Arrest Israel's New Defence Attache Eden Attias as a Gaza War Criminal

NDPP, what exactly is wrong with showing some sensitivity to distinctions that others think are important?

Let me try to explain. If someone opened a thread saying, "Condemn the dirty zionist filthy pseudo-social democrat Mulcair, collaborator in the genocide of the Libyan and Palestinian people!", I would expect people here to say, "naw, that ain't right". I'd certainly say so myself. Would that make me an apologist for Tom Mulcair?

"Zionist" doesn't mean the same to everyone. There are people who consider themselves zionists who are our allies, whether you want to believe it or not. Otherwise, you will be opening threads saying, "Arrest that dirty zionist bootlicker of war criminals Uri Avnery!" We can agree or disagree with his view of the Israel-Palestine issue, but we can't call him a "dirty zionist" and expect everyone to back away in fear of being associated with zionism if they don't like that phrase.

Personally, I think the main difference between Hitler and Netanyahu is that Netanyahu is still alive, and that makes him a clear and present danger. That doesn't mean I'm going to put up thread titles saying, "Israeli regime worse than Hitler!". That kind of foolishness leads to ... well... people being afraid of Iran, for example. It leaves the Netanyahus rubbing their criminal hands with glee. You know what I mean?

Hope I'm being clear. If not, well, it won't be the first time.

As a practical matter, you are not going to get anything to change in the Israel/Palestine situation if you insist that everyone who supports change repudiate Zionism in ANY form.  You will need to get the support of those who still identify as Zionists but oppose what Israel is doing to Palestinians(and there are a LOT of such people, especially in the Diaspora).  This is especially true for winning support for change within Israel itself...you simply CAN'T demand that every person of conscience there publicly declare themselves to be anti-Zionist.  To ask them to do that is to ask them to permanently marginalize themselves within the Israeli political spectrum...and what use are allies if they are marginalized and powerless?

It's like insisting that  oyu can only be pro-FN if you call for the complete dissolution of Canada(or the U.S., for that matter).

And of course Zionism isn't synonymous with Judaism, but not all Zionists are reactionary Arab-hating maximalist maniacs either. 

Why do you insist on using rhetoric on this issue that costs you a LOT of potential support?

Do you really believe that all Zionists are personally evil? That being a Zionist is actually the same thing as being a Nazi?  Even if you are a progressive Israeli who speaks out against what is being done to Palesitnians?

That there's no difference between Uri Avnery and Avigdor Lieberman?  or(to use an American example)between Michael Lerner and Alan Dershowitz?

If you believe that, you are holding people there to a standard you would never hold people to here when discussing anything pertaining to North America.

As for myself, I'm neither Zionist nor anti-Zionist...you could call me an agnostic on the issue.  But(like a lot of other people)I'm always going to call someone out for using rhetoric("Dirty Zionist")that sounds like it could have been used at a Nuremberg Rally.  It's the sort of thing a right-wing Likudnik provacateur might use here if she or he wanted to give other right-wingers something to attack Babble for.

Nobody denies he's a war criminal.  And nobody here was defending Zionism.

It's about your rhetoric here-your pointlessly offensive and inflammatory phrasing.

I WANT the guy arrested, ok?

NDPP wrote:

He's 'Dirty', he's 'Zionist', he's a 'War-Criminal'. Title is accurate and stays.

He's Jewish too, right?

M. Spector wrote:

Unionist wrote:

If someone opened a thread saying, "Condemn the dirty zionist filthy pseudo-social democrat Mulcair, collaborator in the genocide of the Libyan and Palestinian people!", I would expect people here to say, "naw, that ain't right". I'd certainly say so myself. Would that make me an apologist for Tom Mulcair?

By definition of the word [url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apologist]"apologist"[/url], yes, it would.

I hope that inspired intervention made you feel better. It certainly had a calming effect on me. Next time you weigh in, consider the possibility that one might oppose the use of baiting inflammatory divisive language even when it is absolutely accurate in your lexicographical purist's sense. To be very blunt, one could object to the phrase "that dirty warmongering genocidal crooked Jew Netanyahu" without being painted, by either Merriam or Webster, as an "apologist" for Netanyahu.

No it isn't.  I don't make any such equation. Anti-Zionism has nothing in common with anti-semtism.

Left anti-Zionism is a respectable position and I admire the convictions of those tho take it.

What I reject is the idea that absolute anti-Zionism(which I'm defining as settling for nothing short of calling for a unitary state)is the ONLY progressive position.

To make that equation is to say that people like Uri Avnery, Michael Lerner, and most of the Israeli human rights community are reactionaries.

It doesn't have to be absolute anti-Zionism or nothing.

Why insist on a position that will ALWAYS be opposed by the majority of the Israeli population and that will always permanently marginalize any Israeli that embraces it?  You do realize that it will be necessary to get the acquiescence of such people in resolution to the crisis for that resolution to work(just as it will be necessary to get the acquiescence of the majority of the Palestinians), right?

And no, I don't absolve the Israeli government of anything it's done to Palestinians.

OK...so you think all Israelis are evil.  I wonder whether you still make a distinction between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, then.

Why is it that you can't accept that it is impossible to get an agreement that ends the war here that is not accepted by the majority of the Israeli population?

One option that might work would be the Belgian model...which creates a unitary administration yet recognizes the national characteristics of each polity here. 

While the majority of Israelis will always be against an absolutely unitary state, a Belgian-type model could work.

That's what most of the left in Canada now seems to back regarding Canada's relationship with Quebec.

Agreed that they aren't present among the current leaders(and that probably goes for both sides).

But, seriously, how do you propose to get the people of Israel, whose cooperation with any arrangements will be required, whatever those arrangements will be, with ANY proposals for ending the war, if you collectively demonize them, and if you insist that the only acceptable resolution is one that you know that they can never be persuaded to accept?  You do realize that the world can't just ORDER the State of Israel, as currently constituted to simply disappear, right?  How many countries, anywhere, would WILLINGLY agree to do that?

This isn't about me...it's about the question of how do you get everybody whose acceptance will be needed to get on board with ending the war?  You can't seriously insist that a pure unitary state is the ONLY accceptable solution(just as it is equally UNacceotable to say "they should just move to Jordan" to Palestinians).  There is a case for it as the ultimate solution, but, at least in the interim, there needs to be a reconciliation process in which the wounds are healed on both sides and grievances are redressed on both sides.

This is something that a Belgian-type approach could achieve...since it would involve, at the outset, ending all the privations and restrictions currently imposed on West Bank and Gaza Palestinians.

As to the exiles, while it isn't realistic to do total the total physical return of all of them, there can be official acknowledgment by Israel that the expulsions of 1948 and 1967 were never acceptable and that the exiles, even if they can't physically return home, have the right to identify as Palestinian and to have that idenfitication accepted by all(this would also involve real apologies and real, immediate financial compensation for all they've been put through).

Those are the kinds of things that can be tried, I think, and that could get the support of rank-and-file Israelis, many of whom are not unquestioning supporters of what the various Israeli governments have done to Palestinians, yet who, like anybody else, have a hard time getting their heads around the idea of something like the formal dissolution of the country they currently live in.  There has to be a way of including at least the non-hawkish wing of the Israeli population in any solution, and this is the problem with insisting that the immediate creation of a unitary state is the ONLY acceptable outcome.

Change the title. Maybe a suspesion is in order. If instead of Zionist NDPP used another term (I will not give examples) a banning would occur

Let the pro-Zionist witch-hunt continue!

No, I'm going to flag your post as offensive.

M. Spector wrote:

Let the pro-Zionist witch-hunt continue!

Yes people who object to the phrase "dirty zionist" must be pro-zionist warmongers.  Why not just say zionist vermin?  Using these words to try and make Israeli Zionists seem less than human is juvenille and stupid and has absolutely nothing to do with justice for the people of Gaza.  It's trolling by NDPP - plain and simple.

allah wrote:

Change the title. Maybe a suspesion is in order. If instead of Zionist NDPP used another term (I will not give examples) a banning would occur

Welcome to our community.  Nice to see that on your first day you are demanding that punishment be meted out to a poster who has been a part of babble for 4 years.

Lets start punishing people not for anything they post but rather what we can imagine they might have posted instead. What a truly totalitarian statement.

Again welcome to babble I just hope you don't try to get me banned on day two.

ETA: hi Catchfire crossposted with you this morning.

Thx NDPP for pointing out that this promoter of punishment posted for the first timne on Nakba Day.

Haaretz wrote:

In 2009, Miller introduced a Knesset bill which would have made taking part in a Nakba Day event punishable by arrest and up to three years in prison. The prison sentence was later struck from the bill in order to pave way for its becoming law in 2011.

But Miller's Nakba Law still casts a shadow over events marking the day. Legal experts have noted that if schools or other state-supported institutions merely read the names of Palestinians killed or forced to leave their homes in 1948, they could be fined at the discretion of the Finance Minister.

Is it relevant that Miller, a resident of the settlement city of Ariel and a senior member of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, was born and raised in Leonid Brezhnev's Moscow?

It is relevant because for decades, the Jews of Soviet Russia were forbidden to commemorate their heritage. They were barred - with artfully worded and intensively enforced official repression - from gathering to study their true history, reconstruct their shattered culture, and mark the memories of their people.

It is relevant because the Soviet system tried for decades to legislate feelings and creeds and beliefs and the sense of peoplehood, and because the Soviet system, partially as a result, failed.

In the end, though, I have to thank Alex Miller. Had he not sought to make a name for himself with a law to help obliterate the names of others, I might not have spent time this week studying the history of the place I first lived in Israel, and studying about the people who had lived there before.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/thank-you-russian-i...

So what does anyone think of the fact that Canada has allowed a diplomat who is a suspected war criminal to enter the country?

Personally I don't give a flying fuck about his personal hygiene I think he should be banned for being a murderer of innocent people.

As far as I am concerned condemn Zionism all you wish. All I'm opposing is the coupling of the words dirty and zionist.

Richard Silverstein makes a blog post entitled [url=http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/11/17/idf-cast-lead-di..."IDF Cast Lead Dirty 200"[/url], about the list of IDF members allegedly involved in war crimes against Gaza in Operation Cast Lead.

Colonel Attias is on that list. He is one of the "Dirty 200".

[b]There are 50 responses posted on the blog; not one of them objects to the use of the word "dirty" as a descriptor of those alleged war criminals.[/b]

Only when it gets to babble does the phony politesse raise its head; on babble we can criticize war criminals but we have to be polite about it, and not hurt the feelings of anyone who might have some sympathy for them. God forbid we should say anything inflammatory or divisive.

I think that the people that come on this board only to complain about things like using dirty in front of zionist have an agenda that has little to do with any progressive vision of the ongoing tragedy that is the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Caissa you post here a lot so I can accept your voice even if I think your wrong on this one.  The adjective dirty gets applied to everyone we don't like.

"Hey, baby, if you're feelin' down
I know what's good for you all day
Are you worried what your friends see
Will it ruin your reputation lovin' me "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUDMy-GplkQ

 Dirty White Trash (with Gulls), 1998

Noble and Webster

M. Spector wrote:

Catchfire wrote:

It was established in the other thread that many babblers consider the phrase "dirty Zionist" to be offensive. That's enough for me to change the thread title.

It's been established in this thread and elsewhere that many babblers [b]don't[/b] consider it offensive. What's offensive is the implication that Col. Attias doesn't belong on the [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/arrest-israelsne... Cast Lead Dirty 200 list[/url] —

 

nobody on this thread or the other thread on which the "Dirty Zionist" usage was questioned was making THAT implication at all.  Attias clearly belongs on that list.  You don't have to accept the use of the term "Dirty Zionist" to accept the guilt of those on that list OR Attias' place on it.  Nor do you even have to be an apologist for Zionism.

You are reading something into peoples' responses that isn't there at all.

Watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical,a liberal,a fanatical,criminal

Ken Burch wrote:

You can assume that nobody here is defending either Zionism OR Canada's admission of Col. Attias.  Objecting to the phrase "dirty Zionist" doesn't make you a Likudnik.

I would never presume to know the minds of other posters which is why I am open to the idea that some on this board are defending the state of Israel from justified criticism. Your post screams don't talk about the issue because we all agree. That is also a silencing technique especially when it is far from clear that we all agree.

It is similar to trying to destroy arguments by putting words in your opponent's mouths. For instance you have raised the term Likudnik and no one you are talking to has hurled that insult.  So the talk goes from the issue at hand i.e. letting suspected war criminals into Canada especially as diplomats to a stupid side track of we aren't all right wing assholes.  Allah (nice respectful name for an Israeli supporter) like you not only disagreed with the adjective chosen but also tried to put antisemitic words in NDPP's mouth. One of the preferred tactics of some people is too obfuscate the real issue.  This thread has had little discussion of Canada allowing this outrageous appointment because the title has become the topic of discussion not Israeli war crimes. 

You can presume all you want I prefer to keep an open mind on the subject of peoples intents.

Zionism is not exclusively related with Judaism...Far from it.

I think those who believe the adding of the word 'Dirty' to the word 'Zionist' is somehow 'anti-semtitic'  are just trying to put words in other people's mouths and babble has a nasty habit of smearing those with libelous labels when they disagree with a comment.

The PC train has left the rails.

Dostoyevsky wrote:

Believe it or not I agree with you more than you think.  I believe the creation of the state of Israel was wrong and a tragedy for the Palestinian people.  Just because I dislike NDPP and Martin's smug attitudes and their trolling in this thread and felt like commenting on it doesn't mean you know anything about me or my political views.

I never said I knew anything about you or your political views.  i guess you can't help trying to put words in other peoples mouths.  I know it seems like an easy way to win a debate but it doesn't work.