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Category Archives: Israel

FTAC – MEC – When You See It, It’s Ugly

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by commart in FTAC, Gaza Suzerain, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

MEC, middle east conflict

Neighbors make the neighborhood. When the neighbors have to count among themselves either secular or religious mafia — post-Soviet Putinism, retrograde Islamism — the good neighbors (e.g., “moderns” and “moderates”) disappear beneath the flashings of malignant egos who have as their chief concern themselves at the center of a universe they control and from which they derive adulation and love in abundance — that they have to rig everyone else’s reality is something easily overlooked — or hushed — by the same.

Gaza should be liberated from Hamas; Ramallah should be cleared of the hypocrites and liars of old PLO, PFLP, “solidarity” anti-Semites and lunatics and the basis in thought (the “information space”) for existing at all. We should know the names of families tied to terror by financing it; we should know how money moves into these streams that flow against humanity and see that law and military and paramilitary force cut them off and ruin them. Every facet sustained in sustaining the middle east conflict needs to be taken apart and taken down to its language — and then the language needs to be exploded never to be put back together again.

The neighbors make the neighborhood.

The problem with the middle east conflict resides with who has been running it, profiting from it, murdering for it (160 children in tunnels; the destruction and continuing suffering of Yarmouk in Syria [while Mashaal dances off to Tunisia with $2.5 billion in estimated wealth]) — it never was about the “poor Palestinians”, the Arab abandoned refugees of wars undertaken in the glorification of contempt for others, exclusiveness, and unbridled hate.


What is really challenged — all that is challenged — is the “malignant narcissism”, the domains of the “control freaks”, the feudal estates of the politically criminal.

Related

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in having suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together.

The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organisation to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

http://www.factualisrael.com/faisal-weizmann-agreement-arabs-invited-jews-return-israel/ – 3/3/1919 (9/25/2014).


According to Forbes, the Islamist terror group, also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, has an annual income of $2 billion. Hamas comes in second, with a yearly revenue of $1 billion. Colombia’s FARC is ranked third with a $600 million annual turnover, while Hezbollah is fourth with $500 million. Fifth on the Forbes list is the Taliban with $400 million, followed by Al-Qaida and its affiliates with $150 million; Pakistani-based Lashkar e-Taiba with $100 million; Somalia’s Al-Shabaab with $100 million; Real IRA with $50 million; and, closing the top-ten list is Boko Haram, with a $25 million annual revenue.

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/forbes-israel-isis-worlds-richest-terrorist-organisation-history-613806 – 11/12/2014.

# # #

FTAC – Israel – Ethiopian Jews – Facets – The Ugly, The Bad, and The Beautiful

26 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in FTAC, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Israel

Just so you know —

— Israel is a real (Jewish-majority) society and one gathered back from all over the world.  It has issues within itself, but the focus on racism in Israel may belie something in the accuser.

I’m not going to respond to X unless he starts calling and verbally elbowing others here.

What he is doing is singling out The Jew.

I’m not playing that game — and none of you should either. He’s not presenting “a different point of view”: he’s promoting old fashioned anti-Semitic agitation and propaganda.

You should know that the International Solidarity Movement complains of FBI infiltration — a good thing if true, for the FBI indeed watches extremist groups carefully.  Also, the ISM has supported Hamas and Fatah operations — and in the U.S., Hamas is designated a terrorist organization just as the Taliban may be in Pakistan.

The Ugly

Regarding the sterilization story, it is unfortunately true, acknowledged by the government — I’ll share a Salon piece with you in a moment. It was wrong.  However, in a democratic open society, scandals break, the ugly truth comes out, and if the system works, justice is sought and in some part obtained.

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/israel_admits_ethiopian_jewish_immigrants_were_given_birth_control_shots/

Again, it was wrong, but it also comes to light, and I hope grievance has been openly redressed (I haven’t looked at this story in a long time).

The Bad (Gets Better)

It’s hard being an immigrant anywhere, new on the block, not yet part of the landscape, and that’s true for Jewish immigrants to Jewish Israel —

— but again, Jews listen, and white Jews who have problems with black ones get some comeuppance, some criticism in public, some change in public policy if necessary, and the society moves forward.


Righteous complaint — righteous response:

https://www.nishmat.net/maayan-ethiopian-women/


From 2012 —

— Free speech in action.

The Beautiful

Enough said.

Additional Reference

On the claim involving FBI infiltration of the ISM, web search “FBI, International Solidarity Movement” should yield listings of socialist publications dealing with arrests and infiltration.

What follows here for neophyte political readers are western-side introductions to the ISM.

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/international_solidarity_movement_ism_ – 8/27/2012

http://www.stoptheism.com/

http://israelseen.com/2010/10/24/lee-kaplan-infiltrated-the-international-solidarity-movement-and-in-israel-to-expose-the-fraud-in-rachel-corrie-case/ – 10/24/2010

http://archive.adl.org/main_anti_israel/international_solidarity_movement.html#.VE1dZCLF98E – 11/29/2010

On Related Anti-Semitism

In Ethiopia, where I stayed for two days, almost everyone I met seemed to think that Israeli war crimes deserved international sanction and that Jews should be made to pay reparations for the destruction of Gaza hospitals and educational facilities.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/the_ebola_like_plague_of_anti_semitism_sweeping_the_west – 8/4/2014


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaktN8bZfmwqjSFwdh5Kyvg

ECE appears to be covering radical Islam in Ethiopia today.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon

http://www.meforum.org/961/operation-solomon – Spring 2006 (book review)

# # #

Attacks – Ottawa, Jerusalem

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in Canada, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

attacks, death by car, Jerusalem, Ottawa, shootings, terrorism

The “different kind of war”, the “war for detectives and poets”, the “Islamic Small Wars” — singular or plural — have not been impeded at their low-intensity simmer.

The impetus for this post came with a phone call, a heads-up on the Ottawa incident —

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/parliament-hill-attack-1-gunman-dead-after-soldier-shot-at-national-war-memorial-1.2808710 – 10/22/2014


The violence is not confined to Parliament. Police say that there could be multiple shooters and that there are three shooting incidents in the capital.

Ottawa police, whose buildings were also locked down, provided details on Twitter about multiple shootings: “Incidents occurred at National War Memorial, near the Rideau Centre and Parliament Hill.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/22/world/americas/canada-ottawa-shooting/index.html – 10/22/2014.

So far, according to the CNN piece, no links with Islamic violence have been made in the Ottawa shootings.

Related on Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/22/us-canada-attacks-shooting-idUSKCN0IB1PY20141022 – 10/22/2014.

Related on Fox

The shooting at the government complex came after witnesses said they saw two men jump out of a Toyota Corolla and run toward the memorial, where one opened fire on the soldier, who later died at Civic Hospital. Officials did not identify the guard pending notification of his family, but The Ottawa Sun said he was a member of Hamilton’s Argylls of Canada – 91st Canadian Highlanders who were on tour guarding the memorial.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/10/22/soldier-shot-at-war-memorial-near-canadian-parliament/ – 10/22/2014.

Now cited in comments:

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office says two scheduled events today in Toronto with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have been cancelled.
The last-minute announcement comes amid an ongoing emergency in Ottawa, where several shootings have occurred on or near Parliament Hill.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/22/malalas_honorary_citizenship_ceremony_cancelled_pmo.html – 10/22/2014.


The latest follows an apparently attempted murder by car in Quebec:

(Reuters) – A Canadian man who was killed by police on Monday after trying to run over two soldiers in Quebec “had become radicalized,” the government said after the first such incident in Canada since the country joined the fight against Islamic State militants.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/us-canada-military-idUSKCN0I927020141021 – 10/20/2014


From Jerusalem:

A baby girl was killed and eight people were injured Wednesday, after a terrorist hit them with his car outside the Givat Hatachmoshet (Ammunition Hill) Light Rail stop.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186461#.VEfv0iLF98E – “Baby Murdered in Jerusalem Terror Attack” – 10/22/2014.

# # #

Pat Condel – “Boo Hoo Palestine”

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, Condel, Gaza

Posted to YouTube October 20, 2014.

Reminders

http://tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels – 7/25/2014.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/ – 7/28/2014.

Protectorates and Suzerain

Semi-Autonomous Gaza

Semi-Autonomous Ramallah

The camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt: national protectorates until integrated out of Arab apartheid.

Some dreams never come true and shouldn’t.

# # #

Link – Gaza – Four Boys, A Beach – Staged Murder

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in Gaza, Israel, Journalism, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

forensic analysis, Gaza, Israel, media, Pallywood, propaganda

Do you ever see little boys out jogging? Of course not. They’re following directions. Someone is trying to figure out the best way to exploit them. A Swedish site says that this image was taken the previous day. I don’t believe it. I’m sorry, Palestinians: I no longer believe a single word you say. They’re gamboling unnaturally, they just happen to be the three who were killed, and they’re in the same clothes that they wore when they died.

By the way, the children had to have been unaware of the real plan. They were mercilessly used by murderers.

http://www.thomaswictor.com/was-the-gaza-beach-incident-a-setup/ – 10/1/2014 with updates.

Wictor appears to report his observations and reasoning as he experiences them and as he has enough to package into a post.  In the above, I’ve taken an excerpt from what at the moment is the second piece in a series.  In order, and as an update (October 16, 2014), here is what is online now:

http://www.thomaswictor.com/four-boys-on-the-gaza-beach/ – 9/29/2014.

http://www.thomaswictor.com/was-the-gaza-beach-incident-a-setup/ – 10/1/2014 with updates.

http://www.thomaswictor.com/wall-street-journal-confirms-hamas-beach-operation/ – 10/15/2014.


Propagandists count on three elements for the effectiveness of their work: the show-and-tell of a simple picture and an immediately sensible explanation for it; the impossibility of honest investigation; defeat, fear, intimidation, or laziness within their target audiences.  Against that framework, Thomas Wictor has been quietly analyzing the feed from “Pallywood” — more or less the Hamas Production Company — and how its claims and products have been actually put together.

Central throughout the Islamic Islamic Small Wars: who do you believe?

And why believe whom you might believe?

Fear, intimidation, loyalty, and patronage may be in that decision.

The love of God, of humanity, integrity, and principle may be in it too.

Wictor’s an honest man (we’ve corresponded briefly, and with that and what he does, that’s how I feel).

# # #

Gaza Script Rewrite

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in Gaza, Israel, Middle East

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Gaza, good spirits, Israel, middle east conflict, philology, political psychology, politics

For some 20 years now Israeli governments, left and right, operated within the paradigm of the two-states solution, “land for peace” formula and the belief that only the establishment of a Palestinian country in the very heart of our own will solve all our problems. This, however, was tried and failed numerously. If there’s indeed any science in “political science”, then these “experiments” and “observations” must be taken into the most serious of consideration.

http://levzhivaev.blogspot.co.il/2014/10/yom-kippur-and-false-conceptions.html – 10/9/2014.


I should publish the  above excerpt as a link and leave it be.

Instead, and this a true “back channel” in “People’s Diplomacy” (online), I will suggest only that poetry needs once again to be taken seriously.

🙂

The kind of Gazan leadership that uses children — 160 of them now dead — to build assault tunnels has a problem in the head sustained by language internalized and maintained (or else!) in the head.

That language can be changed.

Gazans may be quiet, considering the kind of ears the walls may have, but they need no longer be kept blind and deaf as well.

Where Hamas has exploited children, Gazans may know it.

Where Hamas has forced, manipulated, or positioned noncombatants and their immediate surrounds as human shields, Gazans well know it.

Where Khaled Mashaal appears to have gone missing through the action while producing a reputation as a now powerful and wealthy man worth more than $2.5 billion, Gazans may know it.

Where Israelis mean well and Arab Israelis, Christian or Muslim, do good by themselves and others, Gazans now know it.

Those are nice homilies for reading by the side of the road, but let’s really get on the on ramp: the language traps formed by Islamist and Soviet post-Soviet anti-Semitic cant and rant and the congruent manipulations in language to produce anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist passion are the kind of traps that hold the mind in tangled webs.  They’re woven of evil pairings — simple metonymy — into dismal and self-defeating worldviews.  Taken up and strewn around campuses and streets by the “solidarity movements”, they sustain the plundering of Gazans by powerful, deeply exploiting, and sociopathic personalities.

The Revolution on the Inside will not be televised.

Related Reference

http://levzhivaev.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/israeli-military-operations-in-gaza.html – 7/17/2014.

# # #

Christy Anastas — From the Middle East Conflict — “Stories Not Told to the World” — A Christian Voice

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Christian, criticism, middle east conflict, Palestinia, Palestinian, Palestinian lying

The content dates from Spring 2014, and some of it has been well reviewed, but I feel it still worth a listen and a look.

______

A video was uploaded onto YouTube which featured a young Palestinian Christian woman describing what it was like to live under Israel military occupation. If that was all the video was about, it would have simply been added to the thousands of other YouTube videos which describe the same thing. What made Christy Anastas’ video unique was that she bravely revealed how Palestinian Christians have and are being treated by Palestinian Muslims and nationalists.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/01/what-happens-when-a-palestinian-doesnt-hate-israel-enough/ – 5/1/2014.


Christy Anastas: “I believe in people, not concrete.”

Posted to YouTube – 4/25/2014.


On the whereabouts of Christy Anastas —

Christy Anastas, the 24-year-old woman who has fled the West Bank (where a journalist was recently sentenced to a year in prison for mocking Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook), will present herself for inspection at a police station in England on the morning of April 29, 2014.

Why?

Because a self-styled “peace and justice” activist has called the police in England, informing the authorities that she may be a “missing person.” Consequently, Christy will present herself at a police station somewhere in England this morning to assure them that she is not being held against her will.

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2014/04/christy_anastas_on_the_stone_p.html – 4/28/2014.


On PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat —

So, given that even Hamas never claimed that 96 percent of those killed were civilians, where did Erekat get this number? Again, we must admit that he simply made it up.

This is not exactly the first time: Erekat was one of the inventors of the “Jenin Massacre” in 2002. In fighting in the West Bank city, 52 Palestinians were killed, as were 23 Israeli soldiers. Yasser Arafat claimed at the time that the “Jenin Massacre” could only be compared to the siege of Stalingrad in World War II. Erekat himself said “the numbers of killed could reach 500 since the Israeli offensive began. Thousands of wounded. The Jenin refugee camp is no longer in existence, and now we’ve heard of executions there.”

There was considerable destruction in parts of the camp, but at no time did it cease to be in existence. He made that up. Does any of this matter? It does.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10183 – 10/8/2014.


Today:

http://www.emmaus-group.org/

# # #

 

FTAC – An Observation on Integrity in Scholarship on the Middle East Conflict

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-Semitism, middle east conflict, scholarship

Integrity counts and truth matters and the two integrate with honest scholarship. “Simply put, the Jews fleeing Europe and the atrocities of Nazism, found a home in the mid-1940s in the newly-created State of Israel, while the Palestinians lost theirs.” It’s not true. It’s stated as true because it’s believed, easily comprehended, and perhaps troublesome to actually independently research. Even intending to “get into the books” may be complicated by questions like “how far back does one go?” Or “what should be taken into account and what dismissed?”

Zionism responds to centuries of European persecution, and in fact discrimination that targeted Muslims along with Jews. The leveraging of religious passion and supersessionary argument account for that (the Church has had its institutional subscription building and subscription-taxing interests too) as does ethnic minority status outside of one’s homeland.

Modern Zionism is also a 19th Century pursuit and the subsequent Jewish immigration and agricultural capitalization of what is today Israel far precedes the rise Nazi Germany.

As regards the refugees of 1948, Efraim Karsh’s volume _Palestine Betrayed_ provides an account perhaps difficult to accept but also broad, fair, and vigorous in research: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300127270

The best scholars serve God because the attachment of mind to cultural and personal loyalties produces ephemeral research and dishonest and disingenuous findings. We should not see what we want to see but see what is to be seen, and doing that with clarity, we may then repair some things.


Source of the little bit of grit in this clam’s shell:

http://megaphoneoz.com/?p=9221 – 9/29/2014.

Proposed new approach: adopt empirical methods; adhere to good principles in ethics, morality, and scholarship; and let’s move on to get people settled without rancor in their various spaces and otherwise integrated, independent, and living as the free agents of their own destinies, not as the subjugated pawns of the destinies of piratical dictators or their mafias.

# # #

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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.

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