Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumStop Living in Denial, Israel Is an Evil State (Gideon Levy)
After weve cited nationalism and racism, hatred and contempt for Arab life, the security cult and resistance to the occupation, victimhood and messianism, one more element must be added without which the behavior of the Israeli occupation regime cannot be explained: Evil. Pure evil. Sadistic evil. Evil for its own sake. Sometimes, its the only explanation.
Eva Illouz described its signs (Evil now, Haaretz, July 30). Her essay, which challenges the idea of the banality of evil, considers the national group as the source of the evil. Using philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteins concept, she finds a family resemblance between the Israeli occupation and historys evil regimes. This similarity does not mean that Israel is Nazi, nor even fascist. And yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. Its a depressing and brilliant analysis.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.734309
rgbecker
(4,877 posts)bluedye33139
(1,474 posts)AwareOne
(404 posts)With an undeclared nuclear arsenal but they're our rogue terrorist state with an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
patsimp
(915 posts)Warpy
(113,130 posts)but I have to admit I can't stand their present government.
DuckHuntGangsta
(4 posts)Talk about hateful anti-semetic nonsense. This sounds like something that would come out of Trumps mouth if he had an itch for Jews vs. Muslims and other brown skin persons.
Have you been to Israel? Have you spoke to few Israeli's? Do you understand an objective version of what led to the state of Israel and its current state?
If you truely understand the history of the thing you shouldn't hate either side; there were a series of blunders,
Missteps, and unwillingness to compromise or accept co-existence on both sides.
If you remove the politics, Israel is a model example of what investing in human capital and innovation looks like vs. country's that over rely on natural resources.
patsimp
(915 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)He has lived in Israel since 1953 (and is Jewish).
Israeli
(4,300 posts).....he is also a secular Left wing post zionist atheist......get your facts straight oberliner please .
King_David
(14,851 posts)leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Just more petty bullshit.
Israeli
(4,300 posts)Lets see .......
" He has lived in Israel since 1953 (and is Jewish)."
Oberliner's post gave the impression that Gideon had chosen to live here ie had immigrated ...he was born here and had no choice .
It also gave the impression that Judaism is important to him ....its not , he is an atheist .
I also filled in the gaps regarding Gideon's politics ....which happen to mirror mine .
Hope this helps ....anything else I can educate you on KD just whistle
King_David
(14,851 posts)That's a very nuanced analysis , thank you.
He has the same politics as you ?
I have always found Gideon Levy to be extremely self righteous.... I heard him talk in the USA once , he describes himself as Jewish. I think he thinks of himself as the one and only righteous Jew in the world , he thinks he is the only Jew that gets along with Gentiles ( weird because he lives only among Jews , unlike us ), he thinks he's the only Jew that actually "gets it" , he thinks he's the only Jew that understands what's going on.
Israeli
(4,300 posts)ref quote : " ( weird because he lives only among Jews , unlike us ) "
.....seriously KD .....you cant be serious ....can you ???
Where/when did you hear him talk in the USA ?
What was the subject ??
He does a lot of English interviews......many of them with Americans ...
....example ....
You should pay more attention ....You Tube is a good place to start .
King_David
(14,851 posts)leftynyc
(26,060 posts)the person who posted this OP.
6chars
(3,967 posts)is that a terrorist who killed a bunch of people was not allowed to have a ;eave from prison to see his dying parent. you could argue either way about that, but it strikes me that there are more evil things in the world to take up newsprint - or pixels - about.
Response to oberliner (Original post)
Mosby This message was self-deleted by its author.
ericson00
(2,707 posts)bashing what he hates while living in what he hates.
He also hates himself, obviously.
shira
(30,109 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=131390
Its true that this kind of terror also hurts innocent people brutally. Its means are similar too. Palestinians attacked planes when Osama Bin Laden was still a business administration student in King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, and Palestinian suicide terrorists preceded ISIS. But all this cannot cover up the difference: ISISs goals are insane, the Palestinians goals are justified.
What would you say to a Gazan youngster hesitating whether to join the resistance? Is there any point to his life and any chance for his future if he and his colleagues bow their heads submissively before their jailers? Is there anyone, in Israel or the rest of the world, who would remember their existence without the violent resistance that is tagged as terrorism? And their brothers in the West Bank violence may not have given them any real achievements, but at least it raised their issue and put it on the agenda.
Lets be honest about it: Had the Palestinians not hijacked airplanes in the early '70s, would anyone in the world know about their disaster? Be interested in their fate? True, nothing has been solved since then, but this is despite their desperate resort to terror, not because of it.
Israel has given the Palestinians and the Arab world a fateful lesson it understands only force. Only force got Israel to return Sinai, only force led it to the Oslo talks, only by force will the Palestinian problem be solved. This force, in the case of people who have no army or air force, is terror.
The first 20 years of occupation, during which there was little terror, passed pleasantly, so it occurred to nobody to give the Palestinians even a few of their rights. Terror put these rights onto the agenda. Because of the first intifada, they reached Oslo.
The second intifada, which was more savage, brought disaster on them they lost some of the worlds sympathy and some of the sympathy toward them in Israel. But terror was and remained their only weapon. They have no other. Even if they destroy their entire shabby weapons arsenal and swear to walk in the light of Mahatma Gandhi, they have no chance of getting what is theirs without terror.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.710588
shira
(30,109 posts)Yeah, supposedly Israel is part of the same family of evil states as the Nazis, but hes careful to say, But Im not calling Israel a Nazi state just kind of Nazi.
He claims the reaction to Elor Azaria proves Israel is an evil state. Uh, how? Hes on trial. He didnt even claim that the publics reaction is what proves it, but rather the establishment and occupation regime proves it. That makes no sense.
Then he claims the continuation of the occupation proves Israel is evil. Would someone say the same if the Allies were still occupying Nazi Germany because Nazi Germany refused to surrender?
much more...
https://tayaraherzl.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/stop-living-in-denial-gideon-levy-is-evil/
shira
(30,109 posts)An Evil State. These are powerful words to use about any country. One might safely apply them to North Korea, for example, where all but party members live and work in slavery, penury, hunger and darkness. Even those at the top of the political class can fall foul of the tubby tyrant, and find themselves being eaten alive by dogs.....Come on. Admit it. North Korea is an evil country, if ever we saw one.
On the other hand, one might with full justification refer to Iran as evil, given that it has been the greatest exporter of terrorism for the longest continuous period of time, in the light of the novelty of the Daesh phenomenon, and the disappearance of utterly-unlamented Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Iran, you will remember, breaks records with its rate of execution by hanging not skilfully, but from the jibs of cranes, so that you need to read the Amnesty International website before and not after meals. The sorts of offenses that could see you strung up in Iran, such that one moment you are alive and kicking and the next kicking on your way to a slow and painful (and public) death, include being out-and-about-while-being-Sunni (Iran, you will recall is a piece of Shiite real estate), a homosexual, a juvenile delinquent (by the standards of the Ayatollocracy, at any rate), a listener to foreign broadcasts and other universally-acknowledged abhorrent crimes. (On August 5, 2016, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein , in a break from customary UNHCR Israel-bashing, condemned Iran for: the application of overly broad and vague criminal charges, coupled with a disdain for the rights of the accused to due process and a fair trial [that had] led to a grave injustice.) Evil-ish, at least, would you not say?
On the other hand, in Saudi Arabia you could be publicly beheaded in a town square for being Shia, a prostitute or an adulterer. Evil, pure and simple, no?
In Turkey, you might, whilst being an unapproved journalist, or a callow army conscript sent out of a Friday evening to stand guard on a bridge in Istanbul and for that condemned as a revolutionary traitor, survive, but you would then probably have to live (as it were) in prison until the new Sultan (Erdoghan) sees fit to release you or not, until the day you are hanged, since he is threatening to bring back the death penalty (and to let the European Union also go hang). You would not even belong to a select group in Turkey, but be merely one of many thousands who have been rounded up in the few short weeks since the abortive coup inspired by who knows whom (or you know who). Not evil?
In dozens of countries across Africa and Asia, including the kleptocracy that is Russia, life is severely tenuous, by reason of the absence of the Rule of Law, or the non-existence of a free press able to express views however deprecatory they may be about the state. They, too, score significantly on the evil-ometer.
In the USA, you could be locked up longer than Nelson Mandela for being convicted as a spy for an allied country (Israel), if you were Jewish (and called Pollard), and the Separation of Powers (that should lie at the heart of every democracy) were trampled on by Secretary of State for Defence, Caspar W. Weinberger, in his wholly improper 46 page submission to the trial judge on March 3, 1987, the day before sentencing. Hellishly evil.
much more...
http://israelseen.com/2016/08/07/howard-epstein-the-banality-of-the-evil-pen-of-gideon-levy/