Tag Archives: social grammar

Palestinian Authority – Incitements to Murder Jews in Service to the Subjugation and Enslavement of Its Own

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Israel, Middle East, Politics

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Under Abbas, the PA has been waging a war of words against the Jewish state, engaging in anti-Semitic incitement of the vilest kind and using Holocaust denial, racial slurs, and Judeophobic epithets. It is a stream of hostility cultivated and implemented over the past decade under the Abbas leadership. A stream which is competing with “Der Ewige Jude”, the Eternal Jew, favored by Joseph Goebbels, in which Jews are compared to rats.

Giulio Meotti – Abbas is a War Criminal: The Evidence – Op-Eds – Israel National News, 9/27/2013.

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A comment in The New York Times on the funding and training of Palestinian Authority Security Forces:

Much of the training supported by the United States and the European Union was conducted in Jordan, away from traditional Palestinian bases, in hopes that months away from home would cement a new professional ethos. Yet old neighborhood and clan ties continued to be used in recruitment and some of the most powerful Palestinian security organizations remained outside the reform regimen.

Kimberly Marten – The Bane of Palestinian Infighting – NYTimes.com – 6/26/2013.

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We write today because we are deeply disturbed by recent reports of large-scale political arrests being carried out by the Palestinian Authority inside the occupied West Bank. These arrests have targeted critics of the Palestinian Authority, including youth activists, human rights defenders, prisoners’ rights organizers and scholars, and journalists, including former political prisoners held by Israel and released in the October 2011 prisoner exchange agreement and subsequently.

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This operation is currently under the command of Rear Admiral Paul Bushong.9 We are deeply disturbed by the security coordination regime and the role of the United States, highly committed to supporting the Israeli military diplomatically, economically and militarily, in maintaining this regime to the detriment of Palestinians’ freedom of association and expression.

National Lawyers Guild, Free Palestine Subcommittee.  Letter to Mr. Maen Areikat, Chief Representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Mr. Ali Muhanna, Minister of Justice, Palestinian National Authority, and Mr. Riyad al-Maliki, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Palestinian National Authority, October 8, 2012. PDF.

The oddness of the fracturing of the flow down from duel authoritarian modes and the simplistic ways of understanding them seems to me ever striking.  Plainly through its behavior and language over time, the Palestinian Authority remains bent on Israel’s destruction and the theft outright of the Jewish state, and in that it has no place to go, and yet it seems to cull or silence competitors either worse than itself or better.

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Perhaps it would be well to mention here that the American freedom of speech concept was and remains intended to protect discomforting or unpopular speech — not conspiracy or incitement to commit crimes, but politically distasteful speech, and that on the basis that protecting legitimate criticism is a necessary facet of a living and progressing democracy.

As regards then the constituents governed by the Palestinian Authority, one might then take an interest in whose voices have been intimidated, restrained, or silenced by it.

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▶ West Bank IDF soldier murder poses threat to peace talks: Israel soldier killed by sniper in Hebron – YouTube, 9/24/2013

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It appears one state cannot bribe another — that is what western assistance seems made to look like — off its language-conveyed-and-sustained program, however destructive, evil, and deeply misguided and suffocating to its own people that program may be.

Children Taught to Hate on Palestinian Television: Where’s the Coverage? – YouTube, 7/14/2013.

▶ “Our enemy is Satan, Zion with a tail” – girl on PA TV – YouTube, 9/23/2013

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I had the opportunity to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who expressed grave concern both for Israel’s security as well as for the prospects for peace. “How,” he asked us, “could the Palestinian leadership be a serious partner for peace if it welcomed into its ranks vicious terrorists who continue to deny the very right of the state of Israel to exist?” His concern is more than justified.

U. S. Congressman Steve Chabot speaking in the early minutes of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee-level hearing on the middle east conflict – PROMOTING PEACE? REEXAMINING U.S. AID TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, July 12, 2011.

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Gross corruption charges have for a long time been directed at the PLO, which already by 1993 was the richest terrorist organization in the world, according to the British National Criminal Intelligence Service, having assets of ten billion dollars and an annual income of approximately two billion dollars. The Daily Telegraph reported in 1999 that the PLO had secretly invested over 50 billion dollars around the world. Still, Norway has continuously broken bread with these people.

Gates of Vienna: Seduced by Palestinian Propaganda – 1/19/2013

Additional Reference

Arguably, the use of propaganda by Palestinians to gain compassion and political support has been their one great success. The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, with its falsifications of history and politics, its portrayal of themselves as not only innocent but the most compelling victims in the world, its staging of events to blame Israel for atrocities they themselves have committed, its deliberate concentration on alleged injuries or deaths of children, and its achievement in persuading much of the media to accept and advance its manipulation of language and action, have all been part of its success in the propaganda war.

Michael Curtis – American Thinker – Articles: The Palestinian Use of Propaganda – 9/29/2013

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The loosely compiled list that follows may be offered more for impression than information.

As with the above material, it’s indicative of the official continuance of a surreal state of affairs, one in which Israel and the west put up effort in funding, labor, and services to bring the refugees of 1948 into a modern state and state of being while the graying post-Soviet remnant of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) continues to promote an anti-Semitic, genocidal, and totalitarian engine suited to its own combined tribal and mafioso needs.

The real story hasn’t to do with murder per se but with the complete and final enslavement and subjugation of the refugees generations by way of the control of what they may read and speak and think.

Deception: Betraying the Peace Process: Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik: Amazon.com: Books (2012)  Even the unhappy review of the book lauded its scholarship and acknowledged the true state of affairs illustrated by it.

Palestinian Authority: Pursuing Peace, or Pushing Propaganda? – The Daily Beast – 12/11/2011

Palestinian Authority blocks critical websites – Committee to Protect Journalists – 4/24/2012

Palestinian Propaganda – Wild Olive web site page, n.d.

5 Signs of Sinking Palestinian Press Freedom | HonestReporting – 4/2/2013

West Bank and Gaza Strip * | Freedom House – 2012

After a while, and if one has lied in a large way, one sees it on the World Wide Web, the “mirror, mirror” not on the wall but on the desktop.

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Ma’an News Agency.  “Fatah, Hamas officials trade accusations in heated debate.” February 23, 2013.

Oren, Amir.  “U.S. names top Navy officer security coordinator for Israel, Palestinian Authority.”  Haaretz, June 9, 2012.

Palestinian National Security Forces – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sanders, Edmund.  “Israeli soldier lured to West Bank and killed, officials say.”  Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2013.

Sayigh, Yezid.  “Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian Transformation in the West Bank and Gaza.”  The Carnegie Papers, Carnegie Middle East Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2011.

The Washington Institute.  “Peace through Security: America’s Role in the Development of the Palestinian Authority Security Services.” Conference Keynotes, 2009 Soref Symposium, featuring comment on and linking to an address by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton (“Michael Stein Address on U.S. Middle East Policy”).

United States security assistance to the Palestinian National Authority – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

U.S. Dept. State, United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC)

U.S. Dept. State and Broadcasting Board of Governors, Office of Inspector General, Middle East Regional Office.  “Performance Evaluation of Palestinian Authority Security Forces Infrastructure Construction Projects in the West Bank.”  Report Number MERO-I-11-03, March 2011. PDF.

U.S. General Accounting Office – “Report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Its Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, House of Representatives: Palestinian Authority: U.S. Assistance is Training and Equipping Security Forces, but the Program Needs to Measure Progress and Faces Logistical Constraints.  (2010).

Zanotti, Jim.  “U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians.”  Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2013:

Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.

Successive Administrations have requested aid for the Palestinians to support at least three major U.S. policy priorities of interest to Congress:

• Preventing terrorism against Israel from Hamas and other militant organizations.

• Fostering stability, prosperity, and self-governance in the West Bank that inclines Palestinians toward peaceful coexistence with Israel and a “two-state solution”.

• Meeting humanitarian needs

Zanotti, Jim.  “U.S. Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”  Congressional Research Service, January 8, 2010.

Etc. – Fragments and Outtakes

Those who follow the middle east conflict more closely know that beneath the sawing of vocal interlocutors in the Preoccupied Territories, legitimate economic development, and utility and trade throughput plus access to higher education and sophisticated medical services have formed arrangements that the well known vanguard of the vain may feel beneath their own considerations.

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First, as I just said, I profoundly believe that it is in the national security interest of the United States to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Second, I am one of those who firmly believes in a two-state solution: a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside the state of Israel is the only solution that will meet the long-term needs of Israel and the aspirations of the Palestinian people. This has long been the policy of our national leadership, and I share it.

Third, let me state very clearly my deep conviction—and I tell this to my Israeli friends all the time—that as President Obama said last year, the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, it is unbreakable tomorrow, and it is unbreakable forever. [Applause.]

Lt. General Keith Dayton, U.S. Security Coordinator, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Michael Stein Address on U.S. Middle East Policy, program of the Soref Symposium, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 7, 2009.

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Before I get into the details of the program, I would like to remind you that the Government of Israel has 100% ransparency into all aspects of US support to the PA Security Forces (PASF) and that the USSC will never advocate or sponsor activities that could threaten Israeli security.

Lt. General Moeller, United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Statement for House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, July 12, 2011.  PDF.

Convincing Washington to support the security mission remains a tall order even today. Despite the undisputed progress the Palestinian security force has shown on the ground, Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have recently put yet another hold on funds for maintaining and developing the force, as a demonstration of their displeasure with policies adopted by the Palestinian Authority.

 Nathan Guttman – Why No Love for Security Cooperation? – Forward.com – 6/19/2012.

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“Another Kind of Islam . . . .”

27 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion

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Ahmed is convinced that only the Muslims themselves could be the answer to the “Islamists” and that the moderate Muslims must find the resources to counter what she called the “multi-head Medusa.”

“Only if we tell ourselves the truth, that the Islamists are a threat within us, can we confront them. The chasm between Muslims and Islamists is a deep one,” she said.

Israel Hayom | Muslim scholar: ‘I refuse to let Islam fall captive to the Islamists’ – by Reuven Berko, 9/27/2013

Between Islamic Jihad and Western Anti-Jihad, or perhaps better phrased, between the Islamist’s Believers and the More Strident of the Crusader West — that’s got the Kavkaz Center obsession working in it — reside the lives of approximately 1.2 billion persons.

Where the true religion mixes time in a forever present, leaving the virulent segment of believers forever fighting the Battle of the Trench, “another kind of Islam” would seem to want to join with the nations in progress across the many qualities of living.  As sensible as that may seem, as easy as it may be to do — just switch off the “contempt” and “hate” buttons — language-based perception — start with the child’s command of a globally antagonistic and misfitted social grammar; move on to the compression of time integrated with a powerfully romantic and barbaric scripture (for example, reference At-Tawba 29 — the binary or split Jihad/anti-Jihad views of the literature are abundant on the web); and wrap-up with alignment of ahadith, essential hearsay, to suit political interest, and don’t forget to add the black-and-white thinking (acceptable / not acceptable) accompanying it — precludes so convenient an answer.

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Narrators who took the side of Abu Bakr and Umar rather than Ali, in the disputes over leadership that followed the death of Muhammad, are seen as unreliable by the Shia; narrations sourced to Ali and the family of Muhammad, and to their supporters, are preferred. Sunni scholars put trust in narrators, such as Aisha, whom Shia reject. Differences in hadith collections have contributed to differences in worship practices and shari’a law and have hardened the dividing line between the two traditions.

Hadith – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 9/27/2013.

With Muhammad’s death, apparently, the Religion of Peace seems to have become the Religion of Eternal Conflict, starting with the conflict between the Shiite and Sunni camps in their exercise of a) tribal choice in the b) absence of more clear successionary  instructions.  In the medieval fields of battle in an age much less comprehending of empiricism, enlightened reason (Shakespeare’s contribution to a pagan humanism that he would weave within and around the separate character of the Church — or ever mindful of it — more than 700 years later), it would be said that “God decides” even though what “decided” then (as now) would have been diplomacy, energy (brought to bear in battle), strategy, and steel.

The Jews have had issues with language too, but where the Torah teases minds into arguments — what is the meaning of an action, a passage, a moment? — injunctions to act as programmed in the adoption of attitudes and beliefs about others and with reference primarily to one’s own grandiose image as licensed to subjugate whole populations, a thing well demonstrated by either the invention or favored adoption of the Banu Quarayza legend, that behavior as primarily language behavior has and indeed has had other effects.

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For Muslim readers, perhaps the toughest chapters deal with Muhammad’s slaughter of the Banu Qurayza. Fatah denounces the story as invented by influential scholar Ibn Ishaq nearly 100 years after the Prophet’s death. No archeological evidence supports it. No Jewish text corroborates it. Yet the story forms part of Islam’s Hadith literature and the Sira, the biography of the Prophet, and has come to be regarded as divine truth, Fatah says.

The problem, the author says, is that Islam lacks a tradition of questioning religious texts. So far, no Toronto imam has joined him to reject the Banu Qurayza story. So far, no mosque has invited him to speak.

The Jew Is Not My Enemy: Tarek Fatah | Toronto Star – by John Goddard, 11/19/2010

More than merely modernity or opportunity, the “humanity of humanity” — there will be a page on that here — has long tempered Islam in its treatment of Jews, albeit capriciously, much in line with the fate of the Jews left exposed to the will of more powerful others whenever and wherever Jews have been in the minority position, and that from Roman times to this day.

As with the quintessential Jewish desire to band in the desert — in human evolutionary reality, who were those people who first gathered together and determined a good way, their way, and way of life that would leave dictators to their fates — or, as with Haman, defeat them? — Islamic humanism and humanists seem to me a more natural course for Muslims than that conceived, promoted, and disciplined by the God Mob even though their stripe seems to have been there at the beginning.

There may be in the above thought a patently Jewish perspective, but a glance at Islam’s more beneficent and merciful humans, certainly more so than the miscreants often mentioned on this blog, tells of something deeply universal operating across cultures and languages as one slips into the modernity of any epoch:  Eman Fahad Al Nafjan, Irshad Manji, M. Zuhdi Jasser, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Mudar Zahran, Qanta Ahmed, Tarek Fatah have each taken firm stances against “Islamist” drift while deeply acknowledging or affirming their relationship with Islam.  With such good people and scholars, every one of them, one wants to know whether theirs collectively will become the voice of a powerful Muslim “silent majority” — I don’t think they are that today in the world’s Muslim-majority states — rather than the expression of a highly educated, intellectual, western-oriented elite, which (look ’em up on YouTube) is how some may be played by the more Brotherhoodly among zealous coreligionists.

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It’s hard to look into the heart except through the mouth using for an instrument one’s ears.

Those I’ve named speak bravely, consistently, reliably and seem ever good voices and great souls.

They are influential in our global online village, and they’re not in the least alone — the fan base is pretty good, but perhaps its development may be likened to depositing vaporized precious metal on a suitable substrate — it takes a little bit of time and repetition to get from that process something solid and strong.

For the time being, I suspect the English speaking and Express Tribune reading Muslim complement to a still emerging global intelligentsia — we have each shared with the other a hearty “welcome aboard!” although aboard what may remain in contention — indeed comprises but a thin layer and kind in the amalgam of the earth-wide communicating whole.

Will Islamic humanism and humanists contain what needs to be contained?

Tune in (after the Sabbath).

Additional Reference

VCU Menorah Review, “An Open Letter to Tarek Fatah” by Richard Sherwin, Winter/Spring 2012.

The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism: Tarek Fatah: 9780771047848: Amazon.com: Books (2011)

Maimonides – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 9/27/2013:

During the reign of the Almoravids, the position of the Jews was free of significant abuses,[14] but after another Berber dynasty, the Almohads, conquered Córdoba in 1148, they abolished the dhimma status (i.e. state protection of life and wealth) in some of their territories. The loss of this protected status threatened the Jewish and Christian communities with conversion to Islam, death, or exile.[13]

Maimonides fled to Egypt and became the personal physician to the Kurdish general and sultan Saladin and his family.

Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 9/27/2013:

The coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians during this time is revered by many writers. Al-Andalus was a key center of Jewish life during the early Middle Ages, producing important scholars and one of the most stable and wealthy Jewish communities and a relatively educated society for the Muslim occupiers and their Jewish collaborators, as well as some Christians who openly collaborated with the Muslims and Jews. María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University claims that “Tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society”.[1]

Islamic Humanism – Lenn E. Goodman – Oxford University Press

Islam And Terrorism: A Humanist View, by David Schafer, May/June 2002

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Guilt and Jealousy in Two Lines

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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Finish your supper. Don’t you know there are children starving in Africa?”

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“If you don’t finish what’s on your plate, I shall give it to your brother.

Guilt has always to do with others, some perception of their suffering, and the role we may play in aiding, alleviating, or appreciating the same in light of our own perceived better-off capabilities, luck, and comparative wellbeing.

Jealousy has primarily to do with ourselves, doubts about our grasp and power, and our worried perception of cheat and theft by assorted and presumably conspiring others.

For the most part, grammar in language refers to structural properties and rules guiding the management of the written and spoken word; however, grammar may also refer to basic sets of social and psychological instructions — count the mother’s inventions for encouraging an economical approach and value to eating (waste not — want not) among such — that once interiorized may be forgotten but quite elaborated, for in both examples, food on the child’s plate may serve as a convenient subject for an integrated cluster of ideas involving the properties of other things:

“Take care of your things because . . . ” (you are lucky to have them . . . they’re expensive . . . somebody sacrificed something else for you to have them . . . etc.) and “If you don’t take care of your things . . . ” (somebody will steal them . . . they may be ruined . . . you’ll lose the use of them . . . you’ll be found out as incompetent or defenseless or both, and so on).

I wouldn’t presume to say with authority that the two lines offered here demonstrate precisely how a binary rule may be planted in the mind.

On the other hand, I would suggest tabula rasa applies only up to the moment a child first 1) hears an adult speak and with some accuracy interpolates the meaning of adult utterance and 2) subsequently discovers surfacing in language themes that embed socially reinforced rules that will go on to influence the development of attitudes, the recognition and interpretation of emotions, and perception itself with social perception — how to perceive others; how to behave among others — a crucial part of the psychology.

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A Note About “Social Grammar”

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Psychology

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One of a few conceptual building blocks permanently resident on this blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/social-grammar/

Social Grammar

My hypothesis and theory is that a) there is such a thing as the development of “social grammar” accompanying language uptake, b) that it is part of the learning of a language and subsequent navigation of a related language culture, and c) it has gravitational sway on formulations associated with  perception and expression.

Basically: “Social Grammar” may be comprised of a set of rules a) governing relationships between symbols, beliefs about them, and related emotions, and b) serving to navigate cultural and social context in both perception (what is important to see) and expression (e.g., what is good to say; what is not; when; how; etc.).

What’s interesting in this proposed “detection” behavior is its placement in the uptake phase of natural language development, i.e., the idea that an infant picks up (“takes statistics”) on verbal inflection in such a way as to have pre-formed attitude and belief formula in advance of the acquisition of more sophisticated meaning.  If even from the womb (from the instant the ears become active) we hear, for example,  “Xanglies” pronounced bitterly, harshly, we may as we compile more information about “Xangley” have a bad feeling about Xangliness, whatever and whoever Xangley turns out to be.

This proposed base level behaviorism and building-block linguistic programming may have profound influence as the individual language-bound spirit becomes expressive, independent (seemingly), and mature.  The rule carried forward from the formulation “Xanglies bad” (“X” <–> negative valence) may have control of later perception, and, because it was set into the basic behavioral programming of a developing consciousness prior to its own expressive capability and later reasoning ability, it may be nearly impossible to reach and repair at later stages.  If true, it follows that a malevolent basic instruction formulated in infancy may serve as call to conflict and violence in later years.

In fact, we may flatter ourselves if we think that it’s more the oral and written literary traditions of cultures passed on to older minds that form our cause for the most absurd kinds of conflicts.

In this dismal view in which conflict devolves in part to social rules deduced by infants to facilitate their own survival-driven social communicating (i.e., social grammar), the fix may be in before the child shapes his first sentence.

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FTAC – A Note on Anti-Semitic Bigotry and Sophistry

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Psychology

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11/6/2012/1212H

J. — wade into academe and you wade into a flood tide of anti-Semitic ranting.

What do you want to do about it?

Report it to CAMERA, Honest Reporting?

Kick it around in the peace groups?

For any close reader, the sophistry shows up in the first paragraph: “Just recall the final TV debate as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney competed to prove who could pander more to the pro-Israel side while treating Palestinians as if they didn’t exist.”

This is well-recognized false witness and slander, but because it targets a people and a state — the Jewish People and Israel — there are no legal remedies. The cultural remedy is to make ourselves honestly known through ourselves around the world.

More we cannot do.

God, although I know you don’t believe, or Nature, and that should suffice, inspired in us a great mission in a world much larger than ourselves, and we have been on it for 5,000 years — perhaps I should say only 5,000 years — and we have eased, fully, close to 3 billion people to monotheism, not that 2.85 billion give a rip about thanking us for their better tracks.

That, of course, is their problem.

I may publish this on BackChannels, it makes me so angry and, as the Jew-baiting writer might calculate, a little bit helpless as to how to approach the repair of this form of bigotry and hate.  Such behavior in language stems from a deeply embedded social grammar — it is not a reasoning behavior but one rigidly set in attitudes and emotions — acquired by children in their earliest years, including probably some weeks in the womb with their ears turned on.