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Things to read if you're suffering from misplaced optimism
I'm still preoccupied with finishing a conference paper (the topic: Why it is so hard for states to "cut their losses" in wars of choice, and how they can do so more effectively?), and so I can't do a lengthy blog post today. But in addition to the excellent commentary provided by FP's Marc Lynch, I recently came across two short pieces that are well worth reading and I wanted to alert you to them.
The first is Tony ("Rootless Cosmopolitan") Karon's analysis of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's announcement that he is not going to run for re-election. Karon suggests that this is partly "political theater," but makes it clear that it is a setback for Obama's increasingly incoherent Middle East "peace effort."
The second is by Robert Dreyfuss on The Nation's blog, right here. It is, to say the least, a rather damning indictment of U.S. Middle East policy since Obama took office. And the obvious question is: Why has Obama's team caved so fast and so quickly, after its promising start?
I never thought I'd write the following words, but is it possible that Obama's handling of the I-P peace process might actually end up being worse than George Bush's? It's still too soon to go there, but the fact that the question even occurred to me ain't exactly encouraging.
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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Obama's Mideast policy collapse
Why is Obama's Mideast policy in a state of disastrous collapse? Netanyahu and Likud enjoy the support of many operatives and sympathizers (neoliberals, neoconservatives on the left) in control of key levers of power within the Democratic Party and the Obama administration. End of story. His stated policy objectives are being systematically undercut by members of his own administration and by the AIPAC-controlled Congress.
I think it is far too early
I think it is far too early for such thoughts. Obama started by laying out a rational policy and that he did this at the start of his presidency is the good news. Clearly he has had to make a tactical withdrawal and the bold start was perhaps not so wise, but he is a strategic operator.
If he does nothing for 7 years lets Bibi destroy any prospects for a Palestinian state then for sure it would look worse than 43's peace efforts, but we are a long way from that.
The World War IV Juggernaut
chrisdornan -- It is unlikely that Obama will be able to regain his balance on Mideast politics, since he continues to come under heavy and often vicious attack for pressing the Mideast peace process from so many neoconservative voices in the mainstream media -- including The Washington Post as well as Fox News. American interests are heading towards a catastrophe in the region. Likud and AIPAC are in the driver's seat in American politics and in the Obama administration, and they are working to ignite a global conflagration between the United States and the entire Muslim world (World IV, or, in Christian Zionist parlance, Armageddon). There is no political force on the American scene strong enough to stop them.
Simply, Just the Wrong Strategy.
I know what one is saying here, is very similar to what I said on the commentary of Marc Lynch, but I don't really think that, President Obama's strategy regarding the peace process is incoherent, nor believe that, he caved in very quickly to Israel.
In this context, the President's strategy was coherent but wrong right from the start. He manipulated his Cairo outreech speech to the Muslims, to become a leaning instrument on the Arab and Muslim side, so that they can lean in turn, on the Palesitnians to start talking to the government of Bibi Netanyahu. President Obama did say the right things such as, the settlements being illegal, but then again, we have all heard that since the days of the Presidency of Mr. Carter. He re-iterated his belief also, in the two-state solution to the Palestinian problem, yet here again he seems to have forgotten that, we have already heard that, this is the goal, since the days of the Madrid Conference 1991. I say, No. His policy is coherent but totally wrong, because he was leaning on the wrong side, and, added nothing to the needed credibility of an honest US peace broker.
As for caving in to Israel, well, how could that be, when he really never intended to lean on Israel in any case in the first place.
Regarding Abu Mazen, if indeed he is indulging in theatrics, then I wonder if he has reached the stage of megalomania, to believe that he is bigger than his own people, and consequently indispensable to them !!. In my books at least, no one is bigger than his/her own people, and therefore, no one is indispensable; especially if they are insecure enough as leaders, to indulge in theatrics.
khairi janbek.paris/france
AIPAC and Obama
janbekster: "As for caving in to Israel, well, how could that be, when he really never intended to lean on Israel in any case in the first place." In fact, during that famous (infamous) speech he made before AIPAC during the campaign, under the tutelage of Rahm Emanuel (whom he has described as his "minder"), he pledged absolute allegiance and obedience to the leading organ of the Israel lobby. There should be little surprise about his rapid cave-in to Netanyahu and Likud. The neocons are as much in control of this administration as they were of the previous administration. AIPAC controls both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and most of the mainstream media.
the intention.
I thought I was clear in saying that, there couldn't have been caving in, since there was no intention in the first place, to pressurise israel.
khairi janbek.paris/france
Intent taken
"In fact" was a cue that I was underlining and expanding on your point. :) That AIPAC speech was the giveaway -- that, and the loading up of his administration with AIPAC operatives and devotees. Who couldn't see this current mess coming?
Obama's run out of political capitol
Even if we had the best of intentions and the most brilliant strategy for resolving the crisis, he's run out of the pull necessary to get anything done here. The unemployment rate is up around 50% on his watch, we've lost millions of jobs, and we're still bleeding them like crazy; a 10% unemployment rate is generally considered political death for a president. ANd what pull he has left he clearly wants to put into domestic policies, such as health care, and very likely a second stimulus.
He no longer has the pull for this fight, so it's better he just move on. Like you said, because he put the Palestinians' hopes up, there's a real danger of an explosion in violence if they are let down, so he'll have to try and control that somehow, or he could end up being much worse than Bush on the issue.
Prospects for the American Economy
If you think the American economy is in bad shape now, watch what happens when World War IV gets fully underway. A military conflict with Iran alone, whether initiated by Israel or the United States, will send oil and gas prices soaring into the stratosphere and bring the already fragile American economy tumbling down.
Chicago Politics Comes to Washington
Nathan Guttman is (almost) always right!
Godfather lingo
"Sending a message" -- sounds like a scene from The Godfather. (Why not link directly to the Forward site, and ignore the antisemitic site?)
Which Anti-Semitic Site: Phil Weiss's or Mine?
I am really tired of the anti-Semitism accusation.
People hate and despise Zionism and Israel not out of anti-Semitic feeling but because of the vile nature of the ideology and the state: Why is this nationalism different...?
Get over it! After the Gaza Rampage it makes much more sense to talk about genocidal Jewish racism: The Pattern of Ethnic Ashkenazi Genocidalism: The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine. We would have better politics in the USA if there were more honesty about this subject.
For the record I have some Jewish ancestry and the ethnic Polish side of my family -- the Brzezinskis -- rescued a lot of Jews during the Hitler years. (Zbigniew is not anti-Semitic either despite all the Jewish rants.)
The members of my organization, Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel, practically all have E. European ethnic Ashkenazi ancestry.
When Hitler took power in Germany, Marlene Dietrich decided she did not want to be German if the Nazis defined what it meant to be German. Likewise the members of EAAZI have no interest in Jewishness as defined by Zionism.
As for sending a message, Chicago politicians were at least as likely to "send a message" as Chicago gangsters and were probably even more duplicitous.
It is worthwhile to remember that without the efforts of corrupt Zionist Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Rahm Emanuel would have been stripped of his US citizenship for volunteering to serve the Israeli military: [truthdig] israel's toy soldiers.
Antisemitism
Phil Weiss's site is definitely not antisemitic -- and he would never say that he "hates and despises Israel and Zionism." I don't find this kind of rhetoric to be very helpful in discussions about Mideast politics. Perhaps it is not antisemitic in intent -- but it could easily pass as anti-Jewish incitement. (Sorry -- and I have a low tolerance for false charges of antisemitism wielded as a club by some pro-Israel activists.)
He is an self described
He is an self described anti-zionist. Meaning he does not believe the state of Israel should exist. If you don't think a state should exist, then you must hate it.
Antisemitism
I think it is possible that history (and Jews themselves) will judge Zionism to have been a mistake -- an intellectual and political error -- but I don't hate Zionists or Israelis -- on the contrary, I admire many of them, even when I disagree with them on policy or philosophical issues. This particular "anti-Zionist" seems to have concocted a theory about Ashkenazi Jews that many people would understandably find indistinguishable from classical antisemitism.
Where Did You Study Jewish Historical Political Economics?
I've been studying it for 40 years -- first at The Pingry School, then Harvard, then Yale, and then on my own.
When you claim that my analysis of the development of Zionism is indistinguishable from classical anti-Semitism, you only demonstrate how profoundly ignorant you are of Jewish studies.
In a nutshell, I am making a very simple point.
Political science and the historical discussion of the nature of the nation are too restrictive in assuming that the elemental nation-state must be consolidated on the basis of a territory and language.
From the early 19th century onward Jewish communities undergo a process of virtual national consolidation on a foundation with two key components.
The first component consisted of the remnants of pre-modern Jewish trade networks that had been constructed around a common faith requiring a commitment to Jewish sacred law. Jewish sacred law (or Halakhah) provided a uniform commercial code that regulated Jewish networks of trust in mercantile and financial industries.
The second component was a new national consciousness associated with the new idea of a Jewish Volk that must take possession and control of Palestine even if the vast majority of Jews never migrate there.
Evolving (and somewhat different) political and economic interests of Western, Central and Eastern European Jews worked together to create the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland
(1) that partnered with the UK and
(2) that managed the New Settlement and now the State of Israel as a colonial dependency.
Since the end of the British Mandatory, the Zionist colonial system has evolved into a vastly profitable mostly financial empire that has rendered the US government an intimidated and dependent client state within an extremely flexible imperial system.
Introduction: Jewish Historical Political Economics provides a starting point to understand my analysis.
I've read this book before
I've read this book before except it used to be called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Jewish Racist without Rational Reply Resorts to Defamation
Anyone that believes my discussion of historical Jewish political economics has any similarity to the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion has not actually read the Protocols.
Stephen Walt - New Father Coughlin??
Was Fr. Coughlin an Anti-Semite?
[Stephen Walt] Talking to Hamas?
Your acedemic qualifications
When you say that you studied at Harvard and Yale, and then on your own, do you mean to say that while on weekend furlough from the psychiatic hospital, you would take your crackpot texts and go to READ them at Harvard and Yale, but were eventually asked not to return as your anti semitic tirades in the campus parking lot eventually became tiresome to the students and faculty, thus requiring you to "study alone" in the confines of your room at the hospital (except, that is, for the orderly holding you tracts for you to read when restrained in your straight Jacket?)
Just curious.
Jewish Racists Sans Rejoinder Screech Anti-Semitism, Insanity!
The reaction to Martillo's three hypotheses convinced me that I probably had no future in Jewish studies.
The hypotheses were:
1. Peripheral Romano-Frankish, Romano-Arabic Islamic, and Turko-Slavic populations constructed the Medieval world.
Romano-Franks created the Medieval Christian West.
Romano-Arabs created the Medieval Islamic East.
Turko-Slavs and the last Geonim created the Medieval Jewish trade networks, (a) which were the "territory" of Medieval Rabbinic Judaism and (b) without which the Medieval world did not function economically.
Why Study Yiddish Culture?
[Patricia Crone] What do we actually know about Mohammed?
2. Nineteenth century Jews inherited a superior form of social networking from the international Jewish trade networks of the Middle Ages.
Even though pre-modern forms of Jewish business activity were in decline since the late 18th century, the associated Jewish networks of trust increased in size and cohesiveness with the development of international telecommunications technology and the growth of the associated international media industries in the 19th century.
At the same time, (1) because Jewish population was growing rapidly, (2) because many traditional Jewish economic niches had become obsolete, and (3) because more non-Jews had begun to enter traditionally Jewish types of business, Jewish social networks were becoming more aggressive and often tried to establish effectively exclusive claim to new economic sectors.
Increasing numbers of non-Jews began to view Jews as economic cheaters, and despite self-serving Jewish efforts to blame Christianity for rising hostility toward Jews (in an era of declining religious belief!), classic late 19th anti-Semitism was really a response to the growing effectiveness of Jewish social networking and can be primarily attributed to antisocial Jewish behavior associated with certain aspects of economic modernization and technological innovation that advantaged the Jewish meta-population.
The Importance of Nuremberg Tribunal Law
3. Hellenistic Judaism arises when the Hasmoneans and Herodians encourage proselytization in order to increase the wealth and power of Kingdom of Judea (also known in Latin and Greek as the Judaic Kingdom). This policy dovetails with road and port building within Judea as well as the expansion of the Temple complex, the growth of the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora, the beginnings of a trade network, and an intellectual culture of Ioudaismos that rivals Hellenismos.
The soil that the Hasmoneans and Herodians fertilized gives rise to Christianity as well as Islam and makes it possible to reconstruct Judaism in the Diaspora after Second Temple Judaism is shattered with the crushing of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion.
Origins of Modern Jewry
Followup(II): Origins of Modern Jewry
Reading Abrahamic Scripture Together
[Khaleej Times] Israel Steals Palestinian Heritage, History
Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian Holidays (South Park videoclip for fun)
---------
The three hypotheses are intimately connected and provided a unified frame to look at political-economic development from the Greco-Roman antiquity through the modern period.
Because my approach conflicts with the Zionist narrative and Jewish perpetual victimhood, I am rarely able to have a rational discussion of my ideas either with Jewish studies scholars or with Jews outside of academia.
I switched to physics and engineering, did some critical work on non-invasive imaging techniques, came back to MIT where I worked on network transparent high resolution raster graphics as well as the use of highly parallel computer systems for economics modeling and then I invented VLAN Routing, which is a key networking technology.
An intriguing resume.... (and messianic ethnic natiionalism)
I must admit that you have an intriguing resume. If you lowered the volume of your moral outrage at "the Zionists," perhaps some folks would take more trouble to sort through and parse your historical interpretations and theories. You've obviously given the subject a great deal of thought.
I've got a very simple theory for sifting through and making sense of all this: ethnic nationalist movements -- and especially messianic ethno-religious nationalist movements (like religious Zionism) -- strongly tend to polarize the entire world against themselves. In my mind, this is close to being an ironclad scientific law. This is not especially a Jewish issue -- it's a universal human issue. But Jewish civilization looms large in this discussion because biblical messianic ethnic nationalist memes (particularly in the Torah/Old Testament) feature prominently in Western culture. It comes as no surprise that Israel is in radical conflict with "the nations" (the United Nations and much of the world community). (And its relations are becoming increasingly strained with its chief protector and benefactor -- the United States). Most messianic ethnic nationalist movements seem to self-destruct in spectacular and apocalyptic ways. Perhaps Jewish civilization as a whole should begin to edge away from Zionism with haste.
A Limited Perspective
I have been in Jewish studies for over 40 years and have no idea what you mean be Jewish civilization. There is a European civilization of which Jews are a part. There is an Islamic civilization of which Jews have been a part. There was a Hellenistic civilization in which Judeans participated.
Your analytical framework like that of Mearsheimer and Walt is insufficient because it cannot, for example, explain Jewish Political Diversity at the Fin de Siècle (Nineteenth Century). Mine can.
As for volume, I write about historical Jewish political economics just as I would write about those of Germans or Russians. Americans have been trained to have an inner screeching Jew, who gets hysterical whenever the discussion turns critical. You should try to get over it.
If people want to criticize
If people want to criticize Israel that is perfectly fine and of course not anti-semetic.
What obsessive anti-Zionists think we don't see is that they hold Israel to a far harsher standard than any other country in the world. Countries where hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered, like Sudan, don't get as much attention. When Sri Lanka killed 25,000 civilians during the same period as the Gaza war, no one made more than a peep. When you demonize the only Jewish state in the world and yawn at countries who are immeasurably worse, it is clear that you hold Jews to be more worthy of demonization than any one else. And that is anti-semitic.
Direct Hit Dave123
Fire for effect!
Modern Western democratic values
You and Dave123 are missing two important points: 1. Zionism is constructed substantially on a religious and biblical ideology which claims for itself moral *superiority* over "the nations" (not equality or inferiority). It had better live up to its own self-declared values if it wants to maintain the sympathy of the world at large. 2. Modern Western democratic nations expect Israel to live up to modern Western democratic standards -- otherwise there is little motivation for the West to make large political and financial sacrifices for it. Modern Western democratic nations are the states of all their citizens, not the states of particular ethnic or religious groups. Israel is losing political support worldwide because of its self-contradictions.
Direct Hit! Fire for effect!
Direct Hit!
Fire for effect!
Left Handed Theory
Careful! The other side of that theory is that Modern Western Democratic nations see little benefit in creating yet another Arab League member that may be little more than an Iranian rocket base fully stocked with innocent human shields.
Palestinian Sympathy Fatigue is spreading...
Racist Jewish Zionists Wish!
Scumbag Friedman just wants the world to ignore the next IDF slaughter of Palestinians.
Somehow I don't think Thomas Friedman, who never saw a massacre of Palestinians he didn't love, really wants the USA to cut off the $60-100 billion per year subsidy that the USA provides to Israel, nor do I believe that he expects the USA to clawback the $6-8 trillion that the Israel Lobby has manipulated the USA into expending fraudulently on behalf of the US-Israel alliance.
Collection: Chief Zionist Frauds
Why Not Remove Zionist Interlopers?
Saving American in 100 Words
In my analytic framework Friedman counts as a particularly malevolent member both of the Zionist plutocracy and also of the Zionist intelligentsia.
The WW2 Allies hung Julius Streicher for minor mischief in comparison with the evil that Friedman perpetrates.
As opposed to spouting your
As opposed to spouting your ridiculous conspiracy theories and going on ad nauseum about your resume and how your other crackpot historical ideas have some bearing on current events,
why not just stick to the facts, the current facts, and stay on course with the discussion?
No one here cares who you are, what you claim to have done, or what your bizarre interpretations of history are.
Whose Conspiracy Theories?
(1) Isn't this the wrong place to dump on someone with the accusation that he is spouting conspiracy theories?
Zionists have been accusing Professor Walt of spouting conspiracy theories for years now.
His ideas really are not so different from mine.
I look at process more than results.
I trace cash flows.
I provide the historical context.
(2) You asked for my credentials. If you did not want them, you should not have questioned them. What credentials do you have? Obviously, you are upset that I have some. I used to be on the MIT faculty. At which Ivy League university or equally prestigious academic institution were or are you a faculty member?
(3) As for crackpot historical ideas, I am not really so far out of the mainstream in Jewish studies, Eastern European studies, or the classics. Just compare my writings with those of Crone, Shaye Cohen, Stanislawski, J. Harris, Jacob Neusner, Solzhenitsyn (a talented amateur), Kimmerling, Pappe, Shlaim, N. Davies, Slezkine. I differ with the Jewish studies experts in that I write integrated non-exceptionalist historical political economics (Issues and Questions in the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism). I read more languages than typical for the academic experts. And perhaps more important I have a thorough background in mathematics, statistics, and economics.
(3) Demanding that we stick to the current facts is a peculiarly American perversity. I am working on some mathematical models for the commodities markets right now. Once I get them all programmed, my first test runs historical data through them to see if they predict the past.
In my experience racist Jewish Zionists are the ones most insistent on not looking at the past, e.g., pre-1967 or 1947-8. Of course, they never refrain from babbling a false pogrom and persecution history of Jewish suffering: Facts versus Delusions in Jewish History.
From a Palestinian standpoint, I would think that for a genuine solution Palestinians really need some confidence that Jewish Zionists won't go off on some murderous serial or spree atrocities binge that have been so common in modern Jewish history since the 1850s: Jewish Peril: 1939 versus 2009.
For my part, I am suspicious that you focus on one of the few prominent non-Jews involved in Obama administration high-level decisions. What about Dennis Ross: Ross Belongs in Jail Not Government? We saw this pattern in the Bush II administration -- even to the point of rock-throwing at some untouchable Jewish Zionist plutocrat (Adelson then, Saban now).
I have no doubt that US foreign, health, and economic policy would have far fewer problems and be far more effective (Zionist Infestation Causes US Incompetence) with a purge of all racist Jewish Zionist subversives. Ross deserves a lot of (Jewish Zionist) company in prison. Stuart Levey is one of my chief candidates for arrest under charges of conspiracy against rights and seditious conspiracy against the Constitution.
YAWN
"Demanding that we stick to the current facts is a peculiarly American perversity."
YES!
Might need to bear that in mind
Please understand that for most Americans supporting Little Satan is like looking after a little sister or kindred spirit. Great and Little Satan share far more in common with each other than any illegit, unelected regimes that seem content to maintain pitiful literacy rates, construct computerized police states and encourage others to try to do what their own militaries could not.
Ethnic and religious agendas in Mideast politics
courtneyme109: do you have a particular ethnic or religious stake in Mideast politics? Most Americans don't. I don't. All Americans *do* have an important financial stake in Mideast politics. That is why, for instance, every American administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt has cultivated warm relations with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations in the region.
Nope
Personal stake? Shared values with all of the League of Hot! Democrazies. Nothing magic about Little Satan per se - same deal for SoKo, Nippon and Taiwan
An energizer bunny for Likud and a religious ethnocracy
So from which particular religious and ethnic frameworks are you viewing Mideast politics? Why, exactly, do you expend so much energy in defending a regime which is in sharp conflict with so much of the world, including the American government?
Say Again?
Sharp conflict? You mean like with intolerant, semi literate, illegit regimes like Arab League? AM Gov? LOLZ! Get a grip. Please. No Realist could be that depraved!
Ethnic and religious agendas in Mideast politics
The entire international community strongly and sharply opposes Israel's settlements policy in the occupied territories, and in general is rapidly tiring of Israel's messianic ethno-religious agenda, which increasingly resembles that of apartheid white South Africa. And your own ethnic and religious biases are? (We all have them.)
Internat'l Chimera
Ethnic/Religious biases are not hardly productive.
If HAMAS holds periodic and open elections, establish an independent judiciary, create a free press, arrest murderers, subject their treasury to public scrutiny, eschew suicide murdering, censure religious leaders who call for mass murder, embrace non-violent dissidents, extend equal rights to women, end honor killings, and pledge that any Little Satans who choose to live in the West Bank will enjoy the same rights as Arabs in Little Satan, then they might find Americans equally divided over questions of land and peace.
But all that is a lot of ifs. And so for the present, Palestinian leaders shouldn’t be too surprised that Americans increasingly find very little in their society that has much appeal to either our values or sympathy.
So time is not on the Palestinians’ side. The world elsewhere tires with the creepy global image of the masked rocketeer as it continues to move toward open markets and free societies.
Meanwhile, Palestine is closing itself off from its only window to the West, its tribal government free instead to trade and exchange ideas with the likes of Mubarak’s Egypt or the Assad dictatorship in Syria.
Ma Nishtanah haLeumanut hazot mikol haLeumaniot
Michael Neumann scorches the idea of common US and Israel values or kindred spirit in Why is this nationalism different ...
Patriot Americans have nothing in common with the Jewish Zionists that are subverting and poisoning the American system.
Except for
appreciating a kindred spirit that values tolerance, egalitarianism, periodic, transparent elections, a free, uncensored press, a military under civie control, a nat'l treasury under public scrutiny, and an independent judiciary under elected gov oversight that drives control freaks batty.
Americans totally love it.
How Do You Know a Racist Jewish Zionist is Lying?
He is breathing.
Jewish financial corruption is legendary.
Historicaly halikhah (Jewish sacred law, Jewish sharia) has served as a uniform commercial code for Jewish businessmen. I recently ran across 1840s German Christian usage of die Haliche - the Yiddish pronunciation - to mean the secret way of thieves; slippery, illegal way.
The beloved Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem wrote short stories about Jewish financial misbehavior: Menahem-Mendl on Wall Street. (I also have a much less generous article on my blog: Jewish Financial Aggression, Worldwide Economic Nakba.)
The Israeli economy is so non-transparent that nowadays non-Jews use the Israeli banking system to hide shady transactions.
I worked on and off in Israel and the Occupied Territories for over 15 years. You can't lie to me about the country.
The country was founded on genocide that was planned for over 60 years. Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim were one of the most violent, murderous, racist populations in E. Europe.
How could such a population possibly bring tolerance and egalitarianism to the ME: [Shraga Elam] Israel's Arab Affairs Expert?
All patriotic Americans have a duty to hate and despise the State of Israel as well as the racist Jewish Zionist subversives that have manipulated the USA into an alliance with the Zionist (ethnic Ashkenazi Nazi) state.
Whether intended or not, the
Whether intended or not, the primary effect of your entire "body of work" here is to take legitimate criticisms of US-Israeli foreign policy decisions and smear them with a fine patina of anti Semitic, crackpot, ideological feces, and therefore make actual discussion of the real issues at hand that much more difficult.
I would imagine that Professor Walt would find you and your ideas disgusting, and would take offense at his work being compared to your pathetic ramblings in any way shape of form.
By the way, are you typing all of this with your nose, or is the orderly taking dictation?
Whether intended or not, the
Whether intended or not, the primary effect of your entire "body of work" here is to take legitimate criticisms of US-Israeli foreign policy decisions and smear them with a fine patina of anti Semitic, crackpot, ideological feces, and therefore make actual discussion of the real issues at hand that much more difficult.
I would imagine that Professor Walt would find you and your ideas disgusting, and would take offense at his work being compared to your pathetic ramblings in any way shape of form.
By the way, are you typing all of this with your nose, or is the orderly taking dictation?
Is typical of racist Jewish
Is typical of racist Jewish Zionist masbirim to accuse anyone of insanity if he actually states the facts about Zionism or the State of Israel.
As I remember the initial criticism of the Israel Lobby included accusations that practically accused Professors Walt and Mearsheimer of insanity. (I think it was an essay of David Harris.)
It is a measure of racist Jewish Zionist arrogance that you presume to speak for Professor Walt.
I run into him every now and then in Cambridge. He can always tell me to go away if he wants.
By the way I know that you are a racist Jewish Zionist by your moniker.
Zionist propagandists always demand balanced news reports.
A good reporter writes objectively, and the facts are rarely balanced.
When some racist Jewish Zionist starts screeching about balance the proper response is to ask him whether historians should write balanced accounts of German Nazi-Jewish relations.
Because I find your
Because I find your ramblings, distortions, and ridiculous pointless stories about your background to to be, well, pointless and often offensive, you conclude form that limited data set that I must be Jewish?
Again, I would remind you that If I said I was or was not, it would not matter, because this is a forum of Ideas. However, I would assume then that you consider most people who meet you of who read your drivel to be Jewish, as you MUST also be identified as a loon by most people you come across.
For instance, when your psychiatrist offers you anti psychotics, do you hoard them, believing him to be a secret Jew who is out to get you, or do you take them in hopes that you will have better perspective with which to follow his obviously malevolent intentions?
Ethnic and religious biases in Mideast politics
Actually, in discussions about Mideast politics, it's usually a good idea to get all the ethnic and religious biases and agendas of the participants out in the open from the get-go.
Do you mean with his
Do you mean with his Psychiatrist or with others here in this forum?
Seriously, I could not disagree with you more. This is the internet. This is a blind forum. There is no way to know whether someones background and resume are real or completely fabricated for effect.
Therefore, this is a forum of ideas, and nothing else, where Facts and verifiable truth trump everything else. The rest of it, like whether or not this complete basket case went to Harvard, or just imagined that he did, is of absolutely no consequence to these discussions whatsoever, nor does that line of discussion do anything but draw attention away form the bizarre and pointless nature of just about everything this raving anti-semite says.
I could care less what ethnic background or nationality this imbecile thinks I am; in fact, it probably would be a benefit to my arguments (that the settlements cause terror against both the US and Israel, and must be completely ended along with the occupation and replaced with a UN peace keeping force until a stable Palestinian state emerges) to suggest that I am Jewish, but I have no interest whatsoever trying to lend false credibility ( or not, depending on who I might be trying to convince) to my views on the matter by attempting to paint myself as one thing or another. I would rather let the facts speak for themselves, and let it be clear that in any case, my feelings have nothing to do with an inherent animosity towards Israel or Jewish People in general.
Countries where hundreds of
Please. There is extensive criticism of Sudan, and when the Sri Lankan government was crushing the Tamil Tigers, there were constant calls for yet another truce, condemnation of civilian casualties, etc.
Israel claims to be a first-world democracy. You get expectations of better behavior.
Better Expectations
True! Unlike say -- Grozny?
and I'd add
- - - to these points the fact that the US doesn't supply Sudan or Sri Lanka or any other state the kind of massive financial and military support we grant to Israel. hayed surcharge
Spit on Racist Jews Babbling About Darfur
They think that non-Jews are so stupid that they cannot see through the opportunistic use of Darfur troubles in order to distract from Zionist genocide.
[wvns] explaining darfur
[wvns] war in sudan's darfur is over