The Genie is out of the Bottle

[DeBunkem]

From Democracy Now!

To keep in mind when reading all the Islamophobic and anti-Semitic (Arabs are Semitic)
nonsense funneled into the forum:

MARWAN BISHARA: I think the impact is going to differ from one country to another, but there’s a certain commonality to all of it. See, there is this thing that’s been absent in the mind of many, not only in Washington, but also in the U.S. media. There is something called an Arab. There is an Arab nation. You can fly—you can take a seven-hour flight from Morocco to Iraq, passing through an Arab region that speaks the same language, that has the same heritage. But it has been invisible to American media and to American decision makers. We’ve seen the Arab world. We’ve seen Saudi Arabia, we’ve seen Bahrain, through the lenses of military strategy, oil, prisms of Israel, and certainly terrorism and jihad. But what we’ve seen over the last six weeks has been completely absence.
So, for example, I was in one of those brainstorming sessions that tried to talk about what’s next for Palestine and Israel. And what amazes me is that everything that they speak about has an Israel reference to it, because that’s where the correspondents for their main networks are, that’s where their people are, and that’s how they’ve seen the region—Egypt, Palestine and so on—from Israel’s prisms. So, every point of reference is, what did Netanyahu say, or what does Israel think, what would the Israeli lobby consider. Would now, for example, President Obama do this and that, and will the Israeli lobby allow him? What does that mean for our strategic interests in the Middle East? Not understanding that there is a complete sweep that requires not only a change of mindset and, if you allow me here, a change of decision makers, perhaps, or a change of aides in Washington. There’s a complete class of bureaucrats in Washington that are not only not in touch with what’s going on in America, they certainly are not in touch with what’s going on in the Arab world.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Marwan goes, we can’t not talk about the Palestine Papers, because Al Jazeera has released them, and you’re the senior political analyst for Al Jazeera. The Palestine Papers, the leaked documents obtained by Al Jazeera that show how Palestinian leaders offered sweeping concessions to Israel on a number of key issues but received little in return. The U.N. Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace, Robert Serry, has said the papers highlight the Israeli government’s rejection of serious negotiations in its attempt to retain control over the West Bank.

ROBERT SERRY: What you have seen is, in my view, an earnest, genuine Palestinian attempt to actually show readiness for a two-state solution, and maybe we haven’t seen that same readiness on the other side, given also the fact that all of what happened hasn’t led to an agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Robert Serry. Marwan Bishara, I want to have you explain the significance of this—it’s hardly talked about in the United States; we all know about the WikiLeaks documents, but not the Palestine Papers—and again, get Professor Chomsky to respond.

MARWAN BISHARA: Well, look, it’s very simple. There’s been this notion for the last 20 years that, from Arafat onwards, that the Palestinians were not serious partners for peace, that the Palestinians were not forthcoming, that they’re not willing to compromise, that they were set in their ways. What we found out from the Palestine Papers, 1,600 documents detailing session after sessions with the Americans, with the Israelis and so on and so forth, that the Palestinian delegation was not only making incredible compromises that I’m not sure that they will pass through the public opinion in Palestine, but they were making acrobatic attempts just to please their Israeli partners and their American partners. They were almost playing in the American role of trying to bridge between America and Israel and between Palestine and Israel themselves. And yet, they’ve been met with rejection after rejection after rejection, not only from the so-called hawkish bits of the Israeli politics, but actually from the so-called moderate parts of the Israeli policy or the Israeli delegation. So we would see sessions after session, for example, with then-Foreign Minister Livni, where the Palestinians are offering one possibility after another, and the Israelis coming back and saying something so condescending, such as, "Oh, this is very interesting, but I don’t think this will work. Why don’t you come up with something different?" And it just goes on and on for years.
Now, as Professor Chomsky was saying, the problem with much of that, Amy, is that there is information out there, but it does not come together in some understanding of some sort. So we know for 20 years the Palestinians have made historic compromises on the question of the territory, on the question of borders, even on the question of Jerusalem, a question of right of return of refugees, but they have always been met with rejection from the Israeli side and complicity from the American side.
MARWAN BISHARA: Yes, Ayman Mohyeldin, that’s correct. And, of course, in Cairo, we’ve been there in a very substantial way. I think we had like eight roving reporters in Egypt alone when things broke out. So, we are there, we listen to the people, and we report the story as is. Of course, before, we’ve been accused, because we report those things that Noam spoke about, the sentiments of people—there is a pent-up tension in that area. The fact that Washington sees people as terrorists, as jihadists, as radicals, as extremists, and the most autocratic and the worst of kleptocracies in the world as moderate, as allies, as friends of the United States, is an insult to the American people. But that’s how Washington has been viewing these things.

The pro-Apartheid/Occupation posts are written through the same US/Israel prism which is pro-dictatorship. In spite of all the talk about Egyptian democracy, why is the US not preventing the bloody attacks on Arab citizens and the press in Bahrain? could it have something to do with the huge US military base there? MORE at Democracy Now!

Gaza/warsaw parallels:




http://www.ceia-sc.org/page37/page48/page48.html

When it is levelled at Israel then, the charge of apartheid generates not counter-argument backed by counter-evidence, but rather walls of sheer stony denial, if not inarticulate eruptions of blind rage, as though either denial or sheer fury could permanently forestall argument.
Saree Makdisi
2010-03-11

[cnorman18]

From Democracy Now!

To keep in mind when reading all the Islamophobic and anti-Semitic (Arabs are Semitic)
nonsense funneled into the forum…

First, a correction: “anti-Semitic� has one and only one meaning, and has had one and only one meaning and no other since its inception; the word was coined by a German antisemite named Wilhelm Marr in 1879, specifically to replace the German word Judenhass, literally, “Jews-hate.� Attempts have been made by many to make it mean “Arab-hate� as well as “Jew-hate,� but it just doesn’t, and never has. The only such references to any such purported meaning are found in bogus claims like this one. Further proof? Okay: There is no such thing as “Semitism.� The word “anti-Semitism� has one and only one meaning. One wonders why DeBunkem makes such a point of trying to deny that. The number of places where that claim is found is, shall we say, limited.

Second: I call “unsupported claim� yet AGAIN. DeBunkem is absolutely alleging that there as been “Islamophobic and anti-Arab nonsense funneled into the forum,� and the obvious reference is to me. Let him prove that allegation, retract it, or explicitly admit that it does not refer to me. I am on the record any number of times on this forum as opposing anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry, most recently day before yesterday --

…Hollywood and American culture in general has been smearing Arabs and Muslims as savages for as long as I can remember.

-- and I regard the claim that I have ever posted anything Islamophobic or of a bigoted anti-Arab nature as an absolute smear, sheer unsupported and unprovoked calumny, and a deliberate and consciously promulgated falsehood. Opposing and exposing anti-Israel and frankly anti-Semitic propaganda on this site is NOT Islamophobic or anti-Arab; it is pro-truth and nothing else. Unlike DeBunkem, I CAN PROVE and HAVE REPEATEDLY PROVEN that HE has posted material from blatantly anti-Semitic sites on this forum, and I am prepared to PROVE IT AGAIN if that claim is questioned -- and again and again whenever such material appears.

Can DeBunkem prove his base libel, or will he retract it? Any predictions?

Now, to this post:

MARWAN BISHARA: I think the impact is going to differ from one country to another, but there’s a certain commonality to all of it. See, there is this thing that’s been absent in the mind of many, not only in Washington, but also in the U.S. media. There is something called an Arab. There is an Arab nation. You can fly—you can take a seven-hour flight from Morocco to Iraq, passing through an Arab region that speaks the same language, that has the same heritage. But it has been invisible to American media and to American decision makers. We’ve seen the Arab world. We’ve seen Saudi Arabia, we’ve seen Bahrain, through the lenses of military strategy, oil, prisms of Israel, and certainly terrorism and jihad. But what we’ve seen over the last six weeks has been completely absence.

Coming from DemocracyNow, this is indeed amazing. The fact is, up to this point I agree with this quote entirely, and would add that the Arab world and the injustice and oppressive governments that have dominated it for so long have been invisible to the critics of Israel too. I have explicitly made this point in the past -- most recently in the column by David Suissa quoted in the OP of this thread:

Even if you absolutely believe in the imperative of creating a Palestinian state, you can't tell me that the single-minded and global obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the enormous ills in the rest of the Middle East hasn't been idiotic, if not criminally negligent.

While tens of millions of Arabs have been suffering for decades from brutal oppression, while gays have been tortured and writers jailed and women humiliated and dissidents killed, the world -- yes, the world -- has obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As if Palestinians -- the same coddled victims on whom the world has spent billions and who have rejected one peace offer after another -- were the only victims in the Middle East.

As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world.

While self-righteous Israel bashers have scrutinized every flaw in Israel's democracy -- some waxing hysterical that the Jewish democratic experiment in the world's nastiest neighborhood has turned into an embarrassment -- they kept their big mouths shut about the oppression of millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East.

They cried foul if Israeli Arabs -- who have infinitely more rights and freedoms than any Arabs in the Middle East -- had their rights compromised in any way. But if a poet was jailed in Jordan or a gay man was tortured in Egypt or a woman was stoned in Syria, all we heard was screaming silence.

Think of the ridiculous amount of media ink and diplomatic attention that has been poured onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict over the years, while much of the Arab world was suffering and smoldering, and tell me this is not criminal negligence. Do you ever recall seeing a U.N. resolution or an international conference in support of Middle Eastern Arabs not named Palestinians?

Of course, now that the Arab volcano has finally erupted, all those chronic Israel bashers have suddenly discovered a new cause: Freedom for the poor oppressed Arabs of the Middle East!

…As you can see is happening, right here and right now.

Go ahead; go to the DemocracyNow! Website and do a few searches. See just how many impassioned articles it has posted that were concerned with democracy and/or oppression in Egypt, or in Bahrain, or Yemen, or Iran, or ANY Middle Eastern nation other than Israel, before January 15 of this year. I won’t give you the answer; go ahead, look for yourself.

Oh, well. Onward.

So, for example, I was in one of those brainstorming sessions that tried to talk about what’s next for Palestine and Israel. And what amazes me is that everything that they speak about has an Israel reference to it, because that’s where the correspondents for their main networks are, that’s where their people are, and that’s how they’ve seen the region—Egypt, Palestine and so on—from Israel’s prisms. So, every point of reference is, what did Netanyahu say, or what does Israel think, what would the Israeli lobby consider. Would now, for example, President Obama do this and that, and will the Israeli lobby allow him? What does that mean for our strategic interests in the Middle East? Not understanding that there is a complete sweep that requires not only a change of mindset and, if you allow me here, a change of decision makers, perhaps, or a change of aides in Washington. There’s a complete class of bureaucrats in Washington that are not only not in touch with what’s going on in America, they certainly are not in touch with what’s going on in the Arab world.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Marwan goes, we can’t not talk about the Palestine Papers, because Al Jazeera has released them, and you’re the senior political analyst for Al Jazeera. The Palestine Papers, the leaked documents obtained by Al Jazeera that show how Palestinian leaders offered sweeping concessions to Israel on a number of key issues but received little in return. The U.N. Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace, Robert Serry, has said the papers highlight the Israeli government’s rejection of serious negotiations in its attempt to retain control over the West Bank.

ROBERT SERRY: What you have seen is, in my view, an earnest, genuine Palestinian attempt to actually show readiness for a two-state solution, and maybe we haven’t seen that same readiness on the other side, given also the fact that all of what happened hasn’t led to an agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Robert Serry. Marwan Bishara, I want to have you explain the significance of this—it’s hardly talked about in the United States; we all know about the WikiLeaks documents, but not the Palestine Papers—and again, get Professor Chomsky to respond.

MARWAN BISHARA: Well, look, it’s very simple. There’s been this notion for the last 20 years that, from Arafat onwards, that the Palestinians were not serious partners for peace, that the Palestinians were not forthcoming, that they’re not willing to compromise, that they were set in their ways. What we found out from the Palestine Papers, 1,600 documents detailing session after sessions with the Americans, with the Israelis and so on and so forth, that the Palestinian delegation was not only making incredible compromises that I’m not sure that they will pass through the public opinion in Palestine, but they were making acrobatic attempts just to please their Israeli partners and their American partners. They were almost playing in the American role of trying to bridge between America and Israel and between Palestine and Israel themselves. And yet, they’ve been met with rejection after rejection after rejection, not only from the so-called hawkish bits of the Israeli politics, but actually from the so-called moderate parts of the Israeli policy or the Israeli delegation. So we would see sessions after session, for example, with then-Foreign Minister Livni, where the Palestinians are offering one possibility after another, and the Israelis coming back and saying something so condescending, such as, "Oh, this is very interesting, but I don’t think this will work. Why don’t you come up with something different?" And it just goes on and on for years.
Now, as Professor Chomsky was saying, the problem with much of that, Amy, is that there is information out there, but it does not come together in some understanding of some sort. So we know for 20 years the Palestinians have made historic compromises on the question of the territory, on the question of borders, even on the question of Jerusalem, a question of right of return of refugees, but they have always been met with rejection from the Israeli side and complicity from the American side.
MARWAN BISHARA: Yes, Ayman Mohyeldin, that’s correct. And, of course, in Cairo, we’ve been there in a very substantial way. I think we had like eight roving reporters in Egypt alone when things broke out. So, we are there, we listen to the people, and we report the story as is. Of course, before, we’ve been accused, because we report those things that Noam spoke about, the sentiments of people—there is a pent-up tension in that area. The fact that Washington sees people as terrorists, as jihadists, as radicals, as extremists, and the most autocratic and the worst of kleptocracies in the world as moderate, as allies, as friends of the United States, is an insult to the American people. But that’s how Washington has been viewing these things.

On the “Palestine Papers,� one simple and on-point question:

Does anyone here think that Al-Jazeera is a credible source?

Here is a story from the BBC: Palestinians attack al-Jazeera 'distorted' talks leaks. Notice that it is the Palestinians who are denouncing these papers as “distorted,� and not either the Americans or the Israelis:

The Palestinian Authority has accused al-Jazeera TV of distortion, after it leaked documents purporting to show offers of major concessions to Israel.
President Mahmoud Abbas said the leaks had deliberately confused Palestinian and Israeli negotiating positions.

The documents suggest the Palestinians agreed to Israel annexing all but one settlement in occupied East Jerusalem - an offer Israel apparently rejected.

The BBC has been unable to verify the documents independently.

Al-Jazeera says it has more than 1,600 confidential records of meetings, e-mails, and communications between Palestinian, Israeli and US leaders covering the years 2000-2010.

The Palestinians are reported to have proposed an international committee to take over Islamic and Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, and limiting the number of returning refugees to 100,000 over 10 years.

The papers are believed to have originated from the Palestinian side.

Mr Abbas, who is due to hold talks on the peace process on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, [guess that’s been called off… cn18] said negotiations had been carried out openly, and his fellow Arab leaders were aware of their contents.

“Is it not strange that we would offer all these concessions which Israel demands, yet there is still no peace deal?�
--Saeb Erekat, Chief Palestinian negotiator

"What is intended is a mix-up. I have seen them yesterday present things as Palestinian but they were Israeli... this is therefore intentional," he said in Cairo, in remarks quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who is quoted as saying they were "offering the biggest Yerushalayim [Jerusalem in Hebrew] in Jewish history", later told al-Jazeera that he had nothing to hide.

"On several occasions I have said on al-Jazeera that we, the Palestinian Authority, would never give up any of our rights. If we did indeed offer Israel the Jewish and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem, and the biggest Yerushalayim as they claim, then why did Israel not sign a final status agreement?" he asked.

"Is it not strange that we would offer all these concessions which Israel demands, yet there is still no peace deal?"

BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, in Jerusalem, says the most likely source of the leaks is a Palestinian rival who wants to damage Mr Abbas's leadership.

He adds that the Palestinian leader has not been directly quoted in these documents so far, and being at arms length may allow him to distance himself from the fallout.

The secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Abed Rabbo, alleged that al-Jazeera was engaged in "media games... to trick and mislead the simple citizen" and was working for a "certain political trend" - a reference to the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, which controls Gaza.

But a Hamas spokesman said the leaks revealed the "ugly face of the authority, and the level of its co-operation with the occupation".

They show "the level of the Fatah authority's involvement in attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause, particularly on the issue of Jerusalem and refugees, and its involvement against the resistance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip", Sami Abu Zuhri said, according to the AFP news agency.

Current peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been suspended for months over Israel's refusal to stop building Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

'Biggest Jerusalem'

Among the leaked papers, the reported offers relating to East Jerusalem are the most controversial, as the issue has been a huge stumbling block in peace talks. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital.

The Palestinian reaction is a testimony to the potential damage the contents of the leaked documents could do to the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and to his team.

…without confirming the veracity of the reports, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had also made concessions which were rejected by the Palestinians.

"He put an offer on the table which called for splitting Jerusalem, he put an offer on the table with territorial swaps which gave, practically, the Palestinians 100% of all territory, and they nevertheless refused him," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"That's what Prime Minister Olmert has said publicly and that's what's published today in one of these purported documents."…

…The leaks also purport to show that Palestinian leaders were "privately tipped off" about Israel's 2008-2009 military offensive in Gaza, a claim Mr Abbas has denied in the past.

A couple more simple and on-point questions:

If these documents show the Israelis in such a bad light, why did the Palestinian negotiators keep them secret in the first place?

If they prove that the Israelis are so intransigent and that the Palestinians are so willing to deal, why are they now crying “foul� and “distortion�? Remember, those complaints are coming from the Palestinian side, not the Israelis.

Me, I think I’ll wait till we have a little more information, and a little less testimony from everyone involved, Palestinian, Israeli and American, that some of the facts in these “leaks� have been deliberately altered and reversed to serve a Hamas propaganda agenda.

Al-Jazeera isn’t exactly the BBC. It’s not even Fox News.

The pro-Apartheid/Occupation posts are written through the same US/Israel prism which is pro-dictatorship. In spite of all the talk about Egyptian democracy, why is the US not preventing the bloody attacks on Arab citizens and the press in Bahrain? could it have something to do with the huge US military base there?

Beats me. My question is, what happened to the “US/Israeli approved resistance-crushing bloodbath� that you predicted in Egypt? Maybe the US doesn’t have the total control in these countries that you keep implying that it does. Or are you advocating a invasion of US troops in Bahrain and a US-supported coup in support of the protestors?

MORE at Democracy Now!

Only since mid-January. Wasn’t much interest there prior to that time, now was there?

Gaza/warsaw parallels:

[The usual inflammatory picture, again one with the pridictable fatuous, facile, and oft-repeated insulting and inflammatory Nazi-Israeli link, deleted]

http://www.ceia-sc.org/page37/page48/page48.html

And, as usual, I invite everyone here to go to the link, read the article, and then look around at the other material on that site. Judge for yourselves how unbiased, how fair, how evenhanded it is. Judge for yourselves what its agenda might be. I won’t even bother to give links to other pages on the site; feel free to explore on your own. See what you think.

When it is levelled at Israel then, the charge of apartheid generates not counter-argument backed by counter-evidence, but rather walls of sheer stony denial, if not inarticulate eruptions of blind rage, as though either denial or sheer fury could permanently forestall argument.
Saree Makdisi
2010-03-11

And as I’ve said before, my arguments -- including the often-posted Forbidden Topics listed below -- do not constitute either “sheer stony denial� or “inarticulate eruptions of blind rage.� It might even be pointed out that DeBunkem’s continued total refusal to even acknowledge those arguments might constitute “sheer stony denial,� if only by his “sheer stony silence� in response to them.

I don't expect an actual RESPONSE to any of this, of course; only another change of subject, probably on a new thread. There are enough OLD ones that DeBunkem has abandoned in the face of something other than "sheer stony denial" and "inarticulate eruptions of blind rage." Maybe his own "denial or sheer fury" is supposed to be an answer on those threads.

Oh, here are the lists. First the Forbidden Topics (these are supposed to be nothing but “sheer stony denial� and “inarticulate eruptions of blind rage,� mind):

(1) The decades-long campaign of Palestinian attacks against unarmed civilians chosen as primary targets for mass murder

(2) The responsibility of the Palestinian terrorists for the deaths of Palestinian civilians due to their own inarguably criminal tactics

(3) The openly and explicitly stated, and never renounced, Palestinian goal of the total eradication of Israel and the extermination or expulsion of every Jew in the Mideast

(4) The decades of Government-sponsored and encouraged old-school Nazi-style anti-Semitic hate propaganda to which the Arab public is subjected, which includes Holocaust denial, claims of worldwide Jewish conspiracy, the promoting of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic document, and even, incredibly, dramatizations of the notorious Blood Libel as factually true

(5) The explicit Palestinian goal of “ethnic cleansing� in order to establish a Judenrein Arab nation in the West Bank, and eventually from the Jordan to the sea

(6) The fact that very many Arabs never left Israel at the time of its founding, and many (20% of the Israeli population) live there in peace and freedom as full citizens to this day

(7) The factual record of endlessly repeated Israeli offers of “land for peace�

(8) The blatant and proven anti-Israel bias of the supposedly “unbiased� UN

(9) The blatant and proven anti-Israel bias of many supposedly “unbiased� NGOs

(10) The FACT that looking to mutually exclusive historical narratives of the past offers no solutions, only more endless conflict

And now the abandoned threads, where my “sheer stony denial� and “inarticulate eruptions of blind rage� apparently ended the debates:

Uprising Threatens Status Quo in Gaza Ghetto?

The Media and the Mideast: Power and Responsibility

Israeli Blockade to Keep Gaza on “Brink of Collapse�

Israel and the Other Arabs: Signs of Hope

AIPAC spying on US

What I learned from a 1937 World Atlas

Noam Chomsky: Agenda and Tactics

Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay Recognize Palestinian State

Justifying Israel (ff.)

Israel and Palestine -- Whose Land Is It?

8 Reasons Leftists should be Pro-Israel

Question for DeBunkem

Are Jews “Unrightly� Occupying Israel?

Berserk Israeli Terrorist NOT a Racist?

And then, of course, there are the threads addressed to DeBunkem where he has never deigned to reply at all:

To the Chorus of Chronic, Compulsive Critics of Israel

Questions for Debate: Israel

Oh, to be an Ideologue (on the Left OR the Right)

Human Rights Watch: Bias and Agenda

Are These Events Relevant?

United Nations PROMOTES Racism and Hatred -- Again

Letter from a Forgotten Jew

�How Can You Defend Israel?�

�How Can You Defend Israel?� Part II

Repeated Unsupported Claims

[cnorman18]

Let me put it all a bit more simply and directly:

Smearing your opponent and ignoring his arguments isn't "civil and respectful debate." What it IS, I will decline to say; but debate it isn't.

[micatala]

Moderator Formal Warning

From Democracy Now!

To keep in mind when reading all the Islamophobic and anti-Semitic (Arabs are Semitic)
nonsense funneled into the forum:

. . . . .

The pro-Apartheid/Occupation posts are written through the same US/Israel prism which is pro-dictatorship. In spite of all the talk about Egyptian democracy, why is the US not preventing the bloody attacks on Arab citizens and the press in Bahrain? could it have something to do with the huge US military base there? MORE at Democracy Now!

Gaza/warsaw parallels:




http://www.ceia-sc.org/page37/page48/page48.html

When it is levelled at Israel then, the charge of apartheid generates not counter-argument backed by counter-evidence, but rather walls of sheer stony denial, if not inarticulate eruptions of blind rage, as though either denial or sheer fury could permanently forestall argument.
Saree Makdisi
2010-03-11

While not naming any forum member in particular, and whether or not it was intended to point to anyone on the forum in particular, this post is phrased in an inflammatory manner. It makes accusations that, even if they were supported by evidence, are really out of bounds in the realm of civil debate.

And DeBunkem continues to use inflammatory images that seem to have not legitimate debate purpose.


This is a formal warning.

[cnorman18]

In spite of all the talk about Egyptian democracy, why is the US not preventing the bloody attacks on Arab citizens and the press in Bahrain? could it have something to do with the huge US military base there?

Hmmm. The royal family in Bahrain seems to have backed off, and I note that "pressure from the West" -- could that include the US? -- is credited for that, at least in part.

Meanwhile, Gadhafi is having his troops mow down civilian protestors with machine-gun fire and mortars. Maybe the US isn't intervening because of all those US military bases in Libya... Oh, wait...

At any rate, it's nice to see the Left finally noticing that which Israel supporters have been saying for decades; "Want to see repression and corruption and brutal injustice? Look beyond Israel! Look at her neighbors!"

Of course, there are some, even here, who keep trying to find a way to blame the US and Israel for all that corruption and repression and injustice too, even in societies and nations where hatred of Israel and Jews is carefully nurtured and fed. Wait and see; it's as inevitable as the tides. For some, the focus of all hatred and outrage will and must, always, now and forever, world without end, remain the same.

Call it a point of religious dogma: Sola Israel.

[Grumpy]

cnorman18

At any rate, it's nice to see the Left finally noticing that which Israel supporters have been saying for decades; "Want to see repression and corruption and brutal injustice? Look beyond Israel! Look at her neighbors!"

I protest this conflation, I am pretty left wing and have recognized the hypocracy of the Arab world towards Isreal often and loudly. I don't see the left as being blind to much of anything, though some take their positions beyond the evidence. Bigotry and anti-semitism are equal opportunity idiocies, but, with certain exceptions, it is not built into the "theology" of "freedom with a conscience". The situation surrounding Isreal is the direct result of some of the countries around it waging an eternal war against Isreal's very existance. These countries were closely tied to the Nazis during WW2, the antisemitism has never been eliminated and it has been in their political interest to feed the predjudices of the people. Thus a state of constant war that it would not matter what Isreal did or didn't do. Isreal, as a country, has not always made the moral decision, but the arguement that they are the bullies in the mid-east is laughable.

Grumpy

[cnorman18]

cnorman18

At any rate, it's nice to see the Left finally noticing that which Israel supporters have been saying for decades; "Want to see repression and corruption and brutal injustice? Look beyond Israel! Look at her neighbors!"

I protest this conflation, I am pretty left wing and have recognized the hypocracy of the Arab world towards Isreal often and loudly. I don't see the left as being blind to much of anything, though some take their positions beyond the evidence. Bigotry and anti-semitism are equal opportunity idiocies, but, with certain exceptions, it is not built into the "theology" of "freedom with a conscience". The situation surrounding Isreal is the direct result of some of the countries around it waging an eternal war against Isreal's very existance. These countries were closely tied to the Nazis during WW2, the antisemitism has never been eliminated and it has been in their political interest to feed the predjudices of the people. Thus a state of constant war that it would not matter what Isreal did or didn't do. Isreal, as a country, has not always made the moral decision, but the arguement that they are the bullies in the mid-east is laughable.

Grumpy

Point taken, and I stand corrected. I certainly did not intend to include ALL liberals and leftists in those observations: indeed, most Jews tend to be liberal/left ourselves. With the capital L I intended to signify the extreme Left, where the perfidy of Israel and its priority as a matter of concern have assumed the roles of articles of faith. Sites like DemocracyNow! and CounterPunch are prime examples. At one time the extreme Right was the primary source of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda. That is lo longer true.

No, not all of the Left has that attitude, and I was wrong insofar as that implication was possible from my post: but it is inarguably true that there are elements of it that do.

[Shermana]

IMO, Liberals who support Israel are the rarity, but the Right is seeing a resurgence as well of the old rhetoric.

I see just as much as rabid anti-Israel venom from Lefties and Righties. I used to be a big supporter of Ron Paul, I still agree with his policies, but due to his political neutrality approach (something I approve of, as the USA relationship is counteracted by aid to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the PA, and the admin's attempt to tell the Jews where to build and not to as if they own Israel), I notice Ron Paul got quite a few shares of foaming-at-the-mouth neo Nazis. It seems all ends of the political spectrum love to denounce Israel as it suits them. There are times I even want to slap Ron Paul for his totally clueless assessments of Israel and the Palestinians (he seems to forget what happens and pander to his neo-nazis at times).