So would you have no moral qualms about making “Reich Chips!”, the crispy crunch chip with the bag that has both the German flag and der Fuehrer? Oh, sure, they endorse Hitler, but they also endorse the natural German Lebensraum! Sig Heil!
Still stand by your implied assertion that since it’s for a good cause having a terrorist on the cover is permissible?
“The Hero” one is just as bad, if not worse. See, from a practical standpoint, throwing rocks at soldiers is almost never a good idea. It is likely to get you killed post haste, what with the soldiers being better armed, well-trained etc.
To use your own children for this purpose is reprehensible.
You have got to be shitting me.
You don’t see the homicide bombers targeting the homes of Arab citizens of Israel, do you? Or targeting the Arab members of the Knesset? Of course not. They are quite clearly targeting Jews, and any Jew will do, as far as they’re concerned. I literally cannot fathom how any rational person could argue otherwise.
And further to the point, all this about the Palestinian struggle not being a priori anti-Semitic is a heaping load of crap:
–the Palestinians don’t want a homeland–they want that homeland, the one currently known as Israel. And let’s say for a moment that they were to get it. Given the treatment of Jews by every single fucking Arab nation in the world, do you think the Palestinians for a moment would allow Jews to stay and enjoy full citizenship? Do you think that they’d allow Jews to serve in the government, and to have the same rights as everyone else, as Israel does with its Arab citzens? If you believe that for one second, you are unforgiveably stupid.
–What’s more, if Saudi-controlled Arabia or Egypt or any other nation were to suddenly put its money where its mouth is and actually volunteer a parcel of land for their poor, oppressed Palestinian brethren to have a homeland (instead of constantly kicking them out of their countries, too), do you think the PA or the Palestinians would take it? Fat freaking chance. They want Israel or nothing.
–The PA wouldn’t be insisting on a “right of return” if they had any intention of allowing a single Jew to remain. The goal is to drive all of the Jews out of what they consider Muslim land.
It should be noted with my previous post, that I am not comparing Palestinian independence to the Third Reich- I was just substituting one murderer for (an albeit worse) another and then attaching a semi-related cause in each case to the end.
Anyone who would dance in the streets over the deaths of 3,000 innocent civilians IS EVIL. :mad:
No, not ALL Palestinians, but those specific ones, their political, and yes, religious, leaders, and those who support them ARE EVIL. :mad:
Since Godwin’s Law has been invoked, I think the only great debate left is- are these things chips, crisps, or a poor man’s Cheetoh, as it appears in this picture? Not to mention I’m dubious about the existence of cheese/tomato/paprika-flavored potato chips (seems more like the seasonings for Andy Capp’s fine line of products), although I do like the idea.
Eve wrote, in the OP:
Dang, if they’re that cheap, no wonder they’re selling so well! A bag of Fritos in a U.S. vending machine typically costs at least 60 cents nowadays.
This thread has ceased to amuse me and is now bumming me out.
Nice going there ** Olentzero **
;j
Are we counting Egypt in that list? Because last I heard, they had a peace treaty with Israel.
And yes, I confess to being enough of an optimist to think that not all Arabs want to do dirt to the Jewish people of the world. There’s been a lot of hostility in recent years, but I keep thinking back to how Jews and Muslems used to coexist peacefully several hundred years ago, and how the Koran teaches devout Muslems to respect Jews and Christians because they’re all “brothers of the Book.” Dopey, optimistic me.
Although Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel, the once quite important Jewish community in Egypt has dwindled to fewer than 200 people.
Hey, someone starts throwing out epithets like “monster” and accusations of “supporting the murder of Jews”, I feel compelled to respond, regardless of where the thread started.
pldennison, nice to have you back. I kinda thought we’d gotten the spite out of our system with the “free speech for Nazis” debate back in 1999, but apparently absence makes the heart grow fonder, or something like that.
I’d like to see some cites on Arab treatment of Jews in the Arab nations, especially anything that highlights ghettoization of Jews or actual slaughter. I’d also like to see some examination of the situation of Jews in postwar Germany, since there must be similar effects on the population there after those twelve years of state-sponsored anti-Semitism seventy years ago.
In a similar vein, if the Palestinian struggle is based almost purely on anti-Semitism, how is it that both Palestinians and Jews marched side by side here in Washington this past April to protest Israel’s actions and voice support for Palestinians? By your reasoning, that 75,000-strong demonstration should have been torn apart almost immediately by anti-Semitic violence.
I’m with rjung - dopey, optimistic me. The Palestinians are pissed at Israel because Israel hasn’t made even the remotest effort to treat them as equals and as “brothers of the book and the soil”. If Israel were to actually adopt such an approach, I have a hard time believing that the Palestinians could not find it in themselves to behave the same way. There is nothing in their religion or their ethnic makeup that makes them automatically hate Jews - it is only the sociopolitical situation in which they find themselves that makes them hate Israel.
I’d love to give you some cites, Olent, except there aren’t any. No why? Because there are no Jews in those countries anymore. For some odd reason, they must not feel very welcome or comfortable in them. Any speculation as to why that might be?
According to the CIA World Factbook:
Saudi Arabia
Ethnic groups: Arab 90%, Afro-Asian 10%
Religions: Muslim 100%
UAE
Ethnic groups: Emirati 19%, other Arab and Iranian 23%, South Asian 50%, other expatriates (includes Westerners and East Asians) 8% (1982)
note: less than 20% are UAE citizens (1982)
Religions: Muslim 96% (Shi’a 16%), Christian, Hindu, and other 4%
Jordan
Ethnic groups: Arab 98%, Circassian 1%, Armenian 1%
Religions: Sunni Muslim 92%, Christian 6% (majority Greek Orthodox, but some Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Protestant denominations), other 2% (several small Shi’a Muslim and Druze populations) (2000 est.)
Yemen
Ethnic groups: predominantly Arab; but also Afro-Arab, South Asians, Europeans
Religions: Muslim including Shaf’i (Sunni) and Zaydi (Shi’a), small numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu (Hey, look–there’s a few!)
Libya
Ethnic groups: Berber and Arab 97%, Greeks, Maltese, Italians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Turks, Indians, Tunisians
Religions: Sunni Muslim 97%
Syria
Ethnic groups: Arab 90.3%, Kurds, Armenians, and other 9.7%
Religions: Sunni Muslim 74%, Alawite, Druze, and other Muslim sects 16%, Christian (various sects) 10%, Jewish (tiny communities in Damascus, Al Qamishli, and Aleppo) (Look, a few more! They must be exceedingly tiny, since those other numbers add up to 100%)
You want me to go on? No, I didn’t think you did. See, it’s hard to ghettoize someone if there aren’t any within your borders. If you were to look at the United States, which shares a huge border with Mexico, and discover no Hispanics living there, what conclusion would you draw? You’d conclude that maybe there’s something inherent in U.S. culture that was unfriendly to Hispanics. I know it, and you know it, so don’t pretend otherwise.
Your question regarding Germany might have some relevance if: 1) Europe was composed of monarchies and crypto-fascist dictatorships instead of democracies, like the Middle East, and 2) Most of Europe was dominated by governments with, at best, leanings towards Muslim fundamentalism and fanaticism, and at worst, outright participation in terrorist funding. But Europe isn’t like that, and the Middle East is, so there is no relevance beyond, “Look! A big distracting thingy!”
Why were there Jews in your little parade? Beats the hell out of me. If I were a Jew and saw someone with a Star of David=Swastika sign, I’d proceed in no small manner to beat them within an inch of their lives. I might do it even though I’m not a Jew. That said, I won’t pretend that there aren’t a significant number of self-loathing Jews in the world, nor that the modern far-left isn’t capable of deluding itself into all manner of stupid things.
So why aren’t the Palestinians bombing Jordan or Syria or all their other Arab brethren who don’t seem to want to help them out too much? If your answer is, “Because the Jordanians aren’t Jewish,” you might be a winner.
And, given the facts above regarding the practical nonexistence of Jews in Arab states, why on Earth should Israel view the Palestinians with anything but suspicion? “Gosh, I know that all the other Arab countries have pretty much managed to kick us out, and they did collaborate with the Axis powers in WWII, and the Palestinians have been indiscriminately blowing up our elderly and our teenagers and our babies, for god’s sake, but maybe we should trust them, just this once.” Give me a break.
I don’t hold any spite for you personally, Olent. I think you’re a good guy and a good father. I’m not particularly smart or sharp when it comes to politics, and I’m not the most well-read guy in the world, and I have a tendency to get easily aggravated. But there are some things in the world, dammit, that are simply evident to anyone willing to see them. This is one of them.
Olentzero, I think your optimism and naivete are blinding you to the realities of anti-Jewish hatred among the Arab nations. From this site
A Friday sermon in the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza calling for the murder of Jews and Americans was broadcast live on the official Palestinian Authority television:
Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand by them they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine…
[/quote]
Even Ari Fleischer, President Bush’s press secretary denounced the anti-Jewish leanings of the Arab press.
[quote]
“The president has called on the Arab states to stop the hatred in the press against Israel or against Jews,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday. “They need to stop the incitement and the hatred that can be found in the government press.”
[quote]
The 10 March issue of the Saudi Arabian newspaper, al-Ryadh, ran an article asserting that Jews used the blood of children to make Purim pastries.
Regarding massacres of Jews in Muslim lands, well, there aren’t many Jews left to have a half-way decent slaughter. The anti-Jewish riots that killed thousands of Jews in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen in the 1940s caused a mass exodus of Jews from those nations (7. Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, 1977), pp. 30-31.)
Yes, the Sharon government has used an excessive hand toward the Palestinians. I deplore tearing down peoples’ houses just because they were related to a suicide bomber, the humiliation of searches of people passing between the West Bank and Israel, and the corrosive hatred between Israel and the Muslim world.
Sure, there neeeds to be an equitable peace between Palestinians and Israelis, but it doesn’t help your cause if you prestend that the Palestinians are more virtuous than they are.
And so is Sharon ans so is any Israeli who opposes removing the West Bank settlements.
And you don’t see the irony of this?
No, sqweels, I sure don’t. See, I’ve got relatives on my father’s side who I never met, and who nobody knows where they’re buried. Know why? Because the fucking Nazis killed them in Europe in the 1930s, that’s why.
So when someone suggests that Judaism in general or the State of Israel in particular, in the process of trying to defend itself against those charming representatives of humanity referred to as “suicide bombers,” is functionally equivalent to a political philosophy which resulted in the deliberate rounding up and execution of millions of people, I kind of get peeved.
Squeels, equating the Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish faith, with the Nazi Swastika, the emblem of race hatred and mass murder is obscene. No rational person can possibly see any connection between the two.
Israel is not gassing Palestinians and cremating their bodies. Israel is trying to maintain its existence in the face of unremetting violence and hatred from its enemies.
Israel has proposed peace treaty after peace treaty. The Palestinians have rejected every one.
Israel only fires on military targets and in self-defense. Palestinians wire themselves with explosives which they detonate on busses, in shopping centers, and in cafes, to kill Jews indiscriminately.
Israel was, until recently, willing to recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinians explicitly reject the right of Israel to exist.
The truth you are igmoring is that the Palestinians do not wish to share the land. They want Israel, every square inch, and they want to kill every Jew there.
If you wish to equate something with the Swastika, I suggest the Palestinian flag. (After all, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalme was allied with the Nazis during the war and even today, the Palestinians sell Mein Kampf in Arabic.
Does anyone know how much anti-Semitism there was in Arab countries prior to the establishment of the state of Israel?
Plenty. contrary to the myths sold to gullible foreigners, Mohammed and his follwers did not consider "the people of the Book (dhimmis) to be equal. Jews and Chrsitans were tolerated, as long as they acknowledged the suzerainty of Islam and paid a special tax.
Jews were condemned in the Koran from the very beginning.
Muslim communites have also succumbed to anti-Jewish violence from their earliest days.
Even in the 20th century, there have been attacks by Arabs against Jews, including the Hebron Massacre of 1929.
And, as previously mentioned, the Arab states aligned themselves with the Axis powers during WWII. (Or at least allowed their countries to be used as power bases following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, until Allied forces kicked several of their asses cough Iran cough.) I think we can take it as given that the Axis and its goals were not particularly friendly to the Jews.