Of God, Guns, and Isreal..Modern Progressives

[onmyknees]

Man....what the fuck is up with the modern day Democrat (Liberal) Party? There's threads that proceed this trying to draw some hazy like between Ryan and Marx, and you all can't even determine if Jerusalem should be the capitol of Israel, and god forbid the word god should appear in your party platform as it realties to one's "god given ability". And watching Villaraigosa attempting to take a voice tally, it was clear those who wanted the language to remain out of the platform carried the day. A mortified mayor simply declared victory and pounded the gavel saving you all further embarrassment. You spent months entertaining each other on here with how radical and "extreme" the Tea Party was, and this is the chaos you counter with at your big show ? 70 % of Americans in poll after poll identify some sort of belief in a higher authority, and here you are booing when a simple reference that has been there for years is being reinstated. Who's extreme now and just who is out of the mainstream? If your intent was to lure in some Independents, my guess is that just went up in smoke. Nicely Done

[hippifried]

You're really reaching now. If any of that shit was that important to you, you would have capitalized God. In your context, that's a proper noun ya know. Flunked out of 4th grade English grammar, huh?

Besides, I don't know what you're whining about anyway. Those of us that you're trying so ineffectively to insult aren't Republican dittoheads. We aren't brainwashed to think alike.

[Stavros]

Perhaps you could confirm that you want to re-write the Constitution of the USA and put the word 'God' in it, as it does not appear anywhere in the document. It is not important if 70% believe in God, but that the Constitutional right of all Americans must guarantee that the 30% who do not believe in God have the same rights of belief as the rest. If this is what you want to change, then start a campaign and best of luck.

Calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel is a provocative political act -the status of Jerusalem is as yet undefined in international law beyond being an illegally occupied city, most states refuse to recognise it as the capital of Israel precisely because this would legitimise theft. The Democrats have been deceptive and hypocritical on this issue for years, Hillary Clinton having once refused to endorse Jerusalem as the capital performed a complete volte face when she decided to run for election in New York, thereby showing how completely lacking in principles she is. If you want a serious debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then attention to the key unresolved issues: the right of return of refugees, and the status of Jerusalem deserves serious thought, it is a pity that it has become a balloon in the Democratic convention, but we don't expect rational thought on Israel or the Palestinians on this side of the pond anyway, and I don't think anyone on this forum has pretended the Democrats are perfect. One final point, if that made a mess of it in the convention, doesn't that mean these affairs are not as tightly scripted and predictable -and boring- as some think? Makes a change to see people disagreeing with each other! Might even be healthy for democracy.

[Prospero]

Good post Stavros - covering some key issues.

With regards to the US constitution and God you are correct and though the founding fathers may well have been believers there was a quite conscious and deliberate decision to separate church and state. Those who went to America to find freedom from Europe had certainly had enough of the persecution that follows when State and religion are in unity. (And which we see clearly at play in Iran today.) Yes the 30 per cent who are non believers are defended by this but so too are the Mormons, the Jews, the Muslims, the Sikhs, Hindus and other various group of believers who'd become minorities in a nation that decided to conjoin Christianity and the State.

I will not add anything more to Stavros's remarks re the status of Israel except to endorse what he says abouts disputed status. I am not sure that most states refuse to recognise it because this would legitimise the idea of theft - but simply because it IS in dispute? I think there is a fine distinction there.

Of course the ultra-religious right in America, once prime persecuters of Jews and other minorities, now support israel for their own peculiar religious reasons (an apocalyptic vision that has some common ground with the beliefs of Iran's President Ahmadinejad) as well as the more obvious and clear electoral benefit of appealing to the Jewish constituency.

[Stavros]

Good post Stavros - covering some key issues.

With regards to the US constitution and God you are correct and though the founding fathers may well have been believers there was a quite conscious and deliberate decision to separate church and state. Those who went to America to find freedom from Europe had certainly had enough of the persecution that follows when State and religion are in unity. (And which we see clearly at play in Iran today.) Yes the 30 per cent who are non believers are defended by this but so too are the Mormons, the Jews, the Muslims, the Sikhs, Hindus and other various group of believers who'd become minorities in a nation that decided to conjoin Christianity and the State.

I will not add anything more to Stavros's remarks re the status of Israel except to endorse what he says abouts disputed status. I am not sure that most states refuse to recognise it because this would legitimise the idea of theft - but simply because it IS in dispute? I think there is a fine distinction there.

Of course the ultra-religious right in America, once prime persecuters of Jews and other minorities, now support israel for their own peculiar religious reasons (an apocalyptic vision that has some common ground with the beliefs of Iran's President Ahmadinejad) as well as the more obvious and clear electoral benefit of appealing to the Jewish constituency.

I used the word theft because land owned by Palestinians has been stolen by settlers on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. If you want a comparison I think it would be Northern Cyprus -nobody except Turkey recognises the government of the 'Republic of Northern Cyprus' even though Turkey is a NATO ally of the US and the UK, and nothing of significance happens in 'Northern Cyprus' without the approval of the Turkish government. The so-called 'government' in Northern Nicosia would like nothing morre than recognition so that it can dodge any negotiations ona just settlement to the division of Cyprus. Similarly, Israel wants international confirmation that Jerusalem is its capital in order to legitimise its occupation of the whole of the West Bank. For the extremists this is merely one stage in the expulsion of Arabs; for others the sticking point remains the borders of any new 'state' in a two-state solution, as the division of the West Bank into 'Zones' under the last treaty has been shown to work against the interests of the Palestinians who need Israel's permission to travel from one zone to another (for security reasons of course!).

As for the religious issue in the US, you are absolutely right.

[Prospero]

Still beg to disagree (though I'm not objecting the idea that it was theft). I don't think the refusal to recognise Jerusalem (al Quds) as the capital is recognition that it is stolen but rather a refusal to take a side in this issue. If states refuse to agree they are remaining neutral surely?

It's long been contended by many who are non-partisan in this that the only way out of this deadlock is for there to be international governance of Jerusalem - recognising both claims to it. For both Israel and the Palestinians it's status seems to be non negotiable. For it has the holiest shrine of Judaism, the second (or is ti third?) holiest shrine for islam and the holiest sites for Christianity as well. It is finally a bloody mess.

[broncofan]

Calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel is settling an issue that is clearly unsettled and allowing Israel the right to claim land as their capital that is not recognized by the international community as theirs.

I agree with Stavros on the main points but I wouldn't be so certain that the conversation about Israel is more balanced in the U.K than the U.S. At universities and campuses here, you do hear quite a bit of advocacy for both the Palestinian and Israeli positions. In the U.K. I think that you hear a one-sided chorus for the Palestinian position including even justification of support of sabotage of property owned by Israelis abroad etc. You hear journalists say that they don't read emails when they recognize based on the subject matter that the content is pro-Israel. I'm not saying that the position taken by most in the U.K is wrong but I don't think that diversity of opinion on the issue is so impressively broad just because what many believe is the more reasonable side gets primacy.

I do get the sense when reading comments sections on U.K forums discussing Israel that anything exculpatory is suppressed, anything damning emphasized, and superlatives are used liberally. People write stuff like "inherently evil state" and then shrug their shoulders and emphasize for affect that "anti-semitism and anti-zionism are not the same thing." In fact this latter phrase almost seems like the defense for any degree of exaggeration or intentional misstatement. Wasn't there a U.K politician who during the Lebanon war got off his treadmill at a public exercise facility and started with the "f'ing Jews" routine when he saw a report of what the Israelis were doing. Had this politician said, "f'ing bloodsucking Zionists" I guarantee you there would have been a thousand people who would have repeated as a mantra the distinction between anti-zionism and the like.

Again, not saying that the general view is wrong in the U.K, but it does at the very least not seem like the model for diversity of opinion on the issue.

[Prospero]

Bronco - I think you overstate the case, but there is certainly a pro-Palestinian bias in the UK.

[broncofan]

Bronco - I think you overstate the case, but there is certainly a pro-Palestinian bias in the UK.
I admit I was taking the most unenlightened voices in the mix and magnifying them. For instance, if you go to a pro-Israel forum, you will occasionally hear neanderthals call the Palestinians a nation of terrorists. My point is not that this is representative of opinion in the U.K. I think much more highly of the average person there than that. I am only saying that if you take the message being spewed by the thickest member of the public, this will often give you an idea of what the overall slant is.

They are taking nuanced pro-Palestinian views and distilling them to something simple and crude. The purpose of pointing out the existence of these individuals is not to imply that pro-Palestinian views are themselves crude (or that those holding such views are responsible for those who misunderstand what they say); just that you can best glean an overall bias by looking at the comments of individuals without the guile to disguise it.

[Stavros]

There is bias on both sides of the Atantic on both sides of the conflict. I think the perception in the UK is that there is a stronger pro-Israeli emphasis in the US not just because of the strength of the Jewish lobby and the pro-Israeli position of some Christian fundamentalists, but because the US has had an alliance with Israel since 1967 which claims to guarantee Israel's security, although I believe in practical terms this only came into operation once, in the 1973 War. One assumes that if Israel were attacked and appeared to be struggling to deal with an invasion, the US would go to its assistance.

In the UK, Broncofan, you may be referring to various nasty remarks about Jews made by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, the latest of which was the rather daft claim that Jews wouldn't vote for him in the mayoral election because they are rich. His inflexible belief that he is the right man for London isn't shared by everyone in the capital, and most of them are not Jews!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/29/ken-livingstone-contrition-jewish-chronicle

Livingstone comes from a position on the so-called 'left' (hard to know what that means these days) which for years has viewed Israel as an aggressive state that has victimised Palestinians, a position that lacks the subtlety that comes with a considered analysis of the Conflict. Some on the left have also regarded Palestinian guerilla groups as 'revolutionaries', even though it is now clear they were, and are, quite simply crooks. The PFLP for example was at one time in the 1970s making a million dollars a month from the bribes it got from those airlines it agreed not to hijack. Where did the money go, to the struggling masses?

I think the balance of opinon on the Palestinians in the UK changed with the first Intifada in 1988; up until then, as indicated above, the Palestinians had succeeded in alienating most of the political constituents outside the Middle East they actually needed for their cause, by hi-jacking aeroplanes, and murdering Olympic athletes, political figures, and civilians in airports. People did not forget that, and still do not. However, Israel's inept handing of what began as peaceful protests on the West Bank and in Gaza cost it dear, people who had associated Palestinians with outrageous crimes against humanity, saw ordinary people being beaten and treated badly even though it was their land that had been occupied. An elementary sense of justice suggested that what Israel was doing was wrong.

The PLO/Fatah were taken by surprise by events in 1988 and rapidly moved to get their people on the ground involved to 'lead the revolution', fearing that the core Palestinian constituency on the West Bank and in Gaza was developing a political voice independent of its so-called 'Official Representatives' -an anxiety that was deepened with the emergence of Hanan Ashrawi and Haidar Abdul-Shafi as eloquent Christian and Muslim voices of Palestinians who actually lived under occupation, where Fatah was living in splendid isolation in Tunis. In Gaza the creation of Hamas was quietly encouraged by the Israelis precisely because they saw it as an anti-Arafat vehicle, which it was, not expecting it to last.

Arafat's success in sidelining the moderates and in 'reinserting' PLO/Fatah dominance over Palestinian politics has not been a success- for them anyway. The conference in Madrid in 1991, and the Oslo Peace Accords to many people represented an authentic turn away from the hopeless cycle of violence and political deadlock that had characterised the conflict since 1948, yet it was also clear that Oslo could only be the beginning, not the end of a process -which is how some Israelis saw it. Ariel Sharon and Bejamin Netanyahu however, were opposed to the Oslo Accords, and have done everything since 1993 to make them irrelevant. At the time Arafat too was an obstacle, because his obsession with his image and, above all other things, the cash flow was always more important to him than the fate of 'his people'; the men he promoted -Nabil Sha'ath, Mahmoud Abbas and Said Erekat in particular are weak and indecisive and, crucially, unable to represent all Palestinians.

If an anti-Israel bias is still discernible in the UK it is not helped by the spokesmen and women who speak officially on behalf of Israel, as well as Netanyahu himself -they come across as arrogant, aggressive, and completely indifferent to the rights that Palestinians have. It is a greater pity that other voices in Israel are not heard, because the Coalition govt has been under attack across Israel and the Occupied Territories on a whole range of social and economic issues, and it cannot undermine Israel's security to give airtime to issues which concern the Israeli public the most -the lack of affordable housing in Israel (not everyone wants to live in a subsidised settlement on the West Bank), forcing Orthodox Jews to serve in the military, etc.

Israel is a phenomenally successful country, against so many odds or even because of them -technology developed in Israel is in widespread use around the world, including mine and your mobile phone.
http://israel21c.org/technology/innovation/made-in-israel-the-top-64-innovations-developed-in-israel/

The mere idea of Jerusalem as an international city is conceptually stupid and in practical terms unworkable, the idea is put out to deflect attention from the most radical option, but one which I think ought to be discussed -a one state solution for all. This must mean the end of a 'Jewish state', but a 'Jewish state' is in any case a phoney description of Israel where a substantial portion of the population is not, and is never going to be Jewish -and even if all the Muslims and Christians were expelled, are Israelis going to give up their domestic servants, their nurses and their farm labourers from China, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka?

The challenge is one that makes sense in the context of a Middle East where the old, corroosive hatreds are laid to the rest, and the signs are in the Arab Spring that the prospects for positive change exist, even if they are also being challenged from within by a declining but obstructive Islamic radicalism that offers nothing practical other than the jaded mantra Islam is the Solution, something most Muslims no longer believe.

The challenge is to come up with some new ideas, for example to solve what could become a protracted conflict over the oil and gas resources of the Eastern Mediterranean where reservoirs cross international boundaries from Egypt in the south to Syria, possibly Turkey in the north. As with the conflict over the Falkland Islands Basin, the conflicted parties should step aside, and allow capitalism to create consortia drawn from investors on all sides whose priority is to develop the resources for all. It is a case of Follow the Money, for as with the mineral contracts being signed in Afghanistan with India, China, Russia and Japan, isn't making money what excites people more than making war?

It isn't going to happen while Netanyahu is in power, and I can't see the current Palestinian leadership promoting it, which makes me an idealist on this issue -but otherwise what do we have? More of the same -but the same doesn't work, or it gives Israel time to build more settlements creating facts on the ground, something it cannot do without taking land and resources away from the Palestinians, who may yet launch a third Intifada.

Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in a box; it is time to think outside the box.

[broncofan]

I understand. I agree with everything you said except about the concept of a Jewish state. It doesn't require everyone to be religiously (or ethnically) Jewish anymore than someone from Britain has to be Anglo-Saxon. The significance of the Jewish character would operate only with respect to the return of refugees in the case it were necessary. That seems a highly unnecessary insurance policy but that would jibe with the purpose of having a "Jewish state" in that sense. But as far as expelling Muslims and Christians, that's obviously a no-go and I don't think a requirement for having a Jewish state.

Every state is going to have both origins and traditions that are held with different degrees of reverence by its constituents. If Israel is going to be able to have a state with a Jewish character, they are going to have to do their best to ensure that minority rights are protected and that those who are not religiously Jewish have a stake in the future of the state. It's not an easy task but I don't think it's entirely incompatible with having a state entity that is Jewish according to its general traditions and law of return. Of course, that state entity should not span from the river to the sea.

But I am aware there are very good reasons for public sentiment to be against Israel. Neutrality doesn't have a very well-defined meaning. Some people think it means reaching no conclusions and my post did seem to embrace that fallacy. One can be neutral and Pro-Palestinian if the balance of facts weighs in that direction. And you provide very good reasons for the change in the tide of public opinion, but I was just saying it occasionally seemed like the way the facts were presented was not neutral. This is strongly the case in the U.S with respect to the media adopting a very pro-Israel stance which often means underreporting the humanitarian crises in Gaza.

The man I was thinking of was Senior Diplomat Rowan Laxton. I do know about Ken Livingstone and think he just has foot in the mouth disease. I understand the imputation of what he said (and has said previously), but I think he is just a faster talker than he is a thinker. What he said about wealth and voting patterns does not have the empirical support he would want but is an understandable train of thought; I think he's probably a reckless speaker.

But yes, Israel is used as a wedge issue. The issue of Jerusalem being considered the capital of Israel is being exploited by Republicans when it should have zero significance in our political process. The occupation and the continued lack of peace negotiations should have a role in any country's foreign policy conversation but there is very little serious discussion about it here and it is used much more cynically as a reactionary attempt to divide the populace.^^^^^^^^^^:)

[flabbybody]

Here's a dirty little secret about American Jews: Israel is a distant 7 or 8 on a list of issues that most of us care about. I worry about my orthopedic surgeon being in my insurance book of approved providers. I worry about the cost of a NYC subway ride going up, and I worry about Mexican families in my neighborhood being deported because they don't have papers.
To the extent that Israel is an important strategic American ally in a hostile part of the world, we support her and advocate for her security. If the people in charge there become war mongers, this support will erode.

and for the last 80 years, we always vote Democrat. So Romney can go get a circumcision and it won't matter. we'll be voting for Obama by a huge majority. IMHO

[broncofan]

Here's a dirty little secret about American Jews: Israel is a distant 7 or 8 on a list of issues that most of us care about. I worry about my orthopedic surgeon being in my insurance book of approved providers. I worry about the cost of a NYC subway ride going up, and I worry about Mexican families in my neighborhood being deported because they don't have papers.
To the extent that Israel is an important strategic American ally in a hostile part of the world, we support her and advocate for her security. If the people in charge there become war mongers, this support will erode.

and for the last 80 years, we always vote Democrat. So Romney can go get a circumcision and it won't matter. we'll be voting for Obama by a huge majority. IMHO
There's almost no way the Democrats could take a position on Israel that would lose my vote. Even if they demanded Israel immediately remove all settlements, the Israelis balked, and the Democrats decided to cut foreign aid to Israel to zero. They would not lose my vote, but the ADL would go crazy, Alan Dershowitz would threaten to sue everybody, and AIPAC would lose its shit.

Now I'm not saying that's a policy I would agree with; I would explicitly disagree with it, but Israel is not that high on the list of my political priorities. Democrats would have to literally do an about face on every major issue for me to change my vote.

Here's what I worry about and it's not to lend credence to the cretins who claim Democrats don't care about Israel enough and this implies they don't like Jews. For instance, when this Diplomat (Rowan Laxton) lost his cool and starting spewing hatred in the gym and was not just talking about Israel but explicitly Jews, there were some articles about this in the American press.

Now, I am not in favor of criminalizing racist statements but this is standard practice in many European countries. If you look at the comments section of Huffington Post (a left-wing American site) you will see that it was literally 80% or so of the comments that were saying the man did nothing wrong and that it must have been some sort of ultra-Zionist snitch who ratted him out. There were an extraordinary number that were implying that such a law would only be enforced with respect to racist comments made about Jews, who are essentially a protected minority (purportedly as a result of the power we wield). Now, I honestly do not care if someone thinks that Israel's policies are heinous and they have nothing good to say about them; but when they look directly in the face of a "f'ing Jews" rant and imply that Jewish people are ardent foes of free speech and will do anything to suppress criticism of Israel it is exasperating. So is my quarrel with the anonymous Huffington Post or BBC commenter?

I think it must be with a certain percent of people on the left part of the political spectrum, a region I otherwise feel very comfortable with. It's just I'm not sure who or why.

[Stavros]

Thanks for those insights, flabbybody and Broncofan. I suspect that what some of the more ferocious protectors of Israel would note is how in moments of stress when people lose their self-control, a residual almost a 'natural' anti-semitism emerges -from people like Laxton (who I have never heard of, thankfully) and also Mel Gibson which is meant to suggest many people are raised with a fear or phobia of Jews and that is why Jews will never be secure outside Israel. Some Black people would also argue that it doesn't take that much to provoke a White person into using dirty words about Black people and we all know what they are. Crude response, or inherited prejudice?

It is one of the tactics that shuts down debate, just as there are people -not just on the left as it was but also, amazingly in the 'human rights' penumbra who get upset if you draw attention to the violence Palestinians mete out out to each other in Gaza and on the West Bank where corrupt political practices are as natural as sunlight. Corruption exists in most political systems, it has been a major problem in the Arab states but also in Israel where as I see it the best minds go into science and technology, business and the arts, rather than politics.

The polarisation that has taken place in Israeli politics since Menachem Begin's victory in the 1977 elections has increasingly diluted the centre ground of its moderates. There was a time when Jabotinsky and Avraham Stern were viewed as fringe lunatics, yet they and there supporters never went away. There were warnings of what could happen to moderates with the demolition of Moshe Sharett's career in the 1950s (via the 'Lavon Affair') but it goes further because it wasn't just about dealing fairly with the Arabs, but the internal debate in Israel where the initial Labour Party project was to create a socialist state based on collective agriculture, somewhere between the Moshav and the Kibbutz. That debate now seems to have been eclipsed by the decline of the collective movement, the success of capitalism, and the growth of an entirely new problem, the settlers on the West Bank and the Orthodox communities. Israel did not just acquire almost a million hostile Arabs in 1967, it generated the growth of a Jewish settler community that poses severe security issues inside Israel itself.

When the first Israeli government granted exemptions military service to scholars, it was to keep alive a scholarly tradition that the Ben-Gurion government thought might be lost. I don't think he expected the Orthodox community to grow so large, and would be horrified to know that in the West Bank today women have to sit at the back of the bus. Throw in the loathing the Orthodox communities have for the queers and the godless bums who spend their days cruising the beaches of the Mediterranean, and you can see how the meaning of a 'Jewish state' can as Broncofan suggests, have no real religious meaning at all, but also how that can be seen as either the problem or the solution.

The greater pity is that there is such an hysterical lock-down on rational debate or creative, imaginative debate about Israel -not least because it is so energetic inside the country. Trying to debate the direction the Arab world is heading in doesn't generate much light either...