The New Republic

Godspeed.  Bless you.

- dylanposer

April 17, 2009 at 1:22pm

As with most other "confabs" organized to didvide up the world between Good and Evil, both camps will reduce their agenda down to a mirror reflection of the other. At least as you approach the extremes.

"We say Good...they say Evil", will become their mantra and those trying to chip away the True Believer mentality will be charged by both camps with Sleeping With The Enemy.

That's because the The True Believers recognize no other possible outcome other than their own. And given that those in charge of writing up the minutes for most human history confabs have God [or The Good] on their side, the God/Good with the biggest tanks and the biggest PR teams back home usually "win".

That understood, perhaps Zvika Krieger can spell out his own political agenda in order to disclose to us the angle from which he will cover Good and Evil at "the fray".

george walton

- iambiguous

April 17, 2009 at 2:16pm

dylan:

Godspeed. Bless you.

george:

Is that THE God....or yours?

And what's the difference between them? As an atheist, I've always found that important to establish when "the fray" starts unfolding at TNR.

george

- iambiguous

April 17, 2009 at 2:20pm

Walton, as a fellow atheist, shut the fuck up.   It's a phrase.

Zvika, best to you.  

- boneill

April 17, 2009 at 2:31pm

...According to this harrowing account from the 2001 event, Jewish activists were harassed, abused, physically intimidated, taunted, and followed throughout the week. Anyone who tried to object to the Israel hate-fest was booed off the stage with shouts of "Jew, Jew, Jew." The conference hall was overflowing with copies of "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" and pamphlets featuring pictures of Jews with long hooked noses and evil smiles, their serpent fangs soaked in blood and their military uniforms decorated with swastikas. At the conference's only panel devoted to anti-Semetism, dozens of protesters stormed the tent, screaming, "You are all murderers! You have Palestinian blood on your hands!" Israeli flags were burned in front of the European Union of Jewish Students table, and Jewish activists were accosted by members of Hamas....

I know it's so, but reading this just blows my mind.

Bone, it's a waste of breath. And that advice is worth every penny you are paying for it.

- basman

April 17, 2009 at 2:39pm

george, don't you ever tire of yourself? You are so fucking tedious with your atheism, and so lacking in grace. Zvika is placing herself on the line, have a little decency to allow some posters to express their best wishes for her safety instead of letting your insane ego to get in the way.

dylan, I second you.

- blackton

April 17, 2009 at 2:47pm

hey bone, you were posted first without my seeing what you wrote. I should have refreshed first. Most times I ignore him, but as he was short I read it. Big mistake on my part.

I wouldn't mind going, to get involved in some verbal scraps, but I am germanic looking, blue eyes, etc. Until I say something no one would harass me at all, so it is far easier for me.

- blackton

April 17, 2009 at 2:57pm

But blackton, that would make it all the more powerful when you do get in their faces. I've used the fact that your average European assumes I'm a Scot or a Canadian, based on my appearance and northern-border accent, to blow some minds in my day as well. (Fact: Continental Europeans have absolutely no ear for accents in spoken English. Other fact: I have absolutely no ear for accents in any language other than English, so we're even.) The surprising appearance thing can be a powerful tool, as long as you don't use it to hide from the bigots. (Although I'm not Jewish, and I assume that getting in unsuspecting Europeans' faces a bit to defend the United States from facile slander is probably a lot easier, and less personally dangerous, than getting in an unsuspecting bigot's face a bit to defend oneself from antisemitic bile.)

- rhubarbs

April 17, 2009 at 3:49pm

Good luck and stay safe!

- rozenson

April 17, 2009 at 5:34pm

bone:

Walton, as a fellow atheist, shut the fuck up.

george:

Are you trying to suggest your own "no God" is the only "no God" a rational mind should embrace?

Shit, my own "no God" has forgottten more things than your "no God" still remembers.

Or, perhaps, your "no God" will not tolerate any opinion about Israel [or...Zivka?] that reeks of....reality?    

Here's another phrase then: Fuck that.

Come on, bro, give it your best shot. Turn this exchange into a theatrical event.

george

- iambiguous

April 17, 2009 at 7:50pm

bas:

Bone, it's a waste of breath. And that advice is worth every penny you are paying for it.

George:

I suspect Israel will be feted with more of the same. Especially given the fact that the folks at Durban II will have read things like this:

SAREE MAKDISI

"Israel has killed and wounded almost four thousand men, women and children so far in its assault on Gaza; it has entombed whole families together in the ruins of their homes. As I write these words, news is breaking that Israeli bombs have killed at least 40 civilians huddling in a UN school which they mistakenly thought would be safer than the homes from which Israel’s relentless barrage—and its deliberately terrorizing “warning” leaflets and prerecorded phone calls—had already driven them. (I still have one of the leaflets the Israelis dropped on besieged Beirut in 1982 and the language is exactly the same—“flee, flee for your lives!”). Mosques, schools, houses, apartment buildings, have all been brought down on the heads of those inside.

"As horrific as the toll of dead and injured already is, the scale of Israel’s bombing, and its targeting of ambulances and medical and rescue crews—several doctors and paramedics have been killed or wounded so far—means that the true totals are actually unknown. Countless numbers of victims have bled to death in the streets or in the ruins of their smashed homes. Calls for help aren’t getting through Gaza’s phone networks, battered to pieces along with the rest of the civilian infrastructure—its water, sewage, electricity systems, all already crumbling as a result of the years of siege. The victims that are evacuated—as often, these days, in civilian cars as in the remaining ambulances—make it to hospitals that are overwhelmed; many will die that might have otherwise been saved.

"Any hospital would be overwhelmed under the circumstances: how then for a hospital that has already been cut off by the three year old Israeli blockade of Gaza from urgently needed supplies, medicines, drugs, anesthetics, spare parts, fuel for generators? In fact, the true story of what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza is to be seen in the besieged territory’s hospitals: the smashed, burned, dusty bodies of children being carried in on makeshift blankets (there aren’t enough stretchers to go around); the morgue drawers full on stretchers, on beds, on the blood-washed floors, as the doctors run from one to another trying to figure out who can be saved and who must be attended to first—the boy with his feet blown off? the old woman with the huge gash in her head? the young man with his guts hanging out of his stomach? the anguished little girl thrashing about in pain, in fear, in agony and begging for her mother who vanished in some monstrous explosion? And outside, on the crowded sidewalks, the other side of the human suffering that Israel has chosen to inflict on an entire population: the wailing mothers, fathers and children; the weeping young men; the panicked people rushing around trying to find loved ones after each new Israeli bombing.

"All this to make Israelis feel secure? What security is this kind of barbarism ever likely to gain them?"

george:

Not to mention Beirut, eh?

Just because the Durbin folks are blind to the stuff racists and islamists in the Middle East dump on Israel, doesn't mean that Israel is deserving of NONE of it.

george walton

- iambiguous

April 17, 2009 at 8:38pm

black:

george, don't you ever tire of yourself?

george:

Nope. Don't you ever tire of pointing it out?

HERself on the line? I googled Zvika Kreiger and she seems to be a he. Unless there are two Zvika Kreigers blogging for Newsweek and TNR.

Sorry, but for me it is always the argument, not the person making it.

On the other hand, if Kreiger had blogged the above from his/her hospital bed, having been viciously attacked and beaten for being pro Israel, I would not have reacted as I did. And to the extend he/she was offended by my post, I apologize now.

But let's not forget this: the vile bile that has been dumped on me....especially in The Spine.

So please spare me the lectures about insensitve screeds, ad hominems and vicious personal attacks...okay?

george

- iambiguous

April 17, 2009 at 9:11pm

Zvika is a man's name. Zvika is to Zvi (a male deer, in Hebrew) what Charlie is to Charles. It can never be a woman's name. The parallel female name is Zvia, or Ayala.

________________

It is interesting that George justifies the hatefest Basman was describing by quoting extensively the lies and disinformation propagated by SAREE MAKDISI ,a professor of English Literature,  whose area of expertise is British Romanticism.

""Israel has killed and wounded almost four thousand men, women and children so far in its assault on Gaza;"

_____________

"The IDF's Coordination and Liaison Authority for the Gaza Strip announced Wednesday that it has identified more than 600 of the 1,374 fatalities in the Gaza War as members of Hamas; 309 were innocent civilians.

Another 14 fatalities were members of Fatah whom Hamas executed during the fighting. The IDF has not yet determined whether another 320 had any affiliation with a terrorist group."

www.examiner.com/x-3912-Baltimore-Jewish-Examiner~y2009m3d25-True-Gaza-War-death-toll-comes-to-light

Three times the number of deaths and never a mention of Hamas militants. That's Makdisi's romanticization of Palestinian martyrdom. They are the perfect victims, totally blameless, totally passive. And 1,300 is not a great enough number. It must be tripled, for a stronger impact.

Hard to believe scrupulous george who relentlessly googles names to find out who they are is unaware of the lies. But still he posts it. What can be the harm in adding a few drops of fuel to the hatefest?  

- noga1

April 17, 2009 at 11:49pm

noga:

Hard to believe scrupulous george who relentlessly googles names to find out who they are is unaware of the lies. But still he posts it. What can be the harm in adding a few drops of fuel to the hatefest?

george:

Thanks for putting Makdisi's numbers in....perspective.

We know of course that whatever the IDF reports is the gospel truth because it comes directly from G-d's mouth to IDF's ears. Then it's released for all the rest of us. You know, so we can more authoritatively mock all the anti-Semitic tallies.  

Oh, and I once asked you what the fate of the innocent Gazan children murdered by the IDF would be on THEIR Judgment Day. Come on, give me an answer that convinces me this does not make your G-d any less loving just and mericful. But you don't DARE go there, do you? THERE is where the whole infantile belief in G-d is reduced down to the level of the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. But they don't sit by and let innocent children get blown to bits, do they? You know, being that they are just imaginary. Like Snuffleupagus. Big Bird's G-d.

Only 309 innnocent civilians killed? Well, that's a relief. And that number no doubt is far, far lower than the number of innocent civilians killed by the Qassam rocket attacks. Has that number reached 10,000 yet?

But I do agree that Makdisi probably does stack the statistical deck to make the death and destruction more ghastly. Sadly, every side does that. Your side too.

george

- iambiguous

April 18, 2009 at 3:24am

"Walton, as a fellow atheist, shut the fuck up.   It's a phrase. "

I doubt george is an atheist. Genuine atheists do not obsess over God. The whole point of being an atheist is to be liberated from the need to worry about God.

- noga1

April 18, 2009 at 4:13pm

george:  "But let's not forget this: the vile bile that has been dumped on me....especially in The Spine."

If you don't like the heat, remove yourself from the kitchen, buddy.  You came on to TNR like a dime-store professor who couldn't stop telling everyone that he'd actually read a book to the end.  You assumed that everyone needed lessons in tying their intellectual shoelaces, and wondered why you were given short shrift.  You generated long unreadable screeds in which the first person singular appeared to be the main theme of the day, and wondered why fellow posters found them something less than hypnotic.  You assumed you were one jump ahead of everyone else, but kept revealing you were behind the curve.  You showed no generosity of spirit toward anyone at all, but kept talking about how you weren't being read appropriately.

For my part, I think that in general I've been pretty ok toward you -- I even congratulated you on the clever use of Dylan lyrics and the occasional moment of intellectual sunshine when a short witty remark breaks through.

Not taking oneself too seriously can be a good defense against perceived bile onslaughts.  Try it sometime, maybe?

As Peter Sellers said in Dr. Strangelove:  "Er . . . Major Bat Guano, if that indeed is your name . . ."

- ironyroad

April 18, 2009 at 8:38pm

"The leftist weekly, Jungle World, focusses on the UN's Durban Review conference on racism and related intolerance which opens next week in Geneva. For Lukas Lambert, the preparations confirm the worst: the UN doesn't give a damn about human rights. "The countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have been using their majority in the Human Rights Council for several years now, to pass a number of resolutions to combat so-called 'defamation of religions'. These 56 states demand that religions, and primarily Islam, should be recognised as the bearer of human rights, whose 'violation', for instance through 'insulting images', should be pursued and prosecuted. In the same context they demand 'voluntary' limits on press freedom. The council passed a resolution to this effect just two weeks ago, giving the persecution of opposition figures and minorities in dictatorial states the UN's blessing one more time."

www.signandsight.com/.../1861.html

- noga1

April 18, 2009 at 10:12pm

noga,

I note this:

"I once asked you what the fate of the innocent Gazan children murdered by the IDF would be on THEIR Judgment Day. Come on, give me an answer that convinces me this does not make your G-d any less loving just and mericful. But you don't DARE go there, do you? THERE is where the whole infantile belief in G-d is reduced down to the level of the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny."

And you respond with, "I doubt george is an atheist. Genuine atheists do not obsess over God. The whole point of being an atheist is to be liberated from the need to worry about God."

You still refuse to GO there...to go THERE, don't you?

But you're right. I do obsess about God. And I obsess about God because without one all the unspeakable horrors that constitute both human history and "the state of nature" IS essentially meaningless and absurd. But I suspect you don't have a fucking clue as to how unbearable it is to face "the human condition" without "a loving, just and merciful" Creator to fall back on?

Man, I'd give anything in the whole fucking world to be ABLE to believe in God. I'd eat a mile of Jackson's shit just to kiss his ass if at the end of it there was someone, something that could fit it all into the a Reason, a Reason that led to a just and meaningful Salvation. If I could sit down with God and have Him explain to me why all the terrible things I saw and did in Vietnam fit into a loving just and merciful Plan, I'd be eternally at His beck and call.

But unlike your own refusal, I go THERE every fucking day. What the hell have you actually done in your life to dig all the down to the wrenching ambiguity of Faith? What the fuck do you know about STRUGGLING with it day in, day out....year in, year out?

I always get around to this eventually with people. I respect or I do not respect someone's intellectual and emotional depth depending on how far down in the muck and the mire they have gone...they have been tested.

So, how far down HAVE you been? Is your faith just a collection of words you mouth because you were taught to...or because believing them gives to peace of mind. Or have you earned them in a life bursting at the seams with trials and tribulations?

Remember, I told you you should skip my posts.

george walton

- iambiguous

April 19, 2009 at 3:36am

irony:

If you don't like the heat, remove yourself from the kitchen, buddy.

george:

You're so full of shit here I simply have to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are merely living up to your moniker.

Or are you...now...literally pissed off at me because I'm dumping on Noga....a woman?

In fact, I see in Noga as someone who may well be genuinely struggling to come to grips with the questions I raise. There is little of the rock hard macho plasticity and the knee-jerk testosterone drivel I get from the Jacksons in here. So, sure, I test this.

But that's known as a complimentary gesture among the folks who truly know and love me.

And sure, in turn, I might be completely wrong about this. But she comes back at me tenaciously and she pushes back at me in a way that makes me react to her all the more. And sooner or later I'll see how far down her thoughts and feelings go.

But the bottom line....in TNR blogs....is always going to be this: That neither you nor I nor Noga has even the faintest of clues about each other. We just exchange words in a virtual reality a couple of times a day. Grasp the problematic "reality" of that and all your exchanges are put into the sort of perspective that allows you to go off the edge of cliff and know you are only going to fall on.....more words.

george

- iambiguous

April 19, 2009 at 4:02am

Zvika -  best wishes, looking forward to the reports.  

- Lymon1

April 19, 2009 at 8:17am

"Or are you...now...literally pissed off at me because I'm dumping on Noga....a woman? "

Since Ironyroad is not averse to the occasional dumping on Noga himself, I find this conjecture more than usually bizarre. But as far as I'm concerned, he deserves this bear's hug by george.

www.youtube.com/watch

- noga1

April 19, 2009 at 9:57am

Geneva, Switzerland Libya was chosen in 2007 to chair the preparatory committee for the UN Durban Review

- Anonymous

April 19, 2009 at 10:58am

george:  "We just exchange words in a virtual reality a couple of times a day."

You think?  Exchange can indeed happen, and it's good when it does, but monologues born out of an impervious narcissism won't cut it.

". . . if that indeed is your name."

- ironyroad

April 19, 2009 at 12:09pm

Noga:  "But as far as I'm concerned, he deserves this bear's hug by george."

I'll bet he does!

- ironyroad

April 19, 2009 at 12:14pm

Zvi & Zvika are male names (my Hebrew name is Zvi).

Zvika, here's a suggestion for you.  For at least a few of the conference days at DurbanII, why not wear a Kippa (yarmulka or skullcap) while wearing your press badge & see how the  "progressive" & merely anti-Zionist  conferees react to you. Of course to maintain your cover (I am assuming, perhaps wrongly, that you are not Orthodox) you cannot eat any blatantly non-kosher food while wearing the Kippa; also don't wear it on Saturday if you don't want to take on being Sabbath observant..  That could make for an interesting story in and of itself.

As a practicing Orthodox Jew (may Walton forgive me) I wear a Kippa all of the time, even in areas where it tends to make me stand out (for most of the period of my doctorate at the U. of AZ I was the only Kippa on campus) and have my collection of stories.  My most interesting experience was in Leipzig & Jena (both in the former East Germany) during a business trip in May '95.

Hershel Ginsburg

Efrata / Jerusalem

- ginzy

April 19, 2009 at 2:19pm

So what happened?  I'd ask anyway, as you end on such a teaser (and I've no shame in admitting I'm a narrative junkie), but I also lived in Berlin in the early 90s and observed many oddities and weirdnesses as the ex-GDR underwent its various transformations.

- ironyroad

April 19, 2009 at 3:29pm

OK Irony, here goes:

I flew in to Frankfurt from Chicago, nothing special there.  The Lufthansa flight crew was particularly gracious in giving me their closed off area for me to do my morning prayers, complete with Tallit & Tefillin (prayer shawl & phylacteries for the uninitiated among you).  A few glances in the Frankfurt airport but that's about it.

I fly from Frankfurt to Leipzig & get a few more stares at the airport.  I hail a cab to get to the Leipzig central train station.  The cabbie lifts an eyebrow but off we go.  As we drive through the once glorious and now drab city of J.S. Bach I notice a few sites of Jewish interest (possible ex-synagogue, a Jewish cemetery etc.) by the noticeable Shields of David built in to the stone.

At the train station I find I have 2-3 hours until my train departs for Jena.  I book my ticket and walk around the station.  The stares are getting more blatant, longer, and obvious.  A few bemused smiles, some stares of disbelief ("There's one that got away!!").

I go over to the platform from which my train is scheduled to depart and notice a young male in his 20's, wearing a black leather jacket and his hair cropped very very very close.  When the jacket opens a bit from his movements, I see he is wearing a T-shirt with some sort of large lightning-bolt; I don't see enough of the shirt to check out what else may be there, but I start getting the general idea.  I then casually parade up and down the platform with my luggage cart as if I am just trying to while away the time and watch his reaction.  He is staring at me but a harder and harder look appears on his face.  I really did not want to end up sharing a train compartment with him.

I quickly decide that my newfound “friend” is unlikely to have booked a first class ticket so I go back to the train ticket office and upgrade myself to first class (the advantages of being on a major corporate expense account).  Back to the platform I stand quietly waiting for the train and my “friend” is staring at me.  Train pulls in, I wait until almost the last possible moment & climb into first class.  I notice that my “friend” has even an angrier look on his face.

At Jena, I hook up with another member of my company’s delegation and our host from the Zeiss microscope division.  We were Zeiss’ honored guests who were there to explain our chromosomal diagnostic technology which depended on quality fluorescence microscopy (FISH, for the aficionados among you), and what was good and bad about the existing Zeiss line.  They also wanted our opinions on the new model they were developing at the time.  So there I was, the son of a survivor of Auschwitz (my mom, may she live and be well) telling a bunch of German scientists & engineers what they were doing wrong (excuse my vindictiveness) while conspicuously labeled with a Kippa.

We are then given the grand tour of the Zeiss R&D facility and more stares from the staff & workers, especially those who were East German in origin.  Later we walk around the town (more stares of disbelief) and go out to a tavern for a drink of fine German bier (strict German beer laws take care of any Kashrut questions).  The tavern owner knows the Zeiss personnel but is surprised and seemingly uncomfortable with my presence.

The next day my coworker and I drive back to Frankfurt, get some bemused smiles at the hotel but the rest of my trip is uneventful.

I also have some cute Kippa stories from my grad student days at the U of AZ but also some not so cute.  My oldest son, currently a graduate student in biophysical chemistry at Hebrew U., recently spent a week in Grenoble at the high energy X-ray source accelerator there doing some of his thesis research and also had an interesting Kippa experience.

But these will have to wait for some other time.  Enough for now.

Hershel (Tzvi) Ginsburg

Efrata / Jerusalem

- ginzy

April 19, 2009 at 4:20pm

A vivid account, ginzy.  Definitely the unpleasantly staring guy at the rail station sounds like a 90s neo-nazi of some stripe, who was seeing in you a ghostly (or concrete) manifestation of his delusional theory of German history.  He probably believed simultaneously that the Holocaust was a fraud and that it had been totally justified anyway.  Upgrading to first was a good way of escaping his attentions and irritating him as a little extra.

Your Jena experience I find rather fascinating, mainly because it reminds me of impressions I had so strongly in different situations during that time.  I was in Jena on a couple of occasions, and found it a strange mixture of hopelessly provincial and interestingly college-townish.  Although I wasn't identifiable in the way you were (and presumably I didn't trigger whatever specific mix of hostility/curiosityguilt you were picking up), German is a language in which even if you speak it well -- and I did at the time -- it's impossible to hide your "auslaender" status.

My experience of East Germans in particular was that they could often be severely discomfited by "foreignness" (for want of a better word) in and of itself.  The feeling one often had -- and needless to say it got worse the less white/European one looked -- was that some deep inadequacy in the structure of the German ego was being exposed and provoked by the mere presence of one's non-German and apparently coherent self.  So if one adds to that an extra strain on the German sense of self-regard caused by the reminder that the nation exterminated vast numbers of people, with genocidal intent, withn living memory, morbid symptoms can be expected.

I remember a very interesting case -- somewhat of a reverse story to yours -- around that time, involving a member of the Berliner Philharmonie (liberal, cultured, intellectual, the whole nine yards) on tour in Israel who got drunk in the hotel bar in Tel Aviv one evening and started yelling ugly antisemitic (Nazi-style) remarks at the top of his voice.  Needless to say this was diplomatic incident stuff and the guy got hustled off homewards post-haste, whereupon he locked himself in his Berlin apartment -- but it was also very revealing about how this psychic substratum is not to be found only among the knuckle-draggers.

- ironyroad

April 19, 2009 at 5:43pm

noga:

Since Ironyroad is not averse to the occasional dumping on Noga himself, I find this conjecture more than usually bizarre. But as far as I'm concerned, he deserves this bear's hug by george.

george:

See what I mean? You dodge the bullets best by risking nothing at all. You don't have the spiritual integrity to get in the path of them, do you?

So the segments of my post that point down into the deepest, dankest, dirtiest parts of the cave, you simply avoid.

I told Irony it wouldn't take long to see how frightened you are of swimming out into the deep end of the pool. Better to stay in the wading pool where everything is crystal clear. And that's where G-d can hold your hand and warn you about the devils out in the depths with me, right?

george

- iambiguous

April 20, 2009 at 12:42am

irony:

". . . if that indeed is your name."

george:

Of course it's my name. You gave it to me, remember? Your exact words were, "isn't it ironic I had to create you in order for you to create me?"

But we were about to venture into the illusory world of words that is The Spine. We both needed protection from each other in order to protect Marty from reality. Noga, Ginzy, Jackson, the bulb man....they are merely distinct and separate personalities Marty created in order to bolster his own sense of protecting us from him.

Now, don't rock the boat my friend. We can always cast another character....right?

gw

- iambiguous

April 20, 2009 at 1:00am

Geneva, Switzerland When I walked in the door of the Israel Review Conference, I expected to find manic

- Anonymous

April 20, 2009 at 8:58am

To illustrate the point I made in my article yesterday -- about how the dynamics of Durban I have been

- Anonymous

April 23, 2009 at 8:32am

The biggest loser at the United Nations Durban Review Conference on “racism” this week in Geneva was the United Nations itself. The United States unfairly got a lot of bad press and bad marks for walking out of the first...

- Anonymous

April 24, 2009 at 11:45am

The biggest loser at the United Nations Durban Review Conference on “racism” this week in Geneva was the United Nations itself. The United States unfairly got a lot of bad press and bad marks for...

- Anonymous

April 24, 2009 at 12:09pm