A good march, of protest or support, is a fine counter to Elias Canetti’s mindless, destructive mob. Glad to see another one that didn’t morph into a mob, unlike January 6th.
Most people are, in fact , reasonable. The assholes stand out. Seems like we could marginalize them a bit better. (Like, not putting assholes in charge I guess.)
I'm at the hospital. My wife is having surgery. Not major, though not minor either. The hard part will be the potential 6 - 10 weeks on a liquid diet. My wife has been honest about our marriage not lasting through that.
When I first went out to the waiting room there was some tall , older ex - realtor looking guy talking to the chaplain who was explaining to him they wouldn't change the TV to Fox News because it upset people. He retired rather sullenly to a corner to watch it on his phone. Everyone seemed relieved.
Thanks for attending these things - it's always interesting.
I guess I was kinda goin' for a "Gym dance shoes are to shoes as gym dance music is to music" sorta thing. Unsuccessfully, in retrospect (which is pretty much the only spect I got).
Holy cow that is about what happened to my wife. Although to be fair, she had and emergency surgery to fix her strangulating hernias, but she followed that up with a gall bladder, and then a final (we hope) one to go in and fix it all.
"...I had always been flattered to be approached, to be asked if I was Jewish, as if I could ever be part of the grand thing they were. How much we lose and keep losing."
I feel that; like (as a non-American) I feel like I've lost "America." Both ideas are kinda intertwined in my mind.
This is a terrible mess. Solutions are beyond me, so I'm basically keeping my mouth shut (because I don't know what to say that would help in any way).
The Anti-Defamation League has been including pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations in a nationwide map of antisemitic attacks (now labeled "antisemitic and anti-Israel") so they can put people peacefully demonstrating in Penn Station on the map right next to "guy spray-paints a Star of David on a storefront."
And that sort of bullshit absolutetism is why we can’t have nice things. Thanks ADL, NRA, GOP, etc, etc. Also, too, Hamas obvs., and fuckin Bibi and his crew of incompetent corruptocrats.
I think the rhetoric from conservatives – most of whom are not Jewish, at least in the U.S. – obscures a great deal, as it’s intended to. Most Americans support Israel, but if you drill down that doesn’t mean they support unlimited Zionism. The “pick a side” rhetoric also obscures how many Jews in Israel and how many liberal Jews in the states oppose Netanyahu’s policies, how many have marched and rallied in opposition to the slaughter of Palestinian civilians and called for a ceasefire.
That said, the slide from opposing Israel’s policies into antisemitism has proven to be alarmingly slippery – far more so than I would have imagined in the U.S., at least. I blame Trump and MAGA for softening that ground, but a dispiriting amount of it is also being insinuated by the Left. And as Roy has pointed out before, the way the hostilities are being framed so closely mirrors the post-9/11 build up to the Iraq war it’s hard to see how the rhetoric is walked back. I'm glad this appears to have been more a rally in support of Israel than an opportunity to lean heavily on anti-Palestinian sentiment.
Might this have anything to do with the "crisis" *of boyhood/manhood? When the (good ol') boys are no longer the protectors because the protectorates have finally cast them off, what's left for them?
* scare quotes as needed. The "crisis", if there is one, encompasses all humanity, but 'round these parts it's mostly guys that seem to be getting the attention of our professional crisis mongers. Odd, that...
“the slide from opposing Israel’s policies into antisemitism has proven to be alarmingly slippery”
It’s something people have been trained in for a long, long time. Variations on the theme “you’re either with us or against us.” Any criticism (no matter how valid and constructive!) of the USA means you “hate America.” Any criticism of the Democratic Party means “you want Trump to win.” Any criticism of the carceral state means you’re “soft on crime.” It’s really easy to use the template, and this version packs a particularly powerful, cynical punch.
Exactly. Genuine antisemitism is very real. That’s why this cynical abuse of the term is so dangerous and gross. It drains the term of any real meaning to apply it indiscriminately. It also dehumanizes Jewish people by implicitly asserting that every one of them, everywhere, de facto endorses every action taken by Israel’s government — and by implication also makes them responsible for every such action. It’s a despicably gross way to co-opt a huge number of people, and their generational experiences, and their suffering.
About six months age a teenage family member shocked me by spouting explicitly Antisemitic tropes. This makes me think there's been a lot of the stuff on social media recently. So the pro-Palestinian--anti-Jewish slippery slide is almost certainly going in both directions!
My Zionist sympathies took a huge hit when Israelis freely voted into power Nazi-esque ex-terrorists with Begin in the mid-70s or so. I mean, if Israelis *wanted* to be Nazis... The irony can kill you.
And speaking of irony, I'm starting to equate Hamas (not an endorsement of anything they've done), compare/contrast the Warshaw ghetto 1942.
Mandatory reminder: The $2b Abraham accords at the least did more than its fair share to trigger 10/7. Not that they're really anything more than commercial policies...
Almost forgot; word of the day:
"The new word “humineral” (人矿 rén kuàng) has taken the Chinese internet by storm and is now a sensitive word subject to censorship. First introduced in a now-censored Zhihu post... “humineral”... describes a person relentlessly exploited by society until they are eventually discarded on the refuse pile.
1. Huminerals: You are a resource, not a protagonist. You are a means, not an end. Your life’s work will go towards the fulfillment of others instead of the pursuit of your own desires.
2. The life of a humineral can be divided into three stages: extraction, exploitation, and slag removal. Investment in your education over your first decade or so is oriented at extracting your potential—turning you into usable ore. The middle decades are a process of exploitation and consumption. When you’re finally useless, they’ll use the least polluting method possible to dispose of you.
**
8. Huminerals power the motors that turn the wheels of history. Huminerals have few other choices: either fuel history’s engine, or be ground beneath its wheels. Of course the inverse is true. If huminerals were to stop propelling history, then those other huminerals who abstained would not be crushed. Yet there are always huminerals who see more value in a lifetime of being fuel than to risk being flattened."
Well, in a sense it all flows from ca. 1947 where the UK did the same fine job preparing Palestine/Israel for independence as they did for India.
I don’t think an attack on al-Aqsa would trigger an attack the size of 10/7. Now, the Abraham accords locking the complete Arab world off from giving Palestinians *any* meaningful support for anything better than their current situation. It wasn’t an act of anger over the mosque but 1,000% desperation.
Not going to put on a hazmat suit and go into the mind of Hamas, but it also pretty successfully scuttled any talk of Israeli/Saudi normalization of relations.
I feel you, and as much as I love Israel, it’s hard to root for Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Israel to me, is like America under Trump rule; complete chaos, dysfunction; with the true enemy operating from within.
That said, I don’t have any sympathy for Hamas either. Just the victims on both sides of this conflict. Hopefully, Israel will come to its senses and end Netanyahu’s rein of terror and Hamas’s as well.
Settlements of all kinds need to be disbanded and negotiations need to begin as the world demands a two state solution. The world also needs to support the Palestinian Authority; warts and all, against Hamas and terror of any kind.
John Oliver had a good rant about how both the Palestinians and Israelis have been betrayed by absolutely horrible leadership.
My guess is you could have picked any half-dozen random Palestinians and the same for Israel, put 'em in a room and whatever the hell they'd come up with would be far better than what we have now.
If I was a Palestinian I'd be furious with these Hamas motherfuckers, they go and poke the bear and then come back and hide in the relative safety of their holes while those of us on the surface get the shit kicked out of us. And they don't care, they're so much in thrall to their dreams of glory and martyrdom. Religious fanatics are the same the world over.
And yet... if I was living in Palestine right now, would I say so? Probably not. Once the bombing starts, people tend to rally behind their leaders, even if their leaders are monsters who got them into the shit in the first place. Not only because they fear punishment, but because of some lizard-brain-tribalism thing we've got that is not serving us well, to put it mildly.
The problem for the Palestinians is that there was only one election held in 2006, after Israel unilaterally removed themselves from Gaza. Since then, Gaza has been under authoritarian rule; dissent isn’t tolerated and torture is frequently used as a cudgel.
Additionally, when you consider that 70% of the population wasn’t even alive in 2006, no one can say Hamas is well respected by the people.
It’s a conundrum, with innocent Palestinians caught between a rock and a hard place.
True, both sides have been cursed with awful leadership, although the Israelis have had many more opportunities to change their leadership and still ended up at awful.
For a long time I had a crackpot solution to Israel/Palestine: two states, divided along pre-'67 lines, right of return for Palestinian families kicked off their land in '47, right of settlement for Jews who can buy land in the West Bank. But if you're a Palestinian returnee in Haifa, you're a citizen of Palestine and don't vote on Israeli matters, and if you're a Jew in Hebron you're an Israeli citizen with no say in Palestinian matters (unless you apply for citizenship in the 'other' country and are accepted). Israel and Palestine both control their own borders, no Israeli soldiers on Palestinian land (or vice versa, but that's never been a prospect). It was kind of an extension of something a character said in Philip Roth's Operation Shylock about Jewish settlers: "if they're so eager to live where Abraham kissed God's ass, they can do it under a Palestinian government."
I thought that each side effectively leaving hostages in the other side's territory would act as deterrence for both (it actually sometimes worked that way in the ancient world), but now I'm afraid it would just be seen as an opportunity to do some more ethnic cleansing.
The big story this morning in Michigan is the "hundreds of Jews stranded at Dulles" because their charter bus drivers supposedly didn't want them to attend. Thank you for pointing out, on Twitter, that the Metroline train runs all the way to Dulles and they could have just bought tickets that would take them to the National Mall. But being Detroiters, I'm sure many were unfamiliar with the entire idea of mass transit. No city this size does it as badly as we do.
I was in DC yesterday and saw lots of flag-draped folks heading to the mall as I made my way to Union Station. Didn't hear any speeches but there were a lot of smiling, laughing people. Kids, too.
This is beautiful. And sad. I'm always flattered, too.
"In the old days in New York whenever they approached me from their silly RVs I had always been flattered to be approached, to be asked if I was Jewish, as if I could ever be part of the grand thing they were. How much we lose and keep losing."
Next time the armageddon comes up for adjudication before Il Corto di Tutti Corti I assume there'll be some wacked out billionaire christo-fascisto plaintiff, swirlin' the keyring from a new nitro-fueled hyperdrive RV and smiling knowingly RV King's way...
Since 2016 we have been giving the $3.8 billion per year in military aid. A bunch of Hamas bombings are unlikely to put too big a dent in that $20+ billion
Any either/or, you're-either-with-us-or-against-us dichotomies are made even more indefensible by the fact that, because it's a quasi-religious state, Israel is three/three/three mints in one: There is (sic) The Jews. There is Israel-the-nation. And there is the Israeli government. That pro/con duality represents two-dimensional thinking in a three-dimensional world.
Incidentally, quite a few countries base their founding ethos on either Christianity or Islam. If there were more than one Jewish nation the psychology would be different.
The street-level view of humanity almost always looks better than the one filtered through any kind of media. Trouble is, the Man On The Street doesn't have much pull in the board room or negotiation table, and that's where their troubles begin. I appreciate your reports from the trenches very much, since it is impossible to get this kind of view of any protest any other way than going there.
The thing about the whole "standing with Israel" con that bugs me most is it deliberately obscures the event that precipitated it. Not the attack itself as such, just the fact that it happened. You can argue about the morality or practicality of what I would call the Netanyahu Plan (essentially slowly squeeze the Palestinians out of existence), but the explicit deal the Israeli people made with Netanyahu guarantees attacks like this will happen. So, the implicit agreement is "we'll be ready for them". And they weren't. They failed the people of Israel in the most fundamental job of any government. And the result? "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, we must Stand With Israel!". It's a con that would make Trump blush. And it will probably work. Again.
The thing about guys like Bibi and Trump is that they're not as risk-averse as normal people, because they've lived charmed lives where they've never had to face any consequences. And that probably leads to a certain recklessness in all other things: "Let's keep makin' the Palestinians eat shit, the army will keep it under control" would strike most people as dangerously hubristic, but for Bibi taking huge risks and making others pay the consequences while he skates free is just how he's lived his whole life.
Yeah, exactly. Like I said, you can make arguments against (and for) the deal, but they had a deal. And Bibi baby blew it. He had one job, as the kids say. As much as it all depresses me, the mindless and mindful slaughter, the fact that he's skating on the failure at most fundamental job a leader has is even more enraging than Trump skating on his shallow corruption (so far) of everything he touches.
In the future, we should only elect POC from the lower income stratum for whom life is a tightrope walk and the slightest misstep means the severest punishment. That's how you get yerself some extra-cautious leadership.
Most of humanity wishes to live and let live. Some people would prefer to kill us all and let god sort it. We humanitarians need to take those people into account and plan accordingly whenever/wherever life happens.
Yeah, but after fucking up the world order and world economy, he had the decency (for lack of a better word) to retire from power and public life. In his defense, I'll say I think he didn't intend to do all that, and once he realized what his neocon pals had gotten hin into, he backed off slightly, which was about all he was capable of. He still owns the title of Worst President Ever for the combination of falling in with bad companions and being dumber than a box of rocks. He'll never pay a price for what he allowed to happen in his name beyond being a punch line in history. Wow, i didn't intend to mount a defense of George Fucking Schrub, but here I am. That's how passed I am at Netanyahu. I really hope the Israeli voters find a way to hold him accountable, since no one else will.
A good march, of protest or support, is a fine counter to Elias Canetti’s mindless, destructive mob. Glad to see another one that didn’t morph into a mob, unlike January 6th.
Most people are, in fact , reasonable. The assholes stand out. Seems like we could marginalize them a bit better. (Like, not putting assholes in charge I guess.)
I'm at the hospital. My wife is having surgery. Not major, though not minor either. The hard part will be the potential 6 - 10 weeks on a liquid diet. My wife has been honest about our marriage not lasting through that.
When I first went out to the waiting room there was some tall , older ex - realtor looking guy talking to the chaplain who was explaining to him they wouldn't change the TV to Fox News because it upset people. He retired rather sullenly to a corner to watch it on his phone. Everyone seemed relieved.
Thanks for attending these things - it's always interesting.
Pro tip: Gym shoes for gym music.
I guess I was kinda goin' for a "Gym dance shoes are to shoes as gym dance music is to music" sorta thing. Unsuccessfully, in retrospect (which is pretty much the only spect I got).
No realtor like an ex-realtor.
The sense of entitlement from some people.
I tells ya, it's the petty boojie, figuring because they managed to sneak a toe into the business realm that the world owes them.
And to think that all that prosperity was the result of price-fixing! Hey, that's not how the Free Market is 'sposed to work!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/realestate/nar-antitrust-lawsuit.html
I’m shocked, SHOCKED there is gambling going on in this establishment!
Best wishes to her (and you) for a full and not too uncomfortable recovery.
Thanks! She's already had an emergency appendectomy and her gall bladder removed this year. At least she,'s made her deductible!
Jesus, what a year! It's horrible we have to regard "meeting her deductible" as such a rousing high point, but that's U.S. health insurance for you.
Ain't that America! It's like it's some kind of fucking holiday.
Liked because it's true, not because I approve.
Holy cow that is about what happened to my wife. Although to be fair, she had and emergency surgery to fix her strangulating hernias, but she followed that up with a gall bladder, and then a final (we hope) one to go in and fix it all.
Hope all goes well.
Yikes! Good luck to her and you.
Wishing for good outcome and easy recovery for her, and you.
"...I had always been flattered to be approached, to be asked if I was Jewish, as if I could ever be part of the grand thing they were. How much we lose and keep losing."
I feel that; like (as a non-American) I feel like I've lost "America." Both ideas are kinda intertwined in my mind.
This is a terrible mess. Solutions are beyond me, so I'm basically keeping my mouth shut (because I don't know what to say that would help in any way).
Yeah, there's the "It's all been said" syndrome, but also the counter – maybe been said, but not yet convincing (or artistic, or forceful) enough.
Always room for more nuance, and especially more coherence.
I don't disagree, but I don't feel that I personally have anything constructive/instructive to say right now.
Fair enough. I feel that way pretty much all the time, but manage to say stupid stuff early and often anyway.
Kudos for taciturnity.
I'll say this: disagreeing with policies of the government of Israel (which I do) doesn't automatically make me an anti-Semite or pro-Hamas.
The Anti-Defamation League has been including pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations in a nationwide map of antisemitic attacks (now labeled "antisemitic and anti-Israel") so they can put people peacefully demonstrating in Penn Station on the map right next to "guy spray-paints a Star of David on a storefront."
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/11/palestine-israel-protests-ceasefire-antisemitic/
And that sort of bullshit absolutetism is why we can’t have nice things. Thanks ADL, NRA, GOP, etc, etc. Also, too, Hamas obvs., and fuckin Bibi and his crew of incompetent corruptocrats.
Not losing, not when jewel-like prose still prevails...
Cheers.
I think the rhetoric from conservatives – most of whom are not Jewish, at least in the U.S. – obscures a great deal, as it’s intended to. Most Americans support Israel, but if you drill down that doesn’t mean they support unlimited Zionism. The “pick a side” rhetoric also obscures how many Jews in Israel and how many liberal Jews in the states oppose Netanyahu’s policies, how many have marched and rallied in opposition to the slaughter of Palestinian civilians and called for a ceasefire.
That said, the slide from opposing Israel’s policies into antisemitism has proven to be alarmingly slippery – far more so than I would have imagined in the U.S., at least. I blame Trump and MAGA for softening that ground, but a dispiriting amount of it is also being insinuated by the Left. And as Roy has pointed out before, the way the hostilities are being framed so closely mirrors the post-9/11 build up to the Iraq war it’s hard to see how the rhetoric is walked back. I'm glad this appears to have been more a rally in support of Israel than an opportunity to lean heavily on anti-Palestinian sentiment.
Might this have anything to do with the "crisis" *of boyhood/manhood? When the (good ol') boys are no longer the protectors because the protectorates have finally cast them off, what's left for them?
* scare quotes as needed. The "crisis", if there is one, encompasses all humanity, but 'round these parts it's mostly guys that seem to be getting the attention of our professional crisis mongers. Odd, that...
“the slide from opposing Israel’s policies into antisemitism has proven to be alarmingly slippery”
It’s something people have been trained in for a long, long time. Variations on the theme “you’re either with us or against us.” Any criticism (no matter how valid and constructive!) of the USA means you “hate America.” Any criticism of the Democratic Party means “you want Trump to win.” Any criticism of the carceral state means you’re “soft on crime.” It’s really easy to use the template, and this version packs a particularly powerful, cynical punch.
Very, very true, sadly enough. And the historical roots of antisemitism are deep.
Exactly. Genuine antisemitism is very real. That’s why this cynical abuse of the term is so dangerous and gross. It drains the term of any real meaning to apply it indiscriminately. It also dehumanizes Jewish people by implicitly asserting that every one of them, everywhere, de facto endorses every action taken by Israel’s government — and by implication also makes them responsible for every such action. It’s a despicably gross way to co-opt a huge number of people, and their generational experiences, and their suffering.
Last year everyone was worried about inflation, this year the problem is conflation (of peaceful protest with terrorism.)
About six months age a teenage family member shocked me by spouting explicitly Antisemitic tropes. This makes me think there's been a lot of the stuff on social media recently. So the pro-Palestinian--anti-Jewish slippery slide is almost certainly going in both directions!
Jesus, that's depressing to hear young people are picking this shit up.
Antisemites - growing up
Little nitwits - all fucked up
Who ya gonna blame? THE PARENTS!
Fucked up instead of fetched up, that's the problem.
NOW you got it!
He didn't get it from his parents, though he might have been trying to out-left them.
What can I say?
My Zionist sympathies took a huge hit when Israelis freely voted into power Nazi-esque ex-terrorists with Begin in the mid-70s or so. I mean, if Israelis *wanted* to be Nazis... The irony can kill you.
And speaking of irony, I'm starting to equate Hamas (not an endorsement of anything they've done), compare/contrast the Warshaw ghetto 1942.
Mandatory reminder: The $2b Abraham accords at the least did more than its fair share to trigger 10/7. Not that they're really anything more than commercial policies...
Almost forgot; word of the day:
"The new word “humineral” (人矿 rén kuàng) has taken the Chinese internet by storm and is now a sensitive word subject to censorship. First introduced in a now-censored Zhihu post... “humineral”... describes a person relentlessly exploited by society until they are eventually discarded on the refuse pile.
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/02/word-of-the-week-huminerals-%E4%BA%BA%E7%9F%BF-ren-kuang/
1. Huminerals: You are a resource, not a protagonist. You are a means, not an end. Your life’s work will go towards the fulfillment of others instead of the pursuit of your own desires.
2. The life of a humineral can be divided into three stages: extraction, exploitation, and slag removal. Investment in your education over your first decade or so is oriented at extracting your potential—turning you into usable ore. The middle decades are a process of exploitation and consumption. When you’re finally useless, they’ll use the least polluting method possible to dispose of you.
**
8. Huminerals power the motors that turn the wheels of history. Huminerals have few other choices: either fuel history’s engine, or be ground beneath its wheels. Of course the inverse is true. If huminerals were to stop propelling history, then those other huminerals who abstained would not be crushed. Yet there are always huminerals who see more value in a lifetime of being fuel than to risk being flattened."
"Now you can go where they get things done / Brace yourself, my son"
We used to just call this "slavery".
Yeah, no, all that stuff applies to workers. Slaves once, the masses now.
“Forget about it Jake, it’s Capitalismtown”
For whatever it's worth, I'm personally becoming convinced that 10/7 was a reaction to the Israeli attack on the al-Aqsa mosque earlier this year.
Well, in a sense it all flows from ca. 1947 where the UK did the same fine job preparing Palestine/Israel for independence as they did for India.
I don’t think an attack on al-Aqsa would trigger an attack the size of 10/7. Now, the Abraham accords locking the complete Arab world off from giving Palestinians *any* meaningful support for anything better than their current situation. It wasn’t an act of anger over the mosque but 1,000% desperation.
Meanwhile, it’s going to go on and on and on...
Not going to put on a hazmat suit and go into the mind of Hamas, but it also pretty successfully scuttled any talk of Israeli/Saudi normalization of relations.
Both sides?
I grew up in a liberal Jewish family which had basically four political dogmas:
1. FDR saved this country
2. Never cross a picket line
3. We Shall Overcome
4. Israel is never wrong.
It really hurt to have to abandon #4; Jewish exceptionalism, like American exceptionalism, is a helluva drug. Guess I've gone from:
Israel is always in the right, to
If Israel is ever in the wrong, they were intolerably provoked into it by their enemies, to
Israel is, like every other country, a land of moral contrasts, to
Israel is trying very, very hard to lose any degree of sympathy I ever had for it, to
If I had to choose which march to go to, it would be the one chanting "From the River to the Sea..."
Hearted for your self-reporting. Most all of us got eye-scales to shed – always painful, and some never manage to, maybe just avoiding the pain...
I feel you, and as much as I love Israel, it’s hard to root for Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Israel to me, is like America under Trump rule; complete chaos, dysfunction; with the true enemy operating from within.
That said, I don’t have any sympathy for Hamas either. Just the victims on both sides of this conflict. Hopefully, Israel will come to its senses and end Netanyahu’s rein of terror and Hamas’s as well.
Settlements of all kinds need to be disbanded and negotiations need to begin as the world demands a two state solution. The world also needs to support the Palestinian Authority; warts and all, against Hamas and terror of any kind.
Just some thoughts...:)
John Oliver had a good rant about how both the Palestinians and Israelis have been betrayed by absolutely horrible leadership.
My guess is you could have picked any half-dozen random Palestinians and the same for Israel, put 'em in a room and whatever the hell they'd come up with would be far better than what we have now.
Wholeheartedly agree. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than the current leadership on both sides...:)
If I was a Palestinian I'd be furious with these Hamas motherfuckers, they go and poke the bear and then come back and hide in the relative safety of their holes while those of us on the surface get the shit kicked out of us. And they don't care, they're so much in thrall to their dreams of glory and martyrdom. Religious fanatics are the same the world over.
And yet... if I was living in Palestine right now, would I say so? Probably not. Once the bombing starts, people tend to rally behind their leaders, even if their leaders are monsters who got them into the shit in the first place. Not only because they fear punishment, but because of some lizard-brain-tribalism thing we've got that is not serving us well, to put it mildly.
The problem for the Palestinians is that there was only one election held in 2006, after Israel unilaterally removed themselves from Gaza. Since then, Gaza has been under authoritarian rule; dissent isn’t tolerated and torture is frequently used as a cudgel.
Additionally, when you consider that 70% of the population wasn’t even alive in 2006, no one can say Hamas is well respected by the people.
It’s a conundrum, with innocent Palestinians caught between a rock and a hard place.
True, both sides have been cursed with awful leadership, although the Israelis have had many more opportunities to change their leadership and still ended up at awful.
For a long time I had a crackpot solution to Israel/Palestine: two states, divided along pre-'67 lines, right of return for Palestinian families kicked off their land in '47, right of settlement for Jews who can buy land in the West Bank. But if you're a Palestinian returnee in Haifa, you're a citizen of Palestine and don't vote on Israeli matters, and if you're a Jew in Hebron you're an Israeli citizen with no say in Palestinian matters (unless you apply for citizenship in the 'other' country and are accepted). Israel and Palestine both control their own borders, no Israeli soldiers on Palestinian land (or vice versa, but that's never been a prospect). It was kind of an extension of something a character said in Philip Roth's Operation Shylock about Jewish settlers: "if they're so eager to live where Abraham kissed God's ass, they can do it under a Palestinian government."
I thought that each side effectively leaving hostages in the other side's territory would act as deterrence for both (it actually sometimes worked that way in the ancient world), but now I'm afraid it would just be seen as an opportunity to do some more ethnic cleansing.
I'm not Jewish either, Roy ... but Shalom.
The big story this morning in Michigan is the "hundreds of Jews stranded at Dulles" because their charter bus drivers supposedly didn't want them to attend. Thank you for pointing out, on Twitter, that the Metroline train runs all the way to Dulles and they could have just bought tickets that would take them to the National Mall. But being Detroiters, I'm sure many were unfamiliar with the entire idea of mass transit. No city this size does it as badly as we do.
I was in DC yesterday and saw lots of flag-draped folks heading to the mall as I made my way to Union Station. Didn't hear any speeches but there were a lot of smiling, laughing people. Kids, too.
This is beautiful. And sad. I'm always flattered, too.
"In the old days in New York whenever they approached me from their silly RVs I had always been flattered to be approached, to be asked if I was Jewish, as if I could ever be part of the grand thing they were. How much we lose and keep losing."
"approached me from their silly RVs"
Clarence Thomas has found his new religion.
Next time the armageddon comes up for adjudication before Il Corto di Tutti Corti I assume there'll be some wacked out billionaire christo-fascisto plaintiff, swirlin' the keyring from a new nitro-fueled hyperdrive RV and smiling knowingly RV King's way...
I'm glad to hear Mike Johnson got a warm welcome, I guess Israel didn't need that $14 billion in aid after all.
Well, if you believe the Economist or whoever it is tracks national incomes, tax base and GDP, you are correct.
But, you know, I like to give billions to my friends even when they don't need it, it's a nice gesture.
Hearted 'cause I don't need it...and I always appreciate a nice gesture...!
Since 2016 we have been giving the $3.8 billion per year in military aid. A bunch of Hamas bombings are unlikely to put too big a dent in that $20+ billion
Any either/or, you're-either-with-us-or-against-us dichotomies are made even more indefensible by the fact that, because it's a quasi-religious state, Israel is three/three/three mints in one: There is (sic) The Jews. There is Israel-the-nation. And there is the Israeli government. That pro/con duality represents two-dimensional thinking in a three-dimensional world.
"That pro/con duality represents two-dimensional thinking"
I think you're being one dimension too generous, they want to confine us to a number line, they'd never allow us to roam freely about the x-y plane.
I think if we’re dipping our toes into Middle Eastern politics, we better plan on n-space analysis
Newly-minted with only di-flections
They can't figure out tri-flections
They say with their smirks:
"Maths! How does it works?
The x-, the y-, and the z-directions?"
Incidentally, quite a few countries base their founding ethos on either Christianity or Islam. If there were more than one Jewish nation the psychology would be different.
Thanks. You've wordified a notion I'd pondered but could not quite espouse cogently.
Proper wordifying can be edifying.
These days seems like we're leaning toward absurdifying...
It's always Flatland for some
Well, the Palestinians SAID they wanted a homeland, didn't they? Didn't specify how many dimensions they wanted, did they?
Roy got there late, that must be why he missed the guy with the "Sasquatch Israel" sign.
That guy's elusive, you know.
Nice one.
The street-level view of humanity almost always looks better than the one filtered through any kind of media. Trouble is, the Man On The Street doesn't have much pull in the board room or negotiation table, and that's where their troubles begin. I appreciate your reports from the trenches very much, since it is impossible to get this kind of view of any protest any other way than going there.
The thing about the whole "standing with Israel" con that bugs me most is it deliberately obscures the event that precipitated it. Not the attack itself as such, just the fact that it happened. You can argue about the morality or practicality of what I would call the Netanyahu Plan (essentially slowly squeeze the Palestinians out of existence), but the explicit deal the Israeli people made with Netanyahu guarantees attacks like this will happen. So, the implicit agreement is "we'll be ready for them". And they weren't. They failed the people of Israel in the most fundamental job of any government. And the result? "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, we must Stand With Israel!". It's a con that would make Trump blush. And it will probably work. Again.
The thing about guys like Bibi and Trump is that they're not as risk-averse as normal people, because they've lived charmed lives where they've never had to face any consequences. And that probably leads to a certain recklessness in all other things: "Let's keep makin' the Palestinians eat shit, the army will keep it under control" would strike most people as dangerously hubristic, but for Bibi taking huge risks and making others pay the consequences while he skates free is just how he's lived his whole life.
Yeah, exactly. Like I said, you can make arguments against (and for) the deal, but they had a deal. And Bibi baby blew it. He had one job, as the kids say. As much as it all depresses me, the mindless and mindful slaughter, the fact that he's skating on the failure at most fundamental job a leader has is even more enraging than Trump skating on his shallow corruption (so far) of everything he touches.
Yup.
Cautionary-ness: What are We missing?
In the future, we should only elect POC from the lower income stratum for whom life is a tightrope walk and the slightest misstep means the severest punishment. That's how you get yerself some extra-cautious leadership.
My political philosophy goes something like this:
Most of humanity wishes to live and let live. Some people would prefer to kill us all and let god sort it. We humanitarians need to take those people into account and plan accordingly whenever/wherever life happens.
Softly big-sticking. Trusty/verifying. Armslengthing.
Heart wide open, but also eyes, ears, nose & etc.
TLDR: Hope best, assume worst, plan as needed.
OK, you got the job, when can you start?
Well, Bush the Younger skated too. There's precedent.
Yeah, but after fucking up the world order and world economy, he had the decency (for lack of a better word) to retire from power and public life. In his defense, I'll say I think he didn't intend to do all that, and once he realized what his neocon pals had gotten hin into, he backed off slightly, which was about all he was capable of. He still owns the title of Worst President Ever for the combination of falling in with bad companions and being dumber than a box of rocks. He'll never pay a price for what he allowed to happen in his name beyond being a punch line in history. Wow, i didn't intend to mount a defense of George Fucking Schrub, but here I am. That's how passed I am at Netanyahu. I really hope the Israeli voters find a way to hold him accountable, since no one else will.