SLICE

[napoleonherself]

ETA: I explain myself very slightly better in a comment to a comment to this post, so if you do find yourself wanting to draw a tiny mustache on me, you might want to read it before making your final decision. I guess what it boils down to is, are there really exactly two points of view on the subject? Do I really either have to be in full support of this particular country or else I hate it and desire its end? Can I really not be against its current governmental and political actions and climate without also hating the people who live there, even though you'd never accuse a guy who hated Parliament and the Queen with bitter bitter loathing as hating all British or Anglican people? Why? Just because you feel that way? Who wrote that particular rule, was there a vote, and are we just not allowed to ever again discuss it?

Now back to the actual post.

Ouch. Why did no one tell me that TxtLJ chops your posts into tiny pieces? Fixed now.

Explanation for previous post: I wanted to record this commercial on the Mike, so I decided to suffer through the Ed Schultz show instead of switching back to my mp3s right after Stephanie Miller finished up. This guy Norman Goldman was subbing. At one point a twelve-year-old girl called in, making a fairly confused point about I think the government wasting money on things like illegal wars? Goldman was with her until she said we should stop giving aid to Israel, and then when she said that Israel shouldn't even exist he called her an anti-Semite, declared that she needed to get a lot more education before trying to talk about these things, and hung up on her.

Israel shouldn't be there, though, not really.

Look. You probably have a home. Chances are you like this home, at least a little. Now see this guy here? This is Bob. Bob has been oppressed all his life. He's had a horrible time of it, through no fault of his own. Some asshole even threw him in a concentration camp, can you believe that? He barely escaped with his life.

From now on, the southeast corner of your living room belongs to Bob.

What, you say you were there first? You say that was YOUR living room, goddammit? Well, sure, but Bob has a right to exist too. Bob's suffered more than you ever will. Are you some kind of anti-Bobbist?

Yeah, the Jews have been putting up with assholes for centuries, and they absolutely did not deserve it. But kicking other people off their land to make up for it? That's your answer? You've decided that two wrongs make a right? Really?

The Jews should exist, absolutely. They're people, and once we've determined that much, any further modifiers probably aren't needed. But a COUNTRY is not PEOPLE, and being against Israel DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE AGAINST THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. And I just can't get behind a government that sends armored bulldozers into the residential neighborhoods of their slightly browner neighbors, folks. I just can't.

Just like for eight years, so very many Americans kept pointing at Washington, D.C. and saying "I swear I'm not with them."


So there you go. Norman Goldman is an idiot, and the nation of Israel can bite my shiny metal ass.

Swastikas, anyone?

Comments

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

I will try hard not to be *too* vociferous here, but:

1) Bob's ancestors had been gone from the site of Bob's house for anywhere from centuries to millenia by the time Bob came back to build his house. A variety of other tenants had lived on the land over those centuries. None of them matter now that Bob's decided to come back?

1a) Those other tenants all built homes and had communities and cultures of their own. They are not inherently inferior just because they're not like Bob's.

2)Not all of Israel's neighbors are their enemies. Egypt is both a de facto and de jure ally, even against the Palestinians. The idea that the entire Arab world is a bloc that responds with some sort of gutteral, unreasoning hatred to the existence of the state of Israel is a counterproductive myth.

3)She answered the question of whether she is against the state of Israel's current existence below, so I'll skip it. I will say that the state of Israel is currently occupied by a totalitarian, racist theocracy and being opposed to its current form is supportive of its people and their liberty.

4)Writing to our Congresspeople would do very little good. Not to give you a long lesson in the working state of the American political system, but a: Israel decides what it spends the aid money we give it upon, not us (we dictate broad categories only, along with saying they have to spend most of it buying US products) and b: since the aid to Israel is also a bailout of various vested US interests, our Congresspeople are already bought and sold. See the wikipedia article on the Iron Triangle for more details on how that process works.

4a)Reflexive cries of anti-semitism whenever someone critiques Israel have ruined all productive dialogue in the United States on this subject. If you write your Congressperson suggesting changes in Israel-US policy that don't fall under 'give them more money to buy more bullets', your letter will get tossed in the crank pile and be politely ignored. Guaranteed. It is considered beyond the pale to even say such things in public. See the Overton Window for more details.

5) It's odd that without the state of Israel, a holocaust is inevitable. For one thing, it's clearly an untested theory. For another, approximately as many Jews live in the United States as Israel, and I don't recall seeing brownshirts in the streets smashing their shopwindows of late. Actually, since your own post puts forth the assertion that Israel does what it does with our full support (largely true)... but the United States would perpetrate another Holocaust if it could.. we hate them?... we love them?... my head hurts.

Yeah.

One final point: stop conflating 'Jew' with 'Israeli', please. For that matter, stop conflating 'Israeli' with being a member of Likud (or Kadima for that matter, or Eris forbid, Yisrael Beiteinu).

Thanks for (not) reading