In which I run across a vehement Zionist and defender of Israel on another forum and take her on...
Over at unknowncountry.com, which I swear I only read when I'm really bored (it's the site of the poster boy for alien abduction, horror novelist, and Gurdjieffian Whitley Strieber). Following Strieber's own utterly repugnant journal entry demonizing the Muslim world, new registrant "Abigail" appears, and her very first post goes like this:
Some of the comments on this and other threads suggest that Whitley is biased or uninformed for believing that Iran’s nuclear program constitutes a threat to Israel and the lives of its people.
Whitley said: “And make no mistake: Iran does want to destroy Israel. It is not bluster. What they want to do is to attack Tel Aviv with a small nuclear weapon that will devastate the city, destroying Israel as a coherent state for the foreseeable future.â€
[...]
But does Iran hate Israel so much that it would be willing to risk its own destruction to eliminate it?
[...]
Matthias Kuentzel, professor of political science at the University of Hamburg, Germany, presented a very sober analysis of Iran’s apocalyptic vision at Columbia University, New York, March 6, 2008. In brief, he demonstrates that Iran’s implacable hatred of Israel stems not from political motives, but from deeply religious ones, and that therefore its leadership is immune to both reason and fear in its pursuit of Israel’s destruction.
[...]
Quoting Kuentzel: The Iranian leaders do not at all regard themselves as antisemites. “We are friends with the Jewish peopleâ€, stated Ahmadinejad in Columbia. Moreover, the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country. Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II. Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews†are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.†Instead he says, “The Zionists†have for 60 years now blackmailed “all Western governments.†“The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural, and media sectors.†“The Zionists†fabricated the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists thrive on war and hatred,†Ahmadinejad claims. “Everywhere they exist there is war.†The pattern is familiar. He invests the word “Zionist†with exactly the same meaning Hitler poured into “Jewâ€: the incarnation of evil. Anyone who makes Jews – whether as “Judas†or as “Zionist†– responsible for all the ills of the world is obviously driven by antisemitism. He must want to eliminate Israel, as the “germ of evilâ€, in order to save the world. He must deny the truth of the Holocaust in order to pave the way for his “truthâ€. The demonization of Jews, Holocaust denial, and the will to eliminate Israel – these are the three elements of an ideological constellation that collapses as soon as one of the elements is removed. [end quote]
As horrifying and incomprehensible as the idea is to civilized people, Whitley is absolutely right in his statement that Iran is determined to completely destroy the state of Israel. It sees it as its holy duty. If it acquires the means, it will certainly make the attempt.
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Prior to my own entering the fray...
"Allen" says:
Abigail very interesting post. Unless I missed it somewhere, I don't see that the Iranian President calls for the destruction of Israel. He calls for the destruction of the "zionists" and their regime but nothing of the destruction of Israel. Did I miss it somewhere?
And "Abigail" replies:
Allen, they use "the Zionist regime" as a disrespectful way of referring to the "State of Israel." You will not find them using its proper name of Israel or the State of Israel in any direct quotes, only in paraphrases by others who don't want to repeat the pejorative term.
To which "Fortwynt" rejoins:
Not true abigail. There is just as much difference between the zionist regime and the regular folks as there are between the united states government and the citizens of the united states. I clearly know the difference when I am criticizing (rightly so) the zionist regime.
And then she says:
Fortwyn, I’m happy to have you clarify that you are only opposed to the policies of the current Israeli government, and not to the right of its ordinary Jewish citizens to live and govern themselves in their own country. However, I think President Ahmadinejad would disagree with you on this point.
So then I sez to her, I sez:
Well then how about this, Abigail? I don't believe that Israelis have a right to "their own country" when ethnic cleansing was required to establish it and apartheid to maintain it. I wholeheartedly support the right of Jews to live and practice their religion safely anywhere in the world -- including Palestine -- but not the right of Jews as a pseudo-racial group to practice a racially-based nationalism at the expense of the non-Jewish autochthonous peoples of Palestine.
And SHE says:
Casseia, I had to look up “autochthonousâ€! But I don’t understand your question. Are you asserting that the Jews constitute a separate race? I can assure you that it’s not true. Jews come in every shape and color. As for apartheid, Israeli citizens of all races and religions, including Muslim, have the vote, form political parties, and regularly elect representatives to the parliament, called the Knesset.
You do have a point about the determination of most Jews in Israel to maintain the “Jewish nature†of the state. However, since many countries in the world, including ALL Arab countries, do the same thing in favoring or even establishing one religion officially as the state religion, it does seem rather unfair to single Israel out for criticism in this regard.
So then I really take the gloves off (not):
Yeah, it's a good word, huh?
No, I certainly don't believe that Jews are a "race" -- first of all, I strongly believe that the whole idea of "race" is a social construct that has done far more harm than good and is long past its freshness date. But how would you define Jewish identity? It is possible to be an atheist, non-practicing Jew. It is also possible to be a converted Jew (although probably not an atheist, non-practicing convert). The former would imply that there is something about Jewishness that you are "born into" -- and perhaps "caste" is a better way to express that quality than "pseudo-race." The latter would suggest that it is a religious practice. Either way you define Jewishness, however, it does not provide a moral basis for expelling people from their own land in order to create a new state, and the thing about most Muslim countries is that they did not do that. (OTOH, I am no fan of theocracy in any form.)
As for the ability to vote, form parties, and have those parties represented in the Knesset, that's true of Israel proper, although to suggest that it guarantees social equality is pretty disingenuous. However, the state of Israel also controls the occupied territories, and what you have said about the non-Jewish minority in Israel is clearly NOT true of the non-Jewish MAJORITY there. South Africa had its bantustans, little "pretend states" that it could use to (unsuccessfully) obscure its fundamental racism. Israel has the Occupied Territories. Are you in favor of the state of Israel withdrawing from the OT and allowing a truly independent, geographically contiguous Palestine to emerge? My own opinion is that the two-state solution does not represent justice for people forced from their land in 1948, but it would be a clear improvement from the status quo.
On a related theme, I think this portion of your post above deserves some kind of award for logical contortionism:
Quote [and here she is quoting someone else]: "The Iranian leaders do not at all regard themselves as antisemites. “We are friends with the Jewish peopleâ€, stated Ahmadinejad in Columbia. Moreover, the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country. Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II.
Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews†are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.†Instead he says, “The Zionists†have for 60 years now blackmailed “all Western governments.†“The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural, and media sectors.†“The Zionists†fabricated the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists thrive on war and hatred,†Ahmadinejad claims. “Everywhere they exist there is war.†The pattern is familiar. He invests the word “Zionist†with exactly the same meaning Hitler poured into “Jewâ€: the incarnation of evil. Anyone who makes Jews – whether as “Judas†or as “Zionist†– responsible for all the ills of the world is obviously driven by antisemitism."
Iran has the largest population of Jews in any Muslim country, and yet they desire the extermination of Jews? "Ahmedinejad means Jew whenever he says Zionist." That's a nifty sleight of hand that can be used to deflect any criticism of Zionism, isn't it? I find it much easier to believe that the most people -- including Ahmedinejad -- mean "adherent of Zionist ideology" when they say "Zionist" -- especially given the fact than in the USA there are many Zionists who are NOT Jewish, such as the "Christians United for Israel" folks. Semantic precision on this issue is certainly important to me, and obviously important to Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism and the existence of a "Jewish state," notably Neturei Karta: http://www.nkusa.org/index.cfm
You can follow the shenanigans starting here:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=5626&post=5443...
fan mail
Great job, Casseia. Keep it up.
E
Fan mail? From some flounder?
Only in Moosylvania
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"But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7."
~~ Dr. Shyam Sunder - Acting Director Building and Fire Research Laboratory (NIST)
Great knowledge dissemination job, Cass!
Man, you just jumped into that thread with full guns blazing. Holy mama. I’ll bet the first thing Abigail did after being blown across the room and getting back up, was to look up that WTF!? word.
Autochthonous – that was a really great word to throw out there, Casseia. You usually never see that one used unless a discussion on mythology is involved, as in the idea of a deity being born, coming out of, or self-manifesting from the Earth - an ‘autochthonous deity’. The goddess Sita, from the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, was born from a clod of earth, found by a pious peasant out plowing his field, or so I’m told, and there’s so many more.
“the non-Jewish autochthonous peoples of Palestine†– beautifully, concisely, and accurately expressed.
You would think that a provable, near 1,400-year period of continuous residence (or longer) in a particular place would provide a people natural rights and security, and perhaps a position of definite seniority in the decision making processes about what happens to, and on, that land. Not, however, in this case, where the invading foreign Turko-Khazar hordes all seem to be operating under the illusions of the mythic imagination, where sacred tall tales are mistaken for real history.
As archaeology and the study of many texts has demonstrated, there was no Israelite tribal confederation living in Egypt as pharaonic slaves in Ramesside times (nor in any other times); there was no Egyptian royal child raised by Israelites after being found in a basket on the river, as in the much older birth-tale of the Akkadian king Sargon; there was no Exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt into the Sinai where their leader received the “Ten Commandments†on Babylonian-like tablets (not Egyptian papyrus scrolls) to give to these newly and “specially chosen people from among all the nationsâ€; and the deity that the Israelite tribes came to worship was, in fact, borrowed by them from the Canaanites amongst whom they settled after their many pastoral migrations into Canaan from the EAST. Therefore, there was no empirical, historical EVENT wherein a monotheistic deity named YHWH awarded this particular tribal confederation (or its later convert descendants) a particular chunk of actual real estate defined as a land stretching from the “waters of Egypt to the River Euphrates.†In the modern age of Reason and Science, you cannot march into someone else’s land and evict them at the end of a gun barrel based upon a FCKG TALL TALE, myth, sacred narration, etiological narration, or whatever else you want to call it. And this “specially chosen people from among all the nations†concept is also 100% complete horseshit and nonsense. This dearly held tribal superiority concept—also based upon the mythic Exodus narration, a non-event in the world of 3-D, real historical events—must surely go into the old anthropology museum glass case of peculiar specimens and primitive notions if humanity is to advance. No imaginary Canaanite deity gave any tribes any special status, or eternal real estate deals, or told anyone to cut their baby’s foreskin off, or nuthin’. This is ALL based upon a multi-threaded oral tradition of late Neolithic campfire tales that eventually gained momentum (mostly due to the marketing dept.) in the early Bronze Age and then turned into highly organized, state religious cults, and here we are today, and still with all the funny hats, costumes, and magical mumbo-jumbo.
Abigail has definitely been drinking the Zionist-TV kool-aid, but her quoting all the “bad things†that Ahmedinejad says was funny, because, I’m reading along, going “good, ...right, ...yeah, ...good,†and then I realize I’m reading his stuff, and she’s saying that this is all the crazy, bad stuff. Maybe I’m a bad person too. :( Nah. He seems like a reasonable enough, and fairly well-read chap to me. When a Persian leader with a PhD starts saying things which require a certain level of historical awareness to properly understand, controlled-TV-History kool-aid drinkers like Abigail and bimbos like Glen Beck just blank out and fall into their comfy pre-programmed propaganda responses – “Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, anti-Semite, Holocaust-denier, wipe Israel off the map, nukes, nukes, nukes, kill, kill, kill,†and “antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II.†I wonder who that might be? Adolph Schickelgrüber perhaps?
Lenny Bruce had a comedy bit where he said that it was Hitler’s Hollywood agent Mort who insisted on the name change. With the “Schickelgrüber†last name, there were just too many letters for the theatre marquee. Big problem back then.
The Talent Agent: “We need something shorter, with maybe six letters, something that will really get the crowds, something that will really hit them, ...hit them, ...Hitlaar, ...Hitler, ...Aaydolf Hitler, six letters, fits on the marquee, beautiful! Aaydolf, sweetie, you come back tomorrow morning, first thing, and we will do something with the armband thing and the whole look. Now you can quit that schmuck house painting gig and give up that Kemtone jazz. Okay, tschüs!â€
Abigail says that “Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews†are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.†Yeah sometimes, Dr. Mahmoud can be just a bit off with his facts (so much to keep track of, you know). It’s more like 2,700 Zionists, plus those “Tears for Fears†guys and their entire road crew, but hey, who am I to quibble over picky details with the president of Iran?
Anyways, Casseia, super great comments, and thanks for bringing your machete of knowledge to cut down all those overgrown and tangled mental jungle vines out there. One acre at a time. How many more acres? Don’t ask, you don’t wanna know.