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Tag Archives: politics

Welcome to Israel! Travel Writing Sponsored by The Carter Center

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, North America, Poetry, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Religion, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ferrari Sheppard, Israel, journalism, Palestinians, political, politics, social justice

She examined my passport again, “Do know any Palestinians?” she asked.

I smirked and lied, “No.”

I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014; also posted: I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ – Stop Being Famous – 1/24/2014.

* * *

Carter taught Christian students in Plains Georgia that Judaism teaches Jews to feel superior to non-Jews, that Jewish religious practices are tricks to enhance wealth, and that current Israeli policy toward Palestinians is based on these “Jewish” values and practices.

Carter at Cardozo: It’s Not the “New-Anti-Semitism” — It’s the Older Kind | FrontPage Magazine – 4/10/2013.

* * *

How would you characterize from a Jew’s point of view the uncircumcised?

Non believer?

And what?

Unclean, what?

They called them DOGS! That’s true.

Jimmy Carter’s Bible Class as Transcribed and Commented Upon by Michael Miller, 8/15/07 | Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors – 8/15/2007; posted 4/1//2013.

That was a long time ago, Mr. Carter.

Related: Is Bible Teacher Jimmy Carter an Old-Fashioned Jew-Hater?: But How Can a True Christian… :: The Phyllis Chesler Organization – 11/15/2007.

* * *

The history of Palestinians was something I was familiar with as well, only because in high school, my friend’s parents were Moroccan Jews with staunch right-wing Zionist views. They’d go on about how Palestinians were worth shit and how they were sucking off the land they stole, and how they were not from Palestine, but Jordan. Truth be told, my friend’s parents’ passion about their ‘homeland’ made me sick. As a black person living in the United States, I could not relate to their love for their proclaimed homeland because I never had one. My ancestors were captured from various regions of Africa and forced onto ships bound for the Americas. Therefore, when questioned about the geographic origins of my ancestors, my answers were as vague as Africa is big.

I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014.

It appears the young celebrity creating his celebrity flew to Israel on The Carter Center’s dime (“In the weeks preceding my departure from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to Tel Aviv, I received travel warnings from The Carter Center, the organization responsible for sponsoring my trip”) with a reactive and retributive attitude forged in self-righteous alienation, never mind that, for example, about 1.7 million Israelis live in the same funky poverty for which he would claim to stand in the interest of social justice.

* * *

Crying Isn’t a Weakness: StyleLikeU’s Closet Profile on Ferrari Sheppard – YouTube – 11/19/2013.

*

The Genius Of The Crowd: Charles Bukowski – YouTube – Posted 12/19/2007.  Related text: The Genius Of The Crowd by Charles Bukowski — Hello Poetry

* * *

Related on this blog (a whole section): Anthropolitical Psychology | BackChannels

Our worlds are as small or as large as the information we acquire about them, and they are also as false or honest as the methods we use to comprehend whole issues and the integrity and curiosity with which we pursue them.

I get a little “Jewed out” myself, sometimes, and somewhere between the ever present clouds of the Holocaust and constant distributed cheerleading (deserved) and defense (also deserved) of Israel.  Nonetheless, riding beside my own brand of international humanism (thanks, Felix Adler and Abraham Maslow — two more Jews), Judaism itself and its call to conscience (yo, Jimmuh: Jesus was Jewish!) remains for me an integral part of seeking social justice and what is good in living individually and communally.

* * *

Despite months of lobbying by anti-Israel activists and a desperate last minute petition drive, the 141st APHA annual meeting and exposition held in Boston. defeated an anti-Israel resolution by 74 to 36 votes. The resolution was discussed by the association’s Joint Policy Committee. The anti-Israel campaign was led by activists of BDS, the global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, which was initiated by Palestinians in 2005 and is coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee established two years later.

Pro-Israeli activists defeat anti-Israel resolution on Palestinian health issues | JPost | Israel News – 11/10/2013

The forces of Jew Hate, a term earthier and less sanitized than “anti-Semitism”, have created on-campus and political bubble environments sufficient to enclose the “open-minded”, who may not be as much so as presumed, nor more cagey than vulnerable.

* * *

As I stood in line at JFK waiting to be interrogated by security agents prior to boarding a flight to Tel Aviv last January, I thought of all the reasons why I didn’t belong there. I’m only half Jewish, for starters – and it’s the wrong half. I only know a couple of Hebrew words. I have a lot of what an Un-Jewish Activities Committee might call “Palestinian sympathies.”

Learning from Israeli Secularism | The Humanist Community Project – 5/29/2013.

Jewish ethnicity and the embrace and expression of faith may vary quite within the Jewish community, but it may not be possible these days to escape the influence of the wisdom of Hillel the Elder, himself quite possibly the elder contemporary of Jesus, from any contemporary stance.  One might also go back a little farther in time to “The Akedah” and the undefined test given Abraham, a test either of obedience, which children believe without question, or of conscience, which adults may perceive with penetration – and perceive as Abraham failing (God never speaks to him again; an emissary in the form of an angel has to intercede in the murder; a substitute ram is made to appear for the knife Abraham would have too willingly used on Isaac: had he only spoken up, or, in the modern vernacular, spoken truth to power on behalf of Isaac and Sarah).

Israel provides a broad suite of basic services, including the training of Abbas’s police force, to the generations of refugees who remained on the land after the Arab war of annihilation in 1948.  When the hate recedes, when the threat of violence against Jews fades on to the pages of history, the Jews and other Israelis — Christians, Muslims, and others — will prove as helpful as can be, but those days seem always set farther away by smears.

Reference

American Task Force on Palestine

Annual report shows 1.7 million Israelis living below poverty line | JPost | Israel News – 12/17/2013.

Campus Watch

Hillel: If Not Now, When? (Jewish Encounters): Joseph Telushkin: 9780805242812: Amazon.com: Books

Hillel – Israel & Judaism Studies

Increase in Palestinians Treated in Israeli Hospitals | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com – 8/2/2013.

Is Bible Teacher Jimmy Carter an Old-Fashioned Jew-Hater?: But How Can a True Christian… :: The Phyllis Chesler Organization – 11/15/2007.

International Solidarity Movement | Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.

International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – NGO Monitor – 2/27/2012.  Related: CAMERA: Whitewashing ISM – 9/1/2004.

Israel arrests Al-Qaida recruits trying to bomb U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 1/22/2014.

Israel – Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)

I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ – Stop Being Famous – 1/24/2014; I Traveled to Palestine-Israel And Discovered There is no ‘Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’ | Ferrari Sheppard – 2/10/2014.

Jimmy Carter’s Bible Class as Transcribed and Commented Upon by Michael Miller, 8/15/07 | Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors – 8/15/2007; excerpt re-posted to present site 4/11/2013.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/jimmy_carters_human_rights_dis.html – 8/26/2007 (added here 10/9/2014).

Learning from Israeli Secularism | The Humanist Community Project – 5/29/2013.

List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2013 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept 1993) – List: 1994 – 2012 – Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Carter Center: Advancing Human Rights and Alleviating Suffering

The Genius Of The Crowd by Charles Bukowski — Hello Poetry – n.d.

Which crowd?

Addendum

Since posting the above blog, this gem has been published in the New York Observer: Boteach, Rabbi Shmuley.  “The Moral Disintegration of Jimmy Carter.”  August 11, 2014:

Mr. Carter’s underdog obsession is what motivated him to legitimize Fidel Castro and take his side in a bio-weapons dispute with the United States and to praise North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung with the words: “I find him to be vigorous, intelligent,…and in charge of the decisions about this country.” This is the Korean dictator who, together with the tyrannical son who succeeded him, starved to death about 3 million of their own people. Carter added absurdly, “I don’t see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation.” He also hailed Marshal Joseph Tito as “a man who believes in human rights,” and said of murderous Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, “Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights.” Carter told Haitian dictator Raul Cédras that he was “ashamed of what my country has done to your country,” which made most Americans ashamed of Jimmy Carter.

# # #

Why Everyone Should Boycott Official 2014 Holocaust Commemorations in Hungary

13 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Hungary, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions

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anti-Semitism, division, Hungarian nationalism, Hungary, political, politics

Dr. David Mandler's avatarDavid Mandler's Blog

Imagine the White House chief of staff stating the following at a press conference after a significant meeting about a highly controversial issue with the leading representatives of American Jewry: “the President will address all of our fellow Americans as well as our Jewish citizens next week.” It does not take a lot of imagination to envision the firestorm of criticism that would follow such a division of the American people into real Americans vs. Jewish citizens of America.

Yet, this is precisely what János Lázár, the Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office, said after the unsuccessful round-table meeting with leading Hungarian Jewish organizations. Of course, he was not talking about fellow Americans but rather “fellow Hungarian countrymen” and “our Jewish citizens.” Perhaps at other times, this statement would have drawn more fire from liberal Hungarians and Hungarian Jews alike. At this time, though, Hungarian Jews are, in a…

View original post 1,093 more words

Middle East Conflict – The Other Path Toward Peace – Glazov Interviews Zahran

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

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advocacy, Israel, Jamie Glazov, Jordan, Kerry Plan, Mudar Zahran, Palestinian, peace talks, politics, Zionism

An Hamas terrorist has more rights inside Israel than a Jordanian Palestinian citizen inside Jordan.

______

The Glazov Gang- Secular Palestinian Leader Denounces John Kerry’s Peace Plan. – YouTube – 18:44 – 2/8/2014.

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Jamie Glazov Productions

Mudar Zahran :: Gatestone Institute

Jordanian Palestinian who writes for ‘Post’ indicted in Jordan for ‘inciting hatred’ | JPost | Israel News – 12/31/2013.

* * *

The sun doesn’t also rise.

In some parts of the world, it rises for the first time.

With time, and with the efforts of a courageous independent few, the hateful games played by spoilers against the Jewish people become more clear as to their true intents, and not only as regards Jews but as regards all others in their path.

Around 11:15:

This is all anti-Semitism 2.0 . . .  the problem for me as a leader of my people is we’re going to suffer because of this . . . as long as they push us into fighting against Israel and make the point that Israel is demonized and bad while we get killed and kill Israelis in the process . . . .  this is awful, and this is exactly what Mr. Kerry’s peace plan, actually King Abdullah’s peace plan, this is exactly what it’s going to bring . . . .

______

Muslim & Zionist! Kasim Hafeez: “Israel is the only liberal democracy in ME” – YouTube – 6/5/2012.

______

Arabs for Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islam in Israel and the Palestinian territories – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Muslim supporters of Israel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* * *

“I’ve had a few instances even in Halifax when Muslims will say, look I may not agree with everything but its given me things to think about. That’s the start you know; its’ creating cracks in the lies they may have accepted as truth. So that’s one of the best feelings, when I do have Muslims and it’s made them think, challenged what they believe and their ready to take it further.”

Why a British Muslim of Pakistani Origin Defends Israel | United with Israel, n.d.

Related: The Muslim Zionist states his case | In The Paper | Comment and analysis | Mail & Guardian – 8/23/2013.

# # #

Adding to the Hungarian-Iranian Connection

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, Hungary, Iran, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine

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commentary, Hungary, Iran, political, politics, Putin, Russia, Ukraine

President Janos Ader and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in separate messages felicitated the anniversary of victory of the Islamic Revolution to President Hassan Rouhani and First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri.

In his message, President Ader underlined the efforts of both countries in expansion of bilateral cooperation in all fields, which secure interests of the two countries.

Farsnews – http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13921122000527 – 2/11/2014.

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More BackChannels pieces on Hungary’s drift toward nationalist socialism and Iran:

Hungary – How Distant in Time? – Comment: Holocaust Memorial Boycott | BackChannels – 2/10/2014.

Hungary’s UN Envoy Seeks to Clear National Conscience, Admits Hungarian Collusion in the Holocaust | BackChannels – 1/26/2014.

Erdogan – Turkey : Jobbik – Hungary — Amplifying the Politics of Division | BackChannels – 1/25/2014.

Reference for the European Commission – Scheppele’s Proposal to Counter Resurgent (Hungarian) Nationalist Urges | BackChannels – 12/2/2014.

A Note on the Hungarian Jobbik Party’s Relationship With Iran | BackChannels – 11/14/2014.

_____

There have been additional references to Hungary in relation to other subjects, e.g., European reparations to the Jewish community, but it’s the drift into nationalism that catches play here and with it movement within the European aligned NATO state to cement relationships with the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

As as happened over the course of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s tenure, drift toward fascism may draw a strong liberal response from the middle and thereby stall a conservative state movement.

Similar dynamics have also surfaced in Kiev — Ukraine protests take center-stage at EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels | News | DW.DE | 10.02.2014 – which population has found itself in The Bear Trap, i.e., aesthetically, politically, and spiritually aligned with European modernity and its social values but beholden to a state in which the “vertical of power” — the Autocrat — determines the character, position, and values of the state and states it makes its buffer.

Hungarians may express themselves, take to the streets, and throw fits, but Papa Putin with the checkbook and gas tap has sufficient clout for leaving the Ukrainian government to shrug off its liberal critics.

That particular Bear has also aligned itself with Iranian interests — the better to drum up defense and nuclear sales business — and to the extent that it also holds Hungarians in its paws by way of energy supply and sales, it may stalls Hungary’s westward inclinations and, possibly, encourage  those who feel comfortable with thuggish mafia-style Putinesque Russian politics.

The effects of the axis — Putin-Assad-Khamenei — made visible by the collapse of Syria, a lingering post-Soviet artifact may be just emergent in the discussion eastern European politics.

If I had budget plus swift graphic arts I would do this with clusters, but a linear verbal illustration might suffice:

Putin-Assad-Khamenei (Middle East) | Putin-Orban-Yanukovych (Eastern Europe)

Where tanks may once have been dispatched, cash and energy may suffice — and money gets around without conscience.

Additional Reference

Hungary

Viktor Orbán in Moscow: “Putin’s new little kitten”? | Hungarian Spectrum – 2/1/2014: “Moreover, one must keep in mind that for Hungary Russia is a much more important partner than vice versa. In trade relations the Hungarian share of Russian imports is only 2%. On the other hand, Hungary because of its dependence on natural gas and oil is heavily dependent on Russian goodwill.”

Putin $14 Billion Nuclear Deal Wins Orban Alliance – Bloomberg – 1/15/2014: “The deal shows Putin’s ability to use Russia’s control over energy resources to extend his sway beyond the former Soviet Union. Last month, he pledged a $15 billion bailout and a cut in the price of natural gas to Ukraine and promised to lend as much as $2 billion to Belarus.”

Ukraine

Ukraine protests take center-stage at EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels | News | DW.DE | 10.02.2014

BBC News – Putin meets Ukraine’s Yanukovych on Sochi sidelines – 2/8/2014: “Under pressure from Moscow, President Yanukovych had refused to sign a far-reaching association and trade agreement with the EU.”

Putin, Yanukovych promise closer economic ties amid Ukraine protests – CNN.com – 1/23/2014.

European Union and the United States

From the above cited BBC news link: “Washington’s European envoy Victoria Nuland was heard using an expletive to disparage the EU’s handling of the crisis and revealing Washington’s determination to influence the outcome of the Ukrainian struggle.”

Марионетки Майдана – YouTube – 2/4/2014.

Obama cancels meeting with Putin amid Russia tensions – NBC News.com: “Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” the White House said.

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The collapse of the Soviet Union left Soviet business and political relationships as well as Soviet style in place: at least as much would seem embodied in the post-KGB, now FSB person of Russian President Putin who has accepted the defeat of Russian communism — or the armored covering of it — but not of Russian empire and the idea of a Russian way of doing things, even if regress to a 19th Century stance with class empowerment through patronage and equal footing with despots similarly endowed becomes the price paid by Russia’s constituency for the privilege of being different, quintessentially Russian, and now as in the Romanov-then, also cut out of the money but restored in pride.

Additional Reference

Sochi Olympics: Opening ceremony evokes Russian pride before torch is lit – Washington Times – 2/7/2014:

SOCHI, Russia — A Russia in search of global vindication kicked off the Sochi Olympics looking more like a Russia that likes to party, with a pulse-raising opening ceremony about fun and sports instead of terrorism, gay rights and coddling despots.

And that’s just the way Russian President Vladimir Putin wants these Winter Games to be.

# # #

FTAC (Posted Here Exclusively) – On Syria, Putin, Sochi, and Power

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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intervention, political, politics, Putin, Russia, Syria

As a dictator develops, he may pass certain milestones in the way that any other criminal might. What starts with techniques for stealing elections, for example, gets on to a depth in corruption hard to reverse (once everyone’s on the take) — and then, later, more substantial crimes. Vladimir Putin may have launched and pursued his career along two tracks: one as the ultimate Bond villain, the Soviet, post-Soviet KGB thug — and he’s already got the nukes — and the other is his own figure in Russian history: how will he be remembered?

The farther down into the depths Syria goes, the more difficult Putin will find it to control his own reputation even as he rebuilds aspects of the Russian security state. He could intervene to temper the Assad regime with some kind of Russian ideological humanism lifted out of 19th Century aristocracy and agitation, but the Assad regime seems to have gone beyond rescue, imho, as has the ISIS part of the revolution, and such Russian medicine as may be applied may not be strong enough to reverse the damage done the state.

Incidentally, Putin evacuated Russian civilians from Syria, at least to the extent that they cared to leave (by air); he also pulled the naval presence from Tartus. That’s been part of the hands-off approach to Syria that has also made the battle space a political theater in which the worst of the worst really have shown their colors, somewhat diminished their own energies as well as assets in play, and brought inherent fault lines in the Arab world and in Islam into focus for the world to see.

A Putinesque intervention during Sochi would be glorious! 🙂 However, what does he have to work with, and what can he do with it? Syrians have needed what Egyptians have enjoyed: a protective and tractable army, not the one dropping barrel bombs on their heads. Take it further: they needed a mentality that would have gathered behind General Idris a malleable revolutionary army: instead, that bright idea has been flanked by the al-Qaeda affiliates and their remote sponsors.

If and as Russian web-based information culture expands, Putin’s reliance on image he can control will become more deeply challenged, but the so-called “fragile empire” has great backbone in the stolen billions of the energy business and use of the same to stoke corruption and patronage. Putin’s enjoying the winter games. He knows his kind of power, and, for now, he knows he’s got it and with it a fine image of himself along with the roaring adulation of his nationalist fans.

Inspiration: promotion of an article (which I’m not finding online) by Adnan Oktar encouraging Russian intervention in Syria.

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There is a struggle between America and Russia in Syria.! (Adnan Oktar) – YouTube – 2/3/2014

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Call it the “System of the Mahdi” or a thousand other things: essential humanism is the issue in Syria, and as noted here recently and implied in the top section, which was composed for a thread but is only posted here, Syrians have never known the possession of an army that stood for their interests.

What they have known and for three years experienced with increasing misery is a dictator’s army, Which has been the mighty instrument of their own subjugation.

With the revolutionary army partially, heavily, hijacked by the al-Qaeda affiliates, even if disaffiliated by al-Qaeda central, they’re trapped, and the reward for being defenseless is global hand wringing, UN humanitarian assistance, and neighborly emergency medical care in small portions — the injured or ill have to get to a border and across it — plus other assistance from (gasp!) Israel.

Syria is gone with several of its key cities destroyed and one-third to one-half of its population dispersed internally and externally.

Assad will not get it back, much less put it back the way it was.

Syrians, however, are not gone.

They will need to go home to their land and live different lives.  God give them the army to do it, somehow, and give that army the prescience and wisdom to know and to separate true threats to Syrian freedom, when it comes, from the fabrications of fascist dictators.

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FTAC – Hamas – Gaza – Latest IDF Missile Strike

09 Sunday Feb 2014

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

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Tags

Israel, peace, political, politics

The U.N. had a readied charter for Palestine in 1948. The Arab states rejected Israel’s charter, launched a war of annihilation, lost it, enhanced Israel’s defense ability, and managed to keep the issue alive for what will soon be 70 years.

Setting Fatah aside, Hamas has found itself isolated by the counterrevolution in Egypt — it had swung with the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power — and its enthusiasm for Sunni-based Islamic Jihad in Syria, bringing it into collision with Hezbollah and annoying sponsor Ayatollah Khamenei.

At the end of “Cast Lead” in 2008/2009, so has been my impression, Israel’s Defense Forces, and truly representing Israel, had promised Hamas that the next barrage of rocket fire from Gaza — there had been about 8,000 (!) launches prior to “Cast Lead” — would be met by eliminating the senior fighting leadership of Hamas. True? I don’t know. However, Hamas has been motivated to suppress the fire of the non-Hamas launching units.

The global anti-Semitic rhetoric seems sponsored — same rant where the Far Out Left meets anti-western (anti-human, imho) “Islamist” Ambition writ large — but peace has been not only always available but also pursued and evident in trade throughput, both directions, with Gaza, the acceptance of a Judenfrei Gaza (2005 evacuation of Jews from the strip, where the archaeological record of habitation reaches back 3,500 years) that proved that “land for peace” doesn’t work and won’t, and in local labor and trade, which part includes Jews and Muslims laboring side by side in peace.

At this point, I think agreements will only follow what becomes true on the ground. What’s true in Gaza today is that Hamas has found itself isolated.  As political rogues within its own zone of control threaten by proxy the existence of its senior leadership, it has chosen a path beside a cold peace.

The news inspiring the comment: IDF Targets Gaza Terrorist, Eliminates Imminent threat to Israel – 12/9/2014.

Note: I’ve slightly revised the last paragraph of the material quoted but did so in keeping with original intent.

Related: Israeli Military Launches Airstrike on Palestinian Man – 2/9/2014.

My prediction: peace will one day be more evident in Gaza and in cross-border relationships than war, and the politicians involved will have to fall all over themselves trying to catch up with it.

Alas, that day seems distant and yet a little closer too.

______

The reason for staying is loyalty to approximately 500 Palestinians who are among the plant’s 1,300 employees, Birnbaum claimed. While other employees could relocate on the other side of the Green Line if the plant moved, the West Bank Palestinian workers could not, and would suffer financially, he argued.

“We will not throw our employees under the bus to promote anyone’s political agenda,” he said, adding that he “just can’t see how it would help the cause of the Palestinians if we fired them.”

SodaStream Boss Admits West Bank Plant Is ‘a Pain’ — Praises Scarlett Johansson – Forward.com – 1/28/2014.

Additional Reference

I’ve put these references in ascending chronological order as they may suggest a story, even in headlines, about fits and starts, crimes and punishments, and, in the end, behavioral change.

Hamas claims responsibility for tunnel under Gaza-Israel border – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 10/21/2013.

IDF EXACTS MAJOR PRICE FROM HAMAS…FINALLY…Kills Its Military Commander…Commentary By Adina Kutnicki | Adina Kutnicki – 11/14/2014.

Hamas: Our Rockets Will Reach North of Tel Aviv – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News – 11/22/2013.

IDF soldiers fire at, hit Palestinian placing bomb on Gaza-Israel border | JPost | Israel News – 12/23/2013.

IDF observing Hamas strides to deter Gaza rocket fire | JPost | Israel News – 1/12/2014.

Hamas deploys forces near Gaza-Israel border to stop rocket fire – Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 1/21/2014.

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Fallujah – That Was Then – Is This Still Then?

07 Friday Feb 2014

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

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conflict, Fallujah, Iraq, political, politics

Four years ago, al-Qaeda appeared to have been destroyed in Iraq. Last week, fighters from the group captured Fallujah, a city where hundreds of Americans were killed or wounded in the last decade fighting the jihadists. How did this stunning reversal of fortune happen?

David Ignatius: Iran’s fingerprints in Fallujah – The Washington Post – 1/8/2014.

Don’t think for a moment that the United States isn’t still involved in Iraq. At the moment, the government of Iraq is preparing for what might be called the Third Battle of Falluja.

The Third Battle of Falluja | The Nation – 2/6/2014.

* * *

As long as the Iranian and Saudi Arabian sponsors continue to move around suitcases full of money, more or less, one might expect the tides to shift in the fashion established: extremist or deeply partisan combatants on the battle lines; noncombatant residents between those lines, conceptually, and likely to be punished in the path of whatever machinery might have the upper hand for a few hours, days, weeks, or months.

As in Syria, there seems nothing like an armed central and moderate force in place of opposed tribal alliances, and creating that central-moderate force seems ever as difficult or more difficult than setting the usual hotheads at each other’s throats.

Perhaps that accounts for this week’s slouching toward the “Third Battle of Fallujah” where ends desired in common, such as they may be, may seem doubtful to those who must achieve them.

Related: Fighting continues in Iraq’s Anbar Province as civilians flee, 1 February 2014; IRIN Middle East | As fighting continues in Anbar, displaced numbers soar | Iraq | Conflict | Refugees/IDPs | Security – 2/5/2014.

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Iran – Ayatollah Tortures Ayatollah

06 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran, Islamic Small Wars, Politics, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Boroujerdi, disinformation, Iran, Iran nuclear program, Islamic Small Wars, ISW, political, political prisoners, politics

According to reports received by “Human Rights Activists for Democracy in Iran”, despite Mr. Boroujerdi’s serious and worrisome health conditions, and instead of transferring him to a hospital, Movahedi, deputy prosecutor to Special Clerical Tribunal went to his cell to harass and psychologically torture Mr. Boroujerdi.

BamAzadi: Boroujerdi’s Serious Health Condition and Harassment by Movahedi Deputy Prosecutor to Special Clerical Tribunal – 2/1/2014.

* * *

Ayatollah Hossein-Kazamani Boroujerdi, a senior member of the Shiite Muslim clergy, is presently serving the eighth year of an 11-year sentence handed down to him by the Islamic Republic’s courts for advocating the separation of state and religion inside Iran. He has also spoken against political Islam and its leaders.

Ayatollah Tortured, Near Death, in Iran for Criticizing Political Islam :: Gatestone Institute – 2/5/2014.

Gatestone’s article goes on to list other Iranian political prisoners.

Related: Ambassador Bennett Condemns Detention of Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Iran – Canada News Centre – 7/24/2013; Introduction Site of the Oppenent (STET) to Political Religion Leader Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi; The Persecution of Ayatollah Boroujerdi In Iran – 12/16/2011.

For the regime, one may imagine, the political prisoner is a thorn set aside and safe from creating further botheration.

For opponents to the regime, the same political prisoner may be treated as a convenient perennial.

It would appear then that Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi has become a reliable fixture as a prisoner of conscience.

As anarchy and civil war grind on in Syria — and the major politicians mouth sock puppet platitudes — Boroujerdi, even in prison for many years, stands signal for the manners and values promoted by Ayatollah Khamenei’s: autocracy, imprisonment, kleptocracy, subjugation.

Related: Reuters Investigates – Assets of the Ayatollah – 11/11/2013.

______

Earlier this morning, the issue of Iran’s nuclear development programs came up on Facebook with the posting of this piece, which pointed toward disinformation in the U.S. – NATO perception of Ayatollah Khamenei’s kleptotheocracy.

Misread Telexes Led Analysts to See Iran Nuclear Arms Programme – Inter Press Service – 2/5/2014.

My response From the Awesome Conversation (FTAC):

“At present, Iran can best be described as a country determined to preserve for itself the option of acquiring nuclear weapons capability at some future date: to shorten, to the greatest extent possible, the time it will take to build these weapons (and to warn the world) once the decision is made to do so, by developing dispersed, hardened dual-use nuclear fuel cycle capabilities; and to seek shelter from international nonproliferation pressure in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s (NPT) promise of access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.” 2012 – CFR – http://www.cfr.org/iran/iran-nuclear-challenge/p28330?excerpt=1

Counterpoint: http://www.fas.org/policy/iran.html

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Iran/

As no one pays me anything, lol, I’m definitely not paid enough to sift data on Iran’s nuclear development programs, whether for civilian grid distribution or fast warhead or other weapons system delivery.

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

It takes time to dig up and dig into intelligence themes (even in what is becoming called “Open Source Intelligence). Try not to be swayed by the latest in claims without evaluating them with other data broadly compiled and at hand.

Deeply controlling and narcissistic personalities suffer from the hubris that they alone may control an entire information environment, and so they may but with gaps and holes streaming in data of greater integrity.

To misinform an enemy’s intelligence gathering apparatus while refusing third-party inspections in an area critical to regional and world peace has its own disingenuous and hideous cast: controlling a lie is not control: in fact, it is opposite as it invites aggression and seeds chaos.

______

The former “Evil Empire” will host the Winter Olympics starting Friday.  As then, as now: Russia, whether its constituents like it or not, has to keep buried beneath tons of glamour, glitter, ice, and snow the fact that it has supported an incredibly brutal dictatorship in Syria and just a step beyond it the same Ayatollah that has kept in prison and tortured another senior cleric for advocating what Russians prefer: a secular society separating church from state.

Russians online, I am certain, read the news too and doubtless follow the Syrian Civil War and its many themes, including the anachronistic Shiite-Sunni rivalry that energizes a certain portion of humanity while enriching beyond wildest dreams the dictators who profit on mass murder and suffering, albeit, lucky for them today, as sponsors of war of benefit to themselves.

Addendum

In addition to the routine imprisonment and torture of a political rival, the kindly-looking Ayatollah Khamenei via his client against the west Bashar al-Assad also supports (whether he knows it or not — but then how could he not know it?) this kind of behavior: UN quietly documents Syria’s war against children | The World – Financial Times blog – 2/5/2014.

What Russians are doing aligned with the Assad and Khamenei regimes today, I leave to Russians to answer for themselves.

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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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