[Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night

Wed Apr 16 11:27:47 CDT 2008

Has the makings of a good op-ed. David writes

I do this fully aware that what I say will end up circulating in the  
Jewish community, and indeed there's no reason why it shouldn't.

Could you enter this in any newsletter the Hillel/Jewish publishes?  
(I suppose I'm being silly. )

Keep going David, the message may ultimately resound.

--mkb

On Apr 16, 2008, at 10:42 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> An excellent and insightful comment, showing the time and attention  
> David has devoted to the matter.  --CGE
>
> David Green wrote:
>> Robert, have you ever had to attend a Bar Mitzvah?
>>  I'm sorry to state the obvious regarding Monday night below. I do  
>> this fully aware that what I say will end up circulating in the  
>> Jewish community, and indeed there's no reason why it shouldn't.
>>  What is it that motivates the most right-wing, pro-Israel members  
>> of the local Jewish community to obsess about "hate speech" late  
>> at night on UPTV? It' an open secret that elites in this country  
>> exploit the Holocaust and anti-semitism in order to justify and  
>> cover for arming Israel and invading the Middle East, not to  
>> mention their desire to bomb Iran. Would people like Lee Melhado  
>> and Paul Weichsel, the latter featured on the N-G front page and  
>> the most virulent of the local Zionists, be doing what they are  
>> doing if they were not blindly self-righteous regarding their  
>> support for Zionist bigotry, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing? It's  
>> only the golden opportunity they see for asserting Jewish  
>> victimhood and innocence in the face of the brutal realities of  
>> occupation and ethnic cleansing (and increasing criticism of  
>> Israel) that gets them to watch UPTV rather than reruns of Seinfeld.
>>  It isn't just that anti-semitism is trivial and to no effect in  
>> our culture, or about questionable views of what constitutes hate  
>> speech and its alleged consequences, or about freedom of speech.  
>> It's that anti-semitism has to be inflated and featured in order  
>> to stigmatize any discourse about what the U.S. and Israel are  
>> doing. The pea of anti-semitism absolutely must be felt both by  
>> the faithful and our entire culture through a thousand mattresses,  
>> to justify what we all are doing in the Middle East.
>>  (Incidentally, it would be a mistake to think that any of these  
>> people are actually concerned with the well-being of Jews,  
>> especially poor Jews in Israel who suffer from economic policies  
>> related to militarism and racism. Moreover, there happen to be  
>> 20,000 Jews in Iran, that is, Iranians, living peacefully with  
>> Muslims, who are put in danger by U.S. and Israeli threats  
>> directed at that country. The CUJF crowd represents elite  
>> interests more than "Jewish" interests. Indeed, their conflation  
>> of the two contributes more to whatever anti-semitism there is left.)
>>  It's not about Israel wagging the American dog. Silly assertions  
>> like that only allow local Zionists to write "poor innocent us"  
>> letters to the N-G proclaiming their powerlessness, shooting fish  
>> in a barrel in order to assert their benign innocence, while they  
>> promote the most brutal policies, and shout down those who  
>> protest, experienced personally by me at Hillel on April 1st. If  
>> you want to experience the public expression of virulent hatred,  
>> you missed your opportunity--both with my detractors and with the  
>> speaker, in terms of the content of his talk. One of the recent  
>> letter writers, Ehud Yairi, somehow lost his sense of humor when  
>> he walked toward me and berated me while I tried to ask the  
>> speaker what he thinks the U.S. response would be if Canada  
>> invaded Montana and established Canadian-only settlements with  
>> Canadian-only roads. Perhaps he didn't get the analogy, and it's  
>> understandable that he wouldn't.
>>  In that regard, I'm being completely serious when I say that the  
>> speaker that evening, David Makovsky, could not express his  
>> ignorant and hateful views anywhere on or near this campus except  
>> at Hillel, where he summarized a century of Zionism by saying that  
>> "the Jews came in peace, but the Arabs wanted war." Try to find  
>> one Palestinian in the world who would not take this in the  
>> hateful and racist manner in which it is intended. I would admit  
>> that perhaps a half dozen of a billion Muslims might agree with this.
>>  This whole affair is about exploiting historical Jewish suffering  
>> in order to suppress criticism about what's going on. Could it be  
>> more obvious that CUJF's concerns are expressed in a larger  
>> political context? It's not by accident that those Jews most  
>> concerned about this silly program are those who most avidly  
>> support Zionist atrocities.
>>  This is not only about the suppression of speech, but the support  
>> of U.S. militarism and Israeli aggression. You can't separate the  
>> two, and you shouldn't.
>>  It seems to met that those who want to protect UPTV as a local  
>> resource ought not to waste their energy on legalistic debate and  
>> hate speech, as if the Melhados and Weichsels are truly hurt and  
>> aggrieved by this program. That's handing them too much. These  
>> people don't need to be debated, they need to be shamed.
>>  DG
>>      What the hell is that supposed to mean David? That is a real  
>> sick
>>     comment!
>>          
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>>         Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:29:52 -0700
>>         From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com
>>         Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting  
>> last night
>>         To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
>>         How ridiculous. Brumleve is a crackpot, of course. But  
>> suffice
>>         it to say that if there was a show that told the awful truth
>>         about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, from 1948 to the
>>         current day, then the same folks would be labeling that "hate
>>         speech" too.
>>                  What really is sad is that because of their hyper- 
>> sensitivity
>>         and complete lack of perspective, the local Zionist self-pity
>>         partyers put everyone else through an evening that sounds  
>> like
>>         having to go to three Bar Mitzvahs. Now you know what we  
>> have to
>>         deal with.
>>                  DG
>> ...
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080416/bf4c28af/attachment.htm