Yossi Klein Halevi has an interesting piece up at The New Republic that provides an Israeli point of view about the war with Gaza and the general situation there.
I don’t have much to say about it right now. I am kind of digesting it. It’s a mixture of propaganda and honest reflection, and it gives some good insights into the psychological element that is involved on the Israeli side. The situation there is definitely deteriorating. Security is getting worse. Foreign relations are getting worse. The quality of life is taking a hit. And the conclusions that are being drawn will not change the trajectory of any of this one bit.
Freddie deBoer: Palestinians Live What Israelis Fear
I re-read this now that you’ve posted it (read it earlier). And it’s worse the second go-around. I see mostly propaganda, to be honest.
This dude is supposed to be a liberal, I’m assuming, based on his wiki-page.
Wow, just wow…if this is the best we can hope for from Israel — Gideon Levy is whispering in the wind at this point — there’s no end to this that doesn’t end in complete and utter catastrophe.
And the next generation? Way worse
as I said, it’s part propaganda.
But it is nonetheless informative.
Informative of what? How far Israelis have their heads inserted up their asses? I say this as an American Jew. I’m ashamed of what has happened to Judaism.
It will never get better until the Israeli’s are willing to confront ‘the original sin’ of taking other’s land so that they can have a state. The basic history of this is that the natives have tried to fight back against this taking, right from the beginning, and more or less the Israeli’s have been killing them ever since, for their daring to fight back.
That taking of land goes on, and the protestations of the natives, sometimes violent, is met with more violence.
The only reason Israel can carry on as a ‘liberal democracy’ is to ignore this history. Israeli history never goes back far enough to confront the reality of their nation’s founding on other people’s land. It was not ‘A land with no people for a people with no land’. And I’m not religious, so pointing to the Bible and saying God gave it to me is not compelling, to put it mildly.
If the Israeli’s could admit to any of that, they might confront their complicity in the dire situation, and perhaps they could begin to understand the legitimate grievances of the natives and then just maybe come to some decent resolution of the whole fucking mess that has been created in ‘Palestine’. Just building more settlements as a punishment for terrorism is leading the state of Israel off a cliff – especially as this is a dishonest formulation. They want the land and the terrorism has become an excuse to just keep taking it.
And Netanyahu is an absolute idiot. He really is the Israeli version of W Bush. By the time he’s done, there’s going to be a really big fire someone will need to put out.
I agree with everything you said (and said very well in my opinion) until you got the part about Bibi being an idiot. Unfortunately, he’s an evil genius. The result is worse than if a schmo like W. was running the show.
Yeah but – campaigning openly for Republican candidates in America and flipping the bird to the president almost for the fun of it, when a majority of Jews are Democrats?
So he can what, get the support of Rapture-seeking Republicans like John Hagee, and harvest money from Sheldon Adelson?
He’s an idiot alright.
How about “Evil Idiot with a glimmer of short-term Cleverness”.
Long term, Israeli policies are idiotic. But Bibi’s not playing for the long term. He’s playing to get re-elected. By the time the long run gets here, Iran will have nuclear weapons or maybe all the Arabs will have given up and left for better paying jobs in New Jersey.
Israelis know that the IDF does not
deliberately kill civilians.give a fuck about civilians. They talk openly about genocide. Israel is Palestine’s ISIS.Finally, I get to write something in defense of Israel. As bad as the IDF is, it pales next to the brutality of ISIS. If Hamas were ISIS, Israel would be justified in most of its actions. ISIS is truly horrible.
Problem there is that Israel is marketed as the “only democracy in the Middle East” who shares are values and so on.
Saying that you’re not as bad is ISIS is –well– a very lame boast.
That’s why Israel gets held to a different standard. They claim to be different, and better, and you can’t have it both ways.
When there are 2,000 dead Gazans, sitting in rubble in a ghetto, and there a few dead Israeli’s, people are going to wonder if that’s really fair or reasonable or moral. This while Israeli politicians openly discuss killing the rest of them, taking the land and extending some train line down the coast.
They are Palestine’s ISIS only because the Israelis are the ones that slaughter them. Air strikes and beheadings both kill.
None of it matters.
The continued slow-mo ethnic cleansing will continue as planned.
Hamas will fire off bottle rockets in the general direction of a “settlement”, and then the IDF will come through and murder a couple hundred Palestinians.
Rinse and repeat just slow enough so that the world can only look on in horror.
Oh, and the US is just as guilty for any and all of what Israel does.
They are our puppet.
Yossi Klein Halevi has an interesting piece up at “The New Republic” that provides an Israeli point of view about the war with Gaza and the general situation there.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
As in “EventheliberalNewRepublic”?
Or the fact that in printing the above BS you’d never know Marty Peretz sold the rag.
I figured that’s what you had in mind with the old boss and the new boss.
Yossi Klein Halevi’s plea for sympathy reminds me of someone who kills his parents and then pleads for sympathy because he’s an orphan.
Stand With Israel …
If you support Israel, for American Jews it would be natural to vote for Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a member of the Institute’s iEngage Project. Here is an article by Dr Yehuda Kurtzer …
“It definitely creates communal tension. Jews have a very clear and long history of traditionally voting for the Democratic Party in America. It’s quite surprising, because the Democrats have always represented the social and poor side, while the Republicans were the rich and educated.
“It would have been natural to vote for (the Republicans), but the general feeling in the communities was that (the Democrats) better represent Jewish values.
“Now many changes are taking place. Suddenly, quite a few Jews are finding themselves on the Republican side. Communities are sometimes divided, and groups are formed which feel more comfortable there because of the traditional values and the approach toward Israel.
○ Will Someone Tell the NY Times What is a `Mainstream Israeli?’
What strikes me is the author’s complete inability to see what is happening to the Palestinians. Gaza, itself is smaller than the land area of Philadelphia and has a population larger than Philadelphia by 2 or 3 hundred thousand. He complains that there is no where to hide, yet if you look at a map of Palestine from 1948 (the original petitioning which violated the Palestinian Arab rights at the time and was a gift to Zionists for the cordite given to the Brits), there is not very much left of Palestine.
The existence of Israel is a convention of the Colonial powers. Yet it is a fact, as well as it is a fact that the Palestinians have a legitimate claim stemming from thousands of years of being native to that territory. Israel must find a way to talk to its enemies recognizing both histories have a legitimate aspirations. That demand must be met if is there is to be any justice in the Middle East.
He even continues the myth that the “unilateral withdrawal” from Gaza was a generous Israeli gift rather than the construction of a prison camp with the guards all on the outside. I thought as we learned over the past months what life in Gaza is like that story would die a natural death. And treats the Second Intifada (by a kind of David Brooks elision) as the cause of the collapse of Oslo rather than Netanyahu’s and Sharon’s sabotage of the agreement. An awful, deeply dishonest piece.
Excellent analysis on Israel and the Palestinian cause …
○ Gaza War: Bringing Out the Worst in Israeli Misogyny, Racism
Cross-posted from my diary – Auschwitz Survivor Dr. Hajo Meijer Passed Away at 90.