"Civilization is not self-supporting. It is artificial. If you are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization -- you are done." (Ortega y Gasset)
Monday, August 18, 2008
Comment trail for the Monday: There are days when I just can't be bothered with writing full posts. That's when the comment trail is handy. To remind those of you who are interested that I'm still very much kicking, though out of sorts*, sort of:
(The YusufIbn Ibrahim character reminded me of the good old day on the Charlie Rose message boards, when posters created different personas under different monikers and even went as far as having conversations with themselves.)
(* I don't know why, but renovations at the Contentious Centrist's household bring with them a period of mayhem and unbelievable angst. I have come to the conclusion that in our daily exertions, only a few crises surpass the stress of: 1. relocation; 2. renovation. I don't remember being this despondent even during the days preceding a c-section date with my obstetrician...)
For reasons which have everything to do with me and mine, I'm still in a drought season. There is nothing like an overwhelming source of worry and anxiety to dry up one's ability to write and drain one of any motivation to take the trouble. However, I can still respond so here is a comment trail for this Tuesday:
If anyone takes the trouble of actually looking up my comments in any of these trails, and responding to them in some other site, they should at the very least make sure they represent my comments accurately and honestly. One poster on some message board which I will not deign to define here and now has quoted me as saying:
"'Switzerland’s referendum vote to ban minarets is needlessly xenophobic but it does not infringe the religious liberty of Swiss Muslims. Minarets remain emblematic of mosques in the Muslim heartlands but there is no theological reason why houses of worship in the West have to incorporate such towers...'"
whereas this is in effect an excerpt from what Taj Hargey - chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford - said in an article in the Times.
I wonder how much mischief has been caused by this sort of sloppy reading and comprehension, eliciting more sloppy and irresponsible reactions. Why bother to read if one is not prepared to actually r-e-a-d what is written, in plain view?
This is a fine example of Hitchens’ periodical anti-Jewish belch. He has to keep re-establishing his credentials as a Saidian so he occasionally finds these little niches of opportunity to mock Jews for their “tribal backwardness”, which is of course an established truth universally acknowledged.
The Great Intelligence Scam, at Michael Ledeen's blog: About the latest CIA big story that "Iran unilaterally and secretly suspended its covert nuclear weapons program back in 2003, and hasn’t resumed it to date."
I had the same sceptical reaction. I also do not like the coincidence of this revelation coming so soon upon the heels of the Annapolis fiasco in which it was made clear by Condoleeza Rice that the administration had more or less decided to throw Israel to the dogs. How else can we interpret her snivelling appeasement of Arab sensibilities by claiming her sympathy for poor segregated Palestinians and forcing the Israeli delegation to use a side entrance in order not of offend the racist Saudis?
This looks like a concerted effort to minimize the Iranian nuclear threat even as the Bush administration gears up to force Israel into further humiliations and razor edge dangerous compromises.
As Optimus prime famously says: There is more to this than meets the eye... Where are Mearsheimer and Walt when we need them to uncover nefarious plots by dark underground Lobbies?
Comment 1: I have a question for dear Manolo. Why is he so tough on “the giant plastic coconuts” but Donatella, whose face seems as plasticated as a China doll’s minus the cuteness, is deemed “magnificent and odd and wonderful”?
Comment 2: Dear Manolo: I can see now that I was precipitous in my impression and I apologize. Still I do not understand why a woman who practically dwells in the land of beauty and grace, where elegance reigns supreme, would do this to herself. She speaks of her preference for blond because it symbolizes, for her, freshness and innocence. Yet here she is, looking so totally articifical, old and practically over-burnt, the very opposite of her beauty ideal. Beautiful women, when they grow older, they grieve for their beauty for a while but then they make peace with the demands that age makes. These are the women who continue to be beautiful (Shirley Maclaine comes to mind). They manage to stare down age by keeping a version of older age freshness and innocence. But Donatella, she gave up on her two ideals when she tried to impose them on herself.
Where the tenor and entrenched antisemitic memes by certain posters alerted me to a certain possible inter-connection there, reminiscent of the Sci-FiBorg who are "a cybernetically enhanced humanoid drones... organised as an inter-connected collective with a hive mind, inhabiting a vast region of space with many planets and ships, and sophisticated technology. They operate towards one single minded purpose: to add the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species to their own, in pursuit of perfection. This is achieved through forced assimilation, a process which transforms individuals and technology into Borg.."
Comment 1: Arabian19's Ashkenazi-Zionist meme should alert readers here that he is working for Martillo's propaganda machine. They are like the Borg, on Star Trek
Comment 2: Arabian17: Let's just say the fluctuations in your command of the English language and your choice of well-known antisemitic tropes highly favoured by Martillo do not sustain your credibility as an authentic voice
Comment 3: It is clear from your opinions that details are hardly something you concern yourself with, Arabian 19. AS, for example, that 80% of Israel's Jews are ashkenazi. This is Martillo's land of make belief. Your disdain for the details of recorded truth as well as repetition of his favourite meme (Ashkenazi, Zionist blablabla) indicate that you two are feeding from the same great central mind. You can have a different point of view, but you can't advance lies and myths and expect to be taken as a reliable interlocutor. There are some standards to observe in a discussion. Lies do not make that standard.
"while they want to be able to utter any calumny against the Jewish state and suffer no recriminations for their speech, they view any speech from those challenging their views to be oppressive, stifling, unreasonable, and, in the popular term used by those who frequently utter second-rate ideas, “chilling.”
This tactic can never be repeated enough, or overstated. Its logic, based on populist appeal to martyrological pathos, is best lampooned in Monty Python's greatest work: Life of Brian:
"JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry."
"the defeat of the Israeli Army (IDF) by Hezbollah"
Was there a defeat? According to whom, Che Nassralah?
This is such a load of BS. It demonstrates yet again, how the indecent Left has internalized the notion of Arab triumphalist humiliation to the point where they are indistinguishable from Hezbollah or Hamas, with their declarative of agenda of genocide and destruction. Thus, Jewish life, Jewish children, Jewish history, the Holocaust, are all erased from the matrix of the noble fight against "anti imperialism". Such inconvenient truths must be ignored, reversed, violently-gutted, if one is to sustain one's fragile edifice of redemptive radicalism in the service of some unfathomable mega-narcissism. If it takes wiping out the remnants of the Jews, what of it? Some eggs must be broken in order to make omelette, right? So what if the proposed omelette tastes like shit, if we judge from its historical precedents?
"...the naive, the falsely naive, and the downright evil blur categories in support of their ideological prejudices and christen the killer of innocents a “resistance fighter,[-]
The business of terrorists, after all, is to terrorize—so said Lenin, an uncontested master in the field. The ultimate refinement lies in the inversion of responsibility. Operating instructions: I take hostages, I cut off their heads, I show them on video; those who beg for mercy must address themselves to their governments, who alone are to blame for my crimes: my hubris is their problem. The less the terrorist’s restraint, the more he causes fear and the sooner you will yield in tears, or so he believes.""A better definition of terrorism is a deliberate attack by armed men on unarmed civilians. Terrorism is aggression against civilians as civilians, inevitably taken by surprise and defenceless. Whether the hostage-takers and killers of innocents are in uniform or not, or what kind of weapons they use—whether bombs or blades—does not change anything; neither does the fact that they may appeal to sublime ideals. The only thing that counts is the intention to wipe out random victims. The systematic resort to the car bomb, to suicide attacks, randomly killing as many passers-by as possible, defines a specific style of engagement."
There is such a phenomenon as "Hillary derangement syndrome", too:
"Horowitz observes that there is an “inexhaustible fertile market of Clinton hostility,” but that “the search for a unifying theory of what drives Hillary’s most fanatical opponents is a futile one.” The reason is that nothing drives it; it is that most sought-after thing, a self-replenishing, perpetual-energy machine. The closest analogy is to anti-Semitism. But before you hit the comment button, I don’t mean that the two are alike either in their significance or in the damage they do. It’s just that they both feed on air and flourish independently of anything external to their obsessions. Anti-Semitism doesn’t need Jews and anti-Hillaryism doesn’t need Hillary, except as a figment of its collective imagination. However this campaign turns out"
I understand the point of this post, Mick, but my attention was grabbed by these phrases which are like Freudian slips that offer a glimpse into the subsconscious of a culture (please forgive me for mentioning the F-word whom you despise:-)):
“They checked that I had nothing with me and threw me in the cell with all the others.”
"after some strings were pulled, Yara was out of jail."
She was thrown in a cell "WITH ALL THE OTHERS". And then "SOME STRINGS WERE PULLED". One wonders how many of those "others" had someone close to them who could also "pull strings" on their behalf.
And then this: "whose mother teaches Qur’an recitation to children."
Not teaching the Quran (to encourage thinking) but very properly "Quran recitation".
"He explained this accident by saying that he had been intellectually lazy and had failed to take sufficient care to substantiate his sources."
This is a much more interesting admission than whether or not he can be labeled bona-fide antisemite. A person who so openly and easily admits to laxity and intellectual laziness; how can anyone trust anything anywhere or whatever he has to say? Why would any movement want such a person to speak in its name or represent its cause? And what worth is a cause that such are its representatives?
Someone in the Engage Comments dropped this response:
Why is it that any post that goes up on Engage - Noga knows better? And always so quickly! On this occasion I think Noga is wrong. Anybody can make a mistake. Anybody can fail to check a source. But the point here is not that he's made a mistake and that making a mistake makes you worthless. The point is that the form of the mistake is connected to the politics.
It's not a simple mistake. A person like John Wight, who made a career out of his pro-Palestinian activism, claims to be knowledgeable and credible when he brings in history to sustain his various claims and prescriptions. But this proves that his alleged reliable sources are nothing of the kind. This should really erode whatever credibility he has when he purports to push for academic violence against Israel. It is much more important to the maintenance of genuine scholarship and academic integrity, both verifiable and even quantifiable values, to expose this failure than to label him antisemite, which is a crime of the heart, not of the mind.
"Propaganda" seems like thin gruel compared with this ham-handed mass-marketing of suffering. Hitchens called it more appropriately in one of his recent articles the "auctioning of pity" which more or less hits upon the cyncism of both the manufacturers of these images and their disseminators.
My comment: I don't think you fully appreciate the genius of this cartoon. It is a spoof on the myth that vampires are terrified of crosses. Netanyahu is depicted as a vampire while "Mother Palestine" is the virtuous Christian, who chases away the blood sucker with her version of the cross: the key.
Latuff, who won a prize in a contest of caricatures mocking the Holocaust, would have that kind of mindset. The Holocaust could happen because people had been conditioned to accept cruelty to Jews by centuries long indoctrination in the myth of the blooducking Jew, the anti-Christ Jew and what not. Latuff is one cog in the vast anti-Israel propaganda machine which works hard at making people think of Israelis (actually, Jews) in a certain way. He is doing his faithful part in building up for a second Holocaust, by dehumanizing and demonizing Israelis.
And it is little wonder that you, who spoke of the Hebron "massacre" would find this kind of humour appealing.
______
BTW, it is also a misreading of the vampire myth. Because obviously Israelis are not going anyway no matter how many keys are thrust at them. It is more of a wishful thinking rather than any realistic projection of the status quo.
Certainly this kind of cartoon and your admiration for it are unlikely to persuade Israelis that they can trust their Palestinian Arab neighbors to make genuine peace
He is doing his faithful part in building up for a second Holocaust
Oh one could only wish hope and dream!
________
UNclear Israel? Buj-Al Arab opines about a resolution that urges Israel to put all its atomic sites under UN inspection and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"So, fanatic racist Israel can have nuclear weapons (and not much nuclear power) and (equally?) fanatic Iran is not allowed to have any of the above? Perhaps it's worth noting that Israel is Jewish and Iran is Muslim."
What I found interesting is the blogger's pathological inability to deal with historical realities. Check it out:
_______ Remembering the Hebron Massacre: The blogger Solomon2 reminds readers of this event, points to the way an Arab blogger dismisses it, and asks:
"Would Israel even have to exist as a separate Jewish State if events like the Hebron Massacre hadn't demonstrated the failure of Arabs to stand for justice within their communities, so that if Jews were to live in their internationally-endorsed homeland, they would have to fight to establish justice themselves? And is this not similar to the struggles other minority population in the middle east have today?" My comment:
FWIW, I think Buj is a decent enough fellow who has a hard time dealing with a different version to truth than the one he was brought up upon. I do not read Arabic so I rely on Arab sources written in English or translations to learn about Muslim and Arab attitudes. Al-Jazeera is one such source. Al-Ahram is another. What I have noted in these two media outlets is the inability to differentiate between editorializing and facts, between inclination and opinion, between belief and recorded, verifiable history. Their reports overflow with sarcasm and hateful asides. I have been thinking there is little surprise that the much dreaded "Arab street" is simply simmering with anger and indignation against Israel, Jews and the West. Angry people do not think. When people are kept at a constant, low-level of anger and resentment all the time, they lose all capacity for self-reflection or self-criticism.
___________ The dark history of Hebron The blogger, somewhat subtly, re-writes the event of the Hebron massacre:
Israel's West Bank settlers are often religious nutters who claim a divine right to live anywhere in Biblical Israel. This is true of the Hebron settlers, but they also cite another justification for their presence in the town. Before the foundation of the state of Israel, Hebron also had a Jewish presence. In the British mandate period, increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine from those committed to political Zionism led to increasing tension. In 1929 in Hebron, many of the local Palestinians turned on their Jewish fellows.
Reading this one comes away with the impression that the only Jewish presence in Hebron was relatively recent and consisted of "Zionist nutters". Since there has been recorded Jewish presence in Hebron since the early 15th century, the question is what is there about the real, recorded history of the Jews of Hebron that is so threatening to the blogger's view of the I/P conflict?
Your account is seriously misleading. There has been recorded Jewish presence in Hebron since the early 15th century. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron#Ottoman_rule
Since the material is all too available through the google tool, one can only conclude that the author of this account is at best willfully ignorant.
___________ Witness in Palestine is a usual lachrymose account of Palestinian suffering, as compressed through the heated the heated imagination of the "witness". In her telling of the Hebron massacre she writes: "In 1929, some 30 Jews were brutally murdered by Palestinians who resented their growing presence in Hebron... the vast majority of Jews killed in the massacre were recent immigrants from Europe, because most of the native Hebron Jews were saved by their Muslim neighbors who hid them in their homes."
In my comment I corrected her about the number. There were 67 Jews who were massacred.
Surely a detail such as this would not have been all that hard to find out, would it? Why would she try to reduce the number of Jews killed in Hebron, I wonder?
"...examining how racists of both leftist and rightist varieties will vilify a person not because of what they say, but because of what they are called. Barack Hussein Obama. "
My comment:
Esther Delisle, who wrote a book about the legacy of Lionel-Groulx and antisemitism in Quebec, talked about how the idea of the invisibility of the Jew was a source of national paranoia during the thirties and forties. A Jew named Goldberg could change his name to Godbout and there would be no way of telling him apart from non-Jews.
Mordechai Richler had an ironic twist on this paranoia when he discussed Jews as being designated “an invisible minority”. “My people”, he used to say with some acerbity, “are anything but invisible”.
A stroll through the Arab street (continued from here)
@Dubai Jazz, the ornery music continues, again resorting to the talented caricaturist who won Achmadinejad's Holocaust-denial cartoon competition. Make no mistake, in some circles such an honour carries a lot of weight. This time the bilious and antisemitic cartoonist, who would not have felt out of place in the company of Julius Streicher makes a comment on the so-called "Apartheid Wall" which Israel has erected in order to separate the terrorists and various suicide bombers from their intended victims.
I left the following comment on Dubai Jazz's thread but, based on his past record of very little tolerance for Jews or others who do not quite share his views, the comment will in all probability be deleted:
____________
Here is the "obligatory Jew"* to provide some balance and facts:
"The barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism, including the suicide bombing attacks that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada;[4] The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier;[5]" (wiki)
The Berlin Wall was intended as a prison for East Germans, keeping them locked into the Soviet part of Germany. The Separation barrier is intended to keep terrorists from entering into Israel or the Israeli settlements it encircles.
It is indisputable that the presence of the fence (as well as the increased number of checkpoints) prevented many atrocities from taking place. It allowed a certain pacification of the population which in turn saved not only Israeli life but the life of Palestinians as well.
Most importantly, it is not an irremovable fixture. When (if) the Palestinians decide that they want their own statehood, and the final borders are negotiated, then the barrier can come down, a lot faster than it went up.
However, I'm sort of puzzled by this commiseration with Palestinians about their inability to reach their fields easily when I consider that a Syrian national of such high morals and international sensibilities like DJ would be so much more concerned about oppression and real apartheid in his own backyard:
"So how does Syria treat this minority?
Roughly 300,000 of them are denied citizenship thus denying them the right to education, employment, property ownership, and even marriage.
Nor are they allowed to speak, write or print their own language and their culture cannot be expressed openly.
Odd, isn’t it? Mind you, as everybody knows the Zionist Entity is much much worse. Palestinians have no access to education, cannot work, purchase property or get married. It even bans Palestinians outright from speaking, reading and writing Arabic.
Oh wait. I may be wrong here….
Stateless Kurds who try to leave the country for work risk torture and imprisonment.
To be honest, it reminds me of a two-tier political system in which one group in a country is denied the rights that another enjoys. Though I seem to have forgotten its name. Ap… App… Ah! Apartheid! That’s it!"
You guys make it so easy to knock you down. You simply are incapable in keeping the entrenched animus a little better restrained. This incontinent need to express the contempt for Jews which you have been and are being fed by your educators and your state media.
If not, please feel free to delete my comment.. otherwise, here is my reply to CC:
""The barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism, including the suicide bombing attacks that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada;[4] The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier;[5]" (wiki)
The Berlin Wall was intended as a prison for East Germans, keeping them locked into the Soviet part of Germany. The Separation barrier is intended to keep terrorists from entering into Israel or the Israeli settlements it encircles."
Well well.. The State of Israel was itself born as a terrorist state. No one supported it except the big powers of the UK and USA (the biggest colonialists in modern history). After all, Israel is better and cheaper than combined UK/USA military bases in various Arab countries.
One of the main issues with the apartheid wall is that it is seen as a land grab as it is mainly built on contested Palestinian lands. The fact that it stops suicide bombers is irrelevant if it's built on the wrong piece of land.
I could go on and on about how Israel has directly made life hell for Palestinians and Lebanese and Syrians during its occupation of their land. After all Israel controls everything (including cement!) in a land that doesn't belong to her (e.g. Gaza)!
However, I will write to you about the epitome of irony. The Jewish people have produced some of the most brilliant minds in the world in the last 200 years. You have consistently punched way above your weight in the arts, music, science, politics, etc (the list truly does go on and on). Look at the Nobel prize for instance.
With about 180 Jewish winners (out of 829 total). This makes about 20% of the Nobel Prize winners Jewish while Jews make about 0.25% of the world population!
To do some maths: 20% / 0.25% = x80! Thus Jews are about 80 times smarter than the rest of the world, on average!
So, with such a smart race, why are they so impotent in finding a solution towards a peaceful realization for their 2000 years of dreaming of a state?
Peace,
BuJ
***
Note the inability to address directly the argument I made in response to the argument made in the Latuff cartoon:
A blames B for stealing a loaf of bread.
B says he did not steal it but bought the bread and here is the recipt as proof.
A responds by saying: who cares that you have a receipt? Your father was a thief and besides, if you are so smart, why do you have to steal bread instead of making it?
The whole exchange may seem non-sequitur and irrelevant but it makes perfect sense, for those brought up on the tradition that irrational thinking is the only rational way to think.
Why are you so concerned about the sentiments of people who recommend that apostates should be executed? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Is Rose hinting that the man might be Jewish or have some favourable inclination towards Jews, and that this fact somehow has any bearing on what he is being put through?
The Inquisition used to persecute Mooriscos, for the same exact reason.
I have to wonder at what point does the tension between what is averred and what is practiced snaps? And what would be the result of such a breakage? An epiphany? Or a withdrawal into complete La La land?
________
UpdateII:
@ Buj al arab's blog, the blogger fumes at the British legal for failing to prosecute Tzippi Livni for "crimes against humanity". My comment:
Buj: I wonder why you put so much faith in the good judgment and moral righteousness of a country which only last week you assessed as declining into third-worldism. This Livni fiasco, in my humble opinion, is exactly one of the symptoms that characterises this decline in which UK legal system acts more like the legal system that can be found in Arab countries: clearly political, skewed and corrupt. If this were not so, one would wonder why LIvni deserves such attention when the UK fails to prosecute its own suspects, like Tony Blair's involvement in the Iraq war, or all the other heads of states who comprise the occupation forces in Afghanistan. I mean, why choose to focus on Israel first, when these other events took place earlier and are responsible for killing civilians in much much greater numbers than little Israel's defensive war has ever done or will do?
Can you answer this question?
Signed:
Obligatory Jew :)
I would also like to point to the illustration chosen by the worthy Buj for adorning his learned opinion: Livni as Hitler. It is a staple of the Arab street that every criticism involving Israel should be couched in Nazi terms. It is also a mark of great cognitive dissonance: The Arab street likes to believe that the Holocaust is a Zionist invention. If so then it makes sense to conclude that it never took place. Yet the choice tropes of Arab antisemitic discourse (which this post by Buj is one example, given his choice of illustration) is the swastika and Hilter. These symbols being deeply offensive to Jews and Israelis, Arab bloggers will use them. The question why they would choose to insult and pain Jews by symbols of an event that they claim never took place remains one of the usual enigmas; don't look for logic, historicity or proper perspective when you read or scrutinize Arab bloggers' premises. It's all about raging hormones, irrational leaps, distorted view of reality, and thundering lacunae.
And this is the kind of thinking Israeli politicians have to deal with, when they try to negotiate peace.
My latest comment, (posted on December 11 by the blogger). As can be expected, no answer will be forthcoming, which to me suggests a reluctance to entertain even the possibility that he and his ways might be wrong, or in error, or deliberately self-narcotizing by the fuzzy sentiments of comradeship, even if it comes at the expense of truth and justice:
“I have better things to do than engage in conversation with people who express no solidarity with me or my ideas.” Need more be said about your being a prisoner to dogmatic thinking? I notice you did not address my question about singling out the Israeli Jewish woman for your disapproval. What can you say, really? In a presentation that has “Fighting anti-Semitism” in its title, you then go on to attack a Jew for speaking up her mind and disagreeing with your one-sided support for a fascist organization which openly adulates Hitler and preaches the completion of the final solution. Your comments are addressed to those who understand automatically why an Israeli Jewish woman is singled out. This should cause just a stir of anxiety in any decent thinking person. Clearly Jews have no rights. It is futile to imagine that anything can induce you to dig a little into your beliefs in order to better understand what you are advocating and whom you are supporting. “Fighting for antisemitism” would have been a more honest title. AS for this: ” “gee, that sounds like a good description of the IDF’s destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure during the summer of 2006.” Note you own distortion of this definition. “Terrorism is aggression against civilians as civilians, inevitably taken by surprise and defenceless. ” It would take a real malign intent to contend that the Lebanese who were attacked, were attacked for no other reason than they were civilians, or that they were defenceless, or that they were taken by surprise. The civilians who lived on the Israel’s northern border were taken by surprise by the barrage of a 1000+ katiushas from within those “civilian” areas from across the UN ratified Blue line, an international border. But then, why allow a few easily verifiable facts interfere with your worldview and the way you choose to revise recent history? Absolutely there is a need to forget that Jews are human beings, too, if one is to continue one’s worshipping at the feet of one’s prophets. The Drink Soaked Trots:
(As Dubai Jazz tends not to tolerate my presence on his ultra pluralistic blog, here is the comment I dropped:
Your little piece of satire is quite a masterpiece of wit and humour, DJ. I think I get it: Israelis are idiots and bumbling wannabes, and all Israeli women are whores.
@ The New Republic: a discussion of the Walzer and Margalit's article ( parts of which I translated for the benefit of those interested posters) in which a case is attempted to be made that IDF soldiers were following morally-flawed rules of engagement during the Gaza war. I outline my critique of the weaknesses of this case as it is presented by the two intellectuals.
@ The Magnes Zionist: treats the same Michael Walzer and Avishai Margalit article, celebrating Walzer's condemnation as " carefully worded but uncompromising". I took issue with some of Mr. Haber's expressed positions, based on some peculiarly misleading interpretations of Hebrew slang terms and what not.
Sidebar:
I'm going to park here my latest comment to the Magnes Zionist until such time as it makes through his moderation. He has already banned one poster because he didn't like his line of thinking, so I get the impression that Mr. Haber is not too tolerant of people disputing his truths.
"Mr. Haber,
I’m sorry to belabour the point. I get the feeling that you get very impatient with posters who take issue with your so confidently-stated accounts.
I took your advice and googled the term "lech-le-azza". It took a few attempts at different transcripts to get a substantial number of results. Here is what one of them says:
"Faced with attacks from the Gaza Strip since the early 1950s, Israelis were cursing “Lech le’Aza” – literally “go to Gaza” and figuratively “go to hell” –
years before their conquest of the coastal strip where their sworn enemies lived in the largest numbers and worst conditions. Now, as Israel leaves the Strip after nearly four decades of strategic disorientation, Gaza is showing no signs of shedding its dubious distinction as hell’s synonym. Indeed, a vast majority of Israelis – including ones who would not part with its Jewish settlements – woke up this morning happily Gaza-less. To them, this part of the surgery they have just undergone feels less like an amputation and more like the removal of a tumor. Though this rule has had its exceptions, on the whole when Israelis heard “Gaza” what came to mind was hostility, fanaticism, violence and irredeemable destitution. The place author Amos Elon once described as “the Middle East’s
armpit” was where most years, most Israelis would not go unarmed, if at all.
It was the sprawling maze of makeshift alleys, shanty towns and open sewage channels that two generations of Israelis patrolled incessantly and recall traumatically. It was the place that a succession of Israeli administrations tried, and failed, to rehabilitate;"
So your characterization of this colloquialism as a "double entendre" (the etymology of which you neglected to mention in your original post, leaving the reader with the impression that "lech le-azza" was a malign invention of the average Israeli mind, meant to express utter contempt, disregard, and indifference to the life of Gazan Palestinians) is indeed closer to the linguistic meaning. However, you fail to identify properly the rationale of this abbreviated form of "Lech le-azazel", namely, that the misery of the place had less to do with it than the fact that since the early fifties Gaza was the place from which terrorists infiltrated into Israel, always leaving behind death and destruction.
The ill wish conveyed in this expletive has more or less the same function as "Go to hell". People tell each "go to hell" when they hope their enemy will go to a place in which they will feel very uncomfortable and maybe even their life will be endangered. “Lech le-azza” has less to do with Gazza than with the fate that awaits Israelis should they attempt the excursion without protection. _________________
@ Bob's: the thread on Hannah Arendt generated a long long comment exchange which I hesitate to call a discussion. By 'long long comment exchange" I mean a long thread with excruciatingly long comments left there by posters whose thought processes I cannot begin to fathom, and whose staunch loyalty to historical revisionisms would not shame even Holocaust denial aficionados. One needs to read it to believe it.
I think I'm suffering from a blogger's block. Even though I have a list of topics I want to blog about, I can't seem to collect enough patience and concentration to do so. I want to write about my impressions from my Israel visit, but as I said, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Here is my comment (which has been three-times deleted from the blog. Now my IP is banned there. Apparently, disagreement with the opinions of Indymedia is strictly forbidden):
“Having watched the video, I am certain that Tommy was abused and yelled at in what constituted, or should have, a breach of the peace,”
The Court of Appeal defined a breach of the peace as being ‘an act done or threatened to be done which either actually harms a person, or in his presence, his property, or is likely to cause such harm being done”
In what way was “‘Tommy” threatened or about to be threatened by the 75 year old Jewish professor who took voluble umbrage with the faulty merchandise “Tommy” was trying to sell?
“Tommy” on the other hand, would not let well enough alone. Here was his big chance to be a human rights hero, facing up to the fascist garda, so he kept filming him, yelling at him, and keeping him from filing his report. It was "Tommy", who fell foul of the Breach of peace rule and the garda had little choice but to arrest him. In fact, it seems to me, and I watched this video a few times, that "Tommy" was banking on provoking the policeman. If anyone at all was abused in this video it is clearly the policeman, who was prevented from carrying out his on the spot investigation.
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“I confess I do not know what Mr Man's point is above.”
Let me help you. "Tommy”, upon being confronted for his slanderous placard by the Jewish man, pretended that the man’s Jewishness was not important to him. In other words, “Tommy” believes he is only expressing legitimate criticism of Israeli policies when he says that Israeli soldiers murder Palestinian babies, and not his suppressed antisemitism. However, since the Jewish man disagreed with this view, “Tommy” was infuriated and his facade crumpled in a minute under the weight of his barely contained animosity. “Tommy” then proceeded to tell the Jew that he is a bad Jew, because the Jew does not agree with “Tommy”’s view of Israelis as child-killers. From then, as Mr. Man’s comment shows, “Tommy” had nowhere to go by downwards. For me, this clinches the matter:
“You are accepting at face value Jewish people that are abusing me.”
“Tommy” is not much of a human rights activist since no self-respecting human rights activist would ever make such a statement, which stands in full contradiction to how "Human rights” are fundamentally defined (In the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights”). Perhaps someone else here can provide another explanation as to what “Tommy” actually meant?
Perhaps “Tommy” who comes through like a sanctimonious, undereducated, hotheaded bully, does not know this simple and self-evident truth. Perhaps he has been misled to believe that the dictionary defines “Human rights” as exclusively “Palestinian and Irish rights”. Palestinian right to kill, try to kill, teach to kill, preach to kill, Israelis with impunity, and Irish rights to slander Jews with impunity.
Of course I do not expect this comment to survive your Stalinist censorship.
1. "The actions of Hamas to drop the Holocaust from its textbooks"
Reading this, again, delicate formulation, one might be excused for thinking that Hamas textbooks included coverage of this event but now Hamas decided to "drop" it from its textbooks.
The art of lying pleasantly.
Here is the real deal:
"Gaza's ruling Islamist movement Hamas has resisted suggestions that Palestinian children should be taught about the Holocaust in UN-run schools.
The head of its education committee in Gaza, Abdul Rahman el-Jamal, told the BBC that the Holocaust was a "big lie".
[..]
The UN, which runs most Gazan schools, recently asked local groups whether the Holocaust should be taught. "
Reading Mikeal's renditions of information, events and records, is like walking in a minefield; one needs to be extra careful to walk around entire blocks of information and historically-verifiable records in order to insist on believing anything he says.
2. "In my books, they have forfeited all claims to the right of self determination. They are thugs who wouldn't have a clue what to do with it."
I do not disagree with your pessimistic take on Palestinian rejectionism. However, I do not see how much longer will Israel be able to sustain its occupation and restraining of this people, in the current manner. It is better that Israel withdraws to a more defensible borderline. And this can only happen if Jewish settlements enclaved deep inside Palestinian land are removed and moved into areas within Israel. As long as there is presence there, there will be growth. And this growth worries me because it does not seem to have a future commensurate with the wishes of most Israelis. What the Palestinians then do with the Judenrein WB is completely up to them. Separation is an existential necessity for Israel. The ultra religious settlers who are there mostly because of their faith will simply have to accept that Israel's law will bind them, and that Israel's needs cannot be achieved in the Jewish heartland but somewhere nearby.
I think Israel should build two great, well designed cities, one in the Negev and one in the Galilee, to accommodate the displaced settlers, and anyone else who might want to live there.
"We're making a film on the blatant institutional discrimination against the residents of this Palestinian east-Jerusalem neighbourhood; authorities favour the Jewish settlers who are not hiding their desire to Judaise the neighbourhood, to void it of its Palestinian character."
I doubt the film makers have much concern for the history of this place and what "institutional discrimination against the residents of this.. neighbourhood" really achieved:
"In 1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen, fleeing the persecution [11] there. Initially, they lived in tents. Later, when the rainy season began, they moved into the ancient burial caves on the east side of the valley.[12] In 1884, the Yemenites moved into new stone houses on the eastern slope of the Kidron, north of the Arab village, built for them by a charity called Ezrat Niddahim. This settlement was called Kfar Hashiloach or the Yemenite Village. Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloach as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An 1891 photo shows the homes on an otherwise vacant stretch of hillside.[13] An early 20th century travel guide writes: In the “village of Silwan , east of Kidron … some of the fellah dwellings [are] old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews from Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub,”[14]
The Yemenite Jews left Silwan during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and non-Jewish Arabs moved into the vacated buildings. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Silwan was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.[15] It remained under the Jordanian rule until 1967, when Israel captured the Old City. Until then, the village had delegates in the Jerusalem City Council." (wiki)
@Dubai Jazz: here and here (my comments are deleted, but here is my latest, which I posted Sunday morning and which will likely be deleted:
"I know of many Americans who would laugh at the notion that American foreign policy in the last 20 years went out of its way to protect and save Muslims (sometimes from themselves!)."
Your pathology is showing.
The US did not go out of its way to protect and save Muslims. It went out of its way to save and protect persecuted, genocided human beings, who happened to be Muslims.
Can you get the difference?
I suspect that your main beef is with this fact, that the US does not make it a priority to save Muslims qua Muslims but rather adheres to the the notion that human rights are universal, whether you are a Muslim, a Jew, a Bahai, black, white, yellow, whatever.
You are speaking from 14 centuries of indoctrination in the regularized contempt of him who is not like myself. It's strange experience to read this kind of medieval mentality in colloquial, modern, everyday English. )
(Choice quote: "if you have any problems with the video, then go and bitch to your Jewish brothers")
Update (9 December):
The brave and upbeat blogger Buj predictably deleted my original comment. And is now careful to censor any other contribution. I left this comment which will naturally not be posted:
"go and bitch to your Jewish brothers that made this video."
This incontinent need to drag in Jews when you are out of reasonable answers seems like a favourite tactic in Arab lands. Why is that, I wonder? I don't suppose it would have anything to do with your educational institutions and media culture, would it?
Anyway, more to the point, here is the most recent piece of news coming from the Egypt side of Gaza:
Why do you think Egypt is complicit in the blockading of Gaza? What could possibly be its reason for doing so? And how come most (by no means all), Arabs are only "bitching" about the blockade when it is done on the Israeli side?
I mean, Gazans do not launch rockets in El-Arish, do they? There has not been a campaign of genocidal terrorism against Egyptian towns residing near the border with Gaza, was there? So why is Egypt blocking passage of goods and people into Gaza? These facts, these ideas, are considered as a breach of civilized conversation. Which makes you wonder what exactly is civilized discourse in intra-Arabconversation? What are the premises that underline what is acceptable to propose, notice, talk about in this milieu?
“a bigger shoah [note: “Shoah” is the Hebrew word referring to the Holocaust]”
Well, no.
Shoah means disaster. And it usually comes with its own special verb: “Le-hamit shoah”, to bring upon someone or something a disaster. Hebrew speakers use it to describe a nuclear disaster (shoah garinit), ecological disaster (“shoah svivatit”) among other usages. The Holocaust, when brought up to by Hebrew speakers is always, always, always referred to as “Ha-Shoah”, THE Shoah, to differentiate from any other “shoah” (disaster).
Seems to me that some commenters are determined to give this phrasing at this time a particularly sinister meaning. Why? Is it because you believe that Vilnai blurted out some secret plan, or wish, when all he did was use perfectly idiomatic Hebrew to warn Gazans that they should expect more disasters to befall upon them if they continue with their qassam violence directed at civilian targets? If so, what could account for such readiness to attribute the worst possible meaning to an Israeli politician’s use of such a phrase?
Update: Just checked the status of my comment and it is still "awaiting moderation", nearly 7 hours after being posted, though another poster's later comment has gone through. I conclude that "Tikkun" is pretty resistant to tikkun (Hebrew for "correction") when that correction is at odds with the author's rationale of "Blame Israel all the time, first, last and never re-adjust".
UpdateII: Two days after posting my comment, it made it through the moderation. This morning, April 10, between 8 a.m. when I checked, and now (10:21 a.m.), it was deemed that Tikkun readers could be trusted to read it. Miracles never end ...
Unfortunately I lost the comment I posted but the gist of it was that Mark Elf's omission is a thought crime, or the beginning of a thought crime. It does not make sense unless it was actually his subconscious admiration and love for Israel forced out into the open by the pressure of his amazing hypocrisy and maybe, unlikely as it may seem at first reading, even stupidity. It was in effect a Freudian slip of the tongue. Time for Elf to come out of the closet, perhaps?
Imprinting disgust through the choice of juxtaposed images, with an aim at creating a palpable feeling of aversion. Propagandists usually resort to this kind of methods to induce in their more hapless readers the “correct” understanding.
There is a kernel of truth in Gutman's diagnosis. The kind of virulent Muslim antisemitism that we see in Europe and elsewhere is indeed fed by Palestinian animosity towards "Zionists" whom they just happen to misname as:"Yahud" . As we can see in the following example, cited by the Israeli journalist Ben Dror Yemini:
"Two researchers, Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik of “Palestinian Media Watch”, published recently a book “Deception”, in which they chronicle the systematic incitement to hatred against Israel and Jews under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
Some of the evidence is already well-known, since the nineties when there was a joint Palestinian-Israeli committee for the prevention of incitement. The state of affairs, however, is going from bad to worse. Here is one example: The PA subsidizes a monthly youth magazine entitled “Zaizafoona” (name of a forest tree). Last summer that magazine carried a story written by a young girl about an imaginary encounter with four ideal historical personages: The first is the eighth century Persian mathematician Al-Khwaizmi (from whose name the terms "algorism" and "algorithm" are derived. The second admirable figure is the great Muslim conqueror Salahdin. The third is the Egyptian author and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfuz. From each encounter with the each figure, the young author learns something that contributes to forming her thinking and future endeavours. Then there is another historical figure in this roster of historical model figures: Hitler. And Hitler tells her: “I killed the Jews because I wanted everyone in the world to know that this is a destructive nation, that wreaks havoc and death upon the entire world”.*
The story is well integrated into other stories in that magazine that ostensibly speaks for values taken from the Human Rights discourse, and combined with Islamic, Arab and Palestinian pride. Until they get to Jews. Then it is another matter. Jews are evil beasts worthy of extermination. And in that context, Hitler morphs into a laudable figure. There is no editorial qualification accompanying the story, that would clarify to the reader about who Hitler was, or what Nazism is, or what the Holocaust was."
Such virulence spreads by contagion, easily, among Muslims and Arabs.Where the good ambassador is wrong is in his displacement of the cause on to the Israelis. It is the Palestinian side of the conflict and their many fans in Europe that stimulate this kind of antisemitism, that for some reason they pretend serves the "peace process", or whatever it is that the Palestinians are after.
As in the case of the notorious "come back to Israel" ad campaign, Goldberg lacks the acumen to zero in on the real story. In his silly analogies and interpretations he reminds me of the meticulous editor who goes to a great deal of trouble to separate the wheat from the chaff and then publishes the chaff.
___________ Update December 14: The following story provides another proof of how antisemitism works in Europe today. The person who makes these accusations about Jews is a Turkish Belgian"Human Rights" activist:
"These people [the Jews] can get away with anything because they have money and financial power, but they also exploit our guilt [meaning the Holocaust]."
It comes to a point that whenever I read "anti-racist" I brace myself for some antisemitic rant following.
The magazine’s director, Shareef Samhan, did not dispute the translation, though he said the girl was “accusing” Hitler and not praising him. He said he had not been aware of the text and noted that Unesco was not a central backer of the magazine.
Hrmmmm.
توجهت للباب الثاني كان ينتظرني هناك هتلر قلت: انت من قتل اليهود قال: نعم و لقد قتلتهم حتى تعرفوا انهم قوم يعيثون فسادا في الارض. وانا اطلب منك الصبر و التحمل لما تلقاه فلسطين من عذاب على ايديهم قلت: شكرا على النصيحة
which PMW have corrextly translated as
I turned to the next door; there Hitler awaited me. I said, ‘You’re the one who killed the Jews?’ He [Hitler] said: ‘Yes. I killed them so you would all know that they are a nation which spreads destruction all over the world. And what I ask of you is to be resilient and patient, concerning the suffering that Palestine is experiencing at their hands.’ I said [to Hitler]: ‘Thanks for the advice.’
This is a lovely story about a NYC public servant who composed a sentence for a subway placard using the semicolon aptly, dare one say perfectly.
Fine stewards of English, such as Lynne Truss and Louis Menand, praised this man. But Noam Chomsky did not. As you'll read in the story, he had something entirely different to say about it. His evil and inhuman coldness have never been better illustrated than by the few words he spoke when asked for his comment. I know that you comprehend the depth of his monstrousness. May you teach your children well.
First: I guess Chomsks was asked about the use of the semicolon as an expert on grammar but chose to reply as an "expert" on political science.
If he were so lucky as to be profiled by Norman Geras on his blog, to the question: "If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently?" he would answer: I would have studied political science and be Norman Finklestein.
And wouldn't we all be better off if he gained his reputation for his dubious Leftist theories rather than become a legend in linguistics which then gave him the momentum to stick his nose where it doesn't belong?
"Evan Solomon: I just talked to Noam Chomsky, and I asked him about what went wrong, and he said, 'I'll tell you what went wrong, and this is what Bernard Lewis won't tell you. What went wrong is that we had profound support of repressive regimes, we had British imperialism that destroyed national industries in Egypt, we had American support of repressive regimes, like the Shah, that is not a move towards modernization, but rather a repressive regime. And what it is, the trouble there that is we have created artificial boundaries throughout Africa and our imperialist impulses that created problems they can't solve. It's not their problem. How do you respond?
Bernard Lewis: Well, Mr. Chomsky's views on Middle Eastern history are about as reliable as my views on linguistics, but I'll let that pass."
Second: Bob is such a nice interlocutor. But really, Bob, I ask you, in what possible context could Chomskey's "I suppose Bush would claim it’s the effect of No Child Left Behind" be in any way relevant to a question about the perfect grammatical application of the semi-colon?
Whatever happened to his sense of fun, of humour?
“A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in front of patriotic passion”(Henry Louis Mencken)
Manufactured "delusion" and unbridled "passion" being indeed symptoms of Chomskyitis.
Engage's editor (David Hirsh) made this observation in the comments. This is just an excerpt:
.. MEMRI should trust people to make their own judgments. The way that MEMRI cuts, and offers only exerpts from the texts, sometimes gets in the way of serious understanding. It offers encouragement to those who desperately want to claim that MEMRI misrepresents its material. Given that often MEMRI is the only public source, in English at least, it needs to offer enough of the material to enable readers to contextualize it properly and to satisfy themselves that the text is not presented in a one-sided and therefore inaccurate way.
It is not a secret that MEMRI has links to Israeli intelligence. Neither is the word of Israeli intelligence universally respected and trusted.
I took umbrage to the statement I highlighted in red. Here is my comment:
"It is not a secret that MEMRI has links to Israeli intelligence."
That's like "Jews sans frontieres" claiming that David Hirsh has no moral credibility because he is the editor of Engage which is a Zionist website, a position that is underlied by a few unsubstantiated premises:
Who decides what is morally credible? Is Engage a Zionist website? And what if it is, does that negate its moral credibility? And does David Hirsh lie when he denies that he is a Zionist?
MEMRI's founders, like everyone else, seek to translate their special skills and experience where they might be needed and rewarded. If, as Israeli Intelligence employees they specialized in gathering, translating and interpreting information from the Arab media, then it is perfectly plausible that upon quitting their jobs, that they will look for a niche where their expertise might be needed. A physicist who worked in a highly specialised R&D field would seek employment where this experience and accumulated knowledge would be an advantage. Why then, suggest that there is something fishy about MEMRI just because of their founders' background?
Esther Delisle, who wrote a book about the legacy of Lionel-Groulx and antisemitism in Quebec, talked about how the idea of the invisibility of the Jew was a source of national paranoia during the thirties and forties. A Jew named Goldberg could change his name to Godbout and there would be no way of telling him apart from non-Jews.
Mordechai Richler had an ironic twist on this paranoia when he discussed Jews as being designated “an invisible minority”. “My people”, he used to say with some acerbity, “are anything but invisible”.
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Update: Take a look at the comments