Bill Kristol as well, the US is overreacting, Bibi apologized so move along.

The fact is, the US was making a good-faith effort to APPEAR to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, and the Israeli government expressed its gratitude by doubling-down on a reckless, aggressive policy that every US president since Jimmy Carter has opposed pretended to oppose.

how does that scan?

the “reckless, aggressive policy” is the real policy, and they are simply at the point where they feel they can dispense with the ‘peace process’ charade and operate out in the open, and if Joe Biden doesn’t like that, well too bad.

So I guess we’ll soon be seeing Foxman and Donohue on with Beck, Hannity, and BillO with all of them trashing Obama, Biden, and Clinton

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Disclosure: My Father was in Palestine from 1942 to 1948, and after Lebanon, Syria & Iraq. I grew up with stories of the Stern Gang, Ergun & Haganar, and how they were considered terrorists by the British when the British were fighting against Hitler in WW II. (King David Hotel and Army Field Hospital Massacres).

Yeah..but he did it FIRST and then he apologized. SOS is right – it’s offensive and insulting.

You’re with us, or you’re an anti-Semite! The label that keeps on giving.

How many DUEL citizenship citizens control congress?

That’s right, it’s antisemitic to ask, right?

Sorry, but that’s just stupid. Every controlling authority in every place at every time considers any who oppose their chosen policy to be “terrorists.” Just like we do right now. You mention that the British were fighting Hitler. Is your logical implication to be taken to be that the Jews were fighting WITH Hitler?

Truth is, there is a long and despicable history of anti-Semitism in Britain, just like the rest of Europe. The Israelis fought them because they had to.

And although I find plenty to disappoint in recent Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, let me just throw a little sandbag of historical context in here before the predictable anti-Israeli wave gets to tsunami status. There’s nothing noble about the Palestinians, either, and the history of Arabs both before Isael and, I’m sure, after any eventual demise of Israel, is that their full-time favorite pursuit is the killing of other Arabs.

So, just consider how bad the villains are in a place that has no heroes.

Foxman is playing a really disgusting game. For him anyone who doesn’t give absolute support to Israel is a Nazi. In effect, he’s sending a message that he will make sure that a change in America’s Israel / Palestine policy will only happen in the ugliest way possible. Eventually some people will start deciding “OK, I’m a Nazi I guess, because I want the Israel policy to change.” And to Foxman, that will prove that he’s been right all along.

And this kind of thing is going to keep going on as long as we allow Israel to direct our foreign policy. My money says that Biden, Clinton and Obama will be full of nothing but effusive praise in addressing the next meeting of AIPAC. Party affiliation knows no disparity when it comes to AIPAC and Israel.

There should be swift payback to Israel and the ADL for this insult. Don’t know what it would be but it’s about time something was done. If anyone thinks that Israel will stop before they have either driven every Arab from what they consider “their” land or killed them all is fooling themselves. This is one of the most bloodthirsty policies we have seen in a long time.

My own experience, having spent ten days in Israel in 1981, was that Israeli attitudes towards Palestinians were very similar to what I recall whites attitudes towards blacks were when I was growing up in south Texas in the 1950s,

the Stern Gang, Ergun & Haganar, and how they were considered terrorists by the British when the British were fighting against Hitler in WW II

I don’t think many Americans know what ‘the Stern Gang’ is, and I stumbled on it years ago in the autobiography of Dean Acheson, “Present at the Creation”.

There is more-than-credible evidence that Menachim Begin was a member of the Stern Gang. They dressed as Arabs in order to create an incident in the King David Hotel (in Jerusalem).

When you deliberately use civilians as a disguise to avoid being accountable for your acts of what are – essentially, war – then the boundaries between ‘just war’ (fought with military, armies, ‘rules’ of engagement) as opposed to ‘unjust war’ (terrorism, ‘total war’) are so blurred that no one knows who the ‘enemy’ is and the world becomes paranoid.

I just think that there’s been so much trauma on all sides of this issue that we’re dealing with extremely rigid belief systems.
I leave the rest to neurocognitive experts.

But who really ‘wins’ here?
Short term, whoever wanted to beat their chest got an emotional payoff.
Long term, they look like a pack of thugs backed up against a wall beating their chests and thumbing their noses at everyone. How that is ‘strength’ escapes me.

I believe all groups in the Near East have made extraordinarily rich, complex, exquisite contributions to humankind.

I have no answers.
But I’m weary of the extremists always having the most leverage, whether in the US Congress, or with AQ, or in Israel.

Well it took FDL long enough to get going with this week old story.

That said, I ask again as I have many times, why the hell is America supporting a regime that has ignored 14(?) UN findings and yet invaded Iraq after two trumped up findings? And why are we supporting a criminal enterprise run by terrorists (let us not forget The King David Hotel bombed by Menachim Begin), terrorists that continue their assassinations of government officials, terrorists that illegally occupy the Palestinian’s land, terrorists that practice genocide and apartheid terrorists that destroy sacred mosques, terrorists that kill women and children and drive farmers from their lands so that the rich americans can build more and more settlements. Israel is a terrorist nation by any definition, it a nation that has been condemned in the UN as committing war crimes many, many times including just recently in their illegal incvasion of Gaza and the West BAnk.

The sooner America cuts their tie with the criminals nation the safer we shall all be.

Anti Israel and anti Semitism are two separate things, contrary to what Foxman seems to believe. Just like I can be anti Saudi Arabia without being anti Muslim. There’s nothing “noble” about Palestinians you say? Maybe not but does that mean their civilians deserve to be bombed with white phosphorous and run down by bulldozers for protecting land ownership that has been in their families for centuries? Grow up. The current government of Israel is an abomination and a monster and being against that sort of violence and disrespect for humanity doesn’t mean that I must hate Jewish people. It only means that I find Zionists no better than any other loathsome terrorists.

For my own part I do not buy any goods produced in Israel and I donate to Palestinian causes through Europe to avoid the Aipac laws of this country.

Abraham Foxman appears to be the spokesman for a small number of very wealthy American Jews who are fanatical Zionists for whatever reason. Polling apparently shows that the majority of American Jews (themselves a couple percent of the overall population in total) oppose the occupation, land expropriation, etc.

From my standpoint, it very much appears that the US government has hitched its wagon to Israel. This really needs to change. Israel has all the power in the world, the complete upper hand, in its relations with the dispossessed Palestinian people, and shows no sign or interest of equitable co-existence with the Palestinians. This indicates for a dubious future for Israel, as the Palestinians are hardly a tiny unknown band of tribes in some remote wilderness in the world. Israel is not choosing an equitable two-state solution, apparently, and the inequitable one-state solution more likely according to informed observers is going to make Israel the next Apartheid South Africa.

Certainly that state of affairs will keep Abraham Foxman busy writing threatening letters.

“So, just consider how bad the villains are in a place that has no heroes.” is your comment snark or do you just have a lack of knowledge of history? Ever hear of Saladin?
And there are many more in Islamic history.

And you seemingly are unaware that arabs are also ‘semites’.

And you also show ignorance about Islam when you write “that their full-time favorite pursuit is the killing of other Arabs.”

You really need to take a strop to that razorbrain of yours.

Israel yanks our chain not the other way around.SCUM

There’s nothing noble about the Palestinians, either, and the history of Arabs both before Isael and, I’m sure, after any eventual dmise of Israel, is that their full-time favorite pursuit is the killing of other Arabs.

Historically incorrect. The Palestinians had their lands taken from them by the british and given to the Israelis. It was, and still is, the Israelis that desire to kill arabs.

For some REAL FACTS please read this

What? “This story” isn’t “a week old” — it’s about the ADL’s response, which just happened.

And I blogged about Israel’s PM embracing John Hagee on Wednesday.

Israel has no intentions of allowing the Palestinians to have one inch of land. They want it all and since the US has no spine, I imagine that they will end up with it all.

With friends like Israel, who needs enemies! I don’t understand why we give Israel so much leverage. Israel only cares about Israel.

F*ck off ADL!

Justin Raimondo provides a fine overview:

Biden seemed baffled, and was probably genuinely hurt, at how deliberately his hosts chose to insult him, but it’s no mystery as to why this occurred. As Biden put it early in his stem-winder, all the benefits Israel receives via its alliance with the US are “impervious to any shifts” in American politics. There are no consequences for subverting the American agenda, or even for humiliating the Vice President (as he begs for more).
US policy in the region is not only impervious to partisan politics, it is invulnerable against any consideration of American interests. Unlike our other satraps, Israel is accorded not mere respect, but deference: they’ve been given a blank check, and they fully intend to cash it.
The reason for their arrogance is the unrivaled power of Israel’s potent lobby in the US, a well-coordinated and generously financed interest group that doesn’t brook any disagreement or deviation from its relentlessly consistent advocacy of the line that what’s good for Israel is good for the US. That this has never been true, and is even less true today, hasn’t stopped the entire US political and journalistic establishment from strenuously trying to enforce this fact-free orthodoxy — and smearing anyone who dares disagree as an “anti-Semite.”

but, there are unanticipated political shifts taking place that may change the calculus on IP as on so many other issues.

the Legacy Parties are discredited, the real economy is a shambles, and the Wall Street casino will likely collapse again in the next year or two, at a scale that cannot be bailed out.

in this context, the flow of billions of dollars funneled annually to the feisty, defiant and ungrateful little client state will be quickly brought to a halt.

the predictable anti-Israeli wave gets to tsunami status. There’s nothing noble about the Palestinians, either, and the history of Arabs both before Isael and, I’m sure, after any eventual demise of Israel, is that their full-time favorite pursuit is the killing of other Arabs.

I generally avoid these threads, because they get extremely emotional (understandably), and it’s hard to have a good ‘conversation’ on them.

However, I’m sorry that you feel what I have copied here.

FWIW, and I have no important role in any of the decision-making, the term ‘anti Israeli’ concerns me. I spent part of my childhood in Germany, and as a child was accused on a playground in Washington state of being ‘a Nazi’. I have never truly recovered from that deep insult, and I doubt that I ever will. (My parents were helping rebuild Europe and for that I got called a Nazi?! That’s nuts.)

“Israel” is a huge, huge term.
For me it encompasses things that go back to 4,000 BC, so I don’t shrink it down to mean current Israeli politics, which frankly I couldn’t begin to keep track of.

If you have any interest, and quite possibly you do, in the history of the Ancient Near East, it is extraordinarily rich, and in the 20th century (with the discovery of the Ebla Tablets, the Ugarit Tablets, to say a ton of work related to ancient Aramaic and Hebrew) many new insights have been unearthed. Given the trade routes, the agriculture, the development of new crops and fruits, the rich history, I think that there is a great deal of remarkable historical breadth that you seem to be missing.
And I don’t see it limited to any particular ethnic, language, or cultural group; it’s the rich mix that made for so many extraordinary innovations. Including alphabets.

I guess my point, in a nutshell, is that “American leadership in the peace process” seems irrelevant now. The Israeli people have voted into power an absolutely intransigent, truculent, extremist regime. They support the acts and policies of this regime. The Israeli nation does not want peace with the Palestinians, the Lebanese, Iranians, etc. The Israeli nation wants to expropriate what remains of the West Bank without a concern as to what to do for the people living there already, and fight against its chosen enemy sovereign nations in the region.

American leadership in such context no longer means creating peace for Israel, a nation which does not want peace, but just to expand its borders continuously beyond what has been internationally recognized. What American leadership now means is eliminating “aid” to Israel, and treating Israel diplomatically as the US would treat any other nation. We need to “avoid foreign entanglements” and see to our own interests now.

I think Israel will continue to get money from the US if all of us are starving. The lobby is too powerful.

You and I seem to be reading similar tea leaves.

Assuredly they can take over the land if they want, with or without international recognition, and it won’t matter. The one state outcome for Israel means that they are minority population in their own state, unless they plan a full-scale military ethnic cleansing campaign to drive Palestinians across the borders of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. That would be a very policy for Israel, its a political non-starter.

So the Israelis, as a wealthy minority in their one state, shared with impoverished, miserable, angry Palestinians, would have no choice but to deny full rights of citizenship in many, many ways to Palestinians, in order to maintain Israel as a “Jewish state”. At that point, any claim that the Israelis could make towards being some sort of “noble” democracy go away forever. At that point, they’re Apartheid South Africa, and the international condemnation grows and grows and grows …

history of Arabs both before Isael and, I’m sure, after any eventual demise of Israel, is that their full-time favorite pursuit is the killing of other Arabs

Quite a generalization there.

Of course, there are long times in history when you could substitute “Chrisitian” for “Arab,” and not so long ago, you could have sustituted “European.”

The Israel Lobby is just another example of how money and special interests have broken the US government, with the added icing on the cake of “dual allegiances” or even “dueling allegiances” when it comes to all the US/Israel dual citizens in and around the USG.

Over sixty years of zionist Israeli aggression against the Arabs. Sixty years of zionist theft of Arab land and Arab water, happily supported by western imperialist powers such as France, Netherlands, Britain and USA, who have been helping themselves to Arab oil since 1922, for almost ninety years now. Heck of a theft, imperial pigs.

It is cute, the way Israel boosters, when it comes time to point to Arab political violence, forget all about the history of Europe, etc.

nice post at 25 on the long and various history of the peoples of the region. Nation states were overlaid on the societies there relatively recently, as well, Egypt excepted.

and Twain, that is probably true that the Lobby is powerful enough to continue the taxpayer tithe to tel aviv in the face of almost any domestic US calamity – but this power is embedded in the structure of the 2 US legacy parties, at least one of which will go the way of the Whig party in the next 10 years or so. hopefully.

Those are the facts as I remember them stated. You’ve inferred something that was not written.

The British did not believe the Zionists were with them in fighting Hitler. Did the British believe they were fighting for Hitler? I never heard that suggested. The British understood the Zionist had their own agenda. Did the British believe the Zionists honorable? Not in my hearing.

The British did not reflexively believe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The British were experienced with multiple enemies in a theatre of war.

No. Israel broke their agreement with Pakistan 2 days after making it by building 112 new apartments over a week ago. Hagee was another story, and a pretty silly and minor one as Hagee is only of interest to a few nut jobs in the US and Nuttyyahoo will embrace a snake if it will bring him some publicity….as will McCain.

The story is Israel breaking agreements again and again with impunity. It is Israelis committing genocide. It is Israel starving innocents. It is about Israel denying children the ability to go to school. It is…..oh hell it is not worth my energy.

Vice-President Biden should have had them turn the jet around and returned back to the U.S., without even landing.

Cute in a sick kind of a way.

“Israel” is a huge, huge term.
For me it encompasses things that go back to 4,000 BC, so I don’t shrink it down to mean current Israeli politics, which frankly I couldn’t begin to keep track of.

Hmmm, without getting into a debate about semantics I would like to establish that for the purposes of this discussion, “Israel” in my usage means the current government and state established in 1948 as a result of the expiration of the British Mandate and the form of Zionism it represents. I’m not interested in etymology or biblical myths about Israel, how they are “god’s chosen people” and other self aggrandizing, ego stroking beliefs. I am only interested that in yet another incarnation of a “Manifest Destiny” frame of mind, they are exploiting peoples’ superstitions to “justify” slaughter of innocents and seizure of land and property that they would otherwise have no right to. Throwing the accusation of antisemitism into the mix or equating modern Israel with historical and mythical Israel is just another way of “justifying” abomination. Saying that no Palestinians are innocent really is just a tool to render them the less than human “other” to assuage guilt. Just my opinion. (Just to be clear: I’m not saying that YOU said those things.)

well said. I believe that Israel is very dangerous. They just don’t seem to care and they have nukes. Scary.

Your comment was wrong — this post is about the ADL’s response to US criticism. That’s sort of in the headline. It isn’t a week old.

You’re entitled to your opinion about the relevance of Hagee — to me it shows the degree to which Israel’s government has become radicalized. You don’t think it matters, fine.

But don’t tell me what I’m writing about and when, as though it’s part of some sort of effort to whitewash Israel’s behavior.

Spare me.

I undertand you have your priorities, opinions and right to express them whenever you please. I, however, have the right to criticize FDL if one of their posters puts up something that is, in my opinion, the wrong story at the wrong time.

Move those goal posts.

First it was “Ah, FDL’s finally getting around to this.” Now it’s the wrong story at the wrong time.

Um….

I have an abiding, years-long interest in just about anything related to the reading process, and that includes the history of alphabets.

I don’t see where I mentioned ‘Biblical myths’.
I’m interested in writing: who did it, how they did it, why they did it, how they taught it, who learned it, what purposes they used it for, what writing systems seem to have evolved from which earlier writing systems, et cetera.

“El” has been written for thousands of years, by a wide range of ethnic and cultural groups. That in no way, shape, or form ‘equates’ Israel with anything mythical. It does in some interesting ways equate it with things ‘historical’.

Which is why I tend to avoid threads involving US foreign policy with respect to certain Near East nations. It’s hard to contribute and people almost always misread what I intend.

Actually, Craig Unger’s book ‘Fall of the House of Bush’, an FDL Book Salon selection over a year ago, really opened my eyes about Hagee.

I think your analysis of *why* he is significant and worth tracking is right on target.

The Bill Moyers’ piece on Christians United for Israel was the turning point for me.

I’m sorry but you must have missed my last line. I’ll repeat it here: Just to be clear, I’m not saying that YOU said those things Also I said “…I would like to establish that for the purposes of this discussion, “Israel” in my usage means the current government and state established in 1948…” Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Which is why I tend to avoid threads involving US foreign policy with respect to certain Near East nations.

Nobody is changing the mind of anyone else on this crap ever.

JazusI feel like I am communicating with a door.. The “real” story is not the reaction to the reaction it is the fact of the illegal building of settlements post the agreement with Pakistan. The rest is just eye shadow.

It is a topic that lends itself to folks talking past each other, ain’t it?

I met a guy at a party in September that I found quite engaging and even desirable. We shared a lot of things in common, gaming, similar interests in science fiction, we were in similar fields, he was just coming off an extended period of unemployment which I was in the midst of. All in all, a very pleasant guy. Until the subject turned to Israel, which he brought up. He proudly proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and if he had his way, every Arab, man, woman and child would be rounded up and herded into the sea. He thought that the very recent Gaza conflict didn’t go anywhere near far enough, that there were no innocent Palestinians and that god had given that land to Israelis and so forth. Never before had I seen someone advocate and propound so proudly his belief in deliberate genocide, outside of movies or historical archives and certainly not without swasticas bedecking every surface in sight. He seemed to miss the similarity entirely.

No, I’m not saying that anti-Israel and anti-Semitism are the same, and I vehemently disagree with people who sloganeer in that way. All I was saying is that in the 1940′s, anti-Semitism was rampant among Europeans, including Britain, and that that played a big part in their policy decisions.

I just don’t like one-sided discussions like the ones we always get here when Israel is mentioned. It’s the only thing I find really distasteful about this site. Everybody in the Middle East kills everybody in the Middle East. Sad but true. The actual data is that the Israelis do it with regret, while the Arabs do it with glee. Don’t forget, people, that the Arabs sided with the Nazis during the Holocaust years. Be careful how you assign blame. If you feel you must assign it.

And Margaret, I’m “grown-up” enough to remember the Arabs vowed to kill every single man, woman, and child if any of their attacks on Israel resulted in victory, so, until the Israelis demonstrate that degree of blood-thirst, maybe you should grow up a little. That said, I deplore any act that kills innocent civilians, no matter by whom.

Ugh, thank goodness for hoops.

Don’t forget, people, that the Arabs sided with the Nazis during the Holocaust years.

So did the effin pope. And you are not factually correct.

Indeed.

No worries.
Your definition of what you meant by ‘Israel’ was helpful.
As you see, mine is too unwieldy to be workable in this sort of discussion.

And as someone else pointed out, ‘nation states’ are (in my view, anyway) pretty much a 20th c overlay. In many respects, they’re probably more misleading than helpful much of the time.

It’s mostly the alphabets that interest me.
No doubt the Syrians, Turks, Israeli’s, and heaven-only-knows who else wonders WTF I’m doing on their websites in my spare hours. (Shrug.)
No doubt ‘alphabets’ are too mundane and dusty a topic to interest political extremists. (At least, I hope they are…. as they don’t require munitions budgets, nor military expertise.)

You can see why I admire Kelly her linguistic gifts ;-)

Alphabets = core technology.

And baseball!

I think you and dakine01 have pretty well nailed it.

tom friedman in his nytimes cop-ed said it best when he wrote: “He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

So by your definition, FDL still hasn’t gotten to “the real story” because this post is about the ADL. Which again, contradicts your first comment.

Here’s a thought — start your own blog so you can blog about what you think are the “real” stories. Because comments about what other people should be blogging about are tedious, to say the least.

So bombing civilians with white phosphorous isn’t “blood lust” enough for you? Sorry. Didn’t realize that Israel would have to nuke a city before it was okay by you for others to criticize them. And “vowing to kill every single man, woman and child” doesn’t exactly hold a candle to actually trying to DO it as Israel does regularly

You are the one posting. Do not post if you cannot accept criticism.

How long has Saladin been dead? Have moderera Arabs acted like Saladin?

Of course I know they are all Semites. So does Foxman, right?

Bigotry comes in all shapes and sizes, it looks like you’ve chosen yours. I can’t find a good side in the Middle East. Sorry.

Happy to accept criticism that a) makes sense, and b) isn’t simply “FDL sucks.”

Do not comment if you don’t want factually wrong comments point out to you.

I thought that might be the point of confusion. See, I was only trying to define my use of Israel for the context of this conversation.

You can see why I admire Kelly her linguistic gifts ;-)

Dunno if he’d be amused or otherwise but Kelly is a man. I think he’d get a good laugh out of the misperception though. :-)

Maybe you can’t remember one, Abe, because “friends” of the United States typically don’t pull fuck-you moves like that on our Vice Presidents.

Fuck You is ok? Can I say that Israel tried Making Joe Biden their Bitch then and Joe gave them [Edited by Moderator. No, you can't say that]?

I believe he was right on, on this one.

And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill

Linky no worky. But I’ve read a lot of detailed history about the region, and to decide that the Israelis are the lesser moral force there overall really takes some distortion of the facts IMO. That land was just empty desert before Israel, noone cared about it, and no other Arabs will help the Palestinians now. What does that tell you? It’s all tribal out there. I detest tribalism. sorry.

Too bad.

GWBush could have been a hero by invading Israel and presiding over regime change there. Certainly he would have had much greater justification.

Instead, he took the cowards way out and invaded a country basically on its knees.

Coward in Vietnam. Coward in the Middle East. Coward in America.

I miss his humor as well as his writing.

Exactly!

Funny comments considering you’ve been doing your best to pretend that it’s perfectly OK for Bibi to do what he just did.

I notice that he hasn’t dared respond to you. ;-)

I agree with everything you wrote. But, I think ancient history matters less than recent history, generally speaking, don’t you?

I just don’t see how anybody can have a favorite side in the entire area to root for. All have blood on their hands. But it is dismaying to me that most here seem to count only the Israeli actions they disapprove of. Really dismaying. But not unsurprising, as my prediction of a “tsunami” above makes plain.

I’m almost done with his bio, what a sick fuck he was.

The actual data is that the Israelis do it with regret, while the Arabs do it with glee.

Ergo, Israelis are always totally innocent and blameless and Arabs, always guilty.

Great analysis!

Actually the link works just fine.

You have not studied the region very well, if at all.

It was not “empty desert” before the Israel Margaret defines, but a primarily agricultural region, where Jews and Arabs alike bought and sold land and farms amongst themselves. While rural, they co-existed, for all intents and purposes.

Taking, with no compensation, deeded land from Arabs was only possible with the mandate and the billions fed into the mandate.

Your ignorance can be fixed. I don’t know about the “stupid”, however.

Of course, of course. i only generalize in deference to brveity, and the fact that long,detailed comments I write tend to disappear into cyberspace before I evevr get to hit the Submit button. I think you’re read enough of my thoughts to know I also deal with tthe details before coming to a conclusion. I know a lot of details about the history of the Middle East, just not willing to transcribe them all.

I usually avoid discussions about the Middle East altogether, because there are no good conclusions to be drawn. I have enough to do trying to figure out how to save my own country.

I can see that. Just from his music, you get the nihilist attitude in so many areas

It’s the abuse of others that bothered me. He did try to make amends when he got sober but it was seriously ugly.

So, we get the middle east settled?

Demon rum, (helped along by other substances?) has caused many a poor boy’s troubles.

yup

Ever noticed how fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?

Yep, building another settlement right now /s

I usually avoid discussions about the Middle East altogether

You’ve said that several times in this thread, yet here you are. I can only conclude that you don’t mean it. Your protests and statements that “both sides are at fault” and “there is no good guy” are completely contradicted by your continued characterization of Israel as the victim of out of control Arabs. Glass houses my friend. I would be hesitant to accuse others of bigotry when everything you have said is about an ethnicity when most people here are complaining about a nation state and it’s policies.

That’s how I’m feeling about my Illini right now.

You mentioned Hitler, I was trying to figure out why. I gave you credit for having a reason???

Just to be clear, the Arabs aligned themselves with Hitler in WWII. OK?

Tubby’s doing his standard take a bunch of players folks don’t know a thing about and coaching the hell out of them trick.

But just think, in a couple of years, they’ll implement the “Major Conference Coach Saver Rule” and increase the field to 96 and you won’t have to worry any more.

One person’s terrorist group is another persons national liberation struggle. Will leave it to others to decide which label best applies to Irgun. The author in Foreign Policy (David Kerner) gives his descripttion of Irgun in the quote below.

The quote, for those unaware, gives us some additional info about Rahm’s background.

FYI Rahm did disavow his father’s comments.

Rahm’s father Benjamin Emanuel served in the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that targeted British and Palestinian civilians — most famously with the King David Hotel bombing and the Deir Yassin massacre — to advance the goal of creating a Zionist state. This week, the elder Emanuel has not exactly assuaged doubts about his son’s pedigree. “Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel,” he told the Israel daily Maariv, “Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab?”

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/11/07/rahm_emanuel_and_israel

Check yourself. The label “Israel booster” does not apply to me. I’m just not able to whitewash the Arab history in that region, like so mnay here sem so willlling to do. The cycle of savage retribution there has gone on so long, there are no pure actors anymore. And I’m just objecting to the remarkable lack of balance in the comments on this thread. Really remarkable.

LOL. Getting labeled as a whitewasher of Israel’s behavior here is easier than falling off a log. To me, it feels like listening to Teabaggers talk about liberals. Don’t let details or facts get in the way. Assume the worst. Flame away. Have a good time. While your own country is being stolen from you. Whoopee!!!

So, then, we both fucked up today LOL.

ok by me

I’d as soon they either keep it as it is or expand to all the world and invite all the D-I schools

Hey, hey, hey, for once we are all in complete agreement! I rejoice. I celebrate. I learn my lesson. ;-).

Heh ;-))

Perhaps a less intense focus on the conflicts of today, and a wider view of that extraordinary region with all its innovations – some of them surely due to the nexus of trade routes, language confusions, and religious variations – would assist our friend to be a better advocate for whatever view s/he seeks to adopt.

Thanks for a cool head and Big Picture perspective.

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Amy Goodman’s Breaking the Sound Barrier hosted by Sara Robinson

On the contrary. I see no need to be so defeatist.
I hope that you’ll be able to feel less anguish, and more curiosity.

About the biggest lesson that I gleaned in my travels and life is that most people, most of the time, mostly want to watch kids grow up, beat their siblings at games and business, maintain solid friendships, and live to grow old.

I’m passionate, acerbic, and strongly opinionated.
And I’m fed up with extremists, thugs, punks, drug lords, corrupt banksters and cowardly electeds profiting from unleashing chaos.
We all sink or swim together, in the end.

No. Nonononononono. Don’t ASSUME, please. If I mean to say something, I’ll say it.

You, too, Margaret.

Um, fuck ADL. Cut Israel off, let’s see how they do. I for one am getting tired of being associated with them.

Jeez, you too? Gimme a break, it’s illogical to just leap to the opposite extreme of what someone says.

But if you don’t know that one side puts out press releases claiming victory for their terror successess, while the other side at least pretends to be sorry they had to do it, then I have to lower my opinion of you.

An overview of the comments made on this thread today highlight why the Mid-east situation is as it. Palestinian’s use suicide bombers because they don’t have tanks and F-16s. Israel has elected a far more right-wing government who has no desire for peace, and both sides continue to effectively use the politics of victimization, vying to catalog what has been most victimized. I have always been a supporter of Israel’s right to exist, but it seems to me, with the establishment of the new government, Israel now bargains in bad-faith more than the Palestinians, IMHO.

Oh, Margaret. “I can only conclude . . .” seems to be the problem. You’ve never seen me comment on any Israel thread before (although I’ve been prolific on the issues that truly do engage me), and you probably never will again.

Because Raven and dakine01 are right, above, that this is a topic that is not susceptible of rational discussion, and rational discussion is the only kind I’m really interested in.

This topic is invariably ruled by emotion, and you’d be amazed to hear the arguments and debates I’ve had with a lifelong friend who became an ardent, Israel-above-all supporter.

I’m done with this.

and raven is an idiot

Ah, Raven, you called me “stupid” first, and thus provoked I reacted like a child. I might just as well have added that I agree with you most of the tiime, which is true. Please accept my apology for my unworthy response. Peace.

maybe it’s time we stop supporting Israel and see how long they will last without us there to protect them. They talk and act big by throwing their weight around the region knowing we are there in case they get over their head with some other country.

1) USS Liberty
2) Rachel Corrie
3) the US was NOT making a good-faith effort to broker peace – it is doing Israel’s bidding – if the US were an honest broker they would not be arming and funding the war criminals of Gaza and Lebanon
4) Biden did not get the finger – he was told before the whole world to kiss Israel’s ass and he did – the right thing for the US to have done would have been for him to leave, recall the US ambassador and cut off all aid to Israel – but the Mossad probably has more than enough dirt on most US politicians so that there was no chance of any of that

It’s humorous to see all the crackpots aroused by a policy disagreement between two governments that are deeply rooted allies. The most recent Gallup poll demonstrated that Israel is extremely popular in the U.S., while the Palestinian Authority is very unpopular. Several European countries disapproved of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Notwithstanding a brief demand that french fries be renamed “freedom fries,” that disagreement was relatively minor. Same with U.S. and Israel. Expect Hilary Clinton to speak clearly about the steadfast American support for Israel at the upcoming AIPAC convention.

the Palestinians are hardly a tiny unknown band of tribes in some remote wilderness in the world

Unlike who the Jews were several thousand years ago. How quickly some people forget. There is something in the Torah about being generous to the sojourner in your land, the land that the Lord you God has given you.

Sometimes Justice moves more slowly than one would wish. Anyway, it’s best to not react in an over-emotional way and in so doing lost the sense of a proper just response.

As the U.S. isn’t as interested in hurting Israel it would be better for us to sanction something and let Israel’s best enemy decide the details. We should, of course, restrain their enthusiasm.

Israel, or at least part of it, has earned themselves a tat for the tit they offered us. The Palestinians can think of many insults or injuries to bestow.

My suggestion would be for the Palestinians to carve out an extra bit in whatever final peace agreement they sign with Israel. Let the Right-wingers in Israel suck on that.

More precision is needed when describing a nation — we’d demand the same of America. There are many Jews in Israel, and world-wide, who are not Right-wing or crazy.

Friedman’s reaction is populist, but our government can’t be that superficial. We have to continue working on things which are in our nation’s interests. I thought Biden was terrific, though he looked jet-lagged.

I can’t imagine how world-traveling Secretary’s of State manage their sleep routine.

Doesn’t seem like much has changed since the modern nation of Israel was founded. The constant Hatfield-McCoy feud dynamic between the Palestinians and Israelis means nothing will ever change until their respective approaches to peace change. But, they both keep doing what they’ve always done for nearly half a century. As the redoubtable Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that working for you?”