Can you tell them apart? Helen Thomas can…
Read Time:2 Minute, 21 Second
Like lookin’ in a meer-uh, right? Too bad Danny’s short. If it was up to the UN possibly a tall Palestinian would have to surrender some of his height to Mr. De Vito.
What about the two gentlemen in the second pic ? Could be twins too, couldn’t they ? Conventional wisdom holds that they are the same. Both are “sons of the desert”. One Arab, one Jew. Both descended from a common ancestor. One returned to his ancestral homeland where the other awaited. Except…call me crazy but I think one guy would fare far better traveling thru Arizona and it ain’t the guy on the right. The reason for the guy on the left having European features is because he IS European. The vast majority of the world’s Jews are Ashkenazi, European Jews descended from tribes in Russia who migrated westward into Europe. Judaism is a religion. Like Christianity or Islam. They no more have an ancestral right to the Holy Land than a baptized Mexican Catholic has a right to an apartment in the Vatican.
Jews and Muslims and Christians come in all colors. The fact is that most Jews are ethnic European. That is where their shared ancestry lies. Truth101, Kit and myself are all adherents of Christianity. But we make no claims to be a Christian race. Our mutual ancestry is different. Truth’s Irish ancestors suffered horribly during the potato famine and at the hands of the English. Kit’s ancestors were the victims of unspeakable genocidal slavery. My ancestors endured genocide at the hands of foreign invaders. None of this ancestral pain was caused by the people of Palestine. Our Christian religious roots in the Holy Land do not give us the right to take what land remains to the Palestinians.
Neither was the horror of the Holocaust caused by the people of Palestine, yet the retribution for the most visible excess of the Nazi regime was extracted from them. They became victims of the political expediency of the Western Democracies and the dogma of the Zionist cause.
Why do I write this now ? Because of the villification of Helen Thomas for speaking the truth. A great journalist, a great woman is being raked over the proverbial coals due to her honesty. The barely restrained anger at her ruthless questioning of the current and past presidents rose quickly to the surface, causing obvious joy to spokesman Robert Gibbs. Thomas was the only member of the White House press corps who refused to accept the often “canned” response of those she questioned. Helen Thomas spoke the truth to power once too often. Among the multitude of midgets she stood tall, in her figurative crucifixion she retains her dignity.
We won’t see another like her soon, and it’s our loss.
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I’ve just had deja vu….In my latest…no not my post…a comment I think…I dunno..anyway..somewhere about 10 minutes ago I pointed out that the Jews used terrorist tactics to get Palestine.
Whilst I have long admired Israel – Entebbe etc – I am starting to wonder whether they need their wings clipping a bit.
Only the USA can do such a thing. I hope they do.
fourdinners I think you’re correct, about the wing clipping. If we were truly their friend we’d do it!
My great-great grandfather came to America from Titan and played for the Titanics 🙂
I think I remember seeing those old film clips of him!
Holte,
You are right on all counts amigo, I’m sorry! Usually I try to research all aspects. I even did DNA reading on this one, but things were kinda flowing y’know?
Another thing, I’m pretty sure Joe is German, not Irish but kind of using poetic license. Irish seemed more sympathetic. Thanks man!
You’re welcome Oso – FYI my great-grandfather came over to England from County Cork, Ireland, after the great famine, things didn’t improve for years, I am guessing he couldn’t afford the fare to Boston or New York because that’s where the majority of refugees headed for. Lots of coal mining and factory work in England, height of the Industrial Revolution at the time, hence my catholic upbringing and schooling was due to Irish refugees. Catholics had been rendered almost extinct in England until they needed some cheap labor.
Had things gone differently you might have played for the Celtics!
Interesting point of view Oso – Just a minor thing The Northern Europe Potato Famine of the 1840s Ireland suffered greatly during the famine as it was THE staple but other northern European countries suffered too. Forcing a great migration of peoples.
Truth’s Irish ancestors suffered horribly during the potato famine and at the hands of the English. Saying his family suffered at the hands of the English is like saying Texas invaded Iraq or Nebraska is threatening Iran. If Truth’s ancestors suffered at that time or later, it was at the hands of the British. The Black and Tans, a feared regiment, were in fact Scottish.
Sad that all the work this woman has done, has been reduced to a stupid statement. There are so many fart catchers in the media establishment, that have said much worse and are still there.
Glad you wrote this Oso, and I agree with every word. Palestine really got the shaft when Israel was created. I think what they are putting up with is far less horrible than anything the Native or African Americans ancestors had to endure. And we have a ringside seat to this circus in the Middle East when we have no business paying for tickets.
Thank you Mother Hen.
It seems that your selective memory forgets how many thousands of innocent Palestinian villagers were massacred in Deir Yassin and other villages to create the so called Israel . The Palestinian children should know not to forget that their nation is called Palestine and that it is from the Lebanon in North to the Sea of Agaba in the south , and from the Mediterranean in the west to the Jordan River on the East.
That bit she said about going back to Poland and Germany was unfortunate, and unfortunately made the sole focus of certain A-holes who then twisted her off-the-cuff statement into something it was not.
I get no pleasure from saying this to believers such as you, Oso, but the Israel-Palestine conflict is an outstanding example of the harm that comes from adherence to nonsensical fiction called holy Scriptures.
Stimpson writes:
“I get no pleasure from saying this to believers such as you, Oso, but the Israel-Palestine conflict is an outstanding example of the harm that comes from adherence to nonsensical fiction called holy Scriptures.”
I get no pleasure, and I mean this most sincerely Oso, out of agreeing with this statement.
me neither… but I’m an animist, a Celt and I follow a home mellowed spiritual nature….
Stimpson and Mike (Mike and Mike?)
I must say I agree with you both. It pains me to say it, but you are right.l
I think, sir, your prejudice is showing. The Palestinians try to kill the Israeli people every single day of their lives. They indoctrinate their children with the mandate of murdering innocent Jews. Their behavior is reprehensible and the sooner your bleeding heart understands that they are many terrorists and not all victims the more educated you will be. I do not fault your passion. You believe what you believe and are willing to say so. That is a trait to be admired but what Helen Thomas said is not to be admired. It is an irresponsible statement, loaded with prejudice, and not expected from someone of her former stature. Her termination is justified.
Thanks for visiting MMA, Runningbear. Do you care to address the point Oso made about Judaism being a religion and not a race, and that European Jews’ claim on Israel is questionable at best? Or are you content to just remind us that some Palestians have responded with violence to being dispossessed of land their people were living on?
Yes, there are “terrorists” and religious fanatics in Palestine. Just as there have been many Israeli terrorists (including Menachem Begin) and fanatics, and there are many scary Israeli fanatics to this day. We can all agree on that. Your prejudice is showing, since you focus only on the assholes on the Palestinian side. In fact, you say “The Palestinians kill …” – which is even worse, since you’re generalizing to include all Palestinians.
Runningbear,
I thank you for acknowledging my passion. I have come full circle, I’d previously been a strong supporter of Israel several years ago. I began to draw a parallel with Indians and my views changed.
I thank you for taking the time to read my post. Respectfully,I think your views are as extreme as you view mine. Possibly we both need to look at the other side, it can be difficult when we both may have our biases.
Ditto Oso and ta for the article helping to get this side of it across. !!!
Robert Fisk: The truth behind the Israeli propaganda
Saturday, 5 June 2010
I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers’ home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.
But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel’s warrior “commandos” stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week’s end, the protesters had become “armed peace activists”, vicious anti-Semites “professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole”. I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn’t quite get into this weird version of reality.
Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. “On that aid ship,” a Sri Lankan texted me this week, “I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted.” He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family’s home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven’t seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the “terrorists” of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about “armed peace activists” on Thursday.
I wasn’t personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I’ve seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as “elite” as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – “Arabushim” (the equivalent of the abusive term “Ayrab” in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then…
Well, then came the Goldstone report, which found that Israeli troops (as well as Hamas) committed war crimes in Gaza, but this was condemned as anti-Semitic – poor old honourable Goldstone, himself a prominent Jewish jurist from South Africa, slandered as “an evil man” by the raving Al Dershowitz of Harvard – and was called “controversial” by the brave Obama administration. “Controversial”, by the way, basically means “fuck you”.
There’s doubts about it, you see. It’s dodgy stuff.
But back to our chronology. Then we had the Mossad murder of a Hamas official in Dubai with the Israelis using at least 19 forged passports from Britain and other countries. And the pathetic response of our then foreign secretary, David Miliband? He called it “an incident” – not the murder of the guy in Dubai, mind you, just the forgery of UK passports, a highly “controversial” matter – and then… Well, now we’ve had the shooting down of nine passengers at sea by more Israeli heroes.
The amazing thing in all this is that so many Western journalists – and I’m including the BBC’s pusillanimous coverage of the Gaza aid ships – are writing like Israeli journalists, while many Israeli journalists are writing about the killings with the courage that Western journalists should demonstrate. And about the Israeli army itself. Take Amos Harel’s devastating report in Haaretz which analyses the make-up of the Israeli army’s officer corps. In the past, many of them came from the leftist kibbutzim tradition, from greater Tel Aviv or from the coastal plain of Sharon. In 1990, only 2 per cent of army cadets were religious Orthodox Jews. Today the figure is 30 per cent. Six of the seven lieutenant-colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious. More than 50 per cent of local commanders are “national” religious in some infantry brigades.
There’s nothing wrong with being religious. But – although Harel does not make this point quite so strongly – many of the Orthodox are supporters of the colonisation of the West Bank and thus oppose a Palestinian state.
And the Orthodox colonists are the Israelis who most hate the Palestinians, who want to erase the chances of a Palestinian state as surely as some Hamas officials would like to erase Israel. Ironically, it was senior officers of the “old” Israeli army who first encouraged the “terrorist” Hamas to build mosques in Gaza – as a counterbalance to the “terrorist” Yasser Arafat up in Beirut – and I was a witness to one of their meetings. But it will stay the same old story before the world wakes up. “I have never known an army as democratic as Israel’s,” the hapless French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said a few hours before the slaughter.
Yes, the Israeli army is second to none, elite, humanitarian, heroic. Just don’t tell the Somali pirates.
We nor the Europeans will ever admit that all of the problems we are having with the Mid Eastern Countries stems from the WWII and post WWI taken in that part of the world. I have often wondered how we would feel had someone imposed another country on our land.
She’s tough as nails, and has outlived several presidents. I figure her “retirement” was more a “fuck you” than anything else. The press is trying to paint it in terms of she retired out of shame or scandal…I don’t buy that for one NY second.
Me neither Bee. Or the twin, whichever is currently commenting.