the USA, Israel, and national interest

Those new entry procedures in the UAE seem oddly similar to the sophisticated techniques for spotting subverts used at Ben Gurion airport.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, March 3, 2010 8:09 AM Bookmark

Considering that they've stopped multiple attempts to bring explosives aboard planes by people who were ethnically European, I don't think so.

He did not explain what procedures would be used to identify the Israeli visitors, except that the police will "develop skills" to recognize Israelis by "physical features and the way they speak."

you could charitably interpret this to mean the same kind of quick profiling that israeli airport security does

if you were in a charitable mood

I'm actually talking about arrivals in Ben Gurion, not departures.

Considering that they've stopped multiple attempts to bring explosives aboard planes by people who were ethnically European, I don't think so.

Eh? When, who?

interestingly, BG began being hardass after an attack by terrorists who were neither arab nor european in appearance

LOL Bibi

Also LOL Grauniad:

"This article was amended on 18 March 2010. The original text described Hagai Ben-Artzi as the husband of Binyamin Netanyahu's wife. He is her brother. This has been corrected."

ugh fuck these people

seriously can't believe how craven and cynical a stunt that is

the President is angry that Israel can't be trusted to follow international law/abide by signed agreements/follow through on promises = THE PRESIDENT HATES JEWS

yeah right

or there's abe foxman calling david petraeus an anti-semite for pointing out that israel's treatment of the population in the territories makes it hard for the US to have good working relationships with militaries in the region.

general david petraeus? more like grand wizard david petraeus!!

Don't know who Abe Foxman is, but Bibi's brother is obv. a moron, so I wouldn't take it too seriously

Foxman's head of AIPAC or something right?

or JDL? I can't keep these douchebags straight

oh the Anti-Defamation League

What would happen if the neo-cons, the Christian-right and the Shas/settlers all got their druthers and all of historic Israel was judaized? How many years of no second coming would it take for the Xtianists to get bored or distracted? How many years would it take the settlers to no longer care about their erstwhile Xtian allies?

I've been in the same room as Mr. Foxman. I found him unpersuasive.

What would happen if the neo-cons, the Christian-right and the Shas/settlers all got their druthers and all of historic Israel was judaized?

I can't help thinking the beast would destroy itself from within in pretty short order -- all those groups have more than their RDA of the power-hungry and self-righteous, they'd be manufacturing internal conflicts over doctrinal minutiae in six minutes flat.

You know what they say: two Jews, three opinions.

they'd be manufacturing internal conflicts over doctrinal minutiae in six minutes flat.

I tend to agree. They are so blatantly using each other as means.

I mean when your group identity is one of oppression and victimhood, and I'm not speaking for the settlers here as much as the American/Religious Right (from experience), the wind really goes out of your sails when you can't claim that anymore. You'd think people would be happy to get what they said they wanted, but that's never the case, is it.

yep Laurel OTM

You know what they say: two Jews, three opinions.

never heard this aphorism before but LOL

What?! C'mon, there's also the one about the Lutheran who was stranded on a desert island -- when the rescuers came several years later, he gave them a tour: "This is the first church I built, right after I washed up here...and over there is the church I built after the schism from the first one."

hahahahahaaa

What would happen if the neo-cons, the Christian-right and the Shas/settlers all got their druthers and all of historic Israel was judaized?

I have seen some mainstream Israeli (or pro-Israel) commentators saying "I don't know if this is such a good idea" wrt the alliance with the US Christian Right. I understand that the Christian rightwingers want a Jewish state in all of EI/MP to fulfill some Biblical prophesy, the next stage of which is that said Israeli Jews are meant to convert to Christianity en masse. I suspect that this is not likely to happen, which might make the Christian rightwingers a bit annoyed.

As an aside, someone I know once pretended to be an Irish Christian Zionist to travel along with some Israeli right wingers taking part in a protest against the Gaza evacuation. When asked about how things went with the Irish Christian Zionists he answered truthfully that they were not particularly strong.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/

that article is fantastic, really speaks to how I feel about Israel. I didn't realize it was Beinart until the end, and I wouldn't have thought he had it in him.

yeah seriously

rip american jewish establishment

He had me up until

"Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age."

I'm not entirely convinced by this reasoning - no one has explained to me how "liberal Zionism" is supposed to change the endgame that seems to be built into zionism itself.

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2010/05/17/zionism-as-liberalism-not-tribalism/

yeah I feel totally alienated from Israel as an American Jew. honestly think the world would be better off without this failed experiment of a "Jewish state".

damn elvis http://www.elviscostello.com/news/it-is-after-cosiderable-contemplation/44

they should get Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett to take his place

10 dead as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid convoy

To get back to the original topic, do you reckon the USA will veto any Security Council resolution on this?

i dunno if it'll be on the security council's radar

i mean, the security council hasn't said peep about north korea fucking torpedoing a south korean warship [via china being on the security council]

This calls for a sternly worded letter. USA, please put one in the envelope with your next contribution to Israel's budget.

Emergency session of the UN, so one can only imagine what geopolitical shifting events will come from that. On the other hand, Israel is actually 'sorry' about something, so who knows what might happen.

So is J Street about to fall apart?

Why, would you like it to?

I really like J Street, but there's like a whole funding controversy underway. This is one piece of it: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/24/soros-funder-liberal-jewish-american-lobby/

But there's also a bunch of other weird stuff.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/j-streets-half-truths-and-non-truths-about-its-funding/63541/

soros! crazy

The funding "controversy" is such a non-issue imo. People are unsurprisingly looking for ways to smear J-Street. I don't have any problem with Soros, and those who do would make hay about this either way -- if they were "open" about it it would be bad that they took his money, if they weren't open about it it's bad that they're "not open" about it. What "other weird stuff"?

Apparently a big funder is a professional horse-better from Pittsburgh and an associate of his, a woman named Consolacion Ediscul from Hong Kong. No one has any idea who either of these people are.

also -- i don't have a horse in it but it's weird that they lied about not taking his money. full stop.

So somehow this amounts to a sincere concern on your part that J Street is about to collapse?!