An article on October 30 in The Economist about a discussion with a Palestinian leader points toward the possibility of some hope after the fighting. It's not a solution, or even the beginning of a solution, but it does indicate that a solution may not be impossible:
Please stop calling Arabs antisemitic. Arabs are Semites. Arabic is a semitic language. I believe Hamas, along with other groups, can be labeled anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist, but not antisemitic.
Indeed. They are horrendous. Just as a rather depressing statistic, I wonder which groups, right or left-wing dictatorships (ie Stalin and Co) have been more brutal numerically. I suspect the right-wingers are worse, but neither is a club I'd like for us to join. Better not to waste space in your head answering that one.
-- it may very well be genocide - it's a legal term with specific meaning. Stop clutching your pearls.
2. I'm a Jew; and, a very Jew-friendly Jew, at that. Rep Gottheimer should confine himself to serving the needs of those closest to him in his heart: the wealthy people in his district. There's nothing wrong with voting against that resolution. (I sure wish we (that includes me) had listened more to the opponents of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were denounced and demonized, too.)
3. The worst among the various schmucks, poltroons, dumb-asses, and petty authoritarians wrapping themselves in the Palestinian cause - for now - are a threat to what? Taking them even half as seriously as they take themselves makes me wonder: what will John Podhoretz do when the shit really hits the fan?
5. Please think and behave constructively. Cultivate a reasoned, dispassionate response to things. The politics of outrage and the politics of denunciation are really bad bets.
While we're talking about what some students are doing on the left that is abhorrent, can we also talk about people like Tom Cotton and their opinion that Israel can "bounce the rubble" in Gaza? There's an ironic historical link to that phrase that come from Winston Churchill. He noted about mass bombings of cities that "the law of diminishing returns operates in the case of the demolition of large cities. Soon many of the bombs would only fall upon houses already ruined and only make the rubble jump. Over large areas there would be nothing more to burn or destroy." He also used that phrase around nuclear deterrence that the Soviets need only destroy a US city once as what's the point of making the rubble bounce. Tom Cotton uses this expression without any recognition of how someone like Churchill used it. He's all in favor of leveling Gaza to the ground and continuing to pound it even after simply to make the rubble bounce.
While we're acknowledging what a few on the left do that is anti-semitic, maybe we can spend a few times talking about what our elected congress is in favor of. Genocide.
It's always fun to have a conversation with someone who asks for proof of something, and upon getting proof immediately wants to talk about a bunch of things unrelated to their original question.
But to your point, I think we shouldn't vote for Democrats until no person on the left, whether it is in Europe or the US is anti semitic.
Charlie, every emotionally charged issue, from the McCarthy years to Vietnam and Iraq and beyond is going to bring out challengers to the established order and some of them are going to be hateful and even violent, but simply dismissing them as "a cancer" is unproductive and historically inaccurate. While strongly supporting Israel's right to defend itself, we cannot forget that Israel is led by a twice indicted P.M. protected from criminal prosecution by a cabinet of messianic zealots who failed at the only thing they promised Israel -security. Unfortunately, in order to support Israel we are in bed with some very bad actors who have zero interest in ever supporting Palestinian rights and the long hoped for two state solution. This ancient American Jewish veteran is sick at heart and fearful that the way Israel conducts its
"pay back" will seriously damage all involved, the U.S. included
I have zero sympathy for leftists who minimize the terrorist tactics of Hamas or any other terrorist organization who justify slaughtering innocents as a necessary means to their political ends. The brutalities committed by leftist regimes are legion. It is always, always those in the middle who get stuck with mopping up or living in the rubble afterwards. As to the cool kids ripping down posters of kidnap victims, shame on them. That is petty, childish behavior. Ever so much easier to tear things up and yell slogans than do the hard work of building things up and supporting one another. Mao said “Power comes from the barrel of a gun.” As I see it, it is only death and destruction that come from the barrels of guns.
How much of this is "the left" and how much of it is just people who like Hamas perhaps for some other reason? Many of the people I've seen don't look like Kool-Aid haired gender studies majors. They look like the kind of people who wouldn't like the former at all.
Hate is apparently a human value in some quarters. I read your friend's deeply moving article about her own children and a purple nightlight and was moved to tears and then appalled that the 550 plus replies were in the nature of: "See, Democrats hate you; don't vote for them" mode. (They apparently do not know that Chuck Schumer and many others hold Israeli citizenship. Or facts don't matter.)
The only hope I see is that there are Palestinians who feel for the loss of Israeli babies and Israelis who are against the bombing of Palestinian babies. These are strong people! My prayer is that there is a growing number of both. Because what HAMAS did is unfathomably depraved (and not denouncing it is complicity). And what Israel is doing seems to involve war crimes ("Go south" and then bombing the south, for instance). There is plenty of bloody handiness to go around, at least within "governments." There is plenty of hate and embrace of violence and pointing fingers at The Other, real or imagined. This particular conflict can be said to stretch back to Abraham -- or at least 1917. That is not the point and Now is not the time. All sides - and their governments - must return to acting out of a sense of the humanity of all people, all peoples. (Including MAGA, btw.) Or humanity is surely doomed.
I pray for all of the babies and young mothers and old grandmas in both countries and Ukraine and other places (20% of the world population is in substandard or no housing). I pray for us all.
It is right to worry about and regret civilian casualties in Gaza. It is wrong to demand that Israel back off and do little or nothing because of them. The objective of the Israeli armed forces is to defeat its armed enemy Hamas. The Israelis are not intentionally attacking civilians. If Hamas were to dig in in positions along the border and other strong points from which it had evacuated civilians, there would be only the few civilian casualties inevitable in combat. Instead Hamas’s “fighters” are hiding among civilians and hoping to use them as shields. Because of that the moral responsibility for civilian casualties is Hamas’s, regardless of how the Israelis conduct their campaign. In contrast the objective of Hamas on October 7th was not to attack its armed enemy the Israeli armed forces. There were plenty of installations Hamas could have attacked if it had been. The objective of the attack on October 7th was to murder, torture, kidnap, and rape as many civilians as possible. The Hamas terrorists who attacked on October 7th are savages, and so is anyone who approves of what they did. A lot of masks have been dropped in the last three weeks by both supporters of Hamas and lefties who excuse supporters of Hamas, and people need to pay careful attention to those who dropped them before they expediently put them back on. There is useful information to be gained.
I find I can agree with most if not all your words here. I think you are accurate. I disagree that Israelis have no choice at all. I believe they could set up a no-kill zone around the Rafah exit point and pressure Egypt to let Gazans out -- maybe just women and children -- and put on planes perhaps to US bases in Iraq, for instance. There is ALWAYS an option (even when it isn't ideal or desirable) to murdering children and the elderly and women.
As a non-Jewish woman married to a Jewish man, my husband and I have had many conversations (arguments) of 20+ years about the situation in Israel with the West Bank and Gaza, and the broader Middle East area. I, frankly, despise Netanyahu and find him an incendiary person who has done nothing to help resolve the issues that have plagued Israel since its inception, and cannot believe that this man has held power in Israel for so long. I hate that the Israeli government not only allows but has supported Jewish settlements in the West Bank. I feel that it is incredibly stupid that so many in the Israeli Government, particularly Netanyahu, have no desire for a two-state solution with the Palestinians and continues to cause so much hardship for Palestinians, and now consequently, the Israeli people.
However, the pure, unadulterated, heinous, violence of Hamas' attack in Israel, the bloodthirsty cruelty of killing and torturing babies, children, women, children, the elderly and the kidnapping of children, babies, women, men and the elderly by Hamas, should be completely untenable by any civilized, ethically evolved human. Hamas' actions on Oct. 7th should be condemned by any person who has a shred of humanity.
You can have compassion for the Palestinians in Gaza while condemning the actions of Hamas. You can detest Netanyahu's and the extreme-right Israeli's policies and abhor Hamas and their naked violence simultaneously.
We have been down this road before, where a group of people have voiced their intent to commit genocide against the Jews. It has been ongoing for centuries, honestly.
The Palestinians could have had a two-state solution long ago as well if Yasser Arafat had said "yes" to Ehud Barak back in 2000 during the Camp David Summit with President Clinton, but he was unwilling to make a final decision that might put him in a negative light with the extremist elements of his party.
The situation in the Middle East with Israel has been so intractable because the "leaders" of each State are so intractable. They all have their dicks out trying to be the tougher guy, while the people who live in these States who just want to live safe, happy, economically and physically secure lives are the victims of the hubris of their "leaders". It's always the extremists who seem to get to determine the course of the lives of the moderates and that is complete BS.
Also I came late to this NYT opinion piece but found it interesting. Essentially the author (Jewish) states that by blocking non-violent and ethical résistance (like the BDS movement) the US and West have ratcheted up the "need" for violent resistance.
If civil disobedience is impossible then UNCIVIL disobedience will follow.
We should see these acts of domestic terrorism for what they are -- attempts to divide and destroy us as a country founded on the principle of life and liberty for all. The labels left and right don’t mean anything when the actors are so wrong. These are people whose driving force is chaos, and, yes, evil. We must stand up against this, whether it’s proud boys marching with tiki torches or black clad antifa supporters tearing down poster of kidnapped children.
I am not sure I understand the mechanism in distributing frozen assets. But why have we not also redistributed Iranian frozen assets to Israel and other allies in the region?
An article on October 30 in The Economist about a discussion with a Palestinian leader points toward the possibility of some hope after the fighting. It's not a solution, or even the beginning of a solution, but it does indicate that a solution may not be impossible:
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/10/30/a-vision-for-the-palestinians-after-the-war
Please stop calling Arabs antisemitic. Arabs are Semites. Arabic is a semitic language. I believe Hamas, along with other groups, can be labeled anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist, but not antisemitic.
Indeed. They are horrendous. Just as a rather depressing statistic, I wonder which groups, right or left-wing dictatorships (ie Stalin and Co) have been more brutal numerically. I suspect the right-wingers are worse, but neither is a club I'd like for us to join. Better not to waste space in your head answering that one.
Charlie:
1. https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
-- it may very well be genocide - it's a legal term with specific meaning. Stop clutching your pearls.
2. I'm a Jew; and, a very Jew-friendly Jew, at that. Rep Gottheimer should confine himself to serving the needs of those closest to him in his heart: the wealthy people in his district. There's nothing wrong with voting against that resolution. (I sure wish we (that includes me) had listened more to the opponents of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were denounced and demonized, too.)
3. The worst among the various schmucks, poltroons, dumb-asses, and petty authoritarians wrapping themselves in the Palestinian cause - for now - are a threat to what? Taking them even half as seriously as they take themselves makes me wonder: what will John Podhoretz do when the shit really hits the fan?
4. The ADL map (https://www.adl.org/stand-with-israel?utm_campaign=irshamatt2023&utm_medium=pr&utm_content=20231025 ) looks like a light Jew-hate couple of weeks in the America where my parents grew up. Or what Black Americans experience now. Or what Muslim Americans went through for years after 9/11. I hate it all - but please don't make it worse than it is.
5. Please think and behave constructively. Cultivate a reasoned, dispassionate response to things. The politics of outrage and the politics of denunciation are really bad bets.
While we're talking about what some students are doing on the left that is abhorrent, can we also talk about people like Tom Cotton and their opinion that Israel can "bounce the rubble" in Gaza? There's an ironic historical link to that phrase that come from Winston Churchill. He noted about mass bombings of cities that "the law of diminishing returns operates in the case of the demolition of large cities. Soon many of the bombs would only fall upon houses already ruined and only make the rubble jump. Over large areas there would be nothing more to burn or destroy." He also used that phrase around nuclear deterrence that the Soviets need only destroy a US city once as what's the point of making the rubble bounce. Tom Cotton uses this expression without any recognition of how someone like Churchill used it. He's all in favor of leveling Gaza to the ground and continuing to pound it even after simply to make the rubble bounce.
While we're acknowledging what a few on the left do that is anti-semitic, maybe we can spend a few times talking about what our elected congress is in favor of. Genocide.
It's always fun to have a conversation with someone who asks for proof of something, and upon getting proof immediately wants to talk about a bunch of things unrelated to their original question.
But to your point, I think we shouldn't vote for Democrats until no person on the left, whether it is in Europe or the US is anti semitic.
Charlie, every emotionally charged issue, from the McCarthy years to Vietnam and Iraq and beyond is going to bring out challengers to the established order and some of them are going to be hateful and even violent, but simply dismissing them as "a cancer" is unproductive and historically inaccurate. While strongly supporting Israel's right to defend itself, we cannot forget that Israel is led by a twice indicted P.M. protected from criminal prosecution by a cabinet of messianic zealots who failed at the only thing they promised Israel -security. Unfortunately, in order to support Israel we are in bed with some very bad actors who have zero interest in ever supporting Palestinian rights and the long hoped for two state solution. This ancient American Jewish veteran is sick at heart and fearful that the way Israel conducts its
"pay back" will seriously damage all involved, the U.S. included
Ed
I have zero sympathy for leftists who minimize the terrorist tactics of Hamas or any other terrorist organization who justify slaughtering innocents as a necessary means to their political ends. The brutalities committed by leftist regimes are legion. It is always, always those in the middle who get stuck with mopping up or living in the rubble afterwards. As to the cool kids ripping down posters of kidnap victims, shame on them. That is petty, childish behavior. Ever so much easier to tear things up and yell slogans than do the hard work of building things up and supporting one another. Mao said “Power comes from the barrel of a gun.” As I see it, it is only death and destruction that come from the barrels of guns.
Don't forget Pinochet, Hitler and Mussolini and many, many more...
Hamas-denialism, election-denialism, it's all about wanting to believe your own set of "alternative facts", to quote Kellyanne Conway.
How much of this is "the left" and how much of it is just people who like Hamas perhaps for some other reason? Many of the people I've seen don't look like Kool-Aid haired gender studies majors. They look like the kind of people who wouldn't like the former at all.
Q: Who tears down posters of missing children?
A: Haters. Haters hate.
Far left. Far right. Each other. No matter.
Hate is apparently a human value in some quarters. I read your friend's deeply moving article about her own children and a purple nightlight and was moved to tears and then appalled that the 550 plus replies were in the nature of: "See, Democrats hate you; don't vote for them" mode. (They apparently do not know that Chuck Schumer and many others hold Israeli citizenship. Or facts don't matter.)
The only hope I see is that there are Palestinians who feel for the loss of Israeli babies and Israelis who are against the bombing of Palestinian babies. These are strong people! My prayer is that there is a growing number of both. Because what HAMAS did is unfathomably depraved (and not denouncing it is complicity). And what Israel is doing seems to involve war crimes ("Go south" and then bombing the south, for instance). There is plenty of bloody handiness to go around, at least within "governments." There is plenty of hate and embrace of violence and pointing fingers at The Other, real or imagined. This particular conflict can be said to stretch back to Abraham -- or at least 1917. That is not the point and Now is not the time. All sides - and their governments - must return to acting out of a sense of the humanity of all people, all peoples. (Including MAGA, btw.) Or humanity is surely doomed.
I pray for all of the babies and young mothers and old grandmas in both countries and Ukraine and other places (20% of the world population is in substandard or no housing). I pray for us all.
It is right to worry about and regret civilian casualties in Gaza. It is wrong to demand that Israel back off and do little or nothing because of them. The objective of the Israeli armed forces is to defeat its armed enemy Hamas. The Israelis are not intentionally attacking civilians. If Hamas were to dig in in positions along the border and other strong points from which it had evacuated civilians, there would be only the few civilian casualties inevitable in combat. Instead Hamas’s “fighters” are hiding among civilians and hoping to use them as shields. Because of that the moral responsibility for civilian casualties is Hamas’s, regardless of how the Israelis conduct their campaign. In contrast the objective of Hamas on October 7th was not to attack its armed enemy the Israeli armed forces. There were plenty of installations Hamas could have attacked if it had been. The objective of the attack on October 7th was to murder, torture, kidnap, and rape as many civilians as possible. The Hamas terrorists who attacked on October 7th are savages, and so is anyone who approves of what they did. A lot of masks have been dropped in the last three weeks by both supporters of Hamas and lefties who excuse supporters of Hamas, and people need to pay careful attention to those who dropped them before they expediently put them back on. There is useful information to be gained.
I find I can agree with most if not all your words here. I think you are accurate. I disagree that Israelis have no choice at all. I believe they could set up a no-kill zone around the Rafah exit point and pressure Egypt to let Gazans out -- maybe just women and children -- and put on planes perhaps to US bases in Iraq, for instance. There is ALWAYS an option (even when it isn't ideal or desirable) to murdering children and the elderly and women.
As a non-Jewish woman married to a Jewish man, my husband and I have had many conversations (arguments) of 20+ years about the situation in Israel with the West Bank and Gaza, and the broader Middle East area. I, frankly, despise Netanyahu and find him an incendiary person who has done nothing to help resolve the issues that have plagued Israel since its inception, and cannot believe that this man has held power in Israel for so long. I hate that the Israeli government not only allows but has supported Jewish settlements in the West Bank. I feel that it is incredibly stupid that so many in the Israeli Government, particularly Netanyahu, have no desire for a two-state solution with the Palestinians and continues to cause so much hardship for Palestinians, and now consequently, the Israeli people.
However, the pure, unadulterated, heinous, violence of Hamas' attack in Israel, the bloodthirsty cruelty of killing and torturing babies, children, women, children, the elderly and the kidnapping of children, babies, women, men and the elderly by Hamas, should be completely untenable by any civilized, ethically evolved human. Hamas' actions on Oct. 7th should be condemned by any person who has a shred of humanity.
You can have compassion for the Palestinians in Gaza while condemning the actions of Hamas. You can detest Netanyahu's and the extreme-right Israeli's policies and abhor Hamas and their naked violence simultaneously.
We have been down this road before, where a group of people have voiced their intent to commit genocide against the Jews. It has been ongoing for centuries, honestly.
The Palestinians could have had a two-state solution long ago as well if Yasser Arafat had said "yes" to Ehud Barak back in 2000 during the Camp David Summit with President Clinton, but he was unwilling to make a final decision that might put him in a negative light with the extremist elements of his party.
The situation in the Middle East with Israel has been so intractable because the "leaders" of each State are so intractable. They all have their dicks out trying to be the tougher guy, while the people who live in these States who just want to live safe, happy, economically and physically secure lives are the victims of the hubris of their "leaders". It's always the extremists who seem to get to determine the course of the lives of the moderates and that is complete BS.
Please consider sending this comment to the Squad members in Congress.
Also I came late to this NYT opinion piece but found it interesting. Essentially the author (Jewish) states that by blocking non-violent and ethical résistance (like the BDS movement) the US and West have ratcheted up the "need" for violent resistance.
If civil disobedience is impossible then UNCIVIL disobedience will follow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
We should see these acts of domestic terrorism for what they are -- attempts to divide and destroy us as a country founded on the principle of life and liberty for all. The labels left and right don’t mean anything when the actors are so wrong. These are people whose driving force is chaos, and, yes, evil. We must stand up against this, whether it’s proud boys marching with tiki torches or black clad antifa supporters tearing down poster of kidnapped children.
I am not sure I understand the mechanism in distributing frozen assets. But why have we not also redistributed Iranian frozen assets to Israel and other allies in the region?