Bibi

I want to get my two cents in on Bibi Netanyahu.  And let me start out by saying that he disgusts me the same way that Bush and Cheney and Reagan and McCain and Gingrich do.  More about this later.

I first noticed Netanyahu in the early nineties, and he seemed immediately familiar to me- a self-serving demagogue cut from the same cloth as the American guys I mentioned above.  But the Israelis couldn't see that, and for a historical reason.  Israel is not an old country.  Up until Netanyahu, all of the high ranking members of Israeli governments had participated either in the fight to establish the State, or in the struggle to build a society from nothing.  And as with our founding fathers, this left even the most deplorable of them, like Sharon, with a commitment to the welfare of Israel that overrode their lowest motives.  Not so with Netanyahu.  He cared for no one but himself, and was willing to advance in Israel the same right wing cant that has caused us such damage here in the U.S.  In a way, he is more destructive than Republican leaders here, because he is not so surrounded by think tanks, pollsters and other manipulators who could try to keep him from spinning off from reality in such a tragic manner.

We can see this clearly because we have lived with it so long, but the Israelis could not, and thus they got Netanyahu.  And the results they are getting are pretty much the same as the results that we got under Bush and Cheney.

At the start of this current spate of violence, I was shocked to see how much public opinion seemed to have turned in the direction of the Israelis.  Comment sections on web posts that had routinely featured hundreds or thousands of the most sickeningly antisemitic remarks were now filled with supporters of Israel.  All gone now.  With eight hundred deaths and counting, the Palestinians have again succeeded in the only thing they seem to be able to do besides terrorist violence- convincing the world (which is predisposed to see things in any way unfavorable to Jews) that the Israelis are once again the bad guy.

No matter that a very large number of civilian casualties are undoubtedly the result of the callous actions of Hamas, mixing their military installations into the civilian population in a deliberate attempt to cause any Israeli response to their attacks to result in Palestinian civilian deaths, and whose soldiers, in a violation of international law, wear no uniforms, and can therefore be declared to be civilians once they are dead.  Far too many people are ready to ignore the 13,000 rockets, the tunnel attacks on Israel, the hatred espoused by Hamas, all of it, in order to blame the Jews.

Still, Netanyahu's strategy of mindless militarism has produced the same result that Bush's and Cheney's did- making his own country one more time a pariah, and allowing the Arabs to portray actions taken by Israel in self-defense as some sort of abominable aggression.

This is the result of giving in and letting the right rule your country, wherever it happens.  Thanks, Bibi.


P.S.- there seems to be a random line of type across this post, at least on my browser.  I don't have a clue where it came from.  Sorry.

Comments

Sam240 said…
I want you to imagine that you are in Philadelphia (according to the 2009 World Almanac, it has a population of 1.45 million and an area of 139 square miles). Imagine that Philadelphia is surrounded by military forces of a country whose leadership has threatened a "Shoah" if the people within resist. This country has a history of expelling people - ethnically cleansing them - who share the culture of Philadelphia.

The country putting Philadelphia under siege has also bombed its airport and the Delaware River ports. Thus, it controls who goes in and out. It has also had Philadelphia under siege for the past 47 years.

1) Do you expect that every single person within Philadelphia will quietly accept a state of siege, even after 47 years? Isn't it more likely that somebody will resist, even if it's by making homemade rockets?

2) Would the people of Philadelphia have a right to resist such a siege?

3) Look at a map of Philadelphia. Is there anywhere in the city that isn't close to a civilian population? If there is no such place, then how can you criticize the Philadelphia resistance for putting weapons in a civilian area?

4) Gaza, according to the same World Almanac, had a population of 1.5 million and an area of 135 square miles. In both population and area, it's a close match to Philadelphia. If it is morally right for Philadelphians to resist, how can it be wrong for Gazans?

[Incidentally, Israeli official Matan Vilnai did threaten Gaza with a "Shoah." He was later rewarded with a Cabinet position as Minster for the Home Front, and is now ambassador to China. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/01/israelandthepalestinians1]

5) If the Palestinians are collectively guilty because some of them support Hamas, wouldn't that also make the people of Israel collectively guilty because some of them voted for the Likud Party? Or do you accept the reasoning only when it applies to Arabs, and not to Israelis or Americans, which would make you an anti-Arab bigot?
joseph said…
Mr. Eagle,

I have a little different view of Netanyahu. Israel is a socialist country founded by democratic communists. Netanyahu is a Romney type capitalist who, I think, has an economic agenda that is not particularly suited for Israel, but it is not my country and I think the citizens there should make the choice of what economics they want, with the condition that such economic principles provide a degree of fairness and safety for all citizens. His foreign policy seems to be exactly what Israel wants and needs. That he uses his foreign policy to advance his domestic agenda is a fairly common strategy in all democracies. The problem is that the Palestinian leadership is only concerned with self preservation and living on hate is their way to go. In that respect, they are very much like Republicans here. Until a real Palestinian leadership, which values Palestinians, arises I see no hope for them.
joseph said…
Sam,

There is so much nonsense in what you say that it takes too much time to respond. However, you said you didn't know about the Armenian tragedy. Sorry for your poor education, but I knew about it in high school in the mid 1960s. Everybody, including the Armenians, knows its the Turks who don't want to talk about it. http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/Israel That you just insist it's Israel demonstrates an antipathy that is simply indefensible. That Hamas is willing to accept Israel with 1967 borders is laughable. What they say is that they will accept the borders IF IT PASSED A REFERENDUM. Since polls show it wouldn't that acceptance is moot. Furthermore, Hamas says different things in English and Arabic. You said MEMRI was not reliable. I read the debate that you cited. The mistranslation that MEMRI occurred years ago and didn't seem that significant to me. The more important charge was that MEMRI was cherry picking the quotes.
joseph said…
elderofziyon.blogspot.com has the same complaint. He invited anybody to simply give him an article or video of any Palestinian Arab saying anything like, "Jews are our friends, we should live with the Jews, we should accept Israeli and Jewish friendship, we should reach out our hands," and he would happily post them. To day he has not had any response. As far as the Arab population of Palestine before 1948 (Palestinian then meaning Jew), there are serious questions. In 1932, there were over 20 languages spoken and many Arabs listed their home countries as other than Palestine. But let us accept your numbers. In 1932,there were some 600,000 Arabs, in 1948 there were about 1.5 million in Israel. This is not natural growth. When Jews started coming in the late 19th century, there were fewer than 500,000 Arabs living in all of Palestine, today there are about 8 million people in Israel, clearly it was underpopulated when Jews started coming. What your comment about Philadelphia has to do with anything is beyond me. Gaza can get anything that EGYPT will allow in. Egypt, not Israel, controls the Rafah crossing. Israel tries to prevent the importation of weapons. Looks like a good idea to me. Hamas deliberately fires from civilian areas despite there being vast unpopulated areas it could shoot from. Lastly, it has become clear to me that the anti-Israel arguments can no longer be separated from anti-semitism. Why do you feel so comfortable trafficking with those types?
Green Eagle said…
Sam, I want to tell you something. Whenever I hear someone compare Jews to the Nazis, who nearly destroyed them, I know they are the most disgusting kind of anti-semites. This is because they know fully well that they are lying, and they are only doing what they do to add their little bit of torture to the misery which the Jews have experienced.

They sometimes (as in your case) try to hide their hatred in a thick layer of assumed rationality, but it doesn't work with me.

You now have become the third person to be banned from this blog, and in a way the worst of the bunch, because the other two were wingnut loons who probably didn't even know how hateful their behavior is. You do know how dishonest you are.

Good bye.
joseph said…
Sam,

In 2009,Vilnai said the Palestinians would suffer a shoah IF they kept shooting rockets at Israel. Was it appropriate? Probably not. Did he mean that Israel was going to murder all the Gazans. No. And as for the gypsies, if they want a homeland, I think they should have one. And if they want vast parts of South Dakota, it's ok with me. And Mr. Eagle, if Sam apologizes and agrees that Jews are not like Nazis, you should let him comment, albeit with some limit on the length of his comments.
Green Eagle said…
Joseph,

I'm in the middle of working on a movie in which I have a lot of work to do. I have very little time left to write things for my blog, and I can't afford to spend my time dealing with things that have been long refuted. On the other hand, I can't allow someone to persist in the standard attack method of throwing so many misleading things out there, knowing that liberals would spend the rest of their lives dealing with the distortions. I just won't get caught in that trap.

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