This is obviously a crisis of unimaginable complexity. Wingnuts aren’t the only ones to feel bloodlust when terrorists mass murder innocent civilians, but they surrender their wits more easily than we do. There are 200 or more hostages, many severely injured, and all traumatized and probably dehydrated and hungry. You can’t simply bomb Gaza into dust and hope to recover those people. The only strategy that makes sense is to immediately identify who the people in Hamas are that hold power. Those people must be dealt with via diplomatic hostage negotiators. Hamas must understand their only option to salvage any form of due process for their people is to surrender the hostages, accept responsibility for the killing and have those responsible face a trial. The trade off is innocent Palestinians and people in Gaza who were not involved in the violence will receive humanitarian aide, and terms for a new future for that region be decided later. But there must be peace, there must be accountability, surrender of hostages, and no more civilians hurt. All Hamas can do to avoid total destruction of Gaza is cooperate. I’m no Middle East diplomat, but bombing the very area where innocent hostages are being held may not bring them home alive.
F*ck the faithful, f*ck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; f*ck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; f*ck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.
'We supplied all those arms to Israel. We want to see that they get used or its a waste of American tax money. If you don't like it we could just blow up some rocks in Afghanistan again. That was fun'
The phrase Anti-semite refers to hatred of Jews and not hatred of "semitic" people. In the late 1800s in Europe it became uncomfortable and unfashionable at dinner parties, for example, to discuss and revile Jews outright. So someone came up with the brilliant phrase Anti-Semite which everyone knew, of course, referred to Jews but did not contain the offensive and repugnant word Jew. This allowed people to get away with their Judenhasse and not have to feel bad about the words they use.
The idea that people from the middle-east can't be anti-semitic because they are semites is absurd and doesn't fool anyone except the people denying the true meaning of anti-semite.
NOTE: Almost 11 hours earlier, Kate Stoneman wrote a much better version of what I tried to write here. I highly recommend Stoneman's comments.
I just wanted to apologize for coming across as flippant. I grew up in Germany in a family that played fast and loose with Jewsdidit and all that jazz. the last thing I want to do is lecture on what constitutes anti-Semitism.
you can see a similar mess in the border area between Pakistan and India.
where do you even begin to resolve things when the rift is along religious lines on top of geographic lines where people lose access to their land? we've seen it in the Balkans how this shit can erupt overnight.
turns out that geopolitics is a chaotic system where even a small disturbance can have a huge impact down the road.
So Hamas was elected in 2006, and Israel has not allowed Gaza to have elections since 2007? Which means Hamas stays in power in Gaza, even if the majority (?) of the people there no longer support their leadership. Hmm.
That's really all I'm going to allow myself to say about that. Hmm.
Israel has nothing to do with the absence of elections in Gaza. Gaza has not been "occupied" since Sharon pulled out, but has been "blockaded" (the West Bank is "occupied": that is, soldiers patrol there; soldiers make punitive excursions into Gaza after mass attacks but are not present day-to-day) since Hamas was, sort of, elected in 2006. Hamas had the discipline to unite behind one candidate for each seat, while less extreme groups split their votes, and so Hamas got a large majority of the legislative seats in Gaza, although there was not a single district in which the majority of the population voted for them.
Hamas then killed most of its political rivals, and has not allowed any dissent since.
Netanyahu has apparently a policy of propping up Hamas and undermining the Palestinian Authority, all to slow any unity between Gaza and West Bank. That includes millions of dollars funnelled to Gaza, and therefore to Hamas.
Back after 9/11, the receptionist in our office wailed "We HAVE to take out Saddam Hussein! We CAN'T let him hit us again!" God, I hope we've learned something since then.
By the time of the invasion, 3/4s of the American public believed that Iraq was behind the attack. Why they didn't sent 19 Iraqis to do it is the biggest mystery.
"That enemy is not the Palestinian people, of course, even though support for terror attacks is widespread among Palestinians. The enemy is not exactly Hamas either, though Hamas is part of it. The enemy is the Palestinian theory of Israelis that makes the violence seen on October 7 seem to many of them a rational step on the road to liberation rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet another in a long string of self-inflicted disasters for the Palestinian cause."
I think Palestinians understand Israeli "resolve"--a willingness to use violence to get their way, with contempt for international law and basic human rights--much better than Israelis understand Palestinian resolve--the necessity of defending themselves from colonization, forced removal, and being reduced to prisoners in what used, and was promised (by the Oslo Accords), to be their own country.
As for the article, it's one of the worst examples of blatant propaganda I've recently read, that turns history upside down and inside out, deliberately misrepresents Palestinians real experience with Zionist expansionism, cynically idealizes Israeli behavior as saintly, innocent and noble victims who never did anything wrong, while demonizing Palestinians as mere "human animals" who started everything and deserve what they get.
Nothing that they do "defends" in any way. Their actions neither prevent Israelis from doing harm to Palestinians, nor weaken their ability to do so, only intensify their desire to do so.
Judenhasser? Damn, how exquisitely erudite, witty and classy is that? I don't 'hate'--as my son's judo instructor used to tell his students at the end of every class, "Those who hate end up destroying themselves." A good maxim to live by...one you might profit from if you can ever overcome your intolerance of opinions with which you disagree.
I grew up around a lot of Jews; a large number of whom were close friends of my parents (their kids were my peers, classmates, some were very close friends). Most were vets, a few married to survivor wives; which is how, at a very young age, I saw the numbers tattooed on their arms, and knew who put them there, and why. The husbands had their day jobs, mostly in the glass factories, and finished their educations on the GI Bill at night, while the wives stayed home to raise the kids and tend the chickens (egg production was a major pillar of the local economy back then). And they all got together once or twice a week, usually at my parents house, to drink coffee or sip beers, and talk. I daresay I learned more about 'life, the universe and everything' from their conversations (they were an rather intellectual and artistic lot) than I ever absorbed from formal education, including two college degrees and reading more than a thousand books.
And one subject in particular was Zionism and Israel. Pretty much everyone, even the non-Jews, were ardent Zionists, but it was "left" Zionism, a vision of Israel as a secular, socialist, multi-cultural democracy, with equality under the law for all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, culture and especially religion. They're all gone now, and they carried that idealized version of an Israeli state to their graves. Along with rather bitter resentment at the militaristic, xenophobic and theocratic Zionists who destroyed their hopes through the mistreatment and persecution of Palestinians; a betrayal of their faith, as it were. As for their children (all aging boomers now), they are pretty much indifferent to Israel as it became; to them, it's just another country that has to be judged on its own merits, just like every other on the planet, including the US.
Btw, I never take insults personally, especially when they are meant to be. Which is why I can casually dismiss your slur without the need to make an exception in your case. Shalom.
PS: If it makes you feel better, there plenty of other insults you can hurl; it's just comic relief to me any more.
Damn, what an exquisitely erudite, witty and classy response to my comment on the Judenhasse seeping through Paine_in_the_apse's (PITA) comment; and
PITA with only two college degrees. It seems that PITA grew up among Jewish (chicken farmer) survivors and learned about idealistic Zionism from them. What a crock of bullshit. (ASIDE: PITA as an acronym is pretty appropriate here)
I not only grew up among survivors, I IS ONE.
I was born in 1944. I grew up in a DP camp in Germany from October 1945 to 1950, and arrived in the US in 1950 as a six and a half year old (when you’re six that addition half year is very significant and important.). One thing is certain, my parents and their friends, with and without numbered forearms, DID NOT PHILOSOPHIZE about Zionism. They had lives to salvage, lives to live, and children to raise. They did not abandon Israel for some philosophical bullshit.
This is obviously a crisis of unimaginable complexity. Wingnuts aren’t the only ones to feel bloodlust when terrorists mass murder innocent civilians, but they surrender their wits more easily than we do. There are 200 or more hostages, many severely injured, and all traumatized and probably dehydrated and hungry. You can’t simply bomb Gaza into dust and hope to recover those people. The only strategy that makes sense is to immediately identify who the people in Hamas are that hold power. Those people must be dealt with via diplomatic hostage negotiators. Hamas must understand their only option to salvage any form of due process for their people is to surrender the hostages, accept responsibility for the killing and have those responsible face a trial. The trade off is innocent Palestinians and people in Gaza who were not involved in the violence will receive humanitarian aide, and terms for a new future for that region be decided later. But there must be peace, there must be accountability, surrender of hostages, and no more civilians hurt. All Hamas can do to avoid total destruction of Gaza is cooperate. I’m no Middle East diplomat, but bombing the very area where innocent hostages are being held may not bring them home alive.
Yeah Hamas could end this.
At any time.
F*ck the faithful, f*ck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; f*ck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; f*ck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.
Iain M Banks.
"They are either calling for MORE war crimes,"
I don't think there was an or there, they were ONLY calling fro more war crimes.
'We supplied all those arms to Israel. We want to see that they get used or its a waste of American tax money. If you don't like it we could just blow up some rocks in Afghanistan again. That was fun'
"If you don't like it we could just blow up some rocks in Afghanistan again. That was fun". Thank you Mr. Haliburton that will be all for now.
"One perfect example is Arkansas Senator and star of “The Killing Joke” flashback sequences, Tom Cotton."
"Here’s a simple test, DeSantis: If “stop and frisk” loving New York mayors past and present wouldn’t implement your plan, you went too far."
Sheeit dude, you are stompin' hard in SER territory today!
"For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong" H. L. Mencken.
Face it, Republicans have something in common with Hamas, which is that both love to use children as human shields.
"Again, the “protect kids” politicians showing how little they actually care about kids if they are darker than alabaster."
what they intend to do is always the opposite of what they say.
"calling all Palestinians anti-Semitic."
Palestinians are, by definition, semitic.
The phrase Anti-semite refers to hatred of Jews and not hatred of "semitic" people. In the late 1800s in Europe it became uncomfortable and unfashionable at dinner parties, for example, to discuss and revile Jews outright. So someone came up with the brilliant phrase Anti-Semite which everyone knew, of course, referred to Jews but did not contain the offensive and repugnant word Jew. This allowed people to get away with their Judenhasse and not have to feel bad about the words they use.
The idea that people from the middle-east can't be anti-semitic because they are semites is absurd and doesn't fool anyone except the people denying the true meaning of anti-semite.
NOTE: Almost 11 hours earlier, Kate Stoneman wrote a much better version of what I tried to write here. I highly recommend Stoneman's comments.
'inflammable' means 'flammable'? what a country!
He thinks Palestinians are self-loathing like Mark Levin and Stephen Miller are.
they also think that everyone else is stupid.
That should be read in an Aubrey Plaza voice...
But anti-Semitism does not mean being against Semitic people as a whole.
I just wanted to apologize for coming across as flippant. I grew up in Germany in a family that played fast and loose with Jewsdidit and all that jazz. the last thing I want to do is lecture on what constitutes anti-Semitism.
I know, and IMO it didn't come across as flippant. People twist words into pretzels to conform to their worldview.
The group of Jews to whom the term was first applied were a long way from their point of origin. So there's that.
I don't know a lot about Jewish history and the little I know is mostly about the tangled mess that is pre WWII European Jewish history.
these sometimes tiny groups who often were living separate from everyone else went through so much over the centuries that it makes me so sad.
I knew of at lest two abandoned Jewish cemeteries where I grew up but at least people showed a little bit of respect and left them alone.
I know. and "semitic" is a long outmoded term. the only remnant these days is "anti-Semitic" as a term.
what I'm trying to point out is that it's a war among brothers and sisters and always has been.
you can see a similar mess in the border area between Pakistan and India.
where do you even begin to resolve things when the rift is along religious lines on top of geographic lines where people lose access to their land? we've seen it in the Balkans how this shit can erupt overnight.
turns out that geopolitics is a chaotic system where even a small disturbance can have a huge impact down the road.
Accidentally added a new comment here that was supposed to be a reply lower down. Carry on.
Hmm. Learned something I didn't know here.
So Hamas was elected in 2006, and Israel has not allowed Gaza to have elections since 2007? Which means Hamas stays in power in Gaza, even if the majority (?) of the people there no longer support their leadership. Hmm.
That's really all I'm going to allow myself to say about that. Hmm.
Israel has nothing to do with the absence of elections in Gaza. Gaza has not been "occupied" since Sharon pulled out, but has been "blockaded" (the West Bank is "occupied": that is, soldiers patrol there; soldiers make punitive excursions into Gaza after mass attacks but are not present day-to-day) since Hamas was, sort of, elected in 2006. Hamas had the discipline to unite behind one candidate for each seat, while less extreme groups split their votes, and so Hamas got a large majority of the legislative seats in Gaza, although there was not a single district in which the majority of the population voted for them.
Hamas then killed most of its political rivals, and has not allowed any dissent since.
Ah. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.
Netanyahu has apparently a policy of propping up Hamas and undermining the Palestinian Authority, all to slow any unity between Gaza and West Bank. That includes millions of dollars funnelled to Gaza, and therefore to Hamas.
There's no opposition party to run against Hamas. At least not one with living members.
Hamas could’ve called for elections, but that’s not how Hamas rolls.
It’s a tragic situation where the main actors all share blame.
Indeed. The blame, but not the pain.
BRENNAN: But how do you know what's in the backpack?
DESANTIS: Well, you have to make those judgments based on intelligence and all the other things that you do.
Brennan: I just asked you what those things are.
And DeSantis has no intelligence to use.....
Back after 9/11, the receptionist in our office wailed "We HAVE to take out Saddam Hussein! We CAN'T let him hit us again!" God, I hope we've learned something since then.
HAHAHAHAH... oh, you're serious... Nope.
By the time of the invasion, 3/4s of the American public believed that Iraq was behind the attack. Why they didn't sent 19 Iraqis to do it is the biggest mystery.
"One perfect example is Arkansas Senator and star of “The Killing Joke” flashback sequences, Tom Cotton."
It's very rarely that I will do this, but thank you.
That is exactly who he is.
A real eye-opener.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-does-not-yet-understand-the-depth-of-israeli-resolve/
"That enemy is not the Palestinian people, of course, even though support for terror attacks is widespread among Palestinians. The enemy is not exactly Hamas either, though Hamas is part of it. The enemy is the Palestinian theory of Israelis that makes the violence seen on October 7 seem to many of them a rational step on the road to liberation rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet another in a long string of self-inflicted disasters for the Palestinian cause."
I think Palestinians understand Israeli "resolve"--a willingness to use violence to get their way, with contempt for international law and basic human rights--much better than Israelis understand Palestinian resolve--the necessity of defending themselves from colonization, forced removal, and being reduced to prisoners in what used, and was promised (by the Oslo Accords), to be their own country.
As for the article, it's one of the worst examples of blatant propaganda I've recently read, that turns history upside down and inside out, deliberately misrepresents Palestinians real experience with Zionist expansionism, cynically idealizes Israeli behavior as saintly, innocent and noble victims who never did anything wrong, while demonizing Palestinians as mere "human animals" who started everything and deserve what they get.
Here's a better overview of the actual historical context: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/10/16/palestine-history
Nothing that they do "defends" in any way. Their actions neither prevent Israelis from doing harm to Palestinians, nor weaken their ability to do so, only intensify their desire to do so.
Ding !!! Ding !!! Ding !!! We have a new leader (Paine_in_the_apse) in the race for the most blatant Judenhasser on Wonkette.
Judenhasser? Damn, how exquisitely erudite, witty and classy is that? I don't 'hate'--as my son's judo instructor used to tell his students at the end of every class, "Those who hate end up destroying themselves." A good maxim to live by...one you might profit from if you can ever overcome your intolerance of opinions with which you disagree.
I grew up around a lot of Jews; a large number of whom were close friends of my parents (their kids were my peers, classmates, some were very close friends). Most were vets, a few married to survivor wives; which is how, at a very young age, I saw the numbers tattooed on their arms, and knew who put them there, and why. The husbands had their day jobs, mostly in the glass factories, and finished their educations on the GI Bill at night, while the wives stayed home to raise the kids and tend the chickens (egg production was a major pillar of the local economy back then). And they all got together once or twice a week, usually at my parents house, to drink coffee or sip beers, and talk. I daresay I learned more about 'life, the universe and everything' from their conversations (they were an rather intellectual and artistic lot) than I ever absorbed from formal education, including two college degrees and reading more than a thousand books.
And one subject in particular was Zionism and Israel. Pretty much everyone, even the non-Jews, were ardent Zionists, but it was "left" Zionism, a vision of Israel as a secular, socialist, multi-cultural democracy, with equality under the law for all citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, culture and especially religion. They're all gone now, and they carried that idealized version of an Israeli state to their graves. Along with rather bitter resentment at the militaristic, xenophobic and theocratic Zionists who destroyed their hopes through the mistreatment and persecution of Palestinians; a betrayal of their faith, as it were. As for their children (all aging boomers now), they are pretty much indifferent to Israel as it became; to them, it's just another country that has to be judged on its own merits, just like every other on the planet, including the US.
Btw, I never take insults personally, especially when they are meant to be. Which is why I can casually dismiss your slur without the need to make an exception in your case. Shalom.
PS: If it makes you feel better, there plenty of other insults you can hurl; it's just comic relief to me any more.
Damn, what an exquisitely erudite, witty and classy response to my comment on the Judenhasse seeping through Paine_in_the_apse's (PITA) comment; and
PITA with only two college degrees. It seems that PITA grew up among Jewish (chicken farmer) survivors and learned about idealistic Zionism from them. What a crock of bullshit. (ASIDE: PITA as an acronym is pretty appropriate here)
I not only grew up among survivors, I IS ONE.
I was born in 1944. I grew up in a DP camp in Germany from October 1945 to 1950, and arrived in the US in 1950 as a six and a half year old (when you’re six that addition half year is very significant and important.). One thing is certain, my parents and their friends, with and without numbered forearms, DID NOT PHILOSOPHIZE about Zionism. They had lives to salvage, lives to live, and children to raise. They did not abandon Israel for some philosophical bullshit.
"Hamas is an evil terrorist organization, but the Palestinian people aren’t all Hamas."
THIS! in a nutshell.