No, there are not many survivors left, and I just saw that Dr. Meyer died in his sleep today, aged 90.
But Wiesel doesn’t say what you attributed to him. You attributed to him the policy of Israel toward the population of Gaza. He condemned Hamas. Please find me a death camp survivor who has supported the policy of Israel toward the people of Gaza. You said it was easy. It might be. But you haven’t done it.
And here is Prof Cohn’s published list of Israeli war crimes for those who haven’t bothered to read it yet.
I think that there isn’t a failure on my part to understand the hand waving complexities, but rather willful blindness to crimes against humanity, including genocide, according to Prof. Cohn.
I don’t think this is true, but even if it is, it absolutely is assigning special responsibility to Jews.
I didn’t accuse you of anti-Semitism, and I took this particular criticism back anyway.
Now you’re just being childish!
It’s pretty damn minor, but I took it back anyway. I shouldn’t have said it. And you shouldn’t compare Israel with the Nazis.
I didn’t say you used those exact words, but you absolutely did apply special responsibility to the Jews. You said it wouldn’t end until the Jews speak up. That’s applying special responsibility to the Jews to end the conflict.
I didn’t make it up, and it doesn’t imply you are anti-semitic.
I want this too.
No you haven’t.
No it doesn’t.
This would be close to genocide, but this is not an accurate representation of Israel’s actions.
Then why not find some much more valid comparison? They’re out there. For example, you could compare Israel to the US or UK – it’s much closer, in government, society, and policy, to those two countries than to Nazi Germany.
Debatable, but as there’s no Nazi comparison, this is a more reasonable criticism to make.
This is just gibberish.
It’s not “just short of a concentration camp” – that’s just more ridiculous hyperbole. And saying it’s a lot worse than apartheid South Africa is an insult to the many, many thousands killed and imprisoned (a huge number more killed and imprisoned under Apartheid than in Gaza) under Apartheid.
Both the Nazis and apartheid South Africa killed and imprisoned, way, way more victims than Israel has. Really – do you have no idea how bad apartheid was? It wasn’t as bad as the Nazis, but it was way, way worse (factually – we can count the victims for these events) than what Israel’s done. Saying Israel is close to either is an insult to the victims of both.
No, there are much, much closer historical cases. This is a very, very bad historical comparison.
No, it’s actually much, much worse. You’re showing some major ignorance of South African history here.
No, it’s an awful one. Just pathetically bad history.
More bad, awful history. Really ignorant stuff here.
You see it wrong.
If you really believe that Israel is “a third as evil as the Nazis”, then that’s pretty ignorant (and offensive) stuff.
Dude, dozens of other countries have done worse things in the last few decades. Is Israel really worse than all these countries that have killed hundreds of thousands and more?
Comparing Israel to the Nazis hurts this cause.
No it’s not. You are displaying some more major historical ignorance. Fascism has some tenets that are not hard to find and read about – and Israel doesn’t follow these tenets.
More bad, bad history.
His opinions are no more valid than Elie Wiesel’s, and no more valid than my grandmother’s. I don’t think I’m blind to anyone’s views. Are you blind to my grandmother’s views, or are hers just as valid?
To quote Wiesel in his open letter:
“Moderate men and women of faith, whether that faith is in God or man, must shift their criticism from the Israeli soldiers – whose terrible choice is to fire and risk harming human shields, or hold their fire and risk the death of their loved ones – to the terrorists who have taken away all choice from the Palestinian children of Gaza.”
Sounds like Wiesel is supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Yes I have. Wiesel said Israeli soldiers shouldn’t be criticized, and that their enemies (Hamas) should be. That’s a pretty direct endorsement of Israel’s actions.
It’s okay to accept this. It doesn’t mean that legitimate criticism of Israel is any less valid.
I’ve given an analogy to Germany and WW-II. It takes a great deal of support to allow a small group of people to spin society into a state of war. Do you disagree that it takes a considerable amount of support to allow people to stockpile weapons in schools, shoot missiles off in neighborhoods and do mass public hangings?
Pretend it’s 1930 in the United States and a black man is lynched. The KKK didn’t exist without a great number of people knowing who the participants were. I can link pictures of crowds gathered around their bodies like it was a picnic.
Hamas can’t exist in a vacuum. What the Palestinians have created is a perpetual war zone. Hamas may do the dirty work but they exist because they have the support.
Obama’s popularity is at an all time low after 8 years and he’s leagues above the popularity of Congress. What’s your point? The status quo is going to remain the same even if the Senate flips.
What we have politically is a far cry from what’s going on in Palestine. Do you honestly believe the society that has evolved there over the last 50 years is a positive one?
but lets go back to analogies. Would you tolerate the KKK stockpiling missiles and launching them in your neighborhood? Too big a stretch? OK, what would you think of your neighborhood if black people where hung from trees every time one of them was accused of something. This is not the Israelis doing this, it’s Palestinians doing it to themselves. Me personally, I’d say they took a wrong turn somewhere and had rendered their community a hell hole. Can it be fixed? Of course it can. Is there any sign of it? A little.
It’s my opinion that “They the People” created the situation they’re in just as other societies have done, good or bad. It’s a collective event that started with a declaration of annihilation for another group and it’s devolved into something from Lord of the Flies. And it goes way back beyond the last 8 years.
But if you think they’ve made a place worth raising children in, by all means state your case.
Nope. If this had happened once, it would have been big news. Your claim, and that of Hedges, is that it happens often, perhaps even routinely.
Hedges has not previously made truly outlandish claims, so I can see why you might consider him credible. However, when he makes claims that he has seen an event multiple times that has not even been picked up by Al Ajazeera, he calls into question his accuracy. (For that matter, why is he reporting it in his blog as a previous event when he should have submitted it as a news story the first time it happened?)
Much of what he says in that piece is credible, particularly when he says that the IDF portrays various civilian harming attacks in ways that seem to go counter to reality. However, he weakens his claims–and, by extension, yours–when he “reports” events that no one else appears to have seen.
As with your persistent misuse of the word fascist, claims are not strengthened by piling on absurdities.
So you are calling his eyewitness account a lie? That is your right in a free country. You can judge him to be a scurrilous liar, and even go beyond the milquetoast denouncing that you manage of “might consider him credible”. That is mushy mouthed nonsense.Did you see it not happen? Cuz I’ve a witness who has seen it multiple times. One you have acknowledged does not make outrageous claims. You say it hasn’t been carried on a major news source and is only a blog. Dr. Meyer was denigrated the same way, and so are each and every witness to an atrocity in Gaza. All the witnesses who saw Rachel Corrie murdered were so libeled. The libel of the victims and the witnesses is routine, predictable and as acceptable as honoring Joesph Goebbels. Anyone who does this to most of the victims and witnesses are Goebbelses, Nazi propagandists. And if they think that calling them a Nazi propagandist is too much, too bad. When you excuse hundreds of kills as being people deserving who died, and all the witnesses “uncredible” you are a propagandist for a murder machine. These people are giving up their humanity by dismissing evidence of mass murder. The offense at being called a Nazi is really so much smaller than the life lost and just to boot.
You imply here that Hedges would put his entire reputation and career on the line and outright fabricate his report. I am put in the position of believing you or Mr. Hedges to be telling the truth, and the other possibility is that you have trouble interpreting in good faith an event or printed word before his very eyes because you would rather not believe it. I have seen nothing in your post that would affect even in the slightest the integrity of Mr. Hedges and the credibility generally put in him.
I am accurately using the word fascist, and I’ve explained why. The best argument against that has been that fascism requires a dictator, as in a single person. And I don’t accept that. As far as the people of Gaza are concerned, the government of Israel is a tyrannical government that imprisons them, kills them, etc. and in which they have no voice and are unrepresented and regarded as sub-human. So pardon me if I give your misuse of the word “fascism” as much respect as the other things you pronounce. I do not respect the opinion you espouse on this matter at all.
Why is that? Because people who disagree with the position you have taken have their credibility and integrity called into question with far too much regularity. And it is never supported.
You don’t give Dr. Meyer’s opinion and experience any respect and you don’t give Mr. Hedges eyewitness account any credence and call it into question on the basis of nothing more than wishful thinking. That is your right. But do not expect me to not be in disdainful contempt of the way the evidence has been weighed. These things have been happening in Gaza for 50 years and the silence from the willfully blind is only punctuated by the assertion of lack of credibility.
I’ve cited Joan Rivers call for genocide, and the silence is, well, silent. http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/showbiz/joan-rivers-israel-gaza/
I’ve noted that calls for genocide are common in Israeli political discussions and… silence. Incitement to Genocide "Incredibly Common in Israeli Political Discourse" - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
I’ve linked to Prof. Cohn’s summary of Israel’s crimes against humanity, and silence ensues. http://jurist.org/forum/2014/08/marjorie-cohn-israel-crimes.php Do you not find her credible too? She has remarkable credentials.
It is okay that you don’t find any of these people credible. That is your right. But to put it gently, it suggests a confirmation bias in who you choose to find credible. It is also your right to be silent, and your right to attack those who call it murderous fascism. But I don’t have to respect that.
I’m not going to let some people tell me how to use the word “fascist” because I don’t respect their attempts to offer wisdom on the subject. Rebranding Israel as a State Headed for Fascism | HuffPost The World Post Among people no longer giving Israel a special pleading free pass, “fascism” is the correct term.
When someone with an opinion refuses to credit any of the evidence on the other side, that person isn’t engaged in good faith debate, they are protecting their world view from facts, in this case the fact of fascism by Israel toward Gaza.
Mr. Wiesel is wrong to say that the soldiers committing crimes against humanity should not be criticized. Illegal orders should not be obeyed. I suppose Mr. Wiesel does not find these orders or actions to be crimes against humanity.
But that is not in any sense a direct endorsement of Israel’s actions or policies. That is the opposite of direct, that is “indirect”. Direct would be a statement that fully supports the actions of Israel as a government, not hiding behind what Americans do and “support the troops”.
And he says that (Hamas) should be criticized. Not that the people of Gaza should have the life bombed out of them.
That hardly support your position. Give it another go, again, Wiesel would be my best guess to find such a statement, but so far, he hardly supports bombing Gaza.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hamas-backs-international-criminal-court-bid-25095502
Here’s the latest. Nazi bastards.
Respectfully this post shows rather severe ignorance as to what the Nazis actually were about.
That said, let me ask you two honest questions.
If Israel really is comparable to Nazis then shouldn’t that mean that anyone who identifies as a Zionist should be comparable to Nazis or at least Nazi sympathizers?
Furthermore, if Zionists are comparable to Nazis or Nazi sympathizers and most American and British Jews identify as Zionists then shouldn’t we celebrate and encourage the killing of American and British Jews, exempting the small minority who deny being Zionists?
If not, then please explain why the killing of Nazis should be condemned.
In addition to my last post, I’ll admit that I was astonished to just how laughably ignorant this post was regarding actual Nazi tactics.
No one was actually killed in this operation because, as your cite notes, the Israelis issued several warnings in an attempt to lessen he chances of civilians being killed.
Could you please provide me some examples of the Nazis trying to minimize the number of Jewish civilians that were killed by their actions?
Thank you in advance for what I’m sure will be extremely well though-out, well-informed answers.
Well, to be really scrupulous, the killing of Nazis isn’t so much a valid goal. The defeat of the Wermacht in WWII was the valid goal. Since it was an armed conflict, this mean the necessity of killing enemy soldiers, but not all of them were Nazi party members, and, in addition, not all Nazi party members were armed combatants. It would have been a war crime to send a squad of commandos to kill a young woman file clerk in a non-combat area, just because of her Nazi party affiliation.
That’s one of the problems with much of this discussion, as you have pointed out: terms like Israeli, Jew, Zionist, etc. (and Palestinian, Hamas, Hamas supporter, etc.) get tossed around without sufficient care.
Not really. I am saying that there is no support for his claims. No one else has reported any similar events that he claims to have witnessed multiple times. That calls into question his accuracy.
He might have seen an event that he misinterpreted.
He may have seen things that he now exaggerates to make his point.
I have no idea why he posted what he did and I do not call him a liar. I just note that there is no support for his claim. Why would not AlJazeera be all over this if it is a frequent event?
I am not calling anyone “scurrilous.” That is the sort of thing that you do: hurling invective at people in the odd belief that that makes your point stronger.
Only in your imagination. Reporters, (particularly in violent situations), often report things that they thought were correct that turned out to be errors without suffering any damage to their reputations. I imply nothing about Mr. Hedges’s character. I note only that his claim is not supported by any other witness, despite his claim that it has happened multiple times. I tend to doubt that the IDF is staging such events when he is the only witness, so where is the corroborating testimony?
And you “explanation” was as much bullshit as your initial usage. You are deliberately misusing a word that has a genuine definition in order to make the Israelis look as horrible as possible by accusing them of being the same as the people who most seriously persecuted Jews. As a rhetorical device, it has a certain appeal, but it is still erroneous and the various new definitions you have invented for fascism to rationalize your point are still wrong.
This tactic fails on two fronts. Such critics tend to be marginalized and ignored because of their heavily one-sided criticisms, and genuine opportunities to promote peace go unutilized.
On the one hand, the U.S. can do far more to pressure Israel - for instance, refusing to automatically help it restock its arsenals until it commits to an long-term open-ended agreement not to expand settlements in disputed areas. The Israeli government has recently displayed a highly arrogant attitude toward the Obama administration and evidently feels it can bypass it until a friendlier President (Hillary?) is elected. Our government needs to upset that calculus.
On the other hand, private donors (and possibly governments) that’ll be pouring large amounts of money into Gaza for reconstruction can insist on tight controls on spending and use of raw materials like concrete, forcing Hamas to use the money and materials to build schools, hospitals and shelters, instead of replenishing their rocket and arms stockpiles and utilizing concrete to build scores of new tunnels with which to attack Israel.
If people just throw up their hands and say “You can’t reason with Hamas and its supporters, you can’t expect anything good from them, we’ll focus on Israel instead” they’re helping blow another chance at compelling both sides to change their behavior.
So what exactly are you suggesting I need to do, beyond calling Hamas a terrorist criminal organization? I have far harsher words for Hamas than I do for Israel, and I have an exceedingly jaundiced view of anyone who doesn’t.
Not quite what I call for: I call for–and have done so in this thread–encouraging negotiations between moderates on both sides. Israel’s government has the potential to enter into such negotiations. I do not believe Hamas does. When putting strict controls on raw materials, I’m not convinced Hamas is a valid partner. Do you think they are?
It’s an implicit endorsement. You know it too – he would have criticized Israel if it wasn’t an implicit endorsement. Instead, he urged people not to criticize Israel, and he criticized Hamas.
One can support Israel’s actions without believe the people of Gaza should have the life bombed out of them.
I already told you about my grandmother – unfortunately, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Please quote as exactly as you remember what your grandmother said about how to treat Palestinians. In this thread, one of our posters has rejected the eyewitness account of a Pulitzer prize sharing, highly respect, reporter with the bare unsupported assertion that
So I won’t consider your assertion that your grandmother, may she rest in peace, said something generally. Attribute some words to your grandmother, preferably in quotes. Not that she merely supported a position you are now taking. Search your memory, I’d like to know as closely as possible what she taught her grandson.
There are plenty of other reports of similar incidents. It demonstrates something else entirely. It demonstrates that you are completely blind to facts that disagree with your view of the world:
http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/088E7C424B63CC19852571EA00536864
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/human-rights-watch-findings-gaza-massacre.html
You didn’t merely call the one account I provided into question, you asserted it did not happen
Later you write:
It is news and has been for quite some time. But it is not news that the American public wants to hear, nor is it news that American news organizations will repeat. American news organizations will repeat the kidnappings and doings of attractive white women ad infinitium, but what goes on in Gaza or the West Bank is run once, and only from one point of view.
You have not said maybe he misinterpreted what he saw, you said that it did not happen at all. A reporter you admit has stellar credentials. You give it zero weight. You treat it as a lie. It is routine.
That is why I’m comparing the behavior of Israel in Gaza to the Nazis with respect to the Warsaw ghetto. It is earned.
She’s still alive. She’s said, essentially, “everyone around Israel wants to kill the Jews and destroy Israel, so they are only doing what it takes to survive”. I don’t agree with this 100%, but her opinion is just as valid as Elie Wiesel’s, and as valid as your example.