Shorter Benny Morris
Above: Slouching Towards the Samson Option
- Just because Israel’s paranoid doesn’t mean the wogs aren’t after her. Gotta finda way, a better way, better waaaay [MUSHROOM CLOUD EXPLOSION]
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Extended rant beneath the fold:
Morris, as is his wont, starts with a historical analogy through which he means to describe what’s usually referred to as Israel’s “existential crisis.” He tells us that Israelis, lately, are feeling rather what their forefathers felt in 1967: dread. Except for the fact that “Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country — today there are about 5.5 million — and the military did not have nuclear weapons.” Ordinarily this would completely puncture the point of all that follows, but then it also would assume Morris’s complaint was reasonable and stated openly, when actually his point is evil and nihilist — and he knows it, which is why it’s made by implication. Benny Morris is frustrated that there’s not a conventional army of wogs for righteous Jews to immolate; thus his piece’s implication that Israeli Jews — or, at least, the Israeli government — should or will consider one of two extremes in response to the “threat”: generic fascism or the Samson Option. But I am getting ahead of myself — or, rather, ahead of Morris:
The general problems are simple. First, the Arab and wider Islamic worlds, despite Israeli hopes since 1948 and notwithstanding the peace treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994, have never truly accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s creation and continue to oppose its existence.
Second, public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can’t be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards. The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.
As might be expected from someone whose attitude to 1948’s colonial operation has always been “yay!,” Morris considerably spins the issue of “existence.” Another way of putting it would be that many Arabs have never accepted being invaded and driven from their land. Morris wants Arabs to forgive and forget colonialism, but frets that Israeli Jews (and the Israeli government’s Western Allies) are forgetting about the Holocaust. He’s frustrated, all right, but not out of ignorance. His frustration is symptom of a contradiction become untenable.
Grievances with political power — at least, the political power Morris envies — aren’t kept alive by reminders of fact (the Holocaust happened) but by repetitions of or perpetuation of the same atrocity (Arabs are being ethnically cleansed right now). Morris envies the Arabs’ memory of ’48, but refuses to acknowledge that Israel keeps that memory alive by continuing its settlements, its ethnic cleansing. So long as there are bulldozers leveling Arab houses and Kahanist, uzi-toting, Benny-from-Brooklyn-type thugs on the West Bank taking land that is not theirs, Arab anger will burn brightly.
More specifically, Israel faces a combination of dire threats. To the east, Iran is frantically advancing its nuclear project, which most Israelis and most of the world’s intelligence agencies believe is designed to produce nuclear weapons. This, coupled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s public threats to destroy Israel — and his denials of the Holocaust and of any homosexuality in Iran, which underscore his irrationality — has Israel’s political and military leaders on tenterhooks.
I’m really tired of this. Aside the usual objections to and allowances for Morris’s by-rote anti-Ahmedinejad screed (yes, he’s a nut, but he’s not the leader of Iran, etc., etc.), the real point Morris seems to be making here is that Israel is uh-skeerd cuz it might lose its regional monopoly on nuclear weapons. Oh noes!!! All I can say is welcome to the 20th Century, slow-pokes: we lost our nuclear monopoly in 1948 or so, and though we too went a bit nutty with paranoia and fear, we managed to make it through without nuking or being nuked by anybody — and we were presided over, for nearly six years, by the guy who originated the fucking “madman theory” of [nuclear] war.
Next, Morris dilates a bit on the “wogs, wogs everywhere!” theme. Did you know that eleventy billion Hamas and Hezbollah members are busy in their corrugated tin shacks making homemade weapons? Really! And no doubt like the moonshine and crystal meth made in the corrugated tin shacks I’m decidedly more familiar with, I’m sure these weapons, too, are made to exacting standards and with the highest quality. Tremble ye mighty and despair, indeed!
On the other hand, cockroaches are also often thought to be busy (besides breeding incontinently, that is; can you say “demographic crisis?”) in dank, unseen places (on the other side of security walls, you could say), their grim insectoid minds plotting who-knows-what. Morris doesn’t do the bug-exterminator metaphor that is standard issue among the cruder JDL-types [cough PammyMishaLizardsAnschlussel cough], but I definitely feel the same vibe, as it were, from his writing on not only the Arab menace to the North and Southwest, but from within as well. It’s all so “purity control,” isn’t it: a pristine people supposedly besieged militarily, demographically, “existentially;” from within and without by other races which mean to rob them of their potential, of what they believe is theirs. Mommy, who were the freikorps? Anyway, regarding Gaza:
But the attack will not solve the basic problem posed by a Gaza Strip populated by 1.5 million impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are ruled by a fanatic regime and are tightly hemmed in by fences and by border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt.
An enormous Israeli ground operation aimed at conquering the Gaza Strip and destroying Hamas would probably bog down in the alleyways of refugee camps before achieving its goal. (And even if these goals were somehow achieved, renewed and indefinite Israeli rule over Gaza would prove unpalatable to all concerned.)
At first glance this passage might seem okay. There’s, for instance, the crucial evidence-against-interest remarks about Israel’s border control and its potential governance of the Gaza Strip. But I call your attention to the mention, definitely in a tone of opportunities (for Israel) lost, of a ground assault being bogged down “in the alleyways of refugee camps.” Because of what follows, I think I can guess at what Morris is actually bemoaning here, and it ain’t the loss of Arab lives; it’s that the world will not tolerate another Sabra and Shatila and he bloody well knows it.
The fourth immediate threat to Israel’s existence is internal. It is posed by the country’s Arab minority. Over the past two decades, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity and embracing Palestinian national aims. Their spokesmen say that their loyalty lies with their people rather than with their state, Israel. Many of the community’s leaders, who benefit from Israeli democracy, more or less publicly supported Hezbollah in 2006 and continue to call for “autonomy” (of one sort or another) and for the dissolution of the Jewish state.
The italics are mine, not Morris’s, but I couldn’t resist on the grounds that it’s soooo fucking rich. For Morris (but especially for School of Commentary American Jews who parrot his words) to say this is like Peter Griffin being outraged that Homer Simpson is a fat drunken slob. Of course Israeli Arabs are identifying as Palestinians! One day tribalists of a declining majority (as Morris is here) will come to understand that tribalism inspires tribalism, and if shit isn’t rectified (by which I mean, at least, muted), tit for tat upsmanship will eventually make for such a deep gulf of mutual otherness that no commonality can be found. Israel is a contradiction. On the good side, it was founded by social democrats of sorts who had the principles of their kind; on the bad side, it was founded by people who superidentified as a religious and ethnic tribe. In a de jure way, the good side remains in the sense that non-Jewish Israelis have citizenship (of sorts, for now); in a de facto way, Jewish tribalism completely won out, and Palestinian superidentity is the inevitable reaction to it.
Demography, if not Arab victory in battle, offers the recipe for such a dissolution. The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews).
If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050. Already, within five to 10 years, Palestinians (Israeli Arabs coupled with those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) will form the majority population of Palestine (the land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean).
Congrats, Morris (and, by extension, like-minded Israeli Jews): you’ve made your bed, now lay in it! The average Israeli Arab is now just as fanatical in a tribalist way as you are, and now he’s outbreeding you! Lemme guess: You’re worried that when he outnumbers you, he will treat you as badly as you’ve treated him? Food for thought!
The past fortnight has seen a recurrence, albeit on a smaller scale, of such rioting. Down the road, Israel’s Jews fear more violence and terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Most Jews see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.
Right. Well, let me tell you about a guy who also had to deal with a race of shifty, hooked-nosed traitors in his country. He knew what to do with those who were congenitally disloyal, amirite Benny? He had a funny moustache. His name was… I forget. And his country was.. I forget that, too. But you know who I’m talking about, right? He drove a blue car.
Now for Morris’s final and nastiest paragraphs:
What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality.
Translation: Blarg, the hated wogs cannot be met and therefore defeated on a traditional battlefield!
Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges.
Translation: We can no longer pretend the wog problem is a strictly “internal issue” over which we have jurisdiction/sovereignty! We might be denied our regional nuclear monopoly! The Palestinians aren’t going to continue taking this apartheid shit much longer! What are we to do? Well, we could give land back, do anything to make peace, but well, HAHAHAHAH fuck that! So, instead —
And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.
Israel’s sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow.
Or, as an Israeli government official was heard to mutter in the 1980s after denying for the record’s sake that his country would be the first to launch nuclear weapons, “and we won’t be the second, either.”
You know what happens when you’re bound by things that keep you from doing what you need to do — especially when you’re a government whose alleged needs are first and foremost causing “more powerful explosions”: You remove those things. Of course, if international law and weapons conventions were garments, Israel has been naked for years. So that’s not a problem. What Morris is talking about is more cultural and diplomatic. Bluntly, he’s saying that Israel is capable of doing — indeed reserves the right to do — anything horrible, from bombing the crap out of those extranational wogs who reside in the “midst of dense civilian populations,” to doing who-knows-what-Malkinified-things to the Israeli Arab “fifth column,” to nuking people. Goodbye, “Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior;” hello to something much older, barbaric, fanatical:
“Then Samson prayed to the Lord, ‘O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.’ (Judges 16:28).” “Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ (Judges 16:30) Down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it.Thus he killed many more as he died than while he lived.” (Judges 16:30).
HTML – Excellent post, very well done Sir.
The solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is actually quite simple.
See, Captain Kirk has to transport the two leaders to a remote deserted planet, hold a phaser to their heads and shout “Talk, dammit!”
Seriously, the most novel solution, the one I think would work the quickest, is to declare Israel and the Territories an open state, under control of the Vatican.
This gives them a common enemy to hate.
The fact is, here is more proof that liberals hate Jews and want Muslims to take over the world. People like you make me sick.
Yes.
(My only negative is the “made their bed, now lay in it.” That being a grammatical pet peeve o’ mine, please change it to “lie in it.” Thanks.)
I’m amused when people, especially Americans, complain about underhanded guerrilla tactics.
“Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them.”
Gosh, I can’t fathom why they decided to stop using conventional armies, then.
This is exactly the same thing we did to win independence from the British. With exceptions that are few and far between (and doubley so in the early years on the war), every time the colonists engaged the British in conventional terms, the colonists were sent packing. If roadside bombs and snipers existed in 1770, they would have been the mainstay of Continental tactics.
It’s war, not freaking dueling pistols at 20 paces. You don’t fight fair, you sneak up and bash the other poor bastard’s head in. If you can do it while he’s asleep, so much the better.
“The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.”
Oh please. People like you can’t wait for everyone else to forget about the holocaust. So long as that’s draped around your neck, you can’t go in and kill every Arab west of the Dead Sea, then claim is was justified.
Are they sure it’s not the Goliath option?
The phrase “collective punishment” comes to mind.
Of course this is collective punishment. That’s what it has always been. Some kid blows himself up and manages to take a few Israelis out with him, and the next thing you know the kid’s family’s house is bulldozed to the ground. Isn’t that SOP?
How anyone can believe that this will win hearts and minds or bring any semblance of peace is totally beyond me. Collective delusion comes to mind.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Gaza has been the world’s largest prison/concentration camp for years. A million and a half Plestinians have been bottled up there, prevented from getting anything but the barest minimum to (mostly) survive. We (the US and her ally/master Israel) claim that we want to spread “Peace and Democracy”, yet when the citizens/inmates of this hellstate democratically elect a governing faction we happen not to like, we react by tightening the chains another notch on their already unbearably tight rack. Then when the victims of this extended war-crime lash out in the most ineffectual way, by launching cobbled-together, barely functional rockets at their oppressors, Israel responds with sickening, overwhelming military force, killing at least a hundred innocent civilians for every one Israeli casualty. And they claim justification because their own “existence” is somehow threatened.
Scarier even than the Samson scenario is the fact that it’s been 60 years and Israel has done okay while the situation of the Palestinians just gets worse and worse. What if the status quo just remains the status quo effectively forever? The lopsided situation could just remain on a continual nightmare loop — I’m not sure historical analogies really work in this context. The one part of the historical analogies that never seem to come to pass (Holocaust, apartheid being the most frequently invoked) is things were really terrible… then they got better. Where here it’s more like things were really bad… and then they stayed that way. What if that scenario actually is sustainable? All the depressing evidence to date suggests it is, and seems to be what Israeli policy is banking on.
This phrase really bugs me:
…West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards
This is probably the result of reading too many gothic romances while a teenager but I always think of people who are under the protection of other people or governments when I see the word ward.
Doesn’t look like Israel is doing such a hot job.
The sorta funny part is that we’re told to fear the A-rab because he doesn’t support our western values. Morris is proposing that Israel sheds her western values to counter them. But then what’s the difference between one side and the other?
Also, unless you read Ha’aretz you might not know there’s any dissent in Israel.
Morris is a supporter of genocide (he has said that the “forced eradication” [his words] of the native Americans was necessary for the good of mankind). He is a blatant racist. He is also, as Gabriel Ash has written (and HTML suggests) a certifiable nut-case who is actually looking forward to nuclear war in the M.E. as an opportunity to “finish the job” of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians remaining in Palestine.
Yet, this is the man the NYT chooses to publish not once, but twice since last summer. They would never publish a Holocaust denier (and rightly so), yet they publish a holocaust cheer-leader, apparently on a semi-regular basis. It’s enough to make me wish they go under.
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.
If one is going to compare oneself with Samson, one should at least be the underdog, nu?
Good to see ya, HTML. Happy New Year.
I imagine if this post gets noticed by the knuckledraggers you’ll have a shitstorm of troll comments.You have criticized Israel and, by extension, the entirety of Jewish people everywhere; ergo, you are a Jew-hating anti-Semite.
DocAmazing say: “If one is going to compare oneself with Samson, one should at least be the underdog, nu?”
As Morris points out, the demographics will make them true underdogs in a few years. From that point of view, Israel -is- the underdog, because all they have is nuclear weapons and the United States to protect them from a sea of rage-filled Ay-Rabs who hate Israel for no reason.
Johnny: Oh, pssht.
Does it ever actually come out to trolls arguing that *we’re* Jew-hating anti-semites?
Of course not.
No, whenever an Israel post comes about, it attracts the Stormfront ninnies that think we’ll agree with them and not obviously point out that we actually like the people on both sides of the conflict as human beings, and are therefore disappointed with either side acting like idiots; whereas they just want to destroy shit, because the Jews and Muslims are all filthy disgusting swine to them and Aryan Jesus won’t come all over their faces until every last non-Christian soul is wiped out from Outremer.
Wasn’t Samson the world’s first recorded “suicide bomber”?
first, mad applause to html. cogent, thoughtful, eye-opening. that is some top-quality shit man, and i know it when i smoke it.
h, do you own “wrestling with zion”, tony kushner’s collection of essays on israel from an american left perspective (one you might even recognize as “left”, as opposed to mushmouthed middle)? it’s got some great stuff, and it’s the only other place (i don’t remember which essay) where i’ve seen the point about “who started the tribal identity thing” made as well as you did. fuck man, the religious shitbags, who are even hated in israel, are still given the education ministry portfolio whenever they are in coalition!
also, my dad has a nice piece in that book talking about anti-semitism and the left, and makes the obvious-point-that-must-be-repeated-a-thousand-times: jews are a religious/cultural group, and to criticize them en masse is to partake in anti-semitism most likely. israel, on the other hand, is a country, with policies the criticism of which is merely like criticizing any other country–burma, say, or south africa circa 1984 most aptly–based on a government’s actions in the world. jews don’t get a pass just because they got fucked over many times once they achieve the levers of power of a state. shit, native americans wouldn’t either, no group of formerly oppressed who have become oppressors should get a special get-out-of-criticism free card. to think so is just fucking jejune. dammit.
Thanks, HTML.
I keep trying to write what I think, but I get all tied up in spluttering rage and frustration.
Christ. These are supposed to be smart people, aren’t they? Wouldn’t you assume that to rise to a leadership position you’d need to be able to think critically?
And yet, over and over again, they keep responding in EXACTLY a manner so as to perpetuate the violence, to ensure that there will be a next time, a next war, a further bloodletting. And the imbalance keeps growing. 20 killed by rockets in ten years, how many thousands killed by the Israeli military in “response”.
It seems to me, in viewing these worsening, entirely unnecessary criminal actions by the Israelis, all they are doing is creating an environment so violent, so filled with hatred and fury, that they ultimately will be destroyed by it. Eventually, not even the lap dogs around the world will be able to stand by and allow it to continue.
I suppose it is a sad, but necessary outgrowth of the brutality of the past several decades that a part of me feels that day cannot come soon enough…
mikey
Be fair, Badger3k. Samson didn’t use a bomb.
Glad to see you back, HTML. Great fucking rant against the glennocidal in(s)anity.
Christ. These are supposed to be smart people, aren’t they? Wouldn’t you assume that to rise to a leadership position you’d need to be able to think critically?
And yet, over and over again, they keep responding in EXACTLY a manner so as to perpetuate the violence, to ensure that there will be a next time, a next war, a further bloodletting.
Maybe that’s the whole point? Just keep escalating until it reaches the level of all-out genocide. I dunno, I’m still really fucking drunk from last night. Take everything I say with a bit of salt (and some lime if you have it).
good post, yo. many thanks.
Robert Green: jews are a religious/cultural group, and to criticize them en masse is to partake in anti-semitism …. israel, on the other hand, is a country, with policies the criticism of which is merely like criticizing any other country
Word. Although I was a history major in college, I often think that Sting’s take applies best to the whole Israel/Arabs mess: “History will teach us nothing.” I really don’t care any more who did what to whom, or who did a worse atrocity, or who “started” it (a kindergarten argument if I ever heard one). Pretend it’s the world’s first day and figure out from there how to help people who are poor and suffering.
“Gotta finda way, a better way, better waaaay”
Obscure Nirvana reference duly noted. Well played sir!
Headline for a neighbour who treats you like a punching bag, then offers to pay for bandaids: “Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, but Offers Gaza Aid.“
He had a funny moustache. His name was… I forget. And his country was.. I forget that, too. But you know who I’m talking about, right? He drove a blue car.
Guy with the hat, right? Yeah, he had a thing with the thing, and then *whistles* That thing with a thing wasn’t no more problem, ey oh, so’s how’s your family?
Jennifer Loewenstein at counterpunch.org is also worth reading on this.
“and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.”
That if you look at the impoverished and crumbling states like Egyt and Syria is probably the most nonsensical claim.
word to that.
incidentally, i made a chart the other day categorizing the horrible existential threat to israel.
http://mrbloggington.blogspot.com/2008/12/comprehensive-solutions.html
A spokesman from the IDF was on the news the other day, talking about the Hamas “war machine”. Water Tango Foxtrot?*
* Version of the phonetic alphabet preferred by the armed forces of Pakistan and several other countries.**
** I am not making this up.
Nice charts, Mr Todd. They sum up a couple of crucial points very succinctly.
Jews and Arabs are Semites, exact same race, ethnicity and the same semitic language(s). They are both considered “wogs” by Europeans.
yes. and on that note, happy 2009, everyone!
…also i wonder how John McCain would have handled this. He’d be all like, “cut the bullshit!”, and then they would and stuff. People would be cutting so much bullshit.
From the Morris piece:
“If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050.”
Everyone here knows the Israelis won’t let that happen. The only questioa are whether it’s going to be simple ethnic cleansing or something darker, and just how will Israel’s wingnut supporters justify it.
Happy New Year, everybody!
Robert: No, I haven’t, but I’ll look for the book, and if I pick it up, will read it.
As for what I’ve read about Israel-Palestine… well, I approach it as I approach another conflict about which I have some stake through my own identity (the American Civil War): I try to avoid reading about it. But wingnuts (and those supertribalist, reflexively pro-Israel, American “liberal” Jews who should know better: e.g., the absolutely horrible Alan Dershowitz) won’t let me. So, somewhat paradoxically, I read more of the conflict through that prism than through any other source. I have read, however, some leftist stuff online, mostly Cockburn, Richard Silverstein, Finkelstein, Weiss. As for books, eh… I’ve had Chomsky’s book on the conflict for many years, the one in which he conclusively and forever destroyed Joan Peters (that much I’ve read in excerpts and reviews), but I haven’t had the heart to read it whole.
Hitchens, back when he was a human being and writing in Izzy’s old space in the Nation, used to occasionally post some small but dense and excellent work on the conflict — the quote of the 80’s Israeli spokesman on nukes come from my memory of one of those pieces.
As for my point on tribalism, it’s something I’ve always instinctively known independently, at least since I was a freshman in the early nineties and was (of course) horrified by the college republicans, but also by the silly tribalism of the many idiots in the PC “left.” OTOH, Hitchens did crystalize the maxim “tribalism only inspires more tribalism” in his overview of the Vidal-Podhoretz feud, which was not only spot on in the specific (about which I know a great deal) but in general. Many flamewars with a certain Podhoretz clone in my early net days only reinforced the truth of the matter. There’s more, but I’ve already gone on too long, and I bet you’re sorry you asked by now hah.
A good article (what else) from Glenn Greenwald looks at the U.S. reaction and how the politicians seem to be out of step with The People.
He is also worth reading here about that cheerful Peretz fellow
Excellent fucking article HTML Mencken. I always appreciate your tendnency to talk about the hardest stuff that is bothering us all, in a way which is as darkly humorous, and as free of the tiresome attitude of bullshit ‘politeness’, as I have come to expect of the Sadlynauts.
There’s so much wrong with Israel’s actions here, on so many levels. Others in this thread have mentioned the moral or demographic problems with Israel’s kill-’em-all policy. Here is criticism from another angle, from the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld (hardly a peacenik), who believes that the war is unwinnable. From 2002, but just as applicable today IMHO.
Bonus excellence from van Ceveld, why Iraq will end as Vietnam did.
The worst part is that the guy used to be a truely brave and intellectually honest scholar. He literally rewrote his own book on the Palestinian refugee problem after discovering the order given by the Israeli army in government archives and founded the ‘new historian’ movement where zionist Israelis could in fact view Palastinians as human. Sadly, he seems to have been gripped by the same jingoism and moral dissonance that turned Hitchens into a raving lunatic. Pathetic.
OKIE, what’s below is going to seem a lot like a troll, but it’s not. I’m pretty far to the left and I definitely don’t prescribe to the whole “Arab’s are inherently evil” shit. My view on this is that this shit has gone on too long and is too complicated to blame any one side, so I’m writing this not to try and convince you how awesome Israel is but to try and point out that I think a lot of people are tending towards an anti-Israel attitude simply to contradict the conservative “ZOMG the darkies are gonna kill us” bullshit.
I find it really frustrating of how so many on the left seem to talk as if the problem lies solely with the Israelis. Yeah, they’ve done terrible shit, but there is way too much blame to go around to only decry them. You’re decrying tribalism, then blaming everything on Israel and that seems a bit hypocritical. Gaza has a border to the south that’s just as closed. The West Bank has a border to the east. How come Jordan and Egypt don’t step in and do something to help.
EVERYONE is screwing the Palestinians.
Maybe it’s not how you intend it, but it really doesn’t seem that you don’t recognize that the problem isn’t just twofold. Yes, Israel is basically fucking over the fucked. I hate them for their bulldozers and their walls and their bombs. That doesn’t change the fact that from day one, long before Gaza and the West Bank were taken over, there was a shitload of antisemitism in the region. If you’ll recall, the refugee crisis started when over a dozen countries declared war on Israel. The Arabs in the camps right now fled Israel at the call of the invading countries, who wanted them out of the way so they could more easily “push the Jews to the sea.”
I think the only real reason to put the onus of peace keeping on the Israelis is because they’re the ones with the economic and political stability to actually try and improve things. Still, the only way that I can see that this problem is ever going to be solved is if Israel puts a shitload of money and energy into developing a functioning economy in Palestine. If they weren’t in abject poverty,maybe the Palestinian’s would stop hating them. Sounds like a good idea; but how do you get a country that’s been getting randomly shot at with rockets to start throwing a shitload of money at the people who voted the rocket launchers into power?!?!?!
Too many people just seem to want to call everyone a racist. Tell me, why is Israeli racism so much worse than Arab racism? How come no long as screeds about the fact that Arabs fucking HATE Jews and have done so since long before they were “the oppressed.” You yourself note that they used to get attacked by armies but now only by terrorists. Isn’t that because they didn’t used to be the powerful ones and yet somehow they still had problems?
I mean, why is it that Arab violence is just in response to Israeli violence and so doesn’t get you riled up, but Israeli violence in response to Arab violence is OMG HOW STUPID CAN THE ISRAELIS BE?!?!?!
THEY’RE BOTH STUPID.
Sure, but one side took the other side’s stuff and keeps taking, and we all support the takers with tax money for some stupid reason.
The Palestinians are a propaganda tool for governments in the region who get to say “Hey! Look over there!” when another big pile of money goes missing.
I keep reading his last name as “Mortis.” I need to read more rigorously.
Hey everyone,
I think it’s important that this comment be injected into this thread also: http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/15773.html#comment-762059.
Schooled.
Bull fucking shit. I’m not making the argument about who was here first or whatever, but if you want, then you lose, seeing as how the Jews predate the Muslims by a few thousand years. We give money to plenty of Arab countries too, either through aid or by buying their oil.
More Jews were kicked out of the surrounding arab states during the late 60’s than Arabs fled Israel during the same period. Rather thanputting them in camps and bitching about it for 30 years, Israel happily assimilated them. Dozens of Arab countries could do the same for the displaced Palestians but don’t.
Again, I’m not arguing one side is right and the other is wrong. For every argument there is a counter argument. Hence, both sides are stupid. Thinking otherwise is being biased, for either direction.
the Jews predate the Muslims by a few thousand years.
Meaning Palestinians in 1948 had no rights?
Have fun applying this logic to the former Yugoslavia and see if you don’t end up agreeing that Radovan Karadzic had a point. After, all Serbs predated Muslims in Europe too – fun fact!
Alternatively, people have rights regardless of the age of their culture.
We give money to plenty of Arab countries too, either through aid or by buying their oil.
We’re not talking about “Arab countries”, we’re talking about one of them, the Palestinians (hint – they don’t all look the same). And we’re not buying their oil.
Of course, other Arabs do indeed love the way we give money and weapons to the regimes that oppress them, so it all evens out really.
And we have given a lot of money to Iraq, so they can have the pleasure of being kicked in the face by our boots.
More Jews were kicked out of the surrounding arab states during the late 60’s than Arabs fled Israel during the same period.
In terms of violence, these two events were not actually the same. And Palestinians are not mere “Arabs” who can be simply be moved to one interchangable “Arab” country anymore than you can shove the Spanish in France and say “Enjoy your new home, guys, and stop bitching already – assimilate you bastards, you’re all the same!”
Arabs fled Israel – nice use of the passive voice. Were forcibly expelled by the Haganah is another, and more accurate, way of putting it.
For every argument there is a counter argument. Hence, both sides are stupid. Thinking otherwise is being biased, for either direction.
Sometimes, but not always. Even after every shitty thing the Palestinians have ever done has been added up and noted, the body count and physical suffering of this conflict is very, very heavily weighted in one direction. The stuff that happened before does actually matter – because the consequences are being felt in the present by real people, real men, women and children.
The Palestinians have the World’s Worst National Liberation Movement TM (borrowed from Daniel Davies). But the denial of Palestinian self-determination is the beginning and end of this conflict and walking away from that leaves us back in the same bloody place.
I’m not making the argument about who was here first or whatever, but if you want, then you lose, seeing as how the Jews predate the Muslims by a few thousand years.
If you’re a fundamentalist bible-believer, sure. Otherwise you have to face the fact that the creation of Israel was a colonization by foreigners.
the Jews predate the Muslims by a few thousand years.
So if the non-Jewish locals were still Baal worshipers you’d feel differently?
Oh,my good
A good article (what else) from Glenn Greenwald looks at the U.S. reaction and how the politicians seem to be out of step with The People.
He is also worth reading here about that cheerful Peretz fellow
A good article (what else) from Glenn Greenwald looks at the U.S. reaction and how the politicians seem to be out of step with The People.
He is also worth reading here about that cheerful Peretz fellow
A good article (what else) from Glenn Greenwald looks at the U.S. reaction and how the politicians seem to be out of step with The People.
He is also worth reading here about that cheerful Peretz fellow
I am helping my mom in picking out and buying Bamboo blinds and was hoping for some advice on different manufacturers. First we looked at Levelor and Bali at the local home store. For our windows these are going to run from $150 to $200 each. The kid at Lowes said he has the least problems with Levelor, but Bali customer service is easier to deal with. I would prefer never to have to talk to either and want them to just work! 🙂 MB2-632
HP0-D01
70-648
Sometimes, but not always. Even after every shitty thing the Palestinians have ever done has been added up and noted, the body count and physical suffering of this conflict is very, very heavily weighted in one direction. The stuff that happened before does actually matter – because the consequences are being felt in the present by real people, real men, women and children.
I found this on another blog, very funny.
The Little Dickie Silverstein Marching Song
I am a little kapo,
It makes my mommy mad,
Cause when I am a kapo,
Those Zionists get sad!
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
I want to see them Zraelis,
All dumped out in the sea,
My swastika a waving,
Cause everything’s bout me.