I saw a post from someone who seems to consider himself an enlightened liberal Zionist, declaring a Gotcha! on those who are opposed to B&J. The argument was as follows: If you consider the B&J withdrawal from Judea & Samaria to be BDS, the same as a withdrawal from Israel, then you're saying that Judea & Samaria are properly part of Israel - in which case you're admitting that there is apartheid, because the Palestinians can't vote!
It's a foolish argument, but some people are getting the reason wrong as to why it's a foolish argument. (And it's entirely separate from the fact that even if Israel was claiming that Judea & Samaria are part of Israel, the situation still wouldn't be one of apartheid; not every human rights inequality is apartheid.)
Judea & Samaria are historically part of the Jewish homeland (just like Lebanon is and Eilat isn't). But, contrary to what some people on the right claim, they are not part of the State of Israel. Israel has not annexed these areas, and Israeli law does not apply there. You're not allowed to keep a pet king cobra in Beit Shemesh, but you are allowed to keep one in Efrat, though I would most definitely not recommend it.
This is basically obvious and agreed upon by everyone (at least, as soon as they give it thought). And so boycotting trade in Judea & Samaria is obviously not exactly the same as boycotting trade in Israel proper. (Technically speaking, it might not even be BDS. As my friend Rabbi Scott Kahn has pointed out, BDS refers specifically to boycotting Israel. If someone were to boycott trade in Jaffa, due to claiming that it was stolen from Palestinians, that might not be BDS.)
Nevertheless, although the B&J boycott of Judea & Samaria is not the same as a boycott of Israel proper, it must still be opposed and it is still wrong (and perhaps more insidiously so). Because (A) it comes from the people who want to boycott all Israel, (B) it is a precursor to a boycott of all Israel, and (C) it is wrong for the very same reason as boycotting Israel is wrong.
Regarding point A, by now it is fairly well known that B&J wanted to actually boycott all Israel, and were only reined in by Unilever. The board is headed by Anuradha Mittal, who has posted over 100 anti-Israel tweets, including one describing the creation of Israel as a "catastrophe." This action was not about Israel pulling back to the 1948 borders.
Even more significant is point B. As Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has written:
BDS is an irritant, a mostly failed attempt to harm Israel economically which has not put a dent in the growth, B”H, of the Israeli economy. The B&J/Unilever gambit is more dangerous. It takes a large, well-liked company with name recognition in practically every US family, and associates that good name with a finding that Israel is a huge human rights violator – perhaps the worst in the world. Making that horrific label stick, possibly in the minds of tens of millions of Americans, can indeed wreak havoc with Israel’s standing in the world community. If it goes unchallenged, it makes it that much easier to heap all the other epithets on Israel: apartheid, brutal, inhumane, Nazi-like. It would make it so much easier for the next business to do the same. And the next. And the one after. It will make it easier for school curricula (beyond the college campuses, which have been lost for years) to lump Israel together with the truly brutal regimes of the world. It can put every Jew on the defensive for being on the wrong side of history. The fact that a true corporate giant – Unilever – would not cry foul at this misstep will greatly solidify the impression that Zionists/Israelis/Jews are evil and expendable.
It's perfectly legitimate to be upset about various deficiencies in human rights suffered by Palestinians. It's perfectly legitimate (although possibly mistaken) to think that Israel made a huge mistake by not relinquishing control of Judea & Samaria. It's perfectly legitimate (albeit probably futile) to try to pressure the Israeli government as well as the Palestinian Authority to try to reach an agreement. But joining an antisemitic campaign is antisemitic.
If you'd like to subscribe to this blog via email, use the form on the right of the page, or send me an email and I will add you.
Minor point of contention - calling it "only" 90 civilian deaths dehumanizes those 90 people. Not likely to win anyone over if phrased that way.
ReplyDeleteWell it has to be put into perspective why it is 90, and it has to do with where Hamas place their weapons...
DeleteIt doesn't say, "only 90 civilian deaths", it says, "If it's only the 80 civilian deaths..." "Only" doesn't qualify the number of deaths, which would be callous, but the fact that there have been 80 civilian deaths, which means something completely different.
DeleteThen again, if you could read it incorrectly, others might too, so I agree that it probably should have been written more carefully.
Change it to Nationalist Judaism
ReplyDeleteNationalist Judaism is Zionist Judaism.
DeleteA Rational approach to Judaism is nationalist. But then again, you'd have a tough time arguing that a valid mystical approach to Judaism can eschew nationalism. Good look with discarding all those pesukim, gemaras, and rishonim
DeleteIf you don't want the epithets Rabbi Adlerstein rightly anticipates, you don't need better Hasbara. You don't need to invest in diplomacy. You don't even need to stop treating non Orthodox denominations so badly (though it would be nice if you did). You don't need (on the basis of the logical fallacy of guilt by association) to shry antisemitism in a way which devalues the word of any meaning.
ReplyDeleteAll you need to do is to stop the Kahanists.
The real slippery slope is the moral decline. Just look at your own message boards. Look at Sssvi. Look at Yakov. Look at Shmuel. Look at Nahum. Look at Frank.
There never was will be any form of protest against the moral decline of the nation that you would accept. I am sure you would have decried the prophet Yeshayah as an antisemite if he made you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about your smugly privileged moral certainties.
And again... The Hat at it spraying his poisonous venom. Find me one statement that I've made that makes me a "Kahanist".
DeleteCalling you a useful idiot and self-hating Jew does not qualify. There are many statements you've made that qualify you for those titles. The most recent being you siding with the anti-semitic B&J board and Israel hating chairman of the board.
Other than that, the content of your post is nonsensical (as is your custom). You think if the "Kahanists" are stopped all will be well and good? BDS will disappear? Calls for "from the river to the sea" will disappear? The Palestinians, Hamas, and Hezbolla will throw away their weapons and peace in the middle east will reign supreme?
Go chase yourself, buddy. For any alleged problem supposedly caused by Kahanists you can dream up, I can name dozens actually caused by you and your ilk.
DeleteGood point.
DeleteRabbi Slifkin, is there any way that WOULD be acceptable to you, for a foreign person or goup of people or enterprise, to exert pressure on Israel on behalf of the palestinians?
I think if there is none, then your advice on any such particular action has zero value.
Regarding your meme, I hope it be helpful, but the fact that someone else does worse has never been a good defense argument.
Why should any foreign person or group want to exert pressure on Israel to any slight degree more than they would want to exert pressure on any of the 190+ other countries on Earth?
DeleteThe meme has nothing to do with other people doing worse. It has to do with the reaction of Western leftists to the two situations.
Jew well 5:22PM:
DeleteThey can move to Israel and become citizens and vote. Oh, not Jewish, can't become a citizen. (Actually they can, but that's an involved process)
Can move to China, and even if can become citizen, can't effectively vote.
Japan won't even let you move in. Neither Iran or Pakistan. Or (US) Indian Territory. Or Mexico.
Europe is also problematic.
In fact, a non US citizen who tries to affect political decisions must register as a foreign agent.
@Nachum & MiMedinat HaYam
DeleteI wasn't talking to you but to Rabbi Slifkin who said it is legitimate to be upset at the situation. If you are upset, then you want to do something, just like international pressure played a big role in overthrowing the actual apartheid regime.
I guess you also believe that any meddling in another country's internal affairs is wrong. So maybe we should give Iran free rein, no? Maybe jews should not have meddled in ottomans' affairs in the Damascus blood libel? this is ridiculous.
LOL. And here we learn that "The Hat" views himself as a prophet.
DeleteI'm an Israeli citizen. The only non-resident Israeli citizens who get to vote are, as you know, beneficiaries of Israel's cake-and-eat-it policy in the West Bank.
DeleteNo Student V. Here we learn that saying Israel as a nation is heavy with sin is not antisemitic.
DeleteIsrael as a nation is indeed not without sin (and it's not without many merits too). Among those sins are some of its members who willingly side with anti-semites like the racist B&J and the racist chairman of that board.
DeleteHat 9:09
DeletePlenty of Israelis fly in to vote, at least from USA.
This year was difficult to do that
Maybe that's why had to do it three times, and still didn't work
Frankly, Israel has the right to annex Judea & Samaria, Lebanon, etc., as they were historically part Israel. My recent ancestors lived in Lebanon. Today it is an Arab hellhole. B&J accusing Israel of violating humans rights never heard of China. China is the worse human rights violator, responsible for millions of deaths. Japan during WWII was probably worse than the Nazis, Japan did a holocaust throughout all of Asia and yet, Japan and China gets away with it. They're all antisemitic.
ReplyDeleteI think official legal whatevers would agree that Israel has the right to annex. The unfortunate situation is that if Israel DOES annex, then the demographic weight of the Palestinians would be a major problem. That's the simplistic version of the situation as I understand it.
DeleteAnd therefore, the people living there have this sort of half-and-half citizenship lifestyle; they exist under Israel's control and do not enjoy complete citizenship rights.
If they were to magically become peaceful, then it would be OK to release Yesha to a hypothetical PA country, but as that will never happen, this limbo situation is where we are stuck.
On a recent blog post, someone put in a link to a recent article suggesting a path to Palestinian economic independence, but that has been criticized as too naive.
Shmuel:
DeleteJapan and China are not anti semitic
They hate all foreigners.
(MMY - I don't think Shmuel was saying that China and Japan are specifically antisemetic. Just that the wrold/the media/etc is antisemetic for not pointing out human rights violations in other countries but focusing on Israel)
DeleteYosef, yes, that is correct. MMY - I agree that Japan and China are not anti semitic since, as you wrote, they hate all foreigners.
Deletehttps://freebeacon.com/national-security/meet-ben-jerrys-board-chair-anti-israel-activist-has-published-defenses-of-hezbollah-hamas/
ReplyDeleteWe should stop settling land that we refuse to annex
ReplyDeleteSettlement construction is limited to only existing settlements. That has been the official Israeli policy since the signing of the Oslo Accords.
Delete(There are outposts, but those are built without any government approval. They should be removed.)
In 1992 when the Accords were signed less than 100,000 settlers lived in the West Bank. The current number is 400,000.
DeleteSo you're in favor of annexation?
Delete@The Hat: "In 1992 when the Accords were signed less than 100,000 settlers lived in the West Bank. The current number is 400,000."
DeleteIs it surprising that the number has increased by that much in 30 years? What was Israel supposed to do--sterilize the settlers?
In my neighborhood in Ramot, Jerusalem, when I made aliyah in 1993, the population was 20,000. Now it's 60,000. But the amount of the land area hasn't increased. They built on existing land, that was already annexed.
@Nachum:
DeleteThat was already proposed by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert--to annex the large settlement blocs, and provide land from Israel to make up for the difference.
That was still rejected by Abu Mazen.
https://www.jns.org/erekat-olmert-offered-abbas-more-than-the-entire-west-bank/
Thanks to Bibi there has been a de facto freeze on the natural growth of already existing settlements too.
DeleteAll of this should be ended, and land should be settled freely. Time to stop holding out for some fictitious Fakestinian state that will never be.
I don't know the exact demographics, but maybe waiting until the Jewish population is significantly larger than the Palestinian population there IS a good strategy. Once the Jewish numbers are overwhelming, then annexing won't be demographic disaster it would otherwise be. So we aren't in permanent limbo, just a long waiting game.
Delete@Yehuda P: presumably you will be aware the rate of expansion of the settlements is double the rate of expansion of Israel as a whole in the same period. That is manifest bad faith.
DeleteYehuda P: The population of Israel in 1992 was around 5.1m. It is now around 9.1M. An impressive growth rate of 80%, or around one fifth of the growth rate in the settlements of more than 400%.
DeleteDon't pretend this explosion in the settlements is anything other than 320% manifest bad faith on the part of the State of Israel (and I'll grant you your 80% baseline population growth).
Student V: denying someone else's national identity as "fake" has earned you a late entry into the catalogue of Kahanists I compiled earlier in the thread. It's an act of casual bigotry that we've become sadly habituated to so that it hardly registers.
DeleteUh oh, you labeled me with a term. What ever shall I do?
DeleteThe West Bank settlements have larger families--that could account for the greater population growth there than the rest of Israel.
DeleteStill, offers were made to the Palestinians, by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, about annexing the major settlement blocs, and ceding the rest to the Palestinians. The longer the Palestinians wait, the more the Jewish population in those settlement blocs will increase.
And isn't it somewhat unfair that a Palestinian state can't have any Jews living in it?! Then why can Israel have Arab-majority cities in it?
"@Yehuda P: presumably you will be aware the rate of expansion of the settlements is double the rate of expansion of Israel as a whole in the same period. That is manifest bad faith."
DeleteThe population growth of the settlements shouldn't matter, because the land area of the settlements remained constant.
If the settlements occupy only 9% of the West Bank, as they did in 1993 when Oslo was signed, what difference should it make if it's 100,000, or 400,000, or 1 million? Is it because the only way to make peace with the Palestinians is if we remove all of the settlers and return back to the pre-'67 borders? Is that really what's holding back peace? Apparently not, since we removed all the settlers and settlements from Gaza, and they don't give us peace there.
There were terrorist attacks in the pre-'67 borders as well, in the years from 1948-1967. What "occupation" were they opposing then?
Yehuda P:
Delete1) It isn't credible to asset that the density of the settlements has increased fourfold is it.
2) The demographics is a legitimate concern as well as the land area. That's why Israel applies racial criteria to the laws of return.
3) You know perfectly well why the Gazans don't make peace. Because you cannot separate Gaza into an independent Bantustan from the West Bank in the minds of the vast majority of the Palestinian - divide and rule has failed.
@The Hat:
DeleteI still don't get your argument. So there's Modi'in, Givat Ze'ev, Gush Etzion. If Israel says, and has said, that they'll annex them in a future agreement, what difference does it make what the population of these areas is?
Israel has proposed annexing the large settlement blocs, time and time again, and yielding in exchange the equivalent land area from parts of Israel in the pre-'67 borders.
Abbas was already offered by Olmert more than the equivalent of the West Bank, with the land swaps, and refused the offer.
https://www.haaretz.com/1.4883092
https://www.jns.org/erekat-olmert-offered-abbas-more-than-the-entire-west-bank/
"You know perfectly well why the Gazans don't make peace."
DeleteYes, because they're ruled by Hamas. There wasn't any blockade on the Gaza Strip before Hamas took over. Do you think we would be having another conflict every three years or so with Gaza if it were under PA control?
You seem to have some other reason, which I can't understand. Is Israel supposed to cede all of the land between Gaza and the West Bank, so that it'll be contiguous?
Your argument seems to be that the expropriation has created such durable facts on the ground that it should cease to give offence. The argument is deeply cynical and assumes too much. What quality of land is Israel offering the Palestinians in exchange? Some dusty dry rocks in the middle of the Arava? You cannot treat a negotiating position, especially one which is so convenient to one side and so inconvenient to the other, as a consummated deal. It's not credible to say you are negotiating in good faith if you've already determined the outcomes of the negotiations and are treating it as your own.
DeleteOlmert offered more than the area of the entire West Bank, and agreed to a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
DeleteErekat said that they should have accepted it.
"Erekat explained that the area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip before they came under Israeli control in 1967 was 6,235 square kilometers. Olmert offered Abbas even more land than that, a total of 6,260 square kilometers. At the negotiations, Erekat encouraged Abbas to accept the offer, saying that he could tell Palestinians: “I got more than the 1967 territories.” Abbas rejected the offer."
https://www.jns.org/erekat-olmert-offered-abbas-more-than-the-entire-west-bank/
"not every human rights inequality is apartheid"
ReplyDeleteAnd not every "human rights inequality" is uncalled for. And not every "human rights inequality" actually is one.
And after the events of the last few weeks in South Africa, any cliched call of "apartheid" should be met not with a defense of Israel- although Lord knows Israel can defend itself against that- but simple laughter.
I must also state my unease with the hairsplitting I've seen some engage in (like your reference to Jaffa and so on) about "BDS." No. calls for BDS, or any sort of boycott, are anti-Semitic, plain and simple. Even if they come from leftist Jews like Ben and Jerry, or from hypocritical high-caste Indians like this "chairman." That she hates Israel proper is to be expected, but...it's to be expected of anyone who goes on about the West Bank, which is the point.
The biggest single mistake was the development of settlements in these disputed territories rather than the creation of affordable cities within IL. The existence & development of these cities had a single goal. To create a fait accompli that cannot be reversed. This was also done in '48 & '67 to dozens of Palestinian villages, many of which were essentially vanished off the face of the earth. Populations were transferred from Lydda, Ramle, Haifa etc. etc. massacres were perpetuated, inc. the machine-gunning of muslims locked in a Mosque - known as the 1948 "Lydda Mosque Massacre". So, know we now that both sides have excellent track records in population transfer and death - but this constant pretense that resistance to this narrative is 'anti-semitism' is the gravest idiocy I have ever heard. 20 years ago when I was a Jewish student rep. these people were laughed off as mentally deficient quacks - but I saw they were dangerous and time would afford them leverage. Now we call them anti-semites who want to make the OTs 'Judenrein' - when I realize that most Jews barely even know the history of modern IL, these arguments become even more laughable. The truth is that IL body politic cannot handle the serious and real dangers of a non-violent economic boycott because it cannot respond to it in a way it can with actual violence. The reactions to an ice cream brand boycott makes Israelis look petulant and foolish - because the truth is that it will require a certain amount of transparent thought on the matter - and IL society cannot deal with this.
DeleteOmar Barghouti founded the BDS movement in 2005, while Israel was executing the Gaza Disengagement. If anyone thought that it would earn Israel any brownie points, well, it didn't.
DeleteHe has said explicitly that his aim is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. That's not anti-Semitism?! He knows full well that Jews can't live in a Palestinian state.
Boo-frickety-hoo.
DeleteThe Lydda Mosque Massacre is not as crazy an event as its cracked up to be. Indeed it happened. It was a forced expulsion, done in the name of security. The shootings seemed to because of inexperienced Israeli fighters (you know, the non-soldiers who just fought in the Independence War) who were jumpy with this assignment, never having dealt with civilians before. Some of the civilians had weapons and were shooting from their houses and such.
DeleteThe argument could be made that the expulsion itself was the bad thing, but the counterargument is that it was in the name of security. The deaths were not planned. This was not an extermination the way Nazis or Crusaders collected Jews together and gunned them down.
And I just got that from Wikipedia.
Yosef R: what about the rapes? (Yes, goods Jewish boys gang raped Arab women)
DeleteYou ruined an otherwise good (if not exactly ground-breaking) article by asserting mistakes on both sides. You shouldn't try to appear balanced or reasonable, as so many on the right, but never on the left, like to do. It just weakens the force of your argument, and dilutes the clarity. BJs was wrong, finished.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not BDS does any damage to the Israeli economy is not relevant. Their constantly calling Israel an apartheid state, and now a colonialist project has become part of the vocabulary, and the result is the stance of the Democratic party. By constantly having to defend itself, Israel ahs become tarred with that brush.
ReplyDelete"It places all the blame on Israel for the creation and/or perpetuation of a situation which is at least as much the fault of the Palestinians, if not much more so"
ReplyDeleteI think a legitimate argument can be made that the ultimate cause of the current situation is Israel's policy of settling the occupied territory starting in 1967.
That itself had a cause. The land was being used as a base from which to attack Israel.
DeleteTurtle, that's a reason to continue occupying the area, not a reason to have Israelis live there.
DeleteThe best way to ensure the occupation continues is to move civilians in. Among other things, that makes it much more difficult to leave. That's the reason the ICRC doesn't approve of such things, after all.
DeleteSo leaving aside that Jews should have the right to live everywhere they want, especially in their own ancestral lands, their being there provides a nice practical benefit as well.
The ultimate cause was Great Britain's support of the local Arabs back in Mandate times. If things were a little different, the PLO never could have formed. (So say historians who know more than I.)
DeleteA laughable discussion, if there ever were one. The only guiding principle for a nation is its benefit. Everything else is empty talk as the UN and the world history has been demonstrating since forever.
ReplyDeletenicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden ... sondern durch Eisen und Blut.
DeleteCounterpoint: Brexit, coronavirus, the defenestration of Netanyahu. No iron, no blood.
DeleteYou write: "And it's entirely separate from the fact that even if Israel was claiming that Judea & Samaria are part of Israel, the situation still wouldn't be one of apartheid."
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that "not every human rights inequality is apartheid", that's not an explanation why having a segregated, non-voting population group determined on ethnic lines would not be.
You make a strong assertion but don't provide reasoning. I'd be interested in hearing it.
Human rights are empty words that have no real meaning. Had Tutsis not defeated Hutus they would have been exterminated with the world looking on. There was nobody to help them. Uigurs are doomed and China might one day take over Taiwan by force with no consequences. Might makes right is the fundamental law of the Evolution.
DeleteIsrael has had weak and confused governments incapable of dealing resolutely with the problem. This will not change in the foreseeable future. Obviously Israel isn't China and what China can do isn't an option for it.
You're asserting that having such a group is a bad thing without providing reasoning why. If we're going to be making demands like that.
Delete@Nahum
DeleteI'm interested in hearing Rabbi Slifkin explain why having such a group would not qualify as apartheid.
If Israel absorbs the territories without granting rights to the people living there solely based on their ethnicity, how would that not be apartheid? Whether it's "right" or "wrong" is subjective I guess.
Yakov: I think religion evolved as a behaviour which increases survival chances. Cooperation and seeing the divine in others increases everyone's reproductive success.
DeleteHat: the birth rate of the European race that subscribes to this thinking is below replacement.
Delete'Cooperation and seeing the divine in others increases everyone's reproductive success.'
Not in the real world. The stronger will always prevail.
There is no perfect way for a society to function and conditions change over time, but if you value your way of life separation is necessary.
@Yakov: "Israel has had weak and confused governments incapable of dealing resolutely with the problem. This will not change in the foreseeable future."
DeleteAn interviewer for Ha'aretz, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, recently put an interview that she had with Rabbi Steinsaltz in 2014.
https://twitter.com/avitalrachel/status/1419679364808073216
Rabbi Steinsaltz quipped, ""I have two proofs of God's existence:
1) Pravda denied it.
2) The continued existence of the State of Israel with the government it has today."
Yakov: in my real world, hairy male hominids do not roam around, grabbing females to mate with, and rolling around in the mud battering to the death other males with crudely hewn flints. In my real world the worst it gets is the exchange of barbed unpleasantries on these august fora, or a testy exchange with the local council about refuse collections. Most people around me seem to follow similar lives of exclusively petty, 21st century, dramas. I don't feel we are missing out.
DeleteHumanity's evolutionary strategy revolves around the group: large, ordered, structured societies without which the resources and knowledge for deploying technology could not exist.
Incidentally, if Barnet council are listening, bring back there green bins!
Imagine being an ordinary citizen and actually believing the farce that large corporations are upstanding, trustworthy, have your interests at heart, and are reliable guides to morality.
ReplyDeleteJust imagine the stupidity!
I work in one of those large corporations (Fortune 500) and I can tell you employees *don't* actually believe that. It's quite similar to how Communist Russia works. Everyone knows everything is baloney and in some cases illegal, you just do what you're told in the hopes to keep your job/life and hope either for lawsuits/war or that the next CEO/leader or Board Member/Czar will be better.
DeleteThe truth is, Israel should have just annexed those territories a long time ago, just like it did with the Golan.
ReplyDeleteThey say the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The Israeli equivalent is, "Israel never learns." They keep trying to give away territory, hoping that it will make their enemies (both Jew and non-Jew) like them. It's never going to happen. Once and for all, just annex all the areas supposedly in dispute. End the charade.
That only works when done in tandem with population transfer.
DeleteWould be nice - and we all wish it were that easy. The problem is that there are A LOT of Arabs there. How many Arab MKs are in the government now, and how many would there be next time if all of these become citizens? Like 30 or 40? Is that a tenable situation?
DeleteIt can be annexed regardless of who lives or doesn't live there. And sure it will present certain problems, but no more conceptually than East Jerusalem, Acre, or other cities with high Arab population.
DeleteThe Jewish population is still considerably higher than the Arab, even if they were to be full citizens. And keep in mind all the dire warnings of 30 years ago, how the alleged "high arab birth rate" was going to overwhelm Israel in short order... Never happened.
I was surprised to read on Rechavam Ze'evi's Wikipedia page that he advocated creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank immediately after the Six-Day War. He argued that the longer we drag it out, the more animosity it will cause.
DeleteThat's very surprising, because when he was the head of his party, Moledet, the party's slogan was "Only Transfer Will Bring Peace". Not a forced transfer--but to give West Bank Palestinians economic incentives to go to Jordan.
He said that if anyone has a better solution, he'd like to hear it.
Dear Rabbi Dr,
ReplyDeleteYou claimed that the thousands of chanting youth filmed singing about burning down villages, death to the Arabs, and vengeance (like they do every year!) was not a sight familiar to you. Is your own site a sight familiar to you?
I have been ably abetted in advancing my argument that nationalist Zionism has fallen into the hands of extremists by the national Zionists who post extreme, racist, violent, bigoted and dehumanising content under your very nose, while you simultaneously protest to have neither seen, nor heard, any evil.
Again I put it to you: the pressing issue is not ice cream.
"nationalist Zionism has fallen into the hands of extremists"
DeleteNo it hasn't. That's why Smotrich only got 7 seats. And arguably, not all his support is strictly from extreme nationalists.
I didn't catch it at first but Student V was right that The Hat views himself as a prophet. That explains a lot of his rantings (that he sprays in multiple threads to try and avoid being pinned down so he can continue to spew his debunked rhetoric) and his writing style. Too funny. We should call him The Prophet henceforth.
DeleteThe Prophet in this post engages in unsubstantiated name calling, bigoted generalized statements about a whole sector of Jews.
I put it to you Mr Prophet: your pressing issue is being a smug, self-righteous bigot. Take a look in the mirror.
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1419715448929755142
DeleteEphraim: I understand everything in your sentence apart from the word "only"
@HAT if you think you are a prophet (as in receiving communications from the supernatural) you are delusional and need to seek medical assistance forthwith. I wish you a rephuah sheleima. . ACJA
DeleteI would point out to the elderly incontinent atheistic gentleman that the title of Prophet was bestowed upon me, because apparently expressing protest about rampant immorality is itself an immoral act which should be scorned. It's quite the honour for a mere troll.
DeleteI urge all to write a letter of protest to Unilever objecting to their decision. I already have. Their contact is at their website. I will also boycott their products. ACJA
ReplyDeleteI have often found that inchoate rage leads to poor decision making. The subtleties of the argument are lost in the verbiage, so that the person who feels the urge to respond to this particular provocation is quite Frankly indulging in anti-Semitism and other forms of racial bigotry. In particular there is an insufficient appreciation of the interlocotour's point entirely concerning the iniquity of the Occupation. Please affirm my prophetic qualities in the space provided below, together with the like-minded Kahanaists and disgruntled connoisseurs of ice cream who are against all boycotts of Jewish led businesses apart from the ones they approve of on the grounds of anti-Semitism.
Delete@hat Unilever in it’s antisemitic and anti Israel rage joined BDS. All alleged unjustified iniquities of an alleged ‘occupation’ by Jews of their homeland would vanish if the Arab world ceased hostility towards Israel. Let this sink in. The Arabs DO NOT WANT A JEWISH STATE IN ISRAEL, and will do everything in their power to see it’s demise. You are aiding and abetting your sworn enemy. I know it and they know it, but you are blissfully unaware of it. ACJA
DeleteWhat a windbag. What mindless babble.
DeleteAnd again - as mentioned above - find me one statement that I've made that makes me a "Kahanist". I guess it's too much to ask the likes of you to have the minimum integrity of backing up your labeling and name calling. Hint: disagreeing with your bigoted rantings and objecting to making Yesha judenrein including the Gush, Maaleh adumim, East Jerusalem and probably also Har Homa does not make one into a "kahanist".
ACJA - I salute you. We need more Jews like you, atheist or not.
What ACJA said. Or to state it in a different way - it is what makes him into such an incredibly useful idiot.
DeleteO Frank, please forgive me.
DeleteI appear to have predicted that you would respond to my comment, thereby (upon closer reading of my carefully compacted nonsense) affirming yourself as indulging in anti-Semitism. I believe the technical term is hook, line and sinker.
I am however undoubtedly a troll, and this whole thread has brought pathetic joy to my evening, for which I sincerely apologise.
Not only thinks himself a prophet but a genius in his own mind...
DeleteTo be honest, I couldn't distinguish between the "carefully compacted nonsense" in this post and those from your ostensibly "regular" postings.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHey Professor - you still sticking to "Trust the Science"? When will you be man enough to admit that the Charedim were right all along.
ReplyDelete