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Title: Polite Discussion on Zionism: Is it Possible? (amazing read)
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URL Source: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/message/7271
Published: Apr 26, 2007
Author: Karin Friedemann
Post Date: 2007-04-26 15:04:52 by gengis gandhi
Keywords: None
Views: 198
Comments: 10
Polite Discussion on Zionism: Is it Possible? Topic List < Prev Topic | The Zionist philosophizes that the Palestinian is not a human (Israel was a land without a people). The Anti-Zionist argues that the Palestinian is a human being. So what is the moderate viewpoint? The Palestinian is a quasi-human? That seems to be the American Progressive Jewish position. Amazing isn't it? Polite Discussion on Zionism: Is it Possible? Karin Friedemann - ummyakoub @ http://yahoo.com April 25, 2007 World View News Service I found http://www.realisticdove.org/ very interesting because it is the first time I have come across a progressive Jew so honest about his racism. Usually when confronted, these confused souls just get indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right" to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the accusation that anyone who has questions about your definitions is accusing you of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person think that he has the right to live unharrassed on someone else's stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are participating in a criminally insane political ideology. Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or without warning, bulldozed our house? First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees and fixing the pavement around the house. The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people. A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions and consequences. If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of Israel is based on the condition made by the UN that Palestinians would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist, according to the UN. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop arguing about isms but the next step is to follow the laws that already exist to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do it? Why are progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution means that a lot of Jews need to be prosecuted. The refugees need to be given back their property with extra for damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day. The refugees need to be given full civil rights. Full water rights, full road rights, and the full right to criminally prosecute. Every Jewish family in America that has any property in the Holy Land needs to be prosecuted as part of an organized criminal network. Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells stolen property is a criminal. They need to be prosecuted. Any Jew who owns stolen property in the Holy Land should have his property seized including their US assets and Progressive Jews should insist on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics. The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that, the US legal system could solve the problem within a year if they just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are Progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force in the Holy Land? There is enough room in all of Bush's new prisons for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others. It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque. Some shady white Jewish real estate dealers were furious that the black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that piece of real estate away from the people who own it. Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist organizations' assets are confiscated to repair all the damage they have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish People" have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an ethnocentric nation state. I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination - ie, the ability to do what you want when you want how you want - is to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there is nothing okay about it. When a progressive Jew starts whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace. Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property." The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the right to fight you." So that actually can be done in the context of a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible. Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting behavior, but it's in the process of being made less sadistic. On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a progressive Jew, "You stole my property!" The progressive Jew will usually shut down entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him (hypothetical but common scenario). The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing character assassination via gossip so that none of the other progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy" subject. But they will be told that this person is an "enemy of peace" - so that it will be politically correct to shun them the same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only they think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have no water or food - but they want their victims to LIKE them. The Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that expected the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us, we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole. It's amazing. I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic defensive reaction. Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the sense that they cannot process the type of information that is necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal, invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND everything we are about to do. Is this a rational approach to peace? Is it working?
Poster Comment: only zionists want to try and make a simple issue complicated. 1. don't take peoples' property 2. don't blame those whose property you have taken for resenting that and hating you. 3. and no, you can't claim that those you've cheated despise you for any reason other than the fact that you've cheated them, such as claiming that you are hated for invalid reasons, such as race, religion or other canards. This is another example of a straw man argument.
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#1. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
Jews have proved that when they have a country they can actually run without surrogates and lackeys, they become Nazis. The state of Israel is the heir apparent to the Third Reich. Religion is merely a detail. It's the way they treat their minority culture. Shame on Israel, shame on the Jews who support them, and shame on the Gentiles who carry their water.
Superb Article GG. Right on points, Paul R.
I think Zionists, at least at a subconscious level, believe they have a free pass to do a whole helluva lot of what is objectively considered evil and the world needs to look the other way for a long, long time. And that is because they have never forgiven and will never forgive the rest of the world for not preventing the Third Reich. So anything they do for the next (fill in the number of centuries heres) is just payback for 1933-1945. Never again! as they say.
The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government. - Sam Houston
Polite Discussion on Zionism: Is it Possible? No. ;)
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition but of course anyone who dares to say this is a Nazi. ;)
We must remember that Hitler was funded by the very people who have been running our own government for many decades now. Hitler's "crime" was that he saw through the scam of the international banksters and turned it to his own advantage. And so it goes for every leader of every nation who has denounced these global thieves and pirates since then.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
And that is because they have never forgiven and will never forgive the rest of the world for not preventing the Third Reich. So anything they do for the next (fill in the number of centuries heres) is just payback for 1933-1945. Never again! as they say. You are correct sir! It starts with "you're the Chosen People." Chosen for what and by whom? Not by God. Not to rule that pathetic strip of land between Egypt and Lebanon. If God wanted Jews to have that chunk of land, he's sure had a funny way of showing it. I suspect it's not God who wants them to have it but maybe ... Oh, I don't know ... maybe ... SATAN!!
[Paul Revere #1] Jews have proved that when they have a country they can actually run without surrogates and lackeys, they become Nazis. The state of Israel is the heir apparent to the Third Reich. Religion is merely a detail. [Sam Houston #3] I think Zionists, at least at a subconscious level, believe they have a free pass to do a whole helluva lot of what is objectively considered evil and the world needs to look the other way for a long, long time. Here is an example of ultra-right wing Zionist wing-nuttery and an opposing view. In the Lewin school of thought, genocide is acceptable if performed by Israel because, "The Torah commanded the total eradication - including women and children - of certain nations (Amalek being a singular illustration)...." Genocide is OK as long as some wingnut proclaims the victims to be Amalek. However, woe unto him who has a religion which proclaims jewish people to be Amalek, yada, yada, yada. Some people can twist and distort and just lie to purport to justify anything. Detering Suicide Killers By Nathan Lewin Note: The debate between Nathan Lewin and Arthur Green on how to deter suicide killers, which appears below, are two parts of a whole. Please do not circulate one article without the other. Introduction We are now faced with an apparently intractable, increasingly ferocious Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This expanded issue of Sh'ma--offered only in part on-line--offers a series of perspectives on how American Jews might talk about the crisis. Some of the reflections might shock. These are shocking times, and that some are now thinking the unthinkable might well unsettle us. But the only way out of the present quagmire is to listen intently, to weigh previously inconceivable options, and to arrive at conclusions that contain just enough morality and just enough pragmatism. As usual, the opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors or the Sh'ma board. Feel free to participate in the conversation on-line. The terrorists have a new indispensable weapon - created by Yasser Arafat and re-fined by Osama bin Laden - in their war against Israel and the United States. It is the walking bomb - the suicide killer. Weighty ethical issues affect how a civilized society can deter the murderer who is ready to sacrifice his or her own life. Organized societies deter criminals by imposing punishments that demonstrate to potential offenders that crime does not pay. In theory, capital punishment should prevent all crime by those who calculate the consequences if they are caught. The death penalty is so drastic that its mere availability should deter a potential offender, even if it is rarely implemented. The Torah prescribes capital punishment for a wide range of offenses, but a Sanhedrin that executed once in seven years (or in seventy) was called "destructive." Mishna Makkot 1:10 In the United States, we go through extreme contortions before we carry out an execution. For several years, the Supreme Court blocked all capital punishment, and even now it gives extra-careful treatment to cases that involve the death penalty. It is better, we are told, to avoid executing one innocent person than to kill one hundred cold-blooded murderers. That calculus works so long as death is a true deterrent. Terrorism, as practiced by Arafat's thugs and by bin Laden's acolytes, has thrown that assumption to the wind. Drastic rethinking of the theory of deterrence is needed when terrorists successfully recruit young men and women to commit suicide while killing dozens or thousands of innocent civilians. Terrorism will not be shut down until the individual terrorist is effectively deterred. Israel's campaign of "targeted assassinations" has tried to prevent suicide bombings by swift nonjudicial execution of known organizers of such deadly attacks. Experience has shown, however, that others take the place of those executed, and the supply of those willing to give up their lives has not dwindled. And Israel's policy of retaliating against political targets - i.e., Arafat's headquarters or Palestinian arms caches - has been a total failure. What threat will effectively deter the individual who is prepared to die so long as he can take many Jews (or, since September 11, many Americans) with him? Studies of Palestinian suicide bombers and of those who, knowing their death was imminent, carried out the September 11 horror indicate that most were closely knit to their families - to parents, brothers, and sisters. Indeed, these family members routinely give press briefings extolling the suicide killers, and they are the recipients of financial bounties from supportive Moslem charities and governmental organizations. What if Israel and the United States announced that henceforth the perpetrators of all suicide attacks would be treated as if they had brought their parents and brothers and sisters with them to the site of the explosion? Suicide killers should know that they will take the lives of not only themselves and the many people they don't know (but nonetheless hate) in the crowd that surrounds them when they squeeze the button that detonates their bomb, but also the lives of their parents, brothers, and sisters. The nation whose civilians are killed or maimed should, by "targeted assassinations" or other means, be free promptly to execute the immediate relatives of the suicide bombers. This consequence would, I believe, deter most suicide killers - many of whom now anticipate that not only will they be rewarded in a world-to-come, but that their immediate families will be honored and granted lavish benefits on this earth. I hear anguished screams from an array of civil-libertarians. How can a civilized society - and particularly a people following the ethical principles of the Torah - justify killing innocent family members because their relative has gone on a demented mission? World opinion will surely condemn any such policy, even if - as I believe is absolutely essential - it is implemented only after full and repeated warnings in advance to prospective suicide bombers. Critics will cite the obscene Nazi policy of executing families and entire communities in retaliation for individual acts of resistance. How would the elimination of a suicide killer's family differ from this indefensible Hitlerian practice? This is no easy ethical question, but it is not as one-sided as may initially appear. Weigh the relative "innocence" of these family members against the "innocence" of the Israeli adolescents and youngsters killed by suicide bombers at discotheques and cafés or against the "innocence" of those who happened to be on high floors of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. If executing some suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically permissible. It is a policy born of necessity - the need to find a true deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably ineffective. How does it differ from Nazi retaliation against families of those Hitler classified as criminals? The Nazis punished the families of resisters who attacked evil Nazi generals or other governmental functionaries, not the innocent mothers, children, and teenagers whom the suicide killers target. And the Nazis did not claim, as Israel and the United States plainly can, that punishing the perpetrator for his own "crime" would not prevent its repetition. And how "innocent," in fact, are the families of the suicide killers? An "escape hatch" might enable them to avoid the consequences if, promptly after their son's or brother's suicide mission, they surrender to the authorities, publicly condemn the crime, and reject any financial or other benefit from it. The policy of family retaliation would also encourage family members to dissuade brothers, sisters, or children who appear to be gravitating toward suicide missions. Finally, can Jewish law and tradition accept this seeming punishment of innocents? The Torah commanded the total eradication - including women and children - of certain nations (Amalek being a singular illustration) because of the continuing threat its members presented to the survival of Israel. When there is no other deterrent, self-defense entitles one to take measures that are ordinarily unacceptable. The extremely modest proposals that some people are now willing to accept - national identity cards and roving eavesdrops (and even the "automatic" destruction of Palestinian villages that Alan Dershowitz proposed in The Jerusalem Post of March 11, 2002) - are the proverbial use of aspirin to treat brain cancer. They may occasionally disrupt terrorist plans but will have no major impact on the terrorist threat. Effective prevention will come only with effective individual deterrence of potential suicide killers. Nathan Lewin is a Washington, D.C. attorney who frequently appears before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the Adjunct Faculties of George Washington Law School (Jewish Civil Law) and Columbia Law School (Supreme Court Litigation). A Stronger Moral Force By Arthur Green Note: The debate between Nathan Lewin and Arthur Green on how to deter suicide killers, which appears below, are two parts of a whole. Please do not circulate one article without the other. Introduction We are now faced with an apparently intractable, increasingly ferocious Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This expanded issue of Sh'ma--offered only in part on-line--offers a series of perspectives on how American Jews might talk about the crisis. Some of the reflections might shock. These are shocking times, and that some are now thinking the unthinkable might well unsettle us. But the only way out of the present quagmire is to listen intently, to weigh previously inconceivable options, and to arrive at conclusions that contain just enough morality and just enough pragmatism. As usual, the opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors or the Sh'ma board. Feel free to participate in the conversation on-line. Although I am not as pious as Nathan Lewin, I still have some pretty old-fashioned Jewish instincts. My first desire on reading Lewin's essay was to rayz kri'ah, tear my garments, as a sign of mourning on hearing the desecration of God's name. Can we really have come to this? A well-respected spokesman for law, ethics, and Jewish tradition proposes that we (the government of Israel, that is, the one he would like to see operating on Torah-based principles) execute the families of suicide bombers. Devoting all of six words to the struggle of conscience ("This is no easy ethical question..."), he goes on to justify his proposal by reference to the Torah's command to eradicate Amalek and the Canaanite peoples. I only wonder how long it will take him, by the force of this proof-text, to go all the way and suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole has earned the fate of Amalek. After all, "when there is no other deterrent...." One of the several tragic by-products of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle of recent years has been the conversion of ultra-Orthodoxy to support the most rightwing and aggressive stream within Israeli politics. Long lukewarm in their acceptance of Zionism and totally opposed to the messianic language of the National Religious Party's settler element, these Jews have now joined their Sephardic counterparts in imposing the old Diaspora vision onto Middle East politics. The Arabs are simply the goyim. They will hate us forever, for this is the essential nature of Ishmael, Esau, and their descendants. Somehow these come to be identified with Amalek as well. There is no view more dangerous than this to the possibility of peace, except perhaps the one recently published in a Saudi newspaper, claiming that the Jews require Muslim blood to bake their hamantaschen. Israel is by far the stronger party in the present conflict. It must be the stronger moral force as well. Indeed it must stop the suicide bombings, and I can muster little moral outrage at targeted assassinations of those planning and directing such operations. Since a few terrible incidents early in the Intifada, Israel has been remarkably good at not targeting civilians, although there have been more "collatoral damage" killings than can be justified. We all once took pride in Israel's tradition of "purity of arms," the careful and responsible use of firepower. Today, with the fear generated by violent Palestinian resistance, there are too many nervous and vengeful fingers on the trigger, at all levels. Israel is the creation of the entire Jewish people, and has to stand for something, not just survive by becoming a barbaric Middle Eastern superstate. The Jewish tradition's most essential moral teaching, that every human being is the image of God, must not fall victim to the bleak times through which we are living. Suicide bombings must be stopped. This will not happen through obscene suggestions that we stoop to their level, executing the parents and siblings of perpetrators. Such a horrid policy would only call forth new troops of suicide bombers, recruited throughout the Muslim world. Suicide bombings will be stopped when we address the root cause of such desperate actions: the degradation and humiliation of the Palestinian people. Israeli society has failed terribly at respecting the Arabs who are destined to forever be its neighbors. This is true both within the country and in the occupied territories. Military policy, especially in its local application, is often needlessly violent and degrading. Endless checkpoint delays, bulldozing of homes, uprooting of trees, disrespecting of elders, and lots more have been the daily lot of Palestinians for thirty-five years. These constant humiliations are the immediate source of the rage that motivates suicide bombers, most of whom come from the very respect-based culture of traditional Arab villages. On the larger scale, we need to restore hope. No wonder Palestinians have no faith in the peace process. We continue to build settlements, expropriate land, and deny them the right to build homes on their own land while we build whole towns for newcomers. How can we expect them not to be frustrated and angry? If we want to end suicide bombings, we need to demonstrate clearly (by our actions, not just by words, as we keep saying to Arafat) that we are willing to end the occupation. Yes, a two-state solution is a gamble. But it's the only one we've got. Arthur Green is the Phillip Lown Professor of Jewish Thought at Brandeis University.
#2. To: Paul Revere (#1)
#3. To: Paul Revere (#1)
#4. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
Great Article!
#5. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations.
#6. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
sanity bump
#7. To: Sam Houston (#3)
And that is because they have never forgiven and will never forgive the rest of the world for not preventing the Third Reich. So anything they do for the next (fill in the number of centuries heres) is just payback for 1933-1945.
#8. To: Sam Houston (#3)
think Zionists, at least at a subconscious level, believe they have a free pass to do a whole helluva lot of what is objectively considered evil and the world needs to look the other way for a long, long time.
#9. To: gengis gandhi (#0)
Claimjumper bump
#10. To: Sam Houston, gengis gandhi, Paul Revere (#3)
http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm
http://www.shma.com/may02/arthur.htm
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