lukethemanmurphy: "Here's a question: Have you ever thought that Israel's concession of settlements in the Gaza was purely a strategical move?"

According to Dov Weisglass, then a top adviser to Ariel Sharon, Israel withdrew from Gaza was exactly that - a strategic move to "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state":

"The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians. ...

"[T]he rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=485929

No one cares about Palestinians,...

Then it's up to Israel to, you know? If not you, who? if not now, when? There you go, the answer is staring you right in the face.

Thank you for your expert opinion on how everyone else feels about Palestinians.

"Tragically, real Palestinians are dying. But with so many countries consumed by anti-Semitism, the ridiculous United Nations that Glenn wants us to turn to as unbiaed arbiter, and the Jew haters ranting away in much of Europe, Israel is on its own, and so are the Palestinians."

From my perspective, as a Palestinian, I would actually think it would be great if the bias you speak about in the UN translated to UN Security Council resolutions. But it doesn't, if it exists. The craziest thing about your post is that you think that the anti-Israeli bias of the UN is the source of Palestinian deaths. Even in your batshit thought process, I can't see how an anti-Israeli bias at the UN would do anything but help Palestinians. Why, they should own Tel Aviv by now.

Sand tells us that the Jews stayed in Palestine! There was never a Diaspora caused by the Romans!

The Romans were believed to have exiled some Jewish elites at that time.

If you ask me, Zionism's whole cosmography is based around a late 19th century British public-school Biblical geography.

Is cosmography the word I want? Well, it's the one I got.

Paul,

WinSmith has never once identified either, (A) a criticism of Israel that is, in their estimation, categorically anti-Semitic, in content or intent, nor (B) a criticism of Israel that is NOT anti-Semitic in either content or intent.

Nor have they ever offered any criteria by which one might make such a calculation.

I suspect this is because WinSmith is at least clever enough to know that once such criteria are proposed they would be swiftly debunked, demolished, and discarded.

Or, if accepted by any poster, and complied with, they would remove WinSmiths singular pretext for objection to all criticism of Israeli actions*, which (objection) seems to be his/her raison de etre.

Much easier for WinSmith to hold the accusation at the generic level where it can neither be proven or disproven.

So much more USEFUL ...

(* I note that most of us have fallen into the trap of commonly conflating "criticism of Israel" with "criticism of Israeli actions" but they are not the same thing. It is mostly harmless, but not always. I have not criticised Israel - the government and its military forces is not the country, nor the nation, nor the people - I have criticised the actions of the government and military.)

Well, for starters, not denying that those who raise the specter of anti-Semitism might have a point. All the screaming that anti-Semitism is simply a "tool of silencing" betrays deep ignorance and wilful denial.

Comments on this board have claimed Jews exploit "anti-Semitism" to profit from Gentile guilt.

I'm sure there are cases when this might be true. The Neo-Cons certainly abuse it for that reason. But the Neo-Cons abuse any and everything they can. They are liars and chickenhawks.

To dismiss anti-Semitism itself is like when a Neo-Con dismisses racism in America because Obama won. It's nonsensical and ignorant.

The reason most liberal sites, like Daily Kos and Huffington Post, choose words carefully when criticizing Israel is that they, unlike Glenn, realize the results of flamethrowing accusations leads to setting a brushfire in well prepped historical ground. You might not be an anti-Semite, but if you yell "Jewish global money conspiracy" in a crowded theater, you are responsible for the stampede, even if you happened to see a specific example that could arguably fit what you're trying to talk about.

There are a million ways to make critical points of Israel's handling of the Palestinians. However a responsibility to engage in the facts, and not engage in historically ignorant rants, is a first step.

Throwing around words like "tribalists," "Zionists" or some of the rants I've read just in the past few hours, are pretty obviously what they are.

If you'd like to see rabid anti-Semitism masquerading as political critique, just read a bit on this vile website:

http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/

Never mind the most voracious critics of Israel are often Jews. For the anti-Semite, anecdote proves all.

Whoa! That one is way, way too deep for me.

And I've seen Marty Peretz- you may wanna take it easy on the "voracious".

I find it no more a trap than saying Iraq when I mean Iraqis or vice versa, and etc. with America, Americans...etc. This is colloquial usage and commonly accepted to the point where I have never heard someone asking to make that distinction for other nations. The idea that we should be especially careful not to do do it when speaking of middle eastern politics at the colloquial level, because criticism of 'the Israelis' rather than the Israeli government, military, tank shells, etc., could be taken as anti-semitic, should be, in a sane world, instead an insult to people who live in Israel.