Feingold defends Israel's attack response

[Tinoire]

Feingold defends Israel's attack response

SATURDAY, July 15, 2006, 4:29 p.m.
By Craig Gilbert

Platteville - U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold today defended Israel's right to protect itself amid the escalating conflict along its borders, saying, "I don't think any country is going to let their soldiers be kidnapped, transported, killed ... without a serious response."

Feingold said he would not second-guess "whether that response was exactly as it should be."

Said Feingold: "My hope would be that Israel would use as much restraint as possible .... It's in Israel's interest and the interests of peace. But I do think Israel has not only a right but also a responsibility to respond to the Hezbollah attack."

The Wisconsin Democrat, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke with reporters about the issue as he set off on a political swing through Iowa. Feingold is a potential presidential candidate in 2008.

(snip)


When a constituent at the Wisconsin session criticized both the Palestinians and the Israeli government for taking a "dysfunctional" approach to the conflict and said the U.S. needed to "lean on Israel" to change its behavior, Feingold offered a different view.

"There's blame to go around for everybody," he said, but he argued that Israel had been acting constructively in recent years and blamed Hezbollah, Iran and Syria for provoking the current crisis.

"They are facing a two-front war now, and it's a tiny country," Feingold said of Israel.

Feingold posted a statement on his Web site Friday saying, "I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks."


http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&date=7/15/2006&id=8593

[mom person]

:fight:

[chlamor]

Yes, play the victim some more. In this crazy world Israel and the US, nuclear powers, are the oppressors and play the victim. People throwing rocks, using two dollar box cutters and using their bodies as missiles are the oppressors. Over 3000 Palestinians including women and children have been slaughtered since 2000. And they live under a brutal occupation that has gone on for 40 years. I have a solution to the rockets launched into Israel. Let the US arm the Palestinians with F-15s, Apache Helicopters, tanks, missiles and so and so on. Then they too can kill Israelis in the high-tech manner and be consided victims too. Throw a spear and you're a savage - a cannibal - a terrorist, etc. Fire a missile from 30,000 feet and your a victim. This politically correct crap is over. Israel is an apartheid, fascist state and will go down the same way as South Africa and Nazi Germany. None too soon as far as I'm concerned.

Fuck Feingold.

[Stop_the_War]

n/t

[Stop_the_War]

n/t

[marshwren]

...the power of the Israeli lobby...which (like global warming) is something only amerikkkans don't believe exists. The power of outfits like AIPAC to punish politicians who don't kowtow to the "poor, little, defenseless Israel" line will find themselves slime-boated (a technique AIPAC perfected decades before 2004), their funding cut off, and given instead to any challenger willing to be a rubberstamp for Israeli aggression. For decades (e.g. since 1948), this was the sole provenance of Democrats; with the neo-con/funny-mentalist christian alliance, the GOP has muscled in on the Israeli lobby's fundraising lagress and propoganda machinery. If Democrats were smart (yes, i know, an oxymoron), they'd let the GOP have Israel--its racist annexation policies and illegal nukes and all--and start championing more sensible, workable solutions, without having to suck up to Likud or Kadima.

[Genius]

He's done some good stuff but sometimes people need to look beyond their own heritage for the right answers.

[Two Americas]

What does "heritage" mean and what is the relevancy here?

[Genius]

While a lot of Jews are open-minded and oppose what Israel is doing, Feingold seems to be blind to its faults.

[Two Americas]

There is no group of people called "the Jews" who are this way, that way or the other.

The man's presumed ethnicity is not relevant.

You can't judge the group by the individual and you can't judge the individual by the group.

[Genius]

I was simply looking at the fact that a lot of his votes have been pro-Israel and this concerns me.

[Two Americas]

An important distinction needs to be made. It is not right to say that people do or say the things they say or do because they are something. "Oh sure you would say that, you are a liberal" is a way to discredit the speaker and nullify their argument. Similarly, we hear about "Christians" being such and such or "red state" people being this way or that way.

There is something very suppressive about making what a person says or does subordinate to what they supposedly are. It is the same thinking as racism, and that isn't changed by making generalizations and assumptions about people in a "good cause" such as opposing the actions of Israel or opposing the actions of the Dominionists.

Of course the Dominionists say they are fighting for all Christians and represent Christianity, of course the Zionists say they are fighting for all Jews, of course the Bush administration says they are fighting for all Americans. But we shouldn't be fooled, and whether you are for or against the Dominionists is less important than whether or not you buy into their pretense of being representative of Christianity.

There is another reason this is important. We have many people in the Demcoratoc party and in liberal organizations claiming to be the opposition to the right wing and to be representing all who are in opposition to the right wing.

Yet another reason to make distinctions here is the trend toward labeling people as illegal for what they are rather than for what they did. "He is a terrorist" then justifies imprisonment and torture regardless of what he has done. "Those people are illegal" is another example. In each case, the presumed group that a person belongs to makes them guilty until proved innocent. That is exactly where assigning individuals first and foremost into these groups and making their identity more important than their actions leads.

The ruling class doesn't so much care which groups you hate and which individuals you assign to a group, just so long as you are seeing people that way rather than as individuals. Once we stop seeing people as individuals, tyrants can easily assign people into different groups for us and thereby gain our complicity for anything they want to do to them.

[mhkeefer]

Reading it, I found myself thinking of the images you've recently posted at the PI Bar & Grill of your own beautiful cherry orchard, and of the people of all kinds who have come there to pick fruit for themselves, faces wreathed in happiness--and children ornamented with the same cherry earings I remember inventing as a child.

How can we refuse the metaphor?

The Hebrew word for 'orchard'--'pardes' (paradise)--is borrowed from ancient Persian, ancestor of modern Farsi, the language of Iran.

That originary 'pardes' was in what we now call Iraq, cradle of civilizations--reduced to a depleted-uranium-polluted torture house by American invaders who have discovered depths of barbarism unimagined by the Mongol invaders under Hulagu in the 13th century.

Now Ehud Olmert and George Bush would like to reduce Iran and Syria to a comparable state of desolation.

'Pardes' is not just the place from which our mythical common first ancestors were expelled, but also the place to which--as that symbolically central book of the Torah, the Song of Songs, tells us--unconditional love enables us to return.

"Shelahayikh pardes rimonim 'im peri megadim keparim 'im neradim nerd wekarkom qaneh weqinamon":

"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire with spikenard, Spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon..." (Song of Songs, 4:13-14).

(I'm no Hebrew scholar myself: the transliteration and translation are by my old friend Francis Landy, in his superb essay on the Song of Songs in Robert Alter's and Frank Kermode's 'Literary Guide to the Bible'.)

But these words may help to remind us of how thoroughly the Israeli aggressors, with their apartheid Wall, their theft and destruction of Palestinian orchards and murderous treatment of their rightful owners, and now their renewed assaults upon the Palestinians and the Lebanese, are befouling their own most precious traditions.

Thanks again, dear Mberst-- for your orchard, and for your analyses.

[Flipper]

Ariel Sharon: 'We control America'
Palestinian Information Centre
Wednesday, October 3, 2001

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM -- An acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres during which Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we control America."

According the Israeli Hebrew radio Kol Yisrael Wednesday, Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and turn the US against us.

At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying

"every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

[Two Americas]

What does that mean to you? What conclusions do you draw?

[Two Americas]

Thank you.

[Raphaelle]

What else would cloud his vision other than his indoctrinated tribalism from a politician who sees clearer than most on everything else?

[Two Americas]

It doesn't matter. A person's opinion is just the same regardless of what they "are" or what we think they "are."

Speculating that a person thinks or says something because of what they "are" - or what we imagine they are - is never a good idea, regardless of the circumstances.

[Raphaelle]

The disdain you hold for white surburban liberals and their niche issues and pet projects are legendary and then you lecture on political correctness, accusing everyone else of sweeping generalizations. Then you claim it is a question of certain groups having more power so criticizing them is justified. What group has more power than the Israeli lobby, mberst? And why is it acceptible to condemn American militaristic nationalism but not American Jews allegiance to Israeli despite the lies and barbarism?

But what is the point--You will just revert right back to your refrain.

[Genius]

Levin is the worst when it comes to receiving AIPAC money. Let's ask them what AIPAC got in return for their dollars. As far as I can tell, the Democrats have more to worry about this than the Republicans and the Republicans have no qualms about filing ethics charges against our people. Personally, I think these people could be indicted over this stuff - if a prosecuter wanted to make the case that they are accepting bribes for votes. Maybe, if we diplomatically point out the dollars and the votes to the big receivers, they'll start voting against AIPAC. We have to be careful how we present it though. We should say that we are just discussing information that is currently publicly available and that others are likely making the same connections.

[Two Americas]

It is wrong to blame all people of Jewish descent for what Israel does.

It would also be wrong to blame all white suburban people for what America does. I don't believe I have done that.

[Raphaelle]

The commentary is on the silence or the Israeli nationalism--to the point of defending ruthless war criminals and racists but you are twisting it into a antisemitism charge--the same tactic used to impose the silence.