Posted on 12/29/2001 12:08:08 AM PST by H.R. Gross
December 28, 2001
As Israel prepares to expel its Arab helots from Palestine, its "amen corner" worldwide is also on the march, excoriating anyone who looks cross-eyed at Ariel Sharon as an "anti-Semite." The latest front in this campaign is England, where Barbara Amiel, wife of media magnate Conrad Black, went on a rampage in the Telegraph, claiming that, at a recent dinner party, the French ambassador referred to Israel as "that sh*tty little country," and wondered why the world had to be dragged to the edge of World War III on account of it. On the basis of evidence gleaned at ritzy cocktail parties, says Ms. Amiel, the world is experiencing a revival of anti-Semitism, which is now "respectable" again.
Oh, please! Does she really expect us to believe that Osama's infamous videos denouncing the "Jews and Crusaders" are the "in" thing with the hip cognoscenti? Lay off the crack pipe, lady, and get real: anti-Semitism is less respectable than pedophilia. After all, hordes of people aren't buying The Protocols of the Elder of Zion the way they're snatching up those Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, now are they? Amiel's essay is just one breathtaking inversion of reality after another. Getta load-a this:
"For the past 25 years, I've watched sad-faced Israeli activists trudge around Western capitals with heavy hearts beating under ill-fitting suits. They carry folders of transcripts and videotapes to document the misrepresentations in the press and the moral hypocrisy of the world towards Israel. They want to win the war of ideas on its merits. Their attention to detail in translating the hate literature of the Middle East and the hate-filled speeches of its leaders is commendable."
One can only wonder what "Western capitals" she means: surely not Washington, D.C. Everyone acknowledges that the Israel lobby is among the most powerful in the Imperial City. How else have they managed to get their hands on a grand total of $90 billion-plus in American military and economic aid since Israel's inception?
Aside from US exporters, Israel is the single largest beneficiary of our "foreign aid" program: US tax dollars paid for a booby-trap bomb planted near an Arab elementary school, which blasted a group of Palestinian children – children! – to bits. American tax dollars also pay for Israeli "settlements" inhabited by violent, fanatical fundamentalists intent on provoking war no matter what. This image of sad bedraggled little underdogs making their rounds, desperately fighting an uphill battle against overwhelming odds, is nothing but a bad joke – either that, or it is meant to be ironic.
If the Israeli lobby is so powerless, then why this American largesse? We not only arm Israel, but we also prop up their sh*tty little socialist economy with constant infusions of cash. Whatever those Israeli "activists" are carrying around in their folders, whatever is on those videotapes, it must be some pretty powerful stuff. Given the Fox News revelations about the extent of Israeli spying in the US, I don't even want to hazard a guess as to what's in them.
They want to "win the war of ideas on its merits"? Tell that to Jean Ryan, former managing editor of the Oneida (NY) Daily Dispatch, and city editor Dale Seth (a 15-year veteran of the paper), who were both fired when a delegation of Israel Firsters approached the editor and then the owner demanding the paper retract an allegedly "anti-Semitic" post-9/11 editorial written by Seth. Seth's crime was to recall the terrorist origins of the Jewish state – as if no one had ever heard of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, both of which waged war on the Arab civilian population – and without which the state of Israel would never have come into existence. He also made the true but politically incorrect observation that the whole region is rife with religious fanaticism, and Israel is no exception to the rule:
"The United States, through its close association with Israel since its inception, has now been dragged kicking and screaming right into the middle of that centuries-old Middle Eastern conflict. From that position, it would behoove that party in the middle to consider the hearts of the warring parties. Neither can be simply beat into submission."
A local attorney, Randy Schaal, demanded a meeting with Ryan to protest the editorial: Ryan refused to meet with him, pointing out that that if the staff met with everyone who disagreed with an editorial, they would never get a paper out. She told him to write a letter to the editor, which he did. But Schaal also contacted local politicians, as well as the Anti-Defamation League, and it wasn't long before pressure was brought to bear on the paper's management, which then ordered its editors to come up with a "clarification." This was published alongside Schaal's letter, a letter from Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and a missive from the mayor of Oneida. Still, Schaal and his fellow Ameners weren't satisfied. They went to the President of the Journal Register Co., and demanded a retraction and an apology: it was unconditional surrender, or nothing.
After a series of meetings with various self-appointed representatives of the Jewish community, the owners of the Daily Dispatch caved and published a groveling mea culpa: "We understand many felt [the editorial] expressed anti-Semitic sentiments," it said. "We will not further offend our readers by attempting in any way to justify what was written; we can only assure readers that The Dispatch is not anti-Semitic and that we acknowledge the editorial should not have been published."
So much for the Israeli lobby winning the war of ideas on the "merits" of their case. Clearly, another strategy is at work here: not debating their opponents but silencing them.
The rest of Amiel's essay is really a kind of paean to the efficacy of brute force. While those poor bedraggled Israeli "activists" may have been fighting an uphill battle, according to Amiel, in the post-9/11 era the tide seems to be turning, and she can hardly keep herself from gloating that now the Arabs are really going to get it:
"Powerful as the truth may be, it needs a nudge from 16,000lb daisy cutter bombs once in a while. The Arab/Muslim world's intransigence comes into sharper focus when we see the Americans liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban in six weeks and a cornered Arafat unable to go to the bathroom without the risk of being blown into the next world."
Here is the kind of Zionist who clearly enjoys the brutality and indignity of the Israeli occupation. Such people now feel free to publicly exhibit and even flaunt their perversity, which seems like something straight out of Kraft-Ebbing. What else can one call Amiel's odd interest in controlling Arafat's bowel movements other than a sh*tty little perversion?
"Nothing succeeds like powerful bombs," exults this war goddess, "as bin Laden explained in his latest video release. 'When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse,' he said." How natural for her to approvingly cite bin Laden on the terroristic imperative: but then that is what tribal warfare is all about, no matter which side one fights on.
Yes, it is force, not reason or negotiation, that is decisive, avers Ms. Amiel, who gleefully predicts that "All those people badmouthing the Jews and Israel will quieten down." Or else be quieted down, involuntarily, like Jean Ryan, Dale Seth, and now perhaps Carl Cameron, of Fox News. "You are looking," Amiel continues, "at the tail end of the train but the engine has already turned a corner and is going in the opposite direction" – and anyone who shows up at one of those ritzy parties she's always attending had better get on board, or else.
No one would think to label denunciations of, say, Robert Mugabe, as the equivalent of anti-black racism: but we are expected to just accept that virtually all criticism of Israel and Ariel Sharon is due to "anti-Semitism." Amiel's blatantly dishonest and self-serving jihad is naturally bound to cause resentment among all thinking people – an emotion that could, easily, turn into genuine anti-Semitism. But that, I believe, is the point: anti-Semitism serves the interests of the most extreme wing of the Zionist movement, and always has.
Founded as it is on the permanence of Jewish victimology, and the idea that anti-Semitism is inevitable, Zionism thrives when Jewish persecution grows. It is a natural tendency of Zionist propaganda to exaggerate hostility to Jews. The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was confirmed in his opinion that it was "futile" to combat anti-Semitism when the infamous Dreyfuss case was at the center of a storm of controversy. Today, however, with the rapid decline and marginalization of anti-Semitism everywhere but in the Middle East, the pressing need for a Jewish state requires more justification.
Anti-Semitism in the West, as "hate crime" statistics and other research has shown in recent years, is practically nonexistent. This good news was hailed by Jewish organizations in the US when it was first announced, but the extreme Zionists were no doubt made uneasy. For if anti-Jewish prejudice is distinctly beyond the pale, at least in the civilized world, i.e., the West, then what do we need a Jewish state for? This is a question many Jews, when faced with an appeal to emigrate to Israel, must ask themselves, and, at least up until Ms. Amiel's outburst, the Zionists have had no good answer. Now they appear to have solved the problem by simply redefining "anti-Semitism" to mean any criticism of Israel's expansionist policies and its current radical right-wing government.
Anti-Semitism used to mean legal and cultural proscriptions directed against Jews. In medieval Europe, Jews were forced into ghettos, in Nazi Germany they were branded with the yellow star and exterminated, and, in America and Europe, it used to be that some establishments, both high and low, would not do business with Jews. Certain hotels and men's clubs would not admit them, and anti-Semitism was especially rife in the universities where an unofficial Jewish quota kept their numbers and influence limited. This is real anti-Semitism, and, today, it is not only illegal but socially and politically unacceptable: anyone deemed an anti-Semite in this, the original sense, is in effect a pariah, and rightly so.
Ok, fine. I see only your attacks are coherent (barely).
I am being reminded of a saying about swine and pearls...
Dang, claptrap, you blew it for us. That's it. Thread's over. We lose. There's some obscure Internet rule, I can't remember the name, that when two opposing sides are involved in a protracted web flame war (and 700+ posts qualifies as "protracted", I think) the side that first raises a cudgel (clearly labeled for all to see as "the Nazi Stick") automatically loses. By default. It's always enforced as the "over-kill rule", because, by definition, there is no moral yardstick taller than the Holocaust. Attempts to prop it up for self-serving ends are QID "invidious".
Of course, I don't know, I haven't followed and read *every single line* of *every single post* in this well-past roasted turkey of a thread... Maybe someone from the "other side" made earlier comparisons between today's IDF and the Ultimate Personification of ALL EVIL on Earth? Hmmmmmmm?
PS-- Really, I think most of us can agree, a huge majority of Palestinians "care about their children". Even the parents of the sadly mis-used suicide bombers. Who can't see that it's an obvious win-win, with them? They get a lump sum cash advance, here, while junior is enjoying an eternal bliss of celestial lap dances, with... "virgins" who always miraculously re-grow that... vaginal "virgin-skin" that is so... precioussssss. Is this 'religion' all about POWER, or what?
Check the post to which I responded.
It only comes across as a negative to those who want to find fault with Jews. As they do on this and other matters.
I am certain, montag813 is not offended. He knows, as you should by now, that there is nothing offensive about the term. It means Gentiles. Period.
Travelling is OK under any circumstances. It not one of the sabbath like Jewish holidays. Orthodox fast, but it's nowhere near the gravity of Yom Kippur.
Strangely enough, you want Americans to have you in their minds when you whine about how America should defend Israel, and pay attention to your tribe.
My Tribe? You are a foulmouthed bigot who really doesn't deserve civility, although I did try, have even helped you out a few. But since you think you MUST use the word *TRIBE* to connote an insult, please allow me to enlighten you to a few facts of life as it really is and not as you have claimed them to be.
Being HEBREW and knowing the roots of your tribal ancestry is not an insult, babe. It is an honor. Just as it is with any of the Original Nations here in this country. It is a heritage of which I am very proud so if your intent is to insult, you have gone done the rabbit hole with Alice. I suggest you stay there because you have gone beyond foolish to incredibly inadequate.
FYI, Adapt and modify is Armed Forces protocol, fool. Look for it in any survivalist handbook or manual. They hand out brochures if you want to go caving in the mountains right here in the USA. And it was a favorite phrase of one of my best English professors. Evidently, you can't think fast enough to understand, so ...why bother explaining?
Lol. It would take some work to get an area as sh*tty as where you belong, maddie. Chernobyl. Various other pestholes where radiation has leaked, including a few areas where transportation passes thru but where stops are discouraged. Bio-warfare research facilities where pipes rusted thru and released pathogens to the local wildlife, leading to areas permanently infected with amusing and novel Russian sneezestuff. Did someone tell you that quite a few of your boob countrymen are incompetent pigs, maddie?
Not to mention the prostitution racket running out of ol' Russia. Did you know that all the surrounding countries have special police details just taking care of their neighbour leaking desperate women trying to survive, as well as the ones bing pimped?
And did I mention that ..mm toy factory for you? The one a bit north of Moscow? Where the women workers (that was the main workforce) didn't get any pay but got handed a bag of product once a week which they were allowed to peddle on the Moscow streets, to keep food on the table?
Why don't you go back there? It seems so you, you know ;).
And you didn't answer my question.
Let me get back to you. Can you help me out? The anti-Semitic train of thought is becoming of great interest to me.
"montag813" is obviously a friend of the Jews. Why would it even cross your mind that after that great post he wrote, I would insult him using a derogatory term?
Maybe you should analyse your thought processes. They don't seem rational.
By the way, Caughing-snot, your English is funny. Are you in America at all? Or are you in a kibbutz?
If one was to count your posts on the subject, it seems you may be constipated.
Of course it seems funny to a Russian drone. And I'm on sort of a funny subject, that garbage dump that could have been a country but has devolved into a poisoned welfare object. Personally I think it's hilarious seeing all those commies stewing in their own juices. Why don't you go back in the pot?
Anyway, as to where I am - that's for me to know and for you to wonder about, isn't it? I'm probably closer than you think, though :)).
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