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Go Home George Bush: Smarter Than Condi

THE SPINE NOVEMBER 29, 2007

George Bush: Smarter Than Condi

BY JAMES KIRCHICK

Almost everybody knows that people who think in analogies think sloppily.Desmond Tutu, leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa, clings to his comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa.  It is such a gross analogy, factually and philosophically, that by now it almost needs no rebuttal.So now comes Condi Rice, who grew up in the Jim Crow American south, and compares life for the Palestinians in the Holy Land with her own life in what had been the Confederacy.  Actually, she made quite a lot of her own life.  After all, she'd been provost at Stanford before George Bush handed her the running of American foreign policy.  So where in Israel is there a race theory of white supremacy?  Do Israelis lynch Palestinians?  In fact, if there is a race theory in the troubled land between the river and the sea it is in the Arab view of the Jews: ape and monkey and lower still.Here's something: George Bush is brighter than our secretary of state. 

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96 comments

Martin Peretz writes:

-- Desmond Tutu, leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa, clings to

his comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa.  It is such a

gross analogy, factually and philosophically, that by now it almost needs

no rebuttal.

Haaretz reports today:

-- "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.

www.haaretz.com/.../929439.html

And so, once again, Martin Peretz shows that he doesn't know one end of his spine from the other.

- ndmackenzie

November 29, 2007 at 5:44pm

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God damn it Mackenzie, I was just ready to post that!

Sheesh, this site isn't big enough for two anti...

(My post was going to be far more gracious Marty.)

- The Ignorant Populist

November 29, 2007 at 5:58pm

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What a pair of morons, my god.

Did he say that this is what the situation is like now?

Is it?

Has it ever been?

You couple of retarded brainwashed idiots.

You didn't even understand what Olemrt meant in the nauseating rush caused by teh mere hint that maybe you can use this to defame Israel.

Assholes.

Too stupid to deserve an explanation anyway. And there's not a chance you'll ever figure it out on your own.

- babigail

November 29, 2007 at 7:01pm

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God i can't stand stupids.

- babigail

November 29, 2007 at 7:03pm

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I must admit that at first blush, I thought Condi's analogy was valid but as I read Peretz' rebuttal, particularly the parts about no lynching and the absencs of a white (or religious) dominance theory, I have to admit that the old grouch rebutted the analogy pretty well.  Point for Peretz, at least from this poster.

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 29, 2007 at 7:09pm

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oh...but how did the inferential leap about Bush being smarter that Condi come in?  I need a lot more convincing on that thin reed of a contention..

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 29, 2007 at 7:10pm

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Martin Peretz writes:

-- So where in Israel is there a race theory of white supremacy?  Do Israelis lynch Palestinians?  In fact, if there is a race theory in the troubled land between the river and the sea it is in the Arab view of the Jews: ape and monkey and lower still.

Martin Peretz, of course, ignores that a supremacist race theory is central to the entire "settler" movement.

Meanwhile, on the UN thread, babigail writes:

-- It looks like we're not dealing with humans here, who have the capacity to learn, deduce, grasp, correct. Must be some other species. Maybe some sick mutations of monkeys or pigs. Who knows what they are, and whence they derived.

So there we have one of the stoutest defenders of Israel on The Spine spouting a racist theory where Palestinians are "some sick mutations of monkeys or pigs." babigail constantly boasts of how her son has written yet another Haaretz article about anti-Semitism in Europe even as he is blind to the bigotry in his own household.

- ndmackenzie

November 29, 2007 at 7:46pm

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I second Abigail's post:

"babigail said:

What a pair of morons, my god.

Did he say that this is what the situation is like now?

Is it?

Has it ever been?

You couple of retarded brainwashed idiots."

yes they are a pair of idiots, or rather IP is an idiot, mackenzie is just an antisemite.

- jacksondyer

November 29, 2007 at 8:26pm

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"Martin Peretz, of course, ignores that a supremacist race theory is central to the entire "settler" movement." ndmackenzie

what malicious nonsense.

The settler movement, which I do not support and neither does Abigail, is based on an historical claim and not on a "supremacist one."

It's mackenzie who is the supremacist attacking Jews because they insist on their historical and political rights. Mackenzie is "palestinianist" and pushes their supremacist ideology that the Jews are an inferior people with animalistic traits.

- jacksondyer

November 29, 2007 at 8:30pm

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An Israeli friend of mine always used to object to comparisons with American racism in the South. In response to talking about discrimination against Arabs (which does exist), he says, "Oh yeah? Did blacks in the South bomb cafes and launch rockets at homes?"

Even black riots in 1968 after King's assassination were put down after a short while.

- rozenson

November 29, 2007 at 8:54pm

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Yes, rozenson the comparison is inapt for the reasons you mentioned. It's also inapt because at the end of the day Blacks and Whites in the South belonged to the same Christian Protestants culture which made reconciliation all that much easier.

The same is true to a degree in South Africa, Bishop Tutu and a White Anglican Bishop have a lot more in common than do Jews and Muslims.

- jacksondyer

November 29, 2007 at 9:24pm

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Jackson is correct about the settler movement, it was much much more an historical/religiously motivated movement than one of racial enmity.

That said, I'm always offended when Peretz looks for ways to state his 'there are no Palestinians' line.

The fact of the matter is that Arab Muslims were living on that land and the Israeli settler movement began moving illegally, and sometimes destructively, onto it.

That was wrong. What difference does it make what moment the Arabs living there articulated a national consciousness?

- mmathog

November 29, 2007 at 9:34pm

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There may not have been a 'Palestinian" people in 1948, but there is one now.

Israel as Olmert and others have recognized (including Ariel Sharon) will have to deal with them as a people.  

- jacksondyer

November 29, 2007 at 10:06pm

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babigail, didn't you know those two imbeciles? ndmackenzie and The Ignorant Populist are two ignorant and hate-filled idiots. They hail from Britain and Ireland. Their comments look like they listen every day to BBC, which I remember confusing with Radio Moscow in the '80s. Yes, it was that bad when it dealt with Ceausescu. Ceausescu was the dictator of Romania and was a monster. Well, not for BBC. And that's what feeds the minds of these two typically smug and stupid appeasers.

Of course, as it usually goes with European fuckhead appeasers, their main problem is with Jews. They return there obsessively.

- sleepyavl

November 29, 2007 at 10:39pm

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mmathog, let me tell you about an ARAB SETTLER: Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian. There are plenty of Arabs like him who immigrated to the area of Israel/Palestine. Yet somehow only the Jews are looked upon badly and the Arabs not.

The very symbol of the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat was most certainly an Egyptian immigrant, not a Palestinian. Why is this ignored? Well, plain old anti-Semitism.  Arabs immigrate? OK. Jews immigrate? Bad bad bad. You see, the Jews have no rights for fuckhead anti-Semites.

Yesterday the fuckheads were Nazis, now they are Far Lefties.

- sleepyavl

November 29, 2007 at 10:44pm

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Some people kept saying that the M&W book was no big deal and it merely expressed the opinions of a couple of Professors. Nothing to worry about.

If you want to know why it is a big deal read the following story from Haaretz:

"'Jewish lobby' comment surprises France"

"France's Foreign Ministry expressed surprise on Wednesday over an Algerian government minister's remarks about a "Jewish lobby" being behind French President Nicolas Sarkozy's rise to power.

The flap came as Sarkozy was preparing to visit Algeria next week.

Muhammad Cherif Abbas, Algeria's minister for veterans, was quoted Monday in the daily El Khabar as saying that Sarkozy had been brought to power by a "Jewish lobby that has a monopoly on French industry."

Abbas also mentioned Sarkozy's "roots," an apparent reference to the French president's maternal grandfather, who was Jewish.

French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani responded Wednesday: "We are surprised about these remarks that appeared in the press, which do not correspond to the climate of confidence and cooperation in which we are preparing the president's state visit." ..."

www.jpost.com/.../Satellite

- jacksondyer

November 29, 2007 at 11:19pm

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"So there we have one of the stoutest defenders of Israel on The Spine spouting a racist theory where Palestinians are "some sick mutations of monkeys or pigs." "

mackenzie, at least it's not in our textbooks!

- rozenson

November 29, 2007 at 11:40pm

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""So there we have one of the stoutest defenders of Israel on The Spine spouting a racist theory where Palestinians are "some sick mutations of monkeys or pigs." "ndmackenzie

There she goes again taking out of context what Abigail said. As rozenson said mackenzie's Palestinian darlings teach theri children that Jews are "monkey and pigs" and that they should be killed.

This little antisemite prefers to focus on a poster's comment made out of frustration with the Jew hatred of the Palestinians, so called. But mackenzie doesn't see Jew hatred in Hamas and Fatah's views of Jews. No, to her their views are an expression of pure reality.

- jacksondyer

November 30, 2007 at 12:26am

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Here's what else, according to the same Haaretz' article, Rice said in closed meetings:

"Like Israelis, I understand what it's like to go to sleep not knowing if you will be hurt in an explosion, the feeling of terror walking around your own neighborhood, or walking to your house of prayer," Rice was quoted in the Washington Post as saying.

...

According to the [Wa]Post, Rice reportedly closed her statements by saying that both sides in the conflict had endured great pain and for far too long."

Her sentiment is exactly right (leaving aside a poor comparison of blacks in the US South to Palestinians, but, let's say generously, it was her way of saying "I feel your pain".)  What I question, though, is her wisdom in focussing her energies on the  Arab-Israeli peace now, at the expense (as it seems) of everything else.  And announcing to the whole world the totally unrealistic timeframe, one year.

If she really means it, it will likely produce haste and many frustrations all around.  Then the I-P/Arab  conflict may actually deteriorate.

- sabaka

November 30, 2007 at 3:22am

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"So there we have one of the stoutest defenders of Israel on The Spine spouting a racist theory where Palestinians are "some sick mutations of monkeys or pigs."

OHH.

How sensitive, how humanistic!

I just haven't noticed this outcry from your filthy mouth when the Jews were called monkeys and pigs by Arabs.

No objection to any RACIST theory from you there.

No shock, no indignation. No protest. Nothing.

I want to tell everybody that I'm beginning to doubt the merits of being "above" the other base and degraded side. If we accept with silent sighs that we're called monkeys and pigs, I can't see what's so horribly shocking when we say the same abut them. Or about their prophet.

It looks like they have discounts here, in the west. They're allowed to say anything about anyone, and we don't even pay attention to it. But of a teacher calls a teddy bear Muhammad, she will be flogged and imprisoned, not to mention world-wide violent protests in response to caricatures in a Danish paper.    

But look how the whole community gets up and reprimands me when i dare utter the very same racist invective against them. Not to mention the usual antisemites, who open their foul mouths only when their angelic proteges are attacked, and never ever say a word when we are dehumanized?

Does no one here think it's maybe time to put an end to this double standard?

Or maybe that we're also allowed to stoop to their low and beastly level?

I'm beginning to think that this highfalutin "we are better than they are" attitude has been a big mistake all along.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 4:06am

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But there's some comfort here, and some amusement too.

Finally this monkey ND gave us his candid opinion about what people naming other nations "monkeys and pigs"  are: "racists". and this is a "racist theory".

Let the records show that the ND pig described this attitude as a racist theory, and that this is what he really thinks of Arabs.

They are racists who have developed a racist theory.

I didn't say it. APE.D. did.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 5:18am

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Of course Israel is an apartheid state. Anyone who actually lives here knows that. Any Jew who enters Israel is automatically granted Israeli citizenship; this is anything but automatic for Arabs who marry outside Israeli Arab communities.

Intermarriage between people of two religions is not, per se, illegal in Israel - it is simply impossible. A Jewish man cannot marry a Muslim or a Christian woman (and vice versa), unless she converts - and you need a religious court to agree to that, which rarely if ever happens. Miscegenation laws, anyone?

Israeli academy have recently changed their admission guidelines, because the former guidelines allowed too many Arabs in - which drew a complaint from the army's Chief Personnel Officer. Numerus Clausus? Not officially, no, but damn close.  

The government routinely invests much less in Arab townships than in Jewish ones, and this includes the Druze townships, where a large segment of the population serves in the security services. A Druze comrade once told me (yes, little Zionists-from-afar, I'm an IDF veteran who spent more than two years in the Strip, you can start hyperventilating now if you haven't already) why many Druze choose to remain in the army: "When I'm in uniform, it's 'come here soldier, have a drink, what would you like to eat?'; but when I take off the uniform, go into civilian life, it's "a job? you want a job? but you're an Arab!" Puts it in a nutshell.

The government has never built a town for the 18% of its population that is non-Jewish, and has used every dirty trick in the book to trick Arabs out of their lands. The number of Arabs in the israeli public service is abysmally low: less than 5% and much less of that in upper management positions. Seperate  but unequal? Bet your ass. But, then again, you actually have to live here to know all this, and bloviate from afar about the need for <i>me</i> to defend some settlement.

- nvyossig

November 30, 2007 at 10:01am

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Of course Israel is an apartheid state. Anyone who actually lives here knows that. Any Jew who enters Israel is automatically granted Israeli citizenship; this is anything but automatic for Arabs who marry outside Israeli Arab communities.

Intermarriage between people of two religions is not, per se, illegal in Israel - it is simply impossible. A Jewish man cannot marry a Muslim or a Christian woman (and vice versa), unless she converts - and you need a religious court to agree to that, which rarely if ever happens. Miscegenation laws, anyone?

Israeli academy have recently changed their admission guidelines, because the former guidelines allowed too many Arabs in - which drew a complaint from the army's Chief Personnel Officer. Numerus Clausus? Not officially, no, but damn close.  

The government routinely invests much less in Arab townships than in Jewish ones, and this includes the Druze townships, where a large segment of the population serves in the security services. A Druze comrade once told me (yes, little Zionists-from-afar, I'm an IDF veteran who spent more than two years in the Strip, you can start hyperventilating now if you haven't already) why many Druze choose to remain in the army: "When I'm in uniform, it's 'come here soldier, have a drink, what would you like to eat?'; but when I take off the uniform, go into civilian life, it's "a job? you want a job? but you're an Arab!" Puts it in a nutshell.

The government has never built a town for the 18% of its population that is non-Jewish, and has used every dirty trick in the book to trick Arabs out of their lands. The number of Arabs in the israeli public service is abysmally low: less than 5% and much less of that in upper management positions. Seperate  but unequal? Bet your ass. But, then again, you actually have to live here to know all this, and not bloviate from afar about the need for <i>me</i> to defend some settlement.

- nvyossig

November 30, 2007 at 10:01am

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yossi yossi, life isn't all that easy.

Let's take your tall tales one by one, what do you say?

Marriage

In Israel the state provides only religious marriage services. Two secular Jewish individuals, like my ex-husband and myself, who refused to get married by a Rabbi, can go abroad, get married, and be accepted by the state as a 100% married couple.

Arabs could in the not so far past marry Arabs from the Pals territories and bring them in as citizens. Until a pattern was discovered, by which they were implementing the infamous "right of return" under this license. From then on they can marry and move out to their spouses' place. Arabs who marry non-Pals spouses have no problem.

Israel will not stand in the way of true love. She only wants to preserve her existence as a Jewish state.

Universities.

IDF constitutes one of the heaviest Universities' sources of income. If it peeps, the Us stand to attention. They also want to survive, you see. But it's not like masses of Arabs are storming the Us' gates. They have a separate education system, as per THEIR demand, and it fares almost s badly as it does in any other Arab state, but still a bit better.

Townships

Much like any other investment in any other Arab institution, Israel kept pouring endless amounts of money into their town halls, to no avail. Corruption, nepotism, deceit, bamboozling, failure to pay their own workers, complete failure to collect taxes... you name it,  put an end to this. Today they can straighten up (some have), be run by a gov rep, or go on and drown in their own crap. Same goes for failing Jewish townships.

New towns

The Israeli gov has built 10 new Arab towns:

Rahat, Tel-Sheva' Kseifa, Arara, Segev Shalom, Hura, and Laqia in the south.

Zarzir, Basmat Tivon, and Heib in the north.

Yes, you actually have to live here to know all this. You also have to be a decent human being to avoid the temptation to spread downright lies to those who don't live here, and to relate the truth in its appropriate context.

They are 20%, not 18.

They are represented by 10 Knesset members.

They have the closest thing you can think of (alas) to cultural autonomy.

They are full protected by the supreme court.

As their fellow Arabs elsewhere, they had, still have, the complete opportunity and possibility to make something better of their lives.

As their fellow Arabs elsewhere, they have failed miserably.

They are not drafted to the army, nor do they contribute as much as one day of their miserable lives to their own community or country.

This concludes the moment of painful truth of the day.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 11:19am

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Oh, and yossi... I'm an expert on Israeli Arabs.

Even more so on Israeli Bedouins.

I'm also fluent in Arabic.

Count to 10 before you venture to answer.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 11:30am

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And now, since I'm getting really tired of it, let us examine the term "apatheid" as executed in SAfrica, vs. israel.

In SAfrica                                                      

Blacks didn't have the vote

Blacks were stripped of their citizenship and became citizens of their respective bantustans, They were not allowed to leave the country.

Blacks were not allowed to stay in white towns without a permit.

Blacks were forced to attend their own schools.

Blacks were forced to use their own communication system

Blacks were not allowed to marry whites

Blacks were not allowed to run their own businesses or engage in their professions outside the bantustans.

In Israel

Arabs vote just as Jews.

Arabs are full citizens, carry an Israeli passport, and are free to go anywhere they choose on the globe. Same as Jews.

Arabs stay and live in any city they choose in any neighborhood they prefer. There are no places to which Arabs are prohibited entry, save the ones prohibited for Jews as well. In reality, they live together with Jews in 7 cities: Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Ramle, Lud, and Jaffa (Tel aviv). But they can go anywhere else as well.

Arabs have forced the Israeli Government to establish a separate education system for them, and refused to attend the one created for Jews.

Arabs even ride the same buses, trains, and planes  we do!

Arabs and Jews intermarry A LOT! They go abroad, get their marriage certificates, and are recognized as married as anyone else.

Arabs can and do open businesses anywhere they choose to. They work in their professions, and there isn't a hospital in this country of which they constitute less than 20% of the work force.

If you wanna talk about injustices, discriminations, wrongs - be my guest.

But for god's sake, stop using the term apartheid in this context.

It only exhibits your shameful ignorance!

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 12:31pm

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Listen fucking nvyossig, half of European states have Laws of Return that are far more comprehenisve than Israel's. In Germany you can have German ancestors seven hundred years back, not just grandparents - you still get the citizeshiip immediately under the German Law of Return - and you get it preferentially as a German.

At least 11 European countries have it: Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Ukraine, Greece, Romania, Austria. Lithuania and others. These laws are specifically designed to favor their nations since they are national states.

Have you called these European countries apartheid states?! No? Why not?

As most anti-Semites, you are not only stupid and ignorant, you are also a compulsive liar.

So fuck yourself, shitty bastard!

- sleepyavl

November 30, 2007 at 12:55pm

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Here's one specific example  of the Law of Rerurn implementation in Germany.

Right before WWII, there were roughly one million ethnic Germans inside the USSR.  They came to Russia over several centuries, from XVI on, often by invitation of Tsars who wanted to westernize Russia.

In July 1924, some of them even formed  the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. When Nazi Germany invaded  USSR in 1941, the Volga German ASSR was abolished, and Russia's German population was almost entirely deported to central Asia, Siberia and other remote and harsh areas of the USSR.

"With the collapse of the Soviet Union, large numbers of Russian Germans took advantage of Germany's liberal law of return to leave the harsh conditions of the Soviet successor states."  Needless to say, they all have been granted German citizenship.

Read in full:  en.wikipedia.org/.../History_of_Germans_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union

- sabaka

November 30, 2007 at 2:28pm

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sleepy, you forgot to mention Finland.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 2:35pm

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Ireland also grants citizenship to those who can show Irish descent via a father or grandfather. btw this includes descent from citizens of the northern counties that are part of the UK. I believe Italy has a simlar provision.

- teplukhin2you

November 30, 2007 at 4:13pm

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Yes tep and babigail, you both are right, I had forgotten Ireland and Finland, they also have a Law of Return. Ah, Ireland! That's where a poster with extreme hostility to Israel hails from, The Ignorant Populist. But hey, who am I to think as a pesky Jew I have equal rights to the Germans or the Irish or the rest of the Euro-bunch?

Anyway, this whole thing started from that fuckhead, nvyossig. The shitty bastard has not come back yet.

- sleepyavl

November 30, 2007 at 6:49pm

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Oh, he has come back alright.

You can be sure of it.

Maybe he didn't expect what he found.

tucked his tail tween his legs and ran off back to the den.

- babigail

November 30, 2007 at 8:59pm

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This talk on apartheid is simply absurd. I just read an article by Claude Klein on Israeli arab minority and the Israeli Supreme Court has recognized them protections, as a minority, that are the most inclusive in the world.

The article is by Claude Klein "The Jewish State and it's Arab Minority" and it was published in a book "Israel", organized by Esther Mucznik (a highly respected intellectual here, portuguese jew, specialist on jewish themes). Her book was specifically designed to destroy some myths giving accurate information on various themes. You should translate it, since it is simultaneously very accessible and very effective.

- luispc

December 1, 2007 at 4:10am

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You can read about a book and ordered it (if you read the language) here:

www.difel.pt/.../index.php

- luispc

December 1, 2007 at 4:12am

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luispc -

I will remind you that no less than the Israeli Prime Minister said this week:

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

That "South African-style struggle" is a direct consequence of the Israeli colonization policy in the Palestinian Territories. It is a major step forward that an Israeli Prime Minister finally recognizes this.

Additionally, the idea that the "Israeli Supreme Court has recognized them protections, as a minority, that are the most inclusive in the world" is utter hogwash.  Immigration rights are only the most obvious area in which Israel discriminates against Arab Israelis.

- ndmackenzie

December 1, 2007 at 2:22pm

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"Immigration rights are only the most obvious area in which Israel discriminates against Arab Israelis"

Howcome is it discriminatory to have, after the demands of arab-israelis, all public signs on both languages and to make it mandatory respect for arab language? Howcome is it discriminatory to recognize -- as the Israeli court explicitly recognized -- that Israel cannot be constructed as a perfect nation (meaning ethnic) state? And howcome is discriminatory to recognize all israeli arabs strict equality before public institutions, even more in the very sensible domain of land distribution (saying that "we declare that the state of Israel has no right to attribute public land to the Jewish agency in a discriminatory base between jews and non-jews")?

What you are saying is just absurd, ndmackenzie!

And if you're a bit honest on that quote you'll understand that, in the present scenario, that statement means the obvious. If the demographic balance within Israel is damaged, the state of Israel is finished. Do you really think that an arab majority would recognize jews the rights that Israel is now recognizing to the arab minority? What world do you live in?

- luispc

December 1, 2007 at 3:30pm

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But it's not a bit honest in anything it says.

It's a cross between a pig and a monkey.

Honesty isn't in its vocabulary.

- babigail

December 1, 2007 at 4:41pm

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"Immigration rights are only the most obvious area in which Israel discriminates against Arab Israelis"

Any of the antisemites here cares to elaborate?

I'd love to hear some of the less obvious areas.

And please - at least try to resist the usual lies.

(But who am I kidding? Saying "Israel discriminates against Israeli Arabs" and then disappearing into the mists, is the pigs' favorite pastime...)

- babigail

December 1, 2007 at 4:51pm

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luispc writes if "you're a bit honest on that quote you'll understand that, in the present scenario, that statement means the obvious."

The statement by the Israeli Prime Minister about Israel facing "a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights" is a sign Olmert recognizes that having the daily lives of millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories controlled by a small minority of Israeli settlers is politically, morally and legally untenable. It is absurd to believe otherwise.

- ndmackenzie

December 1, 2007 at 5:37pm

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I repeat:

what are the less obvious areas in which Israel discriminates against her Arab citizens?

- babigail

December 1, 2007 at 9:36pm

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Luis, as you know very well, for the last 15 years Israel has been struggling to reach the 2-states dream. Olmert hasn't suddenly landed on this invention. Most of Israel's leaders, including many in the right-wing declare this as the only solution openly.

The only problem is that the Palestinians don't want it, and work very hard to detsrtoy any hope for it.

That's where we're stuck.

Not with the Olmerts, but with the Arafats and Haniyes.

- babigail

December 1, 2007 at 9:45pm

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I know Abigail, I know.

And ndmackenzie, on the possible effects of an Arab majority in Israel, you should just think about what happened in post-colonial North Africa in what concerns Jews. In 1945, there were 900 000 Jews in Arab countries. In 1976, that number had been reduced to 25 000. And one could think that this was strictly dued to the creation of Israel. It wasn't. Arab countries made it explicit that they did not wish to keep jews as nationals. An example was the Algerian law of 1963, that decreed that it was necessary to have muslim parents and grandparents to be Algerian.

So, you can keep ignoring all this and keep attacking for no sound reasons whatever. I really don't know why you do that. If you were really interested in the solution of this problem, you would explore all it's dimensions and quit a manicheist perspective. That won't solve anything. Anything at all.

- luispc

December 2, 2007 at 4:08am

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"I really don't know why you do that."

Of course you know, Luis.

It also has nothing to do with the state of Israel.

Only with Jews.

- babigail

December 2, 2007 at 5:01am

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ndmackenzie shows once again she's a demented Nazi of the most murderous kind. She denies Israel the right to have a jewish Law of Return. Yet immigration laws in Israel favor Jews because Israel is the Jewish national state. At least 11 European states have Laws of Return which are far more comprehensive than Israel's. They have such laws because they explicitly are national states - Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Austria and so on.

Yet ndmackenzie denies to us Jews the very same rights that she does not deny to her fellow Europeans. This denial is the very essence of genocidal anti-Semitism. Whoever denies my people this fundamental right to having my country is my deadly enemy.

That is why I thought and I will continue to think of ndmackenzie whenever I go to do reserve duty in the Israel Force. It is because of such people that the existence of the Jewish people and our very lives are in mortal danger.

- sleepyavl

December 2, 2007 at 2:16pm

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luispc writes:

-- So, you can keep ignoring all this and keep attacking for no sound reasons whatever. I really don't know why you do that. If you were really interested in the solution of this problem, you would explore all it's dimensions and quit a manicheist perspective. That won't solve anything. Anything at all.

In writing this luispc seeks to divert attention away from what is by far the most significant dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the continued subjugation by an Israeli minority. of the Palestinian majority in the Palestinian Territories.  We have had four decades now to understand that wishing the significance of the occupation away won't solve anything. Anything at all.

It is pretty clear from his quotation that the Israeli Prime Minister has put the lie to the assertion of Martin Peretz that: "[the South African analogy] is such a gross analogy, factually and philosophically, that by now it almost needs no rebuttal." Unlike Martin Peretz, Olmert recognizes the evil the occupation has visited on the Palestinian people and is expressing the hope that this evil will not migrate to Israel as it could were the Palestinians to turn around and demand a unified state on the grounds that four decades of subjugation is enough.

Neither Olmert nor I seek a single-state solution and it was both wrong and slanderous of luispc to insinuate otherwise. Placed early in his response, that slander effectively negated the entirety of his response - predicated as it was on a falsehood.

I hope his  response is not an indication that luispc is falling into the manichean camp, in which jacksondyer blames all the ills of the world on anti-Semitism, or the manic camp, where babigail periodically spouts forth vile remarks in the hope we won't notice how racist they are. Such a fall would be a great loss as luispc strikes me as one of the few other sane individuals that post on The Spine.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 2:39pm

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First of all, ndmackenzie, I don't even understand half of what you say.

Second, Israel is not an obsession for me. Before I read TNR, I  thought about Israel as I thought about Checoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Chechnia, Ireland or Sudan where there are (or were) problems as well. For reasons of proximity, I even thought more about Catalonia and the Bask country more than I thought about Palestine...

But when faced with all these passionate discussions, I tried to learn a little. And one think, strikes me as evident. In the beginning of the 21st century there is a state there -- Israel -- recognized by the international community and with a people that has no where else to go if the existence of that state is compromised.

So, it strikes me as evidently acceptable that that people is not willing to accept terms that would compromise the very existence of their state. Which is something still not fully accepted by those that say they are "negotiating". And it seems to be something that you don't fully accept as well. Since, in the reality of this world, the majority solution you are proposing would mean the very death of Israel.

I would love it to be otherwise. But, considering the history from these last 50 years (the examples I gave and that you did not refute), and considering that the Arab world turned Israel in their cause celebre (as a subterfuge not to face their own problems, which are huge: any person with half a brain knows that an arab israeli is much better off in terms of recognition of dignity and rights than, say, in Iraq or Saudi Arabia...), if you keep any doubts that your solution would be a new "final solution for the jewish problem" than you are simply refusing to face the facts.

On my sanity. I do try to keep it. And if you're worried with it, please offer me arguments and not bigotry.

- luispc

December 2, 2007 at 2:54pm

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The French Prime Minister is introducing a new Law of Return to France under which immigration is forbidden unless the prospective immigrant can claim the Romans forced his ancestors out of Gaul.  Immigration will be absolutely forbidden to anyone displaced from France during WW2 regardless of how many millenia their ancestors have lived in what we now call France.

I believe the creation of the State of Israel was a vital project - as is its continued existence. I do not believe that, 60 years after its foundation, continued and unlimited immigration rights for Jews - and Jews only - can be viewed as anything other than racist. It is time that racism in Israeli immigration policy was removed by allowing unlimited Jewish immigration on a humanitarian basis, for historical reasons, and an ethincally-neutral limited immigration policy that was not based on ethnicity or religion. The idea that a US citizen is able to pack up his family and head to Israel to be welcomed with open arms while Palestinians are denied entry is utterly obscene.  Hiding racism behind religion is an age old practice and is no better when directed at Muslims than at Jews.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 3:16pm

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And now on to the reality of Jewish migration to Israel. The Guardian had an interesting article last week unfortunately titled: "Israeli migration agents target German Jews."

-- An Israeli intelligence organisation is to send agents to Germany in an effort to persuade tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to settle in Israel.

-- Representatives of the organisation Nativ are soon to operate on the approval of the Israeli government to "counter the dangerous assimilation of former Soviet Jews in Germany", according to the wording of a decision recently passed by the cabinet of prime minister Ehud Olmert.

-- Around 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, about 70% of the total community, are currently living in Germany having begun arriving at the invitation of the government in the early 1990s. But their assimilation into what is now the fastest growing Jewish community in the world has been problematic, largely due to linguistic and cultural differences, including varying approaches to defining Jewishness and even sometimes a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust.

-- The Central Council of Jews, the organisation representing Jews in Germany, has expressed its fury that Israel is trying to effectively steal its members. In a recent letter to Mr Olmert, the council described the decision as a "sign of mistrust which we find personally offensive".

-- Stephan Kramer, the council's general secretary said that it gave the impression that the "connection to Israel" and "imparting Jewish values" was not important to Jewish community leaders, when it in fact belonged to the "foundations of Jewish existence".

-- He added: "If you read the cabinet decision, you get the impression that Jewish Germans need to be evacuated. That sends a fatal signal."

-- The German government has joined the row, insisting that it should be up to individuals to decide where they live.

www.guardian.co.uk/.../0,,2218098,00.html

So here we see an example of Israel actively working to damage, if not destroy, "the fastest growing Jewish community in the world" in order to "counter the dangerous assimilation of former Soviet Jews in Germany." This action really begs the question of whether Israel has put its own selfish interests ahead of the interests of World Jewry. The answer, of course, is "yes."  Just as it is "yes" for all those American Likudniks who put the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of both their own nation and those of their co-religionists.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 3:17pm

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luispc writes:

-- Before I read TNR, I  thought about Israel as I thought about Checoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Chechnia, Ireland or Sudan where there are (or were) problems as well.

This is perhaps a sad reflection on the foreign coverage in The New Republic.  However, you should be aware that there are many highly-respected Jewish writers in American who do not share the Likudnik philosophy of The New Republic. I would recommend you to read their works as well as those published in this magazine.

luispc continues:

-- So, it strikes me as evidently acceptable that that people is not willing to accept terms that would compromise the very existence of their state. Which is something still not fully accepted by those that say they are "negotiating". And it seems to be something that you don't fully accept as well. Since, in the reality of this world, the majority solution you are proposing would mean the very death of Israel.

This was a response to a comment in which I explicitly pointed out I did not believe in a single-state solution:

-- Neither Olmert nor I seek a single-state solution and it was both wrong and slanderous of luispc to insinuate otherwise.

I have pointed out several times on these boards that the solution I advocate is sentence-by-sentence identical to the canonical phrasing one reads across the American media.  Two states, 1967 borders, minor mutually-agreed border adjustments, the usual waffling on Jerusalem, a safe and secure Israel.  The only thing I believe essential to that solution but is not normally included is that we need to guarantee the safety and security of Palestine as well as Israel.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 3:32pm

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This discussion started ndmackenzie because you quoted a phrase from the Israeli prime-minister, that you sounded to believe as obscene, on the demographic balance within Israel. I understood that phrase as stating the obvious: that any solution cannot damage that balance or Israel is dead, unviable.

I took from what you were saying -- reflexively, so to speak -- that you would find it acceptable a solution that would damage that demographic balance, given the context in which you've quoted the Israeli PM. I invite you to read the above said to confirm if my reading was so "slanderous".

Also implied in our discussion was the problem of the arab minority. For this minority, I understood, you were speaking about the arab-israeli minority, that lives within the internationally acceptable borders of Israel. You suggested that they were seriously mistreated and even gave the apartheid example. I replied with examples of decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court (and in Israel there is rule of law) that suggest quite the opposite. You did not comment.

And if you were speaking, not about the arab israeli minority, but about the majority of palestinians in and outside the borders of Israel, they have self-government and the greatest part of their problems is of their own responsibility.

Of course there are occupied territories. But, from what I can understand, they mean more a problem to than a wish of Israel. If there were guarantees of security in a scenario of liberation of those territories, is it that Israel would be interested in keeping them. I hardly believe so. And very recent experiences give strong evidence that Israel security fears are very well founded...

And on the two state solution, I'm glad you are for it. Everyone is for it. But surely you do not speak of a two state solution in which, in both states, there are arab majorities. Do you? I ask, because the context of the discussion suggests otherwise. And as I said - perhaps "slanderously", I don't know -- history suggests that to put an Jewish minority under arab rule means the end of that minority...

And on the two state solution you defend, who is REALLY blocking it?

- luispc

December 2, 2007 at 4:11pm

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luispc asks "[a]nd on the two state solution you defend, who is REALLY blocking it?"

As the occupying power, Israel is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY blocking it.

Deny that and you deny REALITY.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 4:26pm

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How is it so, nadmackenzie? Would you care to inform me, from your perspective, avoiding adjectives and insults? I would be interested, since you seem to have an angle of analysis that I simply miss. I'm not being ironic. I simply don't understand.

- luispc

December 2, 2007 at 4:34pm

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The Nazi ndmacknezie finds abhorrent the idea that an overseas Jew can enter Israel under he Law of Return. Yet she doesn't find abhorrent the idea that ethnic Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Fins, Irish, Lithuanians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Austrians can return preferentially to their ancestral homelands from wherever they are, even hundreds of years.

Of all people who have this right of return to their national homelands, only to the Jewish people does ndmackenzie deny this fundamental right.

Why do you deny us the right that you allow others,  ndmackenzie? Is it because you want to murder us as the Europe of your grandparents did? Without a country we are at the mercy of evil murder-hungry psychopaths like you.

All of you who read The Spine, behold ndmackenzie: she embodies the ESSENCE OF GENOCIDAL ANTI-SEMITISM. You will not see anyone else even close in magnitude of depravity and evil and hunger for Jewish blood.

- sleepyavl

December 2, 2007 at 6:04pm

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So as I understand it, ND, you're saying that the Palestinians should have right of return to pre-1967 borders.  Just  as the Jews do.  Out with it, weasel.  

- MOLLYSIMON

December 2, 2007 at 6:19pm

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mollysimon -

I wrote:

-- It is time that racism in Israeli immigration policy was removed by allowing unlimited Jewish immigration on a humanitarian basis, for historical reasons, and an ethnically-neutral limited immigration policy that was not based on ethnicity or religion.

Israel is a mature nation that has existed for 60 years and Israel needs to develop a mature immigration policy to match its national maturity.  I think that policy should encompass umlimited Jewish immigration, on a humitarian basis, to allow Jews to immigrate from countries where they face persecution. Otherwise Israel should have, as I wrote, an ethnically-neutral LIMITED immigration policy. At this point in the history of Israel it is both obscene and racist that an American Jewish family can move to Israel and be greeted with open arms while an Israeli Arab family can not be reunited if part of the family lives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In an earlier comment I also noted how Israel is actively trying to convince Soviet Jews now living in  Germany to further migrate to Israel, regardless of the damage this would do to the growth of the German Jewish community. Such actions damage the German-Jewish community by weakening it and making it look less committed to Germany itself. They also destroy the idea that unlimited immigration into Israel is not racist because it is predicated on the humanitarian needs of World Jewry.

- ndmackenzie

December 2, 2007 at 6:48pm

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ND:  "At this point in the history of Israel it is both obscene and racist that an American Jewish family can move to Israel and be greeted with open arms while an Israeli Arab family can not be reunited if part of the family lives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.*  ARE YOU SAYING THAT YOU BELIEVE THE PALESTINIANS HAVE THE RIGHT OF RETURN?  Just give me a fucking answer!  Please.  

"[A]ll those American Likudniks who put the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of both their own nation and those of their co-religionists."  Nice, ND, using that old "dual loyalty" smear.  

- MOLLYSIMON

December 2, 2007 at 11:10pm

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Haven't you understood ND is for the Pals right of return to Israel? In the two states solution, it simply can't find the obvious sense in Pals gathering from all over the world in Palestine, while Jews get the option to stream to Israel if they so wish.

It worries over and is deeply hurt by - can you fucking believe this? - Israel's relationship with the Jewish community in Germany! It actually has an OPINION about what the state of Israel is doing or not in regard to German Jews. Isn't it just just fantastic?

ND has never yet given a comprehensive answer to anything. Even if one was willing to consider its suggestions (such as allowing all the Arabs in the world to immigrate to Israel), it never takes the next step to explain how Israel is physically expected to continue existing.

In other words, this is not a serious adversary to a debate. It's just a hateful and sly supporting actor to the worst of Israel's enemies.

And even this civilized and honest attempt by Luis to extract some kind of a coherent thesis from it, has failed completely.

This base and evil creature makes me wish a real opponent of Israel would one day appear on the Spine, and provide a complete, intelligent, honest, cohesive, open, well-reasoned thesis for a solution, no matter how opposed to it I would be. It's no use debating with this shredded and scattered emblem of a brain.

Thanks to this pitiful excuse for a human cerebrum I've learned to appreciate the value of intelligent, strong, and rational adversaries in a debate, and even long for them.

- babigail

December 3, 2007 at 5:00am

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ndmackenize wants limited immigration only for Israelis - not for the many Europeans who also bring their own nationals back under Laws of Return. Fuck yourself, anti-Semite! You are who we Israelis need to be careful about. Go fuck yourself with your Hitler poster and your Che Guevara T-shirt. Go listen to your Hamas morning music, fucking murderous psychopath - yes that's you piece of shit ndmackenzie.

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 12:58pm

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Even such abusive language fails to mask the stupidity of the writer

Here is a less foul retelling of sleepyavl's thoughts:

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines

Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true,

As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us

With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?

Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,

Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

(William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1 Scene 2)

- ndmackenzie

December 3, 2007 at 1:19pm

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Well, Lear won't really do when one expects honest answers, after giving actual arguments.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 1:30pm

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Actually, luispc, I gave you a whole bunch of actual arguments and honest answers and it is mendacious to claiim otherwise.

Furthermore, I find it interesting, yet neverthless sad, that on another thread you condemn The Jaunty Boulevardier's commenting style yet on this thread you have no complaints about the foul-mouthed mendacity of sleepyavl's comments.

- ndmackenzie

December 3, 2007 at 2:36pm

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Nazi ndmackenzie, your arguments show that you are demented and anti-Semitic. Not once have you addressed the Laws of Return of other Europeans. Oh no, they have the right, just not the Jews. You little Aryan shit you! You soooooo have rights that we don't have.

And don't get all cultured with us. Shakespeare, no kidding! We all know very well that your intellectual food is porn, Hitler and Hamas clips.

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 2:49pm

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molly, pay attention to ndmackenzie. She is prime material for being a murderer of Jews. During the war, it is exactly this kind of semi-educated hateful cretin that filed the ranks of the Sonderkommandos. Now the same type of person signs anti-Israel boycotts, supports terrorists with money and occasionally more... wolves bidding their time for more action. They don't say Heil, but you can't miss their Arafat scarf and Che Guevara T-shirt...

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 2:55pm

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The European Union version of the "law of return" states:

2. Every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State.

3. Nationals of third countries who are authorised to work in the territories of the Member States are entitled to working conditions equivalent to those of citizens of the Union.

europa.eu/.../pressReleasesAction.do

It looks to me as if sleepyavl could up-sticks today and plop himself down in the cube next to The Ignorant Populist in Ireland or luispc in Portugal. Ireland has 4 million people and Portugal has 10 million - yet both these countries allow unlimited migration and full work rights to the 400 million people working in the European Union.  Almost 10% of the World's population, regardless of religion, has full freedom of movement and work rights throughout the European Union.

The people of the various Europeans countries must be vile and dastardly for making it to so hard for the likes of sleepyavl to go and work in their countries.

- ndmackenzie

December 3, 2007 at 3:07pm

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You got it wrong ndmackenzie. I wasn't commenting his "commenting style". I was commenting his constant commenting of others commenting styles. It's commenting the commentings!

And on those arguments that you afirm you have given me, I reread the above and I haven't read any (it's probably me, being mendacious). I only read about German Jews, what Olmert said constantly being taken out of context, about you defending a two state solution on who knows what terms and about me being "slanderous" and "mendacious".

I just had asked simple questions:

1. Do you really think there is discrimination against arab-israelis, comparable to "apartheid", even considering, for instance, the mandatory decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court?

2. On those two state solution, don't you think it is understandable that the Israelis want safeguards on not being left with a two arab state solution (or with one arab state solution), that would leave them completely vulnerable as a minority (I mentioned the examples of treatment of the Jewish minority in the Arab world in these last 50 years)?

3. Given the recent experience Israelis had when liberating an occupied territory after international pressure (it is they that have to put up with the terrorist attacks and the bombing, not us...), don't you think it's understandable that they are cautious about future experiences and at least want safeguards?

4. Do you think I'm really being offline when I say that the occupied territories are more a burden than an advantage for Israel?

These are questions you did not answer. I really would like if you did, since I would be interested in your perspective if it were articulated and founded. And please do not insist on calling me, yet again, "slanderous" or "mendacious". Not that I care with the name-calling (I don't give a shit about it, I always find it applicable to the one that calls the names), but in my good will, I'm willing to accept that you have some sort of founded perspective on this subject.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 3:09pm

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But no one comes here anyway ndmackenzie. Only Brazillians and Moldavians which I enjoy very much, please note.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 3:11pm

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And just a side note to say that on the commenting the commenting discussion, the last posts do not show on my computer. But I'm sure no one gives a fuck, since in the new TNR they have a strict policy of keeping costumers displeased.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 3:38pm

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And again on the commenting the commenting discussion the last words I read there are

"Thejauntyboulevardier said:

luis..."

Nothing else. So I'm left with the reticences. One could even laugh about this.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 3:41pm

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Fucking Nazi lies as usual. Laws of Return, you idiot, exist in at least 11 European states and are binding, unlike your fucking european law. These national states have NOT disappeared, you compulsive liar. They are: Germany, Hungary, Finland, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland, Greece, Lithuania.

This is the third time only on this thread that I have to put the list up.

But you have a the heart of a tiger and the brain of a donkey.

Your fucking mentors Arafat and Hitler have taught one lesson that you apply every thread you post: 'lie as much as you can, eventually the lie will stick".  You can't make any arguments, because they all are based exclusively on factual lies. The existence of the Law of Return is the perfect example of your absolutly demented lying habit.

It should be noted that you are cuckoo about exactly one subject: Jews. It's also the only one you post about.

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 3:47pm

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Just to say that the "commenting the commentary" discussion I'm referring to is not the one about Peretz' post "commenting the commentary". It's the one with the 100 plus posts in which M. Jaunty is whining about "certain people", describing what "real men" are all about, announcing publicly that he organizes separate soirees for his friends and saying that I'm "just a tad off" of being admitted in these latest ones.

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 3:49pm

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"The people of the various Europeans countries must be vile and dastardly for making it to so hard for the likes of sleepyavl to go and work in their countries."

Also, for your information you fucking Nazi fuckhead ndmackenzie, I also hold an European Union passport by birth. I don't need your approval to live there. But I don't want to. I live and work in a better place, one where vomits like you are seen as the vomits they are.

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 3:51pm

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luispc criticizes me for quoting "what Olmert said constantly being taken out of context."

Well it looks like the Internet has caught up with me because that Olmert quote is now making the rounds.

Matthew Yglesias uses it as a hook to write:

- We remember, of course, that people threw a fit when Jimmy Carter said this, but it's true whether or not people like to hear it. If Israel insists on governing millions of Palestinians forever and ever, those Palestinians are going to demand citizenship in the state that governs them.

matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/.../ehud_olmer_jewhater.php

Steve Clemons brings it up and writes:

- A lot of folks slammed Jimmy Carter for using the word -- but when Israel Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert says the same thing, it just makes the problem in Israel more tangible and real.

www.thewashingtonnote.com/.../002558.php

Eric Trager at Commentary magazine uses the quote to critisize Olmert:

Thanks to their highly controversial recent publications, former President Jimmy Carter and the academic tag-team of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have become persona non grata in much of the American Jewish community. Carter’s Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid argued that Israeli settlement in the West Bank—not terrorism, nor the ascendancy of Hamas—is the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy argued that U.S. policy in the Middle East is primarily driven by “American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel’s interests.”

www.commentarymagazine.com/.../1465

To which Matthew Duss at Tapped makes the obvious response:

-- Yes, if only Olmert read Commentary more, then he'd really understand what's at stake in these negotiations. He'd also better understand what language is and is not acceptable when discussing the issue in the United States, and how this differs significantly from what is acceptable in some other countries.

www.prospect.org/.../tapped_archive

- ndmackenzie

December 3, 2007 at 4:46pm

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Ndmackenzie, I've made four simple questions in good faith. None of those articles and least of all Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer tell me anything on the answers I asked.

Can't you just answer those questions?

And on those commited with peace men and zionist conspiracy denouncers, I'm really affraid that their candid approach will put us all on the path of war. But that's another discussion. For now, I only ask again, as politely as I can, could you answer the questions I've asked?

- luispc

December 3, 2007 at 4:54pm

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"... you fucking Nazi fuckhead ndmackenzie..." ----

If one were to judge the quality of Israel's support by the quality of its Spine-reading supporters' insults, I'd have to give a D grade.   It's the repetitive variations on "fuck" that do it, really.  The review might read something like, "The staid and repetitive schoolyard taunts generally distract and prevent any effective communication of points of argumentation.  One is forced to conclude that these commenters failed to successfully complete grammar school."  

- jfelliott

December 3, 2007 at 5:44pm

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Luis, it's funny.

You know he's not going to answer, coz you know what his unanswered answers are.

I don't have the patience to read his quotations (haven't you noticed all he does is quote? he's a compulsive quoter) but I'm sure some of them are as distorting as his "understanding" of what Olmert said.

It was very different from what Carter said, anyway.

he really is as bad as sleepy describes him.

- babigail

December 3, 2007 at 5:46pm

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luispc -

1) I have never claimed that Israel is an apartheid state.  Although there remains significant discrimination against the Arab-Israel population this discrimination does not amount to apartheid.  However, along with many others including it seems the Israeli Prime Minister, I do believe that  Israel has created and continues to foster the growth of an apartheid state in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  In the West Bank, the political and security desires of the minority Jewish population completely dominate the political and security desires of the majority Palestinian population. The situation in Gaza, for which Israel is still the legally-recognized occupying power, is nothing more than a Bantustan with Israel able to control all exit and entry to the area. Indeed the pathetic right-wing smear of Hamistan would be far more accurately written as Hamustan.

2) I fully understand why Israelis might be concerned about the possibility of their being a single Palestinian state with Jews as a minority.  That is why it is so important that Israel comes to a solution soon from a position of demographic strength and why Israel should ignore the wide-eyed lunacy emanating from the American Likudniks, many of whom frequent TNR, who suggest there will never be a solution for 1000 years.  Israel and its friends need to understand the lessons of Ireland where a similar sentiment of no unification ever has now changed to an acknowledgement that there will be a united Ireland in our lifetime.

3) Israel liberated the Gaza Strip in the same way the United States liberated New Orleans during Katrina - it unilaterally withdrew - and unsurprisingly the same devastating consequences erupted. The unilateral Israeli withdrawal does not change the fact that Israel remains the legally-recognized occupying power for the Gaza Strip. The Israeli withdrawal does not change the fact that Israel armed forces routinely enter the Gaza strip and cause whatever carnage they please.  The Israeli withdrawal does not change the fact that Israel constantly shells Palestinians and in one night alone killed more Palestinian civilians than the number of Israelis who have been killed in years of Palestinian rocket attacks on Sderot. And finally, the Israeli withdrawal has not prevented Israel committing war crimes against the Palestinian people living in the Gaza Strip as demonstrated by the collective punishment Israel is currently practicing on the people living there.

4) The continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is an incredible burden for World Jewry to bear.  It has caused many good and decent people to abandon that human decency out of a desire to defend the faith. However, the occupation and all the carnage consequent to it is no burden at all to Israel and those hard-core Zionists who view the occupation as an essential part of their irredentist ideology. And it is no burden to those who allow their faith to mask their bigotry. Sleepyavl even boasts of how my comments make him long for his IDF reserve service - can you even imagine how he must treat Palestinians given the despicable way he handles himself on these boards.

- ndmackenzie

December 3, 2007 at 6:24pm

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Guys (Luis, Val, Babs), I have not laughed so hard in a long time.  I swear, I was laughing out loud here, not a quiet chuckle, but guffaws.  "I was commenting his constant commenting of others commenting styles." Priceless.  

- MOLLYSIMON

December 3, 2007 at 6:48pm

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And of course he hasn't answered.

No matter what Israel does, she's always gonna remain the occupying aggressor. she withdraws Gaza and leaves an opening to Egypt - she's an aggressor. She tries to stop the constant rockets by entering gaza and killing the shooters - she's the aggressor. She leaves Lebanon completely - she's the aggressor (shaba farms! which don't even belong to lebanon), she gets permission from her own supreme court to reduce power supply to those who shoot at her daily - she's the aggressor.

When Israel will finally refuse to accept the refugees "back" (4th generation, mind) - she will become the ultimate aggressor.

No matter what she ever does, that's her lot in life - to be the aggressor.

Good enough. Coming from this dubious entity - I'll take it.

I certainly don't feel that I have to appease the likes of him or find grace in the eyes of his ilk.

There are antisemites in places in this world where a Jew has never set foot.

Antisemites will be antisemites.

So why should we care.

- babigail

December 3, 2007 at 7:48pm

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Sleepy, you make my day.  My husband and I have taken to quoting you.  "As for the rest, they are midgets."  Keep it coming, please.   Life can be so dull.  And, to contradict Jaunty, who thinks I'd say the same in person as I do on-line, he's wrong.  I'd be far nastier.  As I said to the lady in her Porsche when she tried to cut me off:  "Get a better plastic surgeon, bitch."    

- MOLLYSIMON

December 3, 2007 at 7:53pm

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jfelliot:  I learned my anglo-saxon long after grammar school.  Me a college graduate!  Me like to study lots!   But welcome to the Spine.  This is a particularly vituperative thread.  They're not all so bad.  But if it's too strong for your stomach, nu, what can I say?

- MOLLYSIMON

December 3, 2007 at 7:58pm

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Good Golly, Miss Molly, I was merely making an observation that calling someone a "fuckng Nazi fuckhead" isn't a particularly cogent or persuasive way to make one's point, nor is even a compelling insult.    Just saying.  I'm all for profanity, I just have high standards for its use in argumentation.  Of course, I don't come to The Spine for the high standards, as there aren't any.

- jfelliott

December 3, 2007 at 10:38pm

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jfelliott, I sympathize with you. I take your love of civility and your criticism at heart. However, I make an exception for ndmackenzie. She is an anti-Semite who hasn’t seen a murderer of Jews she didn’t like.

How can you reason with someone who comes from Jew Watch?

Just read her posts. No one comes even close when it comes to persistence and viciousness of lies. They are not any kind of lies or murder-cheer. They are pretty much exclusively about Jews.

I am a great believer in reciprocity. If someone is nice to you, be nice to him or her. But if someone slaps you, don’t turn the other cheek – punch him as hard as you can in the face.

- sleepyavl

December 3, 2007 at 11:41pm

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" Sleepyavl even boasts of how my comments make him long for his IDF reserve service - can you even imagine how he must treat Palestinians given the despicable way he handles himself on these boards."

Listen you vicious Nazi ndmackenzie, the majority of Palestinians are not Nazis like you. We Israelis have a conflict with them, but I don’t see it without solution with all of them. Just some.

Of the Palestinians I knew, you mostly resemble the Hamas people. I met Many Palestinians in my undergraduate years (not in Israel), at the university. I was careful to not let them know I was a Jew because I wanted to hear their opinions. It was fun to hear them uncensored.

You ndmackenzie resemble very much to them – you have the same incredible eagerness to murder Jews. This is why you are a motivator during my IDF trips, I know that you are a deadly, committed and uncompromising enemy. I don't think most Palestinians want the destruction of Israel and the destruction of all Jews. Only the really crazy ones - Hamas, al-Aqsa guys. And you.

There are other Nazis and truly deadly enemies of the Jewish peoples, I have no illusion. But you are the only one who comes here and shows her venom and her appetite for murder disguised as social conscience.

Enough for you today. Go read your daily Mein Kampf chapter, porno queen.

- sleepyavl

December 4, 2007 at 12:02am

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I don't understand ndmackenzie your argument on Katrina. So Israelis should have kept there a police force and an education system in order to keep law and order? But that wouldn't be

occupation from your perspective? Or, even worst, paternalistic colonialism? I'm already imagining everyone at Columbia University holding posters on the the new colonialists... and everyone at the UN general assembley demanding immediate withdrawal...

And on those acts Israel still practices on the Gaza Strip, what are they supposed to do when they are rocketed? Say "keep them coming"?

And on those settlers on the occupied territories, you are right. But on this, what you are saying is no different from what Abigail has already told here when arguing with one of those settlers. This is a cancer for the majority of Israelis as well, as I'm able to understand... but this majority is unable to face those settlers, from what I'm able to understand, precisely because a withdrawal from those territories would mean that we would have phenomena similar to the one observed on the Gaza strip.

So, it leads to a possible conclusion. If there is to be a solution, everyone is to undertake their own responsibilities, including the Palestinians. It's really counter-productive for the international community not to remind them that they must do some homework (beginning with explicit acceptance of Israel...since, with many, we are still at that point... and then to explicit declaration that terrorist activities are simply unacceptable).

And on the question if you find it understandable that Israel is unwilling to accept any solution that doesn't guarantee a Israeli state with a Jewish majority, which I understand, given recent experience, I take that you also understand that. So, I don't understand why you quoted Olmert above in the context you did and impying what you did... Well, but let's drop it.

- luispc

December 4, 2007 at 9:11am

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Oy, Luis. You are breaking my heart.

Really.

Just one point you should take into account: at this very point any withdrawal of forces (a direct result of evicting outposts) in the west bank will cause a civil war there, the identical twin of what we saw in Gaza, with probably the same consequesnces.

Hamas may yet surprise us in its positive affect, if the Fatah leadership ever realizes that Israel is its best friend in this situation, where they can't overcome these criminals on their own.

Much as Jordan had realized it it decades ago vs Syria and the Pals.

Ah, the future vision of paradise on earth: moderate wings of Palestinians, Jordanians, and Lebanese collaborating with Israel and with each other in a struggle for life and death against the axis of evil in the ME: the terrorists, Syria, and Iran.

It may not be all that crazy a fantasy.

In fact, it's the most rational outcome of the pressure of the bad guys.

Alas, rationality isn't anything you can firmly count on here. Still it occurs now and then.  

- babigail

December 4, 2007 at 11:22am

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luispc fails to understand my analogy of the Israel abandoning the Gaza Strip with the US abandonment of New Orleans following Katrina. In both cases we see the the impact on a local population of a precipitate withdrawal of a functioning government.

He asks if the "Israelis should have kept there a police force and an education system in order to keep law and order?" The Israelis had four decades in which to build a functioning civil society in the Gaza Strip with functional government at various levels. The Israelis had four decades in which to build world-class education systems in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis had four decades in which to build world-class education systems in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis had four decades in which to build a world-ranked economy in the Gaza Strip along with the outside connections, the airports and the container terminals to support it. The Israelis had four decades in which to build infrastructure in the Gaza strip and the power stations, water utilites and the refineries that go with it. Instead the Israelis did none of that, deciding instead to expend its money and effort over four decades in "settling" 10,000 Israelis there and giving their needs primacy over the needs of the resident Palestinian population.

And now we see the effect when the precipitate Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip leaves behind chaos. And that chaos is all and only the fault of the Palestinians in precisely the same way the chaos in New Orleans can only have been the fault of the residents of that city.  Of course it is not. And just as the blame for the horrors of New Orleans lies with the governments which abandoned the city not having done enough to prepare for a catastrophe so the blame for the chaos in the Gaza Strip must lie with an Israeli government that over four decades failed to prepare for withdrawal.

The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip had several motivations one of them being financial, the occupation being too much of an economic burden for so few "settlers."  However, there was also the strategic reason of demonstrating the inevitability of the chaos consequent to withdrawal.  The ability to claim that "a withdrawal from those territories would mean that we would have phenomena similar to the one observed on the Gaza Strip" was and is a strategic goal of the Gaza Strip withdrawal. This strategic desire has been further strengthened by the siege of the Gaza Srip following the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections. It became pretty clear that Hamas was close to major changes in policy but Israel could not tolerate these changes because they would have destroyed the rationale for its continued mistreatment of the Palestinian people. And so, instead, we end up with the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip which, being collective punishment of the Palestinian people is a war crime for which Israel must be held accountable.

And finally, luispc writes: "So, I don't understand why you quoted Olmert above in the context you did and impying what you did... Well, but let's drop it." I provided ample evidence that my understanding of the Olmert quote and context is pretty universal.  I quoted Matthew Yglesias from The Atlantic (and I notice Andrew Sullivan, his colleague and the former editor of TNR refers to it today), the well-respected Steve Clemens, Matthew Duss from The American Prospect and Eric Trager of Commentary. My understanding is obviously shared across the American political spectrum.

I would advise you that it is difficult to straddle the line between mendacity and stupidity because when you make a mistake you tend to lose your nuts. If you are genuinely interested in American culture and politics you need to broaden your reading beyond The New Republic.  This magazine is notoriously biased with regard to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and is not a reliable source of information or commentary on the issue.  I recommend you broaden your reading to include Eric Alterman at Media Matters, Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, M.J. Rosenberg and Daniel Levy at TPMCafe, and finally Matthew Duss at The American Prospect who has done a marvelous job documenting the collected malice of Martin Peretz. I am sure there are many other fine commentators in America, and their numbers are increasing, who do not share the bigotry that pervades this magazine.

- ndmackenzie

December 4, 2007 at 2:48pm

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sleepyavl increasingly resembles some sideshow automaton designed to spit out foul-mouthed slanders in return for a nickel. Here are few words from each of the comments he has posted to this thread:

- European fuckhead appeasers

- fuckhead anti-Semites

- So fuck yourself, shitty bastard!

- this whole thing started from that fuckhead

- demented Nazi of the most murderous kind

- The Nazi

- fucking murderous psychopath

- Nazi

- They don't say Heil

- Fucking Nazi lies as usual.

- fucking Nazi fuckhead

- She is an anti-Semite who hasn’t seen a murderer of Jews she didn’t like.

- you vicious Nazi

At some point his mental faculties will desert him and leave sleepyavl with nothing but an obscenity where his brain used to be.

- ndmackenzie

December 4, 2007 at 3:01pm

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At The American Prospect, Gershom Gorenberg writes:

-- By then, though, Olmert had been visited by an Idea. I suspect that he himself would have been less surprised if he had discovered he was pregnant. In newspaper interviews in late 2003, Olmert announced his vision: Israel needed to pull out of most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Otherwise Palestinians in occupied territory would demand the right to vote in Israeli elections. Since Palestinians were on the verge of becoming the majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, Israel would cease being a Jewish state. "I shudder to think that liberal Jewish organizations that shouldered the burden of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa will lead the struggle against us," Olmert said. This comment was a psychological gambit: He assigned to liberal Jews elsewhere the piece of the idea too terrible to say in his own name.

www.prospect.org/.../articles

I think there is now sufficient evidence to show that Martin Peretz was absolutely and totally wrong to claim the apartheid analogy: "is such a gross analogy, factually and philosophically, that by now it almost needs no rebuttal."

- ndmackenzie

December 4, 2007 at 3:36pm

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On your first post, there are three main points:

- One it is that Israel did not apply enough resources on occupied territories. I cannot confirm or infirm. I don't know. But even if she had, that would not have bought the good will of international community or of the arab world (that would be faced by the international community as paternalistic colonialism). And palestinians in these last decades have had no lack of resources in what concerns health and education. I do know for a fact that they are completely covered financially on this, if not by Israel, by the EU.

- The second means to attribute intentions which cannot be confirmed and that defy what one would intuitively conclude on why Israel left Gaza. I find it a bit abusive that you jump in to all those conclusions without any evidence whatsoever. That could be only be explained by an adverse animus towards Israel that prefers to attribute her the worst intentions all time. And even if she had this worst intentions, would it be so important to discuss them when what we are trying is to, impartially, think about a solution that finally ends everyone's misery around there?

- The third is on many other commentators that don't accompany Peretz on this and that seem to confirm what you implied on Olmert above. Besides the argument of naked authority (and I don't recognize Alterman or Iglesias what I don't recognize no one, not even God), I haven't seen anything that would infirm that the man was only saying that he would not have a Israel with an Arab minority. Saying this PRECISELY because he would not have apartheid in which a majority would be denied the right to vote. So this only confirms and not infirms what Peretz says when he finds abhorent the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa.

How is it, for you, that if Olmert is unwilling to have a Jewish state that includes the Gaza strip and the West Bank (seeming to agree with everyone, including you, on going back to 1967) since it would be an Arab state (because, it seems, PRECISELY, that he would not live with apartheid of a majority, denying arabs the right to vote) he is for apartheid? How is it that this denies the accuracy of Peretz when declaring the use of the word apartheid abhorent?

You are being incoherent ndmackenzie

- luispc

December 4, 2007 at 4:02pm

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"The man", in my third paragraph, is Olmert, of course. And when said "with an arab minority", please read "with an arab majority". This could be concluded by context, but anyway.

- luispc

December 4, 2007 at 4:24pm

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What ignorance, good god.

First: analogies. I've said it before and I'll say it again: they never work, and always serve as the lowest demagogic arguments. The New Orleans populace are all fully American citizens, and there's no war going on between their nation and America. They craved their own government's support.

As opposed to the Pals' status, situation aspirations, and attitude. How can these two populations be compared at all. Same goes to SAfrica's apartheid policy. No nation involved there threatened to throw the SAfricans to teh sea for decades.

Second, only someone who refuses to look at reality can claim that Israel hadn't done anything to "build" "construct" "help" etc for the Palestinians. Let's look at some facts. Israel hasn't been ruling the Palestinian population for the last 12 years at least. So it's 3 decades, and a bit less, not 4. They had ample chance to do what Israel had "failed" to to for them, and not just chance: A LOT of money.

UNRWA has been ruling all the refugee camps and doesn't even allow the PA or any other body to intervene. They run each aspect of social life there: education, welfare, health, municipal services - everything. No one can enter or do anything. Not only in refugee camps in the PA territories, but all over the ME. If anyone failed, it's UNRWA and the UN.

But not even they failed. The Pals failed, as they have failed in anything they've touched.

But what about the Egyptians and the Jordanians? They could work miracles for 19 years over there before 67, couldn't they? During that time the rest of the Arab world could have chipped in too. The Western world, instead of assigning UNRWA could build a life for them.

I guess it depends on your point of view.

For some people the year 1967 is like the year 0000 is for the rest of the world: the beginning of time count. There's the B-6-days-war and teh A-6-days-war.

Israel is responsible for everything and don't confuse us with facts.

- babigail

December 4, 2007 at 6:23pm

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But the most ridiculous argument is that Israel is responsible for the civil war instigated by Hamas. This wasn't even their first "free" election, it was the second one. All their internal affairs were strictly run by themselves, they did the only thing they are really good at: destroy and kill, abuse and torture.

Israel should have PREPARED the kindergarten before leaving there? maybe even trained the new kindergarten teachers?

Did Israelis since 1948 need preparation by someone else? training? infrastructures? They did it all on their own, living in ascetic conditions for decades, for the sake of building a country for themselves. But of course, we don't expect this from the Pals. They are our retarded children, our poor handicapped unfortunate bunch of good-for-nothings who can't even build a sewer system in their own habitat. Or a power plant.

Actually, they can't do anything save for building rockets , digging tunnels, and making exploding belts. There they show extraordinary energy and diligence, a will to die for their country, and endless devotion and sacrifice. Just don't bother them with education or making a living, or such despicable jobs as building  decent houses and streets.

KILL KILL and KILL, that's where they show their abilities.

Yeah, Israel is responsible for the chaos that took over Gaza, and big parts of the west bank as well.

Just Israel.

EXACTLY as America is responsible for the Katrina aftermath.

Good comparison.

- babigail

December 4, 2007 at 6:47pm

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The reality, ndmackenzie, is that you are a Nazi. Moreover, if you care so much about obscene words, you shouldn't post porno on TNR, as you did in June 2006. To remind everyone, you then elaborated on how jacksondyer "went down" on Marty Peretz.

You're not bright and you are incapable of making arguments. Maybe among your brain-dead comrades you cut a dashing figure, although I doubt even that. You actually leave the impression of a crazy bag lady, capable maybe of murdering a drunk beggar (provided he's Jewish), but not much more. In fact, here on TNR you cannot hold your own against anyone who disagrees with you. That is mostly because your arguments are based either on factual lies (mots of the time) or on factual omission. You always lose, so then you shout louder. That is why people despise you.

The only thing that gives you an identity is your demented and blood-thirsty anti-Semitism. No other topic moves you. You supplement intelligence and honesty by the energy of hatred. But you're not fooling anyone. I'm the only one who tells you to go to hell explicitly, but many others have just as much contempt for you.

The good part about you is that you are a weak, wretched creature. The most you can do is on these chats - or give money to Hamas.

Note that my insults are directed only to you. No one else comes even close in evil to you. Good luck to you, dark soul.

- sleepyavl

December 4, 2007 at 8:29pm

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There is a book by Sartre in which the talks about his uncle Jacques, an idiot who never had much to say but had much simmering anger. So he hated (or pretended to hate) the English and that was his identity. At family celebrations, Sartre’s father would occasionally steer the conversation to the English, so that uncle Jacques could launch into a diatribe against the English. Everyone understood it was a gimmick to have the poor chap speak about something, to not be left alone – this random hatred alone was how the only way this otherwise empty man could be defined.

So it is with ndmackenzie, a not very bright person whose identity is defined by deranged diatribes against Jews - but not much else.

- sleepyavl

December 4, 2007 at 8:40pm

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"During that time the rest of the Arab world could have chipped in too. The Western world, instead of assigning UNRWA could build a life for them."

Yes, it makes you think... Anti-semitism in European societies was ALWAYS (meaning: ALWAYS) rooted by those societies collective bad conscience or absent conscience. The Jews were to be blamed for everyone's failure (it started back at the moment in which the Romans accused the Jews of killing Christ, although strangely they had been the ones that had crossed him...). Now, in a renewed exercise, everyone is looking with extraordinary lenses (that allow to see what I would never see, even with glasses) for the faults of Israel...without considering one's own failures...

And it's extraordinary that, in the end, Israel is being accused of not providing for Palestinians (for instance with education). By the very persons that constantly accuse everyone of ethnocentrism or cultural exclusivism...

Of course I'm for helping those peoples (and the effort surely can't be only Israeli...howcome no voices were or are heard worldwide on the need for the international community to finance and keep a police force in the Gaza strip? The same in the West Bank?). But simultaneously I'm not constantly thinking myself within a multicultural conscience (I don't believe in multiculturalism: without shared commitments no human society has ever - meaning: EVER - subsisted) and I'm constantly trying to remember what western culture is all about...

- luispc

December 5, 2007 at 9:51am

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I should precise that when I say that I don't believe in multiculturalism, I mean to say that I don't believe in anomic and detached multiculturalism in which there are no shared commitments. This could be concluded in good faith, but one should make things explicit when there is the constant risk of being called "fascist" or "ethnic cleanser".

In this supposition, I think that, for instance, muslims should be accepted and cherished in non-muslim societies as long as they accept that these ones are based in principles that oblige everyone and that are not to be compromised in any circumstance. Since, from my perspective, to compromise there would mean to compromise the very possibility of existence in terms of mutual respect.

And in this supposition, education systems should particularly stress what those principles are (the main one being fundamental equality amongst men and women). And the west should not be ashamed of remembering the same principles and to make an effort to export them. Instead of putting all it's effort in exporting "free market" and "free initiative". Not that I'm against "free market". But one can have "free market" and lack everything one value (China is the utmost proof of that...)

- luispc

December 5, 2007 at 11:39am

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