I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.
She didn’t say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.
And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, “I’m from Arab descent.” That’s it? That’s all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents’ stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?
In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I’ve listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it’s now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It’s about an ingrown, organic hate. It’s a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, “Go home to Palestine.” But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to “go home to Poland and Germany.” Yeah, I said “oooh.”
I think that it’s theoretically possible to express the kind of hatred of Israel that many do and not be anti-semitic. But I don’t think it happens much in real life.
The other day Jim Davis asked me in comments why I (and the Tea Partiers) object to being called “racist” because we oppose President Obama’s policies (or “liberal” or “progressive” policies in general), when I’m willing to call people anti-semitic for their views about Israel.
Here’s the difference. I would be (and have been) criticizing those policies regardless of who was advocating them, or what color their skin is. I’m pretty sure that’s true of most of the Tea Partiers as well. The fact that a black man has ascended to the presidency doesn’t somehow magically and suddenly make such criticism racist.
Israel’s attackers, on the other hand, have a double standard. They attack it for things (e.g., abusing Arabs) that they completely ignore when other countries (notably Arab countries) do them on a much grander scale. They accuse it of war crimes when it takes greater pains, and greater risks to its own troops, than any nation in history, with the possible exception of the US, to minimize collateral civilian casualties. But these same hypocrites ignore or defend the real war crimes of the “Palestinians” — hiding weapons in hospitals and churches and mosques, sneaking through borders in ambulances, deliberately targeting children, fighting out of uniform, using their own women and children as human shields — while castigating Israel.
So yeah, sorry, I think there’s something else going on there. And Helen Thomas just made a massive Kinsleyan gaffe, and revealed what she (and many others) really think. Oooh, indeed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I’ve observed this before, but leftists seem (unaccountably to me) to get their panties much more in a twist about human rights abuses when they’re cross race. Israel making Arabs second-class citizens? The horror! Saddam murdering thousands of his own people? Hey, it’s his business. Mao wiping out tens of millions of Chinese? No biggie, they’re his people. Gotta break some eggs to make the omelette, you know.
Another example was apartheid in South Africa. Not to defend it, but was it really that much worse than what Idi Amin or Mengistu were up to? Really?
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, Israel is going to partially lift the Gaza blockade. That won’t satisfy the critics, though. They won’t be happy until the weapons are flowing freely in. And probably not even then.
[Late evening update]
But there’s no anti-semitism involved:
Radicals, Islamists and Longshoremen blockade Israeli ship in Oakland.
And when someone compares the Israelis to Nazis, it can only be either anti-semitism or profound stupidity and ignorance, even when (or especially when) it’s a Nobel Prize winner. It’s been said before, but the Nobel Prize (in fields other than science) ain’t what it used to be. If it ever was…
[Tuesday morning update]
More useful thoughts from (Christian) Mike Potemra:
…the support for Israel that is offered by me and like-minded people is based not on headline-devouring apocalypticism but on something perduring and eternal: a sense that the fate of the Jews implicates humanity, that a world that refuses to find a place for the Jews is engaged in a rejection of even more fundamental truths. This State of Israel is, yes, a state like all other states; that should go without saying. But how strange that, of all the 200 or so states-just-like-other-states in the world today, this one alone is treated increasingly as a pariah that’s on a deserved path to being wiped out.
I am not ashamed to say that some of my own support for Israel is based in religious motives, even if these motives are not those presented in caricature form by the cultured despisers. And I resent the caricature less than I otherwise would, because I view it as rooted in a deeper obtuseness, the one these despisers show in regard even to their own self-interest and to their own intellectual consistency. The only country in the region with liberal values — that lets, e.g., its religious minorities vote; that has, e.g., gay-pride parades — is the one they view as an embarrassment. This, again, is a level of obtuseness that cannot be explained on a purely rational basis.
It’s the oldest hatred in the world. Of course it’s not rational.
[Bumped]
fighting out of uniform
They should all be executed immediately after interrogation. No trial. Faster if they’re wearing our uniform. We are at war.
Your larger point is well said.
What you have to understand, Rand, is that when leftists take the side of evil vermin, it is not because they are soft-headed nice guys who just don’t have it in them to hurt the poor bastards.
It is because they admire those evil vermin, and wish they were just like them.
Example: a legitimate case can be made against the death penalty. All one would need would be a case of (a) an undeniably innocent man who was executed; or (b) a substantial number of technically guilty men who still should not have been executed (e.g., people who defended themselves in a state that limits self-defense). Either one of these would curb support for capital punishment.
Yet they persist in making their poster children monsters: cop-killers like Leonard Pelletier and Mumia. Why?
Because they wish it was them killing the cop.
This is also why they support gun control: they fantasize about some evil inner city thug raping and murdering a middle-class family, and being able to claim a small piece of the “glory,” much as a boxer’s fans feel tough by virtue of his winning a fight. And they sure as hell don’t want that middle-class family to have the tools with which to defend themselves.
And, of course, it is why they support al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria: because they feel like they’ve had a testosterone surge every time they hear about some low-life Palestinian pedophile (and yes, they are) blows up some Jewish pizza place and kills innocent people. They get all giggly inside, thinking, “Tee hee, I’m such a bad boy. Giggle.”
I don’t take these attacks seriously. It’s like Godwin’s Law, whenever they resort to crying “racism,” you know they’ve run out of truth, logic or both. If it were really racism, it would be obvious to everybody.
Israel hasn’t gone out of its way to kill Arabs who aren’t trying to kill Israelis. There are Arab Israelis, after all, including some who serve in the IDF. The problem with so-called progressives is that their whole mindset is based on finding victims and then using their cause as an avenue to power. Don’t think that Arafat and other terrorists haven’t figured that out and played it like crazy, even as they fleeced their own people and send ignorant dupes out to kill themselves.
That would require a sound, logical reason why Israel, unlike every other nation on the planet, should not exist. If there is one, I haven’t seen it, and I can’t understand why the “anti-zionists” would keep it to themselves. Are they waiting for Usenet Flamewar v. 23408320.3209 or something?
Yet they persist in making their poster children monsters: cop-killers like Leonard Pelletier and Mumia. Why?
Because they wish it was them killing the cop.
I read this a few hours ago and clicked away shaking my head at the idiocy of it. But I just had to come back (lest it go unchallenged) to say that it ranks on my Top Ten List of the stupidest things I’ve ever read on the internet.
Puh-leese, shit like this doesn’t add credence to your opinion, it simply invalidates any point you were trying to make by being light years from believable.
Rand wrote: Here’s the difference. I would be (and have been) criticizing those policies regardless of who was advocating them, or what color their skin is. I’m pretty sure that’s true of most of the Tea Partiers as well. The fact that a black man has ascended to the presidency doesn’t somehow magically and suddenly make such criticism racist.
I absolutely agree with this, but why didn’t the Tea Party come into being until a black man was elected President? Was it coincidence? Was US policy towards Israel so very different during the Bush years? As a non-Jew, the policy seems pretty much unchanged.
but why didn’t the Tea Party come into being until a black man was elected President?
Let’s look at what else happened then: 1) Something like two trillion dollar (combination of ARRA, other federal payouts, and the Fed’s “investments”) was burned on the financial crisis. 2) 2009-2010 had a deficit in a single year nearly as big as the collective deficits of the previous president’s seven other years. The next few years have similar deficits. The US has committed to huge spending increases over the next few decades to fund such things as the new health care plan. 3) The current administration and Congress has exhibited unusually brazen hypocrisy and deception (for a presidential administration). 4) For anyone concerned about the direction of the US, the current administration is a remarkable threat to the US’s future, perhaps the most dire threat so far.
Bottom line is that this is something like the analogy of boiling a frog. If you do it slowly, the frog dies. If you do it too fast (say by dumping frogs in boiling water), then they’ll jump out of the water. If Obama had been willing to go slow or incrementally, he might be able to corrupt the US and destroy its future (that being the effect of his current plans) without causing a massive reaction. He didn’t do that.
Was US policy towards Israel so very different during the Bush years?
In addition to what Karl said about the spending, yes, it was. Bush didn’t demand that Israel stop building in East Jerusalem, when that wasn’t even an issue on the table with Hamas. Bush didn’t apologize to the Arab nations for supporting Israel. Bush didn’t let the Israeli PM cool his heels in the White House while he went to have dinner.
I could go on.
One more point. While not many conservatives or Republicans (or me, being neither) were very happy with spending under the Bush administration (as evidenced by the fact that they stayed home in 2006, which is why the Donkeys took over the Congress), the Obama administration is “spending on steroids” in comparison. And the objection to that among me and the Tea Partiers is over that, not because the president is black.
I can’t speak for the Tea Partiers in that regard, but the fact that he’s black was the only reason to vote for him, as far as I was concerned. So I guess that, in that regard, I am a racist. But nowhere near as much as most Democrats are.
I read this a few hours ago and clicked away shaking my head at the idiocy of it.
OK. So what is your explanation as to why the Left worships cop-killers?
The notion that the Tea Party participants are motivated by racism is absurd.
If race were the motivating factor, the Tea Parties would have started the moment Obama won the election — for he was every bit as black then as he is now. But they did not — and in fact, Obama took office with a 70+% approval rating.
The Tea Parties didn’t start until after Obama’s massive “stimulus” bill was passed and he rolled out his 2000+ page “cap and trade” legislation comprising a takeover of the entire energy sector of the U.S. economy — legislation that he demanded be passed immediately before anyone could even read, let alone fully understand, the fine-print details of this industry-crippling scheme. That was all followed by the GM/Freddie/Fannie bailout, more massive Federal looting of our children‘s future wealth, the global on-his-knees-to-kiss-Muslim-butt apology tour and the rollout of a 2000+ page healthcare “reform” bill that he also demanded be passed in record time.
These are the issues that launched and have sustained the Tea Party movement. Inconvenient facts indeed for the “it’s-all-about-race” self-delusion of the left.
The idea that “the left”, i.e. anyone who doesn’t consider themselves “right wing” or “conservative”, worships cop-killers is kinda funny. I don’t think that one percent of America even knows who Mumia IS, same goes for Leonard Pelletier, so “worship” might be overstepping slightly to make an argument, eh?
I was raised in the SF area during the turbulent 60s-70s and was taught to respect the police. I may not like it when some of them abuse their power, but I certainly don’t want society to turn on the system that keeps anarchy at bay. I think this is true for most of America.
I have never seen “kill the cops” or “Free Mumia” signs at political rallies so I am curious why you think this state of mind exists.
but the fact that he’s black was the only reason to vote for him
I understand this POV, and admit that it played into my vote. I am of Czech heritage but had black friends growing up in Oakland, and I felt that it would be good for black kids to have that role model (all other political considerations aside).
I agree with the base principles of the Tea Party but can’t buy into the partisan rhetoric. It would be better for the movement if people came out and said “Bush trashed our economy, and Obama is continuing to do so.” But it really does seem too partisan to be an honest anti-tax movement.
jmo
The Tea Parties didn’t start until after Obama’s massive “stimulus” bill was passed
From Wikipedia, with lots of documentation, comes “The Tea Party protests are a series of protests across the United States beginning in early 2009;” and “The group had previously held DC protests in 2008…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests
For what it’s worth.
I can’t speak for the Tea Partiers in that regard, but the fact that he’s black was the only reason to vote for him, as far as I was concerned.
Just out of curiosity, did you vote or abstain this time round?
“Here’s the difference. I would be (and have been) criticizing . . . [Obama’s] policies regardless of who was advocating them, or what color their skin is. I’m pretty sure that’s true of most of the Tea Partiers as well. The fact that a black man has ascended to the presidency doesn’t somehow magically and suddenly make such criticism racist.”
I like the way Greg Gutfield puts it in his “Unspeakable Truths” books: He says what he dislikes about Obama is Obama’s ideas; “and I disliked those ideas when they were Jimmy Carter’s, Bill Clinton’s and Al Gores’s.” (Quote approximate, from memory.)
You never have a bulldozer when you need one.
The idea that “the left”, i.e. anyone who doesn’t consider themselves “right wing” or “conservative”
No, that’s not the left. Most people don’t consider themselves anything.
From Wikipedia, with lots of documentation, comes “The Tea Party protests are a series of protests across the United States beginning in early 2009;” and “The group had previously held DC protests in 2008…”
That’s impossible. “The group” didn’t exist until 2009 (and it wasn’t a “group” in any organized sense). Tea parties began after Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant in the wake of TARP and the Porkulus, in late February of 2009.
They did exist before, but they were called “tax protesters”, and they were “lunatics” instead of “racists.”
That was so long ago, you know, before iPads…
People who call Tea Partiers racists apparently believe that if we had a Caucasian president pushing the same Leftist agenda as Obama, those of us in the pro-freedom camp would be okay with that. And—by going by that logic–that if if we had, say, a President Sowell or a President Clarence Thomas pushing a pro-freedom agenda, Tea Partiers would be up in arms simply because of his skin color. Weird.
But I guess if you can buy into the Cult of the State you can believe pretty much anything
Imagine if Obama, soon after taking office, had said, “Yes, it’s true I was raised a Red Diaper Baby, hung with William Ayers, belonged to the New Party with Howard Zinn, was a long-time member of Rev. Wright’s congregation and should ‘Amen!’ to his primitive collectivism, and worked as an Alinskyite community activist. But I just read Bastiat’s THE LAW and Milton Friedman’s CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM, and now I realize that all that all that stuff me and my socialist friends believed in was just bunk! As president I’m going to work for lower taxes and a free market. TANSTAAFL!” Do “liberals” really think there would have been a Tea Party movement?
I’m not much of a racist (a bigot against a race). You can tell because I’m just not very angry and hateful against any races. But sadly I am a pretty big partyist (a bigot against a political party). I’m bigot against the Democratic Party. I try to fight it, but I get very angry and hateful against the Democatic party, including it’s leaders.
Before I switched parties I was a bigot against the Republican Party, but back then I didn’t know it was bigottry. I thought it was righteousness.
Yours,
Tom
I think the seed for the Tea Party movement was sown the moment that Obama went before the nation and said, “We are 5 days away from FUNDAMENTALLY transforming the United States of America!”
I know I could feel the blood drain from my face a little when I heard that. I willfully denied that it meant anything all that serious at first. Perhaps it was just a rhetorical flourish that sounded good among the hype of his “historic” election. But I really had to keep asking myself, “What does he mean by, fundamentally?” I dunno I like my founding fathers. I think they had this stuff pretty well worked out. I didn’t really see anything wrong with the country on a fundamental level. It was the extraneous nanny state bullshit that has been piled atop the fundamentally sound foundation that I felt was threatening the structure of our country. Of course, we ended up not having to wait for very long to see exactly what he meant by that statement. Obama has orchestrated a aggressive expansion of the federal government the likes of which makes the spend happy George Bush look like a piker.