Comments on: Are You Listening, Joe Lieberman?

By: george a. hilborn

george a. hilborn — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:45:30 +0000

After returning from Israel after 16 days of structured and non-structured visiting and doing what I like to do best talking to theperson on the street ; Jew, arab christian,Palestinian et. sec, I know that the propaganda line of both the U.S. and Israeli governments have “feet of clay” The good Rabbi has made some valid points but he does gloss over the actions of the”Stern Gang et.al.” The Hegge gang are really reactionary thugs hiding behind a trumped version of the Book of Revelations to gather in the gullable Southern illiterates.( BIG SURPRISE) What most Jews who welcome these so- called Christian Zionists forget is that Hegge says when the ‘BIG GUY’ comes all Jews who don’t convert will be eliminated ” beware of fundamentalists bearing gifts “

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:22:56 +0000

Yoffie’s speech was excellent as far as Hagee & the Christian Zionists, but I discovered, I think in either JTA’s or Jpost’s coverage, that Yoffie made one astonishingly awful statement (not related to the Hagee issue):

…From the Palestinians we see only relentless terror. Surely the Palestinian national movement, in its various manifestations, is one of the ugliest and stupidest national movements in modern history.”

To which I replied in my blog: “Uglier and stupider than the terror employed by sectors of the Jewish national movement before 1948? The good rabbi seems to have a case of historical amnesia.”

But that isn’t even what the main pt of criticism should be. Eric Yoffie knows how to write a stunningly nuanced affirmation of Muslim-Jewish dialogue. Yet why does he make the ever so common mistake of Palestiniaphobes in claiming all Palestinians either are terrorists or support terror. Besides, I’d say that the Jewish national movement doesn’t look terribly attractive or intelligent right around now either.

By: Chris Dornan

Chris Dornan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:44:54 +0000

jonolan points to the modern paradox at the centre of the Jewish state. However the paradox is there and it can’t be wished away. So I find the fact that people find such self-evident truths disturbing highly disturbing. As much as those forging Israel’s future have to come to grips with the paradox, people criticizing Israel have also to come to terms with it. The people that make up Israel clearly see Israel in these terms, as a Jewish state, and the historical treatment of the Jews by Europeans, culminating in the Holocaust–itself unique–has not a little to do with our arrival at this point. I repeat this is a reality that can’t be wished away whatever people’s dogmatic notions.

In any situation, boundary changes that convert an ethnic majority into a minority have the potential for seriously destabilising consequences and it should be obvious to all that this is particularly true of Israel but none of this will be of the slightest concern to the likes of Hagee. The breakdown of boundaries between US and Israeli interests will probably hurt Israel much more in the long run. As painful as their involvement in the Middle East is to Americans (and to a lesser extent Europeans) Israel has to live there; American Presidents move on to fund and build their libraries in peace (which to be fair is a whole lot better than putting discredited Prime Ministers in charge of Peace in the region).

Whether it is the above kind of comment, often used to support the Palestinians (though I am not saying jonolan was doing this), or Hagee’s fake support of Israelis, it seems to me that local surrogates are being used to advance quite separate agendas. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are being served by it.

By: jonolan

jonolan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:41:31 +0000

It may be just me, coming from an American perspective – we believe in liberty, freedom and Democracy – but the ending of the quote was quite disturbing.

“[sic]…and the loss of Israel’s Jewish majority”

That one piece of a sentence may well point out a lot of people’s problem with Israel. Various nations throughout history have tried to keep certain ethnicities as majority – or at least majority shareholders in their governments. Jews regularly denounce anyone who compares Israel to those nations though…