ISRAEL;WHEN WILL THE WEST DO SOMETHING... PART II

[UCM]

Here goes....

haven't read the whole thread yet (been on holiday and need to catch up), but there is a Jewish sect (if that is the right word) who do not believe in Israel for religious reasons. I think they think it is God's will for Jews to forever wander in the wilderness. I think they are very small in numbers, but obviously their views are not based on the same beliefs as liberal Jews who question Israel. I think this is just a good example of how absurd it is to say "Jewish people think xxx" in the same way as it is ridiculous to say "British people think xxx"

nothing can justify what is being done by the Israelis to Lebanon - absolutely nothing. The enormous loss of innocent civilian life in Lebanon is absolutely shocking and totally counter productive. bombs never achieved anything. only dialogue wins over hearts and minds.

True - they have to talk. But Israel/Bush/Blair say they can't negotiate with "terrorists". What a marvelous cop out. So the murders go on and on.

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Oh yes please. Definitions. Anti-semetic. Zionist. Anti-Jewish (and how that differs from anti-semetic)?

I'm getting confused.

mimiyello - not negotiating with terrorists has never been a sustainable line and Blair knows it. we negotiated with the IRA and achieved a sustainable peace. as for Blair's rethink on middle east policy - what a load of bollocks. it amounted to nothing. he needs to listen to his Cabinet and change track. i hope this brings him down quite honestly, and he will have to live with iraq and lebanon on his conscience.

lisalisa just to clarify I don't think mimoyello meant that the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy, but that keeping it at the top of all "genocide lists" was a "conspiracy".

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Lisalisa, I'm afraid ,that "antisemitism" like any other from of racism is in the mid of the person doing it, and thus you can't easily define it in a useful way.

I have no doubt that some people detest the way Israel behaves because they don't like Jews.

There's no objective way to tell.

The test for me is to change nouns.

If (say) Zimbabwe or Brazil did this would you still see it the same way ?

If you got a video of the way Israeli troops behaved, and used some cleaver software to change their uniforms to German ones, would you feel the same ?

I accept that many Jews don't support Israeli actions, but a lot of them do. I've tried to always say "Israeli supporters" rather than Jews, not least because ome of the madder and nastiest supporters of Israeli' atrocities are American evangelicals.

Whoops type, I meant to say "mind of person doing it".

Possibly Bush and Blair are the biggest 'terrorists'around at the moment.So a group of people are called terrorists if they don't want..America.Uk trampling all over them[for example].
The Ira received alot of funding from the USA...it was the sisters of a guy shot in Belfast who shamed the USA into withdrawing much of it's funding.Possibly not alot to do with Blair[unfortunately].

'Next time we will be sure to die quietly and not to mention it again lest we be accused of using it for our own causes...'
Lisalisa it seems to be this fear that you vocalize that fuels Israeli aggression. I would like to clarify that I was brought up to see the holocaust as one of the most terrible events in humankind's history, and that Israel was the Jewish people's rightful homeland. But other holocausts have happened throughout history - the Aboriginal people and Native Americans have both suffered mass genocide, and their people are still suffering the effects, disenfranchised, dwindling populations and their societies broken up. Does mentioning these events somehow insult the memory of the Jewish people who lost their lives in the Holocaust? I understand why you might be upset by some of the comments here, but it seems there can be very little argument or questioning of Israel's military tactics without the 'debate' descending into cries of anti-semitism [and some hurtful comments on the other side, agree.] Can you actually justify what Israel are doing at the moment though? Can you see that the Palestinian and Lebananse people deserve as many rights as Israelis?

Quote from Blair yesterday - "We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st century, about global values,"

obviously these global values include pandering to the US, using violence to achieve your aims and not giving a stuff about civilian casualties as long as they are Arab/Muslim.

god saadia that speech was so depressing (or at least what the bbc reported of it). we need to win hearts and minds. but can't talk to terrorists. how is that going to work then tone?

fucker

all he gives a shit about now is the lecture circuit in the US, where he apparently is greeted with spontaneous applause in lobbies of hotels etc. just think if American public opinion is that in favour of him how much good he could do right now, and he's doing worse than nothing.

i wonder if Blair was always so amoral, or whether it is something that happened to him, i.e. power corrupts.

yes, I was rather upset by that speech. I really really don't understand what he hopes to achieve by it. I'm pretty sure he's not really motivated by the lecture circuit - he's got that in the bag anyway. he usually seems to be motivated by his place in history, but how he can possibly think that history will judge such facile statements in the face of such a complex crisis kindly i don't know.

sigh.

LL - apologies for misreading one of your earlier posts re. the sect in question. I had missed the bit about the particular sect you were talking about.

You have misread my post - what I said about the holocaust was this, and I copy and paste here: "It is a Zionist conspiracy that puts it at the TOP of all genocide lists" and then I went on to mention the Armenians who have suffered an atrocity similar to that of the Jews.

I am very categorically NOT a holocaust denier.

I just do not see why we have to be constantly reminded that the atrocities against the Jews are the worst ever, etc. as though there is some kind of competition to prove who has suffered more than any other nation.

All human suffering is BAD, is it not ? It is shocking and appalling and one does not wish it on one's own children, family, relatives, no matter what religion or race, would you not agree ?

What many of us find appalling is the manner in which the Israeli nation wishes to force us into believing that the captivity of TWO soldiers is worth the death of 10's of Lebanese.

Is Jewish blood better than any other blood ?

I really think Blair is feathering his nest for his departure from no 10 and preparing the US for his forthcoming circuit of lectures, talks etc - and he'll make a real killing ( excuse grim pun)I am sure. I watched some of his speech being broadcast live last night and felt as others do. Fed up! This so called 'arc of extremism' or whatever he terms it, is this the same as GWB's 'axis of evil'? what I find really scary is this belief that it is acceptable to impose your value system and moral code upon other nations and cultures and to do so by force if there is resistance. It is freakily similar to the crusades of medieval times.

donnie that is exactly what I was thinking (but you worded it much better than I could). It's colonialism all over again.

donnie - much as i agree that Bliar is being scary, talking about the problem of terror isn't the same as saying it is OK to impose your own moral values on another society (except insofar as it's OK to tell another society that blowing people up is wrong, but as it ges I'd agree with that). This new "war on terror" or whatever they're calling it is also not at all like the crusades, which was all about capturing the Holy land for christendom - there was a lot of cultural ignorance around at the time too, but that wasn't the motivation.

donnie - we have been trying to impose our so called moral codes for centuries on other nations. With the advent of the UN there was hope that centuries of colonialism would be stopped.

Unfortunatley there is no one now to stop the rampage we see before us. Although the USSR practiced it's own form of colonilaism often by proxy, at least it was a deterrent force against blatant US imperilasm and quite often very successfully, i.e Vietnam.

The USSR and its nuclear deterrent are dead. We now have to live with a weak Russia and one remaining superpower bent on invasions, although bless him, Putin does know when to open his mouth and insult both Bush and Blair as he did quite recently when he said he didn't need lectures from either of them on "democracy" nor on how to run his own country !

much as I disagree with lisalisa I can't see that she has said anything that suggests she is a racist of arab hater, donnie.