Sepharad,

What article in The Guardian would you describe as savagely anti-Israel?  Can a story not be critical of Israel without being savagely anti-Israel?

>> They also noted that any misconduct by the IDF does not invalidate the purpose of the invasion, to stop Hamas firing rockets into Southern Israel.

I am surious why you insist on repeating this lie.  Even Mark Regev, Israel’s government spokesman, admitted that Hamas were not firing rockets between July and November 4th, upon which time, Israel broke the ceasefire based on a dubious claim about the purpose of a tunnel Hamas were digging.

Nevertheless, Hamas made an offer to extend the ceasefire in December and Israel rejected that offer.  That would have ended the rocket attacks by Hamas, just as the prios ceasefire had, so it is cler that Israel had 2 options availabel to them if ending the rocket atatcks was indeed their goal.

So the purpose of the invasion had nothing to so with stopping Hamas firing rockets into Southern Israel.  It’s time you aknowleged this if you want to be taken seriously.

The following article is a representative of the Arab perspective on the Netanyahu government and its negative implications on the so-much needed peace in Palestine!
===============
Netanyahu And The ‘Future Of The Peace Process’
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud270309.htm

“Overlook the names and the titles, most Israeli major party leaders are one and the same; even their language is equally archaic and confrontational. Therefore, one fails to appreciate the panic over the ‘future of the peace process.’ As far as Gaza, for example, is concerned, it matters little whether the over 1400 people killed in 22 days were blown up by a Likud Revisionist, pulverized by a Labor dove, or bombed by a Kadima peacemaker, a fact that an envoy like Blair doesn’t seem to understand…”

Folktruther:
Your assessment of my intelligence is your right, but it is of no consequence. 

See, I recognize you constantly engaging in reductionism and deliberate obfuscation, as well as continuing to repeat things about other posters, particularly Sepharad and me that you KNOW are untrue, yet you repeat them anyway.

I’ve made the mistake of attempting to engage you in intelligent and rational discourse.  I keep thinking that behind your buffoonery and ideology there’s a mind that TRULY wants to get to the pith of issues.  You keep disappointing me, so I must assume it’s my fault for continuing to try. “Shame on me”.

Sepharad, would you slap me upside the head next time I do that? Thanks!

Thanks.

Inherit- when I characterize you as a boob, I don’t mean that you are not intelligent.  As I’ve said before I think that you ARE intelligent, almost as inteligent as Anarcissie or wadosy.  What I mean is that you are an ideological idiot in the Greek sense, and a cultural philistine, a very different thing.

It is a combination of the American mainstream truth, especially the preconceptions underlieing your economic Education, on one hand, and your Zionism on the other.  It has induced a cultural cretinsm that prevents you from acknowledging the ethnic clensing, war, irrationality and death culture of Israel.  The only way you can refute the reality-based truth is by calling it a lie, and me a liar.  Like a boob. 

It is true that you are not an Israeli lemming like Howard, but he and Sepharad and Trith are your ideological comrades.  If this ideology rose to the level of coherance, I would dispise it; as it is, you are as conflicted and dinbatty as my relatives, and I pity you.

Separad, I certainly believe you when you say that you did not like the Gazan war, the raving rabbis, or the Israeli t-shirts exulting in the torture and death of Palestinians.  It makes your journalistic task so much harder.  As a Zionist journalist it is your job to perform ideological damage control of Israeli’s death policies, and this is much more difficult when Israeli barbarism is so blatant. 

You and the other barbaric Zionists identify with Israeli imperialism that is evidenced in its ethinic cleansing, war and irrationality.  But the idea is to keep it concealed as much as possible and divert attention away from it.  And you do a wonderful job in sanitizing the bloodshed and justifying it.  I’m sure the fake peace group Peace Now is proud of you.  And I’m sure you are a good mother and nice to your horsie.

Sepharad,

There’s no point arguing with FolkTruther. He’s put out his Great Lie about what you are and he’d rather cut off his right arm than admit it’s not you.

He doesn’t CARE that it’s a lie. If he lets you appear to be a reasonable person with a different POV, it upsets his entire world view.

FolkTurder has defined you as an extreme jingoistic expansionist Zionist who is controlled by Mossad and Likud and is simply telling fairy tales here to look reasonable. NOTHING will convince him otherwise, than that you are part of a greater Jewish—oops “Zionist” conspiracy to take over the world and make us all david and obey the 613 commandments.

It’s a failing of his religion: once you categorize someone that’s what they are to the end of time.  And you can’t be wrong because you used “Scientific Marxism” to establish it—and that’s, like any religion, by definition 100% correct.

He is
Perfect. He is
Utterly correct. He is right on
Target because he’s in the
Zone!

Inherit, Clinton’s pose with Barak was probably both political and a cheap shot.

Folktruther, I am not OK with what happened in Gaza, especially not that IDF soldiers are coming forward re orthodox soldiers being brainwashed by raving rabbi. My questions, given that not only orthodox soldiers were involved, why would soldiers who should know better so easily swayed by a little bloody religious gibberish? This is a big deal, not anything that can be tolerated for many reasons, and I hope the Israeli government—especially the opposition leftwing parties—push it right to the wall. Of course any soldiers who participated will be punished though I know you doubt that ever happens. One reason I’m so upset is that I know many current and former IDF soldiers and this is something none of them are capable of. When I saw a picture of the “2-for-1” tee shirt it made me nauseous and angry.

Why do you think anyone who wants Israel to survive by definition wants to see Arabs dead? There will be no survival unless there is peace and there will be no peace without at least a rough justice. And, I hope, an apology to Arabs for the displacement caused by Israel’s existence. At some point, Israel also should pay Arabs for the cost of replacing homes and businesses demolished or disrupted by Israeli policies. Given the leaders—Netanyahu and Hamas—the progress toward peace could be completely derailed unless every Arab and every Jew who WANTS it is willing to take some risks for it, invest in it and act without leaders where possible.

No matter how much you deny it and no matter what you say about me, I do truly want peace. You’d have to be a moron to want anything else. (Or if not a moron just excessively religious.)

Folktruther,

You may be the only person on the face of the planet that thinks I’m an idiot.

Then you repeat these absurd assertions totally unsupported by ...what do you call them?....Hmmmm….Oh yeah…FACTS.

If your neo-Marxist “scientific mathematical” analysis told you the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, and the earth really IS flat, you’d defend to your dying day and “prove” that the earth really was flat and that the sun really does rise in the West.

I laugh at you but you really are as dogmatic and religious in your thinking as DwayneBaker or Christian95, just your religion is your “scientific Marxism” and theirs is Christianity.  Even Fadel is not nearly as fanatical about his religion (Islam) as you are about yours.

Yes, it’s a religion.  Your denial of a deity doesn’t change that.

You are a fool, but, clearly,  a harmless fool.

Inherit, Clinton probably supported labor as part of the right wing coalition, to preserve the cover of the fake Peace Process for US and European public opinion.  You should be grateful: now you can continue to pretend to support the two-sttate solution while Israel continues its wars, ethnic cleansing and despotic rule.

Sepharad, Inherit is an ideological boob whose mind was not only distorted by Aipac Zionism but by Alyce Rosenbaum, aka Ayn Rand.  For those who don’t know who she is, before there were comic books and graphic novels, there was Alyce Rosenbaum.  Accounting for the brain damage of Inherit and Greenspan. 

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

However, you, Sepharad, are entirely different.  You identify with evil.  After the Gazan atrocity against the population, you still consider the murderous Israeli military as ’ the most moral army in the world.’  After all, they didn’t kill Jewish women and children so what does it matter, right?  It’s just a public relations problem and as a Zionist journalist,  it’s up to you to do damage control.

My Jewish relatives are bad, but none of them are as bad as you.  Because they are ideological boobs like Inherit, and you are intelligent.  You identify with a death ideology which is leading Israel, and the US, not only to slaughter but to nuclear war.  And I have no doubt that, if you survive, you will support it, just as you support the Gazan atrocity.

Why is there a picture of Hillary Clinton on this article, standing with Ehud Barack?  What’s that got to do with ANYTHING going on with Netanyahu trying to form a government?

Or is it just another cheap shot?

Mike3, actually this is not what the Israeli people wanted. If you recall, Tzipi Livni—the one who wants to return the West Bank to the Palestinians and negotiate sharing Jerusalem, which is as it should have been (first denied by the Arabs and then by the Israelis)—got more votes than Netanyahu. She was unable to form a governing coalitions because she wouldn’t give an inch to the religious parties. Netanyahu, who came in second, WAS able to form a governing coalition (though Livni refused to join it, saying she did not want to be a figleaf for a rightwing government). I think that what needs to be changed is the party coalition system—though in the system in America it sometimes seems that the two largest parties are incapable of admitting input from the smaller parties—green, Nader, etc. Twice Americans have voted for another candidate and Bush became President anyway. The same thing just happened in Israel. Are there any political scientists out there who think they could cobble together a better system that might benefit both countries? Fareed Zakariah? Noel Feldman? Anyone?

So what do we have in Israel now? Lieberman (on corruption charges) and the far right, on the right: Likud with Netanyahu in the middle (sic); and Labor with the fun loving Ehud Barak on the left (sic). This three headed abomination is what the Israeli people have voted for and apparently want; and something that only in Israel would be called: politically normal. The Israelis want it because the people of Israel and those who govern them; want a reckoning and balancing of the books with Lebanon and another shot at the better trained and disciplined Hezbollah. (Who may well give the now even less disciplined IDF yet another bloody nose.) It would be difficult to determine what is most thuggish; Israeli politicians or the IDF. But it does expose the hypocrisy and moralizing of American, now worldwide, Australian and Canadian Zionism, and Israeli moral indignation, if these thugs and racists had assumed similar positions, let’s say for example, in Germany. Can you imagine the uproar that would have created? Perhaps the most disgusting aspect about the state of Israel; is its arrogant hypocrisy.  The short article asks: will Labor be able to stomach working together with the right and the ultra right? Oh yes indeed sir, have no fear of that. The real difficulty will not be political; the real difficulty will be the actual sight of each other’s sweaty fat faces in the Knesset.

Folktruther, your conflict and disgust with your religious relatives has blinkered your eyes and clouded your mind where Israel is concerned. You’re not stupid, but too perversely cynical or otherwise unable to waver from your ideological canon.

Catching up on various Brit papers last night, I came across the lead article in the March 20 issue of The Independent (not exactly a pro-Israel paper but not as savagely anti-Israel as The Guardian). They made some smart suggestions re any IDF war crimes—particularly that the Israeli government should make a full and open investigation rather than the military.

They also noted that any misconduct by the IDF does not invalidate the purpose of the invasion, to stop Hamas firing rockets into Southern Israel.

They also that the soldiers’ testimonies were made public by an Israeli academic, and stated “It should not be Israeli society on trial here. Indeed it is a tribute to the openness of Israeli society that we have learned of these allegations. ... The strength of Israel is not in its military sophistication but in the openness of its society and the clarity of its values.”

The Independent also notes, rightly, that “if Israel fails to root out this canker of brutality and ill-discipline from IDF it will deal itself a heavier blow than any of its enemies in Hamas or Hizbullah have thus far managed to effect.”

Have also been reading that some of the allegations were heresay rather than witnessed first hand, and of some fakery in the Guardian’s videos. Many more isolated facts undermine some of the allegations—which I will not detail just now, not wishing to set off another anti-Israel tirade, but I believe where there’s smoek there’s fire, and that nothing but a full and open non-IDF investigation will explain the inexplicable. Am particularly concerned with the rabbi anointing soldiers’ heads with oil and the distribution of pamphlets containing vile religious extremist garbage was distributed to many troops before entering Gaza.

None of this, by the way, eases my disappointment with the Likud-Labour alliance. Barak is talking a good game but am waiting for actions to back the talk up—as I am waiting for Netanyahu to back up his stated intention to lay economic groundwork for the Palestinians, because I believe it to be inconsistent with his longtime statements and policy.

Israeli ethnic cleansing, despotism and war has taken place the last three decades under the guise of the Peace Process.  Zionists have always stated that they want Peace as they stole Palestinian land, blew up their homes, and bombed other countries.  Natenyahoo has discarded this fig leaf, which disturbs American Zionists who need it to face the world.  The US prefers to give Israel its weapons to ethnic cleanse the Palesitians under the guise of supporting Peace.

Enter Barak of the Labor party who is for Peace.  He was the Israeli war minister who initiated and ran the Gazan war against the Gazan population, most of the Palestinian casualties being women and children. He is back with the fig leaf of the Peace Process, for a post in the new government.  Making Sec of state Clinton happy.

he Israeli political process is almost as corrupt as the American electorial process, with socialist labor supporting the ethnic cleansing, despotism and war of the right wing.  Just as the Dem party supports Gop policies, and Obama promotes Bushite policies under the guise of Hope n Change.

In Israel the president has been indicted for rape, the premier for bribery and the other ministers are being investigated.  As in the US, all the political leaders are concerned about is their own careers, holding office.  But there is still an active opposition in Israel, much more so than in the US.  So the corruption that is routine in the US power system, and excluded from discussion in the learned and mass media, still draws opposition from a marginalized left. 

Which is opposing the Israeli labor party much more than Dems are opposing the Dem right wing policies.
So labor may split, or just continue to lose support as it has with its support of right wing policies.  the split between the money and media of the ruling class and the interests of the Israeli population is as grreat there as it is in the US.

So what. Labor and Likud run a political gamut from Y to Z.

I’m sure the “liberals” of the Tweedle-Labor party will have no trouble being able to “stomach” the policies of the Tweedle-Likud party.

Only in the US and Israel does anyone believe there’s any real difference. The people of the rest of the world, not having the benefit a Zionist-controlled media and government to guide their thinking, can see the truth. Israeli Jews are just further crystalizing the fascism that follows inevitably from their religious/racial nationalist ideology. Israel is simply clarifying itself.

What was Barak thinking? That Labour would affect Likud policy? More likely Likud will swallow up and coopt Labour. I get his rationale that “We don’t have a back-up country”, but now there is no more large left opposition party, just a lot of little fractured ones. Tzipi was right about the figleaf, which is not nearly large enough to veil the ugliness. One of Labour’s basic pillars is peace and two states, which Likud rejects.

Barak, as unbelievable as it seems, has to be engaging in self-delusion. Sadly, so is the military’s Gabi Ashkenazi who doesn’t believe the IDF did anything wrong in Gaza. I can understand—and shared—the difficulty of believing that, but when IDF soldiers and pilots themselves say something happened, it happened. Ashkenazi can’t afford wasting time being deluded—he has the power to change things and needs to be figuring out how to kick out the official rabbi who was anointing soldiers’ heads with oil and intoning biblical gibberish making it OK to kill civilians, and how to get the religious out of frontline combat teams immediately for some serious retraining (while prosecuting every soldier who fancied himself a holy warrior and deliberately killling people who would otherwise be walking around alive today. Ashkenazi and I are from a generation that believed IDF could do no wrong and we thought it would never change, but something has gone wrong and it needs to be dealt with NOW before one more Palestinian child dies.

The only good news out of Israel today is that some Labour members are walking out (I presume to the correct side) and there are enough IDF fighters who recognize murder when they see it and will say so.

So they all walked in lock step, or should that be goose step, toward the plain of Megiddo. One Likud to rule them all.