American Dream wrote:c2w? wrote:I didn't make any assumptions. I did a search that turned up that photograph, which is of Satmar Hasidim. Protesting at, IIRC, the UN at some point earlier in the decade.
Can you provide a specific citation?
Thanks.
Yes. Can you do a Google search? Because if you can, you can find photos of that protest attached to articles that identify those protesters as Satmar, as well as articles that identify them as Neturei Karta. But more of the latter, which appear more reliable, as I'm sure you know. Although evidently you don't know and will never learn that I have no problem admitting error and humbly apologizing for it, which I hereby do. I additionally apologize for not doing it as feelingly as I would have if you'd just corrected me, which I regret.
And yes, I do fully concede in advance that my belief that you're playing a little power-trippy game is an assumption. It might be incorrect, therefore. But it wouldn't be unjustified.
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Also, much more feelingly --
Searcher08, I'm so sorry to have wrongly implicated you as having made a careless and irresponsible error, when I was the one who didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. You know that I think the world of you, although we're fairly regularly on opposing sides of a certain subset of issues and concerns. Or at least I hope that you do. Please forgive me for having unwittingly been such a non-duly-diligent asshole to you.
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And
also --
AD, I apologize to you more feelingly, too. Including for the bitchiness a mere two line breaks above. I really and sincerely do.
Because:
(a) You were completely in the right; and (b) I'd honestly have no one but myself to blame even if I knew for a fact that your phrasing signified passive-aggressive game-playing. Which I don't. For all I know, you were just being cautiously distant.
But in either case, given that there's no arguing that I not only totally bit your head off without even considering that I might have been mistaken but also threw in a few disgustingly condescending and wholly unmerited Miss-Know-It-All flourishes, garnished with several tablespoons of barely concealed smug hostility first, I'm in no position to be reading you out for anything. I'm as ashamed of myself as I should be, and very much hope you'll forgive me for the insult implicit in my previous response to you as well as for the explicit elaboration on it above.
Which, btw, I'm leaving in solely in order to make it clear how far out of line I really was. Because it was pretty damn far.
I'm very, very sorry for that. And especially so because you're actually one of the very few posters to this thread who isn't either just gleefully getting his or her hatred on or speaking from a position of close-to-pure pig-ignorance. Or both.
Which is what I was really responding to when I wrote both of the ugly little exercises in overcompensatory, base and unearned self-satisfaction. The truth is that I'm afraid to speak up. Less because I fear the consequences personally than because if the antisemitism on this thread and on this forum is really as profound, immovable, and deaf to reason as it appears to be, I'd rather not find it out.
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Although I would like to say: Holy Mary, Mother of God, quit picking on Percival. I don't agree with him either, and we don't exactly have a very chummy history together. But I'd rather disagree with someone who wasn't panting and drooling over the utopian prospect of eliminating an entire people's right to exist than agree with someone who was, quite frankly.
I mean, I unequivocally and absolutely condemn Israel not just for this action but for every single one of the numerous crimes against humanity large or small that it's committed as a matter of official policy for the last 43 years. And since I take that position on principle, I'd stand by it through storm and tempest unless and until someone showed me where the flaw in the logic on which I base the principle was. Which could happen, obviously. But since it hasn't yet wrt to this subject, moot point.
Further, and just to be crystal clear, I don't exactly condone and smile upon crimes that occurred more than 43 years ago.
It's just that as a matter of both principle and pragmatism, I'd maintain that since prior to that:
(a) all parties to the conflict behaved badly and in bad faith in various and fluctuating configurations and to various and fluctuating extents (except for Great Britain and the United States, which were unremittingly evil);
(b) both the Jewish settler/Israelis and the Arabs/Palestinians had about five centuries of reasons to think that they were fighting for their right to exist for all of that time; and
(c) they were probably completely right to think it was at high risk on both sides for most of it...
I don't know. I personally would opt to rule that the statute of limitations didn't cover acts prior to '67, that's all. It was a long time ago, and although there have been bad acts on both sides since then, there have only been absolutely and unequivocally condemnable ones on Israel's. So to me, if what you're aiming for is justice in the present, sometime around then is at or near the most constructive place to draw the line without violating principle for any party that's still alive enough to prosecute.
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Anyway. I'm very sorry, AD. And Searcher08. Plus a shout out to Simulist for actually posting showing some concern for the suffering in Gaza.
Also, I'm a jerk and no angel myself, and don't claim otherwise. Though I do mean well. And I do hold that:
* It's always an absolute wrong for one class of people to declare another lesser, and then proceed systematically to strip them of their property, their rights, their citizenship and their lives. Which happens and is happening all over the world as it has without intermission since the dawn of civilization; and that therefore
* Being an absolute, it's neither more nor less wrong when Jews are on one or the other side of the equation; and that therefore
* People whose calculate that wrong at either a higher or a lower value when they factor in Jews are all equals under the sun, in that they're equally and absolutely wrong.
I really don't know what else to say. Those are my principles. It's possible and even probably that I simply don't understand from what principles 90 or so per cent of the posts to this thread proceed. But to me, they read as if they proceed in whole or in part from virulent unexamined antisemitism. And they have from the first page.
It's very disturbing.