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TEL AVIV -- A Western ally in the Middle East, armed with U.S. weapons, attacked Muslim guerrillas in a Palestinian refugee camp last week, killing seven.

Is that big news?

The answer, this time, is "no".

No Western newspaper has run a banner headline about a "massacre," no emergency meetings of the United Nations have been convened, and Canada's deep thinkers on human rights, Michael Ignatieff and Louise Arbour, have not declared the military action to be a war crime.

That's because the Western ally rooting out terrorists was Lebanon, not Israel.

Since May 20, Lebanon has been engaged in a mini-civil war against Fatah al-Islam, which is just what it sounds like -- a Muslim terrorist group, holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp called Narh el-Bared.

Killing Palestinians, including Palestinian terrorists, is normally fodder for at least half a dozen UN resolutions, investigations and accusations, and plenty of harrumphing from the CBC, BBC and Globe and Mail.

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I would agree that there does appear to be a double standard at work. Israel is held to a higher standard. But is that because Jews are held in disdain? Or is it because Jews are thought to be superior to Arabs?

I think it is the latter. Most people think that when Arabs treat each other in this manner it is par for the course. Expectations are low, because if we questioned the elephant in the room about it, it is generally thought that Israeli's are more like "us", and therefore inherently superior to their Arab neighbours.

A case of antisemitism, if we remind ourselves that our Arab brothers and sisters, along with our Jewish brothers and sisters, are considered semitic people's too.

The west really never cares if brown people blow each other up.

Listen to some of the rest of his rant:

quote:

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Why did the UN intervene to save Hezbollah from Israel, but the world shrug in apathy -- no, actually send arms -- to support Lebanon against another terrorist group?

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I dunno, maybe because Israel bombed that U.N. post and murdered a peacekeeper? Or may because Israel defies more U.N. resolutions than any other country in history, so the U.N. decided to become Hezbollah boosters for a change?

The notion that the U.N. had to "save" Hezbollah is as pathetic as the old story that the U.S. "could have won in Vietnam", but they were fighting with "one hand tied behind their back".

In actual fact, Hezbollah needed no rescuing. It has now won two wars against the Israeli aggressors. In June 2000, it drove Israel out along with its puppet killers (the South Lebanon Army, who were offered free Israeli citizenship and money to re-settle).

Likewise, in 2006, the losers were Israel, Lebanon, and about 1,200 civilians on both sides of the border - everyone, in fact, except Hezbollah.

Since that time, Israel has confined its military operations to easier targets - like Gaza, which it starved into submission.

When was the last time we saw "at least half a dozen UN resolutions, investigations and accusations, and plenty of harrumphing from the CBC, BBC and Globe and Mail" as a result of Isreal engaging legitimate combatants within Isreal's own boundaries?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: MacD ]

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unionist: I dunno, maybe because Israel bombed that U.N. post and murdered a peacekeeper?

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That's an unarmed Canadian peacekeeper - Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener. Our Prime Minister's response was to question why the post was manned at all and to encourage the "measured" response of Israel. However, the Canadian Major wasn't the only UN victim of the Israeli bombardment:

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CTV: In addition to Hess-von Kruedener, the Israeli bomb killed three UN observers from Austria, China and Finland, according to UN and Lebanese military officials.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MacD:
Another couple of points that Ezra Levant and Moshe Feinstein have ignored ...

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Surely you're not suggesting that Moshe supports that rabid hysteria of Levant's?

I thought he was only bringing it to our attention to demonstrate the revolting state of journalism in some parts of Canada.

As well, and again, Israel and its neo-con supporters on one hand say "Israel is the front line in the war on terror" (again, terror and terrorist being racist euphemisms for Arabs and Muslims) but then coyly asks "why are you looking at us?"

And then, b), there is the truth. Google "palestinians killed" and "lebanon killed" and click on the news link. You will find the international media has been reporting the battle in Lebanon and the related killings. I have been reading about it, haven't you? You will also find in the last week of July six or seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, in what was described as the deadliest day in weeks, with virtually no reporting in the North American media. Here is a link:
Turkish Press.

Again, neo-con reporting is more propaganda and lies than any amount of truth.

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Or may because Israel defies more U.N. resolutions than any other country in history, so the U.N. decided to become Hezbollah boosters for a change?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
Yet it's a free-for-all against Israel. The reason why is due to anti-semitism, plain and simple.

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You're full of shit, and I say that with the utmost of respect and no offence intended whatsoever.

Furthermore, you discredit the Jewish people by defending aggression and racism, then screaming "anti-semitism" when someone calls Israel by its true name.

quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
Then why no outcry against the Christian Russians, the Muslim Saudis, or the Chinese? Hatred of Jews is so entrenched in today's world that you can't even see it when it's right in front of you.

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When Israel stops occupying other people's lands, and stops sending armies and assassination squads across borders, then I will expect the world to judge its domestic policies the same way as it judges everyone else's.

Until then, Israel remains an international rogue state which deserves universal condemnation, and doesn't receive enough, in my humble opinion.

For you to associate opposition to Israel with opposition to the Jewish people is an attack on the Jewish people.

Show me the international condemnation of Israel before 1967. It happened only once - when Israel teamed up with Britain and France to invade Egypt, but that little military incursion was short-lived. Other than that, Israel was widely seen as the struggling underdog. Not since 1967.

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Or may because Israel defies more U.N. resolutions than any other country in history, so the U.N. decided to become Hezbollah boosters for a change?

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The fact there's so many UN resolutions against Israel simply furthers the point that Israel gets different treatment. I have stopped being a supporter of their policies around the 2006 lebanon war. I no longer go out of my way to purchase their goods, for example. However, Israel is simply not in the league of truly repressive regimes. There is no comparing Israel to China, Russia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, North Korea... while I do not think all criticism is motivated by anti-semitism, I think it certainly plays a central cause in a lot of it.

You get a certain nucleus of anti-semitic opposition to Israel supporting resolutions at the UN, and then everybody else supports them due to politics. I don't believe China, for example, is anti-semitic. But who are they going to oppose in UN votes? Little Israel, or the oil superpowers?

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:

There is no comparing Israel to China, Russia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, North Korea...

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Israel occupies territory internationally recognized as belonging to other people, and it regularly invades neighbouring countries.

None of your other countries does that.

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Originally posted by unionist:

Show me the international condemnation of Israel before 1967.

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Israel occupies territory internationally recognized as belonging to other people,

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Israel occupies territory internationally recognized as belonging to other people, and it regularly invades neighbouring countries.

None of your other countries does that.

That's why the U.N. condemns Israel - although only to a tiny fraction of what it deserves, because of the veto power of Israel's boss, the United States.

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China occupies Tibet and Russia occupies Chechnya. If these territories are not "internationally recognized" to be occupied, it's because china and russia are big players. Any country which seriously tries to tell China to get out of Tibet is in deep trouble.

I'm more concerned with right and wrong. Technically, Mugabe is not occupying another country. However, it could be argued he's occupying his own country. He certainly beats up the opposition. If I had the choice between living in any of those places, to apply the John Rawles morality test, I would chose to live in Israel-occupied Palestine.

quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:

"Internationally recognized" by the very anti-semites who want Israel destroyed.

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You think the West Bank belongs to Israel? You support the occupation?

That would place your opinions among a tiny percentage of fringe right-wing extremists in Israel.

quote:

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"Internationally recognized" by the very anti-semites who want Israel destroyed. Circular reasoning mixed with anti-semitism.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Moses:
Among those who make this call are citizens of the state of Israel.

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Yes, including Avrum Burg, ex-Speaker of the Knesset, ex-Chair of the Jewish Agency, ex-candidate for leader of the Labour Party - one of Moshe's "anti-Semites", no doubt:

quote:

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Q: Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a Jewish state acceptable?

A: "It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite."

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quote:

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The fact there's so many UN resolutions against Israel simply furthers the point that Israel gets different treatment.

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While Israel continues to violate UN resolutions and international law, while it continues to illegally occupy land and expand settlements, while it continues to impose collective punishment on an entire people, and while it continues to turn Gaza into a concentration camp of unspeakable misery, Israel faces scattered and disorganized boycotts roundly assaulted and attacked in the main stream press.

Meanwhile, since Gulf War I, close to 2.5 million Iraqis are dead (note, that would represent close to 10 per cent of the total Iraqi population. How many are need to declare a genocide?), the nation is destroyed, up to another 4 million are refugees, and the country is beset with sectarian and political violence. All for allegedly violating a UN resolution!

And now Iran faces sanctions and the threat of war for ignoring UN resolutions attempting to prevent Iran from pursuing a nuclear program under internationally recognized treaty rights and without ever violating a single international law. At the same time, Israel faces no international criticism or condemnation for its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and not one Israeli faces charges for the use of cluster munitions and alleged white phosphorous weapons in Lebanon.

How can anyone claim Israel is held to a higher standard with a straight face?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
So Unionist I see that you have neatly dodged 500apples correction of your statement regarding the fact that China occupies Tibet and Russia occupies Chechnya.

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Dodged? Tibet is internationally recognized as being part of the People's Republic of China, and Chechnya has always been part of Russia. The fact that both countries commit inexcusable brutalities there does not change the fact that they are doing so on their own internationally recognized territory.

Why not deal with the fact that there is a poster in this thread who supports the Occupation and calls its opponents "anti-Semites". Or do you agree with him?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

If you want to compare Israel with the murderous campaigns in Chechnya or the ruthless Chinese occupation of Tibet, fine. Let's do so.

China and Russia claim those regions as part of their national territory and extend to the residents within those regions citizenship as Russians or, alternatively, as Chinese.

So let Israel extend citizenship to all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and then at that time we can group, properly, China, Russia, and Israel together in a rogues gallery of states that routinely violate human rights.

Would you agree to that or would you now like to change the course of this thread toward a different strawman?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

How about answering my question about the Occupation?

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Tibet is internationally recognized as being part of the People's Republic of China

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When did the UN vote to recognize Tibet as being part of China? Tibet was an independent country before China just walked in and annexed it in 1951. Tibet is a Chinese colony just like Korea was a Japanese colony prior to WW2.

Of course now you could never get an anti-China resolution through the Security Council because China would use its veto.

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Of course now you could never get an anti-China resolution through the Security Council because China would use its veto.

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Such childish, bullshit arguments.

Edited to add: Besides, I don't even understand the point of this argument. Would not the defenders of the Israeli occupation agree that Tibetans and Chechnyan resistors are terrorists and until there is no violence and the Tibetan and Chechnyans can establish secuirty there should be no negotiations and, besides, there is no Tibetan or Chechnyan partner for peace? Or are those struggles somehow different? Somehow more legitimate?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Of course a better example is why is it that nobody cared when Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948 and made everyone living there an ipso-facto Jordanian?

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[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: ohara ]

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Did you miss my point about the international attitude to Israel changing 180 degrees after 1967?

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According to Golda Meir, world opinion is only ever even remotely sympathetic to the Jews as long as they are weak, dying and losing. The moment that Jews fight back and refuse to be pathetic victims, it is easy for the archaic anti-semitism that lurks within people to re-surface.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Of course now you could never get an anti-China resolution through the Security Council because China would use its veto.

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Hahaha. From 1951 to 1971, China's seat in the U.N. was occupied by... Taiwan! You will say just anything at all, won't you?

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Of course a better example is why is it that nobody cared when Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948 and made everyone living there an ipso-facto Jordanian?

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"Nobody cared"? Progressive people cared. The Palestinian people cared. They had no voice, no organization. Over the 1950s and 1960s, despite rabid opposition from the biggest powers in the world and from "their own" semi-feudal Arab "friends" (in Jordan, Saudi, etc.), they built up the necessary organizations which one day could provide statehood.

They were slaughtered in 1970 by King Hussein; they were constantly attacked by various Lebanese militias; they have stood their own with virtually no impartial assistance from anyone.

quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
When Michelle was moderating here the kind of vituperative attitude constantly displayed by Unionist usually resulted in a stiff cyber-slap. I shoild know I was on the receiving end a few times and more often than not she was right.

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Feinstein called my views anti-semitic. That doesn't bother you. I denounce Stockholm for questioning (in 2007, on a progressive board) the national status of Palestinians. But I don't call him names.

As for Israel, it has had dodgy partners ever since the 1950s -- can one say the apartheid South Africa regime, the Somoza and Batista dictatorships, and so on? It's role in upholding the Cuban embargo, voting with the US and against everyone else (quite literally) continuously? There is a reason that decolonized nations in the non-aligned movement did not care for Israel, as they saw it for what it was -- yet another European colonial settler state stealing land from indigenous peoples.

And this double standard applies more to the Arab World than anyone else, who cannot even resist their own enslavement by Western powers their puppet dictatorships, without being called a terrorist -- where also one white Israeli life is worth more than ten or even hundred Palestinian, Iraq, Lebanese, etc. in our oh so fair and balanced media.

It is truly disturbing that we have so many neo-con voices here on rabble, whose racist logic and inability to even comprehend their own racism, poisons every discussion on this topic, which I agree, gets way too much attention -- however that's not the fault of critics anymore than those who launch ever more topics to defend Israel.

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: ceti ]

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"Nobody cared"? Progressive people cared.

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There is a reason that decolonized nations in the non-aligned movement did not care for Israel

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The reasons are oil and money. When former British and French colonies in Africa became independent in the early 60s, Israel had very good relations with most of them and had very active foreign programs in most of them as well, but by the late 60s, the Arabs started to threaten to cut off oil exports to any of those countries who didn't become pro-Arab and break off relations with Israel. The Arab world, thanks to all its oil, has about 1000 times the money to bribe these countries with than Israel has. Also Russia started offering tons of weapons and money to anyone who wanted to become anti-Israel (this all sounded like a good deal to people like Idi Amin who promptly took the money and made Uganda into a haven for hijackers etc...).

quote:

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Originally posted by ceti:
It's pretty depraved twisted thinking that one could excuse one's own genocidal behaviour by pointing to others.

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Talking about genocide, if any people on Earth are experts in this matter, due to being on the receiving end of it, it's the Jews.

The truth of the matter is that most of the world doesn't give a damn about Israel and the Palestinian issue. Besides the fact it is a powder keg from which global war could erupt, it has little relevance for the lives of most people.

The sad part is that whatever promise Israel might have once offered, it has been betrayed with militarism, racism, greed, and the madness of power. Rather than Israel seeking accommodation and peace among its Arab neighbours, it instead sought US support for military and cultural dominance.

Today, the US is in decline, probably irreversibly. The rising economic giants of Asia have no great concern for Israel but is developing cordial relations with Israel's Arab neighbours.

The current phony peace being heralded by Rice and Gates with the laughable Olmert playing along, is more a response to the shifting politics of the region brought about by the US's misadventure in Iraq which was egged on by Israeli hawks. The Arab leaders coming to Israel on bended knee are merely posturing because suddenly they have become fearful of their own minority populations. And who knows better how to repress Arab aspirations than Israel, America, and the West?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
Ceti, unless your own particular ethnic group has survived genocide, I suggest you don't mention that again.

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Not a single Jew would have survived the Holocaust had they not been helped, sheltered, sympathized with by someone who looked beyond their "particular ethnic group".

Yet you and others on this board can deny the very existence of a people, and then say: "Genocide? Who me?"

Your poisonous and divisive comment sums up everything I hate about Zionism. With views like yours, the allied struggle against Nazism and Fascism would never have prevailed.

quote:

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Rather than Israel seeking accommodation and peace among its Arab neighbours, it instead sought US support for military and cultural dominance.

Today, the US is in decline, probably irreversibly. The rising economic giants of Asia have no great concern for Israel but is developing cordial relations with Israel's Arab neighbours.

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From 1947 up to the 70s Israel begged and begged and begged the Arab countries to have peace negotiations - but they refused because at that point in time all Arab countries refused to discuss anything other than Israel being annhiliated. It was only after the 1967 and 1973 wars that the door started to be opened a crack, first by Sadat and then by others.

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From 1947 up to the 70s Israel begged and begged and begged the Arab countries to have peace negotiations

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Israel may have cordial relations with those nations but none of them would lift a finger nor care very much if Israel disappeared tomorrow. They need resources from the rest of the world. Israel offers little more than technology for war.

Israel only has relations with those Arab nations that are subservient to US and with governments that retain political and social control only with repression and US arms. Think about it. Some of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world, Jordan and Egypt are Israel's "best friends". What should that tell anyone?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Some of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world, Jordan and Egypt are Israel's "best friends". What should that tell anyone?

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I think most people would agree that Syria and Saudi Arabia and Sudan are way, way, way more repressive than Jordan or Egypt and they are Israel's most implacable opponents.

Iraq under Saddam was also about as repressive as anyone could imagine and he was no friend to Israel either.

On the other hand a Muslim democratic country like Turkey that has free, multi-party elections has very good relations with Israel - even while having an "Islamist" ruling party.

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Not a single Jew would have survived the Holocaust had they not been helped, sheltered, sympathized with by someone who looked beyond their "particular ethnic group".

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You're full of shit, and I say that with the utmost of respect and no offence intended whatsoever.

WWII was not about saving the Jews from the Holocaust. It was about many things, but not that. The Western powers knew what was going on, but delayed mentioning anything about it because of anti-semitism. The Soviets paused at the gates of Warsaw, allowing the Germans to wipe out the Jewish resistance, before they then in turn defeated the Germans.

No one came to specifically save the Jews. Only the swift collapse of the German state following the Normandy landings saved the few remaining European Jews from complete annihilation.

And if the likes of Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Saudi Arabian etc etc etc get their way, it will be 1945 all over again for the Jews.

quote:

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
Some of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world, Jordan and Egypt are Israel's "best friends". What should that tell anyone?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
Talking about genocide, if any people on Earth are experts in this matter, due to being on the receiving end of it, it's the Jews.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
We're fighting for our very survival as a people.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Makwa:
All residents of Turtle Island are the beneficiaries of hundreds of years of attempted genocide. No one group here is due an automatic moral high ground.

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Taken by itself, it's not much of an arguing point.

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quote:

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It's Elie Wiesel's concept. Solidarity with other victims belittles one's own victimhood. What a false and ugly lesson this is.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Edited to add: Besides, I don't even understand the point of this argument. Would not the defenders of the Israeli occupation agree that Tibetans and Chechnyan resistors are terrorists and until there is no violence and the Tibetan and Chechnyans can establish secuirty there should be no negotiations and, besides, there is no Tibetan or Chechnyan partner for peace? Or are those struggles somehow different? Somehow more legitimate?
[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

You may revise history in your own mind all you want. But the truth is that Israeli has been expansionist, war like, and hostile to Arabs from its inception relying on western, primarily US, hegemony and military superiority to survive.

Israel may have cordial relations with those nations but none of them would lift a finger nor care very much if Israel disappeared tomorrow. They need resources from the rest of the world. Israel offers little more than technology for war.

Israel only has relations with those Arab nations that are subservient to US and with governments that retain political and social control only with repression and US arms. Think about it. Some of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world, Jordan and Egypt are Israel's "best friends". What should that tell anyone?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Israel is doing very well as a country and certainly has more to offer than selling its used american military technology.

Israel's latest accomplishments

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Despite the second Lebanon war, the divestments, and the boycotts, Israel's economy enjoyed the largest growth in its GNP of any Western country at 8% for the last quarter of 2006. Foreign investment hit a remarkable high of over US $13 billion and the budget deficit was under 1%. Industrial exports, excluding diamonds, rose 11% to $29.3 billion in 2006 with the hi-tech sector leading the surge, according to the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Israel's hi-tech industry exported $14.1 billion in goods last year,
growing 20% from 2005.

What follows is a selection of Israel's achievements in the first months of 2007:

1. Scientists in Israel found that the brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea
water, free of pollutants, and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proves an ideal environment.

2. Israeli-developed designer eyeglasses promise mobile phone and iPod users a personalized, high-tech video display. Available to US consumers next year, Lumus-Optical's lightweight and fashionable video eyeglasses feature a large transparent screen floating in front of the viewer's face that projects their choice of
movie, TV show, or video game.

3. When Stephen Hawkings visited Israel recently, he shared his wisdom with scientists, students, and even the prime minister. But the world's most renown victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, also learned something - due to the Israeli Association for ALS' advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cell research, as well as its proven track record with neurodegenerative diseases, the Israeli research community is well on its way to finding a treatment for this fatal disease which affects 30,000 Americans.

4. Israeli start-up Veterix has developed an innovative new electronic capsule that sits in the stomach of a cow, sheep, or goat, sending out real-time information on the health of the herd to the farmer via email or
cell phone. The e-capsule, which also sends out alerts if animals are distressed, injured, or lost, is now being tested on a herd of cows in the hopes that the device will lead to tastier and healthier meat and milk
supplies.

5. The millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to the newly developed KishKish lie detector. This free Internet service, based on voice stress analysis (a technique commonly used in criminal
investigations), will be able to measure just how truthful that person on the other end of the line really is.

6. Beating cardiac tissue has been created in a lab from human embryonic stem cells by researchers at the Rappaport Medical Faculty and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's biomedical engineering faculty.
The work of Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein has also led to the creation of tiny blood vessels within the tissue, making possible its implantation in a human heart.

7. Israel's Magal Security Systems is a worldwide leader in computerized security systems with products used in more than 70 countries around the world protecting anything from national borders to nuclear facilities, refineries, and airports. The company's latest product, DreamBox, a state-of-the-art security system that includes intelligent video, audio and sensor management, is now being used by a major water authority on the US East Coast to safeguard the utility's sites.

8. It's common knowledge that dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing. Israel's Bio-Sense Technologies recently delved further and electronically analyzed 350
different barks. Finding that dogs of all breeds and sizes bark the same alarm when they sense a threat, the firm has designed the dog bark-reader, a sensor that can pick up a dog's alarm bark and alert the human operators. This is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel, which Forbes calls "the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies."

9. Israeli company BioControl Medical sold its first electrical stimulator to treat urinary incontinence to a US company for $50 million. Now it is working on CardioFit, which uses electrical nerve stimulation to treat congestive heart failure. With nearly five million Americans presently affected by heart failure and more than 400,000 new cases diagnosed yearly, the CardioFit is already generating a great deal of excitement as the first device with the potential to halt this deadly disease.

10. One year after Norway's Socialist Left Party launched its boycott of Israel, the importing of Israeli goods has increased by 15%, the strongest increase in many years, Statistics Norway reports.

---

http://hedgehogcentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-has-israel-produced-what-have.html

quote:

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Originally posted by Makwa:
All residents of Turtle Island are the beneficiaries of hundreds of years of attempted genocide. No one group here is due an automatic moral high ground.

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Oh my, hundreds of years! Talk to me when it's in the thousands, like the Jews. When entire governments and societies have, as their part of their founding charters and continuing to this very day, the duty to exterminate you. As bad as things were for the natives of the Americas, it pales in comparisson to what the Jews experienced and continue to experience.

By the way, I don't recall any Jews refering to Aboriginals in this manner:

quote:

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"The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war,"

"That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe. That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."

David Ahenakew, a senator with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), a former chief of the organization and a former chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN)

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quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

I'm not sure which "people" you are fighting for, but I wish you utter failure in that fight.

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That's clearly anti-semitic, wishing that the Jews lose their fight for survival. I'm pretty sure the HRC would love to ask the owners of this board some questions about that statement, and why it's allowed to stay up.

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Moshe Feinstein ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
Oh my, hundreds of years! Talk to me when it's in the thousands, like the Jews. When entire governments and societies have, as their part of their founding charters and continuing to this very day, the duty to exterminate you. As bad as things were for the natives of the Americas, it pales in comparisson to what the Jews experienced and continue to experience.

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Please don't start a victimology pissing contest, or continue one for that matter. It's disrespectful (to the real victims, we're just descendents), immoral and unecessary.

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
When did Elie Wiesel say this and under what context please.

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Listen to Michael Berenbaum - I'm quite sure you know who he is, but for others, here is a biography. Here is how he wrote about President Carter's Commission on the Holocaust (source):

quote:

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Membership on the Commission became contested when non-Jewish victims of Nazism, Poles and Ukrainians primarily – Gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses would come later – vocally insisted that they be included in the process and in the proposed Museum. Armenians, victims of an earlier genocide were asking for their place. And Elie Wiesel, whose own work stressed the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the Kingdom of Night as a world apart, was concerned that this move of inclusion would stimulate dejudaization and falsification. The primacy of Jewish victimization – the judeocentricity of the Holocaust – and its relation to non-Jewish victims was to become a perpetual dilemma for the Museum. [...]

Wiesel argued for the primacy of the Jewish experience. “While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims,” he said. The very definition of the Holocaust in the Report to the President of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust represented the primacy of Wiesel’s view. Jews were given metaphysical primacy, they were not the first of the Nazi victims historically. The Report said: “The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II; as night descended millions of others were murdered as well.”

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Here is Berenbaum again, in a tribute to a far greater man - Simon Wiesenthal, the "Nazi-hunter":

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Actually, Wiesenthal's most well-known philosophical battle was with Wiesel. The two squared off indirectly in the late 1970s over the question of who were the true victims of the Holocaust; that is, was the Holocaust a Jewish event or a universal event? Wiesel argued that the Holocaust was a uniquely Jewish experience, settling the role of non-Jews in the Holocaust with the turn of a phrase: "While not all victims were Jews, all Jews were victims."

Wiesenthal, in contrast, argued that the Holocaust was the death of 11 million people, 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews. The figure was invented: If we consider all civilian non-Jewish deaths, then it is too small; if we consider only those who died at the hands of the Nazi killing apparatus, then it is too large. But the central point was Wiesenthal's belief that the inclusion of non-Jews was essential to his postwar commitment. Nations had to feel that they had lost their own if they were to bring the war criminals to justice.

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Here is Noam Chomsky, from his Chronicles of Dissent, talking about a 1982 conference on genocide in Israel of which Wiesel was to be honorary chair:

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"The Israeli government put pressure upon [Wiesel] to drop the Armenian genocide. They allowed the others, but not the Armenian one. He was pressured by the government to withdraw, and being a loyal commissar as he is, he withdrew . . . because the Israeli government had said they didn't want Armenian genocide brought up."

Wiesel went even further, calling up noted Israeli Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer, and pleading with him to also boycott the conference. "That gives an indication of the extent to which people like Elie Wiesel were carrying out their usual function of serving Israeli state interests," Chomsky explains, "even to the extent of denying a holocaust, which he regularly does."

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Originally posted by Moshe Feinstein:
[QB][/QB]As bad as things were for the natives of the Americas, it pales in comparisson to what the Jews experienced and continue to experience.

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[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

In the 80s, Israel helped the US circumvent its own restrictions on aiding groups like the Contras, and the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, who were exterminating their own people. In the case of Argentina, Israel didn't even flinch from supporting the military dictatorship whose anti-semitic fascism was quite legendary.

Any Israeli claim to moral legitimacy in my mind was shattered in the killing fields of Central America, not just in the Middle East or Africa where Israel was joined at the hip with the South African regime.

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I'm pretty sure the HRC would love to ask the owners of this board some questions about that statement, and why it's allowed to stay up.

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Are you trying to raise a lot of money for rabble?

What's taken the CHRC so long?

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: CUPE_Reformer ]

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Originally posted by CUPE_Reformer:
Are you trying to raise a lot of money for rabble?

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But in for a penny, in for a pound.

Moshe, I think there is lesser protest against Putin's Russia and totalitarian China because there is little hope in influencing those governments. The fact that people think Israel is more open to influence bespeaks of people thinking Israel and Israeli's more open to reason. A compliment, if you ask me, even if it might be an annoying one.

And yes, WWII was not fought to stop the holocaust. And yes, there were enough people who saw it coming before the war that it shows that the allies were callously indifferent-- if not callously complicit-- in the holocaust.

But that's governments. The ordinary citizens who fought in the war and liberated the camps returned to their civilian lives as fighters against antisemitism. I knew a few. They have passed on.

Accusations of antisemitism should not be based on speculation, or ill reasoned arguments from nut bars like Levant.

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Wow. Unionist was right about you minimizing other people's histories. When the peoples of Turtle Island get even one one-hundredth of their homelands returned to them, then we can consider historic parities.

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The Soviets paused at the gates of Warsaw, allowing the Germans to wipe out the Jewish resistance, before they then in turn defeated the Germans.

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Wrong. The Jewish rebellion in Warsaw was in 1943 when the Russians were still thousands of miles away. The rebellion you are thinking of was the Warsaw Rebellion of 1944 by the Polish Resistance (99% of whom were non-Jewish) - the Russians DID sit on their asses and watch with glee while the Nazis killed off the entire non-Communist Polish resistance.

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I honestly think that "Moshe Feinstein" is probably an anti-semitic gentile who is trying to paint a ridiculous caricature and parody of a so-called Zionist in order to goad people on a progressive board like rabble into having a more hostile attitude towards Jews and Israel.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Wrong. The Jewish rebellion in Warsaw was in 1943 when the Russians were still thousands of miles away. The rebellion you are thinking of was the Warsaw Rebellion of 1944 by the Polish Resistance (99% of whom were non-Jewish) - the Russians DID sit on their asses and watch with glee while the Nazis killed off the entire non-Communist Polish resistance.

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Not wrong. Just controversial. This is from Wikipedia:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

I honestly think that "Moshe Feinstein" is probably an anti-semitic gentile who is trying to paint a ridiculous caricature and parody of a so-called Zionist in order to goad people on a progressive board like rabble into having a more hostile attitude towards Jews and Israel.

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But that's governments. The ordinary citizens who fought in the war and liberated the camps returned to their civilian lives as fighters against antisemitism. I knew a few. They have passed on.

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Even more significantly, a great number of people in the Nazi-occupied countries who were not on any list of persecution risked their lives to save and conceal Jews and other targetted peoples, purely of their own volition. Most of the people who survived those dark times did so because of the intervention of those brave non-Jewish souls.

They understood that we are all one people, ultimately, and drawing lines between us, while it is an easy route to take in frightening circumstances (like the Israelis and Palestinians live in), only buys into the logic of the Nazis, deepening the bitter rivalries that create the space for such atrocities.

Moshe, you may think your adversarial attitudes are the only logical response in a world fraught with peril, but you couldn't be more wrong. You draw those lines with every word, separating us from you, and Israel from those it oppresses, refusing to see the common bond, the shared need for a better future. It is you and your exclusionary ethics that feed the flames of hatred and sow the seeds of violence.

Come over to the other side, Moshe. Peace needs all the help it can get. Take the hands of your Palestinian brothers and sisters, and even those who criticise Israel, like all of us. We all want the same thing in the end.

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I think most people would agree that Syria and Saudi Arabia and Sudan are way, way, way more repressive than Jordan or Egypt and they are Israel's most implacable opponents.

Iraq under Saddam was also about as repressive as anyone could imagine and he was no friend to Israel either.

On the other hand a Muslim democratic country like Turkey that has free, multi-party elections has very good relations with Israel - even while having an "Islamist" ruling party.

Try harder.

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But the Americans also trained the Israeli security services too, no? Which also, just like Saddam, imprisons children and commits torture.

If it is your argument that Israel is as brutal and vicious as its Arab allies, I won't disagree.

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Israel's latest accomplishments

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In the coming decades as water, energy, food, and other items become scarcer, Israel will have nothing to show for its years in existence except the enmity of its neighbours (and make no mistake. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are merely following the instructions of their American masters, and I am sure you know that), and the indifference of the world community.

Yes, Israel has given the world some useful technologies. It has also given the world uncertainty, violence, and the growing risk of a global war. All to be America's pit bull in the mid-east as opposed to being a light unto nations as advertised.

If Levant wants Canadians to ignore Israel, why not? Haven't we in the West invested too much time, money, and energy on Israel already? Tony Blair's predecessor has a thought on the subject:

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As an expert on the global economy, with a world-wide perspective, Wolfensohn could also point out that the importance of the US in the world economy is gradually declining, with new giants like China and India rising.
We, the Israelis, like to think that we are the center of the world. Wolfensohn, a person with a world-wide outreach, sticks a pin into this egocentric balloon. Already now, he says, only the West considers the Israeli-Palestinian issue so important. Most of the world is indifferent. "I have visited more than 140 countries: you are not such a big deal there."

Even this limited interest will also evaporate. Wolfensohn rubs salt into the wound: "A moment will come when the Israelis and the Palestinians will be compelled to understand that they are a secondary performance … The Israelis and the Palestinians must get rid of the idea that they are a Broadway performance. They are only a play in the Village. Off-off-off-off-off Broadway." Knowing that this is the worst one can tell an Israeli, he adds: "I hope that I am not getting into trouble by saying this, but, what the hell, that's what I believe, and I am already 73 years old."

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A warning to Tony Blair, Uri Averny

[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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We do know, though, that Iran under the Shah, imposed by the US, also used rape as a torture technique.

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[ 05 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

The West Bank and Gaza could be the envy of the middle east, if only Arafat had been willing to take YES for an answer in 1999 when Israel offered him virtually everything he ever asked for.

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The West Bank and Gaza could be the envy of the middle east, if only Arafat had been willing to take YES for an answer in 1999 when Israel offered him virtually everything he ever asked for.

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[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

You're arguing for the racist and brutal collective punishment of all Palestinians. And if not arguing for it, then you're at least rationalizing it as a natural condition, resulting from what you claim -- based entirely on half-truths and a biased narrative -- are the sins of one man.

The occupation, the scorched earth policy, the pass cards, the check points, the beatings, the torture and jailings (including children), the siege and the starvation all flow from the favored instrument of brutal, racist regimes everywhere: collective punishment.

I am astounded that people who call themselves "progressive" or who would claim to believe in human rights can with a straight face defend the racist policies of Israel as though Israel is exempt from standards governing behaviour and human rights.

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I am astounded that people who call themselves "progressive" or who would claim to believe in human rights can with a straight face defend the racist policies of Israel as though Israel is exempt from standards governing behaviour and human rights.

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ETA: Whoops, sorry, after reading Stockholm's last post, I mistook this for the word association thread.

[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

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Oh my, hundreds of years! Talk to me when it's in the thousands, like the Jews. When entire governments and societies have, as their part of their founding charters and continuing to this very day, the duty to exterminate you. As bad as things were for the natives of the Americas, it pales in comparisson to what the Jews experienced and continue to experience.

By the way, I don't recall any Jews refering to Aboriginals in this manner:

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"The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war,"
"That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe. That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."

David Ahenakew, a senator with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), a former chief of the organization and a former chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN)

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The quote above is from Moshe. And it is offensive as hell, yet it is allowed to stand. Why is that? He quotes one Native guy and assigns that to the entire FN population. Then he denies FN experiences. Essentially not only does this insensitive ass have no idea of history, he could give a rats ass about the genocide of FN people (as evidence by his quote because see, they must have deserved it).

I personally think someone should be saying something to this rabid fool who paints everyone as anti-Semites if they don't believe in the state of Israel (and that is his least offensive thing). Denying FN genocide is just as horrible and it should NOT be tolerated on this forum.

[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: Stargazer ]

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Read this person's posts from day one. He has just been praying to be banned, for God knows what motive. He should not be banned, but rather held up as a real-life example of how our enemies try to sow poison and division between people fighting for the same cause.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Of course a better example is why is it that nobody cared when Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948 and made everyone living there an ipso-facto Jordanian?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
No genuine pro-Israel fanatic could possibly present the "case for Israel" this badly.

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Don't be so modest...