For those in the comments below who continue to insist that Israel should have tried to arrest the head of Hamas rather than kill him, why not take a look at the founding document of the terrorist group, The Covenants of the Hamas. Right off the bat it shows that Hamas has declared itself at war with Israel (by the way, Hamas terrorists are not citizens of Israel).
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
And then just to be clear it says the following:
[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.
Israel is at war for its very life. It’s one thing to debate Israel’s dealings with the Palestinian population as a whole, but how it deals with a terrorist group at war with every Jew is something else entirely.
Oh Al, give me a break. “Israel“nobody could be that depraved”). I don’t blame them one iota for saying “never again.”
“God enforces the natural law.”
How, in this case?
On another thread, Al invited me to “go ahead and do your worst.” Against my better judgment, OK.
The reason Al would not try his theory on a street in Israel, John, is that he believes, among who know how many other anti-Semitic lies, that Marx and Lenin were Jews. That is not true (each had some Jewish ancestors, but neither was ever “baptized” or practiced Judaism). He also has referred to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as being “of disputed authenticity.”
The evidence is here:
http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2004/03/nat_hentoff.html
Chris,
That was a helpful difference made.
This whole discussion is helpful because I want to support Israel, but I can’t if we give them the green light that anythiing goes because of the Holocost. I’m not sure that they are as in imminent danger as before they became a state or just afterwards-they have become a fairly strong player since then.
But I will agree that “Palestinians” (again, a 20th century definition of a variety of Arabs) bear the worse sins because the violence is aimed at completely eliminating all Jews.
Israel has every right to defend itself, but to do without conscience or with more force than necessary will make me question my support of that action. To kill Palestinians out of revenge is unacceptable, but to defend their people, heritage, way of life, land, peace-what can we call acceptable? It’s an honest question I often struggle with.
Al is again trying to dress up his anti-Semitism as a scholarly dispute about historical theory and intellectual influences.
It is not. It is three very simple matters of fact.
A baptized Lutheran or Orthodox can read all the Jewish intellectuals in the world, can freebase Moses Hess, can build a statue to Trotsky the Secular Messiah, can subscribe to the New Republic until the Parousia, can dance the Hatikvah to Jerusalem and back—NONE of that makes one a Jew. And THAT is what Al said elsewhere. Here are the quotes, for those who (understandably) don’t want to slog through Amy’s thread.
“The involvement of Secular Jews in Bolshevism is well known, and hardly disputable. From Marx, to Lenin, to Trotsky, to Schiff.”
AND
“Then you give an example (Mao, a communist) derived from a secular jewish source (Marx).”
NOT Jewish-influenced Marx or Lenin, but the Jew/Jewish Marx and the Jew Lenin. This is a simple factual point that Al is trying to obscure by raising dust and wind about secret histories.
In addition (and unacknowledged here) is Al’s chin-stroking half-skepticism about the notorious czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This is very simple, folks. Anyone who says something as demonstrably and unambiguously false as “Marx and Lenin were Jews” or that the Protocols are of “disputed authenticity” “as far as I know” because “I’ve never read them, or looked into their authenticity at all. I have no interest in them” (while taking great interest in the Jewish parentage of Lenin)—that person is either an anti-Semite himself or is credulously learning history from people who unquestionably are.
Nothing Al says about Israel or anything involving Jews should be taken seriously. And since I have promised Dom that this will not become D’Hippolito-Shea Redux, this will be my last word on the subject, here or anywhere else, unless Al has a major change of heart.
A quick google search will yield numerous references to Marx’s Jewish Heritage as a catalyst for his Messianism. FromCommentary, To The Catholic Encyclopedia(“Yet the services of Karl Marx and of his friend and brother-Hebrew, Friedrich Engels, to the cause of Socialism must not be underrated. These two writers came upon the scene just when the Socialist movement was at its lowest ebb.”>, To Gertrude Himmelfarb, to Christopher Hitchens: “
Marx was of course a non-Jewish Jew, and Berman hails from the garment district of radical tradition. He shows a keen awareness of the displaced messianism that lurks in Marx’s work-and which isn’t the best part of it-but also of its specific appeal to secular Jews in the 20th century. ” and countless other who say the same thing about the influence of Marx’s Judaism on his messianism.
It seems more that Victor has decided that I am an antiSemite (despite frequent assurances to the contrary, and assurances that no, I don’t believe in the “Protocols”—to insulting e-mails) because he doesn’t agree with me, rather than because of anything anti Semitic that I have said.