Peace Now, by the way, is opposed to the settlements. I’d say that makes them pretty un-Zionist.
Oh, give me a break. I don’t agree with Peace Now, I don’t even like them that much, but to call them non-Zionist - especially for the reasons you stated - is completely asinine. Opposing settlements? So does at least half of the Israeli public, nowadays. Anti-war pacifists? Again, I don’t agree with it, but it doesn’t mean they hate their country, especially when you remember that the organization was founded by decorated war heroes.
I believe that any country can accept people who love it and yet hold radically different beliefs. Charlton Heston is a true American patriot; so was Abbie Hoffman.
PaulFitzroy, I can’t help noticing that you seem at least as concerned with Israel’s security as you are with US security. The two concerns are not one and the same.
It is this conflation of US interests with Israeli interests that troubles some of us, and which seems to be a feature of some “neocon” thinking. For example, why have we lately (even before our invasion of Iraq) been rattling our sabres at Syria and Iran? Those nations, to the extent they have supported terrorism in recent years, have supported terrorism against Israel, not the US. For that matter, Iraq itself had been more of a threat to Israel than to the US (between lobbing Scuds into Israel during Gulf War I and providing financial support to families of Palestinian suicide bombers). The source of US woes has been Saudi Arabia (from whence bin Laden and the majority of the 9/11 hijackers hail). Yet Saudi Arabia continues to enjoy a cozy relationship with the administration.
Which leads me to wonder: whose foreign policy are we pursuing? Our own or Israel’s?
This question becomes all the more troubling when we see evidence (as noted in the OP) that Sharon may have been placing agents in the US administration. Is this true? And were Sharon’s agents exercising undue influence on US policy?
It is not anti-semitic to notice this, nor to be wary of Israeli influence on our government. If US soldiers are to be sent to die, I want to be damn sure it’s to protect US interests, not Israel’s.
I would be equally concerned if any non-US government seemed to have undue influence over our own.
:eek: 
:eek: What the FUCK?
You didn’t really mean that, did you? Please tell me you didn’t really mean that. Please tell me you don’t really believe that you can’t be a good Zionist if you’re willing to make any compromise on the issue of Israeli control of the Occupied Territories.
Don’t get too bent out of shape.
As a sort of gauge to Manny’s view of the proper use of the English language consider that Manny also thinks George Herbert Walker Bush, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and various other Realists are well described by the term “Saddamites.”
There’s no telling what he meant exactly by the term “Israel-hater” and whether or not it would be covered by common definitions of the two terms
SimonX: *Manny also thinks George Herbert Walker Bush, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and various other Realists are well described by the term “Saddamites.” *
Misleading, but nowhere near as bad as his “Nation/Stormfront” analogy. After all, those Realist politicians (before Gulf War I, at least) did support Hussein as the leader of Iraq.
SimonX: There’s no telling what he meant exactly by the term “Israel-hater”
He doesn’t get to make up his own definitions of terms in common use. And it’s no excuse for bad behavior to plead that you do it all the time. Grossly mendacious inflammatory political rhetoric is not any more excusable when it’s SOP than when it’s a one-time lapse. Quite the contrary, I’d say.
No, shame on you, Kimstu. Shame on you for defending defenders of terrorism. The Nation is not a liberal magazine that simply supports, for example, creating a sovereign nation of Palestine (that would be President Bush) or unilateral withdrawal from settlements (Sharon). They are a virulently anti-Israel and anti-American organization to whom no Palestinian atrocity is too bad to escape justification because of Israel’s “war crimes” and no Israeli defense of itself is not exactly one of those “crimes.”
They’ve supported, justified or apologized for just about every evil dictator since WWII, with the single proviso that they must be anti-American to qualify, from Stalin to Pol Pot. This is the organization whose lead columnist not only believes that the American flag “stands for jingoism and vengeance and war” and forbad her daughter from displaying it in their home outside of her bedroom but chose the week after 9-11 to brag about it; the group which served as the U.S. distribution outlet for Jean-Charles Brisard’s paranoid 9-11 fabrication Forbidden Truth.
What is “absolutely fucking appalling” is that people on the left still put up with these defenders of terrorists and excuse them as ‘just a little bit more left’ or an ‘alternative viewpoint’ like they were some kind of slightly embarrassing but beloved aunt. They are not. They are the philosophical, intellectual and political cover that gets terrorist thugs like Arafat awarded the Nobel Prize and invited to the White House. They are the inspiration that gets young idiotic idealists like Rachel Corrie to commit suicide defending ammo tunnels. And they are the hope which leads terrorists like Hamas to believe that if they can just kill a few dozen or a few hundred more innocent Israeli civilians committing the “crime” of taking a bus or getting pizza that public opinion will change and they will achieve their goals. What is “absolutely fucking appalling” is that they’re still welcomed in polite society.
Their viewpoint is less loathsome that that of Stormfront. But they are more insidious and capable of more evil because people still abide them, something which is not true of Stormfront. My criticism of them and my opinion of how they should be treated stands as written.
Manhattan, I don’t even think their viewpoint is better than Stormfront’s. How many terrorist attacks today are the work of neo-Nazis? Stormfront’s constituency hasn’t blown up any nightclubs or buses.
Defending terrorist murderers, in my opinion, is worse than being racist.
As to whether a Zionist can oppose the settlers, I would say he couldn’t. This is my opinion, and you might disagree with me, but Zionism is the belief that Jews can settle in their own land wherever they want to, and that you can’t kick someone off of a piece of land just because they’re Jewish. Zionists generally believe that the settlements, and the land that they are on, is Jewish land given to the Jewish people by God (and legitimately won in the 1967 six-day defensive war that anti-Israel forces are constantly trying to erase from history.)
Here is your golden opportunity to condemn the Stern Gang.
Howard Stern is one of my favorite humorists. I would never criticize Stern or the fine gang of folks on his radio program.
And you’re completely wrong, ignorant of history and just as bad as those people who claim that Zionism is a form of apartheid. Zionism is a secular movement whose purpoise is to endure political independance to the Jewish nation. It’s not about individual rights or about God, it’s about the good of the state of Israel as a whole. Settlement certainly had a strategic purpose in the past, especially in pre-1948 Palestine, but it was never an end to itself, and as of now it’s a liability.
You remind me of those Kiryat Arba settler types, who came here three years ago from Long Island and have the chutzpa to criticize me for choosing to live in Tel Aviv as if that makes me less of a Zionist then they are.
manhattan: They are a virulently anti-Israel and anti-American organization to whom no Palestinian atrocity is too bad to escape justification because of Israel’s “war crimes”
Untrue. The Nation frequently condemns Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts:
In just a few minutes, I was easily able to find these cites from the Nation describing Palestinian terrorism as “evil”, “morally catastrophic”, and provoking “overwhelming horror”;and these are quite representative. Just because the Nation often considers Israel more to blame in this conflict doesn’t mean that they consider Palestinian terrorism okay.
manhattan: They’ve supported, justified or apologized for just about every evil dictator since WWII, with the single proviso that they must be anti-American to qualify, from Stalin to Pol Pot.
I’ve seen lots of condemnations of evil dictators, including Stalin and Pol Pot, in the Nation. A few examples:
manhattan: This is the organization whose lead columnist not only believes that the American flag “stands for jingoism and vengeance and war” and forbad her daughter from displaying it in their home outside of her bedroom but chose the week after 9-11 to brag about it;
For your information, here is what Katha Pollitt (whom I have never heard described as “the lead columnist” of the Nation; as far as I know, she has the same status as all their other columnists) actually said in that column (which in fact appeared on 8 October 2001, not “the week after 9-11”):
By the way, manhattan, you may be interested to know that Pollitt is also the author of the above 1 August 2002 quote stating that it’s “just and appropriate” to be “overwhelmed with horror at suicide bombers” and calling Arafat “a corrupt and preening tinpot dictator”.
You clearly do not read the Nation and know nothing about it or its writers beyond a few right-wing smears. If you believe that the US and Israel can do no wrong, naturally you will be outraged at the existence of a publication that dares to criticize them. The caricature of the Nation as mindlessly and radically “anti-American” and “America-hating” is just a reflection of the stupidity of this “you’re either with us or against us” worldview.
Obviously, I meant to type “ensure.” It’s an interesting mistake, though.
Proof for your slander of The Nation, please.
Once again, some proof for your slander of The Nation would be nice.
Please provide proof that The Nation thinks that palestinian suicide bombers are “just a little bit more to the left” or “just an alternative viewpoint”.
To conclude, would you please, manhattan, provide proof for your slanderous assertions, or else i respectfully suggest you shut up.
Are we even talking about the same magazine? I’ve been reading The Nation* since the late '80s. During the Cold War it was always skeptical of it, but also consistently anti-Soviet. I can’t recall anything I’ve ever read in its pages that seeks to justify any act of terrorism, Palestinian or Israeli or other. At this stage of our history the American flag does stand for jingoism and war, but I can’t recall The Nation ever making that an editorial position. As for conspiracy-theory interpretations of 9/11 – I think I might have seen the book you mentioned advertised in The Nation, but it’s quite ordinary for a political magazine to sell ad space to people whose politics are more extreme than those of the the magazine’s editorial board; I also routinely see ads for the seminars of some revolutionary socialist in New York, forget his name, even though The Nation has always been defined by its character as a non-revolutionary, even anti-revolutionary, democratic-socialist publication. I did see a conspiracy-theory book about 9/11 reviewed in The Nation, just a few weeks ago, but it was reviewed from the viewpoint of debunking the theory as preposterous.
But does Zionism necessarily and definitionally include the viewpoint that “their own land” includes the whole of Palestine? I don’t believe it does, nor ever has.
I believe there have always been a lot of atheists and secularists in the Zionist movement, Paul, going back to the 19th Century. In fact, judging by the picture James Michener painted in The Source, the early Zionists envisioned the new Israel as a society that would have little or no place for rabbis. And a lot of modern Israelis, such as archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and journalist Neil Asher Silberman, believe that most of the Old Testament account of Palestine’s history is not only unsupported, but is flatly contradicted, by the archaeological evidence. See their book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (Free Press, 2002), reviewed by Daniel Lazare in Harper’s Magazine, March 2002 – http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/False_Testament_(Harpers).htm.
Are you trying to say that these “anti-Israel” forces were merely opposed to Israel’s policies rather than Israel’s existence? Isn’t that how you said you were using the term?
And that last clause of your sentence is an appeal to right of conquest, nothing more. You might as well argue that Indonesia had a legitimate claim to East Timor, or China has a legitimate claim to Tibet, because those claims were fairly won by force of arms.
That might sound hypocritical coming from an American, because we Americans live in a country whose territory was mostly won by force of arms – but that’s pretty much a dead letter here-and-now, for obvious reasons. The Indian nations are tiny and scattered (and are still allowed some small measure of sovereignty on their reservations), and the lands we won in the Mexican-American War were never heavily populated by Mexicans in the first place, and are thoroughly Americanized now. And ancient wrongs, in any case, can never be righted, because both perpetrators and victims are long dead and nothing done to their descendants affects them.
But Israel is now oppressing the Palestinians of the Territories, who came under Israeli rule within living memory; and the Territories are so thickly populated with Arabs that they will never be Israelized without the application of some utterly unthinkable “ethnic cleansing” measure. This situation is not morally defensible by any appeal to right of conquest, and still less so by any appeal to utterly preposterous ancient claims based on Scripture. :mad:
So the thread is now completely derailed, the op fairly settled: there is no evidence that Sharon has placed opertives in the the US government in order to influence US policy, specifically in order to get the US into a war that is not in Isreal’s interest for the US to be mired in. All there is, is rumor of a more broad reaching investigation as to whether any Cheneyites have leaked information or otherwise engaged in extra-legal activities. And speculation by one rag with a clear anti-Israel bias above and beyond those rumors that it follows that the Cheneyites are at the beck and call of a foreign power and that power is Sharon.
Now the thread is about the power of word choice.
“Terrorist” - calling someone who kills civilians with the intent of influencing policy by way of provoking fear in a general populus anything other than a terrorist is bias. Such acts are not “freedom fighting” or “militant” … they can only be described as terrorism. Whether you agree with the goal or not. To avoid the word is evidence of bias. Media that avoid the word when describing the actions of Hamas et al are biased by that evidence. Sources that refuse to call the Stern gang terrorists also evince bias.
A Godwin’s collolary: Stormfront references count too.
“Zionist” - one who believes that Jews have a right to a land within their ancient home. To claim that one must believe that the borders of that home must be that of the ancient lands has never been a requisite part of that belief. Most early Zionist would have been happy with the original partition if they could’ve lived in peace. Most current Israelis are Zionists; many American Jews are. But a majority of each believe that borders are negotiable in return for a lasting peace with security. Israeli governments have agreed consistently with their Zionist voters on this matter from after the Six Day War on, and did not annex the occupied territoties but offered them up in return for peace. Settlements were always a political bone to throw at extremist elements needed to create ruling coalitions, never a mainstay of most Zionists.
“Neocon” - not code for Jew, but once again much has been made of the fact that Jews are over-represented in the neocon elite. Adbusters did have that article that starred the names of neocons that are Jewish and implied that their Jewishness and consequent “special affinity for Israel” was reason for and proof of decisions that favored Israeli interests over American ones. Yes, SimonX, “obviously these would be some pretty skewed people who’d make such an assertion.” There are some pretty skewed people out there.
“Anti-Israel” vs “Anti-Likud/Sharon/Israeli policies” - clearly the two can be different, often are different, but sometimes are not. When a source is consistently against everything Israel does but relatively ignores virtually all ills elsewhere, then it crosses the line to being anti-Israel. I don’t read the rags in question to have an opinion about them, but certainly I have encountered some posters who met that criteria. And when someone or some source is clearly “anti-Israel”, one questions why.
When was that point “settled,” DSeid? I missed that post. What you describe above is, in fact, the FBI’s working theory for this ongoing investigation. There is “no evidence” only in the sense that the investigation is still ongoing (unless the White House has managed to pressure the FBI to shut it down by the time I type this).