any estimation is not legitimately theirs."
This statement is constantly repeated in the face of its manifest falsity. Christy's repeating it is merely an indicator that she is prejudiced against Israel. But that is hardly news is it?
Christy writes --
"But try to tell someone who has been displaced and who has had a wall built keeping them away from their rightful homeland that they must 'live in peace' and 'recognise Israel'."
From which we are to deduce that people gain some special merit from being bigoted and intransigent? Actually, it is the other way round. People who are reasonable are to be taken seriously. Intransigent bigots cannot be reasoned with and are ignored. That too is human nature.
Christy writes --
"Not that I do either by the way, and like you, I lead a relatively comfertable and pathetic western life,"
Which is to say you admit you don't know what you are talking about. Not that keeps you from angrily denouncing everyone who disagrees with you.
Christy writes --
"but at least I try to understand how those who live in despair may react to what may seem to you to be superficially a non-problem."
Actually Christy guesses at how they react through a haze of romanticizing paternalist racism.
Quite the contrary. So far from being a non-problem, the determination of Muslim elites to demonize Israel and the West as a strategy against modernization and democratization, is the problem of the 21st Century.
People like Christy and D. just make it harder and make it take longer until Gaza can become a prosperous modern society.
Go on, keep bombing schools and killing children. None of your twisted and weasal words will explain those pictures of dying children away.
ReplyDeleteThe Israeli conflict, like any conflict, is caused by horizontal inequalities. That is political inequality, economic inequality and social access. These conditions all prevail in gaza due to Israeli oppression. Israeli attacks are unjust but what else have we come to expect from this barbarous disgusting war mongering nation. Lets not forgot the massacre of nearly 18,000 people, mostly civilians, in their genocide in the lebannon.
ReplyDeleteIsrael's illegitimacy is not just decided due to a historical line Fig Newton, I've come to expect this narrow-mindedness and one-channeled thinking from you though. Their actions, the lack of a peace and international condemnation as well as their constant war crimes render it illegitimate apart from the fact that less than a century ago an empirial power (in a dynamic period of change, moving on from Westphalian state system) mandated for a mass migration of people to displace Palestinians from their land, all factors make Israel illegitimate, its not up for debate, get over it.
But as I said previously, it needs to co-exist with a Palestinian state for the sake of peace. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not one of religion despite what one may think, no war is, it boils down to two ethnic groups manipulated and consolidated by ethnic entrepreneurs, when one group relates to abject poverty, oppression and horizontal inequalities in comparison to the other, conflict is inevitable. The only way conflict can be resolved is institutional change on a scale that removes these inequalities, a removal Israeli oppression (for example, give Gaza control of its borders and ultimately a free sovereign Palestinian state.)Indeed, this approach of institutional change ended the bitter entrenched dispute in Northern Ireland. Gaza is an open air prison, the blame lies with Israeli oppression, Israel has itself to blame.
Politically Jack and Newton, neither of you have one single leg to stand on. I am sick and tired of trying to explain simple politics of war to small minded narrow-minded bigots, why I waste my time, I don't know. I just get really angry when self-righteous Zionists try to defend the indefensible. As much as I'd personally also like to tell you to get your head out of your ass too, there is no point cause its firmly permanently lodged up there no matter how much women and children die at the hands of Israeli aggression.
Breathe, dear ones, breathe.
ReplyDeletepjs - sac'to
In reviewing the above posts, in particular those by D Period and Christy, I think I have found even more evidence to support Michael Savage's assertion that "liberalism is a mental disorder". Jack by contrast has consistently demonstrated clear reasoning using actual facts, and has done so with eloquence and wit without bringing up irrelevancies or relying upon media-supplied slants or partisan ideologies. Remember, the Talmud says (paraphrased) that "when a wise person talks with a foolish person it is two fools talking". Let the fools talk amongst themselves -- you don't need to encourage them.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is for sure -- the Israelis are finally acting as a sovereign nation should, which is to decisively rid itself of a constant low-level threat. The timing of this is obviously tied to the upcoming coronation (inauguration) of President BO. The new administration wants certain loose ends cleaned up beforehand, and they gave it the go-ahead. The Israelis have been restrained from acting on their own behalf fro the last 8 years by Bush and Condi. This may be the only right decision Obama has made so far.
Nick Danger, neither you nor jack can counter one single point I made, not one. Branding liberalism a mental disorder is all you can come with. Clearly, Jack's comments are completely biased and none rely on factual basis as you put it. Very strange conclusion. I have explained every single point I have made and countered others, I have explained what causes the war, what needs to be done and why there always will be conflict until these issues are addressed. Any other approach to understanding Israel is flawed and incorrect. This is my last post as arguing facts with crazy Zionists is like talking to a wall.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe Nick Danger or Jack have ever seriously examined whether Israel is a legitimate state or not. Thats probably why it appears we are two concrete blocks shouting at each other. I'm sure there are things I haven't examined, I'm certainly no expert on Palestinian affairs or the abstractions of national sovreignty and other political theorisms, but I am familiar with Middle Eastern history and feel that the foundation of Israel is the single greatest reason why the middle east is constantly in such turmoil.
ReplyDeleteDetractors of this position, who honestly cannot see any problem in the way in which the state of Israel came about (Or else have never seriously questioned it, even to themselves) love employing ploys like 'liberal', 'socialist', 'racist', 'nazi' etc. etc. Their assumption is that those of us (Who, beyond mainstream American public thought, actually form the majority of most thinking peoples in most other parts of the planet) who don't believe the Israeli state possesses such legitimacy and can therefore understand why and the exact nature of Palestinian grievances are merely anti-semitic.
I put it to all of you, who is holding the more pernicious 'moral high ground' in this debate? How can someone who accedes to the rights of an entity which displaced hundreds of thousands by terror (Which there are plenty of documented cases) or by mere annoyance (By building settlements in their back gardens) really claim those who disagree with them are in some way 'prejudiced', 'moronic' or 'small minded'? The hypocrisy of it all is mind-boggling, but as I said before, the particulars of this debate are always overlooked and it always becomes a veritable slanging match, from which neither side seems to gain any new understanding or focus of what is a remarkably and stupendously complex question.
Christy ---
ReplyDelete"Go on, keep bombing schools and killing children. None of your twisted and weasal words will explain those pictures of dying children away."
I assume it is not Jewish children being bombed in their schools that you are concerned about? Oh so silly of me to forget that the deaths of Jewish children do not concern you in the least do they?
So who is the "twisted weasel" who can excuse the murder of children? That would be you, Sweetie, wouldn't it?
No, we are not "two concrete blocks shouting at each other." You were rationalizing and excusing murder of Jewish children and calling me a twisted weasel for not agreeing with you.
ReplyDeleteNow you seem to have found that position indefensible even to you so you are trying to change the subject.
Actually calling people who rationalize or advocate killing Jewish Nazi-Hamas-racist is not a ploy it is a fact. No one between Hitler and Hamas have openly called for the murder of Jewish children. And there you are my dear Christy in that excellent company.
But I will pretend to believe you are hot the twisted weasel by your own analysis someone who advocates the murder of children is.
Let's make this as simple as we can. Your position is that you rationalize, condone, and advocate killing Irish men women, and children, but you claim not to be anti-Irish. That would seem to cove it wouldn't it? Or put differently, just how stupid would you have to be to talk yourself into such a proposition?
Which is just what you've done, isn't it?
Now assuming I were still taking Christy seriously, which I am having more and more trouble doing. Let's consider the history of the Kings of Palestine. Let's get out that good old collection of historical maps. Especially since Christy knows so much Middle Eastern history.
ReplyDeleteWell there aren't any king of Palestine now. But surely there were before the Israelis took over. Well no, the Queen of Palestine was Elizabeth II and before her George VI and so on back to the arrival of the Britsh Army under General Allenby in 1917.
So the Palestinian kings must have reigned over the Palestinian nation before the British. Well no, the Ottoman Turks ruled what is now Israel for more than 300 years before Allenby.
But surely there was a Palestinian kingdom or land subject to the Turks, some administrative division that would have been the Palestine we are all so sure was there that the Jews conquered?
Well no. There were two Turkish administative units called Vilayets, one based on Acre which included Galilee and most of Lebanon. If we are to consider that to have been Palestine then we have a problem with claiming Lebanon don't we? Well putting that aside for now, surely the other vilayet must the real precursor of Palestine even though under Turkish rule. Well no, that included the coastal plain and El Arish and on into large portions of Egypt. So claiming that was really Palestine is something of a problem too.
Well never mind about there having been a government -- and if we go further back in time, plunging back through the Seljuk Turks, the the Abassids, the Mongols, we find that the very last time there was a state that even roughly corresponded to the British Palestine Mandate, was the crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Well I am sure that is not the Palestinian state Christy and D. had in mind. If we push further back in time past the Fatimids of Egypt and on back to the Umayyads, and to the Byzantines, the last time before the crusaders there was a state that roughly corresponded to the British Palestine Mandate, a true Palestinian state, was in 167 AD, the state established by the Second Maccabbee Revolt, the last Jewish kingdom in Israel. Before that there are Palestinians states with various boundaries and various forms of government going back 1400 years to the end of the Bronze Age in 1200 BC, assuming we don't count the Hebrew patriarchs who were in the land even earlier.
I suppose since these are all Jewish societies they is not what D. and Christy mean by Palestinian.
Well surely even though there never was Palestinian state other than the various kingdoms, tribalisms, and patriarchates of the Jews, surely there was lots of Palestinian villages, adobe houses, olives, big family weddings, folk ways, white washed houses, donkeys, goats, sheep, and camels, the village well, the whole romantic fantasy? Well no.
Every 18th and 19th Century traveler's narrative we have says the contrary. There was substantially no rural population in what is now Israel at all. Christy denigrates Mark Twain for instance because he contradicts her fantasy. There are also various British travelers' narratives, a long French cyclopedia entry from the 1860's which has lots of information. And most of all there are the German newspapers which reported in detail on what is now Israel during the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm I. With their usual thoroughlness, they reported a great deal that matched and showed the changes from the time of French Cyclopedia.
The picture is that there was substantially no agriculture anywhere in the Holy Land. All the population was in the towns. These towns lived almost entirely from tourism and religious alms and the money spent by religious people, clergy and religious charityt cases.
Interestingly there was no majority in the country as a whole. The largest number were Arabs, then Jews, then Armenians, then Turkmen, Bedouins, then Druzes, Kurds, and others. Surprisingly, though there was again no majority, the largest group religiously were the Christians, than the Jews, then the Muslims. My guess is that there must have been a lot of Christian Arabs, particularly in and around Jerusalem.
Everyone agrees that the populations in the towns, except in Jerusalem, were very small, that everyone was very poor, and that almost no one lived in the countryside.
Jerusalem was distinctive in that it had an absolute majority of Jews as early as 1880. The greatest likelihood for this growth in Jewish population was the increase in Jewish philanthropy was able to support ever larger numbers of religious charity cases and the earliest Zionist settlers were arriving.
Jewish in-migration was matched by Arab inmigration from Syria and Egypt. The bringing in of both Jewish charity money and Zionist spending to buy and develop agricultural land led to something like the beginnings of economic development. Construction work in Israel was a draw for Syrian and Egyptian to come and work in Israel. Other more skilled workers also came as the economy developed and even professionals. A typical case is that of Yasser Arafat whose family immigrated to Israel from Egypt. He then claimed to have been born in Jerusalem and that the Jews stole his land.
Initially the few Arab residents of Israel were glad to see the Jews come because they brought prosperity and paid astronomical prices for land. Only after the xenophobic agitation started in the 1920's did the mood change.
Then there were the Arab riots of 1929, long before there was a Jewish state and again even worse riots in 1936, still a decade before the state.
Which by the way give the lie to every Palestinian claim that we hate the Jews because of this or that. Arab violence against Jews predates by 20 years any possible claim of dispossession. Without that claim, false on its face as it has always been, we are left with the truth -- Arab xenophobia.
Another problem was that when an Arab sold waste desert land worth ten pounds to Jews for a hundred pounds, he felt cheated when the Jews irrigated it and raised melons and oranges on it such that the land became worth a thousand pounds. That was a second element of the mythology that the Jews stole the land.
I have always thought that a marvelous expression, so redolent of shoplifting. Things that one cannot pick up and carry away are a bit difficult to steal, no?
While that was irrational thinking, it was no worse than shooting rockets at people who have an air force when you don't have one.
Or that one can advocate killing the Irish without being anti-Irish.
We can talk more about the subsequent profound legitimacy of a claim to land based or rejectionism, and just how persuasive that might be.
Or would you like to go back to advocating killing Jews and calling me a twisted weasel?
I think I owe D. an apology for leaving his reasonings unrefuted and unmocked all this time.
ReplyDeleteD. writes --
"The Israeli conflict, like any conflict, is caused by horizontal inequalities. That is political inequality, economic inequality and social access."
So those guys in the mosques with beards and turbans pounding on the Koran and screaming "Death to the Jews!" are actually Marxist-Leninists demanding equal rights for the downtrodden! All along I mistakenly thought they were Muslim imams. Silly me. Thanks for clarifying this for me D.
I assume the reason they are not out to kill everybody in the Muslm countries is that they have achieved income equality in those countries, have they?
D. writes --
"These conditions all prevail in gaza due to Israeli oppression."
Inequality in Gaza because of the Israelis? Gaza had egalitarian income distribution before the Israelis came when Gaza was occupied by Egypt? No place more famous for its egalitarianism than Egypt. The Sweden of north Africa, the workingman's paradise.
Or do you mean that Gaza is poorer than Israel? Again we have the problem of this being a largely self-inflicted wound by the Palestinians. Instead of education you have agitprop mills. So you have few or no college graduates from Palestinian schools. Those who go abroad to study rarely come back, which of course must somehow be Israel's fault since it seems to be a rule with Palestinians that no matter what folly they commit, it is never ever their own fault.
And of course if what little infrastructure you have left gets destroyed in Israeli air raids which were perfectly foreseeable when you started rocketing their towns, that is their fault too since it is a rule that no folly the Palestinians commit every their fault. It is almost as though you weren't really adults in your own estimation. But since Palestinians are never at fault, it must somehow, though it is not clear exactly how, be Israel's fault. After all, they are adults and you... well you don't seem to think that you are.
D. writes --
"Israeli attacks are unjust but what else have we come to expect from this barbarous disgusting war mongering nation."
Actually it is bombarding the towns of people who aren't bombarding yours that is unjust. Self-defense is universally recognized as just.
Here's the nub of your problem D. You have the empty assertion and it flies in the face of the facts you know them. There is no actual substance to your position. You have only insults. Whom will that convince?
Your problem is not that I am any better at argument than you are. Your problem is that you cannot shoot 11,000 rockets at people who are not shooting at you and then claim to be a victim of aggression. Your problem fundamentally is that you are wrong.
D. writes --
"Lets not forgot the massacre of nearly 18,000 people, mostly civilians, in their genocide in the lebannon."
I agree, let's not forget the thousands of deaths in Lebanon nor the rocket bombardment of Haifa and other northern Israeli cities that preceded them.
You admit that you remember that rocketing Israeli cities will provoke a massive response to suppress the rocket fire. Yet you countenanced the rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli cities. You have admitted that you knew the consequences yet you went ahead anyway. I repeat, D. YOU are responsible for the deaths in Gaza, fully responsible. You, D. You knew what would happen and you went ahead and did it anyway.
You and your Palestinian friends are the disgusting immoral murderous people you accuse others of being. You toss out groundless insults because you have no argument with which to cover your shame and murderous irresponsibility toward the people both of Israel and of Gaza. You call Israelis warmongers when it is you and yours who have attacked them. You accuse others of your own crimes because, like other Palestinians you are unable to accept responsibility for your actions.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"therefore understand why and the exact nature of Palestinian grievances are merely anti-semitic."
One possible reason for us thinking there may be some racism involved is Palestinian mobs screaming "Death to the Jews!" and "Kabir! Kabir!"
But that is just mainstream thinking, which sophisticated large intellects like your can see well beyond.
Ha - I'm anti-Irish, thats a good one!
ReplyDeleteI'll respond to your long winded drivel later on when I'm feeling better. Good luck amigo.
Actually the last word here should go to Fig Newton who didn't sound combative enough to engage anyone's zeal to contradict.
ReplyDeleteOne is tempted to believe that is on account he was actually there, directly involved in real and not paper combat, and knows what he is talking about. Unlike me, D., Christy, and the various Anonymouses.
In glancing over this prolonged squabble (it gives it too much credit to call it a debate) I was struck by a remark he made early on.
Fig Newton wrote --
"I am also a veteran of this countries wars in the Middle East.
I experienced the fighting capabilities of Hezbollah first-hand, up-close. People in despair do not fight - disparate people might fight; however, only the calculating make war."
This is a keen observation and precisely germane to the argument.
What distinguishes Fig Newton's position from mine, D.'s, and Christy's, is that his is an observation, not an argument.
It also suggests hope for the future. Calculating aggressors can be made to change their calculations.
If Christy and D. were right that Palestinian attacks are mere unthinking reflexes, not planned actions, it would require immense amounts destruction to reprogram those reflexes.
But we see that Palestinian aggression is carefully planned and executed with long lead times to procure rockets, to pay for the rockets, to smuggle the rockets through tunnels, to assemble the rockets, to hide them near schools and hospitals, and to finally launch them against Israel's towns. That is not done by reflex.
It is done by calculation. Those calculations can be changed when shown to be mistaken.
Nasrallah himself (the leader of Hezbollah) said after the war in the north began that he was surprised by the size of the Israeli reaction to the kidnapping and murder of a few Israelis. In short, that his calculation was wrong.
I suppose the underlying disconnect is that Nasrallah assumed that since he considered his people expendable, that the Israelis considered their people expendable too. He was surprised when their reaction was based on the premise that they weren't.
It is the same mistaken calculation we see in Gaza today. We have heard exactly the same proposition from our own D. 'We only killed a few Israelis,' he complains, 'Why make such a big deal of it?'
Which is a learning experience for me. It teaches me what the word 'over-reaction' means when used in public discourse. It means, "We consider your people expendable. You are being unreasonable in acting like they aren't."
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"Ha - I'm anti-Irish, thats a good one!"
Oh, my mistake. It isn't the Irish you condone killing, it is the Jews.
I really wish I had the energy to properly respond to you Jack, but for now I'll just have a good laugh at your incessant and barely believable hyper victim-complex. The accusations of anti-semitism are growing a bit old, and tends to completely demean your entire argument (In that, you seem to think that since you are Jewish, you naturally should support the actions of a Jewish State. There is no correlation between your religion and background and your present support for Israel, so please stop playing that very weak, very transparant ploy)
ReplyDeleteI would like to think we could discuss this like adults, but I suppose that that would overlook the entire basis of Zionism - it is essentially an irrational and anti-intellectual thought process. It is a system based on a primitive tribalism and a conception of political authority and legitimacy which simply ignores reality.
You talk about cause and effect, responsibility for your actions etc. But you conveniently ignore countless quotes made by your movements greatest son - David Ben-Gurion.
You lament us for not agreeing with the actions of a military responsible for bombing schools, hospitals, killing women and children etc. Yet you see no problem with the deaths of women and children, you never condemn it. You never even express regret for it.
Then again, me saying that you 'condone the killing of Muslims' isn't going to advance human understanding very far now is it?
D. writes --
ReplyDelete"Nick Danger, neither you nor jack can counter one single point I made, not one."
This is unfortunate. D. has made no points except to insist that Palestinians are entitled to kill Jews, and to call Israel bad names. The fact that he thinks he has made points means that not only is he not listening to anyone else, he isn't listening even to himself.
What points are you talking about D.?
D. writes --
"Branding liberalism a mental disorder is all you can come with."
Actually Anonymous said that. My observation would be more like "Murdering civilians of a country which has an air force when you don't have one, and expecting not to get hurt, is a mental disorder."
D. writes --
"Clearly, Jack's comments are completely biased and none rely on factual basis as you put it. Very strange conclusion."
I agree with D. here. I am biased in favor of the party that is defending itself from rocket attack on its civilian population. I am biased in favor of that rocketing stopping immediately and biased in favor of severely punishing those who ordered it and conducted it.
D. writes --
"I have explained every single point I have made and countered others,"
Actually you have called names and made some cheesy rationalizations and excuses which convince no one, I suspect not even you.
D. writes --
"I have explained what causes the war, what needs to be done"
What causes the war is rocketing Israeli towns. What needs to be done is to stop doing that.
D. writes --
"and why there always will be conflict until these issues are addressed."
Those issues are being addressed right now by the IDF and IAF.
D. writes --
"Any other approach to understanding Israel is flawed and incorrect."
The proof of the recipe is in the pudding, as we say. How well has endless rejectionism served the Palestinian people? Who is better off, the Palestinians in Jordan who live in peace with Israel, or those in Gaza who refuse to?
D. writes --
"This is my last post as arguing facts with crazy Zionists is like talking to a wall."
On behalf of crazy Zionists everywhere I am sorry to see you go. Your arguments are so feeble and so easily punctured and refuted as to make me look smart and articulate by comparison.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"it is essentially an irrational and anti-intellectual thought process. It is a system based on a primitive tribalism"
I suppose you are talking about the independence movement in Ireland? Since you are a fair-minded person who is not prejudiced against any one people, I am sure you will be glad to provide us with a letter characterizing the independence of Ireland as "an anti-inetellectual thought process of primitive tribalism". Please include your home address, phone number, and a picture of yourself so that when we publish your letter in newspapers in Dublin, Belfast, and so on that your fellow Irishmen can express their felicitatons on your valuable insight directly to you.
But it is not the Irish right to an Ireland nor the Togolese claim to Togo that you find illegitimate. It is only the Jews' right to their country that excites your umbrage. And yet you expect anyone at all to find that and the long history of Jew-hatred in your country and your making this odd exception to be some amazing coincidence. The fact is, we simply don't believe you. The reason you are so uncomfortable with being accused of Jew-hatred is that you know it is true.
Tell me why you don't object to the borders and existence of the Philippines, of Russia, of Poland, of Finland, of literally a hundred countries whose legitimacy as nation-states is less than that of Israel? Why is that, Christy? Why only the state of the Jews gets you angry?
You realize there is no Lebanese people before Lebanon was created by the French? You realize that there was no Iraq and no Iraqi people before it was created by Britain? You realize there has never been a Palestinian people until it was created by the British? You realize that there was no South Africa until it was created by the Dutch and British? No Pakistan until it was created by Britain?
Israel was created by its inhabitants, by an ancient people, by resolution of the United Nations. Yet it is only its legitimacy which you question. And you would have us believe that there is no connection between the endless history of Jew-hatred in your country and your hostility to the state of the Jews. Just an amazing coincidence.
The real vileness of racism, the source of its endless persistence, is that people like you sincerely believe your own denials.
The reason for Jew-hatred was that we killed Jesus. No matter that Christianity would be meaningless without Calvary abd Easter Week. Because it is an irrational xenophobic hatred. So your persecutions were really our fault.
Then your people hated Jews because it was the Enlightenment and the Jews were retrograde. No matter that some of the finest Enlightenment thinkers were Jews. No matter that we had universal literacy when most of your people were illiterate.
Then it was discovered that you had to hate the Jews because race was everything and we were an alien race. No matter that every people including yours are a mongrel mixture assembled over centuries of race-mixing.
Then there was the lovely series of episodes where your countrymen hated Jews because we were by turns, and sometimes simultaneously, international bankers and Communists.
Now of course you are beyond all that. Much more enlightened and tolerant now. You and your countrymen just happen to hate Jews because we are Zionists and are oppressing the poor pitiful Palestinians for whom you buy rockets to shoot at us.
But it is just a coincidence that you and your countrymen have always been Jew-haters and are Jew-haters now.
No, no, now we have a much better story, a modern one that we believe. It is just a coincidence that my countrymen and I have always hated Jews for one reason or another. It is just a coincidence that our Jew-hatred happens to be exactly like all the forms of Jew-hatred that went before it.
See we agree that those old forms of Jew-hatred were wrong. But now we don't hate Jews, We are just anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish. Just as the racial ideologists denied being anti-Jewish, just anti-Semitic.
So it is completely different this time. And we really believe it this time. It is just an amazing coincidence that it winds up with exactly the same results as the earlier ideologies and excuses for Jew-hatred. Just an amazing coincidence. Amazing.
Oddly enough, we don't believe you.
And as to Christy's sneering at Jews being victims, there may be a connection between having people like D. doing everything they can to kill us, and people like Christy condoning it, that leads to that.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between modern times and earlier persecutions, is that now we have the means to shoot back. Zionism means not being a defenseless victim. THAT is what D. and Christy find so illegitimate about Israel.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"You lament us for not agreeing with the actions of a military responsible for bombing schools, hospitals, killing women and children etc."
I assume you are talking about the Hamas para-military 11,000 rockets showered on Sderot, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Beersheva?
Like D. you seem unable to hold in mind the causal relationship between the bombardment of Gaza and the bombardment of southern Israel.
You are scarcely in a position to decry my or anyone's indifference to the bombardment of Gaza when your indifference to the bombardment of Israel is so manifest.
Just for the sake of seemliness you should drop a line of argument which serves you so badly and suggests a certain lack of self-awareness.
FIRST even purport to give a damn about the bombardment of Israel by your proteges, before declaiming about my or anyone not expressing sorrow over the bombardment of Gaza.
Christy writes --
"Yet you see no problem with the deaths of women and children, you never condemn it. You never even express regret for it."
That would be you again, Sweetie, when the women and children are Jews, wouldn't it? You really have to get past accusing others of what you are yourself guilty.
Christy writes --
"Then again, me saying that you 'condone the killing of Muslims' isn't going to advance human understanding very far now is it?"
Killing people is an evil. Killing people in self-defense is a justifiable evil.
Killing people who are not shooting at you is a crime.
Justifying killing people who are not shooting at her or her proteges is what Christy is all about. It is her way of advancing human understanding.
But seriously, the precondition for being taken seriously is that one has to let go of the premise that it is OK to kill Jews if one shouts loudly enough about the reprisals.
ReplyDeleteUntil one gets over that, there is nothing to discuss.
No one has the right to shoot at people who are not shooting at them.
Everyone has the right to shoot at people who are shooting at them.
I doubt Christy can make that leap of understanding. I hope she can.
Ok Jack, I'm not arguing about this anymore. You are never going to regress from this position. Yes, I must hate the Jews since I have a slight problem with the actions of the Israeli military.
ReplyDeleteSwallow in your own hyperbole you retarding fucking philistine. I've had enough.
Jews, Jews, Jews. Nobody cares what you are. I certainly don't. It doesn't change the debate. Be satisfied with the idea that you scared off what could have been a reasonable debate with you constant accusations of anti-semitism.
I've reread your posts again. You have used the word 'Jew' at least two hundred times in this thread alone. You have accused me of being anti-semitic at least six times. You have accused my country of been 'jew haters' twice. You have accused the entirety of western civilisation of being in a constant state of Jew hatred.
ReplyDeleteThank God I don't live anywere near you. You seem to have a scary lack of social skills. Would hate to bump into you at a party.
Oh, and I am a man.
Oh, forgot to add, go fuck yourself.
ReplyDeleteSweetie, have you ever actually ever READ your national epic? Leopold Bloom faces various levels of Jew-hatred from almost everyone he meet every hour of his one long day in 1904 in Dublin. And everyone of the Jew-haters has some theory of why their hostility is not prejudice. Every single one of them has a theory why Bloom rather than they are the source of the problem.
ReplyDeleteJoyce's Stephen Daedelus occasionally asks probing questions about the Jew-hatred and gets oral formulaic replies. The interesting thing is the variety of reasons offered for their hostility.
A classic of Joyce poking fun at Irish reasoning is various pub-dwellers inferring from Bloom's good mood that he must have been the only man in Dublin who bet on the long-shot winner of a celebrated horserace which had just been run. They are furious with him for being a cheap Jew and not buying them all several rounds of drinks. As though they would do anything for him, had they won. One of them is so angry he has to be restrained from throwing a punch at Bloom.
Bloom, of course, knew nothing of the horserace and is oblivious to their dark mutterings except for when they come close to attacking him.
Which is what Jew-hatred is in Ireland -- universal, various, and universally denied.
Please excuse my literary maunderings, but it seems to me that Christy would fit right into Joyce's Dublin day in 1904.
But then why should a person be any better than the society which created her? It is not as though we are rational beings capable of being self-critical....
No, better to be angry and end with vulgar shouting than to actually consider uncomfortable arguments.
It seems that Christy wanted to have a heart-to-heart in which she was heard but not burdened with the inconvenience of listening.
And with all that certainty of her indifference to Jews, Christy somehow forgot to explain why it is only the legitimacy of Israel that she angrily denies, not that of Ireland, nor of Palestine, nor any of the other nations of the earth.
ReplyDeleteI guess it is all just an amaziing coincidence.
God, you really do feel sorry for yourself. I'm sorry I have to go these lengths but... 1904 - do you really think the Irish mentality is the same as 1904? You have no fucking clue of history whatsoever if you seriously propound this bullshit. And I do believe you are the type of person who reads Joyce just to be seen doing it on the subway and Starbucks.
ReplyDeleteIn all of my life, I have never ever met someone with such a massive victim complex. Right, we get it, your fucking Jewish. I don't fucking care! I've never even met a Jew in my entire life - this is Ireland! We aren't exactly a multicultural country like the UK or Britain. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF YOU ARE A JEW. IT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME AND IT DOESN'T CHANGE MY OPINION OF YOUR ARGUMENTS.
Sorry to caps lock, I realise its quite rude, but nothing else seems to get into your pretentious little mind.
"And with all that certainty of her indifference to Jews, Christy somehow forgot to explain why it is only the legitimacy of Israel that she angrily denies"
ReplyDeleteI have explained, but as characteristic to you (And you are quickly turning into the most vile person I have ever met in my life) you haven't listened. Maybe you should look.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"Yes, I must hate the Jews since I have a slight problem with the actions of the Israeli military."
And a slight problem with the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and a slight problem with the right of Israel to exist, and no problem at all with the bombardment of Israeli towns with 11,000 rockets, and ...."
Christy writes --
"Swallow in your own hyperbole you retarding fucking philistine."
D., I am not sure which of us should be insulted here, you or me?
She didn't even capitalize Philistine. And yes, it is the same word as al-Filastin, or as we say in English, Palestine.
Pretentious snob.
ReplyDeleteNot insulted at all Jack, a tad embarrassed with the aggressiveness?, Yes. (I think it's a he though) :), I am insulted that you didn't respond to my post about the Gaza economy though and entertained Christy's outburst, I think this argument is going around in complete circles. In fairness to Christy though, he has not made one point which should be in any way perceived to be anti-semitic
ReplyDeleteI never realised I had a google account, that came up automatically. Oh well, guess I'll be debating on here for a while now.
ReplyDeleteI did respond to your economic argument but I think it was as a comment to the previous post.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is a pretty slick system. Since the software is on their computer rather than on yours, they can upgrade incrementally whenever they like. And add whole new applications.
Sadly, even they are now laying off workers because of the sagging economy.
I have just noticed that you are right about Christy. Christy did mention in his last comment that he is a man. In the US, Christy is usually a nickname for Christine. Apparently in Ireland it is a name, not a nickname.
Christy writes --
ReplyDelete"Pretentious snob."
Au contraire. I am the most modest of snobs.
Damien, my reply to your economic argument is in a comment under the cartoon of the man on the psychiatrist's couch.
ReplyDeleteI too am embarressed with the outburst - but you can only push a man so far, you know?
ReplyDeleteChristy writes --
ReplyDelete"I too am embarressed with the outburst - but you can only push a man so far, you know?"
Not to worry lad. There is a war on and blood and death do nothing for anyone's composure.
It is also true that I am pressing you to do one of the hardest things anyone can do -- reevaluate yourself.
According to interviews, there is not a single racist in the United States, and there never has been. According to every other measure of American history and society, that may not be true.
Nobody, but nobody, wants to think that of themselves. I deny being a racist too. But thinking back over my life, considering my reactions, it is not so certain.
But what can I do? I compensate by being pleasanter to black people than I am to whites, I vote for black candidates (except in Richmond after the looting of the West County School District by the corrupt Democratic machine there)and hope for the best.
You mock the idea that Irish thinking has not changed since 1904. I think national moods and attitudes change slowly or not at all unless some huge shock comes along.
In our country, we have had two huge shocks to our racial attitudes. One was the Civil War to abolish slavery, in which more than a million young men died, a tenth of our adult male population.
The second was the Civil Rights movement and the subsequent legal, social, and political changes over the past 50 years since Brown vs. Board of Education. Which we are still seeing worked out.
I don't think Ireland has had any such trauma or semi-revolutionary changes in its racial attitudes as we have had. And even with our enormous changes, I can assure you that America is far from color-blind for people not Harvard-educated Senators.
Just as I have nothing against black people, you have nothing against Jews. But I have the past 50 years of my country's history warning me not to be so sure. You haven't.
My biggest problem with all of your comments Jack was that they seemed ignorant of Irish history. You say for example the Irish mentality is unlikely to have changed since 1904 - I strongly disagree. I'm not sure any historian would agree with you either.
ReplyDeleteThe 1916 rising changed Ireland utterly. (You seem to like your literature, so I'd advise you read Yeats' poem 'Easter 1916' if you are interested). The revolution that Ireland underwent in the years 1919-1924 (IE, the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War) affected Ireland profoundly right up until the 60s. In between this we experienced a domination by Catholicism which you could't even start to imagine. And of course there was also the curse of emigration - America knows better than anyone else how profoundly the Irish diaspora has affected your country (Well, the east coast at least!)
Along came the Celtic Tiger and a subsequent change of attitudes. We entered the modern era.
You may be right that there is a strong subconscious element of Jew hatred in Ireland. I simply don't believe this. There is no evidence for this.
Again, your association with a rejection of Zionism as anti-semitic is again a complete distraction and intellectual cowardice of the highest order. If this is the measure of how any debate on this topic progresses (In that if I disagree with you then I must be anti-semitic) then it is you who needs to re-evaluate himself.
I meant what I said about your constant accusations of anti-semitism, but I do apologise for the Joyce dig. I don't actually believe that. And perhaps I should try a more... balanced tone in the future?
Since Christy and I are exchanging book recommendations, the two best books I have ever seen on these subjects are "The Siege", about Israel, and "States of Ireland". Both are by your countryman, the late Conor Cruise O'Brien.
ReplyDeleteO'Brien was absurdly distinguished. He was a member of the Dail, a diplomat, chancellor of the University of Ghana, and a a bunch of other stuff. He was also the author of one of the best histories of Israel and one of the best histories of Ireland, two countries choked with histories written about them.
I doubt you or anyone could read "The Siege" and maintain your hostile attitude toward Zionism and Israel. Nor for that matter could one read "States of Ireland" without gaining a great deal of insight into, and sympathy for, Ireland.
Christy's attitudes belie his protestations. His attitude toward the Jewish state may have been cleaned up a bit compared to the rawness of 1904, but the substance seems unchanged.
And going back to 'Ulysses' (which I re-read as WP3 audio files played on a little iPod through my car radio, not at Starbuck's) Joyce refers several times to early Zionist settlements and developments in Israel in 1904 as being things on Bloom's mind. While never preachy nor programmatic, one cannot help but take away the impression that he makes a connection between the anti-Jewish feeling in Dublin and the rise of Zionist settlement in Israel. More than a decade before the British arrived.
We know that he spent several years in Paris, so he certainly knew all about the Dreyfus Trial and the poisonous atmosphere of Jew-hatred suffusing France at that time - and, one must add, the honorable and courageous resistance to it among Dreyfusards like Emile Zola.
We know too that in Paris he associated with the poet and notorious fascist and Jew-hater Ezra Pound.
We know too that he left Paris in flight from the Nazi occupation of France in 1940. So he may have had some sense of the preoccupation of Europeans (and in Pound's case, Americans) with Jews.
Joyce died in Switzerland in 1941. Had he lived longer he would have witnessed Stalin's campaign against Rootless Cosmopolitans after the war, the attempted massacre of the Jews of Palestine by the Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Saudi armies in 1948. Had he lived still longer he would have seen several more concerted attempts by their neighbors to drive out the Jews. He would have seen and heard every member of the United Nations decry Israel's efforts to repel these attacks.
But poor simpleton that he was, he would not realized that Israeli is another word for Jew. And that is all Christy's and Damien's denial is ultimately -- claiming that they don't hate and revile Jews, just Israel.
Back to square one.
ReplyDeleteBranch out your historiography. O'Brien - while an absurdly distinguished man as you put it - is not well regarded for his history works. He had some quite rare (and to be a little more uncharitable - mad.) opinions for his time.
I could reccomend to you some historical works that actually use the historical method of critically assessing evidence and arriving at empirical findings and subjective analysis. But I doubt you're bothered with that.
After all, anyone who disputes the legitimacy of the Israeli State wants to kill all the Jews, doesn't he? And someone like that couldn't possibly have any reasonable opinions?
You have to differentiate between my position based on historical analysis (That the Israeli State is an illegitimate entity) and what I actually consider a reasonable course of action (An Israeli State side by side with a fair and just peace with Palestine)
I may not believe Zionism is a logical system. I may believe it is based entirely on religious belief and ancient texts thousands of years old - all of which is anathema to any thinking person. However, this doesn't mean I find them (Zionists) reprehendable, simply historically wrong and people grounded in faith, not reason.
However, you have made no effort to further any understanding whatsoever other than simply propound anti-intellectual cries of anti-semitism.
Will you ever be able to accept that someone can reject Zionism but not reject the common human decency which is applied to all humans no matter what they believe?
I find it amazing that someone who actually has read a thing or two and has evidently done a bit of travelling around the world can be so intellectually stulted so as to prevent reasonable debate by throwing around accusations of Jew hatred. Shame on you.
I would also add that throughout this discussion I have been made appear more anti-Israel than I actually am in real life. Only a moron rejects a countries right to defend itself. But when schools and hospitals get bombed, and little children and mothers are being picked up from the rubble of burning mosques - then we're in another ball park, to use an American expression.
ReplyDeleteI must also add that your affection for O'Brien tells me a lot about you - like you, the man was infamous for his disregard for any sort of standard of discussion. He was argubaly the rudest Irish politician since the Civil War years. Known for his zeal for censorship, I can imagine you doing quite the same - after all, anyone who even dares to mention the word 'Zionist' is preparing to kill the jews as we speak.
ReplyDeleteChristy writes --
ReplyDelete"Branch out your historiography. O'Brien - while an absurdly distinguished man as you put it - is not well regarded for his history works. He had some quite rare (and to be a little more uncharitable - mad.) opinions for his time."
Given the suffocating climate of politically correct leftism on most college campuses, it is not the least surprising that O'Brien's views were not popular there.
Christy writes --
"After all, anyone who disputes the legitimacy of the Israeli State wants to kill all the Jews, doesn't he?"
Anyone who disputes ONLY the legitimacy of Israel has some reason for singling out one country for special treatment. What's your Christy? Why are you concerned about the legitimacy of no other state than the Jewish state?
Christy writes --
"And someone like that couldn't possibly have any reasonable opinions?"
Singling out one state and people for your attacks from all the nations of the earth, and then claiming you have no animus against them is neither reasonable nor credible. Why should anyone consider any of your other opinions any more reasonable than that one?
Christy writes --
"... and what I actually consider a reasonable course of action (An Israeli State side by side with a fair and just peace with Palestine)"
That is the Zionist position.
Christy writes --
"I may not believe Zionism is a logical system. I may believe it is based entirely on religious belief and ancient texts thousands of years old - all of which is anathema to any thinking person."
Yet you support Hamas, which is a fundamentalist religious movement based on the Koran. And the basis of their refusal to live in peace with their neighbors. No condemnations from you about that.
You live in a country thick with churches and each one of them thick with copies of the Gospel. No fury from you about that either.
Do you start to see why I don't believe your claims of fair-mindedness?
Christy writes --
"Will you ever be able to accept that someone can reject Zionism but not reject the common human decency which is applied to all humans no matter what they believe?"
The "common human decency applied to all humans" seems to consist of your changing the subject whenever rocket attacks on Jewish homes and schools is brought up.
It seems to me that it is you who are rejecting common human decency.
Christy writes --
"I find it amazing that someone who actually has read a thing or two and has evidently done a bit of travelling around the world can be so intellectually stulted so as to prevent reasonable debate by throwing around accusations of Jew hatred. Shame on you."
It is precisely BECAUSE I have read a certain amount and traveled a bit that I am not inclined to take anyone's word at face value.
You, to take an example, endlessly deny any animus toward Jews, but never explain why it is only the Jewish state that excites your umbrage, and no other.
Someone young and naive would take you at your word. Having been around the block, as it were, I don't.
Christy writes--
ReplyDelete"Only a moron rejects a countries right to defend itself. But when schools and hospitals get bombed, and little children and mothers are being picked up from the rubble of burning mosques - then we're in another ball park, to use an American expression."
But in ignoring that the attacks on Gaza are an attempt to prevent further rocket bombardment of Israeli towns, that is precisely what you are doing -- rejecting Israel's right to defend itself.
As to "little children and mothers being picked up from the rubble", there are two issues.
a) Where were you when it was Jewish children and mothers who were being picked up from the rubble of their homes and synagogues across southern Israel?
and
b) Look to who has caused those casualties by putting their rocket launch sites in residential areas, near schools, hospitals, and mosques. The civilian casualties are the fault of those who have used civilians as human shields.
The IDF and IAF are doing what they can to minimize civilian casualties but they are going to do whatever is necessary to suppress the rocket fire.
Perhaps Conor Cruise O'Brien was rude because he was brilliant and not one to suffer fools gladly?
ReplyDeleteChristy writes --
ReplyDelete"after all, anyone who even dares to mention the word 'Zionist' is preparing to kill the jews as we speak."
Au contraire. Anyone who well understands history and the current situation is a Zionist. I am a Zionist. Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist. See, it's good to say Zionist. It means the Jews have a right to a homeland, same as the Irish.
God... I'm really tiring of this.
ReplyDeleteAre you even capable of responding to what I said?
"Given the suffocating climate of politically correct leftism on most college campuses, it is not the least surprising that O'Brien's views were not popular there."
Clearly you don't know what your talking about.
"Anyone who disputes ONLY the legitimacy of Israel has some reason for singling out one country for special treatment. What's your Christy? Why are you concerned about the legitimacy of no other state than the Jewish state?"
We are discussing Israel, not other states.
"Singling out one state and people for your attacks from all the nations of the earth, and then claiming you have no animus against them is neither reasonable nor credible. Why should anyone consider any of your other opinions any more reasonable than that one?"
I can't get my head around that logic. Your denial and twisted use of words go's to new lengths my friend.
"Yet you support Hamas, which is a fundamentalist religious movement based on the Koran. And the basis of their refusal to live in peace with their neighbors. No condemnations from you about that. "
Where did I say I support Hamas? I UNDERSTAND Hamas.
"You live in a country thick with churches and each one of them thick with copies of the Gospel. No fury from you about that either."
You really do verge on the retarded sometimes. My issue is with Zionism as a political belief based on religious faith. I have no problem with individuals expressing their faith. Can you claim the same when you support a state that destorys holy sites? Are you a theocrat?
"Do you start to see why I don't believe your claims of fair-mindedness?"
Can you start to see why nobody likes you?
"The "common human decency applied to all humans" seems to consist of your changing the subject whenever rocket attacks on Jewish homes and schools is brought up.
It seems to me that it is you who are rejecting common human decency."
You haven't answered the question. You dragged out a wild and emotional response based on your preconceptions. I don't know how someone can live in complete denial. You are even beginning to deny what is typed in front of you.
"The IDF and IAF are doing what they can to minimize civilian casualties but they are going to do whatever is necessary to suppress the rocket fire."
Funnily I, or virtually nobody outside the US or Israel believes that. Funny how everyone else can be wrong and you can be right, eh?
I mean, I just wish I was half as intelligent and brilliant as you are.
"Perhaps Conor Cruise O'Brien was rude because he was brilliant and not one to suffer fools gladly?"
A bit like you? Brilliant?! Don't make me laugh!
A bit of advice, don't talk about things you know nothing about.
"Au contraire. Anyone who well understands history and the current situation is a Zionist. I am a Zionist. Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist Zionist. See, it's good to say Zionist. It means the Jews have a right to a homeland, same as the Irish."
Everyone has a right to a homeland. The consent of the host population is the key to that right however. Yet you cannot argue against this.
Let me predict your next post - 1) I will be called an anti-semite, or something along those lines, 2) My very ability to make a post will be brought into disrepute, 3) You will make yet another embaressing and self-indulging claim to superior expertise, which most people laugh at whole-heartedly.
I have to admit, while you may be incapable of answering a direct question, you are a good example of a deluded old man believing he is actually clever. Its like a textbook to children - never turn out like him!
In which we teach Christy a new word -- 'subtext'.
ReplyDeleteChristy writes --
"clearly you don't know what you are talking about" [referring to the climate of political correctness that made the legislator-author-academician Conor Cruise O'Brien an outsider in Ireland]
Since Christy doesn't actually say anything in rebuttal, the subtext is he admits the charge.
Christy writes --
[In response to inquiry why he and his ilk single out only Israel to deny her legitimacy, right to exist, right to defend herself, and so on]
"We are discussing Israel, not other states."
Since Christy gives no reason he can admit to, the subtext is that his obsession with Israel is bigotry.
Christy writes --
[In response to a remark that singling out one nation and people for attacks, then denying any animus against that nation and people is neither reasonable nor credible]
"I can't get my head around that logic."
Again Christy has no reply except to say that he can't understand the obvious. The subtext is that he can't understand it because he refuses to.
Christy writes --
"Where did I say I support Hamas? I UNDERSTAND Hamas"
I understand Hamas too. Everyone does. The subtext is that Christy sympathizes with Hamas, shares their animosity and bigotry toward the Jewish state, sympathizes with their unapologetic violence against their neighbors.
Christy writes --
[In response to an inquiry about why the only religion based on ancient texts that he objects to seems to be Judaism] "You really do verge on the retarded sometimes. My issue is with Zionism as a political belief based on religious faith."
The subtext here is that Christy has not noticed that there are two Irelands, one north and one south. And that the division may have something to do with religion.
Christy writes --
"Can you claim the same when you support a state that destorys holy sites? Are you a theocrat?"
The subtext here is that Christy has not visited the Tomb of Rachel in Judea. Wait, he can't. The Palestinians destroyed it utterly within days of their being given land for peace. It was under the Oslo Accords in which each side agreed to respect the holy places of the other. Maybe Christy's Palestinian friends thought there were rockets stored there?
The subtext of his fondness for Hamas is that Christy likes some theocrats but not others.
Christy writes --
[In response to an inquiry whether he does not begin to see why one does not believe his claims to fair-mindedness]"Can you start to see why nobody likes you?"
The subtext, since Christy makes no reply to the question, is that he does indeed see that he is not fair-minded.
Christy writes --
[In response to a query about whether his concern for 'common decency to all humans' does not somehow omit any interest of Jews living (and dying) under rocket bombardment from Gaza] "You haven't answered the question. You dragged out a wild and emotional response based on your preconceptions. I don't know how someone can live in complete denial. You are even beginning to deny what is typed in front of you."
The subtext of Christy's refusal to consider the rocket barrage from Gaza is that he can't. In denial about the bombardment by 11,000 rockets that started this war, he is obliged to accuse others of denial.
Christy writes --
[In response to a remark about the brilliance of the late Conor Cruise O'Brien] "A bit like you? Brilliant?! Don't make me laugh!"
Since I referred to Conor Cruise O'Brien and not myself, the subtext is that we start to see a hint of a sense of inferiority. Not uncommon among haters.
Christy writes --
"A bit of advice, don't talk about things you know nothing about."
From the man who considers reading a book to be showing off....
Christy writes --
"The consent of the host population is the key to that right however. Yet you cannot argue against this."
Actually I can. If a vote had been taken in 1850, every last Irishman would have been run out of the United States. The Irish were enormously unpopular here. For example, in the former bible of the Left, 'Walden', even the enlightened Henry David Thoreau writes with undisguised contempt for the Irish.
When African-Americans moved from the South to northern cities, they were met with uniform hostility. No one wanted them around. Real estate values plummeted wherever they went, so great was the fervor to avoid them.
Even today the arrival of immigrants from Mexico is not met with unmixed glee.
But in this country it is our custom (usually) not to make the will of the worst xenophobes in society our law. We call this custom "liberty."
You only responded to one post of mine (Which admittedly is a massive improvement.) I am going to ignore the rest of your pretentious drivel and respond to the one comment that actually had a sense of reality to it.
ReplyDelete"Actually I can. If a vote had been taken in 1850, every last Irishman would have been run out of the United States. The Irish were enormously unpopular here. For example, in the former bible of the Left, 'Walden', even the enlightened Henry David Thoreau writes with undisguised contempt for the Irish.
When African-Americans moved from the South to northern cities, they were met with uniform hostility. No one wanted them around. Real estate values plummeted wherever they went, so great was the fervor to avoid them.
Even today the arrival of immigrants from Mexico is not met with unmixed glee.
But in this country it is our custom (usually) not to make the will of the worst xenophobes in society our law. We call this custom "liberty.""
You seem to misunderstand the concept of consent.
In the formation of a nation state, do the minority (Which is what the Zionist movement in Israel was at the time) have a right to over-rule the rights of a majority?
The immigration waves you speak of had the consent of the governments, via the representatives of the people, and their elected President. There is enough legitimacy right there for the immigration waves in any democratic Republic.
You seem to ignore that the most important aspect of modern democracy is that 'mob rule', or should I say, 'the power of the people' is essentially limitied, just as the power of the government is essentially limited by the people. Therefore, using your definition of consent, there never would have been immigration of any time. My issue is with the consent of the host population and their natural rights violations that have been superseded by foreigners who came to their homeland in droves.
On a side-note --> Even if Conor Cruise O' Brien isn't the greatest academic of all time, he's 20 times the intellect you are.
While O'Brien had the rudeness, he also had the smarts. You just seem to have the rudeness.
"From the man who considers reading a book to be showing off...."
ReplyDeleteNo, you don't understand me there Jack. I think when YOU read a book you do it to show off.
Really you haven't sold yourself very well in this debate. You not shown any real insights or used any 'talking points' other than the usual Zionist claptrap - the kind of people who will defend Israel while they nuke the antarctic to speed up global warming so as to sink Gaza underneath the sea - No, you pose well as a pseudo-intellectual for a time, but after actually dealing with you it becomes clear what you are. A snob. A snob doesn't read books to enjoy. He read's books so people know he read's them.
Christy, the next comment you make containing personal abuse will be deleted, as will all subsequent comments from you.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry I offended you Jack. Maybe you shouldn't accuse the Irish of being religious fools, semi educated, or living in a hostile environment?
ReplyDeleteOr for that matter, you shouldn't accuse people you don't know of anti-semitism because of their political beliefs?