Comments:

@ TNR About the Christian Right and all that Page 2

@ TNR: Mormonism and Judaism: Hope

@TNR: Western civilization threatened by Iranian nukes
P. 2 - "Under the bus"

P. 3 -
p. 4
p. 5 The meltdown
"
P. 8 :

"Evil, unprincipled, inveterate liar. The single worst human being I have ever encountered. "

P. 9 :

"noga in Hebrew means Venus. But this noga is no Venus. She reminds me of the picture of Dorian gray in his last days.

If you are a survivor of the Holocaust, you sound like one of those experiments of Mengele.

You are very vile, arrogant, insulting, and low class.

Nebeile, JAP, JIP."

@ TNR: No trust

"the political risk of questioning him publicly is now too great."

"The best in people the worst in people"

Irony and Simply Jews

@ TNR: Booooks

@TNR: On not trusting Obama's cooings to AIPAC

page 2

page 3

Page 4

page 5

@TNR: To Pollard or not to Pollard: Sometimes TNR discussion threads bear an uncanny resemblance to Mos Eisley (a "wretched hive of scum and villainy.")

The ethical president Page 4

page 5

A Jane Austen Valentine

Austen's love resolutions in descending order of passion:

Anne and Frederick:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you."

Elizabeth and Darcy:

" Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.''

Mr. Knightly and Emma:

"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.--You hear nothing but truth from me. --I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.--Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them."

Elinor and Edward:

"How soon he had walked himself into the proper resolution, however, how soon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told. This only need be said;- that when they all sat down to table at four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his lady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous profession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one of the happiest of men."

Catherine and Henry:

"... but his first purpose was to explain himself, and before they reached Mr. Allen's grounds he had done it so well that Catherine did not think it could ever be repeated too often. She was assured of his affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own."

Fanny and Edmund:

"Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them. Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well—or a great deal better; whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles, and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people.—I only entreat every body to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire."

Comments trail for the week of Feb. 11

@ Simply Jews: Bombings at Thailand

@ TNR: Leon Wieseltier's call for action in Syria

@ TNR: The disappointment with Libya's revolution

When the boycotters are boycotted

all the demons are out dancing ...

The following is (an unauthorized) translation of a part in a recent article by Ben Dror Yemini. It concerns the question of boycotts and what seems to be a double standard in certain Israeli media when it comes to upholding the principle of Freedom of Speech:

"Mohammad Bakri, the man who manufactured and keeps distributing a blood libel against Israel, called “Jenin, Jenin”, was invited two years ago to present one of his films at the Israel Film Festival in Paris. The festival was supported by the Israeli embassy in France, that is, by the Foreign Office. Culture Minister Limor Livnat made a speech on the occasion. Many of the invited artists were not Likud supporters. We are talking Ram Levi, Ronit Alkavetz, Benny Torati, Sekander Copti, Ari Fullman, Eiran Rickles, Yossi Sidar and others. Some of them are actually members of the anti-Zionist camp. But Israel, true to her genuine democratic ethos, does not snub her maligners. They are still her children.

Charlie Zerihan, the Festival organizer, told me this week in Paris that Bakri was supposed to arrive but at the last minute he demanded an extra flight ticket. This somewhat strange request was rejected and the man did not arrive. And then, on the eve of the opening of the Festival, Bakri became one of the initiators of the call to boycott the event. The pretext given was the participation of Culture Minister Livnat. The public call contained all the usual hackneyed arguments about the refusal to be part of the Zionist propaganda, the occupation and Apartheid state apparatus bla bla bla. Interesting, since the Bakri film slated to be screened was about the Nakba, from Bakri’s point of view. So let’s be accurate about it: the State of Israel generously finances the Palestinian propaganda machine. Bakri’s response? ‘"The whole story is manufactured and I have no comment”.

Let’s move to Tel Aviv. The extra-parliamentary group “Im Tirtzu” demanded that a play put on by “Tzavta” be banned because Mohammad Bakri participates in it. The Culture Minister permitted herself to express a critical view about Bakri*. The demand to ban the play elicited angry reactions, against Livnat as well, even though she said not one word in favour of the ban.

“Tzavta”’s general manager, Moshe Tene, clarified that we need to make a clear distinction between the criticism of “Jenin, Jenin” and the actor Bakri. This is a correct distinction. Except that this same Tene, according to the Uri Heitner’s blog, clarified in the past about “Tzavta”: “Here no Right wing people or settlers will ever find a place to congregate. Never. I will them the date is already taken”. This is our civilized and enlightened world. Against the boycotting of Bakri. For the boycotting of Naomi Shemer. As Heitner reminds us.

Let’s return to Paris. Bakri was not alone in his opposition. Across from the Festival location, a wild demonstration by scary Islamists was taking place. Some of the rioters managed to invade the building. They did not protest the occupation. Or human rights. This was a gang of bloodthirsty antisemites and racists who would have liked to carry out the massacre themselves. Bakri was not one of them. His blood libel against Israel, however, enthused them well. But do not worry. Next time he is invited, at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer, he will ask for an extra ticket.

To Bakri’s credit let it be said that even five extra first-class tickets would not have prevented his call for boycotting the Festival. Because if there is one thing he and his cohorts excel in, it is spitting into the same well from which they drink.

Nonsense, Ochovsky style

And still on the same subject. Gal Ochovsky, on his television show, conducted a terrible racist interview with Ronen Shoval from “Im Tirtzu”.** “You are such an Ashkenazi , he told him “with blue eyes”. And that really is wrong that this young man with his Aryan looks should behave like the barbarians and the Feiglins. In the mind of the enlightened Ochovsky in order to be a dangerous racist you need to be dark skinned, dark-eyed. Though, in fact, Feiglin has blue eyes, too. This won’t do any good. Ochovsky has solid opinions about blond blue-eyed people. For him they are über alles and that was just for starters. There was no interview there, only an unleashed fulmination, cringing support for and self-ingratiating to Bakri, the great actor, and analogizing “Im Tirtzu” to McCarthyism and the benighted thirties. So said the man who loves the Aryan look.

The problem does not spring from Ochovsky’s opinions. The problem is his shallowness. It was Bakri who called for a boycott against Israeli culture, and not just at the Paris Festival. Is there a chance that Ochovsky would turn Bakri into a Nazi or a McCarthyite? Not bloody likely. Ochovsky was one of those who aligned himself with the boycotting of Hall of Culture at Ariel. So there. He is for boycotts but will tag as Nazis ("The thirties”) those who call for boycotting Bakri.

It is all right for Ochovsky to have his own television program in which he sprays his agenda. Freedom of Speech and all that. How come, though, that there is not a similar television program which promotes the antithesis to Ochovsky?"

__________

(Additional explanations provided by CC)

* "They have appealed to a person they see as their ally, Culture Minister Limor Livnat, and she has replied, as can be expected of a culture minister in a democratic society, that "the ministry, and of course the minister, cannot intervene in the artistic choices of cultural organizations supported by the ministry, even if they are controversial." However, she also said that "the ministry would expect the Tzavta administration to have exercised further independent judgment before putting on a production starring a person whose film was described by Supreme Court justices as slanderous calumny aimed at distorting reality in order to defame IDF fighters and depict them as war criminals."(Source)

** The interview is in Hebrew. The interviewer started the interview by expressing surprise that such a fair, blue eyed Ashkenazi lad, from a good home, would be a member at Im Tirtzu. Later on he yells at him that his call on Tzavta to withhold the stage from Bakri reminds us of the "thirties" in Germany. He takes it somewhat back later on, but then he refers to the interviewee as a monster, a McCarhtyite, etc etc.