Israel to World: "Suck It."

Not only surrounding Arab populations, but set againt the 'orrible savages in Africa, look at what they're doing to themselves now, etc.

That kind of thing, I guess.

I think Darragh's right btw, that Israel is considered basically part of Europe. It's pretty close, they compete in European cultural events, the religion's half the same, their notable figures show up here dressed like us, acting like us and talking english (I'm thinking the likes of Uri Geller as much as politician types), lots of people have family there and going there is fairly common, and you'd expect to have a similar time to elsewhere on the European med. This mostly isn't true of say Syria or Egypt - though it mostly is of Turkey or South Africa, which also might be described as 'like us' in a similar way.

I don't know, none of those things is a clincher on its own, but together they add up to something that might go a way to explaining the disproportionate interest in these places compared to others.

that stuff is all a drop in the bucket compared to the "the Jews were given the state of Israel because of the Holocaust" narrative that runs really deep in Western culture, and is obviously tied to really eeply ingrained feelings of cultural guilt/responsibility, geopolitics, and religion

deeply ingrained

Ironically, given what I've posted on this thread perhaps, I got into an argument today with an annoying Muslim woman along the lines of "Why is it only Israel you moan about, why aren't you moaning about 93 people getting shot in a mosque in Pakistan, for instance?". It's a confusing business, I tell ya.

Haha - I do generally try my best to avoid being that guy

greenwald owns spitzer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEEwlebARY

So a photo purporting to be bulletproof vests seized from the Mavi Marmara turns out to be from 2006

http://i.imgur.com/u9Kul.jpg

Not to mention that another photo of "weapons" is mostly kitchen knives and tools.

...

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs really has a flickr photostream?

Oh, but apparently that camera may not have been out yet on that date, so the date on the camera may have just been set wrong?

christ

theres something weird about how the much larger, and more important questions abt the past and future of the region and the relationship btw palestine and israel and the gaza blockade all get subsumed into this legalistic bullshit about who shot who and who was at fault.

or maybe thats totally normal.

Gazans like cream of spinach soup, miss coriander.

That article should be spun off into a sitcom. Oh, wait, it already has.

starring Martin Mull.

horrible op-ed yesterday

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/opinion/03gordis.html?ref=global

http://www.salon.com/news/israel/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/06/02/taghreed_el_khodary_interview

Really OTM, imo.

"that stuff is all a drop in the bucket compared to the "the Jews were given the state of Israel because of the Holocaust" narrative that runs really deep in Western culture, and is obviously tied to really deeply ingrained feelings of cultural guilt/responsibility, geopolitics, and religion"

totally OTM.
Last example: soon after the flotilla news broke, protesters gathered around the old Jewish neighborhood in Rome shouting "Assassins!" and "Fascists!" to the people living there.

reading that washington post article about what specifically is allowed into gaza or not, you would never know that these items are disallowed:

- baby formula
- books
- fresh meat
- canned fruit
- anesthetics

- books

Nice

That's kind of sick. My mom certainly didn't realize any of those things were on the list when I spoke to her yesterday, so I imagine most ordinary, news-watching people in America haven't got a clue, and I think AIPAC kind of likes things that way, judging by the hissy fits thrown when anyone tries to bring up even the most basic examples of Israel being shitty bullies. If your weapons are bigger, it's kind of difficult to portray your victimhood with any credibility.

In other exciting developments, my most pro-expansion HS FB friend has just joined 'I <3 IDF' - seriously - unfortunately the group is conducted in Hebrew so I can't follow the conversation at all. It's so weird because she's such a pacifist in every other context. Le sigh.

i'm being a little disingenuous there; there is no published list of disallowed items and i imagine that it changes from time to time, on both an official basis and at the whim of whoever is searching trucks. however those i just listed come up again and again as not being allowed in.

Building materials were the prohibited items I mentioned to my mother.

Is there a state of declared war or not, and does the legal status of piracy wrt to the blockade depend on this, or is all that so much hot air in any case?

Irish aid ship due to make an attempt to breach the blockade on Sat I think, so there's a lot of differing opinions on the actual international legal status of the Israeli actions.

Would that Israel was fielding a World Cup side this year, as we could have had endless LOLs explaining the offside rule.

Israel defence taking no prisoners, etc

iirc its more complex than "building materials". if the building materials are being used by an approved NGO, then it's allowed, otherwise not. not defending the blockade but that's what i heard anyway.

Gaza crying, etc (xp)

OH YHWH WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Are the NGOs complaining that they have trouble getting those building supplies?

Are the NGOs complaining that they have trouble getting those building supplies?

idk. i mean, in this instance, i would imagine so coz hamas is preventing the cargo from coming into gaza, but then i would imagine they wouldn't be complaining too loudly nahmsayin.

Pretty sure concrete is not allowed in at all.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/deprived-of-concrete-gaza-discovers-bricks-1.275054

Those concrete rockets are a danger to Israeli citizens

the UK doesn't have a disproportionate number of jews occupying print

disproportionate to....?

jews are probably 0.5% of the uk population yet somewhat more common than that in print

then there's the whole thing of jewish ppl (even without connections to israel) being asked/expected to opine on/justify israeli govt actions, that happens too often irl and i'd guess probably 10, 20%? of uk broadsheet comment articles on israel are anguished missives of this nature

and then u have melanie philips making dershowitz look like chomsky

Trying to think of a good truffle fry joke in re ban list btw, will get back to you when I do.

disproportionate to....?

it wasn't my phrase, but all in all i think there is more of a "jewish and pro-israeli" thing going on the US media, than there is in the UK

i mean, that doesn't stop various anti-semites (peter oborne, mehdi hasan) making a mountain of what there is.

the british elite has long been (again someone else's phrase i think) philo-arab, or just generally perfidious i guess (h8 israel in 1948; <3 it in 1956), and the left wing of it, at the moment, is on what it calls an "anti-imperialist" trip.

as the gazan woman who mordy linked to says, the bbc is way way way less pro-israeli than, say, cnn.

it wasn't my phrase, but all in all i think there is more of a "jewish and pro-israeli" thing going on the US media, than there is in the UK

They might not be as pro-Israeli, but I'd say Jewish journalists/ commentators etc are pretty healthily represented in the UK media

exactly

In the American media there is almost zero coverage of why Palestinians want what they do, or any sense of proportion in framing the conflict between the two parties. Any chance of that kind of went down the toilet post-9/11 and post-death of Arafat. Rather than ascribe any ant-Semitism to members of the British left at all, I would say their sympathies have been triggered by a reaction to the unfairness of that framing. Besides, most of the cryptic shit people say about Jews in Britain tends to come from right-wing people who don't much care for Muslims either.

the british elite has long been (again someone else's phrase i think) philo-arab

tendentious rly, tho there have been times when it's served immediate ends (ww1, various gulf potentates propping up london property market, buying weapons, £££ contractors)

a sort of mild mannered upper mid antisemitism/sniffiness about israel is a more germane and recurrent element in relations w/ the middle east

do u think modern panarabism is influenced by british coercion in that direction before the downfall of the ottoman empire?

The Foreign Office certainly had a reputation for being "philo-Arab" at one time, whether justified or not. I supsect Nasser did for that.

suzy, my ex-flatmate used to slag off Israel at the slightest hint of anything Jewish coming up in conversation. He would berate me, for example, for buying kosher food products on the spurious ground that I was propping up the Jewish fascist state, or some such claptrap. He and his ilk may not be out-and-out anti-semites but they sometimes sail close to those rocks.

They can make Kosher food just as easily in Finchley so I don't know which is the worse problem, your x-fm being anti-Semitic or just being a basic idiot. Was there an attempt at education.

...on your part?

those ppl will usually reveal themselves to be slow-witted antisemites of the left-paranoid variety

i don't think they're worthy of consideration

Rather than ascribe any ant-Semitism to members of the British left at all, I would say their sympathies have been triggered by a reaction to the unfairness of that framing.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bf/NewStatesmancover.jpg

xxxpost He was just one of those political pitbull types who had an answer (not always a good one) for everything and was very hard to argue with. Sadly, it's an attitude I've come across plenty of times, albeit not always that extreme, people (of the left, yes) getting all prickly at the mere mention of the J-word or any related topic. Ismael Klata's reply to your comment yesterday about how some people are just heavily invested in anti-zionism really rings true.

Typical balanced reporting from Pilger there I expect (xp)

That NS cover made me put my head in my hands at the time. Just astonishing that anyone could be so careless with anti-semitic tropes. "Conspiracy" for fuck's sake. There are times when the left discusses Israel (by no means every time) that I feel distinctly queasy and the usual defence - "we're not anti-semitic, we're anti-Zionist" - gets a little flimsy when you examine some of the language and imagery they use.

"Rather than ascribe any ant-Semitism to members of the British left at all, I would say their sympathies have been triggered by a reaction to the unfairness of that framing"

Not completely true. European Left has certainly a problem with Israel, and a part of it is definitely ideological. Thomas Haury wrote a couple of interesting, even if not always completely accurate, books about it.