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New York, 4:30 PM
Tue Nov 24
71 posts in the last 24 hours
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05/28/09
It made my heart rate jump up (which is what I was working on), but OMG, no, really OMG, the insults! the illogical arguments! I mean, they had Coulter, talked about Thomas, Gonzalez, showed horrible racist emails from viewers. And Dennis Miller was SO NOT FUNNY. He tried, he really tried, but his "jokes" were awful. It made me really sad to know that people in my country believe all this stuff and are willing to support it wholeheartedly. It does not help make this a better country. It doesn't.
(Note: no I'm not a hippie. Really)
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State Department: [contact-us.state.gov]
White House: [www.whitehouse.gov]
JStreet, "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement": [www.jstreet.org]
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The Zionist project has ceased to be about building a national home for the Jews, and has become about the settlements. Everything Israel does, every budget it passes, every domestic or international decision it makes, always comes back to: the settlements. If we really wanted to protect Tel Aviv (etc), we would reach security arrangements with a Palestinian state, and then protect our borders. But the machinery of the settlements grinds on and on, and most Israelis don't even hear the noise anymore.
When all is said and done, there will be one state, and maybe that is for the best -- personally, I've sort of given up on nationalism as an organizing principle (because, hey, look where it gets us!). But those people who think they're defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state by defending the settlements and deepening the occupation are wrong. And when their grandchildren are issued their Israstine (or will it be Palsrael?) passports, they'll look back at history and know where Zionism ended.
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05/28/09
On one level, I can't argue with any of that. Yes, you're right. We have a right to be there. Yes, you're right, you need more room for the kids. Yes, you're right, leaving graves behind goes against much in our humanity.
But that being "right" doesn't make it smart, and it doesn't negate the (in my mind) equal "rightness" of the other guys -- most of whom, it should be noted, have already accepted defeat. If we were to turn over the Gaza Strip and West Bank in their entireties to the Palestinians today, they would be getting (if memory serves) 22% of historical Palestine. That's what they're fighting for now. The Zionists -- we -- won. We have a state, and they know we're not going anywhere (yes, some Palestinians, including Hamas, still fight that. But so do some Israelis, vis-a-vis the Palestinians, and again, that's what peace is meant to solve).
And since the Oslo Accords (over which I literally danced in the streets of Tel Aviv back in 1993), settlement has well more than doubled, and the West Bank has been essentially sliced into six parts, and the Gaza Strip has been turned into what amounts to an open air prison.
05/28/09
The issue of water sources also plays into it, but I'm less well versed in that piece.
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05/28/09
From my 14 years there, and my continuing experience with the country, studying and writing about it and going back and forth, I would say that the vast majority of Israelis feel a very real connection to the land, in an almost subconscious way -- when you're where you belong, you don't really think about it much.
There have always been strong currents of pride in the sacrifices made, and a need to defend those sacrifices, as well as a sense that those who would fight us really just want to see us all die. It's very hard to shake a deeply ingrained (at times entirely justifiable, at times entirely manipulated) fear of the outside world. There is often a strong sense that Israel is on its own, and I feel certain that lots of people over there right now are talking about how this stupid Administration is completely clueless.
Most Israelis have said they want a two state solution. Polls used to indicate that meant co-existence; now that means separation -- go away, don't bother us anymore. They want peace and quiet, and they want their land, and people have failed to make the connection that that's what the other side wants too, and so the only way to get the first, is to share the latter.
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@bluebears: "I have to say I just do not understand that sort of blood allegiance to an inanimate piece of land." I'm guessing you don't live in the Deep South, where the prevailing sentiment among those who still live and die by the rebel flag is that the guv'mint has no business taxing or telling them what to do with the land their grandpappy bled and died for. People who say the South will rise again freak. me. out. And there are waaay too many of them.
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Really, people. Respect a person's name!
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The worst, by the way, that I ever got was someone who had the nerve to tell me my parents were cruel to put a silent H in my name. I've never been so offended or appalled.
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In short, I understand your pain.
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05/28/09
At any rate, I don't see why Sotomayor is that difficult to pronounce. It surprised me to hear Obama mess it up several times during his introduction. The correct pronunciation seems like the intuitive pronunciation to me, but then again, I'm not an old white dude. And good for Megan for not Anglicizing "Carpentier." I went to high school with a "Charpentier," Shar-pont-ee-ay, but a lot of teachers just called him "Carpenter." It kind of boggled my mind, as again, NOT THAT TOUGH to pronounce. Not as difficult or counterintuitive as mine, anyway.
05/28/09
If I wasn't excited about Judge Sotomayor before, I am now. Way to mobilize the opposition's base, wingnuts; without those clowns, we'd all just be sitting here enjoying the slow return of civil liberties and social services.
05/28/09
[www.latimes.com]
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"To the honorable Barack Obama, President..."
"WE THE WHITE, GODFEARING CITIZENS OF ROCK RIDGE wish to express our extreme displeasure with your choice of" Supreme Court Nominee
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I have a long Greek name that is constantly butchered, so I'm used to it, but most people at least try to pronounce it correctly. I just correct them and we're done with it. The people I hate are the ones who ask me why I didn't change it to my husband's WASPy last name when we got married, because "it's so much easier to say." Gee, I guess I didn't consider YOUR comfort when making a decision about MY name. I'm so selfish - and racist!
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You may also be reverse racist too. You really are a horrible horrible person.
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Good luck to your friends, honey. I marvel at the fact that so few people who sent them over there have any apparent understanding of what war does to people when they come home.
05/28/09