This kind of stuff is relatively harmless. The “Jews are the puppet masters” is the genocide-producing memes. Stupid little stuff you describe are not.
I’m not sure what your point is here, but I will point out that there is a difference between 10% and 0%.
I’m sorry but that statement is ridiculous.
For starters, Arab national consciousness was never really widespread until the early 20th Century, and even after that the Middle East was nowhere close to being %100 Arab.
Leaving aside my fellow Iranians(admittedly not yet called Iranians), until after WWI, the Middle East was dominated by the Ottomans and even after their collapse and the dismemberment of their Empire, Turkey was a huge part of the Middle East.
Additionally there were large numbers of non-Arab groups, such as the Druze, the Khurds, the Armenians, the Copts, and the Maronites(admittedly they later for political purposes claimed to be Arabs).
Lot’s to be said about Voltaire, hardly encapsulated by two or three quotes trying to encase his controversial intellect – that said, hardly the topic of this thread. Care to discuss him? Start one.
Or speak of CANF without being what? Anti-Hispanic? Self-hater? Whatever.
While the notion that Iran only began pursuing nuclear technology after Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech is clearly wrong, this statement is, at best, misleading.
While it is true that the effort was suspended at a point subsequent to Bush’s speech, your statement makes it appear that the two events were related while the reality is that the suspension occurred 22 months after the speech.
It might be more appropriate, (or it might be irrelevant), that the program was restarted a few months after it became clear that the U.S. intended to occupy Iraq on Iran’s border for an extended period in which Iraq was not going to be permitted to form its own government.
Of course it is.
But we very, very rarely see a nuanced claim about how AIPAC (or other similar groups) influence the lobbying process. Much more often we see CT’s that echo traditional anti-Semitic tropes, like Red’s still unsubstantiated claim in this thread, that somehow AIPAC/Israel are controlling US public opinion via “propaganda”. Or CT’s that echo traditional anti-Semitic tropes, like Red’s cites in this thread, that “Zionists” are controlling the United States government to our detriment and to the benefit of alien powers. When critics play “spot the Jew” in American politics, allege nefarious control and manipulation, claim that our government has been subverted in service of foreign masters, claim that Jews are inherently suspect of Dual Loyalty, etc… it’s hard to take seriously the claim that they’re simply disinterested observers curious about US politics.
Put another way, it’s also monocausal conspiratorial nonsense of the first water.
American public opinion for decades has been moderately to strongly behind Israel and moderately to strongly against the Palestinians and/or other Arab states. And remember that during the Cold War several Arab powers were essentially Soviet proxy forces in the region. Even now Evangelical Christians tend to support Israel by a vast margin, and they can and do swing elections. Even on the American left, the type of rabid anti-Israel gnashing of teeth and foaming at the mouth that is common in Europe is reserved for the lunatic fringe. These facts together strongly suggest that pro-Israel policies in the US government will continue without much force needing to be added.
Those folks, however, who believe that they’re not just right but preaching The Truth naturally see enemy action behind people disagreeing with them. That diseased method of rationalizing was in large part behind W&M’s Israel Lobby, where they realized that since they saw no moral cause behind Israel’s current dynamic, that others must not either and so they must have ulterior motivations for supporting Israel.
~shrugs~
Meshugena world.
That’s correct. But that wasn’t the implication of my statement, or at least what I meant to imply. My point was simply that the AoE speech wasn’t the proximate cause of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, nor is there significant evidence that it caused the program’s acceleration. If anything, were we to look at the timeline we’d see that Iran is judged to have suspended their nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. I’m sure most readers will remember that we invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, and the timing puts paid to the claim that Iran developed nuclear weapons in response to Bush’s AoE speech/the invasion of Iraq. It seems that they stopped developing nuclear weapons (at least temporarily) after the AoE speech and the invasion of Iraq showed that Bush was serious about dealing with (his perception of) the existence of WMD’s. If they were really going about developing nukes as a defensive measure, why then didn’t they treat the invasion of Iraq as the green light to go full bore?
I’m not familiar with this claim, can you find a cite? The NIE concluded, with moderate certainty IIRC, that as of 2007 Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program. Surely between 2003 and 7 there was adequate information for Iran to conclude that the US would be in Iraq as an occupying power without granting full sovereignty to the Iraqis. No?
I am not making any guesses as to why Iran suspended their nuclear program. Given what appeared to be your connecting the suspension to the Axis of Evil speech, I threw out a different possibility that following the Iraq invasion, once they saw that the U.S. was not going home (and had a lot of troops next door), they figured they might want to cool it on the nuclear plan until they saw which way Bush was going to jump.
I have no vested interest in that as a theory and since you say that the Axis of Evil speech/nuclear suspension connection was not a point you were making, I am not going to pursue this or any other hypotheses.
The only way one could agree with this statement was if one simply ignored the history of anti-Semitism.
By the standards you’re setting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were not anti-Semitic tracts but simply “the blatherings of conspiracy-minded idiots.”
Now, I’ll assume that you do find The Protocols were horrible but not anti-Semtic since that is the logical extension of your above statement, but virtually all reasonable people disagree and think they are the most famous and prominent anti-Semitic tract of all time.
As to your claims about claims of “Jews being the puppet masters of America” being merely “the blatherings of conspiracy-minded idiots” they simply ignore the fact that anti-Semitism has traditionally taken the form of conspiracy theories.
I.E. the Jews control “the banks”, “the economy”, “the media”, or “the government”.
I’m sorry but this statement is utterly moronic. Claiming that “the Jews are the puppet masters of America” goes far beyond claiming that AIPAC has undue influence in Washington.
You might as well say “what’s wrong with claiming the blacks are out to kill whitey? I think one should be able to complain about the high crime rate on the South Side of Chicago without getting called a racist.”
Total hijack, but…
…this just drives me batty. I’ve been trying not to post, but I can’t help myself this time.
How in the hell are Druze, Copts and Maronites non-Arab? If you speak Arabic as your first language, you’re an Arab, full-stop. I absolutely refuse to acknowledge religious or genetic definitions, which fail on practicality in this case ( with Serbs and Croats you don’t have much choice - the religious is the only thing they’ve got ). The only average difference between a Copt and an Egyptian Arab is likely to be whose forefathers converted - both are probably largely descended from ancestors who have been farming the Nile since the neolithic.
Sorry about both the interruption and the no doubt unwelcome dogmatism :). I know my definition is challengeable, but I just don’t see any others that make sense for covering the largest possible swath of people who themselves claim to be Arabs.
Er… you’re the one who brought him up for utterly no reason.
I’m merely asking if you agree with his statements regarding Jews.
Do you believe the above is true, do you believe its anti-Semitic, or do you thinks it’s wrong but not anti-Semitic?
Thanks
Because they don’t consider themselves Arabs, or at least the Copts and the Druze don’t and historically the Maronites have not and many insist they aren’t.
Similarly, Yemeni Jews, Moroccan Jews, and Iraqi Jews were never considered Arabs even though Arabic was their primary language.
No one has ever believed this. The original Arab nationalists certainly considered Syrian Christians to be Arabs, and in fact most were “Arab Christians” but they never claimed that Syrian Jews were Arabs.
Certainly were one to go to Damascus now and refer to the Syrian Jews as “Arabs” the Syrians would laugh in your face and many would take it as an insult.
Similarly, most Druze in Israel will very strongly insist they aren’t Arabs, regularly use the term Arab as a pejorative and insisted that the portion of their ID card that listed their ethnicity not say “Arab” but instead say “Druze”.
No, people are Arabs if they claim they are and if they insist they aren’t then they aren’t.
Furthermore, if you were to take your above claim to it’s logical extension then you’d have to say:
In short, you’d have to classify Americans, Canadians, and Australians as “Englishmen” and Senagalese and the residents of the Ivory Coast as “Frenchmen”.
I’m sorry but you’re destroying your own argument since the Serbs and the Croats speak the same language so if you’re going to say that the Serbs and the Croats are a different people based entirely on their religious differences.
Moreover, as I’m sure you’re aware, the idea of “ethnic differences” is extremely recent, especially to the Middle East and in the Middle East people traditionally group themselves based on their religious identification and they still do to this day.
Since you mentioned Egypt, I’m sure you’re aware that all Egyptians are required to have their religious identity(which has to be of religious group recognized by the government) on their ID.
Some might disagree with such a grouping but personally I think introducing the concept of “nationalism” to the Middle East was disaster and we were vastly better off before it was done.
And the only average difference between a Bosnian Muslim and a Croat or Serb is that the Muslim’s forefathers were Croats who converted to Islam.
Are you saying that Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks don’t exist?
Interesting that KSA’s leadership seems to be more concerned about their fellow Muslims across the Persian Gulf going nuclear than their Jewish neighbors to the north.
Obviously they must be confused. Everybody knows that Iranian power isn’t destabilizing or a threat to anybody else in the region, and that it’s Israel that causes all the problems. I’m sure that the Saudis meant to say that they’d get nukes if Israel has 'em. Of course.
Self-identification is a very valid argument, but I don’t consider it the only criterion. Farrakhan and cohorts consider themselves to be Muslim. I’m not entirely sure that I do.
Ah, but I don’t. I fully acknowledge that there are a billion ways to define ethnicity. My Serb cousins do so ( essentially ) by religion. But they do so ( or did so ) almost without exception. IMHO that doesn’t work well with Arabs as a general proposition, where you can find plenty of Arabs who don’t define their ethnicity by religious faith - many Maronites may insist that they are actually Phoenicians, but that didn’t stop Khoury from joining the Arab League, as you noted ;). I just see my preferred definition is a matter of practicality as the best general-purpose one around.
I don’t really disagree. I’m never been a fan of nationalism in any form and have a philosophical* distaste for ethnic nations.
They do, sadly. As above I make no pretense as to seeking a universal definition of ethnicity - I agree it is a slippery concept. Since this is a complete hijack, I’ll happily agree to disagree. I’m satisified now that I have allowed myself to breathlessly vent my POV ( which really was too dogmatic - even by my standards I recognize there should be slop and outliers ).
** Philosophical, but not practical.*
I’ve met plenty of Arabs who view Syrian and Lebanese Christians as “Arabs” and most Syrian and Palestinian Christians view themselves as “Arabs.”
However, religious identification is still quite important to them.
If you disagree then ask yourself one question.
Have you ever met any Arabs who consider Moroccan or Iraqi Jews to be Arabs?
The next one I meet will be the first who does so.
Interestingly enough, I never hear anyone claim that Saudi Arabia might try to pressure the US into attacking Iran, even though Saudi has a pretty significant relationship with American commerce and hence American politics. I never hear anyone suggest that the Saudi lobby might be trying to pull strings in the American government WRT Iran.
No, it’s only teh jooooz in izzreal who are up to no good with their evil ZIONIST ways.
Do you hear more rhetoric from American politicians about defending Israel or defending Saudi Arabia? I would suspect people are just responding to the arguments put forward by their elected representatives.
I doubt it. The string-pulling allegation has been around since long before Israel even existed.
Oh? When we went to war to protect Kuwait, do you recall many people suggesting that the Arab Americans within America were acting behind the scenes to dominate our government and make us fight wars on their behalf?