Archive for the ‘Jewish supremacism’ Category
Shootout at the OK Gevald
Posted on: August 9, 2022
Welcome back, one and all, to another installment of the #Israelex5 Blog at the Weekend Holyland Update, brought to you live, with the style for which we strive, by Kedem Productions and GangstaYid Inc, straight from the sweltering concrete jungle of southeastern Tel Aviv.
A lot has happened since our latest dispatch, and while mine own energy levels have been suffering from the stupor-inducing summer temperatures, that hasn’t stopped events from rambling on, to include a brief performance of the annual bloodletting ritual.
As all the official babble, and much of the media coverage, has blathered the usual cliches about Israel’s right to defend itself, the right of its citizens to be free of rocket fire, and blah blah some more, perhaps a brief recap of this proactive, Israeli-instigated short shoot-up show is in order:
In the early morning hours of August 2nd, IDF forces raided the West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin (as they frequently do) and arrested several men wanted for terrorism (ditto), including one Bassam a-Saadi, an operative of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) who, whether it was necessary or not, was documented being dragged by attack dogs as he was arrested.
Following this, Israel claimed to have intelligence of planned reprisals attacks by the IJP, and shut down traffic in the south of the country – roads, rail, summer camps, workplaces, events, the works. People in Israel were grumbling about this seemingly craven approach, and crowned the IJP the winners of this round without firing a shot.
But although Israel is stupid, it is yet to reach that nadir. Israel was planning all along (at least since arresting a-Saadi, who may have folded instantly under questioning) to assassinate a senior IJP commander in the Gaza Strip, southern sector commander Taysir al-Jaabari, which objective it carried out at 16:16 hours on Friday, August 5th. Having preemptively made sure there would be no civilians on the road for the IJP to target with their rockets and anti-tank launchers in reprisal, Israel was free to keep hammering the Gaza Strip and making withdrawals on its target bank, to the tune of 35 casualties, of which 11 were non-combatants (IDF’s count) or 46 casualties, of which 16 were non-combatants (Gaza Health Ministry’s count). More non-combatants seem to have been killed by the 200 or so IJP rockets that fell short of Israel, within the Strip. Of the app. 1,100 that did make it across the border separating Israel from its open-air prison, 95% were reportedly intercepted by the Iron Dome system, and the rest causing only some property damage and a total of three wounded from shrapnel and some others who were treated for bruises and anxiety.
So a great success for the interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid in his first baptism by fire (well, not his personally), right? Superficially, yes. It was a well-conducted operation, as such things go, with no funerals on Israel’s side of the border, and the polls (we’ll get to them below) reflect that. But what about the long term?
Well, if you want to be an optimist, there are signs that not everything about this latest round of shootin’ down folks and blowin’ stuff up with drones was same old, same old. For one, Hamas stayed out of it. The IJP, as the distant second place movement in the Gaza Strip* can be all purist and ideological, vowing to fight to the last man with the last pipe-bomb launcher, hiding under the last pile of rubble. Hamas, as the entity in power, has to actually govern in between skirmishes with Israel, and therefore it has to somewhat listen to what its people want, and what the people in the Gaza Strip wanted this summer was a respite from skirmishing. Hell, that’s what they want most of the time. Only when Israel pushes them too far do they truly support the futile defiance of hurling metal pipes out of fireworks launchers against a country that can darken the skies over their heads with drones carrying smart bombs – basically saying “fine, but your life gonna be disrupted for a lil bit too.” This time the vast majority in the Strip, according to what I’m reading, wanted nothing of the sort. This, beyond natural fatigue with the horrors of these extended bloodletting orgies that occur once every year or two, is a product of Israel smartly focusing its recent suppression efforts on the IJP, and working quietly to drive a wedge between the two Islamist terror groups (while Hamas is the actual representative of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Palestine, IJP is a more radical Brotherhood offshoot, much closer than Hamas to global jihadi movements such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS].)
Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote on Sunday that it is possible that one result of Israel’s assassination of Jaabari (and his counterpart, the southern sector commander) is that younger men will be promoted to these important positions who are a) less experienced, naturally, but more importantly, b) less aligned with the organization’s political leadership, which sits in Damascus and Beirut. This prediction may be borne out by the organization’s surprisingly mild response, after the ceasefire which ended three days of one-sided ass-whooping, to a pointed question about Hamas’s refusal to join in: “There are other ways to help than fighting.” When you’ve just been stomped, you can’t afford to fight with your infinitely big brother as well, I guess.
After falling for the same trap the IJP did and braying loudly about the shameful and cowardly shut-down that preceded the op, the opposition played nice once the guns got going, and rallied behind the government during the weekend military excursion, with Netanyahu finally deigning to show up to a security briefing (it’s mandatory for him as Opposition Leader, and he’s refused to do it for a year so as not to have his cultists see him accord another man PM props). As soon as the ceasefire was declared it was back to business as usual, with all kinds of bitchmoanplainin’ about how Lapid and Defense Minister Gantz dared to be photographed doing their jobs and looking all leader-like in election time. A Bibi mouthpiece named Yaakov Bardugo tweeted stupidly that the Lapid government is leading a “stupid trend” of differentiating Hamas from the IJP. So no, dividing your enemies is actually wise. Problem is, Israel already pulled that with the PLO vs. Hamas – and didn’t use its success to actually do business with the more moderate wing of the broken wishbone. So why should we expect any different in Gaza?
Meanwhile, since the media must have its heroes after a shoot-up, even one that’s really fish in a barrel[1], the “hero” dujour is an IDF shero, who bragged to the media about shooting an unarmed man descending an IJP guard tower on the other side of the border – just shot him, for no reason, no threat, no action, no nothing. But it was open season, so it’s somehow cool. It’s a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh wounds in the world aren’t gonna change that.
So much for the shootin’. You can take a breath, a sip, a toke or whatever before continuing to the intra-Jewish politics below.
—–
[1] (if Hamas is like David compared to Israel’s Goliath, the IJP is David’s addle-brained baby brother who can barely grasp a sling, let alone use it)
Pretty Boy Fails To Revive Flagging Zionist Spirit
There’s a new alliance in town, and according to initial polls, its seemed to actually be doing its job and dragging the corpse of Yamina across the electoral threshold in the polls. But recall Ran Shimoni’s point – no union of existing actors ever exceeded its initial polling, which means there’s every chance in the world that even with Yoaz Hendel’s “Derech Eretz” party, Yamina will still fall short of the goal line. More recent polls indeed have the new bloc, titled “Zionist Spirit” polling at about 2.6% – far short of the 3.5% of the vote needed.
Who’s Yoaz Hendel, you ask? He’s a dashingly handsome naval commando alum, grew up with a knit skullcap but took it off in his youth. Worked for Bibi’s PM’s Office and resigned in protest when Bibi flouted the court ruling, that said his chief of staff Nathan Eshel, who was caught practicing the sexual offense known as upskirt photography, should be banned from public service. Eshel officially resigned but remained as an unofficial advisor to Bibi and a heavyweight power in “court,” and Hendel correctly said “Fuck that.”
But since this display of fine moral spine, Hendel’s conscience has proved far more limber in terms of political loyalty. His adventures in electoral politics began when he and the Frack to his Frick, Zvi Hauser (who likewise quit Bibi’s inner circle due to Upskirtgate) joined their new and untested “Derech Eretz” party to former IDF Chief Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon, who also formed a new party called Telem, ahead of the 2019 elections (the first of the current neverending cycle of them. There was one in ’19, two in ’20, one in ’21, and the upcomin’ scheduled for November 1st, 2022.)
Along with Ya’alon and Telem, Hendel and Hauser then joined forces with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Benny Gantz’s “Hosen L’Israel” and another former IDF Chief named Gabi Ashkenazi, to form Kachol-Lavan (“Blue and White”) – a brand now left in the exclusive control of Gantz. This alliance vied for electoral supremacy with Bibi’s Likud with considerable success, only breaking up in the third elections (late 2020) when Gantz stabbed his partners and voters in the back and joined Bibi with about half of the unified list’s MK’s – Hendel and Hauser among them, despite their leader, Ya’alon, going the other way.
Then the two jumped ship again and joined Gideon Saar’s New Hope (“Tikva Hadasha”), and now they’re fleeing that host (which united with Gantz, who they already burned and who carries a grudge) and latching on to the dying cadaver of Yamina, which for the first time in all its iterations over the past decade or so, does not have a single religious person in a realistic spot on the list. They’re keeping the 3rd spot open for outgoing Religious Affairs Minister, Matan Kahane – but he already spurned the offer in such disdainful terms, I can’t see him swallowing it and reneging.
Which brings us to another desertion from the listing ship of New Hope, which as the mindful reader may recall, united with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the third largest bloc in Knesset, with 14 seats in the current Knesset and 11-14 in the polls for the next. MK Michal Shir, a long-time ally and follower of New Hope Chairman Saar, announced that she is taking her seat and MK’s funding unit and going over to Lapid’s Yesh Atid. Her reason, btw, is quite hilarious. “Benny Gantz is a socialist leftist” (‘scuse me, as Jimi said, while I fix to die laughin, cause Benny the Goose Boy is about as socialist as Milton Friedman; carry on) and some more shade about how he isn’t fit to be PM (which is what he is explicitly aiming for, and not unrealistically as things are shaking out) and how Yesh Atid “reminds her of the old-school Likud” (i.e. before it was taken over by thugs and religios and Judonazis).
On the left, Zehava Galon did indeed come back to stand for leadership (as predicted by this fine and friendly family feature) and save the day, and the polls give Meretz under her leadership a whole seat more than under dumbass IDF he-man Yair “Being called a lefty is like being called the N-word” Golan. I’ll be shocked if he comes close to beating her. By close I mean 40%.
The upshot of all this is, according to the polls, that if Yamina does indeed clear the bar and get in with 4 seats, or even 3[2], Bibi will have his parliamentary majority, with Judonazis as his senior partner.
Bibi Didn’t Know!
In other news: The defendant Benjamin Netanyahu was under questioning again, this time not as a defendant but under implicit warning. This questioning took place in connection with the Meron Festival disaster, where 45 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede in April 2021 due to overcrowding, a shoddily constructed stand collapsing, and a lack of regulation and oversight undergirding both those factors. Bibi was PM at the time and despite the panel of the inquiry commission showing him more and more instances of communications to him on the subject over the years (this is an annual event that just keeps getting bigger), he kept insisting that he never saw them, that this is low-level stuff that simply doesn’t reach the actual PM’s actual eyes. Thus, even when presented with “The PM’s response to the State’s Comptroller Report,” which mentioned conditions at Meron being ripe for calamity, he insisted that “it’s called the PM’s answer, but in practice it’s written by someone in the office. I didn’t see it.”
What did he see? COVID-related stuff! As there was, somehow, no epidemiological disaster at the festival – it somehow didn’t become a super-spreader event – Netanyahu took a victory lap. And the 45 dead? That’s somebody else’s department, see.
And as us Jews continue our interminable petty squabbles about the precise flavor of the regime of Jewish supremacism in this land, we have (in addition to the spree of carnage in Gaza) continued killing Palestinians in the occupied territories at the clip of 2-3 per week (most recently: An elderly, unarmed mental patient and a 15 year-old boy), and our Supreme Court overturned its own ruling from two years ago, and in an expanded panel ruled that private Palestinian land, stolen for the purposes of creating a settlement outpost that’s illegal even under Israeli laws, does not have to be returned to its owners if settlers are already living on it, because said court ruled that the land was stolen “in good faith” (i.e. the thieves didn’t know it was private property, and thought it was merely public Palestinian land they were appropriating in the name of God’s master race.) The court did pay lip service about how future cases will be held to a high bar of “good faith,” but this one the gonifs get away with.
Post bloodletting polls:
Likud 33 (-2)
Yesh Atid (Lapid) 23 (+2)
JudoNazis 11 (+1)
Blue&White / New Hope (Gantz & Sa’ar) 12 (-)
Shas (Sephardic Ultra Orthodox) 8 (-)
United Torah Judaism (Ashkenazi UO) 7 (-)
Joint List (most Arab parties) 6 (-)
Israel Beiteinu (Finance Minister and crook and possible Russian spy Avigdor Liberman) 5 (-)
Labor 5 (-1)
Meretz 4 (-1)
United Arab List (Islamists, were in the last coalition) 4 (-)
Zionist Spirit: Does not make it in 2/3 polls.
Blocs: Bibi Yay 59, Bibi Nay 51, Arabs in the Middle 10
So much for this long-delayed installment, which all you good patrons of this fine and friendly family feature have been patiently awaiting. Don’t forget to tip (be it in the form of dineros or comments, or a share on your preferred public media) on the way out. Till the next time.
[2] Mathematically possible but practically not really
- In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | racism
- Comments Off on Israel’s Government Presents: Ethnic Cleansing
While most Israelis were preoccupied with their army’s attacks in Syria, with the harsh budget, and with the royal family’s extravagant trip to China, something much worse sneaked under the radar: On Monday, Israel’s government passed a resolution, based on the infamous “Prawer plan”, that calls for the forced evacuation (i.e. ethnic cleansing) of some 40 thousand Bedouin citizens of Israel from their homes in the southern Negev region.
Supporters of the plan like to talk about Bedouin “incursions” on public and private land in the Negev. Answering this requires a brief history lesson: In 1948, the leadership of the embryonic State of Israel approached the leaders of the Bedouin tribes within the proposed borders of the state with a proposition: You, the Bedouins, refrain from joining the fight against us or helping our enemies in any way, and in return we Jews, after we win, will honor the status-quo regarding your grazing, living and annual migrating lands. The Bedouins faithfully kept their end of the bargain. In return, the natal State of Israel stabbed them in the back, refused to allow those of them who fled the battles to reunite with their tribes, and evacuated those who didn’t flee from the vast majority of the Negev into a small triangle of land around the city of Beersheba.
Despite this betrayal, most Bedouins became loyal citizens, and many of them serve in the IDF, especially as scouts of matchless skill. These are the facts, so don’t give me any “incursion” crap. Yes, Bedouins tend to make light of real estate and zoning laws (which naturally are made for the benefit of non-nomads). These violations can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis through the courts, and not by racist collective punishment. Furthermore, all the acreage ever illegally appropriated by Bedouins since the inception of the state pales in comparison to the vast areas stolen from them in the early fifties.
Now the Biberman-Bennett-Lapid government seeks to outdo that treachery, and expel tens of thousands of citizens from their abodes. Why? Because it wants to settle Jews in their stead. Such an act has a name under international law. It is called ethnic cleansing, and it is second only to genocide in the list of crimes against humanity.
This may pass quietly. Bedouins are famous for theןר long memories when it comes to grudges. They are perfectly capable of swallowing the bitter pill now only to retaliate in several decades, when it will hurt the most and seem to come out of the blue. But somehow, I doubt it. Resentment over state discrimination within the Bedouin community is close to boiling over as it is and this repugnant step, which is expected to easily pass muster in the Knesset, could well be the last straw that ignites a Bedouin Intifada.
And if that happens? Israel and every last one of its citizens who stood by will have richly earned it. Let every bulldozer driver know, upon arriving to demolish a family’s home, that the bullet in his brain will be utterly deserved. Let every policeman backing up that driver know that he has honestly come by the crowbar to the cranium. Let each and every one of Israel’s ministers most sinister know that if they end up like the odious Rehav’am Ze’evi, that will be nothing but poetic justice.
And those who want justice without bloodshed? Let them form a human wall to block the larceny. Maybe when the racists see that their plan will cost Jewish blood as well, they will have second thoughts. It’s not at all certain, but it’s all we have.
But Where Is Bibi’s Bomb?
Posted on: October 2, 2012
- In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | racism | Social Justice
- Comments Off on But Where Is Bibi’s Bomb?
Once the ripples of laughter had died down from the smash success of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Road Runner special reboot production, It was only a matter of time till the question begged itself: Why would Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office run the obvious risk of ridicule in order to make its point in this way? By “in this way” I mean that even as we accept the wisdom that says “Hey, he got it talked about”, we must also accept upon further reflection that a less ludicrous choice of prop would still have had a theatrical effect and gotten mentioned – without any of the weakening of one’s message. You know – the weakening that comes from being openly declared ridiculous, and from subconsciously rendering your deathly-serious topic synonymous with cartoon connotations.
Bibi’s staff is stuffed with American backgrounds (in addition to his own). It is utterly impossible that no one there heard “beep-beep! Vrooooom!” in their minds as soon as they saw what the boss was schlepping to the big speech. I know his office is all kindsa dysfunctional, but I doubt it’s to the point where no-one can say anything about something like this. So they knew the risk and decided to go ahead with it.
Then why? What was so important that the Prime Minister’s office was willing to not only endure a shit storm of scorn but purposely create it? Not the Iran thing. We’ve already disproved that. Give up? Look in the Negev, the south of Israel. No, not our own non-NPT-participatin’ nuclear facilities. A bit west of there. A place currently named Umm al-Hiran.
My homie and top notch journalist Noam Sheizaf already cooked the story down to the lean bare nitty, so read that and come back for a sec.
Back? Those of you that are just about facts and analysis have my blessing to bail here and spread the word. For those that want my take as well, I’mma be brief:
Any adult who moves into any sort of settlement built on the ruins of the village of Umm Hiran is a legit target for reprisal by force. Yes I’m talking about the dread, naughty, oh my we must never “take the law into our own hands”. I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about JUSTICE. It’s the law that’s doing this evil thing. And no, just because the king takes the poor man’s ewe – a second time, for fuck’s sake – doesn’t make it right. All you bible-thumpin’ ardent Zionists should take a note there. (2nd Samuel, 12:3, in case you need it. )
Once again: ANYBODY participating in this theft, whether as propagator, executioner or beneficiary and recipient of stolen goods is a legitimate target for reprisal. Those that want to be angels have my utmost respect, but I’m talking of mere humans here. It’s not a threat, either, but merely a prediction and a statement of simple morals. I wish I could say promise I’d fight alongside the Abu al-Qian clan when the dozers come. Chances are I won’t be there, but I’d argue to exonorate anyone charged with anything less than causing permanent disability or death in reprisal of this.
Yeah, I said it. Charge me with incitement, motherfuckers. I double dare you.
A New Way To Break Your Cherry
Posted on: May 7, 2012
- In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism
- Comments Off on A New Way To Break Your Cherry
Y’all know the cute rite-of-passage story about the ancient Greek city of Sparta? How they were supposed to steal something without getting caught, so as to show they could be good fighters, and if they were caught they were punished, but for the operational failure of being detected and not for the moral failure of stealing?
Well, like many other things regarding ancient myths, the underlying truth is…gnarlier, shall we say. Oh sure, the young Spartan hoplite-trainee had to steal, but the real “punished for being caught” test was not to steal – it was to kill a man, or more precisely a Helot.
The Helots were the state-owned slaves of the Spartan regime. In order for all the full Spartan citizens to form that ideal “warrior society” and spend their lives from age 7-60 training for and fighting wars, someone else had to raise crops and clean the streets and the dishes and the homes and so on. Enter the Helots – or to be more accurate, enter the Doric Spartans, who around the 7th century BCE conquer the native Messenians and turn them into “Helots”.
Now, this sort of setup required some serious oppression to keep running. The Spartans’ main answer to this problem was a yearly ritual in which they would go through a ceremony of declaring “war” on the long-vanquished and enslaved population. Call it Operation Cast Helot or something. This prevented the Helot numeric advantage from becoming overwhelming, kept any rebelliousness in check and gave the Spartan fighters their famous battle-tested toughness.
The rest of the year the murder of a Helot was a serious offense, albeit on grounds of damaging valuable state property, and not due to the sanctity of life or any effete claptrap of the sort. So the aspiring young tough-guy was challenged to kill himself a Helot – without anyone seeing, so they wouldn’t be forced to punish him. This random, piecemeal slaughter also had a helpfully chilling effect on the Helots.
The Spartan model, although much appreciated by thinkers of a certain kind throughout the years, has never been precisely duplicated. That said, the notion of running wet training drills on your conquered natives is still with us, as evidenced by the latest little story about the most moral army. You know, the one from The Only Democracy[TM]
A few weeks ago, sharp-eyed consumers of the news noticed a cute little hed on YNET: Duvdevan Soldier Discharged For Kicking Bound Palestinian. Duvdevan is the IDF’s elite undercover unit. Members pass as Arabs and infiltrate organizations and demonstrations (and often incite them to violence and even instigate it). In short, at first blush it seemed like a story about the IDF reacting properly and swiftly to unacceptable behavior. And then you read the actual item.
Turns out the boys were out training in the village of Ramon. What do I mean training? Just that. Sneaking around in local garb in the village, in the middle of the night, trying to blend. Well, not a great day at the office for the boys. They were detected. See, Ramon has a pretty rampant crime problem. Folks there have a short fuse when it comes to their property, the nighttime and strangers.
So the stealthy commando kids are observed near the sheep-pen of the Shawakha family. Four Shawakhas run downstairs; One grabs a tire-iron, another a knife, a third a nice thumpin’ stick. They get to the street and the strangers are coming towards them. Rather than identify, or use their guns to deter, the Cherry Boys* keep walking right up to the local guys. When face to face, one of the commandos finally draws a gun. No warning, no “police/army/intelligence/Israelis”. One of the Shawakhas tries to grab the gun (held by a non-identifying plain-clothed thug and suspected thief) and gets shot in the thigh. Then the soldiers shoot another brother in the stomach. Then more shots are fired. Long after any kind of normal person would be declaring who they are and why they shouldn’t be resisted. One Palestinian dead, one severely wounded. One Duvdevan genius with a cut arm.
After all resistance to the boys in camouflage was subdued, and the Helo—Palestinians had their hands cuffed and their asses sat on the ground, one of the soldiers was still furious at them for not realizing he’s an untouchable, so he kicked one of them in the face. And that, to the Israeli embodiment of MSM, was the story. Soldier Kicks Coolie, Bounced From Unit. Not, say, Army Kills Local In Training Fiasco.
For THAT, the IDF (rightly) discharged him. But the practice of training on unwitting natives in this lovely and not-at-all dangerous manner – that, the IDF informed me, was done by proper procedure and after much consideration of all aspects of advisability.
Luckily, while the IDF has yet to reach the level of wisdom associated with giving a shit about what I happen to think, Israel’s veteran human rights NGO B’tselem speaks more softly but carries a bigger stick. After they sent a letter saying “y’all sure this is the way you wanna be?” the IDF about-faced and announced that its own Investigative MP unit would look into it. Uh-huh.
This ain’t the first time, either. I reported on this 2 years ago.
Then last week it turned out it isn’t just Helots they practice on. The good people of Tel Aviv noticed one fine morning that the air has a peculiar, sharp stank to it – above and beyond your normal megalopolis pollution. The authorities stalled for a good long time, playing dumb, and finally broke down admitting it was them doing some hush-hush crap. Who? What? Here the police, Enviro-Protection Ministry and Homeland Security started playing a lively round of Pass the Buck. I feel so much more protected now, I can’t even tell ya.
Finally, in other “Killin Ay-rabs and Getting’ Away With It” news:
A guy killed a Palestinian suspect he had already apprehended and bound. Claimed “his gun went off”. Court told him to his face it was unconvinced of this version. Sentence: Eight months. This is progress of sorts. William Zanzinger only got 6, and he wasn’t a uniformed fighter in the Hosts of the Lord.
Another guy, Colonel Ilan Malka, was found innocent of all wrongdoing in the piecemeal slaughter of the Samouni Family during Operation Poll Jum— I mean, Operation Cast Lead. The real rundown is over at Idan Landau’s blog, but that’s Hebrew. Long story short: IDF enters this neighborhood in Gaza, called Zeytun, takes over the compound owned and inhabited by the Samouni family, and herds all the surrendered civilians (about 100) into a 200 sq. meter space. The army in this case is a unit under the direct command of Col. Malka. He herded them. He knew they were there. Despite this, when he got reports on suspicious movement in that corner, he didn’t go “oh, that’s where i cordoned my tame civilians, lets make sure it ain’t one of them gathering wood for warmth cause they got no power”. He ordered to open fire. On several distinct occasions. Despite this, the IDF self-investigation finds nothing wrong.
There’s more to come, a quick wrap-up of the no good, very bad, not at all useful month Hasbara has had and a lot more… stay tuned.
Oh, while you’re waiting for part B – y’all seen The Hummus Enforcement Agency yet? Get your pita bread ready and go do so. Seriously. Bon Appetit!
Oh, almost forgot: MCA, aka Adam Yauch, AKA the ballsiest Jewboy in music, passed away as most of y’all probably know. RIP, great heart.
*Duvdevan means Cherry in Hebrew.
Like We Just Got Out of the Ghetto
Posted on: April 19, 2012
- In: Jewish supremacism | Uncategorized
- Comments Off on Like We Just Got Out of the Ghetto
When you’re a godless lefty knife-in-the-back-of-the-nation kinda guy, holocaust jokes are kinda part of the territory. In case you’re appalled by the notion and don’t understand how Jews who themselves have lost kin in the holocaust can do that: If you live outside of Israel and have ever had the slightest feeling that the holocaust is misused and overused, stuffed down one’s throat in wrong ways with wrong lessons implied and spelled outright, I can say only this: STFU and be thankful, because you have no idea. What Israel does with the holocaust for external propaganda it does a hundredfold for internal consumption. Besides, spend time in a serious injury ward and you’ll hear the same kind of blackest humor.
That said, and acknowledging that I’ve been known to tell a black shoah joke here and there, I must insist that it is not out of delight in contrariness and shock value that I say:
We Israelis must sharply stop with the holocaust ritual.
Definitely the way it is done now. We didn’t really need the study just recently published, showing that “Voyages of Life” trips (heritage high school trips to the death camps in Poland) have adverse mental effects on the minors who take them. A cursory glance at the talkbacks on any major news site would show much the same.
The anecdotes are too numerous to list, and extend far beyond the “It’s 1938, Iran is Hitler” fixation of our Prime Minister. From the one on former Knesset Speaer Avraham Burg’s book, about a Jew who told him “I can’t take a train when I go to Europe. Being in a train there brings it all back to me” and when asked where his parents came from said “Iraq” (where Jews were not deported by train in the holocaust). And more recently, a radio host on Israel’s military station stated that to her any fair-skinned blond-haired youth has a “Hitler Jugend” look, and that “They” (speaking of Danes, the People of the lefty scum who dared assault an officer’s rifle with his face) “are born anti-semites and die anti-semites.”
The Noble Danish People, for those of who don’t know and others who need an update on the weather in this reality, are the only nation on earth to be collectively awarded a “Righteous Among the Nations” medal from Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum. Quick recap: In a short national effort, spanning all walks of Danish society from the royal palace to the street sweepers, they smuggled 90% of their Jews to neighboring neutral and free Sweden in fishing boats. The country’s universities announced a week’s vacation on some pretext so that students could enlist in the effort. Of 426 Danish Jews who were captured by Nazis and transported east, 70% survived. They survived because the government of His Majesty Christian X sent food packages to Treisenstadt every week. But never mind. To some insane person on Israel’s national military station the Danes are inherently antisemites.
I too had a funny (in a scary way) experience in the same vein. I’m arguing occupation with a supposed Israeli who goes by AsoldiersMom on twitter. The chronological scope of the exchange or any other I’ve ever had with her never ever got earlier than the founding of Israel. To my memory, it was all 90s and 21st century. Suddenly I see her calling all her followers: “Join me in blocking holocaust-denier @AbuKedem !!!” She was dead serious, too.
The Holocaust, to the average Israeli nationalist, is a cart blanche. The ultimate, evergreen, self-replenishing get-out-of-jail card. “I don’t wanna hear it, I’ve had a holocaust and whatever I do is to protect me from it ever happening again, and therefore justified. If you disagree, you support the holocaust.”
From proof of a morally viable justification for creating a state at the expense of the natural rights of a native people, the holocaust has long since become a catch-all excuse for Israel’s right to be the neighborhood punching bag who suddenly shot up in height and packed on much muscle, but is still the traumatized little boy thinking only of raging vengeance for all those unhappy childhood years.
And so, from a cure to the disease that begat the holocaust (a cure conceived well in advance of that monstrous climax) the Zionist endeavor has become enthralled to a vendetta for the years of suffering. The purpose of this state is not to allow its citizens the normal whole life that they felt barred from fully experiencing in exile, but to defy, to prove we’re still around, to lash about on all sides and prove how our rage and our refusal to listen to anyone else have no limits, because our pain has no bounds and nothing can compare to it.
This is the behavior of a wounded animal. But how is it that this sort of reaction is still here? Wounds that do not kill tend, after all, to heal, right? Exactly. In order for the wound to remain open, so it can produce the same reaction of self-justifying rage, to remind that we’re still mad with pain, we need to keep invoking it. We need to brainwash people with the pain and compel high school students and their families to undertake the expensive burden of the holocaust tours, which become drunken romps (as 17 year old excursions tend to) and practice in hating gentiles and nurturing the sense that everyone wants to kill us everywhere all the time.
The actual still living victims of the wound, of course, can be left to spend their remaining days in abject poverty and squalor. So much so that when after years of outrage then-PM Olmert managed to pass a $23/month increase in the pensions of holocaust survivors, he had the nerve to describe it as a historical rectification of injustice, when in reality the sum added – and the new sum combined – wouldn’t suffice for his rectal hygiene budget. Because the sole drive we derive from the wound is not correction, healing or some universal lesson about the human condition that could ever to apply to ourselves from any other angle but the absolutely wronged party, whose one desire is revenge and whose right to execute it trumps all.
Another example from Twitter: I’m arguing with this funny right-winger journalist named Avishai Ivri who sometimes has me on his very right-wing radio show as a token lefty. And then he delivers this gem:
“Anyone who believes they’d survive a single night here without IDF soldiers armed to their teeth around their bed is indulging in sweet delusions.”
The problem with this statement is not that it is factually wrong. It’s that save for scattered exceptions, the state and its navigators have nurtured the situation necessitating this from the very start. One of the first critiques the Palestinians used to hurl at the newly-established Israel was that it was a grotesque garrison state surrounded by barbed wire. Our response has always been “Stop making us and we’ll stop. We ain’t doing this for fun.” But in light of the passing years, one has to wonder.
Zeev Jabotinski (the founder of the Israeli right-wing, in other words no lefty) gave the corpus of Zionist thought the concept of the Iron Wall. According to this, there would be a period following establishment of independence during which we would need to create and maintain an impenetrable barrier (the iron wall) which will prevent our defeated neighbors from regaining that which we took, as many times as needed to convince them that our presence is irreversible; However, even Jabotinski’s militant “you need men on that wall” vision stipulated that when that wall had achieved its purpose, we would be able to make peace with them and live as states live all over the world with their neighbors – with ties of trade, culture, tourism and mutual loathing ventilated at sporting events.
The thing is that somewhere along the line, the wall went from means to end. Even when the wall is made of space-age stainless steel with uranium titties (according to foreign sources of course…), many refuse to stop laying more and more bricks, more supports and foundations and laser beams to zap anyone even looking at the wall. Maybe that’s how the Tower of Babel was built? Maybe people built a levee against the river tide (a laudable precaution) and then just kept on building way after exceeding the height of even the most mythical killer flood waves?
Must we really, just to live here safely, hold two million people under a regime in which we see it as perfectly legitimate to use them as unwitting props in live-ammo military drills? To keep them firmly under our heels with a Stasi-like web of coerced informants numbering in the many thousands? To enjoy such obvious and overwhelming superiority over them that we can do all that, plus keep another million and a half under a quiet siege, half cut off from the world, hardly feel any consequence in our daily lives – and still treat every vain attempt by the vanquished to bite through the IDF boot at the foot stepping on their windpipe as an existential threat. Must we really live like this until further notice? Other states, with equally annoying neighbors and no such military superiority, manage to do without this and only we can’t? That way madness lays.
There’s a famous Zen story about the great teacher Tanzan, who was traveling with another monk when they come upon a pretty young girl afraid to cross an overflowing brook. Tanzan picks her up, carries her across the river and continues with his friend. The other guy after a while says “Why did you do that? You know we monks are not supposed to have any contact with women, particularly not young and beautiful ones.” Tanzan replies: I left the girl on the bank. Are you still carrying her?
Even the biggest trauma, if it is survived, needs to be left behind. This does not mean to forget. As long as there is a State of Israel (even in its impending one-state incarnation) it must include a Yad VaShem. The memory of the holocaust and its lessons must be taught, but there is a limit, and that is way back on our 6. So stand up straight, dammit, and stop acting like we just stepped out of the ghetto. We’ve grown a bit since then, and we can be proud of that.
So lets stop building the wall and start punching some windows and doorways in it, let some light and air in, maybe a neighbor now and then. It’s not healthy to live alone in the dark all the time. We do intend to actually LIVE here, right?
- In: Jewish supremacism | Judaism | racism
- 2 Comments
The #2 chaplain in the IDF, who is in charge of all religious education to soldiers, answers a religious law question and comes out flatly for the right of a Jewish soldier to rape a foreign captive
You know how old things crop up on the Internet? Well, today something floated to the surface on the Hebrew portion of the net that may hound Israel and the IDF for years to come – if both institutions even have many years left to them.
But doomsaying aside, the public and straightforward halachic opinion issued by Colonel and Rabbi Eyal Krim, the number two man at the IDF’s Military Rabbinate, back in the bloody days of the Second Intifada and “Operation Defensive Shield” (2002), is sure to create a storm. How big a storm will provide indications both of the current state of Israeli society at large, and of the degree to which the foreign press pays attention and gets the point.
The halachic issue in question is one known in Judaism as that of the “Pretty Woman”. The dilemma here is not whether it’s OK to fall in love with a prostitute as cute as Julia Roberts whom you hired as eye candy for a party, but something far darker.
A translation of the question (politely stated, with the tell-tale religious acronym for “with heaven’s help” at the top) and the answer by Colonel Krim, follows in full (Hebrew original here):
Question:
I have read on this site about [the halachic issue of] a pretty captive woman, and the relevant portions from the Torah, yet I am left with a question:
In various wars among the nations, such as World War 1, various nations fought amongst themselves, without any of them being particularly “good” or “bad” for the Jews…
But if an army were to conquer a village and rape Jewish girls there, it would have been justly considered as a disaster and a tragedy to the girl and her family.
Therefore, rape during time of war is considered heinous. So how is it that I have been told by a rabbi that “a pretty woman” is permitted, according to some rabbis, even before the process laid out in the Torah? Meaning he may first give in to his urges and lay with her, and only then take her to his home? And so on.
This seems like a contradiction. After all, if the rape of civilians during war is considered to be awful and forbidden, why should Jews supposedly be allowed?
Are IDF soldiers in our time, for example, allowed to rape girls during warfare, or is this forbidden?
Thank you.
.
Answer:
The wars of Israel – both the Mitzvah wars and the wars of choice – are Mitzvah wars. This is how they differ from the wars that take place amongst the nations of the world, between themselves.
Since war in essence is not a matter for the individual but nations war as wholes, there are situations in which the personality of the individual is “erased” for the greater good. And vice versa – at times we may endanger an entire unit to save an individual when this is required for morale.
One of the vital and crucial elements in war is to maintain the army’s fighting capacity. Thus, he who is afraid and faint of heart returns behind the war, so as not to soften the hearts of his brethren, and the emotions and needs of the individual are pushed to the side in favor of national success at war.
Just as during war the boundaries of risking oneself for others are pushed, so are the boundaries of chastity and kosher diet. Foreign wine prohibited during times of peace has been allowed at time of war to maintain the high spirits of the fighters. Prohibited foods have been allowed during wartime (according to some authorities even when there is kosher food available) in order to maintain the fighters’ fitness, although at peacetime they are disallowed.
Thus war also takes precedence over some coital laws. Although having relations with a gentile woman is a very grave act, it was permitted during wartime (under the conditions it was permitted) due to consideration of the difficulties of the fighting men, and since the success of the collective is our main object, the Torah has allowed to indulge the evil urge under the conditions specified, for the success of the collective.
Shalom
Eyal Krim
.
As we Yids say: Oy. I mean, where to start? With the Bronze-Age morality that sees war as a state that suspends all regular notions of justice and decency? To be fair, for that era that was advanced morality. Nobody else prohibited any treatment of war captives at all. Woe to the vanquished was the universal standard, and conquering kings gloried in the trampling of their enemies and rape of their women. The Torah said that even in war actions have consequences, and equaled the penalty of rape at war with that of rape of your neighbors daughter: You had to marry her, and you even had to give her a fortnight month to grieve for her lost family. But what was morally progressive back then is now what we godless buzzkills like to refer to as a war crime. Practiced on a wide enough scale, it can even make crime against humanity.
However, lots of blood has flown out of bodies and been buried in the mud over the millenia since, and at a slower pace, even broadly accepted standards of minimal mandatory morality have risen. Even at war. The entire aftermath and results of WW2, which incidentally featured the greatest slaughter of Jews in history, were a rejection of that notion, which was heartily embraced by the vanquished side in that conflict. If there was supposed to be one group of people that was unanimously, unequivocally against the German variety of the ultra-nationalist plague and all it stood for, it should surely have been the Jews. Or at least so one would think.
Need we go on? Krim is clearly more troubled by the act of having sex of any kind with a goya than by the notion of raping one. Then again, he is only following the inflexible logic of his creed. That IS what the Torah says. The rape is sometimes condoned but consensual relations with a heathen vagina never is.
That such views exist is not surprising. That such views are held by a high ranking military officer, one whose job is to oversee the religious indoctrination forced upon soldiers who come into combat situations in urban areas more than any other in the world, is alarming to say the least, and should lead to deep reflection on the part of Israelis who care in any way about their people’s religion.
Oh, the official response? Glad you asked. When acclaimed blogger (and personal friend, full disclosure) Yossi Gurvitz wrote to IDF Spokesperson’s “New Media” unit to ask whether these statements were consistent with IDF position, and if not what will be done regarding Krim, and how the IDF plans to deal with the possible blowback from this new revelation, he was told that his questions reflected a disrespect both towards the IDF and the Jewish religion, and that therefore the Spokesperson Unit will no longer be replying to his queries on any matter. So there.
In the 19th century, Judaism was faced for the first time in many centuries with a fundamental schism, as educated Jews who had taken advantage of emancipation laws sought to reconcile the good in Judaism with the universal values of the Enlightenment. From this drive were born the two main branches of world Judaism today: Conservative and Reform. The main difference between the two is that Conservative Judaism accepts the overall authority of the Halacha – that 1800 year-old corpus of religious law expounding on the words of the five books of Moses – while giving itself more freedom to tinker with it than is accepted in the Orthodox world. Reform Judaism, on the other hand, allows itself to simply disregard certain portions of halacha that it finds either irrelevant in the face of modern technology or outdated in the face or modern moral views.
One would think that Reform Judaism would be the natural fit for Israeli progressives. But neither Conservative nor Reform Judaism ever made even the smallest recognizable advance within any segment of Israeli society. They have always existed on the margins, discriminated against in the disbursement of religious-affairs budgets, and devoid of any political clout whatsoever (save that which the anti-clerical left was willing to throw them in order to score hits on the religious parties). Even leftists, who often say they yearn for a “humane” Judaism, don’t throng to the two main alternatives. A young Israeli humanist seeking spiritual food is far more likely to either embrace oriental philosophies or to “see the light” and realize why a creed that grants him special and irrevocable privileges is in fact the one true truth.
This is easily understandable. Both reformation movements are uniquely exile-oriented and were designed explicitly to enable Jews to integrate in societies in which they were not the majority and did not call the shots.
However, the rightward messianic and/or fundamentalist drifts of virtually all parts of Orthodox Judaism in Israel means that anyone who cares about the perpetuation of Israeli Judaism, as a faith that can be professed without being automatically suspect by any right-minded person in the world, must create the grounds for the rise of a Judaism that can maintain a by-and-large consistency with basic modern notions of human rights – even if that means devising a whole new form of Judaism, which while speaking of and to the Jew living on his ancestral land and constituting a majority, is still at least as enlightened as the best of “the nations”. Leaving the definition of free, homegrown Judaism to these retrograde troglodytes will lead to Judaism everywhere being viewed on a level akin to that of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Lord’s Resistance Army.
P.S. Yes, I totally ignored the wonderful people of Shomrei Mishpat – Rabbis For Human Rights, who with precious few numbers do great deeds to restore honor and humanity to the name of Judaism. However, those rabbis are mostly Conservative and Reform, and in any event the humanist version of Judaism has been tested at the ballot box more than once over the past two decades. It never managed to get elected to Knesset on its own.
- In: apartheid | Jewish supremacism | Occupation | racism
- Comments Off on This Week in Israel: Thugs, Dogs and Pigs
We are defending our very existence; There must have been very good security reasons; She’s a clear and present danger – but I don’t have to prove it in any way; All they want is to kill us; We have no choice
The excuses of occupation, supremacism and herd mentality never change much, nor have they in this particularly disgusting week in the JEWISH state of Israel.
In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, protests continued unabated against the 2009 theft of the village’s spring, Ein al-Salih, despite the IDF – which abetted said theft by the settlers of Halamish – incessant attempts to intimidate them into just accepting their fate as the Chosen People’s punching bag.
Last night, Friday, marked the first time in over two weeks that the village wasn’t raided well past midnight by the IDF thugs. For 15 straight days the IDF’s brave, moral troops invaded this village every single night, waking up families, tossing their homes, and often confiscating stuff (computers and personal papers) without a warrant or without providing a receipt for the items seized. Seeing as following the Marmara incident several (brave and moral) IDF soldiers were caught looting computers, cell phones and credit cards belonging to the ship’s passengers, one can understand how the lack of a clear signed record of what was taken is cause for concern.
But the abuse doesn’t end here. I already told you last week what happened to Anan Naji al-Tamimi, and this week we got footage of the apparent theft of laptops at the home of one of the Palestinian Gandhis, Bassem Tamimi, who is currently held without charge, trial, or regular access to counsel because Israel can’t deal with his skill at organizing non-violent demonstrations. Ain’t many folks in Nabi Saleh that can get the teenagers to bottle their righteous anger and refrain from showing the invading thugs any physical defiance, thus making the army thugs show what thugs they truly are without even the excuse of kids throwing rocks.
When someone loses patience with this arrogant behavior and arranges a meeting between something heavy and hard and a ransacking IDF thug’s face, the wail will rise instantly: THEY HATE US JUST FOR BEING JEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWS.
Also from the occupied territories this week: The advent of using attack dogs against unarmed protesters, and finally this gutsy kid, who sent a kangaroo military court “judge” into a tantrum by telling him he doesn’t recognize his authority. The judge left the courtroom in a huff, warning the kid he’d screw him at sentencing. Big man, no? Most moral army.
Another lovely story from the Only Democracy this week: About 300 “fans” of the racist football club Beitar Jerusalem, following a victory by their crappy team, swarmed into the Malha shopping mall adjacent to their home field, and proceeded to beat the living crap out of about 10 Palestinian sanitation workers, yelling “Death to Arabs” and so on.
The pogromchiks quickly overwhelmed the mall security, and even the cops who were called to the scene required long minutes before they restored order and stopped the lynching.
Another lovely aspect of this little story is that while it happened last Monday, it was reported precisely nowhere in the Israeli media until Friday, and then only at Haaretz. You know how hasbara parrots love to talk about Israel’s vaunted free press? Bring this one up next time they try it. See what they have to say.
And get this: Despite the fact that the blue porkers were undeniably on the scene, they did not detain a single person for questioning. When asked why that is, a pigsty spokesperson replied that “no arrest or investigation took place because no complaint was filed.”
As my boy Bobby would say, bury the rag deep in your face – NOW is the time for your tears.
For one thing, of course, nowhere in world does a cop need a complaint to make an arrest or at least detain someone for questioning when the crime happens in front of their pink squashed snouts.
For another, though, and this naturally caught my eye, the claim that arrests and indictments can’t be made absent a victim’s complaint is false. I myself was convicted of “threats” against Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (over a blog post, not heavy breathing on the phone…), who did not file a complaint with the police and whom we were not allowed to summon as a witness.
Jerusalem District PD Chief Nisso Shaham is proving that the Kahanists managed to get to him. Said high-ranking porker was marked as an enemy of the Jehovah-nazis when, during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip he was recorded saying “shit on them” regarding the militant settlers and their threats of violent resistance.
When he was appointed Chief of the J-M district, some had naively hoped that a new era had begun for a force that had been accurately dubbed “Kahane’s Police” by songwriter Chaim Cheffer back in the 80′s and hasn’t gotten a damn bit better since. The Judonazis of course raised a big ole wail when he was appointed, but as I say some had hoped Shaham was exactly the sort of guy to blow off their hostility and do his motherfucking job. Did I mention the word Naive?
So now Nisso is cowering from the feared wrath of the racist scum that populate Teddy Stadium’s east-side bleachers, and walking around the streets of Jerusalem with Satan’s spunk dripping from his rectal orifice.
And with that Santorum-like image, we shall now return you to your points of origin, which should be looking really good in comparison right about now or you should be looking deeply into relocation. The Weekend Holyland Update is not responsible for any misconceptions, sympathies or illusions that may have been misplaced on our tours. This tour has been brought to you free of charge courtesy of the pilot’s graphomanic disorder and high-horse syndrome, but feel free to avail yourselves of the “Donate” button over there. Also, you can buy my book, “Jewcy Story: How the Jews blew redemption the last time around” and get 500 fascinating years of Jewish history for the bargain price of $3.
P.S. The bit about “She’s a clear and present danger” refers to Hana Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who is currently on her 38th day of hunger strike, in protest of her administrative detention. Israel apparently doesn’t feel it has a case it can actually convict her with even in a kangaroo military court. Be that as it may, it is really chilling to think that these people, who run our lives and an entire nuclear state, really wish after narrowly dodging the bullet with Khader Adnan, to wind up with a FEMALE martyr who isn’t the self-admitted spokesperson of a terrorist organization. Israel’s only luck with the Adnan affair was that he sucked as a symbol (what with being a bigshot in a sick demented fanatic group). A young woman, pretty enough even with a headscarf, who isn’t self evidently guilty of at least membership in a banned org and who only demanded the simple right of her day in court and to confront her accusers and their claims? That shit will sell like hotcakes. Makes you wonder if the powers that be don’t actually WANT more Toulouse incidents… (Yeah, I said it. Got a problem? Speak the fuck up).
Recent Comments