"Liberal" American Jew equates civic equality with genocide

[CptBork]

calls treaties older than yourself made up and your completely incapable of empathizing with the victims of the conflict.

Which treaty are you talking about? The UN partition plan? I never said that was made up, you must be a very confused individual.

did the most jewish people buy the land with the belief the title was uncontested no so that that buy the simple virtue of basic property law is not legally theirs.

Did the Arabs attempt to conquer that land with the belief it was uncontested? No. So why do you single out the Jews? Are you still on about the Jews allegedly wrecking your precious Polish homeland?

why don't you try and address the problems in a fair manner based on the law and morality rather than a selfish and self entitled want.

I do it all the time. Why don't you try considering the crimes by all parties to a conflict instead of just the crimes committed by Jews? Or at least if you're not capable of that, why can't you at least learn to spell and punctuate?

 

[YoYoPapaya]

What do you mean aren't allowed to work? You mean ever?

I found some material on it. It's a huge problem for Israel:

Moshe Linker spends his days studying Jewish religious texts in Jerusalem, supporting his three children with a seminary stipend, state child payments and his wife’s teacher salary.

Linker is one of the almost 60 percent of Israel’s ultra- Orthodox men who don’t have jobs. The second fastest-growing population group in the country after the Bedouin, they have prompted Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz to assert that the haredim, as they are called in Hebrew, may impede Israel’s prosperity.

The ultra-Orthodox community benefits from hundreds of millions of shekels in public aid. The low rate of employment is putting pressure on the economy in a way that is “not sustainable,” Fischer told reporters in Jerusalem last month.

About 50,000 ultra-Orthodox men who study full-time are also exempted from service in the military, which means they don’t participate in an institution that has driven Israel’s technology boom and helped transform its economy.

Linker, 39, says he makes an essential, if non-financial, contribution.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...le-as-haredim-refusal-to-work-takes-toll.html

 

[YoYoPapaya]

Here's another article from Haaretz:

'Arabs, Haredim not working will become macro danger'
Finance Minister: If, in 20 years, Arabs and Haredim don't join the army in hordes, Israel will still be able to defend itself. But if they don't get off welfare and start working for a living, Israel will have a macroeconomic problem.
By Eldad Dor, Nati Tucker If, in 20 years, Arabs and Haredim don't join the army in hordes, Israel will still be able to defend itself. But if they don't get off welfare and start working for a living, Israel will have a macroeconomic problem, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz warned yesterday at the Sderot Conference for Society.

http://www.haaretz.com/themarker/arabs-haredim-not-working-will-become-macro-danger-1.323886

 

[quadraphonics]

People seem to be on the wrong track here.

Starting with you, right in the OP.

The issue is not Israel or what Israelis think or do - the issue is "liberal" American Jews who equate civic equality for minorities with genocide.

If you bother to read your OP, you'll find that it consists of a liberal American Jew complaining that illiberal American Jews equate a one-state solution with "genocide." He's complaining exactly that his liberal, civic-equality suggestions - a one-state solution, similar to what you yourself claim to support - get hysterically tarred as "genocide" and so marginalized.

Which is to say that it's downright inane to put scare quotes around "liberal" and assign the perspective that he is criticizing, to himself. And then to launch an attack on the liberal wing of American Jewry on those grounds - that they support exactly the perspectives that they are explicitly combatting. "Stilted" doesn't even cover it - it's an outright inversion, supported by nothing more than an obvious misreading of a single sentence.

The real facepalm of it being that these people should be your allies, if we take you seriously: they support exactly the outcome you claim to favor, and are evincing a familiar discontent with being tarred as genocidal antisemites. And yet you're so blinded by the fact of their eeeevil Jewishness (and Americanness, presumably) that you need to dress them up as charicatures of their opponents, and attack them. It's sheer, pig-headed idiocy and hatred - and makes it very difficult to believe that your views on such are expressions of anything more than simple bigoted antisemitism.

But what's really disappointing is that various other posters - including some smart ones - engaged this ass-backwards premise for 3+ pages without even noticing. That's pretty appalling.

Whats wrong with that picture?

Only visible problem is that you're in such a rush to villify anyone with "Jew" or "American" attached to them that you can't even read your own links, or even sort out the basics of which parties think what.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this is an American "liberal" Jew we're discussing. Are American Jews concerned about being bred out of existence in the US? Do they follow the demographics of marriage and procreation zealously to maintain their race? Is there a covert underground team which keeps track of Jews going out of the fold?

No, and that's exactly the reason these liberal American Jews push for a one-state solution with civic equality for all residents, Jewish or Palestinian. And then end up complaining that other, illiberal Jews, hysterically equate that with genocide in order to avoid engaging with such perspectives.

Maybe try understanding your own source links before you post multiple times to chide others for getting them wrong. This is a fucking farce.

 

[CptBork]

But what's really disappointing is that various other posters - including some smart ones - engaged this ass-backwards premise for 3+ pages without even noticing. That's pretty appalling.

I read the article, I don't think I missed out on what SAM was trying to imply. My personal objection is to the idea that a Jew can only be truly called "liberal" if they believe Israel should hand complete sovereignty over to a larger population which has already tried to kill and dispossess them multiple times in the past. If being a liberal means you can't respect a nation's sovereignty, there aren't that many liberals in this world. Me, I have no problem with a one-state solution in Israel, just as soon as everyone else on the planet is doing the same thing and being held to the same standards.

 

[chimpkin]

My buddy was discussing the Israeli-palestinian conflict with his jewish friend in a bar in Israel somewhere. He said out loud, that the way to end this conflict would be to have more interracial marriages. His friend hurried and escorted him out of the place and away before the people in there got violent.

It would solve the problem.

Desegregated schools went a long way towards addressing the racism problem in the US.(Notice I said went...we've de-facto resegregated. Expect problems.)
I think the Palestinian and Israeli kids should go to school together.
They'd get along like a house on fire, or possibly a school on fire...

My personal objection is to the idea that a Jew can only be truly called "liberal" if they believe Israel should hand complete sovereignty over to a larger population which has already tried to kill and dispossess them multiple times in the past.

And the Jews haven't done so to the Palestinians?
(It's pot on the phone, says kettle is black...)
The Jews just happen to have help from a lot more outside resources to help them in their quest to dispossess the Palestinians, is all.

There's a difference between handing someone "complete sovereignty," and giving them voting rights.

Parliamentary systems being what they are, minority parties often hold disproportionate control.

I think if a one-state solution would actually work, and by "work" I mean end the violence and give the Palestinians rights that an Israeli can't ignore without getting arrested....and vice-versa...it has to start by educating the children together, with the same curriculum, in the same schools.

 

[CptBork]

And the Jews haven't done so to the Palestinians?
(It's pot on the phone, says kettle is black...)
The Jews just happen to have help from a lot more outside resources to help them in their quest to dispossess the Palestinians, is all.

If the surrounding Arab states hadn't gotten involved in the conflict, that claim might have had some truth to it. But they did get involved, they lost, and they should deal with their loss just like any other group of nations that rejects peaceful proposals and opts for war. If they want to resettle Palestinians born in Arab countries inside Israel, then they should give sovereign territory to Jews in exchange.

There's a difference between handing someone "complete sovereignty," and giving them voting rights.

The Palestinians should indeed have voting rights, in the various countries where they were born or currently live. Don't see why it's all on Israel's shoulders to accept a greater number of refugees than it has in total citizens, whereas the Arab nations supposedly don't owe a dime. If there's a case that Israel is exclusively to blame, it should be argued at the UN, just like the Arabs should have done and refused to do in 1947.

I think if a one-state solution would actually work, and by "work" I mean end the violence and give the Palestinians rights that an Israeli can't ignore without getting arrested....and vice-versa...it has to start by educating the children together, with the same curriculum, in the same schools.

I think it can work one day, but certainly not until both parties have adopted secular, multicultural values, whereby minorities are able to thrive and grow amongst both nations. At this stage it doesn't look like either party has done so, hence nothing wrong with drawing a line between them until they can learn to get along.

 

[quadraphonics]

I read the article, I don't think I missed out on what SAM was trying to imply. My personal objection is to the idea that a Jew can only be truly called "liberal" if they believe Israel should hand complete sovereignty over to a larger population which has already tried to kill and dispossess them multiple times in the past.

That isn't what SAM is complaining about. Her supposition is that liberal Jews equate a one state solution with genocide, not that they are in favor of a one-state solution and are tarring those who disagree as "not liberal."

Rather, SAM is suggesting that rejection of a one-state solution extends all the way over to the liberal end of the Jewish spectrum - and by implication, that there is really no such thing as a liberal Jew. They're all supposed to lie on some continuum between separatism and outright genocide. This is patently ridiculous, of course, as evidenced by her support for it, which is an obvious misreading of a single sentence complaining about how illiberal Jews don't accept a one-state solution and marginalize the liberal Jews who do with hysterical rhetoric.

If being a liberal means you can't respect a nation's sovereignty, there aren't that many liberals in this world.

True enough, and I wouldn't go that far myself. But let's not whistle past the fact that there is a fundamental incompatibility between liberalism and nationalism. Doesn't mean that you have to call for the immediately dissolution of all nations (and nation-states) to qualify as a "liberal," but on the other hand you can't really accept both the tenets of nationalism and the tenets of liberalism. They are not mutually consistent. Liberalism says that people are basically equals and should have equal rights and opportunities. Nationalism demands that we divvy up the population into distinct groups and assign each one to an exclusive zone of privilege.

Me, I have no problem with a one-state solution in Israel, just as soon as everyone else on the planet is doing the same thing and being held to the same standards.

No doubt, the weird myopia wherein people pretend it's somehow unique or unexpected or strange when Jews express the same paranoid desire for a nation-state homeland to shelter and advance their nation that is the entire basis of the international system of nation-states, is also pretty tired and stilted. Likewise, the semantic acrobatics people will pursue to avoid admitting that the Jews are a nation.

But who cares about any of that, when it's such a great premise for trolling strangers on the internet?

 

[pjdude1219]

Which treaty are you talking about?

the UN charter, the geneva conventions, the charter of the Nurmbeurg tribunals, oh and the montevideo convention. I've referenced all of them and you accused me of making up laws.

The UN partition plan?

funny you'd mention the one pice that has zero legal apllicablity.

I never said that was made up, you must be a very confused individual.

no your just a very dishonest one.

Did the Arabs attempt to conquer that land with the belief it was uncontested?

No. but the arabs conquest of palestine was of other abrb peoples.

So why do you single out the Jews?

I don't. I jsut don't use anchronistic standards to make sure I can get the outcome I want.

Are you still on about the Jews allegedly wrecking your precious Polish homeland?

fuck you. I never said that. You lying bastard. where the fuck does a bigot who repeats Nazi propaganda get to call me out.

I do it all the time.

bullshit.

Why don't you try considering the crimes by all parties to a conflict instead of just the crimes committed by Jews?

I do. unlike you I don't think that the crimes of people should deny them their legal rights.

Or at least if you're not capable of that, why can't you at least learn to spell and punctuate?

Fuck you

 

[Tiassa]

This and That

OMG - it's not a "poor me" argument when your line starts with "usual suspects" and ends off with "whatever the fuck you're ranting about, Geoff" and then on to the inevitable accusations of bigotry and all the rest of it. It's not even at this point that you're wrong about any of the objections to the OP, but that you've even misunderstood your own spin.

O ... M ... G! Poor you, Geoff!

Actually, you know what, Geoff? Perhaps you might try taking a deep breath and expressing your complaint in some manner less histrionic and more coherent.

And who cares? How about the actual comments I posted? "Don't make it about you, Geoff!" "So what are the insults for? Did you even read the issues?" "You're a bigot, Geoff!" You and Bells do this a lot recently: throw a few insults around in lieu of a reasonable statement, then turn the entire thread into some kind of Hegelian rehashing of a strawman meant to look like the other person's personality or arguments. That or talk around them as if you were dealing in fact.

Oh, do give examples, Geoff, since your standard ranting is incoherent.

Lord: just about him and around him, as above. Here's the thing: I don't even care about it that much.

So what is your complaint, Geoff?

As a form of trolling, it's losing it's lustre, because I've come to the unavoidable conclusion that as glib as you like to make these comebacks, you dodge, dodge, dodge, and throw feces. No comments on what Sam needs to do to make it a reasonable statement.

If you actually made any sense, there might be something to tell you. But if you're actually determined to drag yet another thread off topic with your egotistical bawling, just say so up front.

You dig away at these personal attacks, trying to see just how juvenile you can get. That and in point of fact it's you that tries to turn each and every discussion into a flamewar; libel, mud-slinging, bomb-dropping. I listed a bunch of items Sam might conceivably have to examine WRT to her OP - but you just keep slinging mud.

And here I thought you didn't care about it that much.

Look, if you don't want a discussion, fine.

Look, if you don't want to make sense, fine. Just stop mucking up threads for the sake of your ego.

Just wave your 'White Passport' in the air and duck your head. I might have been a little mean to you about the coatrack comment, but if you're going to point your nose in the air and demean the "usual suspects", you kind of earn a response.

Do you actually have a point, or are you just aiming for aimless?

Oh, you earned a complaint on the above.

Let's just hope it's more coherent than your tantrum in thread.

• • •​

I'm simply asking if you're agreeing with SAM, that an American Jew fearing Jewish genocide in the event of a one-state solution with an Arab majority is counterintuitive to the Jewish experience during the Holocaust. That seems to be what you two are implying, certainly SAM at minimum. You seem to be saying that Jews should know better from their own personal experiences, that the search for a sovereign nation (or to preserve the sovereignty of an existing nation) equates to racism and discrimination. Please correct me if I misunderstood you.

Okay, this confusion actually makes some sense.

Let me simply pause and ask you which direction the wheels are turning as the car drives by: clockwise or counter?

You're actually making the same mistake S.A.M. is, except in the other direction. That is, S.A.M. appears to have connected Jewish to the Holocaust in terms of the inequality that causes or permits such outcomes. You appear to have connected Jewish to the Holocaust according to the outcomes of inequality.

I would point to what comes next in my post to S.A.M.:

Yes, the cutural allusion is clear, but it is also counterintuitive. That is, we cannot limit an American Jewish identity politic strictly to its Judaism. It is also American, and thus entitled to be as apparently counterintuitive, openly dysfunctional, stupidly anti-American, or otherwise bogglingly self-contradictory as any other identity politic.

It's not fair to the black guy to expect him to view the police department with an automatically cynical eye. It is not fair to the woman to oblige her to feminism. And it is not fair to the Jew to expect the Holocaust to have any logical place in the identity politic. We cannot bind all Jews to Hitler for all time.​

That whole section of the post is designed to operate within its own structure. The paragraphs you cited aren't missing any words, but they are missing a certain context.

S.A.M. is binding the Jew to Hitler and the Holocaust by saying, "How can you, as a Jew, accept this inequality?"

You are binding the Jew to Hitler and the Holocaust by saying, "How can a Jew expect to forget?" (Or something similar.)

In the context of the phrase liberal American Jew, the question S.A.M. proposes can exist without the word "Jew". Or the word "liberal". It can be asked of Americans. And a Jewish American might be a Jew, but he is still an American as well. While there is something intuitive about associating Jewish people to the Holocaust, it is not exactly fair to do so. A Jew's opinion of anything can exist regardless of the Holocaust, as a component of an American or other national identity, according to gender or sexual orientation. I'm part Japanese. I was born in 1973. I do not identify myself according to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do not identify myself according to the crimes comitted against "my people" during World War II. I do not identify myself according to Commedore Perry's infamous landing. Indeed, what Japanese identity elements there are in my personality have been bequeathed by white people who expected me to answer for the Vietnam War because, well, you know, all us slant-eyes look the same. (Yes, as a natural born American of Japanese and European descent, I have been physically assaulted in retaliation for my role in causing the Vietnam War.)

American opinions need have no intuitive consistency. They need have no conceptual integrity. That's one of the fruits of American freedom—one has no obligation to make sense. Thus yesterday's victim cultures struggle to be successful today, that they might become tomorrow's brutal and exploitative masters. And the question, as S.A.M. has asked it, predisposes American Jews to exclusion from this aspect of the proverbial American dream. I think you have likewise excluded American Jews from equality by attaching them to the Holocaust from the other side.

Are you implying I'm on some fucking crusade against Muslims? When have I ever advocated for anything to be taken away from Muslims, anything they've owned in the last 60 years? Never, that's when (ok, south Sudan is the one exception). Apparently, resisting further Muslim expansionism and the retarded Conquistador Caliphate makes me an imperialist crusader. SAM keeps making underhanded calls to clear the Jews out of Israel or at least render them a minority in an environment just begging for war, and I keep telling her to shove it. How do you blow that up into a goddamn fucking crusade? Keep the Morrisey and cutting to yourself, I don't want any part of that nonsense.

Alright, let us review, then:

"Ahhh I see. Hey Tiassa, are you going to back SAM up that I'm a racist if I don't believe Jews are exclusively native to America, and have no right to sovereignty elsewhere? Are you guys once again digging in the sewers looking for a debate you've already had in 100 other formats?"​

So here's the other option, Bork: You really are that stupid.

Or provocative. Or whatever. But whatever it is, it ain't smart.

Here is the problem: S.A.M. is playing a game with rhetoric that most people around here would recognize if she was a white, Christian, American male. It's called sarcasm, Bork. And I would put before you a simple proposition: Whether you're genuinely missing the point or simply trying to be a provocative troll to drag the discussion off topic, the effect is largely the same.

On any given day, I would actually think you're smarter than your post #38 implies. I can't take your literalism literally; you're not that much of an idiot.

Okay, so ... alright, what is it, then?

Are you jabbing at S.A.M.?

Are you jabbing at me?

Are you somehow expecting a serious answer?

What is it about S.A.M. that compels you to play this role in which you are so apparently unable to follow what really is quite simple rhetoric?

So quit your whining, CptBork. I can easily belive you're not on some fucking crusade against Muslims, or S.A.M., or anything else. But that also requires accepting that you're a complete fucking idiot, and I doubt you'd be any more pleased by that outcome.

At least in expecting a baseline modicum of intelligence of you I'm presuming that you have it to begin with.

 

[quadraphonics]

In the context of the phrase liberal American Jew, the question S.A.M. proposes can exist without the word "Jew".

You seem to be confusing the questions you are raising, with what S.A.M. is talking about. She isn't talking about any of that stuff. She is running with this upside-down misreading of the source quote to insist that liberal American Jews equate a one-state solution with genocide. She's been very clear about this - like 3 separate posts just to remind everyone that such is the topic, totally oblivious to how the link says exactly the opposite of that.

That everyone is just running right past this in order to iterate their usual games and grudges is pretty funny, in a facepalm kind of way.

 

[Bells]

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this is an American "liberal" Jew we're discussing. Are American Jews concerned about being bred out of existence in the US?

There's a difference?

Do they follow the demographics of marriage and procreation zealously to maintain their race?

You mean religion?

Yes.

Is there a covert underground team which keeps track of Jews going out of the fold?

Yes!


They even have a solution. Not well received by American Jews, but yeah.. Welcome to reality. Grand isn't it?

 

[Tiassa]

Basic perspectives

You seem to be confusing the questions you are raising, with what S.A.M. is talking about. She isn't talking about any of that stuff. She is running with this upside-down misreading of the source quote to insist that liberal American Jews equate a one-state solution with genocide. She's been very clear about this - like 3 separate posts just to remind everyone that such is the topic, totally oblivious to how the link says exactly the opposite of that.

That everyone is just running right past this in order to iterate their usual games and grudges is pretty funny, in a facepalm kind of way.

Well, reviewing your summary at #64, the nearest I can say is that you're looking for something to make into a conflict.

I would actually prescribe for S.A.M. the rules by which she must write in order to be understood by the greatest number of people here, but those rules are difficult enough to balance for anyone in general; when it comes to S.A.M.? Well, she's a Muslim, so—

"And yet you're so blinded by the fact of their eeeevil Jewishness (and Americanness, presumably) that you need to dress them up as charicatures of their opponents, and attack them. It's sheer, pig-headed idiocy and hatred - and makes it very difficult to believe that your views on such are expressions of anything more than simple bigoted antisemitism."​

—there's only one way to read her, right?

Very few of my American friends and neighbors "say what they mean" unless you know how to read and understand what they say. That is, to run through a list of people in my life—

• Mother—white, Christian, moderate liberal
• Father—white, post-Christian, libertarian conservative
• Brother—indigenous tribal American, libertarian, relativist
• Pwny—white American, atheist, structural engineer
• Art—black, liberal, atheist, American
• Aunt—white, conservative, Christian
• Cousin J—white, liberal, Christian, former hippie
• Cousin H—white, moderate, female, Christian, former rebel
• Marine E—(cousin H's husband), liberal, Christian, inactive Marine
• Pooh—white, liberal, lesbian, mystic
• Shaka—black, African immigrant, liberal, mystic
• Dr. P—white, female, liberal, Wiccan
• Mr E—(Dr. P's husband) white, liberal, mystic
• Ian—(former co-worker) white, English, atheist, liberal
• Abie—white, liberal, hedonist, generally unserious
• Doc T—white, sixties, PhD, former police psychologist, author
• Mrs T—(Doc's wife) white, MD, really nice person
• Ed—white, liberal, writer
• Wes—white, moderate, police officer, writer
• Stepmother—white, post-Christian, liberal, former Texas hippie
• &c., &c., &c.​

—and to keep counting backwards, to the German WWII survivor who stitched upholstery for my father, or her American GI mechanic husband; my fifth grade teacher (first "black role model"); my fourth grade teacher (first "gay role model"); and on through the teachers, preachers, neighbors, classmates, and passing faces in my life ....

Where was I? Oh, right. Okay, yeah, I can see how your complaint about S.A.M. looks true. Same with Geoff's, or Bork's, or any number of her detractors. But those perspectives only have merit if I exclude her from the regard I give everyone else. Nobody on that list, on any list I might keep, is perceived as I see people perceiving S.A.M.

If we identify five elements in anything S.A.M. says or writes, we might be able to agree on what those five elements are.

But we probably won't agree on what they mean, or what S.A.M. means by them. And, sure, I could probably reach your perspective, but I would be so far out of my element, regarding S.A.M. in so aberrant a manner, that the perspective forfeits itself before I get there. I don't treat you that way; I don't see your words with the same presumption of evil. And I know damn well how much it offends people to be looked at like that. Hell, I'm only halfway there with Geoff, and look how easy it is to work him up into a froth.

Your assertion of S.A.M.'s view of "eeeevil Jewishness (and Americanness, presumably)" does not hold up under scrutiny, unless I apply to S.A.M. a standard I don't apply to other people. And, believe me, if S.A.M. deserves that kind of nasty presupposition, so does my Aunt, and my Cousin H; my father and I would never have reconciled; some of my best friends I would never speak to again. I just cannot adopt such an outlook without reason. I mean, hell, even the people I routinely fight with, and whose characters at Sciforums I've come to despise, don't get that sort of treatment.

Yeah, I get how people see S.A.M. And I could see her that way, too, if I was that frightened of her. If I presumed that Muslims are only capable of focusing on the "eeeevil Jewishness" of Jews.

If I treat S.A.M. as I do other people, though, it doesn't make any sense. It never has.

I have no reason, logical or personal, to presume that the bigoted is the only context she's capable of.

 

[fedr808]

Do I actually need to read the OP? Or can I just assume this is the sequel to the never ending trilogy of circular stupidity I have come to know and hate on this forum?

Im tending towards the latter.

 

[Bells]

OMG - it's not a "poor me" argument when your line starts with "usual suspects" and ends off with "whatever the fuck you're ranting about, Geoff" and then on to the inevitable accusations of bigotry and all the rest of it.

Here is exactly what he said in his response to Bork. I emphasised the name because your name is Geoff and he was responding to Bork. Can you see the difference between the two? Anywho, here is exactly what he said:

"Whatever the fuck you're ranting about, or Geoff, or anyone who has invested their identity so significantly in pretending to be wounded by S.A.M. every time she opens her mouth so that you can carry on your valiant march against Muslims, is your own goddamn problem."


(Source)
​

At no time did he say "whatever the fuck you're ranting about, Geoff" as quoted and linked by you above.

In other words, it really doesn't concern you. He wasn't talking to you or responding to you. Same as the "usual suspects" comment. Not everything revolves around you.

I know you have this inherent need to shine, but really, stop. Now.

And who cares? How about the actual comments I posted?

Well you seem to care?

Which comment? The one where you start acting paranoid? As I said, which comment?

"Don't make it about you, Geoff!" "So what are the insults for? Did you even read the issues?" "You're a bigot, Geoff!" You and Bells do this a lot recently:

Probably because there is a pattern to this behaviour. You have a tendency to insert yourself into the discussion and make it about you. Any comment made you automatically assume is either addressed to you or about you, even when it actually does not concern you. You also have a slight obsession about being used as an example, yet you feel it's fine to do the same thing to others, as noted in the quote above.

Don't worry, when it is about you, you'll be sure to know for sure. How about this! How about when it is about you or a response to you in particular, I say the word "dickhead". Okay? I mean that can be your notification... the word you know will be connected to you in particular.. your safe word so you know it's safe to assume it's about you?

Yes? No?

Probably not appropriate.. But do you get my meaning here? It is a subtle dig at you for being so paranoid about everything being about you, even when it's not. So calm down petal. Go and have a cup of tea. Throw a baseball at the kid's head in a game of dodge ball against the garage wall or something..

 

[quadraphonics]

—there's only one way to read her, right?

You don't have to like my reading of her output.

But let's first take a minute to observe what her output in this thread actually consists of. It's not the general philosophical issues you are raising. It's a very specific, limited, factual assertion that the liberal wing of American Jewry equates "one state solution" with "genocide." She has made this very clear, emphatically and repeatedly: look at the thread title, the OP, or posts #26, #29, #35 and #53. And the basis for the loopy supposition is that single quote from the link in the OP. And it's an obvious misreading: the OP link is a liberal American Jewish organization that supports a one-state solution with equal rights for everyone, and who is fed up with illiberal Jews getting hysterical at the prospect and equating it with genocide in order to marginalize and ignore them. A position we might expect S.A.M. to have some sympathy for, no? But instead, we get this batshit-insane insistence that liberal American Jews think the exact opposite of that, with the implication that there is no such liberalism to be found among them.

And while, yeah, I do find that latter implication to be ugly and bigoted on its face, all I've pointed out to you is that nobody is addressing this actual topic, or its obvious ill-foundedness. Instead, everyone is running with canned talking points and old grudges. Navel-gazing right past the huge pair of stilts in the OP.

That being the subject of my post to you, there. You can take or leave the larger implications about S.A.M.; how about the basic topical issue? Can we take five minutes to note how screwy it is, and maybe establish a non-fantasy understanding of what the basic views on the question are among the various factions of Americans/Jews/Liberals/etc.? Because if thread topic is to be totally irrelevant to contents, at least when Israel comes up, I'd suggest there's no point in having distinct threads on such at all. They should just be merged into one ongoing battle thread.

If I presumed that Muslims are only capable of focusing on the "eeeevil Jewishness" of Jews.

Show me where I've ever attributed anything about S.A.M. to her religion, or engaged in any such stereotyping of Muslims generally.

Geoff is over there, and your strawman of him even farther over that same way.

I'm happy enough to note and criticize the bigoted anti-semitism on its own - and she makes it pretty easy, what with all of the convoluted illogic she's always trotting out in its defense. Like in the OP of this very thread.

If I treat S.A.M. as I do other people, though, it doesn't make any sense.

Show me where I've ever treated S.A.M. differently than I treat others.

Anyway, I'm not asking you to treat her any differently than anyone else, or to endorse my reading of her motives. All I'm asking you is that you take some note of the thread topic, and the inanity in the OP. Why I am getting several paragraphs holding forth on why you don't like my earlier reading of such, is something of a mystery. Do you agree with the assertion that there is no such thing as a liberal American Jew, to speak of?

Although, I would not agree with the supposition that you treat S.A.M. the way you treat most people around here. More than that, I do not think you'll get much traction insisting that you do. Do you really think that people here will generally buy that?

I have no reason, logical or personal, to presume that the bigoted is the only context she's capable of.

Then you haven't been following this forum very closely for the past several years. S.A.M. wears her anti-Jewish bigotry on her sleeve, quite proudly. There's no need to imagine that anyone else is inventing it, let alone invent some anti-Muslim bias to explain that. She's never given anyone here any reason to think that she's capable of seeing such issues in any other light. You seem to be projecting quite a bit onto her. I dunno; it became apparent a long time ago that you have a blind spot where she's concerned.

But, again: call that stuff like you see it, for all I care. All I'm asking you here is that we take a second to address the actual thread topic, and specifically the nutty inversion at the heart of it. If you want to have a discussion about how we account for the different currents of Jewish/American ideology or views of history or prospects for solutions, that's just fine. But let's first establish what those views actually are, and not run with some stilted premise that there do not exist liberal American Jews who'd like a one-state solution with equality for everyone. Because that is what S.A.M. is pushing here, and that is what you are defending by sticking up for her here, no matter how elevated a viewpoint on the issue you personally might possess.

Again, it's kind of astounding that I can't get anyone to even address this basic issue of fact, no matter how direct and clear I am about it. Instead it's all pet-issue tangents and personal grudges. Something is rotten.

 

[quadraphonics]

Do I actually need to read the OP? Or can I just assume this is the sequel to the never ending trilogy of circular stupidity I have come to know and hate on this forum?

A rhetorical question, surely?

 

[quadraphonics]

Probably because there is a pattern to this behaviour. You have a tendency to insert yourself into the discussion and make it about you.

Boy, sure is a good thing that there isn't anybody who spends all their time here enabling that behavior.

Don't worry, when it is about you, you'll be sure to know for sure.

Typically, the presence of a post by Bells is a huge red flag that a thread has become all about Geoff.

 

[quinnsong]

Do I actually need to read the OP? Or can I just assume this is the sequel to the never ending trilogy of circular stupidity I have come to know and hate on this forum?

Im tending towards the latter.

LOL Hmmm, yes indeedy get some good bourbon and wait for the fireworks cause they are gonna be spectacular. BTW you all are the usual suspects not just Geoff!

 

[S.A.M.]

No one's going to disown you for being with a non-Jew, but you get the idea they would prefer it.

Then you're one step ahead of Indians. In Indian communities if you dare to step out, you're mostly out. And thats a best case scenario. Worse case scenario, you could be hunted down and killed. Sounds extreme and ludicrous but there it is. And you don't even have to together with someone from a different religion, a different community is enough to make you persona nona grata. And yeah, edumacation makes little difference. [Think of all those PhDs trotting home to mama so she can select a suitable boy/girl for them]

Me and my brothers have tended to end up with chicks from the axis powers, Germany and Japan for some reason. I've only been with one Jewish woman, and she was black (her dad was one of those Ethiopian Jews).

Just last year we had a "sit down" in the community my dad comes from, trying to reconcile one of our destitute cousins with the "family" - because she married a guy from another community [same religion]. Her mother is dead and her father abandoned her for a second wife and if we did not intervene, they would literally have died because no one would employ her husband and no one would let her step into their homes.

So yeah, I deal with this kind of stuff at levels you wouldn't recognise - which is why I really despise it.

I found some material on it. It's a huge problem for Israel:



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...le-as-haredim-refusal-to-work-takes-toll.html

Its not that they are not allowed to work. We have something similar in Muslims where people who study religion are given a pass from having to work because they are supported by the community. Even Christians have it but they have converted the church into an industry so its not so obvious. Obviously this is a situation unique to Israel, since Haredim in other countries would not be supported by the government and hence would obviously need to work

If you bother to read your OP, you'll find that it consists of a liberal American Jew complaining that illiberal American Jews equate a one-state solution with "genocide." He's complaining exactly that his liberal, civic-equality suggestions - a one-state solution, similar to what you yourself claim to support - get hysterically tarred as "genocide" and so marginalized.

Eh no, Ben Cohen is very much a liberal Jew.

As it says in the OP: That is a distinction that even many liberals do not embrace...Ben Cohen...

Personally I do not think any Zionist can be a "liberal" because supporting zionism, like supporting racism or apartheid is an automatic disqualification in my mind to the definition of "liberal"


And I got this article off mondoweiss, where no one is confused about what Ben Cohen said and what he meant

‘Forward’ publishes statement by ‘liberal’ that supporting one-state is ‘genocide’ by Philip Weiss on April 15, 2011

Who is Ben Cohen? It says here he is the Associate Director of Communications for the American Jewish Committee. Why is Adam Horowitz not quoted in that article? Or Max Blumenthal? Or Antony Loewenstein? Or Naomi Klein? Or Norman Finkelstein? Or Donna Nevel? Or Jane Hirshmann? Or Lillian Rosengarten? Or Gail Miller? Or Anna Baltzer?

Do you understand what the Forward is doing here? Do you see whom they have granted a platform? Newspapers make choices all the time. I challenge the Forward not to grant such a platform to fear and hatred, I challenge it to make room for non-Zionist voices, and to have a forum to debate whether even notioning one-state is genocide.

Also, it is true I focus on that communal tent. Why? Because my community is so blinded, because my community is so powerful, because my community has licensed grave grave human-rights violations against a disempowered community that it is now utterly fearful of, because I believe that by helping my community awaken to its true relationship to the world outside, I can help Palestinians. Because my family is in that community and I love my family.

I was directed to the Cohen statement by Max Blumenthal. I'm grateful for all he has done for our site today.

And if you read the article you can see that JVP is considered such a fringe group that they are just barely under "the communal tent". This is in New York.