Defining Israeli Zionist Racism: Part 8

by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri / January 6th, 2008

Section 1: (Continuation: G: Israeli Zionist Racism in their Own Words)

Analysis: Zionist media vs. Israeli Racist Quotations

It is normal that people reject negative accusations — especially in ordinary life. However, in the broad subject of imperialism and colonialism, the problem is quite different since the ideology of expropriation and domination requires constant propping up so the material enterprise could continue. Historically, it is dubious that British colonialism in Turtle Island, Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), or the openly racist state of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) would have managed to destroy and expropriate lands owned by its Original Peoples without racism as a cry of battle.

Likewise, expropriating Palestinian lands to install a “state for Jews” required racism. But how can Israel implement its “state” with constant exhortation and declarations of racism to harness that state and turn normal people into racist individuals so they can prop up its existence? Finally, as this state solidifies its existence, militarizes its social structures, and achieves a greater colonialist expansion, denying the racist nature that gives it life, becomes a public relations necessity. Let us see how the American Zionist media does this task on behalf of Israel in the following examples:

SAMPLE QUOTATION # 1: “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” [Israeli president Moshe Katsav, Jerusalem Post, 10 May 2001]1“Israeli quotes about Palestinians” at IsraelForum.com.

STATUS: The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) contends this quotation was “taken out of context.”

INVESTIGATION: First, as a Zionist media, CAMERA is not interested in accuracy for all Middle Eastern issues. It is solely and exclusively at the service of one party: Israel. Therefore, it is predictable that that CAMERA will try inevitably to manipulate information adversarial to Israel. Says CAMERA:

While nothing was found in the source given, there was an account in the following day’s edition of the Jerusalem Post. This remark is completely removed from its context to make it sound racist. In fact, Katsav was specifically talking about the brutal murders by Palestinian terrorists of two young schoolboys. The remains of Kobi Mandel and Yossi Ish-Ran, who had played hooky from school to explore a cave, were found on May 9, 2001. The Jerusalem Post clearly placed Katsav’s words in that context:

President Moshe Katsav said yesterday that Israel would never stoop to the brutality the Palestinians displayed in the stoning to death of two Tekoa teenagers this week.
“There is a huge gap between us and our enemies – not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience,” Katsav told reporters at Beit Hanassi.
“We would never stoop to the kind of brutality inflicted on the victims in Tekoa and Ofra,” he added. “They’re our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who don’t belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.”

Katsav said Israel must change its approach to the Palestinians, but stopped short of voicing exactly what that new approach should be — although he appeared to imply that retaliation is at times necessary.

“Force is no solution to anything,” he said, “but sometimes it’s essential.”

Referring to the brutal murders of two young boys from Tekoa, Katsav said he is sure there are Palestinians and other Moslems who oppose terrorism, but it was terrifying to realize how much cruelty and hatred the Palestinians harbor against Israelis. (Jerusalem Post, 11 May 2001)

Summary: Misrepresentation of comments by removal of context.2Ricki Hollander, “Exposing False Zionist Quotes (Quote Busters),” CAMERA, 1 October 2004. [Emphasis in original]

EXAMINATION: CAMERA claims, on its website, that it is “devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media. Because public opinion ultimately shapes public policy, distorted news coverage that misleads the public can be detrimental to sound policymaking. A non-partisan organization, CAMERA takes no position with regard to American or Israeli political issues or with regard to ultimate solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”3“About CAMERA,” CAMERA.

Hiding behind non-partisanship when morally reprehensible crimes are occurring is itself morally reprehensible. Would CAMERA have hidden behind “non-partisanship” when Nazis were overrunning their neighbors and persecuting Communists, Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others deemed inferior or enemy by the Nazi authorities?

But CAMERA is not neutral. It states, “Frequently inaccurate and skewed characterizations of Israel and of events in the Middle East may fuel anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.”4“About CAMERA,” CAMERA. Transparently, the concern of CAMERA is how Zionism and the Jewish state are portrayed in the media. As such they engage in flak by demanding corrections of various media. Indeed, demanding accurate reporting and journalism is de rigueur. But manifestly more odious is the tendentious advocacy of CAMERA on behalf of Israel and Zionism.

Its focus is on denying or obscuring Zionist hate speech. There is no pretense of such advocacy for Arabs or Muslims by CAMERA.

Hence, even though CAMERA may expose some incorrect quotations attributed to Zionists, this does not hide the manifold overt crimes of Zionism and the state of Israel. Readers rightly demand accuracy, but readers should also demand to know the full agenda of media watchdogs that engage in advocacy.

SAMPLE QUOTATION # 2: “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more” [Ehud Barak, prime minister of Israel at the time — August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, 30 August 2000]5“Israeli quotes about Palestinians” at IsraelForum.com.

SAMPLE QUOTATION # 3: “[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” [Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.]6“Israeli quotes about Palestinians” at IsraelForum.com.

STATUS: here again CAMERA takes exception to journalist Robert Fisk’s use of the quotation attributed to Begin. Says CAMERA:

Internet hate sites, as well as Fisk, attribute this derogation of Palestnians [sic] as “two-legged beasts” to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The source generally given is:
Menachem Begin, as quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts,”New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

Indeed, the radical French-Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, did attribute such a quote to Begin in his New Statesman article criticizing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The author posited:

For this reason the government has gone to extraordinary lengths to dehumanise the Palestinians. Begin described them in a speech in the Knesset as “beasts walking on two legs”.

However, further investigation by CAMERA reveals that the actual speech upon which Kapeliouk based his quote, as well as news reports at the time demonstrate that the journalist distorted the quote, giving it a completely different tone and meaning. Begin was talking, not about “the Palestinians” but about terrorists who target children within Israel.

On June 8, 1982, Begin addressed the Knesset in response to a no-confidence motion over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He talked about defending the children of Israel, and according to a June 9, 1982 AP report, “his voice quaver[ed] with anger and sadness.” According to the minutes of the session, Begin stated:

The children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington, in Moscow, and in Peking, in Paris and in Rome, in Oslo, in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. The fate of… Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.

Kapeliouk neither recanted nor apologized for his deception.

Summary: Distortion by an Israeli critic of a Begin speech discussing terrorism and terrorists.7Ricki Hollander, “Exposing False Zionist Quotes II (Quote Busters II),” CAMERA, 4 October 2004. [emphasis in original]

EXAMINATION: In this case, CAMERA has minutely parsed the language. But does this fine-tooth parsing pass muster, or is CAMERA engaged in semantics to cover hate speech by leading Zionists? We submit that Zionists, by and large, draw little distinction between a Palestinian and a terrorist.8“Palestinian Terrorism,” Jewish Virtual Library. At the IsraelForum.com, “Israeli quotes about Palestinians,” one commenter, physics, wrote, “If you replace the words Arabs/Palestinians with terrorists, then all of the quotes are justified. For every single Arab/Palestinian that is involved in terrorism, this is certainly justified. For every single Arab/Palestinian that is not affiliated with terrorism, then the comments are not justified. I see these comments directed at the terrorists.” But many people read literally. What physics does not deal with is the planting of a seed whereby “Arab” or “Palestinian” has become synonymous with “terrorist.” The language of Zionist figures is deliberate, and the overwhelming number of such quotations in existence adduces this Zionist tactic. Indeed, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accuses Palestinian mainstream political organizations of being complicit in the exploitation of children and teens by terrorist organizations.9“Palestinians exploit children for terror – Background,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 March 2004. One can even find “Palestinian political violence” on Wikipedia, and although “Zionist political violence” is found, apparently such political violence ceased in 1948. Further, there is no Wikipedia page for “Israeli political violence.” Presumably Israeli political violence does not exist for the mavens at Wikipedia, and all the contemporary political violence (read terrorism; if you do a search on “political violence” at Wikipedia, the “terrorism” page appears) is confined to the Palestinians. Therefore, we consider CAMERA’s accusing Kapeliouk of deception to be hypocritical and disingenuous.

SAMPLE QUOTATION # 4: “[The Palestinians] would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” [Then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers, New York Times, 1 April 1988]10“Israeli quotes about Palestinians” at IsraelForum.com.

SAMPLE QUOTATION # 5: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.” [Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, David Shipler, “Most West Bank Arabs Blaming U.S for Impasse,” New York Times, 14 April 1983, A3.]11“Israeli quotes about Palestinians” at IsraelForum.com.

STATUS: Again, CAMERA takes exception with a quotation mentioned by Fisk. Says CAMERA,

According to Fisk’s article:

[Arafat] is chastised by George Bush while his people are bestialised by the Israeli leadership. Rafael Eytan, the former Israeli chief of staff, used to talk of the Palestinians as “cockroaches in a glass jar”. Menachem Begin called them “two-legged beasts”…

These quotes appear on numerous anti-Israel Web sites, raising the question of whether Fisk obtained his information on one of the sites that share his agenda. While there is some truth to these quotes, they are either distorted or taken out of context.

Investigation–Example 1: Fisk suggests that Eitan routinely referred to the Palestinians as “cockroaches” He states this as fact, giving no source, but other internet sites refer to an April 13, 1983 article by Gad Becker in the Israeli daily, Yediot Ahronot. This original source of the quote, however, indicates that Eitan’s comment was atypical, made in specific reference to Arab violence. According to Becker, this “uncharacteristic” (as he puts it) and controversial comment was made by outgoing Chief of Staff Eitan during a discussion of how best to deal with Arab violence in the West Bank. In responding to suggestions by Knesset members that the army should stop stone throwers by shooting at their feet or throwing stones back, Eitan reportedly said:

The Arabs will never win over us by throwing stones. Our response must be a nationalist Zionist response. For every stone that’s thrown–we will build ten settlements. If 100 settlements will exist–and they will–between Nablus and Jerusalem, stones will not be thrown. If this will be the situation, then the Arabs will only be able to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.

Summary: A single (albeit controversial) remark made in a specific context is misrepresented as a generalized, routine slur by an Israeli leader.12Ricki Hollander, “Exposing False Zionist Quotes II (Quote Busters II),” CAMERA, 4 October 2004.

EXAMINATION: A microfiche search did turn up Eitan’s quotation in the New York Times. Clearly, CAMERA is turning itself into a pretzel trying to whitewash a racist remark by Eitan. It distracts readers by noting that Fisk did not disclose the source of the quotation. Then CAMERA admits Eitan made the comment, but insists it was “atypical” by citing one person. Is this supposed to be compelling evidence of atypicality?

In examining these three cases, it should be evident that CAMERA is running damage control for Zionist racism. With this in mind, we will present next further examples of racist comments by prominent Zionists.

Zionist websites with grandiose names that play the “accuracy game” are omnipresent across the net. One such outfit is Accuracy in Media founded by the Zionist Reed Irvine. As for disinformation on Arab and Palestinian issues, as well as for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, none can top Daniel Pipes.org.

Read all Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.

ENDNOTES:

Kim Petersen is an independent writer and can be reached at kimohp at gmail.com. B.J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com. Read other articles by Kim and B.J..

This article was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 9:02am and is filed under Israel, Prejudice, Racism, Zionism.

34 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 9:46am #

    Kim,

    These posts sound like what normal people say in a dispute. They in no way support your thesis.

    And, to have only found five examples of nasty verbiage thrown at an enemy in a dispute. Come now. Even I could do better than that supporting your theory and I think it is, to be blunt, the theory of a bigot.

    Consider, though, Kim that the founding covenant of the Hamas advocates genocide – and not just against Israelis but against all Jews. The covenant also accepts as a real source the well-known forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And, the covenant employs the same litany of crimes by Jews that the Nazis used, as in Jews being responsible for all wars since the time of the French Revolution. In fact, the covenant lists them. And, the covenant opposes all efforts at making peace and, instead, proposes war, stating that the dispute is one of religion.

    Now, Kim, if you want to present something other than propaganda, you might note the environment in which some Israelis have commented about their neighbors – Palestinian Arabs who advocate genocide. In fact, the words of the Israelis, given the Hamas covenant, are not all that nasty.

  2. Saad said on January 6th, 2008 at 10:11am #

    Neal wrore:

    >>In fact, the words of the Israelis, given the Hamas covenant, are not all that nasty

    What is Hamas Covenant?

    Attempting to reverse the evil deeds of the Zionists over 60 years of Israeli rampage in Palestine and the rest of the Arab and Muslim worlds? Now that is a noble, moral, and just.

  3. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 10:31am #

    Neal,

    You assert that Hamas and other Palestinian Arabs have advocated genocide. You do not give any details nor do you quote their actual words. However, are you aware that in May, 2007 Israel’s former Sephardic chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu advocated genocide against all Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza? I refer you to the May 30, 2007 online edition of the Jerusalem Post. The story is entitled “Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza.” Here are a few quotations:

    “All civilians living in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks on Sderot, former chief Sephardic chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu has written in a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.”

    “Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.”

    “According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets.”

    “Eliyahu could not be reached for an interview. However, Eliyahu’s son, Schmuel Eliyahu, who is chief rabbi of Safed, said his father opposed a ground invasion into Gaza that would endanger IDF soldiers. Rather, he advocated carpet bombing the entire area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life.”

    “If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand,” said Schmuel Eliyahu. “And if they don’t stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we muust kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”

    “In the letter, Eliyahu quoted from Psalms. ‘I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them.'”

    What was it that you were saying, Neal, about Palestinians advocating genocide? Since you berate Kim for allegedly being one sided and a “propagandist,” I guess you are also now prepared to deplore and condemn rabbi Eliyahu’s call for genocide. After all, you wouldn’t want anyone to think that you are one-sided (or hypocritical) in your moral judgments or that you are just a “propagandist,” would you? By the way, was it racist of the good rabbi to insist that the lives of IDF soldiers (Jewish lives) are more important that the lives of Palestinian civilians (including totally innocent infants and small children)? I’m wondering if you (or Jaime for that matter) will be able to find words strong enough to condemn rabbi Eliyahu’s call for genocide?

  4. jaime said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:02am #

    Ralph,

    FYI I think “carpet bombing” is a bit extreme. There are other measures that would be more sensible to try first. For instance, expanding the buffer zone between the Gaza border and Israel to out distance the missile attacks. Say, 10 kilometres to start. So Beit Hanoun and other Gzan civilian centres close enough to launch rockets from would have to be evacuated.

    I think 48 hours notice is fair.

    And for all the groaning and moaning above…CAMERA has never touted itself as non-partisan. So why the big whoop?

    And I’m glad that Kim pointed out that particularly disgusting atrocity of stoning two children to death in a cave.

    Finally, Ralph wrote

    ” You assert that Hamas and other Palestinian Arabs have advocated genocide. You do not give any details nor do you quote their actual words.”

    Ralph, the Hamas and Fatah Charters contain what you are asking about. Neither has been rescinded as of this writing. Technically, the Palestinian Arabs have put all of their neighbors on notice that they are all to be exterminated without exception.

    Why haven’t you and Kim already offered them your services?

  5. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:29am #

    Come on, Jaime, tell me what you think about rabbi Eliyahu’s call for “carpet bombing” of Gaza. You might think that it is a bit extreme, but the former chief rabbi doesn’t. His statement sounds like a call for the genocide of the Palestinians living in Gaza to me. Surely it mustalso sound that way to you. But you ignored it. Don’t be a hypocrite. You can’t in one breath denounce the Palestinans for allegedly calling for genocide of the Jews (however, neither you nor Neal have provided any concrete evidence that they ever did make such a call) and in the next breath ignore the rabbi’s immoral and detestable call for collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Would you consider rabbi Eliyahu’s racism and bigotry (or his deplorable son’s call for the murder of up to a million Palestinians) to be bigotted behavior comparable to anti-semitism? I will await for condemnation of Eliyahu’s call for genocide. If you do not condemn the rabbi’s statement, you will have revealed yourself to be a hypocrite and a bigot. Surely, even you can see that.

  6. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 12:14pm #

    Ralph,

    From the Hamas Covenant, on killing Jews:

    The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.

    Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

    “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).

    In simple English, we have a Hadith tradition set forth as a political program., “no matter how long that should take. ”

    As for eschewing any settlement, we have the Hamas leadership recently seeking a Hudna. A hudna is a truce. It is, in classical Islam, a truce for purposes of allowing the Muslim side to re-arm or to find a better circumstances in which to fight.

  7. jaime said on January 6th, 2008 at 12:25pm #

    Ralph, clean your glasses/computer monitor.

    I posted:

    Ralph, FYI I think “carpet bombing” is a bit extreme.

  8. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 12:59pm #

    Ralph,

    More from the Hamas Covenant – this time its views regarding the infamous forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

    The Islamic Resistance Movement calls on Arab and Islamic nations to take up the line of serious and persevering action to prevent the success of this horrendous plan, to warn the people of the danger eminating from leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism. Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

    And, so far as a re-statement of what Hitler said about Jews, the Hamas Covenant states:

    For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

    You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

    You might read the entire covenant, which can be found here:

    http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/hamas.htm

    Frankly, it does not get more bigoted than that. Such is, in fact, a restatement of what Hitler said back in the 1930’s, except, of course, that he did not speak of WWII in the past tense.

    In fact, the Hamas program amounts to an eliminationist program to rid the world of a people who supposedly caused all wars all over the world – at least in their foul imagination, the same sort of foul imagination embodied in the Nazi program.

  9. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 1:53pm #

    Neal,

    Despite your lengthy posting from the Hamas Covenant, you have still not posted a single statement in that work that explicitly calls for genocide. There are statements calling for the use of violence to repel the Israeli “invader” (which is what the Israelis are in the eyes of the dispossessed Palestinians) but none that I can find calling for genocide. You shouldn’t assert things you can’t prove, Neal. It amounts to little more than demagoguery!

    I notice that you have not yet got around to condemning the explicit call for the murder of as many as a million Gazan Palestinians by rabbi Eliyahu. Do you agree with him that all of the Palestinian people are collectively guilty for the acts of a few terrorists and that there is therefore nothing morally wrong with “eradicating” them all in order to bring peace to the Israeli Jews, whose lives are said to be of superior worth. Talk about bigotted, racist bullshit!!! This call to genocide, which cites the Book of Psalms in the Bible as justification, is racist as it gets. Right up there with the KKK, Nazis, anti-semites and other dangerous and contemptible bigots. Why have you not discussed this, Neal. Do you really think you can continue to accuse the Palestinians (without yet citing proof) of advocating genocide, and at the same time ignore this explicit call to genocide from an influential Israeli rabbi? Think again, buster!!! Either you explicitly condemn the rabbi’s despicable call to genocide along with your condemnation the statement you have not yet produced from Hamas, or reveal yourself as a hypocrite and as the one-sided “propagandist” that you accused Kim of being in your first post. Your moment of truth has arrived, Neal. Put up or shut up. Condemn in the strongest possible terms rabbi Eliyahu’s statement, or remain silent on the whole matter forever and desist from all criticism of Hamas , having shown yourself to be so hopelessly biased as to have nothing of value to add to the discussion. Youe moment of truth has arrived!!

  10. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 2:06pm #

    Jaime, Stop oogling and snapping fannies with your towel down there at the Hope Springs Eternal Steam Bath and Makeout Parlor and pay attention. I’m sorry, but describing as a “bit extreme” rabbi Eliyahu’s call for the carpet bombing of the Gaza strip and his declaring as moral the killing of as many as one million Gazan Palestinians because of their collective guilt for the terrorist acts of a few has to be the understatement of all time. Were you able to keep a straight face when you wrote it. If someone called for the murder of up to a million Jews, you and I would both agree that is was a terrible, criminal thing to say. Why can’t you be honest enough to admit that it was also a terrible, criminal and condemnable thing for the rabbi to say about Palestinians? Why can’t you be decent enough to speak out against his racism and indency?

  11. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 2:30pm #

    Ralph,

    You write: “If someone called for the murder of up to a million Jews, you and I would both agree that is was a terrible, criminal thing to say.”

    Such is the official position of the Hamas, which I quoted above. They mean to kill all Jews worldwide. Where is your condemnation?

  12. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 2:52pm #

    Neal, Until you give me an actual statement which explicitly says such a thing (as opposed to insisting that you have already done so) why should I believe you? If you can actually provide such an explicit statement I will analyze it and determine if I should condemn iy. But a vague reference from you that such a statement exists (why then can’t you cite it word for word and in quotation marks?) means absolutely nothing to me or anyone else.

    The fact that you continue to refuse to condemn rabbi Eliyahu’s explicit call for the murder of up to a million Gazan Palestinians, however, reveals you for the one-sided Zionist propagandist you apparently are. An evil religious fanatic’s proposal to murder a million people for their collective guilt doesn’t even shock you. Your moment of truth came and you failed it, Neal. You have nothing of worth to add to the discussion, you care not at all about the facts, and the immorality of your failure to be shocked by Eliyahu’s statement shows that you unfit to condemn others, including Hamas, for bad morality. Go stand in the corner.

  13. jaime said on January 6th, 2008 at 5:54pm #

    Ralph, take a pill.

    You’re ranting son.

    Neither Neal nor any other intelligent person that I know, condone mass murder by anyone.

    You’ve spun off on some kind of fantasy thing about what you expect to hear from us at the same time that you refuse to acknowledge that the Hamas creed is explicitly genocidal.

    Put it this way. Not only do we recognize this hamas creed for what it is, so does the rest of the world. That’s why even the Egyptians keep them behind a fence.

  14. Deadbeat said on January 6th, 2008 at 7:42pm #

    This is one of the more important articles in the series as it identifies an influential group promoting Zionism within the U.S. The left needs to continue to identify these groups and the expose impact they have on shaping public opinion.

  15. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:15pm #

    Ralph,

    You want me to quote people. I have quoted the political platform of the leading Palestinian Arab political party. Such was the product of an entire group of people who came together and chose their words carefully. Which is to say, it is a lot more important than what some politician said here or there and in some specific context, which neither of us knows.

    I can, if you want, quote racist Hamas. Fine. Will The New York Times do for you? Let us see. Read this from a NY Times article titled “Bombers Gloating in Gaza as They See Goal Within Reach: No More Israel” (Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, 2002/04/04):

    The goals of Hamas are straightforward. As Sheik Yassin put it, “our equation does not focus on a cease-fire; our equation focuses on an end to the occupation.” By that he means an end to the Jewish occupation of historical Palestine.

    Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of all Israeli settlements and full right of return for the four million Palestinians who live in other states. After that, the Jews could remain, living “in an Islamic state with Islamic law,” Dr. Zahar said. “From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine.”

    Mr. Shenab insisted that he was not joking when he said, “There are a lot of open areas in the United States that could absorb the Jews.”

    The Hamas leaders are clearly enamored of the suicide attacks carried out by their followers. “It is the most effective strategy for us,” said Dr. Rantisi. “For us it is the same as their F-16,” the attack fighters used by the Israeli military.

    For them, the crowning achievement so far was the attack on Passover eve.

    I trust you know that the attack on Passover eve killed a bunch of elderly people celebrating a religious holiday. It does not get much lower than that. I trust that you understand that what was advocated was the intentional massacring of civilians.

    Also from the same article:

    On the night of the Passover attack, Dr. Zahar released a statement saying it was intended in part to shut down the cease-fire negotiations then under way, directed by Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the American special envoy.

    In the interview today, Dr. Zahar explained, “the Zinni mission was bad for us” because, under the proposed terms of the cease-fire, groups like Hamas would be disarmed and their leaders arrested.

    “Besides,” Dr. Rantisi said, “we in Hamas believe peace talks will do no good. We do not believe we can live with the enemy.

    Maybe the “enemy” would end up in Alaska. Maybe. More likely, he had in mind the political program from his own political group, which officially advocates genocide.

    Again: the official program of Hamas is genocide. Such is stated in black and white in the group’s covenant. In fact, it is stated more bluntly than Hitler ever stated his program.

  16. sk said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:41pm #

    Another quote from the archives:

    The obvious key to the success of Arab strategy is the presence, in the disputed territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Jordan River, of Palestinian Arabs, people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery.

    Ruth Wisse in Commentary magazine, May 1988. Wisse was awarded the 2007 National Humanities Medal at the White House a few weeks ago.

  17. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:57pm #

    sk,

    Ms. Wisse lives in the US and teaches at Harvard. Her views are irrelevant.

    The issue that is important is the political program of those involved, not the rantings of those involved. To get straight to the point: what is the political program of Hamas?

    They, unlike Ms. Wisse, have an official document which represents their position. It is, by any standards, among the most racist programs of any political party on Earth. It has no redeeming side. Rather, it advocates war, not negotiations. It advocates genocide, not peaceful co-existence. It asserts a world conspiracy, not a rational interpretation of what occurs in this world. It program is paraphrased, in not a small measure, from Nazi propaganda from the 1930’s.

    That, not some rants by some individuals, is important.

    As is typical of this website, what is presented is propaganda, not analysis. And, Mr. Petersen tends to lead in confusing propaganda with analysis.

    And again: in the end, the parties to the dispute need to bury the hatchet. That means that both sides will get less than they want. That means that genocidal ideologies such as that of groups like Hamas need to be undermined. They, as they say, believe in Jihad and oppose any peace. They, not Palestinian Arabs and not Israelis, are the enemies of all involved because they want that group wants the dispute to continue, not be settled.

  18. Ralph Ray said on January 6th, 2008 at 9:07pm #

    Neal and Jaime, Nowhere in the quotations you cite from the Hamas Covenant does Hamas call for genocide against anyone, unlike rabbi Eliyahu, who calls for the killing of as many as a million Gazan Palestinians if that is what it takes to bring peace to the Israeli Jews. Until you guys express your disgust and disapproval of rabbi Eliyahu’s call for the murder of up to a million Gazan Palestinians, I am not terribly interested in hearing any more of your half baked charges against Hamas. Hamas and the rest of the Palestionians, in case you clowns have forgotten, is currently penned up in the Gaza Strip, the worlds largest concentration camp (today’s version of the Warsaw Ghetto) and the government of Israel is their jailer. The Israeli government is currently committing genocide against the Gazan Palestinians (not through carpet bombing, at least not yet, as the good rabbi recommends, but through starvation, denial of medical supplies, targeted assassination, etc.) and you guys are accusing the victims of plotting the genocide of their own executioners. Your preposterous charges would be laughable if the whole damned situation weren’t so tragic. American Israeli Lobby trolls like you guys constantly creatuing confusion and clouding public understanding on the issue are a big part of the problem.

  19. Hue Longer said on January 6th, 2008 at 9:36pm #

    Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 8:15 pm #

    “I trust you know that the attack on Passover eve killed a bunch of elderly people celebrating a religious holiday. It does not get much lower than that”.

    You really can’t think of anything worse or at least on par with this? I suppose targeting a little Israeli girl walking to school would be a poor waste of limited resources for the desperate and occupied, but personally sniping little girls in the head sounds a bit worse than your worst. How about dropping a payload on women and children while they sleep in their beds? It’s terrible for anyone, young or old to be killed while not fighting, but this appeal to morality you make is very selective

  20. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 9:52pm #

    Ralph,

    You are correct, the Hamas covenant does not speak to exact numbers. It advocates killing all Jews. Perhaps Hamas does not know the number.

    As for Rabbi Eliyahu, you are quoting him out of context and without examining what he meant.

    I am familiar with what he said. The context was Palestinian Arabs who were shooting rockets into the Israeli town Sderot and killing innocent civilians and making life miserable. He was speaking specifically about preventing rocket attacks by Palestinian Arabs by using the Israeli air force rather than risking lives of Israeli soldiers.

    He clearly did not mean that Israel should really kill a million Arabs. That is why he also spoke of smaller numbers of people being killed. What he meant is that Israel should do whatever is necessary to protect its civilian population.

    He also took the view – a view which the rest of the world employs – that there is some degree of collective responsibility of a population. In this case, the Palestinian Arab population does nothing to prevent Palestinian Arabs from shooting rockets at Sderot. They, for their failure even to try to prevent attacks on civilians, bear moral responsibility. That, you will note, is entirely in line with the Geneva Convention, which holds a people responsible where they allow military establishments to hide in a civilian population. In that circumstance, it is moral and legal, under the Geneva Convention, to do what is necessary, even if it means civilians will be killed.

    What he also said is that Israelis should stop risking its soldiers’a lives in such a situation and should, rather than getting them killed, use the air force. In other words, he suggests that Israel should do what the rest of the world does. Why? Because it is morally proper and legal.

  21. Neal said on January 6th, 2008 at 9:56pm #

    Hue,

    Well, the Palestinian Arabs did just what you said. They took a school hostage and then killed the children.

    Have you ever heard of the Ma’alot massacre? Gangsterish terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine murdered 22 religious high school students.

  22. Deadbeat said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:09pm #

    The last I looked the Palestinians have a right to resist and fight back against their oppressors. Apparently the Israelis are the oppressors. Your arguments ring shallow and hollow. But that is always the rhetoric of oppressors and racists.

  23. sk said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:25pm #

    An illuminating excerpt from Noam Chomsky’s online book, Necessary Illusions, published nearly 20 years ago:

    …One should not dismiss the undercurrent of racism that runs through the discussion of the Israel-Arab conflict. That is the meaning of the tacit assumption that the indigenous population does not have the human and national rights that we naturally accord to the Jewish immigrants who largely displaced them. The assumption is rarely challenged, or apparently even perceived. That is true when the denial of Arab rights is merely presupposed, and remains so even when the expression of racist attitudes is crude and explicit. A number of examples have been mentioned. It would be an error to think of them as merely scattered cases.

    Consider, for example, a New York Times Magazine article by Thomas Friedman entitled “Proposals for Peace,” outlining his ideas about a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict. He begins by introducing “an elderly curmudgeon named Sasson,” a representative of “the Israeli silent majority.” The article asks what will convince this silent but reasonable ordinary man–whose alleged views turn out to be remarkably like Friedman’s–to agree to a political settlement. “Sasson is the key to a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement,” Friedman holds. Two proposals are offered that might satisfy Sasson; these are presented as speeches by some Israeli political figure who would be farsighted enough to listen to Friedman’s advice. One is Friedman’s south Lebanon proposal, already discussed: place the territories under the control of a mercenary force backed by Israeli might, and warn the Palestinians that if “they put one of ours in the hospital, we’ll put 200 of theirs in the morgue,” and Israel will “obliterate” whatever the Palestinians construct if they threaten Israel “in any way.” The second is a “diplomatic solution” along the lines of Labor Party rejectionism, with enough power deployed to convince Israelis “to ignore Palestinian poetry” that they do not like. Again, the familiar racist arrogance.

    Notably missing is any Palestinian Sasson, or indeed any recognition that it might matter what Palestinians think or want. The discussion of proposals for peace is based on the assumption that all that matters is what is good for the Jews. Friedman takes great pains to explain to American readers Jewish attitudes into which he feels he has much insight: the attitudes of Sasson, or Ze’ev Chafets, the American-born former director of the Israeli Government Press Office, sympathetically portrayed as he calmly explains that his son would drop a nuclear bomb on the Rashdiye refugee camp “without a second thought” if he felt that Israel’s security were threatened. There is no indication that Friedman understands anything about the Palestinians, or cares to. They are a nuisance that Israel cannot get rid of, and for its own good, Israel should give Ahmed a seat on the bus to shut him up. That ends the discussion.

    The racism is often not subtle at all. We read that Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer is offended by the willingness of the Sandinistas “to express solidarity with Palestinians, M-19s, and other Third World detritus” (Joe Klein); replace “Palestinians” with “Jews” and no one will fail to recognize the echoes of Der Stuermer. The same reaction would be elicited by a complaint that New York is “underpopulated,” meaning that it has too many Blacks, Hispanics, and Jews and too few WASPs; but there is no reaction to a reference to the “underpopulated Galilee,” meaning that it has too many Arabs and too few Jews (Dissent editor Irving Howe in the New York Times). Liberal intellectuals express no qualms about a journal whose editor reflects on “Arab culture” in which “no onus falls on lying,” on a “crazed Arab,” but “crazed in the distinctive ways of his culture. He is intoxicated by language, cannot discern between fantasy and reality, abhors compromise, always blames others for his predicament, and in the end lances the painful boil of his frustrations in a pointless, though momentarily gratifying, act of bloodlust” (New Republic editor Martin Peretz). Comparable statements about “Jewish culture” would be recognized as a reversion to Nazism. Gary Hart was forced to terminate his presidential candidacy because of alleged indiscretions, which did not include his withdrawal of money from a bank when he learned it had Arab investors: “`We didn’t know it was an Arab bank,’ said Kenneth Guido, special counsel to the Hart campaign. `We got him (Hart) out of it as soon as we knew’.” Nor was Walter Mondale accused of racism when he returned campaign contributions he had received from Arab-Americans or, in one case, a woman with an Arab-American surname, “for fear of offending American Jews,” the Wall Street Journal reported; or when he accepted the endorsement of the The New Republic. Change a few names, and the meaning of these facts is evident enough. In the New York Times, William Safire condemns “the world’s film crews” for their coverage of “a made-for-TV uprising of a new `people’…in Israel’s West Bank”; such derision of Jewish resistance to comparable abuses would be unthinkable, apart from neo-Nazi publications, but this passes without notice. It is pointless to discuss the journal of the American Jewish Committee, considered one of the most respectable voices of conservative opinion, where a lead article seethes with bitter scorn about “the Palestinian Arabs, people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery”; this is “the obvious key to the success of the Arab strategy” of driving the Jews into the sea in a revival of the Nazi Lebensraum concept, the author of these shocking words continues. We may, again, imagine the reaction if a respected professor at a major university were to produce the same words, referring to Jews.

  24. Hue Longer said on January 6th, 2008 at 11:37pm #

    Neal,

    As horrible as that may be, it is different than sniping school girls on their way to class for no other reason than to show you can. But this is besides the point that I was making concerning your, ““I trust you know that the attack on Passover eve killed a bunch of elderly people celebrating a religious holiday. It does not get much lower than that”. You believe elderly people celebrating during a religion’s holiday (only “your people”) is as low as one can get and I found that to be morally selective. You didn’t have to say it’s the lowest-but you did.

    When people take to claiming morality for their outrage concerning people they consider “theirs”, yet show callous apathy and hatred for people they don’t, it betrays how sincere that person truly is over their tears for anyone.

    Reminds me of all the good Americans mustering up croc tears for the WTC to justify the death handed out to children in far away places who they don’t give a fuck about. They care about “their people” as far as it helps them identify themselves as good Americans.

  25. sk said on January 7th, 2008 at 12:07am #

    Hue, you might enjoy this memorable passage from an essay by George Orwell on Nationalism:

    Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage–torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians–which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell’s soldiers slashing Irishwomen’s faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause. If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world; and yet in not one single case were these atrocities–in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna–believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.

    The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.

  26. Hue Longer said on January 7th, 2008 at 3:35am #

    perfect, sk….the irony is that people like Neal can actually understand and agree with these words without applying them to themselves (I think jaime might actually find the words anti Semitic)

  27. Ralph Ray said on January 7th, 2008 at 6:23am #

    NO, Neal, I DID NOT quote rabbi Eliyahu “out of context” as you claim in one of your posts. I cited and quoted at length from an article titled “Eliyahu advocates carpet bombing Gaza” which appeared in the online edition of the May 30, 2007 Jerusalem Post. The article (and my post) gave the full context of rabbi Eliyahu’s call for the collective punishment of all the Palestinian people for the actions of the few who were shooting Qassam rockets into Gaza. Your refusal to condemn the racist rabbi’s call for the killing of up to a million innocent civilians and his racist justification for killing Palestinians (whose lives he regards as less important than Jewish lives) reveals you for the Zionist racist that you are. You also continue to remain silent about the rabbi’s racist doctrine that Jewish lives are more important than Palestinian lives. Like the racist Eliyahu, you too believe that Jewish lives are more important than Palestinian lives (you are a racist!!!). Your dishonest claim that I quoted the rabbi “out of context” also reveals you to be a demagogue who is not interested in the truth of the situation but only in refuting anyone who dares speak out against Zionist atrocities. Such intellectual dishonesty is appalling!!! Finally, what “context” could possibly justify the rabbi’s call to genocide?

  28. jaime said on January 7th, 2008 at 4:43pm #

    You made your point, Kid.

    You’ve repeated exactly the same thing at least 4 times AFTER it’s already been answered at least twice.

    Give it a break. Move on.

  29. Neal said on January 7th, 2008 at 6:37pm #

    Ralph,

    I note what the rabbi said. I think you are not interpreting it either in context or, if in context, you did not understand what he said.

    Hue,

    I understood the comment perfectly. I also understand that the Hamas group’s official political program is genocide. That is, to me, significant. You would think the world would learn something when lunatics say loony things, they often mean them, especially when the loony things become part of a political program.

  30. Ralph Ray said on January 7th, 2008 at 9:00pm #

    Neal wrote: You would think the world would learn something when lunatics say loony things, they often mean them, especially when the loony things become part of a political program.”

    Why do you refuse to believe that former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu doesn’t mean it when he says that all Palestinians in Gaza are “collectively guilty” and urges the IDF to “carpet bomb” them and not to worry about the indiscriminate injuring or killing of noncombatants because Jewish war ethics has absolutely no prohibition against indiscriminate killing of noncombatants? Why do you refuse to believe that Schmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed and son of Mordechai, doesn’t mean it when he says, “If they don’t stop after we kill 1000, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. And if they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million”? I thought you said “when lunatics say looney things, they often mean them.” Why do you refuse to believe that these two lunatic and fanatical rabbis don’t mean what they say? You go out of your way to read the worst possible meanings into statements by Hamas and other Palestinians (even finding prescriptions for genocide that aren’t there), but you also go out of your way to pretend that Zionist Jews calling for genocide in the clearest terms are actually saying something other than what they are clearly saying. Why is this? Are you obtuse? Are you unaware that your double moral standard–which causes you to judge Jews one way and Palestinian Arabs another– is motivated by and reveals your own deep-seated Zionist racism? Your double moral standard is so blatant and so transparent that it is almost embarassing to read your posts.

    Finally, just what about the former Sephardi chief rabbi’s call to genocide didn’t I understand? I understood it perfectly. He wants to “eradicate” his enemies. You are the one refusing to understand a statement whose meaning is clear. “If they don’t stop . . .we must kill 100,000, even a million.” The former Sephardi chief rabbi added,”This is a message to the Jewish people not to be compassionate.” You obviously agree with him. You don’t seem to have an ounce of compassion for the Palestinian people and their suffering under the cruel and brutal occupation of the Zionist state.

  31. Hue Longer said on January 7th, 2008 at 11:55pm #

    Ralph,

    but what about what about what about what about?

  32. Dissident Voice : Defining Israeli Zionist Racism: Part 10 said on January 8th, 2008 at 9:29am #

    […] also Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8, 9. Yitzhak Levy, “Arabs are to blame,” ynetnews, 8 December 2007. #“Zionist […]

  33. Dissident Voice : Defining Israeli Zionist Racism: Part 11 said on January 9th, 2008 at 9:04am #

    […] also Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10. Moshe Leshem, Ballam’s Curse (Simon and Shuster: 1989, inside jacket). #Ilan […]

  34. lookinglass said on March 10th, 2009 at 7:24am #

    In historical perspective left movement were defenders of poor,weak and exploited classes and people (and made millions crimes persuing these noble targets).But after defeat of brave national socialists and the end of communist “camp” leftists appeared in the center of sympathy of Holliwood` millioners,J.Soros and muslims milliarders.One of their main target became small heterodocs people casually survived.