shooting at DC Holocaust museum

[professorpan]

I would argue that as much as Jewish people may express vocal disapproval for what Israel does (I do), in the backs of their minds, they are thankful that Israel exists. The Zionist gamble appears to have paid off and now their is a Jewish nation state that is not going anywhere anytime soon and which provides benefits to Jews.

You're a fool if you think that Israel (as a power) gives a flying fuck about the welfare of Jews or any other group of people qua a group of people. Also, it's a genocidal, war-mongering state. Please stop speaking for what people who use their minds have in the back of them.

The main reason that we have a big, showy holocaust museum in the nation's capital -- whereas we not only don't have a big, showy slavery museum anywhere, we blithely accept the numerous, beautifully historically preserved plantation estates that are open to the public all over the formerly confederate south as delightful tourist attractions -- is because big, showy holocaust museums help America feel good about getting involved in the kinds of wars in foreign lands that the military-industrial complex make lots and lots of money by waging. Exponentially more money by a factor of it's-not-calculable than even the enormous sums lavished on various influential figures in federal government by all the pro-Israeli lobbyists in DC put together.

I don't really how this can be a newsflash to anyone familiar with the culture, J-Lo: But please try to bear in mind that the United States, overall, doesn't adore the Jewish people any more than any other country in the Western world. Because a fairly large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews. Period. Which doesn't mean that it logically follows that Jews are therefore automatically entitled to a nation-state on land that's already occupied. Or anything else of a similarly over-dramatic, absurd, and insidious nature.

In fact, the only reason I'm risking bringing it up is that while it would certainly be nice if you were implacably opposed to the slaughter, abuse, and devastation of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel just because you opposed slaughter, abuse and devastation, that's not apparently the case. So you might want to spend a little time meditating on whether it's possible that it's always been the policy of your little beneficial Jewish homeland to perpetuate a somewhat Jew-hostile status quo worldwise for self-interested reasons that have nothing to do with the Legendary and Historic Suffering of the Jewish People.

In short: Even if you have no heart, just as a practical matter, please don't kid yourself. You're only making things more dangerous for everybody.

You're calling someone else heartless after that vicious, broad-brush, cynically absurd tirade? Funny.

Actually, not funny.

Yeah, the only reason there's a Holocaust museum is because of the military/industrial complex, not because of a human desire to honor the millions of humans killed by an militarized sociopathic cult bent on exterminating entire groups of undesirable people.

Why don't you go find a survivor of one of the camps and explain why the museum is such a farce?

why don't you get a real job instead of coming in here once a month to piss on people and vent your aggression?

why don't you jump on jlaw172364 for having the audacity to attempt to speak for "Jewish people" in such a generalised way?

frankly i already know camp survivors who are annoyed and depressed by the cynical AngloAmerican use of this tragedy to cast all their wars in a good light. i don't know about the museum itself, i'll have to ask, but i already know their opinion on the self-righteousness of Spielberg movies, etc.

...

also where do you get off treating everyone like suspects in some tawdry investigation?

i've only seen one person making links to rense in this thread.

if you go back and read some of your own nonsense insinuations and veiled accusations in this thread and you might realise you're in absolutely no position to claim any sort of moral high ground with regard to "cynically absurd tirades".

that might be too much to ask though.

Oh, my! You have unveiled me! Time to get out the help wanted section of the paper and perhaps sign up for some anger-management classes. Oy vey.

Your camp survivor friends are upset with Spielberg portraying the defeat of Hitler as a heroic thing? Or perhaps they find the miniseries "Holocaust" or the film "Schindler's List" to be cynical? Can you be a little more specific, because frankly, they sound very out of the norm for survivors of Hitler's genocide. They sound so very out-of-character that... well... nevermind.

I called bullshit on igNordic's assertions that Jews/Israelis were using the Holocaust museum attacks to whine about their oppression and to justify the treatment of Palestinians. That's not a tawdry investigation, that's asking him to back up his assertions. And he can't because they're bullshit.

And yes, I'm linking to Rense, because some of the conversations here are mirrored by stuff posted on that site. I find that illuminating.

[justdrew]

Your post seemed tongue-in-cheek, but I'll address it nonetheless.

People within any religious tradition will argue over the meaning of various passages and the Jews are no exception.

There were many differing opinions on whether the Jews should return to Israel. However, enough Jews returned in enough force to remain for 70 years, therefore this question is now more or less moot, barring some sort of reprisal of Biblical proportions, supernatural or otherwise.

Although Judaism, like many religions, may be based on premise many find questionable, that a people must heed the decrees of an invisible supernatural being who only communicates with a select group of individuals, there remains a concrete reality that Jews exist as a distinct people and have distinct allies and enemies. After the pogroms, the Jews began to realize that maybe it would be better to not just wait around for the messiah, but that it might be better to just set up their own nation to as a pragmatic strategy to avoid extinction. An interpretation of on small religious passage that would prevent this would be convenient ignored, as is often the case, i.e. Christians go to war ignoring religious proscriptions, while citing "I came to bring the sword!" line.

In any case, I love how people who sit in their nations that were founded on just as much blood, no wait, make that, much much more blood, given that said nations have been around longer, at that a nation, like any ancient god, requires a steady sacrifice of blood to sustain itself, anyway, I love how these people talk about Jews like they don't deserve to have a nation, like nations are just handed out as bounty when enough good deeds are done by some sort of Santa Claus figure, and not stolen by conquest.

thanks for the reasonable response. Clearly an area where there's a lot of thinking already been done.

[compared2what?]

You're calling someone else heartless after that vicious, broad-brush, cynically absurd tirade? Funny.

Actually, not funny.

Yeah, the only reason there's a Holocaust museum is because of the military/industrial complex, not because of a human desire to honor the millions of humans killed by an militarized sociopathic cult bent on exterminating entire groups of undesirable people.

Why don't you go find a survivor of one of the camps and explain why the museum is such a farce?

I don't think and didn't say the museum is a farce. I haven't been there, but I assume that its collections and exhibitions are decidely non-farcical. I was speaking to the forces of power and money that shape institutionalized history rather than to any historical realities. Other than to point out that in terms of proportionate institutional representation, the natural human desire to honor forebears who both did and didn't survive the various historical events that violently decimated the communities or populations to which they belonged isn't exactly the decisive factor. Because when it comes to building and endowing museums, natural human desire isn't worth any more as collateral than it is in any other endeavor the realization of which requires major funding.

In fact, to whatever extent the natural and inevitable result of that is that institutionalized history privileges those tragedies that either happen to be of special interest to people who have enough resources wrt fundraising to make commemorating them on a federal level a fiscally viable proposition, and/or those tragedies that are congruent with the financial and ideological interests of the wealthy and powerful above those that don't, I'd maintain that pretending otherwise dishonors anyone and everyone whose lives have ever meant so little to the world at large that preventing them from being killed by the millions just wasn't much of a priority to anyone until enough people of wealth and power perceived that their own interests were at imminent risk to make intervening in some way a game worth the candle owing to human desires that are entirely extrinsic to the desire to honor the dead.

I therefore have no need to go out of my way to find anyone in order to explain to them what my feelings aren't.

However, fwiw, when the concentration camp survivors who were a part of my life since birth were still alive, I wouldn't have dreamed of objectifying them by treating them as if their personal experiences had conferred upon them some kind of Yoda-like obligation to sit around dispensing historical wisdoms to knowledge-seekers. It would just about have killed them to be viewed as a segregated class of persons by the American-born children of their kith and kin. And although I didn't think of it in those terms when I was a child -- since I was, after all, a human child and not a monster -- I didn't need to think about it at all to perceive that from their point of view and consequently mine, the fundamental truths and principles of our shared cultural and historical heritage were as central to my life and identity as they were to anyone born and raised with them, rather than something to which only those privileged enough to have witnessed the decimation of their communities by anti-semitic sadists firsthand owned enough voting stock to earn them a place on the board of directors.

I should add, to be scrupulous, that I'm thinking of one couple in particular, and also that they weren't blood-relatives of mine. They just happened to have been more important to me during my childhood than most of the undifferentiated cloud of adults who were, functionally speaking, remote members of my extended family because for no reason that I can explain other than spontaneous personal affinity, we emotionally favorited each other, as adults and children sometimes do. If I'm personally a close or even several-times-removed genetic descendant of any concentration-camp survivors (which I might be, for all I know), whatever knowledge there once may have been of the connection that wasn't lost in some undocumented pogrom prior to the Russian revolution, it definitely got lost in the fog of war several decades later. I can't trace my family tree further back than my great-grandparents along any line, and the only one who was still alive and in the old country by World War II the details of whose death I know died at Baba Yar.

It's because I understand the lessons of history that I understand that as far as both the powers that made building the Holocaust Museum a priority and the powers that are now and long have been in the full-tilt process of murdering millions of Arabs in various parts of the Middle East are concerned -- which I regard as two groups with some overlap, not one, incidentally -- it doesn't matter at all whether I'm a Jew or an Arab in any way that goes any farther than the quirk of history via which I was born Jewish when and where I was. But that's truly a quirk, and I see no sign whatsoever that it's part of a generally progressive historical trend.

When I'm reading these threads, I often think of a guy I with whom I had an occasional office-type friendship back in the '80s that was predicated entirely on a mutual -- and for its time and place -- not-that-common interest in the political history of the Middle East. He was of Arab-American descent and his politics were more or less in line with the kind of autonomy-oriented Arab nationalism vageuly expressed by the author of one of the miniseries reviews Jeff linked to about three hundred or so pages ago, which in the case of that review and in the case of my long-ago acquaintance had a little bit of a tendency to cross the line that separates self-determination from self-loathing when it came to emphasizing the necessity of acknowledging that the circumstances of the Arab people were the responsibility of the Arab people.

Specifically I think of his highly memorable response to being corrected while in the middle of a barroom rant during which he had just gotten started on expressing how much disgust he felt with Arabs for accepting the terms of some deal with the British Empire that, as I interrupted to point out, the British Empire hadn't made with Arabs, but rather with then not-yet-Israeli Jews. For whom he also frequently expressed contempt, actually. As he did for the British. It occurs to me in retrospect that he was even more of a malcontent than I am. And that's really saying something. I have no idea what became of him, and haven't heard from or about him in decades. But someday I am going to needlepoint a sampler bearing the statement:

"Jews, Arabs -- They're all Arabs!"

And then put his initials in the lower right corner. Because it's one of the most fundamentally true things anyone's ever said to me.

[compared2what?]

You're calling someone else heartless after that vicious, broad-brush, cynically absurd tirade? Funny.

Actually, not funny.

Yeah, the only reason there's a Holocaust museum is because of the military/industrial complex, not because of a human desire to honor the millions of humans killed by an militarized sociopathic cult bent on exterminating entire groups of undesirable people.

Why don't you go find a survivor of one of the camps and explain why the museum is such a farce?

Incidentally, if you sincerely believe me to have been expressing an opinion that merited such a personally insulting response, then you were at least being kind of an insensitive jerk, but whatever, it's a free county.

If you think your reading might have been mistakenly colored by the assumptions you brought to the post, on the other hand, I'd say that last piece of advice in particular was uncalled for, Senator. And very offensive to me. And I'd also say that most people who weren't crippled by insecurity would regard conceding they might have misread it a painless and appropriate thing to do, assuming that they think that they might indeed have misread it.

Just saying. Have to go now. More later.

[OP ED]

Oh, my! You have unveiled me! Time to get out the help wanted section of the paper and perhaps sign up for some anger-management classes. Oy vey.

good to see we're taking this seriously.

Your camp survivor friends are upset with Spielberg portraying the defeat of Hitler as a heroic thing? Or perhaps they find the miniseries "Holocaust" or the film "Schindler's List" to be cynical? Can you be a little more specific, because frankly, they sound very out of the norm for survivors of Hitler's genocide. They sound so very out-of-character that... well... nevermind.

if i was American Dream this is the part where i'd quote the forum posting guidelines.

the last comment is so underhanded that it suprises me from you. maybe if i was Hugh. [oh i mentioned spielberg, now i get it]

and it was, in the case of spielberg, which is admittedly somewhat off-topic, only two friends of mine, and only one of them is really my friend, the other is His friend who is my friend of a friend. the foil for this discussion, not-so-ironically was the '04 presidential elections and the oath a candidate must take to Israeli attrocities ["security"] before receiving the party nomination. It was part of an Ethics class [my Jew friend is the professor] and our discussion happened mostly afterward, as i am generally cautious about raising remarkably sensetive issues during a class.

The specific discussion, wrt Spielberg, related to certain scenes from "Saving Private Ryan", which opens and closes with a fluttering american flag. He expressed his disgust for a particular series of scenes in the movie, involving the only real recurring German character [none of the Germans have names in the film] who grants us the pleasure of knifing to death the only overt Jew in the film and Spielberg allows us the further pleasure of listening to him struggle and beg for life, while the weak-kneed tri-lingual collaborator character lets it happen. He pointed out that the weak and cowardly translator is also the only one in the movie to stress that the Germans are also human and deserving of humane treatment regardless of their regime's barbarisms. He said it seemed as if every scene with a German hurting someone is immediately followed by a "heroic" portrayal of similar death being handed out to them, and it seems as if it is deliberately designed to dehumanise those people. The Germans must all be universally evil "other". Otherwise, he remarked, how could the Americans justify that they killed more civilians than the Nazis did?

He is only sort of my friend, anyhow, as i'm the only one who debated him on his neo-liberal silliness in class. we do not party together or anything. and although he was exceedingly young when it happened he has no problems sharing his camp experiences with anyone who has the balls to ask about them. (as he phrased it)

I called bullshit on igNordic's assertions that Jews/Israelis were using the Holocaust museum attacks to whine about their oppression and to justify the treatment of Palestinians. That's not a tawdry investigation, that's asking him to back up his assertions. And he can't because they're bullshit.

i could care less about nordic, although if they're a secret nazi they should've picked a better name.

i just meant in general. there's a lot of oozing hostility in this thread and it doesn't appear to be uniform in direction, if indeed it has a direction at all.

And yes, I'm linking to Rense, because some of the conversations here are mirrored by stuff posted on that site. I find that illuminating.

i do not.

(usually we call them strawmen, when you argue with something other than what someone actually said)

carry-on though. i do not have anything against you in particular. rather the opposite in fact, which is why i noticed the seemingly misplaced harshness of your tone.

[jlaw172364]

@ OP ED

Regarding Jews who get pissed off over the exploitation of the Holocaust, they come in a variety of flavors, some of which I will arbitrarily label with letters:

A. Don't talk about the Holocaust at all because it will give people ideas;

B. Don't talk about the Holocaust because it's too horrible to be described;

C. How dare you turn a profit on Jewish suffering;

D. Don't compare the Holocaust to other genocides, it's unique;

E. Don't use the Holocaust to justify invading Iraq; don't compare Hussein with Hitler.

I suspect that your friend falls under category E., I mention the others just to show that there is a range of opinions and motives for not wanting to discuss the Holocaust, which necessarily involves an "industry" around the discourse, i.e. making textbooks.

I think talking about the Holocaust before invading a country, or comparing the Holocaust to 9/11 is obviously nothing more than a cynical political trick designed to appeal to the persecution complex of Jews less governed by reason and more governed by emotion to garner their political support in the form of tacit approval.

Regarding how I claim to speak for World Jewry, come on, how could anybody reasonably claim such a thing, since their is no unified opinion of said group, as is testified by the most critical reporting of Israel coming directly from Israeli newspapers.

But I think that it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the aggregate opinion of World Jewry is to support Israel, although increasing numbers like myself do it with a grimace while holding their noses. This latter group doesn't like what Israel does, but they fear the alternatives based on what has happened historically.

Myself, I sometimes wonder if the rise of the Likudniks and their draconian policies isn't some sort of Fascist Internationale psyop calculated to make the Jews looks exactly like Nazis, and therefore hypocrites, but I think there are enough native racist strains within Jewish culture to allow for independent development, although the possibility that these Fascists egg Israel on, and like a Sun Tzu strategist, only support the more extremist elements, is not completely out of the ballpark, especially in light of what is going on in Europe right now (I.e. Italy's descent into neofascism and the targeting of gypsies; Sarkozy). But this may also arise from the fact that I believe that peace is not only possible in the region, but that it should exist by default, and only the concerted efforts to engineer conflict where there should be done perpetuates the current state of affairs.

I think that the proof is in the financial and political support Israel enjoys. It comes because Jews provide it and because gentiles sympathize somewhat with Israel, although gentile support is on the wane in some quarters. Sure, you have Jewish factions that do not approve of Israel, but they exist on the fringes. In any case, I don't speak for, I merely observe what is aggregate opinion.

@ Alice

Your well-drawn characterization would describe a few of my relatives as well. These particular relatives grew up poor in Morocco and fled to the U.S. rather than endure regular beatings by local hoodlums for being Jewish.

It may seem irrational for wealthy people to feel and express fears of persecution, especially since many of us came of age in an era where wealthy people seem to enjoy extraordinary power such that they are like untouchable gods.

I think many wealthy people acquired their wealth out of a fear of the insecurity brought about by poverty. They worry constantly of slipping back into poverty one way or another. They also fear loss of their wealth at the hands of the angry mobs when the economic climate turns sour. Wealthy people are at their most powerful during periods of prosperity because enough people have enough to lack incentive to plunder. During periods of poverty, people begin eye-balling wealthy people like sharks, and their power dwindles.

Your relative probably recalls periods of unrest where Copts were scapegoated by Muslims to satiate the masses. Scapegoating minorities is a very common political occurrence and is as old as time. It was very common to trump up charges, place people in custody, and then confiscate their wealth. This has been done to Jews for centuries by both Christian and Muslim regimes.

It is cold comfort to tell people who have experienced persecution that we live in a new age; we don't, we still live in more or less the same age, but with more hope than before, for example, as you often cite, look what goes on between Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians could easily all be Copts or Zoroastrians for that matter, but they would still be needlessly experiencing the same phenomenon. Thus, your Copt relative is wise to worry about future Muslim perfidy, as silly as it may seem during a period where Muslims and Copts get along. Additionally, like me, you appear to come from a family where people from two different religious traditions have intermarried; I find that these groups are often less susceptible to hate-filled propaganda.

[Sounder]

professorpan wrote:

compared2what? wrote:

I would argue that as much as Jewish people may express vocal disapproval for what Israel does (I do), in the backs of their minds, they are thankful that Israel exists. The Zionist gamble appears to have paid off and now their is a Jewish nation state that is not going anywhere anytime soon and which provides benefits to Jews.

You're a fool if you think that Israel (as a power) gives a flying fuck about the welfare of Jews or any other group of people qua a group of people. Also, it's a genocidal, war-mongering state. Please stop speaking for what people who use their minds have in the back of them.

The main reason that we have a big, showy holocaust museum in the nation's capital -- whereas we not only don't have a big, showy slavery museum anywhere, we blithely accept the numerous, beautifully historically preserved plantation estates that are open to the public all over the formerly confederate south as delightful tourist attractions -- is because big, showy holocaust museums help America feel good about getting involved in the kinds of wars in foreign lands that the military-industrial complex make lots and lots of money by waging. Exponentially more money by a factor of it's-not-calculable than even the enormous sums lavished on various influential figures in federal government by all the pro-Israeli lobbyists in DC put together.

I don't really how this can be a newsflash to anyone familiar with the culture, J-Lo: But please try to bear in mind that the United States, overall, doesn't adore the Jewish people any more than any other country in the Western world. Because a fairly large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews. Period. Which doesn't mean that it logically follows that Jews are therefore automatically entitled to a nation-state on land that's already occupied. Or anything else of a similarly over-dramatic, absurd, and insidious nature.

In fact, the only reason I'm risking bringing it up is that while it would certainly be nice if you were implacably opposed to the slaughter, abuse, and devastation of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel just because you opposed slaughter, abuse and devastation, that's not apparently the case. So you might want to spend a little time meditating on whether it's possible that it's always been the policy of your little beneficial Jewish homeland to perpetuate a somewhat Jew-hostile status quo worldwise for self-interested reasons that have nothing to do with the Legendary and Historic Suffering of the Jewish People.

In short: Even if you have no heart, just as a practical matter, please don't kid yourself. You're only making things more dangerous for everybody.

You're calling someone else heartless after that vicious, broad-brush, cynically absurd tirade? Funny.

Actually, not funny.

Yeah, the only reason there's a Holocaust museum is because of the military/industrial complex, not because of a human desire to honor the millions of humans killed by an militarized sociopathic cult bent on exterminating entire groups of undesirable people.

Why don't you go find a survivor of one of the camps and explain why the museum is such a farce?

Nathan28….

Why don't you go find a survivor of the Khmer Rogue camps, or the Soviet wheat policies, or Pinochet's "Commanding Heights" torture-for-capitalism policies, and tell any of them that Holocaust victims deserve a museum but they don't? Why not find one of those hundreds of thousands Del Monte workers who got cancer because of the company's liberal pesticide policy? Why not tell an Iraqi whose kids died after we bombed out the power and water that what he's been through is different? If the decision to kill in the extreme is made at the Wannsee Conference, it's somehow special in a way it wouldn't be if it was made in a board room or at the CFR? Why is that any less sociopathic? Or is it because our militarized death cult is somehow exceedingly different?

Or because it would kinda makes PP look silly.

on edit, i can't believe I took the bait. clearly the existence of the Holocaust Museum has next to nothing to do with the circumstances, and is exactly the type of thing I'd expect to crop up in any discussion of anything newsworthy taking place there, save that this character felt it was a good fit for his An chose it as his site to go out in a blaze of "glory", to the extent shooting a guy holding a door open for you is glory. This is exactly the type of controlled-from-the-outset discourse that both the antisemites and the Israeli fascists benefit from and thrive within.

Amen

I came here from the quote only thread, having skipped this thread as probably being just more terrortainment. But I’m always happy to find gems in the garbage. I was enjoying C2W post followed by PP’s assertion that C2w was putting on a “vicious, broad-brush, cynically absurd tirade?”

Well shiver me timbers; what I think of as being commonsense observation, others think of as being vicious and cynically absurd.

[OP ED]

Well shiver me timbers; what I think of as being commonsense observation, others think of as being vicious and cynically absurd.

this was most of the reason for my knee-jerk response.

[Nordic]

@ Nordic

You keep calling Israel a war criminal state. Which states are honorable white-hat wearing policemen? The UK? The US? Europe?

People often confuse good with wealthy, conveniently neglecting the fact that wealth is often ill-gotten. People talk of the US/Europe as the Free World; even if this were true, one would still be confusing "free" with "good," but these nations just have lots of wealth left over from earlier periods of conquest. And I'm just picking out the most obvious examples of criminal nations.

Wow. I'm laughing my ass off. So let me get this straight. What Israel does in regard to its being a war criminal state is OKAY because "everybody's doing it?"

Two wrongs make a right? The U.S. slaughtered its own native population (something Hitler admired, BTW) so it's okay for Israel to slaughter Palestinians?

That sure seems to be what you're saying here.

Wow.

Yeah, that just makes it all A-OK.

Unbelievable.

[lightningBugout]

Nordic check your pm..

[compared2what?]

Because a fairly large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews. Period. Which doesn't mean that it logically follows that Jews are therefore automatically entitled to a nation-state on land that's already occupied. Or anything else of a similarly over-dramatic, absurd, and insidious nature.

Yeah those uppity insidious Jews should know their place am i rite. Hmmm hay maybe JUST MAYBE there's a reason that a fairly large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews period? HEY, WHUT?! I'm juuuussst aaaaaassskkkin' QUESTIONSSSS MAAAAAANNNNNN!

I apologize, orz, I didn't see your post earlier. The adjectives "over-dramatic, absurd, and insidious" were intended as an anticipatory characterization of the mental process jlawsy-law uses in place of informed and reasoned consideration when composing replies to the posts of others, in my experience of him or her. It would be very, very unfortunate if the most natural reading of my post suggests that's how I was characterizing Jews. Such a view is so absolutely not even related to any part of my actual position that the possibility of my words being thus misunderstood didn't even cross my mind. Which I regret, if it should have done. However, I feel relatively confident that the forgoing will clear up any lingering confusion on the matter.

So, moving right along, yes, there is a reason that a fairly large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews, period: They're anti-semites. Thus, as you already know, no, you are not rite. In fact, to err on the side of clarity just for safety's sake: My position wrt the tendency of a large number of people everywhere not to like Jews, period, is that it is, in a word, wrong.

And if that was what Alice meant when she used that word in response to the same sentence to which you responded, then I agree with her. In the event that she meant that my assertion was wrong -- just to cover all possibilities as long as I'm in the neighborhood -- then obviously I would disagree with her. But respectfully, and without rancor. Because I would understand her disagreement with me to be an honest reflection of her worldview, which I know to be that of an intelligent and perceptive woman who bases her opinions on the sum of her observation and experience in conjunction with what she's learned from extensive efforts to avail herself of the best information available to her.

Also, for some bizarre reason, I'd evidently choose to show my affection and respect for her by referring to her exclusively in the third person as if she weren't present. About which I really oughta do something immediately. So thnx, orz! Bye!

Hi, Alice! I have more than one close relative just like that. Since the bonds of family know no reason, and chance being a fine thing, the one I'm most extra-specially fond of is the most insanely, unabashedly and fanatically hard-right neocon I've ever met. And I've met several of the founders of the Project for A New American Century. Those adverbs aren't just hyperbole, is my point. Anyway. He probably wouldn't say it in these terms, but he certainly thinks that a large number of people everywhere tend not to like Jews, period. But since he also thinks that the only and inevitable way this tendency can ever find expression is in the murder of millions of Jews, he's pretty much lived his whole life in a world that he genuinely experiences as if the holocaust were always happening to every Jew everywhere. Which is very wrong. But in a much milder form, it's a moderately common attitude, in my experience and observation, supplemented by extensive reading etc. Which doesn't make it any less wrong. However, it does make it somewhat more likely that if you were disagreeing with my assertion, it was because you understood me to be espousing sentiments that were somewhere along those very wrong lines. Which I'd disagree with too, if I had been.

I just meant that in every part of the world in which I'm familiar enough with the culture to know of what it's made -- ie, the United States, barring the nothern middle part and Alaska; plus some cities in Western Europe -- there are significant subsections of the population who traditionally find Jews inherently somewhat objectionable and don't pretend otherwise, though they may not advertise it. Including two of the many, essentially discrete social worlds of which NYC is made through which, by chance in one case and necessity in the other, I've spent years moving. It's not that big of a deal to me, nor do I consider it at all necessary for every -- or even any -- single person on earth to be in complete agreement with me wrt it. It's just one among many aspects of life in parts of the world as I've been exposed to them. Not more. But also not less.

[compared2what?]

Your camp survivor friends are upset with Spielberg portraying the defeat of Hitler as a heroic thing? Or perhaps they find the miniseries "Holocaust" or the film "Schindler's List" to be cynical? Can you be a little more specific, because frankly, they sound very out of the norm for survivors of Hitler's genocide. They sound so very out-of-character that... well... nevermind.

I'm not a camp survivor, but as I've said before on another thread, I was disgusted by Schindler's List, on the grounds that it's a vile piece of anti-semitic crap in objective terms and -- purely subjectively speaking -- also so emotionally manipulative that I felt that watching it was like being forced into complicity with the molestation of my own emotions.

That response wasn't the norm, but neither was it so far beyond that objections to its canonization weren't contemporaneously and prominently expressed by a few members of the mainstream Jewish intelligentsia. And best expressed by Jim Hoberman, although if his review is online, I can't find it. However, in it's stead, here is the same link to a partial transciption of a roundtable discussion of the subject in which he, Art Spiegelman, and other, assorted lively-minded and/or pointy-headed persons kick the can around enough to convey the general idea that despite your unfamiliarity with it, there's actually a very substantial and non-outrageous basis for making a case very similar to the one you find so beyond the pale that you suspect OP ED of having invented and attributed it to his imaginary friends.

Which is basically innocuous. So please accept that I'm neither implying nor saying otherwise by pointing out that you're hitching your wagon to what is essentially a narrowly focused niche form of holocaust denial for the conventionally minded by doing that -- ie, you evidently find it perfectly acceptable to suggest that if people didn't experience surviving the holocaust in a way that validates the hierarchy of meaning whereby you personally determine the value and importance of human events, then they're probably just part of a lie motivated by some kind of disreputable and low self-interest.

That line of reasoning is a pretty serious obstacle to learning life's lessons, in case that doesn't go without saying. As such, it puts you at a higher risk wrt the wiles of people who specialize in telling you what you want to hear than anyone can really afford to be, by my standards. Which need not be yours. I'm just stating them, not issuing a decree or anything like that.

[jlaw172364]

Did I say Israel wasn't a war criminal state? No, I did not say that. I did say, what state isn't. Did I say what Israel does is okay? No, I have repeatedly made it clear that I do not think that.

The police pick you up on the street because you are smoking a joint. In the cop car, they smoke the weed they found in your pocket that you were going to use to make more joints. At the station, they share the weed with some more officers, including the chief. Later you learn that the DA who prosecute you and the judge who sentence you also light up. They use illegal drugs, but they routinely arrest civilians for using the same drugs. The civilians pay fines, spend time in jail, have records that affect their employment, must underground gouging BS treatment sessions.

When you ask them why, they say they have to wage war on drugs, a blight on the community? You point out that they too use drugs. They say, well we use them to cope with the pressures of leadership and authority. You say, there are legal ways of doing that. You go back and forth; eventually, they get irritated with you and ask you to leave. You are now on their shit-list.

Do you really think these types of authorities have anything but completely fictional authority to arrest, frisk, confiscate, detain, jail, fine, and otherwise sanction a civilian, especially given that they engage in the same behavior? And let's not forget about other phenomena like extra-judicial killings, contract or otherwise. These are the people you see fit to judge you? Are they really rendering justice most of the time? Or are they just preying on the weaker elements for profit and political control?

I'm not saying US kill people, therefore Israel kill people = good. That is a very simplistic, childish point of view.

What I am saying is this:

People who want to administer "justice" on Israel all reside in areas that have states that do what Israel does to a greater or lesser extent. Administering "justice" on Israel requires the use of said states to administer the "justice." Said states, historically, have NEVER administered "justice" for the sake of administering "justice." They have used the pretext of "justice" to plunder, rape, pillage, and conquer, but not the former. Civilians who reside within said areas have demonstrated themselves to be incapable of controlling the excesses of their state organizations; consequently, they are ruled by blood-thirsty goons, in the manner that Israel, being a state, is ruled by blood-thirsty goons.

It's called the ponerology of power [also a book worth checking out]; sociopaths are attracted to positions of power; some are event conscious of this and assist other sociopaths into entering their organizations.

So, when civilians, like yourself Nordic, call for the administering of "justice" on Israel, whether they realize it or not, they are calling for the bloodthirsty goons that govern them to invade the land, kill off Israel's bloodthirsty goons, replace them with stooges, and then plunder the land.

In other words, you are calling for the Iraq War, but in Israel.

Remember how Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and was a brutal, tyrannical overlord? We had to bring him to justice. Now we occupy Iraq and has become a giant blood and treasure sucking boondoggle with no end in sight.

But I digress; what I'm saying is, Israel may be a criminal state, but no other state has any real moral authority to try Israel as a criminal states, since all states are more or less equally criminal.

Realistically speaking, a tribunal would consist of:

U.S. = War Criminal State
China = War Criminal State
Russia = War Criminal State
England = War Criminal State
France = War Criminal State
Germany = War Criminal State By Proxy (subsidizes US military)
Japan = War Criminal State By Proxy (subsidizes US military)

. . . .

I could go on and on, but you should get the idea by now, hopefully.

Maybe several hundred years from now, assuming humanity still exists, will have evolved beyond war, and then, in the unlikely event that someone somehow starts a war, they can be punished.

But you know what? If we evolve beyond war, that won't be necessary because any war any group attempts to start will be thwarted as part of our evolution beyond war.

Courts are cold comforts to victims; they are bandaids in the best of cases, and cynical political mitigation devices in most cases.

The police "accidentally" murdered your entire family? Oh, so sorry, here, we'll drag things out for a few decades, and then give you a paltry million. Maybe we'll sentence the cops to a few years in jail; maybe we'll just transfer them to another state. Too bad, so sad.

[Nordic]

In other words, you are calling for the Iraq War, but in Israel.

What a silly thing to suggest. Talk about a strawman.

Listen, what I'm saying is that what Israel is doing is not just wrong and immoral and just plain nasty, I'm saying it's really bad for Israel.

Anyone who cares about Israel, and the Jewish people in general, should be highly motivated to put a stop to these atrocities. Like pronto.

And for Jewish people around the world to defend these bloody godawful actions of Israel is hurting Israel, and is hurting the Jewish people. Not to mention the world, and especially the poor s.o.b.'s who are actually on the receiving end of this brutishness.

If you care about Israel, you should care that Israel quits being a monstrous country.

I mean, I used to operate under the assumption that Israel were the good guys. That's how I was programmed. And it was the actions of Israel itself that opened my eyes, and when I started paying attention, I was fucking horrified. And now it's completely turned around and I fucking despise the Israeli government for what they do, and I find myself hating anyone who supports such horror.

There are, I'm sure, many like me. Israel is making more and more enemies with every bulldozer they drive through the farmland of Palestine.

Israelis need to condemn this. The same way that so many of us in this country were horrified and did everything we could to attempt to stop the Bush/Cheney cabal in their violent and horrific actions after they grabbed power. We failed, and we're still failing, but at least we made noise about it (until Obama got elected).

What I really don't understand is how otherwise nice people can defend what Israel is doing through some sort of cultural blindspot. It would be nice to see that blindspot be removed somehow.

Then there's the whole "what does America get out of this weird relationship" question, which is something I would certainly like to see someone delve into, if it's possible without being suicided or whatever. But that's is quite possibly an entirely separate subject.

[OP ED]

Administering "justice" on Israel requires the use of said states to administer the "justice."

[citation needed]