Would you trust this person to babysit your children?

Currently babysitting and reading Goliath by @MaxBlumenthal in a house that owns a SodaStream. Hoping the parents still pay me.
— Mariah (@mdizzle928) April 26, 2014

Analysis: 

This part of the message

"Currently babysitting and reading Goliath by @MaxBlumenthal in a house that owns a SodaStream."

 is OK, as far as facts are described with a certain wryness about the incongruity between reading Max Blumenthal's anti-Israel, BDSist book and a SodaStream gadget (a wonderful, soda making kitchen device manufactured at a factory that is located in the nominal part of what is generally termed the "occupied territories" and the source of much quarreling for the Barking Left).

This part of the message

"Hoping the parents still pay me."

is not OK. Not only is it not OK factually; it is not OK because the twittering Maria is extrapolating venality from the mere fact of owning a Soda Stream gadget. She is suggesting that anyone who owns a Soda Stream gadget (that is an Israeli product) is automatically suspected not only of being unsympathetic to Palestinian suffering (an irredeemable sin as far as our sweet and gentle Maria is concerned), but also, of being tight-fisted and dishonest*. People who use SodaStream, implies Maria, are likely to hire a babysitter and at the end of her stint defraud her of her hard-earned payment.

If you hired a babysitter to look after your little children while you were away from home, would you trust such a person with your children's safety? If you knew what she was thinking and even declaratively saying behind your back, would you hire her again? If you had an inkling of the hallucinatory hostility she was radiating towards you, on her  twitter account to her like minded friends, would you allow her near your kids, any time??

There is a silver lining to this unpleasant story: Maria is a fan of Max Blumenthal. That he has fans who are this juvenile, malicious and stupid is all we really need to know about him.



_________

* If I wanted to be really mean and uncharitable towards Maria, I would extrapolate from her mean-spirited, totally gratuitous,  message that she was suggesting that the people she was babysitting for were likely to be what antisemites say Jews are like: miserly and dishonest. But I won't do that. I'll give her a little wriggle room here. She is merely silly, giddy and patently ignorant.

The conflict explained

 (Alan Johnson, BICOM).

"Israel has resolved to share the [red] sliver of land with the Palestinians but only on terms that guarantee there still is a [red] sliver of land into the future, (so, it seeks assurances it can trust on recognition and security).

The Palestinians want part of the [red] sliver today on terms that allow all the land to become [green] in the future (so, it will not recognise Israel as a Jewish homeland, will not compromise on "right of return", and will not say an agreement would be the "end of claims").

 One side seeks a two states for two peoples solution, while one side - now including Hamas and PIJ - seeks the two-stage solution to an all-red map.

The rest is just detail."

_____________

The map is an attempt (alas, often futile) to visualize the actual asymmetry between Palestinians and Israelis. Not the fairy tale of Israel/Goliath so beloved of the Barking Left vis a vis the Palestinian David. It actually explains why Ben Gurion, in 1937, agreed to Peel's partitioning proposal, though it gave Israel a fraction of what Zionism had dreamed about and been promised. He agreed because the Jewish dream of a state of their own and the emergency of Jewish needs at the time could only be realized through this radical compromise. Nations, suffering nations, that dream of states of their own, do not quibble over minor, immaterial details. If they have a dream, they seize the day, the chance of statehood and independence.

To cut a long story short, it is hard to believe that a people who suffer as much as the Palestinians claim to be suffering, will not make a deal to get their state. They are in no rush and not likely to be in any rush, because of the green part of the map.

The Aristocratic Refugees

In its simple form, aristocracy is a privileged class of people, for whom the rules, laws and duties of  commoners, or just people from other classes, do not apply. I'm using the term here metaphorically (and not sneeringly), well aware that Palestinian refugees in Arab countries are privileged in being kept in this abnormal multigenerational refugee-ness, in a perpetual state of in-between, deprivation, and limbo, by cynical Arab rulers and regimes for their own purposes. The Western Rancid Far-left, collaborates with these regimes in perpetuating the "aristocratic" concept of Palestinian refugees, again, for its own political aims and ideological aspirations. Make no mistake, human rights does not figure into their calculation.

Link here: 

I de siste hundre årene har verden opplevd mange store flyktningetragedier.  På grunn av krig eller naturkatastrofer måtte mange millioner mennesker flykte fra hjemmene sine og bosette seg i andre land.  De fleste av disse flyktningene kunne aldri komme tilbake til sin opprinnelsessted.  Men det er EN flyktninggruppe som stiller seg i en særstilling – palestinerne.

(Google translation):

 In the last hundred years, the world has experienced many large refugee No rage values. Because of war or natural disasters had many million people flee their homes and settle in other countries. Most of these refugees could not return to their place of origin. But there is a group of refugees who place themselves in a unique position - the Palestinians.

Rules of Fair Discussion

Cass Sunstein  on the best way to interact with opponents:

The antonym of respect is disdain or (better) contempt; the antonym of charity is selfishness or (better) stinginess. It is much worse to be disrespectful than to be uncharitable. Politicians who show respect--Senator McCain is a good example--tend not to attack the competence, the motivations, or the defining commitments of those who disagree with him. Politicians who show charity as well as respect--Senator Obama is a rare example--tend to put opposing arguments in the best possible form, to praise the motivations of those who offer such arguments, and to seek proposals that specifically accept the defining commitments of all sides.