Real power over U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza rests with Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Blinken -- not Yang. But AOC's function is to shield them from leftist anger.
Cut the crap. There is no such a thing as a Palestinian. They’re all Arabs. Terrorists, murderers, thieves and crooks. Fatah and Hamas get hundreds of millions in funding from the Arab oil cartel, The EU, and the US. Lines the pickets of the thieving so called leadership. Arab murder of Jews goes way back before there ever was an Israel. Their favorite slogan “ichbad al yahood “ ( slaughter the Jews) has been chanted since forever. Haj Amin al Husseiny the Mufty of Jerusalem went to Hitler to make a deal when Hitler conquers Egypt and British mandated Palestine he should ship all the Jews to the death camps. Before you go ape shit on the Jews living and defending themselves in the ancient land of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital for over 3000 yrs. it would behoove you Glen to learn some history (ancient annd modern) so that you could put you love of the Arabs and hatred of the Jews living the modern land of Israel intoroper context. Let me start you off; The land of Israel for the people of Israel.
1) The pro-Israel position is the overwhelming, dominant position of the establishment wings of both political parties and the mainstream media. I know a lot of people on the right like to think that the media and Dems are anti-Israel but it's 100% false. Every president after Jimmy Carter has been steadfastly pro-Israel. The president who most challenged that was George HW Bush, with James Baker. Even Bush 43 was more even-handed than Clinton, Obama and Biden (the sole exception was Obama's abstention on the UN Resolution as punishment for Bibi's openly campaigning against him, and most of his aides were vehemently opposed to this). Few political figures in the US are more pro-Israel than Biden and Hillary. AIPAC loves Dems and the GOP equally. There is no daylight between them (the only ones questioning the orthodoxy are the Squad on the left and the Ron/Rand Paul faction on the right).
2) The media is no different. At CNN, several commentators have been fired for being anti-Israel (Marc Lamont Hill, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr) while none has been for being too pro-Israel. So this view is overwhelmingly the dominant and almost all US discourse. And every security state agency -- the NSA/CIA/DoD -- is even more pro-Israel than they.
3) I'm well-aware that a sizable chunk of my readership here -- perhaps the majority -- disagrees with my views on Israel and Palestine (though my views are consistent with my broader anti-militarism/anti-imperialism stand). It'd be easier for me to just not write about this. But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone. I'm more than willing to engage critics -- as I said, I'm talking to a couple right-wing MAGA Israel supporters to have on to explore these questions -- but to me, the value of this independent platform is not that I am a puppet for anyone side or faction but will also endeavor to tell you what I think and see, and I've always had a readership that could tolerate that kind of dissent and divergence from their strongly held views because they know I come by mine honestly and with an attempt to be scrupulous with the facts.
I get that it'd be way easier for me to just avoid this topic altogether, just to avoid reader dissension. But I wouldn't feel comfortable with myself if I did.
You do you, Glenn - that's why we respect you. I don't care if we don't see eye to eye on a number of policy items. I'm center/right, and you're left. I can care less. What matters to me is your decades-long advocacy and work on behalf of OUR civil liberties and your relentless courage. My much more conservative cousin has exactly the same view of you. You're a national treasure.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Present a factual, historic argument rather than mouthing platitudes that have been promulgated by the left and right Israel haters.
This article wasn't intended to litigate the Israel/Gaza dispute. It described it in the briefest terms. The point was about AOC's role and her decision to attack someone with no power rather than the people in her party who are implementing these policies that she claims to find so immoral. I've been clear that I believe the Palestinians are oppressed and mistreated -- that's not a view I've hidden -- but this article really wasn't about that at all. It just described the conflict in the minimal way necessary to make the broader point. But yes, I do not share the establishment right's view (which is also the Democratic Party's view) on Israel/Palestine.
For people like Roland your article simply became a useful tool for venting his hate toward a whole group of people, yet you spent so much time in responding to that hate, and no doubt knowing it will do nothing to temper his distortions, or his hate.
I know I shouldn’t be so naive, but I was absolutely blown away by the hatred being slung in every direction in the comments on this article, especially by Roland. I guess this is why most people steer clear of Israel/Palestine debates, or even mentioning it (like this article, which like Glenn said isn’t even litigating that issue but is focused on others).
I’m already a pretty pessimistic dude but seeing how (literally) militant people got here, and how cavalier they are about the use of violence toward their designated enemy is still chilling.
I agree with everything you said. I never would go on twitter because of all the hate they say is spewed there, and feel tempted to discontinue being here. Greenwald should really not have created a platform for Roland's hate, which is what he did with such a lengthy response, which muddied the waters, but I do understand he was trying to explain the purpose of his article which had nothing to do with what happened today. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had such a negative reaction.
He isn’t litigating the Israeli Palestinian differences because he has already ruled on the topic in favor of the Palestinians. But he does go on at length about his ruling. He’s not being honest in saying that the article was merely about AOC. For that to be true, you have to ignore the extensive assumptions he states.
I think there's at least two types of post on most of Glenn's essays - especially on a topic such as the Isreali Palestinian conflict. The worst, and the ones best ignored (even if I cant help myself sometimes) are the haters and trolls. Then there are those who have very passionate thoughts and emotions on topic. Again, this piece touches on one of those red hot button issues. Obviously, there are others, too, but not with the same heat. I can definitely do without the haters and trolls
😩 SMH. I’ve noticed the conversation often veers from content and subject to debates and fights about all sorts of unrelated things. People arguing and spewing off righteous knowledge, with dates and quotes and other data to back it up, about completely unrelated shit. You wanna know what I think? I think it’s actually a rather common happenstance for people who consider themselves smart. Which your fans are for the most part. Smart people can often be rather righteous. And they usually rather stick to what they know, lest they be found to not be as bright as their shine. So they disregard all whiplash precautions and take any conversation back there, to their territory. From where they can comfortably pump out their pompous lectures and pump up their egos. It’s not necessarily evil, though it can easily be, it’s human really. We like to be right, we like to be/see ourselves as helpful, and as leaders even. I personally find these self righteous journeys in conversation futile, generally speaking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for different opinions and different sharings of knowledge and experience, etc. But to build, not to dismantle. To unite, not to divide.
Is it so hard to stick to the subject at hand as best as possible People?!!
It must be frustrating for you as a journalist. Again I ask: which came first? The bullshit propagandists on “the news”, or the demand for them? But I applaud and appreciate you for sticking to the truth and the actual news. And not just telling some your readers what they might want to hear, but instead telling us all wtf actually happened. Obrigado!♥️
Bizarre, and scary. But I’ve learned to ask why, instead. Propaganda? Religious hatred? His ex??!!!! There’s usually a reason someone would say and do something so stupid. And it’s not always, or even typically, because they just flat out want to be an ass. When we cancel them, we learn nothing of what they knew. What bothered them. Of what maybe made them think that way, and how we can learn from and/or change that. Or if maybe we are the ones who needed to change.
Ignoring is good for our immediate self preservation. Long term ignorance is how we got to here.
Why do you bother to invoke AOC and Andrew Yang? Yang is a none/ entity as far as NYC voters are concerned. The best candidate for the mayoralty is Eric Adams . The Black borough president of Brooklyn. Out front by 9-10% of any other candidate. As far as your disappointment with AOC the the Democratic Socialist learned fast how to get ahead in politics. That’s what it’s all about. Getting power once people have swallowed your bs and put you in office. Advertise yourself constantly on social media, never getting anything done and moving up the ladder. How do you know when a politician is lying? When her lips are moving. Don’t be disappointed. It’s only politics. Democrat or Republican Two sides of the same coin.
AOC wanted to make a statement without attacking her octogenarian seniors. So she went after Andrew Yang whom she probably does not greatly respect and considers an opportunist.
Yes. This thread got derailed. That is the problem with issues like the Middle East conflicts. You raise one issue and people immediately dive into other issues. It is hard to keep us on track.
I think you're right, and although you weren't looking for my opinion, in the past I have never been on such, well lets call it, a conservative site, and a difference of opinion even on the topic of Israel would engender such animosity. The audience, or too many seemed not to understand the point of the article which had nothing to do with Israeli policy by and large, but AOC's, well, wanting to move up the ladder in the political world, which means you adopt the accepted narrative on Israel. She's willing like the rest to sell her soul, which doesn't surprise me since I never thought she was that authentic even before she was a tunnel away from the Capital building during the riot and claimed she was at death's door.
You make two separate proposals. One I agree with.
I'd agree on bringing the troops home. Staring with Afghanistan and Syria. Then extend to S Korea, Japan, France, England and Germany. And Finally the District of Columbia. Use them on US infrastructure, beginning with completion of the wall on our southern border.
As far as stopping funding, there are lots of areas where I would support eliminating funding before cutting off the small amount of $$$ provided to Israel. Let's stop funding the WHO, BLM, PLO and Hamas. And Minneapolis, DC, the Dep of "Education," etc.
Timothy in the case of Roland his blatant ignorance was not the main issue for me, but his hate was, and it was disgusting. I'm surprised there is not more outrage on this site at his hate filled rhetoric against the Arabs, against the Palestinians.
Well, I read his post here to be aimed at misplaced hatred of Israel, not necessarily an ignoring of misplaced hatred of non-Jewish semites, but I like how you noticed that I took issue with his first sentence, and you his second.
Even the otherwise like-minded opine about the "facts"!
Well, this forum spends time doing that, which is another reason I like it here. (Sorry to those who think I over-post. Still trying to moderate myself, I promise.)
Still, "verifications" are wrought with opinion, too. Even here, "claims" of "fact" vastly outnumber the more accurate "imo"s.
Let’s see. If I tell you that you deserve a punch in the eye, that’s an opinion. If punch you in the eye and it becomes black and blue, that’s a fact. Do you now get the difference?
That "fact" would get suspect in a court of law, where the opinion of the jury (at least "beyond a reasonable doubt", whatever the jury decides THAT is). Were there witnesses? Was it documented? Was it self-defense? Did someone else (possibly, not factually!) do it, not you?
Yes, it can reasonably be considered fact that the sun rose on me this morning. Will it rise for me tomorrow? idk, I'll keep my cell phone camera ready; digital photos are forever, and they time-stamp them now! (Wait, am I connected? Is my date and time accurate? Should I put a "newspaper" (can I even find one?!) in the photo to "factualize" the date?
Nearly 717,000 Jews lived in the territory of Palestine in 1948. It is a shame the Muslims could not accept the concept of allowing the Jews to return to their eternal capital when the modern state of Israel was created. Now, the grandchildren of those who tried to murder all the Jews have made themselves the darlings of the world of victimization.
Accept settlers from another continent to take your land?
If half a million people from another land suddenly disembarked on your shore, brought in thousands of tons of smuggled arms, and then proceeded to terrorize your communities which lived there for many generations in order to abandon their villages and best land, raze to ground many of them including the cemeteries where your ancestors are buried, rename every toponym in the land to erase the historic memory - would you accept that? Israel is from the very inception a settler project, very similar to South Africa - ethnic cleansing is in its nature, which is perfectly visible in the episode that sparked this latest round - simply unable to tolerate that Palestinians still own this or that patch of land or property that is coveted by Israelis - so simply take it away from them.
You make an excellent point, jbt1980. It is time that we, as responsible citizens of the world, all return to our ancestors' place of origin. It is criminal that Denali was renamed and that the native Americans were displaced. All white people must return to Europe immediately! Personally, I would prefer living in Switzerland to the USA. I just never thought I could afford it until reading your insightful and logical statement.
Why start in the middle of the movie? They call it the Promised Land because God gave it to the Jews back in the beginning, they called it The Land of Canaan back then - more than 2,000 years before Christ.
Here’s a tidbit about American anti-Semitism - when my parents immigrated from Europe shortly before the war, the state department filled in the box calling for nationality “ Jewish”. Not Russian. Not Polish. Jewish.
His time spent in Nazi Germany, meeting Hitler and others, is well documented as are his antisemitic speeches and other Nazi propaganda broadcast in the Middle East.
What can be argued is the extent of his persuasive powers on his fellow Arabs. But that is something of a parlor game at this point.
hush fool. have you seen what the arabs did to jews and their synagogues, as well as random shooting as stab attacks in the recent two days? No, you just spread one sided bs like the antisemite you are "jews are the aggressors" you don't impress me. for every one of your articles i can send 20 more
You think you're so edgy, exposing Jews? The reason they posted it is because it is an anomaly. The attacks on Jews from arabs are so frequent its not even news anymore
It’s funny you say that Israel is a conquest country. When I was in Jerusalem about 10 years ago, I saw some excavation going on in the Arab quarter and that lo and behold, they found remnants of Jewish construction…under the Arab quarter……
Of course it is. That same parcel of earth has been conquered by various peoples over and over and over for millennia.
"...they found remnants of Jewish construction…under the Arab quarter..."
Of course they did. And in much of the region, you will find further layers under the Jewish construction. Like the fortress Carroc which has at points been occupied, rebuilt, and added onto by Muslims, Christians, Israelites, Edomites, Moabites... and who knows what, all of whose blood has wet those stones.
So who has claim? All have claim. If peace is to be had, at some point it needs to be sorted out. People need to want peace badly enough to make it happen.
No. According to international law acquisition by conquest is always illegal.
"...
Given the stillbirth of the U.N. collective security system, nonrecognition is one of the few realistic ways the international community has sanctioning deterring conquerors. This much is taken as axiomatic in international law. Indeed, the anti-conquest norm and its nonrecognition corollary are so important that in the view of most international lawyers, even conquest through lawful self-defense against an aggressor is forbidden.
The people in the land did not even own it. The felahs, the felahdin, were effectively serfs, working for absentee Arab landlords. The felahs themselves were a mix of conquered or displaced peoples who had frequently been forced to convert generations before. The distant landlords were the ones who made deals to give land to the Jews. The Palestinians who had worked the land for generations were never consulted by either side. They were just told to leave. That, naturally, left them a bit miffed and lead to violence. Jewish settlers frequently further provoked the Palestinians in order to generate a British crackdown.
So, the situation was never one-sided. It was multilateral with many to blame.
How would you feel if the military came to your house and business and told you that you had to vacate for another group? Then they put your family in a terrible area, restricted your movement, made it virtually impossible for your kids to get an educated, etc? Sounds much like the brutal pogroms perpetrated on Jewish people for milennia.
How would it be if your landlord told you that you were being evicted at the end of your current lease? Sometimes, life sucks. But just because someone is doing something wrong or bad does not make it unethical or illegal.
Doesn’t sound remotely like anything Israel has actually done or is contemplating doing. Remember the Arab Israeli reaction to Avigdor Lieberman’s musings about redrawing the border in any peace settlement to place what is known as “The Triangle” on the Palestine side? They rejected the idea outright, even though they would otherwise stay in place. Perhaps they know something about living in Israel that outsiders are missing.
Glenn, it is important to listen to all sides including the evidence they present to support their position. It is a matter of both common courtesy and intellectual honesty. Unfortunately, for many, the Israeli-Arab conflict turns out to be a blank canvas onto which we can project our disappointments, frustrations and anger onto an historically safe target of opprobrium - once upon a time, it was simply the Jews while now it is their nation state. Much of the criticism seems a product of double-standards when it is not simply ill-informed.
One of the underlying yet unexplored issues, it seems to me, is a certain societal unease with their re-emergence of the Jew seeking equal treatment. The Diaspora Jew, by contrast, a minority wherever he went and, only since the late 18th century, allowed by fits and starts to emerge from his second (at best) class citizenship, appears to some the only acceptable Jew. Whether it derives from theological concerns or crackpot “scientific” principles, the Jew represented by the self-sufficient Israeli gnaws at something very elemental in both Western and Islamic societies - and for good reason, given their supercessionist views of having replaced Judaism and the Jews, yet they are still around not only falsifying this bit of dogma but, as the saying goes “punching above their weight”.
What else explains this continuing and frankly bizarre focus on Israel whose net result is that far greater tragedies and losses of life that occur elsewhere can be ignored - and to pose this question is not an exercise in “whataboutery” but to ask that some common standard and context be used in the discussion.
To your credit, you are one of the few who do examine other conflicts and highlight other injustices. When it comes to Israel, though, I can hope you have the bandwidth in between everything else you do, to re-examine some of your assumptions and be a bit more critical of some of your sources of information. You might still see things the same way, but something tells me that you will emerge with a more nuanced view.
In the interim, please keep doing what you do. It takes far more courage than to post a comment and is far more consequential.
As a final, unrelated question, when will you be offering signed copies of your book to your members (or did i miss the memo)?
I'll probably do a video to address these comments tomorrow -- the substantive ones on I/P - since I don't have a lot of time today. I'm working with my publisher on getting the way to get signed books to subscribers. The difficulty is the pandemic but I believe that I'll be in the US now in August so it may have to wait until then. But I absolutely will fulfill that commitment.
There is no rush to respond, especially given your other commitments. I’m pretty sure that the Israeli-Arab issue will be with us for quite some time yet.
And it was REAL progress, the kind that can't be executive ordered away, like lower illegal immigration that's so easy to reverse by flying deportees back in to vote Dem, I mean lower wages, I mean fill cages, I mean penalize legal immigrants, I mean move around to avoid the media. Oh, wait....the media does that itself.
That more of my taxpayer dollars go to Israel than any other nation -- and that our foreign policy is shaped around Israel -- makes that nation's actions highly relevant, rising above others. I pay for what it does and I don't like what it does.
Surely you'd care more about the cleanliness of the restaurant you eat at than one you don't? Care more about how well your city bus functions than others, when on the way to work? Whether the washing machine you bought with your hard earned money works -- or engages in collective punishment contrary to international law.
Your premise about money going to Israel (which must use the bulk of it on US corporations) is wrong. The US spends far more in Europe, Japan and Korea.
And while you may wish to believe that our foreign policy is shaped around Israel, a minute’s reflection would show that, if anything, it’s shaped around oil and the free passage thereof. Which means it’s shaped mostly around Arab and world economic concerns. The conflicts in the region we have fought have either been on behalf of an Arab country (Kuwait or Lebanon in 1958) or for our own misguided reasons (Iraq in 2002 and Syria a few years later).
That people try to rationalize their obsession with Jews by grabbing at any excuse is certainly troubling, but it’s best to see the world as it is rather than the imagined one we’d prefer.
So please post evidence of annual direct payments to any other single government above $3.8 billion or apologize for implying some kind of racism on my part.
I wasn’t applying any racism on your part, just an unhealthy obsession. Because Jews come in all “colors”, they may be many things but a race is not among them. And before you get defensive about any implication, I’m assuming you were using the term racism somewhat casually with no malicious underlying intent.
Why do you choose to be so unaware of what is being said here when it is so obviously true. I can only assume you are totally unaware of the influence Israel has on our national policies, and our wars. Why are our politicians so beholden to Israel? Why is their so much complicity in both parties to remain silent on Israel's many crimes committed against the people of Palestine? Why do our politicians go before APAC and swear their allegiance to Israel? Yes, and why all the money sent there? Pick up a book by Max Blumenthal, or would you define him as a self hating jew? There are so many who are willing to speak the truth, as there are Americans who stand up to injustice and brutality and war.
Yeah it's the elders of Zion right! The reason America is beholden to Israel is because Israel and their supporters organize extensively for America's support, as it is a world power. The reason Israel organizes for America's support is because people like you and millions and maybe billions of others somehow can't held slipping back into antisemitic tropes when Jews are involved, which somehow or another has always lead to Jews being killed, so Israel is not taking chances in a region where it's surrounding neighbors routinely attempt to attack and annihilate them. But if you really cared about brutality, you'd find no shortage of what to speak of when it comes to the middle east. You don't. Why? Why don't you speak of it? Why only Israel? Can you speak with complexity about any other country in the region? You fell for it boo
You mean the Israeli Arabs, the Druze, Circassian and Christians or, to put it differently, all the Israelis BDS oddly doesn’t target? Or is it just Israeli Jews?
Given your flurry of hit and run postings, I won’t expect anything thoughtful but I would be glad to be proven wrong.
Mr Knapp, I realize you have this thing about the Jews, but in reality aid to Israel has zero to do with Jews or Zionism or even AIPAC. It is all about dollars and profits of the US military complex. I am quite sure the Pentagon does not like the optics of what is happening and will let the Israelis know. BTW, the spending in Europe is not the same category of spending and is mostly paid by Europeans, even though, of course, they never pay enough. American protection is not free. Just an aside.
So well said! And bizarre is right: one would think Western freedoms of religion and association and movement, not to mention self-sufficiency (I love the way Jews don't petition for public assistance), would inform Westerners properly, but since 1948 anyway the Western anti-semites seem to feel free to say to the Jew, "Why don't you get back to where you belong, the scrubby land we (WE!) so magnanimously gave to you."
Was it justice, centuries delayed, to "create" a homeland, or just another excuse to keep on hating.
Well, here's a reason for some to hate on me: I have come to the opinion that Israel should NOT have been created, but instead the hero nation of the mid-'40s should have turned on the freedom beacon and said, "To us! To us! We are your new land of freedom."
No I appreciate the piece and have to question how much my own beliefs have been shaped by my culture. In reading Middle Eastern history I came to the conclusion that some groups were shafted but it is to late to fix it. Israel is not going away nor should it. I think the “Palestinians” have been led incredibly poorly, almost as if they don’t want the problems solved.
You've raised a crucial point that few focus on. Palestinians have terrible leaders (terrorists) who are willing to sacrifice their own people for international sympathy. They will put civilians in or near key sites to be sacrificed. They refuse to come to the beginning table to acknowledge the basic starting point: that Israel exists. Even the rest of the Arab States have grown weary of this. It is true that Palestine's leaders don't seem to want to solve this problem. It should be clear why the US gives such huge support to Israel, an allie on such a strategic place. Israel is a tiny place surrounded by countries that hate it and want it destroyed. True, Israel doesn't handle the impossible problem of how to fairly treat Palestinians, on the other hand, Israel has to be tough because they are surrounded by wolves who, with the first sign of weakness, will devout them. I have been to Israel and spent the past three years living In Egypt. It was an eye-opening experience.
This is such a broad, sweeping statement I wouldn't know how to respond except to say it is sad when anyone dies, and there are varying degrees of sadness and circumstances, and sometimes things turn out one way or another based on incompetence or luck or any number of variables. But that's a whole other topic.
IMO the "palestinians" have been used as a proxy weapon by other countries who are afraid to be direct with Israel. So you see everyone crying for the Palestinians but their Muslim allies spend money empowering Hamas rather than building up the Palestinians.
Do yourself a favor and research every single point or post in this thread because every single "side" is pushing an agenda.
To me though, it sure seems like only one side is pushing a pro-Democracy agenda.
Like many tangled situations, the problem is that there are more than two parties involved, each bringing their own interests. The Palestinian +leaders+ don't want to solve the problems because they often benefit greatly from the conflict. The leaders often do not negotiate in good faith and blame it on the Jews. Some of the Palstinians are passive bystanders, some are whipped up by the claims of the leaders, some are acting personally because +their+ family was killed or +their+ house was burned. The Palestinian +people+ then bear the brunt of Israeli retaliation. In the same manner, Israeli settlers have often acted unilaterally, knowing that stoking the conflict benefits them. The rest of the Israeli population may or may not agree with the settler's actions, but they learn to hate Palestinians when rockets rain down on their homes and kill +their+ families.
Personally, I appreciated the typo that changed “devour” to “devout” as conversion to Islam is historically the only way to shed dhimmi status in a Muslim majority society ... well, that or death.
Actually, it isn't even called "conversion" it is called "reversion." When a person becomes a Muslim they "revert," as Islam is the only way. And I was told explicitly by every Egyptian Muslim I knew when I lived in Luxor that none of them can ever stop being a Muslim. If one denies one's faith they must be killed. This seems to be the answer for a lot of things. To be fair, in many ways the Coptic religion is even more restrictive if that is possible. Christians are also taught from the Bible, there is no way to heaven except through Jesus. I grew up in an extremely conservative Christian family. I rebelled and it wasn't easy, but at least I wasn't killed for it. And at least in the US there were options, I could go out on my own, get a job, go to college, because there was freedom to do so--although we seem to be losing it. People in Muslim countries, especially women most often do not have options other than to live under the thumb of an extreme religion, or at least an extreme interpretation of it. Honestly, I would rather live under the rule of any of the Israeli leaders than Hamas.
Glenn I'm definitely pro-Israel, but not reflexively so. Like all nations they act in their self interest but not always in ways that I agree with. I'm also sympathetic to the plight of ordinary everyday Palestinians, as well as Christians in Bethlehem (the latter having no choice but to produce hand crafts and sell them to Christians around the world). In all likelihood you and I will disagree on many things on this topic, but I appreciate and expect that you will challenge what I believe. So, please, keep it up.
On this general topic one thing I'd like to see addressed is the following: Do the Palestinians really want a settlement? Every time it appears there is a potential opening to get a deal done their leadership seems to scuttle it. While right of return is generally consistent with international law, how could that possibly work with Israel being a Jewish state? And what is Israel to do when missiles are fired indiscriminately into Israeli neighborhoods, as opposed to military targets?
While I agree with much of what you said, there in fact is no “right of return” in international law. To date, there has been but one exception and, ironically, it is contained in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which explicitly gave that right to the Jewish people. The Palestinian “right” is taken from UNGA 194 which made in conditional and was a multi-part non-binding resolution which the Arabs unanimously rejected lest by implication they acknowledged Israel’s legitimacy.
What makes the current situation unique was the new concept of Mandates (they were supposed to be similar to a trusteeship rather than a colony) whose full consequences were apparently never quite thought through. By analogy, today’s Palestinians who left property behind in what’s now Israel would perhaps equate to non-resident enemy aliens of Israel.
Thanks, Charles. My statement regarding the right of return vis-a-vis international law is based upon general recollection rather than actually researching the issue. I'll take a look at UNGA 194, and the rest of your points. That said, I cannot see how a right of return can possibly be reconciled with Israel existing as a Jewish state. And given world history over the last 2000 year, and especially European history in the 20th AND 21st centuries, I definitely come down on the side of Israel on this.
Jeff, you speak for many of us. The assumption that only the Right Wing could possibly be pro-Israel is as biased and offensive as the assumption that all black Americans only vote for Democrats. Yes, many liberals support Israel, just as many blacks vote for Republicans.
I appreciate all reporting on the Arab Muslim-Jew split, because for the most part it illuminates the folly of mankind's biases.
You call it like you see it and continue being honest. “Good people can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” We are all more knowledgeable after a spirited debate.
That you would even consider supporting AOC is scary. From the beginning she has always been a hard left socialist radical.
And being an American Jew myself, I’m always amazed by the sympathy that others of your sort provide to left wingers and are highly critical of Israel. I came to the conclusion that people like you worship left wing policy as your primary religion and being Jewish is just your ethnicity.
You say that you only briefly touched on the policy involved and that the article was focused on AOC being supportive of the same old Democratic gang who have supported Israel since 1948. And then you go on and on describing how THEY blindly support Israel, which is NOT true, regardless of what you say.
Harry Truman was an anti-Semite. Here are some excerpts from his personal diary….
In his diary, he wrote an entry on July 21, 1947:
“The Jews, I find are very selfish. They have no concern for Poles, Estonians, Latvians and other Displaced Persons; they are only interested in themselves. When they have power, physical or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog”.
Former Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., a Jew, spoke with President Truman about the sad state of affairs of Holocaust survivors, passengers of the ship Exodus, who were turned away from the shores of Palestine by the British and were sent back to Europe. Morgenthau asked the President to intervene with the British to allow the Jews entry into Palestine.
Of this request, Truman wrote in his diary: “He had no business whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought one thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed.”
He often called New York City “kike town”; he referred to his Jewish partner, Eddie Jacobson, as his “Jew clerk” and he wrote to Bess about someone in a poker game who had “screamed like a Jewish merchant”.
Once, in 1953, the television host, David Susskind, asked the ex-President why he had never been invited to the Truman home in spite of their many interviews.
Truman replied: “You’re a Jew, David, and no Jew has ever been in our house. Bess runs it and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime”.
Why did Truman recognize Israel? Because he wanted displaced Jews to have a place other than the US to go to. He didn’t want Jews in the US just like he didn’t want them in his own house.
But you ignore such crap?
Here’s more….LBJ refused Israel’s request for military aid in 1967 in advance of clear indications of Arab intentions. Stuck in the Vietnam quagmire of his own false making in the Gulf of Tonkin, he didn’t want another war on his hands. He refused to sanction a preemptive strike and told the Israelis to “negotiate” with Arabs who were poised to strike.
Clinton, taking a page out of the Jimmy Carter playbook, forced Ehud Barak to come to Camp David and give Arafat 99% of what he asked for - and Arafat turned him down, going home to set off a bloody intifada. All in an attempt to redeem his stained presidency with a Carteresque Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, and how did Clinton engineer those meetings? By sending his own political operatives into Israel to interfere in their elections to get Barsk elected. Once all this became clear, Israel threw out Barsk and brought in Ariel Sharon.
Obama started off his first term by giving his very first presser to Al Jazeera, made Netanyahu use the White House back door when he came to visit, made a deal with Iran giving them billions in currency that he admitted he knew would be used in terrorism and gave the mullahs a glide path to a gradual anti-Israel nuke.
And who negotiated that deal for Obama? Joe Biden who immediately began to suck up by reinstating the deal with Iran that Trump wisely pulled out of and agreed to lighten sanctions, all without any action by Iran who continues their slow walk to nuclear weapons as the mullahs laugh in his face and refuse to accept his surrender to them. And then he agrees to send Hamas nearly a quarter billion in aid that Trump cut off because of continued terror and you wonder why rockets fly?
And your talk about the Israeli behavior in East Jerusalem isn’t spot on either and you are too smart to play the Biden deer in the headlights look to not know you are not giving the whole or true story. You leave out that the current issues in East Jerusalem that are causing all hub bub are about Jews seeking to reclaim real estate that they and their families owned for 150 years or so before the 1948 war. That Jordan took it from them and kicked them out and registered the property in the names of Arabs. And that after recovering Jerusalem in 1967, the evicted Jews began legal proceedings to recover what was taken from them. That is what this is all about - people seeking to secure their rights to property in a court of law.
James Baker once said of Israel that the GOP shouldn’t spend too much energy supporting Israel because no matter how much Republicans support them they always voted against them.
And he was right. Nixon saved Israel in 1973 - after he had faced the electorate for the last time even after not receiving much of their support. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, cut off aid to the Palestinians, recognized Israeli ownership of the Golan, and brokered relations with 4 Arab countries that had refused to recognize Israel as a country since 1948. And if you take away the ultra Orthodox vote, assimilated American Jews barely voted for him.
And the Palestinians? They have been bloodthirsty for years. They almost single handedly defined modern terrorism. Airplane hijackings, airplane and bus bombs, Munich and all the rest. They store and shoot rockets in neighborhoods hoping that they will attract retailiation that will give them sympathetic pictures of dead children and hospital patients. Israel defends itself with force, they don’t initiate force.
Wow. A lot to unpack and several lifetimes of grievances but hey - that is your right. You're characterization of Truman is chirlish baby shit talk. Any racialist can cherry pick Truman's habit of speaking freely and doing so as a liberal of his day - but he still integrated the military and that was far more vital that Jackie Robinson or Branch Rickey - who besides SNICK and MLK seem to have been the only instrumental institutions to try and fight endemic racism.
There is no Israel without Truman - and no president ever paid as dear a price for supporting Jews - so you can just take the quotes and shove em up your ass Rick. You are bastardizing history and I won't stand by for it. No American - any American - did more for the Jewish people and the Jewish state - so fuck you.
I love the Jewish people but often hear this kind lying shit. Not everyone is a history clueless dope incapable of judging these important figures with in the context of their own time....
With the length of you're many complaints its amazing you get out of bed in the morning - or more to the point - why do you? Just to add one more inane complaint to the list you have from here to the moon.
I watched a documentary on civil rights recently (if I could remember its name I’d have mentioned it) and the background to Truman’s integrating the armed forces had much to do with trying to avoid another nationwide Pullman strike. Most people act out of mixed motives and politicians theme to act out of mixed political interests. So it’s possible that the threat from A. Phillip Randolph and others did push Truman.
As to Truman making the US the first to recognize Israel (just beating out the Soviet Union), again mixed motives. Truman, as we all know, had a very uphill battle for re-election in 1948 and NY had the largest number of electoral college votes. It also had a very politically active Newish population that Truman needed to keep onside if he was to have any hope to win. So his decision was swayed likely more by electoral considerations than by his former partner’s famous White House visit or some general love of Israel. This also explains something I wondered about: after recognizing Israel, the US implemented an arms embargo on Israel and refused to assist in any real sense until after the Six Day War. Oddly from today’s perspective, France was Israel’s major supporter, followed by the UK.
So, it may just be that the memory of Truman as a huge supporter of Israel and the Jews is a sentimental wish fulfilling but essentially inaccurate memory on par perhaps with the one that finds Britain helping birth the Jewish state when the reality was it more often violated its obligations under the Mandate toward the Jews than adhered to them. Memory can play tricks ... and I still can’t remember the name of that documentary.
Abject nonsense Knapp - propagandizing from the school of I.F Stone & Howard Zinn....
You have a mentally challenged view of history - aka - learning disabled whose brain chemistry has sentenced him to a 12 yr-olds version of epic events.
France as a champion - but the US as the specter of self-interest? Charlie de Gaulle had even more of a dispassionate view of cultures and peoples other than Gaul and a driven pathology than anything Nixon did before or after the 6 days war.
Your grand 'sweep' over the entire 20th century as it pertains to Palestine and Israel is like some paint by numbers kiddie place mat at IHOP dude...get real.
Not one mention beyond a psycho like de Gaulle of a single significant figure in the entire non-sensical dismissive take on why Truman was just this oaf from Independence who got lucky and didn't have a clue.
These stupid remarks were common 'conventional wisdom' about Truman by historians (most of whom where Camelot afficionados - hence Kennedy hagiographers) who until Nixon - and the time necessary to reveal his importance - that ranking rose to where it is now - among the most prominence of all modern Presidents.
American Jewry know the importance - and that was and remains enough to call out dopes like you C.K.
Sorry the facts so disturbed you. In the Six Day War, the IAF jet fighters were of overwhelmingly French manufacture while the IDF main battle tank was British. Only after that war, de Gaulle cut off future arms shipments to Israel as, in part, “punishment” for ignoring his warning not to attack preemptively. Israel did successfully “liberate” some small ships from the French port of Cherbourg it had bought and that France tried to embargo. De Gaulle also gave a speech that was seen as antisemitic but by then he had already decided on a more pro-Arab stance. It is perhaps related that the US stepped in at this point and became Israel’s main arms supplier.
The through line is that no country acts on the international stage for sentimental reasons. When a nation sees that supporting Israel is in their national interests, they support it. When it’s no longer the case, then they don’t.
Beyond that, I won’t bother responding in kind to your invective, as it’s a pointless exercise.
Nixon was crucified on much worse because he was under the delusion that what he said would be his - on tape -for his pick of historian to scrub and rinse and spin just has it had always been AND WAS FOR KENNEDY AND LBJ...AND EVERY OTHER PROGRESSIVE RIGHT UP TO THE CRIMINAL CRIME FAMILIES OBAMA AND BIDEN...
Just on the context Rick...when he wrote what he said - often decades earlier - WHEN THE ENGRAINED ANTI-SEMITISM WAS AS DEEP AS RACIAL EMNITY - and yet I argue -despite his willingness to spout off just as so many felt - HE MADE A DIFFERENCE BECAUSE HE MADE THE HARD POLITICAL CHOICES...
A hack like you will never give him that. So What? History is there for anyone to see regardless of the thin-skinned whinny bitching you indulge in.
Nixon often was a bigoted ass [- but you know what HE GOT BUSSING DONE DUDE - AND SUFFERED A SHITSTORM FOR IT - and he did more for black families than anything LBJ did by way of Great Society programing - unless you gage it by crony capitialism and the monies thrown down a rat hole to a few venders on Vista or hairdressing schools and the like...Same with Dept of Interior and the EPA....
There will be well orchestrated and choreographed campaign, full of "facts" and lies, against you even in this enlightened group of readers.
Always the same -- for 70+ years.
Let's remember -- a portion of the annual huge "foreign assistance to Israel" is always returned to pockets of US politicians. Therefore, we might absolutely hate anything - Iranian whose democratically elected secular government and US-educated economist President we over-through decades ago -- still very fresh memory of every Iranian.
Nothing but rivers of blood and suffering of millions that the coming avalanche of "criticism" will try to whitewash
This is something those of us who don't know what to believe or what is true really need. Look, I lived in Israel in the 90's and I am still confused. You and Bari seem to have a very different understanding of the facts. I respect and trust both of you so I, for one, would be beyond grateful to hear/read a conversation between the two of you!
Mark, you are just parroting left wing talking points to deflect from the meat of Glenn's article showing this behavior is coming from the left, not the right.
What you should be asking is why engage left wing DNC voters who support Louis Farrakhan or Ilhan Omar and their repeated anti-semitic behavior and speech? Clearly these people have proven they are racists and anti-semites.
Even the SPLC labels Farrakhan a hate criminal but we have yet to see a single DNC politician denounce him and the nation.
I don't think I parroted anything. I challenged Glenn to reflect on his obvious anti Israel and pro Palestinian bias in the context of an article that appeared in NRO today. I fully support Glenn's engagement with MAGA Israel supporters but think Bari Weiss would make a really provocative conversation partner on this subject. Bari is neither MAGA nor a left wing version of MAGA. She is a vocal and well informed supporter of Israel and on the front lines of fighting against antisemitism.
I agree with your comments about DNC voters supporting Farrakhan and the squad and I wish Glenn would forcefully object to these folks.
I think we are on the same wavelength, but maybe not.
I tire of you and other posters constantly making the comment section about right wingers when the articles are about the left, the DNC and the media, almost exclusively.
Its the same fucking bullshit tactic of the groups I just mentioned. To associate and deflect away from the actual conversation which is important and damaging to the DNC coalition.
Let me summarize:
Stop mentioning Bari Weiss, stop mentioning right wing, stop mentioning MAGA and lets get back to the article which was about AOC and how the DNC leadership is responsible for the very things their members are complaining about in regards to Israel, and we can stop deflecting, and narrative changing from that.
The Mullahs running Iran can publicly call for the murder of all the Jews of Israel and none of you limp dicks patting yourselves on the back for your online warrior status would make a whimper.
Those supporting Israel don’t murder dissenters. That’s why you lick dookie covered hairy Imam butt cheeks.
An intellectual, hahahahaha! You fancy yourself an intellectual that is just too far by the racist rhetoric.
I don’t care how many of you posturing limp dicked ‘tards attempt to label me, the truth is Islamic countries are lynching homos to the glory of their sky Gawd daily. I detest that.
I will never pretend Islam has created equally productive societies with civil rights for their people until there actually is a tolerant Islamic society.
I am not going to engage in Iran discussions.
Like Sarsour says, you could get zero per cent interest on your credit cards. I could get hung from a crane.
You are so funny. It gave me a good belly laugh today - and I needed humor today watching Zionist Isreal again follow their God's orders and murder their enemies. After all your God is a mass murderer supreme. Look at how many times your God engaged in mass murder to cleanse the Earth - of Jewish people who sinned against their God. No thanks. You offer me nothing but a possibility that you will kneel and do as you describe. You must really enjoy that kind of sex. That is ok; this is America and behind closed doors you can enjoy the kind of sex that you enjoy. Thanks for the good laugh - honestly, I needed it.
'But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone. I'm more than willing to engage critics -- as I said, I'm talking to a couple right-wing MAGA Israel supporters to have on to explore these questions -- but to me, the value of this independent platform is not that I am a puppet for anyone side or faction but will also endeavor to tell you what I think and see, and I've always had a readership that could tolerate that kind of dissent and divergence from their strongly held views because they know I come by mine honestly and with an attempt to be scrupulous with the facts.'
We are 98% on opposite sides but that doesn't affect looking forward to the challenge...We all appreciate you skill and dedication - thanks again Glenn and keep up the outstanding fact based Journo...
BTW, my dentist is an Indian from Uganda. Uganda was to be "Israel" in case that colonization of Palestine fails. You probably know that -- one must admire the strength of Zionist vision for a Jewish state.
- Spoke in condescending tones and strawman arguments about the "Zionist" state.
- Accused Israel of building a wall to separate Palestinian children from Israel children instead of protecting them from the numerous rockets/mortar/knife/suicide attacks
Thats just in the last 30 minutes.
Given this informaiton, I'm pretty sure you can be found standing next to David Duke on weekends all garbed in the same clothing.
Don't bother responding, I have no further time for racist pieces of shit.
It was popularly called the Uganda option but the country that was in fact meant was today’s Kenya. That option was a non-starter and rejected outright because there was no Jewish connection to that African land and the only objective that made sense was the restoration of the Jewish people to their historical homeland - which was what eventually happened.
"It'd be easier for me to just not write about this. But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone."
FWIW, I'm glad you stand for what you believe it, and more importantly, you don't censor yourself. I don't agree with you on this one. I appreciate the concept of getting out of the corpo-militaristic hegemony it seems like the US has fallen into (and has been since Eisenhower's warning...) - in this case, Israel is a little democracy beset by a lot of enemies - though Trump's foreign policy has started to ease that burden a bit.
Having said that, you no doubt will lose some fair weather readers, but I think your more intelligent ones will appreciate your stand for honest journalism, even if your personal opinions make a showing now and then.
Here's a MAGA opinion: Israel/Palestine ought to be treated the same as any other international conflict of similar magnitude. I'd prefer to see less of our dollars spent there. That's all.
And, the obligatory thanks for what you do. Deeply appreciated.
Glenn, I agree that the situation in Gaza miserable for the average Palestinian, but what do you suppose would happen to the Jews if the Palestinians were to prevail in a military conflict with Israel?
If the Palestinians gained the upper hand, I'm fairly certain (based on what Palestinian leaders have said in the past) that they would annihilate Israel and slaughter the Jews. The only thing stopping them is the fact that Israel dominates them militarily.
There's room to criticize Israel, but let's not kid ourselves, Israel treats the Palestinians better than the Palestinians would treat the Jews if Israel's military advantage were reversed.
If the Palestinians were to prevail, the human rights abuses they would perpetrate against the Jews would dwarf any mistreatment the Palestinians are enduring at the hands of Israel today.
Israel is the lesser of two evils. I would prefer it if the United States stayed out of the middle east entirely, but if we're going to get involved and support one faction or the other, Israel is more deserving of our support.
I see your point. Perhaps using gas chambers would speed up getting rid of Palestinians. Noble thought also -- GG as Jewish should be ashamed that he doesn't think as you... I see - you are such a "decent" and compassionate human being
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
Carol, hundreds of missile fired into residential neighborhoods may well lead to much more than a last gap for Netanyahu. Events may well strengthen Likud and Netanyahu.
Yeah...Netanyahu is really Hamas...and he's sending thousands of rockets from Gaza...Hamas and Netanyahus govt faction are one...what??? Boi check ur brain it's on the floor next to you
"I'm well-aware that a sizable chunk of my readership here -- perhaps the majority -- disagrees with my views on Israel and Palestine (though my views are consistent with my broader anti-militarism/anti-imperialism stand)." I agree with your astute appraisal of AOC. However, I think you might do well to reconsider your broader stance which seems a bit idealistic--although as with so many others here, I appreciate the debate. Sadly, we do not live in a world where we can be without boarders or a strong military. I have been to Israel (a bigger topic) and I just spent the last almost three years living in Egypt. As a child of ten my family was traveling the world in a bright red VW van with a big USA sticker on it when we just happened to find ourselves in Cairo days before the 6 Day War. I saw with my own eyes the hatred and the screams to annihilate Israel, at the same time screaming Israel does not exist. We ended up escaping out of Syria into Turkey right before the borders were closed. I am a writer on Substack and will be publishing a piece about this and the broader implications for today, on Friday. The Palestinians are used as pawns by their own leaders, Hamas, who refuse the first step toward the negotiating table: to acknowledge Israel exists. Even the Arab States have grown weary of this, as well as Hamas' alignment with Iran, which is why Trump was able to make his historic peace deal. And it truly was historic, sadly not given the credit it deserved. And now, here we are, not long into Biden's administration and the world has become ever more unstable on many fronts. The fact is, Israel is a tiny country surrounded by hungry wolves who hate it with a hatred beyond reason. When Israel is threatened it must hit back tenfold. Any sign of weakness and it will be devoured. This is an unfortunate human condition and we might wonder why humans do this to one another in the first place. That is a bigger question. But, although I see the tragedy of the Palestinian people, I must stand with Israel. My recent time in Egypt was illuminating--won't go into more detail here. But honestly, I would much rather live under any Israeli leader than Hamas.
I would like to say, good luck with your article, but I for one will not read it, since it is quite obvious in what you have written here you are coming from a highly biased position. However I do hope you mention the disproportionate death rates among Israeli's and those of the Palestinian people through their years of conflict, as well as the destruction and theft of Palestinian lands. Not unusual since Israel has a strong military, while the Palestinians have none. For a tiny country surrounded by wolves they have killed a lot of people, and grabbed a lot of land and resources in the process, with almost total support from the US. I do hope you will mention in the latest cycle of bloodshed it began with the Israeli government's plans to evict Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, to make way for Israeli settlers which is against international law, and in by defending what is there's they have been assaulted brutally. Good luck.
Understood but please respond to my earlier query re this article by Eliot Abrams in NRO today. I can live with your bias but please don't ignore facts.
Eliot Abrams is a dogmatic neocon and I know full well what his views are on Israel and Gaza. I'll read the article but, to be honest, I'm more interested in engaging with less pro-war doctrinal Israel supporters than the Bill Kristols and David Frums of the world. The faction on the right that interests me more is the America First/MAGA faction. Many are not on board with pro-Israel dogma but some are. Those are the people I'm interested in engaging.
If the DNC would condemn Louis Farrakhan and the nation for their anti-semitic views, it would go a long way to stopping the growing spread of anti-semitism in the inner cities. Here is just this week's anti-semitic behavior from the african-american/muslim community.
At some point the DNC should be willing to condemn their own constituents for their anti-semitic behavior, but I wont hold my breath. They will just yell more about how Donald Trump is a white supremacist (he was arguably the most pro-israel president ever) while ignoring the growing racism from within their own constituents.
If he was writing from 1980, he would have said Ronald Reagan, not Donald Trump. But Louis Farrakhan, now he's still a racist, isn't he. And anti-semitic? When did that start, a couple millenia ago?
Perhaps you didn't actually read my comment? Its mentioning how DNC leadership is unwilling to challenge the people pushing a lot of the anti-semitic behavior.
My comments and citations are 100% in line with the article. Thanks for playing.
Glenn, you're being kind to Abrahms)))). He tried to covered up the Salvadoran death squads trained under Reagan, was deeply involved in Iran Contra, lied and withheld information to Congress, and was a Trump appointee. Given that HRC is a big Abrahms fan tells me she doesn't find DT as foul as she says.
I’m MAGA so would love to hear it. We desperately want NO MORE WARS especially Middle East wars. Obviously there are differences of opinion in MAGA land too
It's not ad hominem. One of the problems with this Israel debate is that it's been the same arguments for decades without any movement. We all have to pick and choose which critiques and critics we think are worth. engaging, and all I'm saying is that I think it's less fruitful to engage with long-standing predictable neocon dogma than more evolving and flexible MAGA/America-First defenses of Israel.
Israel - pro-Democracy, pro-women's rights (They had a female leader in 1969 ffs), has already beaten the dogshit out of multiple of the muslim attackers in the 6 day war, is who I stand with.
I won't pretend they don't have skeletons in their closet like every country, but I gladly stand with those who stand for democracy and equal rights.
America doesn't stand with Israel because they are jews, we stand with them because they have been long supporters of democracy in a region known for tyranny, despotism and oppression.
I think you make a false assumption about a lot of MAGA/America-First thinkers. I voted Trump in 2016/2020, but mostly because he was the only choice available after the primaries. (Rubio in 2016 primaries, FWIW.)
I also don't think "Trumpism" or "MAGA" is really an articulated political philosophy. It certainly can't be summarized as simply as "America First, Everyone else go to hell". (Not what you've said, but I think you're implying that when you criticize a few billion sent to Israel in the face of the massive trillions that Biden wants to spend...)
Anyone can make the argument that, "how can we send billions to Israel when we have _________ here??" - which is a false dichotomy. It's loosely equivalent to the "If we can put a man on the moon, then we can _________."
Long and short, I think you can convince people that uncritically sending Israel money is one thing - but most Americans look at Israel first and foremost as a Democracy (which should be defended), and a big chunk also look at it in Biblical terms as the chosen state of God (again, ditto, as written in scripture).
Between those two bedrock beliefs, there's not a lot of daylight for "Hey, how come you can be MAGA/America first and still approve of sending money to Israel??"
Lastly, and quite obviously, getting back to Trumpism, if Trump had a foreign policy, it can be summarized as: Tariffs, "Getting even with China who has been abusing us", "Build a wall!" and "We love Israel, heck, half my family is jewish!"
Not trying to criticize any pro-anti-Trump person, just trying to elaborate on something Glenn has posted about repeatedly (and posted on Youtube).
Glenn, your without any movement isn’t really accurate. Israel picked up and left Gaza, bulldozing Jewish settlements. They gave back self rule to Gaza and the West Bank. They gave Arabs the franchise and they have members in the Knesset. They made peace with Egypt and Jordan and returned the Sinai - all of which got Anwar Sadat assassinated. Ehud Barak was willing to give Arafat 99% of what the Palestinians wanted and didn’t want to end up the same way, so he declined and touched off a bloody intifada.
The organizing documents of Palestinian organizations still call for the destruction of Israel. Guys like Sharon and Netanyahu have been PM for a long time because of the refusal of the Palestinians to make peace and their constant ability to find a hot blooded ally to seek to destroy them.
The Israeli-Palestinian troubles has a personal dimension for me. I am an American Jew. One of my cousins went to Israel and fell in love with a Palestinian Christian. They have been married for over 20 years (maybe over 30) and have several children. Hanna is a vocal critic of Israeli politics and a strong advocate for Palestinian rights. I disagree with many of his views, but he is honest.
So I have to view Israel and its policies with a critical eye.
OK, but I just read it and I think it added something to my understanding. I have very few firm opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don't even have a strong opinion on this particular property dispute after reading Abrams' presumably-best-foot-forward description of it. But I am now strongly of the opinion that MSM describing this particular dispute as being over the eviction of Palestinians to make room for a "Jewish settlement" is pretty misleading. There is no way to defend this characterization:
This latest violence began last week, after Israeli police violently clamped down on protesters who were demonstrating against the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlers.
Technically, many of them are, but their reasons for it are different from the neocons: Many of them want to bring the second coming of Christ which will bring about the rapture and wipe out the nonbelievers (including the Jews), and they see the State of Israel as the key to achieving that.
This is such a hoary smear. I have heard smug, ignorant (smugnorant, if you will) progressives make this claim for years. I have literally never met an American who supports Israel for this reason. In a country of $350MM+, I am sure you can find someone this is a description of, but if you poll 1,000 American supporters of Israel, you won't find two people holding this view. If you do any research at all on this topic you will quickly discover that a number of sociological studies demonstrate that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of a large number of ideological tests with predictive capability (i.e., you can predict a person's views on a wide range of unrelated issues).
If religious conviction by evangelicals was a driving explanation for conservative support for Israel, it sure fails to explain why over-whelming numbers of mainline protestant and non-religious conservatives also support Israel. It also fails to explain why that pattern holds across countries. Why is a French conservative or an English Tory - none of whom will be an evangelical - far more likely to favor the Israeli narrative? Why has support for Israel by Southern Baptists increased so dramatically between 1948 (when fewer than 50% favored Israel) and the present? Surely it isn't because they have gotten more religious (the opposite is true). A better explanation can be found in the old Walther Bagehot essay on crunchiness versus sogginess.
A much more compelling argument can be made that a logical fallacy of progressives drives their support of the Palestinian narrative - a reflexive belief that the successful are the aggressors, the downtrodden the virtuous. It's an ironic place Israeli Jews find themselves a century and a half since Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals.
As for your question, it's because they basically view Palestinians, and basically anyone who isn't from a majority white country, as uncivilized barbarians.
And, maybe this will surprise you, but it's probably because many liberals and leftists in both Israel and the US view the Israeli government under Netanyahu and the Likud party as turning into a borderline Judeo-fascist government that seeks to throw away democracy and make Israel an explicitly Jewish state, where Arabs are 2nd class citizens; going against the founding Zionists wishes for Israel to be both Jewish and Democratic in character.
I would guess that MAGA types are not so keen to support Israel materially, but would also not criticize Israel for using maximum force in Palestine. They liked Trump because he was open about his lack of moral hangups.
Almost. They liked Trump because he was open and honest. You'll find one of the people who put personality in front of policy (i.e. the ones with "moral hangups") in the mirror.
This is such an unhinged racist rant. You should figure out why you are so full of hatred and racism. You sound exactly like a Nazi. You are the modern day equivalent or a Jewish Nazi and your call for genocide is truly disgusting. How dare you claim there is no such thing as Palestinians. GTFO you racist pos
I have heard it before only saying the peoples calling themselves Palestinians are Jordanians.
There is no doubt the Muslim countries are oppressive and do not observe human rights.
They unapologetically call for a Juden free zone. How they get there frequently involves the proposed murder of all the Jews. That prolly gets survivors of the Holocaust who took a desert deal and built upon it a bit hot under the collar.
Just saying I never hear ‘tard outrage like this when the religous nutjobs leading Arab countries in the region unapologetically call for the murder of the Jews.
There is nothing the New Democrats oppose more than success. One must pretend to be powerless victims.
Israel is based on the premise of excluding non-Jews from all political rights, and is currently carrying out a massacre. You are defending the Israeli state which is currently murdering children and leveling apartment buildings. You are a monster. Your post is full of the same kind of hatred you claim others have. Instead of posting this nonsense, you should think about why you are such a terrible person with so much hatred in your heart.
You are based on the premise of antisemitism. You are a monster. You gleefully eat up propaganda about Israel and call yourself a social justice activist as thousands of rockets are shot towards residential areas in Israel, killing Jews and Arabs alike. It doesn't take long to discover the truth about what's going on right now in israel but you rather not see the truth. Had you been alive in the 1930s you would have eaten up the propaganda as well. Every single progressive who calls for the destruction of the "occupation" is the reincarnate of Nazis.
Roland, I did not observe Glenn was a lover of arabs and hater of jews in this article. Glenn is a believer in human rights, and has much compassion and empathy. There is nothing wrong with that. I personally am pro-Israel's right to defend themselves, due to extensive study of the holocaust and WWII that I did as a youth. The Jews in my opinion had a right to defend their right to life, and to establish a nation state from which to defend their right to life. I suppose you could consider the Palestinians have a right to try to regain territory they consider theirs, but the truth is, tribes have been invading others territory, migrating out of territories, and going extinct for the entire course of the history of this planet - look at the Anasazi Indians in Utah. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a microcosm to the macrocosms of tribal conflicts over the course of the history of planet earth. I hope the Israeli's win. But what pissed me off the most in this article of Glenn's, is the amount of money the US ships to Israel every year. I am tired of it and all other ridiculous sums of foreign aid going to other countries. The American Taxpayer is getting bled dry while multiple countries around the world suck with vampire teeth at the teat of the great American taxpayer. It needs to end.
Israel gets that money due to the magnitude of the conflict. However, Biden pursuing a deal with Iran to tilt the balance of power towards Iran will only make Israel more dependent on that aid. A weak Iran and a powerful Saudi/Israel/Turkey etc alliance will lead to more stability and less aid necessary.
For the love of God, please don't. That would turn it into Reddit. There are plenty of brilliant folks on here willing to call out stupidity, but let's hear those stupid opinions and the arguments against them. A downvote button would turn it into an echo chamber.
unfortunately you don't see the whole picture when there are many upvotes, but potentially even more downvoters that couldn't register their displeasure. All you'll see are upvotes.
What a moronic comment! It's pretty obvious who the Zionist "terrorists, murderers, thieves and crooks" are here! It's Palestine, not Israel that's been on the land in the region for generations. The Zionist project -- tying itself to a settler state attached to land already inhabited by a civilized people and having to expel hundreds of thousands to form the state (continuing to "war on") and occupy the rest of the area to "control" and oppress the remaining inhabitants -- is fated to fail . . . unless and until the Israelis can eliminate every last Palestinian. Declaring Israel a "Jewish state" was an extraordinary mistake setting up endless conflict. In the end . . . a one-state solution will have to accommodate both Jews and Palestinians -- and NEITHER can think they will control the "land" for themselves, no matter what the birth rates are, etc. Religion will have to be "set aside" as a controlling factor, burying the hatchet and "getting over" the horrifying brutality that Israelis have visited on the Palestinians will take time . . . but this is the only humane way forward. Otherwise the horrors and bloodshed will continue, quite possibly sparking new wars in the region.
"Before you go ape shit on the Jews living and defending themselves in the ancient land of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital for over 3000 yrs."
Was your reliable source for that the bible? More reliable sources agree that the year was 1948.
Jews have been living in Palestine forever. But creating a state where they were then allowed to steal property from Arabs is a crime against humanity.
And our serville butt-kissing of Israel is why Arabs fly planes into our buildings.
History, Roland? Please explain why Himmler himself, complete with Mercedes touring cars, escorted Jewish families "that matter" across the border into Switzerland and onto Palestine. If we want to get into eye witness history, some of which can be verified on the Yad Vashem site, we can really take a ride.
Roland, which cesspool did you crawl out of you hateful filled Nazi. You scummy lot are thieving beggars who not only stole the land through violence but continue to steal it through ethnic cleansing, murder, false imprisonment and a justice system that only views one side. You have an apartheid system that even trumps that of South Africa in its racist hay days. Like your Israeli brethren you have no awareness of human rights or freedoms as you've been brought up in a society bereft of understanding or morale's with an education system that teaches hate for your neighbours. Sadly, someone like Hitler would be proud of your disgusting mentality!
Please ... stop with the racist / zionist bullshit and the illogical, sweeping generalizations and stereotyping and the lies. Believe what you like but please don't peddle this nonsense among rational adults... for they'll see you for what you are.
They are not all terrorists murderers and thieves. Most obviously are not, and want dignity for themselves and their people. However, a good number of them, especially the younger generation, are socialized into radical islam and terrorism. And their leaders are corrupt and Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations. THIS is a fact. The Israel Arabs and Druze have less of this issue, although a good number of Mosques in Israel probably preach death to the Jews to Israel Arab citizens. What you wrote after that is correct. A Palestinian state would have been devastating for the Jews post WW2.
If the Palestinians win this war and subsume Jewish Israel into yet another shining society on a hill run by Muslims in the Middle East, do you think that will advance Justice? Human rights in the area?
I think the war will continue until Palestine controls Israel completely, and Israel won't let that happen and will always protect its citizens. But no, I'd rather Israel remain Jewish so I can continue to visit it, because it is my second home, and the place I feel the most free, and if it turned into a Muslim state I would no longer be allowed in.
To put it mildly, Pappe is a very controversial figure. This link - in response to a question of Pappe’s trustworthiness- gives, I think a fair appraisal of the back and forth between Pappe and Morris (one of the founders of revisionist Israeli history). You can draw your own conclusions.
As it turns out, Israel is not only an asset to the United States, it is an asset whose value is becoming more apparent to its neighboring Arab countries. All the fear mongering about war breaking out if the US moved its embassy proved to be wrong, as did the prophecies of doom should the US recognize Israeli annexation of the Golan. So maybe the premise of the anti-Israel voices is mistaken altogether. It is at least a possibility worth examining.
As to what is happening at the moment in Israel, what we see is an intra-Palestinian power play (by canceling elections whose outcome he could no longer control, Abbas deprived Hamas of its chance to take over the PA - something that it will not allow without a fight). The background to all this is, of course, Israel and the well-worn slogans about who best protects Palestinian rights.
Even the housing dispute that supposedly lies at the bottom of this outbreak of violence is an excuse. Back in 1982, the tenants agreed that their leases (granted under Jordanian law) required the payment of rent to the identified landlords. An agreement the tenants promptly ignored. It tells you something of the Israeli legal system that nearly four decades later is the case approaching a resolution. When our own rent moratorium ends, try using the same arguments these tenants have and see how long it takes before a US court grants an order of eviction.
Even here, the legal background is revealing on how Israel operates. After Jordan expelled all Jews from the lands of the former Mandate for Palestine that it conquered in 1948-49, it passed a law that allowed it to take possession of all Jewish properties. Some it took by eminent domain and retained control, others it gave ownership to third parties and still others it leased only. When Israel took control in 1967, it stepped into Jordan’s shoes by keeping the eminent domain seizures for public purposes intact (meaning it did not return those properties to their original Jewish owners). Israel also recognized the legal validity of the transfers of ownership (in the face of the evidently discriminatory Jordanian law that specifically prohibited Jewish - not simply Israeli - ownership). Only as to the leased properties did Israel relinquish the right it acquired from Jordan and reverted ownership to the original Jewish owners.
For those wondering why Israel does not afford displaced Palestinians the same rights to recover their properties lost in 1948, the reason is pretty straightforward. Not only are they non-citizens but their rights were essentially forfeited by having taken up arms or supported those Arab armies that sought to destroy Israel. In a sense, they find themselves in the same situation as do the descendants of those ethnic Germans who fled the advancing Allied armies or were expelled after WWII from anywhere between the Sudetenland to the former Soviet Union.
As to AOC in particular, Greenwald is correct that she aims her ire carefully. But there is a reason. She has learned from experience. When she went after Pelosi after the election, she somehow failed to get the committee postings she most wanted. Funny that.
Thinking now. I understand that it’s suicide for israel to accept Palestinian right of return in israel proper. They therefore technically don’t respect the ownership rights of Arabs who owned property in Israel , and they allow Jewish non owners to use the property.
Ok they maybe have no choice, suicide is not a choice.
They should at least make it equitable by allowing Arab non owners to continue living and using property in Palestine proper. They shouldn’t evict these tenants.
You might also notice that no one is denying the sequence of these facts. As they are inconvenient to the “land grab” narrative and “Occupation” paradigm, they are ignored - and that should be a tell.
“ Not only are they non-citizens but their rights were essentially forfeited by having taken up arms or supported those Arab armies that sought to destroy Israel.”
A- How are they non-citizens?
B- We are to assume that the vast majority of Arabs in the mandated Israel, willingly took up arms or actively supported the enemy effort against the legitimate UN mandated government.
C- They were treasonous against the UN mandated government, hmmm.
D- Is this government entitled to punish these treasonous inhabitants for their treason, with forfeiture of property? Hmmm.
A. It might appear a bit technical but here goes: you can only be a citizen of a state and Mandatory Palestine was not a state. The Ottomans never claimed the residents of its former territory as citizens (well, subjects but same thing) after WWI either, mostly because they had relinquished their sovereignty in the later peace treaty. Those who resided in Mandatory Palestine were just that: residents, not citizens.
The first state to arise on the original Mandate territory was the Emirate of Transjordan in 1946 - whose splitting off in 1923 was objected to as illegal by the League of Nations Mandate Commission but as it had no enforcement power, the British did what they did. As to the other 22%, Israel declared its independence and became the only nation state there. Why the Arabs never declared a State of Palestine to at least muddy the waters is a separate question - but as we know from the reality of 1948-67, the creation of such an Arab state was not in the cards, using the Palestinian question as a wedge against Israel and to distract their own people from their misrule was the order of the day. So, the choices were Israel or Jordan, and only today’s Israeli Arabs chose Israel. Hence, the Palestinians are non-citizens.
B. If I understand you correctly, between the UN’s non-binding partition résolution in November 1947 (which the Arabs unanimously rejected) and Britain’s May 1948 withdrawal, it was the Palestinians who attacked the Jewish residents. After the British left, five Arab armies invaded. Whether the Palestinians constituted a “vast majority” or a significant one is probably unanswerable at this point. What we know is that most of the elite fled even before the British left, some Arab villages remained neutral and others either actively or passively supported the Arab armies. What is missing in most stories is that we in the West have imposed our categories on the Arabs. They did not organize themselves as a national group but by tribe and clan - so it is not very helpful to understanding the situation even to speak of the Palestine Arabs as some unified, homogeneous group.
C. If by UN Mandate government you mean Israel, I will just say that the UN in fact had not power under its Charter to act in any way that diminished the rights given the Jewish people by the League of Nations mandate. That’s in Article 80. That Arabs fought against Israel is clear. Treason is, again, a technical legal concept and as far as I am concerned, as they were never citizens who had sworn allegiance to Israel they cannot be guilty of the crime of treason.
As an unabashed Christian supporter of Israel - I am less concerned about these seemingly intractable historical issues - and - more in tune with Charles K. While I concede that the formerly strong Judeo/Christian ties are loosing as we have become a majority secular nation, the 'uniparty' response to Israel is one of the rarer instances of a unconcerned government is for the most part in tune with the vast majority of Americans who likewise support the Jewish State.
The modern independent Jewish state of Israel is a vital ally and an amazing HUMANE
Too many threads to pull on this sweater, ultimately spiritually discerned. In nutshell, I’m sad to see Glenn taken in by the Palestinian PR machine. It is a truly amazing juggernaut of half-truth, misinformation, and outright falsehood, but still, with Glenn’s skills. Start with Sarah and Hagar.
I’m sincerely curious if Glenn, being Jewish and all, (an assumption really, based on his last name?) is ready for another round of landless-hated-minority-in-host-nations experiment.
It’s a club you can’t opt out, as per the Nuremberg laws 1935, or per the general consensus of world society.
Is another round of ‘persecuted minority in host nations’, a question of survival, or not?
Why do you believe anything the Palestinian "Ministry of Health" reports? They lie about civilian deaths in order to inflame. Further, why should we care if Palestinians die after they attack Israeli cities? THEY don't care if they kill Israeli children. Sheesh.
Did you ever read how the current issue started? Maybe it's not a good idea to kick people out of their homes and attack their favorite mosque? Do some research before you spread moronic nonsense you uneducated scum. .
Another heartless scum, I can't comprehend how people like you can exist, just know that justice will come for all of us, one way or another. Also I am Armenian living in Los Angeles so I don't have beef in this game, just my consciousness.
The palestinians were rioting in the mosque and were using it to store weapons to attack police men. That is why they went into the mosque. The homes were illegally held, and were Jewish owned before Jordan took Jerusalem and the settlers were going through the legal system to get it back. However, I don't agree with their cause in this situation. As an outsider, maybe look into both sides of the conflict instead of an incredibly biased social media campaign to paint israel as a heartless aggressor.
You are lying little cunt. there is absolutely not proof of them having any weapons and yes they can through stones when they are attacked. The only one with weapons are Israelis. I will not even comment about housing BS. Israel is heartless aggressor and every Israeli should be ashamed of it, but why would they when they have scum like you defending them. I also will not be surprised if you are just all paid bots. This is text book ethnic cleansing and there will be price for it. Good news is that the world is starting to wake up and see Israel for what it is: heartless aggressors without remorse who are doing to Palestinians what was done to them.
Really. I suppose Armenians are to Turks what Palestinians are to Israelis?
I would think that past victims of genocide would be more sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. The world arranged for the Jews to have a nation on historical soil. The world is, and has been, ready to do the same for Palestinians, whereby they could receive even more foreign aid (especially from neighboring Israel) and/or kick out their "own" Jews and dis-allow Jewish immigration and settlements. They could be a right wealthy country by now. I hear they make excellent engineers. If only they would stop shooting big bullets into the air over Israel.
What about Turks? Turkey of today is similar to Israel, which is run by right wing degenerates too drunk on their power. I dislike the government, but not the people, if that is what you mean.
English is foreign language for me you retard which is more that I can say for cunts like you. Also I didn't graduate in USA, as such have critical thinking, which I am sure is not something that morons like you know about.
Maybe Israel should hand control of the Temple Mount to Egypt...or promise to give it to Saudi Arabia if they open diplomatic relations with Israel. The Palestinians should not be allowed to control the place and then use it as grounds for grievances against Israel.
Looks like the Biden administration is working hard to keep the gulf states from aligning with Israel. That would be beneficial for the entire region - use oil wealth to fund Israeli technical innovations to benefit all the people of the region...except those who make war (namely Iran and the Palestinians).
My state, Montana, hasn't had Republican control of both the legislature & the governorship in a long time. So far this year's legislature has outlawed the Department of Environmental Quality from measuring nitrogen & phosphorous levels in rivers & streams; outlawed hospitals from requiring employees to have COVID vaccines; and outlawed our college campuses from providing medical abortions for early-term pregnancies.
My daughter has advanced cancer & is in the hospital frequently. You bet I give a fuck that Republicans are in charge here. If you hang around left-wing Republicans that tell you Republican politicians are OK, you lack the ability to access the real world.
I hope your daughter makes a full recovery someday soon. You are absolutely right to care deeply about the politicians who have so much power to affect your life and well-being.
I'm curious: Is your daughter able to be vaccinated? And might you be able to request from your health-care provider to ensure only vaccinated staff are present at your daughter's hospital stays?
First of all her name is SANDY. Do you really think when she was tending bar she was called AOC. She doesn’t have enough intellect to market herself. Someone latched on to her and slid her up the slope. Second didn’t Israel win a war to gain its sovereignty and territory.
The Palestinians have chanted death to Israel no matter what like most terror groups in the Middle East. You could cave to all their demands and they would still want to club you to death
Israel took a shithole desert and turned it into the most productive per square mile of real estate in the world. The Palestinians what have they done? Wined and cried give me what you made.
It was never a shithole desert. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t justify stealing and displacing people. I’m sure I can think of something more productive to do with your house. Should I come and take it?
You're absolutely right. But the land was never the Palestinians. The Arabs and the Druze who did not leave during the war enjoy full rights as citizens. Jews have been forcibly removed from homes during peace time in order to placate Palestinians whose ultimate goal isn't peace but full control over Israel, a country which was NEVER theirs.
Your comment encapsulates very well the conceptual error (collectivism) that translates into bad policies.
The land, meaning the territory where Israel and Palestine exist, belongs to no single group of people. Mexico belongs to Mexicans, sure, but it also belongs to Americans and Europeans and Canadians and countless other nationalities who own properties in Mexico. If an American citizen gets thrown out of his property in Cabo on the basis that it’s not “his land” because of his nationality, that’s clearly a crime. If it’s a white Mexican, descendant of Europeans, gets dispossessed because he’s not a mestizo or indigenous Mexican who can trace his ancestry to the first inhabitants of the land now called Mexico, that would be a crime too.
The point is rights belong to individuals, not arbitrary group designations or countries. “Jews” don’t own Palestine. Some Jews owned some parts of Palestine and some Palestinians owned other parts of it at different times in history. Why does belonging to one of these groups imply a superior claim? There is no logical answer. This is why even the most ardent Israel supporters can’t answer what they plan to do with the millions of non-Jews “squatting” in “Jewish land” if they refuse to leave the only homeland they’ve ever known.
Yet without a land and an army, it’s back to the good old days of persecution murder and genocide. (NO reason at all to expect otherwise. Nothing’s changed)
This argument is something the Jews should listen too.
They shouldn’t risk another run. It didn’t work out to good the first time around.
You're right. That's why Arabs and Druze and other nationalities in Israel retain full rights as Israeli citizens, while Palestinian refugees don't from the start of this crisis, because of the war where a bunch of Arab countries decided to attack Israel based on the fact the it is a Jewish nation. Meanwhile, in Gaza, it is a crime to sell land to Jews. I agree that the plight of the Palestinians is not good, but their situation has been exacerbated by terrible, terrorist leadership, and messaging to children to hate israel, give up their lives to kill israelis, and to free Palestine from the river to the see. Don't forget that plenty of Jews there have lost their homes - many of them living there since the 1800s - and their homes have been given to Palestinians. I agree that rights belong to individuals, exactly. Israel has done dark stuff, sure, but no other country can claim that they've been encapsulated in such a conflict as theirs, yet have tried to stay as humanitarian as possible while also protecting their own citizens. Not a single country doesn't have blood on their hands. The conflict in the middle east does not fit a neat binary. It just doesn't. Israel fights for its existence amidst state sponsored terrorism in an unstable region marred by radicals and revolutions and terrorist regimes in nearly every country there. People are continuously turfed out of their homes throughout the region. That is not equivalent to the situation in North America, the examples you have brought up. Jews have been ethnically cleansed from over a hundred countries. I get why they're keen on keeping this one. No?
I see a bunch of non sequiturs here. One need not deny the injustices committed against Jews to point injustices committed by the Israeli government. Jewish suffering is no justification for systemic oppression against Palestinians. That no single country has a perfect record is no blank check for Israel to commit war crimes. Etc. Etc.
I am not against the existence of the state of Israel. I am for liberty and equality under the law. Everyone governed by Israel should have same rights. If Israel governs you, you should get citizenship. If Israel doesn't want to give Palestinians citizenship then it shouldn't rule over them via military occupation. It really is that simple.
Well, it was a malarial area that even the British had given up hopes of cleaning up. Not terribly surprisingly, early Jewish land purchases from absentee effendi who owned most of the private property (locals were often more tenant farmers than owners) overlap extremely closely with malarial areas.
But it was a Jew, Israel Klinger who came up with a plan to eradicate and was able to convince the skeptical British to allow the experiment. It succeeded and became the world standard in combatting the illness. His project’s success was due in no small part to the coordination between the Jews and Arabs with the British and foreign powers staying mostly out of the way.
The story behind this achievement is set out here, if anyone is interested in an example of what Jews and Arabs working together can achieve.
Thank you. I agree that Jews, Arabs (and Christians and everyone else) can work together in peace. Indeed this is what happened in Palestine throughout most of its history. Then something happened that codified the supremacy of one group over the others. A tragedy.
We are in general agreement - except for your penultimate sentence. There was no supremacy of one group over the other in the case of Israel. While it is the nationstate of the Jewish people, unlike every surrounding country in the region, Israel’s citizens enjoy equal rights - but that is not to say, as may be said of every Western democracy, that Israel has managed to achieve that equality and banished prejudice and bias from the human heart. This is an ongoing process for which there are no shortcuts. It may prove likely to be an unachievable goal - witness some of the vitriol in this thread - but it is still worth pursuing.
I don’t think anyone is asking Israelis to banish prejudice. Laws that don’t discriminate against non-Jews trying to return to their homeland, that give weight to ancestral claims by some but not others based on the group they belong to, irrespective of their own individual connection to the land, and the ability of millions to have equal rights and vote for the government that rules over them. This is ending apartheid and it’s not too much to ask.
Yup the same propaganda team that told us how South Africa was a wasteland before the S African whites took over. God-- you think they would come up with new lies.
Mark Twain wrote about that shithole desert more than a century ago. This is what he said about it: "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince… Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone… Palestine is desolate and unlovely. "
Oh geez my mother told me that in the 50s-- such old propaganda-- cringe worthy that you raise it. It is not true. Geez is everyone here posting from 1970? It is 2021
something that was true in 1950 does not stop being true just because 71 years has past. If you have other points to bring up, please do. Otherwise you are the one regurgitating propaganda and knee jerk responses
("gain" should be "keep." The U.N. created sovereign territory in '48. Btw, there WERE real jewish terrorists before that!)
You are wrong about her intellect: now that she IS the State, she knows EXACTLY which side her toast is buttered, and she is a genius in using her young constituents spread across the land.
AOC is a Barack Obama clone. Tell voters what they want to hear, do as your party funders demand, send Wall Street billionaires your time sheet, take their payola and retire from elected office a millionaire after enjoying the benefits your constituents paid for and were denied to them. Zip your wallets folks. The two party system is a scam.
Right. Let's blame Israel for attacks against it by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the islamist terrorists since 1949. Every single mohammedan country expelled all Jews and confiscated their property. Israel must now return the favor. You seem not to have noticed that five nations recently established full relations with Israel under Trump. Many more were set to follow, including the Saudis. But Xoe Bi-Den has put a stop to that by immediately surrendering to Iran and Turkey. He restored funding for Hamas and hezbollah. They know weakness when they see it. Do you seriously think these successive disasters, including Putin's attack on our energy infrastructure, are a coincidence? Yesterday the Bi-Den regime called the Russian cyber attack a "private sector" matter. Wake up.
Except that Israel is not returning the favor, it is following the law even when it may not advance the interests of its partisans. What we do see quite a bit of, however, is the projection onto Israel of what Arab states have in fact done (both to their Jewish communities, most of which no longer exist, or to their fellow citizens who differ only by ethnicity, creed or tribal allegiance) or what fantasists sitting on the sideline imagine Israel would do - thereby confusing their deeply held (perhaps even subconscious) antisemitic tropes with reality.
Precisely. I say send all the mohammedans to Gaza and seal the border. Period. The "Palestinians" are a fictional people. They are simply arabs who initially accepted Israel's offer of citizenship in the new nation while being told by their arab friends that Israel would be defeated by the combined "might" of the arab nations that attacked Israel as soon as it came into existence. They don't want peace, and never have.
Glenn, if you approach the propaganda coming from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority with the same skepticism you have for everything else you cover, perhaps you will change your mind. The real story, which others have written about, is that the return to the Obama foreign policy of supporting Iran financially and politically has destabilized the entire Middle East and precipitated the violence we have now. The story is not that US sends military aid to Israel which, by the way, must use it to purchase equipment from US companies. The story is that the US is supporting Iran and the Palestinian Authority, while Iran is supporting Hamas and Hezbollah with US and Chinese money. The Democrats talk about their love for Israel, but look at their actions, which undermines and destabilizes Israel at every turn. Why, why, why are you not skeptical about the lies they spin in the case of Israel? And at who really benefits?
Yes, Iran made Israel expand settlements and evict Palestinians from their homes. Palestinians were rolling over nicely until Israel-hating yet record breaking military aid package-signing Obama made a deal with Iranians. Makes sense.
Why can the Palestinians not coexist and sell their property to Jews? I mean, I know there are a lot of annoying Jewish people you don’t want as neighbors, but really you support the Middle East being a complete Juden free zone?
If the Palestinians win this war and subsume Jewish Israel into another center of enlightened Muslim leadership... will that really serve Justice in your mind?
It seems to me that you don't understand the basics of the situation.
There is no war in East Jerusalem. There's an occupation where the occupying force, against international law, applies its domestic laws on the local population. One of these laws says that Jews, by the fact that they are Jews, can evict people from their home (no payment) based on the fact that the tenants are not Jews. So you see, this has nothing to do with Palestinians being willing to coexist with Jews or sell them property, which is what they've done for millennia in Jerusalem.
Well. The other side has an argument also. It involves the history of East Jerusalem, the courts and an extended legal battle to regain previously stolen houses.
Now it could be you are telling the truth. Or it could be the other side is telling the truth.
Knowing a little something about Jordanian control of Jerusalem (even Christians weren’t allowed access to holy sites) - I give the integrity edge to Israel, which unlike Jordan is not merely expelling the other religions from the city but is trying to hash it all out one property at a time.
Yet no Palestinian can make that same claim in Israel. Palestinian deeds to property owned by their ancestors are worthless. Jewish deeds, however, are considered in court. Why? Because they are Jewish.
In other words, there's no way for a non-Jew to get a court to hear the point you are describing. That's apartheid in action.
Isn’t that part of the peace process, dealing with the right of return?
Israel WOULD be committing national suicide by allowing the right of return for all Palestinian families who lived there, you’re aware of that, right?
That doesn’t absolve them of land theft, you may argue.
Well, I find that the whole ‘Jewish’ thing within the world order and history, is an anomaly.
A nation living in someone else’s land oppressed, demonized, for millennia, culminating in the gas chambers, and then a new state for them.
Yup, the situation in the world order, based on 2000 years, is such that it is the right and equitable thing to do, to allow the Jews to have their own homeland and not be outnumbered.
It sounds somewhat racist. It doesn’t fit neatly into our ideas and ideals. Yet being persecuted and murdered shouldn’t fit into anyone’s ideals either.
Based on historical and current realities, it is most fair and equitable that Jews have a land FOR JEWS, in their ancestral homeland.
As I said, it’s not so palatable to our ‘refined’ sensibilities of equality and non -discrimination etc., to accept a Jewish State, but gas chambers are even less palatable.
"...I know there are a lot of annoying Jewish people you don’t want as neighbors..."
Couldn't stop laughing! It occurs to me that Jews have learned to be much more tolerant of their neighbors, these last couple millenia, than their neighbors have learned to be, what with that diaspora thing they got going on (Is THAT "empiring," too?).
It's a good thing (or too bad, depending on your opinion) that Jews don't all have, say, bright green skin. Then I could REALLY tell you about my obviously Jewish neighbors.
There are a few issues to unravel in this piece. The first is that there is a cabal of LEFT liberal interventionist warmongers and RIGHT militarist warmongers. Trump, by the way, was not either of those. He wanted us out of wars and stood by those principles, oddly, among all the other strange things he did. Liz Cheney's group and the leftwing warmongers from the Hillary/Biden group all hate Trump for opposing their constant drumbeat for more blood. The INTEL Community also hates Trump for the same reason.
I think you could also be more brave and call out this powerful cabal.
Last thing, I read on Twitter that you proclaim that Israel is the aggressor into Palestinian territory. You do realize that Palestinians have no territory, and no country. The reason I mention this is when you use Israel's incursion into Palestinian territory as justification that Israel is the aggressor and that the terrorists firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel are defending themselves against occupiers, you are on very shaking legal and moral ground. What you are saying in similar to saying that CHOP was being occupied by the police. There is a need to speak accurately and truthfully. And the Palestinian's, while seeking statehood, do not have it. They are in essence in protest against the existing governments of Israel and Egypt who have traditionally controlled that territory. Taken from that viewpoint, clearly, Israel being under siege from rocket fire has the right to defend itself. If CHOP started firing rockets at surrounding neighborhoods, I would want the police in there in 20 minutes breaking that up.
I would add one other observation about the Israel situation. One of the greatest PR victories was inverting the David and Goliath paradigm by replacing the Arab war on Israel with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if you take an even larger framing, something interesting happens and some inconvenient questions emerge.
In the post-WWI territorial settlement in the Middle East, the Arabs now rule about 99.75% of the former Ottoman holdings. The remaining 0.25% is pre-1967 Israel and the balance of the former Mandate territories. In what universe can the Arabs complain legitimately of some cosmic unfairness over this?
The other issue that immediately comes to mind is why is it just to deliver the lands liberated from one imperial power (the Ottomans) back into the hands of the imperial power the Ottomans Turks had replaced, namely the Arabs? Put a bit differently, why were the Jewish people the only indigenous group to be granted self-determination by the world community after WWI?
Raising those matters should refocus the overall discussion, but as most people are far too invested in their emotional attachments of the moment, rest assured this perspective will gain zero traction.
I know a person who immigrated here from Iran when the theocracy took over. He is from mixed religion parents and would have been put to death if he stayed. He sympathized with the Palestinian people and did not take sides against Israel as the Baha’i temple is located in Israel, and they freely worship as do Muslims. Muslims can own land and hold political office in Israel. I doubt that the inverse is true in the Hamas-held Palestinian territories.
I often think how we would react if San Diego was under a rocket attack from the Baja peninsula. I imagine we’d be in there pronto civilian casualties be damned. On a side note, as long as we were stealing huge swaths of territory WHY DIDNT WE TAKE THE BAJA PENINSULA TOO!! Missed opportunity!!
Once you learn to ignore the partisan rhetoric and then understand that there isn't an ounce of integrity anywhere in politics, particularly at the federal level, it all starts to make sense.
Cut the crap. There is no such a thing as a Palestinian. They’re all Arabs. Terrorists, murderers, thieves and crooks. Fatah and Hamas get hundreds of millions in funding from the Arab oil cartel, The EU, and the US. Lines the pickets of the thieving so called leadership. Arab murder of Jews goes way back before there ever was an Israel. Their favorite slogan “ichbad al yahood “ ( slaughter the Jews) has been chanted since forever. Haj Amin al Husseiny the Mufty of Jerusalem went to Hitler to make a deal when Hitler conquers Egypt and British mandated Palestine he should ship all the Jews to the death camps. Before you go ape shit on the Jews living and defending themselves in the ancient land of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital for over 3000 yrs. it would behoove you Glen to learn some history (ancient annd modern) so that you could put you love of the Arabs and hatred of the Jews living the modern land of Israel intoroper context. Let me start you off; The land of Israel for the people of Israel.
A few points:
1) The pro-Israel position is the overwhelming, dominant position of the establishment wings of both political parties and the mainstream media. I know a lot of people on the right like to think that the media and Dems are anti-Israel but it's 100% false. Every president after Jimmy Carter has been steadfastly pro-Israel. The president who most challenged that was George HW Bush, with James Baker. Even Bush 43 was more even-handed than Clinton, Obama and Biden (the sole exception was Obama's abstention on the UN Resolution as punishment for Bibi's openly campaigning against him, and most of his aides were vehemently opposed to this). Few political figures in the US are more pro-Israel than Biden and Hillary. AIPAC loves Dems and the GOP equally. There is no daylight between them (the only ones questioning the orthodoxy are the Squad on the left and the Ron/Rand Paul faction on the right).
2) The media is no different. At CNN, several commentators have been fired for being anti-Israel (Marc Lamont Hill, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr) while none has been for being too pro-Israel. So this view is overwhelmingly the dominant and almost all US discourse. And every security state agency -- the NSA/CIA/DoD -- is even more pro-Israel than they.
3) I'm well-aware that a sizable chunk of my readership here -- perhaps the majority -- disagrees with my views on Israel and Palestine (though my views are consistent with my broader anti-militarism/anti-imperialism stand). It'd be easier for me to just not write about this. But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone. I'm more than willing to engage critics -- as I said, I'm talking to a couple right-wing MAGA Israel supporters to have on to explore these questions -- but to me, the value of this independent platform is not that I am a puppet for anyone side or faction but will also endeavor to tell you what I think and see, and I've always had a readership that could tolerate that kind of dissent and divergence from their strongly held views because they know I come by mine honestly and with an attempt to be scrupulous with the facts.
I get that it'd be way easier for me to just avoid this topic altogether, just to avoid reader dissension. But I wouldn't feel comfortable with myself if I did.
You do you, Glenn - that's why we respect you. I don't care if we don't see eye to eye on a number of policy items. I'm center/right, and you're left. I can care less. What matters to me is your decades-long advocacy and work on behalf of OUR civil liberties and your relentless courage. My much more conservative cousin has exactly the same view of you. You're a national treasure.
And unfortunately a rare treasure today as corrupt corporate media dominate the conversation.
Great post.
I am a conservative-leaning hater of established parties and I couldn't agree more with why I support Glenn.
I respect your honesty and work ethic. In addition to real courage.
*international
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. Present a factual, historic argument rather than mouthing platitudes that have been promulgated by the left and right Israel haters.
This article wasn't intended to litigate the Israel/Gaza dispute. It described it in the briefest terms. The point was about AOC's role and her decision to attack someone with no power rather than the people in her party who are implementing these policies that she claims to find so immoral. I've been clear that I believe the Palestinians are oppressed and mistreated -- that's not a view I've hidden -- but this article really wasn't about that at all. It just described the conflict in the minimal way necessary to make the broader point. But yes, I do not share the establishment right's view (which is also the Democratic Party's view) on Israel/Palestine.
For people like Roland your article simply became a useful tool for venting his hate toward a whole group of people, yet you spent so much time in responding to that hate, and no doubt knowing it will do nothing to temper his distortions, or his hate.
I know I shouldn’t be so naive, but I was absolutely blown away by the hatred being slung in every direction in the comments on this article, especially by Roland. I guess this is why most people steer clear of Israel/Palestine debates, or even mentioning it (like this article, which like Glenn said isn’t even litigating that issue but is focused on others).
I’m already a pretty pessimistic dude but seeing how (literally) militant people got here, and how cavalier they are about the use of violence toward their designated enemy is still chilling.
I agree with everything you said. I never would go on twitter because of all the hate they say is spewed there, and feel tempted to discontinue being here. Greenwald should really not have created a platform for Roland's hate, which is what he did with such a lengthy response, which muddied the waters, but I do understand he was trying to explain the purpose of his article which had nothing to do with what happened today. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had such a negative reaction.
'
He isn’t litigating the Israeli Palestinian differences because he has already ruled on the topic in favor of the Palestinians. But he does go on at length about his ruling. He’s not being honest in saying that the article was merely about AOC. For that to be true, you have to ignore the extensive assumptions he states.
I think there's at least two types of post on most of Glenn's essays - especially on a topic such as the Isreali Palestinian conflict. The worst, and the ones best ignored (even if I cant help myself sometimes) are the haters and trolls. Then there are those who have very passionate thoughts and emotions on topic. Again, this piece touches on one of those red hot button issues. Obviously, there are others, too, but not with the same heat. I can definitely do without the haters and trolls
Oh please! You can't be serious.
😩 SMH. I’ve noticed the conversation often veers from content and subject to debates and fights about all sorts of unrelated things. People arguing and spewing off righteous knowledge, with dates and quotes and other data to back it up, about completely unrelated shit. You wanna know what I think? I think it’s actually a rather common happenstance for people who consider themselves smart. Which your fans are for the most part. Smart people can often be rather righteous. And they usually rather stick to what they know, lest they be found to not be as bright as their shine. So they disregard all whiplash precautions and take any conversation back there, to their territory. From where they can comfortably pump out their pompous lectures and pump up their egos. It’s not necessarily evil, though it can easily be, it’s human really. We like to be right, we like to be/see ourselves as helpful, and as leaders even. I personally find these self righteous journeys in conversation futile, generally speaking. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for different opinions and different sharings of knowledge and experience, etc. But to build, not to dismantle. To unite, not to divide.
Is it so hard to stick to the subject at hand as best as possible People?!!
It must be frustrating for you as a journalist. Again I ask: which came first? The bullshit propagandists on “the news”, or the demand for them? But I applaud and appreciate you for sticking to the truth and the actual news. And not just telling some your readers what they might want to hear, but instead telling us all wtf actually happened. Obrigado!♥️
It is hard to stay on topic. I will try better.
Bizarre, and scary. But I’ve learned to ask why, instead. Propaganda? Religious hatred? His ex??!!!! There’s usually a reason someone would say and do something so stupid. And it’s not always, or even typically, because they just flat out want to be an ass. When we cancel them, we learn nothing of what they knew. What bothered them. Of what maybe made them think that way, and how we can learn from and/or change that. Or if maybe we are the ones who needed to change.
Ignoring is good for our immediate self preservation. Long term ignorance is how we got to here.
Why do you bother to invoke AOC and Andrew Yang? Yang is a none/ entity as far as NYC voters are concerned. The best candidate for the mayoralty is Eric Adams . The Black borough president of Brooklyn. Out front by 9-10% of any other candidate. As far as your disappointment with AOC the the Democratic Socialist learned fast how to get ahead in politics. That’s what it’s all about. Getting power once people have swallowed your bs and put you in office. Advertise yourself constantly on social media, never getting anything done and moving up the ladder. How do you know when a politician is lying? When her lips are moving. Don’t be disappointed. It’s only politics. Democrat or Republican Two sides of the same coin.
AOC wanted to make a statement without attacking her octogenarian seniors. So she went after Andrew Yang whom she probably does not greatly respect and considers an opportunist.
And in doing so, AOC shows that she is also an opportunist.
RolandMay 12
Why do you bother to invoke AOC and Andrew Yang? .... to showcase how corrupt our government officials are. All of them!
Yes. This thread got derailed. That is the problem with issues like the Middle East conflicts. You raise one issue and people immediately dive into other issues. It is hard to keep us on track.
I am just as guilty as other thread derailers. I am going to keep my future comments to the issue raised in the article.
"This article wasn't intended to litigate the Israel/Gaza dispute."
Just wait until you write THAT article. Your entire audience will explode.
I think you're right, and although you weren't looking for my opinion, in the past I have never been on such, well lets call it, a conservative site, and a difference of opinion even on the topic of Israel would engender such animosity. The audience, or too many seemed not to understand the point of the article which had nothing to do with Israeli policy by and large, but AOC's, well, wanting to move up the ladder in the political world, which means you adopt the accepted narrative on Israel. She's willing like the rest to sell her soul, which doesn't surprise me since I never thought she was that authentic even before she was a tunnel away from the Capital building during the riot and claimed she was at death's door.
I say if we want National security we START at stopping funding Israel. Bring troops home and give them jobs rebuilding our infrastructure.
Do I think we’re going to? No. Not till it is entirely too late.
You make two separate proposals. One I agree with.
I'd agree on bringing the troops home. Staring with Afghanistan and Syria. Then extend to S Korea, Japan, France, England and Germany. And Finally the District of Columbia. Use them on US infrastructure, beginning with completion of the wall on our southern border.
As far as stopping funding, there are lots of areas where I would support eliminating funding before cutting off the small amount of $$$ provided to Israel. Let's stop funding the WHO, BLM, PLO and Hamas. And Minneapolis, DC, the Dep of "Education," etc.
but…but…
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts."
I so tire of hearing this ridiculous sentiment.
The real truth: In most cases of establishing common "facts," opinion rules.
Timothy in the case of Roland his blatant ignorance was not the main issue for me, but his hate was, and it was disgusting. I'm surprised there is not more outrage on this site at his hate filled rhetoric against the Arabs, against the Palestinians.
his hate was wrong, and your moral posturing is disingenuous.
My moral posturing? What about your's?
Well, I read his post here to be aimed at misplaced hatred of Israel, not necessarily an ignoring of misplaced hatred of non-Jewish semites, but I like how you noticed that I took issue with his first sentence, and you his second.
Even the otherwise like-minded opine about the "facts"!
Wait you were refering to M. Roland's op, where I agree he came across quite incensed.
That is because truth requires the person to verify a statement and in todays lazy ass society no one wants to spend time doing that.
Well, this forum spends time doing that, which is another reason I like it here. (Sorry to those who think I over-post. Still trying to moderate myself, I promise.)
Still, "verifications" are wrought with opinion, too. Even here, "claims" of "fact" vastly outnumber the more accurate "imo"s.
I agree that phrase is vastly over utilized. “It is what it is” a vacuous load of drivel also way over used.
Let’s see. If I tell you that you deserve a punch in the eye, that’s an opinion. If punch you in the eye and it becomes black and blue, that’s a fact. Do you now get the difference?
That "fact" would get suspect in a court of law, where the opinion of the jury (at least "beyond a reasonable doubt", whatever the jury decides THAT is). Were there witnesses? Was it documented? Was it self-defense? Did someone else (possibly, not factually!) do it, not you?
Yes, it can reasonably be considered fact that the sun rose on me this morning. Will it rise for me tomorrow? idk, I'll keep my cell phone camera ready; digital photos are forever, and they time-stamp them now! (Wait, am I connected? Is my date and time accurate? Should I put a "newspaper" (can I even find one?!) in the photo to "factualize" the date?
Sorry, I love to ramble.
"Will it rise for me tomorrow?" I think that depends on what goes down between the Hogfather, Susan Sto-Helit, and Mr. Teatime.
*...THAT is) decides "fact."
The fact is Israel is an effective conquest (meaning legal, accepted by all major powers), but still, it was built on land populated by others.
So some people have a problem with it - based on moral considerations.
Btw that story about Haj Amin al Husseiny (shipping the Jews to death camps) is a perfect fake story.
And no, he wasn't in Auschwitz either; it's another fake story.
Nearly 717,000 Jews lived in the territory of Palestine in 1948. It is a shame the Muslims could not accept the concept of allowing the Jews to return to their eternal capital when the modern state of Israel was created. Now, the grandchildren of those who tried to murder all the Jews have made themselves the darlings of the world of victimization.
Accept settlers from another continent to take your land?
If half a million people from another land suddenly disembarked on your shore, brought in thousands of tons of smuggled arms, and then proceeded to terrorize your communities which lived there for many generations in order to abandon their villages and best land, raze to ground many of them including the cemeteries where your ancestors are buried, rename every toponym in the land to erase the historic memory - would you accept that? Israel is from the very inception a settler project, very similar to South Africa - ethnic cleansing is in its nature, which is perfectly visible in the episode that sparked this latest round - simply unable to tolerate that Palestinians still own this or that patch of land or property that is coveted by Israelis - so simply take it away from them.
You make an excellent point, jbt1980. It is time that we, as responsible citizens of the world, all return to our ancestors' place of origin. It is criminal that Denali was renamed and that the native Americans were displaced. All white people must return to Europe immediately! Personally, I would prefer living in Switzerland to the USA. I just never thought I could afford it until reading your insightful and logical statement.
Why start in the middle of the movie? They call it the Promised Land because God gave it to the Jews back in the beginning, they called it The Land of Canaan back then - more than 2,000 years before Christ.
So it was no different than in the US, Russia, China. All (today legal) conquests of other people's lands.
Russia to this day is a huge colonial empire.
The only difference is Israel was a late, 20th-century (legal) conquest.
In the 20th century, people generally believed that colonialism, imperialism, conquests were bad things.
Not so much earlier.
94,000 in 1914.
Probably even less in 1814. :-D
Great and so did Christians-- so what?
Correct. Jews born in Israel pre-1948 have Palestine as place of birth on their birth certificates.
Here’s a tidbit about American anti-Semitism - when my parents immigrated from Europe shortly before the war, the state department filled in the box calling for nationality “ Jewish”. Not Russian. Not Polish. Jewish.
You may be right about Auschwitz but there is recent photographic evidence placing the Grand Mufti at another concentration camp.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/amin-al-husseini-nazi-concentration-camp
His time spent in Nazi Germany, meeting Hitler and others, is well documented as are his antisemitic speeches and other Nazi propaganda broadcast in the Middle East.
What can be argued is the extent of his persuasive powers on his fellow Arabs. But that is something of a parlor game at this point.
Why would it be surprising if the Mufti were anti Semitic, given what he lived and saw of the Zionist project in Palestine?
You’re saying antisemitism and Nazi collab is justified because of Zionism
There was nothing wrong with seeking allies.
Till 1941 Nazi Germany was still a better country than the genocidal Soviet Union with its millions of victims.
Others did it too, some Jewish groups tried to ally with Fascist Italy or Germany (against Britain) as late as 1941.
The Jews and Nazi Germany cooperated in colonizing Palestine (till 1939 - so-called Haavara Agreement).
And there was the long cooperation between the Jews and Fascist Italy in Civitavecchia (the Betar Naval Academy.)
It wasn't like the Mufti sought allies...
That was a work camp attached to a SS artillery training school (?).
I suppose he visited the school not the (boring and quite small) camp.
what was boring and quite small? The concentration camp? 2 stars on yelp? You're joking right
It's absolutely a true story.
Check out this link of your brothers you worm. Does it remind you of something? "Night of knives" maybe?
https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/right-wing-rioters-smash-windows-of-arab-owned-businesses-in-bat-yam-667993/amp
hush fool. have you seen what the arabs did to jews and their synagogues, as well as random shooting as stab attacks in the recent two days? No, you just spread one sided bs like the antisemite you are "jews are the aggressors" you don't impress me. for every one of your articles i can send 20 more
You think you're so edgy, exposing Jews? The reason they posted it is because it is an anomaly. The attacks on Jews from arabs are so frequent its not even news anymore
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/violence-grips-mixed-arab-jewish-towns-israel-tensions-flare-2021-05-12/
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/lod-revises-curfew-from-8-pm-to-5-pm-amid-warnings-of-riots-668100
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1974043/tehillim-jews-lynched-in-akko-in-critical-condition-arabs-set-20-hotels-on-fire.html
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1974116/chareidi-man-grandson-of-rechavam-zevi-attacked-by-arabs-in-j-m.html
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1974033/jew-in-lod-is-stabbed-on-way-to-shacharis-arabs-randomly-shooting-jews.html
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1973392/chassan-is-stabbed-by-arab-mob-minutes-after-proposing-to-kallah.html
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/jewish-israeli-stabbed-near-mosque-in-lod-668039
It’s funny you say that Israel is a conquest country. When I was in Jerusalem about 10 years ago, I saw some excavation going on in the Arab quarter and that lo and behold, they found remnants of Jewish construction…under the Arab quarter……
"...Israel is a conquest country..."
Of course it is. That same parcel of earth has been conquered by various peoples over and over and over for millennia.
"...they found remnants of Jewish construction…under the Arab quarter..."
Of course they did. And in much of the region, you will find further layers under the Jewish construction. Like the fortress Carroc which has at points been occupied, rebuilt, and added onto by Muslims, Christians, Israelites, Edomites, Moabites... and who knows what, all of whose blood has wet those stones.
So who has claim? All have claim. If peace is to be had, at some point it needs to be sorted out. People need to want peace badly enough to make it happen.
According to international law new territory could be acquired by conquest or by agreement.
In the case of the former, it's nice to have international recognition of the conquest.
In any case, possession is nine-tenths of the rights.
There is literally nothing more to it.
All that talk about the historical rights, soil, glory, grandfathers and ancient banners means nothing.
No. According to international law acquisition by conquest is always illegal.
"...
Given the stillbirth of the U.N. collective security system, nonrecognition is one of the few realistic ways the international community has sanctioning deterring conquerors. This much is taken as axiomatic in international law. Indeed, the anti-conquest norm and its nonrecognition corollary are so important that in the view of most international lawyers, even conquest through lawful self-defense against an aggressor is forbidden.
..."
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1179&context=facultyworkingpapers
"Land populated on others.... "
The people in the land did not even own it. The felahs, the felahdin, were effectively serfs, working for absentee Arab landlords. The felahs themselves were a mix of conquered or displaced peoples who had frequently been forced to convert generations before. The distant landlords were the ones who made deals to give land to the Jews. The Palestinians who had worked the land for generations were never consulted by either side. They were just told to leave. That, naturally, left them a bit miffed and lead to violence. Jewish settlers frequently further provoked the Palestinians in order to generate a British crackdown.
So, the situation was never one-sided. It was multilateral with many to blame.
How would you feel if the military came to your house and business and told you that you had to vacate for another group? Then they put your family in a terrible area, restricted your movement, made it virtually impossible for your kids to get an educated, etc? Sounds much like the brutal pogroms perpetrated on Jewish people for milennia.
Sounds like the best argument I've ever heard for a big defense budget.
How would it be if your landlord told you that you were being evicted at the end of your current lease? Sometimes, life sucks. But just because someone is doing something wrong or bad does not make it unethical or illegal.
Lmfaoooo best comment.
Right and no one else has EVER experienced that? right?
Happened to the Jews in the Gaza strip and in Jerusalem as well.
Doesn’t sound remotely like anything Israel has actually done or is contemplating doing. Remember the Arab Israeli reaction to Avigdor Lieberman’s musings about redrawing the border in any peace settlement to place what is known as “The Triangle” on the Palestine side? They rejected the idea outright, even though they would otherwise stay in place. Perhaps they know something about living in Israel that outsiders are missing.
The article was on AOC's role in DNC...
As for few facts:
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1YmQC9uSlM
Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder + Max Blumenthal outstanding overview
https://youtu.be/7dbLAiEdQv4
Preferably with links for citations in your arguments as well.
Glenn, it is important to listen to all sides including the evidence they present to support their position. It is a matter of both common courtesy and intellectual honesty. Unfortunately, for many, the Israeli-Arab conflict turns out to be a blank canvas onto which we can project our disappointments, frustrations and anger onto an historically safe target of opprobrium - once upon a time, it was simply the Jews while now it is their nation state. Much of the criticism seems a product of double-standards when it is not simply ill-informed.
One of the underlying yet unexplored issues, it seems to me, is a certain societal unease with their re-emergence of the Jew seeking equal treatment. The Diaspora Jew, by contrast, a minority wherever he went and, only since the late 18th century, allowed by fits and starts to emerge from his second (at best) class citizenship, appears to some the only acceptable Jew. Whether it derives from theological concerns or crackpot “scientific” principles, the Jew represented by the self-sufficient Israeli gnaws at something very elemental in both Western and Islamic societies - and for good reason, given their supercessionist views of having replaced Judaism and the Jews, yet they are still around not only falsifying this bit of dogma but, as the saying goes “punching above their weight”.
What else explains this continuing and frankly bizarre focus on Israel whose net result is that far greater tragedies and losses of life that occur elsewhere can be ignored - and to pose this question is not an exercise in “whataboutery” but to ask that some common standard and context be used in the discussion.
To your credit, you are one of the few who do examine other conflicts and highlight other injustices. When it comes to Israel, though, I can hope you have the bandwidth in between everything else you do, to re-examine some of your assumptions and be a bit more critical of some of your sources of information. You might still see things the same way, but something tells me that you will emerge with a more nuanced view.
In the interim, please keep doing what you do. It takes far more courage than to post a comment and is far more consequential.
As a final, unrelated question, when will you be offering signed copies of your book to your members (or did i miss the memo)?
I'll probably do a video to address these comments tomorrow -- the substantive ones on I/P - since I don't have a lot of time today. I'm working with my publisher on getting the way to get signed books to subscribers. The difficulty is the pandemic but I believe that I'll be in the US now in August so it may have to wait until then. But I absolutely will fulfill that commitment.
There is no rush to respond, especially given your other commitments. I’m pretty sure that the Israeli-Arab issue will be with us for quite some time yet.
Sadly true. Trump was making progress
And it was REAL progress, the kind that can't be executive ordered away, like lower illegal immigration that's so easy to reverse by flying deportees back in to vote Dem, I mean lower wages, I mean fill cages, I mean penalize legal immigrants, I mean move around to avoid the media. Oh, wait....the media does that itself.
That more of my taxpayer dollars go to Israel than any other nation -- and that our foreign policy is shaped around Israel -- makes that nation's actions highly relevant, rising above others. I pay for what it does and I don't like what it does.
Surely you'd care more about the cleanliness of the restaurant you eat at than one you don't? Care more about how well your city bus functions than others, when on the way to work? Whether the washing machine you bought with your hard earned money works -- or engages in collective punishment contrary to international law.
Your premise about money going to Israel (which must use the bulk of it on US corporations) is wrong. The US spends far more in Europe, Japan and Korea.
And while you may wish to believe that our foreign policy is shaped around Israel, a minute’s reflection would show that, if anything, it’s shaped around oil and the free passage thereof. Which means it’s shaped mostly around Arab and world economic concerns. The conflicts in the region we have fought have either been on behalf of an Arab country (Kuwait or Lebanon in 1958) or for our own misguided reasons (Iraq in 2002 and Syria a few years later).
That people try to rationalize their obsession with Jews by grabbing at any excuse is certainly troubling, but it’s best to see the world as it is rather than the imagined one we’d prefer.
So please post evidence of annual direct payments to any other single government above $3.8 billion or apologize for implying some kind of racism on my part.
Here you go: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/585988/
I wasn’t applying any racism on your part, just an unhealthy obsession. Because Jews come in all “colors”, they may be many things but a race is not among them. And before you get defensive about any implication, I’m assuming you were using the term racism somewhat casually with no malicious underlying intent.
The US military spends over $8 billion annually in Germany alone.
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/germany-spent-almost-billion-euros-us-troops-past-10-years
And unlike NATO, Korea and Japan, the US has no treaty obligation to defend Israel against attack.
Can it possibly be that Israel, being the only western democracy in the Middle East, has strategic value double than that of Jordan and Egypt?
They each get around half of what Israel gets.
Why do you choose to be so unaware of what is being said here when it is so obviously true. I can only assume you are totally unaware of the influence Israel has on our national policies, and our wars. Why are our politicians so beholden to Israel? Why is their so much complicity in both parties to remain silent on Israel's many crimes committed against the people of Palestine? Why do our politicians go before APAC and swear their allegiance to Israel? Yes, and why all the money sent there? Pick up a book by Max Blumenthal, or would you define him as a self hating jew? There are so many who are willing to speak the truth, as there are Americans who stand up to injustice and brutality and war.
Yeah it's the elders of Zion right! The reason America is beholden to Israel is because Israel and their supporters organize extensively for America's support, as it is a world power. The reason Israel organizes for America's support is because people like you and millions and maybe billions of others somehow can't held slipping back into antisemitic tropes when Jews are involved, which somehow or another has always lead to Jews being killed, so Israel is not taking chances in a region where it's surrounding neighbors routinely attempt to attack and annihilate them. But if you really cared about brutality, you'd find no shortage of what to speak of when it comes to the middle east. You don't. Why? Why don't you speak of it? Why only Israel? Can you speak with complexity about any other country in the region? You fell for it boo
Its not an obsession with Jews its with Israel.
You mean the Israeli Arabs, the Druze, Circassian and Christians or, to put it differently, all the Israelis BDS oddly doesn’t target? Or is it just Israeli Jews?
Given your flurry of hit and run postings, I won’t expect anything thoughtful but I would be glad to be proven wrong.
Mr Knapp, I realize you have this thing about the Jews, but in reality aid to Israel has zero to do with Jews or Zionism or even AIPAC. It is all about dollars and profits of the US military complex. I am quite sure the Pentagon does not like the optics of what is happening and will let the Israelis know. BTW, the spending in Europe is not the same category of spending and is mostly paid by Europeans, even though, of course, they never pay enough. American protection is not free. Just an aside.
Looks like you’re mistaken. For instance, the US military spends over $8 billion annually on Germany alone, beyond what Germany reimbursed.
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/germany-spent-almost-billion-euros-us-troops-past-10-years
Money laundering with a skim off the top?
But would you hate Israel any less, were we to zero that aid? (I am for zeroing that aid; I don't think Israel needs it.)
Ok. Israel support can come from that portion of the debt that nobody will ever pay then. There. Fixed it.
Good one! (But by that logic, why do we borrow so little? Like, why don't we make the "minimum" wage $100 an hour?!)
Great comments
So well said! And bizarre is right: one would think Western freedoms of religion and association and movement, not to mention self-sufficiency (I love the way Jews don't petition for public assistance), would inform Westerners properly, but since 1948 anyway the Western anti-semites seem to feel free to say to the Jew, "Why don't you get back to where you belong, the scrubby land we (WE!) so magnanimously gave to you."
Was it justice, centuries delayed, to "create" a homeland, or just another excuse to keep on hating.
Well, here's a reason for some to hate on me: I have come to the opinion that Israel should NOT have been created, but instead the hero nation of the mid-'40s should have turned on the freedom beacon and said, "To us! To us! We are your new land of freedom."
No I appreciate the piece and have to question how much my own beliefs have been shaped by my culture. In reading Middle Eastern history I came to the conclusion that some groups were shafted but it is to late to fix it. Israel is not going away nor should it. I think the “Palestinians” have been led incredibly poorly, almost as if they don’t want the problems solved.
You've raised a crucial point that few focus on. Palestinians have terrible leaders (terrorists) who are willing to sacrifice their own people for international sympathy. They will put civilians in or near key sites to be sacrificed. They refuse to come to the beginning table to acknowledge the basic starting point: that Israel exists. Even the rest of the Arab States have grown weary of this. It is true that Palestine's leaders don't seem to want to solve this problem. It should be clear why the US gives such huge support to Israel, an allie on such a strategic place. Israel is a tiny place surrounded by countries that hate it and want it destroyed. True, Israel doesn't handle the impossible problem of how to fairly treat Palestinians, on the other hand, Israel has to be tough because they are surrounded by wolves who, with the first sign of weakness, will devout them. I have been to Israel and spent the past three years living In Egypt. It was an eye-opening experience.
So incompetent people should just die? Imagine if that was applied to the US
I don't know who is advocating for that
This is such a broad, sweeping statement I wouldn't know how to respond except to say it is sad when anyone dies, and there are varying degrees of sadness and circumstances, and sometimes things turn out one way or another based on incompetence or luck or any number of variables. But that's a whole other topic.
IMO the "palestinians" have been used as a proxy weapon by other countries who are afraid to be direct with Israel. So you see everyone crying for the Palestinians but their Muslim allies spend money empowering Hamas rather than building up the Palestinians.
Do yourself a favor and research every single point or post in this thread because every single "side" is pushing an agenda.
To me though, it sure seems like only one side is pushing a pro-Democracy agenda.
"Gasp" seriously-- and of course Palestinians don't want problems solved bu just want to die right?
Like many tangled situations, the problem is that there are more than two parties involved, each bringing their own interests. The Palestinian +leaders+ don't want to solve the problems because they often benefit greatly from the conflict. The leaders often do not negotiate in good faith and blame it on the Jews. Some of the Palstinians are passive bystanders, some are whipped up by the claims of the leaders, some are acting personally because +their+ family was killed or +their+ house was burned. The Palestinian +people+ then bear the brunt of Israeli retaliation. In the same manner, Israeli settlers have often acted unilaterally, knowing that stoking the conflict benefits them. The rest of the Israeli population may or may not agree with the settler's actions, but they learn to hate Palestinians when rockets rain down on their homes and kill +their+ families.
It is just not a neat and tidy problem.
Ugh typos. Meant to say they refuse to come to the "negotiating" table.
Personally, I appreciated the typo that changed “devour” to “devout” as conversion to Islam is historically the only way to shed dhimmi status in a Muslim majority society ... well, that or death.
Actually, it isn't even called "conversion" it is called "reversion." When a person becomes a Muslim they "revert," as Islam is the only way. And I was told explicitly by every Egyptian Muslim I knew when I lived in Luxor that none of them can ever stop being a Muslim. If one denies one's faith they must be killed. This seems to be the answer for a lot of things. To be fair, in many ways the Coptic religion is even more restrictive if that is possible. Christians are also taught from the Bible, there is no way to heaven except through Jesus. I grew up in an extremely conservative Christian family. I rebelled and it wasn't easy, but at least I wasn't killed for it. And at least in the US there were options, I could go out on my own, get a job, go to college, because there was freedom to do so--although we seem to be losing it. People in Muslim countries, especially women most often do not have options other than to live under the thumb of an extreme religion, or at least an extreme interpretation of it. Honestly, I would rather live under the rule of any of the Israeli leaders than Hamas.
Glenn I'm definitely pro-Israel, but not reflexively so. Like all nations they act in their self interest but not always in ways that I agree with. I'm also sympathetic to the plight of ordinary everyday Palestinians, as well as Christians in Bethlehem (the latter having no choice but to produce hand crafts and sell them to Christians around the world). In all likelihood you and I will disagree on many things on this topic, but I appreciate and expect that you will challenge what I believe. So, please, keep it up.
On this general topic one thing I'd like to see addressed is the following: Do the Palestinians really want a settlement? Every time it appears there is a potential opening to get a deal done their leadership seems to scuttle it. While right of return is generally consistent with international law, how could that possibly work with Israel being a Jewish state? And what is Israel to do when missiles are fired indiscriminately into Israeli neighborhoods, as opposed to military targets?
While I agree with much of what you said, there in fact is no “right of return” in international law. To date, there has been but one exception and, ironically, it is contained in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which explicitly gave that right to the Jewish people. The Palestinian “right” is taken from UNGA 194 which made in conditional and was a multi-part non-binding resolution which the Arabs unanimously rejected lest by implication they acknowledged Israel’s legitimacy.
What makes the current situation unique was the new concept of Mandates (they were supposed to be similar to a trusteeship rather than a colony) whose full consequences were apparently never quite thought through. By analogy, today’s Palestinians who left property behind in what’s now Israel would perhaps equate to non-resident enemy aliens of Israel.
Thanks, Charles. My statement regarding the right of return vis-a-vis international law is based upon general recollection rather than actually researching the issue. I'll take a look at UNGA 194, and the rest of your points. That said, I cannot see how a right of return can possibly be reconciled with Israel existing as a Jewish state. And given world history over the last 2000 year, and especially European history in the 20th AND 21st centuries, I definitely come down on the side of Israel on this.
Jeff, you speak for many of us. The assumption that only the Right Wing could possibly be pro-Israel is as biased and offensive as the assumption that all black Americans only vote for Democrats. Yes, many liberals support Israel, just as many blacks vote for Republicans.
I appreciate all reporting on the Arab Muslim-Jew split, because for the most part it illuminates the folly of mankind's biases.
Hold on didn't I just read this point by someone else--- hmmmmm I smell a campaign-- thanks Bibi
So glad to have you engage substantively, rather than post hit and run snipes.
There are questions beyond the points, which would best be addressed with substantive answers. IMO.
Your point has already been made by someone else
You call it like you see it and continue being honest. “Good people can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” We are all more knowledgeable after a spirited debate.
That you would even consider supporting AOC is scary. From the beginning she has always been a hard left socialist radical.
And being an American Jew myself, I’m always amazed by the sympathy that others of your sort provide to left wingers and are highly critical of Israel. I came to the conclusion that people like you worship left wing policy as your primary religion and being Jewish is just your ethnicity.
You say that you only briefly touched on the policy involved and that the article was focused on AOC being supportive of the same old Democratic gang who have supported Israel since 1948. And then you go on and on describing how THEY blindly support Israel, which is NOT true, regardless of what you say.
Harry Truman was an anti-Semite. Here are some excerpts from his personal diary….
In his diary, he wrote an entry on July 21, 1947:
“The Jews, I find are very selfish. They have no concern for Poles, Estonians, Latvians and other Displaced Persons; they are only interested in themselves. When they have power, physical or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog”.
Former Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., a Jew, spoke with President Truman about the sad state of affairs of Holocaust survivors, passengers of the ship Exodus, who were turned away from the shores of Palestine by the British and were sent back to Europe. Morgenthau asked the President to intervene with the British to allow the Jews entry into Palestine.
Of this request, Truman wrote in his diary: “He had no business whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought one thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed.”
He often called New York City “kike town”; he referred to his Jewish partner, Eddie Jacobson, as his “Jew clerk” and he wrote to Bess about someone in a poker game who had “screamed like a Jewish merchant”.
Once, in 1953, the television host, David Susskind, asked the ex-President why he had never been invited to the Truman home in spite of their many interviews.
Truman replied: “You’re a Jew, David, and no Jew has ever been in our house. Bess runs it and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime”.
Why did Truman recognize Israel? Because he wanted displaced Jews to have a place other than the US to go to. He didn’t want Jews in the US just like he didn’t want them in his own house.
But you ignore such crap?
Here’s more….LBJ refused Israel’s request for military aid in 1967 in advance of clear indications of Arab intentions. Stuck in the Vietnam quagmire of his own false making in the Gulf of Tonkin, he didn’t want another war on his hands. He refused to sanction a preemptive strike and told the Israelis to “negotiate” with Arabs who were poised to strike.
Clinton, taking a page out of the Jimmy Carter playbook, forced Ehud Barak to come to Camp David and give Arafat 99% of what he asked for - and Arafat turned him down, going home to set off a bloody intifada. All in an attempt to redeem his stained presidency with a Carteresque Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, and how did Clinton engineer those meetings? By sending his own political operatives into Israel to interfere in their elections to get Barsk elected. Once all this became clear, Israel threw out Barsk and brought in Ariel Sharon.
Obama started off his first term by giving his very first presser to Al Jazeera, made Netanyahu use the White House back door when he came to visit, made a deal with Iran giving them billions in currency that he admitted he knew would be used in terrorism and gave the mullahs a glide path to a gradual anti-Israel nuke.
And who negotiated that deal for Obama? Joe Biden who immediately began to suck up by reinstating the deal with Iran that Trump wisely pulled out of and agreed to lighten sanctions, all without any action by Iran who continues their slow walk to nuclear weapons as the mullahs laugh in his face and refuse to accept his surrender to them. And then he agrees to send Hamas nearly a quarter billion in aid that Trump cut off because of continued terror and you wonder why rockets fly?
And your talk about the Israeli behavior in East Jerusalem isn’t spot on either and you are too smart to play the Biden deer in the headlights look to not know you are not giving the whole or true story. You leave out that the current issues in East Jerusalem that are causing all hub bub are about Jews seeking to reclaim real estate that they and their families owned for 150 years or so before the 1948 war. That Jordan took it from them and kicked them out and registered the property in the names of Arabs. And that after recovering Jerusalem in 1967, the evicted Jews began legal proceedings to recover what was taken from them. That is what this is all about - people seeking to secure their rights to property in a court of law.
James Baker once said of Israel that the GOP shouldn’t spend too much energy supporting Israel because no matter how much Republicans support them they always voted against them.
And he was right. Nixon saved Israel in 1973 - after he had faced the electorate for the last time even after not receiving much of their support. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, cut off aid to the Palestinians, recognized Israeli ownership of the Golan, and brokered relations with 4 Arab countries that had refused to recognize Israel as a country since 1948. And if you take away the ultra Orthodox vote, assimilated American Jews barely voted for him.
And the Palestinians? They have been bloodthirsty for years. They almost single handedly defined modern terrorism. Airplane hijackings, airplane and bus bombs, Munich and all the rest. They store and shoot rockets in neighborhoods hoping that they will attract retailiation that will give them sympathetic pictures of dead children and hospital patients. Israel defends itself with force, they don’t initiate force.
But you know all this…..
Wow. A lot to unpack and several lifetimes of grievances but hey - that is your right. You're characterization of Truman is chirlish baby shit talk. Any racialist can cherry pick Truman's habit of speaking freely and doing so as a liberal of his day - but he still integrated the military and that was far more vital that Jackie Robinson or Branch Rickey - who besides SNICK and MLK seem to have been the only instrumental institutions to try and fight endemic racism.
There is no Israel without Truman - and no president ever paid as dear a price for supporting Jews - so you can just take the quotes and shove em up your ass Rick. You are bastardizing history and I won't stand by for it. No American - any American - did more for the Jewish people and the Jewish state - so fuck you.
I love the Jewish people but often hear this kind lying shit. Not everyone is a history clueless dope incapable of judging these important figures with in the context of their own time....
With the length of you're many complaints its amazing you get out of bed in the morning - or more to the point - why do you? Just to add one more inane complaint to the list you have from here to the moon.
Get over yourself.
I watched a documentary on civil rights recently (if I could remember its name I’d have mentioned it) and the background to Truman’s integrating the armed forces had much to do with trying to avoid another nationwide Pullman strike. Most people act out of mixed motives and politicians theme to act out of mixed political interests. So it’s possible that the threat from A. Phillip Randolph and others did push Truman.
As to Truman making the US the first to recognize Israel (just beating out the Soviet Union), again mixed motives. Truman, as we all know, had a very uphill battle for re-election in 1948 and NY had the largest number of electoral college votes. It also had a very politically active Newish population that Truman needed to keep onside if he was to have any hope to win. So his decision was swayed likely more by electoral considerations than by his former partner’s famous White House visit or some general love of Israel. This also explains something I wondered about: after recognizing Israel, the US implemented an arms embargo on Israel and refused to assist in any real sense until after the Six Day War. Oddly from today’s perspective, France was Israel’s major supporter, followed by the UK.
So, it may just be that the memory of Truman as a huge supporter of Israel and the Jews is a sentimental wish fulfilling but essentially inaccurate memory on par perhaps with the one that finds Britain helping birth the Jewish state when the reality was it more often violated its obligations under the Mandate toward the Jews than adhered to them. Memory can play tricks ... and I still can’t remember the name of that documentary.
Abject nonsense Knapp - propagandizing from the school of I.F Stone & Howard Zinn....
You have a mentally challenged view of history - aka - learning disabled whose brain chemistry has sentenced him to a 12 yr-olds version of epic events.
France as a champion - but the US as the specter of self-interest? Charlie de Gaulle had even more of a dispassionate view of cultures and peoples other than Gaul and a driven pathology than anything Nixon did before or after the 6 days war.
Your grand 'sweep' over the entire 20th century as it pertains to Palestine and Israel is like some paint by numbers kiddie place mat at IHOP dude...get real.
Not one mention beyond a psycho like de Gaulle of a single significant figure in the entire non-sensical dismissive take on why Truman was just this oaf from Independence who got lucky and didn't have a clue.
These stupid remarks were common 'conventional wisdom' about Truman by historians (most of whom where Camelot afficionados - hence Kennedy hagiographers) who until Nixon - and the time necessary to reveal his importance - that ranking rose to where it is now - among the most prominence of all modern Presidents.
American Jewry know the importance - and that was and remains enough to call out dopes like you C.K.
Sorry the facts so disturbed you. In the Six Day War, the IAF jet fighters were of overwhelmingly French manufacture while the IDF main battle tank was British. Only after that war, de Gaulle cut off future arms shipments to Israel as, in part, “punishment” for ignoring his warning not to attack preemptively. Israel did successfully “liberate” some small ships from the French port of Cherbourg it had bought and that France tried to embargo. De Gaulle also gave a speech that was seen as antisemitic but by then he had already decided on a more pro-Arab stance. It is perhaps related that the US stepped in at this point and became Israel’s main arms supplier.
The through line is that no country acts on the international stage for sentimental reasons. When a nation sees that supporting Israel is in their national interests, they support it. When it’s no longer the case, then they don’t.
Beyond that, I won’t bother responding in kind to your invective, as it’s a pointless exercise.
First off, no one here is talking about blacks. Second of all “no Jew has ever been in my house?” “the Jews don’t have anything on Hitler or Stalin”?
Those were written in his personal diary in his own hand, using his own words and you say that’s all misdirection? That he actually loved the Jews?
All this stuff is just a bunch of lies?
Nixon was crucified on much worse because he was under the delusion that what he said would be his - on tape -for his pick of historian to scrub and rinse and spin just has it had always been AND WAS FOR KENNEDY AND LBJ...AND EVERY OTHER PROGRESSIVE RIGHT UP TO THE CRIMINAL CRIME FAMILIES OBAMA AND BIDEN...
Just on the context Rick...when he wrote what he said - often decades earlier - WHEN THE ENGRAINED ANTI-SEMITISM WAS AS DEEP AS RACIAL EMNITY - and yet I argue -despite his willingness to spout off just as so many felt - HE MADE A DIFFERENCE BECAUSE HE MADE THE HARD POLITICAL CHOICES...
A hack like you will never give him that. So What? History is there for anyone to see regardless of the thin-skinned whinny bitching you indulge in.
Nixon often was a bigoted ass [- but you know what HE GOT BUSSING DONE DUDE - AND SUFFERED A SHITSTORM FOR IT - and he did more for black families than anything LBJ did by way of Great Society programing - unless you gage it by crony capitialism and the monies thrown down a rat hole to a few venders on Vista or hairdressing schools and the like...Same with Dept of Interior and the EPA....
Yes Rick...there are lies...lies of omission...and damn lies and you're original post is FULL ....OF....THEM....
AND THUS....SHIT
Wow.
Bravo Glenn and thank you.
There will be well orchestrated and choreographed campaign, full of "facts" and lies, against you even in this enlightened group of readers.
Always the same -- for 70+ years.
Let's remember -- a portion of the annual huge "foreign assistance to Israel" is always returned to pockets of US politicians. Therefore, we might absolutely hate anything - Iranian whose democratically elected secular government and US-educated economist President we over-through decades ago -- still very fresh memory of every Iranian.
Nothing but rivers of blood and suffering of millions that the coming avalanche of "criticism" will try to whitewash
Why engage right wing MAGA Israel supporters? Just have Bari Weiss on. I'd love to see the 2 of you go at it on this.
I've talked to Bari over the last year about a bunch of things and would definitely be willing to talk to her about this.
I would pay extra to watch that discussion.
This is something those of us who don't know what to believe or what is true really need. Look, I lived in Israel in the 90's and I am still confused. You and Bari seem to have a very different understanding of the facts. I respect and trust both of you so I, for one, would be beyond grateful to hear/read a conversation between the two of you!
Thank you !! Bari Weiss who in her sub-stack blog sings odes about her adoration of extreme racist Likudnik politician -- her "hero"
Elie Wiesel's Israeli propaganda and the myth of Soviet genocide against the Jews
His book "The Jews of Silence" was created as part of Israel’s covert propaganda and influence program targeting American Jews.
Elie Wiesel's Israeli propaganda and the myth of Soviet genocide against the Jews - Immigrants as a Weapon (substack.com)
Oy gevalt!
Clarification:
The extreme racist Likudnik politician Barri Weiss absolutely adores is -- Natan Sharansky
That Elie Wiesel is in the same racist category goes without saying.
Oy vey!
Oy racist dreck
Clarification:
The extreme racist Likudnik politician Barri Weiss absolutely adores is -- Natan Sharansky
That Elie Wiesel is in the same racist category goes without saying.
Mark, you are just parroting left wing talking points to deflect from the meat of Glenn's article showing this behavior is coming from the left, not the right.
What you should be asking is why engage left wing DNC voters who support Louis Farrakhan or Ilhan Omar and their repeated anti-semitic behavior and speech? Clearly these people have proven they are racists and anti-semites.
Even the SPLC labels Farrakhan a hate criminal but we have yet to see a single DNC politician denounce him and the nation.
I don't think I parroted anything. I challenged Glenn to reflect on his obvious anti Israel and pro Palestinian bias in the context of an article that appeared in NRO today. I fully support Glenn's engagement with MAGA Israel supporters but think Bari Weiss would make a really provocative conversation partner on this subject. Bari is neither MAGA nor a left wing version of MAGA. She is a vocal and well informed supporter of Israel and on the front lines of fighting against antisemitism.
I agree with your comments about DNC voters supporting Farrakhan and the squad and I wish Glenn would forcefully object to these folks.
I think we are on the same wavelength, but maybe not.
I tire of you and other posters constantly making the comment section about right wingers when the articles are about the left, the DNC and the media, almost exclusively.
Its the same fucking bullshit tactic of the groups I just mentioned. To associate and deflect away from the actual conversation which is important and damaging to the DNC coalition.
Let me summarize:
Stop mentioning Bari Weiss, stop mentioning right wing, stop mentioning MAGA and lets get back to the article which was about AOC and how the DNC leadership is responsible for the very things their members are complaining about in regards to Israel, and we can stop deflecting, and narrative changing from that.
You know something..................go fuck yourself asshole.
That would be interesting
I wish I could be as calm in replying to nit-witted anti-intellectuals as that poster boy for Zionist Israel. I agree with your essay Mr. Greenwal.
Eat shit, you poseur.
The Mullahs running Iran can publicly call for the murder of all the Jews of Israel and none of you limp dicks patting yourselves on the back for your online warrior status would make a whimper.
Those supporting Israel don’t murder dissenters. That’s why you lick dookie covered hairy Imam butt cheeks.
An intellectual, hahahahaha! You fancy yourself an intellectual that is just too far by the racist rhetoric.
Sure you are limp dick.
A little detail for our Galleta rabid racist:
Iran NEVER called for murder of Jewish people -- that appeared only in Israeli "translation" - served to eager US media
Islam is a religion, not a race.
I don’t care how many of you posturing limp dicked ‘tards attempt to label me, the truth is Islamic countries are lynching homos to the glory of their sky Gawd daily. I detest that.
I will never pretend Islam has created equally productive societies with civil rights for their people until there actually is a tolerant Islamic society.
I am not going to engage in Iran discussions.
Like Sarsour says, you could get zero per cent interest on your credit cards. I could get hung from a crane.
Still - try to get Viagra to help yourself - you are obsessed with your weakness
No, I merely recognize dim-witted people like you. It is too easy. Grow up.
Sure you do limp dick ... get on down to lick some more dookie off the hairy Imam butt cheeks you low iq loser ‘tard
You are so funny. It gave me a good belly laugh today - and I needed humor today watching Zionist Isreal again follow their God's orders and murder their enemies. After all your God is a mass murderer supreme. Look at how many times your God engaged in mass murder to cleanse the Earth - of Jewish people who sinned against their God. No thanks. You offer me nothing but a possibility that you will kneel and do as you describe. You must really enjoy that kind of sex. That is ok; this is America and behind closed doors you can enjoy the kind of sex that you enjoy. Thanks for the good laugh - honestly, I needed it.
Oy rabid racist" -- GG 's article was on AOC's role in DNC.
As for few facts see below:
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1YmQC9uSlM
Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder + Max Blumenthal outstanding overview
https://youtu.be/7dbLAiEdQv4
Please get some help-- or tell the troll farm to pay you more so you can
Gosh, Carol Jones, thanks so much for the advice. Just what I was hoping for today.
'But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone. I'm more than willing to engage critics -- as I said, I'm talking to a couple right-wing MAGA Israel supporters to have on to explore these questions -- but to me, the value of this independent platform is not that I am a puppet for anyone side or faction but will also endeavor to tell you what I think and see, and I've always had a readership that could tolerate that kind of dissent and divergence from their strongly held views because they know I come by mine honestly and with an attempt to be scrupulous with the facts.'
We are 98% on opposite sides but that doesn't affect looking forward to the challenge...We all appreciate you skill and dedication - thanks again Glenn and keep up the outstanding fact based Journo...
Thank you.
BTW, my dentist is an Indian from Uganda. Uganda was to be "Israel" in case that colonization of Palestine fails. You probably know that -- one must admire the strength of Zionist vision for a Jewish state.
Let see, so far in this thread you have:
- Called genocides against the Jews "fake"
- Spoke in condescending tones and strawman arguments about the "Zionist" state.
- Accused Israel of building a wall to separate Palestinian children from Israel children instead of protecting them from the numerous rockets/mortar/knife/suicide attacks
Thats just in the last 30 minutes.
Given this informaiton, I'm pretty sure you can be found standing next to David Duke on weekends all garbed in the same clothing.
Don't bother responding, I have no further time for racist pieces of shit.
Oy racist dreck.
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1YmQC9uSlM
Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder + Max Blumenthal outstanding overview
https://youtu.be/7dbLAiEdQv4
The Zionists rejected Uganda (and a few other places) for the simple reason it wasn't Palestine.
It was popularly called the Uganda option but the country that was in fact meant was today’s Kenya. That option was a non-starter and rejected outright because there was no Jewish connection to that African land and the only objective that made sense was the restoration of the Jewish people to their historical homeland - which was what eventually happened.
Thank you VERY much. So it was Kenya - not Uganda.
One should give credit for the vision and persistence of Zionists -- the horror of terror, really a slow genocide, of Palestinians notwithstanding...
“Really a slow genocide”
What percentage of Palestinians were decimated in this slow genocide?
"It'd be easier for me to just not write about this. But I hope I have a readership that does not want me merely to echo what they already think, but which trusts I'm going to always be honest about what I see and think and not try to aggrandize anyone."
FWIW, I'm glad you stand for what you believe it, and more importantly, you don't censor yourself. I don't agree with you on this one. I appreciate the concept of getting out of the corpo-militaristic hegemony it seems like the US has fallen into (and has been since Eisenhower's warning...) - in this case, Israel is a little democracy beset by a lot of enemies - though Trump's foreign policy has started to ease that burden a bit.
Having said that, you no doubt will lose some fair weather readers, but I think your more intelligent ones will appreciate your stand for honest journalism, even if your personal opinions make a showing now and then.
Here's a MAGA opinion: Israel/Palestine ought to be treated the same as any other international conflict of similar magnitude. I'd prefer to see less of our dollars spent there. That's all.
And, the obligatory thanks for what you do. Deeply appreciated.
basically, call it syria and yemen and ignore it. Please, dear Gd.
Glenn, I agree that the situation in Gaza miserable for the average Palestinian, but what do you suppose would happen to the Jews if the Palestinians were to prevail in a military conflict with Israel?
If the Palestinians gained the upper hand, I'm fairly certain (based on what Palestinian leaders have said in the past) that they would annihilate Israel and slaughter the Jews. The only thing stopping them is the fact that Israel dominates them militarily.
There's room to criticize Israel, but let's not kid ourselves, Israel treats the Palestinians better than the Palestinians would treat the Jews if Israel's military advantage were reversed.
If the Palestinians were to prevail, the human rights abuses they would perpetrate against the Jews would dwarf any mistreatment the Palestinians are enduring at the hands of Israel today.
Israel is the lesser of two evils. I would prefer it if the United States stayed out of the middle east entirely, but if we're going to get involved and support one faction or the other, Israel is more deserving of our support.
I see your point. Perhaps using gas chambers would speed up getting rid of Palestinians. Noble thought also -- GG as Jewish should be ashamed that he doesn't think as you... I see - you are such a "decent" and compassionate human being
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1YmQC9uSlM
Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder + Max Blumenthal outstanding overview
https://youtu.be/7dbLAiEdQv4
wow its like there is a big writing campaign. Last gasp Netanyahu?
Carol, hundreds of missile fired into residential neighborhoods may well lead to much more than a last gap for Netanyahu. Events may well strengthen Likud and Netanyahu.
That's in fact is circulated as one reason for this flareup. In any case, it wouldn't happen unless somebody was in on something.
Yeah...Netanyahu is really Hamas...and he's sending thousands of rockets from Gaza...Hamas and Netanyahus govt faction are one...what??? Boi check ur brain it's on the floor next to you
"I'm well-aware that a sizable chunk of my readership here -- perhaps the majority -- disagrees with my views on Israel and Palestine (though my views are consistent with my broader anti-militarism/anti-imperialism stand)." I agree with your astute appraisal of AOC. However, I think you might do well to reconsider your broader stance which seems a bit idealistic--although as with so many others here, I appreciate the debate. Sadly, we do not live in a world where we can be without boarders or a strong military. I have been to Israel (a bigger topic) and I just spent the last almost three years living in Egypt. As a child of ten my family was traveling the world in a bright red VW van with a big USA sticker on it when we just happened to find ourselves in Cairo days before the 6 Day War. I saw with my own eyes the hatred and the screams to annihilate Israel, at the same time screaming Israel does not exist. We ended up escaping out of Syria into Turkey right before the borders were closed. I am a writer on Substack and will be publishing a piece about this and the broader implications for today, on Friday. The Palestinians are used as pawns by their own leaders, Hamas, who refuse the first step toward the negotiating table: to acknowledge Israel exists. Even the Arab States have grown weary of this, as well as Hamas' alignment with Iran, which is why Trump was able to make his historic peace deal. And it truly was historic, sadly not given the credit it deserved. And now, here we are, not long into Biden's administration and the world has become ever more unstable on many fronts. The fact is, Israel is a tiny country surrounded by hungry wolves who hate it with a hatred beyond reason. When Israel is threatened it must hit back tenfold. Any sign of weakness and it will be devoured. This is an unfortunate human condition and we might wonder why humans do this to one another in the first place. That is a bigger question. But, although I see the tragedy of the Palestinian people, I must stand with Israel. My recent time in Egypt was illuminating--won't go into more detail here. But honestly, I would much rather live under any Israeli leader than Hamas.
The article was on AOC's role in DNC...
As for few facts on US/Israel terror on Palestinians:
Palestinian children killed by Israel: The human dimension – April 26, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1YmQC9uSlM
Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder + Max Blumenthal outstanding overview
https://youtu.be/7dbLAiEdQv4
I would like to say, good luck with your article, but I for one will not read it, since it is quite obvious in what you have written here you are coming from a highly biased position. However I do hope you mention the disproportionate death rates among Israeli's and those of the Palestinian people through their years of conflict, as well as the destruction and theft of Palestinian lands. Not unusual since Israel has a strong military, while the Palestinians have none. For a tiny country surrounded by wolves they have killed a lot of people, and grabbed a lot of land and resources in the process, with almost total support from the US. I do hope you will mention in the latest cycle of bloodshed it began with the Israeli government's plans to evict Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, to make way for Israeli settlers which is against international law, and in by defending what is there's they have been assaulted brutally. Good luck.
No worries, Fran. I leave my further response for my article. Thanks for the well wishes.
Understood but please respond to my earlier query re this article by Eliot Abrams in NRO today. I can live with your bias but please don't ignore facts.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/israel-erupts-cutting-through-the-misinformation-surrounding-part-of-this-conflict/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
Eliot Abrams is a dogmatic neocon and I know full well what his views are on Israel and Gaza. I'll read the article but, to be honest, I'm more interested in engaging with less pro-war doctrinal Israel supporters than the Bill Kristols and David Frums of the world. The faction on the right that interests me more is the America First/MAGA faction. Many are not on board with pro-Israel dogma but some are. Those are the people I'm interested in engaging.
If the DNC would condemn Louis Farrakhan and the nation for their anti-semitic views, it would go a long way to stopping the growing spread of anti-semitism in the inner cities. Here is just this week's anti-semitic behavior from the african-american/muslim community.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-05-10/lakeith-stanfield-apologizes-for-anti-semitic-clubhouse
Here is more of the same growing anti-semitic behavior in the inner cities, fueled by the Nation of Hate.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nick-cannon-promotes-anti-semitic-conspiracy-theories-with-former-public-enemy-rapper
At some point the DNC should be willing to condemn their own constituents for their anti-semitic behavior, but I wont hold my breath. They will just yell more about how Donald Trump is a white supremacist (he was arguably the most pro-israel president ever) while ignoring the growing racism from within their own constituents.
Hi are you writing from 1980? It is 2021-- this column was about AOC's hypocrisy-- please get with the program
If he was writing from 1980, he would have said Ronald Reagan, not Donald Trump. But Louis Farrakhan, now he's still a racist, isn't he. And anti-semitic? When did that start, a couple millenia ago?
Perhaps you didn't actually read my comment? Its mentioning how DNC leadership is unwilling to challenge the people pushing a lot of the anti-semitic behavior.
My comments and citations are 100% in line with the article. Thanks for playing.
Glenn, you're being kind to Abrahms)))). He tried to covered up the Salvadoran death squads trained under Reagan, was deeply involved in Iran Contra, lied and withheld information to Congress, and was a Trump appointee. Given that HRC is a big Abrahms fan tells me she doesn't find DT as foul as she says.
Exactly-- what the heck ...
I’m MAGA so would love to hear it. We desperately want NO MORE WARS especially Middle East wars. Obviously there are differences of opinion in MAGA land too
Glenn, I've become a real fan and switched to Founding Member but your ad hominem attack is disappointing. I have come to expect better from you.
It's not ad hominem. One of the problems with this Israel debate is that it's been the same arguments for decades without any movement. We all have to pick and choose which critiques and critics we think are worth. engaging, and all I'm saying is that I think it's less fruitful to engage with long-standing predictable neocon dogma than more evolving and flexible MAGA/America-First defenses of Israel.
Israel - pro-Democracy, pro-women's rights (They had a female leader in 1969 ffs), has already beaten the dogshit out of multiple of the muslim attackers in the 6 day war, is who I stand with.
I won't pretend they don't have skeletons in their closet like every country, but I gladly stand with those who stand for democracy and equal rights.
America doesn't stand with Israel because they are jews, we stand with them because they have been long supporters of democracy in a region known for tyranny, despotism and oppression.
It’s not a defense of Israel, it’s a defense of democracy and freedom over theocratic lunatics.
Glenn,
I think you make a false assumption about a lot of MAGA/America-First thinkers. I voted Trump in 2016/2020, but mostly because he was the only choice available after the primaries. (Rubio in 2016 primaries, FWIW.)
I also don't think "Trumpism" or "MAGA" is really an articulated political philosophy. It certainly can't be summarized as simply as "America First, Everyone else go to hell". (Not what you've said, but I think you're implying that when you criticize a few billion sent to Israel in the face of the massive trillions that Biden wants to spend...)
Anyone can make the argument that, "how can we send billions to Israel when we have _________ here??" - which is a false dichotomy. It's loosely equivalent to the "If we can put a man on the moon, then we can _________."
Long and short, I think you can convince people that uncritically sending Israel money is one thing - but most Americans look at Israel first and foremost as a Democracy (which should be defended), and a big chunk also look at it in Biblical terms as the chosen state of God (again, ditto, as written in scripture).
Between those two bedrock beliefs, there's not a lot of daylight for "Hey, how come you can be MAGA/America first and still approve of sending money to Israel??"
Lastly, and quite obviously, getting back to Trumpism, if Trump had a foreign policy, it can be summarized as: Tariffs, "Getting even with China who has been abusing us", "Build a wall!" and "We love Israel, heck, half my family is jewish!"
Not trying to criticize any pro-anti-Trump person, just trying to elaborate on something Glenn has posted about repeatedly (and posted on Youtube).
Glenn, your without any movement isn’t really accurate. Israel picked up and left Gaza, bulldozing Jewish settlements. They gave back self rule to Gaza and the West Bank. They gave Arabs the franchise and they have members in the Knesset. They made peace with Egypt and Jordan and returned the Sinai - all of which got Anwar Sadat assassinated. Ehud Barak was willing to give Arafat 99% of what the Palestinians wanted and didn’t want to end up the same way, so he declined and touched off a bloody intifada.
The organizing documents of Palestinian organizations still call for the destruction of Israel. Guys like Sharon and Netanyahu have been PM for a long time because of the refusal of the Palestinians to make peace and their constant ability to find a hot blooded ally to seek to destroy them.
The Israeli-Palestinian troubles has a personal dimension for me. I am an American Jew. One of my cousins went to Israel and fell in love with a Palestinian Christian. They have been married for over 20 years (maybe over 30) and have several children. Hanna is a vocal critic of Israeli politics and a strong advocate for Palestinian rights. I disagree with many of his views, but he is honest.
So I have to view Israel and its policies with a critical eye.
Okay, points well taken but it came across to me as ad hominem when you dismissed the article I linked as neocon dogma before even reading it.
In any event I am interested in your views after you have had time to read it.
"...your ad hominem attack..."
On AOC? (i.e. are you being sarcastic?)
No, I felt dismissing Eliot Abrams because he is a Neocon was ad hominem.
Ah another sith lord who cannot handle even listening to dissenting opinions on other's opinions on things.
I can't imagine the ego you must have. Have you ever done LSD?
OK, but I just read it and I think it added something to my understanding. I have very few firm opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don't even have a strong opinion on this particular property dispute after reading Abrams' presumably-best-foot-forward description of it. But I am now strongly of the opinion that MSM describing this particular dispute as being over the eviction of Palestinians to make room for a "Jewish settlement" is pretty misleading. There is no way to defend this characterization:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/piapeterson/israel-hamas-palestinian-gaza-rockets-airstrikes
This latest violence began last week, after Israeli police violently clamped down on protesters who were demonstrating against the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of east Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlers.
Homes that were stolen 73 years ago. The wheels of justice turn slowly and true.
Technically, many of them are, but their reasons for it are different from the neocons: Many of them want to bring the second coming of Christ which will bring about the rapture and wipe out the nonbelievers (including the Jews), and they see the State of Israel as the key to achieving that.
This is such a hoary smear. I have heard smug, ignorant (smugnorant, if you will) progressives make this claim for years. I have literally never met an American who supports Israel for this reason. In a country of $350MM+, I am sure you can find someone this is a description of, but if you poll 1,000 American supporters of Israel, you won't find two people holding this view. If you do any research at all on this topic you will quickly discover that a number of sociological studies demonstrate that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of a large number of ideological tests with predictive capability (i.e., you can predict a person's views on a wide range of unrelated issues).
If religious conviction by evangelicals was a driving explanation for conservative support for Israel, it sure fails to explain why over-whelming numbers of mainline protestant and non-religious conservatives also support Israel. It also fails to explain why that pattern holds across countries. Why is a French conservative or an English Tory - none of whom will be an evangelical - far more likely to favor the Israeli narrative? Why has support for Israel by Southern Baptists increased so dramatically between 1948 (when fewer than 50% favored Israel) and the present? Surely it isn't because they have gotten more religious (the opposite is true). A better explanation can be found in the old Walther Bagehot essay on crunchiness versus sogginess.
A much more compelling argument can be made that a logical fallacy of progressives drives their support of the Palestinian narrative - a reflexive belief that the successful are the aggressors, the downtrodden the virtuous. It's an ironic place Israeli Jews find themselves a century and a half since Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals.
https://www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/news/newsletter-5-robins.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3512555?seq=1
As for your question, it's because they basically view Palestinians, and basically anyone who isn't from a majority white country, as uncivilized barbarians.
And, maybe this will surprise you, but it's probably because many liberals and leftists in both Israel and the US view the Israeli government under Netanyahu and the Likud party as turning into a borderline Judeo-fascist government that seeks to throw away democracy and make Israel an explicitly Jewish state, where Arabs are 2nd class citizens; going against the founding Zionists wishes for Israel to be both Jewish and Democratic in character.
I would guess that MAGA types are not so keen to support Israel materially, but would also not criticize Israel for using maximum force in Palestine. They liked Trump because he was open about his lack of moral hangups.
Almost. They liked Trump because he was open and honest. You'll find one of the people who put personality in front of policy (i.e. the ones with "moral hangups") in the mirror.
This is such an unhinged racist rant. You should figure out why you are so full of hatred and racism. You sound exactly like a Nazi. You are the modern day equivalent or a Jewish Nazi and your call for genocide is truly disgusting. How dare you claim there is no such thing as Palestinians. GTFO you racist pos
I have heard it before only saying the peoples calling themselves Palestinians are Jordanians.
There is no doubt the Muslim countries are oppressive and do not observe human rights.
They unapologetically call for a Juden free zone. How they get there frequently involves the proposed murder of all the Jews. That prolly gets survivors of the Holocaust who took a desert deal and built upon it a bit hot under the collar.
Just saying I never hear ‘tard outrage like this when the religous nutjobs leading Arab countries in the region unapologetically call for the murder of the Jews.
There is nothing the New Democrats oppose more than success. One must pretend to be powerless victims.
Israel is based on the premise of excluding non-Jews from all political rights, and is currently carrying out a massacre. You are defending the Israeli state which is currently murdering children and leveling apartment buildings. You are a monster. Your post is full of the same kind of hatred you claim others have. Instead of posting this nonsense, you should think about why you are such a terrible person with so much hatred in your heart.
You are based on the premise of antisemitism. You are a monster. You gleefully eat up propaganda about Israel and call yourself a social justice activist as thousands of rockets are shot towards residential areas in Israel, killing Jews and Arabs alike. It doesn't take long to discover the truth about what's going on right now in israel but you rather not see the truth. Had you been alive in the 1930s you would have eaten up the propaganda as well. Every single progressive who calls for the destruction of the "occupation" is the reincarnate of Nazis.
Not true. You are a failed seer of hearts.
Also not true. There are Arabs in the Knesset.
You are clearly uninformed or an intentional liar.
There are plenty of real reasons to not like Jews. You don’t need to make some up.
“ There are plenty of real reasons to not like Jews”
Very many legitimate reasons to hate the Jews?
Or ‘only’ not to like them?
I don’t know, the very very angry like Farrakhan are shushed for inappropriate expression of his anger.
Some one could do a deep dive with Farrakhan and we could find out.
And it is a pretense. Arab countries are run by rich oil barons who use an unevolved religion and the fomented hatred of Jews as props of power.
1000 rockets fired at civilians.
The intent was to murder civilian Jews.
Please stop the propaganda
Your brain? where did it go.
Eat shit. Out your ass. With a spoon.
Roland, I did not observe Glenn was a lover of arabs and hater of jews in this article. Glenn is a believer in human rights, and has much compassion and empathy. There is nothing wrong with that. I personally am pro-Israel's right to defend themselves, due to extensive study of the holocaust and WWII that I did as a youth. The Jews in my opinion had a right to defend their right to life, and to establish a nation state from which to defend their right to life. I suppose you could consider the Palestinians have a right to try to regain territory they consider theirs, but the truth is, tribes have been invading others territory, migrating out of territories, and going extinct for the entire course of the history of this planet - look at the Anasazi Indians in Utah. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a microcosm to the macrocosms of tribal conflicts over the course of the history of planet earth. I hope the Israeli's win. But what pissed me off the most in this article of Glenn's, is the amount of money the US ships to Israel every year. I am tired of it and all other ridiculous sums of foreign aid going to other countries. The American Taxpayer is getting bled dry while multiple countries around the world suck with vampire teeth at the teat of the great American taxpayer. It needs to end.
Israel gets that money due to the magnitude of the conflict. However, Biden pursuing a deal with Iran to tilt the balance of power towards Iran will only make Israel more dependent on that aid. A weak Iran and a powerful Saudi/Israel/Turkey etc alliance will lead to more stability and less aid necessary.
sigh-- so you say-- it is money laundering for US politicians and MIC-- wake up
money laundering is politics. this isn't unique to israel. wake up.
Substack badly needs a downvote button.
For the love of God, please don't. That would turn it into Reddit. There are plenty of brilliant folks on here willing to call out stupidity, but let's hear those stupid opinions and the arguments against them. A downvote button would turn it into an echo chamber.
nope just look at the lack of up votes 💗
unfortunately you don't see the whole picture when there are many upvotes, but potentially even more downvoters that couldn't register their displeasure. All you'll see are upvotes.
I have a theory that this unhinged, racist rant is a setup by Glenn to get people to subscribe in order to participate in the comments section.
Anyway, it worked with me.
What a moronic comment! It's pretty obvious who the Zionist "terrorists, murderers, thieves and crooks" are here! It's Palestine, not Israel that's been on the land in the region for generations. The Zionist project -- tying itself to a settler state attached to land already inhabited by a civilized people and having to expel hundreds of thousands to form the state (continuing to "war on") and occupy the rest of the area to "control" and oppress the remaining inhabitants -- is fated to fail . . . unless and until the Israelis can eliminate every last Palestinian. Declaring Israel a "Jewish state" was an extraordinary mistake setting up endless conflict. In the end . . . a one-state solution will have to accommodate both Jews and Palestinians -- and NEITHER can think they will control the "land" for themselves, no matter what the birth rates are, etc. Religion will have to be "set aside" as a controlling factor, burying the hatchet and "getting over" the horrifying brutality that Israelis have visited on the Palestinians will take time . . . but this is the only humane way forward. Otherwise the horrors and bloodshed will continue, quite possibly sparking new wars in the region.
"Before you go ape shit on the Jews living and defending themselves in the ancient land of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital for over 3000 yrs."
Was your reliable source for that the bible? More reliable sources agree that the year was 1948.
Jews have been living in Palestine forever. But creating a state where they were then allowed to steal property from Arabs is a crime against humanity.
And our serville butt-kissing of Israel is why Arabs fly planes into our buildings.
"They’re all Arabs. Terrorists, murderers, thieves and crooks."
Sieg Heil, Roland!
Were you wearing one of your many Meir Kahane t-shirts while you wrote this? Are the sleeves cut off so you can show off your Baruch Goldstein tattoo?
Is that the guy selling all the watches in the parking lot?
History, Roland? Please explain why Himmler himself, complete with Mercedes touring cars, escorted Jewish families "that matter" across the border into Switzerland and onto Palestine. If we want to get into eye witness history, some of which can be verified on the Yad Vashem site, we can really take a ride.
Roland, which cesspool did you crawl out of you hateful filled Nazi. You scummy lot are thieving beggars who not only stole the land through violence but continue to steal it through ethnic cleansing, murder, false imprisonment and a justice system that only views one side. You have an apartheid system that even trumps that of South Africa in its racist hay days. Like your Israeli brethren you have no awareness of human rights or freedoms as you've been brought up in a society bereft of understanding or morale's with an education system that teaches hate for your neighbours. Sadly, someone like Hitler would be proud of your disgusting mentality!
Please ... stop with the racist / zionist bullshit and the illogical, sweeping generalizations and stereotyping and the lies. Believe what you like but please don't peddle this nonsense among rational adults... for they'll see you for what you are.
They are not all terrorists murderers and thieves. Most obviously are not, and want dignity for themselves and their people. However, a good number of them, especially the younger generation, are socialized into radical islam and terrorism. And their leaders are corrupt and Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations. THIS is a fact. The Israel Arabs and Druze have less of this issue, although a good number of Mosques in Israel probably preach death to the Jews to Israel Arab citizens. What you wrote after that is correct. A Palestinian state would have been devastating for the Jews post WW2.
If the Palestinians win this war and subsume Jewish Israel into yet another shining society on a hill run by Muslims in the Middle East, do you think that will advance Justice? Human rights in the area?
I think the war will continue until Palestine controls Israel completely, and Israel won't let that happen and will always protect its citizens. But no, I'd rather Israel remain Jewish so I can continue to visit it, because it is my second home, and the place I feel the most free, and if it turned into a Muslim state I would no longer be allowed in.
To put it mildly, Pappe is a very controversial figure. This link - in response to a question of Pappe’s trustworthiness- gives, I think a fair appraisal of the back and forth between Pappe and Morris (one of the founders of revisionist Israeli history). You can draw your own conclusions.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/htl7d2/to_what_extent_is_benny_morris_assertion_that/
Yup. Nothing AOC fears more than not being allowed to sit with the cool kids. Yang was low hanging fruit.
As it turns out, Israel is not only an asset to the United States, it is an asset whose value is becoming more apparent to its neighboring Arab countries. All the fear mongering about war breaking out if the US moved its embassy proved to be wrong, as did the prophecies of doom should the US recognize Israeli annexation of the Golan. So maybe the premise of the anti-Israel voices is mistaken altogether. It is at least a possibility worth examining.
As to what is happening at the moment in Israel, what we see is an intra-Palestinian power play (by canceling elections whose outcome he could no longer control, Abbas deprived Hamas of its chance to take over the PA - something that it will not allow without a fight). The background to all this is, of course, Israel and the well-worn slogans about who best protects Palestinian rights.
Even the housing dispute that supposedly lies at the bottom of this outbreak of violence is an excuse. Back in 1982, the tenants agreed that their leases (granted under Jordanian law) required the payment of rent to the identified landlords. An agreement the tenants promptly ignored. It tells you something of the Israeli legal system that nearly four decades later is the case approaching a resolution. When our own rent moratorium ends, try using the same arguments these tenants have and see how long it takes before a US court grants an order of eviction.
Even here, the legal background is revealing on how Israel operates. After Jordan expelled all Jews from the lands of the former Mandate for Palestine that it conquered in 1948-49, it passed a law that allowed it to take possession of all Jewish properties. Some it took by eminent domain and retained control, others it gave ownership to third parties and still others it leased only. When Israel took control in 1967, it stepped into Jordan’s shoes by keeping the eminent domain seizures for public purposes intact (meaning it did not return those properties to their original Jewish owners). Israel also recognized the legal validity of the transfers of ownership (in the face of the evidently discriminatory Jordanian law that specifically prohibited Jewish - not simply Israeli - ownership). Only as to the leased properties did Israel relinquish the right it acquired from Jordan and reverted ownership to the original Jewish owners.
For those wondering why Israel does not afford displaced Palestinians the same rights to recover their properties lost in 1948, the reason is pretty straightforward. Not only are they non-citizens but their rights were essentially forfeited by having taken up arms or supported those Arab armies that sought to destroy Israel. In a sense, they find themselves in the same situation as do the descendants of those ethnic Germans who fled the advancing Allied armies or were expelled after WWII from anywhere between the Sudetenland to the former Soviet Union.
As to AOC in particular, Greenwald is correct that she aims her ire carefully. But there is a reason. She has learned from experience. When she went after Pelosi after the election, she somehow failed to get the committee postings she most wanted. Funny that.
Thinking now. I understand that it’s suicide for israel to accept Palestinian right of return in israel proper. They therefore technically don’t respect the ownership rights of Arabs who owned property in Israel , and they allow Jewish non owners to use the property.
Ok they maybe have no choice, suicide is not a choice.
They should at least make it equitable by allowing Arab non owners to continue living and using property in Palestine proper. They shouldn’t evict these tenants.
Your detailed sequence of events re the property dispute, is enlightening.
Where can I corroborate it?
Here’s an article in Newsweek that lays out the background and has an additional link that might interest you.
https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-are-lying-about-sheikh-jarrah-facts-mattereven-israel-opinion-1590504
You might also notice that no one is denying the sequence of these facts. As they are inconvenient to the “land grab” narrative and “Occupation” paradigm, they are ignored - and that should be a tell.
“ Not only are they non-citizens but their rights were essentially forfeited by having taken up arms or supported those Arab armies that sought to destroy Israel.”
A- How are they non-citizens?
B- We are to assume that the vast majority of Arabs in the mandated Israel, willingly took up arms or actively supported the enemy effort against the legitimate UN mandated government.
C- They were treasonous against the UN mandated government, hmmm.
D- Is this government entitled to punish these treasonous inhabitants for their treason, with forfeiture of property? Hmmm.
A. It might appear a bit technical but here goes: you can only be a citizen of a state and Mandatory Palestine was not a state. The Ottomans never claimed the residents of its former territory as citizens (well, subjects but same thing) after WWI either, mostly because they had relinquished their sovereignty in the later peace treaty. Those who resided in Mandatory Palestine were just that: residents, not citizens.
The first state to arise on the original Mandate territory was the Emirate of Transjordan in 1946 - whose splitting off in 1923 was objected to as illegal by the League of Nations Mandate Commission but as it had no enforcement power, the British did what they did. As to the other 22%, Israel declared its independence and became the only nation state there. Why the Arabs never declared a State of Palestine to at least muddy the waters is a separate question - but as we know from the reality of 1948-67, the creation of such an Arab state was not in the cards, using the Palestinian question as a wedge against Israel and to distract their own people from their misrule was the order of the day. So, the choices were Israel or Jordan, and only today’s Israeli Arabs chose Israel. Hence, the Palestinians are non-citizens.
B. If I understand you correctly, between the UN’s non-binding partition résolution in November 1947 (which the Arabs unanimously rejected) and Britain’s May 1948 withdrawal, it was the Palestinians who attacked the Jewish residents. After the British left, five Arab armies invaded. Whether the Palestinians constituted a “vast majority” or a significant one is probably unanswerable at this point. What we know is that most of the elite fled even before the British left, some Arab villages remained neutral and others either actively or passively supported the Arab armies. What is missing in most stories is that we in the West have imposed our categories on the Arabs. They did not organize themselves as a national group but by tribe and clan - so it is not very helpful to understanding the situation even to speak of the Palestine Arabs as some unified, homogeneous group.
C. If by UN Mandate government you mean Israel, I will just say that the UN in fact had not power under its Charter to act in any way that diminished the rights given the Jewish people by the League of Nations mandate. That’s in Article 80. That Arabs fought against Israel is clear. Treason is, again, a technical legal concept and as far as I am concerned, as they were never citizens who had sworn allegiance to Israel they cannot be guilty of the crime of treason.
D. I think I explained this already.
Thank you for your responses. I will read them thoroughly
As an unabashed Christian supporter of Israel - I am less concerned about these seemingly intractable historical issues - and - more in tune with Charles K. While I concede that the formerly strong Judeo/Christian ties are loosing as we have become a majority secular nation, the 'uniparty' response to Israel is one of the rarer instances of a unconcerned government is for the most part in tune with the vast majority of Americans who likewise support the Jewish State.
The modern independent Jewish state of Israel is a vital ally and an amazing HUMANE
Too many threads to pull on this sweater, ultimately spiritually discerned. In nutshell, I’m sad to see Glenn taken in by the Palestinian PR machine. It is a truly amazing juggernaut of half-truth, misinformation, and outright falsehood, but still, with Glenn’s skills. Start with Sarah and Hagar.
I’m sincerely curious if Glenn, being Jewish and all, (an assumption really, based on his last name?) is ready for another round of landless-hated-minority-in-host-nations experiment.
It’s a club you can’t opt out, as per the Nuremberg laws 1935, or per the general consensus of world society.
Is another round of ‘persecuted minority in host nations’, a question of survival, or not?
The only ones taken by PR machine are people like you, but no worries the tide is turning, so get used to it.
Sigh-- really and you haven't been taken in? Are you to judge?
Carol, EVERYONE gets to "judge," i.e. have an opinion.
Why do you believe anything the Palestinian "Ministry of Health" reports? They lie about civilian deaths in order to inflame. Further, why should we care if Palestinians die after they attack Israeli cities? THEY don't care if they kill Israeli children. Sheesh.
Did you ever read how the current issue started? Maybe it's not a good idea to kick people out of their homes and attack their favorite mosque? Do some research before you spread moronic nonsense you uneducated scum. .
Oh, what a pithy comment. Ad hominem makes you look so brave and intelligent.
You should talk. When you build your house on top of my house, expect me to be pissed.
You built our house on his house of many years ago.
Another heartless scum, I can't comprehend how people like you can exist, just know that justice will come for all of us, one way or another. Also I am Armenian living in Los Angeles so I don't have beef in this game, just my consciousness.
The palestinians were rioting in the mosque and were using it to store weapons to attack police men. That is why they went into the mosque. The homes were illegally held, and were Jewish owned before Jordan took Jerusalem and the settlers were going through the legal system to get it back. However, I don't agree with their cause in this situation. As an outsider, maybe look into both sides of the conflict instead of an incredibly biased social media campaign to paint israel as a heartless aggressor.
You are lying little cunt. there is absolutely not proof of them having any weapons and yes they can through stones when they are attacked. The only one with weapons are Israelis. I will not even comment about housing BS. Israel is heartless aggressor and every Israeli should be ashamed of it, but why would they when they have scum like you defending them. I also will not be surprised if you are just all paid bots. This is text book ethnic cleansing and there will be price for it. Good news is that the world is starting to wake up and see Israel for what it is: heartless aggressors without remorse who are doing to Palestinians what was done to them.
Really. I suppose Armenians are to Turks what Palestinians are to Israelis?
I would think that past victims of genocide would be more sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. The world arranged for the Jews to have a nation on historical soil. The world is, and has been, ready to do the same for Palestinians, whereby they could receive even more foreign aid (especially from neighboring Israel) and/or kick out their "own" Jews and dis-allow Jewish immigration and settlements. They could be a right wealthy country by now. I hear they make excellent engineers. If only they would stop shooting big bullets into the air over Israel.
I am not sure what a retarded cunt like you was trying to say, but don't really care cause you are retarded cunt.
And Turks? 🙂
What about Turks? Turkey of today is similar to Israel, which is run by right wing degenerates too drunk on their power. I dislike the government, but not the people, if that is what you mean.
You be credit to public skool sistem in LA, Orez!
English is foreign language for me you retard which is more that I can say for cunts like you. Also I didn't graduate in USA, as such have critical thinking, which I am sure is not something that morons like you know about.
Better then ignorant and heartless scum like you.
That's better. I was worried you had changed. (btw, it's "than," not "then")
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/israel-erupts-cutting-through-the-misinformation-surrounding-part-of-this-conflict/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
Since when did evictions become a cause for war. Evictions happen all the time, especially evictions of squatters.
The NATIONAL REVIEW?
YES.
What part of NYC are you from?
Uh....assuming facts not in evidence. I ain't from NYC.
Maybe Israel should hand control of the Temple Mount to Egypt...or promise to give it to Saudi Arabia if they open diplomatic relations with Israel. The Palestinians should not be allowed to control the place and then use it as grounds for grievances against Israel.
Looks like the Biden administration is working hard to keep the gulf states from aligning with Israel. That would be beneficial for the entire region - use oil wealth to fund Israeli technical innovations to benefit all the people of the region...except those who make war (namely Iran and the Palestinians).
Republicans have been crazy for about 40 years. Democrats have become repugnant over 30 years. I don’t know who’s worse.
My state, Montana, hasn't had Republican control of both the legislature & the governorship in a long time. So far this year's legislature has outlawed the Department of Environmental Quality from measuring nitrogen & phosphorous levels in rivers & streams; outlawed hospitals from requiring employees to have COVID vaccines; and outlawed our college campuses from providing medical abortions for early-term pregnancies.
My daughter has advanced cancer & is in the hospital frequently. You bet I give a fuck that Republicans are in charge here. If you hang around left-wing Republicans that tell you Republican politicians are OK, you lack the ability to access the real world.
I hope your daughter makes a full recovery someday soon. You are absolutely right to care deeply about the politicians who have so much power to affect your life and well-being.
I'm curious: Is your daughter able to be vaccinated? And might you be able to request from your health-care provider to ensure only vaccinated staff are present at your daughter's hospital stays?
The subject is Israel, and the bipartisan, sickening suck-up to it.
Did you call him Ray-gun, too?
Yep.
At least you are honest, M. Pete. I would move those crazy/repugnant start dates way back in time.
First of all her name is SANDY. Do you really think when she was tending bar she was called AOC. She doesn’t have enough intellect to market herself. Someone latched on to her and slid her up the slope. Second didn’t Israel win a war to gain its sovereignty and territory.
The Palestinians have chanted death to Israel no matter what like most terror groups in the Middle East. You could cave to all their demands and they would still want to club you to death
Israel took a shithole desert and turned it into the most productive per square mile of real estate in the world. The Palestinians what have they done? Wined and cried give me what you made.
It was never a shithole desert. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t justify stealing and displacing people. I’m sure I can think of something more productive to do with your house. Should I come and take it?
You're absolutely right. But the land was never the Palestinians. The Arabs and the Druze who did not leave during the war enjoy full rights as citizens. Jews have been forcibly removed from homes during peace time in order to placate Palestinians whose ultimate goal isn't peace but full control over Israel, a country which was NEVER theirs.
Your comment encapsulates very well the conceptual error (collectivism) that translates into bad policies.
The land, meaning the territory where Israel and Palestine exist, belongs to no single group of people. Mexico belongs to Mexicans, sure, but it also belongs to Americans and Europeans and Canadians and countless other nationalities who own properties in Mexico. If an American citizen gets thrown out of his property in Cabo on the basis that it’s not “his land” because of his nationality, that’s clearly a crime. If it’s a white Mexican, descendant of Europeans, gets dispossessed because he’s not a mestizo or indigenous Mexican who can trace his ancestry to the first inhabitants of the land now called Mexico, that would be a crime too.
The point is rights belong to individuals, not arbitrary group designations or countries. “Jews” don’t own Palestine. Some Jews owned some parts of Palestine and some Palestinians owned other parts of it at different times in history. Why does belonging to one of these groups imply a superior claim? There is no logical answer. This is why even the most ardent Israel supporters can’t answer what they plan to do with the millions of non-Jews “squatting” in “Jewish land” if they refuse to leave the only homeland they’ve ever known.
I believe your argument is sound.
The Jews should listen to this argument.
Yet without a land and an army, it’s back to the good old days of persecution murder and genocide. (NO reason at all to expect otherwise. Nothing’s changed)
This argument is something the Jews should listen too.
They shouldn’t risk another run. It didn’t work out to good the first time around.
Survival wins!!
You're right. That's why Arabs and Druze and other nationalities in Israel retain full rights as Israeli citizens, while Palestinian refugees don't from the start of this crisis, because of the war where a bunch of Arab countries decided to attack Israel based on the fact the it is a Jewish nation. Meanwhile, in Gaza, it is a crime to sell land to Jews. I agree that the plight of the Palestinians is not good, but their situation has been exacerbated by terrible, terrorist leadership, and messaging to children to hate israel, give up their lives to kill israelis, and to free Palestine from the river to the see. Don't forget that plenty of Jews there have lost their homes - many of them living there since the 1800s - and their homes have been given to Palestinians. I agree that rights belong to individuals, exactly. Israel has done dark stuff, sure, but no other country can claim that they've been encapsulated in such a conflict as theirs, yet have tried to stay as humanitarian as possible while also protecting their own citizens. Not a single country doesn't have blood on their hands. The conflict in the middle east does not fit a neat binary. It just doesn't. Israel fights for its existence amidst state sponsored terrorism in an unstable region marred by radicals and revolutions and terrorist regimes in nearly every country there. People are continuously turfed out of their homes throughout the region. That is not equivalent to the situation in North America, the examples you have brought up. Jews have been ethnically cleansed from over a hundred countries. I get why they're keen on keeping this one. No?
I see a bunch of non sequiturs here. One need not deny the injustices committed against Jews to point injustices committed by the Israeli government. Jewish suffering is no justification for systemic oppression against Palestinians. That no single country has a perfect record is no blank check for Israel to commit war crimes. Etc. Etc.
I am not against the existence of the state of Israel. I am for liberty and equality under the law. Everyone governed by Israel should have same rights. If Israel governs you, you should get citizenship. If Israel doesn't want to give Palestinians citizenship then it shouldn't rule over them via military occupation. It really is that simple.
Well, it was a malarial area that even the British had given up hopes of cleaning up. Not terribly surprisingly, early Jewish land purchases from absentee effendi who owned most of the private property (locals were often more tenant farmers than owners) overlap extremely closely with malarial areas.
But it was a Jew, Israel Klinger who came up with a plan to eradicate and was able to convince the skeptical British to allow the experiment. It succeeded and became the world standard in combatting the illness. His project’s success was due in no small part to the coordination between the Jews and Arabs with the British and foreign powers staying mostly out of the way.
The story behind this achievement is set out here, if anyone is interested in an example of what Jews and Arabs working together can achieve.
https://academic.oup.com/ae/article/63/4/E1/4713025#125426201
Thank you. I agree that Jews, Arabs (and Christians and everyone else) can work together in peace. Indeed this is what happened in Palestine throughout most of its history. Then something happened that codified the supremacy of one group over the others. A tragedy.
We are in general agreement - except for your penultimate sentence. There was no supremacy of one group over the other in the case of Israel. While it is the nationstate of the Jewish people, unlike every surrounding country in the region, Israel’s citizens enjoy equal rights - but that is not to say, as may be said of every Western democracy, that Israel has managed to achieve that equality and banished prejudice and bias from the human heart. This is an ongoing process for which there are no shortcuts. It may prove likely to be an unachievable goal - witness some of the vitriol in this thread - but it is still worth pursuing.
I don’t think anyone is asking Israelis to banish prejudice. Laws that don’t discriminate against non-Jews trying to return to their homeland, that give weight to ancestral claims by some but not others based on the group they belong to, irrespective of their own individual connection to the land, and the ability of millions to have equal rights and vote for the government that rules over them. This is ending apartheid and it’s not too much to ask.
Yup the same propaganda team that told us how South Africa was a wasteland before the S African whites took over. God-- you think they would come up with new lies.
Mark Twain wrote about that shithole desert more than a century ago. This is what he said about it: "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince… Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone… Palestine is desolate and unlovely. "
Oh geez my mother told me that in the 50s-- such old propaganda-- cringe worthy that you raise it. It is not true. Geez is everyone here posting from 1970? It is 2021
something that was true in 1950 does not stop being true just because 71 years has past. If you have other points to bring up, please do. Otherwise you are the one regurgitating propaganda and knee jerk responses
Thank you.
Yeah history is propaganda when it suits your narrative yawn. Carol read a book
Regardless of the very serious tragedy Israel has created for Palestinians, your comment on AOC was disgusting & your posting makes you a filthy pimp
("gain" should be "keep." The U.N. created sovereign territory in '48. Btw, there WERE real jewish terrorists before that!)
You are wrong about her intellect: now that she IS the State, she knows EXACTLY which side her toast is buttered, and she is a genius in using her young constituents spread across the land.
Glenn, your hard-on for Israel and blind defense of everything Palestinian is something I try to ignore in the spirit of trying to keep and open mind.
Do you have anything to say about this piece by Elliot Abrams in NRO today?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/israel-erupts-cutting-through-the-misinformation-surrounding-part-of-this-conflict/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
WHO has a hard on for Israel???
AOC is a Barack Obama clone. Tell voters what they want to hear, do as your party funders demand, send Wall Street billionaires your time sheet, take their payola and retire from elected office a millionaire after enjoying the benefits your constituents paid for and were denied to them. Zip your wallets folks. The two party system is a scam.
Right. Let's blame Israel for attacks against it by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the islamist terrorists since 1949. Every single mohammedan country expelled all Jews and confiscated their property. Israel must now return the favor. You seem not to have noticed that five nations recently established full relations with Israel under Trump. Many more were set to follow, including the Saudis. But Xoe Bi-Den has put a stop to that by immediately surrendering to Iran and Turkey. He restored funding for Hamas and hezbollah. They know weakness when they see it. Do you seriously think these successive disasters, including Putin's attack on our energy infrastructure, are a coincidence? Yesterday the Bi-Den regime called the Russian cyber attack a "private sector" matter. Wake up.
Except that Israel is not returning the favor, it is following the law even when it may not advance the interests of its partisans. What we do see quite a bit of, however, is the projection onto Israel of what Arab states have in fact done (both to their Jewish communities, most of which no longer exist, or to their fellow citizens who differ only by ethnicity, creed or tribal allegiance) or what fantasists sitting on the sideline imagine Israel would do - thereby confusing their deeply held (perhaps even subconscious) antisemitic tropes with reality.
Precisely. I say send all the mohammedans to Gaza and seal the border. Period. The "Palestinians" are a fictional people. They are simply arabs who initially accepted Israel's offer of citizenship in the new nation while being told by their arab friends that Israel would be defeated by the combined "might" of the arab nations that attacked Israel as soon as it came into existence. They don't want peace, and never have.
Glenn, if you approach the propaganda coming from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority with the same skepticism you have for everything else you cover, perhaps you will change your mind. The real story, which others have written about, is that the return to the Obama foreign policy of supporting Iran financially and politically has destabilized the entire Middle East and precipitated the violence we have now. The story is not that US sends military aid to Israel which, by the way, must use it to purchase equipment from US companies. The story is that the US is supporting Iran and the Palestinian Authority, while Iran is supporting Hamas and Hezbollah with US and Chinese money. The Democrats talk about their love for Israel, but look at their actions, which undermines and destabilizes Israel at every turn. Why, why, why are you not skeptical about the lies they spin in the case of Israel? And at who really benefits?
Yes, Iran made Israel expand settlements and evict Palestinians from their homes. Palestinians were rolling over nicely until Israel-hating yet record breaking military aid package-signing Obama made a deal with Iranians. Makes sense.
Why can the Palestinians not coexist and sell their property to Jews? I mean, I know there are a lot of annoying Jewish people you don’t want as neighbors, but really you support the Middle East being a complete Juden free zone?
If the Palestinians win this war and subsume Jewish Israel into another center of enlightened Muslim leadership... will that really serve Justice in your mind?
It seems to me that you don't understand the basics of the situation.
There is no war in East Jerusalem. There's an occupation where the occupying force, against international law, applies its domestic laws on the local population. One of these laws says that Jews, by the fact that they are Jews, can evict people from their home (no payment) based on the fact that the tenants are not Jews. So you see, this has nothing to do with Palestinians being willing to coexist with Jews or sell them property, which is what they've done for millennia in Jerusalem.
Well. The other side has an argument also. It involves the history of East Jerusalem, the courts and an extended legal battle to regain previously stolen houses.
Now it could be you are telling the truth. Or it could be the other side is telling the truth.
Knowing a little something about Jordanian control of Jerusalem (even Christians weren’t allowed access to holy sites) - I give the integrity edge to Israel, which unlike Jordan is not merely expelling the other religions from the city but is trying to hash it all out one property at a time.
Not because they are Jews, but because they are family of the previous owners and are therefore the current owners.
Yet no Palestinian can make that same claim in Israel. Palestinian deeds to property owned by their ancestors are worthless. Jewish deeds, however, are considered in court. Why? Because they are Jewish.
In other words, there's no way for a non-Jew to get a court to hear the point you are describing. That's apartheid in action.
Valid point!
Isn’t that part of the peace process, dealing with the right of return?
Israel WOULD be committing national suicide by allowing the right of return for all Palestinian families who lived there, you’re aware of that, right?
That doesn’t absolve them of land theft, you may argue.
Well, I find that the whole ‘Jewish’ thing within the world order and history, is an anomaly.
A nation living in someone else’s land oppressed, demonized, for millennia, culminating in the gas chambers, and then a new state for them.
Yup, the situation in the world order, based on 2000 years, is such that it is the right and equitable thing to do, to allow the Jews to have their own homeland and not be outnumbered.
It sounds somewhat racist. It doesn’t fit neatly into our ideas and ideals. Yet being persecuted and murdered shouldn’t fit into anyone’s ideals either.
Based on historical and current realities, it is most fair and equitable that Jews have a land FOR JEWS, in their ancestral homeland.
As I said, it’s not so palatable to our ‘refined’ sensibilities of equality and non -discrimination etc., to accept a Jewish State, but gas chambers are even less palatable.
"...I know there are a lot of annoying Jewish people you don’t want as neighbors..."
Couldn't stop laughing! It occurs to me that Jews have learned to be much more tolerant of their neighbors, these last couple millenia, than their neighbors have learned to be, what with that diaspora thing they got going on (Is THAT "empiring," too?).
It's a good thing (or too bad, depending on your opinion) that Jews don't all have, say, bright green skin. Then I could REALLY tell you about my obviously Jewish neighbors.
There are a few issues to unravel in this piece. The first is that there is a cabal of LEFT liberal interventionist warmongers and RIGHT militarist warmongers. Trump, by the way, was not either of those. He wanted us out of wars and stood by those principles, oddly, among all the other strange things he did. Liz Cheney's group and the leftwing warmongers from the Hillary/Biden group all hate Trump for opposing their constant drumbeat for more blood. The INTEL Community also hates Trump for the same reason.
I think you could also be more brave and call out this powerful cabal.
Last thing, I read on Twitter that you proclaim that Israel is the aggressor into Palestinian territory. You do realize that Palestinians have no territory, and no country. The reason I mention this is when you use Israel's incursion into Palestinian territory as justification that Israel is the aggressor and that the terrorists firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel are defending themselves against occupiers, you are on very shaking legal and moral ground. What you are saying in similar to saying that CHOP was being occupied by the police. There is a need to speak accurately and truthfully. And the Palestinian's, while seeking statehood, do not have it. They are in essence in protest against the existing governments of Israel and Egypt who have traditionally controlled that territory. Taken from that viewpoint, clearly, Israel being under siege from rocket fire has the right to defend itself. If CHOP started firing rockets at surrounding neighborhoods, I would want the police in there in 20 minutes breaking that up.
I would add one other observation about the Israel situation. One of the greatest PR victories was inverting the David and Goliath paradigm by replacing the Arab war on Israel with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if you take an even larger framing, something interesting happens and some inconvenient questions emerge.
In the post-WWI territorial settlement in the Middle East, the Arabs now rule about 99.75% of the former Ottoman holdings. The remaining 0.25% is pre-1967 Israel and the balance of the former Mandate territories. In what universe can the Arabs complain legitimately of some cosmic unfairness over this?
The other issue that immediately comes to mind is why is it just to deliver the lands liberated from one imperial power (the Ottomans) back into the hands of the imperial power the Ottomans Turks had replaced, namely the Arabs? Put a bit differently, why were the Jewish people the only indigenous group to be granted self-determination by the world community after WWI?
Raising those matters should refocus the overall discussion, but as most people are far too invested in their emotional attachments of the moment, rest assured this perspective will gain zero traction.
I know a person who immigrated here from Iran when the theocracy took over. He is from mixed religion parents and would have been put to death if he stayed. He sympathized with the Palestinian people and did not take sides against Israel as the Baha’i temple is located in Israel, and they freely worship as do Muslims. Muslims can own land and hold political office in Israel. I doubt that the inverse is true in the Hamas-held Palestinian territories.
It's not true. In fact, it is illegal for Arabs to sell land to a Jew. To an Israeli arab it is okay, but not to a Jew.
“Politicians are not born; they are excreted.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Firing rockets into Israel is an act of terrorism. There is no justification for terrorism. Terrorists don’t get to have their motives understood.
I often think how we would react if San Diego was under a rocket attack from the Baja peninsula. I imagine we’d be in there pronto civilian casualties be damned. On a side note, as long as we were stealing huge swaths of territory WHY DIDNT WE TAKE THE BAJA PENINSULA TOO!! Missed opportunity!!
Once you learn to ignore the partisan rhetoric and then understand that there isn't an ounce of integrity anywhere in politics, particularly at the federal level, it all starts to make sense.