By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
While I am usually in agreement with Professor Turley’s views on free speech, I must disagree in large part with his opinion as he states in his article concerning England moving to bar support of local governments to boycott Israel and by extension other governments.
I do agree with his concern and objection of governments jailing individual citizens for engaging in boycotts of various entities. Allowing local governments to enact legislation calling for boycotts themselves is however problematic.
Professor Turley’s article reads in part:
England is moving to bar local councils, public bodies and even university student unions from boycotting “unethical” companies.
All “publicly funded institutions” will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn denounced the plan as “an attack on local democracy” and the denial of the right of people . . . to decisions free of central government political control. That includes withdrawal of investments or procurement on ethical and human rights grounds.”
I support, in principle, legislation barring government agencies from engaging in boycotts of individuals, organizations, corporations, or other governments and states that do not engage in activities that do not violate established statutes prohibiting certain acts or omissions. That is, through long established regulations or statutes. Boycotts for that matter are in some ways a separate issue for commerce violations in that they are general in nature and are usually politically driven based upon ideological disagreements with a few members of the political class.
This is one reason the U.S. Constitution and that of the various states prohibit attainder bills which these boycotts essentially are.
The process of a political boycott is designated to enact a general prohibition to economically disenfranchise the target entity from engaging in commerce or freedoms retained with the goal of changing a practice of that target. In practice, at least in the United States where this has been attempted in the past, the state will prohibit the state from engaging in commerce with the target such as where Washington State’s Governor, Jay Inslee, declared that the state of Indiana would not receive any travel or procurements due his political objections to legislation passed by the Indiana Legislature. The effect of this is the denial of the entire other state of receiving these economic benefits, thereby depriving the Indiana Citizens the right to bid for government contracts or to earn wages or sales without any due process afforded by Washington’s constitution or statutes.
Another example for a city council shows how, using what I believe to be a worthy cause of preventing manufacturers from exploiting labor and subjecting labor to harsh working conditions, illustrates some problematic boycotting practices. In this case Resolution M-1545 of the City Council of Olympia.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF OLYMPIA THAT:
Section 1. The City will implement sweatshop-free purchasing guidelines in phases. In Phase I, to be implemented by July 1, 2004, City staff making bulk purchases of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps shall choose from a list of manufacturers proven to be free of sweatshop working conditions, and offering items at a competitive price. Application of sweatshop-free purchasing guidelines to other items of clothing or footwear shall occur in future phases as directed by the Olympia City Council.
Section 2. All requests for bid or quote on t-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps shall include a copy of this Resolution.
Section 3. To determine whether a bid is responsive in terms of these criteria, the City may consider information obtained independently from the bid from the following: the manufacturer, the distributor from whom the goods are purchased, reputable national and international organizations, well documented media reports, and well-documented information from local citizens groups that are knowledgeable about this topic.
Section 4. City staff shall provide individual employees who receive a clothing or footwear allowance, or who make reimbursable purchases of work clothes or footwear, information on local retailers, wholesalers, or known manufacturers of sweatshop-free items, and encourage those employees to make purchases from those sources.
Section 5. The City Council Budget Committee shall review the progress in implementing this resolution annually through 2006 to determine its effectiveness in assisting the City and its employees in purchasing covered goods from responsible and ethical manufacturers, any impact that this policy may have on the ability of the City to purchase such items at competitive prices, and the timing and means of including additional clothing items under the purchasing guidelines.
PASSED AND APPROVED this 9th day of March, 2004.
Here, the definition of “sweatshop” is not properly defined. It also, I believe, violates federal trade practices regarding international commerce. It defines a list of individual companies approved for sales with the exclusion of others deemed to be in violation of the resolution, hence prohibiting other manufactures from entering the marketplace to sell wares to the city.
Again, I am not advocating the proliferation of “sweatshops”. I take exception to this indirect form of boycott which is largely based upon an arbitrary selection process.
This boycotting practice has the potential if allowed to grow unchecked could become more widespread where the threat of sanction can chill not only commerce but actually the free speech of individuals and entities where speech that is deemed offensive by local councils can be curtailed by the threat of punishment. I worry that organizations and assemblies of citizens will be targeted, thus permitting only speech of a particular kind that is effectively a moving target as the political winds change direction frequently.
Where would we be as a society if our governments could boycott by resolution the ACLU, Wild Salmon Fisheries, leagues of women voters, cities, states, or nations? It is the right of the individual person to decide for themselves.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Karen
In essence you give Israel a pass on its disgusting behavior because backward Muslim nations are also disgusting. That’s my point. Suffering the holocaust does not permit Israel to do what they are doing to the Palestinians. You seem to support some sort of pecking order, as long as it is your pals doing the pecking.
Darren….let me reccomend a shrink….obamacare will pay for it. You have way too much anxiety. You anxiety is because you care…..you have one of two actions: take action about what you care about (fight)…..or take this pill (flight). Unfortunately you visited the shrinkn before fighting….so now youra problem. Here is your pill. Give us your gun lest you think straight again. The gulag will fix your broken heart.
Boycott? I want sexual equality: girlcott 1/2 the time.
I should add the Arabs joined a list of groups that displaced the Jews. However, the Arabs successfully conquered the ME, and kept the Jews a subjugated people, or drove them out entirely from some areas.
Alright, another round with karen where we offer facts and she offers opinions. I am not sure where you get your information, karen, but in case you did not know, it is all wrong. It happens sometimes when we listen, read, watch the wrong news sources, which leads to our spouting points that are countered by 99% of historical and scholarly consensus.
Do you have any source for your arguments? I do not think that you are doing this purposely and deceitfully for that would speak a great ill about you, but it happens, as I said, when we have a poor grasp of history. Then again considering that this is the 10th time we have gone through this and you have been corrected about your misinformation, it may be time you stop offering them lest, again, we think you are doing this with the aim of being deceitful.
Don’t thank me, you are on the wrong side of history and friends must help friends when they are ignorant.
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“ I disagree that we are involved with Israel because of oil. If our motives were purely oil driven, we would nuke Israel into ashes, and likely be given free oil for eternity from OPEC.
?????? I don’t follow? Why would we nuke Israel because of oil? Did we nuke Japan because they did not have oil?
We are firm allies with Israel because our nation agrees with the existence of a Jewish Homeland, which has been sacred to its religion, for thousands of years. Most of the decent world agrees with the existence of Israel, so that argument makes no sense imagine that, despite our differences with extremist Islamic regimes which ones and what makes them extremist?and their massive human rights violations, we would also come to the aid of Mecca and Medina if they were threatened at some point in the future How does that relate to Palestinians? That suggests an outside force, like Saddam invading Kuwait, but the Palestinians, if they are the ones you are referring to, are the occupied people!!!!!. Say, for instance, that the UN required that all faiths should be allowed to settle in Mecca and Medina, and it became overrun with Episcopaleans, where it would be majority Episcopalian by 2048, concerning the Muslim world. Interesting, as Israel was created with help from UN, which has deemed that Israel is in violation of ALL the international, legal laws and treaties that govern the conflict. Additionally, that is a very unlikely and silly hypothetical 🙂
And the US is absolutely “holier than thou” when compared to “the Arabs”, if you are comparing with Saudi Arabia, where they chop off your hand for stealing, sentence you to thousands of lashes for political dissent or writing objectionable prose, kill gays, consider rape victims adulterers, widespread honor killings, forbid women to drive or take a step outside the home without permission and a male chaperone, still have female genital mutilation (although there has been a bit of a drop)…I could go on and compare and contrast with Palestinian Arabs, and any other Arabs who descended from the nomadic tribes of the ME, but why? You read this blog and have read the relevant posts.
Is that another attempt at raising the usual red herring to distract us?
What does what horrors S. Arabia commit have to do with the Palestinians? One is a monarchy, the other a democracy (yes, Palestinians vote for their leaders…). Are the Palestinians guilty for the crimes of the Saudis? Is that because they share Islam? If so, what about the Palestinian Christians who are oppressed similarly by Israel?
karen says:
I absolutely get that South Africa’s apartheid was a great wrong, and the world allied against it to enact change.
,b>Yet you support the Israeli apartheid, which has been deemed an apartheid by a great many better people than you or me.
1-What I’m about to write will not come easily for me.
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country’s settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.
I’m not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.
Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body – only to have Israel’s government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.
I can’t pretend anymore. Not after Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.
The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn’t have to.
Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.
This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.
read more: h t tp://w w w .haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/1.671538
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2- Recently, an interesting argument was held in Haaretz between Michael Sfard and Gideon Levy. Sfard claims that “One day the occupation will end suddenly” (Haaretz.com, January 22), while Levy suggests that “the occupation won’t end” (January 24) and that Israel “can continue with the occupation as long as it likes, so why should it end?”
Maybe both are wrong. An analysis of the geopolitical situation on the West Bank shows the occupation hasn’t been an occupation for a long time. It has not been defeated or liquidated, but rather has developed into the next stage: civil colonial control, accompanied by a creeping process of apartheid into the entire area controlled by Israel between the Jordan and the sea.
The Israeli left, which is fighting this outrageous situation, needs to get in sync with the change in reality, and adopt new terminology: No longer “occupation,” a condition that doesn’t exist anymore, and which at any rate can be legal, but “apartheid,” which is coming into being before our eyes, and constitutes a grave international crime.
Occupation is a situation of temporary, militarized control, external to the state’s sovereign borders. The characteristics of Israeli rule in most of the West Bank are the opposite: Control is civilian, permanent (according to the statements of Israel’s leaders), and internal to Israeli society and politics.
Over 600,000 Israeli citizens live in the West Bank (including Jerusalem beyond the Green Line); most of the area of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli municipal councils; Israelis in the West Bank are tried according to Israeli law and vote for the Knesset. Over 1,000 square kilometers of Palestinian land, private and public, are registered to the state, and they are marketable real estate in Israel.
Israel controls entry and exit, customs and taxes, tourism, trade and even registering births and deaths in the territories. Gaza is under blockade. The Palestinian Authority, and even the hostile Hamas, reconcile themselves to the civil makeover of the occupation, being governmental bodies within the Israeli envelope. The main harm to human rights and the obstacles to establishing a Palestinian state are not a result of the military occupation, but actually stem from the civil transformation.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.702597
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karen asks:
How does Israel negotiate with people who want their annihilation?
95% of the Palestinian resistance is non-violent! A majority of Palestinian agree with the existence of Israel alongside Palestine, BUT 75% of polled Israelis do not support the existence of a Palestinian state.
Here are some quotes from Israeli leaders against Palestinians, based on that, who wants the other’s annihilation?
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. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
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 August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” ” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
7. “There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.” Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969
8. “The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1972.
9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti – Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.
10. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : “We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return.” Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. “The old will die and the young will forget.”
11. “We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
12. “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” – Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
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karen asks:
How do you compromise? It is a tiny country. If it gives up more land, the entire country will be reachable by missile.
Hahahahahaha…give up more land? What land has Israel given up? It keeps gobbling up more land!!!
Giving up? Hahahaha, you are funny, karen!
Here are more facts, ditch your sources, the dark side and come to the light.
http://thrivalroom.com/understand-israeli-palestinian-apartheid-11-graphics/
Or perhaps I am the one who is wrong? If so, please show me where, karen so I can change my mind 🙂
The Jews are treated like hell in the Middle East. You will recall that they are completely barred from entry in Saudi Arabia, and treated as inferior in the Middle East. They have been persecuted for thousands of years. Let them have Israel, their homeland, and leave them alone. It is their Mecca. They have brought a booming economy, hygiene, public works, water, electricity, and education to their area of the Middle East. There are many Arab schools throughout the country.
The “persecution of the Palestinians” line is used to try to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinians want Israel’s annihilation. They do not recognize Israel. Their schools do not show Israel on the map.
The Arabs conquered the Middle East, murdered and subjugated the Jews. The Jews were driven from country to country, a people without a homeland, for thousands of years, second class (or worse) citizens everywhere they went. The British Mandate was specifically designed to address the Jewish diaspora.
They got their home back. The vast majority of Palestinians descend from workers who, like immigrants to the US, followed the jobs as the British Mandate got to work building Israel. Their ancestors were nomadic. Palestinians are better off living in Israel than anywhere else in the ME, except for the royals of the UAE. They have better education, water, electricity, voting rights… However, if they do not like living in a Jewish state, they can join the Muslim area of the region formerly known as Palestine, which is now called Jordan. They do not have to live in a Jewish country. There is a wide selection of Muslim countries all around them, so they are spoiled for choice on where to live.
The world is tired of the never ending attempts by the ME and Palestinians to fold Israel back into a Muslim theocracy so they can get back to the business of subjugating women, killing apostates and gays, and driving reasonable people to emigrate away. They should do us a favor and accept Israel’s existence, cease the rabid anti-semitism, stop attacking Jews, and see what happens when the violence evaporates. There wouldn’t be all the walls and barbed wire if they would stop killing women and children on buses and at markets. Amazingly, in the US, Muslims, Jews, Christina, Hindus, and atheists all rub shoulders every day and get along fine. It can be done. Why don’t they just pretend they are living the US and just get along with everyone? But what happened when martial law was lifted in the 1960s, and Palestinians got equal rights? Why, they went right back to agitating against Israel, pushing for strict Islamic rules in Palestinian areas, and then there was the series of Intifadas.
I generally oppose theocracies, but feel that they are necessary in Mecca and Israel, because they are homelands to particular religions in areas known for intolerance for any religion except Islam. Although Israel is generally democratic, it has a Jewish character. Without it, it would be re-absorbed into the Muslim ME and no more Jewish homeland.
Issac:
“My point, which you missed, is that the degree of ‘wrong’ as perceived by the boycotting group, be it a local group, a local government, a state government, or the nation’s government typically determines the outcome. Case in point, with South Africa the degree of wrong was vastly greater than that of Israel, regardless of one’s perception of Israel.”
“Nothing gets by me. My reflexes are too quick. I would catch it.” (Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy). I absolutely get that South Africa’s apartheid was a great wrong, and the world allied against it to enact change.
In the original thread posted by Prof Turley, I had said that as long as the organization’s stance on an issue, i.e. boycott, democratically reflected that of the people, then the people had a right to decide where its dollars went. However, Darren brought up valid points that we cannot break treaties, and we must be cautious in the use of sanctions in silencing speech and differences of opinion. In Darren’s example, the citizens of an entire state were punished economically. I also recall how Palestinians who worked at Soda Stream (I believe) in Israel, were economically harmed by well meaning boycotts against this Israeli company.
How does Israel negotiate with people who want their annihilation? How do you compromise? It is a tiny country. If it gives up more land, the entire country will be reachable by missile. It suffers continuous attacks. If we suffered the same level of attacks per capita, it would be an enormous rate. And our citizens would be pretty fed up and want an end to the violence. We’d want to be able to board a bus without a terrorist plowing through the crowd and then getting out and stabbing a woman. Or we’d want to avoid getting blown up on the bus or at the farmers market. Meanwhile, Palestinians are urged to stay home when Israel warns of imminent attack, to maximize casualties. They are urged to follow strict Islamic law, with the women bundled up. Women are allowed to vote in Israel. Will they keep that right if the Palestinians carve more land out of Israel? The Muslim portion of the region that was Palestine is called “Jordan.” This reminds me so much of the Hindu/Muslim wars that went on when India and Pakistan were created by Great Britain, with the whole fight over Kashmir.
My specific disagreement with you was on your use of “apartheid”, which you applied to Israel here and the US on another thread.
steveg:
“Just what business is it of ours unless we’re on the Starship Enterprise. Since the second decade of the 20th Century, the only reason the West has been involved was control of the oil fields. Don’t start that holier than thou rhetoric about how bad the Arabs are.”
Next Gen or original? Because the original Star Trek Enterprise could take an incredible beating and keep on ticking, while the NG always seemed to be getting blown up. So of course Capt Kirk was able to be more proactive than Capt Picard.
I disagree that we are involved with Israel because of oil. If our motives were purely oil driven, we would nuke Israel into ashes, and likely be given free oil for eternity from OPEC. We have a fair weather friendship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Turkey because of oil. Big difference.
What business is it of ours? We are allies with Israel, so that literally makes it our business.
We are firm allies with Israel because our nation agrees with the existence of a Jewish Homeland, which has been sacred to its religion, for thousands of years. I imagine that, despite our differences with extremist Islamic regimes and their massive human rights violations, we would also come to the aid of Mecca and Medina if they were threatened at some point in the future. Say, for instance, that the UN required that all faiths should be allowed to settle in Mecca and Medina, and it became overrun with Episcopaleans, where it would be majority Episcopalian by 2048, concerning the Muslim world.
And the US is absolutely “holier than thou” when compared to “the Arabs”, if you are comparing with Saudi Arabia, where they chop off your hand for stealing, sentence you to thousands of lashes for political dissent or writing objectionable prose, kill gays, consider rape victims adulterers, widespread honor killings, forbid women to drive or take a step outside the home without permission and a male chaperone, still have female genital mutilation (although there has been a bit of a drop)…I could go on and compare and contrast with Palestinian Arabs, and any other Arabs who descended from the nomadic tribes of the ME, but why? You read this blog and have read the relevant posts.
Karen writes, “I disagree that we are involved with Israel because of oil. If our motives were purely oil driven, we would nuke Israel into ashes, and likely be given free oil for eternity from OPEC. We have a fair weather friendship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Turkey because of oil. Big difference.
What business is it of ours? We are allies with Israel, so that literally makes it our business.”
Not all of our motives are purely oil driven, but control of Middle Eastern and Saharan oil was the primary motive. Whoever controls the oil fields controls the world’s economy, We do not nuke Israel into ashes because Israel was placed there primarily to disrupt the broader Arab coalition using the divine right of return to persuade the unwitting. Only secondarily was it a compensation for German atrocities.
Ask yourself why we’re allies of Israel in the first place. Why would we allow Israel nukes?
Why would the last two presidents have assisted in the removal of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, the attempted removal of Bashar al-Assad, and the destabilization of the entire Muslim rim? Over the past decade and a half the area has somehow become more uncivilized and authoritarian? No, it’s because of the oil reserves.
Why else would Great Britain have placed nearly half a million troops in Mesopotamia to fight the Ottoman Empire during WWI and gain possession of the State of Iraq and Palestine after WWI? If you think it was for native Jews or so that Christians could visit Bethlehem and Jerusalem via Carnival Cruise, think again.
It seems clear enough to me that we have a “fair weather friendship” with Saudi Arabia because the remainder of the Muslim world has despised that kingdom for a century and it wouldn’t exist otherwise nor would our elite class without access to its oil. The royals would be roaming the desert on camelback were it not for our trade of arms and protection in exchange for oil, military installations, and air space to control the region.
A full history and geopolitical lesson in 5 paragraphs.
Karen, please frame the above so next time you want to reignite your usual stream of fallacies and falsities, you check yourself.
Let us add to that in passing that Israel and its lackeys in congress have been pushing us to do their dirty deeds by bombing Iran, which would have spelled the end of the USA as we know it. And yet here we have so called American patriots adamant in subjugating our moral principles and our nation’s interests in making sure Israel is happy, oblivious they are that whenever Israel is happy, Americans are paying a price for I.
IMHO, a lot of this is simply Multicultural Theory meeting Multicultural Reality. The same thing that happens when any “ism” encounters the real world. The Israelis are simply doing what it takes to survive, and that means that they don’t give the Palestinians the same rights as they do the Jews, because the muzzies will kill the whole bunch of them.
But, but, but, doesn’t that mean the Jews think that Jews and Palestinians are different??? That isn’t fair! sniffle. sniffle. Tough poop! If it was me running Israel, I would take MoeLarry’s advice and round up all the muzzies and march them off to Syria or something. Then, I would help Eqypt take over part of Libya and/or Sudan in exchange for the Sinai.
If the populations keep growing, that is what it is coming to, anyway. . . lebensraum. Israel has nukes. Maybe it is time for them to start waving them around???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Girl Reporter writes, “Israel has nukes.”
How else would we have protected our oil from the savage bedouins but by bestowing nukes on Israel?
Based on the comments above I can see an argument for expelling all white people out of north America and giving the territory back to the Indians. I can equate the discrimination mentioned above by the Israelis on the Arab (Palestinians) with the actions of Jackson in rounding up the Cherokees and moving them to Oklahoma. There is an Oklahoma in the Middle East and it is called Jordan.
Moe, there are many similarities between the treatment of Palestinians by Jews and the treatment of Native Americans by WASPs. A couple of rather differences however are that this is not a religious state nor are those born here other than American citizens, with all benefits and protections afforded any other citizens (in theory).
Nice try. Try again.
stevegroen
How any honest, intelligent, person who is exposed to the truth can support Israel can only be answered by reviewing the dark side of humanity. Ignorance, self indulgence, racism, bigotry, etc combine to allow these travesties. Then when the victim, with the oppressor’s hand around its throat grabs a knife and fights back, well therein lies the equation that Israel uses over and over again. It has nothing to do with religion but only survival of the species. You see something you want; you take it; you justify it to work with that pesky little thing called truth. There seems to be no one greater or greatest travesty but many tied for first place. The most perverse, however, is probably the one where the victim asks the world support it in its victimization of others who had nothing to do with the key argument, the holocaust. If it were not for the holocaust, this would not be happening. Somehow Germany is getting a pass on all this. Of course, those Germans are almost all dead and gone now. Something to hope for, the first major nation stopping aid to Israel. Who will it be, France, Great Britain, ? One thing is for sure, what ever nation that does stop aiding the oppressors in Israel will surely be forced to suffer at the hands of these valiant people, the Israelis and their guilty supporters. It’s all about the guilt.
The Palestinians (Jordanians) seem to think that Israel is their mountain. So you have two herds of goats vying for the mountaintop. If you look at the map of the muddle east you will see that the Jews have a spec and the Muslims have a huge land mass already. I am not preaching the sermon on the mount and I do not like the Mount of Monty Christo, but I think that the Palestinians in the West Bank could cross to the East Bank of the Jordan River and live with their own ilk. It was the Jordan nation state which invaded Israel in the six day war. The territory known as the West Bank needs to be Israel. You can bank on it that the terrorists in the West Bank and in Gaza will keep on terrorizing and that the Israelis will be criticized for fighting them. Once more of these terrorists move to California and New York the Americans will start seeing thru the BS lodged in many comments here about Israeli terrorism.
Israel is on the surface the great reward for a people who have been persecuted and worse for centuries. The atrocities committed against the Jewish people are not without equal and have been surpassed throughout history. However, never did the whole world kow tow to a degree that allowed the degree of depravity happen as was the holocaust. It is most remarkable, shameful, perhaps just human nature and therefor sad that the very people that were so persecuted for so long and to such lengths are now persecuting another people, taking their land, subjugating them to a level below that which they deserve, and slaughtering them from a distance.
Growing up after WW2 I read, viewed photos, and listened to stories recounting the misery of the Jews in Europe. At first, I was taken in with the sunshine glistening off of the faces of the young Israeli girls in the army, the wonderful illusions of freedom and hope illustrated in what was Israel. The evil people tried to again destroy these wonderful and deserving again and, along with the rest of the recipients of Western media, I cheered along as Israel set the Muslim invaders straight, taught them the bible, gave them a chance for a better life, etc.
The drop to the depths has been accompanied with the understanding that Israelis are not so much different than the rest of the people who have persecuted them for centuries. Perhaps they don’t sink to the depths of depravity as did other nations, but they are made of the same stuff. They think they are chosen to be above all others and Israel is their mountain. Perhaps that is the reason why so many westerners are pissed at Israel. We looked to them for an example of what humanity should be and were given the same old bag of beans, our same old bag of beans.
I run a bar in Florida. After reading this I am going to bar any Brits from coming into my bar until Brittain squares up its policy towards Israel. And if they are worried about Palestinians then there are a lot who want to enter Brittain now.
Steve, thank you for the video. I could not be any prouder of the many, many Jewish/Israeli allies who speak up and make sure that the oppression of Palestinians is not done in their name.
It is getting more and more dangerous in Israel to speak up…Gideon Levy has to have bodyguards to protect him.
What I do no understand is why Karen keeps repeating the same bigoted and debunked narrative that Bibi and his allies are the only ones to push!!!????
She even justified the massacre of defenseless Palestinian women and children by stating that it was appropriate response for Hamas rockets!
If indeed this is how she cares for women and children, they better find new friends.
Po and Issac: I’m with you both here. It’s just another form of slavery the general public refuses to acknowledge because it trusts that government would never do such a thing.
At its base, it seems clear to me that since the end of WWI, this apartheid has been an elitist mechanism to control the oil fields for economic and strategic reasons. Since the end of WWII it’s used return to the holy land as its cover story and transitioned to the US as the primary benefactor/enforcer when Britain could afford empire no longer.
It’s barbaric, and I’m appalled that the US government has been actively involved in it. We can survive without controlling the oil fields: the aristocracy may not, but the rest of us can.
Indeed, Steve, Isaac. The Palestinian situation is, to me, the litmus test for decency and humanity.
It is currently the longest running oppression of a people that I can think of, and worse yet, we are demanded to flip reality on his head and accept that the bully is here the victim.
But it’s been ongoing for a long time…
Interesting interview of Israeli foreign minister http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2016/02/160205144055234.html