News from South Africa:
Amazingly, at the same time those four men entered Pelindaba from its eastern perimeter, a separate group of intruders failed in an attempt to break in from the west. The timing suggests a coordinated attack against a facility that contains an estimated 25 bombs’ worth of weapons-grade nuclear material.
Also amazingly, this story appears on page 29 in today’s Washington Post. It should have been a banner headline on the front page. The attackers were sophisticated enough to deactivate a 10,000 volt electric fence, make their way into the emergency control center in the heart of the facility, and breach a sealed control room, where they shot an emergency-service worker.
The story continues:
had the armed attackers succeeded in penetrating the site’s highly enriched uranium storage vault, where the weapons-grade nuclear material is believed to be held, they could have carried away the ingredients for the world’s first terrorist nuclear bomb.
Three suspects have been arrested, the Post reports.
This is major news, even if it is buried by the Post. Who and what was behind this attack? Connecting the Dots very much wants to know. �
Jews long ago made a decision not to punish their dissenters, so they can’t complain if the latter run wild
I wouldn’t mind the morally preening “Jewish dissenters” so much if there was anything like this on the other side of the conflict. I am certainly not a fan of intellectual tribalism, but I am hard-pressed to recall a similar phenomenon where one side seems to almost revel in some strange way in parading its dissent before the world while the other just talks about killing you while others cheer them on or maintain a studied silence. On a morbid level it is worth pondering the connection regarding why so many so-called Jewish intellectuals, who personally profess to have moved beyond their own Jewish identities, nevertheless feel such a compulsion to make Israel the Jew among nations.
Naomi Klein anti-semitic? Again with the anti-Semitic? Is it possible to disagree with current Israeli government’s policy and Commentary Magazine without being called anti-Semitic? Methinks you are going too often to that well. So much so, that implies an inability in your part to rationally refute an argument, so you resort to a well-worn insult to punctuate your response.
#3- As irrational as trying to define the term antisemitism out of existence by the mere expedient of claiming that you are condemning the Israeli government? Actually there was a long discussion about that some months back. The trick (actually one with a long history) is to uniformly characterize any discussion of antisemitism as a smear. No, criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitism. But the opposite is also true, although the simple point is typically denied.
Spare the rod and spoil the Jewess. Rule of thumb I say. Take her over my knee and give her a good spanking.
When it is you in the cross hairs, you quickly figure out that you are responsible for your own safety. Israelis don’t give a **** about the leftist rag, the Nation, because they have a nation to defend. They can’t afford to lose and know relying on the kindness of strangers is not an option.
[...] Tobin continues his excellent critique of the blame-Israel-first crowd of intellectuals: “. . . long before 1967 and ever since, ‘Palestinian self-determination’ has been defined…“ Read the whole [...]
Israel Palestine 1947 to present
Andrew Sullivan posted this map, presumably to show how the Israelis are presuring Palestinians. Of course, what he leaves out is that Palestinians tried to destroy Israel in 1947 and 48, tried to do it again in 1967 (although Israel attacked first when it appeared the Nassar and Syrian armies were about to move), Egypt attacked in 1973. Some argue no settlements should have occurred in occupied Gaza, Jerusalem, Golan Heights, and the West Bank, but given the hostility of her neighbors, Israel has in fact been restrained.
“blatant Jew hatred” — Really?
Naomi Klein is Jewish. Her husband is Jewish. I’m thinking she is probably the opposite. The smear says more about you, and your need to slime those who have a different worldview.
Too bad that Andrew Sullivan doesn’t recognize that what the Palestinians want to do is eradicate all of Israel and go back to pre-1947 boundaries. On top of that, that map really isn’t Palestine. According to wikipedia.org, Palestine consists of all of Israel, all of the Palestinian territories, parts of Lebanon, parts of Syria and parts of Jordan. One wonders if the Palestinians will ever launch rocket attacks against Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
And #3, just pull up YouTube videos of Pro-Hamas, Pro-Palestinian protests here in America and listen to what they are saying. This not about Israel, but about Jew hatred. However, one wonders why so many liberal Jews outside of Israel are specializing in this self-hatred of their own ethnicity. Perhaps it is time for all liberal Jews outside of Israel to take a trip to Israel and live under the constant rocket fire that liberal Israelis are subjected to. That’ll probably change their perspective. These Palestinians can give a rat’s ass whether you support them or not – to them, the only good Jew is a dead Jew. It seems that so many on the Left are inclined to agree.
Just like with the US, liberals will always punish Israel for its past misdeeds and never recognize any of its current good deeds. The history of “displacing” a people will always override any attempts to help these “displaced” people assimilate into modern society. One wonders when the Left will realize that the fact that they romanticize the past is what is preventing everyone from having a sound future.
Stan: You can’t be serious. You have never heard of or met a “self-hating Jew.” There are plenty of them. It’s a complex psychological phenomenon found almost exclusively on the Left.
I wish I would’ve waited for #9 to post his statement, but because someone is of the same ethnicity and engages in hatred of said ethnicity does not make their comments a “different worldview”. Hate is hate, whether done by someone outside the ethnic group or done by someone within it.
Stan is quite correct. Chances are that Naomi Klein is not an anti-semite but suffering from tertiary syphilis of the brain, a condition that leads her to sympathize with the vile bigots of Hamas and not with the children of Sderot.
As Michael Medved notes, as an observant Jew, he has far far more in common with observant Christians, then he does by Marxist leftist secular Jews like Naomi Klein.
There are still Jews on the far fringes of orthodoxy who oppose Israel for coming into existance prior to the arrival of the messiah and there are lots of leftist Jews who for whatever reason have abandoned their Sabra brothers and sisters and prefer to snipe from the sidelines.
Very few people in Israel want to destroy or kill Palestinans. Many would welcome a two state solution and recognize it might mean major concessions. But it is just not possible with an entity like Hamas. Not ever. Fatah is a stretch, but Fatah could potentially change. Hamas never.
Naomi Klein and husband, Avi Lewis, son of Canada’s most famous left wing ex pol, are leftists.Leftists despise Israel and support terror states and their actors.
Surely what Klein is outlining is the real mortal threat to Israel. The conventional forces facing the IDF cannot succeed. Iran can threaten nuclear annihilation but must know they would face retaliation many megatons over. But the slow strangle, the progressive delegitimization via the South Africa model will be very hard to counter, especially supercharged as it is by global antisemitism. Hidden beneath this movement is the desire to see Jewish blood. That is an added attraction not present in prior progressive, left wing campaigns.
What can be done to counter this movement?
Yesterday I found a book at the Goodwill in the “10 for $1.49″ bin, “The Best of the Nation”. It ended up costing me 16 cents and was well worth it for the intimate look “the flagship of the left” provides to its internal communications. They are not only anti-semitic but virulently anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-trade. I’ve always thought that the American left was willing to live here under a republic with a capitalist system as long as some concessions were made to their concerns. This is not the case. They are shooting for a 100% socialist future.
“As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company.”
Richard Ramsey “the managing director of a British telecom company” is either a cynical ingrate or a complete ignoramous–an antiZionist and antiSemite who owes his business and his daily bread to Jews and Israel. The three most prominent names in the development of mobile phone technology are Martin Cooper, Joel Engel and Richard Frenkiel. I don’t know for a fact that they’re all three Jewish but it’s a good bet. And no nation besides the US has been more influential in the development of mobile phone technology than Israel.
Naomi Klein suffers from Tourquemada syndrome, a well-known illness that has plagued the Jewish people throughout history. Such twisted people are to be pitied. They have internalized Jew hatred and are its saddest victims. We can only mourn for Ms. Klein and hope someone puts her out of her misery sometime soon.
80 % of American Jews voted for Obama. Marx was an anti-semitic Jew. Chompsky is an anti-semitic Jew. They have a death wish. They are what American Indians call “those who are gone.” Late harvest Marxism has dumbed them down to a moralized totalitarian ache. They live hysterically and compulsively in a virtual ethical desperation. Judging by their politics, they have become what anti-semites have always accused them of being.
Its a good thing Israelis give American Jews’ opinions short thrift, by and large.
They are more than merely aware of recent polls that show more than 50% of American Jews would not be overly troubled, or consider it a personal catastrophe were Israel to be destroyed.
Having grown fat and lazy, with a Jewish identity no deeper that bagels for Sunday brunch with the NYTIMES (if that), they are now fully detached from the hard reality that most Jews have experienced the last 2000 years or so, and that their Israeli brothers experience every day.
What they fail to realize is that the old hatreds are still there, and seem to be rushing back into the world.
There were other assimilated Jews, at another place and another time, who felt this couldn’t happen, and wouldn’t happen. And when it did happen, they had nowhere to go.
So these Jewish imbeciles, not content to merely ignore an Israel they disagree with, for their own narcissistic purposes, feel the need to tear her down, and wish doom upon her, in the most public manner they can manage.
It’s really, really hard for me to get my mind around that.
The solution can only be found in recent history and law.
The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law:
http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Foundation-Borders-Israel-International/dp/9657344522/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231555872&sr=8-1
New publication. This is a tour de force. 700 pages. I’m 1/3 of the way into it. The final word on Israel’s rights.
Those who, like the Nation, who argue surrender is an option, indeed the only option, are wrong. Israel can and must remain strong and it wil prevail, however long it takes.
The true God is one of love and ife, not a god of hate and death as conceived by a sick malevolent narcissist. God will protect his Chosen People, but He has given them the will, the determination and strength to defend themselves.
Rick, South Africa had little trouble attracting investment until its security
situation deteriorated in the post-colonial era. This was so although half the white
population, including the most advanced business sector, was Anglophone and had only lukewarm loyalty to the
Afrikaner state. It would seem to follow that any Israeli government
must balance security concerns against the need for internal Jewish
consensus to ensure a healthy investment climate, giving priority to the former.
Dissent to Andrew Sullivan’s Map History of Jews and Palestine:
Click on the map and you will see supposed quotes of Ben Gurion and others, saying rather nasty things about taking over land from the Palestinians and Arab. But are they true quotes?
A dissenter to Sullivan’s post writes:
Of greater concern, are the fabricated quotations appearing below the maps. I’ll limit myself to the first one: “We must expel Arabs and take their places.” Ephraim Karsh has shown that Ben Gurion actually wrote: “We do not wish, we do not need to expel Arabs and take their place.” Note that Karsh is criticizing Benny Morris, who cited Shabtai Teveth, the unattributed author of the work cited by Mr. Lahoud. In a more recent history, Morris has accepted the accuracy of Karsh’s translation. (See Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001.)
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What Klein falls to understand is once the Jew hatred that’s directed toward Israel gets expunged through whatever her endpoint is (which seems to be the end of Israel), it’s back to the old-time hatred of the Jew as shiftless transnationalists, which would pretty much put her and her family right in the crosshairs…
The Nation is, generally, opposed to everything that’s good.
E.g., they are anti-capitalist, anti-globalist, anti-American,
anti-Western, anti-anti-Communist, anti-anti-terrorist.
Anti-Semitic? That, too – but only insofar as the Jews
are in the right. Only because anti-Semitism is
evil, and the Nation loves evil for evil’s sake.
The Jew hate we’re all seeing will be recalled as nothing to what we’ll see by the end of the Obama tenure.
It’s growing.
It’s growing all across the world.
It’s sweeping like a prarie fire.
This is where the indulgence of the Palestinians has led Israel and Jews everywhere.
““Palestinian self-determination” has been defined solely by the urge to extinguish Israel’s existence.”
this is the rationale for tyranny in the middle east and why mr bacevich counld not be more correct in his urging we not follow israels lead.
israel really is terrified of freedom for arabs. and yet we are in iraq trying to give them freedom. think about it.
ours and israels goals are NOT compatible.
Keep up the essential work. Whe you need a bodyguard I’ll volunteer.
I’ve now asked these questions here in one form or another several times, and have yet to receive a serious response (or a non-serious one, for that matter). So I will try again. Assume Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is correct in all respects. Assume that Israel cannot give up military oversight over the West Bank until it can be assured that a militarized, hostile, Iran-supported Palestinian state will not replace it. All that said, is it Commentary’s position, and that of its supporters here, that Israeli civilians are entitled to settle the West Bank? If not, why is criticism of the settlements never heard here or in the pages of Commentary – only criticism of settlement critics? If those civilian settlements are legitimate, and should never be removed, how exactly do Commentary and its supporters envision the conflict in the mideast coming to an end? I really wonder what you all see as the outcome here.
The Palestinian Arabs are an obstacle to peace. They are a lower order of culture. Most of the world knows this even if it’s inconvenient to say so out loud.
It makes as much sense to remove them as it does to dismantle the settlements. So yes, the conflict will last indefinitely. Grow up and live with it.
Which is why I cut to the chase and suggested that the Palestinians need to be removed in toto from the lands West of the Jordan.
Removed from Gaza.
Removed from the West Bank.
Removed from Jerusalem.
Removed from control of the Temple Mount.
Removed period.
Nobody seems to have a problem when thousands of Jews are uprooted and cast from their settlements.
So since nobody has a problem with uprooting, ——————————- let’s get about uprooting.
Now I’m for compensation, in fact, my suggested compensation is WILDLY EXCESSIVE compared to actual market value of the properties and businesses in question.
So let’s compensate them, and then transplant, one and all, into the Hejaz.
Let’s saddle the house of saud with them.
The sauds have poured billions, tens of billions into satanic hate all across the globe.
So a little pay back is ENTIRELY in order.
So let’s saddle them with the Palestinians.
And this time, Israel doesn’t tolerate them to set up shop right across their borders. No.
This time they’re sent into the very depths of te Hejaz.
Actually, the only humane end game is the re-occupation and annexation of Gaza to Israel, with the current inhabitants allowed (helped?, subsidized?) to emigrate. This will assure Israeli security while liberating a million souls from their miserable refugee camps in which they have been trapped and abused for 60 years. As Arab countries have been made Jew-free, ethnic transfer of Arabs to Arab lands is fair and equitable.
I can imagine US ships taking folks off the beaches to other countries willing to resettle them, for the right price.
There has been a three-generation attempt to share the land and get along. That is not possible, it should, at long last, be clear to all.
The IDF will wipe out Hamas. There is now no red light to stop the war; the contrary is true. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, with no time limits, with the passive approval of all the Arab neighbors, who fear facist Iranian hegemony more than they fear Israel.
The only remaining issue will be the end game disposition of the Arab Gazans.
Another Middle-Eastern Mistake
by Ron Paul
by Ron Paul
Statement on H Res 34, Reaffirming the United States strong support for Israel, before the US House of Representatives, January 9, 2008
Madame Speaker, I strongly oppose H. Res. 34, which was rushed to the floor with almost no prior notice and without consideration by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The resolution clearly takes one side in a conflict that has nothing to do with the United States or US interests. I am concerned that the weapons currently being used by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza are made in America and paid for by American taxpayers. What will adopting this resolution do to the perception of the United States in the Muslim and Arab world? What kind of blowback might we see from this? What moral responsibility do we have for the violence in Israel and Gaza after having provided so much military support to one side?
As an opponent of all violence, I am appalled by the practice of lobbing homemade rockets into Israel from Gaza. I am only grateful that, because of the primitive nature of these weapons, there have been so few casualties among innocent Israelis. But I am also appalled by the longstanding Israeli blockade of Gaza – a cruel act of war – and the tremendous loss of life that has resulted from the latest Israeli attack that started last month.
There are now an estimated 700 dead Palestinians, most of whom are civilians. Many innocent children are among the dead. While the shooting of rockets into Israel is inexcusable, the violent actions of some people in Gaza does not justify killing Palestinians on this scale. Such collective punishment is immoral. At the very least, the US Congress should not be loudly proclaiming its support for the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
Madame Speaker, this resolution will do nothing to reduce the fighting and bloodshed in the Middle East. The resolution in fact will lead the US to become further involved in this conflict, promising “vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” Is it really in the interest of the United States to guarantee the survival of any foreign country? I believe it would be better to focus on the security and survival of the United States, the Constitution of which my colleagues and I swore to defend just this week at the beginning of the 111th Congress. I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution.
Alejcaro asks, “Is it possible to disagree with current Israeli government’s policy and Commentary Magazine without being called anti-Semitic?” Well, yes, of course it is. But there’s a huge difference between “disagreeing” with policy and claiming to Jews hate absolutely no right to statehood (since it supposedly deprives Arabs of their “rights”.) The former is acceptable; the latter is anti-Zionism, Phase III in historical Judenhass. Phase I–anti-Judaism–was the irrational hatred of Jews because of their religion. Phase II–anti-Semitism–was the irrational hatred of Jews because of their “race” (even though there isn’t one). Phase III–anti-Zionism, is the Judenhass of today, much of which (for example, the Islamist variety) incorporates elements of the first two phases.
Putting anti-Zionism in its proper context allows us to see it for what it really is–and makes it much harder for “progressives” who side with jihadis over Jews to act all self-righteous and whinge about how all they want is “justice” for Palestinians. If they are anti-Zionists, if they insist that Jews have NO right to their state, they are Jew-haters, plain and simple
#31: “is it Commentary’s position, and that of its supporters here, that Israeli civilians are entitled to settle the West Bank? ”
That assumes that Commentary has an editorial position.
Does it?
Curious, of course it does – I’ve been a subscriber for decades, and have yet to read one article critical of the settlements – and one article that wasn’t critical of those opposed to them. Notice, by the way, that my questions remain unanswered.
I have no idea what Commentary’s opnion about so-called settlements is. I will give you mine: ALL the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is Jewish land and Jews should have the absolute right to settle everywhere, regardless of whose soveriegnity it is. So, yes, settlements should not be criticized.