It always bugs me to hear US politicians say, as Biden has said, that there is no daylight between the US and Israel, but in military posture it is surely true. Both put no value on human life beyond their nationals. Both have engaged on the Israel model of disproportionate response, the routine behavior of Israel toward Gaza. Lose the life of a national, take 10 or 20 lives in return. 9/11 showed the US commitment to that.
Biden, were he a great President, would tell Netanyahu not to invade Gaza. There is no country that has ever held more leverage over another than the US holds over Israel. WW1 showed how dear the cost could be for large nations chaining themselves to the actions of small countries and now the US risks major war and has already aroused the ire of literally hundreds of millions of people in order to defend an ethnic cleansing colony.
Not only would the world and many Israelis be relieved if Biden acted courageously, he would also be acting after Israel had achieved its historic goal of inflicting pain far beyond what it suffers.
Netanyahu is now talking as would a religious zealot - of the forces of light against the forces of darkness so unless Biden stops the madness we are in for a wild ride that has the world shaking its head.
Clif, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who served as the Prime Minister of Malaya echoes exactly what you are saying my man;
”The crux of the matter is that all these atrocities committed by Israel on the Palestinians stems from the American support for Tel Aviv.
If the US Government withdraws its support for Israel and stop all military aid to the regime, Israel would not have carried out the genocide and mass murders of Palestinians with impunity.
The United States Government needs to come clean and tell the truth.
Israel and its IDF are the terrorists.
The United States is blatantly supporting terrorists.
So what is the United States?
No point asking those currently driving U.S. foreign policy. They would barely be able to contain the foaming in their mouths."
Dr. M was always respected for his thoughts when he was in office. The truth needs to be spoken verbally, though it has been speaking through violence since 1948.
Israel is the last European colony, all the other examples being reviled by the natives and abandoned by their colonizers. Israel is unique in that the colonizers, though Europeans, had no place to return to because of the holocaust and the refusal of countries, including the US, to admit the Jews in the displaced persons camps after WW2.
The Arabs in general and the Arabs of Palestine in particular having no power, it was just too easy for the Europeans and Americans, wracked with guilt, to approve of the taking of land not their own, which nothing justified but the power to do so. Two wrongs don't make a right and the holocaust did not warrant the taking of land from a party that had nothing to do with the holocaust.
Golda Meir, per Gideon Levy, once said "after the holocaust, Jews can do anything", she was right and for those who were Zionists, they did. From then on the weapon of accusing critics of Israel of antisemitism has been wielded freely and the drive to have everyone conflate Judaism and Zionism has been job one for Israel's government, for Netanyahu in particular.
Whenever Israel might be called to account a cry goes up that "you are calling Jews out, how dare you!" and "You are delegitimizing Israel!" and "Israel has a right to exist!" and sure enough, criticism is retracted and apologies are made. This, and this alone, has kept Israel going, giving it an immunity no other colony ever had, even succeeding in getting a traditional anti-colonial country, the US, to become number one ally.
The truth is the same as it has always been - colonies do not have a right to exist and only raw power of the mother country (or in Israel's case, the US) have kept them going. It is, as is now being seen, an impossible task, only seeming to be possible because the US can spend money without limit for now.
Israel has been lulled by this into the belief that it can go on forever living by the sword and that land theft can continue as well. The majority of the world has long been outraged but a superpower can be quite effective against a helpless people. A country that refuses admission of the natives is a long term impossibility. That the Israeli PM sees Nazis in the Palestinians is testimony to his living in 1938, not 2023, and the US follows obediently. There is no happy ending for The Jewish State and a large number of American Jews see this clearly and do not act in obedience to that state.
The UN wanted to impose a partition of Palestine and to make Jerusalem an international city. The latter was a good idea, the former would not, and did not, solve anything. All the talk about a two state solution would not solve it either as it would still be injustice with Israel overawing a pathetic Palestinian statelet. The British, trying to assert control, threw up their hands and left. The US doesn't even try to assert control, outrageously, self righteously and hypocritically siding with Israel. The festering sore has now popped and even world war will not heal it. What makes the current situation novel is the inability of the US to protect Israel from real harm.
The Jewish State cannot be what it thinks it is - a consolation prize for the holocaust. History cannot be undone. A horror to one people cannot be offset by a horror to another group of people even if a superpower acts as if it can.
Clif, in your excellent comment I raised my eyebrows at this sentence:
"This, and this alone, has kept Israel going, giving it an immunity no other colony ever had, even succeeding in getting a traditional anti-colonial country, the US, to become number one ally."
This is an essay published in the American Conservative site on March 2019. The author holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. In light of what is going on now - I find it interesting. Wadda yuh think?
".....the U.S. gets nothing in return for the extensive military and diplomatic support that it provides, Israel....... the U.S. “suffers internationally” on account of its close relationship with Israel, and.......how badly its government under Netanyahu has behaved towards the U.S...... The trouble with all this is that there is no alliance and Israel is not our ally. Its government does not behave as an ally does, it has never fought alongside U.S. forces in any of our foreign wars, and its interests are not aligned with ours as an ally’s should be. There is no formal treaty and no binding obligations that require our governments to do anything for the other.
There are few words in U.S. foreign policy debates used more frequently and with less precision than ally and alliance. Our politicians and pundits use these terms to refer to almost every state with which the U.S. has some kind of security relationship, and it always grossly exaggerates the nature and extent of the ties between our governments. The exaggeration in Israel’s case is greatest of all because it is routinely called our “most important ally” in the region, or even our “most cherished ally” in all the world. These are ideological assertions that are not grounded in any observable reality. Dozens of other states all over the world are better allies to the United States than the “most cherished ally” is, and they don’t preside over an illegal occupation that implicates the U.S. in decades of abuses and crimes against the Palestinian people living under that occupation, but none of them enjoys the lockstep, uncritical backing that this one state does.
The effect of this constant repetition is to make the U.S.-Israel relationship seem extremely important to U.S. interests when it is not, and that serves to promote the “illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.” It is this illusion as much as anything else that prevents a serious reassessment of the relationship.
Israel is one of America’s regional clients, and it is the one that the U.S. indulges more than any other, but that is all that it is. As such, it receives far more support than it needs to and far more than makes sense for the U.S. to give, and the overwhelming political support that the relationship has is out of all proportion to the value of the relationship to the United States. In fact, like several other regional clients Israel has increasingly become a liability for the U.S., and the relationship should be changed accordingly.
You're right to call that word ally out, Dennis. I wrote it without thinking about the definition of the word and how it doesn't apply. As for why it is so commonly used, I would credit the Israel lobby that supplies all the talking points we hear from bought US politicians. I've heard ally so often it easily comes off the tongue or pen. Who was it who said that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be accepted as a fact? Repetition is powerful. People go to the voting booth and say to themselves, "I really don't know who to vote for but I've heard of candidate X, so I'll go with that"
Your comment that there is no formal treaty obligating the United States to supply Israel with the means to wage war on Palestine should be talked about more. If there is no formal obligation, why is the US doing this? How can it, legally? None of the US' postwar colonies had the wherewithal to independently wage war, in fact, Germany and Japan were explicitly stripped of that power.
When you demand, in the name of basic human rights, that all sides ceasefire, you will invariably hear from either gang in the fight that you are asking only them to stop killing. All sides in a terrorist battle demand the right to continue to slaughter innocents. An immoral equivalency that unites the inhumane.
Many of the early reports after October 7th have already been disproven or retracted. Haaretz among others, have reported, for example that in some of the kibbutzim, the settlers were killed by Israeli forces (in at least one instance, deliberately) rather than by Hamas. Two of the released hostages reported being well cared for by Hamas - contradicting earlier reports of the Hell of their captivity.
None of that excuses the many instances of atrocities committed by Hamas members and others. I note that Hamas was the creation of Israel to counter the PLO. I wonder how many Americans know that? (Similar to Al Qaeda being a creation of the US).
Given time, it appears a more nuanced view of the history and facts could allow cooler heads to prevail and give Biden the out of not appearing weak (his biggest fear). But what I fear is the use of the October 7th as an excuse for the Neocons here to push their pet project - war with Iran. Deranged individuals around Biden and in Congress could force action that only a few want - then the plight of the Palestinian, and Israeli, citizens becomes irrelevant.
it is a high-decibel commentary on just who their hideous, hateful OT god is, leon... a demonic, evil , jealous, genocidal, slaughtering, rapacious, devious, duplicitous, vicious, racist, heartless, despicable, war-mongering mass-murderer... a bastard by an order-of-magnitude beyond what any other fantasy-god has ever been created in man's history of religiosity. right! a 'chosen people' by their 'chosen god'! read all about their OT god and be prepared to vomit. don't read it unless you are near a toilet.
Norman Finkelstein has been highlighting the similarities to Nat Turner's rebellion and other instances of oppressed people's liberation attempts. On an interview with Katie Halper, he muses on how he struggled with the Hamas attack, and resolved it by thinking of what his parents (who survived a Nazi death camp) would say, were they still alive. And Norman is sure his parents would've backed the Palestinians, unequivocally.
Norman said to Katie, "is it really murder to kill a concentration camp guard?"
All those Israelis who chose to live in the settlements close to Gaza (or anywhere in Palestine) did just that - made a choice. They also chose to live there despite Palestinians ALREADY LIVING THERE. They stole people's lands, then rounded them up into a concentration camp called Gaza. The Israelis took the Palestinians' homes as their own or tore them down to claim the land.
Mainstream media calls those settlers "innocent civilians".
Does anybody have a recommendation for a video or audio of Israeli settlers rationalizing their actions? I'm really curious about the settlers' mindsets. All this talk about Israelis as innocent civilians and using the word "massacre" with Israelis but NOT when Palestinians are mass-murdered, it makes me curious about what goes on in the minds of these Israeli settlers.
You know that phenomenon where we ascribe motives to others that would be are OWN motives, as if other people think like us. So if you're a kind-hearted person, you assume the best in others. This doesn't work well in the Israeli case, methinks. I saw a video of Israeli preteens spitting on Palestinians in a mosque. Talk about shaking the notion of Israelis as innocent civilians...
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy re: dead babies. Boy, did Americans recoil from the [fake] Israeli stories about dead babies. But nothing is said about the real babies getting buried by Israeli bombs. I'm heartbroken right now.
What really happened on 7th October? – Information Clearing House.info
Evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for most of their own civilian deaths; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories to justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza.👎🤐
Accounts of the Israeli death toll ARE BULLSHIT and shaped to suggest that a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day. With babies beheaded, children and women killed, pregnant women's fetus's disemboweled, and young Israeli girls being raped and their bodies being dragged through the streets by their hair! ALL F*CKIN LIES. INVENTED BY ISRAEL PROPAGANDISTS👎👎
Yep Rachel, turning on Al Jazeera TV this morning is so distressing. I was reading blogs yesterday about Israel putting pressure on Al Jazeera - trying to prohibit them from reporting on the ground. On top of demanding UN Secretary-General ANTÓNIO GUTERRES to resign this tells us how much power these assholes think they have eh!
The people that witness Israel’s crimes, like journalists, UN workers and medics, they just kill them - oh dear!
You are exactly right.
It always bugs me to hear US politicians say, as Biden has said, that there is no daylight between the US and Israel, but in military posture it is surely true. Both put no value on human life beyond their nationals. Both have engaged on the Israel model of disproportionate response, the routine behavior of Israel toward Gaza. Lose the life of a national, take 10 or 20 lives in return. 9/11 showed the US commitment to that.
Biden, were he a great President, would tell Netanyahu not to invade Gaza. There is no country that has ever held more leverage over another than the US holds over Israel. WW1 showed how dear the cost could be for large nations chaining themselves to the actions of small countries and now the US risks major war and has already aroused the ire of literally hundreds of millions of people in order to defend an ethnic cleansing colony.
Not only would the world and many Israelis be relieved if Biden acted courageously, he would also be acting after Israel had achieved its historic goal of inflicting pain far beyond what it suffers.
Netanyahu is now talking as would a religious zealot - of the forces of light against the forces of darkness so unless Biden stops the madness we are in for a wild ride that has the world shaking its head.
Clif, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who served as the Prime Minister of Malaya echoes exactly what you are saying my man;
”The crux of the matter is that all these atrocities committed by Israel on the Palestinians stems from the American support for Tel Aviv.
If the US Government withdraws its support for Israel and stop all military aid to the regime, Israel would not have carried out the genocide and mass murders of Palestinians with impunity.
The United States Government needs to come clean and tell the truth.
Israel and its IDF are the terrorists.
The United States is blatantly supporting terrorists.
So what is the United States?
No point asking those currently driving U.S. foreign policy. They would barely be able to contain the foaming in their mouths."
Dr. M was always respected for his thoughts when he was in office. The truth needs to be spoken verbally, though it has been speaking through violence since 1948.
Israel is the last European colony, all the other examples being reviled by the natives and abandoned by their colonizers. Israel is unique in that the colonizers, though Europeans, had no place to return to because of the holocaust and the refusal of countries, including the US, to admit the Jews in the displaced persons camps after WW2.
The Arabs in general and the Arabs of Palestine in particular having no power, it was just too easy for the Europeans and Americans, wracked with guilt, to approve of the taking of land not their own, which nothing justified but the power to do so. Two wrongs don't make a right and the holocaust did not warrant the taking of land from a party that had nothing to do with the holocaust.
Golda Meir, per Gideon Levy, once said "after the holocaust, Jews can do anything", she was right and for those who were Zionists, they did. From then on the weapon of accusing critics of Israel of antisemitism has been wielded freely and the drive to have everyone conflate Judaism and Zionism has been job one for Israel's government, for Netanyahu in particular.
Whenever Israel might be called to account a cry goes up that "you are calling Jews out, how dare you!" and "You are delegitimizing Israel!" and "Israel has a right to exist!" and sure enough, criticism is retracted and apologies are made. This, and this alone, has kept Israel going, giving it an immunity no other colony ever had, even succeeding in getting a traditional anti-colonial country, the US, to become number one ally.
The truth is the same as it has always been - colonies do not have a right to exist and only raw power of the mother country (or in Israel's case, the US) have kept them going. It is, as is now being seen, an impossible task, only seeming to be possible because the US can spend money without limit for now.
Israel has been lulled by this into the belief that it can go on forever living by the sword and that land theft can continue as well. The majority of the world has long been outraged but a superpower can be quite effective against a helpless people. A country that refuses admission of the natives is a long term impossibility. That the Israeli PM sees Nazis in the Palestinians is testimony to his living in 1938, not 2023, and the US follows obediently. There is no happy ending for The Jewish State and a large number of American Jews see this clearly and do not act in obedience to that state.
The UN wanted to impose a partition of Palestine and to make Jerusalem an international city. The latter was a good idea, the former would not, and did not, solve anything. All the talk about a two state solution would not solve it either as it would still be injustice with Israel overawing a pathetic Palestinian statelet. The British, trying to assert control, threw up their hands and left. The US doesn't even try to assert control, outrageously, self righteously and hypocritically siding with Israel. The festering sore has now popped and even world war will not heal it. What makes the current situation novel is the inability of the US to protect Israel from real harm.
The Jewish State cannot be what it thinks it is - a consolation prize for the holocaust. History cannot be undone. A horror to one people cannot be offset by a horror to another group of people even if a superpower acts as if it can.
Clif, in your excellent comment I raised my eyebrows at this sentence:
"This, and this alone, has kept Israel going, giving it an immunity no other colony ever had, even succeeding in getting a traditional anti-colonial country, the US, to become number one ally."
This is an essay published in the American Conservative site on March 2019. The author holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. In light of what is going on now - I find it interesting. Wadda yuh think?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/israel-is-not-americas-ally/
".....the U.S. gets nothing in return for the extensive military and diplomatic support that it provides, Israel....... the U.S. “suffers internationally” on account of its close relationship with Israel, and.......how badly its government under Netanyahu has behaved towards the U.S...... The trouble with all this is that there is no alliance and Israel is not our ally. Its government does not behave as an ally does, it has never fought alongside U.S. forces in any of our foreign wars, and its interests are not aligned with ours as an ally’s should be. There is no formal treaty and no binding obligations that require our governments to do anything for the other.
There are few words in U.S. foreign policy debates used more frequently and with less precision than ally and alliance. Our politicians and pundits use these terms to refer to almost every state with which the U.S. has some kind of security relationship, and it always grossly exaggerates the nature and extent of the ties between our governments. The exaggeration in Israel’s case is greatest of all because it is routinely called our “most important ally” in the region, or even our “most cherished ally” in all the world. These are ideological assertions that are not grounded in any observable reality. Dozens of other states all over the world are better allies to the United States than the “most cherished ally” is, and they don’t preside over an illegal occupation that implicates the U.S. in decades of abuses and crimes against the Palestinian people living under that occupation, but none of them enjoys the lockstep, uncritical backing that this one state does.
The effect of this constant repetition is to make the U.S.-Israel relationship seem extremely important to U.S. interests when it is not, and that serves to promote the “illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.” It is this illusion as much as anything else that prevents a serious reassessment of the relationship.
Israel is one of America’s regional clients, and it is the one that the U.S. indulges more than any other, but that is all that it is. As such, it receives far more support than it needs to and far more than makes sense for the U.S. to give, and the overwhelming political support that the relationship has is out of all proportion to the value of the relationship to the United States. In fact, like several other regional clients Israel has increasingly become a liability for the U.S., and the relationship should be changed accordingly.
You're right to call that word ally out, Dennis. I wrote it without thinking about the definition of the word and how it doesn't apply. As for why it is so commonly used, I would credit the Israel lobby that supplies all the talking points we hear from bought US politicians. I've heard ally so often it easily comes off the tongue or pen. Who was it who said that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be accepted as a fact? Repetition is powerful. People go to the voting booth and say to themselves, "I really don't know who to vote for but I've heard of candidate X, so I'll go with that"
Your comment that there is no formal treaty obligating the United States to supply Israel with the means to wage war on Palestine should be talked about more. If there is no formal obligation, why is the US doing this? How can it, legally? None of the US' postwar colonies had the wherewithal to independently wage war, in fact, Germany and Japan were explicitly stripped of that power.
When you demand, in the name of basic human rights, that all sides ceasefire, you will invariably hear from either gang in the fight that you are asking only them to stop killing. All sides in a terrorist battle demand the right to continue to slaughter innocents. An immoral equivalency that unites the inhumane.
The lust for blood and violence in our nation's politicians is unspeakably evil.
Christians they claim to be, but the devil incarnate is what they are.
Many of the early reports after October 7th have already been disproven or retracted. Haaretz among others, have reported, for example that in some of the kibbutzim, the settlers were killed by Israeli forces (in at least one instance, deliberately) rather than by Hamas. Two of the released hostages reported being well cared for by Hamas - contradicting earlier reports of the Hell of their captivity.
None of that excuses the many instances of atrocities committed by Hamas members and others. I note that Hamas was the creation of Israel to counter the PLO. I wonder how many Americans know that? (Similar to Al Qaeda being a creation of the US).
Given time, it appears a more nuanced view of the history and facts could allow cooler heads to prevail and give Biden the out of not appearing weak (his biggest fear). But what I fear is the use of the October 7th as an excuse for the Neocons here to push their pet project - war with Iran. Deranged individuals around Biden and in Congress could force action that only a few want - then the plight of the Palestinian, and Israeli, citizens becomes irrelevant.
Who else said God chose these people?
A fantasy of the unwanted kind for those with sense.
it is a high-decibel commentary on just who their hideous, hateful OT god is, leon... a demonic, evil , jealous, genocidal, slaughtering, rapacious, devious, duplicitous, vicious, racist, heartless, despicable, war-mongering mass-murderer... a bastard by an order-of-magnitude beyond what any other fantasy-god has ever been created in man's history of religiosity. right! a 'chosen people' by their 'chosen god'! read all about their OT god and be prepared to vomit. don't read it unless you are near a toilet.
Hamas went "off the reservation".
How dare they! Send out Custer!
The equivalence to US' genocide against the Native Americans is exact!
Norman Finkelstein has been highlighting the similarities to Nat Turner's rebellion and other instances of oppressed people's liberation attempts. On an interview with Katie Halper, he muses on how he struggled with the Hamas attack, and resolved it by thinking of what his parents (who survived a Nazi death camp) would say, were they still alive. And Norman is sure his parents would've backed the Palestinians, unequivocally.
Norman said to Katie, "is it really murder to kill a concentration camp guard?"
All those Israelis who chose to live in the settlements close to Gaza (or anywhere in Palestine) did just that - made a choice. They also chose to live there despite Palestinians ALREADY LIVING THERE. They stole people's lands, then rounded them up into a concentration camp called Gaza. The Israelis took the Palestinians' homes as their own or tore them down to claim the land.
Mainstream media calls those settlers "innocent civilians".
Bullshit.
Does anybody have a recommendation for a video or audio of Israeli settlers rationalizing their actions? I'm really curious about the settlers' mindsets. All this talk about Israelis as innocent civilians and using the word "massacre" with Israelis but NOT when Palestinians are mass-murdered, it makes me curious about what goes on in the minds of these Israeli settlers.
You know that phenomenon where we ascribe motives to others that would be are OWN motives, as if other people think like us. So if you're a kind-hearted person, you assume the best in others. This doesn't work well in the Israeli case, methinks. I saw a video of Israeli preteens spitting on Palestinians in a mosque. Talk about shaking the notion of Israelis as innocent civilians...
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy re: dead babies. Boy, did Americans recoil from the [fake] Israeli stories about dead babies. But nothing is said about the real babies getting buried by Israeli bombs. I'm heartbroken right now.
What really happened on 7th October? – Information Clearing House.info
Evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for most of their own civilian deaths; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories to justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza.👎🤐
Accounts of the Israeli death toll ARE BULLSHIT and shaped to suggest that a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day. With babies beheaded, children and women killed, pregnant women's fetus's disemboweled, and young Israeli girls being raped and their bodies being dragged through the streets by their hair! ALL F*CKIN LIES. INVENTED BY ISRAEL PROPAGANDISTS👎👎
Yep Rachel, turning on Al Jazeera TV this morning is so distressing. I was reading blogs yesterday about Israel putting pressure on Al Jazeera - trying to prohibit them from reporting on the ground. On top of demanding UN Secretary-General ANTÓNIO GUTERRES to resign this tells us how much power these assholes think they have eh!
The people that witness Israel’s crimes, like journalists, UN workers and medics, they just kill them - oh dear!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_TGhZBEk2w
Amen, Dennis. Amen.
Thanks for all your efforts in posting your excellent comments on many websites Ray!
When do you sleep my man?
Take care. Your antipodean friend, Dennis