Monomania and inconsistency

I believe I said in the last thread, dealing with reality in the post-modern world makes upholding the truth a very difficult proposition. That is how we run into absurdities as there are two sides to every story even though that is not true. The human intelligence gets insulted by the notion that in every situation, two claims have equal validity. For those who believe in truth capital T, it means a lot of overtime work.

Roland

You wonder (correctly) if Pogrund’s article would have been published if it went further.

It reminds me: Do you know why Petra Marquardt-Bigman has had nothing on CIF since 5 June?

I can’t believe it is because she has not submitted anything. She has published in the Jerusalem Post and Harrys Place.

I wonder if it is because her articles are not sufficiently anti-Israel for them anymore?

You may have a point, Louise.

Would you say this sentence was anti-semitic?

“The state of Israel came into existence after a campaign of terror from various groups inspired by Zionism – an ideology which stated that the persecution of the Jewish people would end if they had their own homeland in Palestine.”

Louise – I’m going to try to put things into context for you…. I think your reaction at 5.41 is knee jerk, which to me says you haven’t thought the facts through….

I agree with Pogrund when he says… there ARE Jews who misuse and manipulate the Holocaust to stoke up fears for their own purposes.

Look at this without blinkers, Louise. Look on the Net, look at the Israeli papers – and you’ll see that the few remaining Holocaust survivors say the same as Pogrund. Israel itself is guilty of leaving many of these people in poverty, and we have large Holocaust industries whose main purpose seems to me to be to build Holocaust Museums and not only do these NOT keep the memories of that terrible time alive, because there are far too many of them, and it’s a case of overkill – they also keep anti-Semitism in the public eye (which in itself is no bad thing) but they use the fear of it to manipulate and get more money out of people. I’ve been on the receiving end of such “begging letters” with the undercurrent of “You should give to our organisation to stave off anti-Semitism”. You surely must remember the scandal some time ago involving the powers that be from the World Jewish Congress – and missing millions – which thanks to some clever footwork and intimidation by the WJC wasn’t taken any further.

I’m a Jew and I’m proud of it – maybe you might see my comments as anti-Semitic – I’m sure you’ll tell me if you do, but it doesn’t change the facts. I’ve lived in the UK all my life and apart from one or two incidents when I was a child, I have never come across anti-Semitism in the way some people here describe it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t know it if I saw or experienced it, but I don’t see it everywhere, and I certainly wouldn’t adopt an attitude of “we’d better be scared of it, just in case.”

On a slightly different issue I’d just like to say that one of the most vile posters on Comment is Free is LaRitournelle. It’s just a pity that you’ve only got so much room for commentators’ bios, because I can remember reading far worse than those from her.

It’s all very well that some people defend Comment is Free, but as others have said – why have they never banned her?

Of course the Darfur issues has only been relevant for approximately 5 years, whereas the Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing closer to 60. It’s not quite a like-by-like comparrison.

If you enter Iraq into CiF’s search facility you get 6474 entries. Use Britain and you get 11029. For England, the United States, France and Iran, you get 4115, 3004, 2593 and 2752.

Tim.

Of course the Darfur issues has only been relevant for approximately 5 years, whereas the Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing closer to 60. It’s not quite a like-by-like comparison.

Yet the BBC, not completely impartial, estimates that upwards of 350,000 people have died in Darfur over the last 5 years. Compare the last five years of the ongoing I/P conflict and 5,000 would probably be an exaggeration.

Yet, for more than a month, no article on CI(F) which in anyway mentions Muslim killing Muslim in Darfur.

CI(F) is negatively obsessed with Israel. Whatever which/way you approach the constant flow of articles about Israel.

The present Guardian management is conducting a crusade against the one liberal western democracy in the Middle East. I don’t remember a single article examining why the Palestinians cannot get their act together and come up with practical peace proposals.

By the way. Practical means without ROR.

Mita – I doubt Bartle is saying we should not have Holocaust Museums but why do we need so many new ones? One Museum can represent what needs to be represented – so why the surfeit?

There is also the question that is increasingly being asked – why are some organisations still pushing for reparations for victims of the Holocaust when there are less and less survivors left?

Someone should have commented on the lastest article at CIF:

“Peace plans come and go. Obama may have to try a wholly new approachUnless talks address the core, existential issues of 1948, optimism about a new Middle East effort is likely to fade fast” by

Jonathan Freedland

Plenty here to criticise as does normblog:

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/08/new-or-old-thinking-on-israelpalestine.html

looks like Freedland is ready to abolish Israel for the sake of Peace.

Two posters who tend to the melodramatic picked up on a phrase of Freedland’s that had escaped my eye

“Palestinians forced to become a refugee nation so that Jews can have a state of their own.”

Individuals are refugees until they find a home. Jews did not force them not to find a home for themselves and successive generations. That was part of a Macchiavellian plan. Jews did not have a home for two thousand years but were not a “refugee nation”. Most refugees find homes quickly and settle down to work or they starve. This is the first professional refugee nation in history and Freedland should have had more sense than to fall into that trap.

Indeed, I rather think that’s my point. If we compare BBC headline coverage of Zimbabwe and Angola, there’s a clear mismatch, but we understand why all the same. Portugese coverage of the world has a completely different slant. The present is shaped by the past and we’re lumped with it.

On the other hand, were it not for British rule in Mesopotamia there would have been no declaration favouring the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Can you not comprehend how the world might have looked had France, or indeed Germany, hold sway of the region?

modernityblog

I think the Great War is something that the Israel-haters, possibly taking their lead from Arabs, are in denial about.

The Ottoman Empire still seems to exist for them. I see around the posts here some suggestion that antisemites are none too bright. It is certainly difficult to try to envisage the contents of their minds and thoughts. A void from 1914-1964 into which Jews erupt in order to annihilate Arab immigrants.

modernityblog

I’d be interested to see some information on those restrictions. I don’t think Jew-haters consider the real Ottoman Empire. They just swallow whole whatever Arab propaganda says.

When I come across references to how equally Arabs treated Jews there always springs to mind an illustration from nineteenth-century Jerusalem showing the Jewish secretary of an Ottoman bigwig who had had his nose and lips amputated for “spying”. He was still his secretary…