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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rowan Berkeley
Published Letters: 176
That thread is a bit more high profile than this one, and what happened was, I said that this journalist, Dave Marash, had quit al Jazeera because he didn't want to be blacklisted by the neocons, and then the robot posted along the lines of '"neocons"? you mean "Jews"', and I posted right back at him making the fact that it was him making that jump not me really explicit, and that response of mine seems to have been removed.
People get Pavlovian when they see the word "Jew" right in their faces, but as I say, I was just playing his own slur back at him. Then finally I said, just look at my dozens of posts on Glenn Greenwald's threads, or look at my blog, and if you can find anything anti-Semitic anywhere on weither of them, I shall be fascinated to hear about it, and that made him climb down.
All this still leaves it open for him to say that I am "obsessed by Jews" if he wants to. I don't deny it. I am like that girl Shelhevet, who posted a comment to one of Johann Hari's articles about Israel at The Independent website, saying that being an Israeli was like being the child of abusive parents, except that in my case I am not even an Israeli, so it's more like being the disowned child of parents who are abusive to the children they have kept.
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/obama_on_zionism_and_hamas.php
Before even getting to the interview, Goldberg says "The Hamas episode won’t help Obama’s attempts to win over Jewish voters, particularly those in such places as — to pull an example from the air — Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts."
Then when he talks to Obama he says "Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you—Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski—then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it."
strong stuff.
The reference to Palm Beach is already code, and unless I am deceiving myself, it refers to people who would not be expected to be Democrat voters anyhow, but the most interesting thing to me is the yiddishism "kishke." I am sure most of you know that yiddish is NOT spoken in Israel except by the anti-zionist ultra-orthodox. I have felt for quite a few years that the peculiar alliance that formed in the 1970s between pro-settler groups in Israel, or in the occupied territories, and various orthodox factions in the USA was not 'zionist' at all. The semantics of this are complex, but one could describe it as a deliberate attempt to inflate 'zionism' like a balloon until it bursts. Obama is not going to comprehend this - few do.
Now to this "David Larry D" who says : "Discussions of the minutiae surrounding US-Israeli relations are irrelevent. As Chomsky pointed out, the simplest equation seems to explain a lot of the sanctimony surrounding the conflict in Palestine: The Pentagon + The Israeli right wingers = unlimited corporate welfare for the US Defense industry. I haven't seen any credible arguments to the contrary..."
I want to draw his attention to the rather complex discussion of Chomsky and the critique of Chomsky by Jeff Blankfort that I brought up on a previous thread. I shall try to find the link, but juggling too many tabs at once usually just ends up with me losing all the text I already have.
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/10/analysts/permalink/6e34cf77ffc63b336c36e64b3e5b8e46.html
and
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/10/analysts/permalink/2bb9efcbfb4f86511cd47bd2858352d2.html
and on the other zionists, such as they are:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR2008050801521.html
five myths on who’s really ‘pro-israel’
May 13, 2008 by niqnaq
Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director, JStreet, in WaPo, May 11, 2008
Six decades ago, my father fought alongside Menachem Begin for Israel’s independence. If you’d have told him back then that politicians in the world’s last superpower would be jockeying today to see who can be more “pro-Israel,” he would have laughed at you. Grateful as I am for decades of US friendship with Israel, I have to wonder, as the state my father helped found turns 60, just who is defining what it means to be pro-Israel in the US these days. Some purported keepers of that flame claim that supporting Israel means reflexively supporting every Israeli action and implacably opposing every Israeli foe—adopting the talking points of neoconservatives and the most right-wing elements of the American Jewish and Christian Zionist communities. Criticize or question Israeli behavior and you’re labeled “anti-Israel,” or worse. But unquestioning encouragement for short-sighted Israeli policies, such as expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, isn’t real friendship. Would a true friend not only let you drive home drunk, but offer you their Porsche and a shot of tequila for the road? Israel needs real friends, not enablers. And forging a healthy friendship with Israel requires bursting some myths about what it means to be pro-Israel....
how should I do this?
only right-wingers would allege that the commentators on Glenn Greenwald's columns constitute "a left-wing board", and it follows therefore that Susan is in fact a right-wing provocateur engaged in applying a smear tactic. Anyone stupid enough to respond defensively to her remark, by saying, gosh yes we haven't been trying hard enough here to be "left-wing", deserves everything they get.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
