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Go Home Obama Leads The Passover Seder

THE SPINE MARCH 28, 2010

Obama Leads The Passover Seder

BY MARTIN PERETZ

I wonder who is going to edit the Haggadah Shel Pesach, the text used to introduce and accompany the White House Passover meal, over which Barack Obama will preside when he returns from his trip to Afghanistan. 

This, of course, was the golden opportunity to tone down the cacophony of his nasty disagreement with Bibi Netanyahu by going to Jerusalem and celebrating the seder there instead. Perhaps Bibi, who knows the power of drama, would have even arranged to seat the president at the otherwise empty chair reserved for Eliyahu Hanavi, the prophet Elijah, whose imminent coming will usher in the days of eternal peace and God’s return to Zion. Or maybe not. 

Since, however, no one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had the imagination to shift the locale of the president’s seder to the prime minister’s official residence, safely within the perimeters of western Jerusalem, praise be to God, Obama will have to arbitrate himself the theological questions that come up in the various haggadot. Yes, there are dozens of these, some following faithfully the old text, some not, othersbranching out brazenly to find new meaning in an old festival. My favorites are “The Haggadah of the Liberated Lamb,” a vegetarian text counterposing itself to the narrative of the yearling whose blood was used to help the Jews avoid the last of the ten plagues, and “The Santa Cruz Haggadah for the Liberated Consciousness,” second edition. 

The haggadah used at the White House will doubtless follow the traditional account even if there might be “progressive” tropes added. I suppose “Go Down, Moses,” an old Negro spiritual (popularized in the middle decades of the 20th century by Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson) will be sung at the executive mansion, just as it will be sung at hundreds of thousands Jewish homes in America where the knowledge of Hebrew and Hebrew melody is not--shall we say?--up to snuff. 

But the challenges of the haggadah will be in the editing. I have before me four different but more or less traditional variants of the seder text, two with the incantation of “shmoich hamoscha” included, two without. Why is this of significance? This is how one classical rendering reads: 

Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Thy name; for they have eaten Jacob and laid waste his dwelling. Pour out Thy fury upon them, and may the kindling of Thine anger overtake them. Pursue them with anger and destroy them from under God’s skies.

When I was a child and my parents’ minds were with their dead relatives in Jewish Poland, everybody at our seder recited a poem in Yiddish. Here is an excerpt--in English translation, of course: 

Pesach has come to the Ghetto again.

The wine has no grape, the matzo no grain.

But the people anew sing the wonders of old, 

The flight from the pharaohs, so often retold.

How ancient the story, how old the refrain!

The windows are shuttered. The doors are concealed.

The Seder goes on. And fiction and fact

Are confused into one. Which is myth? Which is real?

Come all who are hungry! invites the Haggadah.

The helpless, the aged, lie starving in fear.

Come all who are hungry! and children sleep, famished.

Come all who are hungry! and tables are bare.

Pesach has come to the Ghetto again.

The lore-laden words of the Seder are said.

And the cup of the Prophet Elijah awaits,

But the angel of death has intruded instead.

The poem ends with an oath of revenge.

“Pesach has come...” poses no challenge to Obama. But “Pour out thy wrath...” does.

And so do at least two other portions.

The very first is from the opening statement of the haggadah itself: “Ho Lachma Anya...” or “This is the bread of affliction...”

This year we are here; next year we shall be in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves; next year we shall be free.

The second is the very ending of the seder itself:

Pure One who dwells in the heavens on high, 

Raise up Your people, countless to the eye,

Soon may You lead those You planted strong

To freedom in Zion in glorious song!

L’ shana ha’ba’ah b’ yerushalayim--Next Year in Jerusalem.

Measure Obama’s sensitivity to Muslim feelings. Measure Obama’s disdain for Jewish feeling. Jerusalem is the living heart of the faith, and it is that loyalty he has chosen to assault.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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177 comments

"I suppose “Go Down, Moses,” an old Negro spiritual (popularized in the middle decades of the 20th century by Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson) will be sung at the executive mansion, just as it will be sung at hundreds of thousands Jewish homes in America where the knowledge of Hebrew and Hebrew melody is not--shall we say?--up to snuff." You are turning ugly. What happened to you, Peretz? You seem to have no sense of rhetoric. It's all excess with you, so that you increasingly slip into oily asides with ugly subtext. I'm not sure to whom you are most offensive here: contemporary Jews without your purer-than-thou traditions or to Blacks whose long racial travail seem somehow less worthy of your respect. I'm doing my best not to succumb to some excess of my own so I end this here.

- dmillstone

March 28, 2010 at 5:24pm

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dmillstone You beat me to the punch. This is disgusting. "Go Down Moses" today? "Jewboy" twice last week? What the hell is this? Have you gone fucking insane? Have you no sense of decency? Is there anyone either on staff or in this miserable creature's family who can bring this man back to humanity? Is this kind of shit that you want your grandchildren to see about their grandfather? Go Down Freaking Moses??? If you are still capable of reflection, step back and step away from the keyboard. You have never commanded much respect in journalistic circles but something seems to have snapped in your brain and the deepest dankest excesses of your dark Id seem to be out.

- MrCookie1

March 28, 2010 at 5:40pm

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"Toning down the cacophony of the nasty disagreement" is Israel's responsibility and interest, not Obama's. There are great powers in the world and there are medium powers and there are small powers. So it is, and so it shall be. The United States is a great power. Israel a small power. The United States is not going to bend over to align its interests with those of Israel's, poetry notwithstanding. Israel, if it wants the patronage of a great power, patronage that it needs now more than ever as it has become diplomatically isolated through its 40-year occupation of land inhabited by Palestinian Arabs, must align its interests with those of the United States. It is fortunate for Israel that the United States is as decent a place as it is or Israel would simply be crushed. With all of the abuse being directed at Obama from Israel and its friends these past few days, it would be well to remember that. One can regret that Israel is not a super-power and mourn that the world is still a place where state power and the clash of state powers controls outcomes. But that is the world. There is no other world in which Israel or any of the rest of us can go to live. Best to get used to it.

- roidubouloi

March 28, 2010 at 6:15pm

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There was also an interesting take on what's happening in the larger relationship between Israel and the U.S. in today's NYT, by Tom Friedman. Perhaps that might warrant a little more attention than the White House's seder -- in a, you know, serious news and current affairs journal. Fixations can be amusing and enlightening for a while, and then they become just . . . fixations.

- ironyroad

March 28, 2010 at 7:19pm

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Was that the article in which Friedman complains that Israel abuses American $$?

- noga1

March 28, 2010 at 7:33pm

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"Measure Obama’s sensitivity to Muslim feelings. Measure Obama’s disdain for Jewish feeling." Disdain for Jewish feeling? If Al Sharpton said an equivalent about blacks, you’d be the first in line to accuse him of playing the race card. But now that you’ve joined the club (perhaps you’ve always been a closeted member), a “right on, brother” is in order the next time Al or Jesse, in your opinion, plays the card. Lest we forget, all the President did was ask Israel to temporarily -- yes, temporarily -- halt any expansion of old settlements or construction of new ones on Arab land. The nerve of the neophyte President, huh, Marty? He should have been as pliant as George W Bush was to your kind of neo-con pressure. Acquiesce to rightwinger Bibi Netenyahu’s every whim, that is. I'd bet that was your assessment of Obama during the heady days of the last presidential campaign when you repeatedly praised him lavishly. He turned out to be a quietly tough and persistent dude. You are getting shrill, Marty.

- scrubby

March 28, 2010 at 7:36pm

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Noga: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28friedman.html?th&emc=th

- ironyroad

March 28, 2010 at 8:21pm

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The U.S.' main concern is U.S. security, not Israel's. If they happen to coincide, fantastic. This constant beat down on U.S. jewish people who do not hold Israel's interests above the U.S.' is absolutely disgusting. In fact, it's disgusting when Peretz clearly favors Israel interests above the U.S.'

- OscarPeck

March 28, 2010 at 10:00pm

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scrubby "Disdain for Jewish feeling? If Al Sharpton said an equivalent about blacks, you’d be the first in line to accuse him of playing the race card." Jews are not a race, he is playing, if anything the ethno-religious card which is to say he is offended by Obama's stance on Jerusalem. What is wrong with reacting negatively to some of Obama's policies? I personally am offended not by the pressure he is puting on Netanyahu, I am offended by the lack of pressure on the Arabs in his "peace" moves. I suspect that many other Americans and not just Jews are also offended by that. If he keeps it up he will be a one term President just like Carter.

- jdyer

March 28, 2010 at 10:09pm

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OscarPeck "The U.S.' main concern is U.S. security, not Israel's. If they happen to coincide, fantastic. This constant beat down on U.S. jewish people who do not hold Israel's interests above the U.S.' is absolutely disgusting. In fact, it's disgusting when Peretz clearly favors Israel interests above the U.S.'" So Oscar Peck knows what US security interests are and if you don't tow his line he will start a pogrom against the Jews.

- jdyer

March 28, 2010 at 10:11pm

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Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque. This is a response to Friedman's perversions by Avi Trengo, a leftist journalist, one of those disillusioned "Peace Now" activists who used to hang upon Friedman's words in the past but find him quite useless these days: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3868877,00.html It's in Hebrew. I may translate it into English if there is any interest in it.

- noga1

March 28, 2010 at 10:37pm

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If you have time, yes. "Perversions" is not a good start to a civilized discussion, however. I found the basic model TF sketches out for the shift illuminating. I'm happy to be told why it's wrong, but I want some evidence -- even subjective -- before I agree that it's malicious.

- ironyroad

March 28, 2010 at 10:59pm

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I agree this post is ugly. There was another ugly post a few weeks ago after the Haiti earthquake in which Arabs were gratuitously slandered. I think the problem -- and I want to tread carefully here -- is that Marty firmly believes in a version of Israeli exceptionalism. For Americans such as myself, who hold Israel in high esteem and wish it only the best, but are not prepared to accord its interests a special status above those of our other allies, to stay nothing of our own, it seems legitimate to ask, as Friedman does today: Is the continuing, seemingly intractable Israeli/Palestinian conflict a factor in U.S. difficulties in the Middle East? And if it is, then isn't the principal U.S. interest here to bring an end to that conflict one way or another, rather than futilely mediate the endless "But he hit me first" debate that Marty seems so interested in. These are sincere questions, not rhetorical ones. I'd be interested in the thoughts of others.

- Oberdier

March 28, 2010 at 11:25pm

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well stated Oberdier...

- MrCookie1

March 28, 2010 at 11:26pm

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noga says: "Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque." Noga, you are deranged, completely. You are no longer of this world. You have reached the point where everyone who does not accept Likud's right-wing extremist designs on land east of the Green Line is Israel's enemy. Tom Friedman? I don't like Friedman for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with his "war of choice" meme on Iraq, but if things have reached the point where an Israeli who is anything other than an extremist Yigal Amir-type nut can characterize Friedman as loathing Israel, then the place is finished. It's descent into paranoia is complete. Noga's certainly is. The right-wing is determined to drag Israel down in the pursuit of its chimerical land ambitions. Let us hope there are enough Israelis who will realize that Likud is leading Israel over a cliff and throw them out. Perhaps the fact that for the first time since 1956 the US is asserting its own interests, rather than saying one thing and then allowing Israel to pursue its interests with little regard for those of the US, will be the wake-up call that Israel needs.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 12:29am

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I should have said also that in this case I think Friedman's assessment is dead-on balls accurate. He has gotten right to the essence and he has gotten the essence right. I just re-read the column, linked above, and how anyone other than a true paranoid could characterize Friedman's tone as "loathing" is beyond me. He is barely emotional, sticking to a serious geo-political analysis that anyone who wants to think about the problem of the Middle East should read and take very seriously.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 12:35am

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Noga's link to the Friedman interview in Yediot Aharonot can be roughly translated using Google Translate http://translate.google.com/# .

- amidut

March 29, 2010 at 5:29am

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In light of recent events, there's something offensive and mocking about Obama's "celebration" of Passover.

- amidut

March 29, 2010 at 5:36am

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I dunno roiduboiloi. I read the Friedman article and one of the things that distresses me about it is his assumption that the Israelis think of the need for peace as a "hobby." That's unfair. Look at what's happened to Israel since the Clinton years. Exactly what do you expect of them under the circumstances? The fact is the ONLY way that frequent suicide bombings were stopped was by the methods we now see imposed and which everybody refers to as "apartheid." The withdrawal from Gaza presented an opportunity for the people of Gaza and it was utterly wasted in barrages of rockets and the destruction of valuable infrastructure. That was followed by the bloody takeover of the Strip by Hamas, which people seem to have forgotten in all its awfulness. And who exactly has been attacked by Hamas, Hezbollah and various other parties including Fatah since the Clinton era? If memory serves it was the Israelis. The US on the other hand has embarked upon two wars of choice - of course the 1980's and 1990's weren't exactly the pinnacle of peace in the Middle East and Central Asia either - what with Iran/Iraq, the Soviet/Afghan war, our arming of the mujeheddin, Iran/Contra, our sponsorship of Saddam and of course Gulf War I and that's just the big stuff. So we're complaining now that Muslims are mad at us after we started bombing the hell out of several Muslim nations and this is Israel's fault? Please. And - where is the balance from the Obama administration's approach to the so-called peace process? I don't see it myself. I think the approach to Jerusalem is just wrong. Recognition of the Old City and its value to Jews and also the post 1948 history of the city and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from there and from the West Bank along with the fact that Jews couldn't even pray there or in Hebron and publicly stating this history instead of linking Israel solely to the Shoah would go a long way, from this president in particular, to forging the possibility for mutual understanding. By the same token it's important not to forget the Arab Jews and the problems confronting other minorities throughout the Middle East. Israel's problems are a reflection of long-standing issues, not the cause of them. Similarly both Israel's issues, and ours and those of other aspects of modernity reflect natural conflicts with a deeply conservative region - of course there is going to be stress. This should be seen for what it is - change. For us to blame the Israelis for problems innate to the region such as religious, tribal and ethnic strife and the aftermath of colonialism/imperialism including the great Muslim empires is absurd, it's highly prejudicial and it's a low, cheap shot. It's also ignoring the impact of rapid change on a very old region of the world where highly conservative mores are the rule rather than the exception and also where outside interference isn't necessarily appreciated especially if it's accompanied by a flight of B-52's or a Soviet tank. Instead of facing all this honestly, including the impact of the oil industry on geopolitics, discussing it openly and publicly for example at Cairo, this hard line on Jerusalem and even on Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria is reinforcing Arab attitudes toward Jews, to wit, Jews are inferior people who have no rights and no real history - indeed I've conversed with people who think the mosque predated the Temple, if in fact that Temples ever existed - in this world view, sites like Rachel's tomb has always been Muslim. Always. No American leader should buy into that kind of magical and highly prejudicial thinking. Rather, addressing the issue in a spirit of compromise and getting people face to face should be goal #1 - again, the proximity talks are a tactic from the days of imperial Britain and they won't bring peace. This all goes hand in hand with statements, for example in the NYT by somebody named Robert Wright that the Green Line is Israel's recognized border - which is simply a lie. Indeed his whole column made me queasy: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/against-pro-israel/ Meanwhile, a two suicide bombers have just blown themselves up in Moscow. I think that "linkage" is a chimera. It may be fashionable to blame the Israelis for everybody's problems but that doesn't mean it's factually true. The Friedman article bothered me for other reasons too - not least the linkage business - but it's late so for now this is the best I can do. Meanwhile, please go over in your mind what's happened to Israel since 1999 and tell me you think peace is a hobby for Israel or if, in fact, they don't actually think it's possible and have decided to make do with reality rather than some hopeful myth. Indeed if you read the Israeli press you'll often find a note of real despair. If you read the Palestinian press or look at some antisemitic cartoons or read the latest libels of Israel - at the UN even - maybe you'll feel a sense of despair too. Finally I think maybe there's some confusion as to who really constitutes a minority on this planet and therefore needs some protection. Hint: it isn't "Palestinians." You yourself have noted that the Palestinians are backed up by hundreds of millions of other Arabs. Frankly I hear echoes of Chamberlain these days, who decided by all means it was better to offend the Jews. So you know what happened next. I also believe that schoozing is better than trying whack people upside the head and ordering Jews what to do in Jerusalem is really counterproductive. But worst of all, I'd always believed the US, for all our mistakes and often warlike behavior wasn't really an imperialist nation that would try to harm a little nation, at least not one that identifies so closely with us and believes us to be an ally. But these threats against Israel are making me rethink this (OK so I am dumb). But this really smacks of imperialism to me, especially the spectre of American troops forcing Jews out of Judea, or blood libels or accusations of disloyalty directed at American supporters of Israel. An article in Ha'aretz today reflects Israeli fears that they'll be forced into a settlement with the Arabs, all the previous agreements and letters and assurances from America just torn up and thrown out the window. I think this is hubris on our part and it doesn't speak well of the US and our vast power, which is always in danger of becoming uncoupled from morality. Bottom line at this rate I see nothing ahead but disaster. We need a cooler, more balanced and patient approach - remember how people would criticize Bush/Cheney for ignoring the reality based community? Well that cuts both ways. Progressives can be just as bad as conservatives, they can be just as blind and just as destructive.

- Sophia

March 29, 2010 at 5:44am

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Sophia, I think you're misreading TF. I don't think there's much substance to TF's column, but what little substance there is certainly isn't what you read into it. When TF said "hobby," he was using typical TF glibness to describe a state's pursuit of an objective that is not considered a critical interest. He was saying that, due to the successes of Israeli counterterror policy, and the failures of Israeli land concessions, peacemaking with Palestinians is no longer seen as an existential necessity by the Israeli government. Which is true! Nobody has ever accused Netanyahu of regarding a two-state settlement with the Palestinians as a top strategic priority. As to the "linkage" in TF's article, some here are responding to TF's theory of linkage as if it were the same as, say, Noam Chomsky's theory of linkage. To say that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute complicates American relations in the rest of the Middle East is not to say that every suicide bomb in the world is Israel's fault. It's not even to say that anything at all is Israel's "fault." As far as its complicating effects on U.S. foreign policy, which are undeniable, it doesn't matter whose "fault" the I-P dispute is. All that matters is that the dispute exists, that it is a problem for the United States, and that therefore trying to solve the dispute is in America's national interest. No element of that sequence of statements suggests that Israel is to blame for anything, or even in the wrong in the dispute. Columbia's civil war is likewise a complicating problem for U.S. policy in Latin America; to say this, and to say that resolving Columbia's civil war would be in America's interest, is not to "blame" the Columbian government for anything.

- rhubarbs

March 29, 2010 at 7:57am

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"I just re-read the column, linked above, and how anyone other than a true paranoid could characterize Friedman's tone as "loathing" is beyond me. " You read Hebrew, do you, roidubullies? What a tedious, burly, one-note, total putz you are.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 8:06am

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Here is one paragraph in Trengo's response which explains what's wrong with Friedman's representation of American Aid to Israel: בראיון השבוע מאשים פרידמן את ישראל שהיא עושה בכסף האמריקני שימוש לרעה דווקא "כשארה"ב צריכה אותו יותר מתמיד לתמיכה בתעסוקה האמריקנית". הרבה עיתונאים זרים סבורים כי רק בזכות הכסף של אמריקה העם היהודי מתקיים פה. כשמסבירים להם להם שהיקף כלכלת ישראל הוא מאות מיליארדי דולרים בשנה וכי התמיכה האמריקנית מהווה אחוז זעום מזה – הם מסרבים להאמין. מהשלושה מיליארד שארה"ב מעניקה לישראל מדי שנה רק 690 מיליון מועברים בפועל לישראל. השאר, 75% מהסיוע, נשאר בארה"ב. כי זו סובסידיה עקיפה של הממשל ליצרני הנשק האמריקנים – בואינג, לוקהיד, מקדונאל דגלאס, וכך גם תומך בתעסוקה האמריקנית. "In the interview to Yediot Aharonot Tom Friedman accuses Israel of abusing American aid money just when "The US needs it more than ever to combat American unemployment levels." Many foreign correspondents believe that it is only American money that Jewish polity subsists here in israel. When you explain to them that Israel's economy is in the hundreds of billions per year and that the American support is just a fraction of it, they refuse to accept these facts. Of the 3 billions $ Israel gets in aid from the US, only 690 Million get into the country. The rest, 75% of the aid, remains in the US. It's the American administration's indirect subsidy to American weapon producing industries-- Boeing, MacDonald Douglas, Lockheed-- and as such it supports American employment." ______________ Quotes from original interview with Friedman: "Anyone who thinks they need another war in Israel is welcome to his opinion. Just don't do it with American money". "He called Netanyahu a "drunk driver" but is willing to swear that he has nothing against Israel or its Prime minister." "US is organizing global coalitions against Iran for its own interests, but the main beneficiary is Israel..." ".. any one dollar that goes to Israel is one dollar that does not into one of the projects America needs..."

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 8:30am

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BTW, I may have mischaracterized Avi Trengo when I called him a "disillusioned" Peace-Now Activist. The disillusion he speaks about is with Friedman's idea that withdrawal to the 67 borders is the magic formula for peace.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 8:35am

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thanks Sophia, you are the breath of truth. I was also queasy about Wright's opinonator post, but he did not approve my comment to that effect. Like Amidut, I think Obama should stop the private WH seder because it is mocking. I am completely puzzled why anyone would ascribe negative motive to Marty's mentioning "Go Down Moses". I went to sleep last night thinking it would have been a stroke of genuine leadership had Obama joined Netanyahu for seder in Jerusalem in addition to the standalone photo-op trip to Afghanistan. The thought that Obama thinks he can impose a peace settlement in two years in order to help with his re-election is truly depressing. Maybe O will get bored by then, and decide owning a basketball team is preferable.

- K2K

March 29, 2010 at 8:41am

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K2K you really don't see the thinly veiled racism to peretz' snide reference of Go Down Moses? Wow. That is sad. Did you also think that peretz' use of "Jewboy" for David Axelrod was a merely affectionate? I find it unlikely that Obama's attempt to restart the peace process is to get re-elected. Bush/Cheney proved that you could get re-elected by simply ignoring this issue and allowing it to get worse, not better. I believe that Obama knows that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only get better with aggressive US participation. What has happened over the past 10 years is not the solution.

- MrCookie1

March 29, 2010 at 9:30am

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I love ya, Marty, but whenever you throw in some Hebrew to show off you end up revealing how little you actually know. What is "shmoich?" The word, which is well-known to any Jew with even a passing acquaintance with the Hagada is "sh'foch." Since this is a Biblical quote (Psalm 79 verse 6) there is no question of editing or of using different versions in different Hagadot.

- ravster

March 29, 2010 at 9:47am

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"I suppose “Go Down, Moses,” an old Negro spiritual (popularized in the middle decades of the 20th century by Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson) will be sung at the executive mansion, just as it will be sung at hundreds of thousands Jewish homes in America where the knowledge of Hebrew and Hebrew melody is not--shall we say?--up to snuff. " I, too, do not get why “Go Down, Moses,” is the racist equivalent for "Jewboy". I looked up the song on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0CRAavN4EI And realized the song was well known to me after all. My daughter, who attends a Jewish school, participated in a class pageant whose theme was the Jewish holidays. The song chosen to celebrate the Passover Hagadah was this song. So I have to wonder, how this song of eternal anguish invoked by Marty can be possibly characterized in the following way: "You are turning ugly. What happened to you, Peretz? You seem to have no sense of rhetoric. It's all excess with you, so that you increasingly slip into oily asides with ugly subtext." What ugly subtext? Ugly better describes the sentiment that underlie this venomous hiss.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 10:20am

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No, noga, you paranoid freak. Does it occur to you that Thomas Friedman is published in English? What a pathetic spectacle you make of yourself. You are completely incoherent, overflowing with bile, bitter, and desperately lost. And none of it can help you. No matter how much venom you spew, your country is still caught in the vice fashioned by your own rapacity.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 11:00am

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K2K & noga Nice debater's try: Turn the issue around, up is down, black is white. Won't work. Let me ask you both a question: Would peretz or even you both have referenced Go Down Moses, with its dominant reference to the African American bondage experience, for a Bush Seder? A McCain Seder? A Palin Seder? I think not. That he would reference this particular song for an Obama Seder is entirely questionable and more than hints at his ugly and unmistakable inappropriateness. And instead of seeing this for what it is, you both lamely try to make excuses for him is very telling. What is your rationale for "Jewboy"? C'mon, that should be fascinating how you explain that ugliness away. Can you? Will you?

- MrCookie1

March 29, 2010 at 11:01am

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As I said, I'm willing to be instructed that Friedman is wrong in his column, or where he's wrong, but something more than starting the discussion with a cry of "perversion" is needed to convince me he's malicious. The hobby/necessity conceit is glib -- a Friedmam fault -- but not malicious. And the "loathing" simply isn't there. No possible reading of his column, even the most hostile to the ideas presented, would be able to point to a shred of evidence, either in content, context, or tone. And I'd be happy to argue that out in detail, if anyone is so moved.

- ironyroad

March 29, 2010 at 11:09am

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Here is how I responded to ironyroad's mention of Tom Friedman: " 03/28/2010 - 10:37pm EDT | noga1 Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque." The NYT article ironyroad links to is completely different in tone to the interview he gave to Yediot Aharonot. I offered a few quotes from that interview. Yet you ironyroad take your cue from the insufferable bully roi, rather than pay better attention to what I was actually referencing. It has not occurred to you that Friedman allows himself to express these sneering perverse accusations at Israelis when he addresses them directly. I suppose that "asajew" he is allowed.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 11:26am

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Very decent of you, irony, for which you are to be commended. But if you think that the profoundly disturbed noga, who described Friedman as "loathing" Israel, is capable of engaging in rational discussion, you are mistaken. She sees loathing in Friedman because she is overcome with self-loathing. Such people can only be reached by years of psychotherapy, if at all. It is typical of self-loathers that they think they can eradicate the stain they see in themselves by projecting it onto others. It never works, of course, and then they are left even more agonized. It is this that explains noga's obsession with finding blame for Israel's dilemma rather than looking for the exit. Non-neurotic people want to get out of a bad situation. The profoundly neurotic want only to explain it in terms that they find psychologically acceptable.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 11:31am

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": Would peretz or even you both have referenced Go Down Moses, with its dominant reference to the African American bondage experience, for a Bush Seder?" I suppose it is not allowed now to notice that Obama is black and is married to a woman whose ancestors were slaves in America. And that there is that bond between the Jewish experience that Passover celebrates and the African-American experience. And that Obama's election was seen by many African-Americans (and whites and others) as a symbol of America's liberation from the burden of that past. I know there is a very energetic effort going on trying to create much animosity between the two minorities, even greater than the animosity generated by the likes of Reverend Wright and his faithful friends, Louis Farrakhan. cookie's false, self-feeding and completely baseless outrage is one such attempt. Hope and change, eh?

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 11:39am

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Marty, whatever President Obama is going to be doing on Tuesday night is not an actual seder -- that has to be led by a Jew (or, if you and Noga prefer, a Jewboy), in fulfillment of the mitzvah of recalling the Exodus (Sheimot 13:8). As for playing around with the seder text, it's really his prerogative since he can use whatever text he wants for the occasion, because IT IS NOT A SEDER. Also, in case you didn't know, halacha prohibits the attendance of Gentiles at a seder lest Jews cook or serve food to them at the meal. Perhaps this is another tidbit of Orthodox arcana about which you can blog irately.

- wildboy

March 29, 2010 at 11:40am

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"(or, if you and Noga prefer, a Jewboy)," Why is my name mentioned in this respect? Have I ever called anyone Jewboy or endorsed Marty's usage of this epithet? Or do you assume that anyone who advocates for Israel as passionately as I do would naturally call all other Jews who disagree with me "Jewboys"? And if you do assume that, what does that make you, exactly?

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 11:47am

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Let us accept for the moment the worldview of the most paranoid Israeli. Thomas Friedman loathes Israel. I loathe Isreal. Anyone who is critical of Israeli policy loathes Israel. Plainly a large percentage of the world actually does loathe Israel. Many nations that could formerly be counted as sympathetic toward Israel are no longer sympathetic. I cannot think of one remaining important "friend" of Israel other than the United States. Various international legal authorities have held that Israel's land policies east of the Green Line are a violation of international law. The Security Council has passed multiple resolutions instructing Israel to desist. It is almost the universally held view, right or wrong, that Israel's settlement activity east of the Green Line is a violation of international law. Iran is in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons and it is at best extremely uncertain that the United States, let alone Israel, has the military means to stop it. And the consequences of trying to do so have the potential for disaster. Hamas and Hezbollah are increasingly armed and dangerous along Israel's borders. The Arabs have grown much shrewder in their public relations and are moving world opinion in their direction. A rational person, recognizing this array of malignant enemies and threats, would say to herself, "This is a bad situation that threatens to get worse. What opportunities are available to me to mitigate this or to create further opportunities to escape the enemies who are surrounding me and slowly moving in upon me?" Israel, under its insane right-wing government, instead gives the finger to the American Vice President, the representative of its one ally, and builds apartments for haredim in Jerusalem. How can one explain behavior that is this crazy in the face of genuine, serious threats to existence? It is not easy, and one can at best only speculate. One real possibility is a form of collective delusion. These are by no means unheard of. There are many historical examples, and I won't cite the worst, but the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor comes to mind. Another is a fatalism so deep that it amounts to a death-wish, a Masada complex. "Nothing avails so we should just live as we want, maintain our sense of dignity, and what comes will come." Another is religious fanaticism that believes that all such matters are ultimately decided in heaven so that all that matters is the assignment of blame. We do see endless posts here obsessed with the assignment of blame. Another is the incapacity of people, particularly the Likud and its followers, to admit error, that the beliefs that have inspired them and the policies they has advanced since their ideological forebear, Jabotinsky, are simply wrong, mistaken, errors. Ariel Sharon came to understand this and broke with the Likud, even though it meant repudiating much of his own life's work. But whatever his flaws, when we compare Sharon to Netanyahu, we see a very powerful being on the one hand and a mouse on the other. Some things in history are a function of who happens to be the leader at a moment in time. Had Churchill already been Prime Minister of Great Britain rather than Chamberlain, perhaps we would not have had the Holocaust.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 12:00pm

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Peretz's racial mocking is evident to anyone who is fluent in English, certainly more evident than Friedman's loathing for Israel. Hope and change? Damned right. Change that is driving some here to the edge of madness. But then, Obama's job is change that Americans want, not change that Israelis want. He is, after all, the President of the United States.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 12:04pm

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There will be lots of gentiles at my seder. I'm going to cook for them, serve them, and I will spend the whole night quaking in fear that the Orthodox will disapprove, or that it might not even be a REAL SEDER. One thing is for sure, I would rather spend my seder in the company of gentile friends than in the company of a single intolerant religious nut who genuinely believes him or herself to be possessed of the Word of God.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 12:08pm

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wildboy “Marty, whatever President Obama is going to be doing on Tuesday night is not an actual seder -- that has to be led by a Jew (or, if you and Noga prefer, a Jewboy), in fulfillment of the mitzvah of recalling the Exodus (Sheimot 13:8). As for playing around with the seder text, it's really his prerogative since he can use whatever text he wants for the occasion, because IT IS NOT A SEDER. Also, in case you didn't know, halacha prohibits the attendance of Gentiles at a seder lest Jews cook or serve food to them at the meal. Perhaps this is another tidbit of Orthodox arcana about which you can blog irately” I assume that Marty is aware of this custom, better than wildbeast. I understand the reason for the Rabbinic ruling: to celebrate both being freed from bondage and the moment of becoming a “people pledged to each other and to God.” One can also safely assume that this rule has seldom been observed. Since antiquity Jews have lived with and among gentiles even in the land of Israel. Does any suppose that if a ruler in, say the Middle Ages, decided to attend a Seder he would have been denied a place at the table? In today’s world on the other had, when it is difficult if not impossible to determine who is not a Jew (hence the range of arguments on the subject from Jerusalem to China) it is difficult to imagine a Jews with Jews only at the Seder. Of course wildbeast knows this, just as he also knows that this is one of the rules antisemites like to cite when they attack Jews as being clannish. Leave it to wildbeast to import antisemitic asides into these fora.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 12:30pm

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I wish all those who celebrate the Passover Seder (Jews, non Jews and those in between) a happy festivity and a satisfying meal. It’s also a terrific occasion to practice one’s Hebrew. Chag Sameach!

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 12:32pm

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Roid, no offense meant to you or anyone other than Marty (and Jackson, but that's because he is some sort of fascinating combination of the Rasha and the Tam). I'm just saying that Marty, who is wise and learned in all things Hebraic, might have wanted to note that a Passover seder that is led by a gentile is a simulation of a seder, and could have economized on the snark and unsubtly veiled racist references to "Go Down Moses". As for having gentiles in attendance at the seder, that's between you and your rabbi (or lack of one). Hag sameach to all.

- wildboy

March 29, 2010 at 12:36pm

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"I would rather spend my seder in the company of gentile friends than in the company of a single intolerant religious nut who genuinely believes him or herself to be possessed of the Word of God." This is very impressive, roi. I hope your soul mates on these boards appreciate your nobility in so openly avowing your preference of "gentile friends" to Jews. And you are willing to contemplate a seder that is not "Right". My, my. What a sacrifice. You sound quite the martyr, by jove. It is a very strange world you inhabit, one in which there are either "gentiles" or "intolerant religious nut[s] who genuinely believes him or herself to be possessed of the Word of God." Gentile is the natural antonym to a (Jewish) religious nut. Hmm. I wonder what this worldview reminds me of.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 12:41pm

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There has been some confusion here, for which I'm partly responsible. Noga is correct, she didn't use "loathing" or "perversions" in relation to Friedman's NYT column, so I apologize for that error. I should have followed more closely. I misread a response that immediately adduced a different piece in a language I don't speak, and I thought wrongly that not only Noga but also roid was responding to the NYT column, not the interview in Hebrew, while Rhubarbs was actually responding to the NYT: all this added to the confusion. But down to me. Ok. However, after the storm subsides to the bottom of the teacup, it was in fact the NYT column that I orginally linked to, that everyone can read, and I'm curious as to what Noga (and others) think about that piece in particular, which imo tries at least to find an explanatory model for the current U.S.-Israel tensions. And which, I assume, is not being prejudged as representing either perversion or loathing.

- ironyroad

March 29, 2010 at 12:52pm

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Ach, Jackson, you are making it hard for me to be nasty, what with the kind post about wishing all a happy Pesach. So I will do the same to you (and to Marty, Noga and the rest), Jews one and all. And Noga, my mistake about the Jewboy reference -- I take it back.

- wildboy

March 29, 2010 at 12:56pm

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Gee, jackson, did it sound to you as though I think I am making a great or noble sacrifice in conducting my seder in the manner I see fit? Not at all. We will have a happy mixed company, but nowhere in sight will be any of those Jewish religious nuts who, along with religious nuts of every other persuasion, are possessed of the delusions that they (and of course no one else) know the word and mind of God. But trust me, I equally repelled by similar types of all faiths, every single one. If they could somehow manage to practice their own faith in the manner that seems fit to them without either involving themselves in the practices of others or expressing their opinions about them or imagining that their faith-based reality has anything to do with real reality, I wish them well. For example, I hold no opinion whatsoever about the correctness of their Pesach practices. If they are satisfied, I am pleased for them. They can bathe in shmorer matzo for all I care. Chag sameach. I wish you a ziessen Pesach.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 1:44pm

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wilASS : " no offense meant to .... anyone other than Marty (and Jackson, but that's because he is some sort of fascinating combination of the Rasha and the Tam)" This from the antisemitic tembel who thinks all "russian Jews" are racists. Ass's use of Jewish lore is just a cover for his wicked antisemitic slurs he throws at any one disagree with him. Not that I care what he calls me.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 1:45pm

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Thanks for the well wishes, roidubouloi. Same to you and yours. "Gee, jackson, did it sound to you as though I think I am making a great or noble sacrifice in conducting my Seder in the manner I see fit? Not at all. We will have a happy mixed company, but nowhere in sight will be any of those Jewish religious nuts who, along with religious nuts of every other persuasion, are possessed of the delusions that they (and of course no one else) know the word and mind of God." Didn't think so at all. Anyone who conducts or participates in a Seder has my blessings. I don't believe in purity of faith. I also don't believe in universalizing my principles in saying something like "I don't believe in purity of any faith." The first comment already implies the second. However, I do believe in observing some of my traditions, be they secular or religious, central to the identity of my culture. btw: I have attended many Seders (religious and secular) in which Jewish songs of all types were sang, Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish. However I have never been to a Seder where "Go down Moses" was sung. It's a beautiful song, but it does belong to a different cultural tradition. But, if there were African American people present then it would be appropriate if they took the lead in singing it. I can also see African Americans who chose Judaism to bring their own traditions, including songs to their Seders. After all, I doubt that Moses ate gefilte fish.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 1:57pm

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When Moses ate manna, he always had it taste like gefilte fish.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 1:59pm

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wildboy "Ach, Jackson, you are making it hard for me to be nasty, what with the kind post about wishing all a happy Pesach." Leave me out of your well wishes. I prefer your curses. They seem more appropriate and its wild music seems more authentic and enchanting.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 2:01pm

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roidubouloi "When Moses ate manna, he always had it taste like gefilte fish." It is thought by some naturalists that manna was a type of bird that overflies the Sinai each winter on its way to Africa. Some get so tired by the long seasonal migrating flight that they drop in the desert are often picked up and eaten by wanders. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4253380 Other more traditional explanations have identified manna with certain types of insects or even plants. Perhaps some of them insects or birds did taste like gefilte fish.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 2:10pm

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"It is thought by some naturalists that manna was a type of bird " I think the bird you refer to is the "slav" mentioned in the bible as falling from the sky towards twilight. The "mann" is some sort of a shrub.

- noga1

March 29, 2010 at 2:39pm

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there are those who see racism hidden in ANY criticism of Obama or his policies. Why would the Obamas NOT include "Go Down Moses" at a private dinner described by Jodi Kantor in the NYT "Next Year in the White House: A Seder Tradition" as: "...When Passover begins at sunset on Monday evening, Mr. Obama and about 20 others will gather for a ritual that neither the rabbinic sages nor the founding fathers would recognize. ..." Certainly a Christian hymn that is about Moses and the exodus out of slavery would be appropriate for any Christian President having a private seder. I wish the Obamas would NOT be turning the seder into a WH event with press releases.

- K2K

March 29, 2010 at 2:51pm

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"The Wicked Child" By Tzvi Freeman "The wicked child, what does he say? "What is all this stuff you guys do?" He says "you," excluding himself. Since he has excluded himself from the whole, he has denied the main point. So you too should dull his teeth, saying, "With a strong hand G‑d took me out of Egypt." Emphasize me. For if he had been there, he would not have been redeemed. (From the Passover Hagadah's description of "The Four Sons")"

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 3:02pm

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If I were planning to attend a Sedar, and if I intended to sing "Go Down Moses" at the Sedar, should I skip the verse that speaks of finding freedom in Christ? If so, the truncated song would end with the verse: Your foes shall not before you stand, Let my people go, And you'll possess fair Canaan's land, Let my people go. Which seems kind of apropos to a Passover liturgy.

- rhubarbs

March 29, 2010 at 3:42pm

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passover Mah Nishtana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csh4BMKQpSs&feature=related

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 4:57pm

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I like gefilte fish, with our without. Time to finish getting ready.

- roidubouloi

March 29, 2010 at 5:25pm

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A guter yom tov tzu dir oychet, malahat.

- jdyer

March 29, 2010 at 5:26pm

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"... when he returns from his trip to Afghanistan." I hope someone will have the foresight to show Obama what this Canadian 13 year old girl wrote about the acceptability of any form of slavery. I hope Obama, deep down, really understands what is the difference between a real atrocity, and what is merely a pretext for prolonged war: "No one will ever tell me that Muslim or any women think it’s ok to not be allowed to get educated or to have their daughters sold off at 8 years old or traded off at 4 years old because of cultural beliefs. No one will tell me that women in Afghanistan think it is ok for their daughters to have acid thrown in their faces. It makes me ill to think a 4 year old girl must sleep in a barn and get raped daily by old men. It’s sick and wrong and I don’t care who calls me an Orientalist or whatever I will keep raising money to educate girls and women in Afghanistan and I will keep writing letters and sending them in the back pack of my friend Lauryn Oates as she works so bravely on the ground helping women and girls learn what it is to exercise their rights. I believe in human rights so I believe everyone has the right their own opinion, I just wish that the energy that was used to write that story, that is just not true, could have been used to educate a girl in Afghanistan. That’s what the girls truly want. That’s what the Women in Afghanistan truly want. I have a drawer full of letters from them that says just that." http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=459

- noga1

March 30, 2010 at 4:17pm

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The Moslem world oppresses women. Ergo, Israel must settle the West Bank. Because the former is atrocious and the latter not nearly so. Makes sense to me.

- roidubouloi

March 30, 2010 at 5:05pm

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"The Moslem world oppresses women. Ergo, Israel must settle the West Bank. Because the former is atrocious and the latter not nearly so. Makes sense to me." If you insist on making this local, then at least try to be honest (I know it's hard for you. You are like George Costanza when it comes to lying: remember, it's not a lie if you believe it...) It's not "Israel must settle the West Bank." It's Jews being allowed to live in Jerusalem, in Jewish neigborhoods which have been around for over 40 years and long before the Likkud had even a glimmer of hope of ever winning elections in Israel.

- noga1

March 30, 2010 at 5:52pm

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Here is another reminder of today's worst atrocities, a-propos: "Let my people go" "As we pause to celebrate Passover, and the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian bondage, it is well to remember that more than 27 million people worldwide today are enslaved. They are not building pyramids, but they are chained in forced marriages, conscripted as child soldiers, imprisoned as domestic servants, and — particularly grisly — forced as children to become the sexual playthings of their oppressors. The Bible says that more than 600,000 Israelites were freed during the exodus. That pales in comparison to the current number." http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2010/03/slavery-today-contd.html

- noga1

March 30, 2010 at 9:28pm

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Here is the link: http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2010/03/slavery-today-contd.html

- noga1

March 30, 2010 at 9:29pm

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Okay, have it your way noga: The Moslem world oppresses women. Ergo, Jews must be allowed to live in Jewish neighborhoods east of the Green Line that have been around for over 40 years, i.e. since circa 1967, long[?] before Likud [in 1973] had a glimmer of hope of ever winning elections in Israel. You're right. It makes so much more sense that way.

- roidubouloi

March 30, 2010 at 10:07pm

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You mean that West Bank settlement other than in Jerusalem is now finished?

- roidubouloi

March 30, 2010 at 10:08pm

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I have never told a lie on these pages, noga. The same can certainly not be said of you. You routinely, and quite clearly intentionally, misstate what other people have written here in order to make your own arguments appear persuasive. I don't find that the slightest bit necessary because I actually know how to connect the facts to my opinions in a rational way. You don't. But your frustration at your own incapacity is not adequate justification for your dishonesty. When you find any lie I have told, please get back to me.

- roidubouloi

March 30, 2010 at 10:11pm

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I agree that there is no question but that President Obama must liberate 27 million people around the world from slavery before he turns his attention to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Anything else would be unconscionable.

- roidubouloi

March 30, 2010 at 10:23pm

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roidubouloi My friend, if you're looking for honesty, then with noga, you have hit a dry hole. I do believe that the Spine has many honest posters, though I disagree with most of them, but noga cannot seem to breathe an honest breath.

- MrCookie1

March 31, 2010 at 12:06am

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Here is an English translation of the article I referenced earlier by Avi Trengo. The translation was done by the Yediot Aharonot (not by me): http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3869920,00.html

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 8:20am

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hey noga, do not let the bully hijackers pound their lies into truth at your expense. the rational visitors here appreciate noga's voice. reminding us of 27 million enslaved people today during Passover week deserves respect.

- K2K

March 31, 2010 at 8:46am

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Moshe Arens (a Hard boiled Likkudnik) "When officials in the Obama administration are not using strong-arm tactics, they are appealing to the good sense of the Israeli public and the prime minister. The status quo is unsustainable, they say. This simple phrase in incorrect Latin (Menachem Begin, who knew Latin, used to insist that one should say status quo ante, not status quo) seems to have an overpowering effect on audiences. It was used by Biden in his speech at Tel Aviv University, to loud applause, and by Clinton at the AIPAC conference, to somewhat more subdued applause. Even a member of the Netanyahu government has repeated it on occasion. It is the equivalent of saying "Do something! Do anything! Anything would be better than the current situation." Now that, Israelis well know, is not true. The current situation is far from perfect, like just about everything in the Middle East. But when it is suggested that nothing could be worse, Israelis, who have unfortunately seen worse, and even much worse, find it hard to accept. What Washington is now trying to push down Israel's throat may lead to much worse" http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160111.html

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 8:52am

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Not to worry, K2K. When you go on a safari, the first thing you learn is that a visible lion is a safe lion. And in cyberspace, the noisier a heckler gets, the better he/she serves his/her interlocutor.

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 9:13am

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K2K & noga Your curious sense of moral superiority is touching, as your righteous proclamation that through your Spine posts you are speaking for "27 million enslaved people today" hilariously grandiose. How deserved your figments are is open to question. Still, I claim the title "Leo" before roi gets it...

- MrCookie1

March 31, 2010 at 9:23am

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As if you have the wit, noga, to be anyone's interlocutor. But, truly, your concern for the 27 million enslaved around the world is very moving. You may be dishonest to the core, you may be deluded about who you are, you may be incoherent in your thoughts, but now we all know what a noble heart you have. You honor the spirit of Passover And I see you have acquired a little mouse as a pet, a sidekick. However, do you think you are well served by someone who encourages you to make yourself look grandiose, foolish, and morally obtuse all at the same time? I don't know that encouraging you is in your own best interest. As well, by doing little more than holding you up, your mouse avoids saying anything of his own that might beg for ridicule. He generously offers you up for that. A good friend and admirer indeed. As for Moshe Arens (we're supposed to take Moshe Arens seriously as a thoughtful analyst of reality?), this is vacuous. It can be answered simply by turning its emptiness on its head. "This is a clarion call to do nothing, ever. Because this is the best of all possible worlds, everything that can be done has been done, and everything else would be worse, much worse, and we of course know what much worse is." Arens' version and its inverse are equally devoid of meaning. They are the sort of appeals that appeal only to already convinced ideologues (know any?). Whether to do something, nothing, and what to do are always the questions that must be answered, but not in light of a predisposition toward one or the other. Only by first understanding what is can you decide what is to be done. If you are incapable of noticing that Israel's position is deteriorating, then you cannot notice much of anything. Or, perhaps you are one of those who imagines that Israel really does exist without the active support or at least cooperation of others in the world, that Israel cannot become isolated because it already is completely isolated. And so you imagine that it can survive the withdrawal of that support and cooperation. And yet, if you imagine that world opinion doesn't matter, that American opinion doesn't matter, that Israel must and can stand alone against the world, one wonders why you waste your energies here. If one believes that isolation is either inevitable or a matter of indifference, it should not matter at all what anyone outside of Israel, or maybe even outside Ramat Shlomo, may think, because Israel alone will decide the outcome.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 10:00am

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How curious. It seems that the article in which, according to Noga, Tom Friedman expresses his "loathing" for Israel contains not so much as a word by or quote of Tom Friedman. It consists entirely of the expression by Avi Trengo of his opinions about the unimportance of American financial aid to Israel. Most amusing to me was Mr. Trengo's belief that the $2.3 billion of the $3 billion of annual aid that is spent in the US (no doubt for weapons that Israel doesn't need because, as we know, it can defend itself with no one's help) is not aid at all. The fact that $2.3 billion of American domestic output ends up in Israel gratis seems to escape his notice. Indeed, it seems that the essence of being an Isreali right wing-nut consists of an active inability to notice even the simplest of facts. Apparently Noga was misinformed about the article she referred to, thinking it was an expression of the views, loathing or otherwise, of Tom Friedman. It isn't. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would misinform Noga in this way. (Enter K2K stage right emitting tiny peeps.)

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 10:13am

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"As if you have the wit, noga... " Roi pronouncing on wit is about as credible as a colour blind person pronouncing on different shades of red. ___________ "Apparently Noga was misinformed about the article she referred to, thinking it was an expression of the views, loathing or otherwise, of Tom Friedman. " Anyone who can read the development of the thread from the moment ironyroad introduced Friedman to the discussion to the moment roi made the quoted statement would have to conclude that roi has great difficulties following sequences and separating one article from another. Either that, or roi is deliberately trying to confuse and deceive the already exhausted reader by dint of abusive rhetoric. (=noise). You have a few noga-free hours to carpet-comment this thread, roi. Go!

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 10:33am

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Just to change the boring subject: The dream of justice: From Normblog: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/03/marx-right-and-wrong.html March 31, 2010 "Marx right and wrong" "There's an interesting essay by Robert Paul Wolff on 'The Future of Socialism' [pdf]. Introduced with a wry, self-deprecating comment that casts doubt on how many people will take the topic seriously, it sets out what Wolff thinks Marx can still 'teach us about the world', as well as three failures on Marx's part to anticipate the direction in which capitalism would develop. What Marx can teach us Wolff develops from a famous sentence of Marx's from 1859, namely: 'No social order disappears before all of the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material components of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.' As Wolff extrapolates this thought, the reason socialism has until now remained essentially premature, impossible to achieve, is that 'efficient techniques of central planning' were not yet available. But the further history of capitalism has begun to make them available. The following excerpt gives something of the flavour of Wolff's argument: '[W]hen Marx talks about socialism, he has in mind an economy whose stage of development of technology and organization is so far advanced that national planning is technically possible. Such a stage exhibits both a certain level of technology of production, of data generation and retrieval, and of communication, and also a corresponding level of knowledge and skill on the part of workers at every level, not merely at the top. Although Marx failed to foresee the digital computer, it is not farfetched to say that his conception of socialism presupposed it, or something equivalent.' Marx expected, for sound reasons, that the technology of production, communication, and management required for the central planning and control of an entire economy would develop first within capitalist firms, in direct response to the pressures of competition and the demands of profitability. And so they have. An immediate consequence of this process is the transformation of economic calculations into political decisions, within the firm. Thus, if by socialism we mean the rationally coordinated planning of an entire national economy in such a way as to transform the major economic choices of the society into political choices, responsive to the will of the people, then it is true that socialism has been growing within the womb of capitalism, or at least that the technical preconditions... of socialism can be seen to be developing there. ..... What, then, is the fundamental difference between socialism and capitalism at its most advanced, rationalized, and centralized? Under socialism, economic decisions would be treated [I use the subjunctive because there does not yet exist a socialist society] as collective political decisions, to be made democratically on the basis of the aggregated will of the entire people. In a capitalist society, decisions are taken privately, within the firm, in response only to the interests, the will, or the pressures of those who occupy positions of power within the firm. That there are these developing technical preconditions for socialism doesn't mean Wolff is optimistic about the current prospects of socialism. He isn't. This is because of what he takes to be Marx's three misdiagnoses of capitalism's future. First, Marx failed to anticipate the capacity of the capitalist state to manage economic crises. The second obstacle is 'the persistence of pre-capitalist passions and attachments that Marx was convinced capitalism's invasive rationalization of economic life would weaken and ultimately destroy - nationalist loyalties, ethnic identifications, racial antagonisms, and religious faiths'. Third, Marx foresaw a progressive homogenization of the labour force that could serve as the economic basis of political solidarity and dynamism; this has been undermined by the diversification of functions and rewards, so that now 'a fruitful solidarity [is] out of the question'. Wolff's conclusion is pessimistic: 'If socialism is the achievement, at long last, of justice and equality, it is a dream that has been aborted in the womb of the old order.' The dream of justice and equality, however (and whatever their detailed description, whether this is a socialist description or not), cannot die. Just as, for their part, particularist identifications, 'non-rational' attachments, group animosities and localized hatreds, cannot be expected to. This was something else wrong with the Marxist vision: the idea of a linear chronology in which some (for all that we know) permanent aspects of the human condition are conceptualized as being pre-capitalist and therefore belonging to the past. In any case, the sketching of possibilities and analysis of the preconditions of progress remain a necessary exercise in pursuit of the dream of justice, as of the task of restraining injustice as best we can, the tendencies to conflict, wrong-doing, exploitation and unfreedom." http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/03/marx-right-and-wrong.html

- jdyer

March 31, 2010 at 11:36am

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Oh very good, noga. You managed an eenie-weenie simile instead of merely spewing epithets as is your custom. Keep it up and you may yet escape witlessness. Here, however, we see that there is no fact too trivial for noga to distort. Up to this point on this thread, there were 19 posts by me, including one in which I say that I like gefilte fish!, and, hold your breath, . . . 19 by noga. She bullies and abuses and accuses anyone who will not suffer her vile sputum of bullying and abuse. If one manages to keep up with her obsessive posts, meant to numb one into submission to her insistence that no one disagree with her, she thinks it obsessive of course. Boring, jackson? I don't think so. One would not normally encounter someone like noga outside of a clinical setting and at a safe distance. She is grotesque and repellent, to be sure, yet not actually boring. That is not to say that her ideas are interesting, as she and they are about as vapid as they come. But it is fascinating to observe the bizarre ideation of one such as she. I cannot recall ever encountering anyone else who manages to contradict themselves so frequently and in such short spans of time without ever noticing. How many people do you know who can spew epithets at the rate she does while complaining in the same breath of being bullied? It is like watching a volcano or a tornado or some other destructive force of nature. Frightening if you imagine yourself within physical range of the violent emotions, but not boring.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 12:45pm

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"Boring, jackson? I don't think so. One would not normally encounter someone like noga outside of a clinical setting and at a safe distance." Sorry, Roi, you are both boring. Noga is conservative alright and argues like a believing conservative through, faulty analogies, (as do many leftists) but that hardly makes her "clinically insane." The analysis on normblog, about Marx's statue as a thinker today, on the other hand, is well worth a couple of comments. Marx was after all a believer of the progress of ethical life in history.

- jdyer

March 31, 2010 at 1:00pm

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Well, jackson, if we are both boring, that is progress of a sort. I never expect to fight right-wing lies, smears, and calumny to more than a draw. The shrieking, hysteria, and vile accusations are a standard tactic in their political arsenal, and it is the unfortunate belief on the left that this sort of verbal warfare can safely be ignored. It can't because, unopposed, it dominates discussion and cows people who don't have a thick political skin into refraining from expressing any opinion at all. It is political terrorism and has to be addressed as such. If everyone but the obsessive-compulsive and hysterical noga completely loses interest in this aspect of this thread and any others, that is about as much as can be hoped for. When everyone is thoroughly bored, she will stop. And, if not, at least everyone will be thoroughly bored. Engaging these disgusting people in the sewer in which they live is necessarily a filthy job. But somebody has to do it. You can be sure that if I didn't draw, and more or less monopolize noga's attention for her expressions of, her hostility, she would train it on someone else who would perhaps be intimidated by her and her little band of like-minded Israeli maniacs and fanatics. I would rather be her foil, however boring that may become, and allow others some peace and space in which to communicate.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 1:18pm

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I will read that Marx-related blog later. Just took a whole course on Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, so it should be interesting.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 1:20pm

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Hm. My take is that Noga is more like a classic social democrat on the European model who is attracted to independent and even iconoclastic thinking, but who has unfortunately lost (temporarily?) her capacity to embrace exactly that in relation to one particular issue -- Israel and the ME.

- ironyroad

March 31, 2010 at 1:41pm

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"Hm. My take is that Noga is more like a classic social democrat on the European model who is attracted to independent and even iconoclastic thinking, but who has unfortunately lost (temporarily?) her capacity to embrace exactly that in relation to one particular issue -- Israel and the ME." Thank you, ironyroad. It's an interesting description and one that I would never have thought about myself. I'm used to thinking of myself as a contentious centrist. But this too is not something I thought for myself. It was suggested to me by one of our old acquaintances @CR. Iconoclastic? Is that a good thing to be? And why would you separate my thinking about Israel from the rest of my worldview? What is it exactly about my positions vis a vis Israel that is not palatable to you? I thought we had reached some sort of a basic understanding about it a long time ago, when I directed you to something I'd written about Sari Nusseibeh and you mentioned an Indian term for it, I forget what it was now.

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 4:11pm

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We already have lots of central planning, malahat, although in certain things, such as the desirable mix of consumer goods, there is little need for it and, leaving aside the issues of international trade, it is much simpler to just let consumers decide. We have recently had an excellent example, in the form of the financial collapse as the direct result of de-regulation, of some of the things decentralized markets don't do well. It is the entire dichotomy between all decentralized market decision-making and all central planning that is flawed. We need some of each. The trick is finding the right balance. As to this "other matter," I find noga's ideas perfectly palatable although banal. Their contradictions are often useful starting points for demonstrating the fragility and unreality of a lot of right-wing thinking. Her behavior, however, is execrable. Puncturing one of her verbal balloons almost invariably leads to hysteria and abuse, abuse I am willing to return with a bonus. It is the only language abusers understand. They can only be taught to behave if the price of their bad behavior becomes more than they can bear. If, that is, there is someone willing to administer the lesson.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 4:29pm

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I have a question for Noga, malahat, or Ginzy if he is still around: I just noticed that in the Passover Haggadah it states in the four kashes, “Shebekol Haleilot Anu Ochlin…” Now the present plural of the verb ‘leechol’ ‘achal’ should read “anu ochlim” yet in the Haggadah it says “ochlin.” Why is that? Is this an old declension of the verb? At first I thought it was a misprint but I looked at other Haggadahs which had the same form. I asked around but no one seems to know the answer. Some ultra Orthodox guy I know said something about god being partner at the meal which I took to be too fanciful and subtle to be real. Any ideas?

- jdyer

March 31, 2010 at 4:49pm

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roi: I'm flattered that you took the trouble to count my posts. Now I suggest you do the same with word count and you may just get a clue why I called your type of engagement "carpet commenting". You stand to outdo george walton in tediousness and petulance.

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 4:50pm

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You probably noticed that other verbs are similarly conjugated: yoshvin (and not yoshvim, sitting), Mesubin (reclining), matbilin (rincing). It's an antiquated form of Hebrew. Ginzy would probably know better. It may be a residue, or influence, from Aramaic. I really don't think God has anything to do with it. But who knows?

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 4:59pm

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Don't bother to be flattered, noga. Your distortion was very much in character and it wasn't hard to realize that your name was all over this thread. As for word count, when your thought consists of epithets, dog-whistles, and flat-out lies, as yours does, it is very easy to be brief. If you are spewing nonsense, why elaborate? It is more difficult, and time and word-consuming, to lay out an idea and connect it in a meaningful way to the facts. You are incapable of doing so. Hence, you don't understand why anyone would. You do use a lot of words on occasion, but in those cases you are almost always cutting and pasting something you have read somewhere. An extended idea or argument is quite beyond you. Still, as I have said before, your incapacity is not an excuse for your behavior.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 5:31pm

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noga1 "You probably noticed that other verbs are similarly conjugated: yoshvin (and not yoshvim, sitting), Mesubin (reclining), matbilin (rincing). It's an antiquated form of Hebrew. Ginzy would probably know better. It may be a residue, or influence, from Aramaic. I really don't think God has anything to do with it. But who knows?" I did notice that, which is why I thought it might be and old form of conjugating the verb. Thanks for the answer, Noga.

- jdyer

March 31, 2010 at 5:39pm

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"Don't bother to be flattered, noga." Once flattered one cannot easily be unflattered. But you are welcome to continue to try to persuade me about the not bothering part.

- noga1

March 31, 2010 at 6:27pm

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noga, "contentious centrist" sounds good, as does "inquisitive independent"... TNR is the rare site where one can be koolaid-free of rigid dogma. So, on safari, is a visible hyena also a safe hyena? anyone who thinks being knowledgeable and supportive of Israel in The Spine is automatically "right-wing" is lost in cyberspace, and should try PajamasMedia.

- K2K

March 31, 2010 at 7:47pm

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Noga: "And why would you separate my thinking about Israel from the rest of my worldview?" Because of a kind of self-separation: it seems to have taken on -- in contrast to other areas of discussion and debate -- the character of the untouchably sacred, where any criticism is immediately rejected as hostile and malicious, even when the originator of the criticism does not intend any malice or hostility, indeed quite the opposite. Welllll, inconoclastic. I don't know. Depends if you like the sound of those figures splintering and the bits clattering onto the parquet flooring. Not everyone's plate of hummus. I remember you directed me to something to do with Nusseibeh (the name rings a bell) -- but the Indian thing? What on earth did I say? Direct me again, maybe? You have a much better memory than I do.

- ironyroad

March 31, 2010 at 9:29pm

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Thank you, malahat. Capital markets among other things. "Is a visible hyena also a safe hyena?" Not if you are a mouse. But the mouse that peeps the softest is least likely to be dinner. Even mice can apparently learn this. Irony, you are the consummate diplomat.

- roidubouloi

March 31, 2010 at 10:01pm

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"Because of a kind of self-separation: it seems to have taken on -- in contrast to other areas of discussion and debate -- the character of the untouchably sacred, where any criticism is immediately rejected as hostile and malicious," Yes, I know that can be the impression people get because I've encountered it many times. It's not that I hold Israel sacred. I can say this: The sort of criticism I have for Israel, Israelis and Israeli society you and your like-minded friends are not interested in, so you don't hear it, and when you do, you sweep it aside because it is irrelevant to the topic of Israel as it looms in the world's imagination (the occupier, the oppressor, etc etc). People, I find, are very eager to hear anything bad said about Israel, and even if it is something that ails every modern, democratic society, it becomes another reinforcement of Israel as evil, a specialty of Israel. So if I criticize Israeli society for its past treatment of Oriental Jews, it is either taken as a sign that Israel is a racist society or it is simply not relevant, because it has nothing to do with Palestinians. Case in point: http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2009/11/so-which-is-it-discrimination-or.html I refuse to add even one blade of straw to the bonfire that is being piled around Israel in the world's mind. There is nothing that Israel does that other nations are not doing elsewhere and for much lesser justifications yet you get this pathological focusing on Israel as if it were the beginning and end of evil. There is no inclination for proportionality, or an application of common sense priorities. While little girls are doused in acid and children are enslaved, women are raped, and men get murdered, or have their limbs chopped off as a matter of deliberate strategy, the world is all outraged by 1600 apartments being built in Jerusalem, in a long-standing Jewish neigbourhood. It boggles the mind. I think we can apply what Jean Paul Sartre said about Jews to the anomalous place that Israel holds in today's world: "Thus the Jew is in the situation of a Jew because he lives in a society that takes him for a Jew. He has passionate enemies, and defenders lacking in passion. The democrat professes moderation; he blames or admonishes while synagogues are being set on fire. He is tolerant by profession; he is, indeed, snobbish about the tolerance and even extends it to the enemies of democracy. Wasn't it the style among radicals of the Left to consider Mauras a genius? How can the democrat fail to understand the anti-Semite? It is as if he were fascinated by all who plot his downfall. Perhaps at the bottom of his heart he yearns for the violence which he has denied himself. In any case, the struggle is not equal. If the democrat were to put some warmth into pleading the cause of the Jew, he would have to be Manichean too, and equate the Jew with the principle of Good. But how could he do this? The democrat is no fool. He makes himself the advocate of the Jew because he sees him as a member of humanity; since humanity has other members who he must also defend, the democrat has much to do; he concerns himself with the Jew when he has time. But the anti-Semite has only one enemy, and he can think of him all the time. This it is he who calls the turn. Vigorously attacked, feebly defended, the Jew feels himself in danger in a society in which anti-Semitism is the continual temptation. This is what we must look at more closely." Two key statements here: "He has passionate enemies, and defenders lacking in passion." "The democrat... makes himself the advocate of the Jew because he sees him as a member of humanity; since humanity has other members who he must also defend, the democrat has much to do; he concerns himself with the Jew when he has time. But the anti-Semite has only one enemy, and he can think of him all the time." I'm not one hundred percent sure who Sartre includes in his "Democrat". As can be evidenced in this thread, there are some "Democrats" for whom there is "only one enemy..." __________ I tried to google the discussion we had once ironyroad, but I can't seem to find it. You mentioned a term in response to my idea about a mutual cancellation of rights.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 8:06am

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"So, on safari, is a visible hyena also a safe hyena?" I don't know about hyenas. But a lion who is hungry and on the prowl, lies low among the tall grass of the savanna. This is when he is invisible and at his most dangerous, because he is crouching and you don't see him and he may well pounce when you least expect it. A visible lion is not concerned with hiding himself because he is not out to lunch. He is just sunning himself and you can see him clearly and keep within a safe distance from him. I use the term to describe the loud mouth bullies on this blog. A lion is a dangerous animal, with or without a full belly. However, a hungry lion is more cunning and less detectable and more difficult to defend against if he pounces. A loudmouth bully may be a repelling presence and even a dangerous one but his very noisiness is a signal that one should either keep their distance (not always an option, when that bully insists on getting in your face all the time) or be reasonably well equipped to withstand his attacks. Either way, you are better off for being able to see and hear a lion. "CAESAR Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. ANTONY Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous; He is a noble Roman and well given. CAESAR Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:" And speaking of bullies, there are two kinds. In the poem by Yehuda Atlas "That little boy is Me" the kid says (from memory: More than I fear big blustery bullies I fear the weak and small ones who hit out of cowardice :)

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 8:41am

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noga The one thing I have appreciated in your post, pre-psychotic breakdown, was that you were concise. Now that you have morphed into your grandiose stage, even that feeble attraction have vanished. And, you are now in the habit of responding to your own posts, in other words, carrying on conversations with yourself. Are you now, a la Billy Idol, dancing with yourself too?

- MrCookie1

April 1, 2010 at 9:09am

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"I refuse to add even one blade of straw to the bonfire that is being piled around Israel in the world's mind." Standing ovation for Noga! While I am still uncomfortable with denigrating lions in your bully metaphor, I understand :) For me, it is the bullies who hit out of rage when their lies are exposed who are to be avoided. As to the bonfire in the world's mind, am wondering if legal scholar David M. Phillips will penetrate the Oval Office and the media echo. Reading this during Passover certainly helped me: "The Illegal-Settlements Myth" David M. Phillips "The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex nature of the specific legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty has been rendered against settlement policy. There can be no doubt that this avalanche of negative opinion has been deeply influenced by the settlements’ unpopularity around the world and even within Israel itself. Yet, while one may debate the wisdom of Israeli settlements, the idea that they are imprudent is quite different from branding them as illegal. Indeed, the analysis underlying the conclusion that the settlements violate international law depends entirely on an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative that the West Bank is “Arab” land. Followed to its logical conclusion—as some have done—this narrative precludes the legitimacy of Israel itself. ... All these would seem to fit the offense described in Article 49(6) precisely. Yet finding references to the application of Article 49(6) to nations other than Israel is like looking for a needle in a haystack. What distinguishes a system of “law” from arbitrary systems of control is that similar situations are handled alike. A system where legal principles are applied only when it suits the political tastes of anti-Israel elites is one that has lost all credibility. The loose use of international law, disproportionately applied to Israel, undermines the notion that this is “law” entitled to authoritative weight in the first place. ..." just Google Phillips and illegal settlements to find the whole text in the December issue of Commentary.

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 9:55am

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"I refuse to add even one blade of straw to the bonfire that is being piled around Israel in the world's mind." And, of course, you refuse to take away so much as a straw either. Because, it seems, you and the society to which you belong are convinced that the "world's mind" is of no consequence. Then why worry about it? Just for the sake of argument? That would surely be a waste of time and energy. The very fury of the argument strongly suggests that the claim that there will not ultimately be consequences is not believed by those who make it. Of course, most observers who are able to maintain even a semblance of objectivity see that there will be, even if events evolve relatively slowly by the standards of a single human life. For that reason, the Talmudic preoccupation with considerations of whether the bonfire is proportionate or disproportionate or just the right kind or whether condign punishment is being meted out to malefactors around the world or whether graver injustices go unpunished entirely, rather than with whether it is possible to avoid being burnt to a crisp and just what it would take to avoid that fate, is the mark of mental illness. As unlikely as it seems, we know from history that mass psychosis exists and can affect entire societies. The complaint that 1,600 apartments are of so little importance that no one ought to take notice finds its dual in the observation that they are of so little importance that offending an indispensable patron on their behalf is seriously crazy. It is perverse to insist that one can take a perverse interest in a particular piece of ground as sacred while insisting that no one should take a perverse interest in that particular piece of ground as sacred. It is likewise pointless to ask why the conflict between Israel and the Arabs consumes so much of the world's attention and emotion. The conflict engages the interests of various powers, many of them much larger in one or more or all respects than Israel. That has been the reason for the continuing threat. But, were it not the case, Israel would hardly have been able to secure so much support from the United States over six decades. That the interests of many powers are engaged on both sides is both the reason for the threat and the reason why Israel has not been crushed. There has been a balance of great forces. That balance is shifting against Israel because Israel, in the grip of its right-wing, declines to acknowledge that its fate is not entirely in its own hands. Withal, nothing about much worse behavior elsewhere in the world justifies the colonization of the Palestinian Arabs. As there is no security justification, there is no justification, because the law of nations does not recognize colonization as condign punishment for being conquered. The modern world believes, however much it fails to live up to its own beliefs, that even conquered peoples have certain human rights. Sometimes the world will recognize annexation and absorption as an acceptable consequence, as it did after Israel's war of independence, sometimes not. So it goes. Neither is the argument that doing what is not permitted is not the root cause of the conflict or that ceasing to do it will not by itself resolve the conflict any argument at all for continuing to do it. That is simply the argument that one should do whatever one has the power to do. It is not an argument that should appeal to us on moral grounds. But, quite apart from the morality, if one is to be guided by considerations only of power, it would be wise actually to have the power. For the moment, Israel does have that power, but it won't last, and if the power is taken away by compulsion, there will be consequences. As to your observations about bullies, noga -- pfffft. You are unworthy to make them as you aspire to be one. The fact that you are so inadequate to the task and must cringe and run when you cannot succeed at it does not give you license to try.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 10:11am

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French taunts: "The one thing I have appreciated in your post, pre-psychotic breakdown, was that you were concise. Now that you have morphed into your grandiose stage, even that feeble attraction have vanished. And, you are now in the habit of responding to your own posts, in other words, carrying on conversations with yourself. Are you now, a la Billy Idol, dancing with yourself too?" "As to your observations about bullies, noga -- pfffft. You are unworthy to make them as you aspire to be one. The fact that you are so inadequate to the task and must cringe and run when you cannot succeed at it does not give you license to try." "I unclog my nose in your direction, sons of a window dresser. So, you think you could outclever us french folks with your silly, knees-bent, running-about, advancing behavior? I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy-leather, second-hand, electric donkey bottom biters."

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 10:18am

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Actually, the illegality of the settlements does not depend in the slightest degree on "accepting the narrative that the land belongs to the Arabs." This is the myth that the apologists try to peddle to the world, to no avail. The illegality depends only on the fact that the land is "occupied," a status that Israel itself acknowledges by governing the land, other than the portion of Jerusalem and environs actually annexed, by military occupation government. If Israel wanted to claim the land and incorporate it, it would have to accord the inhabitants equal political rights, as it has (almost) done in Jerusalem by giving the Arab inhabitants the right to vote in municipal elections and the right to claim citizenship, not quite the same as citizenship itself, but close. Whether the land can legitimately be annexed is a different legal question. While precedent would seem not to rule that out, Resolution 242 arguably does. Of course, that question is moot as Israel cannot incorporate without according the inhabitants citizenship and political rights without committing the crime of apartheid. And it cannot accord the inhabitants of the West Bank citizenship and political rights without being overwhelmed demographically. Rather than commit the crime of apartheid, which would not be subject to much if anything in the way of obscuring argument and would invite world retribution, Israel has chosen illegal settlement in the hope that somehow, in the end, this will become legitimized. Say what you want about the Palestinians, they are not exactly fools. They can see clearly that, if they refuse to condone the illegal settlements, they can never be legitimized, and if settlement continues without legitimation it will slowly lead to the strangulation of Israel. While not as egregious as apartheid, there will ultimately be a compelling reaction by the world. If, that is, the Arabs can endure the situation long enough, which they seem willing to do. The surprising thing is not that the Arabs can figure this out. The surprising thing is that Israelis cannot -- and will turn and fury and heap abuse upon anyone who dares to point out to them the fairly obvious consequences that follow from a careful consideration of how the existing situation plays out.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 10:32am

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French taunts? Oh the horror, to be labeled "French!" But that's good, noga. You are on much safer ground when you limit yourself to two words of your own and then quote somebody, anybody, else. At least that way you avoid the ranting incoherence that exhibits plainly your instability.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 10:38am

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"French taunts? Oh the horror, to be labeled "French!"" Can you really be that literal and ignorant, roidelaschmatte? Yes, I believe you can be. Not a spark of wit or charm or humour anywhere in all that verbiage. How can you possibly manage it? (Another bucket for M. Creosote!)

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 11:01am

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noga Oh please. Noga, you have simply gone off the deep end. Anyone who has read this thread and many others on the Spine know exactly where you're coming from and how you think. Fine, sally forth. Just don't spend hundreds of words and multiple posts, several debating yourself, that you're any more virtuous than anyone else. Makes you appear even nuttier than you probably are. Step away from the keyboard and take a deep breath. This is after all, just a discussion post. Get some perspective.

- MrCookie1

April 1, 2010 at 11:09am

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I am sorry, noga, that no matter how you try you cannot summon the wit to be witty -- even by quoting Monty Python. You just are not. You are ponderous, tendentious, too often hysterical, and your thought is uninteresting. You should find something else to do. You must have some talent that you can cultivate. This plainly isn't it.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 11:17am

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"...even by quoting Monty Python" The blessings of google!

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 11:19am

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Noga: "The sort of criticism I have for Israel, Israelis and Israeli society you and your like-minded friends are not interested in, so you don't hear it, and when you do, you sweep it aside because it is irrelevant to the topic of Israel as it looms in the world's imagination (the occupier, the oppressor, etc etc)." That is grotesquely untrue (the politest term I can come up with).

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 11:32am

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"Run away, run away," noga. And while you are going, have a thought for the Black Knight. By all means, Google it if necessary.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 11:37am

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"That is grotesquely untrue (the politest term I can come up with)." When was the last you, or anyone else of your politics, raised the problem of double standard and disproportionality when it comes to judging Israel as anything but a bogus argument to be knocked down, dismissed, jeered at??

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 11:49am

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noga, they can't handle the truth. judging from the expression on Obama's face at his seder (photo in an op-ed in today's Jerusalem Post), I think Obama can not handle much of anything these days, or maybe he does not like the sting of horseradish. Most likely he does not like the increasing media theme that Obama publicly beats up America's allies while attempts to appease the unfriendly keep leading to deterioration (see Syria). Maybe someone changed Obama's haggadah to read "Next year in Ramat Shlomo"

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 12:15pm

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noga, they can't handle the truth. judging from the expression on Obama's face at his seder (photo in an op-ed in today's Jerusalem Post), I think Obama can not handle much of anything these days, or maybe he does not like the sting of horseradish. Most likely he does not like the increasing media theme that Obama publicly beats up America's allies while attempts to appease the unfriendly keep leading to deterioration (see Syria). Maybe someone changed Obama's haggadah to read "Next year in Ramat Shlomo"

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 12:15pm

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Somehow, K2K, I don't see Obama getting overly exercised over something like "the increasing media theme that Obama publicly beats up America's allies while attempts to appease the unfriendly keep leading to deterioration (see Syria)" He couldn't care less. Or rather, he considers it to be the very thing that he ought to do, and therefore he probably feels quite virtuous about it. And I have not seen much media beating up on him. Israelis and their well-wishers are all too aware of Obama's indifference.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 12:24pm

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It is sad indeed that Israelis, or many of them, demand of their well-wishers willful self-delusion about the state of the world, including therein the state of mind and motivations of President Obama. It is even sadder that so many well-wishers are all too willing to oblige.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 12:31pm

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"When was the last you, or anyone else of your politics, raised the problem of double standard and disproportionality when it comes to judging Israel as anything but a bogus argument to be knocked down, dismissed, jeered at?" I can't really accpet your question, Noga, as I don't dismiss or jeer at anyone who presents a serious argument on this board. Want to try it again, this time without the empty hostility and groundless assumptions?

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 12:54pm

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You mean like the empty hostility and groundless assumptions concealed in the passive form of this statement of yours? ""Because of a kind of self-separation: it seems to have taken on -- in contrast to other areas of discussion and debate -- the character of the untouchably sacred, where any criticism is immediately rejected as hostile and malicious," "untouchably sacred"? "rejected as hostile and malicious"? I should not have bothered to provide a thoughtful response to your comment. Feels like I were grinding water.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 1:18pm

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There is nothing dismissive or hostile there that I can see, and I made no groundless assumptions. Most of all, the phrasing and tone are completely free of anything even remotely resembling a jeer. Indeed, it's the very opposite of "dismissing" -- I am taking something quite seriously and trying to find an accurate but hopefully non-polemical way to register it. Hence my bafflement.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 1:29pm

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You know -- maybe it's me, maybe I can't see the pattern for the detail. Does anyone at all out there see in what I wrote the "empty hostility" that Noga indicts? I'll take any response seriously that's honestly meant.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 1:32pm

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"Hence my bafflement." More like a belligerent echo. Is this really your idea of expressing bafflement "That is grotesquely untrue (the politest term I can come up with)."??

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 1:33pm

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"There is nothing dismissive or hostile there that I can see, and I made no groundless assumptions." "untouchably sacred"? What could be the meaning of this unless you share roi's insanely perverted notions about me being far-right, messianic, God-compelled religious nutcase? "rejected as hostile and malicious"? When had I ever accuse you of being malicious? I remember when someone here ventured to suggest you were motivated by some antisemitic notions, I was the only one to care enough about your reputation to scold that poster. Why would I do that if I secretly rejected you as "hostile and malicious"? And while we are being honest, let me add this: If there is anything I dislike about you it is your practice of the politics of the virtuous bystander as long as your own projects are not challenged. As soon as that happens, all pretense at disinterestedness flies out of the window with a shriek. As can be seen right now, right here.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 1:54pm

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I don't see it irony. As I said before, with no touch of snark or irony intended, you are the consummate diplomat. That you are a nutcase, noga, is quite clear to anyone who can read. Exactly what type, I wouldn't go so far as to say. I suspect it is more personal and idiosyncratic in your case. What I have said is that Israel is governed by far-right, messianic nutcases -- something I firmly believe to be the case -- and that you support them and their policies. Your motivation for doing so isn't particularly important as you are not particularly important. (You see, the obsession with other people's state of mind is yours, not mine.) What is of importance is the policies themselves and whether Israel can shake itself from the grip of the fools and nuts.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 2:36pm

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You know what, noga? I'm calling a unilateral ceasefire. I think you have been smacked around enough. Hopefully you get the point. Have the last shot, or two, if you like. On the house.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 2:59pm

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"I'm calling a unilateral ceasefire." I did not realize you and I were at war, roi.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 3:18pm

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A "flamewar," as it is called in cyber-space. They come, they go.

- roidubouloi

April 1, 2010 at 3:20pm

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Really? And how am I supposed to take the corrosive contempt and deliberate untruth of: "The sort of criticism I have for Israel, Israelis and Israeli society you and your like-minded friends are not interested in, so you don't hear it, and when you do, you sweep it aside because it is irrelevant to the topic of Israel as it looms in the world's imagination (the occupier, the oppressor, etc etc). People, I find, are very eager to hear anything bad said about Israel, and even if it is something that ails every modern, democratic society, it becomes another reinforcement of Israel as evil, a specialty of Israel." Either you didn't mean to impute that to me specifically, Noga, in which case I have to wonder what the hell it's doing in a post directed to me, or you did mean to impute it to me, in which case . . . . well, I'll leave you to complete the thought.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 3:26pm

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"They come, they go" You sound as if someone has just poured a bucket of icy water over you. Intriguing switch from red hot fury to shrugging nonchalance.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 4:34pm

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Himself wonders "what the hell it's doing in a post directed to me" The same thing that "the untouchably sacred, where any criticism is immediately rejected as hostile and malicious," And "That is grotesquely untrue (the politest term I can come up with)." are doing in posts directed at me. Responding to the tone rather than substance. If you insist. There is a multitude of sins we could avoid if we managed to keep the acerbic tone out of our criticisms. It's hard to do, though.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 4:45pm

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"Intriguing switch from red hot fury to shrugging nonchalance." His meds FINALLY kicked in?

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 4:48pm

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:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEFJllAj9b8

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 4:51pm

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:) THAT is a hoot. And all made possible by this wonderful thing called the internet. What a playground......!

- jacko

April 1, 2010 at 5:20pm

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"c) SHEESH! Can't we all just get along?" yes, indeed. since I was not online* during the 'debate' over Iraq, nor reading TNR, I get the sense that Marty's blog is a perennial site for proxy wars, something like 'he was wrong about Iraq, so he is wrong about everything else'. Who is correct ALL the time?Heckofa way to discuss the WH seder, to lard in so much personal attacks. Next year in Jerusalem, which is not a settlement... *Disclosure: at the time, I was relying on print, the NYT and The Economist, for international news, and thought the whole rationale for invading Iraq was without merit, and remember being puzzled that anyone was believing the WMD evidence. yes, puzzled. must be my tendency to see so many shades of gray.

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 7:25pm

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malhat: it was a VERY different kind of fight, the very antithesis to "knock 'em out, drag 'em out", in fact.

- noga1

April 1, 2010 at 7:35pm

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Noga: Himself wonders "what the hell it's doing in a post directed to me" The same thing that "the untouchably sacred, where any criticism is immediately rejected as hostile and malicious," And "That is grotesquely untrue (the politest term I can come up with)." are doing in posts directed at me. Responding to the tone rather than substance. If you insist. There is a multitude of sins we could avoid if we managed to keep the acerbic tone out of our criticisms. It's hard to do, though. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 8:03pm

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The WH seder is over; move on to what Obama is doing for Easter. Maybe Hamas will crucify a Christian...(it IS the law in Gaza)

- K2K

April 1, 2010 at 8:48pm

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malahat -- in all the excitement, I overlooked your link to The Quiet Man. I love that movie.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2010 at 10:57pm

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K2K, you little whiff of putrescence, did you think I was talking to you? I wasn't. But, since you are asking for my attention, let's clear up a couple of things: In the hierarchy of people here with whom I might contend, you aren't really worthy of notice. TNR.reader manages to combine an unusual degree of malevolence with an unusual degree of stupidity. Noga is well-read and passionate. I would rather not fight with them, but at least it is some kind of challenge. You, however, are simply ridiculous. You are the most pompous, puffed up, ignorant poster in a long time. You never manage to say ANYTHING. Have you noticed that no one here bothers to respond to you? You are ignored because you have nothing to say and merely interrupt the conversation in the manner of a three-year old. Even when you try to be provocative to get attention, as above, you are ineffectual and pathetic, a loser. For that reason, it is sort of beneath my dignity to contend with you. There is no honor in taking on someone who really is intellectually challenged. There is a difference between stupidity -- a sort of obtuseness -- and sheer lack of intellect. You fall in the latter category. Indeed, you do such an excellent job humiliating yourself without any assistance, it would really be a shame to expend any effort on you. To be honest, I'm not even sure I can make you look any more ridiculous than you already do. There is some kind of absolute bottom. If you aren't there already, you are darned close. The safest course for you would be to take your silly, little, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny excuse for an intellect and go away. This is much too big a stage and there are too many smart people here for you. You are way out of your depth.

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 12:55am

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". . . that amazing, amazingly long, almost cartoonlike fight between McLaghlen and Wayne - it's been parodied many times." And the scene where the policeman rushes to the phone, and you think he's going to call for reinforcements from the nearby town to break up the fight, and all he's doing is placing a bet like everyone else.

- ironyroad

April 2, 2010 at 1:36am

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I'm betting that ironyroad likes The Quiet Man mainly because of the heroine who is a red-headed, what they call "spirited" Irish beauty. I have problems with this movie because it is too much taming of the shrew or Nietzschean in concept (When thou goest to woman, take thy whip).

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 8:13am

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roi: Don't you ever get tired? Don't you think for a minute that your views will have a chance to be better evaluated if people could actually hear them without all that noise?

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 8:21am

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No, noga, I don't get tired; I don't lose patience. Some things are an unfortunate necessity, business that has to be taken care of before getting back to more sensible undertakings. Of course, it would be better if these threads could be free of these sort of excesses. But they don't go away because they are ignored. They go away when there is no profit in them any longer. I am willing to make sure there is no profit in them. I certainly don't expect to profit by them.

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 10:12am

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You call this mere "excess": "you little whiff of putrescence, "?? To me it seems that only a person who does not trust the strength of his own arguments would resort to this kind of tactics. If a poster representing the Republican party point of view were to come here and make his case in this way he would not be tolerated, no matter how intelligent and coherent he was. He would be taken as an example of the baseness and brutishness of the party and opinions he represents. You can celebrate your great talent for bullying and verbal abuse here only because you are speaking to the converted and the believers. If I were your friend I would warn you against the illusion you seem to work under. I'm willing to hazard a guess here that you frighten and repel even those who agree with every word you utter here. And those who are not repelled by your "excesses" are exactly those you don't want as your friends.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 11:08am

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malahat, too often, The Spine commentary is less "like passing a car accident on the highway", more like watching serial killers using word bullets, based on “the received wisdom of those who do not think or know any history.” from Anthony Julius’ "Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England" Today's Jerusalem Post has further insights into what is possibly going through Obama's mind since his WH seder. see you all elsewhere in The Spine.

- K2K

April 2, 2010 at 12:59pm

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Well, noga, you may have observed, or you may not, that I often make arguments here that are just that, arguments, buttressed with facts, observations, anecdotes -- and sarcasm. All the things that good rhetoricians marshal in order to make persuasive arguments. No personal abuse of other posters necessary. I don't think that personal attacks enhance an argument; I think they detract from it. However, you may also have observed, or you may not, that the right wing in general seems to believe that it enjoys a special dispensation to heap abuse on its perceived enemies. Quite apart from venues such as this one, you can find thousands of sites and print media and MSM (sort of) such as Fox that consist of nothing but right wing-nuts spewing venom and abuse. It is the meat and potatoes of right-wing "thought," if you can call it that. It is so bad, that even right-wing elected officials engage in it, not occasionally, but routinely. I defy you to find anything remotely comparable on the left. It doesn't exist. It vanished with the Soviet Union. The right-wing penchant for abuse rather than argument inevitably extends to the public square, including this one. Just look at the fantastic lies, smears, and abuse hurled at Obama and the Democrats over the health insurance reform. My god, you would think they were proposing literally to murder people rather than to give them access to medical care. Most of those on the left regard this pageant of vile behavior with some combination of disdain and horror. They find it incredible that people behave this way, they assume that no rational person (those whom you would describe as "repelled") is swayed by this, that it is self-defeating. They regard it as beneath them to engage it on its own level as they don't want to "get dirty" doing so. If they attempt to meet it with rational argument, they are shouted down, lose interest, and assume or hope that the phenomenon will consume itself. I look, and I see danger. An absurd lie repeated often enough will come to be believed by thousands, then millions. Ironically, the more preposterous the lie, the more likely it is to be accepted. The screeching, the harangues, the abuse DO succeed when they are not met head on. While it is understandable that most on the left do not want to respond in kind, I consider it dereliction of duty that they will not do so, because the consequences of allowing the right free-reign to behave this way are dire. I have the experience of taking over an running a local Democratic committee. Before I took over, local politics followed the national "norm." The Democrats would make policy arguments; the Republicans would heap lies and abuse upon them. The Republicans were winning. When I took over, I insisted that we go blow-for-blow, punch-for-punch with the Republicans. At first the Republicans were stunned. Nothing like it had ever happened to them before. They just assumed that they had some sort of right to use their weapon of choice with no effective response. Then they got more shrill. And so did we. And then they began to notice that we were even better at it than they once we put our minds to it. They were losing the battle. Then they started losing elections. And then they more or less stopped the abuse. And whenever they would start up again, we would just go at it again until they stopped. The last election, they won. But they did it because they made a good argument. They did not rely on their traditional tactics. While I wasn't happy to lose the election, the polity is much better off now that the political battles are being fought on civilized terms. It is just an unfortunate necessity that there is no effective response to this sort of abuse other than in-kind. Think of it this way: When Hezbollah hurls missiles at Israel, the only thing that can persuade them to stop is pummeling them. Nothing else will do. No decent person thinks that this is something to be welcomed or applauded. But it is necessary and good people should not shrink from doing what is necessary. When some right-wing public person engages in this behavior, you don't argue with him. You scream that he is a pig, scum, disgusting, beneath contempt, and whatever other vile imprecations come to mind. Because there is a special problem: When you respond to the abuse with argument, it has the perverse effect of legitimizing the abuse. Bizarre as it may seem, people come to believe that both sides are "arguing" the facts or policy, when one is arguing and the other is simply lying and abusive. And then the abuse becomes more credible. It is the precise rhetorical equivalent of asymmetric warfare. The answer, the only answer I am afraid, is to "go symmetric." I should add that the necessity to be abusive extends to Martin Peretz, himself a serial abuser. In his case, the abuse cannot be stopped, but by responding in terms as absurd and extreme as his, even more so (as when I skip the arguments completely and just point out that he is a "moron" whose words make no sense at all), the extremism and absurdity of his rhetoric are at least brought into sharp belief. A good screaming much between abusers is all it is, there is nothing there. His abuse is empty of meaning; the abusive response is just as empty of meaning. Decent people turn away in disgust, as they should. I consider it a professional responsibility, noga, nothing more. I have the talent (honed in no small measure from having had to do this in public for real stakes). I should put it to good use. If the price is to be disregarded by the decent, so be it. But I don't find that to be the case. Whatever they may be thinking while watching some flame war from the sidelines, I find that they are willing to engage in civilized discussion with me the rest of the time. And if not, not.

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 3:42pm

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"I consider it a professional responsibility, noga, nothing more" Lionel Trilling: "'The moral obligation to be intelligent' roidubouloi: "the moral responsibility to be abusive". I'm curious to know: After that experience, how many of local Democratic committee remained your friends? You ought to be careful that you don't end up doing someone's dirty work and getting them what they want with such means. Because eventually what will be remembered are the means, while the aim has long ago dissipated into oblivion.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 4:29pm

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Every single one is a friend and admirer. I led them out of the political wilderness and they know it. You have quiet on your northern border for analogous reasons. The world is not a just place.

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 5:10pm

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"You have quiet on your northern border for analogous reasons." You mean the North Pole?

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 5:37pm

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I have been wondering where I heard an argument similar to the one you are making, that "I consider it a professional responsibility, noga, nothing more. I have the talent (honed in no small measure from having had to do this in public for real stakes). I should put it to good use. If the price is to be disregarded by the decent, so be it." It was something I read in Arendt's book about the origins of totalitarianism about Robespierre whose motto was, Hanna Arendt tells us: “pour l’amour l'Humanité, soyez inhumain”. So for you, slander, abuse and verbal violence are all permissible in the service of a certain public cause. And of course you are only re-affirming what I have already noticed about the by-standers who will not interfere with you abuse as long as it serves their side of the argument. BTW, I find it hard to believe that last answer about friends. It does not make sense. In my experience people on line are not all that much different than what they are in real life. We turn the volume on some of our traits when engaged in virtual reality but basically we present a more or less faithful portrait of ourselves. Somehow I find it hard to believe that people who have known you at your worst behaviour would want to remain your friends in the real sense of the word once the necessity of associating with you is over. Perhaps they feel they owe you a debt for "leading' them out of the political wilderness so they behave nicely to you but I just cannot see any genuine friendships springing from such extreme exercises of power or whatever you call it. Your Hizzbala analogy is only relevant if you consider the Republican party to be your mortal enemy, out to annihilate you. In which case you are only mirroring real far-Right paranoia.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 6:30pm

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I'm curious about this matter of appropriate and inappropriate analogies. It appears that there are some. The most egregious I can recall was from when I lived in Berlin, and some Green Party spokeshuman had responded to an announcement of significant cuts in something fairly important which I don't remember (e.g. child after-school programs or youth facilities in general, perhaps) with the infamous comment: "This is the Wannsee Conference for the social services in Berlin!" Needless to say, the next morning he was apologizing and emphasizing with great emphasis that he didn't mean to compare etc etc and was deeply sorry if he had etc etc and hoped that etc etc Jewish community etc etc Nazi inhumanity etc etc. One does wonder, of course, what kind of intellectual and rhetorical controls were in place that allowed him to formulate -- and express -- the analogy in the first place. Clearly, suggesting that cuts in services and planned genocide are in some way parallel is either insane, malicious, or stupid in a way that probably only a German could manage (and not mean any offence, at least not consciously). In any case, I'm not sure that roid's analogy of the northern border of Israel and disciplining the local GOP in his area is necessarily exactly the same kind of thing. He wasn't drawing such a precise and thoroughgoing parallel as the Green Party guy and I'd argue it's a bit more casual, with the underlying sense of "if you hit them back, they'll think twice about it the next time" as the intentional focus rather than a specific claim that the Republican Party is like Hizbollah in some arguable way (in contrast, again, to the claim that the budget cuts in Berlin really were equivalent to planning the Holocaust). I mean, a Republican might well be entitled to say indignantly, "I object to being compared to a terrorist group" or whatever, and roid might have to answer that, but I just don't think it's a priori as grotesque as my example.

- ironyroad

April 2, 2010 at 7:11pm

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ironyroad again confirms my thesis that as an interested by-standers he will not interfere with abuse, or lurid analogies, as long as it serves his side of the argument. I wonder he has not attacked me for likening roi's ethics of engagement to Robespierre's. I don't for a minute suppose he agrees with it or he wouldn't take the trouble to advocate for roi's choice of analogies as somehow reasonable. Speaking of lurid analogies, I remember reading once about a woman, a Holocaust survivor, complaining that the ban on smoking in her workplace, which forced her to go outside to smoke, was like the Nazis. It was relayed as a second-hand story and the narrator was not a reliable one but still, one wonders what happens to people's memory when they become used to a normal, peaceful life. Every little thing that interferes with their level of comfortable normality must loom like an unmitigated evil.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 7:40pm

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Noga once again confirms that she shifts to the third person if she's feeling uncomfortable about something. But that aside, I think that there is indeed a similar case to be made. The parallel Robespierre/roid, like the parallel Hizbollah/GOP, is really something more than a little different from the example I set out. There, unlike with you or roid, there was a deep-structure element to the Wannsee Conference analogy that was rather disturbing. It wasn't simply a kind of comparative conceit. How am I a bystander if I join in a discussion? Is there a threshold number of posts, or what?

- ironyroad

April 2, 2010 at 7:49pm

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"Noga once again confirms that she shifts to the third person if she's feeling uncomfortable about something" So what? There is a very good logic to the parliamentary procedure according to which members of opposite parties do not address each other but direct their words to the Speaker of the house.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 7:57pm

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Your thesis is confirmed, noga, because you are describing yourself, not me. You don't understand at all what I am about. You regularly deploy abuse in the service of a particular cause about which you are passionate and you feel, apparently, entitled to do so. I employ that weapon on behalf of one cause -- stopping the abuse by the right-wing of the rest of us. And I do so because it is the only thing that works. When people are violent -- the physical equivalent -- you can carry on as long as you want about turning the other cheek, how people will be repelled by the use of violence to stop the violent, etc., etc. And some of that is actually true. People are repelled by the use of violence to stop the violent. But there is no alternative because not meeting them in kind requires enduring their violence. So, the argument against deploying the necessary but appalling means of violence against the violent is that one must simply be their victim. And I don't believe in that. I don't believe in political pacifism and I don't believe in allowing the violent to succeed because they are more willing to be extreme. That is the analogy to the political arena. The right-wing is abusive of speech and of the public square far more than anyone else, and by many orders of magnitude. There is nothing comparable on the left. I would never advocate, for example, winning the debate about healthcare simply by abusing the naysayers into silence. But I have no compunction about employing their own means to prevent them from destroying the debate itself and the opportunity for discussion on both sides. There is quiet on Israel's northern border because those who are willing to use violence for political ends can only be deterred by one thing -- violence. Those, overwhelming of the right-wing, who deploy lies and abuse as a political strategy are only deterred by one thing, having it trained on them. Is it worthy doing? Absolutely. The alternative is simply to surrender the entire forum of debate to their verbal jackboots. Not me. It works the same way with you, noga. Once you have taken enough abuse -- been smacked around enough -- as I said, you are able to return to (almost) normal discussion. I have no intention or interest in abusing you to prevent you from articulating your point of view. I prefer it, actually, because when you go on a tear you are using that as a substitute for expressing any argument that could be engaged and shown to be a failure. I would rather engage the argument and pick it apart than engage you and pick you apart. But if what is coming in is abuse, then that is what will be going on, as long as it takes. Arendt was an admirer of Heidegger. She is not a source one should rely on.

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 8:36pm

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You, of course, missed what was most important about my story about the Republicans. In the recent election, that they won, they did not employ their customary abusive tactics (perhaps because they thought they could win without them, which they did) and no one used them against them. They won "fair and square" so to speak. And, while disappointed at losing, I considered that a better outcome than the alternative of again having to resort to their behavior to counter their behavior. That is what matters -- we were able to conduct a contest marked by some level of decency because they were deterred or discouraged from using indecent means. It went right by you, noga, because you still don't understand either the nature of the problem or the nature of the solution. You can only think about it in terms of your own willingness to be abusive in a particular cause, rather than only to assure that the forum is not overwhelmed by abuse..

- roidubouloi

April 2, 2010 at 8:43pm

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Noga, that was just a test. I knew you'd pounce onto the first sentence of my post, and completely ignore the second, more substantial and germane, paragraph. It's a pity. I'd have liked your response to the distinction I was exploring. But, I've lived with disappointment (a vision of long red hair, pale skin, hazel eyes hovers before his mind's eye . . .)

- ironyroad

April 2, 2010 at 9:32pm

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roi: No bully is ever an interesting, or enigmatic character. I noticed that you were very responsive to personal questions, eager to provide answers and information. Often much longer than strictly necessary. It means something. I think you see yourself as the hero of your life. That's why you go to such trouble to narrate your moments of triumph, when you were the leader of the people and successfully vanquished the mean guys. You are D'Artagnan! It would be quite sweet if you only allowed yourself to face the reality that a blog on TNR is not quite a venue for glory making. People who actually do something worthwhile do not have this need to brag about it and put down other people. You seem very sensitive to insults. Practically incandescent with fury if someone dares to repay your many courtesies in kind. Yet you try to rationalize it as a choice you make, a responsibility to serve by abuse and verbal intimidation.

- noga1

April 2, 2010 at 11:54pm

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Noga, your psychologizing is amusing, but, as is often the case, you miss the point. Consider first reading the words on the page for what they say, and that they may just be about what they are literally about rather than indicative of other things. Then consider that your interpretations are telling a story about you, not me. I told you that story to illustrate two points: The first is that deploying Republican tactics on Republicans, and by extension the rest of the right-wing, as a means of blunting their extremist and abusive rhetoric works. It works just fine. The second is that that is the reason for doing it, not to do what they are trying to do which is use this weapon to win the political argument. In fact, it doesn't work that way. What actually happens when you have both sides beating each other up is that it is fought to a draw. As soon as the slings and arrows are flying in both directions, the public considers it nonsense, which it is, and loses interest. Then the battle has to shift to other ground. It is only when the abuse is all in one direction that the public starts to accept the abuse as truth. I am not sure of the psychology behind this, but I suspect that much of the public has an unconscious view that, if you will not engage in the battle, the guy beating you up must be on to something. In any case, when one side, the right, is allowed to behave in this way without a contest, it succeeds, often. When both sides engage in the same behavior, it is discredited. As for your "interpretations," I understand that it is almost inconceivable to you that one can do anything for pragmatic reasons. You display this clearly in your view of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. It is all "forces of light and darkness," who is righteous and who is wicked, what you believe would be a just outcome, and so forth. Even the suggestion that some things are just very bad tactics, destined to lead to an outcome other than what you want, is enough to infuriate you. As a result, you can only imagine that I am like you, and that whatever I have to say can only be driven by emotion like yours, maybe not the same emotions as yours, but emotion at a high pitch none-the-less. But, noga, not everyone is like you. Despite what you think you see, I haven't really told you much of anything about myself, any more than a parable is about the story-teller. I give you parables to see what I can manage to explain to you. But here is something about me for you to think about: My interest in a position of political leadership was not at all about a desire to be heroic. The opportunity to be in a position of control presented itself such that I could conduct a real life experiment to see if my theory about modern political life was correct, to see whether, as I described, Republican tactics could be deployed to beat Republicans at their own game. Once I had satisfied myself as to that, I was done, and what people thought about it, one way or the other, wasn't a big concern of mine. The local Republicans detest me, that is for sure. I don't for a moment imagine that a TNR blog is a place to achieve anything of consequence, other than experimenting with rhetoric, of all kinds, in ways that one cannot do in real time, in public, when the political stakes are real. This interests me as a place to try out arguments and styles of argumentation, to see what is effective and ineffective and on whom, and also, when necessary, to prove again that the abusive right-wing can always be beaten at its own game, always, if you have a thick skin and are willing to persist. In contrast, I find you reflexive and unthinking. You adopt abusive language without even noticing you are doing it, usually in response to some argument that you seem unable to cope with. And then, when it comes back at you, you are genuinely astonished and imagine that you are being bullied. You don't even realize what sort of language you yourself have been using. This is typical of the right. The language is so much a part of the very fabric of right-wing, including nationalist, behavior that they don't even notice they are doing it. But, as soon as it comes back, they are all outraged that anyone would dare to behave this way. It all reminds me of nothing so much as the reaction of the Soviet Union at being called an "Evil Empire" by Reagan. That was of course nothing compared to the epithets routinely used by the Soviets to describe the United States. But as soon as it was turned on them, in much milder terms, they were similarly stunned and outraged. It seemed not even to occur to them that they engaged in much worse. They thought it was their unique right to do so. This is also a place to experiment with what people can and cannot learn from other people's rhetoric. I want to see what you can learn once you have been persuaded, at least for a time, to stop your bad behavior. You suppose instead that I am trying to glorify myself, or make myself interesting or enigmatic. All I see is that you use this as a way of being evasive, of avoiding engaging the point I am making, either to agree or disagree, most likely because you don't like the point and have no answer to offer that satisfies even you. The detail and explicitness increases in order to see whether you can ever be engaged on point or whether you will continue to try to talk about something else -- such as what you imagine to be my state of mind. As ever, you are interested in other people's state of mind. I consider that unknowable and beside the point that interests me -- what moves someone, or some group, or a nation, or the world, from point A to point B.

- roidubouloi

April 3, 2010 at 2:25am

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Irony, I have always been a sucker for redheads too. Jackson, if you are still around, I read the article by the UMass professor and found it most of all beautifully written and interesting in its analysis of the failures of Marx correctly to predict the future course of economic development. I think, however, that the answer is simpler: The very notion that there exists any science or method for predicting the course of human history is mistaken. With hindsight, one can always discern causes because everything must have a cause. But with regard to the future, there are simply too many contingencies, seen and unseen. There are many alternative paths that might also be "caused," and no way to tell even with hindsight what might have pushed the worldline down one of the roads not taken. On the subjects of cost accounting and the marginal product of labor, the good professor, neither an accountant nor an economist, is erudite but mistaken. All accounting is imperfect, but it is absolutely possible to address the issue of joint costs and long-term capital amortization well enough to understand what the return on capital will be at the end to a reasonable degree of certain -- and there is always a return on capital that is determinable at some point based on what money went in and what money came out. On the subject of marginal product, the professor is incorrect that paying labor its marginal product would lead to zero profit because there is also a marginal return to capital -- at least in some circumstances. This is what Samuelson et al mean when they say it doesn't matter whether capital hires labor or vice versa, when, that is, they are both receiving their marginal product. As a result, I think the professor's conclusion that we are now seeing the development of the technical capacity that would make central planning possible is also wrong. The mistake there I think is in the entire dichotomy between capitalism and socialism. We need markets, we need planning. The trick is in discerning what can best be achieved with one or the other. Neither is going to achieve the best possible outcome by itself. Oddly, the conditions when one can describe equilibrium in terms of marginal products of factor inputs is the very subject I am writing about now. I liked the piece and intend to pass it on to two professors of mine. I think they will find it useful. Thanks for passing this along.

- roidubouloi

April 3, 2010 at 2:50am

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Hardly psychologising, roid. I treat you strictly as a character from a book. Not an interesting one but someone who insists on grabbing all attention ti himself. I wonder what could the author mean by that character? _______ ironyroad, you sound just a little tipsy in your last comment. I'm sorry if my quip about Maureen O'hara brought up some forgotten heartache.

- noga1

April 3, 2010 at 7:23am

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Yes, noga, I understand perfectly. You think we all live in a novel and that events should therefore follow the narrative logic of fiction. Thus, you always seek to interpret the world, and the people in it, as characters in a book. But we don't actually live in a book, do we? And, for just that reason, maybe the narrative structure of fiction and its conventions are not an acceptable guide to reality. Fiction has one set of conventions. Politics, war, and diplomacy have other conventions. Even rhetoric and argument have conventions different than those of fiction. So, perhaps that is the source of your disjunction. To no great surprise, even prodding in excruciating detail cannot get you to abandon the womb of fiction and engage the real world as it is, even briefly. Oh well.

- roidubouloi

April 3, 2010 at 11:04am

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No, you don't understand at all, roi. It's one of your tragic flaws, you just don't have the kind of imagination that most people have when they try to make sense of the world as a place where not only force and might are the primary factors but actually the idea of justice has some relevance. Arendt was curious about justice and explored it in terms of human behaviour which does include interests but not exclusively so. She understood the nature of antisemitism and its centrality to any system of thinking that seeks to justify harming Jews. You wouldn't get it, just as you can't go beyond the fact of Arendt's connection to Heidegger. Your world is barren and scary and hopeless. Nightmarish, even. It's a world where you need to restate and repeat your allegiance to "gentile friends" by way of humanizing yourself. As if anyone cares! Do you even realize how pathetic and needy that sounded? Your candidate won, big time, and has been sitting at the helm for over a year now and you still fight as if he is campaigning for the job. And what a fury when your rhetoric fails to win your day! And by the way, mere rhetoric can only work on the feeble minded and easily impressionable, the kind of people who would be useless to you if push came to shove.

- noga1

April 3, 2010 at 11:52am

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Sorry, noga, but if we are building a catalog of what is not understood, it is clear that you don't understand even the meaning of the word "rhetoric." It is what you are engaged in here. All efforts to persuade are a form of rhetoric. And if we want to catalog tragic flaws, then we must include your "suicide Judaism" as one. You seem fully to believe that if one can adequately analyze the mind of the anti-Semite, with or without the aid of the repellent Hannah Arendt, that the threat is gone, you are done, you need not then figure out what is to be done so that the anti-Semite does not destroy you. Justification, particularly self-justification, is everything for you. Actual survival and well-being, an after-thought. Allegiance to my "gentile friends" who came to dinner? What a crude mind you have, noga. I do believe that if you weren't Jewish, you would be an anti-Semite. Perhaps that is your fascination with anti-Semitism as the fundamental, virtually the only, lens with which to understand everything about Israel and the situation of we Jews in the world. Racism actually speaks to you, doesn't it? You merely scrabble for the honor of being chief victim. You don't seem any more decent really when you are not spewing venom than when you are, and you seem much more comfortable in the former state than the latter. Okay then, back to your comfort zone, lickety-split.

- roidubouloi

April 3, 2010 at 12:19pm

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Noga: "I'm sorry if my quip about Maureen O'hara brought up some forgotten heartache." It's ok. I compensate for the loss with the intensity of my intellectual engagements :)

- ironyroad

April 3, 2010 at 2:07pm

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Noga: "...someone who insists on grabbing all attention ti himself. I wonder what could the author mean by that character?..." In fiction, such an archetype, the Narcissistic Bully, is almost always male, and often the central villain, making it so VERY satisfying to the audience when the 'righteous rough justice hero' finally kills the smug and intrusive narcissist. Like Clint Eastwood (hero SSA Frank Horrigan) versus John Malkovich (really annoying villain Mitch Leary) in "In the Line of Fire". In the real world, it is impossible to have a rational encounter of any kind with the Narcissistic Bully (NB), or some of the other Bully archetypes, who will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender to his worldview, what Noga acknowledges as the attraction of "the feeble minded and easily impressionable." No negotiation remotely possible. Which is why no one sane negotiates with terrorists, even if armed only with endless verbiage (a form of torture), in fiction, in reality, or in The Spine. The rational human either ignores the NB, or mails a hard copy of the transcripts to TNR so they can try to find a way to keep comments on topic and/or without personal malice in the next generation of TNR Digital. But, first, I shall watch a righteous rough justice dvd with a more normal villain (like the corrupt Senator in "Shooter") because Narcissistic Bullies are way too irritating to have to wait for them to be silenced forever.

- K2K

April 3, 2010 at 5:55pm

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You know what, K2K, nobody is forced to engage in discussion on TNR threads. And, agreed, it's easier to watch a DVD.

- ironyroad

April 3, 2010 at 7:13pm

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ironyroad, some of us would like to engage in discussion without lengthy personal attacks because some think it their mission in life to destroy the right-wing based on 'guilt-by-association' for agreeing with Marty Peretz, who attracts remnants of Bush-derangement-syndrome sufferers because of Iraq. I was not online at that time, but the viciousness of Obama supporters inside his campaign website over anyone supportive of Israel in May, 2008, led me here. A lifetime of being a loyal Democrat only to be cyberbullied by Obama delegates and supporters because of Israel? And that makes me right-wing? I am dying, and need some relief from my social isolation. preferably without bullies.

- K2K

April 3, 2010 at 7:56pm

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May I ask ironyroad what it was that made you abandon your virtuous by-stander position in order to castigate K2K? Was it his/her prognosis of roi's excesses? I'm really curious about this because there has been nothing constrained or remotely decorous about roi's rabid attacks upon others around here and nary a peeps from you.

- noga1

April 3, 2010 at 9:14pm

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ironyroad responds to Noga that her question is impossible to answer because it's posited upon a false assmption. For his part, ironyroad also wonders in what way K2K's passive-aggressive pleading for special attention is different from george walton's, which Noga correctly (in ironyroad's opinion) evaluated and dismissed.

- ironyroad

April 3, 2010 at 9:27pm

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If I understand correctly, K2K was responding to your breezy admonition that "You know what, K2K, nobody is forced to engage in discussion on TNR threads. " which you entered as a response to his/her complaint and ad-hom criticism of dear roi's style of engagement. You ignored the very real concern expressed in the criticism that roi's relentless bullying does not make possible a civilized and reasonable discussion. After your scolding, K2K tried to explain to you why he/she feels claustrophobic and put-upon, which you now choose to dismiss, uncharitably, as "passive-aggressive pleading for special attention". So I have to wonder, once again, ironyroad, where is your sense of fair play? How come you are aroused from this lethargy when someone other than roi exhibits the same failing? You never made even the mildest objection when roi goes into his extensive bouts of name-calling personal slanderous and smearing attacks but you are moved to interject when someone complains bitterly about it, in kind. Just wondering, that's all. And btw, roi's wanton use of carpeting the board with serial, long comments in which abuse and tedious ad-hominems are often served almost neat are more like george walton's than anything offered by K2K. You don't notice them. Why? I'm genuinely curious. A bully is a bully, even when he happens to be extremely intelligent and articulate like your friend roi here. A bully is a bully even when he shares your basic political assumptions. K2K's anguish is very real and for a person as enlightened as you are (frankly, the most enlightened around here, even though that may not be such a great compliment) to mock him or her is plainly cynical.

- noga1

April 4, 2010 at 8:36am

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No, noga, it is your attempt at bullying that renders impossible civilized and reasonable discussion. Your corruption and dishonesty in declining so much as to recognize your own contribution is typical of your political ilk. I am candid about what I am doing and why, whether you choose to believe it or not. You engage in vile behavior and simply wish to pretend that nothing of the kind is occurring. The objects of my "bullying" are strictly you and the couple of other abusers like you. And I will not stop so long as you do not stop. You deserve absolutely nothing less. You do not deserve to participate in civilized discussion because you are uncivilized, and I will not permit you to attempt so to participate, free of charge, while you continue in your behavior. You of course can post at will, but you will have to pay the price if you continue to be abusive. K2K's anguish may be real, but he also opened with ad hominem, didn't like the condign response, and chose to escalate by becoming ever more abusive. He receives the same in kind and then, like you, the classic bully AND coward asserts his victimhood. Sensible people decline to take your view of these exchanges because, unlike you, they are able to observe that they do indeed flow in both directions. If nothing else, noga, you are a classic examplar of the right-wing, oblivious to its own atrocious behavior, and professing an innocence of intention that no one believes. Nor does anyone other than your fellow abusers accept your characterizations of me no matter how many times you assert them. Because they can read, and they are not the moral simpletons that you ask them to be. "Just wondering, that's all." Piffle.

- roidubouloi

April 4, 2010 at 12:06pm

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Serial carpet comment: What you aspire to, noga, is the ability freely to abuse those whose arguments you do not like and cannot address with persuasive counter-argument, and then to be free of any abuse in response so that, where you cannot persuade, you can dominate and intimidate. You can't have it. I won't allow it. Whine to the end of time, assert your purity and innocence without cease, wheedle and plead your victimhood. It won't matter. You will not have what you want. Your abuse will be drowned out with noise in kind so that you cannot be heard here that way. It matters not to me if the result is that I cannot be heard either. Just so long as you do not succeed in your malign purpose. It is the only way to rid the world of atrocious behavior such as yours.

- roidubouloi

April 4, 2010 at 12:19pm

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"All cruelty springs from weakness." (Seneca, 4BC-AD65) [no one is a victim of a bully, only the target of his cruelty]http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm The serial bully: ...is a control freak and has a compulsive need to control everyone and everything you say, do, think and believe; is also quick to belittle, undermine, denigrate and discredit anyone who calls, attempts to call, or might call the bully to account; is arrogant, haughty, high-handed, and a know-all; gains gratification from denying people what they are entitled to...

- K2K

April 4, 2010 at 12:44pm

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I tend to see bullying as a collective thing (mostly). A series of posters ganging up on one individual in a situation for which there is no justification for that behavior. But it can happen that a particular poster (e.g. mr_rationale, our friend with the unintentionally revealing handle) is so far removed from the shared perspectives of people on the TNR site that he succeeds in provoking a number of similar responses to his intervention. Is this bullying? I don't think so. Could I point out long posts are not in and of themselves malicious? For example, ginzy has written, at times, quite extensive and combative posts, and has also continued to use a kind of irritatingly insulting term ("Obamanoids," I believe) that, while essentially silly, communicates that he believes that the people who disagree with him don't have minds of their own. Indeed, he continues to use it months after he said he'd stop. There was indeed something scarily compulsive about george walton's endless screeds, but were they the same as roid's? I've also written a few long things myself, but generally when I felt that I really needed to explain something in detail. I thought his account of being involved in his local Democratic Party outfit, and the question of how to deal with the opponents' tactics, was lengthy but legitimately so. Regarding my own position, I claim neither observer status nor, heaven forbid, virtue! I am admittedly a little nervous about getting into the detail of Israeli or Palestinian issues where that detail is much more familiar to others than to me. To that extent, while I expressed some opinions on the Biden visit and the U.S.-Israel disagreement, I tried often to formulate a question (allowing those with knowledge on the ground to clue me in) rather than make an assertion, and keep the logic of my remarks on a more general level (approaching Netanyahu and his problems from the perspective of power dynamics in a coalition government, rather than making it about him in particular). I consciously avoided getting into detailed arguments about the housing controversy. Which may not have been as obvious to others as I wanted it to be, of course. It may involve distinctions that are more wish than reality. PS I'm still interested in hearing what you have to say on the question of inappropriate vs. appropriate analogies.

- ironyroad

April 4, 2010 at 4:22pm

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"Is this bullying? I don't think so." says ironyroad. I think you have proven my point, ironyroad. you cannot bring yourself to admit, publicly, that roi is a bully and you try to dilute his frequent descent into sheer insolence, vulgarity and personal abuse by bringing in Ginzy's "Obamanoids". Your feeling were hurt by Ginzy so his rather mild mockery becomes the equivalent of roi's: "Noga, you are deranged, completely. You are no longer of this world." "What a pathetic spectacle you make of yourself. You are completely incoherent, overflowing with bile, bitter, and desperately lost. And none of it can help you. No matter how much venom you spew, your country is still caught in the vice fashioned by your own rapacity." Just to cite two random examples picked from roi's comments on the first page of this thread. The following pages will yield a much greater array of imaginative, unprovable, ad-homs. The only explanation is that you don't notice these extravagances because you consider them; (1) perfectly legitimate argument, defensible and verifiable or (2) you are in perfect agreement with them. If the first, then I wonder why you took umbrage at K2K's prognosis of roi as a toxic narcissist. If roi is allowed to diagnose my opinions as symptomatic of some mental disease, why can't K2K? If the second, then I have to wonder why you often engage with me and seek my opinion about this or that. Why would you make fun of a person who is so obviously deranged and irrational? Were you merely being kind to a sick person?

- noga1

April 4, 2010 at 4:54pm

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It's not the first, nor the second, but rather the absent third -- aka the content of my post, which you appear not to have read. And btw, I'm not responsible for what other posters write. Luckily, I'm not even responsible for what you write, as you go through the world somewhat oddly taking sideswipes at people who are basically on your side.

- ironyroad

April 4, 2010 at 5:16pm

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"And btw, I'm not responsible for what other posters write" I did not ask for such responsibility. What I ask for is fair play. If you take a swipe at K2K for psychologizing roi I expect you to notice the very same, and much more, when roi is the culprit. If you insist on remaining blind and deaf to his insults, the very least you can do is remain equally blind and deaf to what K2k has written. If you choose to mock K2k for committing the same "crime" that roi has while you exonerate roi from the taint of bullying, then you are not being fair, or neutral, or objective. Your refusal to understand my point proves that what I claimed was trued that bullying, when done from your side of the political aisle, is not bullying but a thoughtful engagement with the subject. It also explains why you would consider the analogy of a Republican adversary to Hizzbala to be quite an adequate analogy. It is not. Hizzbala is an enemy of Israel. The Republican is not an enemy of roi's. Hizzbala seeks to destroy Israel and genocide its people. The Republican does not seek to destroy roi or murder his family. Both roi and his Republican rival love and care about America. They disagree about what would be better for America. That is the core of their rivalry. It is not about doing away with one another because the one is a mortal threat to the survival of the other. If roi looks at his Republican compatriot and what he sees is a man out to annihilate him, then roi is a piece of work and needs urgent help in facing realities.

- noga1

April 4, 2010 at 5:34pm

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I think we can agree on the definition, K2K. We just disagree on who is the protagonist, who insists on license to these tactics in lieu of argument and who doesn't. Noga gets what noga serves, but declines to admit. Republicans are indeed my enemy, not because they are out to annihilate me, but because there is nothing too unscrupulous for them to do in the pursuit of power, no lie they will not tell, no abuse they will not engage in. Of course. They are of the right-wing. Nor do I accept that they care about America. They hate America. They love only their own money. They sell out America daily in order to pocket the American public's wealth. That's not bad enough. In their insane super-patriotism, they are capable of committing most any crime, and, in their faith-based reality that equates their own undeserved belief in their own virtue with military, diplomatic, or economic efficacy, they are a direct threat to the security of my nation. Given the threat they represent, it hardly matters whether they actually have the intention of killing me. They are capable of accomplishing that through their profound dishonesty, their insatiable greed, and their indifference to reality. The Republicans have destroyed countless young lives for no better reason than to demonstrate that they are tough -- while demonstrating anything but. They have wreaked havoc with the world economy and the American economy out of ideological true-belief and a complete indifference to inconvenient truths. They are dishonorable in their conduct, routinely accuse everyone who is not one of them of being a traitor, a baby-killer, and god know what else. What more do I need in an enemy than that? Some people just don't know the difference between an enemy and a friend. They think anyone who professes benign feeling is a friend and anyone who is critical is an enemy. It can easily be the other way around. Doubtless noga thinks Republicans are just fine fellows with some disagreements on the finer points of policy because they enable the Israeli right-wing. Inevitably, Obama must therefore be Israel's mortal enemy because he will not do so.

- roidubouloi

April 4, 2010 at 7:56pm

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Just for the record, to be clear on just what a goon noga is while proclaiming herself the ingenue victim of bullying, here is the first reference by either of us to the other, or even to anything written by the other, on this thread: 03/28/2010 - 10:37pm EDT | noga1 Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque [sic]. This is a response to Friedman's perversions by Avi Trengo, a leftist journalist, one of those disillusioned "Peace Now" activists who used to hang upon Friedman's words in the past but find him quite useless these days: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3868877,00.html It's in Hebrew. I may translate it into English if there is any interest in it. * * * And here is my response, which noga quotes only in part and shorn of the context: 03/29/2010 - 12:29am EDT | roidubouloi noga says: "Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque [sic]." Noga, you are deranged, completely. You are no longer of this world. You have reached the point where everyone who does not accept Likud's right-wing extremist designs on land east of the Green Line is Israel's enemy. Tom Friedman? I don't like Friedman for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with his "war of choice" meme on Iraq, but if things have reached the point where an Israeli who is anything other than an extremist Yigal Amir-type nut can characterize Friedman as loathing Israel, then the place is finished. It's descent into paranoia is complete. Noga's certainly is. The right-wing is determined to drag Israel down in the pursuit of its chimerical land ambitions. Let us hope there are enough Israelis who will realize that Likud is leading Israel over a cliff and throw them out. Perhaps the fact that for the first time since 1956 the US is asserting its own interests, rather than saying one thing and then allowing Israel to pursue its interests with little regard for those of the US, will be the wake-up call that Israel needs." * * * You are a propagandist in the long tradition of the demagogic right-wing, noga. Same tactics. Same lies. Same professions of innocent victimhood. Different day. How ironic that you call me to task for thinking the Republicans are enemies while imagining Tom Friedman of all people to be Israel's enemy. But this of course is the essence of right-wing propaganda, the tactic pioneered by Josef Goebbels himself, the perversion of every truth. The essence of it is to claim everything to be the exact opposite of what it is so that, in the hall of rhetorical mirrors, even the most astonishing lies can come to be accepted as the truth. There is no truth any longer, only lies and the reflection of lies and whatever lie you choose to believe.

- roidubouloi

April 4, 2010 at 8:27pm

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Just for the record, to be clear on just what a goon noga is while proclaiming herself the ingenue victim of bullying, here is the first reference by either of us to the other, or even to anything written by the other, on this thread: 03/28/2010 - 10:37pm EDT | noga1 Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque [sic]. This is a response to Friedman's perversions by Avi Trengo, a leftist journalist, one of those disillusioned "Peace Now" activists who used to hang upon Friedman's words in the past but find him quite useless these days: [link deleted so that this will post properly] It's in Hebrew. I may translate it into English if there is any interest in it. * * * And here is my response, which noga quotes only in part and shorn of the context: 03/29/2010 - 12:29am EDT | roidubouloi noga says: "Tom Friedman gave an interview to the Hebrew daily "Yediot Aharonot" in which he expresses himself in the tone and loathing that I can only describe as roidubuiesque [sic]." Noga, you are deranged, completely. You are no longer of this world. You have reached the point where everyone who does not accept Likud's right-wing extremist designs on land east of the Green Line is Israel's enemy. Tom Friedman? I don't like Friedman for a variety of reasons having mostly to do with his "war of choice" meme on Iraq, but if things have reached the point where an Israeli who is anything other than an extremist Yigal Amir-type nut can characterize Friedman as loathing Israel, then the place is finished. It's descent into paranoia is complete. Noga's certainly is. The right-wing is determined to drag Israel down in the pursuit of its chimerical land ambitions. Let us hope there are enough Israelis who will realize that Likud is leading Israel over a cliff and throw them out. Perhaps the fact that for the first time since 1956 the US is asserting its own interests, rather than saying one thing and then allowing Israel to pursue its interests with little regard for those of the US, will be the wake-up call that Israel needs." * * * You are a propagandist in the long tradition of the demagogic right-wing, noga. Same tactics. Same lies. Same professions of innocent victimhood. Different day. How ironic that you call me to task for thinking the Republicans are enemies while imagining Tom Friedman of all people to be Israel's enemy. But this of course is the essence of right-wing propaganda, the tactic pioneered by Josef Goebbels himself, the perversion of every truth. The essence of it is to claim everything to be the exact opposite of what it is so that, in the hall of rhetorical mirrors, even the most astonishing lies can come to be accepted as the truth. There is no truth any longer, only lies and the reflection of lies and whatever lie you choose to believe.

- roidubouloi

April 4, 2010 at 8:28pm

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The point of an analogy is not to create an equivalence of content but one of form, Noga, so I think that if you take that angle on roid's analogy it also applies to yours regarding Robespierre. He wasn't saying that the GOP is an armed terrorist group, and you weren't saying that he regards a series of executions as the best way to secure political change. In any case, at the risk of repeating myself for about the fourth time, I regard both as more acceptable than the budget cuts/Wannsee Conference analogy, and I provided some reasons why that is a distinction worth making. Which, needless to say, you completely ignored, as you ignored 90% of what I wrote in the last couple of posts (some of which was directly responding to you). I don't claim to be a bystander and I don't claim to be virtuous, so I respectfully insist you stop asserting that I do either of those things. It's nothing but a cheap rhetorical turn on in which X declares Y to be guilty of something and demands Y defend himself, and when Y challenges the original assumption X accuses him of not being able to mount a defence. In respect of your own problems with roid, I'm still highly sensitive from the serial abuse I received at your hands a couple of days ago, so you will excuse me if I'm not especially empathetic at the moment. This will change, I hope. Anyway, this thread has gone on for too long. Carry on with it if you want. I won't.

- ironyroad

April 4, 2010 at 9:09pm

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only two more days of Passover to go. more from http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm: the bully sees nothing wrong with their behavior and chooses to remain oblivious to the discrepancy between how they like to be seen and how they are seen by others; is a convincing, practised liar and when called to account, will make up anything spontaneously to fit their needs at that moment; undermines and destroys anyone who the bully perceives to be an adversary, a potential threat, or who can see through the bully's mask

- K2K

April 5, 2010 at 12:28am

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