New "Pro Israel, Pro Peace" Political Group Launches: J Street Hopes to Prod Washington MidEast Policy Towards Center
| Tue Apr. 15, 2008 3:43 AM PDT
For years, it's been commonplace for Washington policy observers to shrug over the power of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). On questions of Congressional legislation and appropriations involving U.S. defense sales to the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and policy towards Iran and Syria, AIPAC's influence is an acknowledged fact of life on the Hill, similar to death and taxes, second in power as a Washington lobby group only to the National Rifle Association.
But though its power in Congress is broad and bipartisan, and with some 100,000 members it ostensibly represents an American Jewish community that skews overwhelmingly Democratic, some in Washington's policy community have as long been concerned by what they see as a sharp rightward tilt in AIPAC over the years, in particular as some of its funders and leadership have aligned themselves with hawkish policy positions on issues involving national security, the Arab Israeli conflict, and how to deal with Iran.
So began the motivation for the creation of J Street and JStreetPAC, a new nonprofit lobby group and affiliated political action committee being launched today in Washington, whose leadership describes the new organizations as "pro Israel, pro peace." And unlike most other smaller Washington Mid-East oriented policy shops that primarily issue position papers and opeds, J Street was designed to be distinctly political.
"It's the first time that there has been a political arm for those of us who are pro Israel but pro peace, and who believe that reaching a negotiated settlement in the Middle East is absolutely essential for the security of both Israel and the United States," Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street and JStreetPAC told me. "That is the reason for this effort. We believe the majority of American Jews and many other Americans friendly and supportive to Israel really do recognize that a policy both here and there that would be geared towards really pushing for a two state solution is in Israel's and the U.S.'s best interests."
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Continued From Above
"What has happened in the political world is that the people both elected [to Congress] and candidates and the folks around them have come to believe that the only way to speak to the Jewish community is to take the most right-wing position," Ben-Ami said. "There is no political benefit to be at the center."
"We would like to create a political mechanism, a political benefit to being at the center," Ben-Ami continued. "Perhaps there should be a dialogue between the U.S. and Syria. Perhaps the U.S. should pursue an alternative route to Iran. Let's get serious about a two-state solution, and stop the settlements and stop the occupation and get a two state solution. That is currently not being said."
Among J Street's leadership: Ben-Ami, a former senior domestic policy advisor to President Bill Clinton and former policy advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean; Alan Solomont, a former finance director to the Democratic National Committee; Hannah Rosenthal, former Executive Director to the Jewish Council on Public Affairs; Victor Kovner, former New York City Corporation Counsel; and Samuel Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel under Presidents Carter and Reagan. The new group has an advisory counsel of 100 American members and has gathered letters of support from twenty some former Israeli security and diplomatic officials, including the former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff Maj. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the former Israeli Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Amos Lapidot, former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami, two former director generals of the Israeli foreign ministry David Kimche and Alon Liel, former Knesset speaker Avram Burg, and Dalia Rabin, daughter of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and a former member of the Israeli Knesset and deputy defense minister.
"It's time for members of Congress in particular and the administration to hear much more loudly from those of us in the American Jewish community that the only way to protect Israel's security and for that matter American security interests as well is to support relentlessly a negotiated settlement to the Israeli Palestinian conflict," Solomont, a member of J Street's advisory counsel, and a former chairman of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston, said Tuesday. "Unfortunately other voices are often heard more loudly and I think that distracts members of Congress and the administration from pursuing what I think everyone recognizes as the solution to this conflict."
One of J Street's Israeli supporters in Washington, former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, says Israeli leaders need encouragement from Washington to make concessions that could contribute to the peace process. "I think there comes a point when, if the Israeli leadership actually wants to see this thing resolved, it's clearly easier to say yes to the president of the United States, rather than to the [Palestinian Liberation Organization]," Levy says. "You need to have the president of the United States to help carry you there."
For now, Ben-Ami tells me he is working out of his basement, the organization has no headquarters and doesn't plan for one, and plans to operate heavily in the online world. "We're following the MoveOn model, of being virtual, and heavily online," he says. "Part of our goal and plan in the coming year is to develop an online presence in the way that Obama and Dean and MoveOn have done … and to tap into that and have a large base of small donors."
MoveOn financier George Soros, an initial backer of the concept for the group, pulled out of it, Ben Ami explains, because he thought his presence might ultimately be unhelpful, given his reputation as a bankroller for liberal groups.
J Street has raised half of the $1.5 million it hopes to collect from donors over 2008. That still makes it a tiny David in the shadow of AIPAC's Goliath, which reportedly has an endowment of $100 million, and 18 offices around the country, including a new Washington headquarters funded, sources say, by Las Vegas Casino mogul and conservative philanthropist Sheldon Adelson.
Online fundraising innovations aside, some veteran Middle East hands expressed skepticism that the new organization can do much to transform the domestic political forces that guide Washington's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute-- including strong right wing American Christian evangelical opposition to any U.S. pressure on Israel to stop expanding settlements. J Street "has a very steep hill to climb because peacemaking has acquired a bad reputation over the years in the Jewish community," former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk told the Washington Post. "And there is a widespread fear that U.S. intervention on behalf of peace will lead to pressure on Israel."
But even just with its launch, J Street has perhaps managed to prod some of those same weary Middle East hands and Washington policy observers to talk about such thorny issues with a bit less ideological constraint -- a small feat in and of itself.
Comments
To me this issue has reached a new level of danger for Jews the world over?because Jews are playing the "militant card", which given their numbers (in population) and in truth the shakiness of their 'real' power in a regional and global sense, it strikes me as rather unwise?to the point of almost being absurd.
I do not think that in 1918 there were many Germans who really thought about Jews, simply because Jews had proven in WWI their valor and their loyalty to the German state?in the sense of becoming assimilated into the German state as Germans and not remaining on the society's periphery as Jews?thus it was their German-ness and not their Jewishness that was starting to become the defining notion ethnically. Germans Jews in WW1 were by their percent of the population the most decorated soldiers in Germany, receiving their honored Iron Cross in the sense that it was given (for valor in service and defense of the nation) and not as some symbol of the Hun or some other derogatory concept that would be attached to it by 1933 when the anti-Jew party officially took power and the symbolisms of Nazis took over all of Germany in a rather unbelievable frenzy of mass insanity.
Still it is perhaps worth while to attempt to comprehend how this sort of phenomenon could be possible, because it is a mistake to say that the anti-Jew aspect of what occurred in Germany under the Nazis is anything particular to Germans as a group but is rather a wide spread phenomenon throughout Europe and of course beyond?Jews had flocked to Germany in the course of European history for a reason (that reason is not of course because of its Antisemitism but rather because the opposite was the case?Jews fled to that place which offered the highest degree of liberalism), and we might duly note Jews have flocked to the US for a similar reason?its religious tolerance and its sense of being the land of opportunity, i.e. it's liberalism.
So if one reflects on the consequences of the first World War on Germany it would be the utter depression that ensued upon the entire nation caused by the demand of the allied forces that Germany pay for the debt of the war?thus the utter poverty that engulfed the nation was all the fuel necessary to pin it on the Jews and on communists (the purge of communists by the Nazis is rather bizarre because by 1935 both Stalin and Hitler would be saying of each others ideology that it was the logical stepping stone to their own respective ideologies?thus from Stalin's point of view fascism was a natural stepping stone to communism and vice verse for Hitler. (they'd become political and military chums)
Still what is important isn't the "ideologies" of fascism or communism but rather the brutal reality of what wide spread poverty can create psychologically when the the leadership that commands the nation state is itself in a rather anti-humanist state of consciousness. That is the case today in the US. We have created in the Red Republican Party (Red is for Red State) an almost unbelievable anti-humanist stance. We live in a nation where the leadership of the nation have planned and organized in systematic fashion the torture, the kidnapping and in general the inhuman acts that confront us daily on our TV screens and on the front pages of our newspapers. We have gone to war built on a pack of lies, while at the same time our country has made the false claim that the reason for its actions are "national security". National Security in the US does not build on its military might but rather on its ability to control the world via its economy (the reason for our forward deployment of the military the world over is to ensure that we do not get cut off from markets just in case some particular region of the world becomes unstable?thus the grounds are defensive in nature and grounded in economical reasoning?it's the economy stupid!). The world is priced in dollars not Yen or Euro, but once that faith in the buck ends we will sit with multi-trillion dollar debt and it will be expected of us to pay it off! At this juncture in time we see not just the housing market collapsing but rather the effect is spreading?like a cancer and it will infect each and every aspect of the economy?oil is at 114 dollars a barrel, the dollar has slid by 30 cents to a Euro in less than six months and yet we hear John McCain talking about "winning the war"--the guy is nuts and imagine how he sounds to the rest of the world? (what McCain's statements signal to world is, "It's time to dumb the Greenback" and he's said to be "Strong on National Security")) Unless we remove our forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and probably from the entire world and cut our military spending by more than 50% we will know what the Germans of the 1920's knew?the harsh and cruel meaning of wide-spread national poverty and out of the poverty will come the BLAME.
It is my contention that the blame will placed on not just the Jewish lobby and on Israeli leadership but on Jews in general. That is the stupid game the fanatical Jewish leadership in the Israeli state are playing (don't get me wrong Jews and Israelis in general are not fanatics but tend to be warm hearted humanitarians but this Jewish lobby and the hawks in the conservative party of Israel are fanatical lunatics)?they are engaged in a strategy that will bring upon them and their people a total disaster unless Jews and Israelis wake up and act now.
Hopeful and certainly encouraging. The problem is that those that make up the Israeli government, and which by the way ? though the J Street folks seem to ignore this, were put in power by a majority of Israelis ? are an amoral gang of thugs that would be more than delighted to slaughter every Palestinian man, woman and child. Let's remember that Sharon won in a landslide. The good people of Israel knew they were electing a proven war criminal who opposed any peace process, and did so on the hope that he would crush the Palestinians and enlarge the settlements. So far, so good. And Netanyahu is waiting in the wings, promising to be even more uncompromising and brutal.
While this new lobby appears to offer a glimmer of reason (and maybe even something akin to compassion), nothing will change unless and until those in power in Israel change. Well meaning American Jews banding together to address a decades-old injustice and to battle universally condemned (daily) crimes against humanity is a start, but I will need to see action to believe anything will improve. As long as most American Jews are content to remain silent to the atrocities committed by "their" country so as to avoid speaking ill of Israel, this will be more of a feel-good gesture (and possibly improved PR) than anything else.
What will give this new PAC teeth, and legitimacy, will be its membership. If prominent American Jews in government, or especially those in entertainment, should lend their names to this organization, the results could be of some real impact. But we must remember that time is not on the Palestinians' side. While people with good intentions talk and plan, their home is disappearing, their children are dying and their society deteriorating at an alarming rate. Israel will not stop expanding, killing and stealing resources. Hopefully there will be something left to create a Palestinian state out of.
I think it's not about "our security" it's about morality. And, what we allow ANY murders and thieves to do to ANY other people we are "accepting" them to do to our children and us in future.
I can not believe that we are FREELY allowing Govt. to make laws to tap all of our phones, emails, snoop in our houses, create "political" files, seize assets, indefinably lock up anyone without any public judicial process.......and torture people for "wars of choice". What if the Govt. "sells out" to crooks or Mafia types?if they haven't already? What will WE do then? Trust them ? If they will do heinous crimes to people abroad why not at home?
The only way we will prevent wrongful wars in future is to prosecute ALL "war criminal acts of aggression" foreign and at home..... Now, HOW are "our" politicians & PS (& Israel's) going to like this idea?
I also suspect the biggest murders & thieves are the faceless people who effective bribe (or donate) the politicians to do war crimes, and these same people "indirectly control" the MSM media narrative & the overwhelming fraud propaganda which facilitates or causes 100,000's being killed (and us being robbed in the process) ?.. Without media lies most "politician crimes" would be almost impossible as politicians could not keep credibility?..
We ALL critically need an independent inquiry regarding the "Iraq invasion" (& possibly prosecutions) and the repeal of all of these "Nazi/KGB style police state laws". THE LAWYERS MUST HELP NOW.
Clarence, you are wrong. John Hagee and Pat Robertson are also wrong. Faith in Jesus Christ has replaced physical lineage as the determining factor for identifying God's chosen people. There is neither Jew nor Greek...for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Flesh and blood can not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. "You must be born again."(Jn 3:3) If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal 3:28-29) ( In Genesis, God promised that whosoever blesses Abraham and his seed, God would also bless. So, whosoever blesses Christians, God blesses. How much better can it get than that? Want a blessing? Then, do something to bless God's Chosen People, Abraham's seed: Christian believers in Jesus Christ!)
?"hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth?" (Acts 17:26). God is not a racist. Through faith in Christ Jesus, all who believe?Jew or Gentile?are made citizens of heavenly "Zion," the "Commonwealth of Israel." All believers comprise the "Israel of God." (See Eph. 2:11-22 and 4; and Gal. 6:14-16) Matthew 21:43, Jesus declared to the Jews: "Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation(Gentile) bringing forth the fruits thereof." Based, then, strictly on the testimony of Jesus our Lord, we know for sure that Jews who reject Jesus?and almost all the Jews who live in the U.S.A. and who populate today's nation of Israel fall into this category?are not God's Chosen.
Justin Martyr (circa 100 to 165 CE) and Irenaeus of Lyon (circa 130 to 200 CE) stated that the promises made to the Jews have become invalid and that the Christian church (including any ethnic Jews who have aligned themselves with it) is chosen instead. Pope Pius XII also re-affirmed this doctrine in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (June 29, 1943).
Aaron:
The reason you can't get your information strait is because you have little or no knoledge-base pertaining to that which you commonly speak. AKA 'Crap-talk'.
You wrote:
" . . he claims to be of the Pharisee lineage."
" . . . the Pharisaic sect was re-established as Rabbinic Judaism ? which ultimately produced normative, traditional Judaism, the basis for all contemporary forms of Judaism and even the Karaites use the Rabbinic canon of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisee
Therefore, the Pharisees wrote the modern Hebrew Bible and yes, that is my family.
This does NOT mean I believe in it. What it does mean is that I am subjected to an enhanced level of anti-semitism because certain people (general population--including you) see me not only as a Jew but a 'primal' Jew.
In reality, I am NOT an athiest, nor I do NOT "follow the Talmud".
You wrote:
" . . . ethnic Jewish supremacist . . . "
More fabrications.
I am a historian. 90-percent of the words I post are historic points-of-fact and 10-percent are conclusions (opinions), based on those points.
People who debate me generally do not use facts and certainly no references are typically provided by them but they merely hurl slurs and insults.
You are one of those people.
Congradulations! You are functionally indistinguishable from 'background noise'.
bozhidar bob:
As I said in a post above, no newsprint can be located originating from anywhere in the entire world (written at the time of the event) which sights any forced expulsions of Arabs by Hebrews.
To put this point in context, if the independence occurred today, for certain?some bias newspapers would claim that the Arabs left at the end of gunpoint EVEN IF SUCH EVENT DID NOT ACTUALLY OCCUR. So there is really, no explanation why no newsprint sighting such events can be re-located. Can you find such a news story? I have made this point numerous times on other blogs and to date, no one can produce a scrap of newsprint.
These people merely refused to be part of a minority population run by a majority of Jews. So they departed. Far from unique throughout history. Plus, they were being lulled by Arab leaders--who assured them that the Jews would be cleared out forthwith, in preparation for their proud and victorious return.
"Refugee" status is not automatic. The alleged refugee must meet at least the minimum requirement, namely, that they departed the country of their nationality based on the "well founded fear" of meeting physical harm if they remained. While it is possible that some (if not all) met this simple standard, made more possible because the statute does not specify who would need to cause their "well founded fear" (it could be Arabs?passing rumors) nonetheless, that is NOT a given in this case. If they simply left because they refused to be part of a minority Arab population, they would NOT qualify as legal "refugees" and have no rights of return.
These populations wound up in about 12 Arab nations, which is VERY STRANGE. Normally, fleeing refugees head for the closest friendly border. In the case of the Arab migrations, several populations wound up in Arab countries that share no border with Israel. This would tend to indicate that the entire event was politically choreographed.
Regarding children as "refugees":
Minor children, born to the legal refugees while they were awaiting re-patriot ion would travel with the parents upon return to the country of their nationality. That is not the issue. Here is the issue:
Of the approximately 750,000 displaced Arabs from 1948, most have already died of old-age. Perhaps, 100,000 (optimistically) remain alive today as elderly people. Any "right of return" would normally relate to these people and their minor children (of which there are none because their youngest children would today be like at least 40 years old).
Other offspring, born in other countries and today adults, should not normally acquire "refugee" status. However, special rules were carved out to deal with this population and so their offspring were granted "refugee" status, which, means that instead of 100,000 people with POTENTIAL 'rights of return', today the count is 5.5 million and growing exponentially. The Israelis do not have to cooperate with this patent double-standard of law and I support them in their rejection of it. Made even further unfair because no accounting is made for the Jews who were displaced from multiple Arab countries. The icing on the cake is that the UNHCR has been politically blocked from settling these populations for the past 60 years. If you REALLY want to be clear, here it is:
The displaced Palestinian-Arabs SHOULD have had not one but two alternatives, which have been denied them.
1. To remain where they are and not be denied basic human rights. Their offspring, born of the soil of the countries where they reside SHOULD have received full citizenship rights.
2. When spots opened for immigration to France, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Finland, Spain and elsewhere, these populations of Palestinian-Arabs SHOULD have been offered first priority--because their living conditions were far worse then most other Arabs and Muslims who ultimately migrated to Western Europe. Now, you may assert that such offers were not to the Palestinian-Arabs liking and that they only wanted (and deserved) to move to Israel, but you don't know for a fact, how many would have GLADLY accepted an invitation to immigrate (as welcome citizens) to Switzerland, or Germany or anywhere else. We will never know, because such invitations were blocked, not by Israel but by the most zealot political maneuvering--of the Arab nations who refuse to accept (or permit) Israel to exist.
Once the dots are connected, a completely different picture emerges to that which is commonly circulated by those hostile to Israel.
You quote "yabotinsky". Others quote Theodor Herzl, others quote Hebrew scriptures, which are all distractions. These people are generally quoted in order to debate their opinions. But Herzl or yabotinsky do not speak for all Jews or even all Israelis. Even the Pope of Rome only speaks for Catholics during his office. People can go back and find some quite objectionable statements made by various pontiffs throughout history. Imagine if non-Catholics used such historical statements to condemn the Vatican of 2008? Wouldn't that seem somewhat nonsensical?
With respect to Hertzl, yabotinsky, Noam Chomsky and many others, these are not "popes" or any sort of state spokesman.
The survivors of the Holocaust wanted and deserved a nation which was Jewish by core definition. Opponents of Israel have the hardest time with this. But the vast majority of the people who do not see cause for a Jewish National Homeland, themselves live in nations where their own ethnic group is the Majority group. Israel is 2% of the land in the region. It is home to 1.5 million Arab citizens who generally have better standards of living then Arabs and Muslims in all Arab and Muslim countries, except the oil wealthy. Even then, if one is not a citizen of Kuwait, for example, as a visiting Arab worker, their lives are not so glorious. The Same with Saudi Arabia. The lack of civil rights is oppressive, even to Arab Muslims and women are so far down on the 'totem-pole' that their image in under ground level.
All the negative attention paid to Israel distracts from the dozens of other injustices, many far worse, which plague the lives of Arabs in numerous venues.
It is the price of oil and the systemic hatred of Jews which drives this controversy.
The Palestinian-Arabs are pawns. They sooner they realize it the better off they will become.
Bob:
What are you trying to say? We already knew a few dozens of subjects ago that you consider the Jewish nation akin to the German Nazis. Of course, if you did your reading, other then 4th rate web sites, you might realize that the Jews were given no choice. War gets in the way of profit and profit they respect. The Germans invaded all of Eastern Europe and ½ of Western Europe. They firebombed London and fed humans into gas chambers by the millions?but not before harvesting skin for lampshades and teeth for the gold. Plus, they did sadistic experiments on a percentage of civilians. On the good side, Hitler liked puppies?(but only the master-race of puppies).
The Jews have been a wellspring of knowledge and advances in all the sciences and medicine. In dozens of countries they live in total peace, as an infinitesimal fraction of the prison population. The Muslims, on the other hand, have a fundamental problem with being a minority group, and that holds true in dozens of venues. This problem manifests itself as terrorism in Kashmir, Chechnya, Madrid, London, France, New York, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Iraq (where they are the 100% majority), plus a few venues in Africa, such as the Sudan--where a FEW MILLION Christian (and Jewish) blacks have died in decades of genocides. Why? You would blame all this on "Zionism".
The world is a sick place. Its not getting any weller with guys like you spewing manson-isms across cyber-space.
Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3,000 Years
By Israel Shahak, with a foreword by Gore Vidal.
When the Roman historian Tacitus pointed out 19 centuries ago that the Jews are unique among the races of man in their intense hatred and contempt for all races but their own, he was only repeating what many other scholars had discovered before him. For the next 1,900 years other investigators came to similar conclusions, either from a study of the Jews' religious writings or from a study of the Jews' behavior toward non-Jews.
Notable among these was the Great Reformer, Martin Luther, who in 1543 wrote :
"Does not their Talmud say, and do not their rabbis write, it is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob, as they do with their usury, from a heathen is a divine service. For they hold that they cannot be too hard on us nor sin against us, because they are of the noble blood and circumcised saints; we, however, are cursed goyim. And they are the masters of the world, and we are their servants, yea, their cattle.?" The Jews responded to Luther like they responded to all the others. They put him down as just another "hater," blinded by religious bigotry. And today that's still the Jews' standard answer to everyone who says or writes anything about them except the most fawning praise
To me this issue has reached a new level of danger for Jews the world over?because Jews are playing the "militant card", which given their numbers (in population) and in truth the shakiness of their 'real' power in a regional and global sense, it strikes me as rather unwise?to the point of almost being absurd.
I do not think that in 1918 there were many Germans who really thought about Jews, simply because Jews had proven in WWI their valor and their loyalty to the German state?in the sense of becoming assimilated into the German state as Germans and not remaining on the society's periphery as Jews?thus it was their German-ness and not their Jewishness that was starting to become the defining notion ethnically. Germans Jews in WW1 were by their percent of the population the most decorated soldiers in Germany, receiving their honored Iron Cross in the sense that it was given (for valor in service and defense of the nation) and not as some symbol of the Hun or some other derogatory concept that would be attached to it by 1933 when the anti-Jew party officially took power and the symbolisms of Nazis took over all of Germany in a rather unbelievable frenzy of mass insanity.
Still it is perhaps worth while to attempt to comprehend how this sort of phenomenon could be possible, because it is a mistake to say that the anti-Jew aspect of what occurred in Germany under the Nazis is anything particular to Germans as a group but is rather a wide spread phenomenon throughout Europe and of course beyond?Jews had flocked to Germany in the course of European history for a reason (that reason is not of course because of its Antisemitism but rather because the opposite was the case?Jews fled to that place which offered the highest degree of liberalism), and we might duly note Jews have flocked to the US for a similar reason?its religious tolerance and its sense of being the land of opportunity, i.e. it's liberalism.
So if one reflects on the consequences of the first World War on Germany it would be the utter depression that ensued upon the entire nation caused by the demand of the allied forces that Germany pay for the debt of the war?thus the utter poverty that engulfed the nation was all the fuel necessary to pin it on the Jews and on communists (the purge of communists by the Nazis is rather bizarre because by 1935 both Stalin and Hitler would be saying of each others ideology that it was the logical stepping stone to their own respective ideologies?thus from Stalin's point of view fascism was a natural stepping stone to communism and vice verse for Hitler. (they'd become political and military chums)
Still what is important isn't the "ideologies" of fascism or communism but rather the brutal reality of what wide spread poverty can create psychologically when the the leadership that commands the nation state is itself in a rather anti-humanist state of consciousness. That is the case today in the US. We have created in the Red Republican Party (Red is for Red State) an almost unbelievable anti-humanist stance. We live in a nation where the leadership of the nation have planned and organized in systematic fashion the torture, the kidnapping and in general the inhuman acts that confront us daily on our TV screens and on the front pages of our newspapers. We have gone to war built on a pack of lies, while at the same time our country has made the false claim that the reason for its actions are "national security". National Security in the US does not build on its military might but rather on its ability to control the world via its economy (the reason for our forward deployment of the military the world over is to ensure that we do not get cut off from markets just in case some particular region of the world becomes unstable?thus the grounds are defensive in nature and grounded in economical reasoning?it's the economy stupid!). The world is priced in dollars not Yen or Euro, but once that faith in the buck ends we will sit with multi-trillion dollar debt and it will be expected of us to pay it off! At this juncture in time we see not just the housing market collapsing but rather the effect is spreading?like a cancer and it will infect each and every aspect of the economy?oil is at 114 dollars a barrel, the dollar has slid by 30 cents to a Euro in less than six months and yet we hear John McCain talking about "winning the war"--the guy is nuts and imagine how he sounds to the rest of the world? (what McCain's statements signal to world is, "It's time to dumb the Greenback" and he's said to be "Strong on National Security")) Unless we remove our forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and probably from the entire world and cut our military spending by more than 50% we will know what the Germans of the 1920's knew?the harsh and cruel meaning of wide-spread national poverty and out of the poverty will come the BLAME.
It is my contention that the blame will placed on not just the Jewish lobby and on Israeli leadership but on Jews in general. That is the stupid game the fanatical Jewish leadership in the Israeli state are playing (don't get me wrong Jews and Israelis in general are not fanatics but tend to be warm hearted humanitarians but this Jewish lobby and the hawks in the conservative party of Israel are fanatical lunatics)?they are engaged in a strategy that will bring upon them and their people a total disaster unless Jews and Israelis wake up and act now.
Hopeful and certainly encouraging. The problem is that those that make up the Israeli government, and which by the way ? though the J Street folks seem to ignore this, were put in power by a majority of Israelis ? are an amoral gang of thugs that would be more than delighted to slaughter every Palestinian man, woman and child. Let's remember that Sharon won in a landslide. The good people of Israel knew they were electing a proven war criminal who opposed any peace process, and did so on the hope that he would crush the Palestinians and enlarge the settlements. So far, so good. And Netanyahu is waiting in the wings, promising to be even more uncompromising and brutal.
While this new lobby appears to offer a glimmer of reason (and maybe even something akin to compassion), nothing will change unless and until those in power in Israel change. Well meaning American Jews banding together to address a decades-old injustice and to battle universally condemned (daily) crimes against humanity is a start, but I will need to see action to believe anything will improve. As long as most American Jews are content to remain silent to the atrocities committed by "their" country so as to avoid speaking ill of Israel, this will be more of a feel-good gesture (and possibly improved PR) than anything else.
What will give this new PAC teeth, and legitimacy, will be its membership. If prominent American Jews in government, or especially those in entertainment, should lend their names to this organization, the results could be of some real impact. But we must remember that time is not on the Palestinians' side. While people with good intentions talk and plan, their home is disappearing, their children are dying and their society deteriorating at an alarming rate. Israel will not stop expanding, killing and stealing resources. Hopefully there will be something left to create a Palestinian state out of.
I think it's not about "our security" it's about morality. And, what we allow ANY murders and thieves to do to ANY other people we are "accepting" them to do to our children and us in future.
I can not believe that we are FREELY allowing Govt. to make laws to tap all of our phones, emails, snoop in our houses, create "political" files, seize assets, indefinably lock up anyone without any public judicial process.......and torture people for "wars of choice". What if the Govt. "sells out" to crooks or Mafia types?if they haven't already? What will WE do then? Trust them ? If they will do heinous crimes to people abroad why not at home?
The only way we will prevent wrongful wars in future is to prosecute ALL "war criminal acts of aggression" foreign and at home..... Now, HOW are "our" politicians & PS (& Israel's) going to like this idea?
I also suspect the biggest murders & thieves are the faceless people who effective bribe (or donate) the politicians to do war crimes, and these same people "indirectly control" the MSM media narrative & the overwhelming fraud propaganda which facilitates or causes 100,000's being killed (and us being robbed in the process) ?.. Without media lies most "politician crimes" would be almost impossible as politicians could not keep credibility?..
We ALL critically need an independent inquiry regarding the "Iraq invasion" (& possibly prosecutions) and the repeal of all of these "Nazi/KGB style police state laws". THE LAWYERS MUST HELP NOW.
Clarence, you are wrong. John Hagee and Pat Robertson are also wrong. Faith in Jesus Christ has replaced physical lineage as the determining factor for identifying God's chosen people. There is neither Jew nor Greek...for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Flesh and blood can not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. "You must be born again."(Jn 3:3) If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal 3:28-29) ( In Genesis, God promised that whosoever blesses Abraham and his seed, God would also bless. So, whosoever blesses Christians, God blesses. How much better can it get than that? Want a blessing? Then, do something to bless God's Chosen People, Abraham's seed: Christian believers in Jesus Christ!)
?"hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth?" (Acts 17:26). God is not a racist. Through faith in Christ Jesus, all who believe?Jew or Gentile?are made citizens of heavenly "Zion," the "Commonwealth of Israel." All believers comprise the "Israel of God." (See Eph. 2:11-22 and 4; and Gal. 6:14-16) Matthew 21:43, Jesus declared to the Jews: "Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation(Gentile) bringing forth the fruits thereof." Based, then, strictly on the testimony of Jesus our Lord, we know for sure that Jews who reject Jesus?and almost all the Jews who live in the U.S.A. and who populate today's nation of Israel fall into this category?are not God's Chosen.
Justin Martyr (circa 100 to 165 CE) and Irenaeus of Lyon (circa 130 to 200 CE) stated that the promises made to the Jews have become invalid and that the Christian church (including any ethnic Jews who have aligned themselves with it) is chosen instead. Pope Pius XII also re-affirmed this doctrine in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (June 29, 1943).
Aaron:
The reason you can't get your information strait is because you have little or no knoledge-base pertaining to that which you commonly speak. AKA 'Crap-talk'.
You wrote:
" . . he claims to be of the Pharisee lineage."
" . . . the Pharisaic sect was re-established as Rabbinic Judaism ? which ultimately produced normative, traditional Judaism, the basis for all contemporary forms of Judaism and even the Karaites use the Rabbinic canon of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisee
Therefore, the Pharisees wrote the modern Hebrew Bible and yes, that is my family.
This does NOT mean I believe in it. What it does mean is that I am subjected to an enhanced level of anti-semitism because certain people (general population--including you) see me not only as a Jew but a 'primal' Jew.
In reality, I am NOT an athiest, nor I do NOT "follow the Talmud".
You wrote:
" . . . ethnic Jewish supremacist . . . "
More fabrications.
I am a historian. 90-percent of the words I post are historic points-of-fact and 10-percent are conclusions (opinions), based on those points.
People who debate me generally do not use facts and certainly no references are typically provided by them but they merely hurl slurs and insults.
You are one of those people.
Congradulations! You are functionally indistinguishable from 'background noise'.
bozhidar bob:
As I said in a post above, no newsprint can be located originating from anywhere in the entire world (written at the time of the event) which sights any forced expulsions of Arabs by Hebrews.
To put this point in context, if the independence occurred today, for certain?some bias newspapers would claim that the Arabs left at the end of gunpoint EVEN IF SUCH EVENT DID NOT ACTUALLY OCCUR. So there is really, no explanation why no newsprint sighting such events can be re-located. Can you find such a news story? I have made this point numerous times on other blogs and to date, no one can produce a scrap of newsprint.
These people merely refused to be part of a minority population run by a majority of Jews. So they departed. Far from unique throughout history. Plus, they were being lulled by Arab leaders--who assured them that the Jews would be cleared out forthwith, in preparation for their proud and victorious return.
"Refugee" status is not automatic. The alleged refugee must meet at least the minimum requirement, namely, that they departed the country of their nationality based on the "well founded fear" of meeting physical harm if they remained. While it is possible that some (if not all) met this simple standard, made more possible because the statute does not specify who would need to cause their "well founded fear" (it could be Arabs?passing rumors) nonetheless, that is NOT a given in this case. If they simply left because they refused to be part of a minority Arab population, they would NOT qualify as legal "refugees" and have no rights of return.
These populations wound up in about 12 Arab nations, which is VERY STRANGE. Normally, fleeing refugees head for the closest friendly border. In the case of the Arab migrations, several populations wound up in Arab countries that share no border with Israel. This would tend to indicate that the entire event was politically choreographed.
Regarding children as "refugees":
Minor children, born to the legal refugees while they were awaiting re-patriot ion would travel with the parents upon return to the country of their nationality. That is not the issue. Here is the issue:
Of the approximately 750,000 displaced Arabs from 1948, most have already died of old-age. Perhaps, 100,000 (optimistically) remain alive today as elderly people. Any "right of return" would normally relate to these people and their minor children (of which there are none because their youngest children would today be like at least 40 years old).
Other offspring, born in other countries and today adults, should not normally acquire "refugee" status. However, special rules were carved out to deal with this population and so their offspring were granted "refugee" status, which, means that instead of 100,000 people with POTENTIAL 'rights of return', today the count is 5.5 million and growing exponentially. The Israelis do not have to cooperate with this patent double-standard of law and I support them in their rejection of it. Made even further unfair because no accounting is made for the Jews who were displaced from multiple Arab countries. The icing on the cake is that the UNHCR has been politically blocked from settling these populations for the past 60 years. If you REALLY want to be clear, here it is:
The displaced Palestinian-Arabs SHOULD have had not one but two alternatives, which have been denied them.
1. To remain where they are and not be denied basic human rights. Their offspring, born of the soil of the countries where they reside SHOULD have received full citizenship rights.
2. When spots opened for immigration to France, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Finland, Spain and elsewhere, these populations of Palestinian-Arabs SHOULD have been offered first priority--because their living conditions were far worse then most other Arabs and Muslims who ultimately migrated to Western Europe. Now, you may assert that such offers were not to the Palestinian-Arabs liking and that they only wanted (and deserved) to move to Israel, but you don't know for a fact, how many would have GLADLY accepted an invitation to immigrate (as welcome citizens) to Switzerland, or Germany or anywhere else. We will never know, because such invitations were blocked, not by Israel but by the most zealot political maneuvering--of the Arab nations who refuse to accept (or permit) Israel to exist.
Once the dots are connected, a completely different picture emerges to that which is commonly circulated by those hostile to Israel.
You quote "yabotinsky". Others quote Theodor Herzl, others quote Hebrew scriptures, which are all distractions. These people are generally quoted in order to debate their opinions. But Herzl or yabotinsky do not speak for all Jews or even all Israelis. Even the Pope of Rome only speaks for Catholics during his office. People can go back and find some quite objectionable statements made by various pontiffs throughout history. Imagine if non-Catholics used such historical statements to condemn the Vatican of 2008? Wouldn't that seem somewhat nonsensical?
With respect to Hertzl, yabotinsky, Noam Chomsky and many others, these are not "popes" or any sort of state spokesman.
The survivors of the Holocaust wanted and deserved a nation which was Jewish by core definition. Opponents of Israel have the hardest time with this. But the vast majority of the people who do not see cause for a Jewish National Homeland, themselves live in nations where their own ethnic group is the Majority group. Israel is 2% of the land in the region. It is home to 1.5 million Arab citizens who generally have better standards of living then Arabs and Muslims in all Arab and Muslim countries, except the oil wealthy. Even then, if one is not a citizen of Kuwait, for example, as a visiting Arab worker, their lives are not so glorious. The Same with Saudi Arabia. The lack of civil rights is oppressive, even to Arab Muslims and women are so far down on the 'totem-pole' that their image in under ground level.
All the negative attention paid to Israel distracts from the dozens of other injustices, many far worse, which plague the lives of Arabs in numerous venues.
It is the price of oil and the systemic hatred of Jews which drives this controversy.
The Palestinian-Arabs are pawns. They sooner they realize it the better off they will become.
Bob:
What are you trying to say? We already knew a few dozens of subjects ago that you consider the Jewish nation akin to the German Nazis. Of course, if you did your reading, other then 4th rate web sites, you might realize that the Jews were given no choice. War gets in the way of profit and profit they respect. The Germans invaded all of Eastern Europe and ½ of Western Europe. They firebombed London and fed humans into gas chambers by the millions?but not before harvesting skin for lampshades and teeth for the gold. Plus, they did sadistic experiments on a percentage of civilians. On the good side, Hitler liked puppies?(but only the master-race of puppies).
The Jews have been a wellspring of knowledge and advances in all the sciences and medicine. In dozens of countries they live in total peace, as an infinitesimal fraction of the prison population. The Muslims, on the other hand, have a fundamental problem with being a minority group, and that holds true in dozens of venues. This problem manifests itself as terrorism in Kashmir, Chechnya, Madrid, London, France, New York, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Iraq (where they are the 100% majority), plus a few venues in Africa, such as the Sudan--where a FEW MILLION Christian (and Jewish) blacks have died in decades of genocides. Why? You would blame all this on "Zionism".
The world is a sick place. Its not getting any weller with guys like you spewing manson-isms across cyber-space.
Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3,000 Years
By Israel Shahak, with a foreword by Gore Vidal.
When the Roman historian Tacitus pointed out 19 centuries ago that the Jews are unique among the races of man in their intense hatred and contempt for all races but their own, he was only repeating what many other scholars had discovered before him. For the next 1,900 years other investigators came to similar conclusions, either from a study of the Jews' religious writings or from a study of the Jews' behavior toward non-Jews.
Notable among these was the Great Reformer, Martin Luther, who in 1543 wrote :
"Does not their Talmud say, and do not their rabbis write, it is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob, as they do with their usury, from a heathen is a divine service. For they hold that they cannot be too hard on us nor sin against us, because they are of the noble blood and circumcised saints; we, however, are cursed goyim. And they are the masters of the world, and we are their servants, yea, their cattle.?" The Jews responded to Luther like they responded to all the others. They put him down as just another "hater," blinded by religious bigotry. And today that's still the Jews' standard answer to everyone who says or writes anything about them except the most fawning praise
mean while 1 million
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Feb. 27, 2009 11:30 PM PST.
mean while 1 million russian jews, half jews and maybe jews have immigrated to israel while the palestinians and their children remain refugees. its easier for a yank or european to immigrate to israel than the original inhabitants. justice is not served and this conflict will never finish until you address the refugee problem which is acceptable ,not to israel, but the refugee palestinian.
Thank you Mr Ben Ami and to those who could make this possible. As he mentioned in his statement "It's the first time that there has been a political arm for those of us who are pro Israel but pro peace, and who believe that reaching a negotiated settlement in the Middle East is absolutely essential for the security of both Israel and the United States,"
I totally agree that the majority of American Jews and many other Americans friendly and supportive to Israel really do recognize that a policy both here and there that would be geared towards really pushing for a two state solution is in Israel's and the U.S.'s best interests. Good luck to you and God bless you
I think if people really have a common commitment to Global Whirled Peas, then it's time to talk about MONEY. As in 'large sums of money, that get siphoned out of the US Treasury on an annual basis, or, so-called 'oopsie' spending'. Oopsie. 3 trillion DOLLAR 'oopsie'. As in, 'impeachment-grade oopsie'. Let's get energy-independent, here, grind the faux environmentalism and other posturing right down to the bare metal, establish the facts of the matter in all aspects of foreign aid and 'defense' spending, broom it all out, and bleach-mop, corner-to-corner-to-corner-to-corner, that way, at least OUR position in all of these Human Events will be pretty clear, and they can go ahead and hang a big NO PAN-HANDLING sign out in front of Lady Liberty, while they're at it. Other countries, Israel included, really need to start pulling their socks up, and dealing with their own domestic problems, and not looking to the United States for a bailout or other Nightingale-esque behavior every time they botch up their countries. Help is one thing, but some of this stuff has gone on for DECADES, now, and represents an undue burden on the People, in my estimation. Don't slap people around, necessarily, but DO offer Strong Words Of Encouragement in their valiant struggle for Independence. That way, we don't end up losing ours. That's my view.
I'm delighted to learn about this new organization. For too many years now, the neocons and the leaders of AIPAC and other segments of the organized Jewish community have hijacked the discussion of Middle East policy and positioned themselves as the authentic voices of American Jewry. In fact, most American Jews reject the right-wing agenda of the neocons and most are both pro-Israel AND pro-peace. Thanks to AIPAC and a cooperative mass media, it has gotten so that either you're an anti-Zionist, self-hating traitor to your people (a la Noam Chomsky) or you're a war-mongering, uncompromising right-wing thug (a la Joe Lieberman). There is a vital center, which the majority of American Jews occupy, which is proudly and unapologetically Jewish and Zionist, but which also seeks justice and nationhood for the Palestinians and human rights for all.
Submitted by Michal in S'derot (not verified) on Tue Apr. 15, 2008 12:13 PM PDT.
I would gladly contribute to helping J-street establish their offices in S'derot. They might get a different perspective of their goals for Israel.
Michal R.
S'derot, Israel
"[AIPAC]. . .second in power as a Washington lobby group only to that of the National Rifle Association. . . "
At least this point is made clearly. Ironically, roughly half the people who are highly critical of the USA / Israel relationship are also members of the NRA. The other half are typically 'Paul Wellstone' leftists. Literally the only thing they have in common is there shared resentment of the Jewish Nation.
" . . . the only way to protect Israel's security and for that matter American security interests as well is to support relentlessly a negotiated settlement to the Israeli Palestinian conflict,"
Lets all take a shared breath of reality.
In 2,000, Israel (and the world) offered Mr. Arafat the following 'vigorously negotiated' settlement:
1. Ownership of most of the disputed land--comprised of those territories captured by Israel in 1967. Mind you, these territories WERE NOT captured from "Palestine". They were captured from Jordan, who had no legal title themselves. Plus, Israel already had a peace treaty with Jordan, which was subsidized by US Taxpayer money (billions per year in aid to Jordan). In all, the land being offered by Barak in 2,000 would have (together with that land already given over to Egypt) added up to 95% of all the ground Israel captured in 1967.
2. 30-Billion dollars in cash, to help settle those Palestinian-Arabs who remained displaced.
To this offer, Mr. Arafat was profoundly insulted and 'relentlessly' stormed out of the peace negotiations and started the 2nd 'intafata'. Eleven months later 9-11-01 occurred.
Bear in mind the following equitable considerations:
a) Roughly equal numbers of Palestinian-Arabs were displaced in 1947/8 as were Hebrews from regional Mid East countries. No consideration was made to how the Jews were to be compensated for their lost properties--in countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Egypt Yemen and elsewhere.
b) For the first and only time in the history of the world, "refugees" were given legal permission to pass their "refugee" status down to successive generations. Thus, the 750,000 original displaced persons in 1947, became 5-million by 2,000, when their children and grandchildren were counted.
c) For the first and only time in the history of the world, the UNHCR (refugee section of the United Nations) was politically blocked from resettling these Arab populations into permanent and habitable quarters. While some 20-million Arabs and Muslims were welcomed into Western (Euro) nations as immigrants in the past 25 years, very few were Palestinian. This was far from accidental.
As we now stand, the Arab peace initiative being put forth by the Saudis, calls for all 5-million (now 5.5 million) so called "refugees" to become Israel citizens.
Exactly what sort of "two state" solution is that??
Also, as we now stand, Hamas and Hezbollah have committed themselves to the total destruction of Israel, not the negotiation with Israel. They have been supported and armed by Iran, who is of the same political position.
I am all for peace. I simply believe that the public at large has their facts mangled and as a result, their conclusions can not be relied on. Anyone who actually believes that my points-of-fact are factual, can not agree with the substance of the above article or the stated aims of "J street", which are therefore a daydream.
What exactly is left to "negotiate"? Surrender.
Peter the Great:
Who else other then you and your assorted alias' personalities constitute "we"?
What exactly do you contest?
I neither love or dislike "Christ". I simply know history.
History is a science. It utilizes standards, same as other sciences.
However, when it comes to religious history, accommodations (known as "indulgences" in the Roman parlance) are made to satisfy those who's personal beliefs exceed their desire for true-facts.
The only statement carved on the Roslyn Chapel (in Scotland) built by the Knights Templar and in Latin:
"Wine is strong, a king stronger, women even stronger but truth conquers all."
At a time when AIPAC continues to move further and further to the right of center, an organization like JStreet is LONG overdue. I look forward to seeing this group grow and anticipate seeing great things in the near future...
The primary violation of the human rights of the Palestinian-Arab populations is NOT the result of the actions of the Israelis. The Israelis merely wish to have secure borders, free from attack and terrorism.
The primary violation is the direct and consummate result of the actions of the various "host" countries, who house (collectively) about 3-million mainly descendants of the original displaced Palestinian-Arabs. They are kept in concentration camps, nation less, like animals in several countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. Though 85% of these people never set foot inside Israel and were born on the soil in which they now reside, they are being denied basic human rights by their various "hosts". In Lebanon for example, the Palestinian-Arabs are even prohibited from having full-time jobs. It is these same 'host' countries (and their sympathizers) who continue to foment the conflict against Israel, in hopes that some day soon, they can ship out their Palestinian-Arab populations to what would then be re-named "Palestine".
Such events do not happen by coincidence.
This is a war against the Jews, that just has not worked very effectively (for the past 65 years).
I am a practising moderate Jew and longtime Zionist. But I also believe we must pursue an honorable peace in spite of all obstacles. Unfortunately, I see a lack of vision among Israeli leaders today. For us to give Palestinian Arabs what they want, we need to understand what Israelis and Jews need and want both now and in the future.
"Honorable" applies to both Jews and Arabs. Although we must listen to respectful Arab positions on a peace settlement, we should not accept everything they demand especially demands that would harm Israel's long term viability or be disrespectful toward Jews and Judaism. I believe Jews and Arabs must agree on a set of reciprocal principles that would create a structure for Israel and Palestine coexisting within some form of loose federation.
All agreements between the parties must demonstrate respect for each other and complete reciprocity regarding property, population settlement, public services, education, and other matter of social importance. This a far cry from contemporary Isalamic and Arab thinking but we must be adamant about reciprocity of principles.
Reciprocity would allow Jews to live in Palestine just as Arabs live in Israel but in a manner that Jews and Arabs do not interfere with the social, cultural, and religious institutions of one another. Ethnic cleansing of Jews from a Palestinian state is simply unacceptable. Any talk of Arab refugees must also consider Jewish refugees. Any talk of Arab resettlement in Israel must also consider earlier expulsion and exclusion of Jews from the West Bank (pre-1948), Hebron(1929 and 1936), East Bank (creation of Jordan), and Gaza (1935). Historical expulsion of Jews from so called "Arab Lands" contributed much more to the creation of Israel than immigration of Holocaust survivors to Israel as claimed by Arabs.
So far, I do not see that Arabs understand the destructive nature of their own prior acts and they must not ever be left in the position to behave similarly in the future. Therefore, Israel must have absolute territorial integrity. Furthermore, Jews, Judaism, and Hebrew must be explicitely recognized as indigenous to both Israel and Palestine, settlement issues aside.
For an effective Pro-Peace, Pro-Israel lobby to be credible and effective, it must advance a Zionist Vision based on clear, honorable, and recipricol principles.
I would like to know how I might contact those who are founding this new lobby.
Where in the Constitution does it state that the US is obligated to support the outlaw, terrorist, Apartheid regime in Israel? Israel is no friend of this or any other country. By law, AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups are supposed to register as agents of a foreign power. Our "special relationship" with that wretched little country has given us nothing but trouble.
Bob, you can find contact details for the organization at its website
http://jstreet.org/
Mother USA created daughter Israel.What should the mother do when the child cheats,steals and beats her?
New lobby-please it's like a wolf changing a new sheep's clothing.
One of many big lies--the gun lobby is number 1 in USA. Zionk Bovine piles!
being for a two-state solution is yet another zionist ruse/deception. it is easy to be for two-state 'solution' when there is no second state.
there is only one state in expalestine.
zionists must think that the goyim are retards and would not espy yet another zionist/US 'promise'?
do US and israel think that we have forgotten the three invasions of lebanon and in 1967 aggression against egypt, iraq, jordan, and syria. and after 60 years of crimes against palestinians, some of which are unprecendented, US/IOF will allow a second state?
zionists will never be at peace until, with permission of US, they obtain thru wars parts of lebanon, syria, and jordan; thus fulfilling one of the dreams of the mad hebrew priests.
I wonder if the new group is a creation of Aipac to divert increasing critism from the organization. It provides a perfect foil against the pro-u.s. faction who aver that u.s. jews are monolithic in their support of the jewish state to the detriment of u.s. interests.
Looks like Trollstein needs to do a bit more inquiry into the history of the creation of the "state" of Israel. Specifically the founding days, and, past and present treatment of Christians, Muslims, Arabs, and others driven from their houses at gunpoint and with tanks. However, while T's a member of the "revisionist" school of thought, it is no small task to change the mind of a true believer. One question: just how is it that a "state" based upon racial and religious discrimination, which has a history of violence toward "minority groups" (the protected under democracy) is "democratic." Another Israelism, I imagine.
Although Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, they provide up to 40 percent of total campaign contributions for Democratic candidates and up to 20 percent for Republican candidates.
Now any question who is in control. Through is nuts like Hagee. Oh boy.
Obviously the formation of this new PAC is a welcome development. But at the same time we are reading of this development there is a far more disturbing development taking place in Israel.
Even though polls in Israel indicate that a solid majority of Israelis favor negotiations with Hamas, not a single Israeli politician agreed to meet with Carter, other than Shimon Peres, who took the opportunity to scold Carter. Not a single member of the Labor Party, or any Israeli politician who purports to favor engaging with Hamas, was willing to meet with Jimmy Çarter.
As with U.S. politicians on the issue of Iraq, Israeli politicians are utterly indifferent to polls indicating that Israelis favor engaging with Hamas. The right wing in Israel, as in the U.S., feels free to espouse maximilist positions while the left wing fears to forcefully argue for the position held by a clear majority.
Carter is getting savaged by the press here in the U.S. Haaretz, however, published a most eloquent editorial reminding us that Carter is only man to have brought any kind of lasting peace between Israel and any of its neighbors, and that this fact alone merits his treatment as "royalty." This is an opinion sadly absent in the editorial pages here in the U.S.
Until Israeli politicians, U.S. newspaper editors and political organizations in both countries are willing to embrace efforts like Carter's, we will continue to see majorities in both countries favor engagement and negotiation in the region while their respective governments resort to the same failed rejectionist policies that have brought us the current catastrophe in the region.
From basic talmud/torah: two wrongs do not make a right. Palestinian Arabs (the Palestinian mandate pre-existed the "state" of Israel) are the "victims of victims" (Israeli Jews). Why should Palestinian arabs be made to pay for the tribulations of the Israeli (and by extension, jewish) people by beiing placed under a brutal military occupation for sixty full years? Does this not stand Israeli (jewish) claims of "victimhood" on its' head?
Secondly, the "ethnic cleansing" has already been done--by Israelis to the Palestinian people (largely arabs) driven from their homes at gunpoint and by tanks over the past sixty years--although largely whitewashed in "academic" literature. What gives Israelis a greater claim to the Levant?
Sparta indeed.
The reason that accomodation is compelling is that compromise avoids mutually assured destruction.
PS101: In a pluralist society groups gather to influence national policy. With an historical memory fresh from WWII, and, the widespread success of jewish business(wo)men in America ever since (my own jewish ancestors arrived in the 1800's), why not contribute large sums to political campaigns? Groups that fail to organize have forever been left in the dark.
What needs attention is the blemish thrust upon jewishness by the Israel-right-or-wrong crowd, the misuse of Israel as a landing groud for American military adventures, and, the severe consequences that continue to arise due to the brutality of the occupation and detention of Palestinian Arabs.
It is to be hoped that the new Israel for peace movement
becomes a reality and I fully agree with N.A.Ali.
As for comments espoused by Trollstein may I suggest you
do some earnest research in matters Israel and Semitic people.
The recent article in the Haaretz newspaper discussing a
book titled "When and how the Jewish people was invented"
by the TelAviv University historian Prof. Shlomo Sand, should
give you some idea about reality. For instance he answered
this question as follows :
Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
"It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
You may also ask yourself why the orthodox Torah Jews in the
U.S.A never recognized Israel, and furthermore you might want
to re-read Benjamin H. Freedman's speech of 1961, in which
he warned America.
Israeli mythology is no different from the old Greek or Teutonic
Tribes in Germany.
As Freedman said, today's Jews have as much right to be called
Semitic people as the fifty odd million Chinese Muslims have a right to be called Arabs.
For all the historic facts which surround the state of Israel it is
My hope that the new movement for peace is successful.
okanokodi emma:
You wrote:
"Trollestein, you need to give all that the J-Street lobby are trying to come up with a try. you should remember that the Arafat years are gone and the palestines might have learnt thier lesssions."
Chairman Arafat and his split personality has been replaced by two separate Palestinian-Arab factions, who are themselves at war with one another. Why am I not surprised??
Arafat used to make speeches of peace and reconciliation in English and the very next day, be preaching Jihad in Arabic before school children.
Of course he is gone, thank Allah.
I have nothing against the notion of Peace in Israel, quite the contrary. Therefore, I do not have objection to the concept. I just think it is kinda like Larry Flint trying to mix religion and porno, as he did just before being shot. The fact is that there is not a solution for every problem in this world. Not because I say so and not because I wish it so. Because that is the obvious reality. What people don't realize about me is that half the time, I would prefer to be wrong. I don't have that luxury
george in toronto:
You wrote:
"Mother USA created daughter Israel.What should the mother do when the child cheats,steals and beats her?"
Inaccurate on multiple fronts.
Israel was first created by international treaty law following WW1. See: http://english.katif.net/index.php?sub=2&id=1824
While do not agree that these treaties envisaged all of Palestine, as asserted in the above referenced essay, it certainly envisaged a substantial part. 2008 Israel is 1/5th of pre-WW1 "Palestine" and it contains 1.5 million Arab citizens who vote and hold seats in Parliament.
Of course, these post WW1 international laws failed to implement with respect to Israel and Kurdistan, although the same set of treaties did implement with respect to Christian Armenia and all the various Arab/Muslim oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, UAE and all others in the region.
The second set of Internal laws which mandated Israeli independence took place in August, 1948, U.N.G.A. #181:
The 33 countries (58%) that voted in favour of the partition were: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussian SSR, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, Ukrainian SSR, United States of America, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Uruguay, Venezuela.
The 13 countries (23%) that voted against resolution were: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.
The 10 countries (17%) that abstained were: Argentina, Chile, Republic of China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia.
One state (2%) was absent: Thailand (wikipedia. com)
You will note that Canada voted to affirm. The only difference from then to today is the price of a barrel of oil.
bozhidar balkas:
One might think that the various Popes might work on the Catholic population of Lebanon to stop their ongoing brutality against Palestinian-Arabs, whom they consider "refugees" but who were mainly born in Lebanon. Of course, no such words have been uttered. Gross hypocrisy.
optimist:
(Sounds like even your name is a fib).
You wrote:
" . . . Arabs, and others driven from their houses at gunpoint and with tanks. . . "
Yet, no newsprint can be located originating from anywhere in the entire world, alleging that there were any forced expulsions of Arabs by Jews. The British press was all over Israeli independence and nonetheless, no newsprint of any kind from any newspaper in the UK or elsewhere mentions any forced expulsions. And people like yourself don't find that strange. Why am I not surprised.
Here is your reading list, if you wish to play nice with the adults:
Start with: "Jews, God and History" by Max Dimant
"Semites and Anti-Semites" by Prof. Bernard Lewis (Princeton)
"From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters
"The fight for Jerusalem" by Dore Gold.
" . . . "revisionist" school of thought"
I submit you have it backwards.
" . . .One question: just how is it that a "state" based upon racial and religious discrimination . . "
How is Mecca reserved for Muslims (no Jews permitted).
How is the Vatican a Catholic Nation?
At least in Israel, non-Jews are supposed to have equal rights, although I admit that in practice this is not always the case.
If people funneled their energy expended bashing Jews unfairly, towards constructive goals, the Jews would be better of and the world would also be better off.
Joey Gee:
You wrote:
" . . . Although Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, they provide up to 40 percent of total campaign contributions for Democratic candidates . . "
Tell that to Sen Obama, who has something like 1.35 MILLION individual $$ donors. Since the individual donation limit for the primaries is $2,000.00, your math can not make sense. (I think you get your statistics off of Aryan Nations web pages)(???)
thomas c:
the fact that a lefty like Perez has unwelcome words for Carter, should tell you something about Carter, more so then Perez. Perez is the guy who met with the Nazi Grand Mufti al-Husseini in 1947 and offered him a viable two state solution.
To everyone:
The Israeli war-hawks can be controlled. But only when the Islamic war-lords have been disempowered. Should these factions succeed in their goal of destroying Israel, the joke will be on you, because we in the "West" will be next. Israel has the profound misfortune of being on the front-line of this revolution. For that they should be pitied, not condemned.
