"You think I am posing as a Jew? -- Not that there is anything wrong with that!"
Ando:
You're making that article up. The 'Jerusalem Dispatch'? Yeah, right. How gullible do we all look?
Also:
But you neglect to mention the important fact that Nick Tortelli was not only as unattractive and lubricious as a human being can be, but convinced of his own erudition.
What's this with vocabulary words like 'lubricious'? What the fuck is lubricious? Are you going psocko on us?
3961. RustlerPike - 2/12/2002 11:11:34 PM
Banks:
If you paid me enough I'd refuse to serve too.
3962. Andonly - 2/12/2002 11:24:48 PM
"You're making that article up. The 'Jerusalem Dispatch'? Yeah, right."
Not The Jerusalem Dispatch, Mister Suspicious. "Dispatches" are regular features in The New Republic, written from various places.
Lubricious, lubricious
Some vile, some delicious,
Jerusalem, Cairo,
Ramallah, Lahore.
If I am now Psocko
Then Pike is Menudo,
the Eel is the Hindooo,
and Hindooo's the Whore.
3963. joezan - 2/13/2002 8:02:23 AM
One of the keynote speakers at a conference I attended yesterday was some "widely read, highly respected" (or so the guy who introduced her assured us) Middle East journalist. (The other speaker was Ray now-too-much-of-a-hotshot-for-NPR Suarez, so it is fairly safe to assume I was in hostile territory).
Anyway, this woman presented on The Demonization of Muslims and Arabs in the American Media, and what a load of hooey it was.
I knew we were in for it when, less than a minute into her rant, she referred to the "American characterization of Arab women as "loose...promiscuous...little more than whores".
WHAT???!!!
During the course of her rambling screed, this woman uttered the phrase out of context well over a dozen times. The story "immediately picked up by American and Israeli media and beamed around the world" of the Pals celebrating the 9-11 attacks?
Out of context.
"These were children playing in the streets, for God's sake!"
And sure enough, there behind her on the big screen was a picture from the out of context celebration, of small Palestinian children jumping around as if playing - cropped right out of the photo that we are all familiar with. You could still see the clothing, up to about their chests, of the adults immediately behind them.
But I really loved it when she went off on a litany of Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 State and Defense Dept. sins committed against Arabs. At the end of this litany she added, "One high-ranking State Dept. official, asked whether the US sanctions against Iraq were worth the estimated 500,000 children who had died as a result, answered, Yes, I do."
Of course, she conveniently forgot to mention who this high-ranking State Dept. official was - Madeline Albright.
3964. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 10:41:26 AM
What kind of conference was it, Jozejan?
3965. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 10:44:07 AM
ando:
Good poem. I still don't understand what lubricious means.
3966. mgleason - 2/13/2002 10:48:50 AM
But you neglect to mention the important fact that Nick Tortelli was not only as unattractive and lubricious as a human being can be, but convinced of his own erudition.
Sure, Andonly, you can afford to say this about the Pied Piper of TV repair now that he's off the air, but in his day no woman, six-pack, or fifty-cent word could resist him.
I very much enjoyed your literary efforts, btw.
3967. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 10:54:10 AM
I recommend Jews, God and History by Max Dimont.
3968. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 11:32:49 AM
Nonetheless, and despite everything, there are still some items on the balance sheet that could signal change. The most important we'll leave for last. One is a certain change, still difficult to measure, in the feelings on the street. There's a lot of unease, not so much from what Sharon has done, but rather from what he's not doing and the fact there's not even the shadow of political line. The proliferation of newspaper advertisements, the voluntary initiatives and the sprouting demonstrations are reminiscent of the anti-Bibi atmosphere when it first began. Another factor is the signs of a thaw in the behemoth known as the Labor Party. If things continue as they have, and the party continues to be a supplicant of the unity government, a top-notch group will leave the party for a new political entity. These two trends will strengthen in direct proportion to the madness gripping the extreme right. The Benny Elons and Effi Eitams are raving about transfer and reconquering the territories and other apocalypses that even an angry street won't be ready to buy.
But the best chance for a way out is in the hands of the Americans. Envoys won't help, certainly not when they're the likes of Anthony Zinni. The only chance to halt a deterioration to war is an insistent American demand for implementing the Tenet and Mitchell plans, which have already been accepted by both sides.
Gideon Samet
3969. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 11:40:58 AM
Spike,
If you paid me enough I'd refuse to serve too.
Interesting offer. I had breakfast today with two young women who are raising and channeling funds for Seruv.org. I gave them a check.
But this direct participation is intriguing. What kind of support would you require? My partners and I (we had to go through a wrenching event directly linked to perception of US support of Sharon over the weekend) stand ready to support principled dissent.
How much, Spike? How much to sign Seruv's worthy statement and declare that you will not participate in the illegal and unconscionable subjugation of the Palestinians in their territories? I'm deadly serious that I will entertain a reasonable proposal.
3970. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 11:42:16 AM
I will check in later, to see if there is a worthwhile response.
3971. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 12:12:15 PM
$20K?
3972. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 12:42:16 PM
Not entirely unreasonable, but too much to hand out without a tax write-off.
How about $1000, in exchange for a notarized and attested endorsement of the dissenters declaration? With further similar payments to be made as you lend your considerable propaganda skills to the worthy cause?
Seruv seems to be gaining momentum, and they need experienced trenchermen, by the way. At least that's what I learned today.
if you agree, I'll consult with my partners.
3973. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 12:55:56 PM
Two unrelated but still connected things happened over the weekend.
1) My partners in a struggling-to-fly business venture finally struck a deal with the client we've been pursuing relentlessly for a year. We took a flier on something, expecting to turn it over for a tidy profit, but got waylaid (like everyone else) in the new economic climate. This client is the only possible buyer for our something, and if we don't sell it to him our partnership will probably collapse into bankruptcy.
The rub: the client refused to do business with our American entity. Not entirely unreasonably, he cannot be seen, by X and Y, to pay this price (the lowest we can go without taking a terrible hit) to an American company, that too with an Israeli founding partner.
I've mentioned this person before, he's beyond a business associate. A lawyer, an astute colleague, a fine family man. My family has spent time with his in Haifa. He's put almost two years of his life into this deal, and his precarious personal financial situation depended on it coming to fruition.
There is only one workable solution other than bankruptcy - and we took it. The deal has been cut with our Mauritian shell company, and the Israeli had to bow out of all of it. He has no options, and neither do we. The mutual future, which once looked rosy, is shot. The deal opens a small pipeline into markets which may actually make our partnership what the seven of us envisioned a while ago - but without him.
He took it gracefully, and we have put the very meager profit from the deal into a trust to pay off his daughter's next two years of college. But he is now going to have to declare bankruptcy, and his wife is going to leave him, and all this other shit.
3974. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 1:05:14 PM
2) My brother got an unbelievable offer from a Dubai-based individual to run his overseas investments. The kind of deal that would enable him to become very wealthy in a couple of years.
The deal was on the table until they discovered that he was actually American. For some fucked reason, partly because he had been dealing exclusively with the Frenchman who was to become his predecessor, they had thought he was an Indian immigrant to France.
Heard he was American, with an American wife, deal withdrawn. Couldn't have a Yank handling those finances without opposition from significant quarters.
---
Both of these ugly little episodes would not have occurred except in a climate where a good part of the world both animatedly disapproves of Israeli excesses in the occupied territories and associates these excesses with the US.
As far as I am concerned, this matter has become quite personal. My business interests and family interests have been threatened by perceptions of US policy in the ME and I intend on doing what I can to (a) vocally distance myself from them and (b) lobby to change them. Also (c) - strongly support those in Israel who are similarly opposed to the current regime and its policies.
--
That, amigos, is the sum of it. I bid you all a good day, and promise that you shall hear from me on this topic in the coming months.
3975. marjoribanks - 2/13/2002 1:29:03 PM
Focused on his war against Osama bin Laden and now the larger targets of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, President Bush largely has ignored continued Israeli settlement activity. In the process, he has missed an essential point, namely, that without a reversal of settlement activity, the war against terrorism can never be won.
Few issues fuel more anger against the US and Israel. Few generate more sympathy for the likes of Mr. bin Laden, and not among Palestinians alone. Nothing breeds greater cynicism than the wide gulf that exists between the United States' historic affinity for the principle of self-determination and its willingness to turn a blind eye to Israel's systematic expropriation of Arab lands. Nothing undermines more thoroughly the credibility of the administration's protestations of interest in an eventual Palestinian state than its tepid protests over the continuing seizure of the very land that would constitute such a state.
Peace between Israelis and Palestinians must come at a great price to both. In addition to halting acts of violence against Israel, Palestinians will need to relinquish the "right of return" - their long-standing claim to property lost within Israel when Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from their homes after the Jewish state was created in 1948.
For its part, Israel will have to abandon all or most of its settlements on Palestinian land. Pressure to do so will have to come from the US, which may need to use its annual $3 billion-plus aid allotment to Israel as leverage.
CSMonitor
3976. Wombat - 2/13/2002 1:43:02 PM
Marj:
Seems to me that you are getting angry at the wrong folks. Your problem has much more to do with intolerance, antisemitism, and nationalism in the part of the world you are dealing with than with US policies. The attitudes you describe are much more pernicious than whatever Israel is doing to the Palestinians. I note that Arab states continued to maintain the economic boycott of companies doing business with Israel even during the palmy days after Oslo.
Since you give the impression of being a crusader for righteous behavior, how do you square the fact that your family and friends cannot find work in some parts of the world because they have an Israeli on staff, or are married to an American, with your oft-stated desire for tolerance, etc. It is not the US that should change, but the Arab world. I am sorry to have you relate the moral contortions that you are going through because you want to do business in that part of the world, given how critical you are of US moral contortions in that area.
3977. Andonly - 2/13/2002 4:40:29 PM
Goodness, Spanks. Are you all in righteous crusader knots because you've got to find some Israeli to blame for your own inability to stand on principle?
Of course, no one actually expects you should go broke because of others' intolerance. One can't always choose one's customers. On the other hand, your fine and raucous parade of superior values looks rather dirtied from here.
You could just as easily advocate noisily for Arab concessions as Israeli ones. But you fixate on the crimes of the Jews and sympathize with those who disapprove of Israel. (Oh, and then you try to buy an indigent Israeli out of military service, as though paying him off wouldn't nullify any policial effect he might have by refusing to serve.)
So let's see... you sold out your business partner in order to save yourself, leaving him to bankruptcy and a ruined family. Exiled, as it were. In what way are you not like Zionists saving their own future at Palestinians' expense?
It's convenient and sensible that your partner accepted a bit of a payoff; too bad the Pals have always refused.
3978. Andonly - 2/13/2002 4:43:00 PM
Pike: lubricious means oily.
3979. Andonly - 2/13/2002 4:50:47 PM
"As far as I am concerned, this matter has become quite personal. My business interests and family interests have been threatened by perceptions of US policy in the ME and I intend on doing what I can to (a) vocally distance myself from them and (b) lobby to change them. Also (c) - strongly support those in Israel who are similarly opposed to the current regime and its policies."
None of which you would bother with if you were not convinced that your clients' anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism are perfectly justified.
3980. Andonly - 2/13/2002 5:22:11 PM
"Sure, Andonly, you can afford to say this about the Pied Piper of TV repair now that he's off the air, but in his day no woman, six-pack, or fifty-cent word could resist him."
Hah! (Ever notice how you could just about smell that character?)
3981. joezan - 2/13/2002 11:22:47 PM
Pike:
It was a Healing Racism Summit. I attended last year, and I think they asked me back because they needed a token Republican. (Not really).
Last year I was stuck with teachers and school administrators (bunch of wackos) for the breakout work sessions, and this year I finagled my way out of that and into the government group (this was a follow-up to last year's summit, with all groups reporting on progress made since then).
With the teachers, everyone insisted on their turn to whine, and after awhile it turned into a sort of see if you can out-do the last guy's moral indignation, White self-loathing, and commitment to changing things. (sort of like marj - he would've loved that group).
Of course, this year not even half of the original attendees from that group showed up, so I guess they must've felt they'd cured racism.
Or something.
3982. joezan - 2/13/2002 11:22:50 PM
Pike:
It was a Healing Racism Summit. I attended last year, and I think they asked me back because they needed a token Republican. (Not really).
Last year I was stuck with teachers and school administrators (bunch of wackos) for the breakout work sessions, and this year I finagled my way out of that and into the government group (this was a follow-up to last year's summit, with all groups reporting on progress made since then).
With the teachers, everyone insisted on their turn to whine, and after awhile it turned into a sort of see if you can out-do the last guy's moral indignation, White self-loathing, and commitment to changing things. (sort of like marj - he would've loved that group).
Of course, this year not even half of the original attendees from that group showed up, so I guess they must've felt they'd cured racism.
Or something.
3983. joezan - 2/13/2002 11:23:46 PM
...ooops.
3984. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 11:34:51 PM
Joe did a double post!
Na-na-na-naaa-nah!!!
3985. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 11:43:17 PM
Well, marj, it's good that you've finally found the guts (if one can call it that) to come clean on your weird and annoying politics: I must say, you're the first person I know who admitted so forthrightly that his entire moral weltanschauung is really nothing but a financially motivated propaganda campaign. I applaud you for coming clean, I really do.
But what you're really saying is - 'I'm a coward, help me'. I hope you have some bounds to this cowardice: in other words - if it were a matter of selling your wife out in order to survive physically, rather than selling your partner and friend out in order to survive financially, maybe there would be a point where you would say 'no'.
But what makes you think I would sell my children's physical welfare out for your sake, for anything less than $20K?
3986. RustlerPike - 2/13/2002 11:51:23 PM
I highly recommend Jews, God and History, btw. It's brilliant.
3987. RustlerPike - 2/14/2002 12:18:14 AM
It's time to bully Ya'acov Amor a bit, btw. I want him to arrange a Likud endorsement for my candidacy here.
3988. joezan - 2/14/2002 7:39:17 AM
It appears marj has a real penchant for pissing away his money and siding with losers.
3989. RustlerPike - 2/14/2050 9:54:32 AM
All these months of being force-fed Fisk - and it was all fiscal.
3990. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 11:27:08 AM
.....and it was all fiscal.
Wrong.
My active participation is driven by practical concerns, that is all.
I am very interested in the ME, as I am very interested in parts of Latin America, France, the UK, and other points on the globe. I've spent not insignificant time there, a good portion of it in Israel, and have genuine visceral fondness for it.
But I don't try to meddle in affairs that are not directly related to my interests, because there are (a) very many places that pique my interest and (b) I have enough to do in terms of personal responsibility.
In a world where the US, my country, was not directly affected by Israeli excesses in the territories - I'd content myself with academic and moral ruminations.
But it is my business when American interests overseas, my interests, are negatively affected by an unconscionable support of a brutal occupation.
I want one thing only - that the US not be adversely affected by the Israel/Palestine situation. There are dozens of possible ways that peace could be imposed, and for the US to look better, and none of them exclude an end to the occupation of Palestine.
It is thus my duty, as I see it, to try and influence (to the best of my ability) events to reach the desired outcome - a distancing of the US from Israeli excesses.
3991. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 11:39:34 AM
how do you square the fact that your family and friends cannot find work in some parts of the world because they have an Israeli on staff, or are married to an American, with your oft-stated desire for tolerance, etc
Valid question. My partners and I (two are Jewish) have gone through this before and are still grappling with it.
The people we deal with, it is entirely clear to us, are pragmatic. They care about the bottom line first, what is workable second, and what can be sold, third. I can assure you that antisemitism is not a factor in any of these three.
Previous to Sharon's regime, we have done business with these people. The trouble is Sharon's regime, and the continuing escalation of violence in Israel. You cannot sell products to a people outraged by a perception of rank injustice, if those products are associated with the perpetrators of the injustice.
It is in no way different from the South Africa situation and the global half-on/half-off boycott of goods and services from the Apartheid regime. If you were a businessman whose interests lay in South Africa, you lobbied for an end to Apartheid - because that was the only workable solution in addition to the moral one.
Israel cannot win peace by force, the greater US goals in the War on Terrorism (which I've supported from day 1) cannot be won if Israel continues to occupy the territories and bulldoze settlements onto Palestinian land. American interests abroad are and will be hurt as long as this country is seen to back a nakedly unjust and brutal regime of occupation.
None of this is either new or unique to me. You know it, everyone knows it, and the longer we all dither the worse it gets for American interests overseas.
3992. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 11:39:57 AM
Finally, it is a crucial time - there is a growing ability to pressure the US to change its policy in this matter, and it is my intent to do my darndest to ensure that the changes made are for what I believe is the best.
3993. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 11:54:20 AM
From the Independent:
While Mr Straw was glad-handing senior Israelis – but not the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who cried off with flu – the Israeli army was rampaging through Gaza in its largest raid into the Palestinian-run strip since the start of the 17-month intifada. By mid-afternoon, its troops had killed five Palestinians and invaded a refugee camp and three towns, withdrawing from all of them later. Three of the dead were policemen.
Evidence at the scene of their death, near Deir al-Balah, suggested they been running away from their post when it was hit by an Israeli tank shell, packed with hundreds of "flechettes" – tiny, deadly, darts.
The latest reprisals by Israel began on Sunday after guerrillas from the Islamic nationalist Hamas movement fired two new rockets out of Gaza into Israel, digging craters in fields but injuring no one.
Israel's publicity machine moved into overdrive, describing the "Kassam II" missiles – makeshift, unguided weapons cobbled together in the back streets of Gaza, but with a range of up to five miles – as a dangerous escalation in the conflict. Their warheads carry about 13lbs of explosives, a payload that can blow the roof off a room. But they were dwarfed by the 1,000lb laser-guided bombs blasted into empty Palestinian security buildings in the heart of the densely populated Gaza City by Israeli F-16 warplanes in reply.
3994. mgleason - 2/14/2050 11:57:03 AM
It is in no way different from the South Africa situation and the global half-on/half-off boycott of goods and services from the Apartheid regime. If you were a businessman whose interests lay in South Africa, you lobbied for an end to Apartheid - because that was the only workable solution in addition to the moral one.
I don't know enough about the specifics of your own situation, but what you posted about your brother's does not fit this construct. Enemies of the US can point to any number of its own'excesses' without resorting to guilt by association. The attempt to marry plain old anti-Semitism and 'You made me do it-ism!' to principled objections about governmental policy is disingenuous even by Arab propaganda standards.
3995. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:05:02 PM
"My active participation is driven by practical concerns, that is all."
Go lobby Iran.
3996. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 12:05:17 PM
What does anti-semitism have to do with a Dubai sheikh refusing to hire an Indian-American for a job because he cannot expect a continued flow of state funds to himself if an American is running his finances?
I find it absurd that the term would even be raised.
3997. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 12:07:16 PM
Absurd, but not surprising, that is.
3998. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:18:43 PM
"But what makes you think I would sell my children's physical welfare out for your sake, for anything less than $20K?"
Keep negotiating, Pike, and when you get that $20K commitment, explain to Spanks a la Hairyfat that, per the Prophet's Hudabaiyah agreement, you are not bound to abide by deals made while you are the weaker party.
3999. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:20:41 PM
You know, with 20 grand, you could sweep yourself and your family back to New Jersey, from which you could launch an anti-Spanksian lobbying campaign in support of the Yesha Council!
4000. mgleason - 2/14/2050 12:24:28 PM
What does anti-semitism have to do with a Dubai sheikh refusing to hire an Indian-American for a job because he cannot expect a continued flow of state funds to himself if an American is running his finances?
Ahem. You yourself tied this so-called pragmatic decision wrt your brother to America's ties to Israel. As I said, it is more than a stretch to blame 'excesses' by proxy for the failure to clinch the deal. It is no secret that the UAE, of which Dubai is a part, maintains indirect economic relations with Israel through third countries, and direct relations, as you know, with the US. Blaming the collapse of the deal on US support of Israel is a plot twist straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, yet you lay it before us in all earnestness. I submit that you need to refresh your memory as to the definition of 'absurd.'
4001. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 12:28:39 PM
The question was raised, in today's meetings, whether it would be worthwhile to help finance a media advocacy group, a la dishonest HonestReporting.Com.
My thoughts were - no, that kind of crap doesn't work, and it cheapens both the goal and the process.
However, it was pointed out that this is the way things work in the lobbying process - and you need to get the message out as aggressively as your opponents.
I'm unsure whether it would be the best use of our financial commitment. I think direct appeal to politicians and opinion-makers is better than chain-releases. Plus, dishonest HonestReporting is now notorious for its tactics and no one takes its releases without a shaker of salt. I've asked, even reporters on the ME from the NYTimes completely distrust therir stuff. Who needs that to happen to an entirely honest and worthwhile cause?
We may lauch a website though, that won't cost much.
4002. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:32:42 PM
"What does anti-semitism have to do with a Dubai sheikh refusing to hire an Indian-American for a job because he cannot expect a continued flow of state funds to himself if an American is running his finances?"
He had no trouble dealing with you via your Mauritian shell, once your Israeli friend stepped out of the picture, did he.
By your account, the issue wasn't actually whether your sheikh would deal with an American, or an Israeli, but whether he would do so at the price you required.
Somehow, I imagine you could have gotten around dumping your partner.
4003. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 12:40:25 PM
Ms. Gleason,
I think interpretation of your #4000 is necessary (congratulations on the millennial, and also for managing to find a way on squeaking in the Protocols...)
I said that an American was not being hired because of a perception of US Middle East policy as skewed towards a brutal regime of occupation. And because of this, you pull anti-semitism from a trusty holster, and brandish it around?
I resent having to state this to an intelligent person - but are you suggesting that every aspect of US Middle East policy towards Israel has to be couched in crude terms of antisemitism or philosemitism? Is it not possible to fervently dissent from US policy in the ME towards Israel without being slapped with a canard of antisemitism?
I'd thought that this particular webspace was a bit more grown up than that.
4004. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 12:42:43 PM
4002 confuses two separate matters.
4005. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:51:12 PM
Margarinespanks reminds me of some southerners I used to know who were superficially and in some cases even genuinely welcoming of black people as individuals, but not quite convinced of the necessity of black civil rights.
Spanks likes Jews and Israelis just fine, but he'll cold-shoulder a Jewish friend who gets in the middle of his lunge to shake on a deal with Dubai. Meanwhile, he figures Israelis should be unilateral pacifists and should recognize that they really can do without a Jewish state.
What a guy!
4006. Andonly - 2/14/2050 12:54:30 PM
"are you suggesting that every aspect of US Middle East policy towards Israel has to be couched in crude terms of antisemitism or philosemitism?"
I expect she figures it's no more absurd than that every business deal with America should be premised on anti-Zionism or philo-Zionism.
4007. mgleason - 2/14/2050 12:54:32 PM
Certainly it's possible to dissent from US policy in the ME without anti-Semitism being in the mix. However, the claim that your sheikh, who comes from a country which maintains direct relations with the US and indirect relations with Israel, pulled out of a deal because he feared official repercussions from dealing with an American, not an Israeli, is either disingenuous on its face, or an excuse to indulge in anti-Semitic wet dreams at no cost to himself.
4008. mgleason - 2/14/2050 1:00:12 PM
I expect she figures it's no more absurd than that every business deal with America should be premised on anti-Zionism or philo-Zionism.
Yes, that's an excellent way to put it.
4009. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 1:09:38 PM
MsGleason,
I'm afraid that you don't understand business, or the flow of state monies, or the Middle East.
Let me work an American hypothetical. Funds are granted from the center to states to individual contractors, yes? These individual contractors are required to comply with various hiring and regulatory codes, yes? A Klansman in Idaho is not likely to get one of these contracts, yes? He may be the best contractor, but since he is a Klansman, the state will not do business with him.
The Middle East sheikhdoms hand out vast sums of money to citizens, and even larger sums to crony members of the royal family. But these funds are handed out to those who comply with certain policies not terribly different, in conception, to the regulatory and hiring guidelines exercised in the US.
In this case, a minor but fabulously wealthy sheikh gets a flow of insider deals. They're meted out as long as he complies with a perception. A key part of that perception, in this case, is that the money is used responsibly and not to enrich those even tangentially involved with a moral outrage.
Why is this relevant to Americans? Because America is seen as a country bankrolling a massive injustice a few thousand miles away. For practical considerations, it is impossible to justify having an American in charge of your dealings even as you oppose American policy on principle.
It is a feat of prodigious contortion, but one clearly possible to you, to shoehorn anti-semitism into this equation.
4010. Andonly - 2/14/2050 1:11:01 PM
One thing about Spanks' views which must be kept at the forefront of any discussion about them is that Spanks considers his South Africa/apartheid analogy perfectly apt in every way. He not only wishes for an end to the occupation of the WB and Gaza, he wishes for an end to the Israeli state as it is now consituted--that is, an end to the Jewish state.
4011. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 1:11:46 PM
I expect she figures it's no more absurd than that every business deal with America should be premised on anti-Zionism or philo-Zionism.
Yes, that's an excellent way to put it.
No, it is a typically dishonest way to put it.
Kindly revisit the highly topical and entirely relevant example of South Africa and the international boycott of Apartheid-regime goods and services.
4012. Andonly - 2/14/2050 1:12:09 PM
"A Klansman in Idaho is not likely to get one of these contracts, yes? He may be the best contractor, but since he is a Klansman, the state will not do business with him."
You must be kidding.
4013. Andonly - 2/14/2050 1:15:21 PM
"But these funds are handed out to those who comply with certain policies not terribly different, in conception, to the regulatory and hiring guidelines exercised in the US."
Idiot. Anti-American and anti-Israeli Arab regulatory guidelines are NOT equivalent to American affirmative action guidelines. And as far as I know, it's illegal to discrimate here against racists when their ideological convictions have nothing to do with the jobs they've applied for.
4014. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 1:16:37 PM
It is part and parcel of tactics here to purposely mis-state views and to manufacture purported lines of argument.
4010 is example.
I shall return, briefly, later in the day.
Currently, I have to have an antisemitic lunch of pastrami and rye at the anti-semitic Second Avenue Deli with my two anti-semitic semitic colleagues and one anti-semitic non-semitic colleage, and further plan our anti-semitic activities wrt the proposed advocacy website.
Oh, anti-semitic advocacy website, I hasten to add.
4015. Andonly - 2/14/2050 1:18:13 PM
"A key part of that perception, in this case, is that the money is used responsibly and not to enrich those even tangentially involved with a moral outrage."
You're quite the raver, aren't you. As though "peception" in Dubai about "moral outrage" were a neutral thing quite free of Jew hatred.
4016. mgleason - 2/14/2050 1:20:22 PM
Marjoribanks,
I am definitely not in your class when it comes to contortions.
A Klansman in Idaho is not likely to get one of these contracts, yes? He may be the best contractor, but since he is a Klansman, the state will not do business with him.
I'm afraid your hypothetical doesn't hold water. Even if the state were able to disqualify your Klansman from winning a government contract, he'd still have to be identified as one. It would be impossible, not to mention very, very stupid, to disqualify all residents of Idaho because a number of Klansmen live there.
In this case, a minor but fabulously wealthy sheikh gets a flow of insider deals. They're meted out as long as he complies with a perception. A key part of that perception, in this case, is that the money is used responsibly and not to enrich those even tangentially involved with a moral outrage.
Ah. So he has no dealings with America at all, none, and neither do his other 'fabulously wealthy' peers, who apparently got that way through sheer virtue, not business. Please.
I haven't believed in fairy tales for a long, long time, however prettily spun.
4017. mgleason - 2/14/2050 1:25:42 PM
Kindly revisit the highly topical and entirely relevant example of South Africa and the international boycott of Apartheid-regime goods and services.
It's not dishonest at all, I suppose, to attempt to paint a refusal to do business with one American, while trade continues to flow between Dubai and the US, as a boycott, by proxy, along South African lines.
4018. Andonly - 2/14/2050 1:28:20 PM
"It is part and parcel of tactics here to purposely mis-state views and to manufacture purported lines of argument. 4010 is example."
I haven't manufactured anything, I've just put your on damned words in close proximity to one another so that your assumptions and biases are quite plain.
You have said outright that you wonder whether it is really necessary for Jews to have a Jewish state. You advocate ceaselessly for an end to the occupation, irrespective of any Arab acts that might predispose Israel to conclude it can or can't afford to end it. You label as outrageous every military act of Israel's, excusing meanwhile every Palestinian warmongering, every civilian attack, every antisemitic incitement as regrettable but understandable.
You quote the Israeli left to support your views, pretending to be a supporter of Israel but in fact endorsing, explicitly and implicitly, the transformation of Israel into something that not even the bulk of the Israeli left would countenance.
You ass, your glomming onto their arguments makes them look like Uncle Toms.
4019. rubberducky - 2/14/2050 1:50:37 PM
side line update:
'Margarinespanks' now equals 'Marzipranks' in my favorite made-up nickname department.
both always make me chuckle.
4020. Andonly - 2/14/2050 2:08:50 PM
"Oh, anti-semitic advocacy website, I hasten to add."
Dear Israelis:
Please refuse to serve in the territories, where your brutal government oppresses helpless lambs who would mean you no harm if only you would wake up and behave like the human beings you believe yourselves to be.
Also, I implore you to relinquish this nasty Jewish-state business. It's passe, it's intolerant. Europe, which wants to do business with Arab states who don't go in for Jewish rule in their lands, and I, who would like to do business with Arab sheikhs without having to dump my Jewish associates, really do know what's best. Best for you, best for the world!
Can't you see that the prosperity, the satisfaction--why, the very survival--of the whole world, especially America, where every day I have lunch with one of my many Jewish brothers, now depends on a Jewish sacrifice?
Think back to how proud you were when your own Jesus sacrificed himself to atone for the sins of mankind! Wouldn't you all feel much better if you saved the world now, instead of destroying it with your stubborn, unprovoked ruthlessness?
Please understand that we here at Spanks Unlimited want the very best for you. But we care about ourselves, too. And you simply must learn to think about the welfare of others, not just Jews, Jews, Jews. Once you do, the world will finally love you. I, Margarinespanks, personally promise that this is true.
Trust me: I love you guys. But let's focus on what's best for the majority, OK?
4021. Andonly - 2/14/2050 2:09:29 PM
just in case...
4022. betty - 2/14/2050 2:30:28 PM
It's interesting watching this exchange.
Ultimately, I suspect I fall very much in line with Marj, questioning the need to have a Jewish state (or arab or christian or religion x), and I can't help but think that the settlements are (looking at it from the perspective of someone not intimately involved with the struggles there) only asking for trouble. I have sympathy for both sides here but see the money/weapons given to Israel as a deciding factor...I would compare it more to a Vietnam set of circumstances...One side has big guns and money and support while the other is fighting a guerilla style war. there is an institution of War within the Israeli state but no comparable institution amongst the Palestinians because there is no state. there are organizations populated by Palestinians but there is a difference. I don't know how else to express it, but I'm not sure that I'm being clear.
there is a gross "uneveness" about this whole affair that makes me uncomfortable.
(for the record I've never been considered anti-semitic though i make no effort to hide my anti-zionist feelings. I don't think that opposing a "jewish state" makes one anti-semitic and I know lots of American Jews who join me in that opinion.)
4023. mgleason - 2/14/2050 2:35:03 PM
there is a gross "uneveness" about this whole affair that makes me uncomfortable.
Yes, I've always been staggered by the numbers involved in the Arab/Muslim coalition against Israel.
4024. Andonly - 2/14/2050 2:41:11 PM
"there is an institution of War within the Israeli state but no comparable institution amongst the Palestinians because there is no state."
There is an institution of Brutality within police departments but no comparable institution amongst street criminals because street criminals are not departmental.
4025. Andonly - 2/14/2050 2:45:25 PM
By the way: that poisoned water thing. You haven't answered anyone's queries about your assertion.
4026. betty - 2/14/2050 2:59:01 PM
Andonly,
It's no secret that water sources have been targeted by Israel...it's a common wartime tactic, and not one limited to the IvP conflicts (and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Palestinians had done the same, I just don't know about it).
I was thinking of you this morning when i was reading a "conspiracy" book on the CIA/OSS connections. It touched on the fact that former Nazi's working for the CIA helped train the first Palestinian resistance fighters. I'm gonna try and see if I can find more documentation on this but I've always thought that Neo-Nazi's must get a special joy out of what happens in the ME.
4027. Andonly - 2/14/2050 2:59:42 PM
"I don't think that opposing a "jewish state" makes one anti-semitic and I know lots of American Jews who join me in that opinion."
Lots? They must be a special population known only to you.
Not that all American Jews are Zionists. But I think most would view your opinions with kindly circumspection, a degree of suspicion, and perhaps the sort of tolerance one accords the heartfelt opinions of young children.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but no one has called Spanks himself an antisemite. In bed with antisemites, deaf to antisemitism, convinced of his own moral righteousness, smitten blind with underdogism--all quite as bad, really.
4028. Andonly - 2/14/2050 3:02:31 PM
"It's no secret that water sources have been targeted by Israel"
Israel uses up water that could and should be shared with the Pals. You talked about poisoning. If this poisoning is not secret, disclose your sources.
It's "no secret" that Mossad masterminded the WTC attack, you know...
4029. Andonly - 2/14/2050 3:06:34 PM
"former Nazi's working for the CIA helped train the first Palestinian resistance fighters."
Betty, the Nazi-Arab connection is not exactly new.
Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, made every effort to conspire with Hitler to eradicate the Jews in Arab lands. Specifically, he approached Germany with a plan to "solve" the Jewish problem in Palestine, with German assistance, the same way Hitler had "solved" it in Germany.
The mufti made not one but two proposals to the Nazis (in 1940 and 1941), on behalf, he said, of an inter-Arab committee of government and non-government representatives. He said if the Germans would endorse a draft he had written espousing German-Arab common goals with regard to the Jews, he could guarantee public support.
Here's an excerpt from Husayni's proposed declaration (which the Germans never clearly endorsed, probably in part because they considered Arabs no less vermin than Jews):
"Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (volkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy."
Note, Betty, that the Mufti of Jerusalem wasn't just talking about Palestine, or new Jewish immigrants there.
4030. betty - 2/14/2050 3:58:48 PM
But I think most would view your opinions with ...perhaps the sort of tolerance one accords the heartfelt opinions of young children.
yeah, Okay, then i have nothing to offer this conversation.
4031. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:02:06 PM
Reuters via MSNBC:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Feb. 14 — The World Court dealt a major blow to Belgium’s attempt to try Israeli leader Ariel Sharon by ruling on Thursday that government ministers charged with war crimes can be protected from prosecution by diplomatic immunity.
“The Sharon case, in my opinion, is closed,” legal adviser Jan Devadder told Reuters after the ruling by the United Nation’s highest judicial body.
The lawsuit against Sharon on genocide and war crimes charges has been delayed while a Brussels appeals court decides if Belgium has the right to prosecute the Israeli leader.
They will have to take into account today’s judgment. The judgment is clear: immunity for all ministers for all crimes while they are still in office” Devadder said.
“The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, ruled in a case similar to the Sharon one, that Belgium had no right to issue an arrest warrant for a former Congolese minister accused of human rights abuses as he was immune from prosecution.
“The immunities under customary international law, including those of ministers for foreign affairs, remain opposable (applicable) before the courts of a foreign state, even where those courts exercise an extended criminal jurisdiction on the basis of various international conventions on the prevention and punishment of certain serious crimes,” Gilbert Guillaume, president of the court, said in his ruling.
4032. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 4:06:18 PM
Perhaps it is the two Cel-Ray sodas speaking, but I actually enjoyed and smiled at 4020. Quite droll.
4033. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 4:08:43 PM
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but no one has called Spanks himself an antisemite.
No one could, without being a liar or a fool.
In bed with antisemites, deaf to antisemitism, convinced of his own moral righteousness, smitten blind with underdogism--all quite as bad, really.
I'd say, nope, nope, equivocally yup, nope, if you're keeping count.
4034. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 4:11:02 PM
I now think I must ruminate, pastrami-fuelled, on the very epithet -anti-semite - and its origins and use and misuse in American political discourse.
In a bit, that is.
4035. mgleason - 2/14/2050 4:20:29 PM
Stay tuned as our plucky hero attempts to defang and reclaim anti-Semite, the 'nigger' of the Arab world. In the style of Woody Allen, who exemplifies all that's right about anti-Semitism, he says,
Don't knock anti-Semitism - it's like sex with someone you love.
4036. PelleNilsson - 2/14/2050 4:22:06 PM
It is interesting to see, in the case of Andonly, who tries to project the image of a reasonably balanced commentator, how the varnish cracks as soon as the temperature rises a bit.
betty
Please substantiate your claim that Muslim women and children have been exposed to poisoned wells.
4037. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:23:43 PM
MSNBC yesterday:
Israel also accuses Arafat’s Palestinian Authority of being behind a 50-ton shipment of arms from Iran intercepted on its way to the region.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress that Arafat had accepted responsibility as chairman of the Palestinian Authority for an attempt to smuggle the weapons.
However, Powell said that Arafat had not accepted personal responsibility for the operation, which Israel blocked on Jan. 3 by intercepting the ship in the Read Sea.
Earlier, Powell had described a letter Arafat sent him last week as positive, but he did not disclose the details.
After Israel revealed the smuggling attempt, Powell demanded that Arafat admit responsibility for the operation and said the Palestinian leader should have known about it.
Powell urged Arafat again Wednesday to make arrests and said suspects should not be permitted to avoid long detention through “revolving doors.”
Arafat all along has denied knowledge of the smuggling.
Meanwhile, tensions within Palestinians ranks were exposed in recent days in a spat between Arafat and his West Bank security chief, Jibril Rajoub. Palestinians said that at a meeting Monday, Arafat accused Rajoub of insubordination and waved a pistol in his face, then dropped it because he was shaking. Arafat suffers from an ailment that causes tremors. On Wednesday, Rajoub pledged his loyalty to Arafat.
4038. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:27:39 PM
"Perhaps it is the two Cel-Ray sodas speaking..."
Yes. Part of our world domination strategy.
Unfortunately, our Dr. Brown's plot to infiltrate societies at every level was largely foiled by the Nazis at Coke and Pepsi.
4039. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:32:39 PM
"I now think I must ruminate, pastrami-fuelled, on the very epithet -anti-semite - and its origins and use and misuse in American political discourse."
Sigh.
"It is interesting to see, in the case of Andonly, who tries to project the image of a reasonably balanced commentator, how the varnish cracks as soon as the temperature rises a bit."
I'm a Jew, not a Swede, you wilted aubergine. My partisanship is unambiguous and I've never made any bones about it.
4040. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:42:58 PM
"No one could, without being a liar or a fool."
Well, anyone sufficiently perceptive could call your pompous self nigh onto a fellow-traveler.
4041. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:44:58 PM
Margarinespanks: not an anitsemite, but NOFT.
Has a Yiddish ring, doesn't it.
4042. Andonly - 2/14/2050 4:46:17 PM
Noftische Spanks. Noftischespanks.
Hmm.
4043. ChadNeimim - 2/14/2050 4:47:04 PM
Hello everyone!
4044. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 4:50:05 PM
I wonder, in effect, if it is strictly correct to call someone anti-semitic if he/she does not care one way or the other about the Jews except when it comes to their botched and ugly relations with the Palestinians.
In effect, I have an Arab in mind. Strictly secular, mostly irreligious, totally commercially-minded. He does not give a crap about what the Koran says about anything. He does not give a shit whether you are Jewish, Hindu, Russian, or a Brazilian mulatto. Politically, however, he is incensed by what he sees on television, and knows from his Palestinian friends, about the Israeli occupation, perhaps to an extent by the very presence of Israel - which he considers an abomination foisted on Arab lands.
He hates Israel, he would like it not to have existed, he would like it to cease to exist.
is he an anti-semite? In this case, I'd say no.
Antisemitic is antisemitic, it is an easily recognized European Christian construct which has been transplanted to other lands, and has a similarly configured Islamist offshoot. Misusing the term cheapens its value as an accurate description of a real phenomenon.
4045. CalGal - 2/14/2050 4:53:15 PM
I thought that was anti-Zionism, what you describe.
4046. CalGal - 2/14/2050 4:57:09 PM
Hello, Chad. Welcome to the Mote.
4047. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 4:59:06 PM
I've written tens, even hundreds of thousands of words in this forum and its predecessor on Israel/Palestine, Judaism, Jewish history, my areas of interest in the Jewish diaspora, and other related topics. I defy anyone to find one line, even one word, which could be reasonably inferred to demonstrate that I harbor any anti-semitic thoughts whatsoever.
And, to give a small amount of credit where a small amount of credit is due, the correspondents I've dealt with here have not resorted to that old bludgeon-like tactic. But I see leanings, now.
--
Were I Jewish, I'd be similarly seeing leanings towards calling me "self-hating". This comes with the territory, I'm told. I think it would piss me off a lot more than being called anti-semitic.
4048. mgleason - 2/14/2050 5:01:33 PM
the very presence of Israel - which he considers an abomination foisted on Arab lands.
He hates Israel, he would like it not to have existed, he would like it to cease to exist.
That, in my opinion, crosses the line. How does he feel about the Ottomans? About the French? About the British? Why is it that the Jews perpetrate 'an abomination upon Arab lands?' Is it by virtue of the fact they're Jewish?
My guess is that you'll say no, that it's a principled objection to Israeli cruelty and brutality, etc. Your description, however, tells another story.
4049. ChadNeimim - 2/14/2050 5:03:28 PM
Hi CalGal,
What's this I hear about the Hamas blowing up a tank? Killing 3...
Know anything?
4050. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:03:46 PM
Spanks, if fifty antisemites and fifty anti-Zionists got together and made 365 news reports demonizing Israel and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, which they claimed was an abomination responsible for all Arab ills, and then if a perfectly "neutral" guy watched little but these 365 reports for a year, and decided he hated Israel, wanted it gone, and wished it never existed, no matter the reason for its existence, is the neutral guy an antisemite?
Gosh, I don't know. Let's see: if I saw nothing but anti-Arab propaganda after 9-11 and therefore wished the US would go ahead and nuke Riyadh, Baghdad, and Cairo, would that make me anti-Arab or just anti-Saudi, anti-Iraq, anti-Egyptian?
It's funny you think you can tease out "political" from "irrational" hatred on the basis of what someone confesses to you.
4051. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:05:33 PM
"Your description, however, tells another story."
Yep, but Spanks is a deaf man.
4052. ChadNeimim - 2/14/2050 5:07:48 PM
CalGal
(21:30) Large bomb kills 3, wounds 1 in Gaza
4053. ChadNeimim - 2/14/2050 5:09:30 PM
CalGal
trying again I see it didn't take the link before...
(21:30) Large bomb kills 3, wounds 1 in Gaza
4054. CalGal - 2/14/2050 5:09:44 PM
And--is there then no difference between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism, or are you saying that from a functional perspective they are much the same, so who cares?
4055. CalGal - 2/14/2050 5:10:42 PM
Chad, thanks for the link. I had just checked the NY Times site and hadn't seen anything there.
4056. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 5:13:14 PM
First of all, I'm open to a final decision on the hypothetical (based on a composit) Arab.
Do not misinterpret my comments I know that antisemitism exists, I have witnessed it, I have studied it at length. I will attest, at length, to personal experience of hearing antisemitic diatribe repeatedly many times, including in some very surprising circles. For some reason, antisemites think that I (a brown man) will be sympathetic to what they have to say, just as some racists think that I will condone their racism because I'm not black. In a business environment, even a fairly upscale one, neither phenomenon is very rare or very far below the surface.
Why is it that the Jews perpetrate 'an abomination upon Arab lands?' Is it by virtue of the fact they're Jewish?
That is a fair question. In this case, let us say that he considered all European colonialism on Arab lands an abomination, but not Ottoman rule since it was in the model of the caliphate. I'd say, without checking, that 90% of the Arabs I've encountered believe this.
He's not an anti-semite, is he? Unless he resorts to anti-semitic rhetoric, which - in my experience - most educated Arabs do not.
4057. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:14:24 PM
AP's version:
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Palestinians opened fire on a civilian convoy guarded by soldiers and set off a bomb. The Israelis sent a tank into the area and a huge bomb exploded under it, they said. The officials would not say whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians.
The bombing took place near the Netzarim intersection southeast of Gaza City, the officials said.
About 5,000 Israeli settlers live in Gaza among more than a million Palestinians. Israel controls the main roads through Gaza, and soldiers protect convoys of civilian vehicles entering and leaving the settlements.
The Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom sent ambulances to the scene of the bombing and the wounded were taken to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.
More at:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/677951.asp
4058. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 5:18:26 PM
if fifty antisemites and fifty anti-Zionists got together and made 365 news reports demonizing Israel and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, which they claimed was an abomination responsible for all Arab ills, and then if a perfectly "neutral" guy watched little but these 365 reports for a year, and decided he hated Israel, wanted it gone, and wished it never existed, no matter the reason for its existence, is the neutral guy an antisemite?
It depends.
Antisemitism requires hatred of the Jews, it is an objectively irrational psychological phenomenon. You cannot be a balanced, sane, individual and hate all Jews, or all Blacks or all Muslims, or all Sioux. It's a pathology, in my view.
4059. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 5:23:10 PM
Something intriguing -
The document details substantive negotiations over borders in the West Bank, and refutes charges that the Palestinians never presented a map of their own. Their map proposed Palestinian control of 96.9 percent of the West Bank (Israel proposed 94 percent), plus territorial exchanges to compensate for the remainder, which would be annexed to Israel. The parties essentially agreed Israel would evacuate Gaza.
The parties agreed that Jerusalem would be an open city, whose eastern part would be called Al-Quds and would be the capital of Palestine. The Palestinians agreed that most of the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and both sides agreed to a division of the Old City. The document says "both sides were close to accepting Clinton's ideas regarding Palestinian sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif [Temple Mount]" and Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall.
Regarding the refugees, the parties agreed that a just resolution of the problem had to lead to implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 194. There was no agreement on the number of refugees that would be allowed to enter Israel.
Unofficial EU document shows Israel agreed to pre-'67 borders
4060. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 5:25:15 PM
Anyway, a cosy menage awaits, it is Valentine's Day and I am outta here.
4061. mgleason - 2/14/2050 5:26:18 PM
He's not an anti-semite, is he? Unless he resorts to anti-semitic rhetoric, which - in my experience - most educated Arabs do not.
Anti-Semitic rhetoric is not a requirement. In fact, it is not unheard-of for anti-anythings to go to great lengths to disguise their inclinations, à la 'some of my best friends....' It's been my experience that educated people tend to avoid coming off as mouth-breathers, whatever their personal beliefs.
4062. ChadNeimim - 2/14/2050 5:32:27 PM
Well I will try this again another time... got to run!
4063. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:39:57 PM
"is there then no difference between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism, or are you saying that from a functional perspective they are much the same, so who cares?"
Ther's surely a difference between anti-Zionsism and antisemitism in theory. But people aren't theoretical animals, and in reality antipathies overlap.
I really don't care what pseudo-academic blather Spanks dreams up in order to draw his imaginary bright line between the two impulses. What I care about is what Arabs say, and what they say is strictly antisemitic.
Again, this is not new. But no one who opposes the existence of Israel can claim he has not been influenced by antisemitic thinking if his rationales derive from Arabs' rage and pleadings of unique victimization at Israel's hands. Anyone who further discounts Jewish historical experience as irrelevant to the question of whether Jews have a right to a state... well, what is one to make of this?
4064. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:44:21 PM
"In this case, let us say that he considered all European colonialism on Arab lands an abomination..."
No, let's not say it, because it isn't true. Jewish colonialism is worse: your friend believes it, and you should know he does.
4065. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:46:46 PM
"Antisemitism requires hatred of the Jews, it is an objectively irrational psychological phenomenon."
Oh, so that's kind of like racism requiring the "hatred" of "all blacks," yes? Even though one doesn't actually dislike one's maid or one's child's nanny?
It's all clear to me now.
4066. Andonly - 2/14/2050 5:54:30 PM
And of course this is blazingly true and shouldn't have to be pointed out:
"Anti-Semitic rhetoric is not a requirement. In fact, it is not unheard-of for anti-anythings to go to great lengths to disguise their inclinations, à la 'some of my best friends....' It's been my experience that educated people tend to avoid coming off as mouth-breathers, whatever their personal beliefs."
4067. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 6:03:20 PM
I just started reading, on the PATH, an interesting rumination on jewishness by Adam Gopnick, in the new New Yorker. Good stuff, really, I may quote from it if I have time (and remember to take the copy) tomorrow.
--
4065 is silly. Siegman has something extremely worthwhile to say in that context, I'll quote from it tomorrow.
---
4065 is similarly silly. I wrote off the cuff. How about something like "in order to be antisemitic, you have to hate Jews for being Jews, it's a pathology etc etc." In fact, I think that's it - when you hate a black person because he's black - you're a racist, isn't it? So, if you hate someone because he's a Jew you're an antisemite.
---
I wish Spike got the New Yorker.
4068. marjoribanks - 2/14/2050 6:08:18 PM
Ms. Gleason's point is well-taken. However, it strikes me that you need some evidence before you can throw around epithets, especially very loaded and meaningful ones like anti-semite.
--
But no one who opposes the existence of Israel can claim he has not been influenced by antisemitic thinking if his rationales derive from Arabs' rage and pleadings of unique victimization at Israel's hands.
No one I know bases their opposition on these things. It can be a straight anti-colonial stance, and you know it.
Anyone who further discounts Jewish historical experience as irrelevant to the question of whether Jews have a right to a state... well, what is one to make of this?
Intriguing, intriguing, intriguing. I shall return to this tomorrow.
4069. CalGal - 2/14/2050 6:40:44 PM
What I care about is what Arabs say, and what they say is strictly antisemitic.
Yes, this I agree with.
I would describe myself as mildly anti-zionist--or at least I am completely unconvinced as to the value or historical right to a state. I don't wish to get into an argument about it because I also don't much care. What's done is done, the state is here, and while I don't see any inherent right to a state, I also don't much object to special consideration being given to Jews given their history.
This does not mean I set much store in Arab anger over Israel--for much the same reasons. What's done is done, get over it, etc. I used to have some sympathy for Palestinians; it was used up when Arafat turned down Barak's last offer. I have never had any sympathy for Arab hatred of Israel; it never made any sense to me--and in fact, made more sense when I viewed it as part of the larger picture of Islam gone awry.
Put in practical terms, this means my support for Israel is based on its value to American interests only, likewise my support for US ME policy, and I suspect I am reasonably representative of most Americans in this. But you'd probably have a better gut feel about this than I would.
I was interested in your linking the two (anti-semitism and anti-Zionism) because I am so completely out of touch on religion I wouldn't even know how to be anti-semitic. So far as I think of religions at all, Judaism seems more sensible than most.
(cont'd)
4070. pseudoerasmus - 2/14/2050 6:42:07 PM
I don't understand why such a big deal is being made about Arab anti-semitism.
Anti-semitism. Anti-semitism. It's a talismanic word apparently for westerners.
The Israel / Palestine thing is an ethnic territorial conflict, no different ultimately from the Graeco-Turkish, or the Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir, or the various conflicts over Kurdistan, etc. Peoples enmeshed in ethnic conflicts develop racist and ethnic stereotypes about their opponents.
That an Arab should entertain anti-semitic beliefs & feelings is only natural and to be expected. (Just as some Israelis should entertain racist prejudices against Arabs.)
I really see no grounds for special condemnation of Arab anti-semitism. In the West the Holocaust has made anti-semitism a Big Deal. But outside the West, it's just another form of racism/ethnocentrism and shouldn't really be held up as some gross ethical dereliction. It shouldn't be viewed as any worse than, say, Greek Turcophobia.
4071. CalGal - 2/14/2050 6:45:10 PM
On the other hand, I have been worried about the dangers of Islam since 9/11, and consider US exhortations of tolerance to be misguided and potentially dangerous. For years I used to have vague worries about Arabs and their complete denial of reality when it displeased them, whereas now I wonder how much of that is due to Islam.
I wouldn't say my worries about Islam are prejudice; they are more a wariness of a belief system that seems to have failed to secularize. But whatever. I wonder how many anti-zionists are pro-semitic anti-Islamists?
4072. pseudoerasmus - 2/14/2050 6:51:43 PM
Message # 4048
"the very presence of Israel - which he considers an abomination foisted on Arab lands. He hates Israel, he would like it not to have existed, he would like it to cease to exist."
That, in my opinion, crosses the line. How does he feel about the Ottomans? About the French? About the British? Why is it that the Jews perpetrate 'an abomination upon Arab lands?' Is it by virtue of the fact they're Jewish?"
I think the crucial difference, if I may be so bold, is that the Turks, the French and the British left. I can't imagine why Arabs should be particularly antisemitic if there was no Israel in their midst.
4073. CalGal - 2/14/2050 6:57:30 PM
On a different subject--has anyone seen the documentary A Day in September, on the Munich Massacre? I have always known that the Germans handled the situation badly and that the Olympic committee was arrogantly dismissive in continuing the games, but I was stunned at what seemed to be completely new information. I was wondering how much was common knowledge that I just missed out on?
4074. CalGal - 2/14/2050 6:58:54 PM
One journalist mentions that no one thought for a moment that the Germans didn't have some crack commando squad who could handle this. I wonder, did the Israelis not know this either? Were they expecting it to be handled more efficiently? Or did they know and just write off the hostages as dead, planning their own revenge later? The chief of the Mossad had been flown over to observe things, and one of the documentaries major coups is their interview with him. His outrage is still palpable, 30 years later. So I wonder if Israel knew how completely they were handing the athletes to the wolves. Surely they would have demanded to intervene, or at least contacted other countries to help them out?
On the other hand, it was only a day. It's not like they had much time to react.
I realize this may not be the right thread, but I figured that Andonly or Pike might have more knowledge of what is commonly known.
4075. judithathome - 2/14/2050 7:23:12 PM
I knew about #2 but not the rest...don't know why I'd have known about that but I did.
4076. Andonly - 2/14/2050 11:10:10 PM
"I really see no grounds for special condemnation of Arab anti-semitism."
That's very brave and cosmopolitan of you, but no one here is proffering "special," as opposed to ordinary, condemnation of Arab antisemitism.
"In the West the Holocaust has made anti-semitism a Big Deal. But outside the West, it's just another form of racism/ethnocentrism and shouldn't really be held up as some gross ethical dereliction. It shouldn't be viewed as any worse than, say, Greek Turcophobia."
Yes, in the west, we with our silly post-Holocaust, post-civil rights era "western values" view racism with the derision it deserves. But no, antisemitism is not viewed as worse than anti-black racism, or any sort of racism.
It's a terrible affliction, isn't it, to consider racism bad and incendiary. I hope someday to visit the People's Republic of China for a long sojourn, where I will gradually be disabused of the whole ridiculous concept that attempting to keep ethnic hatred out of political conflict is a good idea. Then I'll be able to despise Arabs freely, the better to assist my countrymen by claiming as credulously as possible that Arabs poison wells and, oh, make sex slaves out of god-fearing Christian women.
But who cares about my epiphanies to come, let's focus on those who have already had all theirs: if you're a very pompous and self-righteous immigrant to the west who considers himself far, far above racism, and yet wants to do business with antisemitic sheikhs, you apparently must convince yourself that Arab antisemitism is either not quite real or else justifiable.
4077. Andonly - 2/14/2050 11:12:35 PM
"I would describe myself as mildly anti-zionist--or at least I am completely unconvinced as to the value or historical right to a state. ...What's done is done, the state is here, and while I don't see any inherent right to a state, I also don't much object to special consideration being given to Jews given their history.
This does not mean I set much store in Arab anger over Israel--for much the same reasons. What's done is done, get over it, etc."
A balanced and disinterested view, which I personally would not consider likely to be influenced by antisemitism.
4078. Andonly - 2/14/2050 11:19:43 PM
By the way, I'm mystified by Spanks' link to that Akiva Eldar piece which claims that the "newly released document" about the talks at Taba "refutes charges that the Palestinians never presented a map of their own". Everyone knows that the Taba talks were going well and that the two sides were very near agreement, certainly on most important security issues. I, for one, was holding out hope during them. That claim that Palestinians never presented their own proposal was made about Camp David, not Taba. I'm sure this stuff was written about extensively in the NYT or other Murcan organs, so it's implausible Israelis other than Eldar knew nothing of it.
4079. Andonly - 2/14/2050 11:28:08 PM
CalGal, I've never seen the documentary you mention, but I've read allusions to some of the things you mention. Perhaps Pike knows more.
4080. Andonly - 2/14/2050 11:33:02 PM
CalGal: "So far as I think of religions at all, Judaism seems more sensible than most."
Well, its modernist manifestations are quite sensible, but so are Christianity's and Islam's. Jewish Orthodoxy is exactly as stupid as orthodox Islam--they're only too similar, in fact--and the two together are either slightly more or slightly less stupid than orthodox Christianity, I haven't decided.
Then there's polytheism...
4081. innatysoe - 2/14/2050 11:46:28 PM
"States are established to protect the interests and realize the aspirations of those who create them" (Freeman, 1997:3).
Hence should the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbullah and the rest of the terrorist alphabet soup create a state in Gaza and West Bank, they will do so to realize their, not America's, aspirations and to protect their, not America's, interests.
Do you feel that the creation of such a state is in America's best interest?
4082. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 12:32:26 AM
Right now we're all trying to understand how they managed to blow up that Merkava. Seems the tanks was simply blown apart. The turret came off.
Big blow for Merkava fans like Jexster.
4083. CalGal - 2/15/2050 12:40:05 AM
And,
I recommend the movie; it won the Oscar for documentary last year in large part because they gamed the system, but once you overlook that sin it's well-made. Extremely upsetting, though. No one comes off well.
4084. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 1:27:07 AM
Message # 4076
"...no one here is proffering "special," as opposed to ordinary, condemnation of Arab antisemitism."
You all are, implicitly.
"Yes, in the west, we with our silly post-Holocaust, post-civil rights era "western values" view racism with the derision it deserves. But no, antisemitism is not viewed as worse than anti-black racism, or any sort of racism."
Rubbish.
Certain classes of racism, including antisemitism, are considered -- implicitly, de facto, tacitly, etc. -- worse, much worse, than other kinds of racism. Notice how goodnaturedly it's taken if someone tells a Greek joke, but Jewish jokes by non-Jews are beyond the pale. No one bats an eyelid if someone were to make references to filthy dung-covered Hindooo brides who jump into their husbands' funeral pyres, but imagine if classic stereotypes about Jews were aired.
4085. Al D - 2/15/2050 1:47:09 AM
No one bats an eyelid if someone were to make references to filthy dung-covered Hindooo brides who jump into their husbands' funeral pyres, but imagine if classic stereotypes about Jews were aired.
I batted both eyelids at the very thought. What kind of a world do you live in?
banks
do you imagine your friend Fisk might be a little tiny bit anti-semitic?
4086. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 2:15:33 AM
The point is that one gets ostracised for airing racist stereotypes only about some peoples but not others. I am not critising that disparity. I am saying it's only natural.
4087. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 2:16:04 AM
criticising
4088. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 2:18:26 AM
For example, I've called Marjoribanks a "filthy Hindooo" many times, and no one cared any more than if I had called him "fucking bastard". But if I had called Andonly a "filthy Jewess" I would have been reproved at the very least.
4089. concerned - 2/15/2050 2:27:10 AM
Now, if a good way could be found to effectively 'ostracize' Muslims for their racist stereotypes....
4090. concerned - 2/15/2050 2:33:20 AM
My god! I'm suddenly a nonagenerian!
4091. concerned - 2/15/2050 2:34:56 AM
4089. concerned - 2/15/2050 7:27:10 AM
4092. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 2:52:16 AM
Whoa! We've been transported in time! It's that Usama dude again! He's dropped the age bomb!
4093. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 6:59:34 AM
Anyhow - Ya'acov Amor says he isn't running in Katzir and if there are elections here he'll help me go to the Likud and get their backing.
That leaves me with the job of arranging Sandrov's ouster and the holding of new elections. We are to hold a rally at which Amor, Councillor Kashi, Ofra Cohen of Harish and I shall be speaking.
Problem is, all this is interfering humungously with my being able to do any kind of old fashioned work in the meantime.
4094. PincherMartin - 2/15/2050 8:31:19 AM
For example, I've called Marjoribanks a "filthy Hindooo" many times, and no one cared any more than if I had called him "fucking bastard". But if I had called Andonly a "filthy Jewess" I would have been reproved at the very least.
When I first saw "filthy Hindooo" in one of PE's post a few years back, I was honestly shocked. But I knew -- or thought I knew -- PE was Pakistani. I just assumed it was a subcon-thing, sort of like how only black men can call other black men "niggers."
This was reinforced later when PE told Marj his pidgin Hindi would never compare to PE's poetic Urdu. I thought there must be some sort of subcon rivalry going on between the two of them. Certainly, if other people habitually called Marj a "filthy Hindooo," I never noticed.
Of course, I had no idea at the time what a Pathan was. I also didn't know that, anthropologically-speaking, a Pathan is as far from a Hindu as a German is.
So what PE assumes was the rest of us not caring what he said about Marj, was really -- at least in my case -- more a matter of not understanding the context of the insult.
I have a sneaky suspicion I'm not the only one who misunderstood the context.
4095. Andonly - 2/15/2050 8:38:31 AM
"No one bats an eyelid if someone were to make references to filthy dung-covered Hindooo brides who jump into their husbands' funeral pyres, but imagine if classic stereotypes about Jews were aired."
Pseudoerasmus, you are as usual out of touch with what people think, at least in th US. What you're describing sounds like a British paradigm.
Frankly, I can't think of a social situation in the US where it would be appropriate among right-thinkers for you to drop some Anglo schoolboy derision of Hindus into the conversation.
We know you here, we all understand your proclivities, but if some subcon were to take offense after all these years I can't say I'd blame him. Particularly under circmstances where such a person's background or association with a country was the subject of routine slander or political harping, I could see someone taking offense, and I expect most of us would sympathize.
But he likely would avoid saying anything here, for fear of being judged unsporting, just as you fear annoying Jews because you might be labelled an antisemite.
4096. Andonly - 2/15/2050 8:59:36 AM
"...no one here is proffering "special," as opposed to ordinary, condemnation of Arab antisemitism."
You all are, implicitly.
No.
Arabs and those who sympathize with anti-Zionism strenuously deny Arab antisemitism, deceiving both themselves and part of their audience (Europe). The importance of convincing Europeans in particular that there's a dstinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been occasioned by the Arab need to overcome Euro guilt and moralizing about the Holocaust: otherwise, no Frenchman, Englishman, or German could afford politically or socially to sympathize with Arabs.
Thus the criticism of Arab antisemitism (from this corner) is not only that it infests Arabs' political claims and should open them to closer scrutiny, but that the belief by moralizing gits like Spanks that it doesn't is pernicious.
It will be pointd out by someone here eventually that Israelis also hate Arabs (for being Arabs). Of course this is perfectly true--of a relative minority of Israelis. But Israelis have mostly adopted western notions concerning racism. Compared to the intensity and scope of Arab Jew-hatred, Jewish Arab-hatred is trivial. Which is why Israel has Shalom Achshav and B'tselem and Haaretz, and the Arabs have rampant paranoia about Jews and Israel, and an increasingly immoderate street.
4097. Andonly - 2/15/2050 9:05:25 AM
"When I first saw "filthy Hindooo" in one of PE's post a few years back, I was honestly shocked. But I knew -- or thought I knew -- PE was Pakistani. I just assumed it was a subcon-thing, sort of like how only black men can call other black men "niggers." "
Pincher's reaction was identical to mine, PE. And Spanks never took you to task, so...
4098. Andonly - 2/15/2050 9:12:08 AM
PE posted to Maria that Arab anti-Zionism might be more intense than Arab anticolonialism in general for the simple reason that the other colonialists (Ottomans, Brits, and French) left and the Israelis didn't. I'll address this suggestion if Maria doesn't get around to it.
4099. mgleason - 2/15/2050 9:45:56 AM
Gahead, Andonly.
My musings ran along the lines of the offer by the Mufti to solve the 'Jewish problem' (which consisted of two Jews and five guys who looked Jewish to the Mufti), four hundred years of Ottoman rule with no real sense of 'abomination' visited upon the Arabs, and the hysteria that you mention. I'm sure you'll do a better job.
For the record, Pincher describes my thoughts as well.
4100. Wombat - 2/15/2050 10:12:12 AM
Many Arab official publications and governments have taken on board the "analysis" provided by publications such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and derive their statements on the role of Jews in the United States from them. The "street" takes an even more extreme tack in re 9/11.
In my experience, there is a narrow band of antizionist belief that avoids antisemitism, but the border between the two is easily and often crossed.
What the rest of the world needs to understand about the US and Israel is that there are a number of affinities that bring the two together in a way that does not exist with the US and other countries in the region.
1) They are liberal, multiethnic, democracies (with the strengths and contradictions thereof);
2) They share a similar founding story (or myth, if one wants to be uncharitable), which is actively propagated by Israel, and which has been very successful in garnering support from non-Jews in the US.
3) The influence of the religious right(which one would think would be a hot-bed of ntisemitism --and sometimes is), which apparently sees the state of Israel as one of the precursors of the revelations, armageddon, etc., on the Republican Party.
4101. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:21:14 AM
Well, I'd cover the same points, emphasizing that the Turks didn't exactly leave right away, but that Arabs mostly accepted them because they adopted Islam and ruled in its name. And because prior to the Turkish conquest Arabs had already influenced Turkish culture to some extent; Turks were not considered beneath them, as Jews have always been considered beneath them. (Which is understandable, given the absence by then of a thriving Jewish city-state or empire; this touches on one of Hertzl's central insights, by the way.) Beyond that the comparison is probably inapt because we're talking about Arabs who, philosophically and politically, bear a pretty distant relationship to Arabs today.
As for the Brits and the French, if a background racism were not in play one would think Arabs should feel more loathing for the Europeans, not less, as both powers meant to own all of Arabia, not just a piece of swampland the size of New Jersey in which, prior to the Zionists, there lived maybe one million people. Did not the French maintain influence in Lebanon after the creation of the state? Were the Brits not interested in Israel as an outpost when it was created?
Where is the contempt of Europe that Arabs express toward Israel--or to put in in Osama bin Laden's apparently well-received words, "the petty state of the Jews"?
Finally: what has Israel got to do, materially, with most Arabs, not to mention Iranians for god's sake? It must surely be an insult for Jews to occupy a sliver of "rightfully" Arab land. But all things considered, insult is a pretty trivial thing over which to wage years and years of war, ensure economic instability, promote political extremism, and enshrine popular misery.
4102. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:21:34 AM
There is nothing in the pan-Arabist attitude toward Israel that doesn't seem congrous with the attitudes of white southerners toward blacks in this country. In the sixties and seventies, even the eighties, they were still pissed about the fucking Civil War. It was a matter of honor, and contempt for the niggers who got over at the expense of their own great glory. You understand, no one today defends slavery. But for racist southerners, blacks should never have taken a place in "white society," in a land "rightfully" dominated by white people.
4103. Wombat - 2/15/2050 10:27:47 AM
Perhaps many Arabs have yet to successfully intellectualize how a people who had been tolerated as weak and contemptible dhimmi could suddenly become so powerful and aggressive toward them.
4104. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:31:05 AM
My 4101 was in response to MG's 4099.
I agree with Wombat, with the caveat that the surprisingly positive influence of fundamentalist Xtianity on US attitudes toward Israel is, I think, fairly small, even in the halls of power.
And I would add that post 9-11, US sympathy for Israel apparently has grown, fertilized by OBL's virulent attitude toward Israel and his undisguised contempt for Jews. If a Muslim zealot will kill civilians over the perception of the US and Israel as Satanic, then Israel must be even more like the US than Americans would otherwise assume...
4105. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:34:43 AM
"Perhaps many Arabs have yet to successfully intellectualize how a people who had been tolerated as weak and contemptible dhimmi could suddenly become so powerful and aggressive toward them."
As I understand it, this is the way they've intellectualized that phenomenon: the contemptible Jews were helped by imperialist America, which they control, just as they control nearly everything in the world outside Arab lands. Just as they intend to control all of the Arabs' lands eventually.
4106. Wombat - 2/15/2050 10:39:23 AM
The main benefit of the religious right is that it has obviated potential Republican party hostility toward Israel ("Socialist," an obstacle to relationships with oil-rich countries, etc.)
4107. mgleason - 2/15/2050 10:39:27 AM
Perhaps many Arabs have yet to successfully intellectualize how a people who had been tolerated as weak and contemptible dhimmi could suddenly become so powerful and aggressive toward them.
Yes, I had the same thought after reading Andonly's post. There is a palpable outrage, doubtless fueled by anger and humiliation over Islam's long slide away from the power it enjoyed in its salad days, but different in quality and intensity from that evoked by the Western infidels who have provoked so much more humiliation.
4108. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:40:20 AM
The thing is, Jews are quite influential in the US. Far beyond our numbers.
In fact, I think the reason it's increasingly hard to identify Jewish "types" in the US apart from other people is not altogether because Jews have assimilated. It's because America has absorbed aspects of "Jewishness".
4109. Andonly - 2/15/2050 10:42:03 AM
"The main benefit of the religious right is that it has obviated potential Republican party hostility toward Israel ("Socialist," an obstacle to relationships with oil-rich countries, etc.)"
Yeah, I'll concede that's exactly right.
4110. mgleason - 2/15/2050 10:57:10 AM
Andonly,
Not related to the current discussion, but what do you think of the growing interest in crypto-Judaism in the Southwest? I know a woman in another forum who converted, along with her husband, because of his researches into his background (Spanish/Catholic), and his conviction that his family had tried to maintain the faith in an underground manner.
4111. Wombat - 2/15/2050 11:00:27 AM
From what I have read, it is based on myth rather than actuality.
4112. Andonly - 2/15/2050 11:06:48 AM
I haven't heard more than that a few years ago, lots of Xtians in New Mexico began discovering that their families once had been Jewish.
What's the long version, Wombat?
4113. mgleason - 2/15/2050 11:07:19 AM
That's what I've read, too, but she's highly insulted by that point of view. I can't talk to her about it.
4114. Wombat - 2/15/2050 11:11:23 AM
I read a piece in Harper's a while ago. Apparently what little physical evidence was provided was false or ambiguous, and ethnographers had trouble accepting it as anything other than a orally propagated myth.
4115. ronski - 2/15/2050 11:29:44 AM
Andonly,
What aspects of Jewishness would that be?
4116. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:54:11 AM
What I don't understand is why we are waiting for Iran, Iraq, Syria etc. to get nuclear weapons. It's not totally unlike the way the world waited for Hitler to rearm and strike before doing anything about it.
4117. ronski - 2/15/2050 11:59:21 AM
From what I'm seeing coming out of Washington, I suspect the Bush Administration is decidedly not waiting for Saddam to obtain nukes, for the fear that he will surreptiously give them to terrorists for detonating in the U.S.
4118. Andonly - 2/15/2050 1:25:45 PM
"What aspects of Jewishness would that be?"
Culturally, a lot of little things. Bagels and cream cheese are pretty ubiquitous nowadays, as are all-beef hotdogs.
But more than that, Jewish humor and expressions have infiltrated the mainstream for years, especially certain inflections and ironic takes. And there's Yiddish. By the time they've been to college, even farmgirls in the midwest can pull out a few Yiddishisms without having any idea where they came from: "chotchkes", "schmear", "schlep". I don't know any adult black person on the east coast who doesn't use the lingo. Now, of course, "Jewishkeit" has been so mainstreamed it's been eclipsed in importance by black culture, which has taken some of Jewishness's old outsider cachet and modified it to include a more visceral rebellion.
4119. Andonly - 2/15/2050 1:34:09 PM
Then there's Hollywod. Hollywood since the '60s has historically been chock full o' Jews, and they brought Jewish notions with them into what they did. Consider the television phenomenon which was Star Trek, a weekly moral sermonette whose creator, several writers, and the two starring actors were Jewish. At least two episodes of Star Trek dealt with Nazis or the Nazi era. One episode featured the first-ever interracial kiss on television. Nearly every episode pitted the droll southern doctor against the proxy Jew, Mr. Spock, a hyperintellectual whose culture was remote and incomprehensible to outsiders. Even Mr. Spock's trademark hand salute, with which he intoned a quintessentially Jewish "live long and prosper", was invented by the actor who played him. Lepnard Nimoy used to peek through his 2nd and 3rd fingers when his face was supposed to be covered during the recitation of the prayer over the lighting of Shabbos candles.
All this stuff was Jews, incidentally or intentionally, getting Gentiles to sympathize with and internalize with American Jewishness, with the way Jews saw their own and others' place in the US. It popularized Jewish American values and gave common Jewish concerns a prominence in American conciousness that they might not otherwise have had. Certainly wouldn't have had in the same form.
4120. Andonly - 2/15/2050 1:35:06 PM
Yes, the character of the outsider was popularized early, especially by James Dean, but the outsider was even more outside when he was Leonard Nimoy, Lou Reed, Bobby Zimmerman--not just outside psychologically, but constitutionally exotic in some undefined way way. These guys all disguised their Jewishness, went walking in America as people freed from something, and became icons at different levels of pop culture. And here were all these white American kids identifying with guys who had shucked off the trappings of traditional Jewish culture--Jews freed from old Judaism, but not unmarked by it.
Apart for the influence of Jewish pop or middlebrow culture on Americans, there has been highbrow culture. The opinions of lots and lots of influential Jews--people whose values include both the strains of traditional diaspora Jewish tolerance (Michael Kinsley) and the Talmudic defensiveness that commands us to kill first anyone who means to kill us (Charles Krauthammer)--these opinions are now American opinions. They've found purchase and been integrated into American thinking. And we don't hear in the (white) US, as we might in South Africa or Italy or some other country strongly suffused with Christian values, too much about turning the other cheek and forgiving sinners. In--what to call it? Post-Jewish America?--it's understood that some sinners you can't afford to forgive.
4121. CalGal - 2/15/2050 1:44:25 PM
Hollywood since the '60s has historically been chock full o' Jews
I wouldn't disagree with the rest of your essay, but Hollywood has been chock full o' Jews since there was a Hollywood. Every major studio was started by a Jew--Goldwyn, Mayer, Warner, Cohn. Producers: David O. Selznick, Irving Thalberg. I think the only major non-Jewish producer was Darryl Zanuck.
Interesting that the 60s were the first decade in which the studio system was dismantled, giving the Jewish studio heads a lot less power. And of course, it was Zanuck who made Gentleman's Agreement. I think I've read that the studio owners were actually terrified that their loyalty would be called into question, and bent over backwards to avoid such problems. Cellar would know more about this.
4122. mgleason - 2/15/2050 1:48:51 PM
Some of my first non-Spanish words were in Yiddish. We'd moved next-door to a retired teacher whose grandchildren lived in California, so I became a surrogate.
I don't know about other schools, but I went to liberal Catholic ones in NY where books like The Diary of Anne Frank and the novels of Chaim Potok were staples. For a long time I thought that the entire world was made up of Catholics and Jews.
4123. Andonly - 2/15/2050 2:27:15 PM
"Hollywood since the '60s has historically been chock full o' Jews"
Sorry, that was an incomplete deletion of a side remark about academia since the 60s...
4124. Andonly - 2/15/2050 2:35:46 PM
Innatysoe: ""States are established to protect the interests and realize the aspirations of those who create them" (Freeman, 1997:3).
"Hence should the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbullah and the rest of the terrorist alphabet soup create a state in Gaza and West Bank, they will do so to realize their, not America's, aspirations and to protect their, not America's, interests.
"Do you feel that the creation of such a state is in America's best interest?"
1. Who is Freeman, why do you quote him, and what text are you obliquely referencing?
2. In answer to your question, I'll pose one: what are America's interests?
4125. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 2:42:37 PM
Ando:
Aren't you reading a tad too much into Nimoy's character? Are you saying Jews have big noses and pointy ears?
4126. Andonly - 2/15/2050 2:47:38 PM
"Some of my first non-Spanish words were in Yiddish."
Yesss. That's how we work it.
First a few words of Yiddish, next you're using phrases like "God forbid" and "...,you should pardon the expression,...". After a few years of this you become ironical and then it's just a short step to poisoning wells.
4127. Andonly - 2/15/2050 2:50:50 PM
"Aren't you reading a tad too much into Nimoy's character? Are you saying Jews have big noses and pointy ears?"
Yes, that's it, that's all I'm saying. Jews have big noses and pointy ears.
4128. mgleason - 2/15/2050 2:51:52 PM
See what a good job she did?
4129. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 3:11:25 PM
Hmmm, yes, I see.
Well, I agree with the observation about America having become a lot more Jewish. Look at the popularity Seinfeld enjoyed: that was a series not just by Jews but also about Jews. It was all very Jewish, and the Jews weren't trying to be gentilish, or masking their Jewishness - they were being very Jewish. Yet it was a mainstream smash hit. More mainstream than any Woody Allen film ever was.
4130. marjoribanks - 2/15/2050 3:15:29 PM
I don't give a shit, and have never given a shit about the terms thrown around by the tribal savage.
You have to realize who they're coming from, you see. I know the twerp, quite well, and have spent thousands of hours online fighting with him, and I dismiss it particularly since I'm familiar with his background.
I also, you may have noted, never throw around the array of terms available for those of his own background (s). I also never ever slash at his (or anyone else's) wife, children, parents, grandparents, or ethnicity.
That's because I prefer to restrict my namecalling to the individual, and I like to be amiable, perhaps occasionally cheeky.
--
I have many comments wrt the posts made here in the last several hours, but you will all be sorry to hear that I have no time and may only return to this space on Tuesday.
4131. marjoribanks - 2/15/2050 3:17:46 PM
Gopnik waxes on about the Jews, America, Jewishness and even Seinfeld in the article I mentioned yesterday.
4132. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 3:18:13 PM
Of course, if we include Star Trek I insist on analyzing Gilligan's Island as well. Gilligan was the Jew, of course: not pretty like the professor, not burly and strong like the captain - slim and slight and doofy, yet somehow more charismatic than all the other characters. His hat, of course, is a permutation of the Hasidic shtreimel.
Then there was the robot from Lost in Space - what could be more classically Jewish than the hysterical, cerebral helplessness of 'does not compute! does not compute'?.
And there's the Indian character from F Troop, of course.
4133. Property of Jesus - 2/15/2050 3:23:31 PM
Seinfelt wasn't so much about being Jewish, it was about being a New Yorker.
4134. Andonly - 2/15/2050 3:47:04 PM
"Seinfelt wasn't so much about being Jewish, it was about being a New Yorker."
Are you kidding? Every one of the regular characters was a Jewsh stereotype. (Maybe with the exception of Kramer. Maybe.)
Spanks is right about that Gopnik article, one of his most insightful in a long time. And Gopnik does make the same point Pike has made; it's not exactly news.
4135. Andonly - 2/15/2050 3:49:26 PM
"His hat, of course, is a permutation of the Hasidic shtreimel."
HAHAHAHA! Bob Denver: Chasidic Jew!
This would be fine Mad TV material, you know.
Hey, Pike. I think I've hit upon the solution to your financial woes.
4136. mgleason - 2/15/2050 3:54:07 PM
Seriously. That's one of the funniest things I've read in a while.
4137. Andonly - 2/15/2050 3:55:37 PM
"I also, you may have noted, never throw around the array of terms available for those of his own background (s). I also never ever slash at his (or anyone else's) wife, children, parents, grandparents, or ethnicity."
Congratulations, Margarinespanks, you superb human being. Surely you are unique in all the Mote. May the Divine One Blessed Be He inscribe you forever in the Book of Life.
4138. CalGal - 2/15/2050 4:04:24 PM
I'm sure that your Jewish business partner appreciated the amiable, occasionally cheeky, way in which you unceremoniously kicked him out of the company when his background became inconvenient. Enduring these little indignities is so much easier when ethnicity isn't mentioned.
4139. Andonly - 2/15/2050 4:23:55 PM
"Hmmm, yes, I see."
Really, Pike, of all the actors that could have been chosen to play Mr. Spock, why did they pick a guy a) who couldn't act but b) aside from the pointy ears and Vulcan haircut looked for all the world like he could've just migrated to the US from Yemen via Lithuania?
Mr. Spock was a Jew. He couldn't even marry outside the tribe. They had a gal at home picked out and waiting for him. Sure, he got some non-Vulcan/alien nafke pussy now and then, but only when he was drugged or insane or otherwise not himself.
Oh, and I forgot: he was the product of an intermarriage. His mother was a particularly goyische earthling who "converted" to Vulcan, as it were. Spock's recurring identity crisis--a half Vulcan, by choice separated from his closed and arcane culture, surrounded by space's dominant culture, Earth--was one of Mr. Spock's main character traits. In the alien Earth Federation/American culture, Spock makes good, becomes famous, and makes all the Vulcans back at home, especially his mother and father, proud of him. But all along, he's lonely, and although he keeps apart, he's never quite sure who he is. He overcompensates with the Vulcan-ness (in one episode, his mother asks plaintively, "Is there nothing of me in you?"), but being Second in Command and Captain Kirk's closest confidante (the Court Jew with the ear of the King), he finds himself assimilating in little ways.
And--keeping in mind that this character was written by Jews--Spock is loyal. Boy, is he loyal. Loyal to Kirk. Loyal to the Federation. And a stickler for the letter of the law.
Jew. Spock is a Jew. I've noticed it since I was a kid, I can't believe you never have.
4140. Andonly - 2/15/2050 5:09:11 PM
Meron Benvenisti in Haaretz:
It's not easy to explain how the ostracism and house arrest imposed by his sworn enemy - the one who regrets not killing Arafat in Beirut long ago - has turned into an almost universal boycott of the leader of the Palestinian people. The "awakening campaign" by those Israeli groups who visit him day after day in his besieged office to cheer him up only emphasize the artificiality of his "independent" status in the shadow of Israeli army tanks.
Under other conditions, the brutal siege of a national leader would have resulted in enraged reactions at home and abroad that would only have bolstered the besieged leader's stature. Instead, everyone important is keeping their distance, finding good reasons not to answer his desperate phone calls. One is angry because Arafat betrayed him, another holds a grudge because Arafat tried to undermine him, and a third wants to stay as far from possible from people the Americans don't like.
4141. stostosto - 2/15/2050 5:09:39 PM
Seinfeld is Jewish?
4142. concerned - 2/15/2050 7:17:53 PM
The influence of the religious right(which one would think would be a hot-bed of ntisemitism --and sometimes is),
No, one wouldn't think that, unless one was grossly aware of the fact that some of Israel's strongest non-Jewish supporters are fundamentalist Xtians.
4143. concerned - 2/15/2050 7:18:35 PM
Correction:
No, one wouldn't think that, unless one was grossly unaware of the fact that some of Israel's strongest non-Jewish supporters are fundamentalist Xtians.
4144. transient1a - 2/15/2050 9:50:48 PM
Message # 4119
Andonly,
.."live long and prosper".... Lepnard Nimoy used to peek through his 2nd and 3rd fingers when his face was supposed to be covered during the recitation of the prayer over the lighting of Shabbos candles.
What??
Feminist revisionism!!
Lebt lang und Erfolgreich!
The members used to turn away from the Cohen, while he practiced the Duchan – the priestly benediction – because it was forbidden to see proceeding. Nimoy couldn’t suppress his curiosity and turned cautiously around, unseen by his father, so that he could see the risen priests hands. The whole proceeding had something mysterious, magic for him since then, an attitude that he wanted to introduce to the Star Trek series, to give the Vulcans this mysterious touch. Since then, they open their hands to the Hebrew letter shin, which is the abbreviation for Shaddai – Almighty.
4145. transient1a - 2/15/2050 9:56:41 PM
Message # 4141
stostosto,
Seinfeld is Jewish?
YES. Could he be otherwise?
4146. Al D - 2/15/2050 10:10:22 PM
As I understand it, this is the way they've intellectualized that phenomenon: the contemptible Jews were helped by imperialist America, which they control, just as they control nearly everything in the world outside Arab lands. Just as they intend to control all of the Arabs' lands eventually
Do you suppose there is some large group in America that has this view? Anybody care to make a suggestion? Nah, too politically incorrect.
4147. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:15:39 PM
I haven't denied Arab antisemitism, and I haven't denied that antisemitism is mixed up intimately with anti-Zionism. What I did say was that Arab anti-semitism was hardly surprising and not such a big deal.
It is a reality that in the USA if one airs Jewish jokes or stereotypes (or anti-black jokes or stereotypes), one gets rebuked or ostracised. In the USA anti-oriental jokes or stereotypes are beginning to achieve the same taboo status (the intensity depends on where in the country). But in general, one can air racist jokes or stereotypes about almost all other ethnic groups in the USA with impunity. Of course I'm not talking about frothing at the mouth about race-wars and Lebensraum and genetic inferiority. I'm talking about airing jokes and stereotypes which would be thought racist when spoken about blacks and Jews.
Message # 4095: "What you're describing sounds like a British paradigm."
What you call the "right-thinking people" in the UK are punctiliously more PC than people in the USA. The British are simply insufferable in this respect.
"But Israelis have mostly adopted western notions concerning racism..Compared to the intensity and scope of Arab Jew-hatred, Jewish Arab-hatred is trivial.."
So you say. I think you're just tuned into some westernised PC elites of Israel.
4148. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:16:21 PM
Message # 4099: "My musings ran along the lines of the offer by the Mufti to solve the 'Jewish problem' (which consisted of two Jews and five guys who looked Jewish to the Mufti)..."
What's so special about that? It is only natural that the Mufti of Jerusalem had sought an alliance against Jews.
During the Second World War, Finland and Bulgaria (which didn't cooperate with the Germans on their Jewish policy) still joined the German invasion of the Soviet Union because they shared the anti-Soviet animus of the Germans. If the Germans had reached the Caucasus and Central Asia, Armenians and Georgians and Central Asians would have sided with Hitler against Stalin too. So what? People seek allies against their enemy.
Certain people are always citing the Mufti of Jerusalem's pro-German sympathies as some major indictment.
"....four hundred years of Ottoman rule with no real sense of 'abomination' visited upon the Arab...."
MGleason the expert on Arab-Turkish relations. Arab-Turkish relations are very hostile, and manifest themselves in territorial disputes between Turkey and Syria & Iraq. But obviously Turks do not generate the hostility among Arabs that Jews do, since the few outstanding issues between Turks and Arabs really can't compare with the issue of Palestine.
4149. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:17:03 PM
I am not one of those loony lefties who say Israel is an apartheid-state, and I certainly recognise that Israeli Arabs can vote, do sit in parliament, participated in the Barak governing coalition and have got one of theirs in the Supreme Court.
Israel is a democracy of sorts, but it is a not western-style liberal democracy, as many people regularly claim.
There are several chracteristics of Israeli society which are distinctly illiberal and undemocratic in a very non-western way:
(1) Israel does not have any civil marriage laws. In other words, because Israel has no civil marriage laws, a Jew and a Muslim wanting to marry must either go abroad to get married (Cyprus is an apparent favourite); or one of them must convert to the other's religion.
(2) Non-Jewish citizens of Israel face systematic institutional discrimination. Many social benefits of the Israeli state, such as public employment, public housing, places at educational institutions, mortgages, etc. are conditioned on military service. Israeli Arabs are not required to do military service and therefore do not benefit from such services. However, Jewish Israelis such as religious students are also exempt but do qualify for social benefits.
[continued]
4150. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:19:11 PM
(3) And the property rights of Israeli Arabs are grossly restricted:
After independence the areas in which 90 percent of the Arabs lived were placed under military government. This system and the assignment of almost unfettered powers to military governors were based on the Defense (Emergency) Regulations promulgated by the British Mandate Authority in 1945. Using the 1945 regulations as a legal base, the government created three areas or zones to be ruled by the Ministry of Defense. The most important was the Northern Area, also known as the Galilee Area, the locale of about twothirds of the Arab population. The second critical area was the socalled Little Triangle, located between the villages of Et Tira and Et Taiyiba near the border with Jordan (then Transjordan). The third area included much of the Negev Desert, the region traversed by the previously apolitical nomadic beduins (see fig. 4).
The most salient feature of military government was restriction of movement. Article 125 of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations empowered military governors to declare any specified area "offlimits " to those having no written authorization. The area was then declared a security zone and thus closed to Israeli Arabs who lacked written permission either from the army chief of staff or the minister of defense. Under these provisions, 93 out of 104 Arab villages in Israel were constituted as closed areas out of which no one could move without a military permit. In these areas, official acts of military governors were, with rare exceptions, not subject to review by the civil courts. Individuals could be arrested and imprisoned on unspecified charges, and private property was subject to search and seizure without warrant. Furthermore, the physical expulsion of individuals or groups from the state was not subject to review by the civil courts.
4151. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:19:22 PM
Another land expropriation measure evolved from the Defense (Emergency) Regulations, which were passed in 1949 and renewed annually until 1972 when the legislation was allowed to lapse. Under this law, the Ministry of Defense could, subject to approval by an appropriate committee of the Knesset, create security zones in all or part of what was designated as the "protected zone," an area that included lands adjacent to Israel's borders and other specified areas. According to Sabri Jiryis, an Arab political economist who based his work exclusively on Israeli government sources, the defense minister used this law to categorize "almost half of Galilee, all of the Triangle, an area near the Gaza Strip, and another along the Jerusalem-Jaffa railway line near Batir as security zones." A clause of the law provided that permanent as well as temporary residents could be required to leave the zone and that the individual expelled had four days within which to appeal the eviction notice to an appeals committee. The decisions of these committees were not subject to review or appeal by a civil court.
Yet another measure enacted by the Knesset in 1949 was the Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste Lands) Ordinance. One use of this law was to transfer to kibbutzim or other Jewish settlements land in the security zones that was lying fallow because the owner of the land or other property was not allowed to enter the zone as a result of national security legislation. The 1949 law provided that such land transfers were valid only for a period of two years and eleven months, but subsequent amending legislation extended the validity of the transfers for the duration of the state of emergency.
4152. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:19:35 PM
Another common procedure was for the military government to seize up to 40 percent of the land in a given region--the maximum allowed for national security reasons--and to transfer the land to a new kibbutz or moshav. Between 1948 and 1953, about 370 new Jewish settlements were built, and an estimated 350 of the settlements were established on what was termed abandoned Arab property.
The property of the Arabs who were refugees outside the state and the property expropriated from the Arabs who remained in Israel became a major asset to the new state. According to Don Peretz, an American scholar, by 1954 "more than one-third of Israel's Jewish population lived on absentee property, and nearly a third of the new immigrants (250,000 people) settled in the urban areas abandoned by Arabs." The fleeing Arabs emptied thriving cities such as Jaffa, Acre (Akko), Lydda (Lod), and Ramla, plus "338 towns and villages and large parts of 94 other cities and towns, containing nearly a quarter of all the buildings in Israel."
To the Israeli Arabs, one of the more devastating aspects of the loss of their property was their knowledge that the loss was legally irreversible. The early Zionist settlers--particularly those of the Second Aliyah--adopted a rigid policy that land purchased or in any way acquired by a Jewish organization or individual could never again be sold, leased, or rented to a nonJew . The policy went so far as to preclude the use of non-Jewish labor on the land. This policy was carried over into the new state.
4153. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:19:58 PM
At independence the State of Israel succeeded to the "state lands" of the British Mandate Authority, which had "inherited" the lands held by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish National Fund was the operating and controlling agency of the Land Development Authority and ensured that land once held by Jews-- either individually or by the "sovereign state of the Jewish people"--did not revert to non-Jews. This denied Israel's non-Jewish, mostly Arab, population access to about 95 percent of the land.
I am not talking about Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, but about Israeli citizens who are Arabs.
From the Library of Congress's Israel: A Country Study
Now, what is western and liberal about these practises?
4154. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:20:51 PM
Message # 4101: "As for the Brits and the French, if a background racism were not in play one would think Arabs should feel more loathing for the Europeans, not less, as both powers meant to own all of Arabia, not just a piece of swampland the size of New Jersey"
Arab nationalism of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was directed very much against French and British imperialism. Nasser's Egypt fought a war against the British and the French. Algeria fought an extremely bloody war of independence with the French. But both powers left.
Why on earth there should be more animosity toward powers which have already left, than toward the (in Arab eyes) oppressive power still in their midst?
Also, the idea that Palestine was mostly undeveloped barren desert that the Jews transformed into the land of milk and honey, is just an Israeli national myth.
"Finally: what has Israel got to do, materially, with most Arabs, not to mention Iranians for god's sake?"
It's ethnic & sectarian conflict. That Arabs and Muslims far from Israel care about their brethren in Palestine is entirely consistent with the psychology of ethnic conflict around the world.
4155. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:22:39 PM
Message # 4102: "In the sixties and seventies, even the eighties, they were still pissed about the fucking Civil War. It was a matter of honor, and contempt for the niggers who got over at the expense of their own great glory. You understand, no one today defends slavery. But for racist southerners, blacks should never have taken a place in "white society," in a land "rightfully" dominated by white people."
Message # 4103: "Perhaps many Arabs have yet to successfully intellectualize how a people who had been tolerated as weak and contemptible dhimmi could suddenly become so powerful and aggressive toward them."
Message # 4107: "Yes, I had the same thought after reading Andonly's post. There is a palpable outrage, doubtless fueled by anger and humiliation over Islam's long slide away from the power it enjoyed in its salad days, but different in quality and intensity from that evoked by the Western infidels who have provoked so much more humiliation."
There is an obvious, apparent, self-evident and ready explanation for the Arab hatred of Israel and Jews, but our retarded trio say to hell with Ockham's Razor and concoct a gimcrack psychonalytical cause for Arab hatred. One of the trio, flush from reading a best seller, now confidently pontificates on the "anger and humiliation over Islam's long slide away from the power", which is just a more upscale version of the officially created & demotically embraced "they hate us because they hate our freedoms and way of life" mythology.
Arabs hate Israel and Jews because their perception, right or wrong, is that Jews stole their land, created millions of refugees and currently oppress them. That is the parsimonious explanation that fits the facts.
4156. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 10:25:52 PM
Well - transient's link clinches it, Spock's Jewish. One reason I never noticed it, I guess, is that I was never really American-Jewish. I was always an Israeli, though I was only seven when my family arrived in Boston and I was seventeen when we returned to Israel. I was already very Israeli and very proud of it when we arrived, and I never let go of that Israeliness, it seems.
Of course, when we returned I found that I didn't fit in here either. That's when the world started spinning, and then it all came tumbling down.
4157. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 10:26:04 PM
Andonly's white southerner analogy is particularly stupid. A much better analogy for Arab antisemitism is the mutual contempt held by Greeks and Turks, or really that held by any groups locked in ethnic conflict.
4158. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 10:57:43 PM
Also, the idea that Palestine was mostly undeveloped barren desert that the Jews transformed into the land of milk and honey, is just an Israeli national myth.
Read Innocents Abroad By Mark Twain and look at some David Roberts lithographs. This place was composed of desert (in the south), barren mountains and swampland, mostly. I'm not a search monster but there are population and geography stats that back this up.
The measures you cite against Israeli Arabs were measures taken after the 1948 war, which itself was a measure taken by all of the Middle East's Arabs to annihilate the Jews physically. They were aimed at seizing control of the land, because it was assumed that the Arabs would keep on trying to annihilate us, and we had better solidify our gains when we could. The restrictive measures on Israeli Arabs -who had participated actively in the fighting against Israel's Jews - were gradually lifted over the decades.
The bit about measures 'prohibiting Arab labor' which you cite (from where, btw?) reeks of Arab propaganda. The early Jewish settlers had a work ethic of avoda ivrit - 'Jewish labor' -which was one of their ideals. The idea was to get the mostly European Jews to revolutionaize their attitude towards life, and to engage in physical labor rather than the traditional cerebral Jewish professions. The idea was to create Jewish farmers, rather than bankers. But we're damned if we do and damned if we don't: if we employ Palestinian labor you say we're exploiting them. If we insist on working ourselves - we're racist.
4159. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:05:45 PM
Israel does not have any civil marriage laws. In other words, because Israel has no civil marriage laws, a Jew and a Muslim wanting to marry must either go abroad to get married (Cyprus is an apparent favourite); or one of them must convert to the other's religion.
This is largely an internal Jewish problem, rather than something directed against Arabs - matter of fact, it's the first time I've heard the issue mentioned in that context. There are hardly any Arabs marrying Jews anyhow. My wife and I would have had a problem marrying here too. The rabbis' control over marriage and burials - and the power of the religious minority in general - is a point of very heated contention here but turning everything into an anti-Arab plot is disingenuous.
The fact is, Pe, Israel's Arabs have not yet joined the Palestinian terror war in any large numbers, despite their leaders' incessant attempts to make them do so. You care to speculate on why that is?
4160. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:24:35 PM
Ando:
Yoel Marcus reaches quite different conclusions from Benvenisti's.
In fact, humiliating and isolating Arafat has achieved the opposite result. In terms of the system, he may be weaker and have an excuse not to act. But on a personal level, as a national symbol and leader, he has grown stronger. Arafat is always at his best as the underdog and the holy saint. The adrenaline starts to flow again. He stutters less and the cloak of heroism envelops him as he calls for a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem.
4161. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 11:27:18 PM
"The measures you cite against Israeli Arabs were measures taken after the 1948 war...The restrictive measures on Israeli Arabs....were gradually lifted over the decades."
I think you missed the last paragraph, which I repeat:
To the Israeli Arabs, one of the more devastating aspects of the loss of their property was their knowledge that the loss was legally irreversible. The early Zionist settlers--particularly those of the Second Aliyah--adopted a rigid policy that land purchased or in any way acquired by a Jewish organization or individual could never again be sold, leased, or rented to a nonJew . The policy went so far as to preclude the use of non-Jewish labor on the land. This policy was carried over into the new state. At independence the State of Israel succeeded to the "state lands" of the British Mandate Authority, which had "inherited" the lands held by the government of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish National Fund was the operating and controlling agency of the Land Development Authority and ensured that land once held by Jews-- either individually or by the "sovereign state of the Jewish people"--did not revert to non-Jews. This denied Israel's non-Jewish, mostly Arab, population access to about 95 percent of the land.
"The bit about measures 'prohibiting Arab labor' which you cite (from where, btw?) reeks of Arab propaganda.
I cited the source: Israel: A Country Study, a State Department publication maintained at the Library of Congress Website: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/iltoc.html
4163. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 11:35:04 PM
Message # 4159: [Israel's not having any civil marriage laws] is largely an internal Jewish problem, rather than something directed against Arabs..."
That wasn't the point. The point was that someone pointed out that Israel is a liberal, western democracy. There is no liberal western democracy in the world with no civil marriage law.
Israel also has a law which can disqualify an electoral list if it is deemed that candidates who are deemed to be denying that Israel is the state of the Jewish people.
The fact is, Pe, Israel's Arabs have not yet joined the Palestinian terror war in any large numbers, despite their leaders' incessant attempts to make them do so. You care to speculate on why that is?
Why should they jeopardise their position by joining the intifadeh of West Bank & Gaza Palestinians? Israel does not have a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. All it takes is a majority vote in the Knesset to alter the Basic Law to make Rustler's expulsion programme possible.
4164. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:38:09 PM
Reposting my #4162, which had been maimed by a stray Pe italic:
The Jewish National Fund was the operating and controlling agency of the Land Development Authority and ensured that land once held by Jews-- either individually or by the "sovereign state of the Jewish people"--did not revert to non-Jews. This denied Israel's non-Jewish, mostly Arab, population access to about 95 percent of the land.
This is what the Supreme Court's Katzir decision was all about. Ka'adan has not yet been given a plot here, by the way. He has now appealed to have Katzir's Acceptance Committee dissolved, on the grounds (I assume) that it is a racist body. The Court had given the decision regarding Ka'adan's acceptance over to the Committee.
The Ka'adan case could be one of the reasons why we have not had any terror act against Katzir to date, btw. We are still more useful to the Arabs as a case study for their anti-Zionist propaganda.
4165. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:44:43 PM
Pe:
Why should they jeopardise their position by joining the intifadeh of West Bank & Gaza Palestinians?
Precisely. Their excellent position, democratically and socio-economically, compared to their Pal, Syrian and Egyptian brethren. I'd like to see any one of those openly writing and speaking and demonstrating against their respective regimes, not to mention actively inciting violence, the way the Arab MKs do routinely.
Israel does not have a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. All it takes is a majority vote in the Knesset to alter the Basic Law to make Rustler's expulsion programme possible.
My expulsion program is specifically aimed at the WB&G Pals and not at the Israeli Arabs. All they need is a whack on the head and they'll come to their senses, I'm sure.
4166. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:49:44 PM
It's weird. I have this feeling that there is suddenly an undercurrent of thought in Katzir which says 'Pike is our Leader'. I see it in people's reactions to me. I could be hallucinating.
There is a lot of talk about elections, and people are starting to plan who's going to run. Yet elections aren't supposed to take place until 2004 - unless I manage to pull off the deposing of Sandrov. Which I think I will.
4167. pseudoerasmus - 2/15/2050 11:52:02 PM
RP, you don't have to reiterate that Israeli Arabs are much better off than Arabs in other countries, economically and politically at least, though perhaps not socially. I agree that is the case.
4168. RustlerPike - 2/15/2050 11:54:37 PM
There is also this undercurrent which says 'Pike = security' (again - I could be imagining this, but I think it's there, and gaining strength, especially since I managed to work into my last pamphlet that I have been appointed Commander of the Central Hill). And there's another undercurrent, of fear and despair. People would sell their houses, but there's nobody buying.
4169. mgleason - 2/16/2050 6:08:25 AM
Despite attempts to spin otherwise, Message # 4099 was inspired by the rather fantastical claim in Message # 4072 that there is no reson that 'Arabs should be particularly antisemitic if there was no Israel in their midst..'
Message # 4148 makes it clear, however, that it is completely 'natural' that the Mufti of Jerusalem should exercise his 'pro-German sympathies' by seeking a solution to the 'Jewish problem' before there ever was an Israel, and even more reasonable that Ottoman rule not generate the 'hostility' the very thought of the existence of Israel did before there ever was a refugee problem or any 'oppression' because it was, well, different. It's only 'natural,' after all.
4170. mgleason - 2/16/2050 6:26:25 AM
Oh, hell: reason. See you guys on Tuesday - we'll have guests until then.
4171. stostosto - 2/16/2050 10:18:09 AM
transient1a (#4145):
"Message # 4141
stostosto,
Seinfeld is Jewish?
YES. Could he be otherwise? "
Actually, it turns out Seinfeld is really a Norwegian concept, created by a certain Åsleik Engmark.
Jeg skapte "Seinfeld" [I created "Seinfeld"]
- I was asked to handle the casting for a new comedy show on NBC about four friends in New York. The studio had picked Steve Martin for Seinfeld, Dudley Moore for George, and Eddie Murphy for Kramer, but I chose to let a younger crew have a go.
[Frankly, I don't know what to believe, Engmark is apparently a hugely popular standup comedian in Norway...]
4172. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 10:33:29 AM
There is indeed absolutely nothing "fantastical" in the claim that there is no reason that "Arabs should be particularly antisemitic if there was no Israel in their midst", at least not more so than anybody else.
What is fantastical about the claim given that antisemitism as a concept and ideology had been alien to Arabs and imported from the West in the late 19th century? This is not to say Jews hadn't faced discrimination or hostility in Arab or Muslim lands before the late 19th century. Simply that the racial ideology of antisemitism is western in origin (read Bernard Lewis on this), and that the Jews in Arab lands were just another minority group who occasionally faced hardships from the majority.
Message # 4148 makes it clear, however, that it is completely 'natural' that the Mufti of Jerusalem should exercise his 'pro-German sympathies' by seeking a solution to the 'Jewish problem' before there ever was an Israel, and even more reasonable that Ottoman rule not generate the 'hostility' the very thought of the existence of Israel did before there ever was a refugee problem or any 'oppression' because it was, well, different."
These remarks are of course ignorant and disingenuous.
Ottoman rule did not inspire an ethnic hostility toward ethnic Turks among the Palestinian Arabs for the rather simple reason that the Ottomans didn't settle ethnic Turks in Palestine in an attempt to create an ethnic Turkish state. Jews, however, had been settling in Palestine in large numbers since the late 19th century.
Fairly rapid demographic changes in ethnic composition almost everywhere produce ethnic tensions and fuel ethnic conflict over land. And the ethnic hatred and rivalry between two groups in actual contact usually exceed any resentment toward a larger imperial force.
4173. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 10:37:40 AM
There is little anglophobia in the subcontinent, despite two centuries of British occupation. But there is obviously Muslim-Hindu tension. Unlike the British, the Muslims had been a foreign imperial power who altered India's demographic mix by settling millions of foreign Muslims in India, as well as converting millions more.
Likewise, there is very little Russophobia in the Caucasus, despite centuries of brutal Russian occupation. This is in part because Russians/Soviets were very skillful at playing off one ethnic group against another. For example, Moscow had transfered some ethnic Armenian territory to juridiction of the Azerbaijan republic and settled Azeris there, fuelling Armenian-Azeri tensions which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the Nagorno-Karabakh war (largely unreported in the west). In the 1940s, Stalin deported the entire Ingush population to Siberia and gave Ingush lands to Ossetians; when the Ingush were allowed to return to their homeland, the Ossetians didn't want to give it back and the Ossetians and the Ingush have been hating each other since. In fact in the early 1990s they fought a brutal war with thousands of casualties which went largely unreported in the West.
The only place in the Caucasus with strong anti-Russian feeling is Chechnya, which, not coincidentally, wants independence from Russia, had been settled by so many ethnic Russians that the population was once nearly half Russian in the late 1980s, and does not have a third ethnic group to contend with.
Conversely, the intense Turcophobia of the Balkans must be explained, not simply by the brutality of the long imperial Ottoman occupation there, but also because the Ottomans left legacies of themselves all over the modern Balkans with the sizeable presence of ethnic Turks or Muslim converts who had ruled the empire on behalf of Constantinople.
4174. PincherMartin - 2/16/2050 11:01:27 AM
PE --
What is fantastical about the claim given that antisemitism as a concept and ideology had been alien to Arabs and imported from the West in the late 19th century? This is not to say Jews hadn't faced discrimination or hostility in Arab or Muslim lands before the late 19th century. Simply that the racial ideology of antisemitism is western in origin (read Bernard Lewis on this), and that the Jews in Arab lands were just another minority group who occasionally faced hardships from the majority.I'm about two-thirds of the way through Lewis's Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, and while he does argue that anti-semitism -- as it was known in the West -- was fairly alien to Arabs until the mid- to late-19th century, he doesn't directly tie the rise of the phenonmenon into growing numbers of Jews or the increasing possibility of an Israeli state in Palestine, but says it predates this. Is this the book you're basing your argument on or is it The Jews of Islam?
4175. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 12:04:22 PM
Message # 4174: "....while [Lewis] does argue that anti-semitism -- as it was known in the West -- was fairly alien to Arabs until the mid- to late-19th century, he doesn't directly tie the rise of the phenonmenon into growing numbers of Jews or the increasing possibility of an Israeli state in Palestine..."
Bernard Lewis, from The Jews of Islam [pg 189]:
"Obviously, a major element in the rise of Arab anti-Semitism is the Palestine question, and the consequent embitterment of relations between Jews and Arabs everywhere. In its origins this is a political conflict -- not a matter of prejudice and bias, or intercommunal or interethnic hostility, but a specific and material conflict between two groups of people both claiming the same place. However, since Zionism and later Israel both happen to be predominantly Jewish, and since there were conveniently accessible Jewish minorities in Arab countries, and since furthermore anti-Semitism provided a ready-made system of themes, images, and vocabulary for attack on jews, the temptation was obviously very strong to make use of them".
"While recognising the obvious effect of the Palestine question in the deterioration of Arab-Jewish relations and, therefore, in the position of Jews in the Muslim world generally, its importance should not be exaggerated, in particular not to the neglect or exclusion of other factors. This deterioration is part of a larger change, affecting the general situation in the Muslim world and that of minorities within it. The general worsening of relations and loss of tolerance harmed others besides Jews. But it was worse for Jews because of the Palestine question, and because they were more vulnerable."
4176. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 12:09:35 PM
What Lewis means by "other factors", he explained in pp. 184-85:
"Western influence prepared the downfall of the Islamic Jewries in more ways than one -- not only violating the dhimma and thus exposing them to the hostility of the Muslim majorities, but also by providing new theories and forms of expression for this hostility. From the late nineteenth century, as a direct result of European influence, movements appear among Muslims of which for the first time one can legitimately use the term anti-Semitic. Hostility to Jews had, of course, roots in the past, but in this era it assumed a new and radically different character. The starting ponit was the very strong feeling the proper relationship between believer and unbeliever, between Muslim and dhimmi, had been subverted. This feeling was fuelled by growing resentment at the favour shown European powers to members of the non-Muslim minorities and at the consequent successes achieved by memers of these minorities, who attained positions of power and wealth under foreign influence or influence they would never have been able to achieve in the old Muslim order. This resentment was directed at Christians as much as Jews -- indeed, rather more so."
4177. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 12:12:27 PM
Besides, Christian Arabs were the pioneers in the propagation of European antisemitism. Once again, Lewis [page 185]:
"But a specific campaign against Jews, expressed in the unmistakeable language of European Christian anti-Semitism, first appeared among Christians in the nineteeth century, and developed among Christians and then Muslims in the twentieth. Mention has already been made of role of European consuls and traders, working with local Christian minorities, in ousting Jews and securing their replacement with Middle Eastern Christians. They were also active in the spread of certain classical themes of European anti-Semitism --for example, in the introduction of the blood libel, and in conjuring up fantasies of Jewish plots to gain world domination. The first anti-Semitic tracts in Arabic appeared toward the end of the nineteenth century. They were translated from French originals -- part of the literature of the Dreyfus controversy. Most of the translations were made by Arab Catholics, Maronites, or other Uniate Christians."
"Local Palestinian Arab notables, both Christian and Muslim alike, perceived the inherent dangers of such [Jewish] settlements to their own communities and persistently demanded [the Ottoman authorities] that the immigrants be sent away. In Palestine itself local Arab Christians led the way in persecuting the settlers already there, reviving the old ritual murder accusations against Jews in fear that the new immigrants would compete successfully with them in agriculture, business and trade as well as in gaining the favour of the Muslim majority, as Jews had done so successfully elsewhere in the Empire".
4178. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 12:12:57 PM
So while "other factors" [European favouritism of non-Muslims and the subversion of dhimmitude] may have been instrumental in upsetting the traditional relations between the Muslim majority and the non-Muslim minorities in general, they can hardly be important explanations on the margin for Arab (Christian and Muslim) antisemitism.
It cannot be coincidence that Arab antisemitism emerges for the first time just when European Jewish settlement in Palestine is getting underway. As I said before, there is a significant, world-wide correlation between forced demographic changes in ethnic composition and ethnic conflict. It is simply not possible to "exaggerate" this factor in Arab antisemitism because the other factors do not speak directly to Arab antisemitism.
4179. mgleason - 2/16/2050 12:33:52 PM
Pincher,
In What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Lewis writes:
With rare exceptions, where hostile stereotypes of the Jew existed in the Islamic tradition, they tended to be contemptuous and dismisse rather than suspicious and obsessive. This made the events of 1948 - the failure of five Arab states and armies to prevent half a million Jews from establishing a state in the debris of the British Mandate for Palestine - all the more of a shock. As some writers at the time observed, it was bad enough to be defeated by the great imperial powers of the West; to suffer the same fate at the hands of a contemptible gang of Jews was an intolerable humiliation. Anti-Semitism and its demonized picture of the Jew as a scheming, evil monster provided a soothing answer.
The earliest specifically anti-Semitic statements in the Middle East occurred among the Christian minorities, and can usually be traced back to European originals. They had limited impact, and at the time for example of the Dreyfus trial in France, when a Jewish officer was unjustly accused and condemmed by a hostile court, Muslim comments usually favored the persecuted Jew against his Christian persecutors. But the poison continued to spread, and from 1933 Nazi Germany and its various agencies made a concerted and on the whole remarkably successful effort to promote and disseminate European style anti-Semitism in the Arab world. The struggle for Palestine greatly facilitated the acceptance of the anti-Semitic interpretation of history, and led some to blame all evil in the MIddle East and indeed in the world on secret Jewish plots. This interpretation has pervaded much of the public discourse in the region, including education, the media, and even entertainment.
4180. mgleason - 2/16/2050 12:50:36 PM
As Lewis indicates, the Nazi effort to promote their particular anti-Semitism found fertile ground.
Again, my original remarks to Marjoribanks were centered around the claim that the presence of a Jewish state on Arab lands was considered an 'abomination' by his composite Arab, and I wondered whether this status extended to Ottoman, British, and French rule. The facile response by pseudoerasmus was that 'the crucial difference ... is that the Turks, the French and the British left.'
While the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine cannot be overstated in terms of fueling the conflict between Arab and Jew, the other factors identified by Lewis and other posters on this thread are not insignificant, and obviously predate the birth of Israel.
4181. mgleason - 2/16/2050 12:59:44 PM
Sorry; dismisse = dismissive in #4179.
4182. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 1:13:09 PM
Message # 4180
Gleason's remarks do not address my argument. They simply posit a contradiction in complete absence of counterargument and analysis.
"Again, my original remarks to Marjoribanks were centered around the claim that the presence of a Jewish state on Arab lands was considered an 'abomination' by his composite Arab, and I wondered whether this status extended to Ottoman, British, and French rule. The facile response by pseudoerasmus was that 'the crucial difference ... is that the Turks, the French and the British left.'
There is nothing "facile" about responding that the European imperialists did leave while the Zionist imperialists (as the Arabs conceive of them) are still there.
This is all the more true because the French, the British and the Turks didn't implant millions of their own people on Arab lands. That's a crucial, major difference, but Gleason just can't see it. Apparently she is insensitive to the difference between the kind of colonial rule based on settlements that alter the indigenous demography (the Americas, Australasia, Siberia, southern Africa, Tibet), and the kind of imperial rule where no such settlements occur (Western European empires in Asia and Africa, with some exceptions).
"While the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine cannot be overstated in terms of fueling the conflict between Arab and Jew, the other factors identified by Lewis and other posters on this thread are not insignificant..."
Please see my critique of the other factors in Message # 4178. The "other factors" pertain to the loss of Islamic dominance without specifically addressing the emergence of antisemitism among Arabs (both Christians and Jews).
4183. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 1:13:31 PM
.... and obviously predate the birth of Israel.
A nonsequitur. The salient fact is that large-scale Jewish immigration into Palestine (obviously) predates the birth of the State of Israel, and largely coincides with the emegence of Arab antisemitism.
"As Lewis indicates, the Nazi effort to promote their particular anti-Semitism found fertile ground...."
Found fertile ground because by the 1920s, well before the birth of the State of Israel, there had already developed in Palestine a major ethnic territorial conflict between Jews and Arabs.
4184. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 1:21:21 PM
Does Indonesia brim with anti-Dutch hysteria? Pakistan, India and Bangladesh certainly do not throb with wild Anglophobic resentment. An enormous French settler class had lived in Algeria since the early 1830s. At the end of the brutal Algerian war of independence, nearly a million French "pieds noirs" left Algeria for France. But Algeria today is not particularly anti-French.
So why should Arabs of the Levant be expected to feel an inordinate racist animus toward the British, the French and the Turks, who have left???
This is not a facile observation. It is an analytical observation.
4185. mgleason - 2/16/2050 1:37:08 PM
Gleason's remarks do not address my argument.
It is my prerogative to stick to the original argument and not follow a new tangent meant to obscure is the fact that pseudoerasmus' original and very facile observation was dead wrong. The question of why Jews alone should constitute an 'abomination' is not answered by the Palestinian issue.
4186. pseudoerasmus - 2/16/2050 3:07:07 PM
Message # 4185
"It is my prerogative to stick to the original argument and not follow a new tangent meant to obscure is the fact that pseudoerasmus' original and very facile observation was dead wrong."
There has been no tangent. That is your hallucination. My original and current observation is that there is no reason that Arabs should be particularly antisemitic if there were no Israel in their midst.
If you cannot distinguish between a tangent and an elaboration of my original argument, then that is a cognitive problem on your part.
"The question of why Jews alone should constitute an 'abomination' is not answered by the Palestinian issue."
It is completely and resoundingly answered by the Palestine issue. Jews alone constitute an abomination in Arab eyes because they alone remain a foreign presence in their midst oppressing them (in their view). That such simple distinctions escape you, is amazing.
4187. stostosto - 2/16/2050 6:23:11 PM
The really weird thing is why the Europeans were so damn obsessed with the Jews for centuries -- after all there was no question of Jews colonising European lands, or anything, was there?
4188. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:05:36 PM
Sto:
Max I. Dimont has a very interesting explanation of that.
4189. joezan - 2/16/2050 9:10:35 PM
How long have we been in the year 2050 here?
Is this something new?
4190. joezan - 2/16/2050 9:11:55 PM
Oh - it's everywhere...not just the ME.
Or am I alone in this time warp?
4191. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:20:22 PM
Jewish history in Syrian textbooks (from the EDUME link provided top right). From reading some of the other stuff there, I'm starting to see where Pe got that theory of his regarding the Jews as a non-people:
"A mixed people, dazzled by the richness of the Canaanite cities and their civilization, crossed the river Jordan, which gave it the name "Hebrews". It began to engage the Canaanite city-states and to seize them one by one, inflicting ruin and destruction, using all sorts of treachery and deception in order to drive a wedge between the Canaanite city-states. It took advantage of the absence of a unified Canaanite state that would be able to stand against the avid invaders and drive them back, as the Zionists do today in Palestine while taking advantage of the disagreement and weakness that inflict the Arabs. The war between the Canaanites and their adversaries continued for about one hundred and fifty years and during that period the Hebrews managed to establish a state in Palestine. Soon after that it was split, because of the disputes among its leaders, until the Chaldeans came and put an end to it." (Ancient History of the Arabs, Grade 5, p. 43).
"Compare the attitude of the Hebrews then and the attitude of the Zionists presently." (Homework, Ancient History of the Arabs, Grade 5, p. 67)
"Among their most famous kings is Nebuchadnezzar, and among his great deeds is the elimination of the Kingdom of Judea and sending the Jews as captives to Babylon." (History of Arab Civilization, Grade 10, p. 12)
>>>
4192. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:21:31 PM
Joe - you're not alone. And it's not just in the Mote. Look at your PC clock, man. Usama has dropped the Time Bomb and we're all old now.
4193. joezan - 2/16/2050 9:22:59 PM
Amazing.
48 years hence, and everyone's still here - still saying the same things... OhioStopas is still claiming Bush stole the election over in the American thread, for pity's sake!
But I see we managed to pick up a new poster - someone named copans.
That's encouraging.
4194. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:23:34 PM
>>>
The justification behind the Holocaust:
"During World War II Nazism persecuted millions of human beings in Europe and elsewhere and part of this persecution affected the Jews for the following reasons:
Because of the non-mingling with the nations and the societies where they lived.
Because of their control and monopoly over currency exchange, banks and commercial financing.
[Because of] their treason toward their homeland, Germany, as they had put themselves in the service of the Allies." (National- Socialist Education, Grade 10, p. 104)
"He [Hitler] became aware of the conditions of the Jews in Germany and of their role in weakening it and in its defeat in the [First World] War... The most important of these [Nazi] principles and ideas [were]: ... The abolition of the Jews' electoral rights because they are strangers to the German Aryan society, in addition to their impact on Germany's defeat in the First [World] War." (History of Modern Times, Grade 11, pt. 2, pp. 68-69).
>>>
4195. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:25:25 PM
>>>
The Jews' evil nature:
"The Jews spare no effort in deceiving us, being hostile towards us, denying our noble Prophet, inciting against us and distorting the Divine Books... The Jews collaborate with pagans and atheists against the Muslims because they see that Islam unveils their cunning ways and evil nature." (Islamic Education, Grade 11, p. 33)
"The congruence of ethnic and religious racism reveals a reactionary notion condemned by humanity because it ranks the Jews higher than the other peoples and involves hostility and disdain towards the nations." (National-Socialist Education, Grade 10, p. 95)
"The Children of Israel did not hold the prophets in esteem. They killed some of them and heaped charges against others, as they did to Moses, may peace be upon him, when they accused him of having killed Aharon. They [also] accused him of adultery and accused him of having a defect in his body... Therefore they deserved the punishment of God." (Islamic Education, Grade 10, pp. 171-172)
"The Jews held a grudge against him [Jesus] because they had found in his call a depreciation of their behavior and weakening of their influence, so they conspired against him." (History of Arab Civilization, Grade 10, p. 233)
"In the vicinity of the al-Aqsa Mosque in the land of Palestine the Jews, the enemies of God, attempted to crucify Christ [but] God rescued him from their plot." (Islamic Education, Grade 6, p. 56)
"The Jews, enemies of God, want to remain in Palestine in order to take hold of al-Aqsa Mosque." (Islamic Education, Grade 6, p. 57)
>>>
4196. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 9:27:01 PM
>>>
The verdict:
"You have already learned of the attitude of the Jews who plotted to kill, loot and exterminate the Muslims [in the time of the Prophet]... That is the characteristic of traitors and deceivers in any time and place. They make use of tolerance and gentleness as a hotbed and a loophole for their crimes and sins.
"If this [affair] points to anything, it points to the aggressive [and] evil tendency that is rooted in the Jewish personality. That, in its turn, confirms that co-existence with them, or having them as neighbors, is an enormous danger that threatens Islamic and Arab existence with destruction and extinction.
"Therefore, the logic of genuine justice decrees against them one verdict the carrying out of which is unavoidable. Their criminal intention should be turned against them by way of their elimination [isti'sal]." (Islamic Education, Grade 10, pp. 115-116).
4197. transient1a - 2/16/2050 9:39:03 PM
Message # 4171 4198. transient1a - 2/16/2050 9:40:06 PM
stostosto,
Hmmm. Probably Engmark was joking.
Seinfeld
In 1990, NBC executives approached the comedian about starring in his own sitcom; teaming with fellow stand-up Larry David, Seinfeld conceived a show about "nothing" – in other words, the small wrinkles of everyday life, from Superman to breakfast cereal, which for years had provided the fodder for his stage routine. NBC, far from convinced, agreed to produce only a miniscule four episodes. Premiering in 1991 under the name The Seinfeld Chronicles, the show was an immediate critical hit but fared poorly in the ratings; known as simply Seinfeld from its second episode onward, the series gradually gained momentum, and NBC agreed to an order of six more episodes, followed in its third year by 13 more.
4199. PincherMartin - 2/16/2050 10:01:14 PM
PE --
But the factors such as the European favouritism of non-Muslim minorities in Arab lands and the subversion of dhimmitude (factors which are fatuously popular with Wombat, Gleason and Andonly), obviously cannot be directly germane to the emergence of anti-Semitism per se, since those factors touch upon Muslim Arab relations with Jews and Christians, not the relationship between Arabs in general and Jews . What is really the only major factor that touched the latter? The Palestine question.
You quote Shaw to support you, but he provides no proof that Arab Christians and Muslims should have been genuinely threatened by the Jews prior to the twentieth century. Why? How many Jews were in Palestine in the crucial period of 1850 to 1900, when anti-Semitism gathered strength in the Arab world, and why should they have been a threat unless it was for the reasons that Wombat, Gleason, and Andonly state? Certainly, a fair number could have emigrated, but not enough to form a state. Besides, there wasn't even a serious ideology of Zionism prior to the 1890s.
This seems to be the crucial question. If Arab anti-Semitism (as it was found in Europe) can be said to predate the twentieth century, then your case is severely weakened. The 1890s is an important period for two reasons: first, The Dreyfus Case took place in 1894, and, second, Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State in 1896, thereby kicking off the modern Zionist movement.
Bernard Lewis writes that the Dreyfus Case convinced a small minority of Jews in Western Europe they could never assimilate and that this small minority in Western Europe would find fertile ground for their arguments in Eastern Europe, where anti-Semitism was much more serious.
continued...
4200. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 10:02:18 PM
OK, it's like this.
Remember we were discussing whether I could trust Ya'acov Amor or not? Well - the guy is balking at even dishing out 300 NIS of his own money to pay for my pamphlet, despite having promised to do so. Now - he wants me to arrange a rebellion in Katzir, which will depose Sandrov and give him, Amor, Harish. He could give a flying fuck what happens to Katzir afterwards.
In return for my services, I want him to 'make' me in the Likud: I want him to recommend me to the big shots, and I want to know that they will endorse my candidacy in Katzir.
He is 'doing me favors', as we say here, saying sure, why not, he'll do it, but he can't do it now because it'll look bad, it'll look as if he's given up on Katzir (which he has). Prior to this conversation, he already met with another Katzirite, who has been doing nothing the past year but sit in his tire shop and let me fight Sandrov for him, and pledged to support his candidacy, although he knew I was thinking about being a candidate.
You see, I'm going to be suckered again and this is my last chance in life not to be suckered. God knows I've been suckered by everyone, from my parents to my girlfriends to Sandrov to my wife.
Now -you see: I have the power to blow this whole thing apart and totally ruin Amor's chances of getting Harish. The way I can do this is by publishing a pamphlet with everything I know about the manipulations and dealings behind the government decision to take Harish away from Sandrov: this included a deal between Shas and the Likud (which Amor told me about) and it included the PMO Director saying stuff like 'I'll crush Sandrov' (to someone from Harish), and 'Sandrov is a dog' (to Amor).
>>>
4201. PincherMartin - 2/16/2050 10:02:26 PM
Lewis's comments on the roots of Muslim anti-Semitism are pretty much the same in The Jews of Islam and Semites and Anti-Semites, but they are a bit more extensive in the latter book. They mirror what you have already written.
Western-style, virulent anti-Semitism penetrated the Arab lands via Christian Arabs (who had close Western contacts) and Western emissaries in the nineteenth century. Lewis continues ...
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the first Arabic versions of European anti-Semitic writings were published. The earliest anti-Semitic tracts in Arabic were all translations, mostly if not entirely from French originals and by Christian Arab translatorsLewis goes on to say that most of these Arabic anti-semitic tracts continued to be from Western sources until the end of the nineteenth century, but notes an important new influence: for the first time, Muslim Arabs, Persians, and Turks began to learn European languages.
4202. RustlerPike - 2/16/2050 10:05:31 PM
>>>
I have to get the guts to threaten him, somehow. There is absolutely no other way. He wants to keep his exclusive connections in the Likud all to himself? Let him give up his dreams of running Harish. All I need is a recommendation. He wants Harish, he'll have to give me Katzir, because without my rabble rousing he has to wait for the Supreme Court decision - which could take years - and if I publish the dirt, he'll have to wait forever.
I'm thinking of printing out a 'dirt' pamphlet to show him, and scare him. Or I can just meet him and say the stuff to his face.
4203. pseudoerasmus - 2/17/2050 2:06:53 AM
Message # 4199
Antisemitism did not gather strength in the Arab world between 1850 and 1900. Lewis says that the "first antisemitic tracts in Arabic appeared toward the end of the 19th century", and usually as translations prepared by Christian Arabs. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion did not appear in Arabic until 1927. Moreover, we don't really see serious Jewish-Arab tensions in Palestine until the 1920s. From the Israel Country Study:
Before the Second Aliyah (1904-14), the indigenous Arab population of Palestine had worked for and generally cooperated with the small number of Jewish settlements. The increased Jewish presence and the different policies of the new settlers of the Second Aliyah aroused Arab hostility. The increasing tension between Jewish settler and Arab peasant did not, however, lead to the establishment of Arab nationalist organizations. In the Ottoman-controlled Arab lands the Arab masses were bound by family, tribal, and Islamic ties; the concepts of nationalism and nation-state were viewed as alien Western categories. Thus, an imbalance evolved between the highly organized and nationalistic settlers of the Second Aliyah and the indigenous Arab population, who lacked the organizational sophistication of the Zionists.
As for the Jewish population in Palestine, it was 12% of the total or 85,000 by the end of the Second Aliyah.
4204. PincherMartin - 2/17/2050 2:17:32 AM
If that's true, then it seems you have a strong case.
My reading of Lewis is that this time (1850-1900) was critical for the development of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, although I have to admit that when I reread those sections in the book, I was surprised to find how few real cases of virulent anti-Semitism by the Muslim Arabs were actually cited by Lewis in that period.
It appeared to not really pick up until after the First World War.
4205. mgleason - 2/17/2050 8:00:45 AM
I obtained access to The Long Trail of Arab Anti-Semitism, by Efraim Karsh, through subscriber services at Britannica, but I believe the online essay is only available to members. I've linked to a slightly edited version at the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, but I will be happy to e-mail the original Commentary piece through Britannica to those who don't subscribe. (It's also available at the Commentary site.)
4206. RustlerPike - 2/17/2050 8:20:37 AM
Ah well, my threatening doesn't seem to have impressed anyone. Now I'm feeling ill, and a little scared myself. Blackmail is not that much fun sometimes.
4207. mgleason - 2/17/2050 8:25:37 AM
The problem is that in these degenerate times blackmail doesn't have the oomph it once had. Not only does the would-be blackmailer need world-class dirt, but he must ply his trade from a position of power to get the most bang for his buck and/or avoid being squashed like a bug.
4208. transient1a - 2/17/2050 10:44:13 AM
Message # 4070
pseudoerasmus,
The Israel / Palestine thing is an ethnic territorial conflict....
Gee.
How about: The Israel /Palestine thing is a territorial conflict.
The differences are economic, ethnic, cultural, educational, sectarian and political. And typical human behavior will, is and has been exhibited.
I do not think that rhetorical nit picking is particularly useful.
A crucial point worth emphasizing is that Judaism is the foundation for both the Christian and Moslem religions. The fact that Jews have refused the 'golden' opportunity of converting to the 'true' religion has long been and is both perplexing and insulting to the those of the 'true' religion -- especially when Jews have flourished.
Here are two tangential, but interesting commentaries:
HUMANITY:A Moral History of the Twentieth Century.By Jonathan Glover.
A moral philosopher makes the case that the 20th century was even worse than we thought.
Out of Ethiopia
The townspeople were "Christians, mostly Amharas," and "Muslims, mainly Somalis," whose religious rituals intermingled freely with ancient pagan traditions and a prevailing culture shaped by myth, folklore, and an imperial dynasty dating back to the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.
In Ethiopia, the ones in power have always been Christians. Now about forty percent of the population subscribes to Islam. So there's poverty and there's also social injustice. Getting rid of poverty is a huge order, but that's one way of tackling this fundamentalism.
4209. pseudoerasmus - 2/17/2050 11:01:55 AM
Message # 4208
"The Israel / Palestine thing is a territorial conflict. The differences are economic, ethnic, cultural, educational, sectarian and political. And typical human behavior will, is and has been exhibited. I do not think that rhetorical nit picking is particularly useful."
A
You are the one engaged in rhetorical nitpicking. I was emphasising the taxonomic similarity of the Arab-Jewish problem with Graeco-Turkish, Tajik-Uzbek, Hindu-Muslim, Serb-Croat problems, etc. "Ethnic conflict", have you ever heard of the phrase?
B
As always, I stopped reading your post after the initial passage.
C
Stop addressing me and promptly commit suicide.
4210. RustlerPike - 2/17/2050 11:20:14 AM
I was actually witness to a terror attack today. We were driving back from Pardes Hanna, Tami and me, and these two police cars pass us in hot pursuit of a white Mazda. The first police car had one tire blown out and was leaving a trail of sparks like I'd never seen.
Turns out that the terrorists opened fire on the police car when they were asked to stop their car, because they looked suspicious. This happened, oh, a couple hundred meters behind us, I guess. Then the cops fired back and killed one terrorist. The second drove away in the car, and blew himself up in the end. There's five people injured, including one policeman seriously injured.
4211. RustlerPike - 2/17/2050 11:21:57 AM
The problem is that in these degenerate times blackmail doesn't have the oomph it once had. Not only does the would-be blackmailer need world-class dirt, but he must ply his trade from a position of power to get the most bang for his buck and/or avoid being squashed like a bug.
Yep.
4212. transient1a - 2/17/2050 11:52:38 AM
sselemanoduesp,
The point is that unless you are willing to spend your life in researching the minutiae of your examples and attempting to untangle messy histories which are, at best, poorly documented -- then your thesis, whether tenable or untenable -- is simply hearsay mostly founded on your biases and rhetoric.
And in the end it is a 'So what.'
It is current situation that is important. And understanding human behavior.
4213. pseudoerasmus - 2/17/2050 11:59:58 AM
Message # 4212: "The point is that unless you are willing to spend your life in researching the minutiae of your examples and attempting to untangle messy histories which are, at best, poorly documented -- then your thesis, whether tenable or untenable -- is simply hearsay mostly founded on your biases and rhetoric."
Not at all. One doesn't need to get into minutiae. The broad outlines are sufficient, which I already know. Besides, it's not as though I've aired something totally original. Scholarly international comparative studies of ethnic conflicts exist.
An excellent example of "hearsay founded on one's biases and rhetoric" is:
"A crucial point worth emphasizing is that Judaism is the foundation for both the Christian and Moslem religions. The fact that Jews have refused the 'golden' opportunity of converting to the 'true' religion has long been and is both perplexing and insulting to the those of the 'true' religion -- especially when Jews have flourished."
What a self-serving theory. And you talk about biases and rhetoric?
"It is current situation that is important. And understanding human behavior."
That's what comparative studies of ethnic conflicts do.
4214. transient1a - 2/17/2050 1:04:47 PM
pseudoerasmus,
That's what comparative studies of ethnic conflicts do.
I totally agree.
I just do not know how far back in time useful information is available.
We all have our biases and baggage. But I do no think that what I stated was:
... a self-serving theory.
For example, the uncertain relationship of the Jews with the Christians is dwelt on every Easter:
ALL Jews were claimed to be directly responsible for Christ's death. So ALL Jews were branded with deicide -- as if humans could kill any kind of god.
And what have I to gain if the 'theory' has some weight?
4215. stostosto - 2/17/2050 5:28:40 PM
Rustler, re your wily political dealings:
Isn't it common practice in Israel to join a party and actually do some active political work for it in order to become its candidate? Do you really have to be 'made' by a trusted insider?
4216. stostosto - 2/17/2050 5:44:21 PM
Transer:
I have in fact corresponded with DeLong once myself (something like you did). An impressive fella by my reckoning.
Concerning "Seinfeld" there is no doubt in my now sober mind that that Norwegian is trying to be funny (it can be difficult to tell sometimes with Norwegians). I mean, the idea of Steve Martin, Dudley Moore, and Eddie Murphy cast in a new upstart sit-com is just beyond silly.
Still, I have been wondering about Seinfeld's Jewishness. I am no good at these Jewish markers that seem so obvious to some of you folk, and I am not sure I want to become any better at them... preserving a naïve innocence appeals to me. Yet, the name "Seinfeld" -- is that particularly Jewish? I would say it sounds more German-German than Jewish-German. And his appearance? He looks a mixture of Scandi-German-English-Dutch. And hows about them fatuous sneakers he is wearing? And his girly manners? And that hairdo of his....?
Hey! I got it! It's the hairdo! It's the exact style of that Israeli pop group "Milk and Honey" who won the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest with their popalicious entry "Halleluja"!!!
4217. stostosto - 2/17/2050 5:58:17 PM
"You think I am posing as a Jew? -- Not that there is anything wrong with that!"
4218. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:38:03 PM
Pseudoerasmus, Message # 4148: "It is only natural that the Mufti of Jerusalem had sought an alliance against Jews."
"Some people are always citing the Mufti of Jerusalem..."
Why not? Why should we ignore the record of exactly what the Mufti and his cohorts asked for? Sure, it is "natural" that he should have sought an alliance against the British and Zionists in Palestine. It is not "natural" (by which PE means justified by the Zionist threat and therefore not racist without cause) that the Mufti and his cohorts should have looked for a German-Italian endorsement of Arabs eliminating all Jews throughout Arab lands in the manner that had been undertaken in Europe. Most Arab Jews in the Mufti's time could give a shit about Israel, and the Zionists from Europe never had any designs on territory other than Palestine. But that's not what the Arabs had convinced themselves of; no, they were already well into paranoia.
I'm sorry to burden Pseudoerasmus with these "minutiae," since he "already knows" the broad outlines of ethnic conflict everywhere, and how it works. But every time his theory of the nature of Arab antisemitism is questioned, he resorts to studying Palestine and the arrival there of Jews in numbers, in the early 20th century. The Arabs were fearful of a Jewish takeover, you see: interethnic conflict, pure and simple.
4219. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:39:38 PM
Only, Muslim antisemitism became ensconced throughout the mideast as the Nazis came to power, not just in Palestine. Jews were treated very badly in Iran even in the 19th century, well before they began emigrating from Europe to Palestine--were spat on, beaten with impunity, ghettoized, considered impure. Christians may have imported European antisemitism to the mideast, but as Maria has pointed out already, Arabs were receptive to it well before there was the prospect of a Jewish state. According to Lewis, "Hostility to Jews had, of course, roots in the [Islamic] past, but in [the late 19th century under European influence] it assumed a new and radically different character. The starting point was the very strong feeling that the proper relationship between believer and unvbeliever, between Muslim and dhimmi, had been subverted."
He goes on to say: "While recognizing the obvious effect of the Palestinian question in the deterioration of Arab-Jewish relations, and therefore in the position of the Jews in the Arab world generally, its importance should not be exaggerated, in particular not to the neglect or exclusion of other forces." By which he means a general deterioration and worsening of relations between majority and minorities in the Muslim world.
Has Lewis, like those of us here whom Pseudoerasmus scorns for being insufficiently reductionist, abandoned Ockham's razor? Or does Lewis see reality in its complexity? The latter, of course. Between 1941 and 1948, Arab Jews who had been indifferent or even hostile to the Zionist enterprise were persecuted in Morroco, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey. Where was the ethnic threat, Pseudoersamus? In Cairo? In Isfahan? In Baghdad, where the Jews had once been thoroughly integrated?
4220. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:41:08 PM
Arabs continue to this day to despise Jews out of all proportion to reason, more and more hysterically, their reason being "identification" with their Palestinian "brethren" whom they otherwise can't stand. Well, something other than simple enmity over ethnic teritorial conflict is at work here:
"Zionist immigration began in earnest in the 1880s, and soon Jewish settlers ran into conflicts with local Arabs. At first, however, the friction centered on grazing rights, land titles, and other property matters; it didn't carry nationalist or religious overtones. Yet as crude anti-Semitic ideas circulated more widely, the view of Jews as greedy, devious, and bent on world domination became bound up with the Arab critique of Zionism. Possibly the first major expression of the now-common view that Jewish settlement was really a beachhead for a takeover of the region was published in 1909 by the Turkish journalist Yunus Nadi, who warned-without any evidence at all-that the Jews aimed to establish "an Israelite kingdom comprising the ancient states of Babel and Nineveh, with Jerusalem at its
center." The conspiratorial notion of the Jews as plotting to take over the world quickly developed."
-David Greenberg
http://www.actworldwide.org/art0014.html
(an American antiterrorism website)
4221. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:42:45 PM
More from Greenberg:
"[Relative tolerance of Jews in the mideast] started to change around 1900. First, colonialism brought a growing European influence into the region, and both political and religious authorities from Europe promoted the idea that Jews engaged in ritual murders. Second, traditional Islamic authority was under challenge from Western liberalism, and the Jews provided a convenient scapegoat. During the 1908 Turkish revolution, the so-called Young Turks seized power in the Ottoman Empire and installed a constitutional regime that expanded freedom of religion. In arguing against the revolution, Muslim conservatives latched onto anti-Semitic propaganda, claiming that secret Jewish machinations lay behind the new regime."
And:
"With Israel's military successes and its willingness to occupy Arab lands until a peace treaty could be struck, Arab anti-Semitism hardened into official doctrine, as it has remained for many decades now. Propagandists, looking to rationalize their losses to a supposedly inferior people, came to depict the Jews as craven lackeys of a mightier power-the United States-a theme that can be heard in Osama Bin Laden's rhetoric today. And it was not just propaganda: Arab countries passed laws that discriminate not against Israelis or Zionists but against all Jews, simply for being Jews." (cont.)
4222. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:43:06 PM
"Islamic teaching, too, has been radically retrofitted to accommodate the new anti-Semitism. Whereas traditional Muslim accounts depict the fate of the Jews as tragic, that of a people too benighted to follow Muhammad the Prophet, current Muslim scholarship in the Arab world imaginatively rereads the Quran for evidence of the Jews' devilish nature. Meanwhile, films showing sympathy for the Jews or depicting the Holocaust are censored, while staples of old-fashioned European anti-Semitism--cartoons portraying greedy hook-nosed Jews, popular novels with conspiratorial Jewish villains, public lectures drawing on phony scholarship like the Protocols--became staples of the new Arab culture.
What Americans have been seeing after Sept. 11, we have to conclude, is hardly new. It's only new to those who never before bothered to look."
4223. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:44:02 PM
And no, Pseudoerasmus, my impression that Israelis are no where near as anti-Arab (or anti-Muslim!) as Arabs are anti-Jew is not the product of my exclusive association with some humanistic elite of Israelis, as you would like to believe. But if it were, it wouldn't matter: we could compare elites and come up with the same verdict.
The following is from that well-known pro-Israel rag, the Guardian:
"Death to the Arabs" is a familiar cry on the Israeli football terraces among supporters of the Betar teams, which originated in right-wing Zionist youth movements.
But the prevalence and intensity of anti-semitism in the Arab world make it an altogether more chilling phenomenon. Hasem Saghiyeh, a columnist on Al Hayat, a London based pan-Arab newspaper who has written on and studied anti-semitism in the Arab and Muslim world, describes it as dangerous and increasing at an unprecedented speed.
4224. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:44:59 PM
More:
Does it matter to the west that absurd conspiracy theories like [that 9-11 was masterminded by Jews] have taken hold, not just in the Middle East but throughout the Arab and Muslim world? Aren't they just the posturing of the powerless? Perhaps, but three months after September 11, some of its complex causes are starting to be revealed. As we dig deeper we find that one root of the assault lay in the emergence of the doctrine of Islamism, a fusion of a narrow, intolerant fundamentalist reading of the Koran with a political movement opposed to all western social, economic and cultural influence. One of its central beliefs is in the enduring evil of Judaism and the Jews, irrespective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and transcending borders or national disputes. Why Jews? Because if America has been branded the enemy, the Great Satan, and Jews are widely believed to "control" America, in the gruesome logic that follows, it becomes "obvious" that Jews have a "secret plan" to destroy Islam and the Arab world.
These ideas are neither of recent origin, nor confined to the Middle East. In 1983, in his Pakistan-set novel Shame, Salman Rushdie wrote of anti-semitism among those who had never met a Jew. ...
cont.
4225. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:49:50 PM
In the week before September 11 there were already disturbing signs that anti-semitism was reaching a new pitch. The attack on New York took place three days after the chaotic close of the Durban Anti-Racism Conference in which delegates from Arab governments and NGOs sought unsuccessfully to have Israel designated as a racist apartheid state, and called for the establishment of a UN committee to prosecute Israeli war crimes and to isolate totally the country. The NGO resolution was not backed by major human rights groups such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. The European Roma Rights Centre issued its own statement, written by Dimitrina Petrova, its executive director: "The aggressive exclusion of Jewish participants and the accompanying, blatantly intolerant anti-semitic spirit plaguing the entire process, prompted us firmly to distance ourselves from this forum's unfortunate outcome."
The language was so intemperate that Mary Robinson, the UN human rights commissioner, refused to present it to the governmental conference. The atmosphere at the conference has been described as saturated with anti-semitism. In the exhibition area, a book of cartoons reminiscent of the Nazi era, depicting Jews with talons for hands and clutching blood-soaked money, was distributed by the Arab Lawyers Union. One of the union's leaflets, in which the Star of David (a religious symbol of Judaism, as well as an emblem of the Israeli flag) was superimposed on the Nazi swastika, so shocked Robinson that she declared at an official dinner: "When I see something like this, I am a Jew." [Oy.]
4226. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:50:10 PM
A session on anti- semitism at the conference was broken up by protestors. There was opposition to having anti-semitism designated a hate crime and Robinson was booed when she referred to the holocaust against the Jews. Karen Pollock, director of the Holocaust Education Trust, which provides schools in Britain with resource materials and teacher training, represented the Board of Deputies of British Jews at the conference. In a briefing to the board on her return, she reported on the NGO forum: "Session after session seemed to provide platforms for extreme anti-Jewish propaganda. A session on hate crime not only had a speaker whose thesis was that Israel's existence was a 'hate crime', but when one person asked a question, he was heckled with shouts of, 'Jew! Jew! Jew!'."
That the campaigners on behalf of Palestinian rights were surprised at the negative reaction to the blatantly anti-semitic material they brought with them, indicates how commonplace such hate speech has become in the Arab world, the extent to which it now forms a normal part of political discourse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,620303,00.html
4227. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:55:53 PM
Here's another assessment:
Just how unrepresentative are the comments [by Arabs] the [pro-Israel media watchdog] Middle East Media Research Institute highlights? Anybody who has spent any time in the Middle East, or even stayed alert to Arab politics, knows that MEMRI doesn't need to travel very far to cherry-pick offensive comments. Indeed, after listening to enough college professors who believe Jews blew up the World Trade Center, priests who say the Holocaust never happened, business executives who tell you McDonalds donates all its Saturday profits to suppressing the Palestinians, burghers who contend that the CIA assassinated Bashir Gemayel, and college students who argue that a rabbinical cabal is suppressing the message of Pat Buchanan, you begin to recognize MEMRI's picks not as extreme outliers but as very common Middle Eastern sentiments, the very air of political discourse in the Arab world. (Tim Cavanaugh, Online Journalism Review, Nov. 27, 2001)
PE: "Jews alone constitute an abomination in Arab eyes because they alone remain a foreign presence in their midst oppressing them (in their view)."
4228. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:56:32 PM
What idiotic nonsense. "In their view"! That covers a lot of ground very expediently. Let's face fact, Pseudoerasmus. Quite aside from territorial competition,
1) the consideration of Jews as an "abomination" is nothing but Islamic or pan-Arabic antisemitism, part and parcel of a contempt for dhimmis that long predates Zionism and has periodically shaded into anti-minority violence throughout history. That this violence was usually not as widespread against Jews as it was in Christian lands is immaterial. The issue today is not merely that Jews are "in Arabs' midst", but that the Jewish State, insubordinate to Arabs or Islam, is considered an "abomination" and a blow against all Arab and Muslim "dignity", everywhere.
2) Jews do not "oppress" most Arabs. Israelis surely have oppressed the Lebanese and to this day oppress Palestinians--not altogether without cause in either case. (Not quite enough cause this week, it must be said.) And Jews around the world do support Israel. But "Jews" do not especially oppress Saudis, Yemenites, Egyptians, Iranians, Iraqis. The material effect of Israel, much less "Jews", on most Arabs is largely nonexistent. There IS currently no ethnic conflict between Israel and the vast majority of Arabs, except as Arabs imagine it. The great sympathy Arabs show to their "brothers" in Palestine is a lie; Arabs routinely oppress each other, especially Palestinians, at least as--if not more--horribly than Israelis ever have.
It is the hallmark of irrational racism to consider the "other" an "abomination". And of course Arabs' virulent racism is NOT confined to Jews, but nowadays extends to Christians as well. This speaks of nothing so much as cultural neurosis, but go ahead and sink that deep out of sight into the semantics of "ethnic conflict" if it helps you draw your prefered conclusion.
4229. Andonly - 2/17/2050 11:59:14 PM
Your analysis draws a great, black spurious line around racism that results from ethnic territorial competition and the racism that seems to have no cause or else grows out of some pure and inexplicable chauvinism. Yet, European antisemitism DID have distant or sporadic causes, it arose in some places in much the same way that Arab antisemitism arose just before the state of Israel was born: as a religious imperative or an ethnic response to increasing Jewish power, the threat of it, or the imaginary threat of it. Jews have usually but not always kept apart, usually but not always been considered foreign in some respect, and often competed economically or politically with others (in 17th century Poland, for example, Jews and Christians became at odds as Jews controlled increasing wealth and property). You can attribute permutations of European antisemitism to analagous causes of Arab antisemitism today (including incitement via religious doctrine), except that in the mideast case it's the imposition of an independent state that has enraged the "rightful" inhabitants of the continent, rather than the imposition of Jewish power and influence within states filled with "rightful" citizens. You can claim that the birth and consolidation of the Jewish state was a violent and unprovoked crime, but a) it was not unprovoked, not even by Arabs, and b) if it was a crime, it was not only a crime of necessity, it scarcely affected all those who claim to have been grievously damaged by it.
4230. Andonly - 2/18/2050 12:02:29 AM
Sure, Muslims and Arabs ally with besieged Palestinians against Jews and Israel for humanitarian reasons. But that ain't all.
"These [the Israelis] are our enemies, and our hatred towards them is rooted in our souls, and the only thing that can remove it is their departure from our lands and the purification of their defilement of our holy places!!!" --Al-Riyadh newspaper (Saudi Arabia), November 22, 2001.
But why exactly should Saudis have Israel-hatred "rooted in their souls"? Why should "purification of defilement", and not, say, restitution for expropriated property (at least some of which was made, by the way, to Israeli Arabs from the Galilee in substantial out-of-court settlements in the 1960s) be what Saudi Arabs require? These words aren't just about winning back territory. They're neurotic fixations on ridding the body of infection. I don't know why you can't recognize this rhetoric for the pathological, Naziesque racism it is, no matter what caused or exacerbated latent Arab anti-Jewish sentiment one hundred years ago.
4231. Andonly - 2/18/2050 12:04:07 AM
"Whereas rulers could once control their populations without communicating directly to the masses, the modern world requires telling the people why they should accept the regime that is being imposed upon them. Israel, a tiny polity with a magnified image, is the answer to an autocrat's political predicament. Problems with public health? Israel is polluting the water supply. Homeless refugees? Israel usurps Arab lands. Restless youth? Israel's democracy is a satanic influence. The deflection of so much political dissatisfaction and so many real and escalating social problems into aggression against Israel eventually reaches fanatical proportions, fueling apocalyptic scenarios of destroying the Satan and the protector of Satan, the United States." -Ruth Wisse, Harvard
So, "normal" ethnic conflict my ass. Much of Arab antisemitism is religiously fomented and is as much the cause as the result of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. You know who has a "normal" right, in 2002, to violently despise Israel and, if they're backward gits inclined to racism, Jews? The Palestinians, the Syrians, the Jordanians (who either are Palestinians or are dangerously affected by West Bank instability), and the Lebanese (who can be expected to remain pissed about the invasion for a while yet). That's it. Not the Egyptians, who got their land back decades ago. Not Iran, which never had a territorial conflict with Jews. Not Saudi Arabia. Not Yemen or Oman or Dubai. Not Qatar. Not Iraq. Etc.
4232. Andonly - 2/18/2050 12:04:34 AM
It must be stressed, again, that sheer, foaming ethnic hatred has never been pervasive among Israelis or Jews in general, certainly not in major newspapers and books, among playwrights, or in academia. Even at the formation of the state, the vast majority of Jews regarded Arabs as a mortal threat, as irrational, vicious rubes, but not an unholy pestilence. So if you want to claim that interethnic hatred is normal in conflict, fine, but then you must explain why Israelis have not succumbed so far as Arabs, why incitement is in fact illegal in Israel, why even in the wake of Ariel Sharon, liberal organizations and major newspapers trumpet the Palestinians' cause, and why rabbis in London and France, much less the US, do not commonly support their brethren in Israel (as the mullahs in Iran and Saudi and England support the Pals) by calling Arabs godless consorters with goats and camels whose impurity must be scoured from the home of David and Solomon.
4233. Andonly - 2/18/2050 12:05:46 AM
Oh yes, lest I forget to follow up once more with Betty, who was unsure of the origin of her poisoned water story:
In addition to reviving this old Czarist canard that Jews control the world, Arabs have revived the old blood libel. A few years ago, the Syrian Defense Minister wrote a book titled, The Matzah of Zion, in which he claimed Jews murder Arab children to knead their blood into matzahs for Passover. In a similar vein, the wife of Yasir Arafat told then First Lady, Hillary Clinton, during a State Visit to the Holy Land, that Israel was poisoning Palestinian water supplies. In a variation on the theme, a Palestinian newspaper recently stated: “In a new step to kill more children, the occupation forces of Israel threw large quantities of poisoned candies in front of two schools last night.” A medic who collected pieces of these unwrapped candies, felt the rubber gloves on his hands melting. He also had trouble breathing and felt dizziness. It seems that no libels against Jews are too awful or too incredible to find credence in much of the Arab/Muslim world.
Coutesy "Rabbi Rulnick's Sermons," Woodbury Jewish Center website, 2001
http://www.thewjc.org/sermons/arab.htm
4234. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 1:04:57 AM
Isn't it common practice in Israel to join a party and actually do some active political work for it in order to become its candidate? Do you really have to be 'made' by a trusted insider?
I'm not built that way. I couldn't do it if I wanted to. Besides, I could run as an independent candidate with Likud support - that would be fine too, I guess. Or I could just be independent, and fund my own propaganda, the way I'm doing now anyways. But right now there's nowhere to run to, anyways.
4235. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 1:06:40 AM
This is the second near-miss, terrorist wise, I've had with Tami and Erez on that road. I'm gonna think twice before I take them on my shopping trips again.
4236. Andonly - 2/18/2050 1:25:47 AM
PE: "But the factors such as the European favouritism of non-Muslim minorities in Arab lands and the subversion of dhimmitude (factors which are fatuously popular with Wombat, Gleason and Andonly), obviously cannot be directly germane to the emergence of anti-Semitism per se..."
Why not? They obviously were directly germane to the emergence of antisemitism among Muslims in Turkey. See again my 4221: In arguing against the [1908] revolution [which emancipated Christians--a clear subversion of dhimmitude], Muslim conservatives latched onto anti-Semitic propaganda, claiming that secret Jewish machinations lay behind the new regime.
"...since those factors touch upon Muslim Arab relations with Jews and Christians, not the relationship between Arabs in general and Jews."
'Arabs in general' are for the most part either Muslims or Christians, both of whom have had their unique problems with Jews. Why should it be surprising, in a climate innoculated with European antisemitism, that Christian Arabs would side with Muslim Arabs against Jews? Let me be clear: no one's saying Zionism and Israel weren't the catalysts for the development of today's outrageous antisemitism. But to say they were the cause of it, to reduce Arab antisemitism to an artifact of "ordinary ethnic conflict" is quite simpleminded.
4237. Andonly - 2/18/2050 1:26:05 AM
"What is really the only major factor that touched the latter? The Palestine question."
The 19th century introduction of European paranoia about Jews found a receptive audience first in Christian Arabs, then in Muslim Arabs, and also in Muslim non-Arabs (Turkey, Iran), so that paranoid notions about European Jewish plans to dominate the middle east flared into being as soon as the Jewish state was even contemplated, and eventually caught on throughout the Arab and Muslim world. That's what you call an antisemitic overreaction. Sure, it's shot through with plain old nationalism and an understandable resistance to colonialism. But that's not all the baby's made of.
4238. Andonly - 2/18/2050 1:42:02 AM
"This is the second near-miss, terrorist wise, I've had with Tami and Erez on that road. I'm gonna think twice before I take them on my shopping trips again."
They were with you? Yeah, I'd get them a babysitter next time.
Have you devised any method, by the way, of advising those of us who've grown accustomed to your updates from Katzir, in the event of your sudden, uh, demise?
4239. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 2:02:58 AM
Have you devised any method, by the way, of advising those of us who've grown accustomed to your updates from Katzir, in the event of your sudden, uh, demise?
I'm not planning on demising just yet, Ando. But I imagine a month's silence could tip you off something was wrong.
Also, should I be hit by a bullet, the resulting methane explosion is bound to be noted by the journalists covering the event.
4240. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 2:10:41 AM
You know, if Pe's reasoning holds across the board, then there shouldn't be a day that goes by without an Israeli crowd burning a German flag, should there? There certainly shouldn't be a German embassy in Israel.
4241. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 2:15:44 AM
100 people killed in attacks, and it hardly makes the front page. One dead Jew or Palestinian gets more coverage than 100 Nepalese.
4242. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 2:26:44 AM
Eyewitness accounts. I'm telling you, we missed the scene by a traffic light, no more than that. When we passed the junction it was quiet, and at the next junction, the chase passed us and turned right. The weird thing is they didn't seem to be going at full speed: the police car was driving on its rear wheel rim but was able to maintain a steady distance from the Mazda.
4243. stostosto - 2/18/2050 6:36:31 AM
You know, if Pe's reasoning holds across the board, then there shouldn't be a day that goes by without an Israeli crowd burning a German flag, should there? There certainly shouldn't be a German embassy in Israel.
That doesn't quite follow from PE's hypothesising. After all, Germany hasn't imposed itself on Israeli territory. The Nazi German genocide on Jews was singularly outrageously evil. But post-war Germany hasn't persisted in this for the last fifty-seven years whereas Israel persists in existing in the Arabs' midst.
For the record, I think Andonly has shown convincingly that Arab antisemitism is pathological, rampant and dangerous. I think it is part of the problem as it most certainly narrows the political room of manoeuvre for Arab leaders making compromise appear unacceptable. But it's also clear that antisemitism is energised by the intensifying of the Pal-Israeli conflict over the last 18 months.
4244. PincherMartin - 2/18/2050 8:44:03 AM
Great debate between Andonly and PE.
4245. stostosto - 2/18/2050 9:32:36 AM
4246. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 11:59:52 AM
Message # 4219
"Jews were treated very badly in Iran even in the 19th century, well before they began emigrating from Europe to Palestine--were spat on, beaten with impunity, ghettoized, considered impure."
As Bernard Lewis can explain, this was not antisemitism in the European sense, but a general expression of hostility toward non-Muslim minorities. Before 1900, and possibly before the First World War, you cannot find anywhere in the Middle East, any expression among Muslims of European-style, specifically anti-Jewish animus. If Jews were treated badly in Persia during the 19th century, this was because the Jews were dhimmi like other non-Muslims, not because they were Jews. This is a crucial point you're trying to paper over.
Iran had always seen more persecution of non-Muslims than anywhere else in the Muslim world. Zoroastrians, Iran's indigenous religion, were hounded to near-extinction. Christians had been the object of severe persecution under the Parthians (before the Islamic period). The status of Assyrian and Armenian Christians improved under the Muslims but that never spared them periodic pogroms and persecutions.
"Christians may have imported European antisemitism to the mideast, but as Maria has pointed out already, Arabs were receptive to it well before there was the prospect of a Jewish state."
Well, you and Gleason have an undue fixation on the state itself. The Jewish state was a watershed, but Jewish-Arab tensions had been ignited in Palestine as a result of Jewish immigration. If there was "fertile ground", it was because of Jewish immigration.
4247. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:00:45 PM
Message # 4219
"While recognizing the obvious effect of the Palestinian question in the deterioration of Arab-Jewish relations, and therefore in the position of the Jews in the Arab world generally, its importance should not be exaggerated, in particular not to the neglect or exclusion of other forces." [Lewis quoted by Andonly
I myself quoted this passage, and I gave my reason in Message # 4178 why I dismiss these statements of Lewis's. It is not possible to exaggerate the Palestine issue.
"By which he means a general deterioration and worsening of relations between majority and minorities in the Muslim world."
Precisely. A general deterioration of relations between majority and minorities cannot explain the specifically Jewish-targeted animus of the Arabs after 1900. Only the Palestine issue can.
"Has Lewis, like those of us here whom Pseudoerasmus scorns for being insufficiently reductionist, abandoned Ockham's razor? Or does Lewis see reality in its complexity?"
The epithet reductionist, when used as a criticism, and the word complexity, are evasions of analysis by humanist littérateur dipshits who mindlessly like to tally up a laundry list of every conceivably plausible reason for a phenomenon regardless of the strength and magnitude of the items on the list. Sometimes a few factors, sometimes even just one, are sufficient to explain a phenomenon; and most other possible factors are unnecessary.
4248. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:01:32 PM
Message # 4219
"The latter, of course. Between 1941 and 1948, Arab Jews who had been indifferent or even hostile to the Zionist enterprise were persecuted in Morroco, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey. Where was the ethnic threat, Pseudoersamus? In Cairo? In Isfahan? In Baghdad, where the Jews had once been thoroughly integrated?"
By the 1940s, the ethnic conflict in Palestine was well known throughout the Arab world. The Zionist desire for a separate state was by then already well known. There had been a major Arab pre-intifadah in the 1930s. Jewish and Arab nationalist organisations were fighting in the streets. It was a world-famous conflict by the 1940s.
Why wouldn't Arabs and Muslims outside Palestine stand with their brethren? It would be strange if Jews in other parts of the Arab/Muslim world weren't affected by the ethnic conflict in Palestine.
4249. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:07:11 PM
addendum to Message # 4246
Christians were occasionally persecuted in other Muslim lands besides Iran as well. It was because of the massacre of Christians by Druze Muslims that European powers intervened with the Ottoman sultan to force him to create an autonomous Christian area (later to be called Lebanon). And then of course you had all the Ottoman brutalities against the Christian populations of the Balkans, including the anti-Armenian pogroms of the 1890s, not to mention the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Yet this dhimmi-disdain was never transformed into widespread paranoid, neurotic anti-Christian animus.
The point I'm trying to make is that the attempt to find origns of Arab/Muslim antisemitism in dhimmitude is, first of all, unnecessary, and specious. The Palestine issue is the only thing that can adequately explain the wholesale adoption of Arab antisemitism.
4250. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:08:04 PM
Message # 4220
"Arabs continue to this day to despise Jews out of all proportion to reason, more and more hysterically, their reason being "identification" with their Palestinian "brethren" whom they otherwise can't stand. Well, something other than simple enmity over ethnic teritorial conflict is at work here...-David Greenberg http://www.actworldwide.org/art0014.html (an American antiterrorism website) "
Nothing in Greenberg's passage necessitates "something other than simple enmity over ethnic territorial conflict" as an explanation for Arab antisemitism.
Being a Jew you must find Arab antisemitism somehow uniquely and inordinately unreasonable. But ethnic hatreds are very intense and very passionate. You have obviously never heard a Russian casually let loose hateful bile over Central Asians or gypsies, or Croats about Serbs, or Bulgarians about Turks.
4251. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:09:46 PM
"1) the consideration of Jews as an "abomination" is nothing but Islamic or pan-Arabic antisemitism, part and parcel of a contempt for dhimmis that long predates Zionism and has periodically shaded into anti-minority violence throughout history."
No, you are confounding two very separate things. Antisemitism cannot be "part and parcel" of the contempt for dhimmis that long predates Zionism. Antisemitism and dhimmi-disdain are totally different things. First is a European-imported ideology of racial hatred, with prefabricated symbols and rhetoric (world-domination, blood libel, etc.). The second is a religious contempt with no racial element.
Besides, to link the two --antisemitism and dhimmi-disdain -- is illogical. If dhimmi-disdain were an important factor in the emergence of Arab antisemitism, why is there no comparably passionate animus against Christians?
You can't cite the anti-"crusader" rhetoric of the Islamists, for that is much more recent than Arab antisemitism, much less widespread than Arab antisemitism (it is largely confined to radical Islamists), and not unrelated to the US support for Israel.
4252. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:10:37 PM
The great sympathy Arabs show to their "brothers" in Palestine is a lie; Arabs routinely oppress each other, especially Palestinians, at least as--if not more--horribly than Israelis ever have.
This passage is an excercise in combining rationalisation and deliberate stupidity. It is irrelevant that Saudis, Yemenis, Moroccans, etc. are not actually affected by the Israelis. Co-ethnics around the world, no matter how much they are separated, tend to sympathise with each other against a common ethnic enemy. That's why the Armenian diaspora around the world, who are no longer really even Armenians, made such a noise during Armenia's war against Azerbaijan, raised money for Armenia, lobbied their countries' legislature to act against Azerbaijan, etc. Turks weren't oppressed by the Taliban either, but ethnic solidarity drove Turkey to support the Turkic ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Ethnic (i.e., Orthodox Slavic) solidarity is why Russians furiously supported the Serbs.
You take an unobjectionable and commonly seen reality -- ethnic solidarity against a common ethnic foe -- and pretend to be stupid and rationalise it away.
The great sympathy Arabs show to their "brothers" in Palestine is a lie; Arabs routinely oppress each other, especially Palestinians, at least as--if not more--horribly than Israelis ever have.
In most ethnic conflicts, the rule is usually "better the devil in my own ethnic group than a saint whose ethnicity is my blood enemy". Stalin oppressed his own ethnic group, the Georgians. But go to Georgia, they love him there. At least he's a home town arsehole.
4253. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:10:49 PM
go ahead and sink that deep out of sight into the semantics of "ethnic conflict" if it helps you draw your prefered conclusion.
There is no semantic quibbling.
4254. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:11:16 PM
"Your analysis draws a great, black spurious line around racism that results from ethnic territorial competition and the racism that seems to have no cause or else grows out of some pure and inexplicable chauvinism."
No, I don't. You're hallucinating, as usual.
Ethnic-racial-sectarian animus almost always exists only between groups who have been in close contact with one another. (That does not mean close contact necessarily generates ethnic conflict.) I know of no "racism that seems to have no cause or else grows out of some pure and inexplicable chauvinism". None at all.
There is a strong correlation between the size of Jewish populations and the chances of having been persecuted. Which countries in Europe have seen the most persecutions, pogroms and/or cooperation with the Nazis vis-a-vis the Jews? Poland, Hungary, Russia, etc. Denmark, Finland and Bulgaria, with their relatively few Jews, didn't volunteer to surrender their Jewish populations (or didn't have many locals cooperating with the Nazis), as had other countries, as Hungary, Romania, Germany itself, etc.
Message # 4230:
"But why exactly should Saudis have Israel-hatred "rooted in their souls"? Why should "purification of defilement", and not, say, restitution for expropriated property....be what Saudi Arabs require?"
Ethnic hatreds, once emerged, develop lives of their own. They are irrational neurotic passions, but you are asking for rationality from them!
4255. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:11:22 PM
"I don't know why you can't recognize this rhetoric for the pathological, Naziesque racism it is, no matter what caused or exacerbated latent Arab anti-Jewish sentiment one hundred years ago."
I recognise it as pathological and neurotic racism.
4256. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:11:47 PM
"Israel, a tiny polity with a magnified image, is the answer to an autocrat's political predicament. Problems with public health? Israel is polluting the water supply. Homeless refugees? Israel usurps Arab lands. Restless youth? Israel's democracy is a satanic influence. "
This is nothing special. In Pakistan the conflict with India has been used an excuse for every domestic problem there is. If there is a terrorist bombing, it's seldom blamed on domestic Islamists but on India's RAW (the intelligence service). The same in the Balkans. Problem with prostitution and drug rings? It's all the fault of Albanians and gyspies.
"So, "normal" ethnic conflict my ass. Much of Arab antisemitism is religiously fomented and is as much the cause as the result of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians."
More deliberate stupidity. I use the word "ethnic conflict" as a shorthand for "ethnic/tribal/sectarian/racial" conflict, so that I don't have to keep using the cumbersome term. Haven't I repeatedly made references to the Hindu-Muslim conflict, which is technically a sectarian conflict?
4257. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:14:25 PM
"So if you want to claim that interethnic hatred is normal in conflict, fine, but then you must explain why Israelis have not succumbed so far as Arabs...."
They have done. There are plenty of Israelis with mouth-foaming ethnic hatred for Arabs. You just self-servingly refuse to see it. But the Israeli state is certainly much better at controlling it than the Arab states. That is due surely to the fact that the Israeli elites are westernised, with PC tendencies.
"Why not? They obviously were directly germane to the emergence of antisemitism among Muslims in Turkey. See again my 4221....."
Antisemitic incidents in the Ottoman empire and in Turkey from Muslim quarters were few and far between. Citing one case proves nothing. Read Shaw's book on the Jew of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. The Turks' neurotic passions and paranoia ran toward their Christian subjects: Armenians and Greeks.
"'Arabs in general' are for the most part either Muslims or Christians, both of whom have had their unique problems with Jews. Why should it be surprising, in a climate innoculated with European antisemitism, that Christian Arabs would side with Muslim Arabs against Jews?"
It's not. I said: those factors [dhimmitude, European interventions] touch upon Muslim Arab relations with Jews and Christians, not the relationship between Arabs in general and Jews. So the question naturally arises, why the special animus against Jews but not against Christians? Only the Palestine question can explain it.
4258. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:16:41 PM
"Let me be clear: no one's saying Zionism and Israel weren't the catalysts for the development of today's outrageous antisemitism. But to say they were the cause of it, to reduce Arab antisemitism to an artifact of "ordinary ethnic conflict" is quite simpleminded."
No, it's not. You simply don't know anything about any other ethnic conflicts, and being a partisan in an ethnic conflict yourself you are led to believe that the one you're involved in (if only emotionally) is soooo special and unique. It's not.
In Message # 3938, I said: "Is the Palestinian cause somehow more worthy of attention and solution than the cause of other occupied peoples (e.g., Kurds, Uighurs, Tibetans, etc.)? No, it is not. It is a tribute to the power of publicity that the Palestinian cause can virtually monopolise the attention of the world and induce some people" to be so pious about it.
The same principle could be applied to our discussion about Arab antisemitism. The world has a special exposure to the ethnic conflict in Palestine. The world, particularly Jews and Americans, are disproportionately more aware of it than of other ethnic conflicts. It is for this reason that Andonly et al. have a hard time situating Arab antisemitism in the larger context of ethnic hatred. They just don't know very much about other ethnic conflicts and hold as unique many non-unique aspects of Arab antisemitism.
4259. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:19:05 PM
"For the record, I think Andonly has shown convincingly that Arab antisemitism is pathological, rampant and dangerous."
I have not disputed that Arab antisemitism is pathological and rampant. But it is no more dangerous than any other ethnic hatred. Since 1940, Serbs have killed more Bosnian Muslims and Albanians, and Croats have killed more Serbs, than Arabs have ever killed Jews. In fact, Ossetians and Ingush have probably killed more of each other than Arabs have killed of Jews.
4260. jexster - 2/18/2050 12:33:58 PM
4261. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:38:55 PM
Also, if as Andonly says "sheer, foaming ethnic hatred has never been pervasive among Israelis or Jews in general", that may be because the Israelis are in the more powerful position. There is less reason to be neurotic and obsessive if you have the advantage. In any ethnic conflict, the weaker party is the more scurrilous, the more resentful, while the more powerful party is more prone to disdain and condescension.
4262. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:57:16 PM
Summary:
(1) The Arab-Jewish conflict is typical of ethnic conflicts in nearly every way. The only thing which sets it apart from other ethnic conflicts is its international dimension, and the imported character of Arab antisemitism. (a) The ethnic conflict in Palestine is more internationalised than any other ethnic conflict because of the heavy involvement of the USA and the world community in general, and because there are many Arab and Muslim states. Usually most ethnic conflicts are more local, involve relatively few states, and lack this cosmopolitan character. (b) Arab antisemitism is completely unexceptional in its paranoia, neurosis and hatred, and is distinguished only by the fact that its rhetoric was imported largely from the European antisemitic tradition. (c) The tendency to view antisemitism as something special, and different from other kinds of ethnic hatred, is a very western predilection, due to the western historical experience of antisemitism. But lack antisemitism lacks the special resonance in the non-West that it has in the West. (d) The tendency to see Arab antisemitism has somehow different from other ethnic conflicts is due to the ignorance of the nature of ethnic conflicts in general.
[continued]
4263. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 12:57:31 PM
(2) The emergence of Arab antisemitism coincides with the large-scale introduction of Jewish immigrants into Palestine. That an independent Jewish state was not immediately envisioned, is neither here nor there, since conflicts over land & other issues are sufficient explanations for ethnic group hatred. Moreover, sudden demographic changes in ethnic composition are associated with ethnic conflicts everywhere. The Palestine question is the best and sufficient explanation for Arab antisemitism, and other explanations are either trivial unnecessary accretions, or consequences of the Palestine factor.
(3) Dhimmi-disdain and antisemitism are not the same thing; and dhimmi-disdain, which pertains to all non-Muslim minorities, cannot explain why Jews came to be singled out by Arabs for special hatred.
4264. RustlerPike - 2/18/2050 2:00:57 PM
The Stones song 'Dhimmi Shelter' was quite a hit in Saudi, I hear.
4265. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 2:19:32 PM
I forgot to mention. The racial animus between Iraqi Arabs and Iranians is quite strong. During the Iran-Iraq War, the official Iraqi press pandered not to Sunni fears of Shia expansionism, but to the "yellow peril" of the Persians, to the "eastern", "oriental" threat, the "Mongol hordes" and the Turkoman vermin. These are the standard rhetoric of Arab racial animus against Persians.
In Iran, the Islamist character of the regime muted the racist rhetoric (and the fact that Iran has got a substantial Arab minority), but the Persians are generally worse than the Arabs in their racial rhetoric. Aryan Persians --having borrowed European Aryan racial pseudo-science -- refer to Arabs as "lizards" and "blacks" and savages, and attribute any dark skin among Persians to "rape by Arabs", etc.
4266. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:27:57 PM
"As Bernard Lewis can explain, [Iranian antisemitism] was not antisemitism in the European sense, but a general expression of hostility toward non-Muslim minorities."
Irrelevant. You might as well have it that Nazi antisemitism was not antisemitism in the classic Christian-European sense, since Nazis also persecuted non-German minorities. So what? Every variation or addendum to Arab-Muslim chauvinism you find makes you think Jews are hated throughout the middle east and all Muslim countries simply because Palestinians are being persecuted in the West Bank and Gaza, end of subject. But this is not true.
Andonly: "Christians may have imported European antisemitism to the mideast, but as Maria has pointed out already, Arabs were receptive to it well before there was the prospect of a Jewish state."
PE: "Well, you and Gleason have an undue fixation on the state itself."
You can't read. I said, "the prospect of a Jewish state".
4267. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:29:53 PM
"If there was "fertile ground", it was because of Jewish immigration."
Jewish immigration alone was insufficient grounds for Arab antisemitism, just as the Jewish presence in Europe was insufficient grounds for European antisemitism.
"I gave my reason in Message # 4178 why I dismiss these statements of Lewis's. It is not possible to exaggerate the Palestine issue. "
I realize this, but you're an idiot and Bernard Lewis is not. And this is why you are an idiot, in discussion after discussion:
"Sometimes a few factors, sometimes even just one, are sufficient to explain a phenomenon; and most other possible factors are unnecessary."
Your mindset is and always has been bizarrely monocausal, so that even when you can perceive multiple interacting factors in the developoment of events, you insist on fixating on exactly one. And invariably, that one cause serves your political or ideological biases, one of which is that westerners are super-sensitive to antisemitism.
4268. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:31:54 PM
"By the 1940s, the ethnic conflict in Palestine was well known throughout the Arab world. The Zionist desire for a separate state was by then already well known. [blah, blah, blah]"
It's 2002 and the ethnic conflict in Palestine is well known around the world, but by and large Jews still manage to refrain from demonizing Arabs and Muslims. As do Americans, for that matter. And Israelis, whom you seem to think the state "controls". Did the state control 15,000 peace marchers in Israel yesterday?
4269. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:35:02 PM
"Why wouldn't Arabs and Muslims outside Palestine stand with their brethren? It would be strange if Jews in other parts of the Arab/Muslim world weren't affected by the ethnic conflict in Palestine."
Yes, it would, since minuscule Israel represent for Jews their last hope of a legitimate Jewish home on earth, while Palestine represents for Arabs and Muslims an imperialist insult to their honor and a defilement of their dominion. These concerns are not morally or rationally comparable. Yes, there are equivalent humanitarian, "brotherly" concerns on both sides. But Arabs and Muslims who can't abide the Palestinians themselves desire the wiping away of the outsiders who (with Arab help) persecute them, and the reinstitution of the totality of Arab and/or Muslim power across the entire mideast. These claims to right, fueled by radical Islam, are what spur on Arab and Muslim antisemitism, quite as much as the mere existence of "the Zionist entity".
"Antisemitism and dhimmi-disdain are totally different things. First is a European-imported ideology of racial hatred, with prefabricated symbols and rhetoric (world-domination, blood libel, etc.). The second is a religious contempt with no racial element."
Here we go again, the doctrinaire compartmentalization of human feeling as though it were a collection of various monochrome marbles. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.
4270. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:38:57 PM
"Ethnic-racial-sectarian animus almost always exists only between groups who have been in close contact with one another."
Yes, and most Arabs never have a thing to do with Israelis (or with Jews since the formation of the state). But you explain pan-Arab antisemitsm as ethnic solidarity against Israel, as though pan-Arab ethnic identity were not itself almost wholly dependent on the existence of Israel. If Israel didn't exist, there would be no bloody "Arab" identity; in fact, just about the only thing that keeps Arabs "ethnically" unified is opposition to Jews and the west. Increasingly, of course, vis-a-vis Israel "Arab" does not mean Arab at all. On the street, it means Muslim.
"I recognise [Arab antisemitism] as pathological and neurotic racism."
Well hallelujah.
"Ethnic hatreds, once emerged, develop lives of their own. They are irrational neurotic passions, but you are asking for rationality from them!"
Yes I am. Why aren't you? Why do you accept ethnic and sectarian hatred as normal when the rest of us are so shocked to hear you prattling on about filthy Hindoos that we simply assume the resident Indian has acknowledged you some sort of license to tease? Do you hear Mr. Hardline Israeli Nationalist, Rustler Pike, discussing the subhumanity of the Arabs he wishes Ariel Sharon would drive into Jordan? The man lives next door to Arabs. He witnesses terror attacks. He has two children to defend. He's no stranger to neurosis! But he seems not to accept much racism in himself. What about Sto, who watched Muslims in Denmark cheering in the wake of September 11? Has he become a frothing right-wing white-Danish nationlist?
Wonder why not.
4271. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:39:29 PM
I think this is about as far as we can get: Pseudoerasmus acknowledges that some of us value emotional rationality and do our best to eschew "irrational neurotic passions," at least when they are dangerous. But that's PC and all too inauthentic for him, perhaps in a Heideggerian sort of way.
4272. Andonly - 2/18/2050 2:44:44 PM
"You simply don't know anything about any other ethnic conflicts, and being a partisan in an ethnic conflict yourself you are led to believe that the one you're involved in (if only emotionally) is soooo special and unique."
Only you have posited that Jews, westerners, and Israeli partisans consider antisemitism unique. But we do not. That, to coin a phrase, is your hallucination.
[This discussion now seems well into redundancy to me, but if it is to continue, henceforth someone else will have to play the role of eel wrassler as I've got a busy week ahead of me.]
4273. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:52:42 PM
Message # 4266
I said: "As Bernard Lewis can explain, [19th century Iranian antisemitism] was not antisemitism in the European sense, but a general expression of hostility toward non-Muslim minorities."
Andonly: "Irrelevant. You might as well have it that Nazi antisemitism was not antisemitism in the classic Christian-European sense, since Nazis also persecuted non-German minorities. So what?"
Shameless sophistry. The Nazis had conspicuously promulgated an official antisemitic policy, with specific reference to, and discussion of, Jews and the "Jewish problem".
No such thing exists in Arab or Muslim lands before the 20th century. In Iran, the Shiite theology regarded all non-Muslims as ritually unclean. Any special emphasis on Jews is the one you place anachronistically. That's not surprising given that you're Jewish, every persecuted group things they're special. But you need to be more objective.
4274. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:53:05 PM
Message # 4267
"Jewish immigration alone was insufficient grounds for Arab antisemitism, just as the Jewish presence in Europe was insufficient grounds for European antisemitism."
Nonsense. In Europe, the status of Jews as killers of Christ had given Jews a special place in Christian culture. No such special status for Jews is reserved Muslim culture.
"Your mindset is and always has been bizarrely monocausal, so that even when you can perceive multiple interacting factors in the developoment of events, you insist on fixating on exactly one."
No, my mindset is not bizarrely monocasual. (When have I ever advanced a monocausal explanation before?) You simply do not understand marginal thinking; and you mindlessly multicausal and regularly spout the episto-platitude, "everything is complex". You just like to assemble a bunch of causes arbitrarily and pronounce them all equally important. It doesn't even occur to you that your pet cause (dhimmi-contempt) can't explain the special animus Arabs have toward Jews today, because dhimmi-contempt applies to all non-Muslims. That is, dhimmi-contempt cannot be an explanation on the margins.
"And invariably, that one cause serves your political or ideological biases, one of which is that westerners are super-sensitive to antisemitism."
Isn't that the same with you? Everything you say reeks of Jewish self-centredness, self-obsession and self-selection. "Why do the Arabs hate us so much? It can't be anything we did!" So you go on to concoct theories which make no sense.
4275. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:53:22 PM
Message # 4268
"It's 2002 and the ethnic conflict in Palestine is well known around the world, but by and large Jews still manage to refrain from demonizing Arabs and Muslims.As do Americans, for that matter."
I do think Jews and non-Jews demonise Arabs and Muslims.
The difference between Arab antisemitism and Jewish animus toward Arabs & Muslims can be explained by:
4276. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:53:42 PM
Message # 4269
PE: "Antisemitism and dhimmi-disdain are totally different things. First is a European-imported ideology of racial hatred, with prefabricated symbols and rhetoric (world-domination, blood libel, etc.). The second is a religious contempt with no racial element."
Andonly: "Here we go again, the doctrinaire compartmentalization of human feeling as though it were a collection of various monochrome marbles. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about."
No, it is not "doctrinaire compartmentalisation of human feelings". You're just not bright enough to engage in analytical thought.
The fact of the matter is, dhimmi-disdain applied to all non-Muslims, and, in the Shiite tradition, all non-Muslims were considered ritually unclean. So what tipped the balance toward a special hatred of Jews? In other words, what caused the anti-Jewish animus, on the margins? Something had to do it. And that is the Palestine issue.
"Palestine represents for Arabs and Muslims an imperialist insult to their honor and a defilement of their dominion."
As you yourself keep pointing out, Arabs and Muslims have not adopted bizarre racial theories about Britons, French or Turks, even though these three powers have also ruled over Arabs and oppressed them. You and Gleason had taken this as evidence that the Arabs harbour a very special animus for Jews. But it's the other way around. The very fact that previous insults to Arab honour and defilements of Muslim dominion, have not created neurotic racial theories about Turks or Britons, while they have about the Jews, shows that Arab antisemitism is not primarily about insult and defilment. That is just a self-serving Zionist excuse to wish away the founding cause of the Arab-Jewish conflict.
4277. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:55:12 PM
Message # 4269: "Arabs and Muslims who can't abide the Palestinians themselves desire the wiping away of the outsiders who (with Arab help) persecute them..."
I don't know where you get the idea that Arabs and Muslims "can't abide" Palestinians. Palestinians are found all over the Middle East as immigrants and/or guest workers. But most countries, particularly poor ones, would really rather not take in millions of refugees. Again, that's nothing special. No one doubts that Pashtuns in Pakistan care very deeply about Pashtuns in Afghanistan; yet at the same time, Pakistani Pashtuns are sick and tired of Afghan refugees. No one wants to accomodate refugees. Even Serbs in Belgrade resent Croatian Serb refugees.
"These claims to right, fueled by radical Islam, are what spur on Arab and Muslim antisemitism, quite as much as the mere existence of "the Zionist entity...."
That's nonsense of course. Radical Islam is a very new phenomenon, of much more recent vintage than Arab antisemitism.
4278. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:56:51 PM
Message # 4270
"...you explain pan-Arab antisemitsm as ethnic solidarity against Israel, as though pan-Arab ethnic identity were not itself almost wholly dependent on the existence of Israel. If Israel didn't exist, there would be no bloody "Arab" identity; in fact, just about the only thing that keeps Arabs "ethnically" unified is opposition to Jews and the west."
Arab nationalism emerged in response both to Turkish nationalism within the Ottoman empire (the Young Turks) and in response to western intervention & imperialism. Arab nationalism has got a literature couched in terms of "what should we do about the west", dating to the early 19th century; and Classical Arabic had always been the aspiration of educated Arabs who saw its adoption as a means of unifiying the Arab nation.
Certainly the existence of Israel contributed to this trend, but to say that Arab nationalism wouldn't exist if it weren't for Israel is the height of stupidity and ignorance, not to mention another manifestation of Jewish self-centredness.
"Do you hear Mr. Hardline Israeli Nationalist, Rustler Pike, discussing the subhumanity of the Arabs he wishes Ariel Sharon would drive into Jordan? The man lives next door to Arabs. He witnesses terror attacks. He has two children to defend. He's no stranger to neurosis! But he seems not to accept much racism in himself."
Well, do you see Arabs in the West or online in conversation with westerners, spewing antisemitic bile? No, Arabs do it largely with other Arabs (or with Muslims) or with an Arab audience in mind.
4279. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 3:57:39 PM
Message # 4270
"What about Sto, who watched Muslims in Denmark cheering in the wake of September 11? Has he become a frothing right-wing white-Danish nationlist? Wonder why not."
No, but he's become warier of Third World immigrants, as I had predicted, and as he's acknowledged I had predicted. But I'm not sure what Sto has to do with anything. Westerners in general don't exhibit the usual psychology of ethnic conflict, and there has emerged in the West a rhetoric and an ideology of ostracising explicitly racist discourse, even though racism against some groups is more taboo than against others.
Message # 4271: "I think this is about as far as we can get: Pseudoerasmus acknowledges that some of us value emotional rationality and do our best to eschew "irrational neurotic passions," at least when they are dangerous. But that's PC and all too inauthentic for him, perhaps in a Heideggerian sort of way."
Yeah, like you've read Heidegger. Just TNR reviews about works about Heidegger, right?
4280. mgleason - 2/18/2050 4:26:45 PM
From The Long Trail of Arab Anti-Semitism:
The truth of the matter is that, for all their protestations to the contrary, Arabs have never really distinguished among Zionists, Israelis, and Jews, and often use these terms interchangeably. As Anis Mansur, one of Egypt's foremost journalists and a one-time confidant of President Anwar Sadat, put it in a moment of candor: "There is no such thing in the world as Jew and Israeli. Every Jew is an Israeli. No doubt about that." Indeed, the fact that Arab anti-Zionism has invariably reflected a hatred well beyond the "normal" level of hostility to be expected of a prolonged and bitter conflict would seem to suggest that, rather than being a response to Zionist activity, it is rather a manifestation of longstanding prejudice that has been brought out into the open by the vicissitudes of the Arab-Israel conflict.
This is hardly to deny the clash of destinies between two national groups. But it is precisely because Zionism was construed as epitomizing the worst characteristics traditionally associated with Jews in the Muslim-Arab mind that the Zionist enterprise could be portrayed in so lurid a light by politicians and intellectuals alike. As Lutfi Abd al-Azim, the editor of a prestigious Egyptian weekly, wrote in 1982, three years after the conclusion of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty:
A Jew is a Jew, and hasn't changed for thousands of years. He is base, contemptible, scorns all moral values, gnaws on live flesh, and sucks blood for a pittance. The Jewish Merchant of Venice is no different from the arch-executioners of Deir Yasin and those at the [Palestinian] refugee camps. Both are similar models of inhuman depravity.
4281. mgleason - 2/18/2050 4:27:55 PM
WHERE DO such vicious stereotypes come from? It has been rightly observed that modern, ideological anti-Semitism is an invention of 19th-century Europe, and that traditionally the Islamic world was by and large free of such "doctrinaire refinements" (in the phrase of the late Elie Kedourie). But the ease and rapidity with which the precepts of European anti-Semitism were assimilated by the Muslim-Arab world testify to the pre-existence of a deep anti-Jewish bigotry. This bigotry dates to Islam's earliest days, and indeed to the Qur'an itself.
Reflecting the Prophet Muhammad's outrage over the rejection of his religious message by the contemporary Jewish community, both the Qur'an and later biographical traditions of the Prophet abound with negative depictions of Jews. In these works they are portrayed as a deceitful, evil, and treacherous people who in their insatiable urge for domination would readily betray an ally and swindle a non-Jew; who tampered with the Holy Scriptures, spurned God's divine message, and persecuted His messenger Muhammad just as they had done to previous prophets, including Jesus of Nazareth. For this perfidy, they will incur a string of retributions, both in the afterlife, when they will burn in hell, and here on earth where they have been justly condemned to an existence of wretchedness and humiliation.
4282. mgleason - 2/18/2050 4:29:13 PM
As this summary suggests, the traits associated with Jews make a paradoxical mixture: they are seen as both domineering and wretched, both haughty and low. But such is the age-old Muslim stereotype--as it is, mutatis mutandis, the Christian. Coming to know Jews as a small subject community in their midst, most Muslims held them in the contempt reserved for the powerless. "I never saw the curse denounced against the children of Israel more fully brought to bear than in the East," wrote an early-f9th-century Western traveler to the Ottoman empire, "where they are considered rather as a link between animals and human beings than as men possessed by the same attributes." To another contemporary visitor to the region, the Jews' "pusillanimity is so excessive, that they flee before the uplifted hand of a child." That was one side of the picture. As for the other, even Egypt's President Sadat, the man who would go farther than any other Middle Eastern leader in accepting the existence of a sovereign Jewish state, could remind his people in April 1972 of why the Jews had to have been brought so low, and why their power was still to be feared:
They were the neighbors of the Prophet in Medina. They were his neighbors, and he negotiated with them and reached an agreement with them. But in the end they proved that they were men of deceit and treachery, since they concluded a treaty with his enemies, so as to strike him in Medina and attack him from within. . . . They are a nation of traitors and liars, contrivers of plots, a people born for deeds of treachery.
4283. mgleason - 2/18/2050 4:29:39 PM
Given the depth of anti-Jewish feeling in the Arab Middle East, it is hardly surprising that some of the hoariest and most bizarre themes of European anti-Semitism should have struck a responsive chord when they made their way there over the course of the centuries. Thus, special derision is reserved in Arab writings (as in Christian ones) for the biblical notion of the chosen people, seen in Anis Mansur's words as the quintessence of "Judaism's perception of the Jews as . . . masters of the universe--its peoples, lands, and skies . .. to whom all other peoples are but servants, undeserving of belief in the Jewish God." To this doctrine is attributed, in turn, the license Jews supposedly take in mistreating non-Jews, with the Talmud characterized as not only condoning but actually requiring acts like the swindling of Gentiles and the "rape of women of other religions."
4284. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 4:49:15 PM
Gee, the next thing you know, people will start posting Croat histories of Serbia or a Pakistani history of India.
Efraim Karsh apparently fails to mention the anti-Christian passages of the Qur'an. And why doesn't he quote passages from the Qur'an to substantiate his characterisations of those passages?
4285. mgleason - 2/18/2050 5:07:52 PM
Perhaps Efraim Karsh, JEW, figured that those Qu'ranic sentiments are easily enough proved or disproved.
Here's another JEW quoting a Muslim cleric who seems to agree with Karsh:
"The battle which will commence after reconciliation with Israel will be the battle against the subjugation of the Arab and Muslim person to Israel, in politics, culture, economics, and security. In the vocabulary of the Qur'an, Islamists have much of what they need to awaken the consciousness of Muslims, relying on the literal text of the Qur'an, because the Qur'an speaks about the Jews in a negative way, concerning both their historical conduct and future schemes. The Islamists must deploy their Qur'anic and Islamic legal culture to combat normalization."
From Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument.
4286. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 6:47:56 PM
MGleason, MORON, said:
"Perhaps Efraim Karsh, JEW, figured that those Qu'ranic sentiments are easily enough proved or disproved."
Is there some reason you're using all capitals in the word "Jew" and not using an article in front it?
No, Efraim Karsh, a Jew, is a partisan in the Arab-Jewish conflict and need not be taken at his word. He depicts the anti-Jewish statements in the Qur'an in a manner suspiciously reminiscent of European anti-semitism. That is why I asked why he doesn't quote the passages in question.
That the Qur'an speaks about Jews negatively is one thing, but the "a deceitful, evil, and treacherous people who in their insatiable urge for domination would readily betray an ally and swindle a non-Jew", is a curiously European-sounding representation of the Qur'anic passages portraying Jews.
Here is a list of Qur'anic references to Jews compiled by www.us-israel.org, so we can expect some of the very worst things in the Qur'an about Jews.
Almost all the references either apply to Jews and Christians equally, or are simple religious criticisms.
In (4:050) the reference is not to Jews at all but to the People of the Book in general. In 4:160-161 the passages are talking about Sinai and the covenant broken by Jews, the same scriptural story told in the Bible. The "we" refers to God.
There is really one reference (5:013) which talks of Jewish treachery and double-speaking. Is this the basis for 20th century Arab antisemitism?
4287. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 6:53:17 PM
"Here's another JEW quoting a Muslim cleric who seems to agree with Karsh..."
Bernard Lewis, a Jew, says something a bit more ambiguous:
"Contacts with Christians during the lifetime of the Prophet were rather less important and very much less contentious than with Jews.... No doubt because of the rather more peaceful relations between the Prophet and the Christians, references to them in the Qur'an are more favourable than to Jews... Other passages in the Qur'an and elsewhere dealing with Jesus, while not accepting the Christian doctrines on Christ's nature, nevertheless share the Christian view of the Jewish rejection. Toward the end of the Prophet's life, the expansion of the Muslim state brought it into contact and sometimes into conflict with Christian tribes, and a somewhat less benign attitude toward Christians is reflected in Muslim scripture and tradition. But in general, while these on the whole express a far more sympathetic attitude Christians than toward Jews, the subsequent development of Islamic law makes no such distinction between the two.
In other words, whatever the Qur'an says about Jews, a specifically Jewish-targeted animus never became part of the Islamic tradition. By contrast, whatever the Bible has to say about Jews, antisemitism became an important part of the long Christian tradition.
So Karsh is just projecting modern issues, particularly Jewish/Israeli ones, into the past. This is precisely the same thing that the Islamic cleric quoted by Bodansky is doing: the cleric is not drawing from Islamic tradition, but is interpreting the Qur'an anew.
So the attempt by Gleason, TONTA, to say these passages in the Qur'an are evidence of a "fertile ground" for antisemitism among Muslims in the early 20th century, fails utterly.
4288. mgleason - 2/18/2050 7:04:14 PM
How rich to be lectured by a DICK whose born-again ethnic enthusiasms must be presumed to play no part in a discussion where they are at least as suspect as the so-called 'partisan' attitudes in what has suddenly become the Arab-Jewish conflict, rather than the Arab-Israeli conflict over land. The DICK may paraphrase the Qu'ran to fit his own agenda, but not the JEW, ignoring what the Muslim cleric quoted above has to say about the Qu'ran's literal text. The link DICK provided to the Qu'ranic statements says:
As in any translation, the original language is not always easy to render in English, and this particular translation uses more temperate language than some others..
4289. mgleason - 2/18/2050 7:09:52 PM
I see that Lewis is to be used as a club when he appears to agree with DICK and pooh-poohed when he doesn't.
4290. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 7:17:32 PM
Gleason, PUTA, said in Message # 4288:
"How rich to be lectured by a DICK whose born-again ethnic enthusiasms..."
What born-again "ethnic enthusiasms"? I am not an Arab and I am not a religious Muslim. And I certainly haven't ever claimed to be either.
"...must be presumed to play no part in a discussion where they are at least as suspect as the so-called 'partisan' attitudes in what has suddenly become the Arab-Jewish conflict..."
I have never denied any biases.
Suppose I had quoted an Arab author or website in support of my views. Then Gleason, PUTA, would be babbling "Pal" propaganda and such.
"The DICK may paraphrase the Qu'ran to fit his own agenda..."
Read the passages from www.usa-israel.org. There is at most one passage which fits Karsh's description.
"...ignoring what the Muslim cleric quoted above has to say about the Qu'ran's literal text. "
Well, Gleason, PUTA, may not understand, but Andonly might. As she herself has argued in the past, the Qur'an's literal text is not the same as the Islamic tradition. And as Bernard Lewis has said, the Islamic tradition makes no distinction between Jews and Christians in terms of treatment.
4291. mgleason - 2/18/2050 7:23:51 PM
Calm down, DICK, you're close to incoherent. Isn't it about time for one of your girlish appeals for support from the gallery, pleading hurt puzzlement at your treatment at the hands of idiots?
Bernard Lewis notwithstanding, I refer you back to the fulminations of your brethren. After all, it's only 'natural' that you should grant them more weight.
4292. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 7:25:37 PM
Message # 4289
"I see that Lewis is to be used as a club when he appears to agree with DICK and pooh-poohed when he doesn't."
Yes, more or less.
PutaGleason apparently doesn't understand the concept of evidence contrary to expected bias. If you used Pakistani sources to make an anti-Indian argument about Kashmir, that would be less credible than if you used Pakistani sources to make a pro-Indian argument about Kashmir.
But in no instance have I rejected something Bernard Lewis has said, without providing a reason for rejecting it. I generally rely on him for facts. I do not have to rely on him or anyone else for reasoning. I supply my own.
4293. mgleason - 2/18/2050 7:28:04 PM
I do not have to rely on him or anyone else for reasoning. I supply my own.
Or someone does; it's not to difficult to determine who, DICK.
4294. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 7:36:19 PM
I hadn't realised you still tenías la mecha puesta. I thought you had passed that age already.
4295. mgleason - 2/18/2050 7:43:45 PM
Almost. I see I'm in good company, though, HERMAPHRODICK.
4296. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 8:10:04 PM
The crucial question: would the Jewish and Islamic traditions insist on the circumcision of a hermaphrodick?
4297. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 8:10:57 PM
By the way, Bernard Lewis's former student, Martin S Kramer, has got a book called 
It argues that the "western discovery of Islam" was mediated through sympathetic Jews and therefore contravenes Edward Said's contention that this "discovery" had taken place at the hands of hostile Christian scholars.
4298. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 8:15:21 PM
Speaking of both Said and Lewis.....
I find Edward Said's famous Orientalism a silly book, a trivial book, a retarded book. On page 315-316 of Orientalism, he quotes the following passage from Bernard Lewis:
"The root th-w-r in classical Arabic meant to rise up (e.g. of a camel), to be stirred or excited, and hence, especially in Maghribi usage, to rebel. It is often used in the context of establishing a petty, independent sovereignty; thus, for example, the so-called party kings who ruled in eleventh-century Spain after the breakup of the Caliphate of Cordova, are called thuwwar (singular tha'ir). The noun thawra at first means excitement, as in the phrase, cited in the Siháh, a standard medieval Arabic dictionary, intazir hatta taskun hadhihi 'l-thawra, wait until this excitement dies down—a very apt recommendation. The verb is used by al-Iji, in the form thawaran or itharat fitna, stirring up sedition, as one of the dangers which should discourage a man from practising the duty of resistance to bad government. Thawra is the term used by Arabic writers in the nineteenth-century for the French Revolution, and by their successors for the approved revolutions, domestic and foreign, of our own time."
This passage is deconstructed by Edward Said thus:
4299. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 8:15:41 PM
"Lewis's association of thawra with a camel rising and generally with excitement (and not with a struggle on behalf of values) hints much more broadly than is usual for him that the Arab is scarcely more than a neurotic sexual being. Each of the words or phrases he uses to describe revolution is tinged with sexuality: stirred, excited, rising up. But for the most part it is a 'bad' sexuality he ascribes to the Arab. In the end, since Arabs are really not equipped for serious action, their sexual excitement is no more noble than a camel's rising up. Instead of revolution there is sedition, setting up a petty sovereignty, and more excitement, which is as much as saying that instead of copulation the Arab can only achieve foreplay, masturbation, coitus interruptus. These, I think, are Lewis's implications, no matter how innocent his air of learning, or parlorlike his language."
Less apparently stupid, but actually more stupid, than Said's mentally retarded attack on Lewis, is Said's reasoning about the pioneering work of European philologists and linguists in British India. Sir William Jones, an intellectual hero of mine, is considered a founder of Indo-European studies. Serving in India during the late 18th century, he noted hitherto unnoticed similarities between Greek and Sanskrit, concluding that they must spring from some ancestral language.
Said quotes Jones:
4300. pseudoerasmus - 2/18/2050 8:16:11 PM
"The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident, than no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source."
What does Said make of this passage, half academic, half giddy with admiration for Sanskrit?
"To rule and to learn, then to compare Orient and Occident: these were Jones's goals, which, with an irresistible impulse always to codify, to subdue the infinite variety of the Orient to "a complete digest" of laws, figures, customs, and works, he is believed to have achieved. His most famous pronouncements indicates the extent to which modern Orientalism, even its philosophical beginnings, was a comparative discipline having for its principal goal the grounding of the European languages in a distant, and harmless, Oriental source..."
Said is the one of the stupidest persons to achieve fame. Palestinians have got such idiots for friends in the West.
4301. Jenerator - 2/18/2050 9:38:28 PM
I thought that MGleason and PE were friends(?), what the heck happened?
4302. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 12:14:27 AM
It was the hermaphrodick. She was repelled by the hermaphrodick.
4303. sakonige - 2/19/2050 2:42:25 AM
She seems to have noticed he is a Muslim.
4304. mgleason - 2/19/2050 7:38:29 AM
I'm afraid Sakonige is correct, Jenerator. I refer you to a certain 700-year period for the juicy details, but suffice it to say that you are witnessing the latest manifestation of an ancient territorial conflict. I must admit, however, that the hermaphrodickic twist has added a picaresque dimension to the hostilities.
Sit down to a plate of moros y cristianos and All shall be revealed to you.
4305. Wombat - 2/19/2050 9:15:24 AM
Yum. Instead of a plague on both houses...eat them. What a metaphor...a Jew who loves eating moros y cristianos, with some fried plantains on the side.
4306. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 10:37:13 AM
Does the reconquistadora know anything about the Milicias de Tropas Territoriales of Cuba?
4307. marjoribanks - 2/19/2050 10:39:46 AM
Pseuder is, by all evidence available, an atheist. Calling him a Muslim, and falling into the lazy pattern of labelling this discussion something on the lines of an old, centuries-aged, debate is facile.
In fact, after a quick read through the posts of the past few days, I see that he has simply put forth an immensely rational position, one full of caveats about Arab anti-semitism. Quite a clear elucidation of the facts, though not the kind of elucidation that is usually found in the Westernized, occasionally-cringing, media.
Few people are willing to face the matter of Israel/Palestine honestly, without an ideological agenda.
When those few do, they face -particularly in the US - a miasma of scurrilous allegations and dishonesty. The attempt to put Pseuder into the Muslim camp is one such. Another tactic is to label someone anti-semitic - which presumptuous correspondents here are leaning towards wrt my shared testimonies. yet another is to label Jews with the "self-hating" tag.
In my incipient old age, these tactics are clearer to my mind as simply obfuscatory. Speak anything but the truth, say anything to keep the focus off the gorilla in the room.
4308. sakonige - 2/19/2050 10:41:34 AM
Message # 4307
He's Muslim enough to call you a filthy Hindoooo.
4309. marjoribanks - 2/19/2050 10:43:09 AM
What is the truth?
The biggest part of it under discussion here is simple - Israel perpetuates the hostility and outrage its very presence initiated by continuing its brutal, illegal, occupation of the Palestinian territories.
4310. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 11:20:09 AM
Well, the genesis and nature of Arab antisemitism is not necessarily revelant to who is right in the Palestine conflict.
And I do not reproach anyone for supposing that I have biases. Everyone is biased after all.
4311. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 11:21:26 AM
(though I would own, if pressed, to confess that I am in fact as close to objective a mortal can get....)
4312. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 11:21:56 AM
... as a mortal...
4313. marjoribanks - 2/19/2050 11:24:31 AM
For your information, Sakonige, madam, that epithet is derived from a certain period in the British colonial era.
Of course only a puckish nitwit would use it today, but I don't take offense because it is grounded in years of mutual hostility, most of which I have found enjoyable.
However, when Andonly weighs in with/on it with that curiously ponderous and painful "witty" manner, I do take notes.
4314. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2050 11:25:02 AM
There are far too many issues here to wade in on but one canard struck me. sheer, foaming ethnic hatred has never been pervasive among Israelis or Jews in general", that may be because the Israelis are in the more powerful position. There is less reason to be neurotic and obsessive if you have the advantage. In any ethnic conflict, the weaker party is the more scurrilous, the more resentful, while the more powerful party is more prone to disdain and condescension.
This is flatly contradicted by the experience in the US regarding Native and African-Americans, as well as South Africa, the Jews of Poland and Russia, Chinese in Maylaysia etc.
It may be true in regards to the Irish and English, or others, but it is not a general trend. I think it is convient for PE's argument, but it doesn't necessarily follow.
4315. mgleason - 2/19/2050 11:33:04 AM
Yes, I am aware of the MTT. Their role is an interesting one.
And for Wombat's delectation, I present potaje de judias, proof that Spaniards, whatever else one may think of them, are culinary ecumenists.
4316. sakonige - 2/19/2050 11:39:09 AM
For your information, Sakonige, madam, that epithet is derived from a certain period in the British colonial era.
Well, 'filthy Hindooo' is something like the epithets Pakistanis still typically use when they refer to Indians on Pakistani messageboards. I don't think that is because the British started it. I think it has more to do with the fact that Pakistanis are overwhelmingly Muslim.
4317. Jenerator - 2/19/2050 11:55:37 AM
Maria,
I'll take anything you cook! Btw, I asked my question in #4301 out of real curiosity, not because I wanted to add any fuel to the fire.
Sakonige, you should stay out of it too. MarjoriBanks is not a filthy anything!
4318. marjoribanks - 2/19/2050 11:55:50 AM
What you think, madam, has rarely to do with what reality offers.
4319. Andonly - 2/19/2050 12:06:04 PM
"It was the hermaphrodick. She was repelled by the hermaphrodick."
It's unlikely she ever got close enough to be repelled by the hermaphrodick, having first been revolted by the gynecomastia.
4320. sakonige - 2/19/2050 12:13:30 PM
Message # 4318
pseudoerasmus descibes himself as culturally Muslim.
I suppose being culturally Muslim would mean having grown up with typically Muslim personal habits. It would mean close personal relationships and with other Muslims, shared personal experiences, and sympathy to their views.
I'm undoubtedly culturally Christian in the same ways. I even bow my head when my mother-in-law offers a Luthran prayer over Easter breakfast.
4321. concerned - 2/19/2050 12:14:01 PM
Here I was thinking that Pseudo Irascible and The Great One were tighter than two ticks in a hog's ear.
4322. PelleNilsson - 2/19/2050 12:14:24 PM
curiously ponderous and painful "witty" manner
Haha!
4323. concerned - 2/19/2050 12:16:07 PM
'The Great One' borrowed from Jackie Gleason, of course.
4324. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 12:18:09 PM
Jonesatlaw (Message # 4314)
This is flatly contradicted by the experience in the US regarding Native and African-Americans, as well as South Africa, the Jews of Poland and Russia, Chinese in Maylaysia etc. It may be true in regards to the Irish and English, or others, but it is not a general trend. I think it is convient for PE's argument, but it doesn't necessarily follow.
The Chinese in Malaysia and the Jews in Poland (and Ukraine, if not Russia) fit my case economically if not politically. Malay racism against the Chinese (and hatred of the Chinese in Southeast Asia in general) is born of Chinese economic dominance. In Poland and Ukraine, the Jews were the urban bourgeoisie, economically more advanced than the masses of Slav peasantry. Also, in both Poland and Ukraine, Jews managed the estates on behalf of the Polish aristocracy.
The thought of Sackonige ripping into the fray makes me reluctant to ask this, but how does the Native American case contradict what I said? Isn't the stronger party condescending and disdainful, while the weaker party resentful and neurotic ?
In the African-American case, aren't the whites more disdainful and condescending, while the blacks resentful (if not neurotic)? Southern whites appear to be resentful and neurotic, but isn't that because of the civil war and reconstruction?
I agree Russia doesn't fit at all, but Christian antisemitism draws upon an ancient tradition so perhaps you can be the asymmetry of the parties doesn't matter in this case.
All the same, I had other explanations in Message # 4275.
4325. sakonige - 2/19/2050 12:26:20 PM
I can't imagine why anyone would describe Native Americans as resentful and neurotic.
4326. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 12:27:49 PM
pseudoerasmus descibes himself as culturally Muslim. I suppose being culturally Muslim would mean having grown up with typically Muslim personal habits. It would mean close personal relationships and with other Muslims, shared personal experiences, and sympathy to their views.
No. By "cultural Muslim" I mean someone who is born technically a Muslim, who is aware of his Muslim heritage and takes interest in Islamic history & culture; as opposed to a "religious Muslim" who, whatever his descent, practises the religion.
I have no close personal relationships with any Muslims other than relatives (unless you count my half-Iranian, half-German best friend); few shared experiences at all (other than feasting on whole muttons twice a year and having once studied Arabic in "Sunday school"); and no "typically Muslim habits" (whatever they are).
Besides, I'm an apostate according to Islamic law. My mother, a Roman Catholic, had me baptised.
4327. concerned - 2/19/2050 12:31:25 PM
Re. 4325 -
Me neither. They're living in the land of opportunity; about the richest, most powerful country in the world.
4328. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 12:32:43 PM
Yes, I am aware of the MTT. Their role is an interesting one."
yes, but what do you know about it ? Specifically, are they armed ? and how so ?
4329. sakonige - 2/19/2050 12:36:46 PM
I have no close personal relationships with any Muslims other than relatives
Those of course are the relationships I am talking about, the shared experiences that really count. Your family relationships and experiences establish your Muslim heritage.
4330. concerned - 2/19/2050 12:38:41 PM
If the White Man had never come, Native Americans would still be preying on each others tribes, cooking with cow patties, chasing buffalo off of cliffs for eats and their frozen bodies would be blowing across the Great Plains like tumbleweeds in winter gales.
4331. Wombat - 2/19/2050 12:42:00 PM
Concerned might want read the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly, with the cover story "1491." Very interesting and provocative based on what 4330 had to say (even if it's leg pulling for Sak's "benefit").
4332. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 12:42:02 PM
I don't think anyone in my family has ever prayed since circa 1850.
4333. sakonige - 2/19/2050 12:43:56 PM
Message # 4326
"typically Muslim habits" ?
I don't know... do certain non-Muslim practices that violate Islamic taboos gross you out? Are you ridiculously fussy about certain little rituals, or sentimental about Muslim holidays? Do you like to sit on the floor, or eat with your hands?
4334. concerned - 2/19/2050 12:46:45 PM
Thanks, Wombat. I'll look that up. Sak - Jes' funnin', of course:)
4335. concerned - 2/19/2050 1:02:33 PM
Actually, I think PE eats off the floor and sits on his hands.
4336. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2050 1:05:04 PM
Message # 4333:
"...do certain non-Muslim practices that violate Islamic taboos gross you out?"
I really can't think of any. I love bacon & shellfish, and I have no problem eating with my left hand (since I hire Marjoribanks to perform the duties Islam reserves for the left hand).
"Are you ridiculously fussy about certain little rituals, or sentimental about Muslim holidays?"
Sentimental only about the smell and taste of nice little lambs slaughtered and roasted.
"Do you like to sit on the floor, or eat with your hands?"
I like sitting on the floor, but many non-Muslims (including the Japanese) do that. Some foods can only be eaten by knife & fork. Others, with chopsticks only. Still others, only with the hands. (Your hand is the best instrument to consume stewy things with bread, or pick at a roasted mutton head.)
4337. sakonige - 2/19/2002 1:15:15 PM
Message # 4336
Sitting with a group on the floor, picking at the roasted head of a ritually slaughtered lamb so as not to waste a bit, sounds very Muslim.
4338. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2002 1:35:51 PM
"picking at the roasted head of a ritually slaughtered lamb so as not to waste a bit, sounds very Muslim."
Firstly, the head of a mutton or a lamb is eaten not to avoid waste (only a North American and possibly a Briton would say that), because it's damned good. Secondly, that's hardly Muslim. The mutton/lamb heads are consumed everywhere but in the plasticated parts of the world you inhabit.
4339. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2002 1:46:39 PM
PE- this is what struck me the characterization of the dominant ethnic group as less likely to be nuerotic and obsessive, with a greater likelyhood of these traits in the oppressed ethnic group. [God, the PC types have stolen the language such that this sounds like leftist cant.]
I think that there is a substantial core of neurotic obsession to white racism in the US, most floridly expressed by those persons in the dominant ethnic group closest to the minority group. The Scottsboro Boys incident reeks with "obsessive nuerosis" about black men's sexuality.
The Boers in South Africa also seem to fit. Again I think that they were always aware of their isolation in a sea of black Africans. They were very focused on dividing this sea whenever possible, even though uniting the different ethnic groups would have been as difficult for black South Africans as any other given hodgepodge of peoples, were it not for the shared experience under apartheid.
I can see your point regarding the Maylaysian Chinese and urban eastern and central European Jews and the economic influence counterbalancing the demographics, but with the substantial number of Jews from rural villages in parts of Poland, Ukraine and Russia also at the receiving end of progroms it loses some force in argument.
4340. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2002 1:47:00 PM
As for "condescending and disdainful" especially regarding Native Americans, I think that it only touches on a portion of white racist attitudes towards Native Americans. It is more of a flavor of racism than the overall pattern. There were white people who see Native Americans as dangerous and not suited to civilized society by their very nature, and advocated their active elimination. Col. Chivington of the Colorado Militia comes to mind- at Sandycreek he quoted as saying to his troops as they attacked the encampment "Kill them all, little and big. Nits make lice." Sounds a bit obsessive and neurotic when old women, mothers and young children are compared to vermin.
Another group fits your analysis, those who expressed belief that Indians would pass from the scene like carrier pigeons, being bypassed by evolution, and those who thought that Native Americans must be wholly assimilated and made "white" in order to survive.
Again, I can't say that the dynamic you describe never happens, I just deny it as a rule, or even as the predominant experience.
4341. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2002 1:52:01 PM
Concerned- you presume no technological advances for first nations over the intervening time?
Your description of life applied well to Europe at a different time. Yet, it did not persist. How do we know that the Americas might not have done the same? Compare the Anasazi to their European contemporaries in day to day living, and I think that the Americas compare favorably.
4342. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2002 1:54:30 PM
Concerned- I see that you were not serious. As Emily Latella often said "Nevermiiind..."
4343. sakonige - 2/19/2002 2:06:12 PM
4344. sakonige - 2/19/2002 2:07:48 PM 4345. mgleason - 2/19/2002 2:16:02 PM Message # 4328 4346. jexster - 2/19/2002 3:09:01 PM How the Jewish Lobby Thwarts Peace 4347. stostosto - 2/19/2002 3:52:14 PM I had sheep head last spring on the Faroe Islands. It's a traditional dish there - same in Norway. It was also very good; only lunt meat topped it in delicacy in the buffet I was served. By contrast, all the various editions of dried fish were really off-putting. 4348. robertjayb - 2/19/2002 4:04:29 PM Bloody Tuesday 4349. concerned - 2/19/2002 4:06:02 PM When I read stuff like the above, it's hard to avoid thinking of the word 'attrition'. 4350. Wombat - 2/19/2002 4:30:37 PM The Italians also do a sheep's head dish. 4351. sakonige - 2/19/2002 4:45:19 PM stostosto - 4352. stostosto - 2/19/2002 4:59:34 PM The heads I had were in halves, and I don't think the brain went into it; certainly the eyes were taken out. Basically you eat the face muscles of the lamb off its cranium. It looks a bit morbid, having half a lamb head filling your plate looking at you with its empty eye socket, but it tastes deliciously. Of course, you need chopsticks for this. (Just kidding). 4353. Jonesatlaw - 2/19/2002 5:10:34 PM God, 4354. marjoribanks - 2/19/2002 5:35:21 PM From the hype of our leaders, one would think that the primitive Kassem-2, less accurate than a Katyusha rocket or a mortar, and certainly less deadly than a suicide bomber who infiltrates an Israeli settlement, presents a mortal threat to the nation. And while we prattle on about this silly missile, they blow up the most fortified tank in the world, the Merkava 3. As in Lebanon, sticking to routine, plying the same roads, relying on heavy armor in civilian population centers, have done us in. The deeper we go into Palestinian Authority territory, the more we pursue our plan of dicing up the West Bank into towns and districts, the worse off we will be. 4355. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2002 5:39:45 PM Message # 4343 4356. pseudoerasmus - 2/19/2002 5:41:36 PM Message # 4345: "I say that they play an interesting role because their guerilla-inspired organization is meant to act as a curb to the power of the regular armed forces, though there's been no real cause for concern on Castro's part. It's just the kind of thing the wily old survior would dream up." 4357. marjoribanks - 2/19/2002 6:49:52 PM The link in Jexster's #4346 is very interesting. 4358. RustlerPike - 2/20/2002 1:04:20 AM Jexster - was that you who blew up that Merkava? You went missing and then -boom! 4359. mgleason - 2/20/2002 7:16:47 AM I understand that the citizen militia is comprised of 1 million people. A dictator would have to awfully confident of the loyalty of the militia. 4360. RustlerPike - 2/20/2002 10:39:35 AM This image really makes it clear why the Middle east is such an important place. 4361. transient1a - 2/20/2002 10:45:25 AM Jonesatlaw, 4362. transient1a - 2/20/2002 10:45:52 AM >>>> 4363. marjoribanks - 2/20/2002 10:55:16 AM Those whose memory has not been totally eradicated, know, for example, that there was a dramatic drop in the number of casualties starting in the middle of December after Arafat's speech to his people. During the three weeks following the speech there was only one Israeli casualty, compared to 44 in the three weeks preceding the speech. A large segment of Israeli society took note that the prime minister and his partners in the government and IDF general headquarters refused to use the relative calm - as both Israel and the Palestinians had agreed, according to the Tenet work plan and the Mitchell report - for a renewal of the negotiations, first to consolidate the cease-fire and then to return to talks over a final agreement. The negotiations would have enabled more effective international pressure against terror attacks. But Sharon was discovered to be chronically opposed to negotiations. In his mythological chase after Arafat's head, he's done everything - with the help of the refuseniks on the other side - to perpetuate the conflict. 4364. transient1a - 2/20/2002 10:55:31 AM pseudoerasmus, 4365. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 11:13:42 AM I really have no idea. I don't collect every bit of trivia about Jews and the Holocaust. 4366. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 11:18:05 AM I have Moroccan neighbours and they tell me with tiresome frequency how excellent are Morrocan-Jewish relations and how much the Moroccan Jews in France and Israel still feel for Morocco. 4367. marjoribanks - 2/20/2002 11:19:17 AM I don't know how "unique" the Moroccan Jewish community is in terms of good relations with the government/monarchy. You can say pretty much everything about the Jews in Iran ( a far larger community, by the way) that you can about the community in Morocco. 4368. marjoribanks - 2/20/2002 11:21:20 AM And in fact, were it not for the patronage of the King, Morocco wouldn't be known for particularly significant good relations with the local Jews. In fact, as that transient1a excerpt mentions, there were anti-Jewish riots when Israel was established and dozens of Jews were killed. 4369. transient1a - 2/20/2002 11:33:19 AM pseudoerasmus, 4370. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 11:41:02 AM Hundreds of thousands leaving qualifies as "en masse". 4371. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 11:42:28 AM I have noticed that Iranian Jews, at least those in the West, tend to associate with other Iranians, actively celebrate Iranian holidays, etc. Whether this means they are sentimental for Iran, I've no idea. 4372. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 11:43:55 AM "In fact, as that transient1a excerpt mentions, there were anti-Jewish riots when Israel was established and dozens of Jews were killed." 4373. transient1a - 2/20/2002 12:03:53 PM pseudoerasmus, 4374. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 12:19:24 PM There is no such implication. But I suppose someone who could confuse "could have" with "could of" is illiterate enough to make such an inference. 4375. transient1a - 2/20/2002 12:29:26 PM pseudoerasmus, 4376. Andonly - 2/20/2002 12:47:34 PM Pseudoerasmus may have no idea what Heidegger's philosophy of authenticity can imply, but the Transient may not recall enough about Heidegger's (complex) life to bring to mind the precise implication of my barb. 4377. Andonly - 2/20/2002 1:04:21 PM An expat Iranian, former radicalized Shi'ite discusses his country's historical treatment of minorities, particularly Jews. 4378. jexster - 2/20/2002 1:47:52 PM Ernest Gellner has an interesting discussion of Arendt/Heidegger in a collection of (largely impenetrable) essays Conditions Of Liberty : Civil Society And Its Rivals - this one was penetrable and its a very interesting topic not only for its biographical but its social/historical dimension as well. 4379. jexster - 2/20/2002 1:49:19 PM or was it Culture, Identity & Politics? 4380. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:00:03 PM I am absolutely certain Andonly has no idea what Dasein is. 4381. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:00:25 PM Message # 4376: "The point I made is that labelling western, principled refusals to wallow in ethnic hatred "PC" and insisting that this only masks lurking anti-Arabism in Jews..." 4382. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:00:34 PM 4383. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:00:48 PM 4384. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:12:54 PM Notice how quickly MGleason tried to imply I was being antisemitic in Message # 4285: 4385. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:22:08 PM If there is a Dasein, are there also a Hiersein and Hinuntersein? And is the latter the existential dilemma associated with being an Australian? 4386. mgleason - 2/20/2002 2:34:33 PM It's hardly my fault that PAL has such a warm and fuzzy feel to it when compared to JEW. Moreover, the Pals, whatever their excesses, cannot be blamed for Said. 4387. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:43:59 PM PAL is that Arab-accented computer on 2001, isn't it? No wonder he kept on calling him BAL. 4388. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 2:44:28 PM himself 4389. mgleason - 2/20/2002 2:58:17 PM Good job; you and HAL have now mired us in Baal worship. 4390. stostosto - 2/20/2002 4:12:19 PM If there is a Dasein, are there also a Hiersein and Hinuntersein? And is the latter the existential dilemma associated with being an Australian? 4391. stostosto - 2/20/2002 4:26:36 PM By the way, has anyone seen a BBC program (I think) about the origins of Nazi "final solution" in which they showed extensive footing from a propaganda film called "Dasein ohne Leben"? It dealt with the human indignity of the life of mentally handicapped and compassionately advocated that their "Dasein" be ended. 4392. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 4:27:56 PM And now I'm beginning to feel Miteinandersein. 4393. stostosto - 2/20/2002 4:33:31 PM Perhaps in the company of a certain Nobel laureate one could have the feeling of Miteinsteinsein. 4394. stostosto - 2/20/2002 4:36:16 PM You might even have dinner and be served Eisbein at his house. That would account for an acute case of Eisbeinbeieinsteinsein. 4395. Andonly - 2/20/2002 4:43:01 PM "But Jews, given their historical experience, cannot but look upon antisemitism as a unique, special, and priviledged form of racism." 4396. Andonly - 2/20/2002 4:43:16 PM But that I also support Israel and complain about Arab antisemitism simply reinforces your bias. You ignore whatever I say that doesn't fit the stereotype of the Israel-supporting Jew who must be anti-Muslim, through which you suspiciously filter all your encounters. Yet I have said here that any number of Arabs have a right to viscerally hate Israel and the Jews who support Israel. I have made it very plain that my quarrel is with wholesale, pan-Arab, pan-Muslim antisemitism--the paranoid demonization of Jews which you have conceded is neurotic, but reponsibility for which neurosis you lay upon those who set it off but did not generate it. 4397. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:06:05 PM Message # 4395 4398. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:06:28 PM Message # 4396 4399. Andonly - 2/20/2002 5:11:26 PM "If there is a Dasein, are there also a Hiersein and Hinuntersein? And is the latter the existential dilemma associated with being an Australian?" 4400. mgleason - 2/20/2002 5:14:35 PM I'm not the one putting epithets in all caps and in bold-face. 4401. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:18:30 PM "Dasein was the quasi-poetic/pre-Socratic nomenclature Heidegger used to refer to human "existence" 4402. concerned - 2/20/2002 5:21:43 PM Fat Jews vs. exploding Arabs 4403. stostosto - 2/20/2002 5:22:30 PM I have been as calm as the breezes on Rhodes throughout this whole exchange. 4404. marjoribanks - 2/20/2002 5:27:56 PM Yet I have said here that any number of Arabs have a right to viscerally hate Israel and the Jews who support Israel. 4405. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:31:48 PM I try to enshrine hysteria in prose through Spanish punctuation marks. 4406. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:33:17 PM I really liked marielita's cristianos y moros comment, by the way. very droll. 4407. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:34:01 PM I am going to change my moniker to 4408. concerned - 2/20/2002 5:37:18 PM Perhaps Al Qaeddin for your honorific? 4409. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:38:12 PM Andonly said: "Many, many Jews do consider antisemitism a 'unique, special, and priviledged form of racism', and have indeed succeeded in convincing any Americans who will listen that it's true. But I'm not among them, and you have no basis for believing I am--none--other than your preconception of what all Jews think and believe." 4410. marjoribanks - 2/20/2002 5:39:33 PM Farsi with those Spanish inversions. It's so L.A. 4411. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 5:40:49 PM Message # 4408: Concerned, I am an exceedingly pedantic person, and therefore I must reject alqaiddin as grammatically incorrect. 4412. Andonly - 2/20/2002 5:53:16 PM "I once said that Jews -- naturally, if I may use that loaded word again --have biases about Muslims. You have given that statement a life of its own by transmuting it into this "all Jews are anti-Muslim" which I have never said in my enitre life." 4413. Andonly - 2/20/2002 5:55:29 PM "Notice how quickly MGleason tried to imply I was being antisemitic in Message # 4285" 4414. Andonly - 2/20/2002 5:56:03 PM ...impossible for you to view... 4415. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:01:21 PM "I still don't know who Benny Morris is, though I am aware of revisionist historians of Israel's founding, and not because of you." 4416. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:18:27 PM "That some Muslims might be galled at uppity dhimmis, including Christians, I have no doubt. (though I frankly think all of you who have never set foot in a single Muslim country, really exaggerate it. You all really need to travel sometime.)" 4417. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:21:12 PM "I really don't understand the distinction you're making." 4418. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:23:20 PM "No, you are hysteric. You're a Muslim, right?" 4419. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 6:24:38 PM Of course I know about the Copts. They're the object of attacks by Islamists in Egypt. But the general population doesn't have a pathological hatred of Copts. Most Egyptians, it's fair to say, hate Jews. 4420. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:26:17 PM "I am going to change my moniker to 4421. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 6:29:27 PM "Or that there has been a veritable exodus of Christians from Lebanon in the last few years?" 4422. Andonly - 2/20/2002 6:31:02 PM I can't keep up with all this, and duties call. 4423. sakonige - 2/20/2002 7:10:34 PM "Maria had it right about your newfound ethnic entusiasms." 4424. concerned - 2/20/2002 7:17:47 PM Shari'a should be relegated to history, in short, because it does not recognize equal human rights among all. 4425. concerned - 2/20/2002 7:20:33 PM Re. 4423 - 4426. Andonly - 2/20/2002 7:47:34 PM "Civil war and greater opportunity to flee abroad, have little to do with it?" 4427. jexster - 2/20/2002 7:48:40 PM The Beginning of the End of Sharon's Fat Murderous Ass? (UK Telegraph) 4428. Andonly - 2/20/2002 7:55:36 PM "They're the object of attacks by Islamists in Egypt. But the general population doesn't have a pathological hatred of Copts." 4429. jexster - 2/20/2002 8:02:48 PM Palestinian guerrillas managed for the first time to destroy a Merkava-3 4430. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:12:36 PM Christians are leaving Lebanon largely because they have lost their formerly dominant position in Lebanon thanks to (1) the civil war, (2) the Israeli war; and (3) Syrian interference. 4431. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:15:14 PM Now that Andonly is back from dutifully letting her offspring hang from her udder... 4432. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:16:23 PM 4433. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:16:41 PM 4434. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:29:53 PM I don't know about "gangs", but I do know that Copts are regularly victimised by Islamists in Egypt and the police frequently do nothing for fear of angering the Islamists. I also know that radical Islamists publish anti-Coptic screeds in their newspapers. I really can't say how virulent anti-Christian rhetoric in Egypt is, but I can't believe it is anywhere the rival of anti-semitism -- which is almost universal among Arabs. 4435. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 8:36:24 PM (Lebanon has got an old and longstanding conflict between Muslims and Christians.) 4436. transient1a - 2/20/2002 9:33:41 PM Andonly, 4437. robertjayb - 2/20/2002 9:39:32 PM Going Naval...Ships, Tanks hit Gaza 4438. Andonly - 2/20/2002 9:44:54 PM "And all this time I though you had been talking about the massacred in 1948 at the hands of the Stern Gang." 4439. jexster - 2/20/2002 9:48:29 PM Well Sharon says he's just gonna keep on killing. 4440. pseudoerasmus - 2/20/2002 10:10:30 PM Message # 4438: "They're weaned, but maybe you with your gynecomastia and shortage of progeny would take comfort in allowing them to bat your breasts back and forth for sport while you attempt to survive a game of chess with my five-year old. How much do you charge for babysitting? I'll be happy to have someone drive you home." 4441. Al D - 2/20/2002 10:36:37 PM P.E. 4442. RustlerPike - 2/20/2002 11:31:00 PM Hello friends. I am a Palestinian named Ahmed Bakri. I have taken over the Pike house. Pike is to be executed tomorrow. This house smells very bad. 4443. robertjayb - 2/21/2002 12:40:42 AM Make some tea from crushed fennel seeds. That is supposed to help. 4444. arkymalarky - 2/21/2002 12:50:54 AM My posting at this time has nothing to do with the really neat number I'm grabbing, but is solely prompted by my concern for RP's safety. 4445. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 1:17:22 AM I would like to host this thread now. Is that acceptable or do I need to provide proof of Pike's death? 4446. sakonige - 2/21/2002 1:21:24 AM 4447. Andonly - 2/21/2002 6:00:02 AM "I'm quite jealous (not of your breasts)." 4448. Andonly - 2/21/2002 6:00:23 AM "Hello friends. I am a Palestinian named Ahmed Bakri. I have taken over the Pike house. Pike is to be executed tomorrow. This house smells very bad." 4449. Andonly - 2/21/2002 7:02:09 AM "What made me think that you are among them, was your reaction to my Message # 4070." 4450. Andonly - 2/21/2002 7:02:29 AM That's not to say Americans are equally concious of all sorts of ethnic or sectarian bias; American conciousness pretty much stops at the border of American majority interests. But, especially in the last decade or so, it seems that Murcans in general have adopted an anti-racist stance that more or less equally enfolds all other stories with that of the Jews and American blacks. Even among Jews, especially liberal, educated Jews, the trend is to consider the Holocaust approximately as horrible as several other mass slaughters (under Stalin, Pol Pot); and worse than the extermination of indigenes and the enslavement of blacks in America only because it occurred in a modern, otherwise "civilized" country. 4451. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 7:23:28 AM It's been done. 4452. mgleason - 2/21/2002 7:39:37 AM Are you a member of the Pal Grocer Network or just another heroic freedom fighter? This looks like Jex's handiwork. 4453. Andonly - 2/21/2002 7:43:51 AM Oh, and by the way: 4454. Andonly - 2/21/2002 7:47:00 AM Pike looks so sweet dead. 4455. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 7:48:54 AM mg: 4456. Property of Jesus - 2/21/2002 8:30:02 AM The difference between commander in chief Clinton with War Leader Bush 4457. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 8:32:56 AM Message # 4449: "Perhaps you misunderstood my impatience with your oft-repeated rant about the naivete of the west with regard to ethnic conflicts around the world..." 4458. Wombat - 2/21/2002 8:41:17 AM Brilliant article by Benny Morris (Israeli revisionist historian) in today's Guardian. Highlights include his equation of Arafat to Haj Amin Husseini in manner and aims. 4459. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 8:42:09 AM Andonly: You know who has a "normal" right, in 2002, to violently despise Israel and, if they're backward gits inclined to racism, Jews? The Palestinians, the Syrians, the Jordanians (who either are Palestinians or are dangerously affected by West Bank instability), and the Lebanese (who can be expected to remain pissed about the invasion for a while yet). That's it. Not the Egyptians, who got their land back decades ago. Not Iran, which never had a territorial conflict with Jews. [Etc.] 4460. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:42:49 AM PE's idea that widespread anti-Semitic views in Muslim lands are the result of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and that this is similar to what is found in other ethnic conflicts around the globe, doesn't hold up to any serious examination. 4461. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:43:36 AM Perhaps most striking is the symbolic, one might also say the magical, destruction which various agencies which is constantly repeated and reenacted at the United Nations and its various agencies -- a kind of prefigurement of what the Arab States hope ultimately to inflict. Even the bitterest of conflicts --between France and Germany over Alsace and Lorraine, between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the Aegean, between China and Japan, India and Pakistan, or Iraq and Iran have never involved total nonrecognition of one side by the other, the total refusal of dialogue, the declared intention to not only defeat the adversary state but to wipe it off the map. 4462. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 8:44:12 AM Speaking of racism - here's Ori Nir from Haaretz: 4463. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:44:13 AM Later, Lewis comments on one possible explanation for the unique Muslim outrage of the existance of Israel: 4464. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:44:53 AM Why then this special anger in the Muslim response to the end of Palestine and the birth of Israel? Part of this is certainly due to its position, in the very center of the Arab core of the Islamic world, and to its inclusion of the city of Jerusalem which -- after long and sometimes bitter disputes -- was finally recognized as the third Holy City of Islam after Mecca and Medina. But most of all, the sense of outrage, as is clearly shown in countless speeches and writings, was due to the identity of those who inflicted these dramatic defeats on Muslim armies and imposed their rule on Muslim Arab populations. The victors were not the followers of a world religion nor the armies of a mighty imperial power, by which one could be conquered without undue shame -- not the Catholic kings of Spain, not the far-flung British Empire, not the immense and ruthless might of Russia -- but the Jews, few scattered, and powerless, whose previous humility made their truimphs especially humiliating. [Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, p. 237-239] 4465. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:45:45 AM But we are not the only ones to think it different. The Arabs and Muslims are even more obsessive about the conflict. And the recent identification, just a few decades back, of the Palestianian cause with anti-colonialism, and the Third World in general, has also given the conflict resonance in areas outside of Europe and the Greater Middle East. 4466. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 8:52:50 AM The book by Lewis, by the way, is outstanding, and anyone interested in anti-Semitism in the Arab world should read it. The Norton paperback edition has an Afterward written by Lewis in the late 1990s to update the book, first published in 1986. 4467. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 9:59:39 AM Message # 4460: "...it is the widespread dissemination and virulence of that hatred towards Jews, in general, and to Israel in particular that make it stand out...." 4468. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 9:59:52 AM Message # 4463: "For Muslims, in particular, the loss of old Muslim land to non-Muslim invaders is a heavy blow, causing anguish and outrage. But this too is not unprecedented, and has indeed happened many times before. From the loss of Portugal to Spain, at the end of the Middle Ages, to the abandonment of province after province and Muslim community after Muslim community in southeastern Europe during the long-drawn-out retreat of the Ottoman empire, Muslims have lost many countries to Christendom". 4469. sakonige - 2/21/2002 10:00:01 AM Message # 4449 4470. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:00:47 AM Message # 4463: "Old Muslim lands on the northern and eastern shoes of the Black Sea, around the Caspian, and in Central Asia were added to the Russian Empire. They remain part of the Soviet Union and their fate is decided in Moscow." 4471. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:01:01 AM Message # 4464: "...the sense of outrage, as is clearly shown in countless speeches and writings, was due to the identity of those who inflicted these dramatic defeats on Muslim armies and imposed their rule on Muslim Arab populations..." 4472. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:05:02 AM Message # 4465: "A normal ethnic conflict between some Arabs and some Jews would not cause Iran -- a Persian country with its own difficulties with Arabs -- to not only spew anti-Jewish rhetoric at an alarming frequency, but to attack the Palestianians for trying to make peace with that country." 4473. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:08:19 AM "You're Jewish after all so it would be suprising if you regarded antisemitism as anything but the most abominable form of all ethnic hatreds." 4474. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:09:24 AM However, in my experience, ordinary Iranians care far less about Palestine than Arabs. (This is in contrast to the government which is always bending over backward to prove its Islamic credentials to the hostile Sunni world.) This may be because there is a much larger Jewish community in Iran than in any other Arab country. All the same, if my entirely impressionistic observation is correct, that may explain why Iran had relations with Israel before 1979. 4475. sakonige - 2/21/2002 10:20:30 AM "Why this difference? It's the occupation of Palestine." 4476. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 10:22:18 AM Terrorism is not a word that should be applied to this conflict between unless it is used of both sides. The Palestinian Islamic-nationalists who dispatch suicide bombers, or fire their mortars and homemade rockets into Israel, intend to sow terror and insecurity, hoping to undermine the government. So does Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, by sending F-16s and Apaches to shoot missiles into Gaza at night. 4477. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:24:11 AM Message # 4473: "You simply fail to distinguish between intensities, intents, and scopes of loathing. It's one thing to disdain, another to despise, another to wish to exterminate." 4478. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:24:32 AM "Both Jews and Christians had been contemptible dhimmis; and both Christians and Jews have visited humiliations upon Arabs and Muslims. But in the end, it's the Jews and Israelis that have become the object of particular hatred and scorn. Why this difference?" 4479. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:25:50 AM Message # 4473: "But it's understandable that someone with your biases...." 4480. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 10:28:47 AM The ability of the Americans to re-write history and to blow-dry the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into clichés is a scandal. The occupied Palestinian territories have now become the "disputed" territories; Jewish colonies on Arab land have become "settlements" and now, according to the BBC and CNN, "neighbourhoods". Israeli death squads are now "elite forces" who carry out "targeted killings". In the same way, the American media have declared victory in Afghanistan. 4481. mgleason - 2/21/2002 10:34:34 AM I'd stop bleating about the impossible to understand, yet unjust 'born-again ethnic enthusiasms' accusation lest a certain boat person believe she struck a nerve. 4482. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 10:37:24 AM PE -- 4483. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 10:37:53 AM 4484. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:38:27 AM I have bleated about it precisely once without someone else first mentioning it. 4485. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 10:47:21 AM Do (or have) Ethnic Turks outside of Turkey subscribe to weird racial theories about the Greeks, refuse to recognize or trade with them, arm their brethern in Corsica to fight them, and attack or isolate their brethern who want to make peace with them? 4486. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 10:49:55 AM PE -- 4487. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:54:25 AM Message # 4482: "Here a section that more fairly represents Lewis's views..." 4488. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:54:43 AM Message # 4483: 4489. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:56:19 AM (2) Ethnic Turks outside Turkey support all issues important to Turkey. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakstan -- all ethnic Turkish states -- supported Azerbaijan against Armenia in the Karabakh war. Turkey STILL refuses to open diplomatic relations with Armenia. The Central Asian states, despite being part of the CIS along with Armenia, never established full diplomatic relations with Armenia ("consular ties" as the euphemism goes). All the ethnic Turkish states support Turkey's position on Cyprus and recognise the Turkish Cypriot Republic, recognised by no other country. 4490. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:04:21 AM PE -- 4491. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 11:11:00 AM Message # 4486: "Yes, there is always something different about each ethnic conflict." 4492. ElliottRW - 2/21/2002 11:11:44 AM pseudoerasmus You say that Arab countries have an interest in framing the Palestine issue as a Muslim issue. How has this interest changed, if at all, since 9-11? 4493. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:14:00 AM Dhimmi, dhimmi, dhimmi, a man after midnight... 4494. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:17:16 AM 4495. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:17:45 AM Never mind, I see you've explained it. 4496. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:18:10 AM An Israeli officer tells his colleagues, according to the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, that they must "study how the German Army operated in the Warsaw Ghetto". 4497. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 11:20:02 AM Message # 4490 4498. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:29:23 AM PE 4499. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:32:04 AM 4500. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 11:33:22 AM What the fuck is this moron talking about? When was this purportedly published? 4501. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:38:53 AM I'm not sure I've understood yet why the precise definition of the roots and nature of Arab antisemitism is so crucial. Is it like - if the Arabs are antisemites then they are in the Axis of Evil, in the League of History's True Bad Guys, and if they aren't then they're OK? 4502. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 11:40:08 AM Message # 4494: "This is a shift in your argument. You just corrected me by saying that your use of "ethnic" meant "sectarian." 4503. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 11:40:19 AM Message # 4494: "Yes, at the same time the Soviet Union was oppressing more Muslims than the hardest of hard-core Zionist could ever dream of, most Arab states had diplomatic relations with it, traded with it, and had cultural exchanges with it." 4504. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:41:52 AM I don't know, but you can be sure that the statement has been fact-checked. 4505. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:43:36 AM PE -- 4506. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 11:47:41 AM FWIW, the Kashmir issue has long since expanded from a purely India/Pak dispute to one which includes the global jihadis (including Bin Laden) and foreign fighters from an array of countries. 4507. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 11:49:03 AM Not that the allegation itself makes much difference. I do think that if it is true, it should be plastered all over American media - but that's just me. 4508. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 11:49:51 AM Message # 4498: "Pakistan and Iran['s]...fear of the Soviet Union pushing into Central Asia sufficiently explains why they would help Afghanistan to fight the Communists. So those examples don't contradict Lewis's point." 4509. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 11:51:40 AM My point was that the hatred of Jews by Muslims - as demonstrated through the type and level of rhetoric throughout the Muslim world -- is unique. 4510. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 11:55:21 AM PE -- 4511. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 12:00:48 PM Message # 4505 4512. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 12:12:20 PM Motivation has long been an underlying theme of discussion in this thread, with the Arabs (in general) most often being accused of desiring nothing less that the annihilation of the Jewish state. Look at Spike's musings just today. 4513. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 12:13:30 PM 4514. jexster - 2/21/2002 12:14:35 PM 4515. jexster - 2/21/2002 12:17:59 PM Today I launch the Mote's "Save Rustler Pike's Hairy Ass Campaign" 4516. stostosto - 2/21/2002 12:19:44 PM Regarding Muslim hatred of Russians, there was a recent news story here demonstrating it. We have a number of Muslim schools here, some of which sometimes have caused furore, mainly because of their active hostility to this country and the West in general which they indoctrinate their pupils with using the most backwards and authoritarian form of rote learning. (Secondarily because the children there get a really bad education bordering on the useless). 4517. stostosto - 2/21/2002 12:24:22 PM For Rustler: 4518. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 12:27:57 PM Message # 4510: "Your comments in Message # 4488 and Message # 4489 are significant, especially your second point in Message # 4489. But in our context the relevant issue is Greece..." 4519. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 12:28:09 PM Message # 4510: "...so I would need to know how Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakstan all choose to deal with the European state, what kind of relations they have, what kind of stereotypes of Greeks they have and how significant are those stereotypes." 4520. stostosto - 2/21/2002 12:32:10 PM (Do they circumcise pigs in Turkey?) 4521. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 12:38:20 PM Message # 4516: "I took note of this, in particular, because several people here in the Mote have opined that Muslims are unduly and inexplicably selective in their hatred of Americans (no, actually, the explanation put forward has been a combo of "our democracy and freedoms" and "we are rich and they are not"), and I don't think Pincher is the first to have quoted that passage from Lewis' book where he makes that point (or similar comments from other sources)." 4522. stostosto - 2/21/2002 12:48:16 PM Pseud, 4523. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 12:52:58 PM PE -- 4524. stostosto - 2/21/2002 12:53:52 PM Wombat commendably mentioned Morris' article in the Guardian, but shamefully neglected to provide a link. Here. 4525. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 12:56:07 PM Stostosto, I don't dispute that I may have asked Rustler about Andonly's comments about Benny Morris, but I don't recall the incident. 4526. marjoribanks - 2/21/2002 1:02:02 PM 4527. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 1:08:47 PM Message # 4523 4528. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 1:09:09 PM PE -- 4529. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 1:09:17 PM No, I'm sure they didn't have such a rationalisation about Palestine, but they certainly did about Anatolia, which they regarded as their homeland. Bernard Lewis himself makes a claim (if I recall correctly) in The Emergence of Modern Turkey (his best book) that the emergence of the ethnic Turkish identity was due, in large part, to the gradual stripping away of the non-Muslim, non-Turkish periphery of the Ottoman empire at the hands of the Europeans, and its eventual reduction to the Turkish Anatolian core. 4530. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 1:19:00 PM Marj -- 4531. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 1:39:35 PM Marj -- 4532. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 1:40:27 PM Arabs have been caught (dead) in Chechnya. 4533. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 1:54:04 PM PE -- 4534. Andonly - 2/21/2002 1:55:47 PM Ots: "(Isn't it comforting that Muslims are perfectly capable of hating other peoples as much as they hate Americans and Jews?)" 4535. jexster - 2/21/2002 1:59:47 PM Mister Chicken Fat on CNN now: 4536. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 2:04:18 PM PE -- 4537. jexster - 2/21/2002 2:18:26 PM Sharon offers up pretty lame gefilte fish - former US ambassador... 4538. jexster - 2/21/2002 2:18:51 PM That Fat sack of shit is done for. 4539. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 2:21:24 PM 4540. ronski - 2/21/2002 2:24:20 PM I thought many Indian Moslems would prefer to keep Kashmir in India so as not to further dilute Moslem representation in India. 4541. jexster - 2/21/2002 2:30:46 PM Peace Now - "Sharon is a fat idiot" 4542. jexster - 2/21/2002 2:33:10 PM The proportion of Jews living in Israel and the territories is today 53 percent, but it will be between 43 to 48 percent in 2020. This forecast is included in an extensive study published this week by Professor Sergio DellaPergola, chairperson of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The conclusion to be drawn from this forecast is clear to anyone who wants to live in Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority - an end must be put to the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and there must be a return to borders based on the 1967 lines (with agreed-upon adjustments). In the area between the Jordan River and the sea two states must live side by side - Israel and Palestine. Only those who dream immoral and impracticable dreams of transfer, or those who cling to the anachronistic and dangerous vision of a bi-national state, can question something so obvious. Haaretz 4543. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 2:35:45 PM Sto -- 4544. PincherMartin - 2/21/2002 2:42:59 PM PE -- 4545. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:00:09 PM Pincher's Message # 4543 is a good, brief synopsis. 4546. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:04:38 PM Message # 4488: "The particular virulence and enforced isolation by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims....even when their country has never been harmed in any way by the Jewish state, has no parallel." 4547. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:08:43 PM Message # 4533: Antisemitism is one of the most "developed" forms of racism. Few other animosities have the battery of "weird racial theories" and ready-made images, rhetoric and symbolisms, as does antisemitism. Unsurprisingly, anybody who might get locked into an ethnic conflict with Jews, would likely resort to this ancient tradition cultivated by Europeans -- because the apparatus of demonisation already exists and you don't have to invent anew. That's what Arabs and Muslims have done; and the particular virulence of Arab & Muslim antisemitism simply reflects what was borrowed. As I said earlier, if there had already been a ready-made, "developed" Graecophobic tradition comparable to antisemitism, which was available to the Turks, surely they would have borrowed it and used it. But there wasn't. Instead, there was a long romanticising philhellene tradition in the West and, even on the Muslim side, the Turks found a respect for ancient Greek science, mathematics & medicine, if not for the culture, in Islamic scholarship. 4548. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:09:39 PM 4549. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:13:15 PM Message # 4536 4550. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:17:03 PM Message # 4539: "A better proof would be: Do Hindus in India, because of the Kashmir issue, cast aspersions on all Muslims in Northern Africa?" 4551. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 3:29:15 PM sto Message # 4517: 4552. Andonly - 2/21/2002 3:34:20 PM "I said that the west, because of its particular historical experiences, considers racist expression against certain groups worse than against others groups." 4553. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 3:38:19 PM Bad speech by Sharon. He actually said kashe li - lit. 'it's difficult for me', or 'I'm having a hard time, too'. You don't expect a leader to say that. And when he was asked what there was to give people hope, he gave another bad answer, something about the fact that we've accomplished a lot here, but it was lame. 4554. Wombat - 2/21/2002 3:39:48 PM Some right wing loon killed the last leader Israel had. 4555. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 3:43:22 PM In other news, a woman who murdered her husband with a kitchen knife was actually ordered released to house arrest by a judge. The state prosecutor is appealing the decision - but really, this is horrendous. It's this kind of femmie stuff which really drives me to think desperate thoughts about our society sometimes, and our chances of defeating the Pals. 4556. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 3:59:51 PM Message # 4552: "No, I'm referring to your assertion that privately the majority of Israelis...are just vicious and hateful as antisemitic Arabs, that the only reason this is not expressed openly is because Israel's government "controls" such expressions more effectively. In fact, I think the truth is that Israelis themselves control such impulses more effectively, as do most westerners. 4557. stostosto - 2/21/2002 4:12:01 PM Rustler: 4558. stostosto - 2/21/2002 4:26:32 PM Pincher Message # 4543 4559. stostosto - 2/21/2002 4:27:45 PM untoy. 4560. jexster - 2/21/2002 4:31:16 PM Sorry RP about the Short Happy Political Life of Ariel Sharon... 4561. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 4:38:03 PM I don't know how widespread this feeling is, but I've heard many Arabs say they have respect for Orthodox Jews, and it's the secular majority of Jews /Israelis whom they hate. 4562. jexster - 2/21/2002 4:47:57 PM Reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable. 4563. Andonly - 2/21/2002 5:23:07 PM 4564. Andonly - 2/21/2002 5:26:46 PM "I don't know how widespread this feeling is, but I've heard many Arabs say they have respect for Orthodox Jews, and it's the secular majority of Jews /Israelis whom they hate." 4565. Andonly - 2/21/2002 5:34:43 PM Aharon Barak is slowly knocking down one pin after another: 4566. Andonly - 2/21/2002 5:47:41 PM 4567. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 5:51:04 PM Message # 4563: "I don't believe I have. And I think some of your assumptions about Jewish attitudes are projections of your own attitudes toward Jews." 4568. alistairConnor - 2/21/2002 6:03:21 PM Naive question : 4569. alistairConnor - 2/21/2002 6:05:17 PM Message # 4565 What does it say on other people's identity cards? Arab? Moslem? Christian? Rationalist? European? 4570. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 6:28:43 PM By the way, despite his stupid musings in his stupid book Orientalism, and despite the marielita's amusing quip that the "Pals, whatever their excesses, cannot be blamed for Said", Said has been advocating one intelligent thing for many years. It is that the Palestinians should keep their radical, maximalist demands, but adopt a Gandhian non-violent resistance approach. As implausible as that is, it would be much more effective. 4571. jexster - 2/21/2002 9:05:22 PM Answer to Message # 4568 at Message # 4562 4572. jexster - 2/21/2002 9:35:09 PM 4573. jexster - 2/21/2002 9:36:41 PM 4574. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:00:08 PM "Well naturally they want all the land back. They want all the land back from Jews because most of the lands Jews are sitting on in Israel once had Arabs on it." 4575. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:00:56 PM You have been interested enough in the ethical question to bring up Deir Yassin and the confiscation of Arab land in Israel as evidence of grounds for Arab rage, as well as whether Israel should really be considered a liberal democracy--of all things, because the state leaves marriage to be regulated by religious bodies with the endorsement of the government. 4576. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:06:20 PM "It is that the Palestinians should keep their radical, maximalist demands, but adopt a Gandhian non-violent resistance approach. As implausible as that is, it would be much more effective." 4577. Andonly - 2/21/2002 10:24:02 PM Pincher: "[Kashmir] certainly was not nearly of the same importance to [ObL] as U.S. troops in Saudi or the Palestinian issue." 4578. jexster - 2/21/2002 10:40:35 PM 4579. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:54:47 PM Message # 4574: "How long should [Arabs] "naturally" want all the land back? How many of them should want it?" 4580. pseudoerasmus - 2/21/2002 10:58:00 PM "...you're insisting ...on a particular moral framework for understanding the conflict in the mideast." 4581. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:47:14 PM I don't know how widespread this feeling is, but I've heard many Arabs say they have respect for Orthodox Jews, and it's the secular majority of Jews /Israelis whom they hate. 4582. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:49:09 PM sto: 4583. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:52:55 PM ac: 4584. RustlerPike - 2/21/2002 11:57:30 PM Pe: 4585. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 12:11:40 AM Pe makes a key point - the key point in the Pal story, really: 4586. ronski - 2/22/2002 12:17:57 AM PE, 4587. jexster - 2/22/2002 12:39:53 AM I realize that many Nazis were fags and have met a few Jew bois who wanted me to play Nazi. 4588. jexster - 2/22/2002 12:40:52 AM And besides..who is a "Jew baiter" anyway.... 4589. jexster - 2/22/2002 12:41:33 AM Pray for the peace of the brave 4590. ronski - 2/22/2002 12:48:24 AM Actually, very few Nazis were gay. And virtually none after 1935. 4591. ronski - 2/22/2002 12:49:14 AM ...were interned... 4592. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 1:22:52 AM Jexs: 4593. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 1:30:51 AM That Israel had no right to exist in 1948 is beyond question, imo. 4594. ronski - 2/22/2002 1:32:35 AM They certainly did. 4595. ronski - 2/22/2002 1:53:19 AM Pike, 4596. concerned - 2/22/2002 2:25:48 AM Any speculation on why the Pals are not being absorbed by their Arab brothers? 4597. jexster - 2/22/2002 2:30:18 AM Yea I know all about that too RP.... 4598. jexster - 2/22/2002 2:33:33 AM RP... 4599. concerned - 2/22/2002 2:37:53 AM ...and the particular virulence of Arab & Muslim antisemitism simply reflects what was borrowed. 4600. concerned - 2/22/2002 2:50:06 AM correction: 4601. concerned - 2/22/2002 3:20:12 AM Mohammed's own serious shortcomings, such as evidenced by his murderous banditry and sexual pecularities, when considered as a member of human society, let alone as a 'prophet', regardless of which historical age is considered, are writ large on Islam today. 4602. concerned - 2/22/2002 3:20:43 AM ...peculiarities.... 4603. stostosto - 2/22/2002 6:56:17 AM IHT/Washington Post spinning Sharon as a moderate. 4604. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 8:43:36 AM sto: 4605. Wombat - 2/22/2002 8:44:57 AM The dirigible or the president? 4606. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:10:42 AM Message # 4585: "Any speculation on why the Pals are not being absorbed by their Arab brothers?" 4607. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:13:17 AM Message # 4599: [PE] "...and the particular virulence of Arab & Muslim antisemitism simply reflects what was borrowed." [Conerned] "I don't think so....Nothing borrowed about this at all." 4608. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:13:36 AM 4609. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 9:20:49 AM Pe: 4610. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:25:46 AM By the way, did you know that in 1995 Bernard Lewis was found guilty in a French court and fined for "denial of the Armenian genocide"? (France makes it illegal to deny the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide.) 4611. Julius Caesar - 2/22/2002 9:28:38 AM Palestinians are trouble-makers 4612. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:35:08 AM RP: Most of the Palestinian refugees already in Arab countries, are still in camps. They have not been integrated into the general population. As for trouble-making, well, Jordan could tell you otherwise, since it faced a major insurrection from Palestinians in the general population. And Egypt surely doesn't want to add to the already disgruntled population. (4) is saying that paranoid dictatorships like Iraq and Syria don't really want new elements introduced into their society because they don't like too much change they can't control. As for OPEC nations, they can surely pay for the expenses of repatriation, but they can't create jobs for all the Palestinian refugees in already-depressed countries like Egypt and Syria. 4613. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:38:51 AM "If the dispute withered away - there would be no more excuse for fighting, would there?" 4614. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 9:46:11 AM Besides, there is no Arab government today which still thinks lands in Israel proper can be regained. They might still think there's a chance that the Israelis might accept a right of return for Palestinians to pre-67 Israel, but surely the bets they would place are at most on a Palestinian state in the WB and Gaza, to which all the refugees in camps in the other Arab countries would eventually be repatriated. 4615. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:20:31 AM PE: "Of course the Palestinian refugee problem is really unique. In almost all cases of permanent or semi-permanent population displacement through ethnic conflict, there has been some party willing to absorb the refugees into the general population. ..." 4616. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:20:47 AM "That Israel had no such right in 1948, is my belief. " 4617. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:21:25 AM (Also, PE's notion that ancient claims to land are accepted by no one is quite silly; they were accepted by Arabs when it suited them:) 4618. ElliottRW - 2/22/2002 10:21:31 AM RustlerPike Would you accept Jordanian administration of the West Bank and Gaza? 4619. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:22:18 AM "it is "understandable" and "natural" that people should not only hate one another in ethnic conflicts, but also succumb to hysterias." 4620. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:22:51 AM A: "So, if Israel tomorrow were to slaughter every last Palestinian in the territories, you would consider it a normal manifestation of ethnic/sectarian/tribal hatred?" 4621. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 10:53:32 AM Would you accept Jordanian administration of the West Bank and Gaza? 4622. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 10:55:38 AM Message # 4616: well put, Ando. Though as usual you skirt the issue (get it - skirt? Skirt the issue?). 4623. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:56:15 AM PE: "So I would say: probably until the late 1970s, Arab leaders held out the hope that Israel could be destroyed and the Palestinian refugees returned. But since then, their reason for not reintegrating the Pal refugees into other Arab populations, has probably changed: "let's wait for a Palestinian state in the WB, and we'll return those refugees there"." 4624. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 10:56:42 AM Message # 4615: "Most people recognize without any difficulty that this fact strongly supports the thesis that there was and is a unique bias against Jews among Arabs....Since you have admitted that the Pal refugee problem is unique, it really ought to be added to your summary list of differences between the Arab-Israel conflict and all other ethnic conflicts: " 4625. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 10:57:12 AM Moreover, no one integrates refugees into the general population until they feel there is no alternative. During the Cold War, Turkey, an example I mentioned earlier, closed the border with Bulgaria because so many more ethnic Turks were fleeing to Turkey than Turkey could readily absorb. So Turkey's solution was to confront the Bulgarian government to improve the treatment of ethnic Turks. That was in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1989 exodus of 300 000 ethnic Turks was precipitated by a major breach of the 1960s agreement between Turkey and Bulgaria about the cultural autonomy of Bulgaria's ethnic Turks. Starting in 1984, the communist government in Sofia tried to force "Bulgarisation" on the Turks (change of names from Turkish/Muslim to Slavic/Christian, ban on the use of the Turkish language, ban on Islamic practise). Turkey accepted the refugees, but did not want to assimilate them. So Turkey made such a furore over this issue that it led to an internal crisis in Bulgaria, contributing to the collapse of the communist government. The new democratic government in Bulgaria rescinded all the anti-Turkish decrees and invited all the ethnic Turks backs. Turkey sent back 200 000, but at least 100 000 stayed. 4626. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 10:57:56 AM [PE] "The only thing which sets it apart from other ethnic conflicts is its international dimension, and the imported character of Arab antisemitism." [Andonly] And the Palestinian refugee problem. Well, those are three rather substantial differences." 4627. RustlerPike - 2/22/2002 10:58:20 AM There is another Muslim holiday now, I believe. The neighboring village has been firing into the air every two minutes for the past 24 hours. Did Muhammad fire into the air, too, I wonder, or is this a more recent importation into Islam? 4628. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 10:59:41 AM Message # 4619: To suppose a behaviour is natural and understandable (i.e., not mysterious in causation), is not to make an ethical assertion. Should you introduce me to Toto and Wieselfleisch, I would explain it to them. 4629. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 11:00:01 AM Message # 4620: "What percentage of Pals in the territories would you like to talk about, I mean as candidates for a normal, understandable slaughter?" 4630. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 11:03:31 AM Message # 4623: That's not the Syrian position, PE. Nor the Hizbullah position. 4631. pseudoerasmus - 2/22/2002 11:14:27 AM Hamas probably believes that continued violence would weaken Israeli resolve and force the Israelis to withdraw unilaterally. 4632. sakonige - 2/22/2002 12:50:06 PM Message # 4627 4633. concerned - 2/22/2002 1:10:18 PM Hamas probably believes that continued violence would weaken Israeli resolve and force the Israelis to withdraw unilaterally. 4634. jexster - 2/22/2002 1:10:46 PM Israel Bombs West Bank, Arafat, Surrounded by Merkavas, Calls for Peace of the Brave 4635. jexster - 2/22/2002 1:13:12 PM Greatly abetted by the natural tendency of Islam to promote the most violent forms of hatred and bigotry. Concerned 4636. concerned - 2/22/2002 2:21:28 PM jexster - 4637. Andonly - 2/22/2002 2:58:01 PM "But I don't agree that it supports the thesis that Arab antisemitism is terribly different from other kinds of ethnic hatreds." 4638. Andonly - 2/22/2002 3:35:10 PM The black owner of an apartment complex subdivides a white man's one-bedroom apartment into two efficiencies so a Korean man can live in one of them. 4639. Andonly - 2/22/2002 3:35:25 PM The Korean guy has managed to gain, by knocking out a wall, an extra room, after several near neighbors got together to try to kill him. His wife and two kids are living there, having crowded the whites who were in the adjacent space into even less space and only letting them go between their rooms, or to the bathroom he now occupies, under guard. The whites who tried to kill him say they want to make a better arrangement, but their kids keep trying to push his family members out in front of cars, so he beats them up periodically. 4640. sakonige - 2/22/2002 4:09:43 PM More like the Korean decides he can't stand to live among his countrymen and demands the right to move into someone elses home he has selected on the basis of his traditional mythology. And he doesn't just cook food that smells bad, he fills all of the garbage dumpsters to overflowing, and his family takes all the parking spaces, including the ones marked for other residents. Then he complains that his neighbors are resentful of him, and demands a "buffer zone" be cleared of them for his protection. His neighbors become more resentful, and he demands an even larger buffer zone, blocking the building's only entrances and exits. His neighbors become outraged, so he starts trying to drive them out of the building by cutting their utility lines and killing their children. 4641. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:10:19 PM "During the Cold War, Turkey, an example I mentioned earlier, closed the border with Bulgaria because so many more ethnic Turks were fleeing to Turkey than Turkey could readily absorb." 4642. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:10:35 PM If you can insist Jews should have gone somewhere other than Palestine, I can insist that Arabs could have reacted to Zionist settlement more peaceably. The reality, though, is that Jews had nowhere else to go, and Arabs were cultural and religious chauvinists. A typical ethnic conflict, perhaps, except for all the exceptions. But no, not everything is "understandable;" and "natural" covers so much ground it either means nothing or it means one must excuse paranoid hysterical racism fro being an unavoidable paret of the human condition everywhere. 4643. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:14:56 PM "I'm sure the Syrians and Hizballah are much more realistic about what Palestinians can ultimately achieve, than their hardline positions would suggest. Their unrealism is rather to suppose that hardline, violent positions would get them a better deal than what Barak offered." 4644. jexster - 2/22/2002 4:17:16 PM concerned... 4645. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:20:30 PM I mean, it's remotely possible that Syria knows it's never going to get anywhere and simply wants a better deal. But more likely, it's domestically useful to Syria to stall indefintely the resolution of the conflict. And Hizbullah assuredly has no non-hardline position; nor has its Iranian patrons. 4646. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:26:17 PM "I suspect a fairly sizeable percentage of Palestinians would want to slaughter all Israelis en masse if they could." 4647. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:30:03 PM "These are significant differences, but do these differences make Arab & Muslim antisemitism different in kind from other ethnic hatreds? No. Three of the four differences simply create an illusion of difference." 4648. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:39:36 PM "Ancient claims on land already occupied are made by nearly everybody and accepted by nearly none. That is a fact." 4649. Andonly - 2/22/2002 4:42:14 PM And I must reiterate: Palestine was only sparsely "already occupied". Approximately one million people in an area about the size of New Jersey, is what I've read. 4650. concerned - 2/22/2002 5:08:37 PM Re. 4644 - 4651. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 5:46:30 PM PE -- Message # 4546 4652. Andonly - 2/22/2002 5:58:02 PM "I have no idea of the level of antipathy and the virulence of the rhetoric used by Russians and other Orthodox Slavs towards Turks" 4653. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:10:12 PM PE -- Message # 4550 4654. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:10:36 PM 4655. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:11:23 PM 4656. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:12:15 PM 4657. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:12:31 PM In Jordan and Egypt he was not officially received but was welcomed with the same or greater acclaim in literary circles. He was invited to Cairo by the government-sponsered Arab Artists Union with the support of the Egyptian Writers Foundation, which elected him an honorary member -- the first since the Federation was established more than twenty years ago. Among many honours, he was given the "Egyptian Writers Award." The editor-in-chief of the semi-official Al Ahram newspaper conferred a press prize on Garaudy in recognition of the "fresh air" that he had contributed to the debate. Garaudy's welcome was not unanimous. Some fundamentalists while approving of his views on Israel, questioned his understanding of Islam. In Morocco he was acclaimed by some newspapers, but his public appearances were cancelled. "The universities," said the Minister of Higher Education, "will not open their gates to anti-Semites." Curiously, in May 1997, Mr Garaudy was invited to contribute a series of articles to an Arabic weekly publiches in London by the BBC Arabic Service. In April 1998 Garaudy was the keynote speaker at a seminar sponsored by the foreign ministry of Iran. Ali Larijani, the head of Iranian radio and television, promised to broadcast Garaudy's views to Iranian audiences regularly; another high cleric called on all Muslims to translate and disseminate Garaudy's book. 4658. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:14:50 PM Andonly -- 4659. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 7:55:20 PM PE -- Message # 4561 4660. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 8:09:36 PM 4661. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 8:19:00 PM By the way, despite his stupid musings in his stupid book Orientalism, and despite the marielita's amusing quip that the "Pals, whatever their excesses, cannot be blamed for Said", Said has been advocating one intelligent thing for many years. It is that the Palestinians should keep their radical, maximalist demands, but adopt a Gandhian non-violent resistance approach. As implausible as that is, it would be much more effective. 4662. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 8:20:28 PM Andonly -- 4663. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 8:41:10 PM One thing I don't understand about PE's sudden interest in what he suggests is the lack of liberal democracy in Israel is that he refuses to recognize (or he rationalizes) the lack of democracy where it is far more real and obvious: Arab and Muslim states. 4664. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 8:58:39 PM This rediff article suggests the issue of what Indian Muslims feel about Kashmir is not as clear-cut as PE argues. 4665. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:02:03 PM This Dawn article says the issue of Kashmir is of no importance to Indian Muslims: 4666. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:12:22 PM And this memorandum to the United Nations, written by Indian Muslim leaders, makes for great reading. It is ambiguous on the subject of whether Kashmir should be free or not, but it is clear that Pakistan has no claim on the land and is surprising for the strong words these Muslims have for their religious brethern in Pakistan: 4667. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:12:39 PM Despite continuous provocations, first from the Muslim League and since then from Pakistan, the Hindu majority in India has not thrown us or members of other minorities out of Civil Services, Armed Forces, the judiciary, trade, commerce, business and industry. There are Muslim Ministers in the Union and State cabinets, Muslim Governors, Muslim Ambassadors, representing India in foreign countries, fully enjoying the confidence of the Indian nation, Muslim members in Parliament and state legislatures, Muslim judges serving on the Supreme Court and High Courts, high-ranking officers in the Armed Foroes and the Civil services, including the police. Muslims have large landed estates, run big business and commercial houses in various parts of the country, notably in Bombay and Calcutta, have their shares in industrial production and enterprise in export and import trade. Our famous sacred shrines and places of cultural interest are mostly in India. 4668. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:15:12 PM Of course, that statement is dated, and not relevant to the current debate, but it is interesting reading nevertheless. 4669. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:48:12 PM The Milli Gazette: Muslim World's Leading English Newspaper also has a different take on what Indian Muslims feel about Kasmir and Jammu: 4670. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:48:32 PM Toy Check 4671. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 9:49:12 PM 4672. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 10:00:19 PM And finally this well-written piece by a Muslim Fundamentalist in something called Crescent International also argues that Muslims in India are secular and take the side of the Indian nationalists: 4673. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 10:05:22 PM Message # 4672 gives me twenty consecutive posts in this thread so I'll give it a rest. 4674. wonkers2 - 2/22/2002 10:23:30 PM Message #4655, Yes, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan! 4675. wonkers2 - 2/22/2002 10:28:11 PM In this vein, I was there only yesterday and heard a Grosse Pointer praising Governor Engler either for his "give a jig a job program" or for getting rid of the "give a jig a job" program (which was not clear to me). Similar slurs about Jews aren't uncommon. 4676. PincherMartin - 2/22/2002 10:33:17 PM Garden-variety anti-Semitism is not uncommon in the states or elsewhere, but hour-long anti-Semitic (or other anti-ethnic) babblings by the leader of a nation in conference with a diplomat of another is unheard of, as far as I know. 4677. wonkers2 - 2/22/2002 10:50:21 PM True. 4678. Andonly - 2/22/2002 10:51:07 PM "This Dawn article says the issue of Kashmir is of no importance to Indian Muslims..." 4679. Andonly - 2/22/2002 11:54:43 PM This is a sort of interesting website, run by the "Croatian Association of Former Prisoners in Serbian Concentration Camps": 4680. Andonly - 2/22/2002 11:55:55 PM Upon their arrival and deployment in camps of Central Bosnia, the Arab volunteers appeared in the beginning in the role of typical highwaymen who intercepted and looted Croatian convoys, destroying everything that they considered belonged to Christian iconography. Then their role was of bloody executors in massive crimes against Croats of Central Bosnia. Those crimes were not only the result of hatred against everything that was not Islamic, but their aim was also to cause by their cruelty panic in the Croatian corpus. The Arabs in Central Bosnia were the cruel instigators of the elaborately planned special war by the AB&H.
Who else but Mulsims eat roasted sheeps heads?
But you would sit on the floor among Muslims, eating the face (and contents of the head?) of an animal with your hands, knowing it had died for your sake, and that others sharing the meal were conscious of the religious significance of the meat.
The MTT is armed, though the massive weapons downsizing forced upon all military and paramilitary groups with the end of Soviet patronage means that they probably don't have much in the way of serious armaments.
I say that they play an interesting role because their guerilla-inspired organization is meant to act as a curb to the power of the regular armed forces, though there's been no real cause for concern on Castro's part. It's just the kind of thing the wily old survior would dream up.
Complicit in murder
(Neither Faroese nor Norwegians are Muslims, typically).
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Palestinian gunmen killed at least six Israelis in an attack Tuesday on an army checkpoint in the West Bank , Israeli security sources said.
The late-night shooting was likely to draw strong Israeli retaliation in a worsening cycle of death and retribution with the Palestinians that has claimed 22 lives over the past 24 hours.
How much of the head do you eat? Do you eat the brains? The eyeballs? The spinal cord?
When will there have been enough blood of children shed to satisfy these folk?
So when Sharon says we will win in the war against the Palestinians, what does he mean? Toppling Arafat and replacing him with someone else? Is that realistic? Will the replacement be any better? Meanwhile, Arafat is the one who has managed to topple three prime ministers, and Sharon himself could be next in line.
If Sharon means victory in the military sense, i.e. reoccupation of the territories, not only will the whole world, headed by America, jump down our throats, but it will be sheer madness. Forget Lebanon. It will be our Vietnam. This is the moment to look at things soberly and ask if the current rules of the game fit in with our basic desire to reach some kind of agreement with the Palestinians.
From Haaretz
"Who else but Muslims eat roasted sheeps heads?"
Everyone from the Atlantic to China, except perhaps the English.
"But you would sit on the floor among Muslims, eating the face (and contents of the head?) of an animal with your hands, knowing it had died for your sake, and that others sharing the meal were conscious of the religious significance of the meat."
I'm afraid not.
Could you elaborate on this? I understand that the citizen militia is comprised of 1 million people. A dictator would have to awfully confident of the loyalty of the militia.
You're right; on paper, an armed citizen militia of one million+ members is a big risk. Several factors rooted in the Revolution's history and development reduce the danger considerably, however.
One of the pillars of Castro's evergreen Revolution is that Cubans live under continual threat of attack and invasion from the US. It is the ultimate expression of We vs. They, the theme that underlies all social policy. The MTT is an outgrowth of a complex web linking the Party apparatus, a widespread network of informers, the old G-2, and a number of auxiliaries, their stated mission to carry out Castro's vision (fantasy) of total war. As with the regular military, the MTT shares in whatever perks are to be had, to a lesser extent. If these safeguards to loyalty aren't enough, their better-armed regular military brethren are always ready to enforce others.
The Castros have arranged a rather ingenious array of concentric circles - the government, Castro's personal troops, the military, the paramilitaries - all in tension with one another, but all bearing down upon the remaining poor schmoes with great verve. 
You stated Message # 4339 :
I can see your point regarding the Maylaysian Chinese and urban eastern and central European Jews and the economic influence counterbalancing the demographics, but with the substantial number of Jews from rural villages in parts of Poland, Ukraine and Russia also at the receiving end of progroms it loses some force in argument.
I think that pseudoerasmus would agree that the smart urban Jews were simply too smart to be racist, while the stupid rural Jews were simply too stupid to be racist. So this particular supposition of his is possibly even more correct than any of his other suppositions.
On the other hand, maybe reality is just a tad more complex.
For example, how does this fit:
Moroccan Jews mourn death of king (99 07 30)
In Israel, Moroccan Jews have traditionally supported parties such as Likud or Shas, that espouse hard-line policies toward the Arab countries. This is partly to compensate for the fact that they felt "Ashkenazi Jews regarded them as Jewish Arabs," according to Haim Shiran, 64, director of Inbal, an ethnic center in Tel Aviv. He said anti-Arab political views are a kind of self-defense mechanism, a way to distinguish themselves from the Arabs.
But when it came to the king's death, the reaction of Israel's estimated 300,000 Moroccan Jews appeared similar to Morocco's Arab residents, many of whom consider the king to be a direct descendent of the Muslim prophet Mohammad. "I know that it may sound ridiculous," said Shiran, "but when on Friday, I saw the Moroccan announcer on television announcing the death of the king, I broke out in tears."
>>>>
The new king's grandfather, Mohammed V, is widely credited with having saved Morocco's Jews from deportation during World War II, and Hassan continued the philo-Semitic policies of his father. Although there was an outbreak of anti-Jewish incidents following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish community was generally safe under the protection of both Mohammed and Hassan, who proudly considered the Jews "Moroccans of Jewish origin."
When tens of thousands of Jews left Morocco in a massive aliyah (immigration to Israel) that began after Morocco gained its independence in 1956, they did so largely because of Zionism and a desire for economic opportunity as out of fear of anti-Semitism.
Now there appear to be signs of the beginning of the end to that approach, or at least the end of the beginning of opposition to its acceptance.....
Gideon Samet in Haaretz.
You have completely missed Andonly's vicious invective:
Message # 4271 all too inauthentic for him, perhaps in a Heideggerian sort of way
as shown by your pathetic and naive rejoinder in Message # 4279
(Hint: What was Heidegger's relationship to Hitler?)
I am well aware of the Moroccan Jews' unique relationship with Morocco. Morocco always has got a Jewish member of cabinet, and the government conducts unofficial relations with Israel.
But so what? That didn't stop the enormous Jewish community of Morocco from leaving en masse for Israel in the early 1950s.
yes, reality is complex, but it's even more complex than Transient1a realises.
Also, by the standards of the ME, the Jews of Morocco did not leave "en masse". There are several thousand who didn't make aliyah, last I read the number was over 5000.
Hmmm. I thought you knew something about Heidegger --as your post Message # 4279 obviously claimed. I am very disappointed.
Fascism
From an appeal by Heidegger to the students of Freiburg University, of which he was the Rector--the principle academic administrator. This appeal was on the occasion of Hitler's plebiscite on the withdrawal of Germany from the League of Nations. November 3, 1933]
German Students: The National Socialist revolution is bringing about the total transformation of our German existence [Dasein]....
Let your loyalty and your will to follow be daily and hourly strengthened. Let your courage grow without ceasing so that you will be able to make the sacrfices necessary to save the essence of our Volk and to elevate its innermost strength to the State.
Let not propositions and "ideas" be the rules of your Being [Sein].
The Führer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply:
from now on every single thing demands decison, and every action responsiblity.
Heil Hitler!
Martin Heidegger, Rector
AND
I would not be a bit surprised if reality was even more complex then even pseudoerasmus realizes.
Transient said: "Hmmm. I thought you knew something about Heidegger -- as your post Message # 4279 obviously claimed. I am very disappointed."
No, my Message # 4279 does not contain such a claim.
That was the point of my penultimate sentence in Message # 4365.
In Message # 4279 you deride Andonly with:
Yeah, like you've read Heidegger. Just TNR reviews about works about Heidegger, right?
The obvious implication is that she has merely a superficial knowledge of and understanding of Heidegger while yours is more substantial.
SO
I am a bit puzzled by your statement in Message # 4370 :
No, my Message # 4279 does not contain such a claim.
Hmmm.
Could your statement of meant:
Your knowledge and understanding of Heidegger must be no better than mine -- which is non-existent?
In retrospect, since you had absolutely no idea what Andonly meant by:
Message # 4271 ..perhaps in a Heideggerian sort of way.
don't you think you should have asked her for clarification --- instead of simply making a vacuous comment?
Heidegger embraced Naziism, but it's hard to show he was an antisemite, exactly, since he had a long affair and intellectual collaboration with his American Jewish student, Hannah Arendt. The point I made is that labelling western, principled refusals to wallow in ethnic hatred "PC" and insisting that this only masks lurking anti-Arabism in Jews borders on making the sort of claims for "Dasein" that Heidegger made, and which wound up as nothing short of a capitulation to Naziism. Likewise Pseudoerasmus capitulates intellectually to Arab antisemitism: it's only a natural partisan response, you know, and it has the most important virtue of not being hypocritical.
If one objects to this, one must be a Jewish exceptionalist and manifestly anti-Muslim, as all Jews who support Israel (according to Pseudoerasmus) must be, the whiners. After all, Jews weren't historically the only dhimmis, therefore Israel is not the catalyst of modern Arab-Muslim antisemitism, but its cause.
(This source claims that in New York, at least, the Iranian Jewish community is indeed sentimental for their homeland.)
Something to do with Romanticism v. neo-liberalism but what in the hell does any of this have to do with the International Jew Conspiracy and its attrocities against the PAL people?
And, no, Transient1a, I've no idea myself. I don't read the New Republic as assiduously as Andonly. By the way, there is something eerily reminiscent of Wieseltier about Andonly.
Where did I say that??? Andonly has got a habit of making extravagant and often lurid extrapolations from what others have said.
At the beginning of the exchange, I argued that antisemitism is held implicitly by westerners particularly Americans and Jews, to be a more special and more pernicious form of racism than other kinds (excepting anti-black racism). Yes, yes, the chorus here will deny this, Transient1a will say he deplores all tribalism (while being tribal himself) and Andonly will piously intone how she equally brooks none.
By racism I do not necessarily mean the rhetoric of race wars, genetic inferiority, and Lebensraum. I mean much less feverish things such as racially or ethnically directed jokes and stereotypes. One is rebuked and ostracised for airing jokes and stereotypes about Jews (unless you are a Jew), but one can get away with airing jokes and stereotypes about almost all other ethnic or religious group (excepting blacks).
But it's only natural that in the West antisemitism provokes special and disproportionate condemnation, since the Jewish experience and the western antisemitic tradition have left such an imprint on western consciences.
Conversely, outside the west, there is no such resonance, and antisemitism is nothing special. It's just another kind of ethnic hatred. That's not excusing or "capitulating to" or praising ethnic hatreds. It's just "normalising" antisemitism. Armenians, relatively neglected victims of genocide, would understand what I'm saying perfectly.
But Jews, given their historical experience, cannot but look upon antisemitism as a unique, special, and priviledged form of racism. This is entirely natural. And this also explains why Andonly is so hysterically bent on attributing Arab antisemitism to causes far more elaborate than the Palestine issue.
"After all, Jews weren't historically the only dhimmis, therefore Israel is not the catalyst of modern Arab-Muslim antisemitism, but its cause."
Now you get it.
"Perhaps Efraim Karsh, JEW, figured that those Qu'ranic sentiments are easily enough proved or disproved."
And what had I said or implied to provoke such a response?
"Gee, the next thing you know, people will start posting Croat histories of Serbia or a Pakistani history of India." Message # 4284
Which implies that Efraim Karsh, being Jewish and Israeli, is a partisan in an ethnic conflict so why should we take his word about passages he does not cite?
Had I said the same thing about most other ethnic groups, Gleason would not have responded similarly. Had I cited an Arab source for a claim about Israel or Judaism, all here would have sneered in contempt at his lack of objectivity. But imply that a Jewish historian lacks objectivity about a conflict his ethnic group is involved in, and Gleason has me screaming JUDE.
That is what I mean when I say people consider antisemitism a unique, special and privileged form of racism. This special status often results in false accusations.
("Edward Said, PAL" doesn't have the same ring, does it?)
In any event, Karsh was saying nothing that Arabs don't themselves acknowledge, or boast about, whether or not you agree with that construction.
Yes. Exactly as Drübensein is the condition of visiting America.
Draussensein is what Marco Polo experienced in China.
An Drobensein is a Norwegian disease.
Eerie, I tell you. Grave-looking, serious doctors and scientists, conscientiously and earnestly having studied such unhappy cases and painfully reached the conclusion which they could barely bring themselves to contemplate, but had to overcome their immediate instinctive psychological obstacles and relucance in order to communicate in the interest of the Greater Good. And, mind you, also, and not least, for the sake of the pitiful Daseiners themselves.
You're so very understanding.
Many, many Jews do consider antisemitism a "unique, special, and priviledged form of racism", and have indeed succeeded in convincing any Americans who will listen that it's true. But I'm not among them, and you have no basis for believing I am--none--other than your preconception of what all Jews think and believe. 'All Jews who are supporters of Israel are anti-Muslim; all Jews who do not come to the conclusions I favor are Jewish exceptionalists; Andonly is a Jew; therefore, etc.'
Except that I have said explicity, in these threads, that Sozhenitsyn was right about Jews' playing the world's worst victims. You'd have to horsewhip me before I'd give a dime to the US Holocaust Museum, an endeavor which I believe should not be publicly funded and should really be in Israel or Europe somewhere. And frankly, I'm quite certain that you would have no idea who Benny Morris is except that I posted an article referring to his revisionist history of Israel's founding in Table Talk.
For the record, I'm no less disturbed by the Muslim anti-Christianity which has emerged most noticeably in the wake of 9-11 but has never been absent and is part of the same phenomenon of Arab and Muslim intolerance against dhimmis-who-get-too-powerful that provides the fertile soil for today's antisemitism. The only difference is that I, personally, don't have to worry that Muslim anti-Christianity will find receptive ears in the west.
"This is entirely natural. And this also explains why Andonly is so hysterically bent on attributing Arab antisemitism to causes far more elaborate than the Palestine issue."
Natural, schmatural, the only one resorting to hysteria is you. Maria had it right about your newfound ethnic entusiasms.
"Now you get it."
I get it and I hand it back because it is frankly inadequate.
" 'All Jews who are supporters of Israel are anti-Muslim..."
I once said that Jews -- naturally, if I may use that loaded word again -- have biases about Muslims. You have given that statement a life of its own by transmuting it into this "all Jews are anti-Muslim" which I have never said in my enitre life.
"Except that I have said explicity, in these threads, that Sozhenitsyn was right about Jews' playing the world's worst victims."
I seldom read this thread and had no idea you had ever remarked about Solzh.
"And frankly, I'm quite certain that you would have no idea who Benny Morris is except that I posted an article referring to his revisionist history of Israel's founding in Table Talk."
I still don't know who Benny Morris is, though I am aware of revisionist historians of Israel's founding, and not because of you.
"But that I also support Israel and complain about Arab antisemitism simply reinforces your bias."
What prompted me into this exchange was actually a remark by Wombat on Marjoribanks's Qatari eunuch friends, the details about whom I've already forgotten.
Yet I have said here that any number of Arabs have a right to viscerally hate Israel and the Jews who support Israel. I have made it very plain that my quarrel is with wholesale, pan-Arab, pan-Muslim antisemitism.."
I really don't understand the distinction you're making.
"the paranoid demonization of Jews which you have conceded is neurotic, but reponsibility for which neurosis you lay upon those who set it off but did not generate it."
Set it off but did not generate? What does that mean?
"the only one resorting to hysteria is you."
I have been as calm as the breezes on Rhodes throughout this whole exchange. I'm not the one putting epithets in all caps and in bold-face.
"Maria had it right about your newfound ethnic entusiasms."
I still don't understand what you and that marielita are talking about.
"For the record, I'm no less disturbed by the Muslim anti-Christianity which has emerged most noticeably in the wake of 9-11 but has never been absent and is part of the same phenomenon of Arab and Muslim intolerance against dhimmis-who-get-too-powerful that provides the fertile soil for today's antisemitism."
That some Muslims might be galled at uppity dhimmis, including Christians, I have no doubt. (though I frankly think all of you who have never set foot in a single Muslim country, really exaggerate it. You all really need to travel sometime.) What's been at issue is how to account for the radically different attitude toward Jews and Christians.
Dasein was the quasi-poetic/pre-Socratic nomenclature Heidegger used to refer to human "existence," as opposed to the merely "present" state of objects. The only way for Dasein to be authentic--for human beings to "exist" or "stand out" from things--was for human beings to strive at all times to embrace the anxiety that comes with facing down the horror of nonexistence, of being nowhere, and renouncing the dignity-sapping "everydayness" that causes humans to "forfeit" our distinction from objects. Heidegger also privileged language as the source and manifestation of "Dasein"; one of his favored expressions was "Language is the house of Being".
MG: "Moreover, the Pals, whatever their excesses, cannot be blamed for Said."
You got that right.
I attribute your shunning of bold to your well-known delicacy of feeling, but I'm afraid you fell under the sway of the all caps lure.
And all this time I though you had been talking about the massacred in 1948 at the hands of the Stern Gang.
Message # 4400: "but I'm afraid you fell under the sway of the all caps lure."
Imitation is the highest form of flattery?
Was the phraseology of the above deliberately chosen to put one in mind of a Coleman grill set up at a tailgate party?
Blech!
No, you are hysteric. You're a Muslim, right?
Really? Where?
I read this thread fairly closely and have found that Andonly's basic premise for debate here consists of the very opposite from what she claims in the quote above.
¡ marg bar ____ !
¡¡¡ marg bar ____ !!!
¡¡¿¿ a quién, pendejo ??!!
Jihadullah Talibaddin, in order to
honour my "ethnic enthusiasms".
What made me think that you are among them, was your reaction to my Message # 4070.
You attempt to alter the text of what I've accused you of so you can deny having said it.
You, Pseudoerasmus, used the formulation all Jews in precisely this fashion: all Jews who are supporters of Israel must be presumed a priori to have anti-Muslim biases. (I believe that is a precise quote, and the words "all" and "must" I then proceeded to take issue with.) You used, as an example of a Jew whom we would not presume to have anti-Muslim biases, Noam Chomsky. And you used this indictment of all Israel-supporting Jews to claim that my views, or those dreamed up by you, were tinged with anti-Muslim bias.
You're so sensitive. She wasn't implying you were antisemitic. She was implying that your anti-Jewish bias makes it impossible to view anything said by a Jew as unbiased.
Yes, because of me, writing under a pseud you didn't recognize in TT. You followed my posts almost immediately with queries to Pike in this thread (or maybe International) about Benny Morris, whose name you even managed to use. It was clear from your post that you were not familiar with the excerpts of his work that I posted at length in TT (to make sure psychos like Daniel Abraham actually read them instead of skipping the link).
Yes, we'd all love to I'm sure. Meanwhile we can rely on other people's experience. Have you in your travels never heard mention of the way the Copts are treated in Egypt? Or that there has been a veritable exodus of Christians from Lebanon in the last few years?
On a Daily Star discussion board, I read someone remarking recently that [s]he'd never realized how much routine discrimination she faced in Lebanon until after coming to the US. Let's not even get into Nigeria; you'll just claim the Christians started it and insist they aren't subjected to Shari'a, much.
No, you don't.
(well, that's actually very funny...)
Jihadullah Talibaddin, in order to
honour my "ethnic enthusiasms"."
But when we abbreviate it, it will sound so Texan.
Jaytee? You wanna throw me anuther beeyer?
Civil war and greater opportunity to flee abroad, have little to do with it?
I still don't understand what you and that marielita are talking about.
¡Ha! I do.
In all these years, although you never hid the fact, they never noticed you are a member of a tribe.
What you mean 'they'?
Economic opportunity always plays some role in these things, but civil war? There hasn't been civil war in Lebanon for years, and opportunity for those who are well off--who are still mostly Christians, I'd wager--probably isn't bad since reconstruction began. The state's economy is a house of of cards built on expat investment, everyone does business exclusively in US dollars, but that doesn't explain the differential exodus. We're talking about Christians leaving by the thousand. Last year, there was a sizeable outflow to Canada.
Whatever you want to ascribe to it, the likelihood is that Lebanese Xtians are leaving Lebanon in some significant part because they don't want to be Christians in a country dominated by antagonistic Muslims who (like Hizbullah) demand "democracy" only because they are in the majority.
The Copts are regularly persecuted and extorted by gangs, not just Islamists, and their their pleas contemptuously ignored by the Egyptian police. This was certainly the case a few months ago, and the problem has reportedly been ongoing for years. 
, Israel's main battle tank and pride of its armoured corps, with a home-made mine buried by a road in the Gaza Strip.
Message # 4412: 'You, Pseudoerasmus, used the formulation all Jews in precisely this fashion: all Jews who are supporters of Israel must be presumed a priori to have anti-Muslim biases. (I believe that is a precise quote, and the words "all" and "must" I then proceeded to take issue with.)"
Basically my point in the old debate Andonly was referring to, was that Jews cannot be objective about Muslims (and vice versa), unless they are arguing against expected bias.
Message # 4412: 'You, Pseudoerasmus, used the formulation all Jews in precisely this fashion: all Jews who are supporters of Israel must be presumed a priori to have anti-Muslim biases. (I believe that is a precise quote, and the words "all" and "must" I then proceeded to take issue with.)"
Message # 13490 in thread 114: "Are all supporters of Israel anti-Muslim?" [Andonly]
Message # 13491 in thread 114: "Of course not. But their perception is certainly filtered through an Israeli-orientated prism."
Basically my point in the old debate Andonly was referring to, was that Jews cannot be objective about Muslims (and vice versa), unless they are arguing against expected bias.
It would be interesting to compare the level of antisemitic animus versus anti-Christian animus (if any) among Muslim countries with few or no Christians, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.
Message # 4376
Heidegger and Arendt
OR
The Vampire and the Maiden:
Tribal Dreams
and
Obsessive Love
A Germanic intellectual nightmare.
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli warships fired at Palestinian security compounds along the Gaza Strip coastline and tanks rumbled into areas in southern and eastern Gaza on Thursday in a three-pronged night-time assault.
Palestinian doctors said four people, one a gunman and the rest not yet identified, had been killed and 33 people wounded in the Israeli raids, which began shortly after midnight. The Israeli army declined to comment on the raids.
Israel's government ordered the army to step-up the ferocity and variety of strikes against the Palestinians on Wednesday in retaliation for the killing of six soldiers in the West Bank and a heightened wave of attacks against Israelis.
The Deir Yassin massacre was conducted by both the Stern Gang (a.k.a. Lehi) and the Irgun, headed by the same Menachem Begin who accepted Sadat's peace deal and ordered the invasion of Lebanon.
"Now that Andonly is back from dutifully letting her offspring hang from her udder..."
They're weaned, but maybe you with your gynecomastia and shortage of progeny would take comfort in allowing them to bat your breasts back and forth for sport while you attempt to survive a game of chess with my five-year old.
How much do you charge for babysitting? I'll be happy to have someone drive you home.
Won't negotiate with Arafat, who despite being "humiliated" is growing in stature domestically and internationally by the hour.
Did Mamma Sharon fuck a Nazi like Hannah Arendt did?
I must say, that is the finest invective I've read in months. I'm quite jealous (not of your breasts).
You know, I was begining to think there was something wrong with you; now I know.
Abu Zuluf
Let's see the proof.
Of course; you have your own. I imagine they're perky and delicate, like little swollen pastries.
Hi Ahmed. Welcome to the Mote. A word of advice: don't light a match. The resulting explosion would be misconstrued to the detriment of your friends back in Umm el Fahm.
Perhaps you misunderstood my impatience with your oft-repeated rant about the naivete of the west with regard to ethnic conflicts around the world to mean that I believe Jews must be privileged sufferers. But I don't know why. My point was simply (and obviously) that Americans in this day and age have absorbed from the development of "Holocaust conciousness" and the civil rights era the notion that all racism is dangerous and bad, even when it seems "natural;" that this attitude is salutary, not to be thrown into the usual grab-bag of American stupidities and hypocrisies; and that your claim about some groups being off-limits and others being fair game is inaccurate.
Furthermore, I think you know very well that the nature of an insult determines the degree to which it is considered beyond the pale. People talk about Jewish American Princesses and no one blanches. If you were to call me, per your own inspired example, a "filthy Jewess," I'd think that was actually pretty funny, since I'd assume you were referring to the habit of ritual purification that Jewish women are supposed to undergo monthly and which, as a secularist, I dispense with in favor of showering every couple of days. But when one gets into historically vicious stereotyping, that's another thing, and it's considered off-limits when applied to any group with any recent memory of persecution or even discrimination.
There are of course Jews who perpetuate a Holocaust industry, and they're just loathesome, IMO. But they don't erase the survival imperative wrought by centuries of Jewish persecution, or the signicance of the particular forms Arab-Muslim Jew-hatred takes today. Or its scope.
So when I read someone like you offering an apologetics buttressed with "you Yanqs take this all too seriously', I can't see why I should regard it with equanimity. 
Abu Zuluf
Andonly: Yet I have said here that any number of Arabs have a right to viscerally hate Israel and the Jews who support Israel.
Margarinespanks: Really? Where? I read this thread fairly closely and have found that Andonly's basic premise for debate here consists of the very opposite from what she claims in the quote above.
Please resume employing your orifice in the lubrication of the Hermaphrodickic testicles.
Message # 4232 You know who has a "normal" right, in 2002, to violently despise Israel and, if they're backward gits inclined to racism, Jews? The Palestinians, the Syrians, the Jordanians (who either are Palestinians or are dangerously affected by West Bank instability), and the Lebanese (who can be expected to remain pissed about the invasion for a while yet). That's it. Not the Egyptians, who got their land back decades ago. Not Iran, which never had a territorial conflict with Jews. [Etc.]
I am a former member of the Pal Grocer Liberation Struggle Alliance (Mr. Hooper faction).
I am aware of Jexster's Midnight Runners but they only accept homosexuals to their ranks.
Right now I am a freelance militant working from home.
But I don't think I have ever "ranted" on this subject before.
"My point was...that Americans in this day and age have absorbed from the development of "Holocaust conciousness" and the civil rights era the notion that all racism is dangerous and bad, even when it seems "natural;" that this attitude is salutary..."
I didn't question that necessarily.
"not to be thrown into the usual grab-bag of American stupidities and hypocrisies"
No, I didn't do that. What I did was question the perceived special & privileged status of antisemitism, as compared with other ethnic hatreds.
"...that your claim about some groups being off-limits and others being fair game is inaccurate."
I think that is fundamentally accurate, moreover self-evident, and you would not be denying it if it were not now so convenient for your arguments.
So when I read someone like you offering an apologetics buttressed with "you Yanqs take this all too seriously', I can't see why I should regard it with equanimity.
It was not apologetics, it was explanation. All the same, it is natural (if I may use that word) that you should take it as apologetics, and it is natural that you should not regard it with equanimity. You're Jewish after all so it would be suprising if you regarded antisemitism as anything but the most abominable form of all ethnic hatreds.
I don't know why Andonly insists on excising out the pan-Arab and pan-Muslim element.
Russians weren't affected by what was happening in the Balkans, either, but they cared about what was happening to their fellow Orthodox Slavs in Serbia. So why wouldn't Egyptians care about what is happening to Palestinians? And indeed why shouldn't the non-Arab but Muslim Iranians?
As Bernard Lewis writes, it is not the simple hatred of Israelis by Muslims who feel robbed of their land that makes the conflict unusual. Instead, it is the widespread dissemination and virulence of that hatred towards Jews, in general, and to Israel in particular that make it stand out: ...while the Arab-Israeli conflict is an example of normal conflict, it has certain abnormalities which make it unique. These arise from the continued refusal of all but one of the Arab states to recognize Israel [this was written in the mid-1980s] or to meet face to face in negotiation with its official representatives. This refusal is still maintained after nearly forty years of Israeli existance, and after a succession of Arab political and military defeats. Lebanon, which negotiated and signed a direct agreement with Israel in 1984, was compelled to abandon it, and the Lebanonese government was not permitted to enter into political contact with Israel even to arrange the orderly liberation of its own territory. Egypt, which unlike Lebanon possessed sufficient strength to take an independent line and enter into such a relationship with Israel, was execrated by almost all of the Arab states; most of them broke off diplomatic relations with Cairo and placed Egypt in almost the same kind of isolation as Israel herself.
continued ...
A study of the testimonies given by senior police officers, politicians, experts and leading figures in the Arab community to the Or Commission creates a grim picture of this combination of inconsistent law enforcement and lack of a coherent policy.
When the law is enforced, it has invariably been done in an arbitrary, cold-hearted manner or through administrative dictates. The past ten days have provided two new examples. The poisoning of the Bedouin fields in the Negev, was a truly wicked act that can be credited to National Infrastructures Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose ministry does not bother to supply even the most basic amenities for tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens. The second was the administrative order (issued under defense regulations for states of emergency) forbidding Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the "northern wing" of the Islamic movement, from leaving the country.
Cabinet ministers are conducting racist anti-Arab campaigns, like that of Tourism Minister Rabbi Binyamin Elon advocating a population transfer. Under his gracious patronage, the eyes of Israel's Arab citizens will be insulted "hundreds of huge posters" to be hung throughout the country carrying the slogan "only a population transfer can bring peace" - as the Moledet party web site promises. The web site also makes clear the campaign is to promote "a population transfer for the Arabs of the Holy Land" - no distinction is made between Arab Israelis and Arab Palestinians in the territories.
Other cabinet ministers have made frequent abusive comments about Arab citizens. The Knesset has been offered bills to encourage their emigration, and to circumvent High Court of Justice rulings granting them equal rights. Such comments and initiatives legitimize the ugly wave of anti-Arab racism and hatred that is swelling in Jewish society.
For Muslims, in particular, the loss of old Muslim land to non-Muslim invaders is a heavy blow, causing anguish and outrage. But this too is not unprecedented, and has indeed happened many times before. From the loss of Portugal to Spain, at the end of the Middle Ages, to the abandonment of province after province and Muslim community after Muslim community in southeastern Europe during the long-drawn-out retreat of the Ottoman empire, Muslims have lost many countries to Christendom. Old Muslim lands on the northern and eastern shoes of the Black Sea, around the Caspian, and in Central Asia were added to the Russian Empire. They remain part of the Soviet Union and their fate is decided in Moscow. More recently, the invasion and occupation of the sovereign Muslim state of Afghanistan, and its incorporation in the Soviet imperial system, with the exile of millions of its people, has passed with remarkably little protest or concern by Muslim governments or Muslim peoples.
These comments track very well with remarks made here by Wombat, Andonly, and Maria Gleason. Certainly, those in the West give unusually close attention to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
This obsessiveness by so many parties, but especially by Muslims, is proof the conflict is not looked at as a normal conflict, in the same way as, say, between Greece and Turkey. A normal ethnic conflict between some Arabs and some Jews would not cause Iran -- a Persian country with its own difficulties with Arabs -- to not only spew anti-Jewish rhetoric at an alarming frequency, but to attack the Palestianians for trying to make peace with that country. There is probably no precedent among "normal" ethnic conflicts for this kind of behavior, nor is there any explanation for it beyond irrational hatred.
Certainly, it would be healthy if the Israel-Palestianian conflict were looked at as more of a normal conflict, but that is a different proposition from saying it already is.
The Afterward spends some time on the case of French anti-Semite Roger Garaudy's popularity in the Arab world. How many of you know anything about Garaudy?
But I think this actually undermines Lewis's point. Both Jews and Christians had been contemptible dhimmis; and both Christians and Jews have visited humiliations upon Arabs and Muslims. But in the end, it's the Jews and Israelis that have become the object of particular hatred and scorn. Why this difference? It's the occupation of Palestine.
Message # 4461: "Even the bitterest of conflicts -- between France and Germany over Alsace and Lorraine, between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the Aegean, between China and Japan, India and Pakistan, or Iraq and Iran have never involved total nonrecognition of one side by the other, the total refusal of dialogue, the declared intention to not only defeat the adversary state but to wipe it off the map."
But there is a crucial difference between these conflicts and the Arab-Israeli one. With the exception of the India-Pakistan conflict, those that Lewis mentions are states which had already had relations, and had already recognised each other, by the time the hostilities came to the fore. Besides, none of those conflicts involved the introduction of a brand new ethnos into the region and displacement of an older one. They all represent older rivalries.
Portugal and Spain ? There are no Muslims there anymore, and haven't been any since the early 16th century.
As for the Balkans, the lands lost by the Turks were overwhelmingly populated by Christians, with few Muslim populations, most of whom were concentrated in the continuous expanse of land from Albania to Bosnia. And Albania became an independent state.
Moreover, the Balkans had been a fairly recent conquest, and the Turks were well aware they were recent interlopers into the region. This cannot compare with Palestine, which had been in Muslim hands since the 7th century, and where Palestinian Arabs had lived since long before the Islamic conquest. Expulsion from lands which were not yours to begin with (the Balkans), is altogether different from lands which you consider to always have been yours.
...your claim about some groups being off-limits and others being fair game is inaccurate...
I can assure you his observation is accurate. Some groups are fair game, and some groups are off-limits.
Even among Jews, especially liberal, educated Jews, the trend is to consider the Holocaust approximately as horrible as several other mass slaughters (under Stalin, Pol Pot); and worse than the extermination of indigenes and the enslavement of blacks in America only because it occurred in a modern, otherwise "civilized" country.
It is considered worse by Westerners because it is white racism against whites. The Holocaust is seen by whites as their own society unnaturally persecuting its own members.
(The same perception of racist persecution as being more heinous when it is practiced against fair-skinned, Westernized people is why the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from the US SE is considered such a blot on American history compared to the overlooked much worse treatment of many other Native American groups.)
This is really the only good argument Lewis puts forth, and I'm surprised no one had brought this up before. But the mitigating factor he neglects is that the Soviet Union was a major supporter of the PLO and the Palestinian cause in general, and a major critic of Israel, and the principal benefactor of Egypt (until 1975), Algeria, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab countries. The Arabs haven't been harmed by the Soviet Union at all. Certainly not to any degree that Iraq and Palestinians perceived themselves to have been harmed by Israel.
Arabs care first and foremost about Arab Muslims, far more than about non-Arab Muslims. Just ask the Kurds and the Persians, Muslim victims of Arab attacks.
Message # 4463: "More recently, the invasion and occupation of the sovereign Muslim state of Afghanistan, and its incorporation in the Soviet imperial system, with the exile of millions of its people, has passed with remarkably little protest or concern by Muslim governments or Muslim peoples"
As for Afghanistan, I don't know where Lewis gets the idea that Afghanistan elicited hardly a peep from the Arab and Muslim countries. Half of the total financial aid given to the Afghan resistance came from the Arab countries, not to mention the large international brigade of Muslims (perhaps numbering 20 000) who fought among the resistance. Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, and others, not to mention Pakistan, helped the Afghan resistance during the Soviet war.
Arab rhetoric had been to couch Israel as a European colonial presence in their midst. That was the tack taken by many non-Arab, non-Muslim countries who sided with the Arabs on the issue, as well.
As I said earlier, I use the term "ethnic conflict" as a shorthand for the larger phenomenon of ethnic/tribal/sectarian/racial conflict. The Indo-Pakistan and the Bosnian conflicts are not "ethnic" either.
That Iranians are Persians (well, actually, only half of them are Persians), is irrelevant. What counts is that they are Muslims, particularly Muslims who are in the Middle East.
If the Arab-Israeli conflict is unique, it is unique only in the sense that it is, or is seen, as both an ethnic conflict and a sectarian conflict --emotionally engaging populations in dozens of different contries.
By the way, Iran had diplomatic relations with Israel until 1979.
"There is probably no precedent among "normal" ethnic conflicts for this kind of behavior, nor is there any explanation for it beyond irrational hatred."
I disagree. Hindu and Muslim extremists in India and Pakistan show a neurotic, compulsive obsession with each other. Serbs who equated attacks on Bosnian Muslims with "historical revenge on the Turks", exhibit very similar neuorses and paranoia. The same with the Armenians, who equated the Azeris in Karabakh with Turks. (Azeris, who are Turks but Shiite, had nothing to do with the Armenian genocide of 1915, committed by the Ottoman government.) Karabakh Armenians raised their children to "kill Turks".
All ethnic hatreds are irrational. That doesn't mean there isn't a cause for them.
Why would it be surprising that a Jew is ecumenical in his abomination of ethnic hatreds?
You simply fail to distinguish between intensities, intents, and scopes of loathing. It's one thing to disdain, another to despise, another to wish to exterminate.
But it's understandable that someone with your biases would wish to glide over distinctions.
Or more, the occupation of Palestine by Western colonists, I would imagine.
Israel's aim is not to kill civilians – though it is scarcely careful with Palestinian lives – and certainly not in large enough numbers to cause an international outcry. Its missile strikes attack the infrastructure of the Palestinians' stillborn state, particularly the police and security services. But they also belong to psychological warfare, intended to sap the Palestinians' will to fight or, more importantly, to support the armed minority who do so. That the attacks seem to have hardened the hatred of the Palestinian "street" for Israel appears not to have swayed the former general Sharon.
The Independent.
I do make distinctions. And I don't think most Arabs want to exterminate Jews!
Come on. The Jews had been properly humbled everywhere, since before Mohammed, and this was supposed to be divinely ordained. They had no empire of their own; its very lack was considered God's judgment on Jews. Christians at least were their own masters in non-Muslim lands. But to be challenged by Jews, especially at a time when the west was slaughtering them for their manifest inferiority, was intolerable.
In the IA conflict, my sympathies are certainly toward the Palestinians, particularly since I accept the existence of the State of Israel only because it is a fait accompli about which nothing can be done realistically. But my overall bias on the Palestine question is that:
These biases are the spirit in which I posted Message # 3938. I personally care a lot more about Kurds and Uighurs than about Palestinians for whom, contrary to the ravings of the marielita, I cannot really generate "ethnic enthusiasms". But no one knows anything about Kurds and Uighurs, because they get no publicity unlike the Pals.
Another lie. Hamid Karzai's government controls only a few Kabul streets. Afghanistan is a place of anarchy and lawlessness, of rape and brigandage after America's war. One of Mr Karzai's own ministers is murdered at the Bagram air base in an inter-cabinet feud. The British Army, which controls the airport, is – so we are told – not responsible. And the Saudis allow the culprits to go free. American B-52s are now bombing "enemy soldiers" – not enemies of the United States but warring tribesmen who happen to oppose America's choice of leader, Hamid Karzai.........
And in the meantime, we must ignore the Palestinian-Israeli war. The Palestinian Intifada uprising, provoked by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque, is a "strategic error", according to the State Department on Tuesday. An Israeli officer tells his colleagues, according to the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, that they must "study how the German Army operated in the Warsaw Ghetto". Needless to say the latter report is not published in the United States.
------
But it is an anti-colonialist war, a struggle against Jewish settlements and I can well see why Professor Arie Eldar, a former Israeli army medical officer, should announce that "we must execute him [Mr Arafat] today".
Fisk.
But I think this actually undermines Lewis's point. Both Jews and Christians had been contemptible dhimmis; and both Christians and Jews have visited humiliations upon Arabs and Muslims. But in the end, it's the Jews and Israelis that have become the object of particular hatred and scorn. Why this difference? It's the occupation of Palestine.
Lewis acknowledges the centrality of the conflict in Palestine to Arab and Muslim attitudes towards Jews. He does not dispute this in the slightest. My earlier argument to you some days ago that he did was due to a misreading of a key section of his book by me. Here a section that more fairly represents Lewis's views:
continued ...
The influence of Europe and specifically of European anti-Semitism, both by example and deliberate propaganda, prepared the ground and planted the seeds of the new Arab anti-Semitism. The changing perceptions of religious, national, ethnic, and even racial identity nurtured their growth and effloresence. The new definitions of loyalty, developing in an age of foreign domination and nationalist struggle, brought a new intolerance of diversity that weakened and undermined the position of other religious and ethnic minorities besides the Jews.But the most important single factor affecting Jews was undoubtably the Palestine question, and the transformation of Arab, and ultimately Muslim attitudes toward them must be seen against the background of the successive phases of the Arab-Zionist and Arab-Israeli conflict.
But, as Lewis writes, if it's mostly about Palestine, it's also clearly more than Palestine. The particular virulence and enforced isolation by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims (who know anything about Israel at all) towards Jews, in general, and Israel, in particular, even when their country has never been harmed in any way by the Jewish state, has no parallel. Do (or have) Ethnic Turks outside of Turkey subscribe to weird racial theories about the Greeks, refuse to recognize or trade with them, arm their brethern in Corsica to fight them, and attack or isolate their brethern who want to make peace with them?
Back to the very cogent South Africa analogy.
When I first got my (Indian) passport, it carried a stamp denying travel to South Africa and Rhodesia. Despite the presence of a significant minority of Indians in the former country, there was no particular ethnic reason for India to stand at the forefront of the anti-Apartheid movement, long before the cause became celebrated in the mainstream of the West.
The reason was a kind of moral outrage, maybe a slightly misplaced one -the spectre of a racist regime on African soil was repugnant to anti-colonial Indians.
Very much the same can be said about the Israel/Palestine situation. Were it not festering, and if it did not generate images and reports of a brutal and illegal occupation, I am entirely confident that you would see semi-normalized relations between Israel and the main of the Muslim world. That is, an Israel on pre-1967 lines is something that the realists in the Muslim world could live with. The reality of today is quite different, and is a painful constant reminder of a colonial past that all the regional countries have shaken off but is integral part of the national ethos.
But there is a crucial difference between these conflicts and the Arab-Israeli one. With the exception of the India-Pakistan conflict, those that Lewis mentions are states which had already had relations, and had already recognised each other, by the time the hostilities came to the fore. Besides, none of those conflicts involved the introduction of a brand new ethnos into the region and displacement of an older one. They all represent older rivalries.
Yes, there is always something different about each ethnic conflict. But why do you recognize it some instances and not recognize it in the particulars of Muslim attitudes towards Jews? When the unusual hatred and anti-Jewish rhetoric, found in such a large swath of the Muslim world, that is not even directly concerned with the doings of that part of the Middle East, is mentioned here, then you adduce it to just another ethnic dispute. Well, you need to tell it to the Muslims. They don't seem to have got the message.
I already quoted that passage in this thread.
"The particular virulence and enforced isolation by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims (who know anything about Israel at all) towards Jews, in general, and Israel, in particular, even when their country has never been harmed in any way by the Jewish state, has no parallel."
"Do (or have) Ethnic Turks outside of Turkey subscribe to weird racial theories about the Greeks, refuse to recognize or trade with them, arm their brethern in Corsica to fight them, and attack or isolate their brethern who want to make peace with them?"
(1) Turks themselves harbour "weird theories" which, if not racial, are certainly obsessive and compulsive, about Greeks, Armenians and Kurds. Turks deny the undeniable Armenian genocide. Turks obsessively erase all physical evidence of the Armenian past in Anatolia, demolishing Armenian churches or relabelling them "Assyrian churches". Many Turks even deny the ancient Greek presence in Anatolia and concoct weird alternate-histories about civilisation in Anatolia prior to Anatolia. Turks deny the existence of Kurds, who are dismissed as "Mountain Turks"; and Kurdish, an Indo-European language, is dismissed as a dialect of Turkish, an Altaic language. (This worse than saying Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects.)
(3) The "weird racial theories" are borrowed from the west, ready-made, and prêt-à-porter, if you will. If there had been a long tradition of weird racial theories about Greeks to draw upon, I'm sure the Turks would have adopted them by now.
Portugal and Spain ? There are no Muslims there anymore, and haven't been any since the early 16th century.
Obviously, Lewis is writing at a time when most Arabs hadn't even reconciled themselves to the lost parts of Palestine where Jews were a clear majority. It is the land, not who is on it, that still focused their attention. As for the Balkans, the lands lost by the Turks were overwhelmingly populated by Christians, with few Muslim populations, most of whom were concentrated in the continuous expanse of land from Albania to Bosnia. And Albania became an independent state.
But Muslim populations were lost, as were the lands that Muslims had grown accustomed to thinking of as theirs.
Moreover, the Balkans had been a fairly recent conquest, and the Turks were well aware they were recent interlopers into the region.
I doubt the Turks thought as themselves as "interlopers," and once they conquered the land, surely pictured themselves as the legitimate rulers in perpetuity.
That's not what I said. I said that the conflicts over Alsace, Cyprus, and others have an element missing in the Arab-Israeli conflict, namely, that they represented conflicts between states which had already had relations. There was no Israel with which to have relations for Arabs before 1948-9.
"But why do you recognize it some instances and not recognize it in the particulars of Muslim attitudes towards Jews?"
All I did was answer the question: why do states involved in other conflicts, have had face-to-face talks, but not Israel and most Arab states? My answer was that T & G had had relations before the Cyprus issue (or the 1922 incident) had ever come up.
But I have recognised several special characteristics of the Palestine issue:
(1) it has an international dimension far in excess of other conflicts, because Arabs are located in many different countries.
(2) it is almost unique in being both an ethnic conflict and a sectarian conflict. (Bosnia was a purely a conflict between groups defined by nominal religious differences.)
(3) Arabs & Muslims were able to draw upon a ready-made tradition of ethnic hatred, which hasn't really existed in other cases of ethnic conflict (except possibly anti-black racism).
(I've slain Abu Zuluf. I wasn't really dead. Stupid Palestinians - gets them every time...) This is really the only good argument Lewis puts forth, and I'm surprised no one had brought this up before. But the mitigating factor he neglects is that the Soviet Union was a major supporter of the PLO and the Palestinian cause in general, and a major critic of Israel, and the principal benefactor of Egypt (until 1975), Algeria, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab countries.
Yes, at the same time the Soviet Union was oppressing more Muslims than the hardest of hard-core Zionist could ever dream of, most Arab states had diplomatic relations with it, traded with it, and had cultural exchanges with it.
The Arabs haven't been harmed by the Soviet Union at all. Certainly not to any degree that Iraq and Palestinians perceived themselves to have been harmed by Israel.
This is a shift in your argument. You just corrected me by saying that your use of "ethnic" meant "sectarian." When I say that Iranians are virulently anti-Semitic, despite never being harmed by the Jewish state, you say this is part and parcel of a normal ethnic conflict. They are Muslims, after all.
Now, you excuse the lack of a strong reaction among Arab countries to their Muslim brethern being oppressed in the Soviet Union by saying, among other reasons, that Arabs were never harmed by the former Soviet empire. Well, which is it?
(from Fisk, from marj)
What the fuck is this moron talking about? When was this purportedly published?
"Obviously, Lewis is writing at a time when most Arabs hadn't even reconciled themselves to the lost parts of Palestine where Jews were a clear majority. It is the land, not who is on it, that still focused their attention."
Nonsense. It is the people, clearly visible in the refugee camps and in the Arab Israeli population.
"But Muslim populations were lost...[in the Balkans]"
? There were no large Muslim populations in Serbia or Croatia or Romania or southern Hungary or peninsular Greece. Most of the Muslim populations had always been in what is today Albania and southern Yugoslavia, and Thrace-Macedonia. Turkey has held onto most of Thrace. There are Turkish minorities in Bulgaria and Greece, and Turkey had rather spoilt relations with both.
"....as were the lands that Muslims had grown accustomed to thinking of as theirs.... I doubt the Turks thought as themselves as "interlopers," and once they conquered the land, surely pictured themselves as the legitimate rulers in perpetuity."
Maybe "interlopers" is not the right word. But the Turks definitely distinguished between predominantly Christian lands occupied by them (ar-Rumi, aka the old Roman imperium), and predominantly Muslim lands occupied by them. And they were certainly aware that they were recent conquerors in Europe. But you can't say that about Arabs in Palestine. You can't compare ethnic Arab attachment to Palestine to the Turkish attachment to their European territories. As for Afghanistan, I don't know where Lewis gets the idea that Afghanistan elicited hardly a peep from the Arab and Muslim countries. Half of the total financial aid given to the Afghan resistance came from the Arab countries, not to mention the large international brigade of Muslims (perhaps numbering 20 000) who fought among the resistance. Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, and others, not to mention Pakistan, helped the Afghan resistance during the Soviet war.
Pakistan and Iran are not Arab states, and their fear of the Soviet Union pushing into Central Asia sufficiently explains why they would help Afghanistan to fight the Communists. So those examples don't contradict Lewis's point.
As for the money, the Arab states give -- or use to give when they were wealthier -- a lot of money to all kinds of causes. That they would give half the financial aid to support Afghan fighters doesn't mean the issue was of major importance in the Arabic journals and newspapers on which Lewis is probably basing his opinion.
Your example of the Arab fighters who actually traveled to Afghanistan to fight is more difficult to explain. That act speaks of real committment. Arab rhetoric had been to couch Israel as a European colonial presence in their midst. That was the tack taken by many non-Arab, non-Muslim countries who sided with the Arabs on the issue, as well.
According to Lewis, that was one aspect of Arab rhetoric, especially during one particular phase of the conflict, but there have been other aspects to the rhetoric as well.
I don't know, but you can be sure that the statement has been fact-checked.
Looking for the relevant article, briefly, I found the much more incendiary comments by Rehavam Ze'evi's son and also the odd (interesting to me) tidbit that his slain father's middle name was 'Gandhi'. I gather that he was mostly called by this name.
I think the Arab countries' rather despicable nature, their inability to compromise, their crazed passion to annihilate Israel, their total disregard for any of the rules of fair play - whether in governance or diplomacy or warfare - are self-evident and that this is quite enough to justify any means Israel chooses to employ in order to defend itself, short of trains and concentration camps.
Having said all that, Sadat was a Nazi sympathizer (and agent, I think?) in WW2 and there is that famous picture of him talking to Begin in that swastika studded tie. I wish I could find that picture online.
I guess it is all relevant, somehow, but I'm not sure I know why. Maybe we are trying to see if this war is of the same moral magnitude as WW2... if it is the next installment in Gog and Magog... if this really is Armageddon...
No, I corrected you by saying that the Palestine conflict is BOTH ethnic AND sectarian, as it should be self-evident to anyone.
"When I say that Iranians are virulently anti-Semitic, despite never being harmed by the Jewish state, you say this is part and parcel of a normal ethnic conflict. They are Muslims, after all."
Obviously, Iranians, not being Arabs, profess a solidarity with Palestinians based on religious affinity.
As I said, Arab Muslims naturally care more about other Arab Muslims than about non-Arab Muslims. Given that the Soviet Union professed to be an ardent friend of the Palestinian cause, and was a major benefactor of many many Arab states, it is not at all surprising that the Arabs might overlook the Soviet oppression of their Muslim minorities and given preference to the ethnic side of the Palestine ethnic-sectarian conflict.
And, also, by the 1950s, after Stalin's death, it was disputable in Muslim perception whether the Soviets oppressed their Muslim minorities more than the Zionists. Muslims in the Soviet Union weren't thrown off their own lands, they could speak their own languages, they were allowed a limited autonomy (in the sense that indigenous peoples largely managed the ethnic republics, except for Turkmenistan), they could attend "official mosques" and practise "official Islam" (which were only allowed by the Soviets as a propaganda campaign to woo the Muslim countries of the Third world), they were allowed pilgrimmages to Mecca, etc.
Nonetheless, the Islamist the state, the less likely it was to have relations with the Soviet Union. None of the Arabian peninsula sheikhdoms had relations with the USSR, other than Yemen, as far as I know. When one of the Yemens went Marxist and pro-Soviet, the Saudis joined the Americans in subverting it.
I'm sure it wasn't.
Looking for the relevant article, briefly, I found the much more incendiary comments by Rehavam Ze'evi's son and also the odd (interesting to me) tidbit that his slain father's middle name was 'Gandhi'. I gather that he was mostly called by this name
Gandhi was Ze'evi's nickname. He was called this because he was a gaunt, dark youth and he once walked into the kibbutz dining room draped in a sheet, and people thought he resembled Gandhi, and the nickname stuck.
I disagree. Hindu and Muslim extremists in India and Pakistan show a neurotic, compulsive obsession with each other. Serbs who equated attacks on Bosnian Muslims with "historical revenge on the Turks", exhibit very similar neuorses and paranoia. The same with the Armenians, who equated the Azeris in Karabakh with Turks. (Azeris, who are Turks but Shiite, had nothing to do with the Armenian genocide of 1915, committed by the Ottoman government.) Karabakh Armenians raised their children to "kill Turks".
My point was that the hatred of Jews by Muslims - as demonstrated through the type and level of rhetoric throughout the Muslim world -- is unique. The Pakistan/Hindu conflict remains largely a conflict between just two nations, and their progeny (like you and Marzipranks) who argue about it abroad. Do Hindus ascribe the conflict with Pakistan to inbreeding among Muslims? Given their own Muslim populations, I doubt it's a prominent feature of the debate.
All ethnic hatreds are irrational. That doesn't mean there isn't a cause for them.
No, I don't think so. If one group of people come and take your land, I can perfectly understand why you would hate them, even all of them. For that reason, I wouldn't really call the hatred of Jews by Palestinians to be "irrational" in the same sense I would say it about a Persian Iranian or Muslim Malay who actively hated Jews and wished them all destroyed and enjoy reading books and propaganda along that end.
--
Spike,
I'm sure it wasn't.
Well, the statement comes from the Independent, which is a reliable newspaper. Furthermore, Fisk is a closely watched (and often reviled) correspondent. If the allegation were false, I am entirely sure that you'd be brandishing several foaming dispatches from dishonest Honest Reporting right now. You aren't, are you?
Agreed. I am very glad you are involved in this exchange, because you appear to think and speak in the same language of analysis, models, variables & social science that I do, unlike the others here who just like to make up laundry lists of possible factors without discrimination and make a literary ragout out of them.
"That they would give half the financial aid to support Afghan fighters doesn't mean the issue was of major importance in the Arabic journals and newspapers on which Lewis is probably basing his opinion."
Why doesn't he quote them? In his books Lewis quotes all the time from primary sources and at every opportunity, but not in this case. I think he is basing his opinions on lazy impressions.
The Afghan war was a very big deal in the Arab world. It was through newspapers, radio and television, as well as mosques, that volunteers and charitable contributions to the Afghan cause were solicited.
"Your example of the Arab fighters who actually traveled to Afghanistan to fight is more difficult to explain. That act speaks of real committment."
It's not just fighters. The Arab countries also sent doctors, nurses, relief workers, and other non-combatant volunteers. I know this firsthand, as I saw them in Peshawar in the 1980s.
Arguable. You are not exactly an experienced or widely read observer of Muslim lands.
Furthermore, one could reasonably make a case that the circumstance represented by the brutal, festering, illegal occupation of Palestine is itself unique.
Your comments in Message # 4488 and Message # 4489 are significant, especially your second point in Message # 4489. But in our context the relevant issue is Greece, so I would need to know how Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakstan all choose to deal with the European state, what kind of relations they have, what kind of stereotypes of Greeks they have and how significant are those stereotypes.
"My point was that the hatred of Jews by Muslims - as demonstrated through the type and level of rhetoric throughout the Muslim world -- is unique."
And I'm saying that (I believe) I have exhausted what is unique about the Palestine conflict in Message # 4491.
"The Pakistan/Hindu conflict remains largely a conflict between just two nations...."
So the occasional Muslim-Hindu riots within India, or the Muslim-Hindu riots in Bangladesh, never caught your attention? Also, in the last 12 years, Kashmir has replaced Afghanistan as the international Muslim cause célèbre.
"Do Hindus ascribe the conflict with Pakistan to inbreeding among Muslims?"
Far worse, on both sides. Aspersions cast on each other's religions by both sides, can really be quite shrill. References to filth, rape, monkeys, pigs/cows, darkness of skin and various other things are quite common. Many Pakistanis say that Hindus are Africans.
"If one group of people come and take your land, I can perfectly understand why you would hate them, even all of them. For that reason, I wouldn't really call the hatred of Jews by Palestinians to be "irrational" in the same sense I would say it about a Persian Iranian or Muslim Malay who actively hated Jews...."
I think that's because you, being secular, accord greater weight to national or ethnic identity than to religious identity.
Fortuitously, good old Henry Siegman has an excellent piece in today's NYTimes which is relevant to some of these claims, which are ofuscatory (whether intentionally on the part of Spike or not). The intended thrust is on the Saudi proposal reported by Friedman a few days ago, but the context is wider.
Crown Prince Abdullah's statement represents a dramatic change in Saudi Arabia's position toward Israel and offers a new basis for renewed diplomatic activity.
Normalizing relations with Israel's Arab neighbors has always been seen by Israeli governments on both the left and the right as crucial to Israel's overall security. One would therefore have expected the Israeli government to use this long hoped-for development to renew a diplomatic dialogue with the Palestinians.
But Mr. Sharon and his government have given no indication that they have any such intention. If this lack of interest is confirmed in the coming days, it will prove what should have been evident all along — that the Sharon government seeks pretexts to avoid a political process, not ways to renew it. The targeted assassinations and reprisals, including the destruction of Palestinian homes in refugee camps, during the three-week period in which Yasir Arafat succeeded in lowering the violence dramatically, seemed clearly intended to provoke retaliations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to avoid being cornered into political negotiations. Mr. Sharon's refusal to take any notice of the new Saudi position should finally bring home to President Bush and his advisers that Mr. Sharon's insistence that there be no negotiations until all Palestinian violence ceases can only be an excuse to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza.
In response to the Saudi initiative, Washington should tell Mr. Arafat that if he acts to reduce violence as he did in late December, the United States will oppose Israeli provocations, call for a halt to further settlement activity and press for a return to final-status negotiations without the unattainable conditions imposed by Mr. Sharon.
Amen, Mr. Siegman.
But for a growing number of Israelis exhausted by the months of fighting and demoralized by the seemingly endless supply of Palestinian suicide attackers, retaliation is increasingly unsatisfactory.
"We can now openly say that we are losing the present round that began in September 2000," Amnon Dankner, editor of the daily newspaper Maariv, wrote in a front-page editorial Wednesday.
We're comin to save ya RP...me and Jen gonna baptize you and well, Jen will have to take care of the rest
It transpired recently that at one of these schools they practiced various blatant forms of censorship. E.g. they glued together pages in the biology books deemed obscene or counter to the Koran; they weren't allowed to read our most PC daily because its former editor was a Jew, and so forth.
But what really surprised me was the intervention by the school management in order to disallow a class to discuss media stories on the Kursk submarine tragedy because those godless Russians only got what they deserved having oppressed Muslims for so long.
I took note of this, in particular, because several people here in the Mote have opined that Muslims are unduly and inexplicably selective in their hatred of Americans (no, actually, the explanation put forward has been a combo of "our democracy and freedoms" and "we are rich and they are not"), and I don't think Pincher is the first to have quoted that passage from Lewis' book where he makes that point (or similar comments from other sources).
(Isn't it comforting that Muslims are perfectly capable of hating other peoples as much as they hate Americans and Jews?)
Dhimmi Shakespeare instead of long French kisses
Dhimmi Mozart instead of holding me tight
Dhimmi Tolstoy instead of girl-talk drivel
Like 'Baby, it's alright'
Dhimmi Shakespeare instead of moonlight flirting
Dhimmi Schubert instead of Hollywood tears
Dhimmi Bolshoi instead of all-night hustle
Dhimmi Henry Moore, Salvador Dali
And an evening at the opera
I don't know why. Turkey has a history of ethnic conflict with Armenians as well as with Kurds. These are just as relevant as the Graeco-Turkish issue.
I brought up Graeco-Turkish relations only because they are better known (to the people in this thread) than other ethnic conflicts involving Turks. But the Graeco-Turkish relationship is largely a resolved matter, mostly a dormant issue.
The only serious outstanding issue between them is Cyprus, and that conflict involves, not displacement and ethnic cleansing, as in Palestine, but how to deal with the de facto partition of the island. The Turks want the Turkish Cypriot Republic recognised, and Greece adamantly opposes anything but a single Cyprus solution. There are no Greek pockets in the Turkish part of Cyprus and there are no Turkish pockets in the Greek part of Cyprus.
All I know is that the Central Asian states support Turkey on Cyprus, because Turkey asked them to. I don't know whether they have relations with Greece, but if they don't, I would be very surprised if that had anything to do with pan-Turkism. They probably don't just because they still don't have relations with half the countries of the world. Their knowledge of Graeco-Turkish relations is probably very scant because of their isolation anyway. Besides there is nothing in the dormant Turkish-Greek conflict which should excite Central Asians.
Armenia and the Karabakh war are different. Central Asians know what Armenia is, and they supported Azeris their fellow Turks. Moreover, the outstanding issues between Turkey and Armenia are legion. Turkey's refusal to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia until the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijan's Karabakh and the Lachin corridor is "resolved", is very reminiscient of the stance toward Israel of many Arab and Muslim countries. The Turkish press went into a frenzy during the Karabakh war, demonising Armenians to a degree unimaginable for a country which has committed genocide against the very people being demonised. Imagine Germany calling Israel a country run by circumcised pigs. (A major Turkish newspaper called Armenia a "country run by uncircumcised pigs".)
See here:
Message # 19492 in thread 114
Message # 19498 in thread 114
Are you for real?
(--- it's things like that that make me wonder about your claim that you hadn't heard of Benny Morris, because like Andonly said I remember you asked Rustler about him). Nonsense. It is the people, clearly visible in the refugee camps and in the Arab Israeli population.
You misunderstand the point. I didn't say the issues of refugees or Arabs on Jewish land didn't matter, I meant the Arabs wanted all the land back, not just the parts with Arabs on it. They wanted (and many of them still want) the Jewish state out of the Middle East. In that sense, it was the land, not the people, that mattered.
There were no large Muslim populations in Serbia or Croatia or Romania or southern Hungary or peninsular Greece.
I didn't say "large." But any Muslims under infidel rule must have been a hard bone to swallow. I'm reading The Muslim Discovery of Europe right now, and I'm getting a good sense in the first part of the book, where Lewis quotes liberally from Muslim sources, how difficult it was for the Ottomans to accept that infidels were taking land from them. They didn't rationalize it by saying, "Well, at least we still have Palestine, and that is the land which really matters."
Haaretz has an article by Akiva Eldar today - here - that contains accounts even more staggering than those Spike protests that Fisk got wrong. There is also the appended map, above, of the checkpoints in the occupied territories about which the following is said:
But for the past few months officials in the Israeli defense establishment and outside it, particularly in the U.S., are arguing that the checkpoints do more harm than good. They have turned into a symbol of the occupation, a daily reminder of who are the lords in the land and who are the subjects. There's barely a single Palestinian for whom the word checkpoint (and they know the word in Hebrew, mahsoam) isn't associated with rage and hatred. It is impossible to know how many Palestinian babies were born in the endless lines, on their way to the next checkpoint. The only Israeli faces they know are those of the young, tired and nervous soldiers at the checkpoints.
Oh yes, about the statements attributed to Israeli leaders -
...Tourism Minister Benny Elon proposed killing the relatives of suicide attackers...
...It took some time, but Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein finally reacted to the declarations by Tourism Minister Benny Elon about transferring Arabs out of the territories, and Effi Eitam's description of Israeli Arabs as a cancer, and their culture as feminine....
"I didn't say the issues of refugees or Arabs on Jewish land didn't matter, I meant the Arabs wanted all the land back [in Palestine], not just the parts with Arabs on it. They wanted (and many of them still want) the Jewish state out of the Middle East. In that sense, it was the land, not the people, that mattered."
Well naturally they want all the land back. They want all the land back from Jews because most of the lands Jews are sitting on in Israel once had Arabs on it. In that sense, it is the people that matter, and the land matters because it is associated with a certain people.
"But any Muslims under infidel rule must have been a hard bone to swallow. I'm reading The Muslim Discovery of Europe right now, and I'm getting a good sense in the first part of the book, where Lewis quotes liberally from Muslim sources, how difficult it was for the Ottomans to accept that infidels were taking land from them. They didn't rationalize it by saying, "Well, at least we still have Palestine, and that is the land which really matters." Nonetheless, the [more] Islamist the state, the less likely it was to have relations with the Soviet Union. None of the Arabian peninsula sheikhdoms had relations with the USSR, other than Yemen, as far as I know. When one of the Yemens went Marxist and pro-Soviet, the Saudis joined the Americans in subverting it.
I knew Saudi Arabia didn't have diplomatic relations with the Soviets, but I wasn't aware that all or even most of the Gulf states followed the same line. However, it's fairly well-known that Islamic fundamentalists were not fond of the Soviets.
All the same, everyone wants to hold land rather than lose it. I can only repeat what I said earlier:
The Turks definitely distinguished between predominantly Christian lands occupied by them (ar-Rumi, aka the old Roman imperium), and predominantly Muslim lands occupied by them. And they were certainly aware that they were recent conquerors in Europe. But you can't say that about Arabs in Palestine. You can't compare ethnic Arab attachment to Palestine to the Turkish attachment to their European territories.
To which I would add: Arab attachment to the lands inhabited by Arabs, is equivalent not to the Turkish attachment to the Balkans but to the Turkish attachment to Anatolia.
FWIW, the Kashmir issue has long since expanded from a purely India/Pak dispute to one which includes the global jihadis (including Bin Laden) and foreign fighters from an array of countries.
Bin Laden simply provided material and morale support to the cause. During some of his speeches, he didn't even mention Kashmir among his litany of world problems. It certainly was not nearly of the same importance to him as U.S. troops in Saudi or the Palestinian issue. (Probably for the reason PE mentions: an Arab looks at the Arab world first before he looks elsewhere.)
Have there even been significant numbers of Arabs caught by India among the terrorists in Kashmir or India?
Arguable. You are not exactly an experienced or widely read observer of Muslim lands.
Marj, you know me so well. I've forgotten. How many predominately Muslim countries have I been to again? I mean, I know I haven't been scuba diving in Abu Dhabi or picking strawberries in Israel, but I'm a little fuzzy after that. Please fill me in.
I also have two Muslim relations in my family: an uncle by marriage, who converted to Islam as a young man, and visits Turkey as often as he can. And a brother-in-law, Iranian by birth, whose family left Tehran when the Shah fell. So I'm able to experience the vicarious pleasure of experiencing Muslim lands through their (and their families) eyes as well.
As for books, I read widely on subjects related to Muslims, with maybe a two to three hundred books in my library dealing with Israel, the Middle East, and other predominately Muslim lands. Of course, I'm sure that isn't nearly as well stocked as your library, which has ample servings of Seligman and Fisk, but then your reading is handicapped by the lack of a brain.
Furthermore, one could reasonably make a case that the circumstance represented by the brutal, festering, illegal occupation of Palestine is itself unique.
If that one were you, yes, I'm sure one could.
I think Chechnya rivals Kashmir as an international Muslim issue. The best place to find reportage of the Muslim views about Chechnya are actually the Russian press. The Russians have complained for years about Muslim anti-Russianism and they report (overreport) anti-Russian stirrings in the Muslim world.
Also, one of the reasons, as revealed in the Soviet archives, for the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was the Soviet fear of Islamic fundamentalism spreading to their Central Asian empire.
I don't understand your third point in Message # 4491 that I cite below.: (1) it has an international dimension far in excess of other conflicts, because Arabs are located in many different countries.
And #1 should have "Muslims" as well as Arabs.
(2) it is almost unique in being both an ethnic conflict and a sectarian conflict. (Bosnia was a purely a conflict between groups defined by nominal religious differences.)
(3) Arabs & Muslims were able to draw upon a ready-made tradition of ethnic hatred, which hasn't really existed in other cases of ethnic conflict (except possibly anti-black racism).
Well, no, and this is something that gets back to the point I tried to make earlier, that western indoctrination against racism is not to be written of as a scrim behind which virulent, doctrinaire hatreds must lurk anyway.
PE claims pan-Muslim/pan-Arab antisemitism is perfectly understandable because everyone outside the west expresses ethnic/sectarian hatreds so viscerally; anyone who doesn't know this is an untravelled rube. OK. But having thus normalized our expectations of conflict so that they conform to the Greco-Arab-Afghan-Turkic-etc. standard, it's implied that we don't have to think anymore about how come "east" outcompetes "west" these days in the vile rhetoric and creepy, lockstep propaganda departments.
It's actually the groupthink aspect of these attitudes that chills me, the indoctrination tactics reminiscent of Naziism or Maoism or Communism. The particular hatreds certainly needn't be "unique" or have a "uniquely victimized" object to be worrisome and repugnant. (And Jews needn't apologize for becoming alarmed when such semi-contrived hatreds happen to be aimed at them.)
All of which is why I simply do not understand why PE began this nonsense about "antisemitism, antisemitism, big deal" in the first place. It is a big deal. Hatred and incitement by decree and indoctrination is a very big deal indeed.
We Shall Overcome!
We are proud to be Jews in Israel (10th Axis of Evil)
So the occasional Muslim-Hindu riots within India, or the Muslim-Hindu riots in Bangladesh, never caught your attention? Also, in the last 12 years, Kashmir has replaced Afghanistan as the international Muslim cause célèbre.
Of course, I've heard of them, but they have not made it an issue for Arabs and other Muslims to anywhere near the degree as is the Israeli/Palestinian issue.
You and Marj in the past discussed Muslims in India, and I seem to remember you both agreeing that they were loyal citizens of India for the most part. That is, the Kashmir issue hasn't radicalized them.
Do Indian Muslims want Kashmir to be independent of India?
Edward Abington - "Talk about peace so lame as to be meaningless" Far worse, on both sides. Aspersions cast on each other's religions by both sides, can really be quite shrill. References to filth, rape, monkeys, pigs/cows, darkness of skin and various other things are quite common. Many Pakistanis say that Hindus are Africans.
Again, Pakistanis are an interested party to the dispute so their aspersions on Hindus (who are mainly located in a state that is also an interested party to the dispute) are not the ones I'm looking for.
A better proof would be: Do Hindus in India, because of the Kashmir issue, cast aspersions on all Muslims in Northern Africa?
A model for what I'm talking about is this: sometime after 9-11, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed condemned the attack against the United States by saying that it would have been understandable if the hijackers had done this to Israel.
That is, a Malay, who is head of a nation which is thousands of miles from Israel, in an area that has never been the slighest bit touched by the Jewish state, speaks of an attack that killed thousands by saying it should have been directed against Israel.
This is analogous to an Arab head of state, say King Mohamed of Morocco, announcing that Hindus were deserving of some similar fate because of their occupation of Kashmir. Of course, if he had said such a thing, there would have been an outcry. No one would stand for that kind of shit. And yet the Malaysian Prime Minister's comments hardly made the news. That's because it is all too typical.
West Bank Criminal Jewish Settler - "Sharon is a fat idiot"
(Isn't it comforting that Muslims are perfectly capable of hating other peoples as much as they hate Americans and Jews?)
Well, I don't see how your example proves they do. In fact, I think it's rather silly to believe this is the case. Obviously one can hate Americans, Russians, and still hate the Jews more. There is no contradiction there.
I have never argued that Arabs only hate Jews or that there do not exist other strong prejudices there are widely dispersed among the nations of Arabia. What I have argued is that the virulence and pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world is unique -- not only there, but when compared to other ethnic disputes around the world.
PE, on the other hand, has made a good argument that this isn't the case. But I have not seen PE argue that Arabs are not anti-Jew or even that they do not hate Jews more than other ethnic groups. He is simply arguing, that in most features, including the level and type of rhetoric employed, the Arab-Jewish dispute falls within the range of normal ethnic conflicts around the world.
I don't know why. Turkey has a history of ethnic conflict with Armenians as well as with Kurds. These are just as relevant as the Graeco-Turkish issue.
Yes, but you were the one to compare the Greece-Turkey dispute with the Israeli-Arab. Also, I have no clue as to the dispute between Azeris and Armenians.
Well, it does have a parallel in the Orthodox Slav and non-Slav peoples' hostility toward Turks. Russians and Ukrainians have never been subjugated by Turks, but in Pan-Slavic eyes, Turks are the usurpers of the Orthodox Christian centre of the world, Constantinple; and the oppressors of the Orthodox / Slav peoples of the Balkans.
Anti-Americanism is not really an ethnic/tribal/sectarian/racial hatred, but traditionally it has been widespread throughout Latin America even in countries which have never been subjected to American military interventions. Sure, Mexicans might have ample cause to resent the USA, but Uruguayans and Argentinians don't really yet they are some of the most anti-American peoples in Latin America.
(The French quasi-philosopher, André Glucksmann, wrote in the 1980s that anti-Americanism has many features in common with antisemitism. And he didn't have Arabs or Muslims in mind. His brief book concentrated on Europeans and Latin Americans. In the 1980s there was a brief period when it was fashionable among French intellectuals to be pro-American. I must agree on Glucksmann's view of anti-Americanism: in many places, it has the same neurotic, obsessive, paranoia.)
All the same, if there are few parallels to the universality of Arab antisemitism and the near-universality of Muslim antisemitism, it is because there are few parallels to the multiplicity of Arab and Muslim states.
Message # 4534: "Well, no, and this is something that gets back to the point I tried to make earlier, that western indoctrination against racism is not to be written of as a scrim behind which virulent, doctrinaire hatreds must lurk anyway."
I didn't say that it was such a scrim. I said that the west, because of its particular historical experiences, considers racist expression against certain groups worse than against others groups.
"...it's implied that we don't have to think anymore about how come "east" outcompetes "west" these days in the vile rhetoric and creepy, lockstep propaganda departments....It's actually the groupthink aspect of these attitudes that chills me, the indoctrination tactics reminiscent of Naziism or Maoism or Communism."
There is no such implication. As I said, you make too many lurid & extravagant inferences.
"but they have not made [Kashmir] an issue for Arabs and other Muslims to anywhere near the degree as is the Israeli/Palestinian issue."
I agree most Arabs and Muslims consider Kashmir much less pressing than Palestine, but surely this is because:
(1) Kashmiris weren't being driven out of Kashmir throughout the whole time since Indian independence. If anything, it's Hindu Kashmiris who have been driven out in large numbers since the start of the Kashmiri conflict in 1989 or thereabouts.
(2) Kashmir was peaceful before the late 1980s. The only conflict was between India and Pakistan, not within Kashmir. Once Kashmir exploded in revolt in the late 1980s, it became an international Muslim issue.
"You and Marj in the past discussed Muslims in India, and I seem to remember you both agreeing that they were loyal citizens of India for the most part."
I agree the vast majority of Indian Muslims are loyal Indians, but they are also critical of Indian policies in Kashmir and say Kashmiris should decide the fate of Kashmir, etc.
Well, as you yourself said, Indian opinion of Islam is tempered by the fact that India has got an enormous Muslim population, Islam is considered one of the many religions of India, and non-Muslim Indians have traditionally sided with the Palestinians anyway. (Gandhi opposed Zionism and India voted against the UN partition plan for Palestine.)
It is my impression that on opinions about Islam and Muslims, there are two kinds of Indians: those who are politically correct to a fault because they want to maintain domestic peace and promote the secular nature of Indian democracy; and those extremist Hindus who, if they have scurrilous things to say about Muslims, they say them about all Muslims not just about Pakistanis and Indian Muslims. Hindu nationalists, moderate or extremist, generally favour Israel, and that is why there has been a greater rapprochement between Israel and India recently. Rajeev Srinivasan, the columnist for Rediff that Marjoribanks links to often, very frequently advocates that as two nations beset by Muslim terrorists, India and Israel have a natural convergence of interests.
"This is analogous to an Arab head of state, say King Mohamed of Morocco, announcing that Hindus were deserving of some similar fate because of their occupation of Kashmir."
I doubt there would have been much outcry among Muslims.
"And yet the Malaysian Prime Minister's comments hardly made the news. That's because it is all too typical."
Is it typical for leaders of Arab and Muslim countries to openly spew antisemitic venom. Who else has said what?
I'm guessing that's from a Queen song? A Night at the Opera?
No, huh?
No, I'm referring to your assertion that privately the majority of Israelis (which is what I spoke of) are just vicious and hateful as antisemitic Arabs, that the only reason this is not expressed openly is because Israel's government "controls" such expressions more effectively. In fact, I think the truth is that Israelis themselves control such impulses more effectively, as do most westerners.
One analyst says the speech shows Sharon is opting for a centrist course, risking alienating the Right in order to keep the Likud centrists and Labor with him.
Remember I predicted a while back that there would be a longing for a Leader here? Well, it's happening. More and more people are asking where a leader can be found who will give people a direction, a plan, something to strive for, a sense of where we're going.
Though I imagine there have been equally gross sentencings in cases involving crimes against women, which I don't notice as much.
I certainly think you exaggerate the extent to which Israelis are free of anti-Arab prejudices and demonisation, but I have not said Israelis are "just as vicious and hateful" as antisemitic Arabs. Otherwise my Message # 4275 makes no sense.
I did not imply by "controls" detailed regulation of behaviour in Israel, but certainly there are laws in Israel against racial incitement, and political parties who make appeals to racial incitement may be disqualified from the electoral lists).
Not Queen, 
They were big in the 70s, but maybe not in the States.
[Me:](Isn't it comforting that Muslims are perfectly capable of hating other peoples as much as they hate Americans and Jews?)
[Pincher:] Well, I don't see how your example proves they do. In fact, I think it's rather silly to believe this is the case. Obviously one can hate Americans, Russians, and still hate the Jews more. There is no contradiction there.
No, the example doesn't prove anything like that. I was just shocked that someone could state so coldly that these hapless Russian sailors who were trapped in an iron can at the bottom of the ice cold Barents Sea simply didn't deserve any better.
Precisely how I felt when some Muslims here very visibly were celebrating the 9-11 attacks. I mean, you may have your sympathies and antipathies; but these people are dead, for real, this isn't just a riotous street demonstration where part of the fun is to shout "Death to America/Israel/Russia" from the top of your lungs; these people are actually dead, as in not drawing breath anymore, and they weren't guilty of any malicious act against Muslims or Arabs whatsoever.
A thought: What if the submarine had been Israeli? Would the reaction have been any worse? Of course, it's possible, I guess...
My advice to you
Fuck
Fuck Fast
Make as many Jew babies as you can
That sort of reminds me of T S Eliot's "free-thinking Jew" remark.
Amen.
"I certainly think you exaggerate the extent to which Israelis are free of anti-Arab prejudices and demonisation"
I don't believe I have. And I think some of your assumptions about Jewish attitudes are projections of your own attitudes toward Jews.
You're correct that my own contacts are not haredi slum dwellers who want all the buses stopped on Shabbos, but as I said before, you're welcome to compare elites.
"I did not imply by "controls" detailed regulation of behaviour in Israel, but certainly there are laws in Israel against racial incitement, and political parties who make appeals to racial incitement may be disqualified from the electoral lists."
Yes, those are laws made by the same people you condemn for having confiscated Arab-Israeli land (in security-sensitive parts of the country, it must be pointed out, all before 1977) and for having made it illegal for Arabs to purchase land (which, although logical for a state under siege from Arabs without, was politically and morally inept and led to the Israeli high court justice Barak's decision two years ago that it was also unconstitutional). Doesn't Lebanon have anti-incitement laws as well? I'd be surprised if it didn't. But a few weeks after 9-11, Walid Jumblatt was writing fantasies in the relatively staid Daily Star claiming Mossad done it. Perhaps that wasn't quite incitement.
But all this stuff about what's "normal", what's "expected" of people in conflict--these arguments could and have been used to explain Deir Yassin, or Sabra and Shatila. You go along with that, too?
That's interesting.
High Court: All converts must be called Jews in ID cards
People who undergo non-Orthodox conversions in Israel must be registered as Jewish on their Israeli identity cards, the High Court of Justice ruled yesterday in a landmark 9-2 decision.
...
The conversion decision was written by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak.... It stemmed from the High Court's ruling seven years earlier that the Orthodox monopoly on conversions in Israel was illegal. At the time, the court refrained from explicitly ordering the state to recognize non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel - though it has accepted non-Orthodox conversions performed abroad ever since the court ordered it to do so in 1986.
Brief Haaretz editorial: be sure to read about Jewish incitement in the last paragraph.
Meaning?
"But all this stuff about what's "normal", what's "expected" of people in conflict--these arguments could and have been used to explain Deir Yassin, or Sabra and Shatila..."
Of course! I would not think of them as anything else than manifestations of ethnic/sectarian/tribal hatreds.
"You go along with that, too?"
I'm not going along with anything. I'm really just explaining, describing, analysing, but you're trying to introduce ethical issues into the picture. I'm not interested.
Of course I have my biases, and in most major ethnic conflicts around the world I take a side, but I am also an avid but amateur student of ethnolinguistics, ethnology, ethnic/sectarian/separatist. conflicts. So I try to look at the peoples involved in these conflicts objectively, as insects under observation. But it's been difficult with you around, fuming and outraged at so many things.
In TT, I once started a thread called "Six of a Kind: India, Indonesia, Serbia, Turkey, Russia [and one country I forget]", which was meant to discuss ethnic/sectarian separatist conflicts in which one group tries to secede from the larger entity but the larger group tries to prevent it". I deliberately excluded Israel from the group because of all those rabid Zionists at TT.
How come Israel isn't a secular state?
How long should they "naturally" want all the land back? How many of them should want it?
"I'm not going along with anything. I'm really just explaining, describing, analysing, but you're trying to introduce ethical issues into the picture. I'm not interested."
No, you're the one who has insisted that Israel has no moral right to exist. (And by the way, you have so been using excess boldface, you gynecomastic hysteric: messages 4252, 4274, 76, 81, 87, 90, 92, at a glance. I would use Spanish exclamation points if I weren't too lazy to learn how.) You're not just "explaining, describing, analysing", you're insisting on a particular view of history and on a particular moral framework for understanding the conflict in the mideast. And this framework supports the notion that it is "understandable" and "natural" that people should not only hate one another in ethnic conflicts, but also succumb to hysterias.
You were assuming (correctly) an ideological affinity of westerners here with Israel--an affinity which is fundamentally ethical in nature--and you meant to illustrate Israel's ethical deficiencies. So, no, you can't say now that you aren't interested in ethics as it relates to the question of whether a particular ethnic reaction is "understandable".
Understandable by whom? Tutsis?
Andonly: "But all this stuff about what's "normal", what's "expected" of people in conflict--these arguments could and have been used to explain Deir Yassin, or Sabra and Shatila..."
PE: "Of course! I would not think of [Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila] as anything else than manifestations of ethnic/sectarian/tribal hatreds."
So, if Israel tomorrow were to slaughter every last Palestinian in the territories, you would consider it a normal manifestation of ethnic/sectarian/tribal hatred?
That it would be more effective is close to indisputable. (I leave a little margin for the sake of conplexity.)
I'm not sure the Palestinian issue was actually important to bin Laden before it became a political expedient. It is probably important to some of his cohorts (that Egyptian, Zawahiri, for instance). But in ObL's organization there is thought to be only one Palestinian of any importance; beyond him ,no Palestinians of even minor importance have been identified yet, as far as I'm aware. 
I will not answer "shoulds" at this point. Presumably Palestinian Arabs will want their land back (1) as long as there are those alive who can remember having lived in pre-Israel; or (2) as long as there remains a large number of refugees who are not repatriated out of the camps and given compensation for their losses.
Of course the Palestinian refugee problem is really unique. In almost all cases of permanent or semi-permanent population displacement through ethnic conflict, there has been some party willing to absorb the refugees into the general population. Pakistan and India each probably absorbed 7-10 million refugees from each other after Partition. Israel itself absorbed a million Jews from Arab countries. Turkey absorbed 300 000 ethnic Turks from Bulgaria in 1989 alone, not to mention the millions of Turks and Greeks "exchanged" between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. The list is endless.
"No, you're the one who has insisted that Israel has no moral right to exist."
That Israel had no such right in 1948, is my belief. Today, that right is neither here nor there. Israel simply is.
However, that is not what I have been arguing this time. In this latest exchange, I am really just trying to explain, describe & analyse, and trying to stay away from ethical issues.
"(And by the way, you have so been using excess boldface..."
Only for emphases.
You're not just "explaining, describing, analysing", you're insisting on a particular view of history..."
A particular view of history is still descriptive. That one can't be completely free of biases, is only human, but the impossibility of perfect objectivity doesn't preclude description & analysis.
Not in this latest "ethnic conflict" discussion. In the discussion about "Did the Jews have a right to a homeland in Palestine?", as aired in the International thread last year (or was it the year before?), I would definitely agree that I promulgated a particular ethical framework.
"And this framework supports the notion that it is "understandable" and "natural" that people should not only hate one another in ethnic conflicts, but also succumb to hysterias."
That is not an ethical statement.
Message # 4575
"You have been interested enough in the ethical question to bring up Deir Yassin..."
I brought it up as a bad pun on Dasein !
"You have been interested enough in the ethical question to bring up...the confiscation of Arab land in Israel as evidence of grounds for Arab rage..."
Confiscation of Arab land was not brought up to support an ethical argument. The confiscation in question (as well as Deir Yassin) are data in the typology of ethnic conflicts, that is all. After all, most ethnic conflicts involve disputes over land and ethnically motivated massacres.
"...as well as whether Israel should really be considered a liberal democracy..."
Well, that wasn't part of the "ethnic conflict" discussion. Nonetheless, whether Israel can be described as a liberal, western-style democracy is not an ethical question, but a purely descriptive one.
"So, if Israel tomorrow were to slaughter every last Palestinian in the territories, you would consider it a normal manifestation of ethnic/sectarian/tribal hatred?"
Well, total extermination in ethnic conflicts is rare, but attempts at large-scale extermination are a bit more common.
Shas gets a lot of Arab votes.
I don't think I ever heard of Sailor before. They certainly weren't big in the US.
Naive question :
How come Israel isn't a secular state?
Because Yahweh decided otherwise.
What was Eliot referring to in his 'free-thinking' remark?
Jexster:
You are aware that the Jew-baiters always persecute homosexuals as well, and with equal venom?
Of course the Palestinian refugee problem is really unique. In almost all cases of permanent or semi-permanent population displacement through ethnic conflict, there has been some party willing to absorb the refugees into the general population. Pakistan and India each probably absorbed 7-10 million refugees from each other after Partition. Israel itself absorbed a million Jews from Arab countries. Turkey absorbed 300 000 ethnic Turks from Bulgaria in 1989 alone, not to mention the millions of Turks and Greeks "exchanged" between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. The list is endless.
Any speculation on why the Pals are not being absorbed by their Arab brothers?
That Israel had no right to exist in 1948 is beyond question, imo.
To suggest that Israel has no right to exist today strikes me as very peculiar.
Please explain.
I find that disgusting.
RP...
I find West Bank settlers and Ariel Sharon, criminally digusting
Yasir Arafat
Some did survive until 1945, at least records in Berlin suggest that, when they interned by the West Germans and the Americans.
When jexster actually learns something about Jews, Germans, gays, or Nazis, or anything else,... well, I'll be surprised.
They even had pink badges for homosexuals in the concentration camps.
Actually, I find that Israel had every right to exist in 1948, and that its creation was a moral imperative after the Holocaust and recognized as such by even the most morally obtuse nations in the world. Otherwise it wouldn't have been recognized by the world when it was created.
Countries that had no right to exist when they were created are numerous, though: the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other ex-British colonies - created by people who had no ancestral claim to the land, and who were not the victims of genocide in their previous places of abode, and who had not been previously self-defined as a nation - spring to mind.
But this is tiresome, and I shall retire some.
It certainly depends on your definition of "right", of course. Many believed Jews had a right of refuge, somewhere. Many were in agreement in 1947-48 that is was in Palestine. Many, including all Arabs and Moslems, thought not.
Certainly, it is there now.
It is not agreed that such agreement includes the new settlements.
Having worked with a Jordanian in the past, we discussed the issue of displaced Palestinians in Jordan, and he said that, while most of his countrymen sympathize with the plight of the Pals, the NIMBY epiphenomenon is of more significance to them, regarding the Pals' permanent resettlement on Jordanian territory.
But no matter what you say, I won't play SS Sturmbannfuerher sex games with you
Have fun!
Ilse,
She-Wolf of the SS demanding that the scum and pigs stay in line or get their ...
I don't think so. The Qur'an, as written by Mohammed, describes the particular antipathy that he developed to the Jews of Mecca, whom he eventually destroyed or dispersed. Nothing 'borrowed' about this at all.
...and the particular virulence of Arab & Muslim antisemitism simply reflects what was borrowed.
I don't think so. The Qur'an, as written by Mohammed, describes the particular antipathy that he developed to the Jews of Medina, whom he eventually destroyed or dispersed. Nothing 'borrowed' about this at all.
"These are not easy times," said Sharon, who is under intense pressure from hard-liners to reinvade Palestinian-ruled areas, crush Yasser Arafat's eight-year-old Palestinian Authority and evict the Palestinian leader.
Does this spell the end of Sharon? If he isn't even regarded as extreme anymore, what's the point of him? That he is civilisation's last bulwark against... RustlerPike?
Sharon is our von Hindenburg.
The neighbouring Arab states just don't want to, because (1) it's difficult to resettle so many people, economically and logistically; but also because (2) Palestinians are trouble-makers (witness Jordan 1970 and Lebanon); (3) the introduction of so many refugees would probably upset traditional settlement patterns in any number of countries, particularly in the two countries most plausible as ultimate destinations for Palestinians (Egypt and Syria); (4) many Arab states are paranoid dictatorships (Iraq, Syria); and (5) the presence of so many disgruntled refugees is a convenient way of keeping the territorial issue alive. Without refugees, without people lividly demanding their homes back, an ethnic territorial dispute tends to wither away.
What you think has no relevance whatever. It is not a matter of dispute that Arab & Muslim antisemitism is borrowed almost wholesale from European antisemitism, with its particular images, symbolisms and rhetoric, and with its racial theories. Antisemitism, as opposed to contempt for non-Muslims in general, is not a part of Islamic tradition at all. Arab & Muslim antisemitism represents a pernicious Western influence.
Whatever the Qur'an says about Jews, whatever antipathy Muhammed might have expressed toward Jews, a specifically Jewish-targeted animus never became part of the Islamic tradition. From Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, p. 11:
"Contacts with Christians during the lifetime of the Prophet were rather less important and very much less contentious than with Jews.... No doubt because of the rather more peaceful relations between the Prophet and the Christians, references to them in the Qur'an are more favourable than to Jews... Other passages in the Qur'an and elsewhere dealing with Jesus, while not accepting the Christian doctrines on Christ's nature, nevertheless share the Christian view of the Jewish rejection. Toward the end of the Prophet's life, the expansion of the Muslim state brought it into contact and sometimes into conflict with Christian tribes, and a somewhat less benign attitude toward Christians is reflected in Muslim scripture and tradition. But in general, while these on the whole express a far more sympathetic attitude toward Christians than toward Jews, the subsequent development of Islamic law makes no such distinction between the two.
So Concerned is just projecting modern issues into the past.
I was talking about the refugees already in Arab countries who still live in refugee camps, so (3) is not relevant. As for (2): they would probably make less trouble if they were living in OK conditions, wouldn't they? (1) shouldn't be a problem for the OPEC nations. (4) doesn't really answer anything.
Which leaves us with (5): "the presence of so many disgruntled refugees is a convenient way of keeping the territorial issue alive. Without refugees, without people lividly demanding their homes back, an ethnic territorial dispute tends to wither away."
If the dispute withered away - there would be no more excuse for fighting, would there? There might even be peace! Israel would be on equal footing with the Arab states as a legitimate part of the landscape of the Middle East. But the Arabs can't allow that.
Middle East Marielitos?
Few countries want to take in refugees, and those that do, do so reluctantly. Absorption happens usually as a last resort.
I know that as an Israeli, explanation #5 is your favourite and preferred explanation, but that cannot be the sole one.
Even if the refugee problem went away because the refugees were reintegrated into other Arab populations, you would still have the problem of the occupied territories.
So I would say: probably until the late 1970s, Arab leaders held out the hope that Israel could be destroyed and the Palestinian refugees returned. But since then, their reason for not reintegrating the Pal refugees into other Arab populations, has probably changed: "let's wait for a Palestinian state in the WB, and we'll return those refugees there".
No kidding. Most people recognize without any difficulty that this fact strongly supports the thesis that there was and is a unique bias against Jews among Arabs, so intense among elites that their Palestinian "brethren" and their descendents would be sacrificed for the sake of ensuring that the land of Israel be recovered. Since you have admitted that the Pal refugee problem is unique, it really ought to be added to your summary list of differences between the Arab-Israel conflict and all other ethnic conflicts: "The only thing which sets it apart from other ethnic conflicts is its international dimension, and the imported character of Arab antisemitism." And the Palestinian refugee problem. Well, those are three rather substantial differences.
Yeah, but your belief is premised on exactly one principle, and that is that indigenousness guarantees the right not only to majority rule but to determine before such rule is established who else may arrive in a region inhabited by the indigenes, even if they are not landowners. You claim that an indigenous population which does not rule itself and has never ruled itself may prevent a refugee population (descended from indigenes still present) from settling in its midst and establishing a majority. Indigenousness is all; by your reasoning, any number of indigenes may rightfully deny any number of immigrants the right to settle in any size territory the indigenes claim for themselves, because of the threat of the immigrants peacefully taking over.
Other people, naturally, take into account other moral criteria in their calculation of right, not only indigenousness. Yes, yes, you'll claim you do too, but in our discussion last year your position revealed itself to be based solely on the rights of majority indigenes, under any and all circumstances.
Palestinians learning the history of their people's struggle
for independence will no doubt be surprised to know that one
of the great heroes of the Palestinian national movement in
its early days in the 18th century was a "Zionist." For
among the revolutionary acts of Dahar al-'Umar al-Zidani
(1698--1777) in the period when he established his independent
state in the whole of Galilee, including Haifa, was his call
to the exiled Jews of Tiberias "to return and inherit their
patrimony." He welcomed them on their return, building them
houses and a magnificent synagogue while they, for their
part, responded with complete loyalty to him, even providing
him with vital information on the movements of his
antagonists.
(The Journalist Atallah Mansour, ironically referencing Tewfik Mu'amar, Daher al-'Umar; Nazareth: al-Hakim Printing Press, 1979 (Arabic).)
"That is not an ethical statement."
Oh, yes it is. Please explain to Bishop Desmond Tutu how succumbing to racial hysterias is understandable and natural. Explain it to your bete noir, Leon Wieseltier, or to any number of post-Holocaust Christian moralists of the twentieth century.
"I brought it up as a bad pun on Dasein !"
Oy, it was such a bad pun I missed it altogether. But I dutifully retract it from my example.
Andonly "...as well as whether Israel should really be considered a liberal democracy..."
PE "Well, that wasn't part of the "ethnic conflict" discussion. "
Only because no one took the load of bait you pulled off some Pal avocacy website and dumped into the ethnic conflict discussion!
PE: "Well, total extermination in ethnic conflicts is rare, but attempts at large-scale extermination are a bit more common."
OK. What percentage of Pals in the territories would you like to talk about, I mean as candidates for a normal, understandable slaughter? I ask specifically because hardline Arab rhetoric from 1948 forward has included the phrase "push the Jews into the sea". I guess that's because the slogan "push the Jews into American helicopters to be transported out of our lands forever" is less euphonious in Arabic.
Yes, I think I would. But it's not in the cards at all.
That's not the Syrian position, PE. Nor the Hizbullah position.
Yes, I agree it is another unique aspect of the Palestine conflict. But I don't agree that it supports the thesis that Arab antisemitism is terribly different from other kinds of ethnic hatreds.
No one wants to absorb refugees if they don't have to, even if they are ethnic kin. No one disputes that Pakistani Pashtuns care deeply about Afghan Pashtuns, but it is also a fact that Afghan refugees in Pakistan are today deeply unpopular and have never been integrated into society.
In Serbia, the Milosevic government kept the Croatian Serbs in camps at first, and probably had in mind to resettle them in Kosovo. But since Croatia and Kosovo have been made off-limits by the West, Serbia has no choice but to reintegrate the Serbs from Croatia's Krajina region (who had lived there for more than 500 years).
Likewise, in the first 30 years or so of the existence of Israel, the Arab states felt they could destroy Israel and return the refugees there. I elaborated on this in Message # 4614.
Actually, I had already named three in Message # 4491, so the refugee issue makes it four. These are significant differences, but do these differences make Arab & Muslim antisemitism different in kind from other ethnic hatreds? No. Three of the four differences simply create an illusion of difference.
Message # 4617: "(Also, PE's notion that ancient claims to land are accepted by no one is quite silly; they were accepted by Arabs when it suited them:)"
Ancient claims on land already occupied are made by nearly everybody and accepted by nearly none. That is a fact.
"Only because no one took the load of bait you pulled off some Pal avocacy website and dumped into the ethnic conflict discussion!"
It was not part of the ethnic conflict discussion. Also, the three matters which I said detracted from Israel's being a western-style democracy, were not taken from a Pal advocacy site. (1) Everyone knows about the absence of civil marriage laws in Israel. (2) The bit about disqualification in electoral lists was taken from here: http://www.law.emory.edu/EILR/volumes/spg97/ALMAGOR.html ; and (3) the bit about Israel's discriminatory land laws were taken from the State Department's Israel Country Study. (Yes, I know about the supreme court decision.)
I suspect a fairly sizeable percentage of Palestinians would want to slaughter all Israelis en masse if they could.
"I ask specifically because hardline Arab rhetoric from 1948 forward has included the phrase "push the Jews into the sea". I guess that's because the slogan "push the Jews into American helicopters to be transported out of our lands forever" is less euphonious in Arabic".
Indeed it would be less euphonious. Arabs are really into rhetoric.
I'm sure the Syrians and Hizballah are much more realistic about what Palestinians can ultimately achieve, than their hardline positions would suggest. Their unrealism is rather to suppose that hardline, violent positions would get them a better deal than what Barak offered.
There is another Muslim holiday now, I believe.
It's funny that you live so close to Palestinians and still didn't know today is a holiday for them.
It reminds me of some of my relatives who have lived in Los Angeles all their lives and still can't speak a word of Spanish. They are so immersed in the language they have to make an effort to keep from learning any of it, but they manage.
Greatly abetted by the natural tendency of Islam to promote the most violent forms of hatred and bigotry.
Television evangelist Pat Robertson yesterday described Islam as a violent religion bent on world domination Pat Robertson
Birds of a Feather or the Same Bird?
After you've satisfied yourself that you've done enough to destroy the messenger(s), perhaps you might stoop to considering the message?
Only because you wrap up ethnic and religious hatreds together in order to get around the fact that although the advent of Zionism caused a local ethnic disturbance in Palestine, the religious disturbance it caused was among all chauvinist, dhimmi-disdaining Muslims who could not abide the possibility that Jews had come to pollute their holy places.
The rest of the complex is populated by whites who dislike all minorities and foreigners, and plan to obtain the whole property from the black owner so they can make it an all-white building.
The Korean man is a political refugee, half his family has been exterminated, and he has nowhere else to go, but the whites consider his presence very unfair because he has displaced a white guy, and they want him out. Plus, he cooks food they can't stand the smell of and he has lots of relatives who visit all the time, pretend the whites don't exist, and can't even speak English.
The whites spend 15 years screaming about the poor dispossessed white guy, and the same 15 years making sure he has no accommodation. Meanwhile, the white guy, who already has two kids, gets married and has five more, all camped out in the subdivided efficiency.
All the whites in the building call the Korean guy all sorts of names they've picked up from local blacks, whom they like even less than they like Asians; but at least the blacks aren't trying to live in the apartment complex.
The Korean and his family are under constant threat from the whites, who now own the building and refuse to allow the Koreans to join the residents' association. The Korean guy offered long ago to give back all the extra rooms he had obtained from the whites, except for one bathroom, if they'd let him join the building association. They refused. The former black owner has offered to help pay restitution to the evicted guy, or give some of his kids places to live in his other properties, but he and the building's white residents refuse, and insist that the Korean is a pollution in their midst who is trying to poison them and intends to take over the entire building.
It's simply the Korean guy's fault, right? He never should have moved in. His circumstances were unimportant; what was important was the right of the whites to live in an all-white building.
Readily absorb? Well, the Arab world has had 54 years and 35 years to absorb refugees whose flight was occasioned by Arabs' own violent unwillingness to accept the creation of the Jewish state. Syria could have resettled all it's refugees in the Golan, all it had to do was accept a peace and joint economic agreement with Israel. The Palestinians woul not now be occupied if the Arab states had agreed ot peace with Israel after the '67 war, when Israel immediately offered to give back all but a few parts of conquered territory necessary to its security, chiefly around the borders of major cities. In exchange, they asked for peace and recognition. The Arabs refused.
There's a very real question as to who bears greatest responsibilty for causing the refugee crisis in the first place. Absolutely the Israelis bear a substantial part of that burden simply for having established a state among violent, Jew-hating xenophobes; but do you believe there would have been a refugee problem anything remotely like the one that exists today if the Arab states had not decided to attack Israel in '48 and '67?
You once accused the well-traveled reporter Robert Kaplan of being excessively pessimistic about everything he experienced in foreign lands. Well, assuming hysterical, paranoid racism to be "natural" in ethnic conflicts strikes me as rather more pessimistic than Kaplan and altogether too loaded a designation anyway. By your lights, the Danish protection of Jews in WWII was unnatural, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee is unnatural, the failure of west coast American Indians to hysterically slaughter colonizing whites was unnatural...
You're in dreamland. Do you hang out with diplomats or something?
huh?
Yes, I'm sure they would, and we both know most Israelis would cringe at the obverse of this, but please tell me anyway: what percentage of Palestinians would it be natural and understandable for Israelis to slaughter, give that there is an ethnic conflict in progress?
HAHAHA!
Today, perhaps, but it is also a fact that most of the world accepted the creation of Israel in 1948, agreeing that the Jews had a right to a state in their ancient home in Palestine. Soviet influence during the cold war changed that opinion throughout much of the developing world; of course it was never accepted in the Arab world, except on a few occasions that predate Zionism, and by a few sympathetic Arabs after the Zionists arrived.
It's not like we have much data to compare ancient claim to land, though, is it. The Jews represent a unique instance.
I was indulging in a little hyperbole. Thought I'd make the 'attack the messenger' phrase a little punchier, that's all.
I have no idea of the level of antipathy and the virulence of the rhetoric used by Russians and other Orthodox Slavs towards Turks, but I would be surprised if it equaled that of the Arabs for Jews. One possible way of comparing it would be to look at the quality of diplomatic relations between the newly-founded states containing Turkish majorities and Russia (and other states with mostly Orthodox Slav populations).
And anti-Americanism in Latin American is not a parallel with anti-Semitism in Arab and Muslim states. There is also a counter-balancing philo-Americanism that exists in Latin America (as well as many other strongly anti-American ethnic groups) that does not exist for Jews in Arabia, a point Lewis brings up in his book. Philo-Semitism in Europe, for example, ensured that competing voices to many prejudices against the Jews were heard in 19th and early-20th century Western Europe.
All the same, if there are few parallels to the universality of Arab antisemitism and the near-universality of Muslim antisemitism, it is because there are few parallels to the multiplicity of Arab and Muslim states.
Well, there are quite a few Latin American states, states with mainly Orthodox populations, and western European states. There are also many minority populations spread out over several states (such as Chinese in Southeast Asia). However, it is probably best not to examine those since a minority population is not likely to have much control over its education system, and the type of rhetoric and prejudice will be strongly determined by education. Looking at minority populations is also useless when trying to judge the quality of diplomatic relations.
Nor do I, but we're expected to rely on Pseudoerasmus's impressions and selected readings.
Well, as you yourself said, Indian opinion of Islam is tempered by the fact that India has got an enormous Muslim population, Islam is considered one of the many religions of India, and non-Muslim Indians have traditionally sided with the Palestinians anyway. (Gandhi opposed Zionism and India voted against the UN partition plan for Palestine.)
Yes, but is this because they were against the plan or because they didn't like anything that had its genesis in the councils of the British? (And why did Greece vote against the plan?)
Hindu nationalists, moderate or extremist, generally favour Israel, and that is why there has been a greater rapprochement between Israel and India recently. Rajeev Srinivasan, the columnist for Rediff that Marjoribanks links to often, very frequently advocates that as two nations beset by Muslim terrorists, India and Israel have a natural convergence of interests.
Andonly linked to a TNR article several days ago that talked about the same phenonmenon.
[Pincher]"This [Mahathir's comments saying the 9-11 terrorists should have attacked Israel rather than the U.S.] is analogous to an Arab head of state, say King Mohamed of Morocco, announcing that Hindus were deserving of some similar fate because of their occupation of Kashmir."
Yes, but there wasn't even an outcry among non-Muslims, so inured have they become to outspoken anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, even by its leaders. I just happened to catch the article on one of the wire services, and it didn't even play up his comments. They were buried in the story.
[PE]"I doubt there would have been much outcry among Muslims."
Henry Kissinger, in one of his autobiographical books, tells the story of visiting Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s to talk about some crisis or another (not having to do with Israel) with Saudi's rulers, and having to listen to literally hours of babble by King Faisal of the Jewish plot to take over the world. Now I admit this is kind of funny, but it's also illustrative: Is there anywhere else in the world one could imagine this happening?
[Pincher]"And yet the Malaysian Prime Minister's comments hardly made the news. That's because it is all too typical."
You probably don't have the Norton edition to Lewis's Semites and Anti-Semites, so I'll type out the Roger Garaudy incident for you, which is in the afterward:
[PE]"Is it typical for leaders of Arab and Muslim countries to openly spew antisemitic venom. Who else has said what?"A French ex-Communist convert to Islam, he had just published a book entitled The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. These are three: the religious myth of the Chosen People and the Promised Land; the Holocaust Myth of Jewish extermination and Zionist anti-fascism, and the myth of the modern Israeli miracle, actually due to foreign money procured by Jewish lobbyists. His sources include apologists for Hitler, post-Zionist Israeli revisionists, and current European anti-Americanism. His mid-East tour in the summer of 1996 was a triumph. In Lebanon he was received by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education, in Syria by the Vice President and several other ministers. In both countries he gave a number of highly publicized lectures and interviews and was welcomed by major literary and other intellectual bodies.
A welcome was given to a prominent anti-Semite (who has no other claim to fame) by the leaders of three Muslim countries. But he is not just welcomed; he is feted. He is not just feted; he and his views are promoted by the leaders. And this is not in the 1970s, during or soon after a war; it is in the mid-1990s, when the peace process still looked like a thing that might take off and people had hope some solid progress might be realized in it.
continued ...
Nor do I, but we're expected to rely on Pseudoerasmus's impressions and selected readings.
To be fair, PE is not responsible for our ignorance. However, we can still probe his examples to see how well they hold up.
I don't know how widespread this feeling is, but I've heard many Arabs say they have respect for Orthodox Jews, and it's the secular majority of Jews / Israelis whom they hate.
There a couple of times in the book when Lewis refers to a similar phenonmenon (which contradicts other points he makes in his book): While the public denunciation of anti-Semitism in the Arab lands is virtually unknown, the expression of such prejudice at the personal level, though increasing, is still rare. This may be due to a certain ingrained courtesy in the Arab cultural tradition, which stops even anti-Semites from making overtly anti-Semitic remarks in the presence of Jews. But it must also owe something to the absence hitherto of that kind of visceral, personal hostility that marks the European anti-Semite, and which, even in those only mildly affected, can cause an almost physical discomfort in personal encounters with Jews. Arabs do not seem to be subject to such discomforts. In the Arab lands anti-Semitism is still largely political and ideological, intellectual and literary. Its prevalence in the younger generation is due to the relentless indoctrination of textbooks and media, and the absence of any information about Jewish history and culture. Despite this, one is constantly surprised to find how the authors of even the most violent and Nazi-like anti-Jewish tracts willing and able to have normal, sometimes friendly relations with Jews or even Israelis when no is there to watch and report them.
Keep in mind, this was written in the mid-1980s.
In TT, I once started a thread called "Six of a Kind: India, Indonesia, Serbia, Turkey, Russia [and one country I forget]", which was meant to discuss ethnic/sectarian separatist conflicts in which one group tries to secede from the larger entity but the larger group tries to prevent it". I deliberately excluded Israel from the group because of all those rabid Zionists at TT.
Table Talk was filled with just as many left-wing nuts who thought Israelis were the modern-day Nazis as it was filled with what you call "Zionists." The problem with talking about the Middle East conflict in TT (or most any other forum I've seen) was not the "Zionists"; it was that the two extremes were very emotionable, making any sort of rational discussion on the issue difficult.
I didn't know Said said that, but I've been saying it for some time now. If the Pals want to get almost every piece of land they are now on, including in Jerusalum, they should begin peacefully protesting. After a few years, the pieces of property will begin to fall into their open hands like ripe fruit.
I'm not sure the Palestinian issue was actually important to bin Laden before it became a political expedient. It is probably important to some of his cohorts (that Egyptian, Zawahiri, for instance). But in ObL's organization there is thought to be only one Palestinian of any importance; beyond him, no Palestinians of even minor importance have been identified yet, as far as I'm aware.
I agree with this, but it was probably always more important to him than Kashmir.
PE has also argued at this site that Japan --which, like Israel, has a few unusual features in its practice of democracy when compared to Western nations -- is a genuine liberal democracy. In addition, he has taken to task some Americans here who focused on the U.S. Constitution as meaningful when comparing U.S. freedom to freedom in Europe.
So why the sudden interest in exposing the Israel political system, including its lack of a constitution, as not really in the same class as that of other Western countries? Commenting on the possible impact of any possible success of the movement of self-determination in Kashmir on the Indian Muslims, all the five were of the opinion that it should not have any impact. Indian Muslims have nothing to do with it. Anti-Muslim riots in other parts of India was in the past never connected to happenings in Kashmir. Indian Muslims had no role in the Kashmir movement. They have no interest in it and it has never been their issue, they said.
If we are living honorably in India today, it is certainly not due to Pakistan which, if anything, has by her policy and action weakened our pooition.
The credit goes to the broadminded leadership of India, to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to the traditions of tolerance in this country and to the Constitution which ensures equal rights to all citizens of India, irrespective of their religion caste, creed, colour or sex.
We, therefore, feel that, tragically as Muslims were misled by the Muslim League and subsquently by Pakistan and the unnecessary suffering which we and our Hindu brethren have to go through in Pakistan and in India since partition, we must be given an opportunity to settle down to a life of tolerance and understanding to the mutual benefit of Hindus and Muslims in our country -if only Pakistan would let us do it. To us it is a matter of no smaller onsequence.
continued ...
Not that our lot is certainly happy. We wish some of the state Governments showed a little greater sympathy to us in the field of education and employment. Nevertheless, we feel we have an honourable place in India. Under the law of the land, our religious and cultural life is protected and we shall share in the opportunities open to all citizens to ensure progress for the people of this country.Indian Muslims may like it or not; their position in the Indian society is largely affected by terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir and state of Indo-Pak relations. Any development in either of the two spheres recoils on them, mostly against their wishes. Indian Muslims do not share or support the separatist tendencies manifested by certain sections of Kashmiri Muslims. That is one important reason why Indian Muslims have not organized any large-scale protest against the excesses of the security forces in the state.
Second Toy Check Like southern Lebanon, much of Kashmir too, has mountainous terrain suitable for guerrilla warfare. What is more, the zionists and the Hindus employ similar tactics to subjugate people under their occupation. Both are extremely ruthless but also highly sophisticated in their propaganda, thereby able to neutralise any serious adverse fallout from their barbaric practices; the Indians are helped in this by secularist Indian Muslims who have hitched their fortunes to Indian nationalism and are willing to work against their fellow-Muslims. Another common feature is their instinctive enmity to Islam. It is hardly surprising, then, that there is considerable military and technical cooperation between the two, which has flourished since 1955 although full diplomatic relations were established only in January 1994. This was highlighted by the visit to Tel Aviv last month of a high-level Indian delegation, headed by home minister and BJP head Lal Krishna Advani, to discuss ‘fighting terrorism’.
It is truly surprising how well-written some of this wing-nut material is. I keep expecting that wingnuts in other countries must be every bit as stupid as they usually are in the U.S.
And I wonder if Henry Ford well-known proclivities are responsible for the local anti-Jewish tone in Gross Pointe.
It's a dying tradition, but still there. Actually Henry Ford never lived in Grosse Point but his influence no doubt extended throughout the Detroit area and beyond. (He lived in Dearborn.) His son, Edsel, did live in Grosse Pointe, but I have never heard that he was anti-semitic. And Henry Ford II took immediate steps to dissociate himself and the company from his grandfather's antisemitism when he took over Ford Motor Company after WWII. I'm sure he was sincere, but Ford had lost a lot of Jewish customers to GM whose Treasurer in the 30s and 40s, Meyer Prentis, was Jewish.
I actually heard an expat Pakistani Muslim on a call-in radio program a couple of weeks ago, opining that the Kashmir issue is incomprehensible, that India is home to millions of Muslims who do just fine there, and that Pakistan should leave Kashmir to India.
According to the information used by UNPROFOR in B[osnia] & H[erzogovina] there were about 3.000 Arab volunteers. They were for the most part concentrated in Central Bosnia - in the El Mujahedin unit, 91, Anti-terrorist unit, and 7th MOS brigade - Bosnian variant of El Mujahedin unit.
It is interesting to note that Arab volunteers rarely appeared on the battlefield during the war against Serbs; they were mostly building their own organization by recruiting local Muslims, by training them and very often by committing, until then, unthinkable public excesses, like breaking crosses or at first sight anecdotal excesses like breaking up brandy stills in which local Muslims (traditionally more secular than their Arab brothers) distilled brandy, or by destroying some other non-Islamic symbol. Every single Croat had an aversion to Arabs, however there were also many Muslims who felt the same. There was an impression that their primary assignment was to ruin the relation between Croats and Muslims.
The article, written by one written by one Tihomir Blaskic, goes on...
Arabs took part in all the major crimes on Croats, and particularly in those committed in the early stages of the war, like in Dusina, Miletici, Ma'aline, kidnapping the commander of Zenica HVO Zivko Totic and the massacre of his military personnel, Mujaheddins appeared as a firing pin in the areas where the conflicts had not yet begun, in the areas where local AB&H members showed resistance to attack their recent (until yesterday) neighbors.
In Mujaheddin “training centers” in Mehurici (Travnik) and Rostovo (Bugojno) a real gory danse macabre was unfolding, the ceremony in which they liberated their Bosnian protégés from the uneasiness of killing. Liberation of uneasiness from killing was achieved by “training” newly recruited Bosnian Muslims - that is by massacring captured HVO soldiers.</
