Zionism’s Lost Shine

[MacCruiskeen]

Best of luck with your social skills, Solace.

I'm having nothing to do with this minefield any more.

That kind of confused and baffled resignation is precisely what hasbara is designed to achieve.

[MacCruiskeen]

The score so far, as of Friday August 8th 2014. (Remember: This is what Dieter Graumann and his perfectly-safe, well-fed fellow-"experts" in Europe and the USA wanted, propagandised for, got, and continue to defend to the hilt -- all the while canting about how frightened they themselves [allegedly] feel):

Palestinian deaths

1,922 killed, including at least 1,407 civilians
448 children
235 women

Israeli deaths

64 soldiers (i.e., those who are carrying out the massacre)
2 civilians
1 Thai national in Israel

(Source: OCHA; 0500 GMT on 8 August)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28702394

[MacCruiskeen]

Good to see the ruling council of my home city taking a stance against the ongoing massacre. I hope other cities will follow.

BBC, 8 August 2014 Last updated at 14:41 GMT

Palestinian flag raised over Glasgow city chambers



The Palestinian flag has been raised over Glasgow's city chambers in support of the people of Gaza.

...

Glasgow is twinned with the city of Bethlehem, which is under the Palestinian Authority not in the Gaza strip.

In a letter to the mayor of Bethlehem, Councillor Docherty said: "Glasgow is home to many friends of Palestine and this is a deeply distressing time for them.

"They represent a variety of ethnicities, political persuasions, faiths and none. However, they are united by a common desire to support the Palestinian people."

...


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-gla ... t-28705044

Renaming St. George's Place, 1986


Nelson Mandela in George Square, 9 October 1993

There can be no peace without justice.

[smiths]

"Classic blame the victim. More likely, rascist opportunism."

Depth perception must be a real problem for you Solace

[MacCruiskeen]

One page back, I called that Guardian article "hysterical scaremongering". Which is now confirmed by the official statistics, published yesterday: There have been substantially fewer antisemitic offences in Germany this year than last:

Kriminalität
Weniger antisemitische Straftaten

Im zweiten Quartal wurden 159 Fälle gemeldet
Rasmus Buchsteiner, Büro Berlin

08.08.2014

Berlin Die Zahl der antisemitischen Straftaten in Deutschland ist leicht zurückgegangen. „Im zweiten Quartal 2014 wurden 159 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund gemeldet. Darunter waren fünf Gewalttaten und 30 Propagandadelikte“, heißt es in der Antwort des Innenministeriums auf eine Parlamentarische Anfrage von Bundestagsvizepräsidentin Petra Pau (Linke), die unserer Berliner Redaktion vorliegt.

Für das erste Quartal 2014 weist die Statistik bundesweit 191 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund, 350 für das erste Halbjahr. In der ersten Jahreshälfte 2013 wurden dagegen 409 einschlägige Straftaten registriert.

...

http://www.nwzonline.de/blaulicht/wenig ... 03400.html

(Apologies for posting this untranslated - I'm in a big hurry and have to go out now. I'll post a translation of this, and of Dieter Graumann's warmongering quotes from the last page, later today. Meanwhile, Google Translate will give you the gist.)

[solace]

One page back, I called that Guardian article "hysterical scaremongering". Which is now confirmed by the official statistics, published yesterday: There have been substantially fewer antisemitic offences in Germany this year than last:

Kriminalität
Weniger antisemitische Straftaten

Im zweiten Quartal wurden 159 Fälle gemeldet
Rasmus Buchsteiner, Büro Berlin

08.08.2014

Berlin Die Zahl der antisemitischen Straftaten in Deutschland ist leicht zurückgegangen. „Im zweiten Quartal 2014 wurden 159 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund gemeldet. Darunter waren fünf Gewalttaten und 30 Propagandadelikte“, heißt es in der Antwort des Innenministeriums auf eine Parlamentarische Anfrage von Bundestagsvizepräsidentin Petra Pau (Linke), die unserer Berliner Redaktion vorliegt.

Für das erste Quartal 2014 weist die Statistik bundesweit 191 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund, 350 für das erste Halbjahr. In der ersten Jahreshälfte 2013 wurden dagegen 409 einschlägige Straftaten registriert.

...

http://www.nwzonline.de/blaulicht/wenig ... 03400.html

(Apologies for posting this untranslated - I'm in a big hurry and have to go out now. I'll post a translation of this, and of Dieter Graumann's warmongering quotes from the last page, later today. Meanwhile, Google Translate will give you the gist.)

Even ONE incident in a country with Germany's history is cause for concern. Accusing a Jew of "warmongering," for speaking up against antisemitism is just so Nazi chic Herr Schicklcruiseken.

[Sounder]

Zionists are so special, with them racism and war crimes are a good thing.

[solace]

Zionists are so special, with them racism and war crimes are a good thing.

Heil, Sounder! Now goosestep back to your PEZ copy.

[solace]

Anti-Zionism: heir apparent to Nazism?

What is ideology but a body of beliefs with the power to stir up and mobilize people. The beliefs are not meant to be studied and understood, but to believe in with a burning faith.


Communism told the faithful to believe in a struggle between classes for political and economic power. Nazism mesmerized Germans to believe in a struggle between pure and impure races for world domination. And then came anti-Zionism…



To be heir-apparent to the earth-shaking isms of the 20th century, anti-Zionism must, as they did, convey a particular world view. For that matter so must Zionism if, as many would argue, it is the vilest ideology of all. It certainly is older than all. As a movement Zionism goes back to the last half of the 19th century, though as a faith, as the unwavering attachment of Jews and Judaism to a homeland, Zionism extends back to biblical days. Whether ideology is the right pigeonhole for it depends on the lessons we learn from anti-Zionism.



“One who has thought as well as suffered.” So wrote the New York Times when Hannah Arendt published her seminal work, “The origins of Totalitarianism” in 1951. One could wish for no better class on ideology than that of the great political scientist Arendt.



Ideology, we learn from her, is first and foremost a body of beliefs. Not just some random beliefs; they must explain past and present, and predict the future, no matter how far removed from reality the beliefs happen to be. Indeed, if they were linked to reality there’d be nothing ideological about them.



As for the tent of followers held enthrall, they must be incapable of learning, from history or from current events. Hence the power and allure of beliefs, of axiomatic premises and made to order facts: they emancipate people from reality. At this point indoctrination takes the lead role, reciting the belief system ad nauseam. In sum, ideology is poles apart from a mere political movement.



And here we leave Arendt, just for a while to compare notes with anti-Zionism. How far does it depart from a political movement? Does it claim to explain the past and present and predict the future? Has it a body of beliefs, of premises and facts that liberate anti-Zionists from reality? Is it taught ad nauseam?



The beliefs of anti-Zionism are a matter of public record. Who has not heard Zionists execrated for the vilest intents or deeds? They pull the levers of power; they’ve made America beholden to Israel; the media is in their grasp; their occupation of Palestine is uniquely wicked; their creation Israel a foreign colonial enterprise running an Apartheid system and committing crimes against humanity. Even the Arab world meltdown is only because Zionists live (too well) on one hundredth of one percent of a region home to people of another faith. The Middle East would get along fine without the Zionist cancer. Only eradicate it and Sunnis would lie down with Shiites, swords beaten into ploughshares.



If the angry belief system had a core it would subsist in two innocent enough words: ‘Occupation’ and ‘Control.’ Yet how those words suffuse every indictment, how they colour every canard. Hardly a day passes without the claim that the Zionist occupation is a crime. No proof is given and, like any rallying cry worth its salt, ‘occupation’ is kept undefined. Just as Hitler railed against a Jewish conspiracy while not a Jew lived outside ghetto or death camp, so anti-Zionists rail against occupation while not a Jew lives in autonomously-run Palestine. And who except ideologues out of touch with reality would crew a ship to free Gaza from itself.



Finkelstein: Zionists are beyond chutpah



Then there is control. Zionists are believed to have the malice and wherewithal to control every important thing. Even when they don’t, Zionists pull levers to get others to do their bidding. The media is under Zionist control; ditto for American policy making and the special treatment that Israel gets. Down in the engine room Zionist money keeps the wheels turning, and the Holocaust card held for when the engine gets tired, threatening the Zionist enterprise. Then the card is played for all its worth. Such manipulative control and lever pulling is “beyond chutzpah” in the words of Norman Finkelstein the anti-Zionist.



Still, anti-Zionism would fall short of ideology unless its core beliefs were drummed into the hoi polloi. Institutions of learning, like the old Soviet Comintern, play that role. When anti-Zionist tenets are not in the syllabus, they’re taught at campus events or summer camps. But remember Hannah Arendt. To be a proper ideology anti-Zionism must go further than learning beliefs by rote. It must explain the past and present, and predict the future. All are key indicators ticked by the narrative so familiar to us.



According to this narrative European Jews came over and stole the land from native Palestinians. Israelis are colonial usurpers and ethnic cleansers. Jackbooted, they oppress harmless Palestinians. What for other people are conscience-free acts (putting up housing, turning on taps, driving on roads, keeping business running) are criminal acts when Zionists engage in them. The anti-Zionist can be neither argued nor shaken out of his credo: Zionists are never innocent, Palestinians never guilty. Period. The anti-Zionist is there to tell you, not to argue.



Prof Dugard: angy when verdicts acquit Zionists



The credo is sacred to skinhead and professor alike. Law professor John Dugard got angry with the chairman of the UN-Goldstone team after he decided that the Zionists were innocent after all. Amnesty Int. Professor Derrick Pounder considered no sign of dead bodies to be proof of dead bodies which the Zionists had somehow secreted away. Haifa Professor Ilan Pappe refused to let go of a fake Zionist massacre long after his student had apologized for inventing one. Come what may, Zionists must be guilty of one thing or another. People emancipated from reality by a belief system, and only such people, can be clownish and contrary to this degree.



What of the predicted future? And how do anti-Zionists work to make it happen?



They predict a one-state outcome – yet another Muslim state, and labour to see it come about. After Palestinian qualifiers crawl out from all corners of the globe to take up their right of return, Palestine will have a Jewish minority. The size of that minority will depend on how many Jews are left alive, and on how many survivors accept dhimmi (third class) status, as Christians ruled by Muslims have done elsewhere. Then the anti-Zionist can take a back seat and wait for the inevitable to takes its course. Ethnic cleansing will solve the Jewish problem. Zionists won’t last long in Palestine, but share the fate of persecuted Christians. No temple precinct, no patriarchal tomb, no synagogue, will be sacrosanct. Of this mouth-watering prospect the anti-Zionist dream is made.



Could Zionism be more vile? Only if it happens to be a real ideology to begin with
.

Writer Robert Fisk: taps into dissaffected Israelis



To be one does it have what it takes? Does Zionism boast a solid body of beliefs, a single narrative that claims to explain the past and present, and predict Israel’s future? Not according to anti-Zionists, when their mind is on other matters. To verify their claims and calumnies about Israel to whom do anti-Zionists turn, first and foremost? Who but to Zionists of ‘conscience’. Disaffected Jews are grist to their mill. The indictments of columnists Robert Fisk or Tom Friedman tap into them on every occasion possible. The books of Israel-hater Norman Finkelstein are filled with source notes from Israeli media, Israeli human rights bodies, Israeli political figures. Boycott Israel platforms are given to professed Zionists.



Inadvertently, anti-Zionists disclose that the Zionism they villify boasts no body of beliefs. By their own acts they prove that Zionism is anything but ideological. Too clever by half, they disprove that Zionism is one hell bent ideology. Against their better judgment they paint a picture of Zionism as an accommodating tent for divergent leanings. World views as far apart as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, Judaism and neo-Zionism feel comfortable under Zionism’s big tent.



No – Zionism is quite unlike its nemesis, that ideology zealously advocating faith in a wicked nation of Jews.

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/anti-zio ... ent-nazism

[MacCruiskeen]

One page back, I called that Guardian article "hysterical scaremongering". Which is now confirmed by the official statistics, published yesterday: There have been substantially fewer antisemitic offences in Germany this year than last:

Kriminalität
Weniger antisemitische Straftaten

Im zweiten Quartal wurden 159 Fälle gemeldet
Rasmus Buchsteiner, Büro Berlin

08.08.2014

Berlin Die Zahl der antisemitischen Straftaten in Deutschland ist leicht zurückgegangen. „Im zweiten Quartal 2014 wurden 159 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund gemeldet. Darunter waren fünf Gewalttaten und 30 Propagandadelikte“, heißt es in der Antwort des Innenministeriums auf eine Parlamentarische Anfrage von Bundestagsvizepräsidentin Petra Pau (Linke), die unserer Berliner Redaktion vorliegt.

Für das erste Quartal 2014 weist die Statistik bundesweit 191 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund, 350 für das erste Halbjahr. In der ersten Jahreshälfte 2013 wurden dagegen 409 einschlägige Straftaten registriert.

...

http://www.nwzonline.de/blaulicht/wenig ... 03400.html

(Apologies for posting this untranslated - I'm in a big hurry and have to go out now. I'll post a translation of this, and of Dieter Graumann's warmongering quotes from the last page, later today. Meanwhile, Google Translate will give you the gist.)

Even ONE incident in a country with Germany's history is cause for concern. Accusing a Jew of "warmongering," for speaking up against antisemitism is just so Nazi chic Herr Schicklcruiseken.

Complaint's in.

This is an anti-fascist board,and you are not just a stupid timewasting hasbara troll, but also a serial defender and enabler of fascism.

Zionists are so special, with them racism and war crimes are a good thing.

Heil, Sounder! Now goosestep back to your PEZ copy.

^^Separate complaint in to the Mods for this separate item of cretinous hasbara trolling..

You are clearly paid by the post and not by the line.

[solace]

One page back, I called that Guardian article "hysterical scaremongering". Which is now confirmed by the official statistics, published yesterday: There have been substantially fewer antisemitic offences in Germany this year than last:

Kriminalität
Weniger antisemitische Straftaten

Im zweiten Quartal wurden 159 Fälle gemeldet
Rasmus Buchsteiner, Büro Berlin

08.08.2014

Berlin Die Zahl der antisemitischen Straftaten in Deutschland ist leicht zurückgegangen. „Im zweiten Quartal 2014 wurden 159 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund gemeldet. Darunter waren fünf Gewalttaten und 30 Propagandadelikte“, heißt es in der Antwort des Innenministeriums auf eine Parlamentarische Anfrage von Bundestagsvizepräsidentin Petra Pau (Linke), die unserer Berliner Redaktion vorliegt.

Für das erste Quartal 2014 weist die Statistik bundesweit 191 Straftaten mit antisemitischem Hintergrund, 350 für das erste Halbjahr. In der ersten Jahreshälfte 2013 wurden dagegen 409 einschlägige Straftaten registriert.

...

http://www.nwzonline.de/blaulicht/wenig ... 03400.html

(Apologies for posting this untranslated - I'm in a big hurry and have to go out now. I'll post a translation of this, and of Dieter Graumann's warmongering quotes from the last page, later today. Meanwhile, Google Translate will give you the gist.)

Even ONE incident in a country with Germany's history is cause for concern. Accusing a Jew of "warmongering," for speaking up against antisemitism is just so Nazi chic Herr Schicklcruiseken.

Complaint's in.

This is an anti-fascist board,and you are not just a stupid timewasting hasbara troll, but also a serial defender and enabler of fascism.

Zionists are so special, with them racism and war crimes are a good thing.

Heil, Sounder! Now goosestep back to your PEZ copy.

^^Separate complaint in to the Mods for this separate item of cretinous hasbara trolling..

You are clearly paid by the post and not by the line.

I have also complained about you calling me a paid agent which is against the rules. I did not complain about the name calling because what's the use when dealing with someone like you who has a long history of uncontrolled temper...just like most Nazis.

[MacCruiskeen]

I have also complained about you calling me a paid agent which is against the rules. I did not complain about the name calling because what's the use when dealing with someone like you who has a long history of uncontrolled temper...just like most Nazis.

You merely prove my point,yet again: you are, quite obviously, paid by the post and not by the line. Either that, or you are an exceptionally stupid amateur, and I do not believe that even you are as stupid as you appear to be. Because how could you possibly be?

Even more obviously, you are a shameless fascist apologist. I have just spent the afternoon marching under the banner of Jews for a Just Peace in the Middle East. The banner I (co-)held bore the words "No German Weapons for Mass Murder". I will not be called a Nazi, repeatedly, by you or by any other fascist creep like you, and I will most certainly not be called an anti-Semite for calling Graumann a warmongerer (which he demonstrably is) and the Jews and Gentiles I marched with voices for peace and justice.

[solace]

I have also complained about you calling me a paid agent which is against the rules. I did not complain about the name calling because what's the use when dealing with someone like you who has a long history of uncontrolled temper...just like most Nazis.

You merely prove my point,yet again: you are, quite obviously, paid by the post and not by the line. Either that, or you are an exceptionally stupid amateur, and I do not believe that even you are as stupid as you appear to be. Because how could you possibly be?

Even more obviously, you are a shameless fascist apologist. I have just spent the afternoon marching under the banner of Jews for a Just Peace in the Middle East. The banner I (co-)held bore the words "No German Weapons for Mass Murder". I will not be called a Nazi, repeatedly, by you or by any other fascist creep like you, and I will most certainly not be called an anti-Semite for calling Graumann a warmongerer (which he demonstrably is) and the Jews and Gentiles I marched with voices for peace and justice.

Nazis blamed Jews for antisemitism. So do you. You are a fucking Nazi. A Nazi in sheep's clothing. You WILL be called one cause you are one.

[MacCruiskeen]

^^

someone like you who has a long history of uncontrolled temper...just like most Nazis.

[MacCruiskeen]

Back on-topic, if humanly possible:

BBC, 9 August 2014 Last updated at 16:41 GMT

Tens of thousands of protesters march in London for Gaza

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28715052

... and throughout the civilized world.