Israel to World: "Suck It."

and meanwhile israeli society will become more mizrahi and more charedi and american liberal ashkenazi jews will become more and more defensive about it. but does anyone really believe that mizrahim gaf about what american jews think of them? i have yet to meet one who does.

honest leftists can't support any country

this is a weird thing to say

I fully support Costa Rica for ex.

there may be exceptions but i think among major world countries none of them live up to left-wing ethics. even once beloved scandanavian countries have turned out to have secret nativist cores.

dim view of the world you have there

how could it be otherwise? the nation state is inherently problematic. any time you're defending a nation state's interests you're going to run afoul.

there's a scale, it's not like every country in the world is militarily dominating its neighbors. there are plenty of countries that are small and relatively insignificant in the scope of world affairs and primarily concerned with minding their own business.

i think you'd be surprised. many countries you might think of as innocuous have all kinds of domestic + neighborly issues that just don't get 1% of the reporting that the israel/palestine conflict gets.

BDS is only 10 years old, the south african boycott movement took about 30. Not saying it will definitely happen but I wouldn't be too smug about it either.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, September 23, 2016 3:58 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially since its such a big deal on college campuses.. at least in california. there's tons of stories out there about students in the pro-palestinian/pro-israel camp really going at it. I havent seen polling but I think the youts are way less pro-israel than they used to be.

my impression is that it's mostly a v minor cause that keeps getting blown up primarily by hysterical right-wingers who use the existence of BDS as a cudgel to attack all liberals w/

it's one of those things that is hard to gauge the actual size + impact bc both its proponents and its detractors have an interest in making it appear larger than it is. in terms of real world consequences though i'm not convinced it has had, or will begin to have a material impact on Israel. it may have an impact on American Jewish college students who feel battered and politically marginalized, which is definitely unfortunate but it's unclear how hurting American Jews will force Bibi to withdraw from the WB.

"a military occupation is only unjust when it stops being necessary"

this isn't wrong exactly but tbh every occupying power thinks their occupation is "necessary"

i agree but it's much easier to make the case - or at least make it controversial enough that it can't be settled unanimously - when hostilities are still ongoing

‏@PageSix
Benjamin Netanyahu was booed by the audience at "Hamilton"

@DougHenwood
Best thing I ever heard about “Hamilton"

This week, with its fresh new $38 billion commitment in hand, the Israeli government announced the approval of an all new settlement in the West Bank, one that is particularly hostile to ostensible U.S. policy, the international consensus, and any prospects for an end to occupation. The new settlement, “one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank,” as the New York Times put it this morning, “is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished.” This new settlement extends far into the West Bank: closer to Jordan, in fact, than to Israel.

In response to this announcement, the U.S. State Department yesterday issued an unusually harsh denunciation of Israel’s actions. “We strongly condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to advance a plan that would create a significant new settlement deep in the West Bank,” it began. It suggested Netanyahu has been publicly lying, noting that the “approval contradicts previous public statements by the government of Israel that it had no intention of creating new settlements.” The State Department invoked the aid package the U.S. just lavished to describe it as “deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel’s security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long-term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians.”

Much of that, while a bit more rhetorically clear than usual, is par for the course: The U.S. — in vintage Obama fashion — issues pretty, pleasing statements claiming to be upset at Israel’s settlements while taking continuous actions to protect and enable the very policies Obama pretends to oppose. But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which (Ehud) Barak warned....

So Israel — in the words of its most loyal benefactor — is moving inexorably “towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation” that is anti-democratic: i.e., the equivalent of apartheid. And the leading protector and enabler of this apartheid regime is the U.S. — just as was true of the apartheid regime of the 1980s in South Africa....

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/

https://twitter.com/IAFsite/status/791565335619104768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

mondoweiss commenters surprisingly upbeat + optimistic about president trump - now they share something in common w/ hardcore right-wing zionists /and/ white supremacists

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/united-nations/united-nations-schizophrenia-on-israel/

looks like i'm going to israel again this summer (third visit)

where will you be? my parents visited friends in tekoa a few weeks ago

haifa (visiting baha'i holy sites)

might visit a friend in tel aviv, but we're not really supposed to tourist around

akka too

might get in a side trip to bethlehem also

sorry i mean nazareth, not bethlehem

embarrassing

‏@AliAbunimah
Lol. Netanyahu told New Zealand backing UN resolution would be “declaration of war”

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.761706

@DougHenwood
As someone pointed out somewhere, Israel is doing to itself what it hates BDS for - isolating the country from the world.

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/uk-criticism-us-kerry/

A British government spokesperson said: “We do not believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this cases the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.

“And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally. The Government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community.”

Do the people in Israel who think Elor Azaria should be pardoned (including some politicians not of the right like Yachimovich) dispute what the judges agreed were the facts of the case (i.e. that he fatally shot an attacker who'd been subdued and was lying wounded on the ground) or do they disagree with the IDF policy that it's illegal to execute subdued prisoners who are lying wounded on the ground? This one is really hard for me to understand as an American Jew, I thought was the kind of outcome liberal Zionists like me were supposed to deploy as evidence that Israel punishes freelance ethnic murderers in a way its neighbors don't.

The apologia I've most often heard is that the soldier was afraid the terrorist was still a potential threat (like maybe playing opossum) but I agree it's a hard defense to understand and his legal teams argument was even more absurd. They argued the guy was already dead so the shot didn't kill him. I assume it's more about not punishing soldiers for killing terrorists no matter the circumstances. It's still far better than the US where a sizable part of population defend cops who murder black ppl in cold blood who weren't even attempted murderers just moments before (and then get let off by the legal system).

It's still far better than the US where a sizable part of population defend cops who murder black ppl in cold blood who weren't even attempted murderers just moments before

tbf a sizable part of the population thinks of any black man 13 and up as an attempted murderer who only by chance may not have been attempting to murder someone at the exact moment he was apprehended

If the comments on this article

http://www.timesofisrael.com/elor-azaria-and-israels-moral-core/

are any indication, there are definitely people in Israel who take the second view I described above: namely that a terrorist should be summarily executed if you have him in custody. It is.... unsettling.

If I can love America while keeping my eyes open to the fact that there are lots of really terrible Americans -- and I do -- I can love Israel while keeping my eyes open to the fact that there are lots of really terrible Israelis. Still, it stings.

it seems like a really dumb opinion too just from a pragmatic pov. don't prisoners have value as bargaining chips, or sources of intelligence? and since these stabbing attacks seem mostly suicide by soldier anyway it's just giving them what they want. idgi.

israelis are nuts. my boss is israeli. =|

Also I'll bet 75% of comments on that page (which is an English-language paper) are US basement hardmen letting you know how tough THEY'D be if they were in the idf

yeah i was gonna say the american right-wing zionists (esp those who ultimately make aliyah to the territories) are really the worst (where worse = more jingoistic, martial nationalism). which maybe shouldn't be such a shock bc even tho our (where our = diaspora cosmopolitan jewry) values are antithetical to theirs, our nation as a whole is v accommodating + even incubates these sentiments where there's a v real phenomenon of [some of] US jewry actually radicalizing israel.

It just sucks ass that an American Jew like me feels like maybe I could never move to Israel because it's been ruined by American Jews

so i heard this "divided the country", are people really 50-50 about whether it was a bad thing to do or not? seems like the judges weren't split

One poll was 84% supportive of letting him off but i don't know how representative that is.

There's a fairly similar case in the UK at the moment with a Royal Marine who was filmed murdering an injured and unarmed Afghan fighter - and telling his colleagues to keep quiet about it as he was breaking the Geneva convention. He was convicted but there has been a huge press campaign supported by a number of major newspapers to get him out of jail, ostensibly on a PTSD defence but, in practice, because nobody cares if soldiers kill 'hostile' targets whether they are a threat or not. I wouldn't be hugely surprised if a majority backed that here.

I started talking with an Israeli-American at the dog park a couple of nights after the election, and the theory he landed on was that the persecution of Jews in Trump's America would inspire liberal Jewish Americans to make aliyah in such large numbers that they would somehow vote in a Palestinian state. A truly amazing blend of unfounded paranoia and unfounded optimism.

summer israel trip postponed for 1-2 years due to family issues

mom says "maybe middle east politics will be more calm in 1-2 years"

i think she's being too optimistic and besides seems pretty calm atm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/former-israeli-security-chiefs-warn-of-tyranny?CMP=share_btn_tw

Jacques De Maio, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation to Israel and the PA, asserts: 'There is no IDF order to shoot suspects to kill, as political officials tried to convince us'; he also rejects claims of apartheid: 'There isn't a regime here that is based on the superiority of one race over another; there is no disenfranchisement of basic human rights based on so-called racial inferiority.'

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4953648,00.html

This Palestinian village had solar power — until Israeli soldiers took it away

^ sums up everything wrong with the condition of Israeli politics/policy today.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak, one of the targets of Netanyahu’s sniping, rebuffed Netanyahu’s comments saying “there’s no hunt, there’s corruption.”

Yair Lapid, a former finance minister under Netanyahu who heads the Yesh Atid party, tweeted after the prime minister’s speech that it “crossed every line.” “What we saw this evening wasn’t a rally of support for Netanyahu but a rally in support of corruption,” Lapid said.

Likud leaders put heavy pressure on party activists to attend the rally. The gathering had a festive atmosphere, with activists hoisting Israeli flags, banners criticizing the media and chanting “Bibi, King of Israel,” using his nickname.

Netanyahu, the second-longest serving leader in Israeli history, is engulfed in a series of scandals relating to alleged financial misdeeds and supposed illicit ties to executives in media, international business and Hollywood.

https://apnews.com/bd0c708ddaed4f4387849d6a656bdd74/Netanyahu-rips-media,-opposition-in-face-of-corruption-case

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/magazine/how-arafat-eluded-israels-assassination-machine.html

some shocking details of how sharon was willing to blow up a stadium and commercial airlines to get arafat

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-corruption.html

No, you suck it!

JERUSALEM — The Israeli police recommended on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, casting a pall over the future of a tenacious leader who has become almost synonymous with his country. The announcement instantly raised doubts about his ability to stay in office.

Concluding a yearlong graft investigation, the police recommended that Mr. Netanyahu face prosecution in two corruption cases: a gifts-for-favors affair known as Case 1000, and a second scandal, dubbed Case 2000, in which Mr. Netanyahu is suspected of back-room dealings with Arnon Mozes, publisher of the popular daily Yediot Aharonot, to ensure more favorable coverage.

some shocking details of how sharon was willing to blow up a stadium and commercial airlines to get arafat

― while my dirk gently weeps (symsymsym), Saturday, February 3, 2018 4:35 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im not shocked by this

a tenacious leader who has become almost synonymous with his country.

the hell he has

lol did you read the article jim?

this is def al capone getting busted for tax evasion