Harry's Place

“Morris identifies two main causes of this shift: the widespread rejection of Israel’s right to exist in the Arab and wider Islamic world ”

Absolute garbage. More Muslim nations recognise Israel than in anytime in history. The Saudis have come forward with a peace plan involving all Muslim nations (which peace wanting Israel has ignored)

This is pure zionist psychosis.

“and the gradual undermining of Israel’s legitimacy in Western public opinion”

You mean the gradual undermining of Israels illegal occupation

“Iran, a country currently led by a president who regularly threatens to destroy Israel and the Jews; to the north, ”

The Big lie repeated again and again. When its pointed out Iran has tens of thousands of Jews in its border who seem remarkably undead (more than any ME country except Israel) you say ” no no we never said he wanted to kill all Jews”

Benny Morris final solution to the Palestinian problem was of course to have expelled all Arabs from Israel in 1948. Its an outrage for C4 to host Ahmeinajad but OK for HP to post links by proponents of ethnic cleansing

Why is HP allowing posts from ethnic cleansers?

“Halevi suggests that the future of the civilized world – and not just Israel’s future – is at stake in Gaza. Gaza, Mumbai, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran.”

The civilized world. LOL.

“These are all fronts in what is, fundamentally, one long war against variations of radical Islamism, a threat to liberal civilization that resembles the Fascist and Stalinist threats of the mid-twentieth century.”

Yeah its true. A bunch of tribesmen unable to control even their own third world lands are equivalent threat to the largest army in Europe able to rule from France to Russia and a nuclear power controlling have of Europes nations.

Its all in the book “Eurabia”

The people who suffer from this extreme rhetoric are of course the Muslim minorities living in the west and elsewhere. But who cares if Israel gets to keep its land

The age-old Jewish answer to the situation Israel finds itself in today, can be seen in a small, yet lovely children’s book called “The Tale of Seven Sheep” (published by Feldheim).

Time for Israel to get serious, tell Brown et. al to screw themselves, and send the troops in to decimate Hamas. Show the world that the Islamists can be defied and defeated, if only the will can be summoned. Show the world that Israel will do whatever it takes to survive and that fascist war criminals will have no place to hide, regardless how much the idiotic media pander to their lies and propaganda. The battle for “western public opinion” is lost anyway. Good grief, you can read about the “high level of civilian casualties in Gaza” in every major British media outlet, its fucking hallucinatory. Has it ever been more obvious that Israel might as well be making its case to a brick wall?

“Because Israel consistently loses these public relations wars, the belief in Israel’s legitimacy is declining among opinion shapers in the West”

Its the other way around – as the western media is mostly dominated by dedicated Israel-haters and passive acquiesence to it, Israel has no chance in winning a public relation war. Israel is going to be guilty full stop. That’s the way it is and its time for those people who understand that Israel needs to defend itself to face up to this fact and the consequences it entails.

Absolutely right on Adam. If every Israeli marched to the sea and quietly drowned themselves the Jew haters would scream abuse at them because the Jews had deprived of seeing them die in agony.

Fuck Hamas! Fuck world opinion as neither will sustain Israelis.

As for being hated, ‘Let them hate as long as they fear’. Lucius Accius

the Jews had deprived the ghouls of seeing them die in agony

Good post. It’s discouraging that Israel seems to be suffering from the general Western failure of confidence. I’ve been concerned for a while that the whole of the West is slipping back into a ’70s mentality, and this is more confirmation of that.

this battle is part of the larger war against jihadism that shifts from one part of the world to the other, and whose outcome will define our generation.”

Halevi suggests that the future of the civilized world – and not just Israel’s future – is at stake in Gaza. Gaza, Mumbai, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran. These are all fronts in what is, fundamentally, one long war against variations of radical Islamism, a threat to liberal civilization that resembles the Fascist and Stalinist threats of the mid-twentieth century.

Only completely.

More co-operation with India is on the cards me thinks.

HPhypocrite writes:

“…More Muslim nations recognise Israel than in anytime in history.”

Since 1948 only two Arab nations have recognized Israel. They are
Egypt and Jordan. Turkey also recognizes Israel, but they are not
Arabs. After 60+ years it is time for the Arab world to recognize
Israel. But they, like you, refuse to do so.

“…You mean the gradual undermining of Israels illegal occupation.”

Wrong. Israel is doing nothing illegal. Israel haters such as
yourself always mention this, as though making the statement
itself makes the statement TRUE. It does not.

When your country is attacked by another, as Israel was in
1967 by Jordan – two days AFTER the start of the 6 day war,
any land captured by the attacked country is LEGITIMATELY
theirs. That has been international law for thousands of years.

Of course people like you, who deny that Jews are even Human
Beings, do not allow Jews to exercise the rights of all other
Human Beings.

—
Europe in the 1930’s: “Jews to Palestine”
Europe in the 2000’s: “Jews out of Palestine”
“Don’t be here … Don’t be there … Just Don’t BE!”

Am Yisroel Chai … The Jewish People will never Die!

Morris identifies two main causes of this shift: the widespread rejection of Israel’s right to exist in the Arab and wider Islamic world

Morris is a historian, so perhaps he’s not very much interested in recent events.

The Arab League proposed a peace initiative in 2002, whereby Israel would retreat to its 1967 borders and all Arab states would establish full diplomatic ties with the State of Israel.

How’s that for “rejecting Israel’s right to exist”?

distraction from the Iranian nuclear threat

Last I heard the US’s National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran had suspended all weapons-oriented nuclear research in 2003 — do you have more recent news?

Halevi suggests that the future of the civilized world – and not just Israel’s future – is at stake in Gaza.

What a relief Israel bombed them; otherwise the Gazans would have taken over the world. I had already bought the chador for my wife.

Liberal democracies are sometimes faced with threats that can no longer be ignored.

Yes, for instance Bernard Madoff.

I have a feeling that when this war is over the civil war in Gaza will be worse.

I have a feeling that when this war is over the civil war in Gaza will be worse.

Perhaps the IDF better leave no tall building standing, given the uses the Palestinian factions have made of them in the past.

Time for Israel to get serious, tell Brown et. al to screw themselves, and send the troops in to decimate Hamas.

Israel doesn’t refrain from sending in the troops because of Brown. It refrains because it’s scared of taking a lot of casualties.

The litmus test for whether a war is justified or not is whether the public is prepared to accept the death of a considerable number of soldiers or not. And in this case the answer is no.

The litmus test for whether a war is justified or not is whether the public is prepared to accept the death of a considerable number of soldiers or not.

A war is justified by a willingness to die for it? That sounds exactly like the kind of nonsense a supporter of Hamas suicide bombings might come out with.

(BTW, have you found out yet what happened to the indigenous peoples of Argentina, and when they are going to get their land back from European settlers?)

Well Mr Buster, let’s revisit at the weekend shall we?

Europe in the 1930’s: “Jews to Palestine”
Europe in the 2000’s: “Jews out of Palestine”
“Don’t be here … Don’t be there … Just Don’t BE!”

Europe in the 2000s UPGRADED its relations with Israel, even in the wake of extensive West Bank rampaging by Jewish settlers with the Israeli Defense Forces looking on.

With enemies like these, who needs friends…

Wrong in just about every detail. Pointless trying to debate it here though.

TheIrie
31 December 2008, 7:30 pm

“Wrong in just about every detail. Pointless trying to debate it here though.”

Indeed. So fuck off.

MattG

Members of the Hamas, Palestinians from Gaza and even their friends all around the world have been saying lately that this action by Israel has been the worst (or one of the worst) ever against the Palestinians. As far as I know, the Palestinian death-count is, after five days, in the low hundreds (less than 400 hundred dead — though every individual death is tragic and so on…), i.e., an average of less than 100 killed there each of these last days. When the real Shoah/Holocaust was at its worst, some 10.000 Jews were being killed daily. Even if all the Palestinians killed since Saturday were innocent civilians (but most were not and, in a police-state like Gaza, policemen’s roles are somewhat different from their roles in democratic societies: maybe it is fair to compare Hamas policemen to the Gestapo), if we put side by side what was done to the European Jews between 1939-45 and what’s taking place in Gaza right now, how can anyone talk about a genocide or a real Holocaust being (or having ever been) perpetrated against the Palestinian population? I probably missed all the indignation shown when true genocides were taking place in Cambodja or Rwanda or when thousands or even tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens were murdered by the so-called anti-imperialist resistence (Al Qaeda fundamentalists and their likes). Unfortunately, I also missed all those “stop the war” rallies during the Iran-Iraq war where maybe a million Muslims were killed.

Regardless of your views on the whole situation it does seem that there is a serious danger that the state of Israel is unsustainable in the long run. The comparison seems to be to the Kingdom of Jerusalem; able to exist for about a hundred years but ultimately overrun by the weight of population around it.

Excellent article, particularly in respect of the importance of Israel’s public relations approach which has been worse than dismal hitherto.

Babs Barron, a psychologist, makes some good points about this in her article on Think Israel at

http://www.think-israel.org/barron.yungianhasbara.html

I would also say that the standing of Israel among the US elite has been damaged by the actions of the Neoconservatives and the Israel Lobby, especially their actions in the run-up to the Iraq war. It seems everyone in US public life is now aware of their activities.

In fact, Obama seems to have been aware of it in 2002. He said in a speech made that year: “What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne”.

The military have also spoken frankly on the Lobby and the Iraq War. In 2002, Wesley Clark, a retired four-star US Army General and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, said “Those who favor this attack [by the US against Iraq] now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel”.
And according to a CBS interview in 2004 with Anthony Zinni, a US four-star General, “Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as ‘the neo-conservatives’ who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
‘I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody – everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do…I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don’t believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn’t know where it came from’”.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a US Army Colonel and Colin Powell’s chief of Staff, said in 2006 “A lot of these guys, including [David] Wurmser, I looked at as card-carrying members of the Likud party, as I did with [Douglas] Feith. You wouldn’t open their wallet and find a card, but I often wondered if their primary allegiance was to their own country or to Israel. That was the thing that troubled me, because there was so much that they said and did that looked like it was more reflective of Israel’s interest than our own”.

It seems the intelligence community, too, has definite ideas on the Neocons and the Lobby. The newspaper Forward stated “According to [Barry] Jacobs, a former State Department official with broad contacts in Washington’s bureaucracy, the notion that American Jews and Pentagon neoconservatives conspired to push the United States into war against Iraq, and possibly also against Iran, is pervasive in Washington’s intelligence community”. See also the writings of US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who goes into great detail in regard to the Neocons’ methods.

Since the Iraq war, masses of data concerning the Neocons and the Lobby has appeared. Anyone interested ought to read not just ‘The Israel Lobby’ by Mearsheimer and Walt, but also ‘The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel’ by Stephen Sniegoski for a fuller picture.

Morris identifies two main causes of this shift: the widespread rejection of Israel’s right to exist in the Arab and wider Islamic world and the gradual undermining of Israel’s legitimacy in Western public opinion.

I don’t agree that Israel’s legitimacy is in question amongst Western public opinion. IMHO there has been a sharp polarisation of WPO, but with the majority of the non-radical left, the centre ground and the non-radical right sympathetic to Israel. In part because of 9/11, 7/7 and the the plethora of other Islamist terror attacks – but mainly because of common sense and natural justice.

Gaza, Mumbai, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran. These are all fronts in what is, fundamentally, one long war against variations of radical Islamism, a threat to liberal civilization that resembles the Fascist and Stalinist threats of the mid-twentieth century.

This has been so obvious for several years now that it should hardly need taking up valuable space in the New Republic just to repeat it once again. And yet it is needed. That is what is so perplexing.

an average of less than 100 killed there each of these last days. When the real Shoah/Holocaust was at its worst, some 10.000 Jews were being killed daily

I see the point; Israel is allowed to kill people, so long as it’s not 10,000 a day.

it is fair to compare Hamas policemen to the Gestapo

A policeman here in my neighborhood killed a stray dog that was chasing him a few weeks ago. I think it’s fair to compare him to Hitler.

I probably missed all the indignation shown when true genocides were taking place in Cambodja or Rwanda

Among those who failed to speak out against the Rwandan genocide were the State of Israel and all major Zionist and Jewish organizations. They were too busy building Holocaust musuems.

I’d like to respond to HPhypocrite, whose remarks–specifically, the accusation that I am an “ethnic cleanser”– I find deeply offensive.

Morris argues–and I agree–that there are three specific political entities which deny Israel’s right to exist: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the current Iranian regime. Neither Morris nor I accuse the entire Muslim world of complicity with this ideology. On the contrary. The ideology of radical Islamism, as many Muslims recognize, has little to do with the Muslim tradition. It is a modern ideology that resembles the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.

It is this ideology which must be defeated, primarily through an ideological war. Unfortunately, sometimes force will be necessary, but must of course, be directed towards those that are the leaders of the military/political movements that espouse these ideologies.

@Ken Fulcrum

Interesting post. To what extent would you say the current attack on Hamas in Gaza was timed to present the incoming Obama administration with a fait accompli?

I would also say that the standing of Islam among the US people has been damaged by the actions of Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Qaeda, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, their allies and sympathizers among the Muslim populations and much of the left etc, especially their actions in the run-up to 9/11, 7/7, Bali, Madrid, Mumbai and their justifications after. It seems everyone in the US, save most journalists, academic intellectuals and some politicians, is now aware of their activities.

“I see the point; Israel is allowed to kill people, so long as it’s not 10,000 a day.”

No, the point is the following: 1 Palestinian killed by Israel = a genocide. 6 million Jews killed, on the other hand, is not a genocide, because, according to much of the Muslim world and to the Iranian president in particular, it never happened. Thus, the life of an armed member of Hamas is worth more than the lives of 6 million innocent and unarmed Jews. (Again: that Palestinian life is considered worthy only if it was taken by an Israeli; if his/her killer was another Palestinian, an Egyptian, Jordanian or any other Arab or Muslim, then his/her life is not considered relevant by most other Arabs, Muslims or by the Western press).
It’s as simple as that.

No, the point is the following: 1 Palestinian killed by Israel = a genocide.

By no means the general position among anti-Zionists… See point 2 in this post on my blog and be convinced that there exists a variety of viewpoints on the subject.

Halevi suggests that the future of the civilized world – and not just Israel’s future – is at stake in Gaza.

Israel isn’t part of the civilised world, at least in the sense you mean.

Michelle Sieff
“I’d like to respond to HPhypocrite, whose remarks–specifically, the accusation that I am an “ethnic cleanser”– I find deeply offensive.”

Not you but Benny Morris. Benny Morris is an advocate of genocide
The fact that HP posts the articles of someone who calls for genocide of Arabs is disgraceful and deeply hypocrtical. Change what Morris said about Arabs to Jews and they would go apoplectic.

Hypocritical w*nkers

On the subject of Israel’s Arab citizens, Morris has argued:

“The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified…[2]”

When a Haaretz interviewer called the 1948 Palestinian exodus “ethnic cleansing,” Morris responded that “[t]here are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing”

Morris has criticized Ben-Gurion for not carrying out such a plan, saying “In the end, he faltered… If he had carried out a full expulsion – rather than a partial one – he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.”[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris

When it comes to analysis available in English there is none better than Halevi and Morris. (Although Morris is often a bit of a bummer.) I think Morris’ debate with (the Columbia professor) Massad, published with the title “No common ground,” has probably influenced me more than any other piece on the Israel-Arab conflict I’ve read.

“Morris argues–and I agree–that there are three specific political entities which deny Israel’s right to exist: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the current Iranian regime.”

—

I am amazed that people can quote Morris on such topics. In an interview with Ha’aretz he compared Israel to 19th century America: “Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.” The fact that this apologist for genocide can be endorsed by the “decent left” is a sure sign that its understanding of decency is purely Orwellian.

Among those who failed to speak out against the Rwandan genocide were the State of Israel and all major Zionist and Jewish organizations. They were too busy building Holocaust musuems.

Not that any extra evidence was needed but thanks for confirming your credentials as the biggest wanker posting on HP.

Ken Fulcrum speculates that a huge mass of the American public
is solidly behind Hamas terrorism in its attempt to destroy Israel.
(Note that he will respond by saying only that the Israeli Government
must go, the people themselves can stay. Just like in Hebron in
1928 I suppose).

Simply wrong. Poll after poll after poll shows that fewer than 6 or 7
percent support the genocide against the Jews that gives you and
your fellow Jew haters orgasm just by thinking of it.

Come on even Naom Chomsky wrote that Mearsheimer and Walt were
wrong. Israel only does what the US tells it to do; not the other
way around. No doubt you are a 9-11 truther too.

A policeman here in my neighborhood killed a stray dog that was chasing him a few weeks ago. I think it’s fair to compare him to Hitler.

I’m sure I could find a few members of PETA who would make that comparison.

I think Orwell had Israel in mind when he said “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”. The face being Palestinian, that is.

Fascinating…let me deal with the anti-Semite known as Hasbara buster first.

The Saudi ‘peace’ ultimatum is a code for destroying Israel. Here’s exactly what has been proposed. Israel redivides Jerusalem, which means that the Jewish holy sites will be desecrated and destroyed, just as they were after 1948 and in recent times by the ‘Palestinians’ in the parts of Judea and Samaria( AKA The West Bank) the Israelis allowed them to occupy after Oslo, a gesture towards peace by a victorious nation unmatched in history.

Further, the Jews will retreat to an indefensible border nine miles wide that Abba Eban aptly called ‘the Auschwitz lines’ (which includes a fair amount of land that would be swamp and desert if the Jews hadn’t made something of it) and create almost half a million Jewish refugees in the remainder of Israel. Additionally, the Jews agree to accept an unlimited number of genocidal Arab ‘refugees’ into what’s left of Israel.

In exchange for that ( and these the exact words of what’s offered) Israel gets ill defined ‘normal relations’ and a promise of an end to hostilities…at least for as long as Israel survives. What’s more none of it is subject to negotiation, and Israel will have to rely on the good will of a bunch of murderous Arabs for it’s survival.

Great deal, isn’t it? You have to forgive the Jews of Israel for not wanting to commit national suicide by giving the Arabs what they were unable to win on the battlefield. Sorry about that.

I also wonder at the term ‘occupation’…exactly how can one occupy land that never belonged to any nation in the first place?

The inherent problem here is that Israel allowed itself to be arm twisted into empowering Yasser Arafat in the mistaken belief this would lead to peace. Oslo was essentially a real estate deal with a contract…land in exchange for peace, the renunciation of terrorism against Israel’s civilians and an end to incitement against th eJews in the Arab mosques, schools and media. As is well known, Arafat lied through his teeth and never fulfilled a single part of that contract..so as in all real estate deals, the property should revert to its former owner,yes?

The irony is that the surrounding Arab nations have all killed and/or expelled a lot more ‘Palestinians’ than Israel has and care absolutely nothing for the refugees of the war THEY caused by attacking Israel in the first place. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to offer these refugees so much as a single dunam of land to call their own, and the only hope these people had was a close economic alliance and peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Thanks to Arafat and their own inherent savagery and love for killing Jews, that future isn’t possible any more.

As for media and PR,thanks to the millions spent by theSaudis to buy academics and politicians and the press like oranges at the market,the deconstruction of history and fact insures that Israel will never get an even break. Nor do they deserve on if they allow themselves to be manipulated into suicidal decision to look good to `the international community.’

There is in fact a solution for Gaza, and one that might actually lead to the Palestinians having the motivation to make th ecompromises necessary for peace…provided the Israelis finally figure out that they care more about the peace and security of their country than they do about trying to contort themselves into following rules unlike those applied to any other nation.

Sorry to be so damned long winded,but these things need to be said.

Rob@JoshuaPundit

The irony is that the surrounding Arab nations have all killed and/or expelled a lot more ‘Palestinians’ than Israel has and care absolutely nothing for the refugees of the war THEY caused by attacking Israel in the first place. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to offer these refugees so much as a single dunam of land to call their own, and the only hope these people had was a close economic alliance and peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Thanks to Arafat and their own inherent savagery and love for killing Jews, that future isn’t possible any more.

Sadly true. Ironically Israel is the only country in the middle east with a functioning economy, and as a result the Palestinians in the territories, before the first intifada, were the second wealthiest population in the Middle east (Israelis being first).

I suppose that even back then, impoverished Syrians, with a 1/4 the wealth of Palestinians had been taught to pity those poor refugees. Propaganda and reality never meet in the Middle East.

Nato Worshipper @ 1 January 2009, 7:14 am

“I think Orwell had Israel in mind when he said “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”. The face being Palestinian, that is.”

If you compare the publication date of “1984″ with the founding of the State of Israel I think you’ll find that this allegation is severely lacking in historical accuracy.

the Jews, many of whom since 1948 have resided in the state of Israel

May I say that this is poorly worded? Technically it’s true, of course, but it does seem to imply – at least to antisemites, admittedly – that those Jews were parachuted into the country in 1948, and there were no Jews there before that.
I know that this is barmy, but there are many people who believe that. After all, we hear people saying that ‘Israel is a few hundreds of thousands of European Jews who have no genetic links to the Jews who lived there 2000 years ago’. Frightening though it is, we need to remember that ignorance and stupidity do not seem to converge to any finite limit on the antisemitic side.

I think Orwell had Israel in mind when he said “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”. The face being Palestinian, that is.

I rest my case.

Israel doesn’t refrain from sending in the troops because of Brown. It refrains because it’s scared of taking a lot of casualties.

Yes, those cowering cowards, the Israelis. Posted by an ignoramus who has never been within 1000 miles of a shooting war.

The litmus test for whether a war is justified or not is whether the public is prepared to accept the death of a considerable number of soldiers or not. And in this case the answer is no.

As dumb as it gets. Look up the Iran-Iraq war.

Among those who failed to speak out against the Rwandan genocide were the State of Israel and all major Zionist and Jewish organizations. They were too busy building Holocaust musuems.

Totally bonkers.
What was that comment about cucarachas again?

Just a thought.

All the media reports an Israeli response to a ceasefire.

So what is the Hamas response?

It seems to be askingt the country defending itself to stop that action without and commitement by Hamas to stop.

Why is the media focussing on Israel, as the responder to have a ceasefire when the agressor says nothing but continues with its rocket firing?

The calls by EU, UN for an Israeli ceasefire is a smokescreen. It allows them to make nice with their Muslim citizens and Arab friends/sponsors while knowing that The USA will veto anything.

…. and to illustrate that this is NOT a one-sided call for a ceasefire, look at who proposes a UN res. and who opposes it. Note how UK’s UN response aligns with Gordon Brown but would seem to be at odds with what Kid Milliband has been saying about how Israel should stop.

A draft UN resolution put forward by Egypt and Libya failed after the US and UK complained that it called on Israel to ends its air assaults but made no mention of Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, which they say started the latest hostilities.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7806844.stm

Its a Global War. I realise that a lot of us strayed from what this thread was about. Let me remind you

In my mind, Halevi’s interpretation of the meaning of the battle underway in Gaza is more compelling. In his conclusion, he writes: “Most of all, what’s required is patience, and the realization among Israelis and our friends abroad that this battle is part of the larger war against jihadism that shifts from one part of the world to the other, and whose outcome will define our generation.”

Halevi suggests that the future of the civilized world – and not just Israel’s future – is at stake in Gaza. Gaza, Mumbai, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran. These are all fronts in what is, fundamentally, one long war against variations of radical Islamism, a threat to liberal civilization that resembles the Fascist and Stalinist threats of the mid-twentieth century. Liberal democracies are sometimes faced with threats that can no longer be ignored. Halevi and Morris tell us why, for Israel – and for the rest of the civilized world – that moment is now.

Look at the news blogs and you will see statements from Muslim leaders calling for the destruction of Israel and calling for volunteers. We have calls for attacks against the USA. Calls have emanated from Islamic preachers and even from prayers in Mosques.

We have many pro-Palestinan supporters stoking the tension with lies about Israel and suggesting that Israel is out to kill all Palestinians and that they are only targetting civilians. I can vouch for some of the most vile antisemitism on places like Republican Radio that would get any of the presenters into jail if they said it in the UK.

I see the US and UK stating that its all Hamas fault and I believe they will sanction the destruction of Hamas. Israel can’t actually say that because if Hamas exists in a pocket of 500 people who have fled to The Lebanon then Hamas can always say “We weren’t defeated”, hence Israel only want to disable Hamas.

If you listen to USA rhetoric it seems that AMerican align Hamas with Islamic-creep into their own country and evoke what the USA had to do after 9/11.

I think we are heading for a clash of civilisations. The Israel actions will arouse Muslims in the West and this may lead to suicide bombings. That will result in the West losing patience with Islam and see it for what it really is, as driven by an Islamist agenda. Islam seeks to dominate by conversion or population. The USA public talks about Europe as if its almost a lost continent.

Israel/Gaza, I believe is a skirimish in the clash of civilisations and I can only see it get worst. For this reason Israel MUST defeat Hamas and prove that Islamist Extremism can be defeated. I expect the USA and UK to support all the way while offering a few crumbs to Arab and Muslim opinions

Just posted this on the tomb. Happy if any bloggers take me up on it:

And if you want a symbol of the roots of the present conflict you could do no better then recall this interview with Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s foreign policy adviser at the time of the disengagement from Gaza:

“When you freeze that process [i.e. the political process with the Palestinians], you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem…Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state . . . has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

I think its an important quote to remember today. It would be great actually to get the whole interview up on-line (hint, hint). The original appeared in Ha’aretz but the link doesn’t seem to work. I reckon it could be published almost without comment.

To imply that the whole process is hostage to statements made by Dov Weisglass is absurd. There are many Israelis and many Israeli politicians who want dialogue, a political process and negotiations with the Palestinians. There are many Palestinians who want a political process with Israel. Hamas hasn’t until now, preferring to do their talking with indiscriminate rocket fire and their racist constitution. It’s time for them to reconsider their tactics and their constitution or continue to take the consequences.

Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state . . . has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

IRRELEVANT since there IS a political process with the Palestinians to move to a two-state solution. I could ask why the Palestinians are stalling The Roadmap by NOT adhering to the first action required of any party in that proces, namely to “immdiately and unconditionally cease violence and incitement”. On the day they signed they broke it. What condition can you place upon Israel when you have to do something ‘unconditionally”?

What about the cyanide delivered by Hamas after Gaza withdrawl which says they won’t follow any prior agreements or recognise the existence of Israel. This kinda kills any peace process.

I don’t need to ‘take you up on it’ and have a ding-dong discussion since no response of a contradictory nature can deny what ACTUALLY happened compared with a few words that DIDN’T happen to come to fruition.

It’s time for them to reconsider their tactics and their constitution or continue to take the consequences.

I hope they continue to take the consequences. I hope Hamas vow NOT to make any changes and that they refuse a ceasefire with Israel. To ASK for a ceasefire is to acknowledge Israel – and they won’t. That simply means carte blanche do reduce Hamas to rubble with will be a great thing for Global stability.

Islamist groups need to know that the West won’t take it any more. All we want is to be left alone from terrorist attacks. Remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are really responses to 9/11 in a demonstration that the West can meet terrorism head on and win.

BTW, we don’t have any choice but to win.

I disagree. There will be terrorists and anti Israel extremists unless and until their leadership comes onside. I’m one of those who wants a negotiated and agreed two state settlement followed by a thousand years of peace.

Beer Sheva is now in the southern rocket zone. My friends kids are now at home because schools in the greater area are all closed.

Reoccupation is looking increasing sensible.

The “international community” are a bunch of screaming hypocrites.

Provide an example of another country who is expected to just soak up rocket attacks on its cities.

The diplomats in the UN are extra-sleazy lowlives with no sense of decency.

I’m one of those who wants a negotiated and agreed two state settlement followed by a thousand years of peace.

We had no problem negotiating with German and Japan once they suffered devastating blows. You could say that there were still people in those societies who harboured the same feelings that led them to war but occupation of those countries by the people who defeated them and who then put into place plans for their rehabilitation have ended in success.

Gaza just needs regime change and that is why USA and UK must and will suppport Israel.

I could ask why the Palestinians are stalling The Roadmap by NOT adhering to the first action required of any party in that proces, namely to “immdiately and unconditionally cease violence and incitement”.

Maybe for the same reason Israel doesn’t stop its settlers’ violence and incitement?

Kiryat Arba’s rabbi, Dov Lior, has issued a fatwa forbbiding Jews from employing Arabs, or renting them houses. INCITEMENT.

The settlers have rampaged the West Bank in the last few months, torching houses, smashing cars, clubbing elderly people, etc. VIOLENCE.

Why doesn’t Israel stop it?

The difference being, of course, that while the Palestinian Authority is a messy thing, Israel has one of the most powerful armies in the world to crush the settlers with.

We had no problem negotiating with German and Japan once they suffered devastating blows.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I would be delighted if Hamas were to suffer a devastating blow but my hope is that they do then decide to make changes.

IRRELEVANT since there IS a political process with the Palestinians to move to a two-state solution.

No, there is not. If you read Weisglass’s statements thoroughly, what he says is that Sharon didn’t want to retain Gaza but did want to retain the West Bank, so that the Gaza disengagement was a distraction; its main purpose was, precisely, to show that occupied territory had been evacuated and the Palestinians had failed to build a State, as if it were possible to build a State in Gaza.

The proof that Israel is not serious in its “political process” with the Palestinians is given by the fact that not a single outpost has been evacuated and that a new civilian settlement has been authorized in Maskiyot, which will be inhabited precisely by settlers evacuated from Gaza.

I discuss the issue at some length in point 3 of this post on my blog.

World opinion is definately shifting towards Israel, and would be doing so much faster were it not for all the oil funded pro-palestinian lies and propaganda.

Look at who is protesting the Israeli actions. You have irrate Muslims ( duh!) and a few leftist dupes.

And after all the ugly actions of so many murderous Islamists these past few years, the civilised world is beginning to understand what Israel is going through, and so levels of sympathy are on the rise.

The Palestinians, their contrived histrionics, their manufactured indignation, and their (largely) self-inflicted ’suffering’ is becomming a worn out bore.

buster, hardly. I doubt that any Jews will get killed if they go against the Rabbi’s edict, whereas the PA has little compunction about bumping off anyone who sells land to Jews.

If you bother to get your head out of your bottom you will notice that the settlers’ actions were roundly condemned in Israel and elsewhere. Can you give me links about anyone who has condemned Hamas or Fateh and is still alive?

Maybe for the same reason Israel doesn’t stop its settlers’ violence and incitement?

Pathetic and wrong.

Back on the day the Roadmap was signed the Palestinians broke it on the same day and next day with stabbings. The Roadmap was signed in May 2003 and YOU are talking about events in 2008. Somehow you don’t seem to think that time exists.

The settler unrest in 2008 is a consequence of a stalled peace process from 2003. Had the Palestinian honoured their commitment then a vacuum would not exist.

You seem to think that a volume of your denials constitutes some knowledge or authority on the matter. What it conveys is a desire to obfuscate facts with random items that have no relevance. You are as transparent as Hamas and a joke. You’d think someone losing the argument so often would skulk away instead of returning to remind us of your Hamas-like stupidity.

In 2009 I predict you will be just another Hamas loser.

I have often wondered, given that the Palestinians are dispersed throughout the Middle East, whether the separate parts function as a whole. I mean, when the refugee camp in Beirut was being blasted by the Lebananese army a few years ago, we didn’t hear a peep out of the leadership in Gaza or the West Bank (at least, I don’t recall it being reported in teh Western media.). Is there some sort of Palestinian Parliament in Exile, that the different branches of the Palestinians send delegates to? (This is a genuine enquiry, and not mischievous.).

Sloop Joon P, (Admiral of The Fleet) you are on the button with

World opinion is definately shifting towards Israel, and would be doing so much faster were it not for all the oil funded pro-palestinian lies and propaganda.

The Palestinians, their contrived histrionics, their manufactured indignation, and their (largely) self-inflicted ’suffering’ is becomming a worn out bore.

Its 100% of what I’ve said many times elsewhere. I uses the word “stooges” too. People like Seaumus Milne, for example.

Look at the Realpolitik. The USa and UK won’t let a resolution pass that doesn’t acknowledge Hamas started this, just like res 1701 about The Lebanon that acknowledges that Hezbollah started it.

I really think that this time Israel will be allowed to smash Hamas because Hamas pride won’t let them surrender they hope that civilian casualties will be the lever – hence using civilian casualties as a political weapon. The implication is that they INVITE civilian casualties. They WANT civilians killed because no life is worth their idealogy to kill Jews.

I have often wondered, given that the Palestinians are dispersed throughout the Middle East, whether the separate parts function as a whole. I mean, when the refugee camp in Beirut was being blasted by the Lebananese army a few years ago, we didn’t hear a peep out of the leadership in Gaza or the West Bank (at least, I don’t recall it being reported in teh Western media.). Is there some sort of Palestinian Parliament in Exile, that the different branches of the Palestinians send delegates to? (This is a genuine enquiry, and not mischievous.).

Sue, this is the problem. There isn’t a single Palestinian voice. The Hamas leader, Mershal is in Syria or The Lebanon. He’s not brave enough to join the Hamas killers he controls. Abbas controls Fatah who are based in West Bank and while Abbas has some control over West Bank he has none over Hamas. Gaza has been called “Hamastan” and the Palestinians are currently two nascent states. The trick is to unite them under Abbas (not that he’s such a nice guy either). I believe new elelctions are due in Feb/March so Israel has to get this sorted and Hamas removed so that a unifying election can take place with only one winner, Abbas.

This is the reason why Israel strategy is so smart. Its everything in one go and why The USA and UK will give them a free ride. They know its the only solution.

The settler unrest in 2008 is a consequence of a stalled peace process from 2003.

What a load of crap! There is no such thing as a “settler unrest in 2008;” the settlers are in permanent unrest as a consequence of their ideology that a million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail. Tell me of a single year since 2003 in which Palestinians were not beaten by Jews as they tried to harvest their olives.

The only notable thing about late 2008 is that the settlers directed their hate against the soldiers as well as against Palestinian shepherds, and it was due not to any stalling of the peace process, but to Israel’s decision to evacuate them from ONE house.

The implication is that they INVITE civilian casualties. They WANT civilians killed because no life is worth their idealogy to kill Jews.

Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, begs to differ:

“The state of Israel must understand that Hamas rule in Gaza is a fact, and it is with that government that we must reach a situation of calm.”

(…)

“We could have eased the siege over the Gaza Strip, in such a way that the Palestinians, Hamas, would understand that holding their fire served their interests. But when you create a tahadiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues, it’s obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahadiyeh, and that their way to achieve this, is resumed Qassam fire.”

But who is a top Israeli general to contradict an expert who speaks from the harsh environment of a computer keyboard.

Maybe for the same reason Israel doesn’t stop its settlers’ violence and incitement?

Mouth-frothing nonsense. The so-called ’settlers’ do not bombard any Arabs with thousands of deadly weapons.

the settlers are in permanent unrest as a consequence of their ideology that a million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.

Mouth-frothing antisemitic lie.

But who is a top Israeli general to contradict an expert who speaks from the harsh environment of a computer keyboard

And which one are you – a top general (of any army), or an ‘expert’ who has never been to the Middle East and has never served in any army for 5 seconds, and is ranting and screeching from behind a keyboard halfway around the world, motivated by nothing but racist hatred?

And if you want a symbol of the roots of the present conflict you could do no better then recall this interview with Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s foreign policy adviser at the time of the disengagement from Gaza

What drivel. It’s the same old, same old ‘The Joos evacuated Gaza as a dirty trick, a ruse. Damn those Joos, they have no shame: they actually leave Gaza to be governed by Gazans. Are there any depths to which they will not stoop? Serve them right to be shelled non-stop by the poor Gazans who were forced to govern themselves’.

One statement by one politician made 5 years ago is no proof of anything. What ignoramuses like you and the sad HB are incapable of grasping is that in Israel you can have dissenting voices and contradictory opinions, unlike the pathetic monolithic SWP and Nazi gangs like Hamas.

the settlers are in permanent unrest as a consequence of their ideology that a million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.

Mouth-frothing antisemitic lie.

See here.

So how many settlers have actually used this distorted interpretation of the Jewish texts?

RE: One statement by one politician made 5 years ago is no proof of anything. What ignoramuses like you and the sad HB are incapable of grasping is that in Israel you can have dissenting voices and contradictory opinions, unlike the pathetic monolithic SWP and Nazi gangs like Hamas.

Though i don’t care for the tone of the delivery, this statement by nearly oxfordian, who i usually mock for his abusive right-wing rants, is absolutely correct and hits the nail right on the head. There are other statements besides Weisglas’ that the hard lefties like to repeat, mantra-like, you read it in almost every column they write: e.g. the Madeline Albright quote where she was asked if the sanctions on Iraq were worth 500,000 dead and she said yes. They always trot that out as though it’s proof that the U.S. is culpable for those lives, when in fact it was Saddam who was starving his people by not feeding them and squandering the resources available to him. Another one is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s statement to the effect that the U.S. lured the Soviet Union into Afghanistan. One statement by one guy, the Soviet Union is off the hook for their own invasion. Of course, the Americans/Israelis etc. are never “lured” anywhere, they are the only actors with volition, as the hard lefties would have it.
Yet another one is that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has resulted in over a million deaths. This one isn’t attributed to anyone in particular (good thing, since the numbers alone are ridiculous), but the notion that the U.S. is responsible for deaths due to Al-Qaeda bombs or Mahdi army attacks (which account for the vast majority of Iraqi civilian deaths) is truly risible, and racist, as it absolves those groups of responsibility, presumably on the basis that they justcan’t help themselves.

See here

from the usual pathetic source.

As vildechaye demonstrated above in his excellent analysis, this is utter nonsense. One guy said this. So what? He’s a lunatic. There are lunatics in Israel and in every other country. There are racists in Israel and in every other country. There is one in Argentina, for example, who demands that Jews be subjected to more stringent criticism, more extreme criteria, than everybody else (because ‘they are the only ones with volition’, as correctly stated by v.), and who can’t see how utterly racist this position is.

“Truth is intrinsically elitist,” says Derrida; however, according to Brophy, it is not so much truth that is intrinsically elitist, but rather the genre of truth. In a sense, the subject is contextualised into a that includes language as a paradox.

The primary theme of the works of Rushdie is the role of the writer as reader. Many situationisms concerning subcapitalist discourse exist. Thus, Sontag promotes the use of material theory to modify and analyse class.

Derrida’s model of the textual paradigm of expression states that the significance of the writer is significant form. But the economy, and eventually the rubicon, of socialist realism depicted in Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet emerges again in Midnight’s Children.

Debord uses the term ’subcapitalist discourse’ to denote not dematerialism, as socialist realism suggests, but neodematerialism. However, the subject is interpolated into a that includes art as a reality.

Socialist realism implies that reality, ironically, has objective value, but only if truth is equal to narrativity; otherwise, the task of the poet is social comment. Thus, in The Moor’s Last Sigh, Rushdie affirms the textual paradigm of expression; in Satanic Verses, however, he analyses subcapitalist discourse.

The subject is contextualised into a that includes consciousness as a whole. In a sense, Sartre suggests the use of subcapitalist discourse to deconstruct class divisions.

2. Rushdie and the textual paradigm of expression
“Class is used in the service of the status quo,” says Marx; however, according to la Tournier, it is not so much class that is used in the service of the status quo, but rather the absurdity, and subsequent dialectic, of class. Baudrillard uses the term ‘the capitalist paradigm of reality’ to denote a self-supporting totality. However, the subject is interpolated into a that includes language as a reality.

If one examines subconceptualist theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept socialist realism or conclude that sexuality is part of the collapse of narrativity. The main theme of Hubbard’s analysis of Sartreist absurdity is not, in fact, narrative, but postnarrative. It could be said that Lacan’s critique of the textual paradigm of expression states that academe is capable of significance.

“Consciousness is a legal fiction,” says Sontag. The primary theme of the works of Joyce is a mythopoetical whole. Thus, Lacan uses the term ‘the material paradigm of context’ to denote the role of the observer as artist.

The subject is contextualised into a that includes language as a paradox. However, if the textual paradigm of expression holds, we have to choose between socialist realism and neomodernist theory.

Sontag promotes the use of subcapitalist discourse to modify sexual identity. But Long implies that the works of Joyce are empowering.

Foucault uses the term ’socialist realism’ to denote not discourse as such, but postdiscourse. However, in Ulysses, Joyce deconstructs the textual paradigm of expression; in Finnegan’s Wake, although, he examines socialist realism.

The textual paradigm of expression states that reality comes from communication, but only if Sartre’s essay on predialectic sublimation is invalid; if that is not the case, Lacan’s model of subcapitalist discourse is one of “the semanticist paradigm of expression”, and therefore part of the collapse of truth. But if the textual paradigm of expression holds, we have to choose between subcapitalist discourse and neomaterial discourse.

Though i don’t care for the tone of the delivery, this statement by nearly oxfordian, who i usually mock for his abusive right-wing rants

—

Pot. Kettle. Black.

the settlers are in permanent unrest as a consequence of their ideology that a million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.

See here.

So its STILL a “Mouth-frothing antisemitic lie”. All you did, and you do this a lot, is to take a single quote at a single event and extrapolate it to “so ALL Jews”. That is a device we even banned when soeaking of Islamists vs Muslims.

So, when a Rabbi says this “fingernail” stuff you have extrapolated his words as now being a philosophy of “settlers”. And, by the way you wrote it you imply ALL settlers believe this.

Hence you stated what can reasonably be called an antisemitic lie.

Now, I think it acceptable to say that someone from Hamas isn’t worth a molecule of a Jewish fingernail. In fact not a molecule of ANY human being. We can say this when we believe Hamas animals to be sub-human.

There is one in Argentina, for example, who demands that Jews be subjected to more stringent criticism, more extreme criteria, than everybody else

It is Israel, and its apologists, who claim the country meets higher standards than other nations. See, for instance, this assertion on Harry’s Place (made by Londoner on 27 December 2008, 5:17 pm):

Israel, being Israel, the most moral nation on earth

Apparently Zionists want to be able to proclaim Israel the most moral country in the world without anyone having the right to investigate the claim’s validity.

In Spanish we have a proverb about having cakes and eating them — does it exist in English too?

Penny. Pemberton. Puerile. Pernicious. Peevish. Piss off.

RE: Ahmad Thompson’s POMObabble: Excellent article by Robert Fulford:

Humanities scholars spend lots of time reading, so why can’t they write?
Robert Fulford
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
The tortured prose common in academic writing often produces both unconscious comedy and literary scandal. It stumbles across my desk or my screen every day, but a particularly striking example showed up in Gail Singer’s recent review of The Girl from God’s Country, a University of Toronto Press book by Kay Armatage about a silent-era Canadian filmmaker, Nell Shipman.
Armatage, who teaches film, has made documentaries, organized festival programs and otherwise operated outside academe. Yet she writes an obscurantist style that seems directed only to other professors. Singer, a filmmaker who admires Shipman and would like to admire her biographer, directs our attention (in the June issue of the Literary Review of Canada) to what Armatage says about Shipman’s attachment to the Canadian North:
“We can see a socio-sexual parallel between the geography of the wilderness and the topographies of narrative in this genre, which organizes a particular spatial itinerary and social anatomy.”
Is there, anywhere, a reader brave or foolish enough to explain what that means? Probably not. And why is it there? How complicated can the story of Nell Shipman be? Armatage seems to be following the first rule of postmodernism: Make simple ideas complicated, and complicated ideas incomprehensible.
Sympathetically, Singer suggests that many scholars believe their peers will judge them harshly if they don’t write that way. By implication, she raises what should be a pressing question in the universities: Is it now mandatory to write badly?
Well, in a sense it can’t be. Good writers work in the universities, and university presses sometimes publish good books. Denis Dutton, editor of the online Arts & Letters Daily, says he knows many lucid and lively academic writers. But for every superb stylist, he believes, there are 100 who range from adequate to awful.
How could that be? Scholars in the humanities spend much of their time writing, and are forced constantly to read the work of superb writers. Yet they pour out streams of gnarled and barbarous sentences and don’t even know they are doing it. Professors in English departments, after lives spent close to the best literature, usually produce the worst prose.
The perpetrators are by no means obscure hacks beavering away in the remote suburbs of academe. Dutton quotes Paul H. Fry, professor of English at Yale. He finds this in Fry’s A Defense of Poetry: “It is the moment of non-construction, disclosing the absentation of actuality from the concept in part through its invitation to emphasize, in reading, the helplessness — rather than the will to power — of its fall into conceptuality.”
Readers may imagine (as Dutton says) that they are too ignorant to understand “the absentation of actuality.” Academic theorists take advantage of the innocent reader’s natural humility. In this case, Dutton suggests: “The writing is intended to look as though Mr. Fry is a physicist struggling to make clear the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Of course, he’s just an English professor showing off.”
Mass culture now attracts the most bizarre theorizing. When moviemakers changed James Bond’s brand of vodka, Aaron Jaffe of the University of Louisville wrote that this “carries a metaphorical chain of deterritorialized signifiers, repackaged up and down a paradigmatic axis of associations.”
We can classify much of this prose as pomo-babble (a word first used, I think, by John Leo in U.S. News & World Report). In pomo-babble, being incoherent isn’t enough. The best pomo-babble requires a high level of jargon density. One word or two won’t get you there. You need four key words in any major sentence. In pomo-babble it’s appropriate to praise, for instance, a transgressive challenge to the valorization of hegemonic narrativity.
In recent years leftist academics have been enraptured by Empire, a 500-page anti-globalization book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, published in 2000. Empire collects all possible criticisms of free trade and wraps them in prose like this: “In the logic of colonialist representations, the construction of a separate colonized other and the segregation of identity and alterity turns out paradoxically to be at once absolute and extremely intimate.”
To commit a sentence like that is to subtract from the sum of human knowledge. But it is not really exceptional, and its authors are much admired for their fresh version of leftist “thinking.”
This kind of academic writing has some vehement institutional enemies (the Times Literary Supplement is especially articulate) and a multitude of individuals it infuriates. In some ways, though, it’s catching. Pomo-babble exhibits strong elements of paranoia, and so (sometimes) do its critics. That may be why they often depict bad prose as a plot by academics. Brian Martin, an Australian professor, invented the phrase “secret passwords at the gate of knowledge” and explained: “Jargon serves to police the boundaries of disciplines and specialities.” It’s like a toll collected from those crossing intellectual borders.
But conspiracy theory takes us only so far. We know that many outside academe, even some people who could never be accused of careerism, are devoted to precisely the same suffocating crit-speak.
No one knows quite how it arose, and no one knows what to do about it. Certainly there are now thousands of humanities professors (and their students) who believe polysyllabic gobbledygook is the best way to write, maybe the only way. You can’t persuade them otherwise.
Crimes against language are not victimless, of course. Academic life has become a publish and perish world: Professors publish, literacy perishes. Students perish too. If they are unlucky (or not warned soon enough), they can find themselves oppressed by teachers who have no interest in demonstrating anything except their own command of an esoteric language and a few Parisian ideas.
What to do? The students fake it, usually. They pretend, for as long as necessary, to take it seriously. Northrop Frye used to say that if you don’t care about being educated, a little animal cunning will get you a degree. My guess is that students confronted with pomo-babble go into animal-cunning mode, get an acceptable mark by hiding their opinions, and then find better teachers or escape to the outside world, somewhere beyond critical theory and cultural studies, somewhere that respects reality and art. All it requires is endurance, a light heart, and the ability to believe that this, too, shall pass.

Is it one of those penis enlargement spam emails?

The whole idea that people living somewhere being a provocation to violence by their very existence is a horribly horribly racist one.

Settlers horrible crime is having babies and sending their children to school etc.

I find the remarks about `settlers’ interesting.

There’s a place I know called Gush Etzion in Judea ( AKA the West Bank) that several people on this board would refer to as a ’settlement.’ It was created from barren wasteland on land purchased via the Jewish National Fund at an exorbitant price back in the 1920’s,and with a lot of backbreaking hard work became a properous farming settlement.

In 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion ( which was commanded, BTW, by Brit officers under the notorious Jew hater Colonel Glubb) surrounded Gush Etzion. The inhabitants were offered safe conduct to the Israeli lines if they surrendered, and seeing as they had women and children among them and only a few rifles against a military force that vastly outnumbered them, they agreed.

The 200 or so able bodied males,including kids as young as 16 were executed in cold blood on the spot. The others were sent to a Jordanian military prison under unspeakable conditions, and only repatriated to Israel in 1950. Gush Etzion itself became a Jordanian military base,and the former inhabitants could actually see their old home from the John F. Kennedy Memorial forest in Israel.

In ‘67, after Jordan’s King Hussein attacked Israel, Gush Etzion was retaken and the land given back to the original owners. The Saudi ‘peace plan’ would have it that these people and others lie them be defrauded out of their land a second time ‘for peace.’

Gush Etzion isn’t unique by any means.

Jews were ethnically cleansed by the Arabs not only from Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem but from the entire Arab world…almost 1 million of them, mostly settled inIsrael without a penny’s help from the UN.

During the first intifadah, I recall seeing a ‘Palestinian’ being interviewed on CNN in East Jerusalem ranting about how he had lived in that house for generations,yadda yadda. The camera panned briefly to the right hand corner of the doorway and the mark where a mezuzah, a Jewish religious symbol found on every Jewish home used to be could clearly be seen.

The only reason the ‘Palestinians’ still live there as well as in the rest of Israel is because the Jews did not treat them the way the Arabs treated them in 1948, and as I mentioned in my last comment, their only claim now comes courtesy of Oslo and the Israelis…and the Arabs reneged on that.

Considering the murderous attacks on innocent civilians during Arafat’s war on the Jews, the ’settlers’ have been beyong humane. Patience in the face of genocidal hatred does tend to wear a bit thin after a while.

The Arabs occupied Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem by conquest for 19 years, from 1948 to 1967. The Jews have had it for over 40 years,and in many cases lived there before that.

Who’s the ’settler’?

Rob@JoshuaPundit

It is Israel, and its apologists, who claim the country meets higher standards than other nations.

Does this silly person not know how to read? Does he have NO grasp of elementary logic? I have exposed the idiotic fallacious nature of this statement above. Poor HB ran a mile instead of trying to address my post. I’ll say it again, and I am sure he’ll run a mile again:

1. Israel doesn’t ‘claim’ anything. A country can’t claim anything.

2. Its government can, but doesn’t. Individual ministers may have claimed this, but this means 100% eff all – and it does not give South American Jew-haters the right to make stronger demands of Jews. If and when they do, they are racists.

3. Some Israel supporters – note that screeching and racist term ‘apologists’ – may have said so. Again, this means eff all as regards the policy pursued by Israel’s government, since those posters do not determine Israeli governmental policy (and again, it does not give South American Jew-haters the right to make stronger demands of Jews. If and when they do, they are racists).

Apparently Zionists want to be able to proclaim Israel the most moral country in the world without anyone having the right to investigate the claim’s validity.

Nonsense. You are not ‘investigating’ anything. You are making categorical statements, each one more antisemitic than the last.

Rob: bravo.

For the sake of completeness, may I say that it’s absurd to call my posts ‘right wing’. Leaving aside the silly use of ‘right wing’ as an adolescent term of abuse, there is nothing ‘right wing’ in supporting Jewish national liberation; there is nothing ‘right wing’ in hating the clerical fascists and genocidal Nazis of Hamas, Hezbollah and the gangsters ruling Iran; there is nothing ‘right wing’ in detesting antisemites on assorted continents. This is no more ‘right wing’ than calling oneself ‘left wing’ because one is a member of the SWP.
I know that I have used the phrase ‘moronic lefty airheads when referring to the SWP. This is simply shorthand for ‘juvenile nutters who think they are progressive socialist radicals (or socialist radical progressives, etc) but don’t have enough brain cells to understand that you can’t be progressive or socialist (although you can be a radical fascist) if you jump into bed with the aforementioned clerical fascists etc.

Anyway, perhaps v. and I should stop baiting each other, since we seem to share a dislike of the same lowlife. How about it?

NO: I’m cool. VC

Simon Tossdale in the Grauniad http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/01/israelandthepalestinians-foreignpolicy?showallcomments=true&commentpage=2&commentposted=1

I’m “WendyMann”

Nearly Oxfordian you made some prophetic statements here

For the sake of completeness, may I say that it’s absurd to call my posts ‘right wing’. Leaving aside the silly use of ‘right wing’ as an adolescent term of abuse, there is nothing ‘right wing’ in supporting Jewish national liberation; there is nothing ‘right wing’ in hating the clerical fascists and genocidal Nazis of Hamas, Hezbollah and the gangsters ruling Iran; there is nothing ‘right wing’ in detesting antisemites on assorted continents

We see in writers like Aaranovitch and Nick Cohen, in Melanie Phillips and at HP itself – that people who may have been called “Leftist”, “Liberal”, “Socialist” even “Marxist/Leninist” have expressed many of the views that you, I, Gene and David T have articulated over the last six months. And many others,

The ‘Left’ definitely moves a bit right when it comes to those subjects you mention. There gets to be a point where you can be so liberal that you push your neck out, marked with a felt tip pen labelled “Cut Here”. Well, the fools still do but the rest of us know we have to expose the “neck slicers”.

The Arabs occupied Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem by conquest for 19 years, from 1948 to 1967. The Jews have had it for over 40 years,and in many cases lived there before that.

Who’s the ’settler’?

Rob@JoshuaPundit

You’re right; there are no settlers in the West Bank and the Prime Minister of Israel, the President of the United States and the world in general have been wrong all along.

Israel doesn’t ‘claim’ anything. A country can’t claim anything.

Pure semantics. What all the presidents and all the prime ministers say is what the country says.

it does not give South American Jew-haters the right to make stronger demands of Jews

Can you quote a South American making stronger demands of Jews?

When a commenter on HP says the Irgun only attacked British military targets, is it Jew-hating to provide evidence of Jewish terrorist attacks against civilians?

When an Israel apologist claims that Bedouins are respected as law-abiding citizens of Israel who serve in the military, is it Jew-hating to give a link to a Jewish educator teaching Jewish girls not to date Bedouins at a State-financed school?

Thanks, Oxfordian.

I might mention one other item,just in passing..

The central issue of Middle East peace is the Arab inability to live next to Jews in peace and equality. Fix that little problem and all the rest of the issues are easily worked out.

Of course,fixing that issue means tossing out a significant part of the Qu’ran and ignoring what Mohammed had to say in the matter.
That’s the real problem. And unfortunately,it applies to the rest of the West ( ‘Dar Harb – the place of war’ in Muslim lingo) as well to the Jews, who are merely the canary in the coal mine and a front in this war.

Rob@JoshuaPundit

HB asks: When a commenter on HP says the Irgun only attacked British military targets, is it Jew-hating to provide evidence of Jewish terrorist attacks against civilians? No. However, to extrapolate from that that Israel supporters all believe that the Irgun only attacked military targets is problematic. Also your continual references to 1947-1949 are tiresome, especially when you’re contrasting them with events taking place right now.

When an Israel apologist claims that Bedouins are respected as law-abiding citizens of Israel who serve in the military, is it Jew-hating to give a link to a Jewish educator teaching Jewish girls not to date Bedouins at a State-financed school? I don’t know if I’d call it Jew-hating, but it certainly is ridiculous. Do you actually believe quoting a single racist educator negates the policies of Israeli state-financed schools. It may or may not be Jew-hating (only you really know that for sure), but it’s certainly dumb.

This small fry here, but I cannot help being bemused by the BBC exclaiming in the same sentence that the fuel supplies are being blockaded by the evil Israelis but the rockets are still continually being fired off from Gaza!!

There are other statements besides Weisglas’ that the hard lefties like to repeat, mantra-like, you read it in almost every column they write: e.g. the Madeline Albright quote where she was asked if the sanctions on Iraq were worth 500,000 dead and she said yes.

The pot calls the kettle black. How many times have we heard from Zionist mouths Azzam Pasha’s quote “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades,” as if it were representative of all Arab people of all times, or even of the Arab people of his time?

The difference, of course, being that, in contradiction with Pasha’s promise, the Arabs never embarked on a genocide of Jews, even when large numbers of Jews were living among them. In Weissglas’ case, on the other hand, subsequent events in the West Bank are fully consistent with his statements to Haaretz. Like he said, after a few token removals Israel did nothing to evacuate the 105 remaining illegal Jewish outposts in the West Bank. Gaza was evacuated so that the West Bank could be retained. That’s evident from actual events; we only quote Weissglas because he aptly summarized the policy.

HB asks: When a commenter on HP says the Irgun only attacked British military targets, is it Jew-hating to provide evidence of Jewish terrorist attacks against civilians? No. However, to extrapolate from that that Israel supporters all believe that the Irgun only attacked military targets is problematic.

And who said that? I know most Israel apologists don’t believe such a thing.

But the fact is, some people do make that claim, and I have all the right in the world to set the record straight.

Note that HB couldn’t even muster a response to being called out on the bedouin educator “issue.” And your use of the term “israel apologists” is repulsive. I’m no apologist. I support Israel in most of its actions. I think the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim side has a lot to answer for. I think Hamas brought this action on themselves completely. But i’m no “apologist.” I would say that when you dredge up 1947-1949 to contrast to events today, that you are being an apologist for the dreadful actions and decisions taken by the Palestinian leadership.

Penny Pemberton, referring to the decent left: “its understanding of decency is purely Orwellian.”

Whereas her understanding of decency appears to be purely hitlerian.

HB says: Among those who failed to speak out against the Rwandan genocide were the State of Israel and all major Zionist and Jewish organizations. They were too busy building Holocaust musuems.

That remark alone shows you to be a vicious anti-semite. f*ck off.

I just love reading the Israeli apologists defending the indefensible. It is incredible how the oppressed became the oppressors in less than 1/2 a century. Blockades, aerial bombardments of densely populated areas are not self defence. It is brutality being meted out on civilians.
I also hate the fact that Hamas fire rockets indiscriminately into southern Israel.
When will the Israelis realise that their brutality will just galvanise world opinion against them? The sympathy is running thin in my country of residence and we have diplomatic relations with Israel. It is said when 2 elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. The civilians (overwhelmingly in Gaza) are suffering because Israel wants to show off its military might. Hamas should stop firing rockets at israel which are resulting in civilian deaths.
How many more have to die because of Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza?

Stop it, Israel, and remember many of your citizens once experienced brutality at the hands of others.

the Arabs never embarked on a genocide of Jews, even when large numbers of Jews were living among them

Lying drivel.
Hebron 1929.
1947.
1948.
etc etc etc.
The fact is that the call to exterminate the Jews has been acted upon many times.

Do you know the first thing about Israel and the ME, Kiguthara?

(that was a rhethorical question)

Can you quote a South American making stronger demands of Jews?

I thought you lived in South America. But I suppose Cloud Cuckoo-Land is somewhere else. My mistake.

Lying drivel. Hebron 1929. 1947. 1948. etc etc etc.
The fact is that the call to exterminate the Jews has been acted upon many times.

That’s what I meant by “devaluing the word genocide.” You mention massacres, not genocides. In 1929, 1947, 1948 hundreds of thousands of Jews were living in Arab countries and never was an official policy of killing all of them implemented. And I’m sorry; that’s what genocide means!

Can you quote a South American making stronger demands of Jews?

I thought you lived in South America.

Yes I do. But when did I make stronger demands of Jews?

All the time.

So, HB, will you state explicitly that there is no genocide of Arabs by Jews?

PS. There was an official Arab policy of genocide in 1948. If you don’t know that, you are an ignoramus. It failed, but that is another point. And the Hamas charter is an explicitly genocidal one. You can deny it as much as you wish, as you will, but the facts are clear.

So, HB, will you state explicitly that there is no genocide of Arabs by Jews?

I had already stated that without any prompting from you. See point 2 here.

PS. There was an official Arab policy of genocide in 1948. If you don’t know that, you are an ignoramus.

You keep devaluing the word genocide!

My cat has genocidal designs. He’s already killed 2 mice this week. This will go down in history as the Rodent Holocaust.