Hillary Clinton took time out last night to appear on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. Neither she or he was all that funny, but–perhaps because her voice was raspy and she looked utterly exhausted–she came across quite sympathetically. She is obviously fighting for her political life. Stewart gave her a small hand in the “hope is overrated” department by joking that he’s been “clicking his ruby slippers together” without result. In the second part of the interview, she made her case for staying in the race, arguing that “big states” like Pennsylvania are important to the Democrats and deserve a say in who the nominee will be. She also claimed that her husband did not wrap up the race until June during his 1992 campaign. Unless she loses both big states today, I think it highly unlikely she will be leaving the race anytime soon.
Contentions
3 Responses to “Hillary with Jon Stewart”
June 2013
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Quote: “Was it necessary to bomb and kill this number of civilians in Gaza or did Israel use excessive force that can’t be justified? ….
Was it wise to keep the war going for this long, or could Israel have ended it a week or ten days ago? ”
The war was not about rocket attacks. The war was timed to take place before Obama comes into office.
Excessive force was used not only on civilians but on the infrastructure which posed no threat to Israel.
Israel has done this in the past. During the second Intifada, Israeli soldiers rampages through the West Bank and Gaza and seeked out computers, files and destroyed as much of the government records as possible. This way, over time, the Palestinians will be turned into a people without records, without history, without the old land deeds, and without culture.
Israel, I suspect (I am keen on military technology), has the capability to shoot down these slow homemade rockets with long exhaust trails. Israel was able to shoot down much faster Scud rockets from Iraq during the First Gulf War. But I guess its better to use the rocket attacks as excuses to do anything against the people of Gaza.
After 60 years of conflict in the Middle East you would be a fool or liar if you believe that Israel has great intentions of not targeting civilians and not destroying the underlying culture.
One way to get Arab villagers to leave their homes in 1948 was through terror. Today it’s the same, except that TV cameras are always on, so Israel says, “we hit this UN sanctuary by mistake”.
If they target terrorists exclusively, then the civilian casualties would be much much much lower. The high figure is a way to instill fear in the natives. Similarly, the infrastructure is targeted in the big goal of getting these people to move out of there.
The world is not really complicate when one sees the big picture.
Big picture, small tube. Naturally Israel got out of Gaza in 2005 in order to flush out the natives in 2009.
That’s a kind of Arab logic for you: In fact it weirdly evokes the Arabs’ own 1948 tactic, ie encourage the natives to leave so they can return as victors. Anyway, if Israel didn’t have such a compulsion to make foolish concessions in order to polish its halo, it wouldn’t need to bomb its way back to the status quo ante.
I agree with you that outsiders don’t understand how important Gilad Shalit is to Israelis. The failure to bring him home, or to even put him on the agenda, will harm Kadima and Labor, and add seats to Likud and Yisrael Beteinu. Even if Hamas fires not a single Kassam from Gaza (an unlikely event), the Shalit failure will hang over the cease-fire like a yoke on Livni and Barak’s shoulders.
To Halpern,
Israel left Gaza because it was too expensive and the native are not leaving anytime soon.
But in the long run, Israel’s strategy seems to make life so unbearable that they leave.
That thing about the Arabs encouraging their own people to leave (and shamelessly, that the Jews begged the Arabs to stay!) has long since been debunked. Please tell the truth when we are talking about other people’s land and lives.
Big Picture: Explain to me why the Palestinian people destroyed millions of dollars worth of greenhouses Israelis left behind. That property might have been used to build a vibrant economy. The answer is clear: These people aren’t interested in coexistence. They have only one, perverted, stupid notion…resistence. Too what. Hamas has reaped what it has sowed. They will continually be beaten until they get it through their thick heads that Israel is here to stay. Hopefully it won’t take longer or more blood. Let them just extend their hands in peace. like Egypt and Jordan, and they will bring peace to their people, instead of bloodshed and destruction.
Quote: “Explain to me why the Palestinian people destroyed millions of dollars worth of greenhouses Israelis left behind. That property might have been used to build a vibrant economy”
I am not sure either. You must understand that these are not educated people, and I am not sure that they appreciate any form of technology except resistance weapons. Hence the need for schools and better education, something that Israel seems NOT to favor.
Quote: “Too what. Hamas has reaped what it has sowed. They will continually be beaten until they get it through their thick heads that Israel is here to stay.”
Well, I am glad that you believe in karma. So maybe one day, Israeli will get it through to their thick heads that what they sow will be what they reap, and that the Palestinians are here to stay. After all, the Israelis are the foreigners, and the Palestinians are the natives. Do you dispute that last statement?
“That thing about the Arabs encouraging their own people to leave (and shamelessly, that the Jews begged the Arabs to stay!) has long since been debunked. Please tell the truth when we are talking about other people’s land and lives.”
Actually, the opposite is mostly true. It is proven by no less authority than prominent Arabs of the time and British personnel of the time stationed in Israel that were no friends to Israel. There was an excellent article in Commentary some months back (among many other studies) with authorities cited. Look it up.
Just because you wish a thing to be does not make it so.
Big Picture: First, let’s take a look at how Palestinians/Hamas educates it’s children. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of Hamas and the current PA foreign minister, understands the key role of education: “We will turn every facet of life into resistance. Education will deal with the culture of resistance. We will not tell them [the children] that Palestine is a state that runs from Rafah to Khan Yunis [the limits of the Gaza Strip]. We will tell them it runs from Rafah in the south to Ras al-Nakura [the Israel-Lebanon border] in the north, and that Palestine’s western border is the [Mediterranean] sea and the eastern border the [Jordan] river [thus encompassing all of Israel].”
A June 2005 report published prior to the Hamas election victory by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) reveals that anti-Israel rhetoric was already embedded in Palestinian school textbooks and other educational materials. The report notes how ideas such as romanticizing martyrdom and “reconquering” the land were taught in the classroom. According to Dr. Yochanan Manor, the chairman of CMIP, the biggest problems with the textbooks are the fact that there is no mention of the historical link between the Jewish people and their holy land, that efforts toward peace and understanding are notably absent, and that one hundred years after first being published, the anti-Semitic Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is presented in the textbooks as historically accurate.
Big Picture: Regarding your historically inaccurate claim that Palestinians are native to the territory:
The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name.
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon’s son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.4 In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be more than 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
quote: “Regarding your historically inaccurate claim that Palestinians are native to the territory”
Response: What are the Israeli saying? They are saying that since they already live there and they made the land fertile, there can be NO return of the refugees to their homes that was left 60 years ago.
Now you are saying that 2000 years ago, the Jews settled there and it is a good claim. You are preposterious. I have debated on and off for many years and I have come to the conclusion that the Israeli apologists are either liars or are delusional. I don’t hate Jews or hate Arabs or anyone, really.
MacDaddy: There was an exchange of populations in 1948-50 — 600,000 Arabs left what has since become the State of Israel and approximately 700,000 Jews were kicked out of Arab countries. The only real difference is that the State of Israel integrated the Jewish refugees into the country, while the Arab countries allowed their refugees to live in squalor in refugee camps. It’s a disgrace!
To ben Rachmiel ;
Quote: “There was an exchange of populations in 1948-50 — 600,000 Arabs left what has since become the State of Israel and approximately 700,000 Jews were kicked out of Arab countries. The only real difference is that the State of Israel integrated the Jewish refugees into the country, while the Arab countries allowed their refugees to live in squalor in refugee camps. It’s a disgrace!”
Response: Nice apologist spin. The Arabs DON”T want to leave. The Jews and Israel WANT them to leave the Arab countries and move to Israel.
Even when quoting correct numbers and facts the whole Israeli apologist spirit is to confuse and make excuses. That is the true disgrace. You know it and I know it but the spin never stops.
To Big Picture: see my comment to MacDaddy about refugees. Three generations of Arab refugees is a disgrace to the United Nations and the surrounding Arab countries. “If each European war had been attended by its own postwar UNRWA, today’s Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of uprooted Gallo-Romons, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced Visigoths–not to speak of more refugee nations such as post 1945 Sudeten Germans…Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes, undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps.” (Edward Luttwak, “Give War a chance).
I’m not claiming that Israel’s claim is based on a biblical tie to the Land; on the contrary, Israel’s claim is based on the United Nations vote in 1947. The Arab people rejected their land with hopes of taking all of it. This greedy, selfish attitude has perpetuated the war there. Let them recognize Israel’s right to exist, as Egypt and Jordan have, and they will find they might benefit from cooperation with the Jewish state.
And the question most Israelis do not really care about, but that the international community will busy itself with: what are the implications of the Gaza operation for the peace process?
Of course the Israelis don’t care. What they really want to do is get back to the job of committing genocide in their neo-con Warsaw Ghetto.
Your attitude puts the death knell to the two state solution, which I must assume you don’t believe in.
Big Picture –
What is needed is a DNA /isotope test to detect ones bearings from AD 100.Then we could go back& claim ownership.
Many Commentary posters would have to go back to Israel /Palestine /MEast but most of us unbound by selective breeding could find ourselves almost anywhere!
500 generations.
To ben Rachmiel,
Quote :”Three generations of Arab refugees is a disgrace to the United Nations and the surrounding Arab countries.”
Now there is truth to this but you must understand why I reject your claim that it a disgrace that Israel absorbed so many people and the Arabs are still refugees. The Arabs don’t want to leave but Israel WANT Jews come to Israel. Why do you not tell it like it is?
Today, some gangster from Russia can say they are Jewish and come to Israel, given allowance, free housing and found jobs. But an elderly refugee will not beallowed to go back to his old home.
Yes, allowing the refugees live in camps for 3 generation is a disgrace, but for everyone! Why does Israel not give them re-settlement money??? They can afford to re-settle every Jew that comes but why they cannot afford to re-settle the refugees.
Since the Arabs are much weaker militarily, leaving these people in the camps is the Arab way of MAKING people like you face the truth: These people weree kicked out from their homes and they will not accept nothing less than justice.
To unamerican,
Quote: “What is needed is a DNA /isotope test to detect ones bearings from AD 100.Then we could go back& claim ownership.
Many Commentary posters would have to go back to Israel /Palestine /MEast but most of us unbound by selective breeding could find ourselves almost anywhere!
500 generations.”
Yes, but why AD100?
Using your criteria, most Jews in Israel would be expelled back to Eastern Europe whence they came.
To Big picture – A poster outlined the history of Jewish settlement up to Ad 60.
I do not think there were many Jewish persons in Eastern europe 500 generations ago.Some brave souls may have escaped Egypt 4,000 Bc along but they would have had to live in a cave in then Europe- but the ladies could still wear fur stoles & large rocks.
Big P – you are humourless.
This discussion reminds me of the worst film ever. Interiors.
I am going for a swim- i will think of Moses.
To “BIG PICTURE”.
First of all, Jews from Arab countries did not want to leave, they were thrown out, there possessions were confiscated, and some of them were murdered by Arabs. Yes, the survivors do not want to go back to those Arab countries because they will be murdered, leave alone that Arab countries will not allow them in. For example, there is a law in Jordan that forbids any Jew to live there.
Second of all, Arab refugees from Israel got more money than anybody else in the world including money from Israel and from American Jews. The last famous case when American Jews gave millions to Arabs was when American Jews paid to help Gaza Arabs to use Gush Katif green houses. In fact, Arabs in refugee camps in 1948 were living much better than the Arabs around the camps, so a lot of surrounding Arabs declared themselves “refugees” from Israel and moved to these camps.
In a couple of years the number of Arabs in those welfare camps multiply two-three fold.
Not that you will believe any facts, but does not hurt to provide the facts anyway.
one of the ways to block, and re-direct the us,eu,egyptian political pressure was to halt the military thrust just at this stage. to show respect for the coming president of the usa, for the inauguration and see the hand the new administration intends to play in the coming weeks.
the israelis, too, have still some cards to play with – especially the tunnel-question, philadelphi-corridor, and the dysfunctional hamas leadership, which, though still largely intact, has only one option available: to sue for peace.
israel has shown, this time, that it can strike surprisingly hard. very hard, indeed. most propably, the arabs are aghast at the moment regarding the brutality of the israeli response for the hamas military build-up. and they’ll take notice of the perfomance of the idf when compared with the iranian-inspired hamas and it’s military disability from the day one.
To elen,
Quote: “Jews from Arab countries did not want to leave, they were thrown out, there possessions were confiscated, and some of them were murdered by Arabs.”
How true is this or is this another spin ? Why is it that Arabs and Jews lived peacefully until the European Jews started coming and causing trouble. Why would peaceful neighbors want to fight each other? I don’t think so. So there must be national decrees that say Jews must leave the country. Give me evidence of that?
****Why is it that Arabs and Jews lived peacefully until the European Jews started coming and causing trouble. ****
Maybe you could call living under dhimmi status peaceful, but most people wouldn’t.
actually, most palestinians only migrated to the area of Israel when the jews came, in order to take advantage of the growing economy the jews were creating. Under the british, who had not yet made up their minds whether to grant a jewish state, arab immigration was encouraged, and jewish immigration curtailed with the result that jews not let in died in nazi europe. This is how most Palestinians came to the area of Israel. Oh, they talk as though they were there since the Romans, but most Palestinians were recent immigrants to Israel, and of course they fled in ’48 swearing to drive Israel to the sea. Does a Palestinian who arrived in 1938 and fled in 48 really have an eternal right to israel? How about the guy who arrived in 1915 and fled in 48,swearing to destory Israel, does his great grandchild have a right? The Palestinian cause is a hoax.