Surely it would be a positive action to be able to read your stuff and that of several others here at FDL in some of the prime media realestate locations coming out of NYC or DC.

Sadly it is often easy to come across what hacks like Bill Kristol,the Kagans or Joe Lieberman have written. Balance? Whats that?

The near constant use of the terms ‘WestBank’ or ‘Gaza Strip’ or the equally tilted framing terms ‘the Palestinian Territories’ and ‘Israeli settlers/settlements’ are fully illustrative of pre-weighted term and tone use.

Who gets put in the bad guy light and the frequency of this role assignment lighting plainly intended to reveal/outline Israel and Israelis as being the good guys in these ongoing Israel/Israeli versus. “terrorists,mad bombers and mindless,demonic Arab/Muslims” frame-ups and narratives.

Israel surely has a firm and tightly held grip on WashDC politics and American ME policy forms and acts.

This Israeli power in WashDC surely undermines or prevents any attempt however modest to move the viewpoints,range of discussions or to begin/consider any policy reset about/over American policy on Arab Palestine in particular or American ME affairs in general.

Clearly Israels own conduct of occupation and suppression conduct in and of Arab Palestine and the Arab Palestinians remains a woefully under reported,under told or very selective and fully prejudiced presented narrative.

The road ahead points to little improvement.

American Occupation of Iraq seems very much based on Israeli model for Arab Palestine.

Talk of Iran being attacked by Americans is a matter of general comment in American core main media outlets. No “war” has been declared yet an American “attack on Iran” is fully and very openly suggested and discussed.

Were Iran behaving this way about Israel it is certain American cruise missiles/war planes would be soon all in the air and headed into Iran.

Israel just in recent days “secretly attacked” Syria (it was/is not really secret who did what to who)with a not very “secret” air strike. So far the spin seems to be this is perfectly ok for the Israelis to have done to Syria. And Syria or Iran should expect and accept it has being possible and ok Israeli conduct.

The hipocrisy astounds.

I don’t like the excessive use of force, either, but at the same time, it seems obvious to me that it would be easier for Israel to treat those people better if Israel was not subjected to constant attacks and the open threat of total annihilation. It’s hard to be fair with people who say they want to annihilate you. So, I am inclined to cut Israel some slack in these matters.

This state of internecine war led me to believe that when the peace negotiations held by Clinton broke down that there was (or perhaps more importantly – needed to be) a war to settle the matter or to at least force the sides to realize war was not the answer they’d dreamt of.

Well, the Palestinians haven’t been faring too well in the war and we’ve been occupied elsewhere, so this issue hasn’t been front and center in the American media.

Question now is whether Americans (and everyone around the world) can understand the point made above, that “I don’t like the excessive use of force, either, but at the same time, it seems obvious to me that it would be easier for Israel to treat those people better if Israel was not subjected to constant attacks and the open threat of total annihilation.”

It took the Europeans a long long time to realize War wasn’t really a very satisfactory solution — especially when every big conflagration began to destroy not only the eventual losers, but the so-called winners.

Why did Woodrow Wilson intervene for WWI? It was effective, but barely. He was regaled as a hero, but then pretty much disregarded. Their lack of understanding meant they were destined to repeat their history…yet again.

I’m not quite sure how FDR came to the conclusion that we should intervene for WWII, but it was tremendously effective. Perhaps it was the all-out nature of the war or the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe, but they seemed to learn a big lesson and, as a result, they are very passive these days.

We Americans understood the dangers of a big war (Civil War memories) during the Cold War era and it helped save us all from a nuclear holocaust.

What will save Israel and the Palestinians? Knowledge the world will not let either completely destroy the other, but will let them pound on each other endlessly at a very high damage rate might create the experiencial learning needed to back away from war.

The Jewish experience in WWII didn’t seem to affect them in the way it did the peoples guiding countries. As victims in WWII the Jews didn’t have the same leadership history they really needed to lead Israel. Now they’re learning the hard way, but a way most peoples of the world have learned.

War is not the answer when both sides may die.

Breaking on MSNBC.com:

U.S. says it has arrested Iranian officer for providing aid to Iraq militants

What was the Iranian’s name? el Beejai al Tonkin?

Shorter Junya I/P Policy: “Now let me see what more ah can do to hep screw things up.”

That’s what you get from people who say “government is the problem”.

Tiny postscript appropriate maybe?

Words are incredibly powerful, and I agree with everything you said about biased word-use and its spread, whether by design or carelessness.

I also think simple attitude can be extremely helpful OR hurtful, depending. The Us vs Not Us feeling that is harder to pin down. Harder to identify and file. No less powerful than spoken and written words.

Think:

“road rage”, bombing as a political tool, bullying of all sorts, rebuffing a stranger’s act of kindness

vs.

compassion; helpfulness; pre-emptive kindless; holding judgemental thoughts about others at bay; walking in the other fella’s moccassins; something as simple as an eye-to-eye smile and nod to a stranger who happens to share an experience with you, or whose job requires them to do a task for you; letting a politician know when you’re pleased, not just when you’re angry; being careful how you talk about others in front of your children, and even when you think they’re not listening.

Trite maybe, but true: actions speak loudly.

corollary: Look at what the current administration is DOING! IN.OUR.NAME! We cannot sanction their actions, can we?!

So — it has been happening at least as long as my lifetime — this indoctrination. How much longer? And how many still believe it? Most, I would say. Look at your “good Democrats” — question them. Oh yes, they see the evil of Bush — but all the rest is TRUE!

Isn’t it interesting that our “objective” and NOT pro-Israeli biased media cannot use the term Palestinian without grouping it with gunmen? It just rolls off the tongue so nicely. It’s actually scary how normal it sounds to me. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. Now, that is effective marketing. A*PAC and the ADL would be proud. It makes me sick that these Zi*nist, Israeli-firsters continue to hide behind Jews and claim to represent us so as to give us bad name when their machinations are exposed to the light. American Jews have the largest percentage of people against this war and I would bet want nothing more than an equitable solution to this carnage in the occupied territories. As an American first, I fully realize that until we deal with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, we have NO CHANCE of succeeding in this so called war on terror. Until we bitch slap the right wing in Israel(and their US supporters) to behave itself and not act like paranoid pussies, there can be no effort at a solution as they will continue to sabotage the process.

I’ve come late to the party. All very fine, but Jews against A*P*C/The Lobby/PNAC must stand up to be counted and demonstrate their disapproval, and they are not.

Everyone is pussy-footing around this issue.

Politically, —By instantly recognising Israel when it illegally declared itself the US set itself on the path to where it is today, having an enemy, Israel, which is in fact our economic colony.

Historically, — There is no justification for the existence of Israel in Palestine. The Jews were never more than the majority inhabitants of a small part of Palestine, Judaea. ‘Israel’ was an organised society of Canaanites (Palestinians) in the north before the Hebrews even existed as any sort of coesive group. The Old Testament has now been shown, by the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, to be a work of fictional political propaganda written in about 630BC.

Today??? It is simple. The US Congress and Administration should stop listening to the deluded and propagandised Lobby (2,500 years of lies!), and it should tell Israel the loans, al of them are hereby called in, that any future discussion will be around the application of a reduced area based loosely around GA 181. In the mean time Israel will forthwith comply with all Security Council Resolutions.

The first thing that will happen is that a great mass of the (illegal) immigrants will go home.

BTW, if you want to confirm what an enemy of the US is Israel, Google “USS Liberty” and “Jonathon Jason Pollard”….. You might even try “Larry Franklin”

Thank you for your humanity. If only such humanity were present and visible in our society at large and in our Members of Congress, who – even when not aware of or clued into the reality of what we are doing in and to Iraq – feel entitled to rule Iraqis “for their own good.”

Our occupation of Iraq is an “Americans can do no wrong” approach to an “us vs. them” (often in service to “their riches, and our birthright to take them against their will”) world view when what is needed more than ever is for all of us to learn to live and let live.

[That Holy Land prosecution in Dallas is apparently the culmination of the decade-long monitoring of that and other organizations that came to an end at the time of the leak by Judy Miller (shortly after 9/11) of the pending government asset seizure/raid of HLF to which she was alerted by a tip from someone (presumably) inside our government. The trial has been pending for years, during which time highly classified materials not intended for discovery were inadvertently turned over to the defense in Dallas by the government, and not retrieved for months… The upshot, after the month-long presentation of the government’s case, was no al Qaeda connection or evidence being presented or alleged as apparently was the suspicion back in 2001; it’s all about Hamas. Here’s an excellent progress report from last year, by local reporters:

Http://cbs11tv.com/local/local.....10859.html

And a more recent overview by Josh Gerstein:

Http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id.....5899659811

It’s hard to tell from the outside if this is simply an us vs. them prosecution, or if there’s actually more here than meets the eye, beneath the surface of these allegations.]