"a disturbing reversal of symbolism"

 "Your local paper might not have covered it, but in the wee hours of Wednesday morning a gang of Israeli settlers attacked the West Bank village of Hawara. "Palestinians reported two torched cars on the village’s central road early yesterday," Haaretz writes. "A small village mosque, used only on the weekend, had the word 'Muhammad' sprayed in Hebrew and a Star of David. Haaretz also found graffiti with the Jewish prayer 'Praise be onto him for not making me a gentile.'" The attackers also took the opportunity to destroy some three hundred olive trees, a major source of local income. "  Salon

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This kind of behavior is on the rise in Israel.  A kind of overweening contempt for the Palestinians has set in.  Attitudes have hardened steadily.  It is now  very difficult to imagine these two populations ever living together amicably.   The concept of peace in the Holy Land seems increasingly to be fantasy.  The whole bloody mess is likely to play itself out as tragedy.   I decided two years ago not to go there again.  pl  

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/04/15/star_david_swastika_open2010/index.html

Comments

[Charles I]

There are reports that settlers did this in retaliation for the IDF destroying some illegally built settler homes.

As if contempt isn't enough for the poor araboushim in a criminal zionist's eyes now they are to blame for what little law Israel applies to its citizns in the west bank.

The irony is that the people without a state are ready and willing to engage in a real two state solution, while the people with a state seem incapable of the civil society to seriously entertain it.

[DanM]

You really won't return? I think you once wrote something on the order of (paraphrasing, obviously). "Jerusalem is a paradise. Its climate, its setting, its history. If not for all the crazies, i could happily live there."

I share your despair for the future, but eagerly await my next visit to Jerusalem and jasmined evenings both there, and in Ramallah, and with friends in Tel Aviv who are as or more appalled by the settlers as any of us.

[J]

Colonel,

It is as various Neturei Karta Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis have said, that the currently existing Zionist State Of Israel needs to be 'dismantled' as it is an affront to Heaven, and that the State of Israel is supposed to be created by the Divine Hand and not by the hands of corrupt murderous Zionist men. As long as the corrupted Zionist State of Israel exists with its acts of Genocide against the Palestinians and others, it poses a danger to all Jews and to mankind as a whole.

[John Badalian]

Dear Colonel Patrick -

I swear Colonel, that I took all my Rx this A.M., at the appropriate time and in the proper amount(s). But, as loopy as this idea seems at 1st blush - should Israel be made a State or given Commonwealth Status?? How else does that United
States regain Control as Master of Its own House?
Have a good weekend, sir.
JB

[Lysander]

If there can be no peace, there can only be victor and vanquished. Clearly the Israelis assume they are already the former.

That being the case, it is hard to blame Israel's neighbors for trying to avoid becoming (in perpetuity) that latter.

[walrus]

Talk about tragic irony.

I also sense that the Palestinian adoption of non violent Ghandi - like protest is an absolute winning strategy.

[par4]

IIRC there is a Biblical injunction against destroying groves as a means of warfare. It seems the hypocrisy of choosing which parts of the Bible you want to use as justification for your political views isn't limited to the "Christian Right". Maybe that's one of the reasons why they get along together so well.

[Fred]

Perhaps we should not label the Middle East "The" Holy Land. There are plenty of holy places right here in the USA.

[SD]

The trees reach bearing age in about 4 years.

Olive trees can live exceptionally long, up to several centuries, and can remain productive for as long, if they are pruned correctly and regularly.

The crop from old trees is sometimes enormous, but they seldom bear well two years in succession, and in many cases a large harvest occurs every sixth or seventh season.
--
To me this sounds like a one sided razzia (raid) of frontier reconquistaIberia between the Christians and Moors in Spain. A scorched earth tactic.

The land is no longer technically, agricultural, but barren.

Certainly would not be visiting any of the smaller islands, I imagine.

http://blackmaps.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/palestina.jpg

[n m salamon]

It is sad that the USA will back such barbarism as opfficial policy

[Ian]

Walrus: "I also sense that the Palestinian adoption of non violent Ghandi - like protest is an absolute winning strategy."

It's worth noting that Gandhi's tactics might not have fared as well against the British circa 1857.

[fanto]

several times I saw the parallel drawn between Palestinians and the American Indians - that Palestinians are destines to suffer the same fate. I think this is a very wrong conclusion and this comparison is totally wrong and misleading the American Jewry into silent adoption of that 'american scenario'.

[hansragnar]

here too ... [Berkeley, CA] Zionists attack Tikkun’s Rabbi Lerner’s home in response to his support for the Goldstone Report.
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/vandalism/

[Jackie]

The persecuted have become the persecutor, the tormented the tormentor. The settlers are very radical and reactionary. I hope the Palestinians go the non-violent route and I hope they gain some success.

[confusedponderer]

I decided two years ago not to go there again. pl

Funny you say that. I have thought to myself that I need to go there before things really take a bad turn.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Interesting to follow politics in the home of political Zionism and the Zionist colonial project, Balfour and all that which started the problem out there...Haifa to take Iraqi oil to refuel the British Med fleet and what? A bit too clever...

"Sighs of relief will have been heard in Israel's London embassy on Friday morning as it emerged that Britain's Liberal Democrat party had failed to capitalize on a surge in pre-election opinion polls. ....

"Gordon Brown loses no opportunity to explain how from early childhood he absorbed a love for Israel from his father, a Christian clergyman and declared Zionist....

"But Israel is not without stalwart friends in the Conservative party. Foremost among them the party's leading ideologue, Michael Gove. Some of the views expressed in his speeches and opinion articles over the past few years would put the mainstream Likud to shame. ..."
www.haaretz.com/news/israel-diplomats-breathe-sigh-of-relief-at-clegg-s-poor-poll-showing-1.288924

[Patrick Lang]

CP

The abusive behavior that I saw in 2008 was terrible. Police and military people alike acted as though they were unrestrained in what they could do to the Palestinians or anyone else. My wife and I were traveling around the West Bank inspecting church schools that we support. Most visitors are herded around in buses under the "protection" and guidance of tour guides. They don't see what goes on away from tourist centers. Grown men are mocked and required to perform clownish exercises in front of their families for the amusement of teen aged Israeli soldiers. Israeli traffic police arrested my driver after they saw him give an indigent bus fare. They inspected his chauffer license for ten minutes until they found some little thing that they could bust him for. They took him away and left us sitting in the car outside Jerusalem. I called the hotel and they sent another driver. On another occasion a police officer at a checkpoint physically grabbed my wife (who was ill) by the arm and attempted to drag her out of the car because she had not responded quickly enough to a question.

It is much worse there now than I have seen it in 40 years. pl

[Dan M]

One of the many checkpoint humiliations was illustrated for me at Kalandia some time in 2008. A Palestinian family ahead of me trying to get "in" (going to family home in East Jerusalem) couldn't communicate in either Arabic or Hebrew with the blond-haired Russian teenager with a rifle who was treating them like dirt. When i got to him, he didn't speak much english either.

[WILL]

Despite their reputed 3% of the demography American Jews hold a firm rein on the levers of MidEast policy. This can be seen in their participation in national life, 14 U.S. Senators, if Kagan is chosen (Cohen in Russian) a third of the Supreme Court, & a grip on the media.

I had previously given an etiology. A modest IQ differential is leveraged via the exceptional shoulder region of the Bell curve into decisive control in leadership positions where an IQ of 140 or greater rules.

I am not protesting. Railing against talent rising would be as dumb as the Nazis being against quantum mechanics & general relativity b/c they were jewish & not German science. But, on the other hand people who have displayed gross leaning such as Dennis Ross & Joseph Lieberman need to be counterbalanced & not in charge.

John Mearsheimer has recently written an interesting article proposing that the future will be decided by the tension b/n the Righteous Jews such as Judge Goldstone and the New Afrikaaners & their Allies (Krauthammer, Fred Hiatt, Netanyahu, etc.).

The end will come in either
1. a binational state;
2. a mass ethnic cleansing; or
3. locked in bantustans.

Mearsheimer Talk

John_Mearsheimer at Wikipedia

It is not an academic matter to the rest of us. They (the terrorists) came over here, b/c we were over there (includes our proxies).

[BillWade]

Is this more symbolism or are they just dumbasses over there?

http://coteret.com/2010/05/06/american-anger-over-idf-use-of-us-army-uniforms-for-prisoners-in-stockade/

[different clue]

If the Lesser-Israelists and the Greater-Israelists were to have a civil war, which side would win? If the Lesser-Israelists are afraid to have the civil war because they are afraid the Greater-Israelists would win; then the Greater-Israelists have already won.

I still intuitively feel that some of the Israeli emigration is Lesser-Israelists who have already internalized their defeat by Greater-Israel and are leaving as political refugees.

There may be a way to test this in the next few years. If David Habbakuk is mainly correct in that the emigres are leaving the peripheral West to live in the Bright Lights Big City centers of the West....then the emigration will stay steady if economic conditions remain the same as now in the West. If we have another financial problem leading to deepening depression and shrinking living standards and job prospects in the West; then the emigration of Israeli West-seekers will slow down.

To whatever extent Israeli emigration proceeds or even speeds up regardless of economic downturns here...I will feel my intuition is just-that-much correct. Someone should interview Israeli emigrants about their views on various things and stuff.
News like this will probably inspire even more JudeoFascist Americans to move to Israel so they can join in the abuse. That should speed up the further emmigration of Lesser Israelists from an Israel ever more firmly in fascist and backwardite hands.

[Mark Logan]

A related development is a program the Palestinians have been using to discourage harassment from settlers during harvest. Gathering foreign tourists to participate. Seems to be effective.

The YMCA is supporting it as well.

http://globalministries.org/news/mee/2010-olive-picking.html

[J]

Colonel,

Israel by its actions has turned itself into a modern day Nazi state.

[confusedponderer]

I found much more interesting this analysis to the effect that Jewish fundamentalist preaching by Rabbis in the IDF is creating a problem for the IDF.

http://coteret.com/2009/11/17/maariv-analyst-fundamentalist-preaching-so-useful-in-gaza-now-boomeranging-against-idf/

The army is now eating the rotten fruits of long-running processes—for some of which it is to blame and for some of which it isn’t. With the army’s blessing, wholesale and premeditated law-breaking was carried and continues to be carried out with the establishment of outposts; the army’s officers have learned that it is worth their while to get along with the Judea and Samaria settlers, and its soldiers are put in impossible situations every day facing people, some of whom deny the legitimacy of the regime they represent.

[...]

Anyone who goes back and reads about the military rabbis, and the non-military rabbis, who walked around and met with the troops just before Operation Cast Lead and who talked about a holy war and who handed out booklets in which the enemy was described as Amalek [the Hebrews’ biblical nemesis whom they were divinely enjoined to destroy], those who thought that this well of motivation would be relegated only to the war against Hamas, will be given a stinging slap to the face.

[confusedponderer]

Directed at BillWade.