That Onion headline "Majority of Americans now Anti-American"

Can we now make the joke "Majority of Israelis Anti-Semetic"?

But none of this is actually surprising. During the peak of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the most extreme views were often found (in greater preponderence) among Irish Americans in the US rather than the Irish themselves in either the north or the south.

This phenomenon is what prompted Bono's famous mid-song rant during a performance of Sunday bloody Sunday:

I'm sick of Irish Americans, who haven't been home in twenty or thirty years, come up to me and tell me about the glory of the revolution. The glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution. Where's the glory in dragging a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing old age pensioners as part of a remembrance day parade, their medals polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that?

It was funding from such people in North America that largely funded the IRA and probably the protestant terror groups too.

Growing up in the 1990s in a community that had a large number of Croatians (in Canada) I saw a lot of the same, with many kids of Croatian descent (most born in Canada no less) taking very extremely hateful stances towards "serbs" and so forth.

I think when you're a world away you can easily dehumanize the situation and turn it into a bad-guys versus good guys situation. Those living the day-to-day reality in Belfast or the Jerusalem tend to have a much better understanding of what is going on, what solutions will work and which won't.

It ties in nicely with how most of the worst arm-chair "we could have won in Vietnam if it weren't for the hippies" types are precisely those that weren't there, or weren't in the field if they were. Chickenhawks for every conflict.

How many wars would end if all the jeering spectators weren't egging on the participants?

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.” --Thomas Pynchon

This is the unwritten and unspoken mantra of the Bush administration and their neocon brainstrust. It is most clearly evident in our blind support for the most radical and intransigent elements of Israeli politics.

It is all about narrowing the conversation to a series of false choices leading to a predetermined outcome – no negotiation, no attempt to understand, no way forward but our way (meaning no way forward). Therefore, we may not speak about alternatives or venture to suggest a sober assessment of reality for fear of being labeled soft, unserious, appeasers, or - "gasp" - promoters of moral equivalence. Watch any Bill Kristol interview for a primer.

Groupthink like this leads ultimately to defeat. We will have only ourselves to blame.

Truth has no special time of its own,

Its hour is now --- always. Albert Schweitzer

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To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. Henry David Thoreau

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The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. Henry Miller

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.... only a fool is scornful of the commonplace. W. Somerset Maugham

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Personal.

Pedinska.

Don't ask me questions about microbiology @ Salon?

If you do I'll ask you about the flue? Or, how is the sprain from soccer?

How would you like it if someone ask in public, "How's your sore sprained muscle groin?"

If I can find your cell phone # I'll ask your opinion about the weather in Ohio? O, ho you.

sorry.

no ho.

O, hi you.

Sol,

I know for a fact that the translations of Irani discourse about Israel are wrong when they mistranslate the Farsi into "eliminating Israel" when a much closer, in context, rendering is that they wish "regime change" in Israel.

As I am not familiar enough with Arabic, especially that spoken in the areas around Israel, I cannot as reliably speak about, but, according to friends who do know the idioms, a similar idea is expressed. After all, Christians, Jews and Muslims are all considered "brothers" in the Koran.

There can be found, generally under rocks, clerics in all countries, the US and not just Arab/etc., who express eliminist tendencies about other peoples. Dubya, in referencing the "Crusades" implied that very thing.

The only group I've seen who speak to scattering Israelites to the four winds are Evangelical in nature, citing that action as a step to fulfilling Revelations.

To Hamas, it is a religious duty to destroy Israel. Same is true for Hezbollah and Iran. MAD would not work in this instance, since they considered it glorious martyrdom to die fighting for their religion. They may "negotiate" to buy time or space, but in the end it will still come down to a fight to the finish.

This is exactly what opponents of peace agreements with Egypt said about the Egyptians. Were they right?

In short, it's naive to negotiate with the likes of Hamas. It wasn't naive to negotiate with the Soviets.

I love how everyone tries to whitewash what was said about the Soveits back in the day to argue they were a good, kind, rational, civilized enemy and thus not comparable to the fanatical Arab hordes of today.

We were told back then that the Soviet Union was ideologically devoted to the destruction of capitalism and the West, that they would never deviate from that dogma, and that attempts to negotiate with them would be futile because they would never give up their commitment to destroying us -- exactly what you're saying about Arabs.

Don't you remember any of that? Enemies are always depicted the same way.

Good Celery.

I can tell you from experience, unfortunately, that you can find people who want to eliminate another people anywhere. There is a broad range of reactionary discourse in Palestine, as there is obviously one here in the good ol' US. Words are cheap, anyway.

Don't make us into Saints, just stop killing us.