Who is more dishonest, the Left or the Right? If Nate Silver was polling this scientifically, he would likely -19 times out of 20 with 5% deposit refundable on the empties- call it leaning with a qualified toss-up. It ultimately makes little difference whether the Obama or Romney team gets in: Drone attacks, and the usual Benghazi style foreign escapades following the Carter Doctrine template are going to follow their deadly and disruptive course. Even media, shock of shocks, like the New York Times has cashiered any journalistic integrity basically joining the I hate you intensely news bandwagon. The very white, liberal, nativist born of inferiority mantra that permeates a sick form of patriotism smearing those who don’t follow the political mantra they adhere to.It makes little sense that a Thomas Friedman, no more than a beat hack, lives in an 11,400 foot house…..
Its the Big Lie that only festers and grows because the Big Stick is used abroad wherever it can be implemented; as Glenn Greenwald pointed out, sanctions in Iran are a form of “soft” genocide, not really affecting the mullahs gadabouting in their Porches but the common people who are ostensibly allies. But the most common epithet is the accusation that the “other” is destroying the country.In reality there is little to choose between the two candidates; all minor differences are whacked out of proportion to give fodder to the passions but when distilled down, its the pretty much the same crappy moonshine that if imbibed often enough, leads to blindness….
—Israel Police on Thursday arrested Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, for “inciting Palestinians to oppose the police” in East Jerusalem.
Heated tensions between residents of the Silwan village in East Jerusalem and the Israel Police erupted over excavation works that have recently began in the village. The excavations are being carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and are sponsored by Elad association, which promotes the “Judaization” of East Jerusalem. —Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/police-arrest-rabbi-for-inciting-palestinians-in-east-jerusalem-1.241257
There is something ironically unifying among extremists and liars on the Left and Right. Besides the hate and demonizing they really need each other as they are so integral to this phony and artificial dissent industry they have appropriated as their own sphere of intellectual masturbation. There is something absurdly disturbing in juxtaposing an Ed Koch and Pat Buchanan….
(see link at end)…(Reuters) – Most Israelis would be reassured if Mitt Romney won next week’s U.S. presidential election, feeling they had an unquestioning friend rather than a dispassionate critic in the White House.
But any change would probably be a question of style over substance, analysts say, with a Republican administration expected to follow the path already laid out by President Barack Obama when it comes to Iran and the Palestinians.
The allies are too joined at the hip on fundamental challenges for the head to make that much difference.
—Sadly, the left does not have an unblemished record on opposing antisemitism. In 2009, for example, the respected American leftist publication Counterpunch published an article by Alison Weir of the organisation If Americans Knew defending the unsubstantiated and implausible claims made by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet about Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinians in Gaza to harvest their organs.
Weir implied, with no evidence, that Israel is at the centre of international organ smuggling. She then explicitly argued that the medieval “blood libel” – that Jews kill Christian children – has a basis in fact. Elsewhere, more than 3 million people have watched on YouTube the antisemitic film Zeitgeist: the Movie, despite its recycling of paranoia about a Jewish plot for world domination.— Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/gilad-atzmon-antisemitism-the-left
“There is a great deal of continuity in foreign policy,” said Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and member of the ruling conservative Likud party. “Things don’t change overnight if a new president takes power.”
Obama, a
ocrat, never enamored himself to the Israeli people, nor to their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The U.S. leader was accused of trying to browbeat Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians, particularly in his efforts to halt settlement-building in the occupied West Bank, and of refusing to impose red lines on Iran’s atomic project.
While Obama also oversaw ever-closer military ties between the two allies, Israelis remembered the perceived slights – such as his failure to find time to see Netanyahu when he flew to New York last month to address the United Nations.
He is also disparaged for not visiting Israel as president. There again, only four of the last 11 U.S. presidents managed to make the trip, with only two coming their first term.
A survey released on Sunday by Tel Aviv University showed Israeli Jews preferred Romney to Obama by almost a three to one margin – the inverse of the predicted American Jewish vote….
—‘Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime,” the headline in Haaretz screamed earlier this week. If that were true, it indeed would have been a worrying development. But the information below will demonstrate that the article contains some of the most blatant anti-Israel lies published in recent years. And Gideon Levy, the one and only – who is read more in English than in Hebrew — was awarded the task of explaining the survey to the whole wide world.
The result? Israel is apparently not merely on the way to becoming South Africa. It has already turned into South Africa. The lie has been making waves the world over, spreading like wildfire. The goal has been achieved.
It’s not easy to chase down a lie that has already gained traction worldwide.—Read More:http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/haaretz-gideon-levy-and-the-israel-apartheid-canard/ image:http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/imagination-poor
“There is clear daylight between the prime minister and the White House, and most Israelis believe that Obama deliberately wanted it that way,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“But there wouldn’t be much of a difference between (Obama and Romney) on the Palestinian conflict or even with the Iranian issue. The course of future U.S. policy is pretty much set.”
Romney has certainly tried to play up divergences with Obama over Middle East policy, repeatedly accusing his rival of throwing Israel “under a bus” and suggesting he would adopt a tougher line with the Iran’s powerful clerics.
But in their debate on foreign policy last week, the two men appeared in broad agreement on a range of issues, competing with each other to show their support for Israel and making clear it was by far their most important partner in a troubled region.
They also adopted a similar line on Iran – promising to prevent Tehran from getting nuclear weapons without mentioning the words “red line”, or committing to using military force….
— President Barack Obama – as his critics often like to remind Jewish voters – has not visited Israel since 2008. But, if he misses the region’s flavors, Obama needs to go no farther than the White House kitchen.
“We make our own hummus,” said White House executive chef Cristeta (Cris) Comerford, in a special interview with Modern Manna last week. “It’s a very wonderful dish, very nutritious.”
And they make it quite often, for “every occasion pretty much,” according to Comerford. “We have so many vegetables in there [the White House kitchen garden] that we need some good dips with and hummus is one of our go to dips.”
So, if Obama loves hummus it must mean he loves us Israelis too! Israelis, self-acclaimed hummus connoisseurs, prefer their hummus with fresh pita bread, but even they have learned to accept the American usage of hummus as a dip for veggies.
But hummus, as it turns out, is only one of a medley of Middle Eastern favorites served at the Obama White House. Another dish chef Comerford is fond of is babaganush, the Middle Eastern eggplant spread. —Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/modern-manna/hummus-is-standard-fare-at-the-white-house-thanks-to-obama-s-chef.premium-1.473455#
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
Romney’s language was duly noted in Israel, even raising questions of whether a Republican administration, haunted by the Iraq-tattered legacy of former President George W. Bush, would have the stomach for a daunting new Middle East conflict.
According to that theory, if anyone is likely to send in the warplanes, it is the Democrat Obama, who has succeeded in convincing Russia and China to back tough sanctions on Iran and is viewed with less suspicion around the globe than Romney.
But Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a Netanyahu confidant, suggested that the sort of military mission often envisaged for Iran, centered on air power, would banish the ghosts of the Iraq quagmire.
“No one wants another war in the Middle East, but there is a huge difference between a major ground war with a commitment of troops that march into an Arab capital, and the spectrum of options that exist now. Some of them may involve just air assets or intelligence cooperation,” he said….Whether by coincidence or design, the next U.S. president will be sworn in the day before an Israeli parliamentary election, with Netanyahu widely touted to win, meaning that the countries’ leaders will be in electoral lockstep.
Some Democrats have accused Netanyahu of interfering in the U.S. election by trying to coerce Obama into setting red lines for Iran. Palestinians hope that if he is re-elected he will get his own back by reviving the moribund peace process and put heavy pressure on Israel into making concessions over territory.
That is wishful thinking.
While Israel was mentioned 34 times in last week’s debate, the Palestinians won just one mention, underlining how far down the world agenda they have tumbled.
In a secretly recorded video at a fund-raising event in May, Romney said “the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable” and suggested his policy would be to “kick the ball down the field”.
After investing time and energy on the issue in his first term, and winning only animosity from both sides, Obama is unlikely to revisit the problem any time soon, said Aaron David Miller, a former senior U.S. adviser on the peace process.
“This whole notion that freed from political restraints the American president is going to go for some grandiose ambitious peace plan that will put him into conflict with the Israeli prime minister is the grandest of illusions,” he said.
Swept to the sidelines, the Palestinian leadership watched the foreign policy debate with a mix of gloom and anger.
“What we didn’t see in the debate was any sign of who has the backbone and foresight to bring about a just peace, and that’s what was needed,” said Hanan Ashrawi, an executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.Read More:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/us-usa-campaign-israel-palestinians-idUSBRE89U0L720121031
Meron Benvenisti: (see link at end)…The comparison to South Africa is wrongheaded, simplistic and dangerous. There was something there which does not exist here: biological racism. The whites there were only 17 percent, and the blacks 83 percent. But on the other hand, the whites and the blacks shared the same religion and lived with one another and the blacks were not expelled. So, I do not accept the allegation that Israel is an apartheid state. Even what is happening in the territories is not exactly apartheid. But what is taking shape here is no less grave. This is a master-nation democracy; in German, a “Herrenvolk democracy.” We are a country that behaves like a full-blooded democracy, but we have a group of serfs − the Arabs − to whom we do not apply democracy. The result is a situation of extreme inequality.
There is a society here of settlers who dispossess others by seizing their place and pushing them out and creating a unilateral power system of migrant rule. That system cannot survive. Ultimately, the good Israelis will not be able to sustain the tension between their liberal values and the brutality of the reality amid which they live. They will leave. They are already starting to leave. Therefore, what’s needed is a transition to a different paradigm. The Jewish nation-state is doomed. It will implode. In the end, the only way to live here will be to create an equality of respect between us and the Palestinians. To recognize the fact that there are two national communities here which love this land and whose obligation is to channel the unavoidable conflict between them into a process of dialogue for life together.Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/jerusalem-born-thinker-meron-benvenisti-has-a-message-for-israelis-stop-whining.premium-1.469447
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