Too whacky for Faux News but ZOA HEART Glenn Beck
And a big HEART it is too. Whackjob wingnut Glenn Beck got a bit too extreme even for the broadcasters that could easily pass for a spoof, Faux Noise, but the Zionist Organisation of America can’t get enough of him. H/T Antony Loewenstein on Beck’s lachrymose mendacity:
The Zionist Organization of America’s annual dinner is a place where conventional thinking about the liberal proclivities of American Jews goes to die. But never quite like Sunday night — when Tea Party darling and Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachman served as the opening act and Glenn Beck was swarmed like a rock star.
Beck, who was on hand to receive the ZOA’s Defender of Israel Award, made his way into the VIP reception at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan shortly after 5 p.m. and almost instantly was beset by a crush of admirers. He found himself wedged into a corner as a crowd of well-wishers surged forward to have their photographs taken with him. Bachmann and her fellow Republican congresswoman, Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, were there, too — but it was clear who the star was.
“Love, love, love, love, love,” Ros-Lehtinen said, extending her hand to Beck, who responded by clasping hers in both of his. All around her, an expanding mass of people pressed in closer, seemingly eager to express the same sentiment.
“I need everyone to back up please,” a photographer practically yelled as he tried to create a cordon around the VIPs to set up his shot. But despite help from Beck’s two bodyguards, an assistant, and assorted publicists and ZOA personnel, the crowd kept pushing ahead.
Crowd control proved to be a recurring problem at the dinner. After the appetizer was served, seemingly half the room converged on Beck and his wife, Tania, tying up the traffic flow in the center of the ballroom and rendering the area impassable. A succession of ZOA officials implored the crowd to sit down so servers could get dinner on the table, but with little effect.
Grabbing the microphone, ZOA President Morton Klein, raised his voice — the first of several times he would do that over the course of the evening — and commanded those standing around to “sit down — NOW!”
…
“Glenn Beck got in touch with me, thanked me for writing this because no one else in the organized Jewish world was defending him, and he asked if we could get together,” Klein told JTA. “We got together, I asked him if he’d be our honoree, he began to almost cry. Tears welled up in his eyes.”
Asked about the discomfort some feel with Beck’s repeated use of Holocaust analogies, Klein, a child of survivors who was born in a German displaced persons camp, claimed ignorance, saying he didn’t watch Beck’s show often enough to have an opinion.
“I just don’t know,” he said.
That Beck, an unabashed crier, became misty at Klein’s offer is eminently believable. Beck appeared to choke back tears at least four times during his hourlong speech — and that was during his less emotional moments.
When he wasn’t battling the urge to cry, he was issuing a battle cry. With arms flailing wildly and face turning the color of the red caviar served in the VIP room, Beck portrayed the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people in apocalyptic terms — as the ultimate showdown between good and evil. Beck was the only speaker at the dinner whose voice reached a pitch more feverish than Klein’s.
Beck said he came to the ZOA as a brother. “It’s personal,” he said repeatedly.
And clearly he has not been chastened by the urgings of some Jewish groups to tread lightly with the Holocaust analogies. Again and again he invoked them, saying the world stood on a precipice like the one it faced in 1939 — only this time it’s worse, as not only is the world ignoring rising evil, he said, it is actively helping it along.
“America is not a collective,” Beck thundered. “America is built on the individual. I am a man and I demand to be counted so others are not numbered again.”
The crowd went wild.
And here’s that horrid, racist little man Morton Klein on the two state solution (2007):
posted by Gert @ 8:26 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
An excellent video! Say what you want, but the guy knows how to talk. Thanks.
PS
Where's Manny?
Daniel:
”Say what you want, but the guy knows how to talk.”
I’d say ‘yes’ to that but only because he suffers from Tourette Syndrome (no, seriously).
Considering the sort of mental picture of you that I’ve built in my mind I’m not surprised that you appreciate the guy’s way of talking. In a different context Klein is someone I’d have to listen to as a head teacher at a prize giving ceremony and he’d send me off to the land of nod in under five minutes (if there’s time spent that I’ll never get back, nodding off is at least one enjoyable way of passing that time).
Klein’s ‘wedding analogy’ for instance is something that raises a few laughs among the brain dead but anyone cognisant would think it decidedly unfunny and lame. Much more importantly, his characterisation of Palestinian culture is simply deeply stereotypical and racist.
Klein and the cohorts of other hard line American Zionist leaders and their myopic followers do Zionism a great disservice by after more than 60 years after the first Naqba still harking back to Zionist mythology in which the Palestinians don’t really exist (re. the ‘23rd Arab state solution’) and thus need not to be dealt with, apart from making every conceivable effort to avoid their return or any settlement of sorts.
Already the hard liners like Klein have basically rendered a two state solution a practical impossibility, paper versions being lip serviced only by those terminally short of imagination or courage (Obama and a whole raft of European leaders), by principled opposition to it and by support for settlement building/expansion.
But Israel is fast approaching a fork in the road: over sixty years of almost blindfolded muddling along, with an almost religious belief that somehow they would ‘win’ (enabled by its pushers, the US and EU) has not made the problem go away and it is now more acute than ever. The Palestinian problem is now more on the agenda than ever before and Israel looks increasingly with tons of egg on its face. Fast and unpredictable changes in the ME don’t help Israel and the US’s position. Shortly will be the time to grasp the nettle. If Israel doesn’t do it, she will be forced to do it. No amount of crying ‘antisemitism!’ or ‘Holocaust!’ is going to change that…
Yes,I've always thought of you as a bit of a nod -based on Hebrew pun - let Manny explain.
I have no mental picture, other than Mike's claim that you may be have a walking disability. Since you are one of the bad guys I also assume that you are ugly, balding or both and laugh at your own jokes.
I think it general you need to learn to differentiate between form and substance. In terms of substance I didn't find the argument that strong, but he knows how to deliver.
This piece is actually quite well written. Did you write it Gert? Surely not?
Daniel:
Sorry to disappoint but I have no walking, or other, disability. As usual it says a lot about Mike that he needs to attribute imaginary ‘shortcomings’ to an opponent rather than simply debate the points.
I'm very pleased to hear that you are well. I think that he saw a aerial photo and though there was a wheel chair in the picture.
There was a bloke called Dubitante on Richard's blog who was much better than you at debating Zios. He even scored some points initially and worse than that got me a little peeved.
You may want to take a few pointers from him or collaborate.
Daniel:
Dubitante’s points are points that I have all made at mine, at Millett’s (you arrived there much, much later than I did) and elsewhere.
I hardly debate Zionists now: you can find the reason in the comments made to D. by his opponents. Typically ‘Palis don’t exist’, ‘Palestine never existed’ and of course the all time favourite, ‘Hamas’. Not worth refuting because irrelevant.
What is interesting about the first two arguments is that they precisely mirror Israel’s attitude towards these ‘non-existent’ undesirables. Israel has potty trained her useful idiots well.
But lets even for arguments sake accept these two first arguments as correct. That would lead me to conclude that those who don’t have a state or citizenship should basically not be upset when someone kicks them out their property. Hard to think of anything more ridiculous (or racist), yet this is what these arguments are predicated on.
These people should read a good book about ‘Blood and Soil’ nationalism. Hint: the last major case didn’t end terribly well. Some minor, more recent cases not far from that one seemed to almost mimick that particular one in terms of blood lust.
As regards Hamas, when I asked Millett what Israel would do if Hamas would magically disappear or was dealt a terminal blow and he daren’t answer the question. Hint: hate them as much as you like but they didn’t cause the occupation or the settlements. They are, albeit a reactionary, reaction to it.
So at Millett’s you’ll see me do the odd strafing run but for the last fifteen or so comments I haven’t even looked at or for any responses. Millett’s blog is about as relevant to modern Zionism and its upcoming ‘hard’ choices as that other blowhard’s blog, Elder of Zyon. Or Mad Mel Phillips…
Well, I haven’t read through the whole thing but he certainly hits the nail on the head when he describes you and the Ultralikudniks:
”You are Israel’s worst enemy. People like me who think that Israel has a lot to offer sit with our head in our hands while we watch ultra-nationalists cheers Israel on to its demise.”
When things finally start to unravel, historians of most stripes will blame Israel’s Religio - ‘blut und boden’ - ultranationalists for her demise.
BTW, which part of the Balfour Declaration didn’t you get, Daniel? I hope you also understand that the Arabs too felt betrayed by the Brits and as far as I’m concerned they have a far stronger case.
What did you expect these people that stood in the way of Israel’s creation to do? Up sticks to ‘Arabia’, so that interlopers like you could take their place because ‘G-d had told them so’? Because you’re Jewish and they’re not?
Your fair weather friend Silke was once again behaving like a petulant child. Like a real troll, actually…
I thought you'd like him. I told you he was good, in my opinion he's miles better than you and is evenly matched against characters like Leah (Yoni's pen-name)or Adam.
As you know I make a point of never discussing substantive issues on your blog, always preferring trash talk. I do my best to only discuss them with people directly involved in the conflict - mainly Arabs and Israelis.
I do make rare exceptions when I think that hammering one of you guys into the ground might give ideas and inspiration to other Zios as I did with your unforgettable "Arabs to the Ovens!" snafu and on several other occasions. However, these cases are the exception rather than the rule.
For all these reasons, I shall not debate the rights and wrongs of the Balfour Declaration, but if you post something that captures my imagination on Millett's blog, you might get lucky!
Have a great week - Manny too
DM
Daniel:
Having read the rest of the exchange I can indeed confirm that there isn’t an argument that D. has used that I haven’t used very frequently in the recent or more distant past, including his legalistic arguments.
But why people still bother using various legal arguments like UNR 242 or the Geneva Conventions with Zionists is beyond me and I packed these attempts in years ago because they’re simply wasted on you guys.
Leah’s stance that it’s all been brought into existence to punish the Jews isn’t just nonsense, it’s also deeply offensive to those who really wanted to put the lessons learned from WW II into a legal framework. Leah is a walking victim complex elevated to the nth degree.
Others like you react to these arguments with hypocritical syllable parsing: your whole stance is that G-d is ordering you to take all the ‘land of Israel’ and yet you try and invert the meaning of mundane texts that are well understood! Perhaps you also believe G-d provided a pro-Zionist interpretation of these texts?
I think you should get one of those web site banners on which Israel pre ’67 is coloured in white and the surrounding lands in black as ‘Arab Occupied land’. That way you could turn the Geneva Convention on colonising land obtained by means of military conquest right on its head too!
As regards:
”As you know I make a point of never discussing substantive issues on your blog, always preferring trash talk. I do my best to only discuss them with people directly involved in the conflict - mainly Arabs and Israelis.
I do make rare exceptions when I think that hammering one of you guys into the ground might give ideas and inspiration to other Zios as I did with your unforgettable "Arabs to the Ovens!" snafu and on several other occasions. However, these cases are the exception rather than the rule.”
Mr Pompous is back in town… “trash talk”? No you won’t do "trash talk" here. You’ll comply with my rules instead. You can also keep your double faced attempts at faked friendliness. With “friends” like you, who’d ever need enemies?
Face it, son: you simply haven’t got what it takes to debate these matters without having to resort to ad hom, from fairly soft jibes to down right nasty stuff. That’s what your track record (or should I say broken record?) shows in abundance.
I pity you in a sense: it must be so limiting to live in that topsy turvy world of religious nuttery in which right is wrong and wrong is right, in order to fulfil your wet dream religious fantasies of a divinely ordained Greater Israel and in which anyone who disagrees with that is considered either an antisemite or a self-hating Jew.
“Arabs to the Oven!” by the way was featured once again recently in an article in Ha’aretz. I’m not sure why it bothers you so much: it may not be the exact solution you have in mind for them but it can’t be that far removed from it either.
Now kindly bugger off for a bit.
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