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Lost In Translation: Setting the Records Straight in the IDF Archives
By Cori Chascione / July 9, 2008
Soon after I arrived in the Dover Tzahal unit of the IDF, I began browsing the army's online historical archives. The Dover Tzahal is the Spokesperson Unit, essentially responsible for army PR. One of Dover Tzahal’s responsibilities is to maintain the IDF website, which is written in both English and Hebrew, features news updates and cutesy human interest stories, and a reliable weekly declaration that we will protect the State of Israel, given by Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi. With a bit of browsing, you’ll also find that the IDF has historical archives, which are basically summaries of historical events that have taken place since just before Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948.
As a native English speaker who is also proficient in Hebrew, I was wide-eyed with both shock and disgust as I began to explore what struck me as an historically inaccurate, grammatically incorrect massacre of supposed facts. The archives weren’t manipulative or skewed in one way or another; they simply didn’t make sense. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that this mess was a result of translations by native English speakers who lacked sufficient historic knowledge and Hebrew language skills. They had been forced to translate the archives from Hebrew to English within a couple of days, an order that was given by (what I’m generous in calling) an incompetent officer that, thankfully, is no longer anywhere to be found in Dover Tzahal. With my sincere interest in history, the written word, and the historical and political image of Israel, I requested the responsibility of editing the archives. Since then, the task has been officially delegated to me just as I’d so desperately wanted—and yet, I feel cursed.
I’ve spent the last several years of my life playing catch-up after being raised in an assimilated family and having attended public schools that glossed over the history of the Middle East and Israel, in particular. At this point, I consider myself to be more than generally knowledgeable about the topics of Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli history along with contemporary affairs, and so I’d simply assumed that editing the historical archives would be somewhat effortless and maybe even fun. I was wrong.
My difficulties are completely unrelated to historical accuracy; I can easily read one paragraph at a time and alter what is not correct, verify facts with credible sources and make certain that the information is solid. The major issue, which impedes the process most of the time, is word choice. For example, there are no generally accepted definitions of a terrorist, a Palestinian, a defensive operation, a massacre, an arrest, or any other term that is essential in describing Israel’s past. I’d become accustomed to using these words in a way that coincided with my understanding of these loaded terms and phrases. Now, however, I’m not speaking for myself, my education, my personal bibliography, or my group of likeminded friends—I am speaking for the IDF, and thus, in some ways, I am speaking for Israel.
Israel critics would have difficulty finding historical inaccuracies or biased terms in the IDF historical archives that are written in Hebrew. That said, the country also needs to express its political actions and ideals as fairly and articulately as possible in English—its second language. For example, in Hebrew, the word piguah refers to an attack. It does not strictly refer to acts of terrorism, but most English-speaking immigrants in this country—the ones that do all of the translating for the IDF—only hear this word in that particular context. If there was a piguah, in all likelihood, a suicide bomber has attacked. Linguistically, however, the word could refer to any type of attack, even a justified counter-attack, and certainly any number of attacks that are not politically motivated. It isn't easy to find translators whose understanding of the cultural and linguistic connotations of the sensitive words used to describe Israel’s “official stance" is deep enough to be published and disseminated, especially considering that they are the very translations taught in classrooms, aired on the news, and influencing voters and policy makers, everywhere.
Most people don’t have a reason to read the IDF website, especially when it comes to the online historical archives. That thought in particular has reduced some of the stress associated with editing the archives, but my general understanding of both the fate of all that is written and the ideological conflict that surrounds the State of Israel, regardless of what it or its supporters do, makes this endeavor nearly impossible. My understanding is that even if the overwhelming majority of people rely on other news sources, books, academic journals, and credible professors for their information, one thing is certain: those looking at the IDF with negative, preconceived notions about our military history and our interpretation of it will read the IDF historical archives, and they will, however unfairly, use our website to conjure up arguments that could falsely represent the position of the IDF and thus fuel the opposition in the ideological war that Israel is, and always has been, fighting.
I know that the IDF archives are misleading due to bad translations, but to most others, they are simply a representation of the IDF and its official stance regarding controversial, historical events. In Israel, we do not have the luxury of overlooking typographical errors, misquotes, or numerical mishaps. Everything associated with this country—every military operation, every sentence written in any publication, the general justification of our existence—is scrutinized in an aggressive way that no other sovereign state has had to contend with.
I see no need to embellish or to leave any portion of our narrative untold, but it's a challenge to make certain that the language coincides with the truth, both in the context of the archives and out of context. For now, I’ll continue to research both Israeli policy and international law in order to best define some of these terms. I'll strive to choose words that speak the completest truth possible, and that serve to further the understanding of our people’s national experiment.
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It's interesting that you bring up the only reason for Chomsky's renown in the first place, WEVS1: his contribution to linguistics. What's especially interesting is that ever since he made those contributions he became so devoted to his extra-curricular activities that he hasn't even bothered to render scholarly opinions in the academic field that he actually should be expected to know something about. Despite the theory of a universal grammar, or more accurately, a universal capacity for grammar, for which he first became widely known, he was strangely silent when geneticists made one of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of the human capacity for language.
The isolation of the FOXP2 gene, which, in its human form, is just two minor modifications removed from the form carried by chimpanzees, is absolutely essential for the proper expression of human language. Its role in both understanding and articulating language places it in a category of genes whose role in both neurological and developmental biology is at the crux of what defines us as human on both a biological and social level. The fact that it "swept" through the human species over such a short period of time, (i.e. it was highly "selected" for) adds further intrigue to our understanding of an indispensable component to human communication specifically and human interaction and the evolution of human society generally. And on this the man who first posed the revolutionary idea of an inborn capacity for language, which is a prequisite theory to this finding, had not a thing to say. What a weirdo.
Paul and Isaac, it doesn’t matter how much evidence you
provide re: Chomsky’s pseudo-intellectualism. He is such a hero to the radical
left that anything he writes is considered gospel truth. It doesn’t matter that
scholars in the disciplines Chomsky pretends he is an expert in (economics, political
science, history, sociology, etc.) routinely point out his sloppy use of
sources, misquotations, etc. I realize he made some important contributions to
the field of linguistics a few decades ago but outside of his field of
specialization he is not taken seriously in academia. Except by loony leftists,
of course.
Edward Said is a similar case. He was a professor of literature,
not a historian or political scientist. But the left views him as an expert in a
variety of fields that he had zero expertise in.
Imagine if a conservative historian, say, Efraim Karsh or
Bernard Lewis, fronted like they were expert linguists or prominent literary theorists?
The left would be calling them every name in the book. But when Chomsky and
Said do the same, they eat it up.
Thankfully, professionals outside the loony left can see the hypocrisy for what it is.Â
Sir,
I am not tending toward any sneering. I did tend toward exasperation when it became clear that there were a number of things that you were not understanding.
Perhaps you cited Chomsky only once. But the tactic of repeatedly denying that "democracy" does indeed have a specific, political definition became incredibly tiresome and too Chomskyite for me to deny his influence on you in that regard. I don't do Chomsky. I do things that can actually be defined. His numerous errors make the content of his work not worth addressing, and his extremely post-modernist prejudices only make matters worse.
Anyways, I am glad that you find Nasrallah's character to be so benign and the man himself to be so trustworthy. Suffice it to say that's not an assessment that I share. I find it even odder that you would hold to such a view while attacking Dershowitz as you did. I highly doubt that, despite whatever credentials you hold, you are so learned in the law to dismiss Dershowitz's scholarship and other contributions there. Chomsky's many non-contributions to political science pale in comparison.
There is one other thing you said which I was interested in addressing. You use your recognition of Palestinian rights, "human rights, equal rights" as a reason for rejecting "out of hand all propaganda depicting Palestinians or Arabs in general as a culture of murder and terror." What on earth do those two things have to do with one another? You are proclaiming that if Palestinians have rights then there is no reason to speak out about what occurs in their culture. This is a complete non-sequitur. Further, it is factually wrong. Every society that has improved its standing on human rights has taken to criticizing its culture. Nothing so petty as pride should get in the way of that. Â
By the way, if I were equally into respecting superior education and titles then I would insist you refer to me as "Dr. Isaac". But adding titles to a pseudonym seems downright ridiculous.
Isaac:
I'm glad you decided to come back but you still are using the tactic of carefully avoiding my factual statements in favor of issuing polemic.
Now, please forgive me for dwelling on so minor a point, but as I recall I quoted Chomsky exactly ONCE. And the quote itself reveals one of his most prominent characteristics: honesty. While he admits the he has no use for American media, he still praises our system's great tolerance for speech of all kinds.
Why did you not address the content of the quote, instead of jumping at the chance to vilify him and, by extension, me.Â
My critique in brief of Chomsky: He makes numerous mistakes of reporting, but not more than most commentators on current events. I personally hate the style of his citations because he makes you work much too hard to verify his assertions. However, in the long run, the very great majority of his assertions of fact turn out to be verifiable – and true.
 I also dislike his polemical style because he, like so many others analyzing the Middle East, sticks with his position and doesn't try to be objective. Like you, Isaac, he tends to sneer at his opponents in writing, although in person he is respectful, well informed, and courteous, even to dimwit liars like Dershowitz (who I guess is my devil as Chomsky is yours).
But I want to call everyone's attention, inclluding Mr. Bogdanor, to a statement he wrote at the beginning of his book "The Fateful Triangle", in which he sets out principles guiding his analysis:
"The first of these is the principle that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are human beings with human rights, equal rights; more specifically, they have essentially equal rights within the territory of the former Palestine. Each group has a valid right to national self-defense in this territory. Furthermore, I will assume that the State of Israel within its pre-1967 borders had, and retains, whatever one regards as the valid rights of any state within the existing international system." Â
This is a principle that I also adhere to, so I reject out of hand all propaganda depicting Palestinians or Arabs in general as a culture of murder and terror. I believe one is completely justified in calling attention to acts of Palestinian terror, as Ms. Glick did above. But I urge everyone reading this thread to imagine, as Chomsky does, that Arabs are human being, with all the needs, sensitivities to pain, and emotions that we all have. I beg you to reread Shylock's speech before the court in which he essentially makes the same case for Jews, who were not in that historical period accorded their humanity.
Isaac: Thank you for responding to my request for other sources for the Nasralla quote. No I couldn't find the Washington Post or LA Times stories on Google (which you so kindly instructed me as to its use – you sarcastic clown). However, I did find it in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune – who got it from Dershowitz!
Second: Wikipedia does not include that quote, making me suspicious about its origins.
Finally: The two additional sources you gave me use the EXACT same wording in introducing, a circumstance which woldm ake me suspicious in any case.
However, I will forego further discussion on the quote and grant you that yeah, it might have happened. But once again, even assuming it is a valid quote, you are talking about intentions, not deeds. So if you will kindly go to the websites of Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International, B'Tselem, or if you read Ha'aretz with regularity, you will find documentation of crimes against humanity committed routinely against Palestinian civilians. You will find many journalists confirming these documents through eyewitnesses – or AS eyewitnesses, and numerous Israeli journalists, editors, writers, academics who have gone on record as condemning the activities of the IDF in the occupied territories.
You might be interested to know, Isaac, that Nasralla also says on his website: "We do not want to kill anyone. We don't want to throw anyone into the sea…" This is part of his statement of policy claiming that Israel has no right to exist on what he considers to be Arab land. My point is, why wouldn't Palestinian-haters use this quote instead of or alongside the other one? At least we can definitively link it to him, even though we may believe he is lying through his teeth (this remains to be seen). Â
Ms. Glick: You reveal your bigotry when you condemn wholesale any "professor" who chooses to treat Palestinians as people. A statement like yours is likely to damage the credibility of your entire thesis. Which means: Why should I believe anything this woman says when she is obviously so prejudiced?
Mr. Bogdanov: Your extended, if somewhat hysterical attack on Chomsky contains a number of true statements. But I note that you are keen on citing him when he was going through his radical socialist phase. Isn't that just as annoying as quoting any number of Israeli leaders who made statements, before and around 1948, about eradicating Arabs and/or transporting them?  I would concede that many of them may have changed their world view by now as a result of experience and maturing. So If you were at all interested in an unbiased assessment you would grant him the same courtesy. Gloating about his incorrectly attributing a statement to Ben Gurion proves nothing about the larger picture. I don't have the time now to go into detail, but your accusations against Chomsky suffer from exactly the same sins that you attribute to him – sloppy research, quoting completely out of context and cherry-picking individual words that could be used in any context.
My last word for tonight: the PLO under Arafat's leadership committed revolting crimes for which no punishment is sufficient. Crimes against civilian populations continue to this day. But now, as I read the detailed reports of many human rights organizations on Israel's behavior in the occupied territories, I must ask why must we (putting myself in the Jewish/Israeli camp) perform the same atrocities, only in spades? Surely that does not make us a better or more deserving people.
P.S.: Isaac, you may call me Doctor Aherodias if you wish to respect my superior educational status.Â
For you to believe that people are holding their breath for you inane opinions shows what a psycho you really are. All you write is pure hamass Islamofacist bullshit propaganda. You are a very sick individual. You need help dude. Your obsession with Israel and the Jews is beyond creepy.  You're wasting hours upon hours on a website writing ignorant crap that doesn't matter.
Israel will be around for a long time. The Arab Fakestinian occupiers will go back to their homeland of Arabia or destroy themselves by their barbaric behavior and pyshcotic rage. Faestinian crimes; Murdering Jewish children by blowing them up, smashing their heads, shooting a pregnant women and her four little daughters in the head, eating the organs of two Jewish boys while beating them to a bloody plup, celebrating the murder of Jewish children by dancing into an orgasmic frenzy, brainwashing their children to hate and murder Jews from birth, etc,etc The Arab Fakestinians have shown that the depravity of their behavior is the same as the nazis or in some ways even worse. The Arab Fakestinians are savages that act worse than rabid animals.
The IDF has shown a lot of restraint in dealing with such barbaric behavior. It's difficult for a civilized people like the Jews to fight an enemy that uses children and women to commit terrorists acts. The only solution is for the Arab Fakestinians to go back to any of the Arab dozen countries or their homeland of Arabia. Israel belongs to the Jews!
Abolishing Israel
Arab “Moderation”, Israeli “Rejectionism”
Lebanon: Heroes and Criminals
The World’s Leading Terrorist Commanders
Sources of Chomsky’s Anti-Zionism
Standing for the Conscience
A painting depicts guards torturing a practitioner while inmates assist them.
None of us in Free Countries around the world understand what it takes for China's oppressed to stand up and demand their most basic human rights under the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While we can criticize our governments in a free press protected by a Constitution, under the CCP the Party is the boss responsible for what they should know, the policeman who arrests them without cause, the judiciary that finds them guilty of violating arbitrary laws, without evidence or due process, and the prison guard who tortures them for having just one independent thought.
Yet like a lotus flower bursting through the winter snow, amidst this harshest of all environments, great spirits cry out for an end to the worst persecution in history. We, who can only imagine all they have been through, applaud the Falun Gong practitioners from the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp for their courage in taking a stand for their beliefs and for justice.
They ask for our help in stopping the CCP regime's brutality: "We call upon people and organizations around the world to stand up and defend justice, and to help maintain dignity and the right to freedom of belief!" We help them, not just for their sake, but for our own, as that simple act of compassion defines not just who we are; it defines the world we choose to live in. How many of us will help?
An Open Letter from Falun Gong Practitioners
Who Are Detained in Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp
We are Falun Gong practitioners who are detained at the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province. We have the following requests:
The forced labor system under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) violates the human rights convention of the United Nations, as well as the Chinese Constitution. Innocent citizens and Falun Gong practitioners have been sent to forced labor camps against their will for several years, without trial. The system even allows individuals to be detained in forced labor camps repeatedly. We ask the kind people of the world to denounce this evil system. It operates this system that openly tramples human rights and the freedom of its own citizens. The CCP's collapse is inevitable.
Guards often torture practitioners by hanging them in the air for prolonged periods, beating them with spiked clubs, sticking pins into them, and keeping them imprisoned in steel cages. Inmates who help them are rewarded with reduced terms.
We call upon people and organizations around the world to stand up and defend justice, and to help maintain dignity and the right to freedom of belief! We demand that the CCP immediately stop this persecution, declare the innocence of Falun Dafa and practitioners, and bring those who committed these crimes to justice.
By All Falun Gong practitioners who are detained at the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp
November 22, 2007
Shi Shenghong's Appeal Letter
My name is Shi Shenghong. I'm currently detained at the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp in the City of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. Here I demand that the CCP authorities immediately release all detained Falun Gong practitioners unconditionally.
Before the CCP started persecuting practitioners, I had a happy family with my wife Liu Mingyun and my son Shi Yueming. My wife is also a practitioner and was sentenced to forced labor in 2000. Due to pressure from this persecution and grieving from missing her daughter-in-law, my mother passed away. The CCP caused this tragedy for my family. My wife and I used to have a clothing business. After the CCP started persecuting practitioners, my family was broken apart. We lost our house and had to rent a place. This tragedy took place in the CCP's so-called "harmonious society."
I was arrested on the evening of August 20, 2006, when I was delivering clothes in Harbin City. I was secretly sentenced to one and one half years of forced labor. On August 28, 2006, when my wife came to visit me, the police arrested her and took her to the Nangang District Police Department. She was sentenced to five years in jail. At that time, our son, not quite 17 years old, had come with her, and was also detained for a month. Regardless of my son's age, he needed care from his parents, but my wife and I were imprisoned, which left my son at home alone. Such a situation affected my son's performance in school. He was not able to enroll in high school, and he now stays at home alone. After my father learned that my wife had been sentenced to jail and myself to forced labor, the old man, over 80 years old, cried every day, and he died on November 18, 2006. He is another victim among millions of victims, who suffered or were implicated in the CCP's persecution.
Shi Shenghong
Late 2007
At the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp
Wang Yunfeng's Appeal Letter
To protest the torture, many Falun Gong practitioners go on hunger strikes; as a result, the authorities torture them with force-feeding, including force-feeding them with alcohol, highly concentrated salt water, or feces.
My name is Wang Yunfeng. I am illegally detained at the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp in Harbin City. I demand the release of all detained Falun Gong practitioners. We are innocent. Our Teacher is innocent.
Since the persecution started in 1999, I have been arrested four times, sentenced to two years of forced labor and have had over 10,000 Yuan extorted from me. I was deprived of my right to freedom of belief, freedom of speech and eventually even freedom of movement. We follow the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" and are good people, and we haven't committed any crimes.
My mother is 80 years old and she cries for me every day. When I was arrested for the third time, she lost her eyesight because of her crying. Because of this persecution, my daughter and son are pained in their young hearts. My family is nearly broken financially. I suffered all kinds of maltreatment during my arrests and detentions. However, there are thousands of families in China that face similar suffering.
We hope that our suffering will wake up the consciences of the world's people. Do not ignore any longer those kind practitioners and their family members. … I hope you can righteously appeal to the higher authorities for the injustices brought upon us, and release all detained practitioners. Do not continue this most miserable persecution. Manifest your conscience and lend your hand. Release all innocent Falun Gong practitioners!
Wang Yunfeng
Late 2007
At the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp
Zhang Shengjie's Appeal Letter
My name is Zhang Shengjie. I'm 59 years old and from Harbin City. I was arrested on November 1, 2005, and sentenced to three years of forced labor. I didn't commit any crimes. I demand to be released unconditionally.
I have been detained in the No. 4 Division of the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp for over two years. I have talked to the division head and explained that Falun Gong practitioners are all good people. The response I got was that all practitioners in detention are required to be "transformed." I cannot understand into what kind of people the CCP wants the practitioners to be "transformed." In such a society with low moral standards, and where money is above all, practitioners follow the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" to purify their minds, gain good health, and to further improve the moral standards in society. It has hundreds of benefits without any harm to the nation, to the country and to society. However, these good people – the hope of the nation – have suffered unprecedented persecution. Just in the No. 4 Division alone, I have met practitioners from different social levels, including officers from military regiments, older ex-military men, engineers, graduate students, doctors, teachers, workers and farmers. As far as I know, there are also professors, businessmen, and government officials detained in other divisions. They are talented people and the principle force in the development of our country. How many such practitioners are in detention countrywide? How deep is the destruction that the CCP has brought to the Chinese people? It is time to correct this mistake.
I strongly request the unconditional release of all detained innocent practitioners!
Zhang Shengjie
At the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp
December 14, 2007
Falun Gong, Humanity's Last Stand
Part II: History Ignored
Huang Ying holds a picture of her mom, Ms. Luo Zhixiang. When Ying was just two years old, her mom was tortured to death because of her belief in Falun Gong.
As the epic struggle has unfolded in China, the free world has largely stayed on the sidelines watching, or even looking the other way. No government has yet formally denounced such large-scale violations of human rights. On the contrary, in the last seven years, Western countries have coveted economic favors from the Chinese regime, and in return given tacit approval by awarding China the 2008 Olympics and WTO membership. The only times the Chinese regime has received real international pressure have been when economic conflicts were heightened and when a situation in China, such as the SARS epidemic, threatened the world.
Mainly because of these economic interests, the CCP's persecution of Falun Gong has been treated as an inconvenient and untimely distraction, sidestepped or downplayed, and Falun Gong practitioners' appeals for help have often been ignored, misunderstood, or even mistrusted. Two common questions bear this out.
One is "Why didn't we know about it?" That question was asked when Falun Gong practitioners around the world publicized how 18 female practitioners had been stripped naked and thrown into the cells of male criminals. That question was asked when Falun Gong practitioners around the world publicized horrifying pictures showing how seven hours of electric shocks had disfigured Ms. Gao Rongrong's face. That question was asked when Falun Gong practitioners around the world publicized the systematic extraction of vital organs from living Falun Gong practitioners. There is no lack of information. For seven years, Falun Gong practitioners in China have taken great risks to collect and send abroad, on a daily basis, detailed information on the extensive and severe human rights violations that have been going on in China. Institutions that influence public opinion, including governments and media, have paid little attention to the atrocities, leaving the public largely uninformed.
Another frequently asked question is "Why does the Chinese government persecute Falun Gong?" To justify its persecution, the Chinese regime has spread many lies. It is therefore not surprising that, in the beginning, world governments and media were influenced by the CCP's propaganda. What is surprising is that, after seven years, there is still no independent in-depth study of this serious issue. Several so-called China experts have further rationalized the regime's persecution as a consequence of feeling threatened by the sudden appearance of Falun Gong's large following. It is hard to think of another recent major human rights crisis in which the aggressor's lies had such a lasting and pervasive influence. It is a combined result of the CCP's lies and the lack of genuine concern for the victims.
At the same time, the governments of the free world have been reluctant to listen to Falun Gong practitioners' side of the story. Some governments, including those of Germany and Canada, do not even believe the severity of the persecution, and have forcibly returned Falun Gong practitioners back into the waiting hands of the Chinese regime. Some countries, including Germany, France, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Russia, have caved in to the Chinese regime's pressure to curb Falun Gong practitioners' protests…, and some have even arrested Falun Gong practitioners for staging such protests.
Because of the misunderstanding, or the lack of desire to understand, the free world remains unaware of the deep awakening of people's consciences in China. The acquiescence, financial investment, and technologies from the West have in effect played the role of working against these changes and have helped bolster the regime and its repression. Some Western companies, such as Cisco and Yahoo, have directly assisted the regime in oppressing the Chinese people.
Because of the mistrust, when two witnesses, who are not Falun Gong practitioners, disclosed the systematic extraction of vital organs from live Falun Gong practitioners in a hospital in China, no government expressed any genuine concern. The US State Department went as far as mischaracterizing the disclosure as "claims by the Falun Gong group" and declared "no evidence had been found" after Chinese officials organized two guided tours of the hospital.
The free world's persistent silence towards such severe and extensive human rights violations is also unprecedented. When this page of history is turned, future generations will ponder how the democratic governments could cast aside the most fundamental values of the free world to seek economic favors from a despotic regime, and how the bottom line of humanity had slid so far that even the use of human organs as a commodity was not enough to cause these governments to make a sound.
The epic struggle of peace vs. violence, truth vs. lies, and conscience vs. evil is still ongoing, and history is still being written. Those who are living the history now still have the opportunity to learn about the epic struggle and choose for themselves which side of history they want to be on.
– To be continued on our next newsletter: The Chinese Tradition of Cultivation Practice
Of course, I do admit that I took some liberties in my last comment to Aherodias. Couldn't really help it, though. The only thing that I can't stand any more than Chomsky is the way some people rely on the guy's farcical ideas. Consider the parting shots in the last few paragraphs more an expression of my all too-well repressed contempt for Chomsky than an expression of any indignation for Aherodias. Having to contend with so many references to the former was becoming more than any human could bear.
Which of Daniel's citations did I contest, Ismail?
And which of Aherodias' Chomskyite inferences conform to any known rule? The inference that democracy can't have a definition? The inference that UN resolutions are a part of some new and universal theology? The inference that the wisdom of one's decisions can't be assessed by others? (Actually the last two were assumptions). How many stem cells must I donate to your aging body and charming but curmudgeonly mind before you accede that there was nothing wrong with challenging those inferences?Â
There was nothing impolite about doing so either. The facts of the conversation reveal that I was quite giving on a few exchanges before Aherodias' admitted and persistent misreadings of nearly a third of what I had to say would have become tiresome to just about anybody. The dialogue wouldn't have even begun had I not offered an initial point of agreement and request for advice on his larger point. At least you occasionally come back and ask me if I'm stating something different from what you interpreted on the first few go-arounds.
I gave you the recognition that I'm sure you feel you deserve for various contributions on at least a few of my last occasions here. Surely that should count for something in the way of moderating your testiness, and re-assessing mine.
Thanking you in advance,
I am glad that Aherodias has joined my camp, as well as Daniel and Ismail. Remember, as Sabbateans, our true target is Torah Judaism. If we can convince enough Jews to abandon the Torah, we can get them to become citizens of the world. Then, there will be no need for a Jewish state, and peace will break out all over the world. I converted to Islam and my colleague Jacob Frank converted to Catholicism in order to facilitate the abandonment of Judaism. Lets meet at my US headquarters (Council of Foreign Relations) in NYC to facilitate my plan. Shmarya Rosenberg has enthusiastically signed on, and will expound on sexual immorality. I hope Henry Siegman will join us for a cheeseburger. The 9th of the Hebrew month of Av is coming up, traditionally a sad time of year for Jews, but the Sabbatean Thanksgiving and New Year rolled into one would be a great time to plan further strategy. Stop masturbating on these pages and join the front lines on the war against Judaism
By the way….159 comments! Hey, Craig, where does that put this thread in the Jewcy Hierarchy of Stimulating Posts?
Well done, Cori. I guess.Â
Sorry to have been away for a while-very busy at work and home to prepare for family holiday, commencing tomorrow; deal with accumulated paperwork, acquaint housesitter with our palatial home and the preferences of overindulged pooch, make sure "Turns out Zionism is racism after all" lawn signs are in place, etc.
I will do my best to return to the conversation as soon as I get back-Daniel, I especially want to address your thoughtful post of 8/1.
In the meantime, lest my loyal reader(s) be bereft of guidance and succor, let me anticipate the comments of the Usual Suspects and offer my take:
1. Daniel and Aherodias will stubbornly insist on embracing both factual citation and the rules of inference in constructing their arguments. These kindnesses will sail over Isaac's head.
2. Isaac himself will become testier with each exchange, threatening to replace me as Jewcy's resident Merchant of Venom. Curses! Outflanked by Isaac? The shame!
3. Cori will continue to duck responsibility for referencing her assertions. In her defense, I'm sure she's extra busy these days justifying the IOF's removal of 10 year old Ahmed Mousa's occipital cortex via an M16 round. I'm sure the brat deserved it, of course, hurling a potentially lethal stone towards the armored Israeli phalanx with that deadly propulsive force we all associate with 10 year old children. On top of this, she must also deal with the assassination of Yousef Amira a day or two later-another unregenerate stone-thrower, I'll bet, 1.8 times as deserving of two in the head as was young Mousa owing to his advanced years. (Note: Like Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, these kids have names, too. Who would have thought?)
Cori, here's a thought; after you justify the killings, you might want to focus on the terrible pangs of guilt the assassins must now endure. How barbaric are these wogs! Causing the enlightened and moral Israeli forces to kill them! Have they no decency?
Note to Craig-please reiterate Jewcy's boilerplate policy for the sake of the shemp above. This thread is too good to be blighted by long, irrelevant cut 'n' pastes.Â
Six years ago last week, a bomb went off in the Frank Sinatra
Cafeteria at Hebrew University's Mt. Scopus campus. Seven
students were murdered. The attack was the work of a Hamas cell
from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
The Silwan cell was one of the most prolific and murderous cells
Israel has seen. In addition to the massacre at Hebrew
University, its four members carried out the massacre at Moment
Café in Jerusalem in which 12 were murdered; the Sheffield
billiards club bombing in Rishon Lezion, which left 16 dead; and
the bombing of railroad tracks in Lod. The cell's most horrendous
attack, however, is generally downplayed.
In May 2002, the group planted a bomb in a fuel tanker and
detonated it as the tanker stood on line to refuel at the Pi
Glilot fuel depot. Miraculously, the cell had attached their bomb
to a diesel tanker. Since diesel fuel is not as flammable as
regular gasoline, the blast was insufficiently strong to blow up
the fuel depot as they had planned. Had they managed to attach
their bomb to a gasoline tanker, the blast would likely have
resulted in a fireball that could have killed thousands.
Pi Glilot fuel depot is located in one of the most densely
populated areas of the country. It is adjacent to North Tel Aviv,
Ramat Hasharon and the Glilot junction which, when the bomb went
off, was filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Given the
magnitude of its foreseeable and sought for carnage, the attack
on Pi Glilot constituted an act of genocide.
For their activities, three members of the cell were convicted of
35 counts of murder and several counts of attempted murder (210
people were wounded in their attacks). They received 35
consecutive life sentences and additional decades for their
non-lethal attacks. The fourth member was convicted of assisting
murder and was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
THE CRIMES of the Silwan cell bear recalling today as the lame
duck Olmert-Livni-Barak government continues its negotiations
with Hamas toward the release of IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit, whom the
terror regime and its terror partners have held hostage since
June 2006. Hamas is demanding that in a three-stage swap, Israel
release a thousand terrorists for Schalit. Hamas has made clear
that it demands senior terrorists and convicted murderers
including Fatah terror master Marwan Barghouti, PFLP commander
Ahmed Sa'adat and an unknown number of additional murderers.
In late June, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's hostage negotiator
Ofer Dekel provided Hamas the names of 450 terrorists that Israel
is willing to release in the first stage of the deal. Although
their identities were not revealed to the public, it can be
assumed that among them are convicted murderers. Olmert recently
told the government that Israel will have to redefine what it
means by terrorists "with blood on their hands" in order to relax
the criteria for releasing murderers and attempted murderers in
exchange for Schalit. Moreover, several ministers are actively
lobbying for Barghouti's release.
To date, no one has publicly raised the prospect of releasing
murderers like the Silwan cell members. But this is no cause for
relief. Even if they are not released in a deal to free Schalit,
there is no reason to assume that they will die in prison.
In 2004, Israel refused to release baby-murdering Samir Kuntar in
exchange for the bodies of soldiers Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and
Omar Sawayid, and for drug dealer and Hizbullah agent Elhanan
Tannenbaum. Instead, Israel released Hizbullah commanders Mustafa
Dirani and Abdul Karim Obeid – men who were supposed to only be
released in exchange for IAF navigator Ron Arad who was kidnapped
in 1986. Once Dirani and Obeid were released, Israel had no one
left except Kuntar to release in exchange for the mutilated
corpses of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser last
month. So too, if Israel releases a thousand mid-level terrorist
murderers as well as Barghouti and Sa'adat for Schalit, it will
have set the stage for the release of mass murderers in the next
go-round.
ALL OF this raises the issue that polite Israeli society insists
on sweeping under the rug: Israel's repeated willingness to
release terrorists for live and dead hostages makes clear the
need to implement the death penalty against terrorist murderers.
The criminal code permits the death penalty to be used in cases
of treason, murder, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes
against the Jewish people. The problem is not the laws on the
books; the problem is the state prosecution's refusal to use
them. Regardless of the nature of their crimes, the State
Attorney's Office refuses to request that judges sentence
terrorists to death.
After the members of the Silwan cell were arrested in the fall of
2002 and the enormity of their crimes was made known, there was a
relatively concerted public campaign to lobby then
attorney-general and current Supreme Court Justice Elyakim
Rubinstein to request the death penalty for the cell members. But
he never considered it.
The fact that another irresponsible government would be liable to
one day release them in exchange for hostages seems not to have
bothered him. Then, too, Rubinstein seems not to have been
bothered by the fact that these men, and thousands like them
continue to constitute a grave danger. In prison they are free to
plot and order the carrying out of still more attacks. Several
murderous attacks have been ordered by prisoners who communicate
their orders through their lawyers, their family members and even
on the telephone. Moreover, while in prison they are free to
draft their fellow prisoners into their genocidal ranks. Since
many of these fellow prisoners were convicted of lesser crimes,
they will be released to kill still more Israelis after being
radicalized in prison by the likes of the Silwan gang.
IT IS not surprising that none of these facts played into
Rubinstein's calculations when he opted not to ask the judges to
sentence the Silwan gang to death. Quite simply, the rarified
intellectual and moral universe that he, his successor Menahem
Mazuz and their fellow prosecutors inhabit is not the
intellectual and moral universe that most Israelis live in. The
prosecutors live in a world in which morality is an abstract
issue, best adjudicated by professors, judges and themselves in
the name of enlightened humanism.
The country's professoriate, which enjoys an intimate
relationship with its legal fraternity, long ago dropped any
semblance of propriety in its enthusiastic embrace of
anti-Zionist causes. Their top-to-bottom moral derangement was
clearly on display last week when a day before the sixth
anniversary of the Hebrew University massacre, the university's
president, Menahem Magidor, joined his fellow university
presidents in signing a letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak
demanding that the Defense Ministry stop barring Palestinian
students who constitute security risks from studying in Israeli
universities.
The university presidents wrote the letter in support of a
petition to the High Court of Justice by the anti-Zionist NGO
Gisha which is demanding the court bar the security services from
preventing Palestinian students from studying in Israeli
universities or prevent them from studying subjects like nuclear
physics that could facilitate the pan-Islamic war effort against
the Jewish state. Gisha's petition was signed by some 450 senior
and junior faculty members from all Israeli universities.
Ironically, the university presidents issued their missive 10
days after the Shin Beit (Israel Security Agency) announced it
had arrested six Israeli Arabs suspected of membership in
al-Qaida. Two of them were students at Hebrew University. One of
the students is accused of planning to assassinate US President
George W. Bush by downing his helicopter during his visit in May.
In light of the legal and intellectual elites' pathological
refusal to recognize the murderous character of Palestinian
terrorists and Israel's duty to defend its citizens from murder,
it would make sense for the Knesset to circumscribe their
authority to adjudicate morality from the bench and the lectern.
The Knesset could amend the criminal code to require the death
penalty in cases of terrorist murder.
Unfortunately, such an effort by the Knesset would likely not
suffice to force their hand. Either the prosecutors would indict
the terrorists on lesser charges or the judges would declare the
amendments unconstitutional, or both.
The Supreme Court's refusal to simply acknowledge Israel's duty
to defend its citizens was made clear by its handling of the
anti-Zionist Left's 2001 petition to bar the IDF from conducting
targeted killings of terrorists. Although the measure is
perfectly legal, the court took five and a half years to issue
its ruling that the IDF is in fact legally entitled by customary
international law to target terrorists. Why there was even a
question that the IDF has the right to target illegal combatants
engaged in an illegal terror war is unclear. Yet even in its
self-evident ruling, the Court invented limitations on the tactic
to demonstrate its concern for the well-being of terrorist
mass-murderers.
The recidivism rates of terrorists released in hostage swaps
alone make clear that hostages-for-terrorists swaps endanger
Israeli citizens. And in light of the moral depravity of our
intellectual and legal elites, it is clear that legislative
action alone cannot remedy the current situation in which even
the most monstrous terrorists can safely assume that they will
one day be released. The public must involve itself in the issue.
THE FIRST step in a campaign calling for a mandatory death
penalty for terrorist murderers would be to conduct a poll on the
issue. To date, no major polling institution has conducted a poll
of public opinion on the death penalty.
Beyond that, student activists should band together to oppose
their professors' call for the Defense Ministry to stop
conducting security checks of potential students. A new student
organization, "Im Tirtzu," was formed last year to combat the
anti-Zionist claptrap disguised as academic research being
propagated by their professors. It is already organizing such a
campaign and its efforts should be supported.
Finally, the public must make clear, through demonstrations and
e-mail campaigns to political leaders and to the mass media, that
it demands both an end to the hostages for terrorists swaps and
the death penalty for convicted terrorist murderers. It is now,
as our politicians gear up for elections, that they are most
prone to listen to us.
It is hard for private citizens to take a public stand. But
between our governmental instability, the weakness of our
political leaders and the perfidy of our elites, it has fallen to
us to make our demand for security and responsible leadership
clear. Until we can be certain that murderers like Kuntar and the
Silwan gang will never harm us again, we will not be able to
sleep soundly in our beds.
Â
1. Go to GOOGLE (http://www.google.com)
2. Select "News"
3. Type in the quote you want and/or the name of the person quoted
4. Read your results.
As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: "We have discovered how to … We are going to win because they love life and we love death. …
Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah revealed in an interview after the recent … We are going to win, because they love life and we love death. …
As Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, once said: 'We have discovered how to … We are going to win because they love life and we love death. …
Take note of preponderance of such "right-wing" publications as Washington Post, LA Times, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately it seems that they often require you to purchase the article these days if you want to search more than an abstract. But I guess that's the price we have to pay to make sure that moderates and left wingers don't have a problem believing that disgusting political leaders can make disgusting statements. Actually, in my experience they don't tend to have that problem anyway.
Anyway, tell your wife I hope you're feeling better.
P.S. Why would you trust a non-right wing source? I thought that Prophet Chomsky says that if it's a privately-owned, corporate, etc., etc., yada yada yada publication then it's in collusion with that evil and un-democratic government anyway - specific party affiliation notwithstanding. Which makes you wonder what's left to read. Perhaps fellow traveler Ted Kaczynski had the answer. Now there's a withdrawn and rambling malcontent who knew how to get his information!
I know that Chomsky is the fountain of all truth (especially in politics, where I hear he has singlehandedly authored many peer-reviewed publications that have become the cornerstone of our modern and irrevocably altered understanding of the entire field of political science). But wouldn't it be nice if he was a bit less hypocritical? If I follow his logic correctly, for all I know he, too, is working in collusion with the government. Assuming his books make money, then we can't trust what's in them, as that just makes Chomsky part of a conspiracy to enrich the omnipotent state. But then again, with Chomsky, everything is. I guess when you can make the whole of humanity one big sloppy smorgasbord of power and relationships, where no distinctions between the various people and organizations involved in those relationships matter, then one can comfortably become a walking bag of contradictions in oneself. Oh wait, I'm starting to understand Chomsky!
He's such a tricky guy.
I feel reformed already, Tuscon Man. Thank you for opening my eyes to the Gospel of Libertarian-Socialism. Â
Isaac, you must have read my mind. I just told my wife less than half an hour ago that I would no longer "debate" with you. However, I think I do owe you a last, somewhat respectful reply to your latest missive.
I guess I was mistaken in bringing up the holocaust/antisemitism business, since it really had nothing to do with our earlier discussions. However, I stand by my statements, while at the same time acknowledging that you are certainly not one of the holocaust/antisemitism card carriers.
Of course I read what you wrote, and anyone reading this thread will observe that in every case I responded with both facts and reasoned arguments. In a number of instances I have supplied references, in some cases links to web sites that document my assertions. However much you may disdain my reasoning, I think it fair to point out that you have in the large majority of cases avoided answering my statements and have responded instead with puerile name-calling. How's "infantile"and "amateurish" for examples?
I really regret getting provoked by your third-grade tactics and reacting in kind, but that doesn't negate what I just said.
Re the Nasrallah quote:
Who in his right mind would bring up such a quote, as evidence in support of an argument, if he didn’t believe there was some veracity in the quote? Of course I never attributed the sentiments behind the quote to you, but I did point out that citing it, particularly from strongly biased and often bigoted sources like the Weisenthal Institute and National Review (I could find no others), indicates that you share their sentiments.
What you actually said (and what I actually read) was: “As far as respective tolerance for lopsided death ratios, all I have to do is quote Hizbullah leader Nasrallah:” Does this not mean in context that you believe a majority of Muslims, particularly Palestinians, do not value the life of a Jew ?
Any idiot can find some bigoted preacher (or mullah) who says outrageous things about their hate recipient of the day. So I won’t dismiss National Review’s citing other Muslims with similar sentiments. However, in the case of a Hezbollah political leader I think you should be supplying some other, more reliable and less biased sources. Do you have one? I’m willing to eat the proverbial crow if necessary, but the corroboration has to come from a neutral party.
I personally detest double standards. In the case of Israel/Palestine, there is a tremendous amount of evidence showing that the US media report on Hamas atrocities with a vengeance, making them front page stories. However, by comparison they rarely report on the routine, day-to-day atrocities committed by Israelis both at home and in the occupied territories.
In consequence, as an American Jew, I feel I have an obligation to provide the missing information to as many of my spiritual colleagues as possible. I don’t have to tell them about Hezbollah rocket attacks or Hamas car bombings – the New York Times does a very good job of that. But try to find an American newspaper or TV network regularly reporting on the massive human rights violations committed by the IDF and you will be sorely disappointed.
This all started with Cori’s oblique defense of the IDF. If my words seem to be a judgment on Israel, I say – what else can it be? You may also find writings of mine on the subject of US politics and foreign affairs, in which case you would probably judge them to be diatribes and judgments of the USA. I’m an American born and bred, so it’s my responsibility to try to keep my country on the right side. I’m also a Jew born and bred, with the obvious associations with Israel, so the same responsibility applies.
Some day you may look back at the words you exchanged with me, and if this happens I suspect you will feel some shame. I understand that your age and experience don’t permit this now – hell, I was just as arrogant, if poorly informed, about my causes when I was younger – but it could happen later. If so, don’t take it too seriously. We all have our blind sides. It was just a phase.
By the way, if you’re interested, I got my Ph. D. from the University of Delaware in 1978. To quote the sage Yogi Berra: “You could look it up.”
I'm not one of your congregants. Your quarrel is really still with them, as you made clear in your first comments.
Read what I wrote, rather than reading into what I wrote. Or if you want to have a protest instead, there are more effective ways of going about that, and the most effective venues are not really on-line. But either way, grow up and please get out of the way so that some grown-ups may re-enter the conversation, if there was anything more for them to discuss.
I won't be discussing anything anymore with someone so amateur and infantile as to attribute the sentiments behind quotes by Nasrallah, et al to me. Pick a quote or refer to an action by someone else and "don't… judge" that instead. Oh wait, your entire diatribe is a judgment on Israel. So sorry, I thought your appeals reflected a mindset that precluded double-standards. I guess I was wrong.
Goodbye.
Isaac – sneering does not constitute legitimate argument. Do you remember when I said that your writing affect approached the megalomaniacal?
“Did you ever take a poli-sci course, or even high school civics, for that matter?”
There are only two possible explanations for this kind of statement that I can see. One is that you honestly believe you are so far above me – about whom you know nothing – that you can rain condescension on me whenever you so desire. That is one characteristic of megalomania, a vastly expanded view of one’s own worth.
The second is probably more apt: That you have run out of rational argument and therefore you stoop to insult in order to distract any one who may be listening. I would expect this of Rush Limbaugh, whose views I can disregard because they are never based in fact. But you should be careful to expose this side of yourself to a wider audience. But let us proceed…
1. Last time I looked Israel was, as of August 1949, a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. Convention Four deals specifically with acceptable behaviors of an occupying power. Israel has the choice of following rules that it has formally agreed to, or honestly saying “Fuck it – who needs these crappy rules when I have Uncle Sam on my side?” The latter more accurately describes the unspoken Israeli position. But personally, I prefer honesty to hypocrisy.
I never claimed that IL represented an ethical authority, but that it is a set of standards of national behavior that allows a basis for communication. Israel, by its signature, on the surface accepts these standards but simply chooses to forget that when it is convenient.
2. The original question addressed Israel’s unwillingness to part with land and resources it has acquired – by the standard to which it has put a signature – illegally. I believe there are numerous ways of reaching a border/territorial settlement, and it may even be possible to allow existing settlers to stay where they are in exchange for some other compensation to Palestine.
3. Perhaps I didn’t make my original point clearly enough. Since you obliquely referred to the terrorism committed by Palestinians, I thought it was appropriate to mention that Palestinian armed violence in the second intifada was preceded – for almost two months – by Israeli lethal violence on the Palestinian civilian population. Let me emphasize this in another way: The first intifada did not take place until twenty years of occupation had passed, twenty years that had witnessed targeted assassinations, home demolitions, mass detentions, and other acts of brutality.
I don’t make nonsensical points – this is another cowardly way of trying to demean me as a substitute for confronting my facts and my arguments.
There is absolutely no difference between the respective goals of the conflicting parties when it comes to violence. This is agreed upon by no less an authority than Yoram Dinstein, a leading Israeli authority on international law (and former president of Tel Aviv university), who writes: “there's no genuine difference between a premeditated attack against civilians and a reckless disregard of the principle to distinguish between civilians and combatants."
In other words, when Israel shells civilian neighborhoods in the OT, it cannot (although it often does) claim that it had no intention of harming civilians. Or when the IDF drops millions of cluster bomblets in southern Lebanon, it is impossible to justify the civilian deaths with a statement of “We didn’t mean to kill them – we were targeting terrorists.” I could of course bring out the statistics by human rights groups such as Physicians for Human Rights showing how IDF troops deliberately target children, firing (successfully) at their heads.
So while I understand that a Hamas suicide bombing is a human rights crime that must be stopped, it needs to be acknowledged that Israeli bombing and shelling and shooting that kills thousands of Palestinian civilians is at least an equivalent act of terror. And that is why the numbers are important, as well as the timeline of offenses.
Concerning “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, etc.” I have not found a single reliable source for that supposed quote – and I don’t accept the Wiesenthal institute or the National Review as reliable sources. But these sources display the most vulgar kind of Islamophobic bigotry – Muslims love death, and so on — that I assumed was beneath you. Perhaps I was wrong.
4…. I take this as agreement.
5. “General Assembly resolutions are non-binding.” Once again, very patronizing and a total distraction. Did I not make it clear that a worldwide consensus on human rights deserves attention? And failure to observe accepted human rights rules is what makes Israel so unpopular at the UN.
6. Whether you read “justify” as intellectual or ethical or as a Chinese restaurant menu item, the point remains: the Palestinians (like the Americans) will choose whatever venal leaders or stupid form of government they wish. That is part of the definition of self-determination – that we don’t get to judge, except in the privacy of our homes or whatever.
7. Did I ever take a poli-sci course? Do you want to bet who has done more reading in political science, history, theory of government, you or I? I would venture that I was reading political science when you were a blot in your mother’s eye. Quit the character assassination, you brat.
And Noam Chomsky, in spite of being absolutely shut out of the United States media, is one of the most highly regarded intellectuals in the world. He, at least, bases his conclusions on facts, not on hot air. Who is your authority?
8. I’m suspicious if we actually agree on something. Would you mind specifying which part you agree with?
9. I believe that in my haste to respond I misread your question about uses of the Holocaust. So sorry. However, that doesn’t change my original position, that AIPAC, Alan Dershowitz, and most American Zionists take out the Holocaust card – and the anti-Semitism flag – whenever anyone publicly challenges Israel’s policies.
1. Some things in IL may be well settled, others may not be. But the larger point is that some concepts may take precedence over others. You're assuming the points you refer to are the only concepts in IL that apply in the matter. Also, the law is not a science. And in the absence of an international executive branch, let alone an international democratic legislature, I'm personally skeptical of taking IL to be a plausible practical authority, let alone the theological basis for some kind of universal framework of ethics that you proclaim it to be. I don't look at American laws to define my ethics. That I should be told to do the same with a body of laws that isn't even accountable to people that represent me is a pretty suspect exortation.
2. Whether the sides choose to settle on the 1948 cease-fire lines or not doesn't preclude a negotiation whereby a 72%/28% ratio of land possession holds regardless.
3. Any point you're trying to make here is nonsense. Death ratios have nothing to do with the respective goals (or lack thereof) behind those tallies. As far as respective tolerance for lopsided death ratios, all I have to do is quote Hizbullah leader Nasrallah:
“We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.”
Regardless of whether Hamas has stated such things or not, they have certainly held to the same view. I'm almost certain that the good doctor Rantissi or Yassin was quoted as saying something similar. Point being that the Jews can't tolerate as high a death rate as they would, for reasons of valuing martyrdoom and the righteousness of the cause versus valuing life itself. The very people claiming to represent the Palestinians who die in conflict and who are the principal party to that conflilct are a more authoritative source than you are on this.
4……
5. If you're going to banter on about international law, you might want to learn a thing or two about it. General Assembly resolutions are non-binding. They are the legal equivalent of a Senate proclamation. So again, with this it seems that you're saying that Israel is unpopular in the UN. Not much of a point beyond that, though, I see. Â
6. You clearly misread what I wrote. I used the word "justify" in that quote in an intellectual sense, not in an ethical sense.
7. What a democracy is, is not all that hard to define. Did you ever take a poli-sci course, or even high school civics, for that matter? And quoting Noam Chomsky, I see. Hmm…. very convincing stuff. I'd look to Chomsky for input on politics as soon as I'd go to Steven Hawking for tips on cooking risotto. But hey, that's just me. I didn't know Chomsky was still in vogue with the kids these days.
8. Ok. I think we basically (and finally) agree on this one.
9. If you're going to address what I said, refer to the quote in full, please.
"I too would like to hear Daniel and Ismail reenter the discussion."
Yup.
Is there some way to correct the formatting on my last post to make it readable? With Firefox the last 6 or 7 characters of each line get cut off on the right, With Internet Explorer all paragraphs are laterally shrunk.
Thanks for any assistance.Â
Isaac:
Here we go again. Isaac, I believe that your responses are uncontroversial – simply because they are focused at such a high level that there is nothing to dispute. I would like to give you some things to actually argue about:
1. There are websites in which the adherents dispute the facts of global warming and associated causes, etc. They are not swayed that peer-reviewed scientific reports agree almost unanimously on this issue.
So if I tell you that there is close to worldwide consensus on the legality of Israel’s treatment of OT civilians, well of course some lawyers can disagree (Alan Dershowitz, for example). It has nothing to do with righteousness and everything to do with communicating about what is and what is not desirable or acceptable behavior. Please refer to the Torah for further discussion about this. We absolutely need to have a foundation of agreement about human behavior, and international law represents nearly universal agreement, USA and Israel dissenting, 155 other nations of the majority opinion.
To use a domestic metaphor: If I am negotiating with you on buying your house, we have to agree on the definitions of “Buy,” “sell,” and “house.” If you reserve the right to define these terms any way you want, our negotiations must necessarily fail (unless you’re a brilliant sales guy). If you – or Israel – fail to recognize well-settled international law, then any “negotiations” that you enter into have to be a sham.
2. I kind of thought you would pick up on any teeny errors I would make regarding the accepted borders of Israel-Palestine. As you know, the original declarations under the UN gave Israel 52 percent of the mandate territory. Today, the Palestinians clearly state they are willing to accept a mere 28 percent as their share, i.e. the 1967 “borders.” Israel has shown through its settlement program that it is not willing to settle for 72 percent. These are facts, not suppositions. Introducing disputes about factoids is merely a distraction from the central points, albeit a lawyerly distraction.
3. Let me remind you that the first Palestinian terror attack in Intifada II – the car bombing on Nov. 22, 200 – took place nearly two months after the Israelis had already killed about 250 Palestinians, many of them children. Between the infamous Sharon “visit” to the Temple Mount and July 15, 2005 – almost seven full years – the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces exceeded Israeli deaths at Palestinian hands by a factor of nearly four. (http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/d9d90d845776b7af85256d08006f3ae9/be07c80cda4579468525734800500272!OpenDocument) The ratio in numbers of children killed is much worse: 854 Palestinian children to 131 Israeli (and please don’t give me a Dershowitz-style argument about how we define “children”). So once again, talk of “scaring evil Jews away” is simply a distraction.
4. It sounds like you agree with me that Palestinians in general have nothing to gain from the continuation of violence, even talking into account your sophistic mention of “discretely identifying” the Palestinian masses – yet another distraction. Why don’t we agree on a number – say 67.3356 percent – and get on with it?
5. Once again, would you please look at http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7f4a6c7fd4a3a66885256e2a005abc0d?OpenDocument for details of the UN GA resolution that has passed nearly unanimously (about 150 to 2) every year for two decades. If 150:2 is not “consensus” then I would like to see what you would call splitting hairs. Certain brilliant Israeli legal minds have declared that leaving the word “the” out of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from [the?] territories occupied in the recent conflict;) makes the resolution ambiguous.
5. 1 Just for the sake of informing our casual readers, I will list word-for-word the key points of the oft-repeated UN GA Resolution:
(a) The realization of the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination;
(b) The withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and from the other occupied Arab territories;
(c) Guaranteeing arrangements for peace and security of all States in the region, including those named in resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947, within secure and internationally recognized boundaries;
(d) Resolving the problem of the Palestine refugees in conformity with General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, and subsequent relevant resolutions;
(e) Resolving the problem of the Israeli settlements, which are illegal and an obstacle to peace, in conformity with relevant United Nations resolutions;
(f) Guaranteeing freedom of access to Holy Places, religious buildings and sites;
Results of a recent vote on this resolution:
153 in favor to 7 against (Costa Rica, Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, United States), with 12 abstentions
6. Your statement is: “It's the idea that they can do that and also get governments that will do a credible job achieving their interests that is hard to justify.” As before, why do you or I or anyone non-Palestinian have to justify what is clearly an internal Palestinian matter? Yet another distraction, the numbers of which you are racking up with alacrity, Isaac.
7. I yield: According to my own principles (see 6. Above) I have no business trying to define for Israel what a democracy is. As Noam Chomsky observes, while US newspapers are for the most part corporate puppets, nevertheless the USA has more freedom of speech than anywhere else in the world.
8. “Many things have multiple lines of causation.” Hmmm… I don’t remember writing about this recently. Could you be referring to my earlier note in which I pointed out that you were confusing – or conflating – correlation with causation? Or are you saying that the long-term history of Israeli-Arab relations presents a complicated picture? In which case I agree wholeheartedly. But I still maintain that all this history is a side issue. Of course the Palestinians would like to hear Israel acknowledge the wrongs they have done, such as expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people, but that should not determine the outcome, for example, of the refugee settlement discussion.
9. If you truly don’t know who is throwing the Holocaust card onto the table, you need to read more of the US Jewish publications. I could refer you to about a thousand articles in which the Jewish Holocaust is used as a principal justification for having a monocultural, if not theocratic state. Or just go to Shabbat services and raise the question among congregants.
I too would like to hear Daniel and Ismail reenter the discussion. I would also like to hear more discussion about facts and less about highfalutin “principles” that simply provide cover for nearly any case one wants to make – this does not refer personally to you, Isaac. I seem to recall Ismail making the same request.
If I seem to be getting harsh around the issue of “distractions,” it’s because I believe they constitute the principal obstacle to the American Jewish community’s understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflicts. To reiterate: inclusion of international law in the discussion would vastly improve the chances for a just, equitable, and hopefully brief resolution of the “Palestinian question.”
Well, you bring up a lot of thoughts here. But for the sake of simplicity, I'll try to break down my responses into just a few simple and hopefully uncontroversial remarks.
1. People can disagree on the meaning of something in international law. I often see people appealing to the concept of international law as if to do so should reveal the inherent righteousness of their specific appeal. But lawyers can disagree in that area as they can in any other.
2. I have never justified Israel annexing new territory through war and/or occupation. If you're going to appeal to international law, you should understand that the green line is not a border according to international law. It represents ceasefire lines. Borders between Israel and whatever Palestinian government forms permanently next to it have never been determined. As Daniel said, borders will be decided by the parties – as they rightly should be.
3. As far as the Israelis acting on desires and the Palestinians merely daydreaming about them, I remind you that terrorism (and the larger-scale actions that they symbolize) are performed with the intention of "scaring" all the evil Jews away.
4. You are making a distinction between the interests of those in power and those of  "the masses" – a distinction I don't deny. The latter is harder to discretely identify though, if it can even be discretely identified. Â
5. The following statement,
Since I discussed the international legal status earlier, I see no point in addressing your belief that “the legal equation changes.” My god, if the international consensus had any effect whatever on Israel the entire situation would have changed by now.
assumes that "international (legal) consensus/status" implies a singular interpretation. See point #1 on this. Israel can be absolutely interested in the rightness of a legal perspective through which to view its interests/actions, without believing that some kind of poorly-defined "consensus" on any particular one of those matters is the only acceptable interpretation, let alone the right interpretation. Â
6. If Palestine wants to retain governments that are either corrupt or inflexible, then I suppose they can do that (although I'm not entirely sure that's what they want to do). But it's not so much justifying that per se that matters. It's the idea that they can do that and also get governments that will do a credible job achieving their interests that is hard to justify.
7. Whatever your disputes or discomfort with your congregation, how a government behaves, even the wrongs it commits, doesn't prevent it from being a democracy. Not holding regular and open elections and respecting the results of those elections is what prevents a country from being a democracy. If this fact leads you to the realization that democracies are not perfect, or that democracy is not synonymous with every right you could imagine, then you'd be right. But democracies still offer immeasurable improvements over other forms of government and allow for the possibility of continued improvements in any of those areas, to which other governments can afford to be less responsive.
8. Many things have multiple lines of causation. There are very few historical analyses that can proclaim that only one thing leads to something else. Many different things can, and usually a combination of many different things does lead to the present reality we witness when it comes to any given situation.
I'm not sure who is using the Holocaust as a reason for killing and oppressing, etc., others.
I'm really interested in seeing Daniel and Ismail retake the reins of the thread.
Isaac:
I would like to eliminate personal assessments from this discussion, which I feel should focus on issues related to Cori’s original post, i.e. all the issues around the legitimacy of the occupation, the use of violence against civilian populations by IDF, etc. But if you will forgive me one more (not disingenuous) probe: You seem to be fond of the expression “epistemological disconnect.”
Do you mean by this that you and I have a different understanding about how I think I know what I know, as opposed to your view about how you know what you think you know? If that’s the case, we need discuss epistemology no further. But I am always willing to address facts, conclusions from facts, and straight out opinions…
So, about permanent settlement vs. policy changes (e.g. in the OT): my opinions on the matter are grounded in what is known as well accepted international law. The question is, do you believe, as I do, that the occupation of Palestinian territories is an illegal act as defined by Geneva Conventions, conventions on human rights and so on? Once again I rely on the “numbers” of nations and internationally regarded legal scholars to buttress my contention. Certainly all conventions dealing with this matter agree that it is illegal to acquire territory through force, even if the party in question feels that it has been attacked by the people it is occupying. This is why the United States eventually yielded German and Japanese territory back to the Germans and Japanese, and why we castigated the Soviet Union for its aggrandizement of Eastern Europe (I know there were other reasons but these are the ones to be considered under law).
All of the acts whereby Israel controls the Palestinian populations that stem from this illegal holding are therefore also illegal and have been specifically defined as such under international law. In consequence, changes in policy in the OT which do not encompass a concrete plan for complete withdrawal from the OT are meaningless. If the Japanese had treated their Chinese war subjects more humanely, would we have felt that justified their invasion of China? As Jerry Seinfeld famously said, “I don’t think so.”
If you like, we can also discuss how international law deals with the Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians by indiscriminate shelling and bombing, but that’s for a later date…
On Israel’s obvious attempts to acquire new territory through its occupation: While you may assert that the Palestinians have the same desire, you run into problems when you consider that they, and the Arab League, have made detailed public statements about their desire to recognize the legitimacy of Israel in return for land that was recognized as Palestinian in 1967. While relevant, I don’t think we need to muddy the waters here with a discussion of the real intentions of Egypt, Jordan, etc.
Secondly, while the Israelis have been persistent in growing settlements in occupied land (a flagrant violation of law, as above), the Palestinians have never settled on Israeli land, i.e. land that we now recognize as belonging to Israel. And as any good therapist will tell you, there is a world of difference between thinking something and acting upon it. Israel is the only transgressor here.
Now let’s further examine the outcome of a declaration of independence by Palestinians, but by analogy; what happened when postwar Hungary decided to declare some independence from the Soviet Union. Well, the Soviet tanks rolled in and flattened them, that’s what. The only way the Hungarians changed the “dynamic” of the situations was by providing the US and Western Europe the excuse to throw brickbats at the lousy Commies. They still had to wait until the Soviet empire crumbled before they could grab any real freedom. What makes you think the Palestinians are in any better position?
You feel Palestinians have something to gain from leaving the conflict unresolved. Well I can see that is probably true for some Palestinians currently in a position of local power (Arafat may have been of that ilk). But for the Palestinian people as a whole? C’mon, Isaac, give me a break.
Since I discussed the international legal status earlier, I see no point in addressing your belief that “the legal equation changes.” My god, if the international consensus had any effect whatever on Israel the entire situation would have changed by now.
Hamas has made numerous agreements with Israel for the sake of avoiding armed conflict. They have refrained from violence over certain periods to no avail. Do you remember how long the PLO adhered to cease fire agreements in the 70s, while Israel was bombing southern Lebanon at least every week (yes, I can document these assertions)? Israel acts as though it is uncomfortable unless some violent exchange is taking place.
I attached great symbolic importance to the Arafat meetings, as you seem to now. But to put it in context, please review the behavior of the IDF once the PLO tried to actually set up a government. Please note how the IDF simply kidnapped the Hamas cabinet. Is this a way to encourage local government?
You know, you can throw terms such as “corrupt” and “rejectionist” at various Palestinians power centers, but you probably know in your heart that the nature of Palestinian government is irrelevant to the crux of the matter. Is it the business of Palestine or anybody else that the Israeli government is corrupt, Olmert’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. So why should Hamas, or Fatah, or any other Palestinian party, have to justify their internal behavior to anyone else, let alone Israel?
These arguments have much in common with various US politicians (and some black luminaries) preaching to African Americans about how they have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and stop being such criminals and all that. Can we pretend that the structure of American society is not wholly responsibility for black poverty, drug use, family breakdown? Once again, we may quote Prof. Seinfeld.
You probably understand that my anger about pronouncements of Israel’s “democracy” come from having my own congregation members shrieking about how Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, not like those nasty Arab states – again, an irrelevancy. In my view, a democracy is a form of government that protects the civil rights of its citizens, nothing less. If such governments are hard to find, so be it.
On a slightly tangential track, neither do I think the Jewish holocaust provides an excuse for us (and here I momentarily identify with Israel) to oppress and kill others.
Well, I really have to run now, but it's been a fabulous chat – so far.
How am I getting "carried away" by my own brilliance? Please. This is your projection. I do not even consider myself an authority on politics – just highly read. I never even made an appeal to authority, let alone my own alleged authority on this. So I think you would do well to make an effort to not personalize or emote so much. If you are heavily invested in a certain way of seeing things, and a certain way of feeling about them, then fine. It's not for me to tell you what to make of all this. I'm only addressing approach insofar as I was speaking to your reply to a question that I honestly posed to you, and in regards to matters you seemed to have looked into quite a bit. If your response reveals an epistemological disconnect from me that might preclude a conversation in which significant differences may be bridged, then I'm just being honest about the prospects for where I see the conversation going. It's not a statement to put you down.
All that having been said, I think your response reveals that there are several points that could be bridged… or at least further clarified in a more agreeable way. I will caution you that a few of those reveal further disagreements that I have, but those statements go to what you say, not to who you are.
First off, let's address the idea of significant changes for now as opposed to something for later. I really don't have a preference for restricting scope on the basis of a permanent settlement versus changes in policy. But if you're going to castigate Israel for "bas(ing) its entire policy portfolio on the desire to acquire as much of the “historic Eretz Yisrael” as possible", then be honest about the context of that assertion. It is up against an adversary who desires exactly the same thing. Regardless of what response you guess Israel would make to a declaration of independence by a Palestinian state, I don't think that's the larger point (it also ignores the points I made about it). The instant that happens, the dynamics of the conflict change. Palestine as a real state (instead of as a state-waiting-to-happen) puts itself in the position of having more credibility behind its demands. The legal equation changes. The way it chooses to use violence as an instrument of policy is looked at differently. Again, these are things that change the equation of each side's dealings with each other in ways that greatly restrict the ambitions of both polities… but not in bad ways. Just in ways that further guide their viable options toward those which every advocate of a two-state resolution envisions will ultimately be the case anyway. As I said, there are things that not only Israel is stalling on – in opposition to its longer-term interests, so keep that in mind – if it doesn't offend you to do so. Or we can drop the matter.
As far as the rest of what you wrote, I think I can answer these one by one. As long as all we're doing is offering opinions, then I don't see any harm in offering mine here:
Of course Hamas should take all steps to restrain suicide bombings as well as rocket firing, but will these steps mollify an occupying power that ignores cease fire agreements whenever it chooses?
Yes. I think they will. Â
And do I need to cite for you concrete instances in which Israel has moved to destroy whatever governing bodies Palestinians hopefully erect for themselves?
No, you don't need to. But you can if you want. The mere fact that the PLO was recognized in a signing ceremony on the White House lawn proves that it is not impossible for an Israeli government to have an interest in something other than destroying "whatever governing bodies Palestinians hopefully erect for themselves". I mean, ideally, such bodies might be something less corrupt than Fatah and something less rejectionist and theocratic than Hamas, and something more interested in law than either. Salam Fayed's Third Way movement would seem to be a huge improvement in this regard. But in the spirit of everything that Daniel is wisely saying, those choices will have to reflect an evolution in how the Palestinians see things and not come about as a result of something that could somehow be "forced" upon them. The corrolary to that, however, is an acceptance of the fact that with decisions come consequences. Not every action the Palestinians undertake will be equally fruitful, nor can Israel make that so. Nor can anyone else.
As far as your last shot,
I don’t give a crap, and they don’t need to do a damn thing, as long as they (or rather the American Jewish community at large) shut up about being a “democratic” state.
I'd have to say that your sarcasm really doesn't bother me all that much. But it doesn't really mean much of anything to anyone either way. Israel will have the regime it has regardless of how American Jews (or Freedom House for that matter) choose to characterize it. If American Jews say that Israel is a democracy, that alone doesn't make it a democracy. But neither does your rejecting the fact that Israel is a democracy make it not a democracy. So what either one of us say here doesn't mean much in terms of what Israel actually is. What it really is, is a very imperfect democracy, vis a vis certain civil rights matters, but that doesn't make it undemocratic. What would make it undemocratic would be denying Arab citizens the right to vote. And then denying all the Jews there the right to vote. I'd say at that point it would be a pretty undemocratic state. And to say all this is not to be snide, nor does it mean I was offended. It means that I am making very clear arguments based on the ideas we've been discussing. Some of them struck me as misguided in how they were originally brought up (and I AM making a difference between factual matters and policy preferences or political sentiments), but I have no problem addressing them – regardless of how many hold to an idea that might seem misguided to me. That doesn't make me megalomaniacal. I wonder if you would say the same for people who think that an appeal to popularity puts them above having to explain their own pronouncements to those who would stand to be most affected by them. And by that I mean various UN emissaries, not you.
None of this was said to offend you. If people want to address factual considerations honestly then they have to accept that they might not like what they hear. But I am seriously trying to focus this response on factual considerations and the conclusions that may be deduced from them. I am not trying to make you feel condescended to for feeling a certain way about them.
Dear Isaac:
I’m sorry you took this so personally – you were obviously offended, so I suppose I should have taken more care in responding. But I must caution you against the use of ad hominem language (simplistic, altogether uninformed), even in the mild formulations that you use. And I’d like to remind you that in my final paragraph I made it clear that I was asking for a discussion, not making pronouncements about solutions.
In defense of my rambling note, let me say that I was trying to respond to the central axiom of your question: that “mutually acceptable and complete withdrawal cannot be accomplished in the near future…” I am trying to avoid making recommendations on the basis of that bleak and – in my opinion – totally unjustified assumption. Because your follow-up question – “what are the prospects for improving the situation in the meantime?” asks me to propose palliatives when, as I said in my response, there are really no tangible obstacles to achieving a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Regarding Point b), which is not my point at all but that of the overwhelming majority of the member states of the UN: what do you suppose are the limits of Israeli reaction to Palestinians “declaring” themselves to be an independent state? Playing out that thought experiment, I foresee no change whatever in official Israeli policy, and hence no end to the occupation and its accompanying brutalities. One could easily make the case that Israel, on the basis of many statements by its leadership and more concretely on its settlement program, bases its entire policy portfolio on the desire to acquire as much of the “historic Eretz Yisrael” as possible. Therefore, their only possible reactions to such declarations would be either silence or an instant increase in the amount of violence against civilian Palestine.
Regarding “morality by numbers,” I believe that if the rest of the world consistently and over a period of decades tells you that you are behaving wrongly, you should start to pay attention and begin analyzing your position, because such obstinacy can only lead to harm when you are a nation state. This is substantiated by the ongoing bloodshed over the past forty years.
Re the question of “moral suasion,” I’m sorry to say I have to agree with you completely – power does not relinquish anything voluntarily. I believe I said that explicitly in my note.
Regardless of your condescension regarding the opinions of the UN supermajority – or even “unengaged” people like Desmond Tutu, who visited the OT recently – I sincerely think that it is easier to go with an open mind to the conference table than to reach a mutually satisfactory solution by infinitesimal steps. You may think this is a non sequitur, but I propose that negotiation toward the “simplistic” ends recommended repeatedly by the General Assembly would be much more successful in guaranteeing Israel’s long-term wellbeing than in trying to become a humane occupier (am I wrong in inferring that this was your short-term goal?). Even Hamas has – admittedly on-and-off –considered recognition of Israel if 1967 borders were restored. So why should Israel never – I repeat never, under any Israeli administration or major party – consider the possibility of a Green Line settlement?
In answer to your charge that I never addressed the Palestinian governing bodies: well of course I didn’t because I believe that history shows that their actions can and will be always willfully disregarded by Israel. Of course Hamas should take all steps to restrain suicide bombings as well as rocket firing, but will these steps mollify an occupying power that ignores cease fire agreements whenever it chooses? And do I need to cite for you concrete instances in which Israel has moved to destroy whatever governing bodies Palestinians hopefully erect for themselves?
You want to address what Israel can do in the occupation? Okay, here it is: occupation breeds violent resistance, without exception. The Jews of Warsaw demonstrated that, as did the Stern Gang in Mandate Palestine. PULL OUT.
Here’s what I think Israel needs to do vis-à -vis internal civil rights: I don’t give a crap, and they don’t need to do a damn thing, as long as they (or rather the American Jewish community at large) shut up about being a “democratic” state.
I would like to apologize for any sarcastic tone I presented in my original response, once again because I clearly offended you. However, I also tell you forthrightly that your own attempts to not be snide fail utterly, and the patronizing position you adopt in the last part of your note approaches the megalomaniacal. Trust me, Isaac, you sound like a three-sigma, highly intelligent person, but don’t get carried away by your own brilliance, please.
My apologies for not being able to keep up in real time, or to give very comprehensive responses. But re: Ismail's questions.
Preliminarily, I haven't written about Zionism directly mostly because my intuitions about it are thoroughly conflicted and I'm not so convinced of the inherent interestingness of my internal monologues to want to subject an audience to them.
Now,
1. The fact of historical anti-Semitism demands a geopolitical remedy.Â
Can you say more about why you object to this? I would also say that the suffering of Kurds, Palestinians, and Timorese demands a geopolitical remedy. Personally, I instinctively take interest in the history of anti-Semitism perhaps more than other historical prejudices and persecutions because it happens to be the prejudice to which my own family has been subject (including myself on one occasion, though I don't share right-wing Zionist delusions about the extent of worldwide anti-Semitism). But the upshot is not that I treat the Jews as a politically exceptional class.
2. It's commendable that you insist that the remedy not cause suffering
to the Palestinians, but what constitutes suffering? That is, what
degree of change to the life of the Palestinian population necessitated
by the establishment of Israel would you tolerate, and what counts as
suffering?
Can we table the "what constitutes suffering" question for now? (Not because it's uninteresting, but because it is so interesting that it really demands an article-length, if not a book-length answer.) As for the acceptable degree of change to the life of the Palestinian population, more on this below, but my answer is methodologically functionalist. What the Palestinians are able to agree upon mutually with the Israelis, through their representative institutions, is acceptable.
3. Do you mean that the secular Israel you imagine would continue to
offer automatic citizenship to Jews? If so, this makes "…but
otherwise treats all of its citizens equally" cold comfort to the
unfortunate gentile Israeli.
This gets right at my conflicted intuitions about Zionism, which is why I was careful above to say that Israel ought to offer sanctuary, but not necessarily automatic citizenship to Jews. Ideally, of course, neither provision would be necessary since in an ideal world there would be no discrimination or lingering effects of discrimination from which Jews would require sanctuary, and indeed, more broadly, Jews would be integrated enough into global society to obviate the need for a geopolitical remedy to anti-Semitism in the first place. This, indeed, goes to the fundamental paradox of Zionism, since if Zionism were sufficiently successful, it would render itself obsolete.
4. In general, I hear you giving a nod to fairness and justice and then
sacrificing those ideas on the altar of "practicality". Liberal
Zionists often seem to view Israeli needs more clearly than Palestinian
rights. In this regard, why do you endorse a boundary "roughly" along
1967 lines? I imagine it's to accommodate the growth of settlements
past those lines. Why should illegal behavior be rewarded?Â
Well I hope I'm giving more than a nod. I do not for a moment wish to accommodate the growth of settlements; my opposition to the settler movement, Ismail, is at least as strong as yours — and I say that having read a sizeable cross-section of your posts these many months. The only reason I say "roughly" is that I believe the specific terms of a final status agreement are up to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. If those terms concede more territory to either side than it possessed before 1967, I don't for a second pretend it's any business of mine to object.
And that's the significance of my references to practicality. I believe I detect in some of your posts a tendency to disclaim any sub-optimal resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict as intolerable. I disagree with that sentiment. Some possible resolutions — e.g., the complete annexation of either side's territory by the other, the subjection of Palestinians to some sort of web of Bantustans — certainly are intolerable. But other possible resolutions meet a minimum standard of equity even if they fall short of optimality. I'd suggest a resolution that involves true sovereignty and territorial contiguity for both sides, and crucially, to which the representative institutions of both sides agree (free of coercion), meets that minimum threshold. I have no business objection to a final status agreement that satisfies such minimum conditions even if it's not the agreement I would have imposed had I been emperor of the world for a day.
And finally,
These are not fleeting contingencies of Israel's presence; they are
part and parcel of its establishment and presence. Why, in the face of
these facts, you focus instead on the "hope" you have for Zionism being
a force for good escapes me.
Well, as to the first, I'm a thoroughgoing anti-essentialist, and in particular, deny that anti-Palestinian violence is any part of the essence of Israel. As, to the second, for the sake of the Palestinians, it had better be true that anti-Palestinian violence is not an essential feature of Israeli polity; Israel has an army none of its neighbors can contend with, a nuclear arsenal, and the unwavering support of the US; the lot of the Palestinians will not improve without Israeli cooperation. That alone is reason enough to hold out hope for Zionism. But there are more positive reasons as well, most prominently the fact, as I've noted above, that there is not a single face or current of Zionism, but a diverse plurality, within which there is plenty of support for a fair and equitable peace.
You sidestepped my question entirely and turned it from a matter of practical solutions that Israel can undertake unilaterally to modify its own policies into one where Israel unilaterally reverses the situation it finds itself in to status-quo ante 1967. The incredibly narrow focus of your direction aside – (despite its breadth of ambition), I find it interesting that you spent 10 paragraphs doing this without once mentioning any Palestinian governing authority, let alone Hamas.Â
I asked a very simple question of policy and you turned it into a political soapbox. Perhaps it was too much of me to expect that you might have done otherwise. We could get into arguing particulars, I suppose – especially your point (b) [which, BTW doesn't require Israel's approval in any event - have you ever considered that there are almost certainly reasons of political self-interest for why "Palestine" doesn't declare its independence? And your whole paragraph assumes that they too have nothing to gain by perpetuating/leaving unresolved the conflict, either]. But seeing as how wedded you are to playing to morality by numbers I realize that there is probably too much of an epistemological disconnect for us to proceed any further. It was challenging enough to start some dialog between Ismail and Daniel, and I'm not sure that even they are much further along than they were when they started.
The only part where you even remotely address what I brought up was your third to last paragraph, and I find that one very… how shall I put this without sounding snide… incredibly simplistic if not altogether uninformed. Countries rarely if ever change internal policies on their own based merely on appeals to moral suasion from abroad. If they did then the Palestinians would have never engaged in suicide bombing. Japan would have surrendered before an atomic bombing or mainland invasion and Iraq would have "disarmed" — oops, wait a minute, too soon on that last one! (I kid). Why even your own reference to China betrays how little all the noise by protesters accomplishes. Countries, and even governments that belong to polities that are not yet countries, have their own interests, and I see that you didn't really address any of those. So if there really is that wide of an epistemological disconnect, I suggest we leave it at that. I'm willing to address what Israel can do, in relation to its actions in the occupation as well as the civil rights problems it still needs to progress on internally, but not according to a grandiose, anti-realist foreign policy perspective that sees messianic tropes in global proclamations – the wisdom of which other countries will immediately accept so that they may proceed to play their part(s) accordingly – as if they were actors in a play scripted by whichever pompous and otherwise unengaged diplomat is speaking at the UNGA at the moment.Â
Isaac, there is certainly a lot that could be done to resolve the situation. To begin with, the American Jewish population must be educated enough to acknowledge that there is nothing controversial about what Israel is doing in Palestine, and further that there are no real obstacles to bringing about a solution.
To verify this statement, simply Google on “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine.” This will bring up a raft of resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and repeated every year since, I don’t know, maybe 1986? And if you look at the text of the resolutions you will find that each one offers specific recommendations, for example:
(a) The withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967;
(b) The realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent State;
9. Also stresses the need for resolving the problem of the Palestine refugees in conformity with its resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948;
And, surprise! Nobody disagrees with any of these resolutions. Whoops, I lied – Israel and the United States are the only ones who dissent (if you ignore the occasional “participation” of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the like).
Now, since the recommendations are very similar to ones that Barak claimed to have offered at the Camp David conferences, there should be no stumbling blocks, should there?
By the way, since the Arab League in 2002, headed up by Saudi Arabia, presented the same solutions and even offered not just to fully recognize Israel but also to normalize relations, such as trade with her, there would seem to be no barriers to peace, right? Except that each time an opportunity like this arises the Israeli leadership says “It’s only a PR ploy.” And if that doesn’t work, they resort to some other distraction, or in desperation go to war in Lebanon or bomb civilians in Gaza.
Let me reiterate that by a factor of about 155 to 2 the nations of the world have consistently demonstrated they understand Israel’s activities in Palestine to be illegal under international law. Once again: there really is no controversy, just distractions and irrelevancies.
I fully understand that we cannot persuade the government of Israel, regardless of party, to heed the wishes of the Israeli people for peace. Even the Israeli High Court rolls over on this matter, with occasional minor concessions.
No, we need do the job right here, at home in the USA. I’m also not sanguine about the prospects of converting our elected officials to the cause of Middle East peace. While AIPAC is not the almighty power it’s often portrayed as, it does keep many in Congress anxiously toeing a line – I know this from conversations with our local, otherwise progressive representative.
Maybe it would be a good idea, as your note implies, to concentrate on the human rights aspects of the occupation. One method might be to regularly send your congressional rep and senators human rights information coming from HRW, Amnesty International, European and Israeli newspapers, and so on. This is an area at least where Congress is always eager to make noises about – see China and the Olympics for a good example.
The press in this country, on the other hand, is a hopeless case. Even our best newspapers, such as the NY Times, are flagrantly biased, not so much in favor of Israel – which they are – but determinedly anti-Palestinian.
So… while I haven’t given you anything concrete yet, is there a basis for talking about this question, the practical aspects of changing Israeli occupation policy?
So, in your opinion, Aherodias, why can't more be done about all this?
I suspect we would probably both agree that occupation in itself is a corrupting business. But assuming that a mutually acceptable and complete withdrawal cannot be accomplished in the near future, what are the prospects for improving the situation in the meantime? Is there any hope or are there any ideas on what could be done until then?
Cori:
The Israeli establishment, i.e. all major political parties, governments in office, and the IDF, frequently resort to the argument that any abuse by Israel against Palestinians is undertaken by "extremists," "bad apples," and that the abuses are "anomalies."
But since you insist that "… in Israel, extremists that resort to violence go to jail," allow me to direct you to some specific sources proving that, alas, the opposite is actually the case in Israel.
The instances cited were selected at random from a huge list compiled by journalists, human rights organizations, and Israeli citizens. I'm sorry to be the one to disillusion you regarding the State of Israel, but somebody's gotta do it…
According to the Jerusalem Post, July 31 2008, Yesh Din, the Israeli Volunteers for Human Rights group, released a report Tuesday claiming a mere 6 percent of Military Police investigations into IDF conduct in the territories in the past seven years produced indictments. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1215331163307
In December 2002, Amnesty International accused the IDF of war crimes for their actions in Nablus and Jenin (West Bank cities) in March of that year. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2742/is_2002_Dec/ai_n25058639/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
According to Human Rights Watch, in June 2005, the Israeli military’s judge advocate general’s office announced that it had opened only 131 criminal investigations into the unlawful death and injury of Palestinians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces since the current intifada began in September 2000. During that same period, outside any combat situation, Israeli soldiers killed at least 1,722 Palestinians – more than one-third of whom were children – and injured thousands more, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. But since September 2000, the judge advocate general’s office has announced only 28 indictments and seven convictions of Israeli soldiers on charges related to unlawful killing or injury.
On January 23, 2006, Israeli soldiers shot a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in the back as he walked along a West Bank road reserved for Jewish settlers. The boy, Munadel Abu Aalia, from the nearby village of El-Mughayer (near Ramallah), died the same day. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/02/08/isrlpa12646.htm
A more complete description of the incident in which an IDF officer ordered the shooting of a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian is given in a video released by B’Tselem. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/30/10711/
In October 2003 an Israeli soldier in Gaza shot and killed a Palestinian who was trying to repair an antenna on the roof of a house. The soldier was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.  According to BBC News, It is the harshest punishment handed to an Israeli soldier during the intifada.
For a look at the way Israeli police and other officials treat Palestinians who come to find work in Israel: http://www.btselem.org/Download/200703_Crossing_the_Line_eng.doc
You might be interested in reading the testimonies by IDF veterans collected by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization formed by a group of ex-soldiers, most of whom had served in Israel Defense Forces combat units in Hebron. Many of the soldiers do reserve duty in the military each year. BTS has collected some 500 testimonies from former soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza. http://www.shovrimshtika.org/publications_e.asp
 And if these are not enough, I will unhappily supply you with a great deal more evidence taken from Israeli sources. And by the way, if you believe that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty international are biased against israel, you need to read the criticisms they level at Hamas and Hezbollah for their infractions of human rights.
Sorry, Daniel – I had not read your post and hence did not realize you had already referenced Benny Morris in your discussion with Ismail.
In any case: I heartily recommend the following video clip from B'Tselem (in case anyone is unaware, this is the Israeli Human Rights group). The casual way in which the portrayed action took place strongly suggests that IDF human rights violations of the most severe kind are routine. Although we would know this if only from reading Israeli newspapers on a regular basis.
http://www.btselem.org/english/Press_Releases/20080720.aspÂ
Ms. Chascione hints at but does not specifically reference mistranslations of IDF official documents used to denigrate Israel. Further, her statements about the aggressive scrutiny of Israeli historical documents must in part refer to the large volume of statements, in speeches or written words, by Israeli leaders regarding their country’s past and present misdeeds.
An obvious example of the latter is the intention of Israeli civilian and military leadership to render all of Palestine arabrein (sorry, Ismail!); another would be the extent of war crimes committed by Israeli forces both during and after the 1948 war of independence.
However, a number of Israeli historians have made Cori’s job a lot easier. The most notable of these perhaps is Benny Morris, a native Hebrew speaker who has exhaustively researched and analyzed IDF documents. Morris has also consulted with still living Israelis involved in formulating Plan Dalet and who were participants in various “massacres” and other acts of ethnic cleansing.
I am curious to know if Cori has read some of Morris’ published histories? He is a firm Israeli apologist – you might say right-wing Zionist – but has used IDF archives to honestly report the true origins of the ongoing Palestinian refugee crisis. Or those of Yehoshua Porath, one of the most widely respected of Israeli historians? Or the diaries of Moishe Sharett?
I could go on at length naming reliable Israeli sources, but my point is: how can Ms. Chascione pretend to be able to translate IDF documents in an unbiased way unless she fully understands the context of those documents? She may justifiably take this as criticism – but I also sincerely wish to further her education. I’m willing to supply a substantial reading list for those who are willing to learn.
A couple of things:
Behold, he has given himself a name, and that name is Isaac, and blessings be upon him, for he has done well in the eyes of the Lord.
Well done. Isaac it shall be.
In the spirit of reconciliation, let me make a proposal. This endless pilpul between Isaac and myself must surely be weighting the eyelids of whoever's left reading it. In an effort to make things more apposite to the original post and to keep the curious fully awake, perhaps we can focus on particular matters related to Cori's initial remarks and lay off the obsessional attention to our respective formal shortcomings. I know that this will mark my mind as second-rate to Isaac, but I believe that debates which include detail and specificity promise more in the long run than those that are more general.
Daniel-
Thanks for your thoughtful elucidation of your position re Zionism. I'm curious as to why, as you remark, you hadn't given much space here to your thoughts about a subject which comes up frequently and about which Jewcy regulars typically have strong opinions.
Obviously, we see things differently. The view from Haram al Sharif is different from that from the Temple Mount, despite their being the same place. I can identify a few problematic notions or nodes of dispute within your brief outline:
1. The fact of historical anti-Semitism demands a geopolitical remedy.
2. It's commendable that you insist that the remedy not cause suffering to the Palestinians, but what constitutes suffering? That is, what degree of change to the life of the Palestinian population necessitated by the establishment of Israel would you tolerate, and what counts as suffering?
3. Do you mean that the secular Israel you imagine would continue to offer automatic citizenship to Jews? If so, this makes "…but otherwise treats all of its citizens equally" cold comfort to the unfortunate gentile Israeli.
4. In general, I hear you giving a nod to fairness and justice and then sacrificing those ideas on the altar of "practicality". Liberal Zionists often seem to view Israeli needs more clearly than Palestinian rights. In this regard, why do you endorse a boundary "roughly" along 1967 lines? I imagine it's to accommodate the growth of settlements past those lines. Why should illegal behavior be rewarded?Â
Finally, the actual geopolitical expression of Zionism has, as you note, required the expulsion of three-quarters of a million people. It has gone on to efface the historical reminders of their presence, and has for two-thirds of its existence conducted a brutal and illegal occupation. These are not fleeting contingencies of Israel's presence; they are part and parcel of its establishment and presence. Why, in the face of these facts, you focus instead on the "hope" you have for Zionism being a force for good escapes me. Do you know of no sturdier candidates for that position?
In any event, I welcome your correction of my misapprehensions about your beliefs.
ELL-
Thanks for your kind words. But genius? Gee, I don't know….do you really think so? OK, then…genius it is.
Anon 4:37-
Zounds! Another alert defender of Zion who's tumbled to our overtaking Oxford! Note to Jihadi Central: more stealth, please, and schedule the re-attachment of Koffler's foreskin for early October. That is all. Â
Again, props to Isaac.Â
Just wanted to clarify that the anonymous poster above, is not the same anonymous individual as I am – the anonymous individual who responded in the last 10 anonymous posts; just in case that point needed to be made. Ismail does have a (limited, as always) point. Monikers are fun, and although their use in cyberspace is obviously not evidence of some mental disorder, they are a good foil to use against individuals more interested in flaming, making caricatures, ad hominems, braggadocio and sonnets than in reasoned discourse. Given how entwined my presence here has become with Ismail's, perhaps I should call myself Isaac.Â
Shocked that Koffler is uneasy about Zionism. Actually, he will do well in England, as the country itself debates the worth of identity. One self-hating Jew joining millions of self-hating Brits. There he can march in support of the Palestinians and their corruption in Oxford.
Ismail,
I have empathy for C as a human being, much the same way I do for Bush, Cheney and Rove. In short, her article was filled with half truths, erroneous information, misguided statements, distortions, misinformation all of which culminated in a blistering debate.  Need I say she was just out of her league. However, you certainly provided a unique perspective on not only the article, but on the various jewcer's personalities. Thank you for attempting to keep those of us interested in substance on the straight and narror. Reading some of your responses was a painful learning experience, I am sure for many. I would be very careful at hurling charges and countercharges at you especially if the issue is too complex and nuanced for a black and white position. I am just not that talented. Keep up the good work.ELL
It sounds to me like you endorse the Sunday-school, pushke-box, Leon
Uris picture of sturdy pioneers, no longer rootless and more rural than
cosmopolitan, setting an example for us all. An army more moral than
history has ever seen, rosy-cheeked and straight out of a socialist
realism tractor painting.
Wow, the comments really multiplied here fast — I'll try to have a longer take on how the thread has developed a bit later, but for now, let me just address this. I've never actually written at length about my conception of and feelings about Zionism, and to the extent I've referred to Zionism here it's been in moderately positive tones, so I can understand, Ismail, why this is the picture you've developed of my attitude towards Zionism. But it's not, in fact, my attitude towards Zionism, which is much closer to Hannah Arendt than Leon Uris. In the first place, I'm decidedly uneasy about the idea of a state founded on behalf of any creed at all, and that uneasiness doesn't make exceptions for the faith I grew up in. At the same time, I'm sympathetic to the claim that the historical persecution and suffering of the Jewish people demanded a geopolitical resolution (though I don't for a moment believe that it licenses causing suffering among any other people). What I would like to see in Israel is an effectively secular state that guarantees sanctuary and perhaps citizenship to Jews but otherwise treats all of its citizens equally. I'm not unsympathetic to Palestinian claims of a right of return — as Benny Morris (whatever his present output is) has chronicled, the myth that there was no forced expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is just that, a myth — but I'm quite sure that implementing it would be fatally impractical, to put it mildly, and indeed, that relinquishing the claim to a right of return is likely to be part of any final peace agreement creating a sovereign, self-sufficient Palestinian state roughly according to the 1967 borders. Which, in turn, is the only minimally equitable solution I believe to be viable.
In general, I try to recognize that there are multiple strains of Zionism, ranging from the boot-stomping-on-a-human-face-forever settler movement to the hold hands and sing acoustic guitar arrangements of new-agey odes to the Jewish matriarchs, and everything in between, and my engagement with Zionism is meant to push it in, let's say, productive and peaceful directions that, among other things, would be of far greater benefit to actual Israelis than the continuation of the awful status quo or giving Netanyahuism (emphasis on the penultimate syllable) free rein. Inasmuch as Israel isn't going away and there's no real point in making plans conditional on there being no Israel, Zionism contains within it the potential to be a force for good, and that's my hope for it.
Does that help?
Fascinating? Really? I didn't realize you were making a case. Read that again.
Reciting facts and construcing purple prose does not make for a "case".
Daniel is getting closer (much closer) to making a really good case, if you want hints (I'm assuming you're attempting to show how Israel's failures at the level of bureaucratic blundering and assorted military atrocities condemns it as a nation, a state, or as a society. That I have to state as much on my own based on assumptions, hints and the context of your words shows how horrible you are at actually making cases). I'd love to debate him on what he said about Israel, but only if he comes back and demonstrates that he'll have the time for it. I'm fully confident that we could do that respectfully and in a way that allow for an illuminating debate, rather than a canned dog and pony show. But as we're aware, he's at Oxford pursuing loftier things right now and probably isn't as invested in these petty battles at Jewcy as he once was.
Fascinating. You're actually turning my reliance on facts to make my case into a vice.Â
I don't recall sipping from a bottle marked "Drink me", and I haven't spotted anyone playing croquet with flamingos, but someone's really trying to suspend the laws of logic around here.
Well, as long as I'm saying nothing, how about this piece of nothingness: Because you're very bad at constructing and recognizing arguments, you might want to do yourself the favor of not asserting that I consider my own assertions to be arguments. But do give the reader the courtesy of a quote that actually reveals the context of my assertion. The way you initially dodged, and later swerved over the discussion on the soldier's trial makes it highly improbable that you found the very acknowledgment of such a trial worth even mentioning. That you did this speaks directly to your demonstrable lack of interest in legal and political realities. Call that an assertion, or call it an argument. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that you didn't notice and probably still don't notice that it calls out for refutation that you can't offer. Â
It's not too hard to compose a single, well-thought out reply to someone who actually has something intelligent to say. But parroting copious facts does not equate to having something intelligent to say. Even when you do manage to bring them up, facts are really only your concern when it comes to condemning Israel for specific acts. I have no problem with you doing that. But the fact that you think that doing that can substitute for making a larger credible argument about Israel or anything else is what makes your contributions here pointless. Facts alone do not make an argument. And your "copious facts" do not make for an illuminating narrative to discuss or debate. They make for the purple prose that you might think is an intelligent contribution to rational discourse. In reality your myopic fixation with purple prose exposes the extraordinarily severe limitations of your conversational abilities.
I also notice that you repeat your lie here about my supposed lack of understanding of the difference between knowledge and intelligence. Of course, it must be entirely coincidental that repeating that lie distracts you, yet again, from addressing arguments that you prove yourself incapable of identifying, let alone debating. And that speaks to your lack of intelligence, not a lack of knowledge of anything other than the basics of logical argumentation.
As far as insults go, I'll refrain from them when I see a consistent effort on your part to do the same. In the meantime, I'll try to speak to you in the conversational style that you seem most comfortable with. But if further insight on the topic is desired, I found the following quote from this article quite interesting:Â
Perceptions of insults
Sociologists suggest insults are often an indicator of flawed reasoning about the character or motivation of others. Though insults are common, and often used in jest, a fundamental axiom of sociology recognizes that derogatory forms of speech make erroneous attributions about the motivation of a person. Scholars classify the erroneous assumptions as the fundamental attribution error.
Another interesting tidbit: The root word for insult in Hebrew is the same as that for a word we've brought up many times in this thread: Pe-Gimmel-Ayin. (Piguah) … or however you want to transliterate that. Â
Whew.Â
Sometimes the formal characteristics of a person's verbal output are more telling than the truth value of the propositions he utters. For example, in some forms of brain insult (Broca's aphasia, if I remember correctly), we observe a curious lack of substantive detail in the subject's linguistic productions. Conjunctives, prepositions, empty circumlocutions, et al, occur far out of proportion to nouns. It is not so much that the afflicted person is correct or incorrect as that she isn't really saying anything.
I am reminded of this as I read our anon friend's recent outpourings, and I note several odd structural features therein; the numerous serial posts, connoting a kind of impulsivity (sending off his comments and immediately realizing that he's got more to say rather than calmly composing his thoughts), a kind of loose and associative rhythm, a conspicuous lack of detail, the whole "address Daniel with ideas meant for me" thing, et al.Â
I don't mean to suggest that the poor fellow doesn't commit substantive howlers as well, of course. For example,
"In his list of topics that he doesn't know much about, he should add: Not understanding how arguments are constructed."
followed in the next graf by,
"Ismail prattles on about how he never asserted that the soldier wouldn't go to trial. I find it highly improbable that he ever even considered that he would."
This, my little friend, is how assertions are constructed, not arguments. Very nice to know what your assessments of probability are, but entirely unresponsive to the demonstrable fact that I simply did not say the coward would avoid trial.Â
And whence the idea that I'm kissing Koffler's ass? I surely believe that Daniel is a singularly erudite and formally rigorous correspondent, but I've denounced his fascination with the empty rhetorician Obama and (I think) Austan Goolsbee as well. We certainly disagree about the Middle East. As in his confusions about intelligence and knowledge, mr anon seems unclear about the difference between admiring the skill and integrity of an ideological opponent and burying one's snout in his posterior. This is a distinction our friend would do well to learn.Â
In general, even the least attentive reader will note that my remarks are typically studded like a plum pudding with luscious historical references, citations of recent events, line by line disputations of the substantive assertions of my opponents, etc., while mr. anon goes on and on with barrages of froth-flecked rantings (isn't it odd that this guy plucks the moments of invective from my comments, ignoring the copious factual material, and condemns me for being an unrelenting viper, while he himself tends to go easy on the empirical detail and instead gives himself over to an obsessional detailing of my personal shortcomings?)
I should go. Anyone who lets a thought like
"Ismail seems to feel threatened when that occurs, which is a sign of something. I'm not sure what that means, but it's certainly a sign of something. "Â
escape his lips instead of catching the senseless thing and beating it to death before it gets away needs no scolding from me. After all, by continuing to pick on this poor oaf, I'd be committing the same injustice I accused Koffler of in l'affaire Weaver-oops, there I go, kissing Daniel's ass again.
"…a more formal introduction and an invitation to rational discourse on the subject."
(Penultimate paragraph).
Words fail to capture the audacity of Ismail's intellectually primitive naivite. You have to just re-read his words for yourself, dear readers.
Glad to know you've got Ismail's respect, Daniel. It shouldn't be too hard to crush him with a two-state defense. Although I'm sure you'll figure out how to do it with the slow and seductive sense of finesse that someone like Ismail accepts as a justification for anything. His mind is as fixated on the impracticable as minds come, which is probably why he romanticizes yours. As logical as you are.
Let the love-fest begin!Â
You've got to love this…Â
You and I, of course, have vastly different notions of "the Zionist cause". It sounds to me like you endorse the Sunday-school, pushke-box, Leon Uris picture of sturdy pioneers, no longer rootless and more rural than cosmopolitan, setting an example for us all. An army more moral than history has ever seen, rosy-cheeked and straight out of a socialist realism tractor painting. Do I exaggerate?
But does he exaggerate, he asks? DOES HE EXAGGERATE? Cliche upon cliche of nothing more than an attempt to reduce one's views to those held by his own mental caricature of an American Jew, Ismail  proves not only that he's read the rules on "A Study in Perpetuating Stereotypes", but that he's probably never read a damn thing that Daniel's ever written.
I, on the other hand, read the Zionist narrative as one primarily of deliberate, unequivocal dispossession and cleansing of an indigenous population and the continued racial (or ethnic, or religious) privileging of the aggressor nation at the expense of the aggrieved.
Ismail, on the other hand, is a study in detailed understandings of history. Which probably would explain his use of such illuminating and multifaceted terms as "unequivocal", etc., etc., ad infinitum. No wonder he'd like to believe that making a caricature of his interlocutor is a polite way to make a more formal introduction and an introduction to rational discourse on the subject. His entire understanding of the history of the Middle East is about as one-sided a caricature as they come.
Daniel, if you can identify with that sort of an approach, then good luck getting an interlocutor intelligent enough to defend a credible case for the "One State fits all" version of Qaddafi's IsraTine, let alone one that could be subsequently fashioned into any real description of rational discourse as the two of you proceed to discuss it. Â
 More unresponsive evasion from the master of bullshit.
Like this:Â
"I won't bother to comment on specific points until you wipe the spittle from the corners of your mouth,"
And, of course, this:
"…the one where he makes a distinction between lacking intelligence and lacking training on something. Yeah, that one. Now what kind of fallacy do we call this assumption of his, that his interlocutor must be confused about the difference between those things…"
No kind of fallacy at all, of course. Just pointing out the altogether homely truism that intelligence and knowledge are different things, a verity which appears to have eluded you.
Although it obviously didn't. The difference was right there in the post. And not only was an effective refutation made regarding your bullshit accusation that I did not understand the difference - a lie you repeat here (just because that's the sort of thing a lying chimp like you would do). I also showed how you lumped the two together in your own inability to even understand that intelligence, not specialized knowledge, applies to identifying arguments generally – a skill which eludes you. I showed this by using your own words. As much as you hate to admit it.
Oh, and you really must avoid things like, "…I take note of their shared inability to separate certain concepts from the meaning those concepts may or may not have within the arguments they attempt to pursue."
No I mustn't. Â
Without an instance or two, this is an exercise in airless geometry, signifying nothing at all.
No. But your response indicates that you are incapable of refuting an obvious display of your own incompetence when it comes to understanding ideas and the way discussions develop. Keep up the poetry though. It won't win you arguments, just a writing contest prize. Â
Were you drunk?Â
Are you just a lying simpleton?
As for our anon. friend-whew, dude, this is really working you up, isn't it?Why, I wonder, did you address your serial comments to Daniel when it's pretty clear that you were talking to me? Playing with narrative styles? Going all literary on our asses? What?
It might be hard for you to understand that someone might address Daniel, while you remain merely the subject of the discussion. This must have happened quite a bit when your teachers were discussing with your parents the budding young delinquent that they had on their hands. It's happening now, too. Sorry to bring back bad memories.
The more important point is what's being discussed, not the person to whom it's being addressed. But I understand that prioritization is difficult for someone as prone to fantasy as you are, Ismail. And now, for something that will really fuck with your mind, I'll now address someone else.
Yup Daniel. That Ismail's a pretty intelligent guy. I mean, who else can throw in a bunch of flowery prose and elaborate vocabulary of the sort that only evasive Marxist bullshit artists still employ, say absolutely nothing, and kiss someone's ass when he can't manage to pull anything constructive out of even his own? Â
I look forward to more instances of Ismail sticking his fingers in his ears, screaming "I can't hear you", and pretending that he has something intelligent to say. I look forward to seeing how creatively he can butter up his posts in an attempt to make it seem like anyone doesn't see through his crap when he does this. It's really all he ever does.
First, Daniel, I'm delighted to see that you're still poking around Jewcy and hope that your imminent induction into Brit academe won't preclude your continued illuminations here.
You and I, of course, have vastly different notions of "the Zionist cause". It sounds to me like you endorse the Sunday-school, pushke-box, Leon Uris picture of sturdy pioneers, no longer rootless and more rural than cosmopolitan, setting an example for us all. An army more moral than history has ever seen, rosy-cheeked and straight out of a socialist realism tractor painting. Do I exaggerate?
I, on the other hand, read the Zionist narrative as one primarily of deliberate, unequivocal dispossession and cleansing of an indigenous population and the continued racial (or ethnic, or religious) privileging of the aggressor nation at the expense of the aggrieved. I hope I needn't (but fear I must) add that this belief in no way minimizes or discounts the very real grievances European Jews felt over the unforgivable brutality they bore under the actions of the nazis and the inaction of the rest of the Western world.
I completely agree that all armies may contain sadists or cowards or folks whose judgement just fails them when we would wish it would not. I also endorse your algorithm for determining when bad behavior becomes emblematic of the army and not just an individual aberration or three. As you might guess, I believe that when that algorithm is applied to Israel…well, let's just say that our Cori has her work cut out for her.
This isn't the place for a detailed defense of my account of the IOF, but, serendipitously, just as this question rears its head here at Jewcy, the website If Americans Knew has posted a quite detailed and well-referenced article detailing the systematic (and unpunished) depredations that the IOF performs upon its captives with sickening regularity, this in addition to the well-established litany of brutalities both venial and mortal with which the IOF has distinguished itself over the years.
And why would we imagine otherwise? Even if Zionist fictions about operating upon a higher plane of morality than the average military shemp does were true, we would predict that forty years of being an occupier would wear down even such a highly calibrated sense of ethics as is deployed by the brave Brooklynites and Jersey boys of the IOF, no?
There is a cost to both occupied and occupier of such an endless and nasty venture.
Lastly, re the sorority girl comment; first, I see Cori's arguments as not particularly well-thought-out, and characterized by an in-group, out-group mentality. Also, as I suggested earlier, her swipe at the BBC sounded bitchy and petulant. The image this brings to mind for me is that of a Greek sister. I don't see it as particularly infantilizing, although, to a Methusalah such as myself, 22 or 23 is positively fetal. (Come to think of it, you're probably in the same cohort yourself. Can one of you spare a stem cell or two for a creaky old codger?) Â
And why do you think the most apt descriptor for Cori's analogue would be a "Palestinian woman"? Was I addressing Cori specifically as a Jewish woman? (I won't say "Israeli woman" since 20% of those are Palestinian and that could get confusing). I thought I was addressing her politics, not her nationality/ethnicity.
Whatever. Very glad to hear from you and hope your contributions will be less scarce than they've been lately.
As for our anon. friend-whew, dude, this is really working you up, isn't it?Why, I wonder, did you address your serial comments to Daniel when it's pretty clear that you were talking to me? Playing with narrative styles? Going all literary on our asses? What?
I won't bother to comment on specific points until you wipe the spittle from the corners of your mouth, but one remark really stands out and just demands a reply:
"…the one where he makes a distinction between lacking intelligence and lacking training on something. Yeah, that one. Now what kind of fallacy do we call this assumption of his, that his interlocutor must be confused about the difference between those things…"
No kind of fallacy at all, of course. Just pointing out the altogether homely truism that intelligence and knowledge are different things, a verity which appears to have eluded you.
Oh, and you really must avoid things like, "…I take note of their shared inability to separate certain concepts from the meaning those concepts may or may not have within the arguments they attempt to pursue." Without an instance or two, this is an exercise in airless geometry, signifying nothing at all. Were you drunk?Â
I appreciate Thor's previous reference to Sabbateanism. I would like to suggest that Sabbateanism should not be Thor's (or Ismail's) enemy, but authentic Judaism. The Sabbatean purpose is to subvert true Judaism by subverting their Torah and allowing them to become citizens of the world. I helped accomplish this by converting to Islam and creating the Donmeh. My counterpart Jacob Frank helped convert thousands of Jews to Catholicism, and descendants of these converts fought bravely in the Wehrmacht and SS. The current government of Israel is run by my followers, including Ehud Olmert and Haim Ramon, who are doing their best to erase israels borders, and therefore deserve your full support. Look at how Israel has done nothing to help Sderot, thereby acknowledging the border between Israel and Gaza is meaningless. Now they have allowed attacks emanating in E Jerusalem in order to increase public pressure to divide Jerusalem. Once Hamas has obtained the strategic heights of the Temple Mount and E Jerusalem, they can convert the entire metropolitan Jerusalem area into another Sderot. The elite Jews (my followers) will flee to Europe and the unwashed Sephardi masses will meet their fate. Therefor, Icall on Thor and Ismal to stop their masturbation (although, in contrast to Judaism, Sabbateanism encourages masturbation) on this website and fight authentic Judaism  Â
Well anyways, I can see that's it for now. For me anyway. Go ahead and respond to all that, find it unintelligent, call it unresponsive, idiotic what have you. Pick it apart in the manner you claim you are capable of, Ismail. We'll see just how honest an interlocutor you are.
Oh, and I don't think he (Ismail again) stayed out of the fray that was going on with Thors. He poked his fat head in to ask if ethnicity, in being concerned – however peripherally – in matters of molecular genetics, isn't just as problematic a concept as race. Well, such a discussion is a whole other ball of wax, and perhaps one that could be held fruitfully and honestly at another time. But I find his naivite in the way he happened to bumble around into such matters to be apropos of his entire, destructive role in these discussions. Thors wanted to discredit the notion of Jewish origins in the Near East. Thors also claims he is not a racist or bigot, although his overwhelmingly obsessive hatred of specifically Jewish historical actors, both singularly and on a group level, is suspicious enough to warrant his protestations to the contrary worthy of being characterized as a distinction without a difference. The fact that Ismail seemed either not to notice or to care that it was Thor's argument was being engaged, and debunked, rather than the importance of the concepts in themselves – around which the arguments were structured, was something that did not escape my attention.
Conversely, although it doesn't escape me that Ismail's hatred and delegitimization of a certain nation-state and Thors' hatred and delegitimization of the same nation-state doesn't equate to agreements between the two of them in other respects, I take note of their shared inability to separate certain concepts from the meaning those concepts may or may not have within the arguments they attempt to pursue. I take note of the way their clumsy efforts lead to bogus arguments on both accounts. If Ismail wants to have an intellectually inspired conversation, it would be nice if he didn't have to wait for Thors' entry into the dialog to find one. Ethnicity, culture, nationhood, identity - these are entirely engaging and worthwhile topics to debate. They are also not just apples being thrown onto Ismail's head by Thors as if the former were Isaac Newton and Thors were the force of gravity. Ismail can and could, entirely on his own, identify larger, more problematic and more worthwhile and engaging concepts to debate and discuss – if he wanted to. Why he chooses to immerse himself in stupid food fights until someone even more distracting and volatile than he enters the scene is something that, for now, only he can answer. Perhaps if he sticks around and continues to behave this way long enough, though, I'll gain my own insight into why that is the case, on my own.
There's no amount of precision or accuracy that is sufficient for getting Ismail to acknowledge (explicitly or otherwise) what he didn't get about an argument that he just didn't like. In his list of topics that he doesn't know much about, he should add: Not understanding how arguments are constructed. It takes more words than are worth typing to educate him on that.
Ismail prattles on about how he never asserted that the soldier wouldn't go to trial. I find it highly improbable that he ever even considered that he would. He used the fact that it was a matter of military justice to discredit the interlocutor's reminder of such things as due process… (note to Ismail, "due process" sometimes includes such things as trials). His tone changed immediately when Cori stated that a trial would occur. Now he slithers around that point by bleating on about how IDF justice is not only far from perfect, and that it might be, well… downright corrupt, or worse! unjust! Well, yo, thank you dipshit, we understand that point. But, then again, it wasn't the point that you took your enemies to task over now, was it?Â
Ismail might think he's pretty clever in the way he backtracks argumentatively – imagining that he's making up for his short-sighted obsession with linguistic jujitsu by performing somersaults and well-finessed acrobatics when it comes to argumentation. He is doing nothing of the sort. He simply doesn't understand when he is being called onto the mat for a very simple misunderstanding that he refused to acknowledge when it mattered. That's why I let the matter die and why he now feels compelled to go back and address it in greater detail (most of it irrelevant). Of course, he's not addressing it in an intellectually honest way. But at least he thinks he's doing the right thing in the expositive manner in which he tries to rehash the details that weren't contested.
If Ismail wants accuracy and precision he should learn how to apply it to his own arguments, Daniel.
Daniel, go back and look at Ismail's last paragraph. You know, the self-congratulatory/self-glorifying one. (I know, based on that criteria it's harder to pick out one specifically from his collection). Go ahead, look at it – the one where he makes a distinction between lacking intelligence and lacking training on something. Yeah, that one. Now what kind of fallacy do we call this assumption of his, that his interlocutor must be confused about the difference between those things, but that he is crystal clear in his conviction that he makes no mistakes when it comes to understanding arguments that should fall completely within his purview? Is that even a fallacy… the assertion that he's only confused about subjects he wouldn't be expected to understand? Or is this just a way for him to be as sleazy in rhetorical methods as he is unresponsive?
Maybe he just doesn't know the difference. Every insult I've heard from him was a (substitute for a) response to an argument that it's obvious he was just clueless about. I have a hunch he suspects that his interlocutor knows what he didn't understand, even as (especially as) he implies otherwise.
Daniel, as someone who respects your work, I can tell you right now that you are lumping multiple people into one. I'm not Shabtai Zvi (among a few if not all of the others you mention), and I have no interest in bolstering Ismail's agenda to characterize his opponents as a distracting way of being unresponsive to them. Sometimes you get heated, too. But with folks like Weaver and some of the others I can understand why. You're open to other ideas, reason, facts, logic. You are open to seeing if you've not actually understood whether or not they had something intelligent to say. Ismail typically is not. Â
For starters, if you truly disagree with him on one-state/two-states, I'd love to see that debate unfold. Although I suspect that for whatever respective reasons you'd both rather avoid it, regardless of the fact that it's not the main point of the thread. I've noticed that, unlike Ismail, you don't tend to take offense when someone acknowledges where they agree with you. Ismail seems to feel threatened when that occurs, which is a sign of something. I'm not sure what that means, but it's certainly a sign of something. Â
In any event, good luck on your efforts to teach Ismail how his reliance on ad hominems (both against individuals and groups) discredits his efforts. Perhaps it might stick. Prior evidence suggests that it won't. If Ismail wants to play like he's King of the Hill here he's going to have to engage what people actually say. At least, that's what he'll have to do until such time as he takes ownership of the blogs where he rings the buzzer and posts his comments.
All that aside, his last post was an improvement. He's doing a better job this time around going back and trying to figure out what was actually said by others (and, in that same process, perhaps what wasn't said - which is something that he might be afraid of revealing) from pages of posts ago. Perhaps a real dialog might now emerge – which is exactly what he said he sometimes enjoys about coming here on one of his very first comments on this very thread.
Can I just say, this is my favorite Jewcy thread ever. Mostly thanks to the weirdo (I assume it's one weirdo) who can't settle for just one idiotic pseud, and introduced some very, very, very dry, very, very insider humor re: the Sabbatean movement. Brother, just because you've got an obsession doesn't mean non-sequitur references are — what's the word? — funny. Besides, can't you come up with a name-drop that's a little more current and a little more scurrilous for us anti-Semitic self-loathers? The Atlas Shrugs lunatic calls us "jewicidal." Can't you be that original? (Also, are you the same weirdo who writes about me in pidgin Persian b/c I insist on correctly translating excerpts of Persian, and find paranoid bedwetting over the saber-rattling of non-leaders of Iran a decidedly counterproductive waste of time. If so, you're aware of which factions in Iranian politics are bolstered by that sort of thing, yes? If not, my apologies.)
Cori, can I very strongly suggest that you reconsider sentences like this:
The day that Hamas starts incarcerating people that attempt
terrorist attacks and putting them on trial rather than celebrating
their heroism will be the day that I feel compelled to correct these
wrongs within the IDF's system of dealing with soldiers such as the one
in question.Â
Israel aspires to be, simultaneously, just one modern states among many, and also a beacon among nations. "Marginally better than Hamas" is not a compliment, and if it's all Israel can achieve, it would vitiate the Zionist cause. Civilized states are civilized, in part, because they don't behave bestially — even if, arguably, their enemies do. It's a statistical certainty, not some exception to the rule, that individual soldiers in armed conflicts will commit monstrous acts from time to time. The difference between individual atrocities and atrocities that redound to the general discredit of a whole armed forces and of the nation they serve is a) the extent to which the armed forces and state in question either implicitly or explicitly encourage such conduct, and b) granting the state the benefit of the doubt w/r/t (a), the extent to which they swiftly investigate and, in guilty cases, severely (but humanely) punish it. You'll be of far more utility to the IDF and Israel if, in your official capacity, you be sure to render IDF archives as honestly as possible and as critically as it deserves to be rendered, and ignore potential distortions (which will occur no matter what and will be made more plausible by any minimally justified perception that the official record-keepers are trying to white-wash the record).Â
Lastly, Ismail, I'm largely with you on the merits (though we may disagree on a two-state vs. one-state solution), but I don't think you're helping your case with the "sorority girl" comments. If your criticisms of Cori's work are well-taken, they're well-taken; if not, then not. Either way, tackling the (wo)man rather than the ball doesn't add anything (and come on now; how would you react to infantilizing comments about Palestinian women?). (And yes, I'm cognizant of my own clashes with one J. Weaver, but I'd like to think whatever swipes I took at him personally were at him personally and not at his group identities generally.)Â
Gosh, this thread really has taken off, hasn't it? Cori's struck a nerve, and good for her. Now, to catch up:
To the microcephalic pisher who has such contempt for the facilitation of conversation that he refuses even to settle on a name (a dhimmi no longer, perhaps, but a dummy eternally):Â
"Although recognizing the problems (with Cori, you call these conflicts of interest) inherent in a government-supported media outlet detracts from your purposes here" Â Â You're not really going to compare the IOF's flack office with the BBC, are you? Whatever it's faults may be, the BBC is not an arm of an occupying army with the avowed purpose of casting that army's exploits in the best possible light-i.e., a PR firm. And Al-Jazeera does exemplary journalism not just in comparison to the so-called press in some tinhorn sheikdom or petro-monarchy, but in absolute terms. Have you seen it? You may wish to ask why a major news organization reporting with a local perspective from an enormously important part of the world is having such trouble finding a US outlet (hint: it's not because Al Jazeera's calling for jihad against the West or similar fantasies such worthies as Steve ("I'm a terrorism expert! No, really, I am!!")Emerson traffic in.)Â Â
To "Hamad bin…":
You really must read things a little more closely before you put finger to keyboard, my lad.Â
"You were, after all, the one who attempted to propagate the idea here that no trial would ever take place."
Not even a tiny bit true. I know trials have taken place and have no doubt they shall continue to flourish in the Only Democracy in the Middle East. I even referenced one or two. My point was that, even with incontrovertible evidence against IOF malefactors, no one seems to get punished much, if at all, as a result of these trials. As I noted above, the brave soul who emptied his clip into the body of a wounded 12 year old girl got about 25K in back pay after his terrible ordeal. Those terrible Arabs!- forcing the agonized and holy Israelis to kill their children, as that festering tower of hypocrisy Golda Meir famously said.
As for your suggestion that I should "…(c)riticize the IDF at large while learning to separate those larger criticisms from the particulars of each specific case.", I ask you seriously what you could possibly mean by this? I'm perfectly aware that among the IOF are decent men and women (the finest of these are the refuseniks, of course), some of whom sincerely believe they are defending their country by occupying that of another. My perspective doesn't require demonizing all IOF soldiers as heartless beasts. This should go without saying. However, insofar as the IOF is carrying out the illegal and beastly program of the Israeli government, I criticize them. Period. As I do the US forces in Iraq, despite some of them thinking they are genuinely aiding the Iraqis.
There, and not a single insult. Well, maybe one, but certainly not your predicted string.
Anon 10:03-
Glad you agree that the silly moniker thing has gotten out of hand. If you want to stay at the party, though, may I suggest that you adopt a screen name so we'll all know who's talking and to whom we should address our witty and decisive ripostes?
By the way, I loved "…single-assedly…". Always thought the hand got too much credit.Â
shabtai zvi-
I suspect that you're getting more chuckles from your comments than any of us, but I could be wrong. Anyone want to chime in? Many guffaws from Haim Ramon references out there? Am I wrong, or are these about as topical as Bill and Monica jokes?
 Cori-
Very happy that you declare yourself firmly against the shooting of bound and blindfolded prisoners at point-blank range. My remarks don't hinge on your defending the coward, which I didn't claim you did. I suggested that your official writings will be unlikely to examine the rot in the IOF that underlies coverups of infamies like this shooting. Or perhaps you suppose that the one time the IOF acted savagely, it had the misfortune to be caught on tape?
But you really give away the game in your second paragraph. In two brief sentences, you a) change the subject to Hamas, which was in no way connected to this incident, and b) inform us that you will take your cues re "correcting" behavior you acknowledge is wrong from…Hamas! When they behave, we will. From which it follows, of course, that the IOF may therefore feel free to treat the Palestinians however they want-which is my point to begin with. Thanks for affirming that the IOF may expect no criticism from Ms. C as long as Hamas is around.Â
And of course you'll leave my other points be, not because of their being "riddled with insults", but because they expose the shaky foundations of your argument. Let's review, shall we? You gratuitously insulted the BBC. Why? Because they didn't explicitly mention the shooter's upcoming military trial (but, as I pointed out, their quote from Barak suggested to anyone with the brain power of a mushroom that just such a trial was in the coward's future). Then I pointed out that no one-not Ha'aretz, not the J Post, not even the IOF website-explicitly mentioned a military trial. So you had no rational basis for singling out the BBC in this instance….except that simply don't like the BBC! Hence, the "sorority-girl hissy fit" remark, which I still find entirely apt and illuminating. Â Â
And you still remain entirely unresponsive to my very objective and relevant observation that you seem to have a habit of making strong claims, promising sourcing, and never delivering. I think that, like a trial lawyer who says things objections to which she knows will be upheld but doesn't care because they can't be unsaid, you make assertions whose content will remain in your readers' minds long after they forget you've never substantiated them. But that's what PR people count on, no? Get the message across, don't worry about supporting it?Â
Thors-
Way too recondite for this discussion, man.
Anon 11:49-
I don't mean to speak for the Jewcers in charge, but my understanding is: No boilerplate. I believe this is the wish of the Almighty Craig, before whom we humbly bow. Use links instead of big cut 'n pastes. Or am I wrong?
Re the substance of your petition, I will neither endorse nor denounce until I read a little more about it (although I admit that the presence of the preposterous Steve Emerson and FrontPage's favorite lapdog Brigitte Gabriel has my bullshit detector aglow).
To the increasingly ridiculous "Hamad…":Â
"It almost reminds you of the way a certain cretin visiting this very website will hurl tawdry slights at others, often while admitting that he lacks the intelligence to actually understand what it is that they are saying."Â
I could be wrong, but although I don't have a cretinous atom in my body, I suspect Hamad's coyly referring to me. Stop the eyelash-batting, you little trollop, and say what you mean!
Once again, I insist that my interlocutors include both precision and accuracy in their remarks. I never admitted to lacking the intelligence to understand what my gnatlike adversaries are buzzing about. I did say that I lack the training to decipher the particulars of molecular genetics, and so wisely stayed out of the battle between Thors and our identity-disordered friend on these matters. As those with more than a teaspoon of grey matter will recognize, lacking training and lacking intelligence are very different things. Perhaps one of you might be charitable enough to explain this to our friend Hamad. I suggest short words and lots of pictures. Many brief training periods will work better than fewer long ones, owing to Hamad's probable attention span. Enthusiastic cries of "Good for you!" and "Who's a good boy?" are highly recommended, as are small bits of cheese to reward success. Â Â
Â
Thank you most graciously, Anonymous 11:49, for the information you provide. I suppose we should not be surprised that Saudi monarchs and other terrorists are going forum shopping for courts that are sympathetic to their need for a shroud of secrecy within which to legally cloak their agenda. It almost reminds you of the way a certain cretin visiting this very website will hurl tawdry slights at others, often while admitting that he lacks the intelligence to actually understand what it is that they are saying. Sometimes true responsiveness requires more courage than others are able to muster.
I refer to the contribution of Sabbatianism to the development of Zionism in Creating the Ethnicity and National Consciousness of Judonia under the subheading Concretization of the Spiritual.
First of all, from the moment that I joined the discussion about this incident, I've called it nothing but it a disgrace. I didn't attempt to defend the soldier, nor the IDF, especially due to the fact that BTselem had to be the first to initiate any sort of proceedings regarding the incident. Don't put words in my mouth.
Secondly, perhaps you're right– perhaps the IDF should incarcerate this soldier until his military trial. The day that Hamas starts incarcerating people that attempt terrorist attacks and putting them on trial rather than celebrating their heroism will be the day that I feel compelled to correct these wrongs within the IDF's system of dealing with soldiers such as the one in question.
As for your other points, ridden with personal insults, I'll leave those be. If you could stop pretending that you know the first thing about me as a person and simply respond to what you so easily refute, maybe we could have an actual conversation. The sorority crap doesn't entertain anyone but you.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
You guys have been ineffectively promoting yourself, and you have missed our actions in occupied al Quds. The advocates of divinding al Quds have been supported by the recent "terror bulldozers". we pay them a small sum and they do our work. This has given support to my agent Haim Ramon who uses the events to press our agenda. Cori, you may want to steer clear of Mr Ramon-he has a great fondness for your female soldiers
The owner of the three preceding remarks is best described as a clown worthy of a role in a side show, for s/he is making a spectacle of itself by using silly screen-monikers… Do you suffer from an moniker identity disorder or something?
FYI, by acting childishly, you simply diminish your own message; don't go running to mama complaining about Ismail; you are doing an admirable job yourself. In case you don't know it by now, you are single-assedly defecating on your own cause.
Sorry. I should have said "why" instead of "while" in the last sentence. My editor is on vacation in Rome. But the context should be clear to anyone reading it. And I hear that the only editor of sufficient talent available on Jewcy's comment boards commands a sum much more handsome than I am able to provide, despite my billions of dollars in various assets and close  connections to Mr. Cheney.Â
"But isn't the real issue here that the guy is free at all? No one disputes that he shot a bound, blindfolded man at point blank range. If that doesn't warrant incarceration until trial, what would?"
I don't know, Ismail. But perhaps you might be able to tell us. You were, after all, the one who attempted to propagate the idea here that no trial would ever take place.
Someday you'll be a very good critic of the IDF. But first you might like to attempt an awareness of where your own advocacy is leading you down a blind path. Criticize the IDF at large while learning to separate those larger criticisms from the particulars of each specific case. Lumping them all together doesn't make your advocacy any more effective. It makes it less effective. Â
You know what I'm saying, as innocuous and helpful as it is, is true. Which is probably while you'll unleash a string of insults for having to undergo the injustice of reading it. Â Â
BBC criticizes the British government as well. Although recognizing the problems (with Cori, you call these conflicts of interest) inherent in a government-supported media outlet detracts from your purposes here, you do not own the discussion. I'm sure al Jazeera is a huge advance for journalism in the Arab world. And I'm sure it deserves credit for gently loosening the authoritarian stranglehold of Arab governments over public opinion, among other things – assuming it's actually managing to accomplish journalism's most respected purpose. But you're using a very narrow set of criteria to define "exemplary", to put it mildly. What's exemplary in Qatar and the rest of the Gulf states is not necessarily exemplary to the rest of the world. But if that's what it takes for you to call progress from a nineteenth-century standpoint what it is now, then so be it.Â
This, from the BBC report that I guess you were too busy writing puff pieces about brutal occupiers to have read in its entirety:
"Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak condemned the incident saying it was "grave and wrong" and that the military would exact the full extent of the law."
Allowing for the clumsy wording, I think the average reader would assume that there'll be a trial in the future. Of course, military trials in Israel have the regrettable habit of exacting little or no justice for the aggrieved parties. Perhaps this guy will even get a bonus, like the case of Capt R. which I cited above.
Come to think of it, I haven't seen an explicit report anywhere suggesting that the brave shooter of handcuffed prisoners is on his way to a military trial. Not in Ha'aretz. Not in the Jerusalem Post. Hey, not even on your propaganda unit's webpage. So why scold the BBC? If I'm wrong, please correct me. If I'm right, please admit that your swipe at the BBC was nothing more than a sorority-girl hissy fit.Â
But isn't the real issue here that the guy is free at all? No one disputes that he shot a bound, blindfolded man at point blank range. If that doesn't warrant incarceration until trial, what would? Instead, he goes back on active duty? Come on, be serious.
And did you read in the Jerusalem Post that the entire sorry event was not even reported to the Military Police until B'Tselem forced the issue by releasing the videotape to the MPs themselves? I hope to see this evidence of the IOF's cowardice and venality soon in one of your pieces. How shall you spin it, I wonder?Â
By the way, how's the research coming? Any progress on sourcing that BBC headline? Or the Debbie Almontaser issue? Oh, yeah, I forgot…you're not in the business of honest reporting. Just get those unsupported claims out there and the damage is done. No one reads retractions, anyway. Â
Actually, you should have followed your initial instincts and declined responding to me. Every time you open your mouth, you commit another glaring blunder. I hope this IOF gig is an unpaid internship. If they're actually paying you for such a stumblebum performance, they deserve a refund.Â
Â
My blog hasn't been deleted, it has been moved to be a part of my website.Â
The soldier that committed the crime in the aforementioned video went back to his unit……to wait for his military trial. I'm sure that the unbiased and lovely BBC remembered to report that fact.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
By the way, like Jaime above, I too noticed that Cori's blog has been taken from us. Oh, the loss!
Am I being too suspicious in noting the relative simultaneity of Cori's blog evaporating from the Internet and my citing it here a week or two ago? Were her bloggy ruminations deemed a security risk by her masters? Or did she simply wish to keep her regressive musings about "Judea and Samaria" secret from the more enlightened among us?
Tell us, Cori! Why have your contemplations been taken from us so abruptly? Was it you or your overlords who made this decision?
Free Cori now!Â
Mike-
I believe that you are a well-intentioned and sincere person, but your assurances that Israeli soldiers are disciplined for crimes against Palestinians don't help me rest at night.
For one thing, by my standards they are all guilty of crimes against Palestinians. Please understand that I am not denying that there are decent people in the IOF, kind to their families and pets, patriotic, perhaps even genuinely desirous of a fair settlement between Palestinians and Arabs. No demonization intended or required. It's just that, insofar as these soldiers are carrying out the mechanics of a brutal and illegal policy, they are criminals.
But I don't expect that you share my standards re this, so let's restrict ourselves to the present, ignoring the well-documented savagery of Israeli forces during the Nakba, and to those soldiers whose actions we can agree are reprehensible. You say you are unfamiliar with the case under discussion. While the main topic seems to be the recent shooting of a bound prisoner by an Israeli soldier, I also mentioned several other instances of IOF brutality in my last reply to you. I'm not sure which you're unfamiliar with (although I can't imagine it could be the former, which has been reported widely). If a soldier can shoot a sitting, bound, blindfolded prisoner at point-blank range in full sight of his commanding officer and be returned to his unit within days, with no one disputing the facts of the case, what would a soldier have to do to get disciplined?
It seems to me that whenever the IOF is responsible for killing innocent civilians it either makes the "collateral damage" claim (note, though, that if a Palestinian blows up a bus full of civilians in order to kill a soldier on board, he's a terrorist; if Israel bombs a building full of civilians to kill a fighter inside, well, that's life….) or it makes a great show of declaring how it doesn't tolerate such behavior from its troops.
How's this for intolerance of butchery? Captain R, who pumped a clip of bullets into the body and head of the wounded 12 year old girl Iman Al Hamas, despite the tape-recorded comments of his troops telling him that she was moving away from the troops and was already wounded, was ultimately declared not guilty and awarded NIS 80,000 for his troubles. Mohammed Aaraj, a six-year-old boy, was sitting in front of his home eating a sandwich when he was killed by an IOF soldier. No charges filed. Kristen Saada was sitting in her parents' car on the way home from visiting her auntie when the IOF sprayed the vehicle with bullets. Twelve tears old. Dead. No charges filed.
Sadly, the list goes on. And on.Â
No less a worthy than Avraham Ben-Dor, former head of Israel's internal security service Shin Bet, told Yediot Aharonot in 2003 with regard to Israel's military behavior in the OPT, "…we are behaving disgracefully. Yes, there is no other word for it. Disgracefuly."
I won't bother to cite B'Tselem's numberless citations of unpunished IOF brutality against civilians, since we all know that they're just a bunch of self-hating Jews who hate Israel, but you can easily find their studies with minimum effort.
So, Mike, while you seem serious and genuine, you must understand that your simple declarations of good faith on the part of your comrades sort of pale in comparison to the specific, well-reported instances of unpunished savagery that I cite here.Â
I am not aware of the specifics of the case we are discussing but I can assure you, from personal experience,that the IDF does NOT condone behavior like this and that the guilty are brought to justice.
Any army is a large and bureaucratic operation and is therefore rife with inefficiency, stupidity, and all the rest – our army is no different and this reflects on every action it takes, including the persecution of soldiers guilty of crossing the very clear lines regarding behavior with Palestinian civilians.
This is not intentional. I think that the army is well aware that, even if only in the interest of the PR war, it is important that justice be served and seen. Personally I believe that the reasons motivating the military justice system transcend my own cynical suggestion. Most of the officers who remain in the army long enough to be responsible for such matters are highly motivated individuals with a developed sense of duty, a clear understanding of their moral obligations, a fierce pride in the army they belong to, and a severe lack of patience for anyone who stains the army's reputation.
Mike Darnell
Digital Art from JerusalemÂ
Dear Ismail and Thor
I am glad you recognize that I am the Messiah. Please meet me at the Council of Foreign Relations- my US headquarters at a mutually acceptable time, so we can wage a more meaningful war against Judaism
Your witlessness is exceeded only by your ignorance, you poor thing.Â
First, are you saying that the BBC is wrong and that the soldier in question was not in fact sent back to his unit? Or are you just issuing the requisite Zionist bleats whenever the letters "BBC" are uttered by anyone, in any context?
While Al Jazeera has dropped the ball with regard to several stories from Qatar, whence most of its funding comes, it has a very good record of afflicting the comfortable in the Arab world; witness the many times it's been censored by this Sheik or that tinhorn dynasty. Quite an exemplary organization, by and large.
At this point, you are just being a noisome pest and contributing nothing.
And do stop groveling. No need for the "great and mighty" stuff, true though it may be.Â
Oh Great Ismail! Surely a government-owned operation such as the Beeb cannot be your only credible source for information on this vexing matter! Besides, I asked for an "Arab" media source. Despite understandable attempts by al Jazeera to emulate the sort of media-government relationship as that which the Beeb exemplifies, perhaps it might be embarassing for individuals in your region to rely on BBC alone for Mid-East coverage. Oh Great and Mighty Ismail!Â
Of course. My mistake. How could I have expected even such a thorough and tireless seeker of truth as yourself to be familiar with the minor and recondite Arab website which was the source of my claim.
It is known as the "BBC" and can be found at http://news.bbc.uk Once there, search for "Israeli shooter sent back to unit". Even better, here's the exact URL, lest your legendary search prowess become even more overtaxed than it already is: Â
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7519987.stm
How could I have imagined that anyone besides one or two of us obsessional jihadis would be familiar with this obscure source? My deepest apologies.Â
PS to Cori- Â See, my dear? That's how it's done. You make a claim, you source the claim. Unless you're just an agent of an occupation force, paid to whiten a sepulchre. In that case, you needn't bother yourself with accuracy at all.
But Oh Prophet Ismail, your response – as magnificent as it was – does not provide the names of the sites that will provide me with the information I seek.Â
Be proud, Young Arab, of your modern literature! Do not leave me to  grope about in the dark for the proper sources on this matter. For I do not wish to abandon the ways of my Western jahaliya entirely, a la John Walker Lindh and Rachel Corrie. I merely seek a reputable and unbiased (and preferably Arab) media source with which to check the facts referred to here, as inferior as they are to your revelatory assertions of them. Â
Excellent declaration that you're less informed than you'd be if you would only widen your reading horizons.
I agree, and commend you for your honest confession.Â
Oh, and Ismail, habibi, if the mundanities of the case following the soldier's questioning were more widely reported, perhaps I might be aware of them. B'Tselem didn't have anything posted describing events after that point, and neither could I find anything more on it from Western media outlets, including the first 10 returns of a GOOGLE search. (All ten returns matched, but described events only as of July 23).
Of course, if I read the sort of jihadi, etc. websites that you do then perhaps I could be privy to those details. But alas, I don't. So I will probably have to remain ignorant of details made available by the advanced level of concern for such human rights matters in the Arab world as this one. They are otherwise currently not accessible to us dhimmis.
Surely you understand – being the kind and magnificent
assholeperson that you are. We humbly beseech Prophet Ismail's input. Assuming we are even worthy of his receiving his revelations.Citations are merely optional as the journalistic standards of al Jazeera, etc., are strange and unfamiliar to us arrogant Orientalists. Â
There, there Ismail. Do you feel better now?
Well, given the anger you surely feel toward Arafat for choosing not to pursue an end to the occupation when he could have done so, probably not.
I see in "graf" #4 you come perilously close to assigning collective responsibility to… well, to someone or to some group of people in any event. Do enlighten us on how "accept(ing) responsibility for one's crimes" works from your foul-mouthed perspective, in the sense that you intended it. You can even explain your case with as many expletives being ejaculated from your mouth as it's possible for you to sprinkle on the page, too – if that helps your thought process.
If the idiot above (P-A, is that you?) is suggesting that the Israeli shooter of a bound prisoner is out on bail, he might want to apply for a job in Cori's unit, where ignorance of actual facts appears to be a big plus on one's resume.
The soldier in question was returned to his unit because he was deemed to be no danger to anyone (no Palestinians were consulted re this, of course). Bail was not an issue because his momentary detention was not a civil one; he was held for a microsecond by the military.
Of course, our anonymous friend admits in his 2nd graf that he is speaking out of his asshole and shouldn't be construed to be restricting himself to such mundanities as things that are actually the case. He then drools on about individual rights and collective guilt in a fashion which addresses my original comments in not the tiniest way. And by the way, there's nothing "alleged" about the actions of the soldier; all parties agree he behaved as a total scumbag.Â
To cap his nonsense off, our deluded buddy utters ZioBullshit Item #12: yes, the occupation is regrettable, but it's all the fault of the Palestinians. This cowardly refusal to accept responsibility for one's crimes earns extra bullshit points given today's news re Israel's decision to approve construction on the Maskiot settlement, a resolution doubtlessly arrived to contain Palestinian terrorism. Right?
Oh, by the way, here's something for Cori to chew on: not only did Israel release the offending soldier back to his unit, it arrested the father of the 14 year old girl who videotaped and publicized the ugly incident a day or two later, on the grounds that his participation in a protest against the Annexation Wall threatened the heavily armed soldiers. Riiight.
Â
Cori, you're such a shill… for due process. Don't you know that the accused have no rights? Not in Israel at least. What they must all do is bow down to Ismail and express collective guilt. Such is the essence of human rights. Truly moral societies do not possess such human rights abominations as, you know, bail.
Of course, I do not know that any of the above possibilities which I sarcastically mention are the case either. But in entertaining them, I'd like to think that an emphasis on individual rights can be expressed as a sane alternative to Ismail's obsession with an uninformed and vengeful collective rights perspective.
None of the above absolves the soldier(s) in question of any responsibility he might bear for commiting certain alleged act(s). It does, however, expose Ismail's lack of understanding or concern for how rule of law works in actual practice. Israel applies it, as most democracies do, in a sometimes corrupt way, and in the territories it occupies, in an often corrupt way. Mike is right that its occupation is corrupting; I'm certain most Israelis acknowledge that. It also describes the reality of a burden they will be quite comfortable to relieve themselves of once certain other people abandon their own fantasies, and exchange them for an acceptance of their own reality from which to work. But that's a choice that they currently choose not to acknowledge.
Is Thor a Sabbatean-a follower of the false messiah Shabtai Zvi? This might explain his obsession with Joos.
I am making a point that is obvious to anyone that studies military or other archives.
The texts often contain ungrammatical and incorrect usages as well as forms that only made sense when the entries were made.
Historians and translators need more than mere fluency to deal with such issues.
In any case, Chascione can just tell us whether the word in the text to be translated was ????? or ??????.
Here is an online article: http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//892529. It uses ?????.
Here is an online response: http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//892529&tb=/i/7108914. It uses ??????.
No one should be surprised at the poor written Hebrew of most Zionist interlopers. I have seen estimates that only about 1/3 can function in Modern Israeli Hebrew at better than High School level. In my experience, the Israeli writer with the best command of Hebrew is Anton Shammas, who is Palestinian.
Dear MikeDarnell, just give up and admit that you are clueless. I am not particularly impressed with your baby ulpan Hebrew. I have participated in graduate (Hebrew-language) seminars at Hebrew University.
Indeed, I am not Ismail, and my main concern with Israel is the role it plays as the keystone of the Zionist Imperial system. I wish Palestinians well, but I worry most about the threat that Zionist Jewish political economic oligarchs and Zionist intelligentsia represent to the USA.
Mike-
I abhor attacks on civilians by anyone on both ethical and political grounds. This includes the indiscriminate tractor rampages in Jerusalem.
In this context, I remind you that Palestinians can't hold a candle to Israelis when it comes to transforming earth-moving equipment into instruments of destruction. The Caterpillar D9s which so bewitch the IOF have been responsible for limitless destruction; Rafah, Khan Yunis, Jenin-thousands of homes destroyed. Moshe Nissim, the celebrated "Kurdi Bear" of Jenin, supplied us all with the disgusting narrative of his drunken, joyful mission levelling that camp.
Six people in Nablus-including a grandfather and his two granddaughters-crushed to death in Nablus by an Israeli bulldozer. A wheelchair-bound old man in Jenin, buried under the rubble. Rachel Corrie, crushed under an Israeli D9.
The hideous actions of two deranged and apparently apolitical Palestinians have received immense coverage here in the US, with the expectable bromides about Palestinians needing to learn to behave themselves. The deliberate actions of an occupying force, on the other hand, are cast as regrettable collateral damage.
At least Mike offers genuine regret and honest reportage. Cori, true to her calling as a PR agent (i.e., professional liar), provides us with more bullshit-easily discredited bullshit at that, as though she has no regard for her readers' intelligence at all;
"…the IDF soldier in that video did a horrible thing, and he's on his way to jail, if not there already…"
In actual fact, that soldier was released and is now back with his unit. I know, I know, Cori made an honest mistake. She's used to shilling for The Most Moral Army on Earth, where such things just never happen.
Months and months ago, when the disgusting but sadly fruitful efforts of Daniel Pipes et al to shut down the Kahlil Gibran school was a hot Jewcy topic, Cori promised some documentation to buttress a claim of hers "…as soon as I can find the time…". Guess her IOF overlords are really cracking the whip, since she apparently hasn't had a moment to do so since then. More recently, she was going to source her claim of the BBC's anti-Israel headline re the bulldozer attack. Still too busy, I guess. Now, she tells us that the shooter of an bound and blindfolded prisoner is on the way to jail, which turns out not to be true.
Perhaps these are honest mistakes or products of her burdensome schedule crafting fantasies for the Ministry of Lies. Or maybe they're the propagandist's oldest ploy-make a claim, any claim; that's what people will remember, not the failure to follow up or support.Â
Cue jewlicious to defend Cori from my baseless personal attacks.Â
Â
Â
Mike– the IDF soldier in that video did a horrible thing, and he's on his way to jail, if not there already, thankfully. I'm also not proud of the asshole yeshiva boys that attacked to random Palestinians in Jerusalem's Old City in response to the recent bulldozer attack– or the insane settlers that held a gun and a knife to two separate IDF soldiers. Â
Still, though, this doesn't invalidate the existence of the State of Israel, nor does it really relate to concept of being a chosen people (which makes me cringe a bit). It means that we have extremists that need to be silenced. Luckily, in Israel, extremists that resort to violence go to jail.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
Hi there Ismail,
When you're right, you're right. I've apparently confused the two of you.
Frankly I've given up on Thor. I can't understand why he insists on making a losing argument over a fact that is so obviously easy to prove (see the whole spelling thing).
I also find it hard to respect the opinions of people who spew out the usual extremist rants and raves without any regard to fact or reason. It's not as if both sides don't have enough legitimate, and factually accurate, causes for outrage…Â
One last thought – I'd like to express my deepest shame and remorse at the horrible near point blank shooting of a cuffed and blindfolded Palestinian protester with a rubber bullet by an Israeli soldier. There can be no excuse for such behavior, it validates my belief that the occupation is morally corrupting Israeli society and, if for no other reason, should be ended before the Chosen people are no longer that chosen…
To all my extremist brethren – before you go out and start attacking me for my frank apology for what is an inexcusable act, please be aware that my first response will be to ask you how many days you served in active combat duty in the refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza. As an infantry captain (reserves) I think it's safe to say that my opinions and views are based on firsthand experiences. Are yours?
Ismail, I wonder whether you have the decency to give a sane response to the 2nd tractor attack we experienced in Jerusalem this week?
Mike Darnell
Digital Art from JerusalemÂ
I'm sure that even the most casual textual analysis will demonstrate to the non-comatose reader that Thors Provoni and I are distinct individuals whose ideological affinities are tangential at best. I have posted at no "pro-Israel websites" save this one (oh, wait-these Jewcy guys are all anti-Semites. I forgot) and have never gotten my ass kicked anywhere.
But damn you, palestiniansareamyth, for leaking the carefully-guarded origins of the Palestinian people as a bureau of the KGB. We really wanted to keep that one on the down low. Â Â
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A PALESTINIAN COUNTRY, PEOPLE, CULTURE OR LANGUAGE. Palestine was just another name for Israel and the Jewish natives who lived there until the Arab occupiers came and illegally invaded the Jewish homeland. Even the Plo co-founder admitted that a "Palestinian people" have never existed.
Anyone who believes that the Arab Fakestinians have an actual claim to the Jewish homeland are just mindless idiots who accept Arab Islamofacist propaganda that began with the help of the anti-semitic KGB.Â
Ismail and Thors are probably the same person. They're "both" out of touch with reality and are defintately mentally ill. Ismail uh Thors have had "their" ass verbally kicked at pro-Israel websites. It's nice to know that they've found a home here at a so-called Jewish website that is actually an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people.
I write the truth and if you don't like it that's your problem. You just can't handle the truth.
Oh, and Mike Darnell-
In your post of 7/20, you appear to be talking about Thors Provoni when you say,
"…at least he's no longer calling it the IOF, so I
think we've made progress…"
It is in fact I who insists upon calling Israel's armed agents of occupation and annexation by the correct acronym, so you'll need to take back your sigh of relief.
Like Zionists, opponents of Zionism come in varying shades of ideological coloration. It's useful to cultivate the knack of telling us apart; when it comes to argument, one size doesn't fit all.
?????? ??? ????? ???? ????.
????? ?????? ?????? ??? ???? ????,
?? ?? ??????? ?? ???? ?? ?????? ?? ????.
well i guess that's enough to prove my point.
A simple acknowledgment of your error will do.
If you are half decent you may want to add an apology.
Good night. It's half past midnight in Jerusalem…
Mike Darnell
Digital Art from JerusalemÂ
Hello all-just back from collecting the Princess from camp and, hard as this may be to believe, getting re-acquainted with her took priority over correcting the misapprehensions of World Zionism.Now that she's back to being a snarling adolescent and I to being an impossibly unfair and capricious dictator, I feel free to return to my pedagogic efforts here at Jewcy.
Cori-
Glad that you agree that the Palestinians are not a product of the world's imagination, as some of your more feral countrymen would have us believe. As for "Israeli Arab", you suggest that this construction enjoys significant support from the Palestinian citizens of Israel. I don't think so. I have no firm numbers (nor do you, of course) but given the theoretical load which "Israeli Arab" carries, I'll bet that the hugely vast majority of Israeli Palestinians reject it.
I'd be interested to know exactly how much of "Judea and Samaria" you think the Palestinians are entitled to; without such a declaration, your good wishes are pretty meaningless. Do you endorse Israel's leaving 99% of the West Bank? 12%? You can see that an imprecise endorsement doesn't go very far.
And why do you like to call Palestinian territory "Judea and Samaria"? Doesn't this imply a certain idea of ownership? OK with you if I call Israel "Palestine"?Â
You believe that an Israeli withdrawal must await the establishment of a Palestinian state. You also do not foresee this happening in the foreseeable future; you even characterize this scenario as "theoretical". Very pessimistic, and basically rendering your endorsement of a Palestinian state meaningless. This is not surprising, since it has always been Israeli policy to give lip service to the idea of two states while working at a breakneck pace to make such a solution impossible.
I'm disheartened to see that you think a simple declaration of your own impartiality is enough to address the obvious objection to a committed ideologue being trusted with translation of sensitive documents. Since you seem immune to understanding what I thought was an uncontroversial and obvious observation despite my having raised it several times, I will drop the subject and trust that those readers whose conceptual eyesight is less occluded by zealotry have already gotten the point.
And you describe actually eliminating passages that you deem mistaken. Am I the only one troubled by an untrained moppet (or anyone, for that matter) taking it upon herself to actually redact an historical record? Isn't it customary to retain such documents in their entirety and deal with controversial translations, etc, with footnotes?
Your comparison of US and Israeli criminality is interesting, but assessing which is "worse" may be more problematic than you think. After all, the US's crimes occurred at a time when respectable scientific and political opinion underwrote the crazy notion that some people were genetically endowed by the Creator to enjoy sovereignty over the lesser races. Israel, on the other hand, performs its crimes in the full sunlight of modern liberal democracy. In any event, these hierarchies of infamy usually turn out to be pointless. We view the nazi holocaust with horror not because it was the worst crime in human history, unique among humanity's villainies (however one could ever establish such a thing), but because innocent people were slaughtered by beasts. If it were the second worse crime in history (whatever that could mean), would we feel better about it?Â
"As we saw in Gaza, if we haphazardly "give back land", Israeli civilians and Palestinians suffer."
Closing off an entire region, withholding food, water and medicine, shutting down orphanages, denying air, water or land access-this is what you call "haphazardly 'giving back land' "? By the way, why the quotes around the phrase "giving back land"? Did you mean to imply that Israel didn't give it "back" because it didn't belong to Palestine in the first place?Or (dare I think it !) that you were signalling your understanding that, by maintaining its absolute control over Gaza, Israel was in no way "giving it back"? Â
I-A-
"But it's too littered with insults for me to take seriously."  Yeah, I see. Six paragraphs worth of not taking it seriously in that post alone.Â
"Claim that you would have been in favor of it regardless of whether or not the demographics suits the purposes of maintaining Arab hegemony over entirety of the region." Â Is this a challenge? If I understand you correctly, you're asking me to affirm my support for one secular state regardless of whether Arabs or Jews would enjoy hegemony there. Of course, in my proposal no ethnic group would enjoy such control-only the civic group constituting the citizens of Palestine/Israel.
"Nowhere in my conversation with Thors (who reminds us what can sometimes happen when mathematicians, like Dembski, pose as biologists) do I remember mentioning ethnicity."
Did I say it happened in your conversation with Thors? I was in fact referring to your comments at an earlier post regarding Judaism as being primarily an ethnicity, perhaps before you took on I-A as your nom de LCD ( and here we have a lovely instance of the idiocy of refusing to take a consistent screen name).Â
"You admit that the material was over your head."
Absolutely right. The particulars of molecular genetics are not included in my otherwise vast repertoire of expertise. I am happy to list areas in which I lack standing. Perhaps you might do the same-oh, wait, then you'd run afoul of Craig's "no interminable post" rule.Â
"In the case of the Palestinian governmental actors, one is more concerned with maintaining Arab identity, the other with Muslim identity."
It suits Zionists to talk about Arabs when they should say "Palestinians" (see the "Israeli Arab" discussion above). I assume you're referring to Fatah and Hamas, both of whom make demands on the part of Palestinians, not Arabs (in the case of the quisling Abbas, "demands" is too strong a word).Â
And please note that neither Fatah or Hamas is proposing a single secular state, which is the position I'm endorsing. A favorite Zionist ploy, though, that; to respond to an argument their interlocutor did not offer. Â
"Craig,… "most cohesive"? Ismail writes well, but…."
Boy, Craig's comment really stung you, eh, P-A? Whence your conviction that I lack political or historical sophistication? Does "pie-in-the-sky" refer to my support for one state? Shall I be pilloried for not providing a dissertation when a simple opinion was called for? Â
P-A decries my " …(unwillingness) to engage more than one perspective…"
I believe this is code for "having deep and informed opinions about a subject of great importance about which I will brook no namby-pamby bullshit about even-handedness". You may have noted that passionate conviction about political principle raises eyebrows only when Israel is the topic. I don't recall partisans of, e.g., affirmative action, being called on the carpet for not being more "even-handed". Â Â
Craig-
P-A providing "worthwhile responses" to my arguments? May a thousand camels befoul your laptop. Â
MikeDarnell writes:
I agree that the latest MIH dictionaries typically have an entry for ?????, but if he did a google search ??????, he would find lots of articles using ??????. There seems to be a tendency in MIH to convert masculine nouns ending in an ayin with a furtive patah to feminine nouns ending in he and in this case the feminine forms seems to have established itself as the original posting by Cori Chascione indicates.
Mike Darnell may be a native Israeli, but he apparently does not do much newspaper reading in Hebrew.
The IDF is a murderous genocidal criminal terrorist organization that routinely commits crimes against humanity and war crimes. It is hard to imagine that an army, which borrowed so many ideas and techniques from the Imperial German, the Czarist Russian and the Soviet armies could be otherwise.
1. I have always been amazed by the inability of certain intellectuals to admit a simple mistake. I again refer dear ThorsProvoni to a Hebrew dictionary to look up the word ??????. In fact I challenge
him to copy out the definition he finds there and post it in his
response, with full citation as to his source (I'm sorry but a google
search doesn't really cut it as an academic reference where I come
from).
2. As to the IDF being all the things our friend
has mentioned – Well at least he's no longer calling it the IOF, so I
think we've made progress…
3. Dear ThorsProvoni since it seems that you are very knowledgeable of Middle Eastern armies and regimes, here's a little pop quiz for you:
A> How many candidates were eligible for election in the last elections held in Syria?
B> What
army is responsible for massacring 7000 Palestinians over a period of 6
months in 1970? (I'll give you a hint – it's dedicated to defending a
kingdom created by Great Britain as a reward to the Hashemite Bedouins
for betraying their Turkish rulers)
C> What is the crime for which
52 men were arrested, beaten and tortured, in Egypt in 2002? (29 were
eventually acquitted – despite the fact that I'm pretty sure they
remained gay…) Â
D> Which of the following measures contemplated by the Political Committee of the Arab League in 1948, were in accordance with international law at the time:
"…all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, shall
be considered members of the Jewish minority state of Palestine. Their bank accounts are to be frozen and used to
finance resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine. Jews believed to be active Zionists are to be interned and their
assets confiscated…"Â
E> There were 900,000 Jews living in Arab
countries in 1948, what happened to them, their
homes, businesses, assets?
F>Are you still sure we "learned it
all from the Russians and Germans"?
Mike Darnell
Digital Art from JerusalemÂ
PSÂ
Dear ThorsProvoni,
Despite the attempts of demagogues throughout the centuries to prove
otherwise, the ability to fling about big words with authority is still
not enough to make you right. Maybe that's why the Hebrew word for truth has only 3 letters: ??? – look it up…
1. ThorsProvoni may want to consult a Hebrew dictionary, I doubt he'll find the word: "??????" . The word ????? should appear though…
People who live in glass think tanks may want to avoid throwing theoretical stones…
 2. I am a native Israeli, reserve officer, and a slight cynic, so read the following lines with care before you come out of your corner swinging …
I am concerned that the fact IDF has delegated the immense responsibility of correcting mistakes in it's translations to a single person, as qualified as she may be. This is exactly the type of idiotic decision making that has enabled the systematic and successful demonization of the most humane military force engaged in a military conflict today.
War and conflict are ugly – they have this knack for bringing to the surface the worst in men. I know. "Been there, done that".
BUT
I also know that there has never been a military fighting force that has been put under such severe moral scrutiny by the society it is dedicated to defend.
If Palestinians wish the world to respect their fighting forces and stop referring to them as terrorists perhaps they should stop automatically worshiping every foul assassin of Arab descent who happens to have killed a non-arab.
The most recent example is the sickening worship of the psycopath Samir Kuntar who's claim to fame as a "freedom fighter" is based on the fact that at the age of 17 he bashed in the skull of a Einat Haran – a 4 year old girl.
Mike Darnell
Digital Art from Jerusalem
Ahh, come on now Craig. You always have something useful to add – even if it isn't always to the debate.
And I am the same one who posted under my previous moniker, PA, which was bestowed upon me by Ismail. So thanks for that. With the reservations noted, I too appreciate the times when Ismail's contributions actually add to the debates. But mind you, I would never make fun of your sunglasses picture, and for two reasons: 1. Because they were cool in a way. 2. Even if they weren't, only a dolt goes through life without the courage to make an outrageous fashion statement every now and then.
Cheers,Â
Well-stated. I think what I meant was that Ismail seemed to be the only one wholly concerned with formulating and debating an argument point-by-point for a while. Everyone else seemed content with making confusing jibes or, in ThorsProvoni's case, ridiculously oblique references (.."Oblique" to the layman.. Who was, seemingly, his audience, given that no one seemed to be otherwise discussing his topics on the same level) to the point of uselessness. And also it should be noted that I applauded P-A (is that you?) when he arrived in the debate for finally providing worthwhile responses to Ismail's arguments.Â
But this is all beside the point anyway.. I said I couldn't follow the conversation so that anyone who is possibly being bothered by my inaction (in the face of commenters violating Jewcy's comments policy) understands it's not for lack of trying. I accept that I have otherwise nothing useful to add to the debate.
Craig,… "most cohesive"? Ismail writes well, but we must make a distinction between clear writing and well-informed writing. When you say that you literally can't understand what a lot of us were saying, did that have anything to do with your level of comfort with college-level (and graduate-level) biology – among, perhaps, some other things as well? I assume that if two (or more) participants are having a discussion at Jewcy that makes use of fields of study that go beyond Jewish culture, pop culture and current events, it will not count against them insofar as the quality of their contributions are valued.Â
Many discussions could proceed with Ismail (or at least it seems that he might claim to derive something useful from them) if he had a firmer grounding in history and political science. Those topics undoubtedly form some of the most contentious ones discussed here at Jewcy, and although his pie-in-the-sky, personal convictions about idealized scenarios are touching (except when it comes to how he interprets every single action undertaken by Israel, of course), I surely don't deserve his scorn for noting the importance of political realities that, although they can't be blamed on Israel, surely influence its actions. Context should count for something and clearly I can't and shouldn't be expected to bring a sense of depth to a conversation and a willingness to engage more than one perspective when my interlocutor offers neither. Or at least, I shouldn't be expected to do so when he only begrudgingly and exceedingly rarely (and usually with a lot of foul-mouthed arrogance) offers something remotely approximating either of those two virtues. Â Â
IAÂ
JCA makes some important points, particularly in his concluding paragraph. Personally, I believe Israel should aim at the goal of becoming a state of all its citizens. It should happen today, in whatever fashion it should happen to be capable of accomplishing it. The Supreme Court is doing what it can in this regard, as I would hope so are other agencies. But it is erroneous to claim that a culturally Jewish state is necessarily, or should be, predisposed to exclusivism. The former I have no problem endorsing, just as I have no trouble appreciating the distinct national cultures whose preservation is sought in virtually every other state. Preserving cultural diversity is pursued both by the EU and the UN, and there is nothing inherently unjust when states play a constructive role in that, regardless of whether those efforts include the majority culture as well.Â
Even such a famous, if nominally countervailing example as the United States, which is unusual in its foundation on the basis of something other than an ethnicity, has a predominantly English cultural heritage that other groups have ultimately assimilated (or will assimilate) into. The latter have also brought their own contributions, which have fortunately also been made a part of the American cultural landscape. But to deny that our cultural norms, starting with the nature of the rights embedded in the founding documents, were and remain a part of a distinctive Anglo-American tradition, would be ridiculous. One speaks of the Anglo-American enlightenment, the Protestant work ethic, and so on. These are important features of American life, and thankfully, they will not change.. much. Others I wouldn't mind doing away with – like the legacy of the Puritans, for instance. Â
In any case, to the extent that the Jewish basis for Western cultural norms remains a significant part of whatever current state(s), or future state(s), are situated in the Levant, I don't have a problem with who is in the majority, from the standpoint of ethnicity. California, for instance, currently has a minority white/European population, and a rich ethnic tapestry that has added to the diverse nature of the state in many ways. And I think that's fine. It's great. But despite this, it has retained the same recognizably, predominant Anglo-American legal and economic culture that it had since it was admitted into the union, and that is the point. And that's not a bad thing either. My assumption is that it's probably a good thing. Â Â
to the 3:54 comment…Â
Change:
"for "one-state" that's fine"
to:
"for a "one-state" solution? That's fine."
Â
Change:
"regardless of whether or not the demographics suits the purposes of maintaining Arab hegemony over entirety of the region"Â
to:
"regardless of whether or not the changing demographics suit the purposes of maintaining Arab hegemony over the entirely of the region."
Â
Change:
"It had nothing to do with ethnicity as a construct but whether Jews had origins in the Near East"
to:
"It had nothing to do with ethnicity as a construct, but rather, with whether Jews had origins in the Near East."Â
Just doing my part to prove my interest in establishing conversations that are based in good faith. Â
As far as PNAS goes, it's a pretty respectable organization. As far as the analysis of the paper, I'll be reading scientific objections. As far as Thors' attempt to portray Y-chromosomal analysis as some kind of Judeo-Zionist conspiracy, well anonymous had it right. He's a crackpot on that score. Read Sykes and his many other contemporaries. Go the National Geographic Society. Go to the various genome projects they've assembled. Understanding human migration patterns throughout history is what Y-chromosomal analyses are most powerful at accomplishing (now). It is edifying and incredibly interesting to the public at large. They have nothing to do with establishing some kind of crackpot supremacy theory of the sort that nutcases like Thors is obsessed with.
In the first paragraph above, I made reference to "Arab hegemony". I should have said "Arab-Muslim hegemony". In the case of the Palestinian governmental actors, one is more concerned with maintaining Arab identity, the other with Muslim identity. Either way, their interest in erecting a state that is antagonistic to the idea of a Jewish majority – let alone a Jewish identity – is clear. And despite the fact that they've avoided declaring statehood, they generally perform the majority of the functions of a state in every other sense. And there is no parallel to them that is strong enough (or that would be strong enough) to gather support for the as yet utterly hypothetical alternative to them that Ismail endorses.
Just some basic clarifications for those who prefer their discussions grounded in reality.
"So here is a picture of a monkey wearing a hat. "
Where did you get that awesome picture of Larry King?Â
Whatever you say, Ismail. I won't be responding to your endless ad hominems and speculation on what I said. If you don't want to read what I said, then don't respond to it. And if you don't understand it, or if it suits your purposes to claim that you didn't understand it, that's your problem. I'm not being evasive; some of what you ask for seems like an honest attempt at clarification. But it's too littered with insults for me to take seriously. You don't like being associated with the recent change in Palestinian tactics for "one-state" that's fine. Claim that you would have been in favor of it regardless of whether or not the demographics suits the purposes of maintaining Arab hegemony over entirety of the region. And the actions and pronouncements of Palestinian non-state governmental actors can be judged. In the absence of a state, that's all there is to go on. It's not illegitimate to do so. It's actually rather meaningful. It's also a discussion you tend to avoid. It's one that involves proclaimed would-be hegemons. Â
Nowhere in my conversation with Thors (who reminds us what can sometimes happen when mathematicians, like Dembski, pose as biologists) do I remember mentioning ethnicity. It's not the focus of that conversation. You admit that the material was over your head. I suggest you stay out of it. It had nothing to do with ethnicity as a construct but whether Jews had origins in the Near East, which Thors disputes. If you disagree with Thors on that score, then you agree with my contention and that ends your foray into that discussion. If you want to have a separate discussion about ethnicity with assertions that fly in the face of modern anthropology, and if you want to buttress those assertions with examples of Ph.D. educated global-warming denialists – which is what you offered last time, that's fine. But I'll have to have a science vs. anti-science debate with you some other time. There's too much here that you are imaginatively attacking me with to defend against another pseudoscientist. Give me some credit for going toe-to-toe against Thors.
But if you're trying to force an endorsement of ethnicity being either primarily a cultural construct versus primarily a biological construct, then I agree with where I think you'd be coming from on that. It is primarily a cultural construct.
And I did pretty well on my SAT, both the verbal and math portions. And then I acquired further education and specialization that allowed me to have conversations on topics that frustrate some people when they're prompted to play a role in them other than that of grammarian.
And anonymous is completely right. Anyone using the term "racial scientist" is a moron. Thors gives that right away.
That's it. Argue something in good faith and bring up something other than word choice and I may be back. But if not, then it seems you'll be content to just speculate on what I've said (and content to throw in a lot of ignorance on at least a few things for good measure), which is not something you need me for.
Intifadaholics Anonymous was nice enough to post an example of contemporary Jabotinskian Zionist racial science in PNAS while my immediately preceeding post links to a Haaretz article at http://tinyurl.com/39r54o that describes the role of Zionist racial science historically in the Yishuv.
Does the issue connect with proper translations of IDF reports?
If Zionist indoctrination can so pervert science, what should we expect from much more subjective translations made by a translator as steeped in the Zionist ideology as Cori Chascione.
And BTW, I contend that comparison of primary Zionist and German Nazi texts shows that Zionism and German Nazism are equivalent with the obvious ethnic substitutions. It is an easy comparison. George Mosse wrote of the similarity of German Nazi and Zionist ideas.
Would we trust translations of Wehrmacht or SS reports made by a true believing German Nazi especially one employed by Wehrmacht or SS public relations?
Probably not.
I doubt I need to remind anyone, but just so there's no question: Jewcy does not endorse any viewpoint by ThorsProvon, Ismail, P-A, I-A (??), Cori, or myself.
I'm trying to follow this thread closely to make sure nobody is violating the comment policy or any site rules or anything (..we have rules?). The best I can say is that ThorsProvoni is once-again toeing the line on extraordinary long re-posts of articles published elsewhere. (I personally consider it just under the cutoff length.)
That said, I find it difficult to follow specific arguments here because I literally can't understand exactly what a lot of you people are saying.
As a partial mea culpa… Ismail, I still think your arguments are the most cohesive! This thread seems to have long ago shifted away from the original discussion, however. So here is a picture of a monkey wearing a hat.
"No Ismail, Thors is falling back on the problematic notion of race. I am not. I am correcting him in his attempts to use those misunderstandings to discredit Jewish origins in the Near East."
You say Jewishnes is an ethnic category. I ask again, is ethnicity primarily a cultural or biological construct? If the former, who cares about genetics? If the latter, well, this looks like some variant of the very problematic notion of race. Â
"If it applies to the Jews it equally applies to the Palestinians who want to use a demographic change in a different direction to regain their own hegemony. "
Nice try. We know what the strategy of the Jewish state has been; ethnic cleansing, terror, two-tiered notions of citizenship, an insistence upon an ethnic/racial/religious state rather than a modern secular one, expansionism, the shuttering of orphanages, putting occupied people on a "diet", obstructing the delivery of pharmaceuticals to besieged families, etc. Since there is no Palestinian state, we may speculate about its actions, but speculation doesn't hold a candle to the evidence of forty years.
Recall that your initial comment referred to my support for a one-state solution. There is nothing about such a wish than connotes Palestinian hegemony; on the contrary, most partisans of this idea imagine a society of Arabs and Jews together. Let's avoid your clumsy sleight-of-hand; I never proposed, nor do I desire, a state without Jews. I do look forward to the end of a Jewish state, though, as I long for the disappearance of Arab states determined by religion or anything but citizenship in the secular, modern sense.
"As heir to the powerful imperial legacy of the Arabs, regaining their hegemony is the objective for which you speak of human rights (in an unpredented "absolutist" sense, I remind the reader) as a transparent cover."
If I decipher your illiterate ravings correctly, you are positing me as the referent of "heir to the powerful, etc etc". (You must have found the verbal portions of the SAT a real bear, huh?). Here you impart to me, baselessly, a motive I lack. You may criticize me to your heart's content based on my words, but not on your fantasies. Fair enough? Â Â
"I note the degree to which you feel unbothered by your association with ideas espoused by ThorsProvoni."
Be specific, now. We both agree that Zionists have been criminal in their colonization of a land that didn't (and doesn't) belong to them. Otherwise, as I said, I'm antagonistic to or agnostic about his assertions. But of course, you didn't mean to accurately characterize my views, did you? Try to be more subtle when you stoop to such sleazy tactics; even the comatose can see through you. Â Â
"And no one else is calling me unhelpful or infantile. If you can separate when you agree with your ally Thors and when you disagree with him then surely you should be sophisticated enough and sufficiently intellectually honest to note when you are speaking only for yourself in this thread. But you're not."
Hmmm. You get more unhinged as you go along. Maybe you should stick to posts of no more than two paragraphs, so you'll stop at merely "incorrect" and head off "full-on crazed". Are you saying that I suggested that many Jewcy readers deem you infantile? Did I ever imply that I was speaking for anyone but myself?
This must have sounded like it meant something when you wrote it, but as you can see, it's meaningless. My guess? You became so intoxicated at the prospect of eliding me yet again with ThorsProvoni for your transparent propagandistic purposes, and so hot to question my sophistication and intellectual honesty, that the simple ability to comprehend my written words fell out the window.
Slow down. Think. Then write. Because when you fuck up, I'll be watching.Â
 From Updating "The AJC attacks".
In his article Rosenfeld attempts a similar rewriting or erasing of Zionist history. He states on page 14: "By no reasonable standard of historical comparison or legal judgment can one show that Israel is intent on genocide; nor are the Israelis engaged in a "race war" against the Palestinians."
One can only be completely amazed that director of the Institute for Jewish Culture at Indiana University either is completely mendacious or is totally ignorant that primary Zionist literature is almost uniformly racist, extremist organic nationalist, colonialist, biological-determinist, or social Darwinist. The eminent Zionist leader Max Nordau, who is probably second in importance only to Theodor Herzl, did not introduce eugenics to the German-speaking world, but he was probably the most important popularizer of eugenic ideas in the German language (http://tinyurl.com/39r54o). Zionist leaders and writers since Moses Hess's publication of Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question in 1862 have supported the ideal of racial revitalization through racial purity and purification.
No major Zionist thinker from the 1880s through the 1940s would have disagreed with the proposition that Zionism is a Blut und Boden or la terre et les morts form of Romantic nationalism. It certainly belongs to the same class of ethnic fundamentalist parties and ideologies, of which the Polish Endeks, Greater Serbianism and German Nazism are examples. Ideologically Zionist scholars are at least as relentlessly primordialist and essentialist as German Nazi and proto-Nazi scholars. (Some of the latter were, in fact, German Jews, who later became Zionists.)
If Rosenfeld is not consciously lying about the "race war" inherent in Zionist ideology, one must wonder what he thinks the preeminent Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann meant on September 19, 1919 by declaring the following to the English Zionist Federation (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, http://tinyurl.com/2zl5n3, p. 41).
"By a Jewish National Home I mean the creation of such conditions that as the country is developed we can pour in a considerable number of immigrants, and finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English or America American." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, http://tinyurl.com/2zl5n3, p. 41.)
The Zionists achieved most of that goal in 1947-48 by committing genocide as defined by The International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (http://tinyurl.com/ypb4xv), which states the following in Article 2.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
The ongoing immurement of Palestinian population centers in the Occupied Territories is an obvious continuation of the genocidal Zionist program and a clear violation of the above article of the International Genocide Convention. This form of Zionist genocidalism has strong similarities to Soviet genocidalism, in which Soviet ethnic Ashkenazim played a leading role (http://tinyurl.com/3y7mmh).
There's no such thing as a "racial scientist". STFU, moron.
Merely to use the term Mizrahi in some sort of collective ethnogenetic sense suggests non-comprehension of the issues in applying genetic anthropological analysis to modern Jewish populations. Mizrahi as an ethnocommunal identity is an artifact of or response to Zionism.
The ancestral connection of bnei edot hammizrah to Greco-Roman Judeans or to ancient Israelite populations is just as much a matter of ideology as claims of a similar ethnic Ashkenazi connection. As Wexler points out the discontinuities is the development of modern Jewish populations were well understood long ago.
As for the Hammer-Oppenheim paper, PNAS often publishes without peer review, and this particular paper is an example  of the type of crap that has appeared in PNAS as a consequence. (In fact, I first began to look at the issue because Dr. Qumsiyeh asked me to look at the paper from the standpoint of statistical correctness and of Jewish studies.)
To draw the conclusions Zionist racial scientists are trying to make, spatial-temporal maps of the whole genome on the analogue of geologic maps but much more complex are required.
Zionist racial scientists simply beg the question and cook the data. In the Robert Lindsay blog entry comments, I discuss the issue of the nature of the Khazar elite and subject populations.
Only in the context of attempting to prove non-existent ethnic Ashkenazi connection to Palestine do Black Sea populations become Mediterranean or Middle Eastern.
Obviously, I will at some point have to write a mathematical critique of Zionist genetic anthropological science, but it has only recently become an issue because of the desperate desire of fanatic Zionist Jews to prove to themselves that they really are not the exact Jewish analogue of German Nazis even if Zionist essentialist primordialism maps almost exactly bijectively onto German Nazi essentialist primordialism.
My original interest was the construction of the Medieval world. This topic required a great deal of knowledge of the ancient world. I try to give a summary of my hypothesis in Les origines des juifs actuels and The Origins of Modern Jewry.
What seems most interesting to me about Cori's project is her acknowledgment, I think correctly, that any utterance–however materialized–which deals with Israel/Palestine history and politics will be incredibly scrutinized; yet simultaneously, there seems to be an inchoate assumption that it is possible to match language to truth, or in Cori's words: "I'll strive to choose words that speak the completest truth possible,
and that serve to further the understanding of our people’s national
experiment." How do we understand truth outside of language? Particularly in this context of struggle over "accuracy" and "bias," with what framework does one who is "neutral" who maintains a devotion to "the facts" and "to truth" represent truth?
Outside of archives, we can look to interviews, to the analysis of other scholars, etc…but these to are mediated by language. What I find most disturbing is the desire here for a neutral language, and an unmediated truth–desires which are at their core, myths. If any realm of discourse makes this clear, it should be that on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Â
What we, as Jews, need to think about when we ask ourselves "what kind of country we want Israel to be" is not necessarily what "happened," but whether our conception of the "good," of the "just" can be actualized in theory within the framework of an ethnic state? I bring this up, because I think it changes the questions we confront…the most important questions are no longer "what happened when" (though those are important), but what can we envision for the future? What kind of political frameworks do we seek to live in?
I understand when right wing Zionists answer this question by outrightly claiming that Jews in Israel come first, that the state is meant for them, and that Palestinian citizens will, and should, remain marginal and secondary within the society. I understand those who believe that Israel must become a state for its citizens in order to be just, and thus cannot remain a Jewish state. What I would ask you, Cori, is if Israel is a young state, one which you hope will grow into something better, what you envision that state will look like. Do you think that Palestinian citizens of Israel will be able to attain a good life–not a good life in comparison to how they live in Jordan, or how economically well off they might be in comparison to how they live in Syria–but a good life as something which has yet to emerge, as a future conception of justice that we would wish for anyone we recognize as human? You might also consider whether we, as Jews, would be comfortable accepting citizenship in a state which is nominally "something else."–say legally a Christian, or Hindu, or Muslim state. What would be our prospects for just treatment in such a framework?Â
No Ismail, Thors is falling back on the problematic notion of race. I am not. I am correcting him in his attempts to use those misunderstandings to discredit Jewish origins in the Near East.
You can feel free to use the quote any way you want. If it applies to the Jews it equally applies to the Palestinians who want to use a demographic change in a different direction to regain their own hegemony. Words like "agressor" are less meaningful. As heir to the powerful imperial legacy of the Arabs, regaining their hegemony is the objective for which you speak of human rights (in an unpredented "absolutist" sense, I remind the reader) as a transparent cover.
I note the degree to which you feel unbothered by your association with ideas espoused by ThorsProvoni.
And no one else is calling me unhelpful or infantile. If you can separate when you agree with your ally Thors and when you disagree with him then surely you should be sophisticated enough and sufficiently intellectually honest to note when you are speaking only for yourself in this thread. But you're not. Â
Just to let everyone know, I read Nazi Martillo's blog entry. The quotes he provides (not much analysis or review [or thought] of his own there, if any) talk about founder effects and bottlenecks that suggest the original Ashkenazi populations were not homogeneous, or in any event, less homogeneous than Mizrahi populations. Not much of a surprise given the history of Mediterranean empires, Hellenization and Roman-Jewish relations and migrations throughout the area at the time. Regardless, he cannot and will not account for the large percentage that proves a Near Eastern origin for Ashkenazi Jews, regardless of a lack of endogamy (this means "marrying in", and is allowed in Judaism, as among virtually every other ethnic group). He is mistaking infamously discredited and thoroughly abased theories of "racial science" with accounts of more sophisticated, realistic and humane understandings of modern genetics that credibly shed light on the inheritance and migration patterns that are the crux of discussions regarding the geographical origins of Jews, both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, about which he has no case against the latter. If he were Jewish or more familiar with them as a people, he would have doubtlessly known this and not made such a ridiculous error. He also would also have accounted for all of the aforementioned, as well as the fact that Mizrahi/Ashkenazi unions that are commonplace throughout Israel will now continue the lineage of a people with origins that are still primarily in the Near East, despite the incorporation of aforementioned exogamous unions from antiquity that prove absolutely nothing in the way of a non-Near Eastern origin of the people in question.
We knew he was a nutcase. Now he's revealing himself to be intellectually fraudulent.
And if you need an example of how extreme and outrageous a sense of bias we can identify as infecting one's views, you will find no better example than him – particularly given his pretension to understanding these matters on a technical level.
Again, I'm assuming from the overwrought prose that I-A is in fact yet another incarnation of P-A, the infant who refuses to join this community even in such a superficial yet helpful way as giving himself a consistent name. He says
"And I suppose that the real shame of all that is that you're only making matters more complicated for Ismail."
How is that exactly? I agree with ThorsProvoni about the overall criminality of the Zionist enterprise, disagree about some his more fervid imaginings and am unqualified to pronounce upon his more recondite historical allusions.
My own analyses stand on their own and do not depend upon one's estimation of ThorsProvoni.Â
" …the purpose the Romans had in mind when they carried out their expulsion was that no Jews remained behind in significant numbers to pose a political challenge to their rule. (How appropriate given Ismail's support of right of return)."
You seem to comparing the Roman expulsion of whoever counted as Jews at the time to the Zionist expulsion of Palestinians, in the sense that both were carried out not on the basis of justice or right or safety, but to assure the political dominance of the aggressor group. If so, I applaud your honesty. Could we be seeing the faint stirrings of your awakening to reality? Alas, I fear this apparent enlightenment is just another artifact of your linguistic imprecision. You meant to compare the Romans with the Palestinians, didn't you? Still delusional after all.Â
And all this business about chromosomes….I think you once described Jewishness as a matter of ethnicity. Is this concept basically a biological one? Or are we falling back on the problematic notion of race? Â
Ismail,
I'd responded to this previously, I thought. What I meant when I said that there is not a definite term for the word "Palestinian", I was referring to a couple of things. First of all, as Jewlicious already explained, this word's meaning has changed in relatively recent history. I'm sure that you read his explanation, and so I won't repeat. I was also referring to the conflict within the Israeli-Arab community as to whether or not they are to be referred to as Palestinians. I'm sure you are aware that there are a good deal of Israeli Arabs that wish to be referred to as such, and many who don't. That's all. It was not, as you implied, an indication that I don't believe that should be a Palestine or a Palestinian people.
I do, in fact. I support the establishment of a Palestinian state, which includes a large amount of land that is located in what I refer to as "Judea and Samaria", much of which I don't believe belongs to the Jews of Israel– and some of which, I do. What I don't support are "pull-outs" in which certain settlements, but not others, are relinquished to the Palestinians, but without a state (and thus, they are not held responsible by anyone other than the IDF for the violence that they foster). It makes sense to me that these places– semi-policed and constricted by the IDF, but not as completely as they used to be– become hot beds for terrorist activity (I do NOT, however, even remotely see this as a justification for terrorism and the homicide of Israeli civilians) and further resentment on both sides. In short, I don't support disengagement without the establishment of a Palestinian state. An agreement (in terms of territory) should be reached, and then both states should be held accountable for any violence that occurs on the other side of the fence (not a literal fence, mind you). I'm not optimistic (and surely you can't be either) that the Palestinians and the Israelis will reach an agreement any time soon, especially not regarding borders, but in theory, this is what I support. If that's right-wing extremism, then I'm guilty as charged; however, if you believe that it is, you should come to Israel and meet The Real Deal.
Though I am commissioned by the IDF to do the job that I do, my individual motivations and values are relevant. I don't stand to argue that every single person that could possibly edit the archives would do so without bias. I'm saying that my sole goal in my work is to produce documents that are objective, and completely void of subjective information. Much of what I have done thus far involves removing entire paragraphs of information due to the fact that there are a few historical occurrences that can only be explained from a subjective perspective. I remove them from the record and simply state that there was This Battle (for example) on This Date. Yeah, you're right– a position in PR could be abused. I maintain that I don't abuse it. As I said, I make the issue language, not furthering my own personal belief that there should be a Jewish State in existence, in this land. As I said previously, I do support the goal of creating a Jewish State– but that doesn't mean that I blindly defend every move that Israel, its government, and its army make. If a Jewish State is to survive, I believe that it can only do so if it is rooted in specific values. The Evil Zionist Empire didn't steal every piece of this land as you seem to suggest, and the establishment of the State was much less "criminal" than, say, the trespasses of the United States during its establishment (last I checked, we haven't handed out any blankets to Palestinian children that were infected with small pox). There are some settlements/regions that Israel DOES owe to the Palestinians, and I support giving it back.
However, as I said, an agreement needs to be reached first. As we saw in Gaza, if we haphazardly "give back land", Israeli civilians and Palestinians suffer.
Go ahead, tear me apart over breakfast.
 Also, Thors– you're a raging anti-semite whose views should have you committed. You're certifiable, and hardly anyone listens to you. How about finding a nice neo-Nazi community to post at, instead?
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
(…)
What do these results tell us about the evolutionary factors that have shaped the structure of the Jewish paternal gene pool? At the most basic level, the genetic distances observed among Jewish and non-Jewish populations can be interpreted as reflecting common ancestry, genetic drift, and gene flow. The latter two processes will tend to increase genetic distances among Jewish populations, whereas admixture will also have the effect of decreasing genetic distances between Jewish and non-Jewish populations. Our results suggest that common ancestry is the major determinant of the genetic distances observed among Jewish communities, with admixture playing a secondary role.
A somewhat surprising result is the small effect that genetic drift appears to have had on genetic distances among Jewish populations. The effects of genetic drift are expected to be greater for Jewish populations because of their reduced effective size during dispersal and as isolated subpopulations in the Diaspora. For the NRY, the effects of drift are expected to be even greater because of its haploid mode of transmission and smaller effective size relative to other nuclear genes. The exaggerated effects of drift were not readily apparent, possibly because large numbers of males participated in the numerous migrations of Jewish populations from the Middle East and within various countries in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. If we accept this possibility, then the higher relative degree of scatter observed among Jewish populations in discriminant analyses of classical genetic markers (4, 53) may be explained by a combination of drift and selection. At least two alternative hypotheses should be considered: (i) high rates of recurrent Jewish male gene flow around the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Near East, and/or (ii) higher rates of female gene flow introducing non-Jewish variation into the Jewish gene pool (54). Although some mtDNA studies suggest close affinities of Jewish and Middle Eastern populations (14, 16), comprehensive comparisons of mtDNA variation in Jewish and neighboring non-Jewish populations are not yet available. However, the existing mtDNA data do suggest that contemporary Jewish populations are composed of a diverse set of maternal lineages that diverged ?10,000 years ago (55). This is similar to our inference that most of the 13 Jewish Y-chromosome haplotypes in Fig. 1 predate the origin of Jewish populations.
In summary, the combined results suggest that a major portion of NRY biallelic diversity present in most of the contemporary Jewish communities surveyed here traces to a common Middle Eastern source population several thousand years ago. The implication is that this source population included a large number of distinct paternal and maternal lineages, reflecting genetic variation established in the Middle East at that time. In turn, this source diversity has been maintained within Jewish communities, despite numerous migrations during the Diaspora and long-term residence as isolated subpopulations in numerous geographic locations outside of the Middle East.
Full text here.
Stop the bullshit. I doubt you've read this. "Zionist racial scientists"? In full control of National Geographic? Sykes? Y-chromosomal DNA analysis is a Jewish conspiracy? Now I've heard it all.
If I saw a headline like "??? ?????? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ", I would probably translate it: "Again an attack, again an attack, again an attack and again an attack."
Translating ?????? as attack (in a military context)Â is generally a good way to avoid adding subjective connotation that was not present in the original text. Hebrew has perfectly good means to specify a suicide attack when specification is required.
Mere college-level proficiency in Hebrew is not enough to produce good translations of the type Chascione claims to intend to produce. One needs an excellent grasp of the changes in orthography, grammar, usage and meaning over the period from 1948 til today.
The Nadia Abu el Haj case at Columbia is typical. Her critics claimed that Professor Abu el-Haj's proficiency in Modern Israeli Hebrew was defective. In fact, the native language of all her critics and of Professor Abu el-Haj herself is not MIH, and in terms of 1950s usages Abu el-Haj was correct where her critics was wrong. (I know this analysis to be correct because I spent a long time in studying changes in MIH over the last 60 years.)
Jewlicious provides an excellent example to show why Chascione's translations are likely to be wrong.
He writes:
"The first official designation of Palestine as a geographical entity came to us thanks to Emperor Hadrian's attempt to render the region judenrein following the failure of Bar Kokhba's revolt in 135."
Exactly what official designation of Palestine as a geographical entity means in Roman terms is rather obscure, but I know at least one example of pre-Bar Kokhba epigraphy describes Samaria as part of Eretz Plishtim. There were multiple geographic definitions for the region and the meanings of Palestine and Judea change a lot from the 6th century BCE to the 4th century CE.
Using the term judenrein for the Hadrianic period is anachronistic, incorrect and propagandistic.
If the territory was judenrein, who wrote the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud?
When Jewlicious states sarcastically "there was never a Jewish temple on the site of Al Aqsa," he is expressing a truth that every honest scholar in the field accepts.
For example, Shaye Cohen at Harvard claims (I believe incorrectly) that Jewishness in the modern sense begins in the 4th century CE. (I put the beginning in the 10th century CE.).
In Latin one could refer to the Aedes Iudaeae, Aedes Iudaea and Aedes Iudaica to wit, the Temple of Judea, the Judean Temple, or the Judaic Temple with slightly different connotations in meaning but without the meaning of Jewish Temple in the modern sense.
A similar set of connotations applies to Rex Iudaeae, Rex Iudaeus and Rex Iudaicus.
Even without the issue of building essentialist, primordialist propaganda into a translation, creating a valid representation of a Hebrew text in English or an English text in Hebrew is often quite difficult.
I saw the one paragraph preamble to the US constitution translated into Hebrew with over a page of notes, and the issue does not arise because MIH is a semitic language (it isn't). There is no problem in rendering the preamble into Arabic, Mishnaic Hebrew or Classical Hebrew. In contrast, MIH Hebrew is for the most part a Slavic language or relexified Yiddish, if one prefers, and the concepts of people and nation in MIH are congruent with the associated ideas in German, Polish or Russian.
I am a fairly competent mathematician with extensive background in a form of statistical modeling not much different in theory from the type of analysis that Zionist racial scientists claim to carry out.
I discuss the problems in applying genetic anthropological techniques to Jews in Zionazi Racial Science.
There is no end to the lies of Jewish extremist racist fanatics in their never ending effort to prevent decent people, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, from realizing that Zionists in stolen and occupied Palestine constitute a criminal murderous genocidal population of thieves, interlopers and invaders while Zionists in the USA casually engage in tax fraud, SEC violations, FEC violations, restraint of trade, conspiracy against rights, and seditious conspiracy in order to exploit American taxpayers and in order to protect genocidal Zionists in Palestine.
Wow Thors. A book. From 1993. I'm impressed. At least your biological understanding of human ethnic groups is progressing past a 1933 perspective.
Still. It's no match for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-chromosome_DNA_haplogroups
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_%28Y-DNA%29
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html
It's 2008. I understand you're smart enough to understand something about computer programming. The author you quote rightly understands that it's not about "purity", but tracking migration patterns and inheritance is a different matter – and the matter I thought you were captivated by. The good news is modern technology allows us to this in a much less speculative manner. Consult your university's biology department for details. Â
Jewish studies scholars discuss the Khazarian origins of ethnic Ashkenazim in a manner that is very different from the depiction of that discussion by Zionist propagandists and Jewish racists.
I give a basic introduction to the issues in the comments section of Reason For the Jew-Obsession, which is a blog entry in Robert Lindsay's Blog.
And I mean "noble" in the sense of authentically Semitic and/or corresponding to similarly identified groups from antiquity. Not that all of those descriptions correspond to some supposedly essentialist understanding of what it would mean to be noble, per se. But since I was speaking to Thors, I figured the choice of words would have made sense to him. Assuming anything will, of course.
"Iosephos writes about Judeans, Galileans, Peraeans, Idumeans, who are the ancestors of modern Palestinians and not of modern Jews."
Wow Thors. Don't tell me you're an afficionado of the Khazar/European theory of (Ashkenazi) Jewish descent, currently in vogue among many white supremacist types. And oh yeah, I just had to had to insert Ashkenazi parenthetically, because I didn't initially realize the ginormous folly in your assertion – that Mizrahi Jews must have also arisen from similarly mythologized roots. Or are they not of the "modern" sort to which you refer? In either event, I'm sure they can't have had the more noble parentage to which only the Palestinians of today could be entitled, right? Y-chromosomal evidence be damned!
As for the rest of your screed, I can always tell when you start waxing ill-informed, self-hating and Nazi-like when your comments start extending (descending?) into multiple paragraphs of unusual length.
And I suppose that the real shame of all that is that you're only making matters more complicated for Ismail.
In any event, and not that it matters, the purpose the Romans had in mind when they carried out their expulsion was that no Jews remained behind in significant numbers to pose a political challenge to their rule. (How appropriate given Ismail's support of right of return). Jewlicious was drawing an allusion, not making a direct comparison. It works on us because our minds are capable of making a distinction between broadly similar historical events and unusual anachronisms such as racial science. But I understand if your obsession with the latter makes his quote maddeningly imprecise to your ears and therefore worthy of your typical "But The Jews are the real Nazis!" retort.
Just because you might happen to know two things about various topics doesn't mean they conclusively share whatever relationship you wish to ascribe to them in that regard. I liked it better when you went on about language and religious texts instead.
Judenrein implies an intent that the Romans did not have.
The German government never actually claimed that Germany itself was judenrein although the intent was to render Germany judenrein.
The rebellions of 70 CE and 135 CE problably resulted in the deaths of about 60,000 (Palestinian) Judeans. (2nd century Latin sources are quite specific that Judean can be applied to people who do not live in Judea and who have no ancestral connection to territory — rather like the terms Greek and Greece.)
To preempt the usual Zionist noise about the issue, I point out that ancient sources are notoriously unreliable when you get to large numbers. Talmud Gittin 57b gives 4 billion as the number of Jews killed by the Romans at Betar.
In addition the Romans were supposed to have stabbed and then burned 16 million Jewish children wrapped in sifrei torah Talmud Gittin 58a.
Neverthess, I do find modern history helpful occassionally in elucidating Classical history. It is worthwhile to reread Iosephos in the context of the Nakba.
Iosephos writes about Judeans, Galileans, Peraeans, Idumeans, who are the ancestors of modern Palestinians and not of modern Jews.
Just as the Palestinian populations of that time period faced a relentless technologically superior foe convinced of his own moral superiority, Palestinians today face a relentless technologically superior foe also convinced of his own moral superiority.
Of course, the Romans did not make the claim that they were the native inhabitants, but they did claim to represent the rule of law in a dangerous neighborhood, and they asserted that they had to take over the religious worship in Jerusalem because it had been desecrated by the Judeans.
Colonia Aelia Capitolina (the city built by the Romans in the Jerusalem ruins) honors Hadrian because Aelius is his nomen gentile, but it is also a pun on the high God El, whom the Judeans worshiped.
Capitolina refers to Capitolinus, and the chief God worshipped in Rome was Jupiter Capitolinus, whose temple stood at the end of the Clivus Capitolinus, which started at the Temple of Saturn, who was a veiled God, whose face like that of El was hidden.
The Romans were making an assertion of greater rights in Judea because they served the gods properly.
The result of the Zionist conquest has resulted in an actual expulsion of Palestinians that corresponds to the mythic expulsion of Judeans that never happened in Roman times.
As for relentless technologically superior foes, Zionist ideology and practice differs like from Nazi ideology and practice, and the Zionist leader Nordau is at least as influential among German Nazis as he is among Zionists (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazis) in terms of introducing the ideas of eugenics, national revival through racial purity, national degeneration through race mixing, primordialism, essentialism, social Darwinism and ethnic fundamentalism.
Cori Chascione is a Jewish Nazi. Making Aliya to Israel is an expression of her sick twisted perverted belief that Jews have the right to plunder and to kill non-Jews with impunity. All decent Jews and non-Jews should despise Jewish Nazis just as we should despise German Nazis.
As for the specific punishment Chascione deserves, Otto Dietrich received 7 years imprisonment for German Nazi PR, Chascione merits no less.
Â
And my dearest little Ismail,
You need not distress yourself over Craig's (current) disagreement with you. We're not intellectual tribalists, you know? I mean we might be intellectual (but never pedants, of course; we leave the pedantry to you) and we are part of a larger tribe. But don't expect that patterns of agreement will follow the logic of solidarity pacts on Jewcy. They won't. Just so you know.
Q. "If the territory was judenrein, who wrote the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud?"
A. A lot less Jews than were in the area before.Â
You really need to get out a bit more, Thors. A good part-time Nazi-sympathizer such as yourself should realize that there were Jews who even found a way to remain in Germany during the Third Reich. See the excellent movie Europa Europa for just one interesting example of this.
I'm intrigued by your assertion that Anglo-American colonists had an easier time relating linguistically to concepts of nationhood preserved in ancient Semitic languages than to those of modern Europe. But that wouldn't be incongruous at all with the well-known fact that the colonists were inspired by ancient Israel in declaring their independence and in consolidating libertarian (i.e. anti-tyranny) ideals into their own nation's laws. America, like, I suppose, ancient Israel, is considered to be a creedal nation, rather than one formed on the basis of an ethnic nationalism - the latter being largely the case across the world today.
Time to catch up-
Anon 7/12 4:22 and 4:38 (P-A?) says nothing interesting, but does it in an amusingly clumsy way. Restate in a coherent fashion and I'll be happy to reply.
Craig, whose former words of encouragement to me showed him to be a man of great discernment and taste, now (shudder!) applauds  P-A and (gasp!) disagrees with me! The vile turncoat! Craig, the jig's up. I'm now going to spill the fava beans-Jewcy's critics have been right all along. We at Islamofascist Central have been subsidizing the so-called Jews running this place for years! Ha! And that's not all! Longtime readers may know that Craig's former photo showed him in oversized sunglasses borrowed from Izzy. But did you know that his Izzywear is not restricted to shades? He also likes to wear her dresses and lingerie! Take that, Craig! Now let's see you disagree with me again…go ahead, as long as you're sure you want the world to know about the incident involving the 9 year old Hindu boy and the mayonnaise.
jewlicious does a 180 and offers a meaningful and intelligent rebuttal of my argument, to which I am happy to reply. The sole specific example Cori provided was the mistranslation of piguah. If she says that this word, unmodified, may refer to various kinds of attacks, but that relatively naive or recent speakers of Hebrew may think it refers only to suicide attacks, who am I to argue? I have no problem with this. As I alluded to earlier, though, I wonder about the specific context in which this linguistic problem arose. Was an IOF document mistakenly translated to suggest that an IOF unit committed a suicide bombing? Or did it cast a justified Palestinian counterattack as a suicide bombing? In other words, were the faulty translations unfair to the IOF or the Palestinians? If the IOF, then that hapless translator is deficient in more than Hebrew; he/she would have to be a recent interstellar arrival to accuse the IOF of a suicide attack, one of the few crimes of which the IOF is innocent. If the Palestinians…well, who's kidding whom? I think we can all agree that Cori and her unit are not interested in correcting unjust depictions of Palestinians.
As for "Palestinian", has its meaning really "…changed again and again over time"? Again, specifics would be helpful, but it's hard for me to imagine that some translator's error wound up confusing a member of the yishuv circa 1925 with an Arab woman forced to give birth at a checkpoint in 2008.
I'd be willing to bet that Cori's idea of the fluidity of the word "Palestinian" has more to do with right-Zionist fantasies of generic Arabs flooding into Palestine to parasitically feed off the labors of the Jews who brought that desolate place to flower than to the fact that, for a time, both Arabs and Jews were (sometimes) called by the same name. After all, she does refer to the bits of historic Palestine remaining more or less (mostly less) in Arab hands as Judea and Samaria, which suggests that she believes they belong to Israel, which would further denature the Arab claim to the land and efface the very notion of a Palestinian (no Palestine, no Palestinians).Â
I will await her clarifications re these matters.
Jewlicious' larger claim-that there is a strict division between ideology and linguistics-is palpably false. We all know that equally able bilinguals may disagree about the proper rendering of a passage from one language to another. Translation in this sense more closely resembles a legal argument than a mathematical proof-one side presents reasons why his/her account is more accurate, the other rebuts. Very ordinary process.
Palestine Rulez gives us some unremarkable boilerplate about being nice but seems to succumb to what he condemns-I don't detect any argument in his post, just assertions about my unknowingly revealing my flaws, etc, etc-pointless dollar-book Freud, done without panache or erudition.
If he means by "…their own personal Rohrshach (sic) test results." another iteration of "Ismail's just revealing his own inadequacies/hatred, etc", well, thanks for the consultation, but, how about addressing my points and refraining from doing horoscopes?
If you want to talk psychoanalysis, though, I have a thought. I'm sort of astonished at the level of certainty many of my critics demonstrate re their fantasies about me-I'm an indolent pauper who beats his wife, I attack Jews, my poor life is animated only by spitting venom at others; one guy even insisted, on no evidence whatsoever, that my offhand mention of my political work in the '60s was a lie! Just because!
Alert readers will be put in mind of the psychoanalytic notion of transference, in which the analysand's fantasies re his analyst are held to be indicative of his own unanalyzed conflicts or needs.
If I am to continue as Jewcy's resident transference object, I must insist upon payment. Insurance accepted.
 Cori congratulates jewlicious for hitting it on the nose, which my comments above show he surely did not do, but I understand a maiden's fondness for her defender. She then goes on to reiterate her belief that the domain of language is entirely separate from the realm of context (in this case, political beliefs). I clearly disagree. I really can't understand how Cori continues her assertion. She does, after all, have clear political leanings which bear on the matters she's translating. She is also doing this work as a paid agent of the IOF. But she insists that this poses no problem.
Well, Cori, let me ask you this: suppose I present to you a Palestinian whose command of modern Hebrew you agree is impeccable (maybe he's a former guest of the Israeli prison system. As you know, many such folks learn their Hebrew-the modern variant-quite well as guests of the state. But maybe you'll disqualify him since he's been certified by the occupying force as a criminal, so never mind). Furthermore, this fellow believes in the Palestinian narrative as devoutly as you embrace the Israeli one.
So I nominate him to translate the archives. Remember, language is language, so his politics shouldn't matter. Will you second the nomination? Unless you make the obviously indefensible argument that you are, of course, objective, but he…well, we all know what drives them; unless you want to assure us that, somehow, you alone transcend your ideological lenses, then what reason would you have to demur?
Intifadaholic (P-A again? You must work on that identity disorder of yours) makes the useful observation that men are not angels and that their interests factor in acts like translating politically charged documents. He further suggests that the folks Cori's "correcting" may themselves have been led more by their political passions than by God's-eye accuracy (something of a stretch, imagining a bunch of yeshiva buchers poring over IOF documents with an eye towards fairly representing Palestinian interests, but OK.)
The problem here arises when we get specific. P-A (?) talks about the  "…demonstrated lack of basic proficiency on the part of the original translators (that) required the strongest corrective." Demonstrated by whom? Cori? Precisely not the case. She surely asserts that this was the case, and she provides the generic "piguah" example, but we can't make an informed decision about whether or not the IOF archives are rife with serious mistranslations unless we see what she's talking about.
My position is this; Cori's said she interested in making sure the IOF is not calumnified by future scholars (she's pointedly not concerned with those bad translations whitewashing their actions, on the other hand). She works for the IOF. In freaking PR, fer chrissake! She seems to be located pretty much right of the Israeli center. Knowing all this, is it really so odd that I see the assumption that the originals were "bad translations" rather than "unflattering (but maybe accurate) depictions"Â as at least undemonstrated?
Sorry this turned out so long. I had originally planned to write two or three brief paragraphs of senseless invective, but chastened by your many calls for civility and trying to respect the efforts of those who offer actual arguments (and not wanting to leave anyone out)… and, to be honest, having nothing else to fill my empty and bitter life, well, I guess I just got carried away.Â
Â
In his defense, as far as concerns the issue that our friend spent post after post blowing his tiny wad on, the historical record is concerned with the identities and potential interests of individuals involved in translating primary source documents. But that knife cuts both ways. Accusations of bias can become an endemic and never-ending process in academic history. Ironically enough, no objection was raised to the shortcomings of those who originally attempted to translate the documents. If revealing a more accurate meaning of those documents was such a pressing concern, someone could have at least acknowledged that a demonstrated lack of basic proficiency on the part of the original translators was what required the strongest corrective. But it probably wasn't. Â One gets the impression that someone thought it wasn't even worth addressing. And that is especially funny given the number of times I've been corrected on matters of word choice by certain anal-retentive people here after stumbling into Jewcy late one night and loudly and imperfectly expressing myself in one of my stupors of intifadaholic rage. I hope that person wasn't sneakily inserting his political bias into his suggestions. Maybe he was though.Â
Â
Jewlicious– that's exactly it. My job is not to interpret historical events. Perhaps I didn't succeed, but this article was supposed to raise issues associated with translation, and how a language barrier and other linguistic issues can influence public record, etc. My qualifications (as far as history is concerned) are irrelevant here– my job pertains to language, and language alone. I'd be very interested in discussing this, and this alone.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
I note the following:
Eighty-year-old Vegas stripper still does it 'classy'.
Now that's some civilization we can all agree on.
Getting back to the topic at hand, Jewlicious is right.
And I appreciate knowing that some attempts at humor aren't lost in translation, especially for you, JewcyCraig.
As I've stated here and elsewhere, unwarranted personalization and excessive emoting obscure debate – despite the fact that even inveterate antagonists addicted to those devices can still manage to entertain and actually enlighten (even if not always in regards to what appears to be, for them – let alone for anyone else - the actual issue at hand). As I've also said, though, when one's argument is so weak that the mere act of acknowledging it embarrasses said person by exposing its paucity, then, well, that's noteworthy.
What Cori is doing brings up a whole host of topics worthy of further exploration. But for some people conversation begins and ends with an advertisement for their own personal Rohrshach test results. Â
There's no real debate Craig. It seems certain parties here are more interested in invective than in addressing anything relevant. I'll restate my case as it were. Cori correctly noted that piguah means any kind of attack, but due to its recent usage is often mistranslated by native English speaking Israelis to mean "terrorist attack." Similarly, the word Palestinian, as Cori again correctly noted, poses difficulties given that its meaning has changed again and again over time. This isn't an issue of politics or ideology – it's a simple issue of the historical record and hardly merits the sort of smarmy chastisement that's been dished out at her. I'd be happy for this discussion to progress in a civilized manner… but, well, we'll see I guess.
———————————
I saved it on CD-ROM at Jewlicious.com
Not that I'm the grand adjudicator of Jewcy debates or anything, but I'm so glad P-A showed up here. Even though I disagree with Ismail's original premise (this time) — that is: while there's possibly a conflict of interest with Cori C's work, I don't think Israel's historical records have much chance of getting any closer to what would be considered a satisfactory level of fairness (by Ismail).. And further, she seems to be pretty positive about the task and not entirely unqualified. — I think his opponents "arguments" only provided more and more [hilarious] grist for his mill.
P-A seems to actually have an interest in addressing the debate at hand, like Ismail, and I salute that! Barbs and all!
The paragraph that you've quoted isn't meant to refer to historical scrutiny, it refers to each and every move that Israel makes– "makes", being in the present tense. UN "Security Council" violations are a good example of this scrutiny– you're telling me that there aren't more pressing HR violations in other areas of the world?
If an Israeli had perpetrated last week's attack in East Jerusalem, do you think that the BBC headline would have declared, "Israeli, father of 3, gunned down in East Jerusalem?"
Probably not. It's not a mindless sense of victimization; it's completely rooted in truth.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
And the inconsistency noted was originally your own. Do try to come up with your own observations rather than inverting those you ripped off from others.Â
As for the language you speak with your dog, I would be intrigued at how it became complex enough for her to convey issues of pedigree. Well, I would be if your statement wasn't just some obviously sloppy, garbage comeback. No wonder you avoid addressing the concerns that attend the task of translating human languages. Except for one.
Just trying to accomodate your own natural form of discourse.
P-A decries "…that stand-by predilection of yours for scatology…"
Three concluding paragraphs consisting of smearing his feces on the walls of this discussion board are what prompts Ismail to instruct others in the art of toilet training.
No one's wiggled out of anything. Just because other points were raised (that you apparently lack the intellectual honesty to address) doesn't mean that your point wasn't acknowledged. It was. Amply enough. I realize that such acknowledgments are something you can't feel comfortable about because your arguments typically only include a single, and usually simple-minded point.  But you should really learn to. Throwing in wildly fun and irrelevant passages, condescension and that stand-by predilection of yours for scatology really doesn't make your comments any more elaborate or intelligible. And enduring your adjectival nonsense is boring enough without having to hear your hundredth use of the world "Procrustean". Learn a new word and be as proud to trot that one out as you are your piece of shit poodle. No offense to her, mind you. I'm sure she's adorable in some way. Â
Now go apply the distinction between singular and plural nouns to your own references of Cori's work.
Oh. And learn what it would mean to raise an objection to it. Or to my qualified defense of it.
Or don't. In which case, you'd be much better off going to electronicintifada.net (or worse, we know your side has a lot to pick and choose from on that score) and engage in the brotherhood of vitriol offered by your fellow Intifada-holics.
Â
Ismail,
 It was the lead story on their radio show. That was the tag line before the aired the actual story. I'm not sure if they've archived it online yet, but they will. I'll post it when they do.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
  "However, no one has identified a substantive objection to her specific translations, despite the fact that examples of them were offered to the reader."
P-A, perhaps you are not as well situated as you think to offer linguistic advice, since you insist upon referring to Cori's "translations" and "examples" despite having been patiently instructed in the singularity of her example.
It's very amusing to witness the Procrustean contortions you'll endure to wriggle out of acknowledging the obvious; namely, that translations of highly contended historical events performed by non-historians with strong ideological inclinations working for the public relations section of the very institution whose soiled linen she's hired to freshen are not to be trusted.
Even my dog, admittedly smarter than most owing to her part poodle heritage, can see this. It's a very telling example of the human disposition to self-deception that, as closely as I rub your nose in the obvious, you insist, like a toddler in need of a nap, that black is white.
Have a bit of shut-eye and come read my words again. Remember to go potty before you get into bed. Sweet dreams.Â
Sorry, left out my name. The question above is mine.
Cori-
I did a quick search and found the following at the BBC website:
"Deadly Jerusalem Bulldozer Attack"
"Bulldozer Rampage in Jerusalem"
"Jerusalem Bulldozer Attack"Â
You seem to suggest that the BBC ran the headline, "Palestinian, father of three, gunned down in East Jerusalem". Even if it did, it would have been outnumbered by those above, which I'm sure you prefer.
But I couldn't find a trace of such a headline at the BBC's website, nor did a Google search turn one up. Perhaps you can tell us where you saw this?Â
Oh, Ismail. You raise the issue of self-esteem. The Jewish sense of ignorance was referred to in a particular context – having to do specifically with ignorance of what it means to embrace vitriol as a life-style. I don't think that admitting to one's ignorance of that should raise concerns for one's self-esteem. Â
Anonymous 8:16, the problems of the potential for bias to obscure Cori's efforts have been noted. And responded to. However, no one has identified a substantive objection to her specific translations, despite the fact that examples of them were offered to the reader.
You focus on the historical memory of Jews as one of the most persistently persecuted peoples throughout civilization, and how that experience might affect the way they feel compelled to represent their military. You do not focus on something much more pertinent and obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of history: Modern Hebrew is a very new language. Speaking it on a daily basis is a recent innovation and an experience engaged in by a only a few million souls at best. The fact that making translations from it into English would have been a shoddy and error-prone process in the days before it had gained a foothold as a viable medium for communication and developed as a nation's language should be obvious. But every now and then you get a couple of people whose interest in the hypothetical is offended by things that are obvious. Too bad people like that weren't around to excoriate Herodotus, Ibn Abd el-Hakem and Ibn Khaldun for the biases that might have inevitably pervaded their works as well. We would have obviously been much better off as a modern civilization today had that been the case, right?
There are some individuals here who know a little bit about the problems of historical analysis and a whole lot of nothing when it comes to language translation, among other things. Go ahead and voice your hypothetical concerns. Cori will continue to focus instead on a real problem that you're ignoring. Just like everything else when it comes to how generalists approach Israel.
"Everything associated with this country—every military operation, every
sentence written in any publication, the general justification of our
existence—is scrutinized in an aggressive way that no other sovereign
state has had to contend with."
Young lady, you really must get out more. There is an entire profession dedicated to reading old documents an analyzing them (not just in translation) in minute and scathing detail. It is called "history". I appreciate you loyalty to your race and tribe, and I suppose the sense of victimization is inevitable. But the notion that Israel is the only country that has suffered the most in all of history from a careful reading of its military, political and social documents is provincial. It may be flattering to imagine your country as experiencing the overwhelming intensity of all historical scrutiny, ever, and somehow surviving all those historians, intact, but it just isn't so.Â
The best of luck, and do enjoy your reading and translating. As a historian, there is nothing more pleasurable (and eye-opening, as you have found) than reading original source material.
Â
Ismail,
 As I've said previously, if you were to post a comment solely based on "the issues", I would be happy to respond directly and completely. It's the sarcasm and stupidly offensive remarks that enable me to ignore them. When I am "coy" about responding to something you've said, it's when I feel the need to clear something up for readers other than you.
Cori C
coriac@gmail.com
First of all, Ismail, you're a self-centered asshole. (And I mean that in the most constructive way possible). The only one whose sake is benefitted by screen names is you. And I daresay you're not giving anyone here much of a reason to be charitable to you.
Read your first comment regarding judgment and translation. A link between those two specific things was the only (foregone) conclusion you made following 3 sentences musing over a relation between translation and something else, interpretation.
Now, I'm tired, you see. Had a fun night out. And at around 4 o'clock I posted a good reply to anon 3:17 regarding the relationship between employment and fulfillment – having first noted your objection to speculation that a lack of renumeration might be your problem. But the screen crashed when the comment was posted and I have to reconstruct what were some pretty witty quips about how your true passion would seem to be as a spokesperson for Hamas/PA. Obviously your daily work engages some talent you must have. But passion should count for something too. It would be incredibly frustrating for someone as articulate as you to see that government's PR and the moral reasoning behind their policies go more poorly defended than (even) Israel's. It's obvious that not even the great Yasser Abdel Rabdo can hold a candle to you, and that must burn you up.
As Palestine's point-man, you might want to attempt an understanding of the following: Your "conflict of interest" complaint is noted. But what was not noted was a single coherent objection to Cori's specific translations. What was not noted was something that vindicated the original mistranslation. Knowing you, it's doubtful that an effort at such incredibly painstaking tasks was ever attempted. And that's because you never intended to have a serious discussion on them. Cori provided examples of what she did. And because you could find no fault with those specific efforts, because you could offer no argument against her specific interpretations, you did what you do best instead. You made the thread a soapbox for your politics. And now this newest application of your politics, in all the glory of its arrested-development, to this article, is noted as well. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you said anything that went beyond that or deeper than that. You didn't. And you know that.
Oh, and every now and then, do try subduing your urge to service the needs of the Arab empire. Even though it's been on life-support for nearly ten centuries - having forgotten how to recognize basic governance after outsourcing that to the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, the U.N. and now the U.S. - old habits apparently die hard. Sorry to hear that Israel won't be the next caretaker government for your Palestinians, either. So stop expecting them to be. Perhaps, as a true believer in the Palestinian cause, you could interest the PA in hiring Juan Cole to translate the IDF's records instead. But first you would have to find a way to offer that old goat unbiased instruction in how to speak the damn language first. Get to it.Â
Anon 2:02 says, "I'm intrigued by your assertion that because translation requires judgment, every translation from a source you don't like will irreparably bias or corrupt the historical record."
I'd be intrigued by such an assertion, too. But nothing of such stupidity has ever passed my lips. My assertion was much more local and specific than the silly generality you attribute to me.
See if you can follow this. Ms. C is a paid flack for an occupying force. She worries aloud that some material in said force's archive may be pounced upon by soulless terror-symps to besmirch the brave lads and lasses of of the IOF. With this explicit concern in mind, and as a right-wing Zionist, she means to render the archives "correct" and "objective". She's the one, not me, who asserts that her goal is "objectivity" and all the related words which suggest the act of translation is a mere technical operation.
Why do you characterize your ignorance as "Jewish"? Sign up for self-esteem lessons, stat.Â
Anon 3:17 (and will you folks please adopt screen names, for the sake of us all?) Â Nope, I'm too old and too smart for the marines. Oh, and I have no interest in subduing other people in the service of empire.
OK, you got me. I'm really a homeless guy and I live over a steam vent in Cleveland. There. Happy? Now, let's talk about the relevant stuff.  ….Ok, job training is available, and the US Marines are looking for a few good men-do you qualify?
I'm intrigued by your assertion that because translation requires judgment, every translation from a source you don't like will irreparably bias or corrupt the historical record. Many things require judgment. And the vast majority of those things have nothing to do with weighing and reinterpreting the historical record until it meets a flawlessly unbiased standard – an objective as hypothetical as it is utopian.
IÂ suspect that on some level you must know all this.
That's the particular of the only "argument" hidden within your temper tantrum. It would have been much easier to decipher had you decided to be more concise. But as the only self-admitted sadist on this thread, you'll have to contend with our Jewish ignorance of the reasons behind your reliance on vitriol as a dialectical crutch.
Well, as you can see, there seems to be quite a conversation going on here, more than the bland "attaboys!" and backslaps Cori's piece would have garnered absent my comments. Let's look at some of the fallout, shall we?
kahane_met wants us to know that he likes laughing at everyone. So noted.
our anonymous friend at 12:36 am (is that you, P-A?) advises me that I can attract more flies with honey than I can with vinegar. First, I'm not interested in attracting flies. Second, I've had some invective-free conversations with many here (my last volley with P-A is a case in point). Why? They make interesting and thoughtful arguments which I respect despite our disagreement. Cori has shown not a particle of insight nor uttered a single phrase that informs, delights or challenges. It is her blithe adolescent certainty in the face of this vacuity that catalyzes my sadism. Finally, one can try to be persuasive about matters of detail or nuance, but Cori's worldview is so completely opposed to my own that persuasion is out of the question, and so supportive of profound injustice that vitriol is entirely appropriate.
And anon, such phrases as "…the copious emotional content of your invective…" and "…a tone so drenched in the acidity of acrid, if not rancid lemons that it completely eclipses whatever reasoning you claim you're trying to engage…" are calling out for a merciful death. Stop torturing the prose. This isn't some lexical Abu Ghraib.
And please advise where I demanded that others "wallow in my own misery"? This suits your perspective; it doesn't reflect what I wrote. Â
jewlicious- two lengthy and overwrought comments about penises? I realize that you must have very stimulated by my offhand remark, but dude…you're embarrassing yourself.
Cori- you entitle your post "criticism of the idf and right-wing zionism", making it clear that you're responding to me, then describe me as "insignificant". What gives? Don't be so coy, you little vixen. Either you reply to my comment, or you ignore me. Can't have it both ways.
In your comment, you continue to use phrases like "verify facts", "clean up poor translations", "accuracy" and "actual history", as though these were straightforward, scientific, objective notions. You say that you want to "free the documents from subjectivity", but you've already acknowledged that one of your purposes is to deny Israel's critics the chance to "…Â conjure up arguments that could falsely represent the position of the IDF…" Can you not see that translating with this in mind is a highly subjective effort? Isn't it clear that your idea of falsely representing the position of the IOF may be someone else's idea of accurately characterizing its activities? Note that I'm not at the moment arguing for one view or the other, just that the activity you describe is a highly theory-laden one, not the simple technical one you suggest.
 Finally, let's keep in mind that you're a publicist. Your business is to burnish your client's image. Flacks for CocaCola don't remind us that it rots your teeth. Flacks for the IOF are no more concerned with the public interest than the Coke guys are. It's not their job. In any other context, this insight would be so basic and non-controversial it wouldn't need mentioning.
You're a PR person. And you're "cleaning up" the translations of your client's exploits. End of story. Â
To our Monty Python fan (you again, P-A?) Â Actually, the "distinction" between translation and interpretation is not obvious at all. If you were right, every person fluent in a language would be as good a translator as any other. They're not. Translation requires judgement.
Anon 9:17 reminds us that some Arabs are stupid. So noted. Also noted: another entirely non-responsive comment. Â
Anon 9:17 gets back to the endlessly fascinating topic of my bank account and work ethic. What's with you guys? If I were unemployed or a homemaker or independently wealthy, in what respect would this make me inferior, or have any relevance to my argument? You shame yourselves with this obsessive concern over my employment status.Â
As I've said before, I understand that many of you chumps can't imagine writing such elegant and literate prose without taking hours to do so. Not me. I write as fast as it takes me to type. It's a gift. So my appearance here really doesn't require the time commitment you seem to imagine it does.
The bigger question, though, is why do you all spend so much of your time commenting about my personal shortcomings or vices? Who cares? How about focussing on the particulars of my argument. Got a different theory of translation? Describe it and say how it's superior to mine. Think the IOF's gotten a bad rap? I'm listening. But this endless conjecture about my character, etc? It's boring and beside the point. Of course, if you have nothing else to say…. Â
How about this?-OK, you got me. I'm really a homeless guy and I live over a steam vent in Cleveland. There. Happy? Now, let's talk about the relevant stuff. Â
  Â
I see Israel, like any other nation (a young one, especially) as a work in progress. I'll be the first to admit that it has done some heinous things (with and without the military). I came to Israel as someone who believes in its ultimate purpose for the Jewish people– not to blindly defend it, but to be a part of a generation that wants to change it. That being said, my editing work and effort to verify facts and clean up poor translation is a part of this process. I'm not naive enough to believe that Israel's critics (or anyone else) will read the online historical archives and adjust their perceptions of historical events; the goal is simply to achieve accuracy and clarity (as I stated in the article several times) so that the IDF's publications reflect its actual history, and so that its credibility isn't tarnished by poorly translated documents.
I hope that everyone (minus Ismail, who is completely insignificant) understood this as the project's purpose; I'm not permitted to re-write history, nor do I have a desire to do so. I'm editing a document that I want to free from subjectivity, and a PhD in History wouldn't make that less challenging, as the process requires verification with specific sources, anyway.
Cori C
http://cori-c.blogspot.com
coriac@gmail.com
I would like to know how Ismail is so handsomely remunerated given that he spends all of his waking hours on Jewcy, and cannot be productive at anything else. Can you provide information how we part time Jewcers can apply for your line of work? Does it have anything to do with Spongebob?
Saleh Riqab: "The goal of the Zionist movement is to establish a state in Palestine, which would become a base for ruling the entire world. Its other goals are to destroy the religions it opposes, particularly Islam; to corrupt values and morality; to spread permissiveness and sex; and to generate moral decline."
"They have come up with many means to achieve this, such as inventing philosophical theories that destroy religion and morality. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim founded the theory of the formation of religion, which attributes it to reason – which means that religion did not originate from God. This is known as the theory of 'collective thought.'
"Jean-Paul Sartre, founder of existentialism, which is based on atheism, was a famous French Jew. The psychologist Freud, who interpreted the infant's relations with his mother as sexual, said, when he was given an award, 'I have never renounced my Judaism.'"
"There are also theories that were invented by non-Jews, but they disseminate them, knowing that they are scientifically false, such as the theory of Darwin. Darwin was not Jewish, but they exploited his theory. Even though new Darwinist theories have appeared, they spread the original theory, because the concept of 'survival of the fittest' serves their
colonialist needs."
Interviewer: "That's what the theory says."
Saleh Riqab: "Yes. It serves the goals of global Jewry. In addition, they established destructive movements to fight religion and morality, to corrupt the leaders throughout the world, and to break down social relations among nations.
"This was led by global Freemasonry, which was founded by three prominent Jews, the first of whom was Herod. This is a long well-known story — the role of the Jews in creating the Masonic movement. The Freemason movement used various methods to bring the political,
philosophical, and literary leaders worldwide to their knees. I remember the names of Arab leaders – some are dead and others are still alive — who joined the Masonic movement. They were brought down. There were even Palestinians among them."
"By the way, I'd like to say something… I don't want to mention names. The viewers will know what I mean. There is a book called Les Fous de la Paix, which was written by two Jewish journalists. I have a copy. It was translated into Arabic, and I've read it. It mentions that one of the architects of the Oslo Accords was meeting with the Jewish negotiator at a
hotel in Britain. According to the book, in an adjacent room, the son of the Palestinian negotiator was with the daughter of the Jews, and they locked the door. That's when the Palestinian negotiator was brought down. [...]
"We see this clearly in the U.S. elections. Both Democrats and Republicans compete to please the state of the Jews. That's why when a Democrat comes to occupied Palestine, he puts on a religious skullcap, goes to the Western Wall, bangs his head against the wall, and says: 'Your philosophy and the need to please you is now inside my head.' They all compete with one another, but the Jews maintain a balance, and they always prefer the Christian Zionists."
"If a Democrat comes to power, like [Bill] Clinton – who served them well in Oslo and elsewhere, and almost served them in the second Camp David, but then made statements [they didn't like] – what did Zionism do? It sent him the Jewish Monica, with whom Clinton had sex in the American White House. "Clinton left [the White House], but there are thousands of pages documenting his sexual depravity, because he had sex in the White House. I read a report that Clinton used to call Arab leaders and talk to them while she was having sex with him."
Interviewer: "My God!"
Saleh Riqab: "These things are documented, but the Arabs don't read them." [...]
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which are a product of the 1897 Basel Congress, discuss how the Jews should seize control of the world. In Europe, and especially in the U.S., there was a quick Jewish takeover of the major mass media, because in the West, the mass media shapes their mentality and their views. They don't read very much, they just listen."
Well stated Cori. You'd think the difference between translating historical documents and interpreting their meaning within the context of the historical record would be obvious. Alas, we are dealing with someone for whom such distinctions are not useful.
Jewlicious: LOL (twice)
Ismail, are there many like you amongst the burly men of Palestine? If so I suggest you all put down your Russian AK-47 pea shooters and simply drop trou. One sight of your magnificent manhood will surely cause the entire Zionist edifice to crumble to the ground! But I guess the lure of mamon is too hard to resist, even for someone as magnificent, and magnificently well paid as you. While you wallow anonymously in the flesh pots of Babylon, Palestine cries out for you to liberate her from the Zionist jackboot of obbression. No wonder tiny-penis Israeli guys like myself can wander freely amongst your formerly verdant fields and orchards! Woe unto us should you ever decide to, you know, step up your assault against our members and go from being a mere faceless armchair combatant to the head of an elite Palestinian vanguard who will surely succeed where all the others have failed by mere dint of the existence of your manly manhood. Impotent no more, you will be free at last. Good God Almighty! Free at last!
Heh. Loser.
———————————
I blog at Jewlicious.com
The difference between Palestineisamyth, Thorswhateverhisscreennameis and you, Ismail – is that you actually seem to take seriously the idea of being taken seriously.
The problem is, that no matter how "appropriate" you consider the copious emotional content of your invective, you achieve precisely the opposite. The only thing taken seriously is a tone so drenched in the acidity of acrid, if not rancid lemons that it completely eclipses whatever reasoning you claim you're trying to engage, merely leaving that taste in the mouths of your readers here. Leaving your audience nauseated by the way you make your appeals is not an intelligent way to attempt to make a point. And if you don't want to take my word for it, perhaps you might want to study the historical success rate of people and groups who demand that others wallow in their own misery with them and bring them down to the level they feel they are stuck dwelling in, as a way to achieve something.
It really doesn't work.
I don't know what you get paid so much to do, but I'm assuming it must not involve understanding such basic truisms such as this. Â
of course, that should be YE"SH settlers now, since 2005…
i like to laugh at arabs who get their knickers in a twist about "palestine" and i like to laugh at brainwashed americans whose greatest wish is to be "israeli" and indeed "more israeli than the israelis" and i like to laugh at yafe nefesh israelis who generally have a severe case of cognitive dissonance and and and is there anyone i left out? i don't like