I've been enlightened to learn that anti-Semitism is simply a tool of Jewish profiteering.

There it is again. You prove that the construct is in your mind with that complete invention. Otherwise you would be able to show someone somewhere stating this and others buying into it.

However critics of Israel who claim they aren't anti-Semitic aren't necessarily not anti-Semitic.

True. I've witnessed much anti-semitism up close and I would say that there is some amount of "historical" anti-Semitic in a few posts on this thread and others here at UT. But you paint with a broad brush, brother.

And you seem to claim a clairvoyance to seeing anti-Semiticism.

Do you know when the claim is a crutch? Have you called out people on it and thought later you were wrong? Can you tell when someone has historical perspective when criticizing Israel?

As I said earlier, you must allow for objective analysis in a criticism such that, if persuasive, it overrides the objection that said analysis harks back to historical stereotypes. It may evoke that history, but that in itself does not make the observation or criticism untrue.

Our actions in Iraq 2003-2009 are about 50,000 times more egregious in terms of human rights violations, slaughtering innocents and unjustifiably starting a war than anything Israel is doing in Gaza responding to mortar fire.

You are so right! Israel should renounce the US and immediately sever its ties with that war criminal regime. The reputation of your country; "Not as Bad As..." is imperiled.

I just thought of something, a song on the order of Dayenu ("It would be Enough") only on a "Israel's not as Bad as.."" theme.

Let's try a verse! To the tune of Dayenu:

Oh, we kill women,

we kill children.

Don't need no stinkin'

Resolutions!

We kill women, we kill children

But we're not as Bad as them!

Not as bad as,

Not as bad as,

Not as bad as,

Israel's not as bad as them!

Excuse me, I gotta go call the guys in my Reggae-Disco- Klezmer band! We're called "Shabbos Night Dread"

* Hamas is a terrorist organization.

And so was Sinn Féin. But the U.K. managed to negotiate with them to end terrorism. Your unexamined sense of specialness does not go over well with many of us because we've watched other bitter religious/ethnic partisans stop their crap and get on with civilized life.

_______________________________________________________________

The difference is that Sinn Féin was committed to finding a peaceful solution to their problem. After years of stalemate, popular support drying up in Ireland as well as in the U.S. and Irish Catholic women speaking out against the murder of their sons by the IRA, the price for continued terrorist operations against England became too great.

The same can be said about Sadat when he negotiated a peace settlement with Begin (despite the political intrigues of Jimma Carter). The price of continued violence became too great.

Where is the outrage from the Arab world at the murder of their children by the hands of their leaders! Oh that's right, Muslim women don't have a voice in an Islamic fundamentalist world.

If both sides aren't committed to peace there never will be any. Israel has shown it's committment time and time again while the perfidous PLO, the PA, Hamas, Hezbollah etc. continue to call for the eradication of Israel.

You like to find genocide in every pro-Israel post on this site but sympathaize with and ignore the overt calls for it by the Palestinians. WTF!

Do you support Israel's ongoing settlement expansion in the West Bank?

Do you support a 2-state solution based on 1947 borders specified in the UN partition plan, assuming Palestinian government states Israel's right to exist as a state based on that plan?

If so, have you made your political viewpoints known to your representatives?

I've been fascinated by these fulminating threads, and particularly want to commend oomooex, Derbig, Chris Sinnard, Arne Langsetmo, Paul Daniel Ash...

But this is turning into an Academy Awards acceptance speech. I'm sure I left a few out.

Y'all are cookin'!

The Stuporheroes of Zion have been spinning like dervishes, but the facts and the law are against them.

PS: I'm not sure if LondonLad is still around, but FWIW I have similar views about 9/11 and the deplorable tendency to be dismissive about the need to pursue the truth of the events and their significance. You are correct to assert that the seminal events of that day very much relate to the ongoing relationship between Amerikan citizens and their government.

And I only recently learned of certain issues on which Chomsky is, shall we say, problematic.

No I don't support the expansion of Jewish settlements but as I stated in a previous post, the Israeli government and the IDF removed all settlers from Gaza to prepare for Palestinian rule so I don't see it as problematic. What appears to be more difficult is for Gazans to rule themselves without devoting all their resources to the destruction of Israel.

I do, as did the Zionists pre-partition, support a two state solution. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since 1947 and there will be a need to modify it to come to terms with today's reality.

We have now devolved into a big discussion on the possible appearance of Antisemetism in critisism of Israel, which turns out to be really, a big discusiion of Winsmith's et al feelings about anti-semetism.

So fricking what if there is some anti-semetism in criticism of Israel? Is there no anti-Islamic oprejudice in discussion of Hamas?

And so a discussion of Israel gets side tracked.

Okay, there's some anti-semetism. Deal with it. How does anti-Semetism excuse Israel from human civilsation?

It's hard to get enough photons up here in the winter, so my wife insists we go out for Pho, right now.

And I never discuss Zionism on a Full Stomach.

I am just curious whether proponents of a 2-state solution work as hard at advocating that as they do defending Israel's brutal attack on Palestinians?

And it sounds like 1947 borders are off the table, water under the bridge and all that?

All there other pre-conditions in your mind(s)?