Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 78 Editor's Choice: 28
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More on Mr. Cole's anti-Jewish sentiments
[Read the article: Is the "Israel lobby" distorting America's Mideast policies?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I’m sorry but I call it as I see it. There is a lot of bullshit here. I originally was going to go into a paragraph-by-paragraph break-down of this. A lot of bullshit disguised as fair criticism. Supposedly, Mr. Cole wants us to just look at the point that the Pro-Likud Israel lobby has exerted undo influence on American foreign policy. That is a point that I and many people believe in and SHOULD be discussed. But the way he (and the paper’s authors ) want us to consider this is in an anti-Jewish context.
The central point of most leftist, passively anti-Jewish arguments against Israel is;
Paragraph 4: “They discuss Israel's illegal, almost 40-year-old occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, and its flawed democracy, which explicitly discriminates against Arabs.”
In itself, that statement is not anti-Jewish. It becomes passively anti-Jewish in its context. I becomes passively anti-Jewish because it focuses on the Jewish state and its actions as “illegal”, rather than focusing on actions and legitimacy of its neighbors, which tried to destroy that state and massacre its inhabitants during the 1967 war (where the occupation started). It points criticism to Israeli democracy as somehow being less than the democracy enjoyed by the US (not to mention Israel’s neighbors). By focusing on the discrimination of ARABS in Israel…a country that has Arabs AND Muslims at all levels of government…instead of focusing on, say, France, where Muslims are not allowed to express their religion in many areas.
The same holds for theories of how Jews control American politics. Jews may have a disproportional influence on American politics. Right-wing Israeli lobbies certainly seem to have a disproportional influence. But for a paper to focus on this as the main cause of the relationship, and not even mention geopolitical concerns? Its definitely anti-Jewish in context.
I assume that Mr. Cole’s claim that the occupation is illegal is based on the UN resolution. The UN did not decree in 1967, when Nasser unified the armies of the Arab world with the explicit purpose of driving the Jews into the sea, that their intent on genocide was illegal. The UN did not declare that the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the City of Jerusalem should not be used by the invading army to attack Israel…but the invading Arab armies marched first into the Holy City and the refugee slums of the West Bank. The UN declared that the Jewish state should not hold onto territory which it obtained in a war of survival against vastly superior forces. A war that was started NOT when Israeli-flown French-made fighter jets attacked Egyptian airbases, but rather when Nasser unified the armies of the surrounding Arab countries under his control, amassed those armies on the border, and had state media proclaim the time to wipe the Zionest state into the ocean was near. (If you doubt this, then ask the question, “How did the Arab armies get into the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem so quickly?”) But Mr. Cole just wants you to look at the occupation as illegal. Unsanctified.
I hate what Israel has done to the Palestinian peoples in those territories. It is not righteous. But why does the world focus on this rather than all the other places in the world that were conquered and annexed? Why was this act different? Jews conclude that the focus on this war and its aftermath is based solely on the one thing we can count-on from many Christian nations: anti-Jewish sentiments. Mr. Cole and company show this in their writings.
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moral intelligence
[Read the article: "We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I got to say- Stefan Aust, Gerhard Spörl and Dieter Bednarz- the questions were good even if Ahmadinejad deflected them. And they presented their country, their culture well.
There is a difference between guilt and shame. You are responsible for your guilt and should by only guilty of things you have (or should have had) responsibility for. Shame is public embarrassment and has nothing to do with responsibility, although one can have both shame and guilt for the sins they committed. I think this is common sense…common ethics. Even people from cultures which emphasize shame over guilt (Japan and China for instance), tend to understand the difference.
The German people of today are truly noble for nurturing the shame of the holocaust. Americans’ feel shame about black slavery, but I do not think American’s feel this as acutely as Germans feel shame over the holocaust. For this- in my opinion as an American Jew- I feel that Germans may be in some areas higher up on their path to collective cultural enlightenment.
The Spiegel interviewers clearly see the difference between shame and guilt. They clearly see that a strong, confident people understands the difference and can embrace the shame of the sins of their ancestors, and use that shame to make them stronger.
President Ahmadinejad clearly comes off here as a neo-Nazi. It does not matter whether he really believes that BS he spews about questioning the holocaust or not. But what is disturbing here is that he seems to lack a very basic common sense understanding about the nature of guilt and shame. He repeatedly says the Germans are held hostage to this shame. His attitude shows that he is either a sociopath who does not feel guilt and shame, or he is someone who really lacks common moral intelligence.