
Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland is not very well known to the public, overshadowed as he is by his own party’s more newsworthy and photogenic congressional leadership and the gaggle of Republicans that is currently lining up in a bid to take the White House. Cardin is, by most accounts, a conventional liberal. He was active in the civil rights movement and embraced every progressive cause in his pre-senatorial days while his voting record both as a congressman and a senator has been reliably left-of-center.
Ben Cardin is the scion of a Baltimore family heavily involved in Maryland state politics. He, his father and uncle all served in the State Assembly and his father was later a judge. All three are lawyers and all were closely connected to Maryland’s politically powerful Jewish community, concentrated in Montgomery and Baltimore counties, which has been traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party.
As an elected official, Cardin regards himself as personally responsible for delivering benefits to his Jewish constituents. He sponsors the Senator Ben Cardin Jewish Scholars Program and also has been active in steering Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants to what he calls “high risk” Jewish organizations in Baltimore. Due to the assiduous efforts of Congressmen like Cardin fully 97% of all DHS grants go to Jewish groups.
Support for Israel is inevitably a sine qua non in Cardin’s circle and candidates for higher office in Maryland are routinely screened for the views on the Middle East. Donna Edwards, an African-American congresswoman who is currently running to fill the seat that will be vacated by incumbent Senator Barbara Mikulski in 2016, has, for example, fallen afoul of the Jewish community thought police on the Israel issue. Though repeatedly asserting her love and support for Israel she is being castigated because “she has regularly ducked resolutions and letters backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s dominant Israel lobby, which takes a harder line in support of the country’s self-defense.” She also voted “present” rather than “yes” when the House of Representatives passed its malicious 2009 resolution endorsing Israel’s right to use overwhelming firepower to defend itself against bottle rockets from Gaza. More recently she boycotted the speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because she believed it to be an affront to the President of the United States. Even though Edwards has never in any sense voted against Israel in any substantive way she is clearly regarded as not subservient enough by those who matter.
Cardin, who received donations of \$218,000 from the Israel Lobby for his 2012 Senate race alone, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, a position he acquired when disgraced New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez was forced to step down. He has been in the news lately for taking on a seemingly uncharacteristic task in the Senate, having co-sponsored with Republican Bob Corker a bill that will require the Senate to vote on any agreement that President Obama makes with Iran. The bill, which passed out of the Foreign Relations Committee by a unanimous 19-0 vote, has been described as a watered down version of a more rigorous bill crafted by the Republican majority, enabling a number of Democrats to add their support.
Recognizing that it might be a less bad option, a reluctant President Barack Obama, perhaps unwisely, has even pledged not to veto the revised bill. The stated intention of Corker-Cardin is to permit the congress to have some voice regarding what is undeniably a major foreign policy issue. Supporters want the country’s legislature to be able to indicate their lack of support for a bad bill, if that should turn out to be the case.
Though the bill is being described as a compromise it does not really change very much. While the president can on his own authority suspend sanctions on Iran, the passage of the bill would delay his ability to do so until after Congress has between 30 and 82 days (depending on details) to review the deal and vote for or against it. And while the president can indefinitely suspend their implementation, only Congress can actually cancel the sanctions because they are mandated through legislative authority.
Thus Congress can hold up a final agreement but the bill does not actually require congressional approval for an agreement to be implemented. And though Congress could theoretically block any lifting of its own legislative sanctions on Iran, it would require a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and House to override the expected Obama veto. Nevertheless, Obama’s agreement to allow a vote does concede that Congress has a potential oversight role in foreign policy, something that the president would have chosen to avoid.
The assumption that Cardin, a loyal Democrat, was interested in producing a compromise to help the president attain a negotiated agreement to eliminate Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program is intriguing but not completely convincing given the Senator’s demonstrated inclination to see U.S. foreign policy from the point of view of Israel. And interestingly enough, AIPAC also supports the Corker-Cardin bill as-is and has resisted attempts by Republicans to make it stronger.
Why would that be the case as AIPAC consistently calls for forceful action against Iran? It might be because, appearances aside, Cardin is not acting in good faith and is actually likely to be working hand-in-hand with AIPAC to accomplish two things. First, he almost certainly wants to reestablish complete congressional bipartisanship on any and all issues relating to Israel, countering the troubling Republican Party’s alignment of its own foreign policy interests with those of Benjamin Netanyahu. As an AIPAC official has expressed it, “Our fundamental view is that this bill is the first step of a number of different steps on the Iran deal. The first and foremost priority is to make sure the bill gets passed to make sure congress is guaranteed a chance to pass judgment on the deal.”
This means that both AIPAC and Cardin want the modified Corker bill to pass but they want that to happen in expectation that the Obama White House agreement with Iran will eventually fail in a bipartisan fashion with more than two-thirds of congressmen in opposition. By some estimates, AIPAC believes that it already has the votes in hand in the Senate at least to do just that and expects that a number of Democratic Senators to include Charles Schumer of New York, who regards himself as “Israel’s guardian” in the upper chamber, will join Republicans in voting against the president.
The AIPAC comment that the bill is a “first step” is critical to understanding what is going on while Senator Ben Cardin’s regard for Israel and its presumed interests should be taken as a given. In March Cardin spoke at AIPAC’s annual gathering where he promised to introduce legislation to block European attempts to boycott or sanction Israeli exports produced in the occupied territories. Cardin’s mixed-up view of a progressive world order combined with deference to what he regards as Israeli interests were notably on display one week after his agreement with Corker when he delivered on his promise.
On April 21st Cardin and his House colleague Peter Roskam attached at the last minute AIPAC drafted amendments to an omnibus trade bill that committed the United States government to use its leverage in trade agreements to block European Union efforts to boycott or sanction products being produced in Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements. The issue is of some consequence as the EU is Israel’s largest export market. The Cardin-AIPAC amendment includes language making it a primary U.S. objective to protect both products from Israel and from what is referred to by the euphemism “Israeli-controlled territories,” a curious position for a U.S. Senator to be taking as United States policy has long been opposed to the settlements and has frequently declared them to be illegal.
Cardin hypocritically justified his amendment by stating “I think it’s critically important that the provisions that are included…for good governance and respect for international human rights need to be a principle trade objective.” Concerning Cardin’s stated respect for international human rights, it should be noted that he enthusiastically supported boycotting apartheid South Africa even though he is opposed to the Palestinians using the same legal and non-violent expedient to obtain their freedom from a brutal Israeli occupation. To that end Cardin characteristically is willing to put U.S. interests on a back burner so he can use American trade policy to protect Israel while perversely cloaking his turpitude in faux sentiments about doing the right thing.
Finally, it is the ultimate irony that the sanctimonious junior Senator from Maryland serves as the ranking member of the U.S.-Helsinki Commission on Human Rights. He recently traveled with his wife by way of military Gulfstream to Copenhagen for official meetings arranged by that organization, stopping for a couple of days in Paris where he stayed in a five star hotel and met with Jewish leaders. The issue of Palestine apparently did not come up.
ONE MORE PUPPET OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE JEWISH LOBBY.
Thanks for this excellent article. Looks like he is just one more puppet owned and operated by the Jewish lobby. They probably have him in their pocket.
Israel is the world leader in money laundering. Not only is the Jewish lobby the biggest campaign contributor (legal amounts), it all pays billions under the table. Most of our politicians and others have secret bank accounts in Israel where millions are deposited in their secret bank accounts once they do the Lobby’s bidding—support Israel and destroy USA with the alien invasion and liberalism. These secret bank accounts are in their Jewish names. For example, Senator John McCain’s Israeli ID and bank account name could be something like Jonah Ben McKenstein.
The politicians then pay their masters back with billions in phoney bailouts and other gov. grants and contracts.
And they probably have something on him too, to be brought out and to criminally prosecute him if he strays (or becomes moral and refuses to be bribed any more or dares to question the Jewish lobby).
I cannot for the life of me understand why Unz publishes so many balanced and fair articles reporting on the blood-lust of the AIPAC and the Zionist control of the US political process..
Unz is an unapologetic Zionist by his own admission.. It makes me wonder what purpose this website really serves..
The Israel firsters in US Congress are wholly treasonous. Israel this, Israel that, bad Iran and, nuclear Israel first.
Cardin is obsequious and a disgrace.
Curious that the comments section is now open. When Mr. Giraldi’s article was first posted, the comments section was closed.
Don – It was a technical problem – not deliberate, I assure you!
The “Public” in AIPAC must be a misnomer, as this foreign lobby isn’t either publicly funded or even mostly by a wide swathe of private donations from the general public, whether or not Jewish. No, this organization represents very special corporate interests, such as the organized gambling mogul billionaire Shel Adelson. It was Hannah Arendt who discovered the term, “the banality of evil,” which she didn’t limit to applying to the bureaucratic enablers and planners of genocide like Adolf Eichmann, but also to those Jewish leaders who betrayed the interests of their own people in favor of their personal goals. I know that Arendt would not be a fan of Shelley’s, nor of the intolerant and violence applauding Boteach either, a man as morally qualified to be a leading Rabbi as any run of the mill televangelist Gantry. And there is also nothing more banal than the pseudo-leaders of our own nation who betray their own people (whatever our personal ethnic or religious affiliations) for personal gain.
I suppose Cardin must not consider Palestinians to be human. If these guys were Nazis there wouldn’t be any Jews left. They know how to frame an argument in their favor. They could make Auschwitz sound like a restful resort and a place where human rights such as Cardin favors be fully implemented. It would be a world where Nazi Germany would be defended for having good human rights. I bet the Turks wish they had people like Cardin working for them.
I think Obama should datamine these people’s data and find things to bring them down with. “Why steal all that personal info if you aren’t going to use it” as Madeline Albright would say. If these people can obstruct and wait out Obama then they will probably get their war via Sheldon or Saban’s candidate.
he’s just an israeli trapped in an american body.
Another blockbuster article, Phil !
Keep knocking them out of the ballpark; and thanks !
A Zionist is someone who thinks the Jewish state has a right to exist. It’s quite possible for Unz to believe Israel has a right to exist without believing it has the right to snooker America into doing whatever it wants.
“bottle rockets from Gaza”
Come on now, this is so unfair. The rockets from Gaza are lethal, and anyone who cares about his family and his country would want to hit back very hard against those who sent the rockets.
Senator Ben Cardin (Zionist-Israel)–like so many members of the Parliament of Whores–is an AIPAC-bought-and-paid-for hack. He’s also morally obtuse: “. . . Concerning Cardin’s stated respect for international human rights, it should be noted that he enthusiastically supported boycotting apartheid South Africa even though he is opposed to the Palestinians using the same legal and non-violent expedient to obtain their freedom from a brutal Israeli occupation. . . .”
Lobby is powerful and NRA is a distant second . But AIPAC JINSA FDD AEI and IP would want America to believe of the existence of the extremely powerful Saudi Lobby and Muslim Brotherhoof lobby inside the country and the State dept.
After creating this negative image of Saudi Lobby being not only powerful,pernicious,and connected to 911 ,Zionists have managed even to portray it being omnipresent . Mc Carthy had way more to show on the communist infiltration and presence . Still he got blamed for exposing the Zionist Communist kinship.
Now the Lobby is making money after creating the false fear ,anxiety,and real hate between American and Saudi. International headquarter of the lobby on Istael got 14 billions from Saudi to bolster its image
Here is the link- .https://consortiumnews.com/2015/04/15/did-money-seal-israeli-saudi-alliance/
Only complete absence of moral both at personal level and organizational level could achieve these inglorious feats that ensnare American, British French politicians and Saudi tyrants in the same rope . Some will portray it as brilliant and expression of high IQ . But it could simply be explained by the fact that it is nothing but pure evil and immorality . At some level all human being tend to accept some ethics and morality in dealing with fellow human . This relationship or the psychological boundary collapses when human deals ith wild undomesticated animals and also in fair number of cases involving domesticated or trained wild animals. Zionism sees rest of the human as cattle . It treats purely any relationship from this prism . Frame of reference is always ” other ” , the ” non Jews” or sub human. This relieves the Zionist of following moral,ethical,honest,and legal guidelines in any kind of transaction between them and the rest. This is why it is possible for people paid by the zionist to compartmentalize and use different yardstick ,be progressive and still ignore the evil that the Zionism is or blame the victims of the zionism or ignore the suffering of those under the occupation of Israel
So long as they don’t cross Israel, the Turks do have The Lobby working for them. Over the years, AIPAC et al. have consistently worked to prevent Washington from declaring the Armenian Genocide to be a case of, well, genocide. However, after Erdogan’s initial support for the Mavi Marmara flotilla into Gaza in 2010, when the Zio-State killed several passengers (including at least one Turkish-American dual citizen), The Lobby threatened to have congress declare the Armenian Genocide a genocide unless Erdogan dropped his condemnation of Israel.
While The Lobby has a history of milking the Shoah for all it’s worth, the also have a history of playing fast and loose with other people’s genocides… and also a history of covering for Israel’s slo-mo genocide of the Palestinians.
It’s a more a case of the latter, I’d say. If The Lobby were really all that ‘brilliant’, ordinary mortals like ourselves would never have been able to figure out their game in the first place.
I am amazed at the attraction the Unz Review has for rabid anti-Semites given that Ron is far from being the self-hating type of Jew. Of course he is offside with those who helped push America into its stupidly begun and stupidly conducted Iraq adventure and those (by no means confined to very rich Jews) who would be restricted by his proposals for limiting campaign contributions. But let me pose some specific questions for the anti-Israel faction.
If there is no intention on Iran’s part to develop nuclear weapons (which I take to be asserted by those who say it has no nuclear weapons program) why do many serious students of the Muslim world like Daniel Pipes think otherwise, and why does Netanyahu act as a believer in Iran’s malevolent intent and nuclear weapons program?
You may say that Netanyahu is only posing as a believer because, in the tangle of Israeli politics, that is how he puts together his plurality that allows him to be PM in coalition (61 votes to 59 right now) but that really has to be no more than your best explanation for your positive belief that there is no intention on Iran’s part to manufacture nuclear weapons, that you have evidence that convinces you (if so, please set it out) and that the Israelis must be equally satisfied – and that there is therefore need of an explanation for Netanyahu’s position.
How well are you acquainted with the Koran, with Muslim culture(s) and with what is taught to children and adults about Israel’s right to exist? It is surely pretty important to assessing whether it is responsible for Israeli leaders to treat Iran’s nuclear weapons program as non-existent. Especially in circumstances which include 5 major nations lining up to treat Iran as though all those centrifuges which are now to be restricted in number *are* part of a nuclear weapons program!
Iran is known to support both Hamas and Hezbollah in their enmity to Israel and it is also quite logical that it would want to possess nuclear weapons in a part of the world where there are powerful Sunni dominated countries east and west – and Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Moreover the example of North Korea recommends them. (None of this is directed against Obama’s agreement BTW. That IMO mostly needs to be backed by credible threats of extreme violence if Iran explodes or claims a nuclear bomb).
Do you dispute the to-me credible view that Iran, if its leaders (mad or pandering to the kind of constituency you presumably think warps Netanyahu’s policies) decided nuking Israel was a good idea, would not give a fig for Israel’s Arab citizens? Of course, against entertaining that possibility is the fact that, in most imaginable circumstances, Israel’s superiority in nuclear weaponry would be devastating. But maybe Iran produces ten old-fashioned nuclear weapons of a kind that have been tested elsewhere and then tests one or announces them. It has bought delivery systems from Russia.
What does Israel do? Logic demands that Israel, even without detailed knowledge of the weapons development, will react to the first dangerous developments as evidenced by failure of Iran to allow full unfettered inspection of everything that needs to be inspected. (Israel will predictably feel great frustration at the inspectors not even seeking to go to all the places Israel advises they should – so expect lively action by AIPAC). It will attack. First destroying Iran’s air defences, then aiming bunker busters at weapons manufacturing facilities and maybe government buildings. Iran would not use its one or two untested but probably functional nuclear weapons for fear of total devastation.
Still, I am not sure what the alternative to the Obama initiative is or what Israel wants or should want.
I have just visited an Israeli kubbutz and city which get respectively 10 and 12 seconds warning of rocket attacks by Hamas of which there have been thousands. I am not sure what the Israel haters expect from Israel in the face of such asymmetric demonstrations of deadly enmity by uninhibited killers (who, more than incidentally, use human shields).
The left tends to feel good when it can patronise the underdog. In 1967 Israel ceased to be the underdog and those unique “refugees” from Israeli territory (and it is internationally recognised Israeli territory) who were 700-800,000 about 1950 have become 6 million! When is irresponsibility and fantasy to end? Is it not shameful that Arab Muslim countries haven’t long ago resettled the “refugees” still in refugee camps – close to 4 million – when Israel with far fewer resources has resettled Jews from all over North Africa and the Middle East as well as Russia and now Ethiopians?
I am not Jewish and don’t see any easy answers. I suspect that the Daniel Pipes school of thought is right and that there will be no peace for Israel as there is for a European country until the Palestinians are, and recognise that they are, beaten. I would not, by the way, support a Jewish state as such if it were not for the fact that the alternative is unworkable even without the still high Palestinian fertility.
Actually the really high rates of reproduction by Muslims in Palestine are amongst the Bedouin. Are you aware of that? From about 17,000 stuck in Israel in 1948 there are now close to 250,000 – poor, with poor education and high crime rates (so have the Ethiopian Jews btw). They no longer sign up for the IDF and an Islamist mayor of majority bedouin municipality said that he didn’t support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The distractions besetting Israeli governments have meant that they have tackled their bedouin problem late and the no longer nomads are becoming Palestinianised. They do not seem to understand that they are not special in having no absolute claims to land which some are making an issue of. Apparently only 6 per cent of land in Israel is not state owned. (I think the 6 per cent was mostly bought from the Ottoman government in the early days of Zionism).
Some who read this will be wondering what I am arguing in some parts of what I have written. But the answer would be that I am merely providing possibly relevant information for whomever it may concern: mostly plain vanilla uncomplicated anti-Semites and anti-Zionists who may just be willing to entertain complexity.
The continuum of outrage [scale of 1 – 10, 10 = highest level of outrage]:
10+ “bottle rockets from Gaza” bottle rockets are “lethal”
3 Israeli attacks on Gaza it’s patriotic, motherhood & apple pie dictates necessity of “hitting back very hard”
1 Netanyahu-gamed US attack on Iraq an “adventure” “stupid”
—–
The continuum of casualties:
Israelis killed by “lethal” bottle rockets from Gaza: 2001 – 2014 —> 23
Gazans killed by Israelis “hitting back very hard” —-> 9,131
Iraqis killed in “Iraqi adventure” —-> according to one source, 133,000 direct civilian Iraqi deaths; in 2006 CNN reported 655,000 Iraqis killed.
That’s why we’re called empire. And why I resort to satire (it’s a coping mechanism)
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/08/22/demons-anonymous/
Insofar as Iran’s “non-existent nuclear weapons program” .. I’m not totally certain on that point, considering the west didn’t get wind of Fordo until 2009? Some might consider Iran would be foolish not to develop that deterrent (particularly Iranians.) A safer bet would be ‘we don’t know’ (my opinion.) That said, why should Israel have nukes and Iran cannot? Why should Iran undergo Nuclear Non-Proliferation inspection regimes and Israel does not? The only people incapable of seeing the double standard/hypocrisy seem to be concentrated in the western democracies.
If it is your goal to “provide information,” you may wish to seek out sounder sources. Daniel Pipes, Benji Netanyahu and a stay in a kibbutz do not inspire in your audience an aura of objectivity.
1. Daniel Pipes is an ideologue; he runs Middle East Forum, whose agenda is advocacy for Israel. The Board of Directors of Middle East Forum is dominated by the original, card-carrying neoconservatives http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Middle_East_Forum — the ones who made the greatest contribution to the Iraq war, according to this BBC documentary http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8581.htm Neoconservatism’s core doctrine is “might makes right.” They have imbibed that peculiar Eastern European zionist notion, elucidated by neocon Michael Ledeen from his study of Moses, that killing masses of people is a good thing to do — he explains it here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?123852-1/book-discussion-machiavelli-modern-leadership
If you wish to form an objective judgment about Iran’s nuclear intentions, it would be more “relevant” and “informative” to study the work of someone like Prof. Dan Joyner, an expert in international law with special study in the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty. Joyner participated in a Symposium at Penn State University where he and Flynt Leverett, who teaches international relations at Penn State; Hillary Mann Leverett, who, as part of George Bush’s national security team negotiated with Iran’s delegates at the UN when Iran assisted USA in its actions in Afghanistan; Richard Butler, former UN ambassador who was also director of weapons inspections in Iraq; and Prof. Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame University, an expert in the international law of use of force http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=jlia
Subsequent to her work with Iranian delegates, Hillary Leverett and her husband, Flynt, have made several trips to Iran where they met with Iranian government leaders and thought leaders at the highest level. Their book, “Going To Tehran,” is in its second edition. They blog at GoingToTehran.
2. It does not appear that you have done much research into Benjamin Netanyahu’s background and history. — more later —– off to work
“. “5
As presidential field broadens, GOP candidates race to show their love for Israel
US Politics Allison Deger on May 7, 2015
Carly Fiorina promises to make Israel her first phone call as president. Mike Huckabee is “just nuts” about Israel. Jeb Bush calls settlements “apartments.” Ben Carson wants to transfer the Palestinians to Egypt. Marco Rubio has taken to dining with top-donor Sheldon Adelson. Ted Cruz is making the rounds with Fire Island’s pro-Israel community. And, Lindsey Graham who has not announced his bid, said if he is president he will have the first “all-Jewish” cabinet. As it shapes up, the Republican field in the 2016 U.S. presidential race is looking to be one of the most fiercely pro-Israel in memory.
– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/#sthash.f9MadD0D.dpuf
Netanyahu has taken the aphorism that was uttered by another compromised US President ( one million dollar in suitcase by Rabbi Silver delivered by person to WH but some say Truman didn’t accept it ) – if you were looking for friends ,get a dog. Nethanhyu got more than one dogs among the GOP hopefuls salivating and wagging tail for his feet that smells just like his father’s soul did .
An argument only a zionist could make:
Try it this way:
“Is it not shameful that the next door neighbor does not give his car to the man whose car was stolen by Zionist Israelis — when those zionist Israelis have been so successful at stealing cars that car thieves from all over North Africa and the Middle East as well as Russia and now Ethiopians have joined them in the thieving enterprise?”
“Jews, a small but influential group in Democratic politics, had been worried about Obama even before last week’s preacher problem. It seems recent divisions between African Americans and Jews were aggravated by matters such as Obama’s sympathy for the Palestinians, and his willingness to take advice from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former Carter administration official who calls U.S. Middle East policy “morally hypocritical.”
Ann Lewis former WH official and Clinton campaign staff in 2008
“To that, Lewis retorted: “The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.” The audience members applauded.
”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/17/AR2008031702440_pf.html
The more is explored the more dirt comes out of the money pit.
You ignore the fact that I was not discussing questions of morality in using an extract from my post but that’s OK because you wanted to question the morality of those who plan, execute or condone the disproportionate infliction of civilian casualties. Thank you. You open yourself to the question whether you know enough about the Middle East and its issues to be sure what is right or wrong about actions taken there by nations and also whether you have a reasoned fact based prescription for what Israel can and should do to resist terrorist attacks supported by nations with populations many times that of Israel.
No doubt your consistency extends to just about all the bombing done by the Allies in WW2 including the atom bombs.
I too must curtail my posting, it being 2.30 am, but I can’t resist saying that
your claim to deeper knowledge than mine fails to convince me because, as test cases, I looked at your link to Joyner and found it to be an irrelevant legal opinion that some sanctions directed at Iran were in some sense illegal, and then I confirmed my memory of the not wholly reputable Australian Richard Butler who, in his supposed area of expertise, must still be trying to live down his adamant expert evidence in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.
As for Bibi (not Benji) or Binyamin Netanyahu, I was warned against him many years ago and hold no brief for his defence. It just happens that the Israeli PM who is featured in my reasoning is thst man. What you apparently have found out about him or think you have has little relevance to the issues raised.
The GOP hacks are desperate to prostrate themselves before the boys in Tel Aviv. Piss on the lot of ’em. Of course, The Pantsuited One is just as despicable.
Harry Truman was a failed haberdasher whom the Pendergast machine put into the U.S. Senate. He was a reliable New Deal hack. In 1944, when the dying Roosevelt deep-sixed Vice President Henry Wallace, the “Senator from Pendergast” got the nomination.
“A recent Los Angeles Times article noted that “pro-Israel or Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Defense League and the Middle East Forum think tank have provided news organizations with reams of critical documentation on Muslim leaders in recent weeks.” Opportunistically taking advantage of the post-9/11 atmosphere in this country, these groups have launched a determined and concerted effort to scapegoat American Muslims. The purpose is to rationalize a new anti-Semitism, directed not against Jews but against Arabs. The irony is that this new bigotry looks, smells, and acts just like the old version….”
—In an interview with Salon, Pipes flat out declared that “Islamism is fascism,” and accused “a substantial body” of the Muslim population in this country of “shar[ing] with the suicide bombers a hatred of the United States.” When Salon asked him what percentage fitted this description, Pipes was elusive: “The numbers are fluid,” he averred, and “I can’t offhand give you numbers,” while claiming that he had seen a poll “cited today on National Review Online that shows really quite a substantial proportion feeling alienated from the country.”
—-
“”Now, they don’t say that in black and white in their writings. I can’t prove that to you. I can tell you that there are all sorts of intimations of it. I can tell you I can sense it. I can make this case, but I can’t make it specifically for CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations]. But you asked me, do I think that’s what they want? Yes.” Pipes
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j111401.html
Your inverted commas in your first par confuse me. Is the LA Times really publishing as its own the words starting with “Opportunistically”? Careless ambiguity not fitt for a serious subject perhaps.
As I have said on the Unz Review you can count on Daniel Pipes to be careful. And, surely, Islamism based on a wish to return to the tribal primitivism of an inspired illiterate merchant of the 7th century cleaving to a book which expresses deadly attitudes to unbelievers and subordinates women is fairly, if not strictly accurately, called “fascist”.
SolontoCroesus made no such claim, Wizard.
Rather, Solon suggested that the sources you cited were insufficiently vetted and that better sources were available.
Your goal of “providing possibly relevant information for whomever it may concern: mostly plain vanilla uncomplicated anti-Semites and anti-Zionists who may just be willing to entertain complexity” might be more succinctly stated as seeking to impress your frankly, ignorant prejudices on others.
“… cleaving to a book which expresses deadly attitudes to…”
Isn’t this “book” to which you refer essentially an offshoot of the Abrahamic religion… and if you characterize it as being “fascistic” doesn’t that imply that the Torah too is fascistic?
Indeed.
I would note to readers that Senator Ben Cardin, preening after the Senate voted 98-1 to pass his bill, commented “There is bipartisan concurrence that we do not trust Iran.” Seems to confirm my analysis, doesn’t it?
gotta laugh to keep from crying.
the Odball of Wiz upbraids KA for “Careless ambiguity not fitt for a serious subject perhaps.” [sic]
If only KA were as keen a critical analyst as Wiz.
At 9:25 pm Wiz was offered links to five experts in the field of Middle East history, politics and law. The links included access to video of a 6 hour symposium and the peer-reviewed journal articles that emerged from that symposium which was held, by the way, at one of the top-ranked US public universities.
In addition, links were provided to blogs of three of the participants in that symposium.
At least three of the participants in the symposium have worked at the highest levels of US government in matters directly upside-down-comma relevant close-upside-down-comma to “information for whomever it may concern: mostly plain vanilla uncomplicated anti-Semites and anti-Zionists who may just be willing to entertain complexity.”
The Leveretts spent over a year writing a book about US-Israeli-Iran relations; Hillary Mann Leverett has appeared on numerous MSM outlets including C-Span, MSNBC and Canadian tv; all are posted on the Leveretts’s blog, GoingtoTehran.com, which was linked, for Wiz’s information.
By 11:46 pm Wiz had processed that body of information, presumably having fully “entertained its complexity.” Wiz scanned one of Dr. Joyner’s blog posts, concluded it was “irrelevant,” thus, presumably, dismissed the remaining 36 months of Dr. Joyner’s work on ArmsControlLaw.com; whereupon Wiz gave way to the irresistible impulse to stamp “unconvinced” the proffered material since it does not buy into the well-documented Islamophobia of Daniel Pipes.
Wizard of Oz
the problem
not the solution
7 th century Islam was brought back to life by the caramilla or cabal opportunitistically both leftists and conservatives ,ideologically with global aspirations of dominance and of withdrawal ,pro West and anti west but always with the antenna directed to the settler garrison state of Israel .They also resuscitated 100 yrs old ideas of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny to establish 1000 BC ideas of divine rights to the land ,continued settlements,and disregard of the rights of the established Cannanites .
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/05/fanatic-islamism-in-the-arab-world/
Sure enough,soon the natural conclusion of supporting the results of the elections in ME were ignored .
In the process they created the myth of the pursuit of Muslim for the glory of the remote past as the crux of the anti McDonald,anti Holloywood,anti Mozart,anti Einestien ,anti Darwin,anti liberty ,anti women penchant of the Muslim.
Le Monde diplomatique – August 2005 ” Malevolent Fantasy of Islam” by Alain Gresh.
Daniel Pipes like Feith and Yoded Yinon knew what they were prophesying were ruse,lies,distortions and Goebbles like perversion ” in the genuine tradition of the 5 th century Platonic ideas of Noble lies distorted by Leo Strauss .
This is why one minute they talk of the yearning of the Muslim for Gaga,Disney,job,and education and of love for Hollywood movies . Next minute they talk of the lack of readiness or mental faculty of Arab or the inability to appreciate the freedom ,liberty,and pluralism while destroying educational centers,closing universities,targeting journalists,destroying architecture and infrastructures ,and filling the entire area with human excitements along with depleted uranium . When challenged ,they said” we didn’t know”
When reminded how they ignored the evidence and the advice ,they call it appeasement and conspiracies by the malevolent who didn’t believe in the Arab .!
– http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07. Bad For You Too? Leon Hadar
Origin of the Species Neo-Con. by Roger Morris
http://www.lewrockwell.com 11/21/2005
Henry Martin Jackson the 1970 guru of neocon gave nod as senator to the 2 US backed coups in Iraq both by Saddam, one 1963 and agin in 1968.He used the Israeli flag to advance his presidential hopes. Kristol,Podohoretz saw the opening to advance their militaristic ,interventional,pro Israeli futures . Richard Perle became Jackson’s chief assistant from 1969 to 1980. Openly they gloated over the dismissal of McGovern and followers from Democrats . But the party wasn’t their’s to adhere to out of any inherent ideology . it was all about Israel. With Carter’s win,they planned the next move to gut Carter and go over to Reagan .
Ignore the world community- Krauthhammer
Iraq has never had it so good- Steyn
The ingratitude of Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them- Pipes
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/04/john-liechty/the-cup-is-half-full-of-it/
Then the question- why the British and Americans wearing Arab grabs or paying Arab criminals to detonate bombs or shoot way back in 2004
( Independent-UK and Rawstory.com,and Counterpunch.com )
Thanks, Phil. Very curious to learn who the brave soul is that voted against!
It was Tom Cotton because he wanted the bill to be much stronger and easier to use to block Obama!
Will the Zionist move their main office to China and Russia ? Martin Kramer thinks Israel should be agile enough to do so. So what about liberalism freedom,love,gay and straight love,immigration,abortion, pornography,free speech? Will these be sacrificed so that the slaughter of Palestninian, Syrians, Lebanese and assassination of Iranian scientist goes on and on?
So Russian Rabbi likecBerel Lazar will play the role of John Hagee or Meyer Habib will declare instead of Scumer but this time to French that he was sent to be the guardian of Israel ?
http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/153309/obama-and-american-jewish-power.
Same Saudi that was in the crosshairs of Neocons until few months ago now are being courted as moderate ,stable,Muslim ally . The same desert where the 7 th century has been rearing its head per the same neocons
in post 911 world
So much for a brave soul in Congress… I should have known better!
KA wrote:
If the Odball of Wiz were as concerned about antiAmericanism as about all-purpose charges of auntiesemitism, rather than attaching him/her/itself barnacle-like to the zionist hull, Wiz would follow the cookie-crumb trail leading to Richard Perle would provide “information . . . and complexity,” and also, if one is an armchair psychologist or wannabe novelist, discover some fine material for the Fathers and Sons theme.
The Wiz’s hero, Daniel Pipes, is the son of Team B leader Richard Pipes (Piepes), born in Poland to a Jewish business-class family who migrated to USA in 1939-1940. Pipes was one of those “mediocre intellects” that Theodor Herzl wrote about in Der Judenstaat; the Polish Pipes who left Europe while yet a teenager thought he had a greater understanding of Russia than did Russians.
Based upon his distorted concepts about the Russian character, Pipes partnered with Albert Wohlstetter, who, as the excerpt below states, used distorted information about Soviet arms to gin up the Cold War arms race —
In a 1987 interview Richard Perle called Wohlstetter the most important influence on his thinking (see http://www.c-span.org/video/?172058-1/defense-issues ). For the purposes of this assessment, we’ll call the Perle-Wohlstetter dynamic a father-son relationship.
Papa Pipes held distorted views about the Russian national character and history. The intellectual hubris with which he held and wielded his mordant views were passed along to Son Daniel, who applied the same hate-driven assessment to Islam. Alexander Solzhenitsyn denounced Papa Pipes’s version of Russian history, and evidence of Russia’s actual progress in weaponry proved that Pipes and Wohlstetter’s Team B assessment were wrong, as Joseph Cirincione, director of the Ploughshares Fund, has argued (see here: The Greatest Threat to Us All )
Richard Pipes was WRONG, and Albert Wohlstetter was WRONG in the self-serving (and Israel-serving) path they pursued relentlessly for 30 years, to the grave detriment of the American people and to the actual, physical harm to the Russian people and economy.
But the sins of the fathers are visited upon if not actually amplified by their sons.
Daniel Pipes supports himself by demonizing an entire population and urging all who will hear to hate Muslims as much as he does. Wizard of Oz has allowed Pipes’s message to influence the Wiz’s mental processes.
Richard Perle is so ideologically fused to the hate-filled and death-dealing ideology of his mentor Albert Wohlstetter that he is immune to facts and logic. In this 2003 C Span appearance Perle declared with supreme confidence that “They [Iran’s mullahs] have pledged to use a nuclear weapon against Israel for example and they’ve talked openly about incinerating Israelis.”
Here’s a bit more of Perle’s wizdom about Iran — notice how Perle’s brain farts have become what Hillary Mann Leverett refers to as “social facts”: things that the American people — and soft-headed entities like Wizard of Oz — have been conditioned to think of as reality but that have no basis in fact, evidence or logic:
Here’s Perle in November 2003:
The Pipes – Perle -neoconservative god-complex is on full display here. What part of the US Constitution, or the counsels of US founders — take a break from Daniel Pipes and read George Washington’s Farewell Address; * or of the United Nations Charter, or of international conventions on war-making ** gives a POS like Richard Perle the right to decide how Iran should be governed?
When something as momentous as waging war against another state and its 75 million people in the case of Iran, is on the line, has not the collected wisdom of over a millennia of Christian civilization taught us that all the evidence should be rigorously examined; that the rule of law is uppermost; and that all other options should be exhausted before initiating actions that will cost the lives of other people? The Roman Catholic church as an institution has not discarded that collected wisdom: in 2003 Vatican diplomat Cardinal Pio Laghi flew to Washington, DC to attempt to dissuade George W Bush from waging war on Iraq. He was unsuccessful. Bush followed the advice of Richard Perle (from the Nov. 2003 interview):
* footnote to Wiz of Oz: whose counsel do you subscribe to, Wiz, one of the men who pledged his “life, his fortune, his sacred honor” to the establishment of the United States Republic, or a bunch of lying sob s the likes of Daniel Pipes, Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Perle? You say you are not a Jew, but that is not the issue: are you an American? Where is your loyalty? Is it to American values?
**hint to Wizard of Oz: Mary Ellen O’Connell might be a good source on this topic. Check it out: http://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=jlia )
*** This statement echoes the thinking of the George H W Bush administration as they made the decisions to invade Iraq in 1990-1991 and also to refrain from extending that invasion into Baghdad to take down Saddam Hussein. As Jeff Engel, who is Associate Professor
Texas A. and M. University Bush School of Government and Public Service, reported: http://www.c-span.org/video/?310832-1/book-discussion-desert-reflections-gulf-war
This notion that colored the G H W Bush administration’s thinking in 1990-1991, that the people of Iraq would abandon their own government in favor of an invading force and overthrow their government, has been the
of Anglo-American war-making since at least
–> World War I, when Allied forces blockaded Germany, deliberately restricting foodstuffs in an attempt to cause so much unrest among German citizens that they would rise up and overthrow their government (800,000 German civilians died of starvation, including 35,000 to 50,000 Germans who died between the German armistice and the coerced acquiescence of Germany to Versailles treaty).
–> World War II, when Allies planned and prosecuted a firestorm war deliberately targeting German civilians, crafted as a “moral war,” and labeled by historian H. Stuart Hughes “the first use a weapon of mass destruction to terrorize civilians.” (see Commentary Reader, 1960, Norman Podhoretz, ed.) (see also The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945.
–> Ten years of sanctions against Iraqi civilians that cost the lives of one million Iraqis, half of them children, “more than died in Hiroshima,” but a price, quoth Madeleine Albright, that was “worth it.” http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8
–> In a September 2007 appearance on C Span California congressman Ed Royce said that the goal of sanctions on Iran was to so constrain the Iranian economy and cause such hardship to the Iranian people that they would rise up and overthrow their government — the scenario right out of Richard Perle’s wet dreams http://www.c-span.org/video/?200726-3/us-policy-toward-iran
–> In the last month US Congressmen have bolstered Royce’s statement, that the goal of US Congress’s sanctions on Iran are to cause so much harm to the Iranian people that they will riot and overthrow their own government.
Save for Germany’s forced acquiescence to the Versaille Treaty, in no instance has a population joined with an invading or aggressing force to overthrow their own government.
IT. HAS. NEVER. HAPPENED that a population will respond to sanctions — which are, after all, collective punishment, proscribed by Geneva Conventions — by overthrowing their government. G H W Bush and his advisors may have been “99% certain” that such would happen, and would be just as certain that it would happen in a future instance, but their certainty would have been based on the same kind of dark and hateful distortions as is the thinking of Richard Pipes, Daniel Pipes, Albert Wohlstetter, and Richard Perle and his claque.
With this caveat: In a 2008 visit to Tehran I was strolling through Laleh Park and stopped to talk with a young Iranian boy, perhaps 12 years old. “You American?” he asked. “Yes,” we replied. He then expressed the hope that the US would invade Iran and liberate it as Iraq had been liberated.
That young man would be in one of Iran’s universities by now, and, having watched the devolution of Iraq to failed state status, one imagines he has revised his wishes for regime change a la Perle.
What you should realize, Wizard of Oz, is that freedoms and rights come with complementary responsibilities.
The right to free speech, even the right to propagate the hate speech that characterized Daniel Pipes, comes with the responsibility for consequences of propagating hate speech. Is a derivative of the “no right to shout Fire in a crowded theater” principle.
For example, Pam Geller organized the hate speech fest that produced the derived outcome of the deaths of several people in Texas.
We can know with reasonable certainty that such provocations as Geller created were deliberate and had the intention of provoking pretty much the sort of response that occurred. To validate this, see Benjamin Ginsberg, “The Worth of War.” Such actions are a tactic that has been used by many entities, including not least neoconservatives and other purveyors of hate and Islamophobia.
Can you think of a good reason why they should not be held to account in the same way as any other offender of the public order should be?
Over the years, AIPAC et al. have consistently worked to prevent Washington from declaring the Armenian Genocide to be a case of, well, genocide
Has nothing to do with Zionism but rather for our (that is, the Jews) hatred for the Armenian people. It is true that we have no love for the Turks, but the Armenians are blood enemies is the way that the Turks could never be. Hence we use our political power to prevent recognition of their made up “genocide”. The Armenians should be grateful that we have been as merciful to them as we have.
I strenuously object to you referring to our Congress as the “Parliament of Whores.” Whores are much more moral and ethical people than our Congress. Whores at least provide a much needed service, often at a fair price, and by and large are not in any way treasonous and corrupt, unlike the finest Congress money can buy. I think Mark Twain stated it quite succinctly quite a while ago and it still applies today except in spades: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.”
This is meant to be – and started as – a response to KA but will serve also as some sort of response to SolontoCroesus
Thanks for your response – I’m on the move and not sure how my one finger/thumb manoeuvres on the phone are keeping up so mention that this is a response to KA. I haven’t time right now to follow up the links and leads but have read the 2006 Lew Rockwell piece by John Liechty which is outstanding (thanks for the link in an earlier post). I particularly note the balance which allows him to acknowledge that Steyn – whom he nails – is often witty and even right.
For the moment I quibble at the implications of Israel as a garrison settler state or the suggestion that absurd claims based on partly mythical claims about forebears dispossessing other Canaanite tribes have got anything much to do with arguments used to try and preserve Israel as a state not swamped by people of very different culture and intolerant religion (different in numerical potency from the many other intolerant religions and naturally frightening people who see that the ISIL (or Taliban) brand can take over large populations and territories.
That’s not the Israel I have visited.
Mind you I can’t really feel what it is to be and feel Jewish (which I am not). It was typical of the people I spent time with in Israel that one was an American “Jewish atheist” with lapsed Catholic sons in law. Perhaps he would, like Einstein, have described Israelis as “my tribe”.
I see that SolontoCroesus has posted some stuff on Pipes pêre et fils which will help my follow up on Daniel Pipes who appears not to have been as careful in the past as he is now. (“Mugged by reality?”). I had already found references to his father (who seemed a mild little man when I met him in his earlier old age) which suggested perhaps a similarity of temperament with his son. Father it seems may have overestimated Soviet strength even more than the CIA apparently did 35 years ago (though that may be unfair: Team B was appointed in 1975). I think DP believes in the threat posed by Iran to Israel as serious. And Iran with the Ayatollahs still in charge plus Revolutionary Guard can hardly be regarded as nothing much to worry about if it obtains nuclear weapons. Sometimes people mean what they say.
The arrogant, ill-informed, stupid and incompetent performance of America in the ME** does not mean that Israel’s case for existence without being swamped by Palestinian Muslim voters doesn’t need strong support in the US by AIPAC or whomever since the left withdrew its support after 1967.
**It could be argued that supporters like Australia’s PM John Howard went too far in genuine support for Bush the Less’s adventure but, given that it was probably still far too early for Australia to decide to no longer be the US’s ever reliable loyal little (or medium size) friend, Howard’s achievement of having only one soldier killed in Iraq looks pretty good – not least because he accidentally shot himself in his bunk room.
**************
As it seems agreed – and correct – that Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was a great blunder I am no longer so inclined to speculate that developments of what Daniel Pipes calls “Israeli towns” on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem are possible bargaining chips. The DP view that peace will only come when the Palestinians accept that they are beaten is probably right. If Hamas had a Lee Kwan Yew who could make Gaza an economically prosperous polity instead of a source of random terrorist rocket attacks on Israeli civilians there would be little problem.
Hey Oz, I was going to mostly stand on the sidelines on this one (and will go back to sitting the bench) but I’d like to offer a bit different perspective. When you say:
It seems to overlook the consistent Israeli Gaza blockade policy best summed up by Dov Weinglass:
“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”
In fact Gaza has a port but there is no reasonable effort to develop the necessary relations with the Palestinians to facilitate the markets and trade opening opportunities to develop. It can’t hurt here to (factually) state HAMAS had won the elections in Gaza that brought them to power and the result was the USA immediately in lock-step with Israel; denying the people of Gaza their electoral will and refusal to do any business with a legitimately elected entity. In a way this recalls Eyal Wiezman’s observation:
“For refugees, camps were shelters for the reconstruction of personal and social life, but were also seen as sites of great political significance, the material testimony of what was destroyed and ‘all that remains’ of more than four hundred cities, towns and villages forcefully cleansed throughout Palestine in the Nakba of 1947-9. This is the reason refugees sometimes refer to the destruction of camps as ‘the destruction of destruction.’ The camp is not a home, it is a temporary arrangement, and its destruction is but the last iteration in an ongoing process of destruction.
“This rhetoric of double negation – the negation of negation – tallies well with what Saree Makdisi, talking about the Israeli refusal to acknowledge the Nakba, has termed ‘the denial of denial’, which is, he says, ‘a form of foreclosure that produces the inability – the absolutely honest, sincere incapacity – to acknowledge that denial and erasure have themselves been erased in turn and purged from consciousness.’ What has been denied is continuously repeated: Israel keeps on inflicting destruction on refugees and keeps on denying that a wrong has been done” –Eyal Weizman: ‘The Least Of All Possible Evils’ (Humanitarian Violence From Arendt To Gaza)
The Israeli national psyche seems incapable to treat the people of Gaza (and to a lesser extent, the Palestinians of the West Bank but that could see a ramped up persecution in the new Netanyahu coalition) as anything less than a negative projection of their own treatment at the hands of certain Christians in what is historically known as a ‘ghetto.’
Just saying (and Ron out)
I get a kick out of all these spurious “arguments” thrown out there by the defenders of the Zionist project.
I actually pity them as they have the unenviable task of defending the indefensible!
For example, they must defend Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. This boils down to defending the existence of an ethnocracy, which is an anachronism from previous centuries. They condemn the nazis for trying to establish their ethnocracy but, in the same breath, they vigorously defend Israel’s attempt to do so.
And while most defenders of the Zionist project subscribe to moral arguments as they must because how else can they criticize what the nazis did, they feel that what Israel is doing to the Palistinians is a special case… that Israel has a right to defend itself from these ungrateful helots!
So they find themselves having to justify the inprisonment of almost 2 million Gazans. They have to defend Israel’s right to “mow the lawn” every few years. They have to defend the brutal occupation that has lasted almost 50 years. And most importantly, they must defend the “special relationship” that makes all of this possible.
Tell me, given the Herculean effort before them, don’t you pity them, too?
Has Unz.com ever considered creating collapsible comment threads?
Ozzie, the Palestinian territories at the green line should be taken over by the UN until people like Netanyahu are just a memory. Then the Israeli supporters don’t get to hide behind Palestinian rockets for their colonial project and the Palestinians won’t receive brutal collective punishment (mass murder) because of morons with imprecise rocket launchers. It will be the UN’s responsibility to police Palestine and arrest violent jihadist. Israeli settlers are going to have to be removed forcibly, voluntarily, or they are going to become Palestinians. After a few generations hopefully they will assimilate. When the violent youth of today are old and no one cares what their racist minds think. As long as the Israeli right wing government does its magic there is hope that the UN will impose a two state solution if a two state solution is ever going to occur. That would be too easy of a solution and would nip Greater Israel in the bud. It is more fun I guess to argue about the tit for tat that goes on in that (should be) insignificant tiny little desert.
Also as of now Iran has no nuclear weapon’s program according to leaked Israeli intelligence. The goal is to keep it that way through a diplomatic deal. Israel, like Saudi Arabia want to use violent Sunni Jihadist (same population that kills Americans/Westerners) to kill off Iranians and their proxies in order to dominate the region. That is why Israel provides those Anti-American fighters with medical attention while its puppets and proxies in the US support overthrowing secular governments. The US after 9/11 should have dealt with Israel and the Gulf States instead of being their slave.
1 ” what war had achieved for Israel,dolma cry has undone”
2 ” The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Istarl needs to defeat them”
3 ” All Muslims unfortunately are suspect”
4 ” the attacks of September 12,2001 made me feel more secure,unlike most Americans”
5 I think it is possible to go to war without taking responsibility for the country that you make war on ”
Daniel Pipes
He also blamed Muslim for Okhlahama bombings
I do indeed pity those who have to turn their high IQ Ashkenazi minds to the defence of many aspects of Zionism. But surely you concede that it is quite unfair to use the Nazis doctrines and practice against most deliberately ethnically specialised states and specifically against Israel.
On the one hand there is the unfortunate example of ethnically quite harmonious societies being disrupted by outsiders thrust upon them. Fiji is an example that comes to mind although, as for Malaysia, one could argue that the newcomers have brought modernity and prosperity.
On the other one could point to the general preference for like living with like 100 years ago. I may be wrong, but I don’t recall learning of any great ethical objection to the notion of a Jewish national home in Palestine (or somewhere else in Africa or Australia). And the Jews had been persecuted so a specially strong claim could be made for their having a state in which they would be safe while remaining identifiably Jewish. Today Japan and Korea are more ethnocentric than Israel and Malaysia offers fair warning of what Muslim governments may do as in states which forbid conversion from Islam and forbid the use of the word Allah by Christians. Ethnocentricity and ethnic states are not to my taste but that is to disagree with majority opinion in most countries I think. And even my tolerant tastes gives way to adding relatively unproductive people to one’s population with or without the vote. Do you disagree?
I suggest as a model for supporting Israel respectably.
1. I admire Israel rather than like it. I also think it is of much greater value to the world than almost any other collection of 8 million people. It would be an objective pity if it were destroyed. Mind you I wouldn’t mind more Ashkenazim in my country. I am in favour of brains energetically used.
2. It has as much legal right to exist on its 1967 borders as any country.
3. It is at war, unwillingly, with a number of hostile political entities (counting Hezbollah and Hamas as well as de facto if not de jure Iran and Syria) and in varying degrees they can and do hurt it in ways that kill people and make Israelis fear that there will be attempts to wipe Israel off the map.
4. No one has solved yet the problem of asymmetric warfare with the ever present possibility that uniformed troops in a national army will find it hard2 to avoid killing civilians without laying themselves open to dangerous attacks for people hiding amongst civilians. It is not just a problem for asymmetric warfare as bombing in WW2 illustrates. Israel has the worse problem that the enemy initiate the attacks which require response.
5. As long as they try to minimise the harm to civilians consistent with striking those who are attacking them with lethal weapons I would give Israel a pass on its heavy retaliations and hope they can do more intelligent things – including, but far from being confined to, denying the enemy weapons through destroying tunnels and interdicting other avenues of supply and using propaganda effectively to cause disaffection with the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
6. The obvious alternative of allowing a less productive and more primitively tribal people into a single state as citizens who will outbreed them without any guarantee that they will become secular liberal democrats rather than intolerant Muslims who impose sharia law is simply not worth suggesting as realistic.
I meant to add the Serbians to those who would support concern over the inclusion of high fertility people of different culture. They regard Kosovo as having been taken from them by Albanians and Albanian speaking tribal people producing very large families.
Thanks I shall Google for these quotes but please clarify No. 1 which isn’t clear.
As I can easily imagine acceptable elucidations or elaborations of these statements I would be interested to know what your reasoned objections are in each case except the alleged factual error, as to which I wonder what he actually said.
I am not sure if I agree with it all but agree with most. The trouble is it isn’t going to happen. As with a lot of ideas which seem obviously sensible it is not necessarily particularly easy to see why it is proving impossible.
By the way it is possible to collapse the thread if by that you mean to hide it. See the button you can click on.
Indeed it looks as though Ariel Sharon through away the best possibility that Gaza could be eased into something like Hong Kong or Singapore status or at least prosperity when he handed it over, effectively, to Israel’s enemies. An earlier mistake was made by not insisting on Egypt having the management of Gaza after the Camp David accords.
Perhaps Gaza should have had a United Nations Administrator on the analogy of the British Colonial Governors of Hong Kong under whom HK flourished…..
You don’t say! Do you think the Palestinians may have had a “great ethical objection”? Or don’t they count because their IQs aren’t as high as those brilliant Ashkenazi minds?
Interesting characterization of the events on the ground. Are you familiar with Prof. Norman Finkelstein’s analogy:
AS A PRACTICAL MATTER, IT IS A VERY SIMPLE CONCEPT. PERSON “A” IS GRAPPLING AND SUFFOCATING (SUFFOCATING IS A FANCY WORD FOR CHOKING)… JAMES. JAMES MANAGES, IN THE COURSE OF BEING SUFFOCATED, TO SCRATCH HIM A LITTLE. HE’S NOW ENRAGED. HE IS FURIOUS AT THE SCRATCHES, AND SO BEYOND SUFFOCATING HIM HE STARTS TO BEAT HIM AND BEAT HIM AND HE SAYS “IT’S MY RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE. HE SCRATCHED ME. IT’S MY RIGHT OF SELF DEFENSE.” SOME PEOPLE SAID HE HAS NO CHOICE. JAMES IS SCRATCHING HIM. ANYONE WITH COMMON SENSE AND DECENCY KNOWS FULL WELL THAT HE HAS A CHOICE. IF HE DOESN’T WANT JAMES TO SCRATCH HIM, ALL HE HAS TO DO IS TO STOP SUFFOCATING JAMES.
IF ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT TO BE THE SUBJECT OF OCCASIONAL SCRATCHES, WHICH IS ALL THAT THESE ROCKET ATTACKS COME TO, IT HAS A VERY SIMPLE OPTION. IT COULD STOP SUFFOCATING THE PALESTINIANS, IT COULD PACK UP ITS BAGS AND RETURN TO ITS STATE. THE BORDERS UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND IT CAN FINALLY LET THE PALESTINIANS LIVE IN PEACE.
With only a couple of minor alterations, this quote could have come straight from the mouth of Gobbles:
“The obvious alternative of allowing a less productive and more primitively tribal people into a single state as citizens who will outbreed them without any guarantee that they will become secular liberal democrats rather than intolerant Jews who impose Torah is simply not worth suggesting as realistic.”
As I said, it’s an unenviable task defending the indefensible!
I suspect the problem is that Hamas is well Hamas so dealing with them can be easily put aside. Abbas is weak. The Palestinians aren’t a credible opponent. They can’t even defend or police themselves effectively. Palestinian violent resistance does them no favors. When they fire rockets it is basically begging to be killed. When they should get sympathy they end up as propaganda pieces for their own demise. Israel attacks UN schools, civilians die, and Israel just has to say the word “ROCKETS,” resulting in all criticism being blunted automatically. Israel has military superiority in the region for now so Israel doesn’t have an incentive to make peace, so they feel like they can take what they want. The US will block whatever comes Israel’s way through the UN. I can’t imagine their being peace without a strong UN military and administrative presence in Palestine to keep the peace. Even if they had a state it doesn’t mean they won’t be smacked around by Israel when some moron with a rocket launcher is firing into Israel. State status isn’t preventing other weak nations in the Muslim world from being attacked. Palestine would be the little guy against a steroid pumped gorilla at a bar.
I think Israel will slowly annex everything they want, but will it always have military superiority over its Arab neighbors? If Shia power is decimated then who will the Sunni jihadist and their non-American patrons go for next? Israel or the Arab monarchs? Palestinian suffering was a recruitment tool for Al Qaeda. Can Israel deal with this experienced and mass multinational mobile army of competing Sunni Jihadist? Some probably will go after Israel anyway but a peace deal would calm the Muslim world down when it comes to Israel. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday a Philip of Arabia (Macedon) comes about promising revenge (of course Arab culture could change and it becomes a non-issue). That land has been conquered again and again throughout history by different people. There are countries that were Empires that are now ineffectual. Israel’s super power status in the region may not last forever so it may someday be made to regret its actions. Israel will always be known for taking all the Palestinian land it wanted in the Islamic world instead of making peace. This injustice may perpetually be a rallying cry for aspiring Muslim leaders like Osama Bin Laden.
A humane alternative would be to help those who do not want to die leave and find a better life somewhere else. They have people who want to leave living in Gaza but are having a hard time doing just that: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/trapped-palestinians-pressure Why not help them or at least give them an option between life and death? Shouldn’t Israel want them to leave or is this an experiment in collective learned helplessness?
It would be nice if the comments were nested with the main post shown but have show more and then a button to show the rest of the conversation if the person wanted to read the replies.
Are you losing your mind?
I am sorry but I just couldn’t read any more of your statements after reading that you called Daniel Pipes a “serious student of the Muslim world”. I guess in your mind, Pamela Geller is another serious student of Islam. If you have not figured out by now that Daniel Pipes is a crude, racist piece of hateful crap, not unlike Netanyahu or Avigdor Liebermann, you obviously have no real intelligence. In a similar situation, I own a cat at home who is “a serious student of ornithology”.
thanks for the chuckle, richard vajs
to the wizard of hate, re KA’s post of Daniel Pipes quotes:
“what war had achieved for Israel,dolma cry has undone”
should be: “What war had achieved for Israel, diplomacy has undone,” or, more precisely, “In brief, the security that war had achieved for Israel, diplomacy has undone.”
Pipes laments that in the Oslo period, Arab states who had been routed by Israel in 1967 were gearing up to challenge Israel militarily — the only language Israel seems to respond to. That is what all of the wars in the ME are about that Israel has snookered the US into waging (including the economic war on Iran which Israel launched in 1995).
That part of the Hebrew mythos that zionist Jews (mostly East European thugs) love most is the warrior mythos. They know nothing else. Patrick Tyler pointed this out in Fortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country–and Why They Can’t Make Peace.
Jabotinskyites, of whom Benjamin Netanyahu is a direct descendant and whose doctrine he advances for today’s Israel to the detriment of most Jews and Israelis, are so wedded to the thrill of “peace through killing” that was so successful for Joshua in the land of Canaan that they are stuck in a time a millennia or so BC, while the civilized world has moved on: they reject “peace through diplomacy” because they don’t know how to function in a civilized world.
Daniel Pipes, Wizard’s hero, has planted his feet firmly in that 2000 BC garden of hate, in which only bitter fruit grows and bad apples proliferate.
Thank you
The forbears of my father were Sephardi Jews. Apparently such Jews have no brains at all. At least according to what I deduce from your writing.
I can’t deny that you have made a lot of sense with plausible scenarios and hypotheticals. Actual annexing of more land must be problematic though I note with interest that, while a civilised Reform rabbi friend who is passionate about Israel says he can “no solution”, Daniel Pipes says “I don’t call them ‘settlements’: they are Israeli towns”.
I also have some difficulty with the idea that Israel only has to say “ROCKETS” and the pressure comes off. In fact the BDS movement gathers strength and there are plenty of NGOs – not to mention sensitive votes in the UN where former friends change tack and vote for recognition of Palestine as a polity belonging to various UN organisations or having status with them.
It is of course an example of a quite frequent problem that Palestinians elect Hamas by majority and then all – and their children suffer in consequence. Like the Germans and Japanese in WW2. I wonder what the Israel response would be to a solution involving a UN mandate or UN administration. Would they trust the UN? Should they trust the UN? The Dutch didn’t save anyone at Srebreniza and the Canadians weren’t a great success in Rwanda. And that’s without looking at Africa today or Kosovo in the 90s. It is unlikely that UN troops or police would prevent Gaza based Islamists firing mortars and rockets – including ones which can reach Tel Aviv – even if the numbers were reduced to hundreds a year rather than thousands.
Ben Cardin should go with Bob Menendez to Israel. They could put themselves at risk if they settle in the occupied territories. They supported sanctions against the former Apartheid regime in South Africa but oppose Palestinian statehood and Hawaii seceding from the US. There are Native Hawaiians that would like to do that.
Of course Palestinians (of whom there very few before WW1) came to object to Jewish settlement stirred up by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem but, by omission, you concede the point I was making about opinion in leading centres of modern civilisation. I don’t claim to be expert (and clearly no one commenting on this blog is) but the right of Zionists to buy land under the Ottomans and subsequently establish a Jewish National Home under the League of Nations mandate was no doubt fortified by the ince clear legal doctrine of terra nullius which, for example, for 200 years governed the treating of land hunted over by Australian hunter gatherers from time immemorial as “terra nullius”. Roughly speaking, hunter gatherers, usually nomadic, were not treated as having reduced the land to ownership. There is a somewhat analogous argument, based I think on fact and certainly supported by subsequent development of land requiring drip irrigation, desalination plants and renewable energy, that the Palestinians living in Ottoman Palestine had done very little with the land. They would add that the “Palestiniaan” was greatly increased by people attracted by Jewish economic developments. That is btw as my real point was that people like us weren’t, as far as I know, raising ethical objections.
As to your Finkelstein quote iisn’t it just plain silly to equate the aiming potentially (and sometimes actually) lethal rockets inat civilian targets in their thousands with scratches? How could the US and any number of allies bomb and invade Afghanistan (I wouldn’t have invaded fwiw) just because a handful of highjackers had managed to kill rather publicly a fraction of the number of Americans killed on the roads each year and an even smaller fraction of those murdered?
I would overlook your illustrating Godwin’s law – even your curious spelling of Goebbels, but for the fact that it points to your complete lack of answer to the passage you parody and shows up your carelessness in searching round to an analogy for Sharia law by referring to the Torah which certainly contains commands which would already have looked primitive to almost everyone even in the 7th century AD but which have nothing to do with the remarkably secular – though inconsistent -state of Israel.
Look. It doesn’t really matter what the degenerates in the US Congress say or do. The rest of the world is poised to begin trading again with Iran. The Germans are already lining us with energy deals. The Russians have already jumped the gun and the Chines are there too.
With a new “nonSWIFT” clearing house just about ready to go, US control over transactions with Iran will be greatly reduced. If the US vetoes an Iran deal, the US will be sitting there isolated, perhaps with France.
Good riddance. Not much the Israel-firsters can do about any of this.
I’ve never heard of Pam Geller so let’s put that aside. But I’d never heard of you either until I Googled and found quotes from your antiwar.com site.
Pay attention SolontoCroesus and all else susceptible to disconnecting the brain in favour of preconception and worse (including simple minded silliness or trollery in calling Daniel Pipes my “hero” – hardly likely when my closest, very learned, Jewish friend warned me that DP was very clever but nit someone one would want to spend a day with…). Here is Vajn found through Wordnik
“US+UK+Canada+Australia+Israel+Satraps carry on where the Third Reich left off” and much more similarly intemperate and foolishly unpersuasive language. And he wants to be taken seiously presumably when he scoffs (but proffers no reasons) at the description of Daniel Pipes as a “serious student of the Muslim world”. Does Vajn know anything about the Muslim world or religion or of the scholars in the field? There is no evidence of it. Does he know Daniel Pipes? Has he ever spent as much as a few hours in his company and able to question him on matters of interest? I doubt it very much. I have and I assess him as an able advocate (though he claims only to be seeking solutions) and a careful one in his choice of words, at least in 2015, unlike many on this thread.
Can you read Arabic? No, I thought not. While seeking to confirm my guess that DP had made a post Cold War study of Arabic before establishing the Middle East forum I did an online search and discovered in a long Wikipedia piece which is evidently not written by Pipes or his partisans that his knowledge of Arabic and serious study of the Middle East goes back to about 1970.
I also learned that to say he said the Oklahoma bombings was the work of Islamists could only be the kind of cheap dishonesty by omission which would get a lawyer disbarred outsude Hicksville. He did however write an op-ed for the WSJ four months before 9/11 predicting further sttacks on the US by Al Qaeda….
Sadly no one in Comments has come close to suggesting a solution to securing the position of Israel as an independent country which doesn’t have to accept immigrants in large numbers that it reasonably considers are culturally incompatible. It is easy to say “I wouldn’t have started from here” when looking back on the post 1967 policies which presumably were confected from genuine fear for the security of a country which is only 25 miles wide in the middle of its northern half in circumstances of unremitting enmity and non-recognition by populous neighbours and from that dangerous strain of Greater Israelites that would throw the Palestinians out of the West Bank. Now Pipes may be right that only beating the Palestinians till they know they have lost will secure Israel’sIsrael’s permanence. No good choices perhaps.
I’m quickly tiring of this exchange, but I can’t let the above statement go unchallenged. Referring to the Palistinians as “hunter gatherers” so as to justify land theft is rich!
Have you read Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine? Here’s a quote:
“…around 720,000 Palestinian Arabs out of the 900,000 who lived in the territories that became Israel fled or were expelled from their home.”
These people resided in their villages and towns for centuries before the Zionists forcibly removed them.
You need to update your Hasbara taking points, as decent people, such as Pappe, have easily refuted them!
Its complicated isn’t it. What is meant by Sephardi these days. I understand that the term is sometimes applied to all non-Ashkenazi. But if it means all whose ancestry dates back to medieval times in the Iberian peninsula it would appear unlikely that some of the selective factors which seem to have lifted Ashkenazi IQs – or different ones – wouldn’t have produced elevated IQs in Sephardim even after one has made distinctions between the true Jews and the actual and pseudo converts to Christianity who all got kicked out of Spain eventually. But I think the charming description of Zionists as mostly Eastern European thugs does point to one truth which is that there are not a high proportion of true Sephardim in Israel.
I am reminded of a leftist former Protestant minister, long an atheist, who became a friend of mine despite our political differences. He said in exasperation that he was, as well known and respected national radio broadcaster simply going to avoid Israel/Palestine topics because of the vituperation they always brought down upon him. And I later found that he wouldn’t join me for lunch with my delightful popular rabbi friend – and vice versa!
Be it known that I am one of the few people on this thread who has no agenda except perhaps to respond critically to bad or carelessly stated arguments and unreliable factual premises or assertions. It is partly to see what the apparent obsessives can do to make them selves sound measured and reasonable if they care to try and to test sincerity. Of occasionally one may also learn something or be prompted to do so, as I have done to check on Daniel Pipes and what has been said about him.
Just dodon’t think I care about the issues you wax so eloquent or just loquacious about. I would lose no sleep if Israel ceased to be and a million Jews came to Australia as refugees. I would like to see the nearly 4 million Palestinian “rrefugees” still in camps resettled in Arab countries. Otherwise dcfdispassionate understanding will have to suffice.
h/t parrot man @ https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/william-eichler/heretics-and-liberals-what-ayaan-hirsi-ali-gets-wrong
On Mr Pipes
1 “Daniel Pipes waves Old Glory with an air of menace. He writes stuff like “Profs Who Hate America“.
His Middle East Forum also runs the campuswatch.org site, which outs academics caught in political misbehavior. He says that “The time has come for adult supervision of the faculty…”. This terrifies me. Jeez, the last thing I want is adult supervision!(*)
This guy is all the scarier because he gets to testify before congressional committees, while I just get to chat with losers at the Suspect Profs Support Group. Naturally my only thought is to save myself. How can I please this man? He sounds like a tough guy about to explode: “Especially as we are at war, the goal must be for universities to resume their civic responsibilities.” Civic responsibility, I can hardly remember “
-MICHAEL NEUMANN is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada
2 “pre-eminent neocon and ardent Zionist Daniel Pipes. In a recent piece in the Jerusalem Post, Pipes spills the beans. He writes:
“The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.
Pipes again:
“Civil war will “terminate the dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This would have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago.”
And finally Pipes declares that a civil war “would likely invite Syrian and Iranian participation hastening the possibility of confrontation with these two states, with which tensions are already high. “ JOHN WALSH
Stephen Zunes documents in Antiwar.com:
“Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war’s intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be “ripped apart” by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to “expedite” such a collapse anyway.
3‘Dr. Daniel Pipes who has been wonderfully successful in my opinion in intimidating the vast majority of already spineless U.S. professors into near total silence despite-The good Dr. Pipes identified the six leading villains in the U.S. — I’m # 6 in a column in the NY Post, perhaps just a few steps up from pure trash newspaper, but one which is widely read and distributed widely — I can get it easily here in Washington, D.C.– THOMAS J. NAGY, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Expert Systems George Washington University.
“Daniel Pipes lays out his case in a number of editorials written in the NY Sun in the last few months. Pipes claims as “fact” that “Islamic institutions [which Gibran Academy is not], whether schools or mosques, have a pattern of extremism and even violence.” He argues that “learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes an Islamic outlook,” as “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” Pipes feels that the teaching of Arabic may lead to “moral decay,” since “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam, an expectation I encountered while studying Arabic in Cairo in the 1970s.”
ANTHONY DiMAGGIO has taught Middle East Politics and American Government at Illinois State Universit
4 “Islamo-Fascism Awareness week has been featuring Horowitz and big-name ranters of the right like Anne Coulter and Fox’s Sean Hannity, plus former US Senator Rick Santorum, and noted Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. They descended on various college campuses to be received by Christian-Fascists and the curious while they hurled imprecations at the left for being soft on sons of the Prophet stoning women to death for adultery.- ALEXANDER COCKBURN
A few months after ACTA’s study was disseminated, Daniel Pipes, the director of a think tank called Middle East Forum, launched a blacklisting internet site called Campus Watch, which publishes dossiers on scholars who criticize US policy in the Middle East or Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. On the website one finds a “Keep Us Informed” section, where Pipes encourages students to inform on any professor who deviates from “correct conduct.” Some have obediently complied.
As Beshara Doumani, a history professor at the University of California Berkeley, points out in his compelling introduction to Academic Freedom after September 11, Pipes and friends have cynically appropriated the liberal terminology of the New Deal and civil rights eras, employing code words such as balance, fairness, diversity, accountability, tolerance, and not least, academic freedom in order to justify the enforcement of a political orthodoxy that undermines these very values.
The book describes this new assault on academic freedom in detail,- NEVE GORDON teaches human rights at Ben-Gurion University in Israe
AND SOME MORE
Daniel Pipes: Pipes is a Middle East specialist associated with right-leaning, pro-Israeli think tanks like the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Washington Institute on Near East Policy. In 1987 he wrote an article for The New Republic with Laurie Mylroie title, “Back Iraq: It’s Time for a U.S. Tilt” (4/27/87). “Iraq is now the de facto protector of the regional status quo,” Pipes and Mylroie wrote–a little more than three years before Saddam Hussein attempted to annex Kuwait.
Pipes showed himself to be just as much an Islamic expert in his post-Oklahoma analysis. “People need to understand that this is just the beginning,” he told USA Today (4/20/95). “The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it clear that they are targeting us. They are absolutely obsessed with us.” Who’s obsessed with whom?
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-experts-speak/
Have problem-? Learn how to google.
He studied Arabic???
“Daniel Pipes lays out his case in a number of editorials written in the NY Sun in the last few months. Pipes claims as “fact” that “Islamic institutions [which Gibran Academy is not], whether schools or mosques, have a pattern of extremism and even violence.” He argues that “learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes an Islamic outlook,” as “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” Pipes feels that the teaching of Arabic may lead to “moral decay,” since “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam, an expectation I encountered while studying Arabic in Cairo in the 1970s.”
ANTHONY DiMAGGIO has taught Middle East Politics and American Government at Illinois State University.
Wizard of Oz is Ahmadinejad behind a green curtain: Wizard of Oz advocates that Israel “cease to exist.”
Wizard of Oz proposes the same final solution as Nazis endorsed:
Wiz also endorses crimes against humanity:
That’s population transfer and population transfer is a crime against humanity:
You are not just an obsessive who wastes time you are behaving childishly in saying that I “advocate” Israel ceasing to exist. What possible point can there be in introducing and premising your lengthy humour-free rubbish with a critical falsehood?
Having provided quite interesting quotes which make it easy to believe that Daniel Pipes has lots of enemies it is a pity to undermine your credit by being cute. If he had said “anyone who has studied Arabic is prima facie an Islamist suspect” then it might have been amusing to show him up as being overemphatic or exaggerating in making his points. But dragging up some material written by someone obscure to make it appear that there is something odd about what DP is supposed to have said because he studied Arabic (40 years ago by the way) really doesn’isdoesn’isn’t worthy of a serious comment.
I quoted your words back to you, Wizard, with far greater accuracy than has been used against Ahmadinejad and with far less dire results: the Iranian people are enduring collective punishment and the periodic threat of war for stating their preferences.
I notice that you did not respond to the information regarding population transfer and the fact that it is a crime against humanity.
How do you defend your statement,
QUOTE: “I would like to see the nearly 4 million Palestinian “rrefugees” still in camps resettled in Arab countries.” END QUOTE
Can you prove any of your off-the-wall assertions Tim? Or have you just gone off your meds?
” why is America so much more pro-Israel than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: AIPAC and the religious rights ”
” Than God we have AIPAC ,the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world ” says Ehud Olmert ,Israrl’s prime minister . The lobby ,which is the centerpiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure groups,think tanks and fund raising operators,produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinized by political donors. It also organizes regular trips to Israel for Congressmen and their staffs ”
Aug 3rd 2006 . Middle East Policy .To Israel With Love . From
The Economist .
How does the lobby carry out its agenda without raising the awareness ?
Often the plan would be slid or inserted quietly and be buried in the 800 pages resolution or bills to be passed
Here is one
” (UPDATE ON PRO-SETTLEMENTS LANGUAGE IN TWO MAJOR TRADE BILLS) S. 995/HR 1890/HR 1314 and Error! Hyperlink reference not valid./HR 1907/HR 644: The Trade Promotion Authority bill (TPA) bill and the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 bill (aka the Customs bill) both are moving nowin the House and Senate. Both include pro-settlements language (being touted, ignorantly or deceitfully as anti-BDS language), in various forms. Note that the Senate numbers for both bills changed this week, with the Senate using two pieces of legislation previously passed by the House as vehicles to move forward with its own versions of these measures. Thus, S. 995 is now HR 1314. and S. 1269 is now HR 644. For further details, see Section 3, below.
http://www.lobelog.com/congress-votes-on-iran/