There’s a news story I haven’t seen in the American press: One of the many countries that are joining in the effort to help Haiti is Israel. Israel always sends help when natural disasters occur. Occasionally, the help is refused. On October 8, 2005, an earthquake struck Pakistan. At first, Pakistan refused Israel’s offer. Finally, on October 15, Pakistan responded by saying it would accept relief ”if channeled through the United Nations, the Red Cross, or donated to a relief fund” (reported in Haaretz).
The fact that Israel is participating in helping Haiti ought to be big news. Israel is the most hated country on earth. Most Swedes, for example, still believe the Aftonbladet story that said Israelis hunt down Palestinian children in order to harvest their organs (the reporter expressed his doubts afterwards, but that got little attention).
I assume that no Islamic country is helping Haiti. Israel’s policy of aiding earthquake victims has gone on for years and received no attention. The time has come to change that.
Comments 113
such an unforgivable omission.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Well, George, if there hadn’t been a grain of truth in the very-distorted harvesting story, things would be easier.
However, I still have difficulty thinking that “Most Swedes” believe the distortion. Have you read something that leads you to that conclusion?
January 14th, 2010 at 7:58 am
fuster,
Why should you doubt that most Swedes believe the story if you yourself believe there is a grain of truth in it? There is no such grain.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:10 am
You know there’s a reason that Iraqi called you a kuffar, sfrog, what evidence, There is apparently no lie, too base, for the world to justify blaming the Jews. for the Christians, it was the collaboration of the Sanhedrin with the Romans, well why not blame the Romans, for Moslems, some deep seated competition with the tribes of Yathrib and
Khaybar, that began with Mohammed. Where is the Saudi, Kuwaiti,
or Chinese contribution,
January 14th, 2010 at 8:15 am
Well George, see if you think of this as that grain.
http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/
January 14th, 2010 at 8:23 am
fuster,
The story in the Forward makes it clear that nobody was killed for the sake of organ harvesting.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:28 am
@ narciso:
I’m not sure why you’re addressing this to me. My thought here is to point out that Israel is dealing with an international community that is ill-disposed toward regarding them favorably and that it’s disastrously stupid to allow themselves the luxury of committing theft from the bodies of dead Palestinians.
It’s not enough to point out that there was stealing from their own as well, it just never should have happened.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:33 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
Of course that’s clear George. I didn’t say that the story was true.
I said that there was a grain of truth that was being distorted.
I was sad and sickened to see it, but there it is.
A grain of truth for the propagandists to build from.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:36 am
Tell me what you would think if you saw a story that Hamas was taking the organs from dead Israelis.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:40 am
There’ s no news peg for this, unless one wants to be obtuse and malicious, like bringing Bolton into the Robertson idiocy. or some of the other gambits you have tried recently. You know one tries to be analytical, but it tears one’s heart to see how they would ever recover
from this, this is no humor, dark or otherwise that is called for. And recycling ‘blood libel’ stories doesn’t help either
January 14th, 2010 at 8:42 am
fuster,
If I saw a story that Hamas was taking organs from dead Israelis, I wouldn’t believe it. Hamas doesn’t kill Israelis for practical reasons. It kills Israelis because killing Jews is virtuous. Hamas is not interested in such trivial things as profit. Hamas rejected the independent state in Gaza that Israel gave it in 2005 and the promise of a withdrawal from most of the West Bank if the Gaza withdrawal worked. Hamas launched rockets aimed at Israeli civilians in order to stop Israel from leaving the West Bank. Hamas fears the creation of an independent Palestine, since such a state might conceivably legitimize Israel’s right to exist.
I notice you haven’t reacted to my primary message, that Israel is helping in the rescue of Haitians.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:48 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
George, my reaction to the story of Israel helping in Haiti is that it’s no surprise for me.
The idea that Israel helps either publicly, or without publicity, is a commonplace. I do believe that they even offered help for the victims of earthquakes in Iran.
It’s virtuous and good.
It would be better if the Israelis were as good at propaganda as their enemies.
Shaping their actions to suit world opinion, sometimes, might even be helpful to their present government and allow them to re-think some of their more absurd statements and acts.
When you’ve got real, numerous, and deadly enemies, you’ve no need to bite yourself in the butt.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:57 am
because the truth isn’t exciting enough, frogman, as compared to base propaganda that best belongs in the Volkischer Beobacter, Now having
seen reports of the Hamas members who gloried in the blood of some Israeli soldiers, who got lost in some corner of Ramallah, the indoctrination of their children, to murder due to our Saudi friends no doubt. The reports from the bridge over Fallujah, the pictures of the mutilation of the three soldiers in Mahmudiyah, I would need proof before dismissing it outright
January 14th, 2010 at 9:10 am
@ narciso:
narc, the truth of simple human kindness and decency is usually not what gets airtime and ink. It really isn’t what excites people.
George is musing as to why the story of Israel in Haiti isn’t what’s being highlighted.
I would say that he is strangely blind to even think of it as a possibility.
The blockade of Gaza is so over-broad and ethically dubious that it renders Haiti a fart in a windstorm.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:25 am
@ fuster:
The article makes it clear that illicit organ-harvesting is a worldwide problem – apparently in relation to research uses, however, rather than the more lurid idea of rich people farming poor people for spare parts. The Israelis get singled out regarding this “grain of truth” because their free press and government, in the face of this loathsome propaganda attack, respond with broad denials and then reveal that Israel, like apparently other countries, has had a problem with medical professionals partaking in the trade.
There is a paranoid logic, however, to singling out the Jews for this, along the same lines as the “grains of truth” behind other libels and propaganda. Jews really are over-represented relative to their raw numbers in scientific research and leading edge medicine. They really do represent a leading edge of modernity, a democratic capitalist aircraft carrier floating in the Arab sea of backwardness, non-development, and misgovernment.
In other words, there is a “rational” basis for Islamist hatred of Israel, just as there is a rational basis for Islamist hatred of the U.S. The Big and Little Satan really do represent direct material and ideological challenges to reactionary, anti-modern cultural forces ad associated political-economic interests, on every level. That its expression tends to be nightmarishly bizarre and infuriating, and yet gets passed on by the useful idiots of the the Western free press, is also, in a way, natural. The hatred originates in the depths of carefully defended multi-generational ignorance, has to be exaggerated demonstratively to compensate for the material weakness of the haters. Meanwhile, the greatest strength of Western – Judeo-Christian – culture is its openness to self-criticism, self-correction, and freedom of conscience and inquiry – which inevitably will include some element of obscenely idiotic inquiry.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Really, we invaded Mexico, on much less spurious grounds, to go after a bandit, like Pancho Villa, . If the Zapatistas were firing rockets into El Paso, the Mexican cartel, it has quite nearly gotten to that poin. You think we would stand by as patiently as Israel was for the better part of two years.
Frankly the rise of 9/11 denialists in the preceding decade, I don’t call them Truthers, was a very dispiriting thing for me. It really did illustrate how stupid people can be allowed to go, in spite of the facts.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:39 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Again, CK, there are a couple of singularities in this and they are all disasters for Israel’s public image and claim to virtuous actions.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:40 am
@ narciso:
narc, it’s not that Israel doesn’t have justification to go after the terrorists or to stop weapons going into Gaza.
It’s the scope, intent and idiocies of the blockade that are the problem.
When you get to where the Israelis are deciding that rice can go into Gaza,
but they’re not allowing pasta, WTF can someone say about self-defense and justification?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066821.html
January 14th, 2010 at 9:49 am
So, it’s yet another lie, abetted by the administration that includes Jones, Powers, et al, who don’t have Israel’s best interests at heart, you do realize we read the whole story, not just the headline on your link.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:14 am
@ fuster:
C’mon fuster, that’s weak stuff, not to mention almost a year out of date (take it up with Prime Minister Olmert if it really bothers you).
For a generation or two, Israel has been strong enough militarily to push the Palestinians into Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon if it felt like it – something that many countries, from time immemorial, wouldn’t have hesitated to do under similar provocations, and often under no provocation at all. However, Israel probably hasn’t been strong enough politically and economically to be able to hold onto such territory after it was cleared.
So, instead of erasing the Palestinian problem from the face of the Earth by time-honored means, Israel has played a different role, one more in keeping with modern humanitarian and ethical standards, also more suited to Israel’s role as a client state of the US. That means chronic instability on its borders met with chronic half-measuritis, including limited incursions into Lebanon and Gaza for limited purposes, as well as “temporary” refugee “camps” well into their third generation of existence, as well as bureaucratized warfare in which a quasi-blockade whose rules allow rice as a staple but have doubts about pasta are just about as normal as random rockets and suicide bombers…
…and libelous propaganda from pseudo-allies, too.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:27 am
@ fuster:
I hope that you do read the whole story as the incident to which i made reference wasn’t mentioned until the eighth paragraph.
It’s neither a lie nor much of a distortion.
It’s policy.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Hamas, is mostly an import of the Egyptian branch of the Moslem Brotherhood, watered very deliberately with Saudi cash. For what
reason, to keep the restive Arab street focused away from their own wretched plight. Gaza is a hellish landscapes, the kind Bosch would have depicted on a bender, who would want to live there
January 14th, 2010 at 10:41 am
A good and necessary post George. The world needs to be periodically reminded which side is the instinctively civilized one in the Middle East. I read pretty widely and wasn’t aware, at least on the surface, that Israel provides emergency aid on a nonsectarian basis worldwide even to declared enemies. The fact of it doesn’t surprise me; but I suspect it would surprise a lot of people that this tiny embattled country goes out of its way to help.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:50 am
. Israel is the most hated country on earth.
I doubt that,I think the USA is the HeavyWeight Champion of World disgust because of our dominant minority status.* 5% of the world uses 20& of the world’s assets.
*From Amy Chua’s “World on Fire”
January 14th, 2010 at 10:51 am
@ CK MacLeod:
MacLeod, what does this reply signify? You’re not addressing someone looking to demonize Israel or to trumpet its evil.
This post is about Israel’s image problems and George’s thoughts that Israel should expect to be viewed more positively.
My comments are aimed at pointing out that Israel and its partisans should have no realistic expectation of a positive image as long as Israel is responding to the provocations from Gaza in an unethical manner.
The world is more apt to look approvingly on Israel bombing the bombers than it is on Israel denying Gazan children pencils and books.
The ridiculous excesses of the blockade simply make it too easy.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:54 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
She’s wrong. George is right.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:55 am
@ fuster:
Can’t get excited about it. The fact that the Gaza border with Israel is open at all, for any reason, surprises me. Were it my decision there would be a double fence line with a declared free fire zone between and a xeroxed statement periodically handed out to the press and diplomats that the Palestinians in Gaza are quite capable of digging a port for themselves or relying on imports from their brethren in Egypt.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:56 am
@ Sully:
The coast is blockaded. The Egyptians are installing an American-built steel barrier under the border to seal the tunnels.
What should be stressed is that the people of Gaza aren’t being cared for by the Hamas-led government and that the people have long mostly been fed by the US and Great Britain through the agency of the UN.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:01 am
and there is a free-fire zone that Israel has bulldozed flat. It’s all on the Gaza side of the border.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:03 am
fuster,
I understand why you think that Israel’s reaction to the Hamas rockets was the cause of its being so hated. But think of what happened in 2005. Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza. Israel removed the Jews living in Gaza by force. Israel said that it expected withdraw from most of the West
Bank.
The world screamed: A land grab! Israel is refusing to negotiate! Israel is planning to withdraw from only 95% of the West Bank!
Nobody understood that Israel was creating an independent Palestinian state. Anti-Israel hatred zoomed up all over Europe.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:05 am
@ fuster:
As long as Israel has neither won nor lost its war with its neighbors, and is instead engaged with and responsible for the lives of people who hate Israel, before the eyes of a world predisposed to dislike Israel, then there will always be something – if not one thing, then another, from now to the end of Israel or the end of time – or a new, improved Harmonic Convergence. Sometimes, it won’t even be possible to have a discussion among Israel supporters regarding a catastrophe and Israel’s humanitarian response to it without getting caught up in the evil of favoring rice over pasta.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:07 am
narciso wrote:
Where do you get the idea that it’s the Saudis supporting Hamas with cash?
As far as I know, it’s the US/GB/UN with food, Iran with arms and cash, and international charity groups third.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:10 am
@ fuster:
Not with my concurrence re the tax dollars that have been spent. Emergency relief is one thing. Providing eternal nectar to a growing hive of openly declared killer bees is quite another.
Of course I’m biased. Ever since the Palestinians danced in the streets celebrating 9/11 (after previously supporting Saddam in GW1) my attitude toward them is fairly settled. The election of Hamas sealed it.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:12 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
I don’t at all think that Israel is hated because of the rockets, George. The hatred long precedes any rockets and most of it is simply irrational and disgusting bigotry.
But i don’t think that you truly understand the withdrawal from Gaza. It wasn’t simply intended to show goodwill, George.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:15 am
@ Sully:
Your attitude is your own and living here, you can afford that attitude.
The Israelis don’t have that luxury and have to deal with a bad situation.
F*** em isn’t a winning policy option log-term for an occupying power.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:20 am
@ fuster:
Israel’s motives in withdrawing from Gaza were complex, and to an extent, self-interested. Nevertheless, by doing so, they created an independent Palestinian state.
Israel’s motives in helping Haiti are 100% disinterested, since Israel knows perfectly well that its efforts to aid earthquake victims throughout its history have gone unreported.
Are you arguing that since the withdrawal from Gaza wasn’t unambiguously charitable, the Gazans are right in rejecting a state so that they can continue their struggle to exterminate Israel and its citizens?
January 14th, 2010 at 11:26 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
No, George I’ll be quite happy when the Israelis have the option of leaving Gaza.
They didn’t leave Gaza entirely. They pulled the troops and the farmers out. They retained control.
And they didn’t create an independent state. Gaza has never been that and it’s wildly unlikely that it could be that. When the Israelis left, they knew that it couldn’t succeed on its own, George. When the Israelis left, the jobs went with them.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:37 am
and it’s silly to think that the people of Gaza are struggling to exterminate the Israelis. Hamas ideas aren’t the same as the ideas of the population.
Yet.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Yes and only 37% of the Germans voted for the Nazis, that is there platform, not roads, sewage clean up, education, but endless war upon the Jews, Sura 9 I think covers it,
January 14th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
@ narciso:
narc, the palestinians didn’t vote for Hamas as much as they voted against Fatah.
My endlessly repeated joke is None-of-the-above would have won the election if it was on the ballot.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
fuster wrote:
And the Germans didn’t vote for Hitler as much as they voted against Weimar. So what? Voting for and abetting genocidal totalitarianism, on the basis of whatever calculations, is a political sin punishable by whatever whirlwind it whips up.
I wish I’d saved a link to the latest bit of Hamas children’s TV – was it narciso who was mentioning it?
January 14th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
and in 2000 the Americans didn’t vote for George Bush as much as they voted for Al Gore, but so what. My point isn’t that the electorate doesn’t share responsibility for the actions of the government.
My point to narc was that the desires of the population don’t match the charter of Hamas.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Actually surveys of Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank would challenge that perception. Fatah, is just as bad, consider who was the head of it, Abu Mazen, the money man behind the Munich massacre,
even though he’s mellowed out some, in his latter years. I didn’t mention Farfour and Manal, but I could have, that amounts to ‘political
pornography’
January 14th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
@ fuster:
Who then is responsible, if not the electorate and those who continue to live under and thus acquiesce to the actions of the government?
I hate it when my government takes actions I think stupid or wrong; but I never doubt that I’m responsible right behind those who order the actions.
Even when a dictatorship is very firmly in place all the residents of a country who acquiesce are responsible. In the case of the Palestinians in Gaza, they have the dirty end of the stick for many reasons, the salient one currently is that a majority of them forgot there are worse things than the PLO. They don’t even have the (faulty) excuse that Hamas ran on a false peace platform.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
@ Sully:
you put in the beginning of the sentence and it helps, sporky.
say oops.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
@ fuster:
As can you.
As to your assertion that f*** em is not a viable strategy; that may be correct taken to the limit; but I doubt Israel’s problems are caused by being too harsh. A lot more likely that short term lack of harshness leads to a continual cycle of longer term problems. As, for instance, there wouldn’t be a Gaza problem if Israel had used one of its wars with Egypt as pretext to push the Gaza population into Egypt and then sealed it off while that country was reeling and disorganized.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
You can make that argument.
You can’t much make the argument that seal ‘em in and forget them is gonna work out well.
January 14th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
You’re impossible, you know that, you find excuses for Hamas’s reign of terror, for the Iranian regime, for inaction in Afghanistan, for the presence of AQAP, but your hatred, contempt whatever, is focused
on anybody, Guiliani Palin, Bolton, Cheney, who ask a more direct approach to deal with the problem. It really is a waste talking to you
January 14th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
@ narciso:
narc, put down the pipe. I don’t make excuses for Hamas or Iran. I hucking fate them.
I’ve no idea what you may think about my ideas on the war in Afghanistan but while folks here were saying that Obama wouldn’t increase the troops or pursue the war, I constantly said that I approved his policies, and that he would go hard in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I’ve been fully critical of the previous administration for blowing off Af/Pak with some token bs instead of confronting the problems there.
I advocate sane and intelligent courses of action that I think to be the wisest way to go about destroying these monstrosities.
The approach favored by Bolton is unworkable and barely sane. Cheney’s ideas are as unAmerican as can be.
Guiliani is just full of gas. You really had to live in NYC to know how inept he was. He did some fine work trying to undo some of the insanity of the Dinkins era, but mostly he failed to be either a good US Attorney or a good Mayor here.
If Palin has some fully-fleshed and articulated ideas I have failed to note them. That may be my failure, but may not be.
I’ve no contempt for her intelligence or her ability to learn, and wish like the Dickens that she lives and learns.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
No, I think I have given you enough leeway, on two dozen threads, to gauge what you think, now you may just be a cynic, I’ve known people like that, or you’re just a jackass
January 14th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
or maybe I’m just an old jaded jackass who thinks that the brilliant tacticians who believe that they have four-move solutions to complex games are fools.
and now, little narc, I would like an answer. Have you ever seen anything from The League of Gentlemen?
January 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
No, I haven’t, I’ve seen Blackadder, Red Dwarf, some programs like that, but it seems a little too strange.
So your solution is like for example, to watch while the Iranians murder Ali Mohammedi, to watch while the build up nuclear facilities from Quom onward, for the Israelis not to respond to Hamas & Hezbollah’s provocation, not to speak out when they disseminate such a base lie in the Aftonbadenblat (sic). That’s just on the foreign policy front.
On the domestic side, you take an courageous, resolute reformer with integrity, and when she is being slandered, and her family is put up to ridicule, you pile on, When laws and agencies that make it harder for businesses to operate, you applaud them. When the people who murdered 3,000 Americans and surely wanted to murder
more, you look askance at procedures that will let them loose, like
the attorney who facilitated Al Shehri’s return to the battlefield, so he could plan the likes of the Christmas bombing.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
@ narciso:
and I drink the blood of good, brave men, better than I’ll ever be, and I cackle out my love for evil.
Give it the strange stuff a try. It’s nearly as funny as Python.
Pretend it wasn’t me, the evil cynical jackass apologist, who suggested it.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
@ fuster:
When you’re right you’re right. My bad. I misread your sentence, finding what I expected rather than what was actually there.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
and you would have found me, elsewhere, defending your darling’s family from attack.
I doubt that you’ve seen anything from me attacking her family prior to my very hearty laugh last week at that announcement of the teenaged girl’s opening her very own new PR firm.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
The world is such that Blackadder, specially ‘the very cunning plan’ Python, the Princess Bride, ‘that word you are using’ seem inadequate as satire. I guess it’s the same problem Phillip Roth had in the mid 80s, he gave up writing fiction, because reality beat him to it. Now it’s maybe your curmudgeon self, but I can’t find any humor, in what has transpired since last night
January 14th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@ Sully:Well, I’m the type of bassturd that wanted to say it, but was just too chickenspit.
Probably.
(thx)
January 14th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
@ fuster:
(yr wlcm)
January 14th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
at least one of us has some class.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
@ narciso:
crusty curmudgeon is how one friend described me.
didn’t let him win a chess game for six months afterward.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Someone else may have said this, but I heard Fox reporting earlier today that Israel was providing aid to Haiti’s earthquake victims.
Fox also had footage of relief materials from Saudi Arabia on the tarmac at the Port-au-Prince airport.
Something that merits comment as well is that hundreds of Americans were already in Haiti when the quake hit, members of church and secular aid groups. In every major urban area in the US, local news stations are reporting on residents with family members serving in Haiti. The three main organizations I give to, including the Salvation Army, were already there and are keeping donors updated on what they’re doing. My brother (yes, the accountant) has worked himself as a missionary in Haiti in the past. I don’t have a single regular email correspondent who doesn’t know or know of someone with a connection to relief work in Haiti.
My point? The people of America are already in Haiti. There have been European aid workers there for years too. Haiti is not forgotten, wasn’t before the quake, and won’t be afterward. People do care, they are helping, and they’ve been helping.
I’m pleased to see Obama reassuring Haitians that they won’t be forgotten. ‘Bout time. Keep up, man! Your people have been down for this one for a long, long time.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
CSM has a story w/list noting the Israeli effort.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0114/Haiti-earthquake-The-nations-that-are-stepping-up-to-help
Nobody else seems to be reporting the Cuban aid effort either.
Cuba has for decades been sending missionaries throughout the Caribbean and South America. Africa too!
January 14th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Great news, J.E, it seems the scope of the disaster, really has awakened the conscience (such that is) of the international community, or at least their self interest. I’ll forget for now that it took him longer to react to other events, but they weren’t on the same scale. He does occasionally rise to the occasion
January 14th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
You know I don’t know where we got the silly notion, that the media is in the tank for Obama, it’s not like they would publish an article about
something, if he is not a first hand observer, oh wait:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/01/14/obama-to-pen-cover-story-on-haiti-and-the-earthquake-for-newsweek/
January 15th, 2010 at 5:03 am
The Swedish elites will no more condemn the organ-harvesting story than Eric Holder will offend Black Panthers in Philadelphia. Whether average Swedes have permitted their own brains to be harvested to appease the Muslims in their midst requires expertise beyond my pay grade, but I suggested at the time that Israel ensure its own citizens the broadest possible standing to bring libel suits, if nothing else.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:46 am
@ Seth Halpern:
Nice image! But it’s highly doubtful anyone would want even a free donated brain infected with the sort of virus that has spread among Europeans who support massive Muslim in-migration.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:23 am
Fuster, awhile back in this thread you wrote “Israel is responding to the provocations from Gaza in an unethical manner.” Maybe you believe what you wrote–take a look at these pictures of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Bergen Belsen to get a clue about what nations do. Israel is very restrained. That you can’t see it is evidence of your incomprehension of morality.
http://www.geocentricperspective.com/Dresden%201945%201.jpg
http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/files/u46/Hiroshima.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Mass_Grave_Bergen_Belsen_May_1945.jpg
January 15th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Israel is the most hated country on earth.
Yes,for the Muslim Nations,outside of that Niche,what are the Rankings of most hated nations.
Rex’s Rankings:Muslim Universe
US & Israel,Dead Heat for #1
The rest of the World minus Islam:
USA #1(I don’t have any idea where Israel ranks in this segment)
January 15th, 2010 at 9:04 am
@ narciso:
You get that idea where you get several others.
Which person can author a story that will garner a large readership, nationally and internationally?
Who, by being published, will lend an air of authority?
Who ain’t gonna be getting paid for same?
January 15th, 2010 at 9:52 am
@ Ed:
Welcome Ed. It’s always good to see another person appear to stick pins in the zombie contentious frog.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
@ Ed:
dear Ed, hello and it matters little that we all know that Israel could respond in an horrific manner rather than an unethical way.
if I slap your face and kick your gut it’s okay ’cause I didn’t kill your family?
anyway, the point of the post, which I understand you to be joining rather late, was in determining why there’s isn’t a more appreciative reception and widespread congratulatory response to Israel’s humanitarian effort in Haiti.
I was trying to point out some rather obvious reasons for that.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
@ Sully:
I’m punctured, but not yet sprawling from the pins.
January 15th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
While I agree there should be far greater coverage, I must note that PBS News Hour last night included report of Israeli assistance, video of Israelis preparing medical supplies and interview with Israeli commander.
Thom
January 15th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
(btw – congratulations George for what I believe is the first ever link for this blog at Non-Zombie Contentions – JRub included it in today’s Flotsam & Jetsam, which I think explains why we we’re seeing a couple new names here. Welcome to the kinda ersatz/posthumous/transformed/evolved refugee Contentions comment threads, visitors! And don’t even bother to say something insulting about Ms. Rubin, Mr. Cluck – cuz I’ll delete it.)
January 15th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
you couldn’t possibly mean that.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
O, she’s old and rough
And dirty and tough
She sez what she wants
And she sez it gruff
Lies like a rug
That’s lumped with stuff
January 15th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
@ fuster:
How very ungracious of you, Cluck. Probly too silly to require deletion – though if anyone would like to see it wished into the cornfield, lemme know.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/149052
po’ sweet thang.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
@ fuster:
That Trudy Rubin piece is tough and contentious; but it’s transparently inadequate justification for an assertion of lying given what is accepted as political mis-speaking and/or exaggeration in this (and every) age.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
If Haitians can awaken to the fact that they represent the lost tribe and get in touch with their Jewishness, a great bond could be formed, perhaps a union.
Think of the improvements in farming. The resorts. The manufacturing. The growing military prowess. the millions of new believers dovening. It’s mind boggling.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
@ Sully:
Trudy??
rough, tough, dirty, gruff. ‘specially dirty. If you don’t take offensive at waving the bloody stumps in that manner…….
the lying might not be there in this case, (and I didn’t cite this one as lying) she just may been ignorant and negligent and happy.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Sully wrote:
I been sitting and scratching over Trudy Rubin.
Is this a Philly thing that us hicks up here wooden unnerstan?
January 15th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
@ fuster:
Where “Trudy” came from is one of those mysteries that even most Philadelphians don’t understand.
Let me see now: when was the last time I took my gingko biloba?
January 15th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Trudy, was Monk’s assistant for the first few season, in real life Trudy Rubin, was Bill Clinton’s favorite foreign correspondent for a reason, because she is shallowly pro Palestinian, was always declaring Iraq lost, and her perspective was because she grew up in an Irish neighborhood, well she could understand the Sunnis or something.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Trudy Rubin is also a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, which is probably why I’ve been seeing “Trudy” whenever I’ve looked at “Jennifer” for as long as I’ve been reading the Contentions Blog and she’s been posting there.
A mind is a terrible thing to lay waste to. I was much sharper before I started reading The Inquirer.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Thank you both. My usual state of confusion is about all I can handle.
I was having horrible thoughts about Jennifer Rubins multiplying like hobgoblins.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
@ fuster:
Clearly you need to get a grip on yourself, and I believe you can. If I can control myself concerning Bill Maher, you can surely control yourself re Jennifer Rubin.
I would think professional help is available even in so benighted a city as New York.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
@ Sully:
Just when I thought I had it under control, the Tsar decided that he had to throw me into the conversation.
I promised not to say a single unfair thing about the woman and I’ve kept to that.
But was that good enough? Wazz it I axe ya? Wazz it?
No ooooo !!
I got pre-emptively attacked!!!!
January 15th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
@ fuster:
I’m still wondering whether he did that as a provocation. The ways of the prince are subtle.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
near as subtle as the very skinny girls stopping the passing cars outside the Lincoln Tunnel payday night.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Coulda been subconscious – but it was more the fact that I was tickled by the link from NZ Contentions – maybe someone e-mailed JRub about George’s post? – and was quite honestly afeared that da frog would suffer a public relapse to his old ways… and I guess I brought about that which I feared… that’s life, eh what?
January 15th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
As I might possibly have mentioned, the Bolton school of diplomacy doesn’t always produce.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
@Sully
As a acquaintance of mine, has put it, “friends don’t let friends, read McClatchy,” now there are exceptions Mark Bowden, the chonicler of Somalia, Columbia, Iran, he still stays sharp at the Atlantic, although
he was having a relapse, objecting to video record of Sotomayor’s
lapses. Glenn Garvin, our local TV critic, who brings a libertarian sensiblilty tothe profession
@fuster
What has the Nowrouz letter to Ahmadinejad, the entreaty to the “Moderate Taliban”, the pressure on Karzai, which was really more in the neighborhood of encouraging a coup, the ‘reset’ on US/Russian
relations earned us
January 16th, 2010 at 7:09 am
@ fuster:
So, fuster, what’s the grain of truth? That Israelis don’t actually harvest organs of Palestinians, they do drain the blood of Christian children for the Passover matzoh? What? What is the grain of truth?
January 16th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
@ DavidS:
I thought that I left a link, David. The grain of truth was that the Israelis really and truly were harvesting organs, skin and corneas particularly, and not only from Palestinians.
January 16th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Most of the examples are from the US, I imagine there are similar stories in Sweden proper, in places like Guatemala, they’ve been known to take your organs while you are still alive. Why legitimize that rumor
January 16th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
@ narciso:
Most of what examples?
And there’s nothing that i say or do to legitimize any rumor. The rumor was that the IDF was going out to kill Palestinians because they wanted the organs.
Nothing legitimate in that.
But it was the damned Israel doctor who stole the organs that did any legitimizing. I would think that the best thing to do would be to arrest, try, and convict the guy of larceny and strip his medical license for the massive ethical breach.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Irvine, Galveston and New Jersey aren’t in Israel, don’t be an ass, maybe that should be your new Avatar
January 16th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
@ narciso:
Perhaps you might deign to explain what your meaning might be.
Let’s get to the name-calling after that.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
for Steven (and Molly)
http://www.rubyranch.us/pb/wp_62610ba9/images/img32087470145caddddf.jpg
January 16th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
You’re old enough what a blood libel is, where it leads, places like Kishinev and Damascus (one former Syrian defense minister, Effendi TLass, wrote his dissertation on that event) and giving credence to
this garbage, in this online platform of all things.
There’s a thin line behind being a cynic, and a spiteful jackass. One doesn’t joke about great tragedies, and abet a cretinous slander, of which this Swedish paper is engaging in.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
@ narciso:
narc, there’s nothing jocular in what I’ve said and there’s nothing even remotely funny in what happened. If you think that covering up a long series of crimes because they play into a horrible slander is wise, you’re not old enough. You need to think a little further about this.
It’s because of the blood libel that this should have been unimaginable for any Jew and reckless of Israel not to have put the guy behind bars.
And you also owe me an explanation about your comment @98.
What the heck was that about?
January 16th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
and stop calling me an ass as I have no reason to wish to be all around you.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Comment #98 refers to the three cities mentioned in the article you linked above. They were sites of somewhat similar crimes in the U.S.
Frankly, I think the frog is getting a bum rap here. George brought up the Aftonbladet (sp?) story, which does have all the makings of a newfangled blood libel. Fuster pointed out a story that gave a real world version of the story.
On the other hand, I think that referring to the Dr. Hiss case as a “grain of truth” to the “charge” may be a bit of a stretch. The old charge that the Jews were in league with the Bolsheviks, or were Bolsheviks – that one did have a “grain of truth” in that Jews were overrepresented among the original Bolsheviks. I don’t think there is a grain of truth to the notion that “the Jews” or “the Israelis” (you used the plural just a few comments above, fuster) have been farming Palestinians for their organs. An individual Israeli engaged in the kind of offense against decency that is relatively common among doctors, morticians, and anyone else who has much to do with the dead. That doesn’t support any notion that “the Israelis” have singled out Palestinians for ghastly abuse and exploitation, or that they customarily treat others to ghastly abuse and exploitation.
The other grains of truth have to do with Israel’s unique predicament, but nothing uniquely to do with the existence of unethical doctors in Israel’s medical establishment.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
You’re impossible, there is no grain of truth to that story, none, zip, zero, nada. It is about unethical doctors all over the world, it’s not about the IDF, they caught the person responsible, and I can’t think of a severe enough punishment for him.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Gentlemen,
having happened to idly walk by this site i must
first say i heartily agree with everything but what
fuster wrote, though in candor i couldn’t keep reading
him at some point.
being from israel, i naturally get to have a lot of such
debates, or rather they are forced upon me. indeed,
your heart’s in the right place but experience teaches
us all that many people exist (though i hope not too many)
that cannot and/or do not want to listen. fuster doesn’t
listen to anything you say – he merely hears, waiting
to say his opinion. in short he’s in for an argument
and not a discussion.
this is the reason for my unusual posting, i feel
there’s great need for advice here: “Don’t feed
the troll”. it is short, concise. keep your energies
to the willing.
many thanks and a wonderful week to everyone!
White
January 17th, 2010 at 8:10 am
@ White:
Welcome and thanks for the comment; but we live in hope that fuster can be weaned from his contrary ways and be brought into the light.
January 17th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Alarums!!! Moderator, don’t let “White” elope un-interrogated. “White,” we have something like a Cargo Cult here and have been expecting a ship of some sort from the mainland for some time. How did you get here? That we may prepare leis and four-color brochures to inveigle others to follow.
God bless the DC-3 and all her offspring!
January 17th, 2010 at 8:59 am
not only interrogated, enhanced. I promise not to listen as he gurgles into his hood.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:16 am
If you don’t listen, there’s really no point to it, is there? Is there?Really, fuster, your need to go along to get along will be the ruin of you, my bachtrian friend.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I thought that the virtue was contained within the act.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:49 am
fuster wrote:
C’est vrai! The act, being pusillanimous, partakes of the virtues thereof.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:59 am
If only you could have explained that that HE-Who-Kept-Us-Safe.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:13 am