Bibi Netanyahu showed yet again what a numbskull he can be in yesterday’s Ynetnews:
“This idea of two states for two peoples is a stupid and childish solution to a very complex problem,” senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu staff said on Wednesday as the entourage made its way back to Israel from Washington.
They were determined to emphasize that Israel would continue to build in the larger settlement blocs and Jerusalem despite US President Barack Obama’s resolute opposition.
Senior aide Ron Dermer later clarified that “when I say ‘childish’ I mean the media’s obsession with the two-state plan, the fixation with that idea rather than focusing on the fundamental issues.
…Another top advisor had no qualms with explicitly deriding the solution itself as “juvenile.”
You’ve just had your first meeting with the president of the United States. He has laid out for you his vision of a two-state solution as the recipe for peace in the region. And no sooner do you hop on a plane to return home, but your senior staff begin snickering behind the president’s back and calling his preferred solution “juvenile” and “childish.”
What’s wrong with this picture? Do they take Obama for a fool? Do they really believe they can get away with such utterly stupid and inane comments?
It is the riposte by Bibi’s staff that in reality is juvenile. But I do hope they keep these insults coming if it makes them feel better. One of these days and it won’t be long–Obama will fix their wagon but good. He’ll present to them the solution to the conflict and they’ll either accept it or risk being toppled as Yitzhak Shamir was when he tried to cross swords with George H.W. Bush.
You’ll notice that Obama and Clinton have begun repeating a mantra that Bibi will hear much more of over the next few months: a call for a complete settlement freeze. This isn’t George Bush’s wink and a nod for public consumption. This is a president who’s as serious as a heart attack and aims to get what he wants. Bibi can call Obama and his ideas names, but it’s going to come back and bite him when he finally realizes he has no choice but to acquiesce. May that day come soon.
Richard, I certainly hope you’re right that Obama will hang tough. But I think you’re probably only wishing it. So far, every promise he has made to his constituency he has backed out on and did the opposite. He will not buck Aipac or Dennis Ross and that crowd. He’s in their pockets, just like he is in the pockets of the banks and the neocons. I’ve been telling you for a long time that there will be no two-state solution. Four years from now we’ll still be talking about it. I’m afraid Elan Pappe is right, that the only solution will ultimately be a one-state Palestine encompassing both peoples. But it will take a long time to get there. Meanwhile, we will have to suffer through a war with Iran, thanks to these idiots.
Pat Buchanan has a much more pessimistic view of Obama and Iran
Did Bibi Box Obama In?
by Patrick J. Buchanan, May 23, 2009
On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to “a mushroom cloud over an American city,” the Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb.
“This is a dictator who is … feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons,” wrote Bibi Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel.
“Saddam’s nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country – and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death. …
“[I]f action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril … (for) no gas mask and no vaccine can protect against nuclear weapons.”
This was horse manure of a high grade, as high as that which Richard Perle deposited on the podium of the Foreign Policy Research Institute a year earlier, when he informed a stunned audience that Saddam “is busily at work on a nuclear weapon.”
Perle had it straight from Saddam’s “Bomb Maker,” “a man named Kadir Hamza.” Hamza, said Perle, told him that after the Osirak reactor was destroyed by Israel in 1981, Saddam “began to build uranium enrichment facilities, many facilities, and we built 400 of them, and they’re all over the country. Some of them look like farmhouses, some of them look like classrooms, some of them look like warehouses. You’ll never find them. They don’t turn out much, but every day they turn out a little bit of nuclear materials.”
“So,” Perle warned his riveted audience, “it’s simply a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons.”
Washing-machine centrifuges in uranium enrichment facilities disguised as barns and chicken coops! And Americans believed it. And so we were stampeded into war against a nation that did not threaten or attack us, to strip it of weapons it did not even have.
That war has cost 4,500 American dead and 35,000 wounded. It has brought death to perhaps a hundred thousand Iraqis. Four million people have been driven from their homes, 2 million, including half the Christians, into exile. Hundreds of thousands of fatherless Iraqi children are being raised by women widowed by that war.
Undaunted, the War Party has a new war planned for us.
Target: Tehran. And Obama may just have boxed himself in.
In return for Bibi’s willingness to talk to the Palestinians, Obama agreed to a December deadline for progress in talks with Iran. If the talks are not fruitful by then, America will step on the escalator.
“I’ve been very clear that I don’t take any options off the table with respect to Iran,” said the president.
Bibi got what he came for.
By setting a six-month deadline, Obama has given an incentive to Israel, AIPAC, the neocons, and even al-Qaeda, which wants Shia Iran bombed back to the Stone Age, to provoke collisions with Iran, until December, then demand that Obama keep his word, suspend talks, impose severe sanctions, and start us on the escalator to war.
And, already, the incidents are multiplying.
Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, has charged the United States with complicity in cross-border attacks from Kurdistan. Israel threatens Iran almost daily and practices bombing runs to Greece and Gibraltar. Iran says it can destroy Israel and tests a missile that can hit that nation.
Israel claims Iran is trucking weapons into Gaza via Sudan. But how the trucks get through Egypt, cross the Red Sea and Sinai, then pass through Israeli and Egyptian checkpoints is unexplained.
Hillary Clinton yesterday called an Iranian nuclear capability an “extraordinary threat” and said the U.S. goal is “to persuade the Iranian regime that they will actually be less secure if they proceed with their nuclear weapons program.”
Query: What nuclear weapons program?
According to the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 [.pdf], Iran halted its weapons program in 2003. Nor are there any reports of the diversion of Iran’s industrial-grade uranium from Natanz or evidence of any secret centrifuge cascade to enrich it to weapons grade.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the EastWest Institute of Russian and U.S. scientists says Tehran is “at least six years away from building a deliverable nuclear weapon,” and a RAND Corp. study says that Iran’s “ability to wreak havoc in the Middle East through surrogates is exaggerated.”
Iran represents no threat to the United States to justify a war.
And as Korea finished Harry Truman, Vietnam finished LBJ, and Iraq finished the Bush Republicans, war with Iran would make Barack – with the situations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq all deteriorating – a one-term president.
Barack had best understand. The crowd manipulating him into war with Iran has in mind, first, obliterating Iran; second, getting rid of him.
“…Barack had best understand. The crowd manipulating him into war with Iran has in mind, first, obliterating Iran; second, getting rid of him…”
If Obama didn’t have a clue before Buchanan’s half hysterical screed (which contains a hefty dose of partisan mud slinging), he sure as hell knows now.
Richard said: “One of these days and it won’t be long–Obama will fix their wagon but good. He’ll present to them the solution to the conflict and they’ll either accept it or risk being toppled”
Puleese.
Richard I fear your drooling obsession for Obama is coloring not only your thinking but your writing.
The great god Obama will present the solution?!
What – Obama let 1400 civilians be slaughtered burned and butchered without a murmur, so that he could be elected, so that he could present the solution?!
The only solution that has any meaning is one created by people on the ground, solutions imposed by on high never mean anything.
And what is Obama’s solution?
“Freeze the settlements”?! lol
Yeah, you mean like the new settlement in the West Bank?
Even if it were to happen – which it won’t – ‘freezing the settlements’ is also meaningless. The settlements are ILLEGAL. What is the point of freezing them?
PLEASE Richard, next time you’re going to write about the mighty Obama [insert genuflect here] and Israel, do your readers favor and take a cold shower first.
A little reality check.
RE: “But I do hope they keep these insults coming if it makes them feel better.”
SHORTEN THAT TO: I do hope they keep these insults coming.
TO MY FELLOW PESSIMISTS: There is nothing to be gained by being fatalistic!
Richard, first, thanks for the site. I’m afraid I am with Ellen and Gene on this. Obama, or any American President, will do nothing. 70 odd Senators have already sided with Bibi and it will only get worse. Obam’s silence on Gaza, on white phosphorus, war crimes, and now no UN relief to Gaza is articulate enough. I would love to be wrong.
I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. Both of these refer to future states of which I do not know and neither does anyone else. I can think the worst will happen and someone else can think the best will happen and it matters not.
There is hoping or despairing and then there is reality.
I am a realist, I try to understand reality as best I can.
There is a great deal of harm in allowing one’s hopes to dim a realistic appraisal. It is called delusion. No matter how painful reality may be, we owe it to all who suffer in this world not to be in some feel-good fog. That’s a cop-out.
I’ll be back in one year or less to point out that I was right about Obama and Richard wrong.
Not with any glee. Not because I care about being right or wrong.
But because truth is important.
You are so serious! Yes, it is entirely possible that the Obama Administration will be the “same old, same old” in regards to the Middle East. Unfortunately, there is no alternative to them for the next four (likely eight) years. As to the Netanyahu Administration, it might very well collapse within a couple of years.
Since the two-state scenario is unlikely to remain viable (assuming that it currently is) past the Obama Administration, I prefer to believe that there is at least a slim chance for a “Hail Mary”.
Having said the above, I am already slowly beginning to transition to the one-state scenario (support for boycotts, etc). Call it ‘hedging my bets’.
Sometime in the next 8 yrs there will be peace bet. Israelis & Palestinians & two viable states. And all this will be partly or largely due to Barack Obama’s intercession. When that happens, I’ll expect you to come back here so that I can point out that I was right–all because truth is important. And I won’t do this gleefully either.
A step comes before dismantling settlements. That’s freezing them. I’m patient enough to take it one step at a time. Your judgment is clouded by a demand for perfection and immediate justice.
“two viable states”
It’ll never happen.
But I’ll be here in 8 years. 😉
What does viable mean?
Are you saying in 8 years Palestine will have an army navy and air force like every other state on the planet?
[exc perhaps Japan, but that was by their choice.]
In 8 years Palestine will control its air water and land?
Have an economy? Trade with other nations?
Be a member state of the UN?
Yr dreaming pal.
See you in 8.
I disagree on 3 counts.
I’ll bet some version of the two state solution will be acted on during the next 4 years of Obama’s first term.
The peace will be a troubled affair due to all the hatred Israelis have made great store of, necessitating international (UN & EU) and especially US guarantees.
Hudna or armistice, an armed truce between the two will likely last decades, if not a generation before real reconciliation can take hold and out of the divisions a true bi-national/ethnic state may emerge.
Actually, I have a fourth. You’ll have to hunt down all your nay sayers because they won’t have the courage to admit you were right.
Obama and Netanyahu share a constituency: those American who own/control land/companies in Israel. How much of Israel is owned by Americans?
In some respects, the situation seems one similar to the period when parts of what is now France were held by the Normans of England. While also seeming to bring up issues similar to state (as in United States) vs. national interests.
RFJK wrote:
“If Obama didn’t have a clue before Buchanan’s half hysterical screed (which contains a hefty dose of partisan mud slinging),…”
To call Buchanan’s statements ‘half-hysterical’ is as gratuitous and meaningless an insult as to call the two state solution’ ‘juvenile’.
In fact the boot is on the other foot. It was the ‘warnings’ on Iraq of the war party that have turned out not to be half but wholly hysterical.
And about that mudslinging – where is the mud? Didn’t Netanyahu (I can’t get it over myself to call the man ‘Bibi’) write what B. says he wrote? Didn’t Perle come up with the fraudulent warnings B. says he came up with?
And now. getting away from you, did Obama ‘box himself in’ as Buchanan says? Stating that no option is taken off the table doesn’t commit him to anything. But why did he impose a time frame on himself? And that in return for virtually nothing from the other side.
Obama back tracked on nothing continuing to support a two state solution, ending settlement activity and there is not time frame concerning negotiations with Iran except maybe reconsidering the process at years end. And as for taking no options off the table that remark was mad exclusively in the context of US security. You will search in vain for any comment in the transcripts where Obama even mentions military action against Iran. That’s Netanyahu shooting his big mouth off for cheap effect and points among the weak minded. As for Buchanan, bless his republican soul. You can never tell when he is playing the partisan or the party critic. Nonetheless, he is dead wrong about Obama and the outcome of the meeting between the pres and the prime minister, which was what I was referencing and Buchanan’s need to play the party loyalist from time to time.
One shouldn’t discount the possibility that there is a fair amount of make belief in Israel beating the war drum. This game has now been going on for a pretty long time. This is what James Petras wrote, at Christmas 2005 (!), in Counterpunch:
“Never has an imminent war been so loudly and publicly advertised as Israel’s forthcoming military attack against Iran. When the Israeli Military Chief of Staff, Daniel Halutz, was asked how far Israel was ready to go to stop Iran’s nuclear energy program, he said “Two thousand kilometers” the distance of an air assault.
More specifically Israeli military sources reveal that Israel’s current and probably next Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered Israel’s armed forces to prepare for air strikes on uranium enrichment sites in Iran According to the London Times the order to prepare for attack went through the Israeli defense ministry to the Chief of Staff. During the first week in December, “sources inside the special forces command confirmed that ‘G’ readiness the highest state for an operation was announced” (Times, December 11, 2005).
On December 9, Israeli Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz, affirmed that in view of Teheran’s nuclear plans, Tel Aviv should “not count on diplomatic negotiations but prepare other solutions”. In early December, Ahron Zoevi Farkash, the Israeli military intelligence chief told the Israeli parliament (Knesset) that “if by the end of March, the international community is unable to refer the Iranian issue to the United Nations Security Council, then we can say that the international effort has run its course”.
In other words, if international diplomatic negotiations fail to comply with Israel’s timetable, Israel will unilaterally, militarily attack Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party and candidate for Prime Minister, stated that if Sharon did not act against Iran, “then when I form the new Israeli government (after the March 2006 elections) we’ll do what we did in the past against Saddam’s reactor.” In June 1981 Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. ”
Etc.
REGARDING “BIBI: TWO-STATE SOLUTION ‘KID’S STUFF”
*TAKE ACTION TO END THE OCCUPATION
Send a personalized letter (E-mail) to the Members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee. Let these Members of Congress know that you oppose the President’s FY2010 budget request for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel.
*TO SEND YOUR LETTER (E-mail) –
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/t/2439/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27254
“You can never tell when he is playing the partisan or the party critic.”
So, because you can’t or won’t you accuse him of ‘mudslinging’ – even when he comes up with controllable facts. Coming to think of it that looks like mudslinging to me.
Not only is Buchanan dead wrong on all counts in his politically inspired screed regarding the Obama/Netanyahu meeting, considering the public personae of the man he is criticizing and all his appointees its a hoot that any person or group can manipulate “him into war with Iran.” I find that remark particularly peculiar, because its decidedly at odds with Buchanan’s many positive remarks regarding Obama’s style and quality of leadership in print and real time media.
You believe what you will, but Buchanan is a deeply conflicted Republican in the twilight of his years, and his commentaries reflect this crises in his circular paths between honest criticism and loyalty to the party.
“A step comes before dismantling settlements.”
Isn’t it forbidden to dismantle settlements according to Jewish law?
RE: “Isn’t it forbidden to dismantle settlements according to Jewish law?”
SEE THE ARTICLE: “Moses was stoned when he set Ten Commandments, researcher claims” – the “Guardian” (U.K.), 03/05/08
(EXCERPT)”…An Israeli researcher is claiming in a study published this week the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone.
According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.
Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared….”
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/05/religion.israelandthepalestinians
Of course not, unless you follow Rabbi Meir Kahane and his ilk.
You talk about ‘honest criticism’. You calling B’s remarks on this particular topic ‘mudslinging’ was no example of that.
On a more important topic: I don’t find the idea that the US can be manipulated into a war with Iran so bizarre as you make it out to be. I wish it were.
It is perhaps unlikely that the US could be instigated to deal the first blow, so to speak, but what if Israel does and needs, or pretends to need, support in the ensuing hostilities?
I am thinking of a historical precedent here. Austria got Germany into a war about which the Kaiser was hesitant by declaring war on Serbia, thus risking a conflict with Russia but counting on the support of its well armed German brother. Germany had little choice then.
RE: “I don’t find the idea that the US can be manipulated into a war with Iran so bizarre as you make it out to be. I wish it were.”
MY COMMENT: Israel has a history of using ‘false flag’ operations to do exactly that!
FROM WIKIPEDIA: Lavon Affair
The Lavon Affair refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Israeli military intelligence planted bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954 in the hopes that “the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, ‘unspecified malcontents’ or ‘local nationalists'” would be blamed.[1] It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: העסק ביש, HaEsek Bish). Egypt retaliated against its Jewish community….Israel admitted responsibility in 2005 when Israeli President Moshe Katzav honored the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.[3]
RE: “Lavon Affair”
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
RE: “But I do hope they keep these insults coming if it makes them feel better.”
FROM LAURA ROZEN’S BLOG “WAR AND PIECE”:
State Department press statement, May 24, 2009 – Question Taken at the May 21 Daily Press Briefing
Question: What is the U.S. response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comments that all of Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty and “will never again be partitioned and divided”?
Answer: Jerusalem is a final status issue. Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to resolve its status during negotiations. We will support their efforts to reach agreements on all final status issues.
An Israeli diplomat adds: “I’m shocked… Barak is going to Washington to ‘convince the administration’ that in exchange for removing illegal settlements, the US will acquiesce on Israel’s ‘demand’ to allow for ‘natural growth.’ You would think that despite being arrogantly dumb on US affairs, they would at least pretend to understand the Obama zeitgeist and at a minimum play the game. But no, they are dumber than meets the eye.”
SOURCE – http://warandpiece.com/
I consider the situation to be so complex as to be nearly opaque.
I don’t think that the interests of Israel and the US can be separated at this point. I consider them, in many respects, one polity. Israel is “the tip of the lance;” the lance is the United States: Bush and Co. 101.
This is from
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-5-22-09/
“Q Robert, yesterday the President outlined these five categories for Guantanamo detainees, and the fifth one that he was talking about, he said, is really complex; very hard to determine exactly what should be done. Another official said that this is basically just the framework of a plan. In other words, it looks very, very undefined. Isn’t this throwing into jeopardy the President’s plan to shut down Guantanamo by the deadline that he set?
MR. GIBBS: No. I think I’ve been asked this question. I’ve had the opportunity to answer this question five days in a row —
Q But realistically, after that speech, we heard nothing specifically from the President on how they could be treated, other than they might be detained indefinitely.
MR. GIBBS: You mean in basket number five?
Q Yes.
MR. GIBBS: Well, and what the President, I think, outlined quite clearly in the plan was we obviously have rules relating to war, but instead of — I mean, the whole theme of the speech was what we have right now at Guantanamo doesn’t work. We have ad hoc patchwork of legal theories, some being undone by courts across our country today. What the President wants to do with the fifth basket, as he termed it, of detainees, is work with Congress and the courts to ensure that whatever system is set up is done through a means where — using a phrase that he’s used many times — somebody watches the watcher. I think what got us into a series of the hasty decisions that the President talked about yesterday was one person or one group of people thought they alone had a legal theory that could govern all of what we did at Guantanamo Bay.
We found that that’s not working. We found that courts have ruled — by judges appointed by the very administration that set that up — have decided that they don’t have the authority to do some of the things that they’re doing, or they have to grant certain rights to detainees, or they don’t have the evidence to hold them for what they’ve been charged with. That’s why we’re in this mess.
But if the President didn’t read to you a piece of legislation yesterday about basket number five, it’s because he intends to work with Congress and to ensure that a process complies with the laws of our country in order to make progress. But the notion that we’re not making progress on this I think is disputed — I’m guessing that your network has done stories on our decision on military commissions, I’m guessing your network has done stories on the decision of the Justice Department to transfer a detainee to New York 11 years after committing a series of violent acts to bring them to justice.
So the notion that progress isn’t being made I think just isn’t borne out by the facts.”
Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Let us never forget the price paid for our countries’ wars.
I don’t think he has.
For me, it was Bush’s declaration that unlawful combatants were not covered by the Geneva Conventions under rules of ‘just war’ that sounded the first alarm about his administration.
The status of an unarmed combatant currently isn’t defined in international law. Israel says that their soldiers are citizens of Israel, and thus entitled to greater safety when they fight for Israel than the civilians (and non-state combatants) of “the enemy,”. That’s a change in how soldiers and civilians currently are viewed under “just war theory.”
Israel’s military leaders are on record saying that they intend to redefine international law by their actions. My view: they create a precedent – “terrorism”, shall we say, might be one example – teach it to other states, and voila: perceived gains create a willingness to accept the new norm that they have established..
In Israel, the writ of habeas corpus only applies to certain people in certain situations. The United States, through the authority invested in the judiciary, rejected the elimination of habeas corpus for “non-state combatants.” I thank the military lawyers and other personnel who acted as citizens responsible for the actions of their government, to make sure the judiciary had an opportunity to do that.
The United States repudiated the doctrine of Bush and Co. and, arguably, of Israel, by electing Obama. But that was an action by the voters; the reins of power are held by politicians. Obama was a senator under the administration of Bush and Co. Perhaps he’s well into his game plan as a President rather than behind in matching up to the expectations of voters regarding “their” candidate.
“The status of a non-state combatant…”
Kahanism has nothing to do with my comments. Here, the Rambam (Maimonides) writes in the Mishnah Torah: It is forbidden to handover to gentiles the Land of Israel, a Jew, or Jewish property. Whoever does this does not have a share in The World To Come. It is permitted to kill the one does the handing over-even before he does it.
This comment is a gross violation of my comment rules. READ THEM CAREFULLY. If you violate them again you will lose yr comment privileges.
Rambam, were he alive today, would be disgusted by anyone claiming that Israel must hold on to every inch of territory it conquered in 1967 even at the cost of thousands of Jewish lives. He was an infinitely most flexible thinker than any settler or settler rabbi.
Your claim above makes Rambam out to be an acolyte of Meir Kahane, which is ludicrous.
@DICKERSON3870
Yes-I read that moronic article when it was first published. It goes to show what academics in Israel will do in order to escape from their religion. Retrofitting Judaism with a baby-boomer/hippie outlook? What idiot would fall for nonsense like that?
Amos – Look up sociopath when you have a free moment.
@Margaret
I don’t know DICKERSON3870 personally, but I think the term “sociopath” is a bit strong. I think it’s just that many people, Jews among them, have misconceptions about Judaism and it leads to outrageous statements/behavior. I think that it’s critical to check out everything on a particular subject before coming to conclusions. However, since the Torah establishes Jewish society, perhaps one who mocks its origins may, perhaps, be considered a sociopath.
Buddy, I think she meant YOU’RE the sociopath, not Dickerson. Advocating the killing of your fellow Jews even under the guise of paraphrasing the Rambam is some pretty wingnutty behavior.
Amos, I am sorry for your problems. You didn’t ask for them, but here we are, and you have them.
Referring to someone as a sociopath is a violation of your “comment rules:”
“1. insults, baiting, vulgarity, harassment or abuse directed toward the blog owner or other commenters are not tolerated.”
I see, however, that Margaret didn’t get “reprimanded.” You even acknowledge her antagonism: “Buddy, I think she meant YOU’RE the sociopath,..”
“Advocating the killing of your fellow Jews even under the guise of paraphrasing the Rambam is some pretty wingnutty behavior.”
You have an article “Obama Tightens Noose Around Settlements.” This can only mean only thing-you advocate the wholesale strangulation of your fellow Jews. In my case, I was quoting one of the most influential Rabbis in Jewish history.
I am sure you are familiar with the Kamsa-Bar Kamsa story in the Talmud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamsa_%26_Bar_Kamsa
The Talmud says specifically that because Bar Kamsa was not executed for having betrayed the Jews to the Romans, we have been exiled from our Land. The Rabbis of the Talmud (Amoraim) are many orders more significant than those of the Rambam’s generation.
“He was an infinitely most flexible thinker than any settler or settler rabbi.”
I’d like to remind you that Rav Ovadya, who is the current leader of Sephardic Jewry, like the Rambam was 1,000 years ago, emphatically forbade the uprooting of Gush Katif. Haredim (“ultra-orthodox”) are FAR from “settler.” Most observant Jews here hold by this outlook-not just those in the territories.
I am certainly not trying to provoke the anger of the other commentators or the moderator, but I think the rules should be applied equally.
If I’m not mistaken this comment is Justin White a longtime troll & advocate of all manner of disgusting violence against me & some of my fellow Jews.
Don’t quote me, Justin, Amos or whoever you are, my comment rules. I know what they are. Do something like that again and all yr subsequent comments will be moderated. My comment rules are primiarily meant for people who engage in reasonable discourse. People like you who advocate killing Jews are treated more harshly as you deserve. I could call you a Jewish advocate of murder. But I don’t have any problem w. “sociopath” though it wouldn’t be the word I’d choose for you.
You’re an utter moron. He’s strangling the settlements you idiot, not the Jews who live in them. Did Sharon literally strangle the settlers removed from Gaza?? Are they still among us living & breathing??
You dare to compare Rav Ovadya with the Rambam? What a laugh! Wasn’t he the one who said that New Orleans shvartas suffered Hurricane Katrina because they were goyim who didn’t study Torah??
And let’s not forget that Rambam was a yored.
Amos, I didn’t refer to you as a sociopath; I suggested you read about sociopathy. I did so because I consider a religious imprimatur to kill others to be contrary to the social good, and, in our time, to be based on education that possibly can be challenged by further education.
My second comment relates to your apparent circumstances, and wasn’t meant to be insulting, but was a further rejection of what you advocate. The anger you express does provoke emotion in return. My emotional response led to the written one, which while a rejection of your advocacy was written in sorrow about the situation.
I see your anger as arising, at least in part, from fear because of your situation. I think killing continues the problematic nature of the situation and that the belief that killing is the answer is a problem for the person who holds it.