Live shot of Trump-voting evangelical Christians celebrating the opening of the embassy:
The event in Jerusalem features corrupt plutocrats, pandering politicians, nepotism hires and bigoted preachers. Israeli security forces have killed more than 40 Palestinian protesters so far.
A religious scholar who escaped a Jesus Camp upbringing explains the significance of this move to evangelicals who believe in dispensational pre-millennialism here. An excerpt:
While that may sound benign (or perhaps nutty) to the theologically uninitiated, they are referring to the “prophecy” of the conversion of the Jews, the second coming of Jesus, the final judgment, and the end of the world — the events referred to as the biblical apocalypse.
I doubt that President Trump could explain dispensational pre-millennialism. I doubt he knows the term. But his evangelical supporters know it. Some of his advisers are probably whispering these prophecies in his ears. Trump might not really care how they interpret the Bible, but he cares that white evangelicals continue to stand with him. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is one way to affirm his commitment to these evangelicals — reminding them that he, Donald J. Trump, is pressing biblical history forward to its conclusion and that he is God’s man in the unfolding of these last days.
I may not believe it — anymore, at least. You may not believe it. Donald Trump might not even truly believe it. But millions do. That matters. Not only for American politics, of course. For the peace of Jerusalem. And for peace for the rest of us as well.
I’m not sure that’s true anymore — that millions are motivated by this nonsense. In my opinion, what really matters is defeating the hate, greed and ignorance that underlie it. That’s the only thing that matters.
Montysano
Watching Jeffress pray “in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” was certainly surreal, but what isn’t surreal these days?
Adam L Silverman
We will see what the Naqba Day commemorations bring when dawn breaks over Jerusalem.
HAL
Dear Jews. We evangelicals just want you to know, when the rapture comes and we’re all spirited away to heaven, while you remain behind in suffering until you die and go to hell, that your support was greatly appreciated. Amen.
Jeffro
40 people dead already
This atheist is starting to think there might be some truth to this whole antichrist thing…did it say anything about him being orange??
Manyakitty
They elected the literal embodiment of the seven deadly sins.
Aleta
(For the moment) There’s a photo of Ivan ka with her mike, looking as poised as any car show entertainer, opening the embassy with Mnuchin, that is paired with a photo of the protesters on the Gaza border. Under the headline At Least 41 Palestinians Killed in Protests as U.S. Opens Jerusalem Embassy. Above the first sentence: “At least 1,700 Palestinian demonstrators were also wounded.” (The numbers are climbing with updates + text is changing.)
The photographers are credited in one line: Mahmud Hams, Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty, which to me suggests editorial positioning, so (in my imagination) Ivan’s PR people may be yelling at the NYT right now. It was on the internet front page at the NYT.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Uh huh
Uh huh :( :(
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: This is going to be very, very, very ugly.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: And by the reports I’ve seen, despite what Jared claimed in his speech this morning, the protestors were peaceful. It appears that the Israeli forces have a shoot within so many feet of the border wall policy in place.
GregB
Jared is firing up the campaign to wage war on Iran.
Yarrow
Adam, can another administration move the embassy back?
The Moar You Know
Goddamn woman, you are a genius. Best art/post combo ever.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s a damn good thing Jesus is never coming back, or white evangelicals would be in a world of ultra-hurt.
Leto
Adam: we could’ve used you down stairs in the Monday Morning Open Thread. Lots of interesting discussion going on regarding Putin and motivations.
Preach.
Corner Stone
Bloomberg.com
Huh. You don’t say…
The Democrats Are Moving Left Without Self-Destructing
Jeffro
@GregB: he needs that dog wagged just as badly as Trumpov
Villago Delenda Est
One of the fun facts is that all this apocalyptic bullshit was created out of whole cloth in the 19th century by…you guessed it…a deranged, deplorable white evangelical.
geg6
The only people in this country who wanted this are the American Christianists and American Zionists. Who are dying slices of the electorate. There never was a majority of American Zionists. And American Christianists are losing demographic strength in a truly startling fashion over just the last few years. They are an ever shrinking minority.
ETA: Gotta say, I lol’d at the photo at top. So true.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Sure. There is a Federal law from 1999 that requires the US government to move the embassy to Jerusalem and recognize that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. As is the case with so much of this type of crap (as in Congress wants to signal their bravery to its constituents while boxing in the president, but recognize that they need the president to save them from the consequences of their craven actions), it has a waiver provision built in that allows the President to waive the requirement (annually) if it is in the best interests of the US. Up until now, every President (Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama) has done so claiming that it was in the best interests of the US to hold this out as a potential reward for the Israelis if they undertook good faith negotiations with the Palestinians and achieved a peace agreement.
All we’ve done at this point is rename the US consulate in Israel as the US embassy. The bulk of the embassy personnel and staff, as well as the building in Tel Aviv are staying in Tel Aviv for the time being. This is largely smoke and mirrors and why the President can keep claiming that he saved over a billion dollars on the embassy building.
There is a US embassy in Jerusalem. It is, in fact, the oldest US diplomatic outpost: the US Consul General in Jerusalem. This was originally the US embassy to the Ottoman Empire and is now the de facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority (PA). This is separate from the US consulate in Jerusalem, which was the the US embassy’s in Tel Aviv’s Jerusalem section and deals with issues regarding Israel.
Leto
We take you live, now, to the President and his advisors…
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: that’s a lot of words to dance around the fact of TPers’ racism
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: Sorry, was otherwise occupied.
Adam L Silverman
@geg6:
Who would happily kill us all/get us all killed in pursuit of their ahistoric and extra-textual pursuit of dogmatic suicide and oblivion.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. So the law could be changed and/or the next president could waive the requirement again and “move” it back (since you’re saying it kind of didn’t fully move)?
The Middle East is so exhausting. What happens when climate change makes it largely uninhabitable?
D58826
@HAL: shorter version – thanks for being cannon fodder
Corner Stone
@Leto: I know some people find it useful but I happen to want Pinterest to die in a fire with the heat of a thousand nuns.
Nicole
Hey, remember when, after 9/11, all the right wingers were yammering about religious zealotry and how awful it was that the Middle East was ruled by a bunch of religious nutjobs? Ugh. There’s nothing they don’t do projection on.
On the bright side, after reading TPM’s post awarding Eric Schneiderman their Duke of the Week award, I’m thinking Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow’s piece coming out now might be the best thing that could have happened for the ongoing investigation (and the chances of state-level charges) where Trump is concerned. Apologies if it’s been posted already. It’s a really interesting read.
Corner Stone
This morning I successfully discussed the core at issue of the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem with my son in less than our 10 minute car ride. I am now over-qualified to be an Ambassador in the Trump admin.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Yep..
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Yep.
The Middle East is currently largely uninhabitable outside of very specific zones. It is mostly sand and scree and dust and heat. Has been for centuries. If it didn’t have oil and ancient religious shrines, no one would either be fighting to live there or care.
Aleta
@Jeffro: Any Pres/FLs they voted for seem to get a pass on the anti-chr thing. Similar to the Pentagon: under O, Satan was literally at the wheel, but not now.
In addition to the evangelicals, the charismatics in the DC area are bravely holding on as they pray for the big event to come soon.
eta But for some odd reason, the ones most committed to the end of this world seem to be focused on making money while they wait
.
sherparick
@Aleta: The Guardian has photographs of this contrast all over the world. However, only Trump’s remarks will be played on Fox and no mention of the slaughter of unarmed protesters on the Gaza border. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/may/14/israeli-troops-kill-palestinians-protesting-against-us-embassy-move-to-jerusalem-live-updates
By the way, the Evangelicals who believe in this (and I doubt they really believe since they are not giving away all they own to the poor and living in common as the first disciples did in “Acts”), are simply nuts, even in Theological terms and Biblical studies. But, really, the only rationale thing about the Conservative Movement is a defense of privilege and property and using any nutty meme available in that defense.
Leto
@Corner Stone: I just picked it at random. Here’s an alternate site.
@Nicole: Maddow had some good coverage on this last week regarding how Trump knew about Schneiderman all the way back in 2013 when he tweeted about this. Of course it all comes back to… Michael Cohen.
arrieve
Betty that picture made me laugh out loud. And I needed to. Thanks.
Corner Stone
@Nicole: I am hovering around this Schneiderman issue as it has something about it that doesn’t set quite right, IMO. I think Mayer’s reporter rep may end up taking a ding or two before this all shakes out.
CDWard
Israelis don’t want peace, they want the Palestinian’s land. All of it. They also want the Palestinians gone, either by ethnic cleansing (happening now) or by a Final Solution (in the works).
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Why the Pinterest hate? I use it to make idea boards for wardrobe ideas and home decor. My account is private, for my eyes only.
Corner Stone
@Leto: I liked the analogy, just hate the site. I feel that all my feelings must be expressed, at every opportunity.
geg6
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, yes. But they’ve always wanted that. They used to frighten me (an atheist), though. Now I just laugh in their faces, even the ones I know IRL. Fuck ’em. They are about to become just another failed religious sect, like the Shakers and Harmonists. The youngs, even their own, want nothing to do with them.
gene108
I am glad our foreign policy is being determined by questionable theological beliefs. Better than by a bunch of elitists State Department officials, with only their eggheaded knowledge of the Middle East, which they learned from secular stuff, like books and talking with people there.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: Better add-on fact: he was also what we would term today a “child molester”. Perfect Republican.
Corner Stone
@gene108:
Well, that and a $30M check from Adelson to the R party.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: They are proving Marx was right, about religion being the opium of the masses.
Leto
@schrodingers_cat: My wife keeps wanting me to make one for cooking ideas. I do like some of the men’s fashion boards I’ve seen, but I just don’t want any more social media stuff. I’m on the computer enough as it is.
Peggy Noonan's Conscience
@Jeffro:
Were I an evangelical or even a particularly religious person, I’d be remembering that traditionally, the Devil lies a lot. And that he has powers to assume a pleasing form (not that Drumpf has a pleasing form, but he definitely tells them what they want to hear.) I’d also remember that acts, not words, define a man,
And if I were an evangelical of a particularly paranoid stripe, I’d think about the fact that Trump’s father was German and changed the family name. And that Donald John Trump’s name in German would be Donald Johann Drumpf, each name having six letters. Has anyone seen Trump’s birth certificate to verify that’s not his actual birth name?
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
No shit. What I sometimes worry about is some Talibangelical(s) deciding to “help things along” in the Middle East, i.e., Reichstag-fire-like events, designed to push various groups/governments into war. And for some reason, I keep thinking of 12 Monkeys.
MattF
Looks like we’re all about to have a case of Jerusalem Syndrome.
Elizabelle
Betty: great photo. Where is it from?
Personally, I am fine with a golden calf. Calves are generally nice creatures, and quite the useful animal. (But no veal pens.)
schrodingers_cat
@Leto: You can opt for a private account, like I did. I also have a Chrome add-on/extension that lets me save any image I like to my Pinterest boards.
I have a bunch of different boards for clothes, accessories, different rooms in the house etc. It helps me figure out what my style is, what I gravitate towards. Its much more soothing activity than reading about politics, I will tell you that.
NorthLeft12
I attempted to explain to a few people this very topic. They flat out told me that I am crazy to believe that anyone believes that.
“That would mean that they are hoping for the end of the world!” one perplexed friend said.
“And deaths of billions of people.” I added. “Men, women, children….pretty much all of us.”
As usual with the RWNJs it is all about them and their unfailing belief that what is good for them is what is right.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Looks like a scene from a movie. A closer look doesn’t show anyone with purple beads or showing their mammaries, so it’s not New Orleans.
Nicole
@Corner Stone: Did you read the TPM pieces (I put the link in my comment)? A lot of Schneiderman’s actions make an awful lot of sense if one takes as truth that Cohen and Trump knew about this since 2013. That was a really, really fast settlement on Trump U, after not much motion, and I don’t think Trump has rushed to settle any of the other many outstanding cases against him. But the one brought by the State of NY, done and done (I now wonder if the plaintiffs got screwed on the deal and if they’ll ever actually see the money).
Schneiderman even did some weird tweet a few weeks back, about how there was a legal loophole that meant the State of NY couldn’t bring charges against him if the federal investigation went nowhere. It was really weird. I mean, why tweet that, out of the blue, unless you’re already preparing to cover your own rear when you don’t bring charges?
Not saying you may not be right; just that Mayer and Farrow are pretty good at this stuff. Wish they’d get curious about Mitch McConnell.
No Drought No More
Democratic party minority leader Chuckles Schumer released this statement: “In a long overdue move, we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem. Every nation should have the right to choose its capital. I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago, and I applaud President Trump for doing it.”
The senator may as well have then added, “Fifteen years ago, I also supported the Bush-Cheney plot to war. I learned nothing from it, and am proud to once again support a republican president as he pours gasoline onto a flaming mideast”.
Democrats like Schumer will still have Americans believe in 2018 that the War in Iraq was a result of honest mistakes, committed by honorable people, all of whom kept the best interests of the United States uppermost in mind while making their decisions. It was bullshit then, it is bullshit now, and it’s past time that truth was acknowledged. To be sure, it will damage the reputations of those good and honorable democrats with the best of intentions that got it wrong in 2003. That will be a extremely small price to pay for the party to pay to right its ship. After all, Americans already know they were lied to perfectly well..
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Juicers: Adam has of course been there. So have I. If anything this is an understatement. I got sent there for work and I would have mortgaged my house by the end of the first week to get sent home. Somehow I stuck it out. Not all of my co-workers could or did. The place fucking sucks.
I got the July shift. Worst one. My co-workers told me “125 during the day, 90 at night, and 70% humidity even at peak heat in the day”. I thought they were lying or wrong, but bought my desert clothes anyway. They were neither lying or wrong. I grew up in desert and had been in 115 before fairly often, but not with humidity. I didn’t think that was possible. Oh, it is.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: It’s a still from the “10 Commandments” movie. Trump-worship by so-called Christians always reminds me of that scene, though an orange pig would be a more apt idol.
Leto
@SFAW: If it’s ala 12 Monkeys, do we currently have any talibangicals in the CDC’s infection disease lab unit? Hopefully HRO is screening for mental illness…
SFAW
@CDWard:
Fuck off.
p.a.
@schrodingers_cat: actually, it seems to be the amphetamine of the masses.
p.a.
To understand Evangs and rapture (and tribalism and hypocrisy) Fred Clark at slacktivist is a go-to.
SFAW
@Leto:
It would surprise if there weren’t any, frankly.
Assuming “HRO” is “Human Resources”: seems unlikely. Why would the Shitgibbon-era CDC be exempt from hiring nutcases?
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
Number of dead is up to 52, per NPR just now.
CarolDuhart2
@SFAW: It’s the truth. Neither vision has room for the local Palestinians (Christians or Muslims), What to do? Depends on who you ask and what you ask.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: I remember the first time we dismounted by the Tigris. Me and two of my teammates – also from Florida. And we were all like: “what’s that in the air, it seems familiar?” It was humidity. We hadn’t felt it in a while!
The amount of money spent to keep the Gulf states livable, or, rather, the places where people live in the Gulf states livable, would stagger most people. What the Israelis have spent over the decades to develop an agricultural system that works outside of the Jerusalem watershed is also amazingly expensive. And that’s just in monetary units – not in the amount of lives it has cost.
Corner Stone
@Nicole: I did. I had already read the Duke one and also several of Josh’s own tweets related to this. I am having trouble reconciling a couple of facts, which may be easily explainable and I’m just not making the connection. Trump is a multi-decade ratfucker. Just look at who he surrounds himself with, Stone and Roy Cohn. So he’s always gathering dirt on people. My question is why did he wait five years to dunk Schneiderman when Eric had been going at him for several years? I just don’t think Trump is a patient or strategic thinker. I don’t have a basis to judge the Trump U settlement but it sounded like Trump just wanted to make it go away.
People with power can easily become corrupted, and men are the worst. ES’s non-denial denial wasn’t as forceful as I would have expected so it makes me wonder. But there are a lot of ties to a lot of people involved (not just Trump, Cohen and ES) in this story, going back several years. Which seems odd, IMO.
Taken with what might be a self-serving or irrelevant statement from ES’s ex-wife, and I’m just waiting for more information.
Leto
@The Moar You Know: I’ve spent a collective 4 years there out of my 21 years total military service. People usually like to talk about dry heat and heat with humidity, compare which one is worse. i usually describe it as my brain was on fire and not being able to touch anything metal outside for fear of 1st/2nd degree burns, on top of feeling like I’m swimming through the air. New people usually laugh at the locals because they’re “wearing bed sheets/dresses”, but after they lose about 3 gallons of sweat an hour their opinions change. “Hmm, maybe they’re on to something.” No shit, you think?
SFAW
@CarolDuhart2:
Oh, I feel SO much better that you didn’t suggest that the
JEEWWWWZZZZIsraelis were going to set up Arbeitslager, and try out that new thing Zyklon-B.That makes it all good, amirite?
ETA: Forgot to thank you for enlightening me re: what is “the truth.”
Yarrow
@Corner Stone:
Agreed. Something isn’t quite right there. I think Schneiderman resigned quickly so he wasn’t the story. Took one for the team, perhaps.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: It seems like this has been the case for a long time. It has always been a land of oases separated by deserts. No doubt that is a big reason why it is a source of constant conflict. That people cannot cease their conflicts long enough to apply modern technology to alleviate more of the difficulties is a big reason why things are going to get much, much worse. They Syrian conflict clearly has its seeds in rural water shortage. Assad’s main action in response to the shortage was to prohibit any public discussion of it.
Aleta
@Leto: and just a hunch, Giuliani. And others, and probably the racist Israeli Cube mercenaries. For almost every woman hit/threatened by AG Sch. there may be one or more others she talked to, and then a few people they told. In my opinion, the women who talked to Farrow, the reputable Democratic supporters, may only represent one type who were hit.
rikyrah
To all of those that continue to try and discount me as an “ambulance chaser” or “porn lawyer” – take note. Here is a link to some of the results I have obtained as lead counsel (over $1B). Not a single one listed is a personal injury matter. #bastahttps://t.co/fHyh0IdTCM
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 14, 2018
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: I find Pinterest to be abnormally pushy about trying to make you do what it wants. Plus it seems too cluttered/busy for how I like to view content. I also do not have a need for an ideas board such as you describe so its usefulness may just be lost on me. My thoughts on it are strenghtened every time I click a link and am ambushed by it trying to leg-hump me the 15 seconds I am there trying to figure out what I am looking at.
Not saying Leto’s was an ambush, the link had pinterest.com in it. So I punched myself in the nads a few times to prepare myself for what I could expect when I clicked.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: While this was inelegantly said, it is not necessarily wrong. The members of Netanyahu’s coalition’s positions – both individual members and the parties they belong to – on the Palestinians is all about a one state solution and has been for several years. How this happens ranges from coming up with some way to give Palestinians some form of Israeli citizenship – from full to second class citizenship – at the almost palatable end to ethnic cleansing on the unpalatable end. And the ethnic cleansing proposals and/or suggestions range from largely non-violent population transfer to violently forcing it.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman:
It seems like kind of a waste, especially as global warming is going to make living there more and more difficult.
ruemara
@No Drought No More: Really? So? Who the fuck cares what Schumer said? He can make all the motions he wanted to, he’s probably pandering to the sizable Hasid population in NYC. He still didn’t MOVE the embassy and cause this. It would’ve gone nowhere in a Democratic administration because our side is smarter and not a bunch of fucking nihilists.
@Yarrow: Then they will drink their blood and eat their own flesh while proclaiming that god gave them that land and they’ll never leave. No one said humans have common sense.
Kay
So glad we have the President’s otherwise unemployable son in law as the lead on this. He leapfrogged ahead of the (qualified) competition based solely on nepotism. A real ringing endorsement of the US “meritocracy”, don’t you think?
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t recall Israeli governments before Bibi enjoying “dealing with the Palestinians” the way Bibi has.
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t see too many countries in the area jumping at the chance to help the Palestinians. Being obvious about it doesn’t make the Israelis saints (so to speak), but they aren’t the only ones over there who wish the Palestinians would go away.
Stuart Frasier
@Yarrow:
At this point, I’m leaning towards Schneiderman being compromised and his downfall being good news. Trumpworld knew about this 5 years ago and they were keeping it in their pocket to release at an opportune time.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: and we know the counting is never immediate. And then the reporting by its nature is slower that the people working to count and to verify.
Librarian
@Betty Cracker: It’s the scene where Edward G. Robinson says, “Where’s your messiah now?”
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Adam L Silverman: While it might be legally reversible, the facts on the ground problem will make it politically difficult to move the “embassy” back again. Perhaps it will remain an outpost, and an embassy in name only.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Perhaps if he/she had said “Endloesung,” that would have been better? Sorry, Adam, but “inelegantly said” is on a par with “economic anxiety” re: giving cover to racism/what-have-you.
El Caganer
@Yarrow: It already has in Syria – a lot of farmland has turned to desert, forcing rural people into cities unequipped to absorb them.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Agreed that they try to push stuff on you, like YouTube or any other social media service. My profile is mostly blank, so they have few suggestions for me. I also ignore whatever suggestions they do have. Its just a good way to save and organize various images I find on the intertoobz for later reference.
ETA: Pinterest links are of the devil and to be avoided at all cost. On that we agree.
SFAW
@Librarian:
On Mott Street, of course. And, amazingly, he looks like Yaphet Kotto.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: If you don’t have an account, you can’t look at a thing that is posted there without being heavily pestered to open one. And the pestering doesn’t really make the utility of Pinterest clear, aside from “look at stuff people put there without us bothering you”.
Leto
@Aleta: Include the NYC FBI office in that. So much fuckery there.
@Corner Stone:
#missionaccomplished (*zips up his flight suit and zooms off…)
Aleta
@Nicole:
For a short time, a few of them said the 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out by the Palestinians.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: The Palestinians aren’t the indigenous population of Iraq or Kuwait or Oman or Algeria or Saudi or Iran, etc.
As for this:
I don’t understand what this means.
Adam L Silverman
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): Most likely.
CarolDuhart2
@SFAW: Stop with that. It is about ethnic cleansing for either land or religion. Either Jesus does it (presumably no Palestinians are Rapture Christians) or Israelis find a way to make the Palestinians go away. Both are based on end-times religiosity, and in religiosity there are no room for the unsaved or the unchurched or those whose visions don’t include this. How this happens is a matter of chance.
Yarrow
@El Caganer: I’m aware. That’s why I mentioned it. The Middle East is going to continue to be harder and harder to live in. At some point if temperatures continue to climb, humans will not be able to stay alive there. Systems will just shut down.
rikyrah
@gene108:
IKR?
So lucky that the true believers of the Little Baby Jesus are running things.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
Indeed. The numbers of dead/injured is already appalling, and I’m bracing to hear much, much higher figures before this day is over.
Aleta
@Yarrow: There are comparative satellite/ aerial/remote sensing photos of the increased erosion and desiccation in the (general) area in the last 15 or so (I’m guessing) years.
rp
Words matter. Saying that the Israelis are looking for a “final solution” for the Palestinians is (a) wrong, (b) offensive, and (c), for reasons (a) and (b), counterproductive.
Alain the site fixer
@SiubhanDuinne: I expect we’ll see a lot more conflict once it’s dawn.
James Powell
@No Drought No More:
Sad truth is that the vast majority of Americans are completely comfortable with Israel displacing and ethnic cleansing the Palestinians. The are also comfortable with the IDF killing Palestinians who throw rocks or shout things. The depravity in our culture runs deep.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: I don’t know what you’re fucking problem is, but take it somewhere else. I’ve been tracking what Bibi and his coalition partners want to do with the Palestinians for a very long time. I’m the person in this conversation, hell I’m the only person on this or any other fucking planet, that wrote the US governmental report on what the actual current Israeli governing coalition’s positions are regarding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I wrote it in July 2014 for the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace – at that time Gen (ret) Allen – his senior staff and advisors (of which I was technically a part), the Commanding General of US Army Europe – at that time LTG (ret) Campbell – and his senior staff, of which I was also a part. This was part of and grew out of my work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue (the Special Envoy’s office) and US Army Europe.
Accurately describing the positions of all sides is necessary to formulate effective policy and strategy. Explaining that the current Israeli governing coalition’s positions range from trying to come up with some way to make many Palestinians Israeli citizens as Israel formally annexes the West Bank to physically forcing the Palestinians out as Israel formally annexes the West Bank. What CDWard is describing is not incorrect in the context of what Bibi and his coalition partners want and are willing to do to achieve it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alain the site fixer:
Yup :-(
Neldob
People who were treated horribly and dehumanized treat other people horribly and dehumanize them.
The idea of having cocktails at the embassy while people are mowed down outside from the other thread seems too appropriate. And almost too hideous to contemplate.
Could this be the embers of a Reichstag fire? What are our plans for when it comes?
millekat1
Somehow I am hearing a lot of Gounod. (Where Mephisto sings a song in praise of the Calf of Gold.)
James Powell
@Corner Stone:
What does that writer mean about the Tea Party’s suicidal tendencies? They now run all three branches of the federal government and the majority of state governments. They don’t use the term Tea Party anymore because they don’t need to. They took over the Republican Party. They are the people who insisted that Boehner and Cantor were too liberal.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Today is the first day of Ramdan, for that extra bit of TRUE Christian(tm) viscous, spitefulness.
catclub
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, what are your thoughts on Netanyahu apparently having enough pull with Putin to stop
the transfer of advanced anti-air missiles to Syria? I was somewhat boggled by that.
Thanks
CarolDuhart2
@rp: It depends on what that is-and as far as I can tell-there is no consensus. But the bottom line is that neither vision has room for the indigenous population-neither religiously or in the matter of a decent place to live. The status quo isn’t sustainable in one vision. And in the other, I call it “Rapture Panic”. It’s been about 50 years for them, and nothing has happened the way they hoped it would. China did not descend its hordes to destroy Israel, preferring to follow its own vision to prosperity. Russia did not do so either, instead allying with every right-wing movement instead. And most Jews prefer to stay where they are. So they have resorted to the refuge of failed prophets everywhere: instead of waiting, they have decided to jump-start things in the hope that finally their predictions would come true.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Bibi seems to revel in making Palestinian lives worse than they already are. Maybe I’m misjudging him? Certainly possible.
Mike in NC
So, existing US Consulate in Jerusalem gets “rebranded” as the new Embassy. Typical Trumpian bullshit marketing stunt.
Adam L Silverman
@catclub: Israel is the southern terminus and then the southern most east-west stepping off point for Russian organized crime’s human trafficking (women for the sex trade), weapons, and narco trafficking route. Avigdor Lieberman has long been Putin’s man in Jerusalem. Also, Russia doesn’t have the military assets in Syria to actually protect its Syrian client and Iranian ally and their proxies from Israeli air power. If he puts those S300 and S400 batteries in Syria he’s just ensuring that the Israelis will blow them up.
guachi
@sherparick:
This actually isn’t true. We have Fox on at work (I work for the fed govt) at they had a split screen with the protests and a caption of 41 dead while playing the ceremony.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: No argument with that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman:
So yet, again the Master Negociator Donal Spanky Trump gives it away for free, and to think people wonder how Trump went bankrupt eleven times, well there is the explaination.
It is truly a pity forty people died over something that’s meaningless in the end.
Barbara
@James Powell: Claiming they are completely comfortable is an overstatement. More accurate would be they feel like the U.S. has been banging its head against the wall and even if it has been too pro-Israel, as it is now, the conflict has always seemed to be hopeless and the Palestinians would do the same to the Israelis if they had the same fire power. I have told people I worked with, Jews, that Israel should have just imposed the two state solution and adopted whatever security measures it needed to in order to enforce it. “Here, this is yours. Stop bothering me.” They usually respond that Palestinians won’t recognize Israel, and would murder people any chance they got, and I say, yes, I agree. The point is that sometimes to make progress you just have to move ahead and leave others behind. Fundamentally, Netanyahu doesn’t want progress and manipulates circumstances to make sure he doesn’t get it.
Amir Khalid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Ramadhan begins in Malaysia at sunset on Wednesday. Can the phases of the moon be that far out of step between the US and Malaysia?
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Fair enough. I guess when I see “Final Solution” being put forth as the goal of Israeli policy, I get kind of annoyed.
Corner Stone
@James Powell: My take on it was the contrast he pointed out. The D’s still have a moderate wing and do not look to be cannibalizing it at present. However, the TP/R party should have been much more dominant while riding their racist white grievance – but they gathered behind extremist candidates that could not/did not win. In areas where the gerrymander can’t hold off all comers (like a Senate race), their drive for nutjob purity arguably stole maybe 6 Senate seats over a four year period?
As for Ryan and Cantor, it’s odds on money that Ryan’s enabling of the TP/Extremist of the Extreme wing could cost the R’s that House seat. Cantor’s nutjob Brat could also find himself in trouble in VA, if not this cycle maybe shortly.
ETA, I just noticed you mentioned Boehner, not Ryan. IMO Boehner was just as much of an enabler and the tiger ate him and poo’d him out.
germy
The rabbi who blessed jared & ivanka:
(wikipedia)
Yosef has a history of questionable remarks, suggesting women who dressed immodestly were “animals” and claiming non-Jews were forbidden to live in Israel.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
This is your periodic reminder that the Benghazi/HillaryZOMGRmail probe sprung from the Obama Administration having the temerity to criticize that asshole redneck pastor for sparking demonstrations across the entire MENA region – including Benghazi, which provided cover for that attack.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Do you think they will succeed. How much of the public opinion is with them
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: I can understand that, but that was why I said inelegantly put. Until, unless that commenter starts spouting significant amounts of anti-Semitic garbage, I’m taking it at face value. Especially as there are currently serving Israeli members of Knesset and Bibi’s cabinet from within the governing coalition who describe the Palestinians far too similarly to how the NAZIs described the Jews. It is unpleasant. And as someone who is Jewish it bothers me that I would have coreligionists who seem to be unaware they’ve become what they profess to hate. But ignoring the reality of just how far around the bend the Israeli political and religious right, especially the overlapping parts, have gone isn’t going to help us understand what we’re dealing with or come up with ways to mitigate and manage it.
That said: I apologize for cursing at you. It was unnecessary. I will endeavor to do better.
rp
@CarolDuhart2: There’s no consensus on the meaning of the phrase “final solution”? Come on. Here’s the dictionary definition:
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
OK, thanks.
Look, (I think) I understand some of the background and motivation re: what drives Netanyahu, and don’t necessarily disagree with some of his (supposed) assessment re: some/most of his neighbors wanting Israel gone. But a scorched-earth policy (in a manner of speaking) does no one any good.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Actually he gave it away to get the adoration he needs to feed his ego.
Sloane Ranger
@HAL: Why should the Israelis care? As I understand it Jewish theology has no Armageddon/end of the world.
As far as they are concerned the Evangelicals are just useful idiots.
This will not end well. No other nation in the region gives a damn about the Palestinians except as cheap labour or propaganda tools.
Lots of them will die for nothing other than Trump bathing in the adoration of his worshippers.
danielx
In today’s WaPo:
The Daily 202: Trump voters stay loyal because they feel disrespected
Well, yes. I do disrespect them.
I’m far from a coastal elitist – granted, my parents had a subscription to the New Yorker for as long as I can remember. But I’m a midwesterner, and Trump voters lost any respect I might have had for them when they voted for the sorry-ass motherfucker. That isn’t going to change. I do hold people who voted for him in at least mild contempt, deepening to active dislike depending on their individual views. Sorry – well, no, I’m not sorry. I don’t give a shit what Trump voters’ reasons were; they were wrong, although most will go to their graves without admitting it. Screw them and their wounded sensitivities.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: This is especially unacceptable and unfortunate coming from the Chief Sephardic rabbi. Israel has a serious racism problem. The Jews of European descent – Ashkenazi Jews – consider themselves superior and more white than the Sephardic Jews – Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent. The Ashkenazi Israelis also consider the Mizrahi Jews – Jews of Arab and Iranian descent – inferior and rank them near or just below the Sephardim. At the bottom are Jews from Africa, specifically the Jews who came to Israel from Ethiopia. This has gone on for a very, very, very long time and while it waxes and wanes, has gotten worse over the past decade. Most of this stuff gets little or no play outside of Israel, so most non-Israelis realize this problem even exists.
schrodingers_cat
@danielx: Respect has to be earned it can’t be demanded. Sorry if you voted for T or Jill Stein because you were too pure, you deserve zero respect.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
Golden tongue that easily bedazzles the weak minded.
TenguPhule
@danielx:
Give it another year and you’ll be considering them sub-humans unfit to pollute the air you breathe.
germy
Jeffro
@TenguPhule:
That’s…not terribly reassuring.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
I feel like something is missing.
El Caganer
@Sloane Ranger: They may not give a damn about Palestinians, but they are very sensitive about the religious status of Jerusalem. Agree that things will not end well – probably for everybody involved.
Jeffro
@danielx: “disrespect” = the new “economic anxiety”
It works both ways, motherfuckers. You want respect? Quit acting like only your views count.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t know. The problem is that the centrist to center-left to left of center in Israeli politics has essentially collapsed in terms of political viability. The final nail seemed to be when Netanyahu stole the right to form the last government from Tzipi Livni who’d actually won that right under Israeli law by having the coalition that won the larger plurality in Israel’s election. Unless or until the center to the center left to the left of center of Israeli politics makes itself electorally viable, the current coalition has a lock on national power in Israel. What’s even worse is that Bibi is, for all intents and purposes, the closest to the center within the coalition he’s assembled. And that includes the other Likud Party members of his coalition.
CarolDuhart2
@rp: What I meant was that the Israelis want it to “go away”, and hopefully for good. But “final solution” while a Nazi term, does not have a fixed methodology. But that the visions do not include anything for the indigenous populations is a tell. And being a religious vision, it is not one that can be argued rationally or on any way compromising on terms. A rational decision would be a one-state solution with a weak federal system with each group having its own space. But such pragmatic solutions would not be in keeping with Biblical prophesy as interpreted by a teenage girl in Scotland over a century ago. Nor with the anxieties of white right-wing Christian Americans who hope they get raptured away from a changing world where fewer and fewer people believe in what they do. And they don’t die and just go where everyone else goes.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
Fox viewers think that killing Palestinian protesters is a good thing, so …
Corner Stone
Link to a twit from Brian Klaas’ feed:
Click through to see Trump’s tweet about ZTE and a Trumpers response(s). As Klaas notes, the Trumper literally has his mind wiped and overwritten in three minutes or less.
ETA, it is suggested in the comments of that thread that the Trumper (Joey M) is a bot. While possible, I find it all too emblematic of the real thing.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: Okay.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
JFC, don’t worry about it!
I have never seen Final Solution (in upper case) used for anything other than an Endloesung reference. (Sorry about the no-umlaut.) I would venture to say that I’m not alone in that regard.
Yeah, that’s pretty appalling. I guess I’m not surprised, given the relatively large number of RWNJs in the Knesset. They should know better, but then again, they’re RWNJs.
Chet Murthy
@SFAW: @CDWard: CDWard, you’re inaccurate that “Israelis” want this. “Likudniks and other right-wing nuts in Israel, who currently control the government” want this. But there are decent Israelis who want peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. Lots of them.
Aleta
@James Powell: And too close to either comfortable or indifferent to the targeting of journalists. (Also reportedly done by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere. And (as documented) done by US police against black journalists covering BLM protests.)
Haaretz, April 9
Haaretz, April 13
Jeffro
Trumpov is going to be even more ‘into’ the fundies – their beliefs and causes and priorities – from here on out, as they are super-loyal to him and will deny the evidence of their own eyes (a la Stormy Daniels). They’re already shoring him up.
“Defend me, my good Christian soldiers!” We’ll be hearing a version of that before too much longer, unfortunately…
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
To be fair. Hamas has a well deserved reputation for using the protesters as cover for military operations.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: Odds are I can’t spell umlaut correctly, so no worries.
James Powell
@Barbara:
I’m comfortable with “completely comfortable.” It means Americans are not upset by what Israel does to the Palestinians. It means they aren’t going to do anything in response, their overall opinions and feelings about Israel and Palestinians will remain unchanged, and it most certainly will not impact how they vote. Your explanation for why that is so is but one rationale for Americans to be completely comfortable with whatever Israel decides to do.
I find this attitude disturbing. It reminds me of a discussion/argument I had during Bush’s Iraq invasion with some pro-invasion tote-baggers. I showed them a photo of a child whose arms were blown off by Our Brave Troops. They responded, “He’d probably grow up to be a terrorist anyway.” People assuming that the Palestinians are all murderers just waiting for a chance to kill is, no doubt, one of the reasons that nothing is going to get better there any time soon.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: I’m very aware.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Corner Stone: Trump auto-correct by posting from a ZTE phone?
germy
@Corner Stone: this first reply to his tweet says it all:
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: He’s a bot alright…unfortunately, he’s the kind of ‘bot’ that actually lives in America, wasting our precious oxygen resources.
“Dear Leader cannot be wrong because if he is, even slightly, then the Magic of him always being right disappears and I like that Magic, I like it a LOT! It saves me from having to engage my System 2 thinking and means that Dear Leader might be wrong on something else and that CANNOT BE BECAUSE HE HATES ON LIBS SO WELL!”
rikyrah
@danielx:
I have said this for awhile:
They are upset because of the lack of respect that we show Dolt45.
That we aren’t deferring to him.
The MSM tried to normalize him, and we weren’t having it.
They are stunned – stunned-, that not only do we NOT show Dolt45 any deference..
But, we are openly hostile towards THEM for voting for him.
We have all but told them that, yes, they will be judged for their vote for him. That it shows THEIR lack of character.
Simply put, for people like me, It didn’t have to be this way. Every inch of pain. Every person who is deported. Every child taken away from their parent. Every person on Medicaid who will lose access to healthcare. Every working person, because of them phucking with Obamacare and raising premiums. Every Palestinian killed today.
ALL OF IT LIES WITH THEM.
I, and no other non-White, outside of the Slave Catchers, are gonna accept responsibility for this.
The lowering of America as a world power – that’s on White people.
If you didn’t vote for him, you know I’m not talking to you. But, you’re probably related to someone that IS responsible.
And, even once we have turned this dark corner..
They.WILL.NEVER.BE.FORGIVEN.
Period.
So, MSM, stop writing articles about these muthaphuckas.
NEVER.WILL.THEY.BE.FORGIVEN.
Their Vessel for White Supremacy is an INTERNATIONAL embarrassment.
Period.
rikyrah
Margot Kidder died. She was 69.
Nicole
@Corner Stone: I get what you’re saying, and again, you absolutely may be right and there may be more here that makes the whole thing fall apart. But I can plausibly see why Trump kept quiet about it (other than tweeting when he first found out, because the man is incapable of sitting on an impulse) because it’s fine blackmail. Schneiderman, when all is said and done, went after Trump the way Weiner worked in the House of Representatives- talked a game, but didn’t actually do a whole lot of anything. Schneiderman did all of the public speaking on the settlement of the lawsuit, but $21 of it is going to the California cases filed against him, and only $4 million to the NY cases. The CA cases were the big ones.
CarolDuhart2
What I worry about even more is that Trump, or one of his deluded followers will try a nuke to ‘hasten things along”.
catclub
@Chet Murthy:
although, as Adlai Stevenson said to the lady who told him that all thinking voters are for him: “But We need a majority”.
James Powell
@Corner Stone:
You’re right about this. I overlooked it because they hold the senate anyway, but it for sure cost them in the campaign against Harry Reid.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
War by the survivors for what little remains.
What, you thought human nature would change?
Mnemosyne
@danielx:
As Jeffro said, this is just a new terminology for what we already know: white people no longer have automatic cultural hegemony, and racist white people are pissed about that.
Nelle
@HAL:My sister is in this camp. My husband is Jewish. We talk of other things. She’s been a dispensationalist for 55 years and I don’t see any way to chink into that closed mindseat. She dislikes Trump but thinks God is allowing him in office to protect the millions of murdered babies and to get the Embassy in Jerusalem. Sigh. I just spent a week with the two sisters, both religious, and I love them dearly, but such a difference. The other sister is a fervent Christian but on the social justice side of things. She married into a big African family. She and her African born son are sitting in an immigration court right now in San Francisco to see if INS is going to deport him (he’s got a green card).
Jeffro
Hey whenever we’re ready for another topic, here’s a good one: how about Whites-Only Welfare?
Why not? Like everything else about this maladministration, it’s racism all the way down!
I have a feeling that the courts will, once again, put a stop to this kind of nonsense before it actually gets implemented. But please, both-sides media, tell us again how this fits with “economic anxiety” (or the latest BS narrative, that this is about perceived “disrespect”)?
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
Which is not happening for a generation barring some genuine miracle.
The last bunch of Palestinian uprisings for 2000-2008 have pretty much fucked the Israeli left and strengthened the hard right. Those suicide bombings and heinous murders left deep psychic scars.
NobodySpecial
@SFAW: Every Israeli government but one since ’73 has reveled in making Palestinian lives worse than they already were. They’ve locked down entire cities for the benefit of a few hundred squatters in more than one place. They’ve removed entire villages. They’ve taken land with a nod and a wink from the government there for 40 years or more. Maybe it’s time to start using terminology that reflects the facts on the ground.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Poor troubled soul. R.I.P.
Nelle
@Nelle: sorry for typos – hand surgery and my significant finger is braced in the significant gesture for at least six weeks. Seems to be appropriate for the state of the world.
And what do I do to get these automatic loud ads from launching (right now, it is a duet, with one a second behind the other).
TenguPhule
@James Powell:
i like to point out that people who say things like this stay very quiet about how the Palestinians have a very well known reputation for murdering civilians and off duty soldiers who’s only crime was to get lost. And that their police are a fucking joke when it comes to holding criminals in jail.
oaguabonita
Hunh?
As someone who grew up in that milieu — and still has relations in/with it — I can’t even imagine what your basis could be for questioning that.
Fair Economist
@Corner Stone:
Any sane leftist can see that some of the lefties are winning, the moderates are adopting more leftish positions, and in any case stopping the Republicans is paramount. Basically, hard rightists are mostly nuts, while hard leftists are mostly sane.
James Powell
@Jeffro:
That is their worldview. To them “respect” means they get their way on everything. Just as “religious freedom” to the RW Christians means that everybody has to follow their religion’s rules.
Mike G
At Least 41 Palestinians Killed in Protests as U.S. Opens Jerusalem Embassy.
Trump supporters are greatly disturbed about this number.
They feel it’s not high enough.
Skippy-san
The Israelis don’t give a shit about biblical prophecy. For them, this is about getting a green light to annex settlements in the West Bank that are not contiguous to Jerusalem. Maybe even annexing the whole West Bank. ( Which will then make Israel like South Africa because they will not give the Palestinians the right to vote).
For Israelis, Jerusalem already was their capital. And most of the embassy staff will still be in Tel Aviv. It will take 5 years to build a proper embassy in Jerusalem-and the US would crazy to give up the beachfront property that the now “consulate” sits on in Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu is playing Trump.
Yarrow
@Nelle:
That’s awful. Why is he at risk for deportation?
Corner Stone
@James Powell: We can do a fun little history re-write and imagine if they put up some decent (by R standards) candidates and had 58-42 R Senate. And then had leverage over a couple Red State D’s like if a Manchin or Heitkamp still existed and/or they don’t put Roy Moore up in AL (for God’s sake). With a proposed 10 more R House seats imagineraly added, there is no telling the kind of fuckery they would have steamrolled through.
TenguPhule
@NobodySpecial:
Maybe you should pay attention to the extreme provocations that triggers the crackdowns, security sweeps and the general hardening of Israeli attitudes against the Palestinians.
Any major power, faced with similar attacks, would have committed something close to genocide by now.
hitchhiker
@danielx:
I read the headlines and skimmed that article, but didn’t have the heart to do more than that. My relatives in MI got co-opted into the Republican party by default, for the tragic reason that their only option for radio “entertainment” back in the 90s was Rush effing Limbaugh. They’re generally not more racist or crazy than anybody I know here on the fabulous west coast, but they do indeed believe that all of us think we’re better than them.
Why? Because they’ve been hearing it overtly and covertly 24/7 for the last 25 years.
What’s happened is not that different from any propaganda that pits one population against another. People start to question their own experience and judgment in favor of what “everyone” is saying.
To wit, my own brothers — who have known me for 60+ plus years and trusted my judgment on all manner of family issues — are now persuaded that I’m in the grip of some crazy liberal ideology that involves despising them. Them, personally.
It’s madness.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
You have proof that the Palestinian Authority directs and approves these operations like the IDF does? Or is this just more of your whataboutism on Israel?
There plenty of freelance Israeli terrorists going around killing Palestinians, if you want to go that route. Baruch Goldstein was just one of the more successful ones.
TenguPhule
@Skippy-san:
Likud’s goal, not Israel’s. The sane Israelis can read a map and see the obvious security problems involved.
Skippy-san
cain
@Villago Delenda Est:
You can always tell a scam because it seems like a lot of these religions have some kind of “they are coming back..” in order to make sure that you’re continue to be interested in the religion. After all, if Jesus doesn’t come back what’s the point of all that praying and so forth. Hinduism has something similar where Vishnu comes down for one last re-incarnation – he’ll come back as Kalki and be running around with a blazing sword.
Oh also from that link.
The Padma Purana describes that Kalki will end the age of kali and kill all mlecchas. He will gather all brahmanas and propound the highest truth, bringing back the ways of dharma that have been lost, and removing the prolonged hunger of the Brahmin. Kalki will defy oppression and be a banner of victory for the world.[26]
“mlecchas” are apparently foreigners. So you know, those filth coming from the north that conquered India. Dharma comes back etc etc. Us brahmanas get all the power..
Moronic. What is an Indian anyways? Is it the original Dravidians or is it the Dravidic/Aryan mix? The whole thing is ridiculous.
Catatonia
@The Moar You Know:
Areas around the Persian Gulf regularly register the highest heat indexes on the planet. Insane values, up to 160F at times. It’s unfathomable to me how people can operate in such conditions. I’ve been to Death Valley in August, it was 122F air temp in the shade. That was on vacation, a lark, an interesting experience. Fun, even. But unlike just about any other things vacation experience I’ve had, I have no desire to repeat it.
Skippy-san
@TenguPhule: Fair enough. But I don’t see Yair Lapid or Labor getting back into power anytime soon.
ruemara
@Adam L Silverman: That’s not concerning at all.
Honus
@Barbara: I get a little tired of hearing how the Middle East is in perpetual conflict because of some fundamental flaw or condition. This is always from people whose ancestors lined up in Europe twice last century and systematically slaughtered something in the neighborhood of 50 million people. Or Americans who killed half a million of each other and destroyed an entire region of the country over an economic dispute. By comparison the Middle East is an oasis of peace marred occasionally by minor sectarian conflicts.
kd bart
I gather that legalized sports betting will now become a major issue in state races?
cain
@Yarrow:
Looks like they’ll be looking for a new homeland, huh? I wonder where they will go next?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Proof of direct orders? No. And seeing as how Hamas and the PLA don’t operate like a professional military, I don’t ever expect to.
Their approval? How much fucking proof do you want? Its not exactly a secret that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ATTACK GETS SUPPORTED by either organization in word and deed. Do you think its some coincidence that the families of the attackers are hailed as heroes and provided with support, including honest to fucking god survivor pensions?
Israel’s professionalism has eroded over the decades, but they still managed to condemn and go after the Israeli who set those Palestinians on fire, including that baby girl who was burned to death.
Name the last time the Palestinians even pretended to try to police their own. You’ll have to go back quite a ways.
Corner Stone
@cain: Give it a few years and Alaska will be the world’s breadbasket.
TenguPhule
@Skippy-san:
Likud and Hamas have a positive feedback loop going.
Nicole
@cain:
I actually had one evangelical friend once say to me that she HAD to believe in all this stuff, because, if it’s not true, then what’s the point in anything? Ugh. It’s like they can’t fathom wanting to be kind and good and just in this brief time we have for its own sake. Their only concern is the threat of punishment. I think it’s why they developed the whole, “believe and Jesus will forgive you anything” schtick. To get out of having to actually do anything good. Said friend also told me Catholics are going to Hell because they focus too much on “doing good deeds.” American evangelism is astonishingly self-centered. Well, maybe I shouldn’t be astonished.
danielx
@hitchhiker:
I hear you. One of my oldest friends (and daughter unit’s godfather) has become a complete wingnut. I kind of understand it because he’s a gun freak, which he wasn’t decades ago. But I don’t know how to talk to him any more. He’s a reasonably smart guy, but back when we were close(er) he wasn’t the same person he is now. He is still a good guy on a personal level, but for me politics has become personal and I cannot respect someone who holds the views he does.
We don’t talk much any more, and I miss the friend he was. It’s painful.
opiejeanne
@NorthLeft12: Dear Lord, I had a conversation with my mom’s home care helper when she was dealing with dementia. Mom had the dementia, but possibly also the helper. She told me she was praying for Armageddon. I asked her why she wanted the world to end, did she really hate it that much? She was flummoxed and more so when I pointed out that the “prophecy” was unBiblical, and like Adam said, pretty darned recent.
She was also not very bright, poorly educated, lived with a “disabled” husband in trailer who totally controlled what they watched on tv (I told her she had the right to watch other news than Fox) and who told her how to vote. When I thought about her life I could see that maybe the world wasn’t such a great place in her eyes.
Other than all of this, she was good to my mom, always cheerful, was a huge help for my dad.
Barbara
@danielx: I have no use for any article of this kind. It falls into the class of “you will find anything if you go looking for it” kind of article, which is to say, start with thesis and then find the proof. It will never be hard to find. And they can just spare me the moral indignation. I have been married for nearly 30 years, I have three kids, I take care of my family and I pretty much live the kind of life they do. They are chasing a chimera of grievance that they have created to justify their anger at a loss that in most cases doesn’t even exist.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
IDF don’t get government pensions for killing journalists and bombing clearly marked Red Cross shelters? Or is okay to kill innocent civilians as long as you’re wearing a uniform?
Neldob
@TenguPhule: This, of course, goes both ways.
FlipYrWhig
@danielx: Will there ever be an article about how counties/districts/states that used to vote for Republicans started voting for Democrats because Republicans went fucking apeshit? Why is that story not interesting to reporters? Why are they so fascinated by a bunch of ignorant bigots who hate everyone and fall for nonsense?
cain
@Adam L Silverman:
How can they sustain all that growth they are having in Israel and the settlements? Worse, none of those people seem to be paying taxes. The tax debt is going to be nuts since they seem to be multiplying… Also how many people is really needed to study the Torah/Tanakh? Worst example of crowd sourcing ever.
J R in WV
I used to have a lot of curiosity about the ancient sites of the area, holy or just ancient. Now many of the most interesting places are either destroyed or too dangerous to get near without SEAL team escort. We travel with friends, often talk about interesting places to go, like Baja and Italy so far. Israel proper is just not attractive as a tourist destination, being over-run with determined revelatory christians, and an armed camp with bomb shelters and such. Plus the willful misinterpretation of most of the sites into proof of the Bible’s truths.
I mentioned Egypt, and he was totally interested but completely unwilling to go as a person of Jewish heritage. Which made complete sense to me, but was sad. I then realized there are hundreds of interesting ancient places he can’t feel safe even visiting. Silk Road? out. Balkans? out. Germany? Get outta here!
Most of our friends can’t afford to travel the way we do. It is way more fun to travel with a small group of friends, two couples, or 3.
TenguPhule
@Barbara:
The problem is that modern technology managed to allow more people to survive on the same resources the area previously had and offered a path to improving lifestyles which also happened to be very fucking expensive.
And once the water tables sink past the point of recovery, shit is going to get even worse.
Barbara
@Honus: Yes, that’s a fair point. For much of human history a lot of geographic regions have been engaged in what looks like constant warfare. I wasn’t trying to say the Middle East was unique, but its climate might make it easier to identify the contested assets.
@TenguPhule: No argument there at all. My understanding is that Saudi Arabia relies a lot on desalination already.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
Modern Germany is safer then many other places.
oaguabonita
@Nicole:
aka “Pascal’s Wager“
Aleta
TenguPhule
@Honus:
Did you just call slavery an economic dispute?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
The IDF are the only side in that conflict that actually investigates and sometimes holds people accountable when an accusation is made.
You are not going to win this fight any more then your mistaken screed on Last Jedi. Stop digging.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
When was the last time an active member of the IDF faced any penalty for their actions? One of their snipers just killed a photojournalist wearing a clearly marked “PRESS” vest.
Let me know when the court martial for that IDF sniper begins, ‘mmmkay?
TenguPhule
@Neldob:
True.
Of course some outrages are more noteworthy then others.
Kicking off an uprising because a disgraced Sharon visited a disputed holy site somehow doesn’t rise to the level of a mob lynching two Israelis who got lost and fled to a Palestinian Security station for safety.
CarolDuhart2
@TenguPhule: And Germany is now secular, so the old myths about Jews no longer have any power except in the East that was never “denatzified”.From 2003, so a bit dated.But official attitudes have not changed very much, so still relevant.
Barbara
@Honus: The other thing is, it isn’t so much the scale of the dispute that is so different, it’s the duration and the idea that it is embedded in a religious difference that can never be bridged. In that respect, reaching back, the Thirty Years War, the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland or conflict between Turkey and Armenia might be comparable. And yet all did end, eventually, with greater or lesser willingness to co-exist. It has always been my belief that Arab nations had to come to a point of seeing the advantage of a political settlement, rather than just using Palestinians as political props for their own various reasons. That still has not happened.
joel hanes
OT: Avenatti on the attack, and killin’ it
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/995692536122564609/photo/1
jl
Trump as Saul, David or Cyrus the Great. I dunno, Trump comes up short for all those possibilities. I’ll do some research to see if there is any personage in the Bible so miserable that a comparison is not laughable.
Just thought of Ahab. I dunno if James Buchanan, or Warren G Harding are in the Bible. I’ll double check.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
And by “disgraced” you mean “the guy running for office who became Prime Minister the following year.”
Yep, Sharon sure paid a high price for inciting a riot and running on his record as a war criminal.
cain
@Nicole:
It’s really akin to just keeping a neat and tidy house. You do it because it is the right thing to do and makes your life pleasant. You don’t do it because some entity is going to come and check your house.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, the Palestinians managed to rehabilitate him. Because at that moment in time they were engaged in an orgy of violence and murder against Israelis in their homes, their markets, their ice cream parlors.
Just like how OBL managed to give Bush Jr. all the popularity he needed, despite the worst security disaster since Pearl Harbor.
CarolDuhart2
@cain: I’m probably going out on a limb, but I doubt if the average Hindu is as obsessed with Brahma’s return. And speaking about the returns-how are the various returns supposed to be compatible? It’s like creation on the other end: which story to believe? Now when the groups were stovepiped it was possible to maintain a certain belief. People didn’t know there was any other story. But now knowing about religions is as easy as looking it up on a smartphone.
TenguPhule
@Barbara:
Unfortunately, the people in charge are pretty much all a bunch of corrupt greedy assholes. Reformers have a distressing tendency to get murdered over there.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Really, it was the Palestinians who rehabilitated him? It wasn’t the Israeli right that kept giving him government jobs even after he committed war crimes? He was the Foreign Minister in 1999, just two years earlier.
But it was all the Palestinians’ fault that he became Prime Minister, and not the Israelis who supported and elected him even after he massacred civilians. Riiiiiight.
CarolDuhart2
@jl: I think Trump’s biggest achievement will be the rehabilitation of those 2 Presidents. Both were inept,but not malevolent. Both won their elections fairly (as far as we know). Harding was a lech, but nobody ever publicly accused him of more than that. And both could take good advice from time to time, and didn’t pour gas on painful issues.
GregB
Just like appointing Pruitt, DeVos and Zinke were anathema to the missions of those governmental departments, same thing with Jared and Middle East peace.
Immanentize
Jes saying — about those ever so permanently violent Israeli-killing violent Palestininians some here are talking about — Since 2000, there have been over 8000 conflict related deaths, and Twenty Three out of Twenty Four deaths have been Palestinians.
So clearly it’s their own fault.
And in other news, minority men in the US are responsible for all the violence perpetrated on them by police and corrections officials because they sometimes get angry about all the violence perpetrated on them by police and corrections officials….
Ammirite, T.P.?
/S/
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: I use “Final Solution” in the case of Israel to underscore the total mental flipflop that the Likudniks display…the total lack of self awareness on their part. They are not righteous. They embrace the core of the ideology that put so many to death in Europe in the 1940’s.
Aleta
@cain: Thanks
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Yes, yes it was.
Mary G
Bad news for a good guy:
I hope caught it early means there’s a chance of remission.
Immanentize
@TenguPhule:
And the Paleftinians killed? Any civilians?
You value Israeli lives over Palestinian lives. Although you are kind of known here for devaluing all lives, so, no surprises, I guess.
And would you call today’s killings by the Israelis “an orgy of violence?”. Or do they shoot kids is sadness more than in anger?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Ah, so Israeli civilian lives are more important than Palestinian civilian lives, so it’s okay to kill four times more Palestinian civilians.
Good to know. Here I was foolishly thinking that all civilian lives were important, not just those of the
Master RaceIsraelis.TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Yes they did.
The previous government collapsed due to the failure of the peace talks and the explosion of Palestinian terrorism that followed. Sharon campaigned on getting tough on the Palestinian terrorism and that’s how he won.
Ironically, he was less extreme while in office compared to his current successor.
MomSense
Remember when President Carter wrote the book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid and there was a yuuge freak out about his choice of the word apartheid?
Seems that is exactly the direction Netanyahu wants to take Israel.
Neldob
@TenguPhule: Are settlers exactly civilians I wonder.
Peale
@jl: Ahasuerus.
Ahasuerus: “Wife, stop what you’re doing and come and show off your body to everybody”
Wife: “In a minute. I’m busy.”
Ahasuerus: “Such insolence. What if every woman did that. Kill her before things get out of hand.”
-Now I’m lonely and need a new wife.
-It’s o.k. for everyone in my kingdom to kill the Jews and take their property on November 7. And its against the law for them to resist.
-Wow, what a beautiful girl. And such a nice lay.
Esther: If you want more of that, then stop this silliness of killing the Jews on November 7.
Ahasuerus: I can’t do that, or people will doubt that I’m the best leader whose best words are the best. Instead, everybody can kill all the Jews they want but the Jews can fight back. Everybody against everybody.
Persian MSM: What a bold and decisive leader.
Basically, Ahasuerus has takes the most extreme position possible even if its ridiculous. Cyrus the Great my ass.
Immanentize
@Mary G: Ugh. Pacreatic cancer killed my dad. Hard to spot, hard to treat, although new CAR-T treatment might prove helpful, but he is not as young as he once was. Good luck, Harry….
celticdragonchick
@Adam L Silverman:
I was raised in a church that taught this stuff. It took me years to escape from it.
Chet Murthy
Reading these comments about Israel and the Palestinians, it’s a little surprising how little empathy people like SFAW, TP, and and others, have for these people. From what I’ve read, it is a documented fact that even under the Oslo accords, settlement-building didn’t stop. And the Palestinians were never offered a decent agreement in land-for-peace. The idea that to watch their land being stolen, year-by-year, and NOT erupt into violent resistance eventually at some minor provocation …. that’s foolish. We’d do it, if some occupier did it to us, and you all know that. [eta: And it WILL be at some minor provocation — how ELSE do you think it works, when your patience is finally exhausted after -years- of waiting?]
One can be a strong believer in the state of Israel, and in the right and necessity of the Jewish people to have a nation of their own, where they can defend themselves (b/c many hundreds of years show pretty incontrovertibly that nobody else will do it for them when push comes to shove) and STILL believe that it’s wrong for Israel to steal the Palestinians’ land from the 1967 war.
And again: if an occupier stole your land, year-on-year, relentlessly, put you under lockdown, year-on-year, you’d eventually erupt in violence too. The thing that really gets me about the current protests, is that from what I understand the Palestinians are doing it nonviolently (maybe I’m mistaken). The …. -discipline- it takes, I wouldn’t have it.
germy
@MomSense:
I don’t recall him being invited on many of the morning talk shows after that.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Lots. Of course the problem being that Palestinians have lied so often about civilians and broken every law of war that it makes it rather hard to determine whether they actually are an innocent civilian.
And you don’t consider the Israelis as human.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Shorter TP: “Kill the brutes!”
celticdragonchick
@The Moar You Know:
I am used to the Mojave desert where humidity is single digit and sometimes even in the summer, nighttime temperatures can dip low enough to make you look for a jacket.
TenguPhule
@Neldob:
They’re assholes. Extremely vocal assholes who should be removed and arrested en masse.
Unfortunately they have so much political pull with Likud that every attempt to deal with them has failed.
celticdragonchick
@Chet Murthy:
Neither would I.
Jeffro
@James Powell:
Exactly. It’s just like Adam (and others) have noted about ‘The Trump Doctrine’ – “I will be treated fairly or else”, where “fairly” = “restore me to my place of privilege and power”. It’s really the same thing for both Trumpov and his followers.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Shorter Mnemosyne: “”The Palestinians are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings I’ve ever known in my life.”
? Martin
@Chet Murthy:
Exactly. A lot of San Diego’s housing cost problems could be solved by simply building settlements in Tijuana and treating them as being in the US. Of course, there are other, possibly better ways to solve that problem. You choose that solution because you want to choose that solution, not because you have no choice. Lee Atwater wasn’t unique.
Aleta
@Nicole: They love punishment. I don’t know if that is a result of loving strict rules or the other way around. (Probably varies? Or this is too simplistic.) If you are hell-bent on punishment, you can end up sacrificing your best interests, even your future, in the attempt to punish the ones who don’t follow the rules you believe in. I wonder if that’s also related to men who hit or kill their partners or children.
FlipYrWhig
If Iran had nuclear weapons would Israel be less likely to act this way? And, if so, can we accelerate Iran’s nuclear program instead of hindering it?
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
Not by sneaking into homes and schools and murdering children, we wouldn’t.
Not by sneaking into shops and markets and intentionally trying to kill as many women and children as we could, we wouldn’t.
Not by using women and children as suicide bombers, we wouldn’t.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
I consider Israelis to be just as human as the Palestinians … but not more human and therefore more worthy as you apparently do.
Ah, this old song. We heard rumors that there were fighters inside that Red Cross shelter, so it was okay for us to kill everyone inside it!
Of course, we’re talking about the strategic geniuses who thought it was a great idea to blow up an entire apartment complex to assassinate one (1) guy and still missed him, so …
Jager
@Betty Cracker: In the trump version who has Edward G Robinson’s part?
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
Except it wasn’t their land. It was Jordan and Syria’s.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Yeah, right. You bemoan settlers being attacked as “innocent civilians” and demand that all Palestinians be destroyed because of it, and then claim that you think the settlers are assholes?
Pull the other one.
eemom
@TenguPhule:
You seem to be the only one here capable of rational thought on this issue. You have my support.
The rest of these folks appear to be blissfully ignorant of the thin line that does, in fact, separate anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, which has become thinner and thinner as overt anti-Semitism has risen in the last year here in the US, in the UK, and in Europe, in examples too numerous to list, which you’d think the news junkies here might have noticed.
Using the phrase “final solution” in the IP context, and all of the numerous other disgusting Nazi analogies that so many on the left adore making in that context, is anti-Semitism pure and simple, full fucking stop. And it is disgusting.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Sure we would, if we were desperate enough. There’s nothing that’s special about Palestinian terrorists. They adopted the tactics of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, who pioneered suicide bombing.
The only thing that’s special about them is that they attack people that the US supports.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Israel caught the Palestinians redhanded gunrunning with ambulances. Its been repeatedly documented that Hamas and the PLA cache arms illegally in hospitals, schools and yes, red cross shelters.
This is what happens when one side consistently refuses to observe any of the rules of war.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne:
Isn’t it odd that TP routinely calls for the violent death of people for very much less than stealing your land, taking away your livlihood and means of employment and stereotyping you as an unrepentent evil? Naqba indeed.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
At this point you have forfeit the moral high ground to me.
Stop and think about this.
eric
The debate about Jewish extremism in the region has been ongoing since the Maccabees. Because jews have so often been violently oppressed, there is a reluctance to consider jews as oppressors. As soon as you refer to any people as “chosen,” you run the risk of immunizing their deeds and misdeeds from rebuke.
eric
@TenguPhule: think about the scene in The Pianist where Adrien Brody’s character is looking from outside the wall creating the ghetto inside Poland. There are many people (Jews and non-Jews) who would use lethal force to undo what he saw, but had no means to affect.
eemom
@eric:
Exhibit A.
Suddenly it’s “jews” instead of Israelis.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So you supported the IDF shelling schools in Gaza that they knew were being used as shelters? After all, a few schools that did not have any people sheltering in them had rockets found on the grounds, so obviously the only solution was to shell buildings full of people in retaliation.
schrodingers_cat
Prediction: Tbogg Unit in 1 hour.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
The Palestinian’s current definition of “their land” is all of Israel. There is a reason they press the “right of return”.
Because obviously the demand to be allowed free movement to work in Israel trumps the right of Israeli civilians to not be murdered.
No need to stereotype when the Palestinians do that to themselves. Youtubing celebrations for successful murders is just one of those own goal kind of things.
celticdragonchick
@TenguPhule:
You are really getting into that whole “whataboutism” thing real hard here.
We can all agree that Hamas is horrible and killing lost IDF soldiers is horrible and shooting rockets at farms is horrible.
I’m just waiting for folks like you to get around to realizing that state sanctioned mass murder and mass imprisonment of an entire city population, preposterous land theft and systematic denial of basic human rights are also, you know, bad.
Barbara
@Chet Murthy: There is intransigence on both sides. One side has vastly superior fire power. The other is being used as a way of managing both internal and external political pressure by co-religionist nations in the region. I have a lot of sympathy for Palestinians, but I can’t, won’t condone the dehumanizing that goes on on both sides of the divide. Again, it has been my view for some time that, as the richer, vastly better armed party in the dispute, Israel could do a lot more to create a solution on the ground. I think Israel agrees with me, but its “solution” is to expand its territorial claims through ongoing settlements, which, in the long run are probably going to make matters a whole lot worse.
Chet Murthy
@TenguPhule:
You’re kidding me, right? You haven’t read -shit- about the firebombings in Japanese cities? Really? You’ve never read about about what we did to Fallujah? Really?
There’s a (somewhat) famous line from a Hamas leader, regarding suicide vests: “If the US would give us F16s, we would gladly give up suicide vests”. Another man called the suicide bomb “the poor man’s F16”. Maybe you should read Martin van Creveld (Israeli military theorist) about asymmetric warfare?
Also, re: “the land was Jordan’s and Syria’s” — you don’t really want to pick that hill, do you? These are the -indigenous- people living on that land, dude. Any position that doesn’t accord them at least -some- right to that land, is a colonialist position.
celticdragonchick
@TenguPhule:
When do Palestinians get their right to not be murdered?
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Your strawman schtick is getting very, very, old.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
You have no moral high ground, because you think that Palestinian lives are less important than Israeli lives. You look at the numbers showing that 3 or 4 times more Palestinians have been killed and you think, That’s a good start.
There are no innocents on either side of this conflict. There have been war crimes and plain old crimes committed by both parties. But you still cling to the idea that somehow killing Palestinians is okay because otherwise you would have to admit that the Israelis have done terrible things, too.
What makes you different than a Trump supporter, exactly?
eric
@eemom: because they were not Israelis in the Jewish Bible.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: I am only surprised it took 200+ comments to get where we are now. I would have said 30 or so when it posted.
? Martin
@TenguPhule: Are you shitting us? Yeah, we wouldn’t resort to such low-volume actions, but we have had no aversion in the past to killing as many women and children as possible – we just do it from a distance rather than relying on a suicide bomber. We boiled people to death in Tokyo, and razed two other cities entirely, and while technology allows us to do this with more precision and less collateral damage, don’t think we wouldn’t act all the same.
Remember, we have a president that has openly advocated for killing people’s families, and we have a near-plurality that voted for that outcome.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
So is yours, given the comment you decided to chime in on.
eric
@? Martin: We also have two nuclear bombs dropped on civilian targets on our resume.
MaryRC
@geg6: Sheldon Adelson wanted this. I’d like to know how much he paid to have this happen.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
And if you actually read the incidents you’d see that the circumstances are not that clear cut.
1 was ruled as disproportional, because there was a legitimate target in the vicinity. The objection was to the scale of firepower used against it.
The other two were condemned by the UN, but hard to say given the unreliability of the locals interviewed and the time delay between incident and evidence collecting.
boatboy_srq
@schrodingers_cat: They’re proving Lenin’s reinterpretation of Marx’s observation that religion is the opiate of the masses. Marx meant that faith was anaesthesia. Lenin reinterpreted it as faith is addiction.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Well, thread was awaiting the-Israel-can-do-no-wrong, (it can only be wronged, if you disagree, you are an anti-Semite) contingent.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne:
@TenguPhule:
You both are being fucking ridiculous. Both sides in this conflict are (and have been for decades) committing inexcusable atrocities, full stop. To try and excuse one or the other based on the actions of the other is an exercise in absolute ludicrousness.
I, personally, would like to H-bomb the entire area into a glass parking lot just so I don’t have to hear one more entitled motherfucker whine on about how he ought to have the right to murder someone.
Mary G
This says what I couldn’t come up with.
eric
@The Moar You Know: John Bolton to a white courtesy telephone. John Bolton.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
I look at numbers showing the Palestinians intentionally targeted civilians, some of whom were SYMPATHETIC to the Palestinians and were working towards the peace process. No question as to whether or not they were out of bounds by the rules of war. And the Palestinians targeted them anyway.
Wrong. You have no moral high ground because you just endorsed murdering children. That what you are in the dark is the easiest way out and that its okay to abandon any trace of humanity if you’re ‘desperate enough’.
Stop digging.
Gravenstone
@Nicole: The right wing has never had an issue with religious zealots, provided they were of the correct flavor. There’s a reason Talibangelicals is an accurate descriptor of our domestic evangelical morons.
Chet Murthy
@TenguPhule: I think you’re missing something really, really important. The “laws of war” pretty much imagine that the combatants are somewhat proportionally matched in firepower. And so, there are rules about what combatants can and cannot do, legally in wartime. But when one combatant is so overwhelmingly powerful, that it can exterminate the other, then the weaker combatant cannot wage war, can it? Hence, it must acquiesce in its own vanquishment? Is that the “hill you wanna die on”?
Again: I think it would be worth your time to read some of van Creveld. And to read some more recent writings on the morality of drone warfare, for instance. When the weaker party literally has nothing they can field to combat the stronger party, they must needs choose other tactics. And this has ALWAYS been the case. ALWAYS.
The argument “oh, the Israelis were bombing legitimate targets, and the school was just <<collateral damage>>” is the argument of the man with the all the bombs, who views even a fingernail on the pinky of his soldier, as more valuable than the life of one of his opponents. It’s not legitimate in the law of war, b/c the fighter pilot doesn’t risk anything in his exercise of power, and not legitimate b/c even if he risks something, it is not proportionate to that which is risked by his opponent.
Your position is one of “might makes right”, and sure, go ahead and embrace that. When our Chinese (or whoever is next — we won’t be a superpower forever) conquerors take over our cities and kill off our children with smart drones, I hope you’ll remember this.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I think I’ve made it pretty clear in this thread that I think that BOTH sides are at fault for continuing the conflict. The only person who thinks that one side is totally innocent and only acting out of self-defense is TenguPhule. Everyone else — myself included — is pushing back on his idiotic claim that the Palestinians are solely to blame for every wrong turn in the peace process.
Neldob
Words are not anti-Semitism just because someone says they are. Sometimes they are clarifying. Sometimes saying some particular word is anti-Semitic is just trying to muddy the issue. In fact it generally is used that way.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Pot, kettle. Look in a mirror.
I know the Israelis have done stupid fucked up shit. I also saw what happened when Israel arrested Palestinians and turned them over in good faith to the Palestinian authorities back in the early 2000s.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
So did you. What, you thought that there were only adults in those shelters? You thought that Israeli rockets can magically only kill adults?
Children on both sides are dying, but you only care about the Israeli ones and make excuses to blame the Palestinians for the deaths of their own children.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
No, no you haven’t. So far all you’ve been doing is playing the moral relativism card.
chopper
come on guys, you know it’s always brown peoples’ fault when they die.
James Powell
@boatboy_srq:
I’m thinking it’s more like the cocaine of the masses.
Just One More Canuck
@Nicole: going to hell for doing good deeds? How warped does your mind have to be to arrive at that conclusion?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Really? Because any time I bring up a specific and documented instance of the Israelis doing something stupid and fucked up, you come up with lame excuses for why they were right to do it.
Sharon deliberately inflamed the intifada. Other people begged him not to go to the temple, but he did it anyway because he knew it would ensure his election. And the Palestinians are solely responsible for what Sharon chose to do?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
From your own fucking article was the recognition that in fact the Palestinians were risking their own children by violating the shelter’s neutrality by trying to hide weapons in them.
Newsflash, that behavior endangers not only the schools that they did them in, but EVERY OTHER school. Which is why we have the laws of war in the first place.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Sorry, the guy who solely blames the Palestinians for Ariel Sharon’s actions now wants to claim that he hates “moral relativism”?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
The massacre at My Lai was okay because the Viet Cong were hiding weapons in other villages. Gotcha.
Barbara
@TenguPhule: I don’t think it’s an insult to Israelis to state that I believe they should do better because I believe they can do better. When that is no longer the case, maybe the U.S. should stop being involved. I feel a fair amount of hopelessness at the situation.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
The Palestinians are the ones solely responsible for reacting violently. They were dicks about that particular religious site long before Sharon and still are AFAIK.
They DESTROYED the peace faction’s power in Israel. It will be at least a generation before any Israeli Doves offer any branches, if ever.
The Palestinians wanted to put the scare into the Israeli in the street.
Congratulations, they succeeded.
geg6
@TenguPhule:
I have a hard time blaming a population that has been treated like animals for, basically, the entire existence of Israel since 1948 for fighting back against what they must understandably consider to be invaders. And the treatment has gotten worse in the last decade or so. If I was a Palestinian, you better believe I’d be trying to kill me some Israeli settlers.
Sorry, but the power differential and the rhetoric of the Israeli governing classes do not make me in any way sympathetic to what they’ve brought on themselves through their own actions and policies. I used to really be a champion of Israel because I bought the propaganda I was fed as a child and young adult. Thankfully, I lost my innocence and naivete on the subject when I quit reading propaganda about Israel and started reading real reporting and histories and analyses on the situation. There are many ways Israel could have solved this problem. They have chosen none of the ones that would leave them safe and the Palestinians with a future. They will reap what they have sown. I respect Israel the same way I respect Saudi Arabia. Not one single bit and I don’t trust either of them at all. They are not our friends. I hope they all wipe each other off the map in the end.
Chyron HR
@eemom:
“Thank god someone else understands that every single one of those filthy subhuman ragheads must be exterminated! Come, enjoy the moral high ground with me.”
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Israel couldn’t legally bar him from the site as he was a free citizen who had the right to go there.
This may come as a shock to you, but reacting violently to an unpopular man visiting one of his religion’s holy sites is not the behavior of a rational person.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
that ship sailed when a right-wing israeli shot rabin down like a dog.
Sloane Ranger
I am irritated by the behaviour of both Israeli and Palestinian politicians and, by extension, their electorates. It seems neither is prepared to accept compromises and that is the only way you get a diplomatic solution. In the past there were opportunities but if one side offered anything, the other regarded it as a sign of weakness and doubled down.
In regard to terrorist attacks by Palestinians on Israeli citizens etc, you fight with the weapons you have in ways that maximise their effectiveness.
Whenever there is a terrorist attack, I am reminded that during WWII, the British Government set up an elite force to attack and kill German officials and collaborators and generally make life difficult in the event of an invasion.
We have freedom fighters, you have terrorists!
Yutsano
Buck it. Let’s T-bogg this puppy.
raven
@Chyron HR: I heard exactly that in a Starbuck in Sherman Oaks!
chopper
@Chyron HR:
i don’t think TP needs any help when it comes to trying to rationalize his bloodlust.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Like I said: anytime I bring up a situation where an Israeli has equal blame for a situation, you contort yourself to insist that it was really all the fault of the Palestinians regardless of what actually happened.
I guess they mind-controlled Sharon and forced him to act like a dick just so they could riot, right? Did they force him to be a war criminal, too?
TenguPhule
@geg6:
Which also reduced Israeli civilian deaths to near zero.
Prior to that, Palestinians had more freedom and income and when polled thought that violence would get them even more concessions from Israel.
Instead, Israel found that harsh security crackdowns made it much harder for Palestinians to attacks Israeli civilians.
Except those were not the targets of choice. The settlers are bunkered down and armed.
It was much easier to target the civilians, including the Israelis who are sympathetic to the Palestinians.
With obvious consequences.
El Caganer
@Yutsano: No. Please don’t.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
on the other hand, you can’t stand on people’s necks for 30 years and expect them to act rationally.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Well, that excuses killing Palestinian women and children!
And you wonder why I keep saying that only one side is fully human to you.
eemom
The sad thing is that all of this tit for tat shit is irrelevant to what’s going on TODAY: i.e., that Dump — aka the US government — is, in fact, deliberately making an already horrible situation worse, getting more people killed, and increasing the likelihood of all out war in the region on God knows how many fronts.
You can debate why he’s doing it and who put him up to it and who is playing who; at least that’s marginally more relevant than relitigating the last 70 years. But the bottom line is that none of that matters. What matters is that what THIS COUNTRY, led by this maniac, is doing RIGHT NOW is as wrong and dangerous as it gets.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Except you keep using bad examples.
You want an Israeli blame situation? Israel’s starting the 2014 Gaza invasion is it.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Forget it, Mnem. It’s Chinatown. Israel and Israelis can do no wrong and are being cruelly persecuted for no reason whatsoever by Palestinian women, children and men who are penned up, not allowed to move freely, starved, thrown off their own land that they’ve cultivated for centuries and killed. Israel is always the morally superior actor when you are talking about Palestinians and Israel.
eemom
@Chyron HR:
Fuck you.
El Caganer
@eemom: Yes indeed. He’s so goddam stupid he thinks he’s actually being a peacemaker with this move.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
And yet you made excuses for Israel bombing UN shelters during that war in this very thread. So, clearly, you don’t blame Israel very much for it since you think the Palestinians were not justified in fighting back.
cain
@CarolDuhart2:
This is true, but that’s because Hinduism hasn’t quite gotten as politicized yet. Also, Hindus are still overwhelming the largest demographic and so they can’t use this as a way to kill people. Also, people are on an anti-brahman kick, so bringing this up probably won’t help.
Ryan
“The event in Jerusalem features corrupt plutocrats, pandering politicians, nepotism hires and bigoted preachers.”
Did any Israel’s attend, or was it all just Trump admin people?”
A Ghost To Most
This thread reminds me why I stopped talking.
Tribalism will be the death of civilization.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Again with the strawman.
The Palestinians kicked off a murder spree. The Israelis cracked down and discovered that strict security measures saved Israeli lives. Now Israel has a rational incentive to keep those same strict security measures no matter how badly it affects the Palestinians and this didn’t have to happen. The Palestinians had a chance to get some of what they wanted, they were never going to get everything, not when Israel had the stronger position of power.
That’s what fucking irritates me, they wanted everything and so got nothing.
TenguPhule
@cain:
Though not for lack of trying.
The Anti-muslim/Anti-beef sentiment is getting worse in India.
eemom
@geg6:
I thought better of you. Sort of.
Do you have any idea how deliberately ignorant of a “summary” that is, both of what TP is arguing and of fucking history?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Read your own links. There were legitimate questions and lack of evidence in those strikes. The invasion itself was much more clear cut.
Aleta
This jeffress ogre is praying to his god to smite him, on twitter no less.
“Join me in continuing to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Download your free copy of my dedication prayer”
James Powell
I suppose that the resemblance between the way the “Israel is Always Right!” people talk about the Palestinians and the way that white Americans in the 19th century talked about Native Americans is purely coincidental.
Sure, the Native Americans, or rather some Native Americans, did some pretty horrible things.
rikyrah
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Under every peace deal proposed by the Israelis, Israeli settlers have been allowed to keep their illegal settlements, and even expand them. This is completely unacceptable to the Palestinians, who point out that thieves should not be allowed to keep what they stole.
When Israel is willing to give that land back to the people they stole it from, then I’ll feel like they’re offering an honest deal.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s time for regime change in Isreal.
TenguPhule
@geg6:
Because when the Palestinians were travelling freely in the early 2000s, they were killing Israeli civilians.
Israel didn’t just decide to suddenly crack down on the Palestinian movement to be dicks, they did it to stop Israeli civilians from being murdered. And it worked.
So now one of the problems to remove those restrictions from the Palestinians is how are the Palestinians going to guarantee they won’t abuse this freedom of movement to murder…again?
BluegirlFromWyo
@Jeffro: Fuck your feelings but respect me. No, how about you take what you dish out instead?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
So the war crimes committed during the invasion are okay, even if the invasion itself was bad?
And, yes, I read my links. You seem to think that unclear evidence exonerates the Israelis even when you admit that the invasion was wrong. Here’s a thought: those shelters wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place if not for the invasion.
This is on the level of But we’re painting schools in Iraq!
eemom
@James Powell:
Point me to the comment(s) on this thread where anyone said or implied anything remotely close to “Israel is always right.”
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
You definition of what constitutes stolen land and what Palestinians think is stolen land are probably bigger then you realize.
The settlers are assholes. Ideally they’d become citizens of the Palestinian state under a two state deal and their problem to deal with humanely.
Chet Murthy
@TenguPhule: Maybe read some? Here’s an article from 2001 about that “historic compromise” at Camp David. And I repeat: you should read van Creveld about fourth generation war.
Because if you want to go with “unconventional warfare[1] is always wrong, so the Palestinians should lose” maybe you should look into the Irgun (or don’t you know what that was?)
[1] as they say, “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist — it all depends on which side you’re on”.
Also, maybe you’ve forgotten that Israel helped create Hamas — to undermine the PA.
geg6
@TenguPhule:
Your arguments don’t wash with me because you are regurgitating their propaganda. Israeli deaths went down. What about Palestinian deaths? YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THEM. I wish Israel could act like they have morals and basic human decency, but they can’t seem to act that way. Yes, Palestinians have done some horrific things, but the power differential has been and is always in Israel’s favor. They aren’t some sort of underdog here. I despise what Israel has become. Most of my Jewish friends feel the same (though not all). I resent every cent of my tax dollars that go to Israel. I consider the Israeli government an anathema, much the same as I do North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
I’m gonna be honest and suggest that maybe the creation of Israel (as it currently exists) was a mistake from the beginning.
A two state solution should have been considered from the start, all the way back in 1947.
Nelle
@Yarrow: Sorry for late reply. He went back to the DRC and came back without following some procedure. Still waiting to hear the outcome.
TenguPhule
@Sloane Ranger:
Killing people who are sympathetic to your cause is self-defeating.
The Israeli peace movement lost a lot of credibility due to the terrorist attacks while Likud was able to flaunt “See, we were right about them all along!”
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
There was a two state solution.
Israel and Jordan.
The surrounding countries did not agree with it.
Chet Murthy
@TenguPhule:
Uh, you’re joking, right? B/c if you’re not, you’re pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Well, than maybe the UN should have done more to enforce their decisions.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Most likely, but sending the settlers currently living in their West Bank and Gaza fortresses back to Israel would solve a whole lot of problems. But, of course, the settlers think that Gaza and the West Bank are part of Israel and are willing to kill people to stay there.
You seem not to realize that the basic problem is that the settlers are currently supported by the Israeli government in trying to take over Gaza and the West Bank.
This is not some weird notion they’ve gotten into their heads. It’s a deliberate strategy of the Israeli government to try and take that land, too.
But anything the Palestinians do to fight back against that theft is morally wrong, according to you.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Desperate, poverty-stricken people don’t often think rationally or strategically.
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
And the Palestinians wanted more then was offered, the Israelis offered all that they could (again, history on both sides coming back to bite them) and the Palestinian leader was too chickenshit to risk a Rabin. It doesn’t paint the picture you seem to think it does.
Yutsano
@ Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) : The British did try for a very ham-handed two state solution by trying to make the Palestinian state Jordan. But the Hashemites weren’t having any of that nonsense. There is zero doubt the British totally messed up partition just so they could walk away like nothing had happened. Why everyone lets them off the hook for creating such a mishegas is beyond me.
geg6
@eemom:
That’s the argument TP is making. I actually have spent some time reading people on both sides and histories of the conflict, so I do understand that the situation is more nuanced than that. However, the fact that Israel cannot be criticized without someone screaming about how Israel IS TOTALLY INNOCENT AND FORCED TO DO BAD THINGS THAT WERE ONCE DONE TO THEIR ANCESTORS!?!11?!?!?! doesn’t exactly lead to any sort of fruitful discussion. Nor does someone immediately rushing in to claim that the people criticizing Israel are ipso facto anti-semites because only anti-semites would criticize Israel.
Fuck that.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
They actually weren’t that desperate or poor in 2000. They got greedy and thought violence would win them concessions. Now they’re really desperate and poor and the international goodwill for their plight is less then it was before.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@eemom:
Josephus wrote the “Jewish Wars”, not the “Israeli Wars”, okay?
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Done more to enforce their decisions about what? The UN didn’t choose a location and say let’s create a Jewish homeland here.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Yutsano:
I sense a pattern here. Nobody seems to try to consider what the people on the ground want.
TenguPhule
@geg6:
You’re reading what’s in your head, not what’s being written.
i don’t like Likud. I don’t like the asshole PM. I dislike how much Israel’s military professionalism has eroded since the early 2000s. But I also recognize that the Palestinians have been bad fucking actors. They’ve murdered a lot of their own reformists and broken so many agreements that its impossible to hold Israel accountable on that score without sounding hypocritical.
I think a lot of people have forgotten just how much Israel was restrained for most of the second uprising. And the domestic price that the left wing government paid for it among its citizens.
Neldob
@eemom: you are being disingenuous. Read what he wrote.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chet Murthy:
Why that’s the very argument used by the Irgun to justify the King David Hotel bombing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
And I agree with you. The problem of course is that they’re a loud minority with significant pull with Likud. it will take a strong left-wing government to be able to remove them without risking a collapse.
Yes, Likud again. Its not even the best strategic positions. Its not even popular in Israel outside of Likud because of the costs and the tax exemptions the religious folks living in them get.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Holding Israel accountable for massacuring woman and children is not hypocritical. They’re the ones in a position of power there. They hold all the cards. They could have been far more magnanimous and fair than they have been.
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
The alternative is that both sides need not follow the rules of war, leading to complete decimation of the lesser combatant since all civilians are now fair game.
You can’t play “rules for thee but not for me” in warfare. Total war is brutal.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
They were. They did.
700+ Israeli civilian death later, they became a lot less fair and magnanimous.
The Israeli military of 2018 is not the Israeli military of 1999. two decades of on and off war have left deep scars.
Aleta
All from S. Kendzior’s twitter:
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
You seem to think it paints a picture of the generous Israelis getting taken by the mean, greedy Palestinians, so this is probably your funniest comment yet.
Neldob
@TenguPhule: I have to consider how desperate and poor is “that” desperate and poor that the Palestinians weren’t.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
Don’t worry, I’m sure that TP has an excuse for why Kushner’s and Adelson’s corrupt actions are really all the fault of the Palestinians. ?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
They just need to get over it and work towards a genuine solution to solve this shitfest. If they can’t do that then the next Democratic admin needs to commit to regime change, not in Iran or the DPRK, but Israel.
It could even be a unifying moment for the entire world after Trump’s reign of error.
eemom
@geg6:
Another strawman. And again, so very ignorant, in this case of current events.
Pointing out that modern day anti-Semitism is often cloaked in the guise of anti-Zionism — which no honest person paying attention to recent events in this country, in the UK, and in Europe would deny — is NOT THE SAME THING as equating all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: The Palestinian “leader” was afraid of being murdered by his own supporters if he took the deal. He thought he could get more. Israel offered upfront and was leery of past Palestinian bad behavior. The miscommunications were there, but do not excuse what happened at the end. The failure crippled Israel’s peace movement.
Sloane Ranger
@Yutsano: Partition was a UN decision. The UK abstained on the vote. They had experience on the ground and knew it wouldn’t work.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
i hear some of them actually had televisions.
Yutsano
@ Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) : Oh I agree Netanyahu needs to go. I’m still hoping his dgo wagging won’t get him out of the corruption mess he’s in. But right now that’s about the only way he’s going down. Any sense of “opposition” to him is non-existent.
And fuck Tzipi Livni.
SFAW
@Chet Murthy:
Empathy? Or do you mean sympathy? Either way, I have both — but more sympathy than empathy, because I (fortunately) have not had to deal with apartheid (so to speak), except as a remote observer.
Be that as it may: not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. Just because I object to the characterization of Bibi/Likud policy as “Final Solution,” it doesn’t mean I support Bibi’s “worldview.” I think Bibi’s an asshole, a liar, corrupt, and not a friend of peace (to put it mildly), and his policies make things worse for everybody — the Palestinians in the short term, the Israelis (and everyone else.) in the long term.
But I also don’t ignore the decades long desire of “the locals” to wipe out Israel. However, that desire does not give Bibi a pass to do whatever the fuck he wants in the name of “protecting Israel.”
TenguPhule
@Neldob: Prior to the uprising and security crackdowns the Palestinian’s situation was improving as more of them were working in Israel, tourism was sending more dollars their way and trade was picking up with Europe. They had decent food, clean water and stable electricity.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
You just keep on digging that strawman.
Aleta
All from NY Daily News
chopper
@TenguPhule:
they offered all that they felt like, which wasn’t much. by historical standards the deal looked good at first blush, but that’s because israel’s previous policy was mostly ‘build settlements on all the good land’. once you dived into it you realized the deal was just insulting.
eemom
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
hmm. Dare I hope you are another member of the forlorn little group of Two Brain Cells To Rub Together on this thread….
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Except it’s not a strawman
Aleta
From The Hill
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Now you sound like John McCain. The personal grudges run deep on both sides now. Doves are the minority in Israel and all but extinct among the Palestinians. Because showing any empathy for an Israeli is a good way to get Hamas or Fatah or your neighbors to kill you.
At this point a UN controlled demilitarized zone between the two parties might be the only way to keep them apart long enough for something to be salvaged.
Stop right there. On a stupidity scale of 1 to 10, that’s a 12.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
What would you have them do? Go quietly into the night without some kind of fight? No matter what they’ve done in the past, they have a right to exist and the Israeli government seems intent on denying them that right.
Peale
Well, this went well. From the US perspective, however, it really shouldn’t matter WHO is worse than WHO but whether or not the conflict is destabilizing to the region (it IS!). Otherwise, we really don’t have an interest one way or another. The sad thing is that we can not honestly serve as a peace broker because for the past 20 years, it has been clear that we are backing Israel, sometimes more reluctantly than other times. One of the reasons for that is precisely the influence of the right wing Christians. That is unlikely to change any time soon. Until some honest peace broker steps forward to replace us now, I can’t see any reason why we would continue to debate this and hope for peace. The US is not going to be switching sides. Its not worth hoping that it will.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
“Regime change” can mean a lot of things. Anywhere from military intervention to economic sanctions.
Don’t ever compare me to McBomb.
That UN demilitarized zone sounds interesting though.
TenguPhule
@chopper:
The deal offered was the best that the party in charge at the time could risk without collapsing the government.
And this was offered to Palestinian officials who had already broken prior agreements.
The alternative was worse.
eemom
@SFAW:
You as well.
It’s mind boggling how none of the bleating sheep accusing TP and me of being Israel Firsters on this thread has noticed that neither of us disagrees with that assessment of Bibi (and Likud policies in general).
eemom
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Man, do you miss the point. I know you’re about 12 years old, but still….
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
And the Israeli leader was not? There’s a reason being murdered by someone on your own side is now called “getting Rabined.”
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
And you think that Israel would accept having the settlers thrown out of Gaza and the West Bank to make that demilitarized zone possible because …
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
Because if they don’t they’ll be glassed? I don’t know.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@eemom:
What’s your point then? And thanks for your insulting tone.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
What they’ve done in the recent past led directly to the situation they’re in now.
Ironic Hell.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
The vast majority in Israel would gladly trade the settler’s locations for security last I checked.
And perhaps the Palestinians will avoid getting into firefights with UN troops arresting Palestinian violators.
Stranger things have happened.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Barak was worried his government would fall if Palestinians didn’t take the deal.
chopper
at least, can’t we all agree that this is weird given that on almost every other day of the year TP fantasizes about bloody revolution and death?
chopper
@TenguPhule:
“we gotta protect our phony-baloney jobs!”.
Kay
I love the photos of Ivanka and Jared glowing with triumph with their flawless dewy faces and carefully coached expressions and mannerisms juxtaposed with the photos of the shooting going on outside the palace walls.
It’s perfect. Insane, but perfect.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Adam L Silverman: When the scandal about how the Ethiopan Jewish Women were being given Depo Provera injections without their knowledge nor consent, and how that was basically de facto Israeli medical policy while being considered illegal de jure, I pretty much knew that Israel the nation-state had completely lost its way.
Somehow all those doctors were giving all of those women those injections and it was supposed to be a complete coincidence? I think not. It was an attempt by white Israel to destroy black Israel by attrition by destroying their ability to have children. We have echoes of this kind of thing in Canadian history from the 20s-50s when large areas of Canada bought into the poison of eugenics, generally applied to the “mentally ill”, First Nations, Doukhobors, etc. It’s a terrible thing to do to people without their knowledge or consent.
Elizabelle
Hey, that golden calf looks kinda presidential. In a classy sort of way.
TenguPhule
@eemom:
The War on Straw was very good to them.
None of us like Israel’s current government. And fuck all if I can see how that gets changed without a damn miracle because as horrible and oppressive as they’ve been, to the Israeli on the street, they’ve learned that being restrained with the Palestinians gets blown up Israelis and the world rushing to defend the Palestinians while being actually oppressive gets no blown up Israelis and the world rushing to defend the Palestinians.
The lesson learned by Israel was not the one intended. And now we have no third party peacemakers that either side can trust to negotiate fairly between them.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Like I said, regime change. It doesn’t have to be direct military involvement.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
This NEVER EVER WORKS THE WAY ITS SUPPOSED TO.
Look at what we did to Central and South America. Take a good long look at our history of involvement in changing governments.
Now imagine that with nukes and religion mixed in.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
And Likud was telling the Palestinians not to take the deal because they would give them a better one. But I guess that was all the Palestinians’ fault, too, right? You’ve already established that you think that any decisions that Israel made were the fault of the Palestinians, and if the Palestinians would just stop resisting, the Israelis would totally stop killing them. They pinky-swear it this time.
Sorry, but the Israelis chose to go down this road. They don’t get to whine now that the rest of the world despises them just because they committed a few light war crimes and a few thousand civilians.
debbie
Stop calling them evangelicals. They are Pharisees.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I was referring to economic sanctions. Not black ops.
Chris
@NorthLeft12:
The problem with the right wing is getting anyone else to believe that they really are as monstrous as they are.
B.B.A.
Feeling ashamed to be Jewish today.
BDS, until the last settlement closes. And I count Tel Aviv as a settlement.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
This has been tried too.
It doesn’t work.Trying to change another country’s government is one of those things better left to the actual people living there.
Outside intervention tends to go very very badly.
Chris
@SFAW:
This argument pops up every time Israel and Palestine are under discussion, and it’s never clear what the heck it’s supposed to mean. For the life of me I can’t see how the failure of other countries to take in refugees has any bearing on the guilt of those who made them refugees in the first place. It’s just whataboutism.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.:
Then you are gonna find yourself quite isolated in that little patch of purity with the extremist Palestinians.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
Uh. because those same countries ENCOURAGED those refugees to flee into them because obviously they could go back and take everything from the dead jews after the short victorious war was over by Christmas?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Any Palestinian who believed a promise from Likud was too stupid to be mobile. Stop trying to shift the responsibility for the Palestinians own actions onto someone else, they were not children. They made a calculated choice to use terrorism as a political weapon and it came back to bite them hard.
Chris
@James Powell:
At least in my experience, no topic brings out eliminationist rhetoric among Americans like Israel/Palestine does. Not that it’s the worst language of that kind I’ve ever heard from Americans, but it’s definitely the most widespread. Over and over I’ve seen otherwise liberal Americans, when this topic come up, excuse and support behavior from the Israeli government that they’d never in a million years excuse from American cops and soldiers, and talk about Palestinians in a way that they never in a million years would about our own black and Mexican populations (and would quite rightly call racist if anyone did).
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Stop trying to gaslight their actions. It was fucking terrorism with an emphasis on causing terror. Congratulations, they succeeded.
Yutsano
We gonna Tbogg? HELL YEAH WE GONNA TBOGG!!!
@TenguPhule: Bibi and Likud are only going down when the corruption scandal hits. Not any time sooner than that. There is no Arab army that can destroy Israel, and they all know that. The only other option is to allow the West Bank and Gaza to be annexed and for Israel to go full apartheid state. Because that turned out so well for South Africa.
jl
Trump will be our prince on earth for 1000 years, We will all be friends and play golf, contract bridge, and have great potlucks amidst lions and lambs lying down together in green pastures next to well groomed greens and Olympic size swimming pools. We’ll all be 25 and virile and nubile (depending on gender) but won’t lust after each other. Then anyone who hasn’t seen the truth by the end goes to Hell.
So, that still doesn’t settle the pre- versus post-Millennial version of Prophecy, whether we get a 1000 year vacay, or go to Hell right away, except the fire, sulfur and demons have wait a little while. Is it Heaven or Hell? I think Mark Twain, Sartre and Rod Serling each worked on that problem, to no avail.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
The Palestinians have a knack for being as unsympathetic and offensive as possible to American eyes.
For starters:
1. Murdered an Olympic team. Something even the goddamn Nazis didn’t do.
2. Assassinated Robert Kennedy.
3. Supported Saddam during Gulf War I
4. Celebrated 9/11.
5. Got caught repeatedly violating traditional exemptions from the laws of war including but not limited to hospitals, schools, ambulances, women and children.
6. Celebrated successful terrorism attacks specifically targeting children.
7. Used hundreds of millions in foreign aid money to pay fighters, arms and ammunition, then complain that there’s no basic necessities available.
Corner Stone
Man, this thread has certainly not disappointed.
TenguPhule
@Yutsano:
Not that confident this is gonna bring down Likud. The scars from the early 2000s have never truly healed. Those constant terrorism attacks broke something in the Israelis.
TenguPhule
@Yutsano:
They don’t want Gaza and at this point the West bank is one big fuckup.
I’m afraid Likud is looking at complete lockdowns with the intent of making them so miserable that they try another failed terrorism campaign or start fleeing. They’re gonna squeeze till something pops, because Likud relies on the threat for its popularity.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
“Modern Germany is safer then many other places.”
Of course it is. It’s also the site of the very recent destruction of the Jewish peoples of Europe, which my friends are not interested in visiting. You missed the point entirely. Some places are too dangerous now, some have terrible and horrific recent histories. Nightmares. Not fun…
Chris
@Chris:
… wow. Thank you, Tengu, for demonstrating.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
Sorry, that wasn’t clear from the original post.
TenguPhule
@Chris: I don’t know how they do it. The saying “Palestinians never miss a chance to miss a chance” has more then a kernel of truth to it.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
NO LINK!
You are a fool. That chart probably won’t include the Palestinian deaths, which are 100% civilians, as they have no real military.
So you’re a big booster of Germany, where millions were killed, and pretty good with Israel, which is stealing land, cutting down olive orchards which take generations to become fruitful, and killing people who protest the theft of their homeland…!!!
Fool! How did you get this way?
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
“Not by using women and children as suicide bombers, we wouldn’t.”
This terrorism is a tactic used by people who are otherwise nearly totally powerless. The IDF doesn’t use suicide bombers because they have factories building tanks, and rebuilding F-15s we sold them at cost. I can’t believe…. OK, don’t feed the troll.
Pie it is.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV: The link was in the original post I was responding to. he was quoting deaths and I responding by pointing out that the types of death were different. Palestinians were getting killed mainly in the fighting, Israelis were mainly being murdered.
Illegal combatants can be shot and killed by any uniformed armed force on sight under the Geneva Conventions.
Otherwise the whole “do not shoot civilians” protection gets thrown out the window. Would you prefer we all go back to the old rules of total war?
Stop, just stop. Your original comment on this wasn’t clear and I apologize as this seems to be a sore point for you.
Nobody’s hands are clean there. And the Palestinians can either accept getting part of what they want or nothing.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
They wanted to generate terror among the Israelis.
They succeeded.
And that’s how Likud is now in power.
Nice Job breaking it, Hamas & Fatah.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
You woke up on the bloodthirsty side of the bed this morning?
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
I understand some of the local produce is almost worth dying for.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
A Golda Meir quote for you: “Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!”
chopper
@Chris:
a thousand times this.
eemom
@TenguPhule:
“Moses dragged us through the desert for 40 years to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil.” — Golda Meir
eemom
@debbie:
kewl! #greatminds
debbie
@eemom:
Right! Plus, I bet she said that a million times. Always digging for a joke, she was.
TenguPhule
@eemom: I think that’s proof that either there is no god or it has one hell of a terrible sense of humor.
They got one of the worst places in the world to live. And they’re still in a fight to the bitter end against everyone else who wants to kick them out of there too.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: To some people, not all, ancestral land and houses never stop holding deep meaning, even if it belonged only to one’s grandparents or parents and was sold. In the same family there can be siblings who feel that and ones who don’t; leads to incredible bad blood.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
There’s a difference between the settlers, who are illegally trespassing and squatting and Palestinians sneaking into Tel Aviv to blowup a goddamn ice cream parlor.
I don’t like that the Palestinians and settlers are playing border war but the settlers are armed and knew what they were getting into when they stuck their dicks into that hornet’s nest. Just like I don’t like when the Palestinians open up on the IDF, but i don’t bitch when they manage to blow up an Israeli tank. That’s war.
Where I draw a fucking line is when a suicide bomber finds a group of little old ladies or little kids who are in school and then blowing them up with fucking ball bearings for maximum carnage.
Stop fucking your strawmen.
TenguPhule
@celticdragonchick:
What state sanctioned mass murder? Please be specific as to what you’re referring to because I have literally seen a whole bunch of things crammed under this label which don’t actually belong there.
Mass Imprisonment? If you’re referring to the blockades, that would be because Palestinian fighters broke the rules so nobody can have nice things. The security clampdowns stopped the Palestinians from killing Israeli civilians and choked their supplies of military explosives. Trying to get them walked back is going to be hard because they were effective, despite how bad they were for the Palestinians.
The land issue is fucked up. The Palestinians are going to have to accept that they’re not going to get everything they want. Whatever claims individuals may have, they’re always going to be secondary to security for Israel and any agreement between the two will probably not resolve this to anyone’s satisfaction. Most likely Palestinians would have to buy the land back from Israeli owners, as unfair as that may be. Of course, that would still be better deal then what the Jewish owners of the properties around Israel received and which they are never gonna get back. But honestly that’s the only compromise I can see working.
The human rights issue has no clean hands. Hamas and Fatah are thugs and they’ve been so inventive in finding ways to exploit basic human rights issues to smuggle weapons and fighters around that its hard to blame Israel sometimes for some of the lengths they’ve gone to. Again, another issue I don’t expect to ever be resolved because bad actors would not be held equally accountable and punishing only one side for it would only alienate them from the whole compromising concept.
jl
@Peale: ” Ahasuerus ”
IIRC, he remained in power for many years afterward, and while not reported in Esther, probably kept up the insane most extreme decrees possible.
So, I’ll keep looking. In a dark mood, i would pick the pharaoh whose foolishness brought on the seven plagues.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Neither are the Israelis, and yet you keep blaming the Palestinians for Israeli actions. Those mean ol’ Palestinians forced the Israelis to commit war crimes! They didn’t want to elect war criminal Ariel Sharon, but the Palestinians made them do it!
That’s the argument from an abuser when his victim fights back: Now see what you made me do!
The Israelis have had just as many chances to de-escalate as the Palestinians have, and they’ve made the wrong choice every single time.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
That’s true — one group has the government of Israel to bail them out when they screw up, and the other one doesn’t.
And if you think the settlers would ever give up an inch of the land they’ve stolen for mere money, you’re dreaming. The settlers are religious fanatics who think that Gaza and the West Bank belong to Israel, and they will fight a civil war to keep it. That’s why Israel sent them there in the first place — to prevent the Palestinians from being able to form their own country.
But the poor, innocent Israelis only sent people to steal that land and squat there because the Palestinians were mean first, right?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Here you are excusing war crimes again. The poor Israelis were forced to commit war crimes! Poor babies. They have no agency. They can only do what the Palestinians make them do.
Here’s a thought: maybe Mossad shouldn’t have assassinated Palestinian moderates on the assumption that resistance would collapse if only the extremists were left. Great job breaking it, Mossad!
chopper
@TenguPhule:
the settlers aren’t merely squatting on land, by the way…
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
You are aware that violating the rules set to distinguish and protect non-combatants means that you forfeit those protections under the laws of war?
Why do you think his popularity surged after years of being disgraced?
I can apply that the other way around and the labels fit nicely.
Hah hah no. I haven’t forgotten the second uprising from the early 2000s. It wasn’t Israel that was making every wrong choice possible and then some. Oh Israel slid into a worse state in the third uprising and the following years of sliding into the hard right’s arms, but the damage had already been done before then.
TenguPhule
@chopper:
I am aware. I am also aware that Israel has done some things to try and curb the settlers and that when there’s evidence that settlers commit murders the Israelis have prosecuted. Again, they’re hampered by Likud and for every settlement torn down, the fanatics build two more.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Palestinian extremists didn’t need Mossad to kill their own moderates. Accusations of being spies for Israel was all the excuse they needed.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
And now you’ve completely crossed over into Moral Myopia.
Its clear that you’ve become completely irrational on this subject.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
Israel has done dick to curb the settlers. the reason I brought up goldstein is you’ve spent this whole thread pointing out the better angels of one side and the lesser angels of the other; hence “these guys are blowing up ice cream parlors while the other guys are just squatting on land”.
TenguPhule
@chopper:
They’ve tried. The Israeli courts have come down on the illegal settlements, but enforcement has been horrible. They pull down some of them, the fanatics erect two more. Without a strong left wing government, Israel can’t remove the settlements without risking a government collapse back to the right.
And the Israelis as noted in your own link, prosecuted who they could.
Viva BrisVegas
@TenguPhule:
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits “transfers of the population of an occupying power to occupied territories”.
eemom
@TenguPhule:
IMHO, it’s not so much this subject as a weird neurotic need to argue to the death on any given subject, based on increasingly irrational attributions to her adversary of things they never said. It’s been demonstrated on hundreds of threads over the years on all kinds of topics. I wonder if it’s a DSM-V classification (or whatever the latest edition is).
eemom
More generally, the prevailing attitude on this thread is exactly the same as though the citizens of some other country were to accuse all Americans, including every one of us, of war crimes based on the actions of the Bush administration, regardless of how vehemently every one of us opposed those actions — not to mention the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by this country throughout its history. Complete and total disregard of the millions of Israelis who oppose and despise Bibi and his ilk just as much as every one of us despises Dump and his ilk and Bush before him.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I agree with you on this point.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Yeah, the four bystanders who got killed when Mossad blew up a car on a Beiruit street to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh got what they deserved for sharing a neighborhood with Salameh. If they didn’t want to be killed by Mossad, they shouldn’t have lived in Beiruit, amirite?
@eemom:
Given that TenguPhule has already tried to drag in our previous disagreement over The Last Jedi you have clearly not been paying attention to why TenguPhule won’t shut up, either.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
So the Israeli government is helpless to enforce its own laws? Gosh, perhaps there’s a grain of truth in what I’ve been saying and there are bad actors on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. ?
chopper
@TenguPhule:
they haven’t done dick, unless slaps on the wrist are a big thing to you. the settlements are still chugging along and the hardcore settlers are still crazy lawbreaking assholes as they’ve always been.
Aleta
@Mnemosyne: If only they had an army that knew how to bulldoze homes and prevent rebuilding. But understandably, that would be inhumane and cause public opposition leading to other difficulties.
chopper
@Aleta:
sorry, these bulldozers only knock down brown people’s houses. it’s a special model built by caterpillar.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
enforcement has been horrible because the government doesn’t give a shit. likewise, the political parties the hardcore settlers vote for are what give bibi his majority in the Knesset, and they know it, and he knows it. fuck, even if that wasn’t true they still don’t give a shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@chopper: There are no left or center-left people who vote? Where do we stand? We have Trump. Should we be a pariah nation?
Mnemosyne
All right, I actually do have some stuff I want to get done this evening, so I turn the argument over to whoever else wants to try and get through TP’s concrete skull. ‘Night!
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: Your passive aggressive martyr complex is irritating. Just thought you’d like to know that.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Point me towards a good actor on the Palestinian side. Please.
I know there are bad actors on Israel’s side. You keep ducking the problem of NOBODY on the Palestinian side being held accountable.
TenguPhule
@Viva BrisVegas:
And I agree with that to a point. Its what constitutes occupied territories to each side that’s part of the problem. It’s like the difference between North Korea’s version of nuclear free and the American version.
The other half is again, trying to get a strong enough government into place that would enforce Israel’s judicial decisions to remove the illegal settlements.
TenguPhule
@chopper: Last bunch of settlement removals were back in 2017.
Keep in mind, this is a group with 600,000 people we’re talking about here. Who vote. That’s 8% of the population.
So yeah, its fucking hard to remove them.
Now imagine 8% of our country as insane religious armed fanatics wedded to one cause and determined not to budge.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
helps that the government doesn’t give a fuck.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
the term “occupied territories” isn’t arguable here. Israel is basically the only one out there who argues they’re not an occupying power, because they desperately want the settlements to be legal.
this isn’t some “he said she said” shtick.
chopper
hell, even israel’s supreme court considers the country to be a belligerent occupier of the west bank.