The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both - Vaclav Havel
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
File under: ‘Does he really, really (no, I mean REALLY!) love Israel?’
Amusing exchange here at HP’s dungeons:
‘Dcook’ takes umbrage with a quote attributed to Obama:
“[…] because it is a true friend and our greatest ally in the region.”
He retorts:
Israel is really grateful to Obama for the UPGRADE!
Previous Obama said “One of our closest allies in the Middle East” http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-israel-one-our-closest-allies-middle-east
This reminds me of “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital” before his election vs the administration refuses to acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital post election. Obama has a track record, therefore, of saying something positive about Israel BEFORE an election and doing/saying something else after.
You would forgive some people if they don’t trust Obama on Israel.
Can anyone really be trusted on Israel (I mean REALLY)? Not by ‘Dcook’, now in response to another quote:
Obama will be considered a world class failure by History if Iran gets a nuke.
Israel: KABOOM!
Obama: “OK, so I screwed up”
Sorry is the hardest word – especially when there is no-one left alive to hear.
Responding to yet another challenger, ‘Dcook’ pulls no punches:
Challenger: Also DocMartyn, I don’t see a single foreign policy decision on Obama’s part to suggest a discomfort with Zionism.
‘Dcook’:
You are fuckin’ joking!!!
Where is the centre, the focal point of “Zionism”. Its [sic] Jerusalem. Its [sic] the many thousand year-old prayer “Next Year In Jerusalem”.
Obviously that means a Jewish State of Israel and its capital city, Jerusalem.
Obama even acknowledged it when he visited Sderot and said “Jerusalem, Israel’s ancient capital and will always be Israel’s capital”. At AIPAC before the election Democratic primary he said “Jerusalem, Israel’s undivided capital”.
Once the liar became President his administration refused to say “Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city”. The administration removed the caption “Jerusalem, Israel’s capital” from photos of Biden in Jerusalem.
At the Democratic Convention they removed “Jerusalem, Israel’s capital” from the platform slogans. It was voted back in.
Don’t insult our intelligence and try and tell us that Obama doesn’t have a discomfort with Zionism and Israel.
You wonder what precisely one would have to achieve, how deeply and sincerely one would have to genuflect before AIPAC’s altar, so that ‘Dcook’ wouldn’t detect any… ahem… ‘discomfort with Zionism and Israel’… All out war against Iran perhaps… but REALLY, REALLY thoroughly!
We're racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel.
As elections draw near, the season of public opinion surveys is upon us. But here is a survey that is more disturbing and significant in its revelations than those informing us whether Yair Lapid is taking off or Ehud Barak is crashing in the polls.
This one lays bare an image of Israeli society, and the picture is a very, very sick one. Now it is not just critics at home and abroad, but Israelis themselves who are openly, shamelessly, and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists.
We're racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state.
Yes, this is Israel.
Among its terrifying results, the survey discovers a certain innocent candor. The Israelis admit this is what they are and they're not ashamed of it. Such surveys have been held before, but Israelis have never appeared so pleased with themselves, even when they admit their racism. Most of them think Israel is a good place to live in and most of them think this is a racist state.
It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply.
The "Jewish" part of "Jewish democracy" has won big time. The "Jewish" gave "democracy" a knockout, smashing it to the canvas.
Israelis want more and more Jewish and less and less democracy. From now on don't say Jewish democracy. There's no such thing, of course. There cannot be. From now on say Jewish state, only Jewish, for Jews alone. Democracy - sure, why not. But for Jews only.
Because that's what the majority wants. Because that's how the majority defines its state. The majority doesn't want Arabs to vote for the Knesset, Arab neighbors at home or Arab students at school. Let our camp be pure - as clean of Arabs as possible and perhaps even more so.
The majority wants segregated roads in the West Bank and does not flinch in the face of the implications. Even the historic connotation does not bother it in the slightest. It wants discrimination in the workplace and it wants transfer. Enough with the whitewashing and pretense. This is what we want. Because that's the way we are.
The right will probably attack the New Israel Fund for commissioning the survey. Gevalt! It will screech. Leftists, Israel-haters. But the right's hollering will not change the result. This was done by a reliable, well-known polling firm. Besides, what's wrong with the survey? What didn't we know before, apart from the loss of shame? Let the right prove that this is not the way we are, that most Israelis want to live with Arabs. That most of them see Arabs as people like themselves, their equals in rights and opportunities. Let's see them prove it wrong. That would be a true cause for celebration.
The survey does not only confront Israelis with their present, but with their future as well. This appears to be the survey conductors' main goal. It tells them: You wanted settlements, you wanted occupation, you want Netanyahu and you've done nothing for the two-state solution, and it's died. Now let's see what's the alternative.
The alternative, as every infant knows, is one state. One state? Most Israelis say it will be an apartheid state, yet are doing nothing to prevent it. Some of them even want it. They don't even ask, Where are we going? Where are we being led? What's the vision for the next 10, 20 years? Well, if all goes well, if all continues they way it is now, the Israelis know the answer and it's a bitter one indeed.
Until then, the image of Israel 2012 is this: We don't want Arabs, don't want Palestinians, don't want equality, and the hell with all the rest.
Values-shmalues, morals-shmorals. Democracy and international law - those are matters for anti-Semites, not us. We will vote for Netanyahu again, recite that we're the only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East and wail that the whole world is against us.
All comments made by ‘Lamia’ (risible spelling has been left untouched):
I really object to foreigners who come to Britain and then publicly stir up hatred against groups already living here, be that either the majority or a minority. I would like to see ungrateful genocidal filth like Yasmin Alibhai Brown and Ghada Kharmi kicked out of the country.
Why are so many high profile left wing ‘refugees’ to Britain complete and utter cunts?
And (in response to a fellow nut):
you are quite right. People like Alhibai Brown make a living or owe their position from complaining about being subjected to dreadful racism and hatred, yet events like this show that they like nothing more than publicly stirring up racist shit against others.
And they’ve chosen Britain as the platform for it – and ublic are supposed to treat this as something to be proud of, a sign of our ability to tolerate peopthe ple we may find objectionable, rather than a sign of how supine, stupid and disployal to the native population our establishment is. There is no virtue or benefit in Britain giving a home to ungrateful and intolerant foreign individuals, and there never was.
And:
We need a law, and soon, to make all new British citizens or residents have to serve a long probationary period – 30 or 40 years, say – during which if they commit serious crimes or stir up hatred against – or even start moaning about – other groups in the country, or even start moaning about them, they lose their citzenship and get booted out of the country. Then we might get some peace from hatemongering noseyparkers like Alibhai Brown, Atzmon and co.
Later in the comment section Sarah AB thanks ‘Lamia’ for part of his contribution. And these are the people who denounce anyone who isn’t fully enamoured with Zionism’s occupation and Apartheid as a ‘Jew hater’…
Mendacious ‘Sarah AB’ (Harry’s Place) is at it again…
Her Fragrance, contributor to Harry’s Place Sarah Annes Brown, just can’t help herself. In an otherwise reasonable and interesting post, crack pot ‘renegade Jihadist’ Kamal Saleem is compared to jazz player, wandering antisemite and general nutjob Gilad Atzmon and anti-Zionism is then dragged by the hair and into the post:
We’ve already heard about Kamal Saleem here. He’s the one who claims to be an ex-jihadist and whose terrible revelations of what Islam has in store for the US are lapped up by some on the right in much the same way as Atzmon’s assertions about Israel and ‘Jewish politics’ are by antisemites anti-zionists on the left.
You’ve to love the cross out type font used on ‘antisemites’: wink wink, nudge nudge! The implication remains clear: criticism of Zionism equates antisemitism.
And yet Sarah AB, unless she’s a complete imbecile (I don’t get that impression) knows very well that the Atzmonites are only a very small part of the anti-Zionist movement, excoriated and despised by the vast majority of us, left or right for that matter (of course HP, once a leftish outfit, nowadays has form when it comes to broad sweeping generalisations about ‘ the Left’). That Atzmon and some of his more moronic followers (see deLiberation for endless fun with Atzmonites) have in fact declared war on much of the anti-Zionist movement, reserving often special ire for Jewish anti-Zionists, she will also be aware of. And unless she lives on another planet (I get that impression) she’ll know to what length the anti-Zionist/Palestinian solidarity movement goes to, to spit out any manifestations of racism in their ranks (see also the recent Greta Berlin kerfuffle and statements in reaction to it by Ali Abunimah, Mondoweiss and many others).
But Sarah AB, Harry’s Place and much of mainstream Zionism are far more interested in using the AS word as a smear than actually combating racism of whatever kind. Mendacious indeed...
As always Harry’s Place's open sewers passing for comment threads rarely fail to amuse. Here’s ‘Trundlemaster’ (16 October 2012, 8:29 am) being insightful [cough]:
People like Saleem damage the anti jihadist cause and taint it. Yes there is Islamic infiltration into party politics and the organs of the state but there are ways of expressing these facts without exaggerating them so you get tagged as a complete fraggle.
Exaggerators [sic] are bad for politics even when they appear to be on your side.
I’ve seen the short film about Saleems life and it just looked like the standard ‘born again’ Christian tale to me but with added ex Islam angles.
There are ex muslims out there who will tell the truth about Islam I treat their testimony with far more trust than I trusted Saleem when I first came across him.
‘Islamic infiltration’ (he means American Muslim politicians, of course), ‘ex muslims who will tell the truth about Islam’: Kamal, eat your heart out, this guy ‘tells it like it is’…
It’s the lack of opposition that the ‘Trudlemasters’ of HP enjoy that’s the most telling of all.
According to accepted wisdom - or more
accurately, received wisdom from Israeli public relations officials - most
Jewish Israelis don't abhor non-Jewish Arabs for racial reasons, they only
resent them for violently resisting Jewish mass immigration to Palestine. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often portrayed in the American media as a
contest over land and other precious resources, but not so often as a battle to
defend the Jewish genome.
But reports of anti-African race riots in Tel
Aviv in May finally broke western media silence over one of the most
contentious issues facing the state of Israel in recent years: the arrival of
tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa. Foreign observers
who long thought that the conflicts in this country take place only over
resources, not race, are being forced to reconsider their assumptions in the
face of overtly racist Israeli discourse about Africans.
Zionist analysts have been at pains to
explain away the physical attacks on non-Jewish people of colour, which have
become an almost daily occurrence since May. Even harder for hasbarists to
excuse is the widespread popular support for the anti-gentile vigilante
violence. An Israel Democracy Institute survey revealed that in the days
following the May 23 attack on Africans, over half of Jewish Israelis agreed
with a ruling party lawmaker's statement that they are "a cancer",
and a third supported the pogrom.
Why all the anti-African hatred? Why did a
thousand Israelis swarm the streets of Tel Aviv, attacking any dark-skinned
person in sight, including women and children? Some Israelis oppose the
presence of the asylum-seekers because they compete with working-class Israelis
for the same blue-collar jobs. Others are upset that many of them are not
gainfully employed, and are a drain on local resources, resulting in a
reduction in the quality of life for the already-impoverished neighbourhoods
where they find shelter.
But these are hardly the core reasons of the
conflict. Both of these grievances could be easily addressed if Israel simply
abided by its own obligations to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and
issued work permits to the asylum-seekers. If employers had to pay Africans
equal wages, they would have no comparative advantage over Israeli workers and
the labour field would level out. And if all Africans were allowed to work
legally, most would, and become contributing members of Israeli society.
Although mainstream media pundits wouldn't
know it, since most of them only just discovered the African issue, it isn't
the economics of immigration that arouses the ire of most Israelis - it's their
race. The Tel Aviv neighbourhoods that have seen the largest influx of
asylum-seekers in recent years were demanding the expulsion of all Africans
half a decade ago, when their numbers were only a trickle and their economic
impact on these communities was next to nil.
From the start, Israeli antagonism to
non-Jewish Africans has had a racial basis: specifically, the fierce opposition
to inter-racial relationships between Jewish Israeli women and non-Jewish
African men. As anti-African activists raise the supposed spectre of mixed
marriages and bi-racial children, several Tel Aviv satellite cities have held
anti-miscegenation rallies in the last couple of years. In one of these towns,
Ashkelon, the racist rally was organized in front of the city hall by the
Deputy Mayor.
Do Israelis who oppose race-mixing realize
the irony of their actions? At one of these Tel Aviv-area demonstrations
against mixed-race romances in December 2010 in Bat Yam, Jewish National Front
party leader Baruch Marzel told Israel's Channel 7 video news: "If this is
racism, then the Jewish state is racism, the Sochnut [Jewish Agency] that works
against assimilation is also racism, the Torah is racism, and the Keren Kayemet
LeYisrael [Jewish National Fund] that sells land only to Jews is racism, and
everything is racism."
Marzel is correct to point out that in
Israel, racial separation is state-sponsored. The State of Israel has no
facility for civil marriage, it only recognizes weddings conducted by clergy.
These religious authorities will only marry two people of the opposite sex who
are officially registered as belonging to the same faith. The government
grudgingly honours the marriage certificates of other countries, but the
requirement to wed abroad in order to receive the benefits of state-sanctioned
marriage is effectively a tax on miscegenation.
If a non-Jewish person, African or otherwise,
finds a Jewish life partner in Israel and wishes to convert to Judaism so that
they can legally marry, they are prevented from doing so. African
asylum-seekers in Israel who wish to convert to Judaism must request permission
from the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office. In June, it was reported
that every non-Jewish person that had made such a request in the previous year
had been categorically turned down.
More than this, the government invites Jewish
anti-miscegenation groups to its committee meetings, so that they can influence
legislation. One of these, Yad L'Achim, physically abducts Jewish women from
their homes if they are known to be living with non-Jewish partners, and is
continuously cited in US State Department religious freedom reports. The work
of both Yad L'Achim and another such group, Lehava - an acronym for "For
the Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land" - is supported by government
funding, via various NGOs.
Last month, a lynch mob dozens deep killed a
Palestinian pedestrian in downtown Jerusalem, in full view of Israeli police;
he was beaten to death, then painstakingly revived by paramedics, to the
chagrin of the perpetrators who stood on and watched. Hours later, the group
Lehava published an Arabic-language leaflet and distributed it in on the
streets of East Jerusalem, warning non-Jews that they would suffer the same
fate if they tried to flirt with any Jewish women.
When the mere mention of inter-religious
romance is insufficient to incite murderous racial hatred, these groups loudly
announce that Arabs, Africans and other non-Jews are abducting and raping
Jewish women in droves. At a Knesset committee meeting called to discuss this supposed
wave of kidnappings, the security services commander in charge of that criminal
category specifically stated that the police "do not know of any such
phenomenon of abductions" of Jewish women by non-Jewish men.
Perusing the headlines of Israeli tabloids in
recent years reveals that while there most certainly is a wave of rapes and
sexual assaults being committed against Jewish women in Israel, the
perpetrators of this misogynist violence are themselves Jewish Israelis,
politicians and police commanders. The long list of convicted felons and
officials currently under investigation for sex crimes includes a former chief
of police, a mayor, a minister, and the president of the country. Official
police reports further vindicate the African asylum-seekers, stating that on
average, they commit far fewer crimes than native Israelis.
Israel receives more foreign aid that any
other country in the world, from the American government and from American
private citizens, both Jewish and Christian. One of the major reasons for this
transfer of wealth is the belief that the governments and the peoples of Israel
and the United States of America share many core values. Is one of these core
values, as Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai stated in June, that Israel
must incarcerate and expel all non-Jewish African asylum-seekers in the
country, because Israel "belongs to the white man"?
Clearly, the United States has yet to fully
redress its own abominable treatment of non-white peoples. But ever since the
1967 SCOTUS Loving v. Virginia case, the US government has refused to
countenance any religion- or race-based restrictions on intimate relationships.
So why does a world superpower with a mixed-race African-American head of state
continue to voice support for Israel's self-definition as a "Jewish
State", when that definition is translated into a public policy of racial
purity intended to keep out all African asylum-seekers and other non-Jews?
This altogether latest (and most ludicrous) example of unjust property theft in E.J’lem show just how far some Zionist settlers will go, once again backed by a court. Moriel Rothman has the story:
Last month, as last minute wrangling over the Democratic Party platform offered Americans a front-row seat to the farce that often accompanies discourse about Jerusalem, events in the holy city reached their own new level of absurdity, though with far more serious and immediate consequences.
Early on Sunday, September 2, Jewish settlers took over a single room in a Palestinian house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. Backed by the decisions of Israeli courts, and protected by both the Jerusalem police and the Modi’in Ezrahi, a government-subsidized private security force that guards Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, the settlers seized the property and began to lay the groundwork for the eventual expansion of the adjacent Ma’ale Zeitim settlement. Like other East Jerusalem settlements, Ma’ale Zeitim, the biggest of its kind within a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, is largely funded by American billionaire Irving Moskowitz.
The settlers’ claim to the room was based on alleged Jewish ownership of the property before 1948. The Israeli court system – regarded internationally as a bulwark against Israel’s increasingly conservative legislative and executive branches – held this claim as sufficient justification for the settlers to take over private Palestinian property and erect a barbed wire fence down the middle of the family’s yard.
There is no denying the fact that there were Jews who lived and possessed property in East Jerusalem before 1948. Just as there were, of course, thousands of Palestinians whose homes were located inside what is now Israel, and who today possess deeds to those lands. Yet the idea of a Palestinian family getting permission from Israeli courts and protection from the Jerusalem police while they “reclaim” a house in West Jerusalem is unthinkable, for a single reason: in Jerusalem, and in the Israeli legal system, there is one set of laws for Jews and another for Palestinians. Separate and unequal.
