• Home
  • About
  • Concepts, Coins, and Terms
    • Anthropolitical Psychology
      • Civilizational Narcissism
      • Conflict – Language Uptake – Social Programming and Scripting – A Suggestion
        • Language Uptake – Programming – On Learning to Listen
        • Mouth –> Ear –> Mind –> Heart System
        • Social Grammar
      • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
      • Malignant Narcissism
      • Narcissistic Scripting
      • Normative Remirroring
      • Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation
    • FTAC – “From The Awesome Conversation”
    • God Mob
    • Intellectual Battlespace
    • Islamic Small Wars
    • New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left
    • Political Spychology
    • Shimmer
  • Library
    • About Language
    • Russian Section
  • Comments and Contact

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

BackChannels

Category Archives: Israel

FTAC – Moscow’s Presence in the Middle East Conflict

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Spychology, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

history, KGB manipulation, MEC, middle east conflict, Palestinian movement, Russia

Here’s a different perspective:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Soviet Era Moscow and “Putin’s Moscow” today both defend and represent a medieval political absolutism laced with criminal and kleptocratic features.

As long as Moscow’s role in engineering the invention of Arafat and the PLO goes unnoticed, and as long as it remains masked off from conversations like this one, there will be no solution to the “middle east conflict”. It’s a money maker for the leaders, clans, and cronies who sustain it at cost to the Palestinians.


Related Reference

On BackChannels – Fast Links

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/11/ftac-why-the-middle-east-conflict-will-be-drawn-down-if-it-is-drawn-down/

Elsewhere On the Internet

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  The Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “Palestinian Authority: 1,700 Hamas Millionaires in Gaza.”  FrontPage Magazine, March 24, 2014.

Lightening, S. M.  “4 Hamas Billionaires and 600 Millionaires Turning Civilian Suffering Into Hard Cash.” Jewish Business News, July 25, 2014.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “How Many Millionaires Live in the “Impoverished” Gaza Strip?”  Gatestone Institute, August 30, 2012.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “How Much is Mahmoud Abbas Worth?  Try $100 Million.”  Gatestone Institute, May 18, 2012.

–33–

FTAC – Module – 12-25-1991 -> 12-25-2016

18 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Israel, Palestinia, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, anti-Semitism, Gaza, Hamas, Jew hate, middle east conflict, Moscow, Nazism, totalitarianism

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

The Cold War ended with the dissolving of the Soviet Union, December 25, 1991.

This represents Putin’s Russia today:

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

Those who have energy and time may want to review the “narrative arc” from 25 years ago to this day.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/


The prompt: a Gaza tykes’ combat training film — uniforms, guns, and all — focused on killing Jews.


Posted by The Israel Project on Facebook, May 9, 2016.

Related Reference

Freimann, Myer.  “Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels: Militant group used child labor to construct underground network in Gaza.”  Tablet, July 25, 2014.

–33–

Also in Media – Syria – Reshet TV – Arab Israeli Muslim Excoriates UN on Syrian Inaction

16 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Political Psychology, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Assad, barbarism, conscience, despotism, dictatorship, global conscience, global political impotence, Putin, reactionary politics, Syrian conflict, tyranny, war


Credit: Reshet TV – Lucy Aharish -Published December 15, 2016


For the malignant among leaders, the power aspired to becomes the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

That power has been amply demonstrated in Syria with insufficient resistance.

–33–

Also in Media: “Israeli Defense Minister Suggests Hezbollah Was Smuggling Chemical Weapons” | The Tower – 12/8/2016

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by commart in Also in Media, Islamic Small Wars, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Hezbollah, Israel, WMDs

Israel does not usually acknowledge foreign military actions, but Liberman told European diplomats Wednesday—the same day that the Mazzeh military airport near Damascus was reportedly hit by surface-to-surface missiles, and a week after two strikes elsewhere in Syria—that that his country was taking action to keep Hezbollah from acquiring “advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction.” His latest comments to the Knesset seemed to suggest that at least one of the strikes was in order to stop Hezbollah from acquiring chemical weapons.“

Our policies and our positions are very clear and are based on three red lines: We won’t allow any harm to the citizens of the State of Israel, we won’t allow any harm to the sovereignty of the State of Israel, and we will not allow the smuggling of high-quality advanced weapons and chemical weapons from Syria to Lebanon for Hezbollah,” Liberman told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Source: Israeli Defense Minister Suggests Hezbollah Was Smuggling Chemical Weapons | The Tower

Moscow’s Rules — A Module

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Russia

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Putin's Russia, Russia, security state

This thin post telegraphs in web links a few of the essentials about President Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet ultra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian project and revanche.  For the viewer, it may work as a portal both into related posts on BackChannels as well as a channel out for greater web-bound curiosity.

Agitation and Propaganda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures

http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-active-measures-modernised-tradition

Recently ‘Also in Media’:

Weiss, Michael.  “Russia’s Long History of Messing With Americans Minds Before the DNC Hack.”  The Daily Beast, July 26, 2016.

Related:

Weiss, Michael and Peter Pomerantsev.  “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture, and Money.”  The Interpreter, November 22, 2014.

Heritage Foundation.  “Propaganda, Disinformation, and Dirty Tricks: The Resurgence of Russian Political Warfare.”  Features YouTube event recording (1:53:40).  Host: Helle C. Dale; speakers: John Lenczowski, Paul Goble, and Ariel Cohen.  April 21, 2014.

Freedom

https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia

Middle East Conflict

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Moscow Apartment Bombings

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Russian Orthodox Church

The ROC has made billions from trading concessions granted to it by the government. It is increasingly asserting its position as the largest of the 14 self-governing Orthodox Churches and is using its political muscle in support of Putin’s aims. It’s no friend to evangelicals, especially in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, seeing them as puppets of the West.

But how has it become so powerful – and how is it using its power?

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/how.the.russian.orthodox.church.is.backing.vladimir.putins.new.world.order/81108.htm – 3/3/2016.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the church received official privileges including the right to import duty-free alcohol and tobacco. In 1995, the Nikolo-Ugreshky Monastery, which is directly subordinated to the patriarchate, earned $350 million from the sale of alcohol. The patriarchate’s department of foreign church relations, which Kirill ran, earned $75 million from the sale of tobacco. But the patriarchate reported an annual budget in 1995-1996 of only $2 million. Kirill’s personal wealth was estimated by the Moscow News in 2006 to be $4 billion.

During this period, the church has been silent about genuine moral issues, such as Russia’s pervasive corruption and the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants in Chechnya. As Kirill begins his reign as patriarch, there is little reason to expect this to change.

Yakov Krotov, a liberal Russian Orthodox priest, recently compared Kirill to a “court Jew,” like Peter Shafirov, the foreign policy aide to Peter the Great. The role of the court Jew, according to Krotov, is to put a civilized face on a repressive system.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/putin-solzhenitsyn-kirill-russia-opinions-contributors_orthodox_church.html – 2/20/2009.

Security State

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

Soviet Era

https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/

Terrorism – Fast Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/

http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-the-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/

http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html

Standard Reference

Piontovsky, Andrei.  “Putin Using All Means Against the West — including Islamist Terrorism — Piontovsky Says.”  The Interpreter, December 12, 2016.

Rosenfeld, Jesse.  “Russia is Arming Hezbollah, Say Two of the Group’s Field Commanders.”  The Daily Beast, January 11, 2016.

Satter, David.  “Putin is No Partner on Terrorism: It’s a Mistake for Washington to Count Moscow an Ally.”  Foreign Affairs, December 22, 2016.


FTAC – A Post as Module

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia

In effect, Moscow, with its penchant for total control, bears responsibility for using the Palestinian refugees to block western democratic and open society (with free press) expansion while also milking the world under the guise of a good deed.

Moscow (Bogdanov) has met with PFLP in recent years (November 2014) and continues to refuse to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.

In Syria, and keeping with its “total control” outlook, it appears that Assad himself incubated ISIL as an element that could be used to blackmail and goad the west.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/

Examine, query, test each URL. As a post on Facebook, the cited URLs taken together tell a story about Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet transformation of Russia into an ultra-nationalist neo-imperial dictatorship.


–33–

FTAC – Moscow – Beyond Rapprochement? Not So Fast!

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

21st Century Neo-Feudalism, middle east conflict, Moscow's revanche, Moscow-Tehran axis, Palestinian KGB

President Barack Obama is not the official who needs to be “outflanked” — nor is President Elect Donald J. Trump.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

Perhaps Putin’s Moscow has promoted “anti- anti-Semitism” and good relations with Israel to continue to sustain its plundering of the middle east conflict.

Note that in recent years, Moscow’s Mikhail Bogdanov has met with PFLP in Moscow (November 2014 — an easy look-up today); that the state refuses to condemn either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations; the state has not only cooperated fully with Tehran in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s hideous persecution of all who refuse to love him in Syria but has itself joined in the barbarism!

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/18/syria-russias-barbarism-the-hospitals/

Under President Putin’s hands, Moscow has been transformed from a once promising democracy into a revived “security state” along familiar old ultra-nationalist lines.

While Israeli conservatives and nationalists have been taking aim at Obama’s approach to managing conflict, the driver of the same — and for many years! — has practically escaped notice!

Soviet Moscow produce a long record of complicity and support for terrorism worldwide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Considering how Putin has chosen to revive Russia to this date 25 years past the dissolve of the Soviet Union (December 1991), what makes Israelis think that Moscow today remains clear of the set of political elements continuing to bear down on its own destruction?

Moscow may yet leave Syria to Assad, but the string of bombings of hospitals, if not other war crimes, may have closed the door on rapprochement, either in fact or in somebody’s head or both.


Inspiration for the response:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19781 – 11/17/2016 — Dr. Martin Sherman’s weekly “Into the Fray” column, this one titled, “Obama unplugged: What to do?”

BackChannels may soon sum its observations in a list of related links involving the defunct Soviet Union and the present corrupt ultra-nationalist dictatorship that in earlier years appeared on the path toward democracy and political modernization.  Instead, and with what has been put on display in Syria — i.e., a medieval and totalitarian theater of politics and war, complete with “The Terrorists” — Russia’s leadership appears to have chosen to in some way relive the 1930s and to perhaps approach the 1940s.

BackChannels means not to allay a change in course but, naturally, to in fact suggest a course correction be made.

Related Reference

Osborne, Andrew and Simon Johnson.  “Russia beefs up Baltic Flee amid NATO tensions: reports.”  Reuters, October 26, 2016.

Peat, Charlie.  “Putin renovates Cold War MISSILE BUNKERS in Crimea as Russia prepares for global assault.”  Express UK, November 2, 2016.

Reuters.  “In Crimea, Russia signals military resolve with new and revamped bases.”  November 1, 2016.

Sputnik.  “Combat Readiness of Utes Missile Systems in Crimea Confirmed by Launches.”  November 19, 2016.  Note: the article reports a P-35 missile launch (NATO name “SS-N-3a), but BackChannels sees no major or western general media confirmation at this posting).

–33–

FTAC – Israel Not At War With the ‘Arab World’

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arab-Jewish relations, disinformation, Israel, kleptocracy, middle east conflict, Moscow-Tehran, Palestinian KGB, Soviet post-Soviet, terrorism

Well, the Jews are not “fighting the Arab World” — there’s a kind of defamation in that statement.

Israelis are defending themselves from those who wish to annihilate them — and considering who has been friendly toward and paying for Hamas and Hezbollah, well, gosh, it’s just not the Arab world after all.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Moscow-Tehran as an axis appears to want to maintain a common interest in positively medieval political absolutism. Somebody has learned how to make a lot of money (for themselves, their cronies, their lackeys, and their tools) that way.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/


Of course the Arab and Muslim worlds have within them strong anti-Semitic currents, but let’s go back to the 1920s and endemic 19th Century Russian anti-Semitism  and the echoes of other medieval anti-Semitism, the same that compelled Herschel and others to entertain the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Israel, and come forward to three distinct aspects in the character of the 1920s: Stalin’s installment in power in Russia as the dominant state in the Soviet Union; the development in the universities of an intellectual path leading to Nazism; and the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928).

All mere coincidence?

Additional Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/140328/timmerman-disinformation – 8/7/2013.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/the_czars_and_the_jews/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/protocols.html


The mercurial, paranoid seventy-four-year-old tyrant was certainly capable of ordering the mass deportations. During the Second World War, he removed Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, ethnic Germans, and Crimean Tatars from their homelands—more than two million Soviet citizens in all. He was no novice, either, when it came to purges and show trials. In the Pravda report, most of the accused “murderers in white smocks” were identified as Jewish and agents of the U.S. and Israel. There were further arrests of Soviet Jews, exemplars of “national and racist chauvinism.” Jews were dismissed from their jobs. They were insulted on the streets, in shops, and on public transportation, according to Arno Lustiger, author of “Stalin and the Jews.”

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/imagining-stalins-plot-to-exile-the-jews – 2/1/2016.

–33–

FTAC – Why the Middle East Conflict Will Be Drawn Down (If It Is ‘Drawn Down’)

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

history, KFB, middle east conflict, politics, Russia

Why things haven’t changed and may not until the root of the conflict has been made clear.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

The Russian state’s history of political criminality — that which has driven the upending of its governments twice in the past 100 years  — has sat at the base of the middle east conflict and helped kept it collecting money for those it blessed: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh, and Khaled Mashaal.

I don’t know if the state of affairs will straighten out with Donald J. Trump in office, but the more word gets around, the more likely it will.

Two other notes of which to be aware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Once you know — and perhaps once Moscow knows the popular west knows — and once the Palestinians know — this game with the refugees should be over.

Noting the KGB history may not change Arab culpability for sustaining the refugees as an apartheid population in relation to their own states, but two legs of the old table have been removed by time — Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, both state sponsors of terrorism.

If the 1920s may be noted as the launch period for the Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella organization beneath which al-Qaeda and others have developed, then this new way of looking at the old conflict also starts to put away an entire era of warfare that needs finally to be consigned more largely to the 20th Century.


The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, which places that development in the same region in time as the full blown expression of Stalinism and in Germany the final fermentation of what would then soon become Nazism.

Addendum – December 26, 2016

SECURITY COUNCIL
7853RD MEETING (PM)
SC/12657
23 DECEMBER 2016
Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms
14 Delegations in Favour of Resolution 2334 (2016) as United States Abstains.

Both the creation of the document, commentary on it, and the voting that ensued refused to acknowledge Moscow’s old hand in the creation of the Middle East Conflict.

–33–

← Older posts
Newer posts →
  • Compassion
  • Empathy
  • Justice
  • Humility
  • Inclusion
  • Integrity
____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

Recent Posts

  • All At Once–War
  • On X: Final Comment on Trump-Putin
  • On X: American State of Affairs: Notes to Anders Aslund.
  • On X: Cowards and Criminals Negotiate Russia v. Ukraine
  • The Destructive Power of Lies: Active Measures and Destabilization and Influence Operations
  • East-West Rivalry: Trump-Putin Divide the World

Categories

  • 21st Century Feudal
  • 21st Century Modern
  • A Little Wisdom
  • Also in Media
  • American Domestic Affairs
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Asides
  • BCND – BackChannels News Day
  • Books
  • Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Epistemology
  • Events and Other PSA's
  • Extreme Brown vs Red-Green
  • Fast News Share
  • foreign aid
  • Free Speech
  • FTAC
  • FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation
  • International Development
  • IRT Images Research Tropes
  • Islamic Small Wars
    • Gaza Suzerain
  • Journal
    • Library
  • Journalism
  • Links
  • Notes On Reading BackChannels
  • OnX
  • Philology
  • Philosophy
  • Poetry
  • Political Psychology
  • Political Spychology
  • Politics
  • Psychology
    • Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy
  • Qualities of Living (QOL)
  • Referral
  • Regions
    • Africa
      • Central African Republic
      • Guinea
      • Kenya
      • Libya
      • Mali
      • Morocco
      • Nigeria
      • South Africa
      • Sudan
      • Tunisia
      • Zimbabwe
    • Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Burma
      • China
      • India
      • Myanmar
      • North Korea
      • Pakistan
      • Turkey
    • Caribbean Basin
      • Cuba
    • Central America
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
    • Eastern Europe
      • Serbia
    • Eurasia
      • Armenia
      • Azerbaijan
      • Russia
      • Ukrain
      • Ukraine
    • Europe
      • France
      • Germany
      • Hungary
      • Poland
    • Great Britain and United Kingdom
    • Iberian Peninsula
    • Middle East
      • Egypt
      • Gaza
      • Iran
      • Iraq
      • Israel
        • Palestinia
      • Jordan
      • Kurdistan
      • Lebanon
      • Palestinian Territories
      • Qatar
      • Saudi Arabia
      • Syria
      • United Arab Emirates
      • Yemen
    • North America
      • Canada
      • United States of America
    • Norther Europe
    • Northern Europe
      • Sweden
    • South America
      • Argentina
      • Brazil
      • Columbia
      • Ecuador
      • Venezuela
    • South Pacific
      • Australia
      • New Zealand
      • Papua New Guinea
      • West Papua
  • Religion
  • Spain
  • Syndicate Red Brown Green
  • transnational crime
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Data

Europe

  • Defending History
  • Hungarian Spectrum
  • Yanukovych Leaks

Great Britain

  • Stand for Peace

Israeli and Jewish Affairs

  • Chloe Simone Valdary

Journals

  • Amil Imani
  • New Age Islam

Middle East

  • Human Rights & Democracy for Iran
  • Middle East Research and Information Project

Organizations

  • Anti-Slavery
  • Atlantic Council
  • Fight Hatred
  • Human Rights First Society
  • International Network Against Cyberhate
  • The Center for Victims of Torture

Meta

  • Create account
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • BackChannels
    • Join 356 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • BackChannels
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar