This is an excerpt from a longer conversation about Israel and Palestine.
Waters is one of those too rare rock musicians I can respect for openly expressing humanist ideals (another is Peter Gabriel). He claims there is a growing movement to end our unquestioning support for Israel in the US; I don’t know, the right-wing propaganda seems to silence everything.
You can find details about the incident of Palestinian footballers being shot online. Expect the usual noise: “Do you have any sources that are not Palestinian?”
There is generally a more open public discussion about Palestine in Britain than in the U.S.
As for rock musicians with admirable ideals, don’t forget Bruce Springsteen. I don’t know that he’s spoken publicly about Palestine but he’s unabashedly progressive in general.
One minute: ”Damn communist Jew bankers controlling the media and destroying America!”
The next minute: ”Those who don’t support the State of Israel is a foul anti-Semite! Never Forget! Never Again!”
There’s a system to the madness. If anti-Semitism increases in the West, more Jews will emigrate to Israel, creating a larger Jewish population and more settlers who will now defend their new home country because they actually fled there across the world.
The price will be paid by the Palestinians and those Jewish people who become the victims of violent anti-Semitic attacks.
From cervantes #1:
Of course, in much the same way as Akira MacKenzie demonstrates here, any pro-Palestinian sentiment on the left is immediately seized upon as “proof” that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemitic racist, (despite his thirty-plus year record of opposing racism and bigotry at every turn).
(Cross-post from the current Political Madness All the Time thread here at poopyhead’s.)
Trump cuts cause 250 job losses at UN agency for Palestinian refugees:
Traitor don’s dalekocracy tries to shift the blame, US envoy to UN: Arab states do not really support Palestine:
Hamas is a genocidal religious cult. It is openly committed to the extermination of every Jew in the world. Everything that you do to argue away that reality supports genocide and religious fanaticism. Without an open recognition of that reality, your treatment of the issue is a grotesque support of their evil.
Green Eagle, #6
Take your straw man with you.
Green Eagle
That’s just false based on the evidence; Mind you Hamas didn’t exist before 1987 and Israel was still actively involved in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, not to mention the fact that Hamas was part of an effort by Israel to curb Fatah (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0ab7bba2ee94); but let’s assume what you said was true. What does that have to do with the fact that Israel is an occupier that has been gradually ethnically cleansing an indigenous population for decades and instead moving in its fanatic settlers to where Palestinians used to live? NOTHING
Saad @7
Is your hay fever acting up too?
Green eagle
I’m sure you will then be shocked to learn that Hamas pretty much owes its existence to Israel. Almost as if the Israelis thought it was handy to
a) have a rival that weakens the secular PLO
and
b) have a bad guy that can subsequently be used to justify whatever atrocity you commit.
Here’s a hint: Nobody here denies that Hamas are mostly islamists and completely assholes, but we’re actually able to understand that Hamas =/= Palestine and that whatever bullshit Hamas is doing is no justification for what Israel is doing.
I mean, looking at people like you shows that b has worked pretty well.
I’m a bit shocked by the casual antisemitism of the american left.
Bingo ! Conflating criticism of the Israeli “government” and its policies with antisemitism. I’m slightly surprised it took ten-ish comments before one of these clowns showed up.
Comparing the treatment of the Palestinians with the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany is no criticism but plain old antisemitism. Add in the usual celebration of Hamas, which are a terrorist organisation with the goal of destroying Israel and the unfunded claim that Hamas was created by Israel and there is not much valid criticism left.
Also what is with the quotation marks around government?
Green Eagle brought a strawman.
Forodrim brought a straw PLATOON.
Either learn to engage with the actual arguments presented, or fuck all the way off back to your right-wing lair.
I’m not shocked at all by people like you dragging this poorly made dead strawperson around year in and year out.
I’m sure you would be shocked to know that the Neo-Nazis, Nazis, Holocaust Deniers, and white supremacists of the US right wingnuts are anything but casual about their antisemitism.
Or would be if there was any trace of thought or honesty in your mind.
forodrim
And I’m sure you can quote people here doing this.
and I’m sure you can quote people here doing that as well.
and I’m sure you can quote people here denying that.
of which they’re obviously capable?
1) It’s unfounded. Unfunded means there’s no money.
2) I’m sure people here (including me) have already posted the evidence for the fact that Israel tolerate and aided the rise of Hamas
It got buried under all that straw.
curious, seriously, asking for advise,
about comparing Palestinians to Indigenous Americans, who are likewise being forcibly removed from their lands by colonist claiming to have been given their land by GOD.
I am honestly worried that I’m reading too much into both of these issues by postulating equivalence
Thank you for letting me know
forodrim
I know you are a troll. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Israel didn’t create Hamas in literal sense; HOWEVER,
Here is Uri Avnery, a former member of Irgun Zionist terrorist group on Hamas:
Israel did not “create” Hamas, but it certainly helped it along in its initial stages.
During the first 20 years of the occupation, the Israeli leadership saw the PLO as its chief enemy. That’s why it favored Palestinian organizations that, it was thought, could undermine the PLO. One example of this was Ariel Sharon’s ludicrous attempt to set up Arab “village leagues” that would act as agents of the occupation.
The Israeli intelligence community, which in the last 60 years has failed almost every time in forecasting events in the Arab world, also failed this time. They believed that the emergence of an Islamic organization would weaken the secular PLO. While the military administration of the occupied territories was throwing into prison any Palestinian who engaged in political activity – even for peace – it did not touch the religious activists. The mosque was the only place where Palestinians could get together and plan political action.
This policy was, of course, based on a complete misunderstanding of Islam and Palestinian reality.
Hamas was officially founded immediately after the outbreak of the first intifada at the end of 1987. The Israeli Security Service (known as Shabak or Shin Bet) handled it with kid gloves. Only a year later did it arrest the founder, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.
It is ironic that the Israeli leadership is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas. There is no better evidence for the stupidity of our “experts” as far as Arab matters are concerned, stemming from both arrogance and contempt. Hamas is far more dangerous to Israel than the PLO ever was.
slithey tove@17, Can’t say I’ve heard of a comparison with the whole of, or any part of, the European invasion of the Americas. A comparison which is often made is to apartheid in S.Africa of last century.
As per an example in a previous comment, the straw brigade will claim the make a comparison to nazi Europe. They aren’t and they don’t. Such a comparison is ludicrous.
The current Israeli “government” is sometimes referred-to as authoritarian, fascist, or (neo-)nazi, albeit paranoid illiberal fantasists — reminiscent of S.African’s ruling parties during the apartheid years — is more on the mark.
A comparison which is sometimes made is the Gaza Strip to a prison (or, sometimes, a concentration camp).
All the “comparison” above does not mean “equivalence”, since there are clearly differences in practices, rationales, problems, and what should be negotiated. “Analogy” is perhaps an apt synonym for all the above “comparison”.
I have no idea what source(s?) asbizar@18 copy-pasted from, but here is Uri Avnery’s Column, Good Morning, Hamas, from early in 2008, which contains the quoted text — and more. For example, on the old (then-current) Hamas charter:
Hamas essentially replaced that old charter last year (2017), Hamas presents new charter accepting a Palestine based on 1967 borders. The Israeli “government”, in classic form which should surprise no-one, rejected the document before it was even published.
@17
well they do look very similar to me in most respects the only difference and the the biggest rational for the whole idea is a religious one in the case of Israel being a jewish state.
In that regards any of those posters so bent out of shape by the mere existence of any resistance to Israeli policies please explain why I should even care which side prevails in any conflict which based solely on the existence of a none existent god and what he supposedly said some time or other?
uncle frogy
Sure, see this quote by Roger Waters, which is the one this Blog Post is about.
„There were many people that pretended that the oppression of the Jews was not going on. From 1933 until 1946. So this is not a new scenario. Except that this time it’s the Palestinian People being murdered.“
(Interview with Roger Waters, https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/06/an-interview-with-pink-floyds-roger-waters/print)
Here people are simply accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing, which is coincidentally which almost all of Israels enemies tried to do.
And yes, everyone who disagrees with you is a right wing troll … an I’m really happy you all googled “strawman”, now try “ad hominem”. Perhaps you will manage to write a single response without a personal attack or making fun of spelling mistakes by a non native English speaker.
And if you want more arguments about the antisemitic language Roger Waters uses you can check this open letter:
http://observer.com/2013/12/the-anti-semitic-stench-of-pink-floyd/
But I guess that Rabbi is also a right wing troll …
Oh and Thom Yorke, another right wing troll:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/radiohead-s-thom-yorke-defends-israel-show-against-bds-calls-1.5479632
forodrim@22, 23,
I agree that Waters’ language as reported at your link is antisemitic. But that does not change the fact that Israel has indeed practiced ethnic cleansing, and policies remarkably similar to those of apartheid South Africa, as part of its systematic campaign of planting illegal settlements in occupied land. If you are an honest person, you will admit that. If you are not a racist, you will condemn it.
Israels government can of course be criticized, and it should be for some of it policies. The settlements for example are a clear violation of international law. On the other hand I can understand that Israel is a bit weary of its neighbors. they have not just said, but actively tried to destroy Israel multiple times. If Israel looses you will have a genocide. But that is a bit of an whataboutism, I’m not here to debate wether Israel is right in everything they do. I want to point out the problematic views of Waters.
The BDS movement, which Waters also supports, regularly calls for the boycott of Israeli Companies regardless of their position or connection to the conflict. Which sounds eerily like of those old German propaganda posters (Deutsche kauft nicht bei Juden). The Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center are calling the BDS movement antisemitic. Waters connections to that movement and his statements are highly problematic and PZs praise for him has shocked me a bit.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center on the BDS movement:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/REPORT_313.PDF
One problem is, news out of the region comes either from Palestinian or Israeli sources, both of which are far too frequently more full of shit than a Christmas goose.
Has Israel done essentially everything that it possibly could to create ideal recruiting conditions for extremism to not only take hold, but to grow? Yes. Has Hamas and other extremist groups done likewise? Absolutely.
It’s like the region attracted an asshole convention for its leadership, each one trying to out strong man the other, leaving the population stuck squarely in the middle.
Cupcake, if you think you are the only non native speaker here, you are gravely mistaken. Yet the funny thing is, I didn’t personally attack you. I asked you for citations, most of which you are still owing, apart from the Nazi Germany one, even though it’s debatable if Waters counts as “people here”. Yet you are so sure in everything you say that reality probably has given up calling long ago.
still, making fun of spelling mistakes is bad style in an discussion.
look again, I provided plenty of sources for the antisemitism of Waters and the BDS movement he supports.
again, not arguments with substance, just personal attacks.
Waters, whom I love as a musician, I find hard to take seriously on politics when he boycotts Israel but not the US—which (1) is Israel’s major sponsor and (2) has a human rights record as bad as Israel’s. It’s almost as if he’s prepared to boycott a country provided it’s not going to cost him millions in touring income. And it’s worth remembering that he invited Eric Clapton to play lead guitar for his first solo album in 1983—the same Eric Clapton who went on a long and bitter white-nationalist rant in concert in 1976 that was so widely publicised that it launched Rock Against Racism in response. Waters could not possibly have been unaware of the controversy and yet he was happy to work with a foam-at-the-mouth racist twonk.
Seriously, here’s Clapton’s speech:
None of this has any bearing on the matter of Israeli politics, of course, but it just really irks me when Waters puts himself forwards as a moral arbiter on the matter. There are plenty of better critics, including Jewish rabbinic NGOs(!) like T’ruah.
I remember watching years ago a French show on the set of which there was an actress, at some point le host stirs the conversation towards the Israel/Palestine conflict and asks the actress about it. Her answer was :
– Why do you ask me ? I’m an actress.
Seeking Waters’ opinion about international politics is even more ridiculous than asking physicist’s Michio Kaku’s opinion about evolution. At least Kaku is a scientist, he has demonstrated he has brain power, can read an article, assimilate huge amounts of information, and do stats. And yet it is ridiculous to ask him about evolution when real experts are available. (The outcome is pathetic if you do not remember.)
What has Waters demonstrated ? That he can play music ? Why should his opinion count more than my hairdresser’s (she is pro Israel, by the way) ?
I’m on the “Roger Waters is a Jackwad” side. Look beyond the bleeding heart facade and the messages in his music and you see (even in the kindest backstage takes) a cold, cynical narcissist who is every bit the capitalist exploiter he claims to loathe.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
25 July 2018 at 11:51 am
One minute: ”Damn communist Jew bankers controlling the media and destroying America!”
The next minute: ”Those who don’t support the State of Israel is a foul anti-Semite! Never Forget! Never Again!”
There’s a system to the madness. If anti-Semitism increases in the West, more Jews will emigrate to Israel, creating a larger Jewish population and more settlers who will now defend their new home country because they actually fled there across the world.
The price will be paid by the Palestinians and those Jewish people who become the victims of violent anti-Semitic attacks.
The US government is so scary right now. I am 61 years old and have never seen anything like this. Where are the patriotic Repub’s? Crickets!
You know, if Israeli Nationalists start passing racial purity laws, and press laws that are only a hair shy of Gleichschaltung, their top military brass uses openly racist language on Palestinians and their settlement policy is so close to what the Nazis intended for Eastern Europe that you might as well call it ‘Westpolitik’, I am wondering just why comparing that to the Nazis is antisemitic.
It really does appear that the lesson the Israeli hard right wants to draw is: “good idea actually”. And they are doing everything in their power to make sure that their viewpoint is the only surviving one.
And note that despite sticking to factual observations and limiting my criticism to the Israeli hard right, I predict the likes of forodrim will still call me antisemitic.
And on another note: forodrim’s “Oh poor helpless Israel”? That can fuck right off into the loony bin of thinking. Israel beat their neighbours bloody and senseless in four wars, when those neighbours had support from a superpower. The current Arab States are as much a threat to the IDF as kids armed with rocks.
I guess they have a backlog of Get Out Of Culpability For Atrocities Free cards to work through.
Oh, you mean like “nothing Roger Waters says on the topic is worth listening to because he’s [supposedly] an ANTI-SEMITE?”
mvdwege
Because of fascism, duh. Seriously, the conflation of Israel with Jews, as Azkyroth is so aptly doing in the next comment is a prime example of casual anti-Semitism, wherein all Jews are treated as a group and you can simply trample over the trauma of the victims of the Holocaust because Israel commits crimes.
forodrim
You came here saying:
without qualifying further whom or what you mean and you talk about bad style in discussion?
See, here’s the problem: You did not reference Waters or the BDS movement until your third comment. In your second comment you kept talking about things nobody said and then jumped on something blf said, so it#s reasonable to think that your comment before is about the commenters here, which is why I asked you to provide evidence of “people here” saying the things you criticise, which you haven’t done so far.
If you cannot make it clear what you’re referencing then you can hardly complain about other people.
You keep jumbling commenters and Waters together, don’t use quotes or usernames, cry “ad hominem” when clearly you’re the one who is in need of googling the term and then you complain about bad style in discussion.
You have shown no sign of honest interest and good faith, so, no, I’m not engaging with you on the substance.
@Gilliel:
And yet the linked Waters comments are not blaming the atrocities against Palestinians on ‘The Jews’ but on Israel, but they are IMO rightly comparing the outcome of the policies. I don’t think forodrim’s case is as strong as they think it is.
mvdwege
I’m not talking about Waters or forodrim specifically, I’m talking about exercising some caution. Even if Israel had not been founded in the wake of the Holocaust and had not been founded by survivors of the Holocaust it would still be dealing out splash damage against the survivors of the Holocaust.
Yet, when Azkyroth claims that “they” have a backlog of “get out of jail free cards”, one has to wonder who “they” are. The state of Israel? How would it come to have that? Or is it Jewish people? And in the end it leads to the wonderful the Jews are the real Nazis sentiment that is indeed part of the left’s anti-Semitism problem (and not just the left’s).
I think it’s perfectly doable to describe and criticise the politics of the state of Israel without using Nazi terminology.
@Gilliel
Since Azkyroth is replying direct to me, and I was very careful to delineate my criticism, I think context is obviously not that Azkyroth is being antisemitic.
And nowhere did I go to ‘the Jews are the real Nazis’. I specifically noted that the policies of the Israeli hard right have a disturbing parallel. This is empathically not the same, and I resent even the mild implication of antisemitism you’re raising here.
That some antisemites are more than happy to use Israel’s conflation of the State of Israel with Jewishness is not a problem. Especially since all points raised in this thread, by Waters or me, were careful not to go too deep into that conflation (except for noting that the Israeli hard right likes to do that). Attempting to raise the spectre of antisemitism in this context smacks of ‘whataboutery’.
Really?
That is not a problem?
Especially when some of those people are more than happy to harm Jews?
When this is the pure distilled essence of anti-Semitism where all Jews are blamed for some real or imagined crimes committed by other Jews down to the imaginary killing of Jesus?
You may resent the “mild implication” of anti-Semitism, yet you are happy with being careless about the conflation of Jewishness and Israel.
Fuck your hurt feelings. If you discuss Israel and its crimes you need to be extra super fucking careful to steer clear of anti-Semitism. Because yes, the Holocaust happened, and not just that, but something like 2 millennia of anti-Semitism and pogroms happened.
Oh and:
If you think I didn’t notice that once again you lay the blame for anti-Semitism firmly on the side of Israel you’re wrong.
@Gilliel
We’re done here. It is a fact that the Israeli hard right specifically uses the association of Jews with Israel as a tactic to call its opponents antisemites, and you are engaging in same here. I see no sense in continuing this conversation, if all my careful pointing the fingers at the Israeli Nationalists gets answered with “Antisemite!”
Oh, and “not a problem”? That’s “not a problem here, in this discussion”.
Try reading for context before flying off on someone.
Try writing clearly before you accuse people of “not getting the context”.
And with this we end the discussion.
(Cross-posted from poopyhead’s current Political Madness All the Time thread.)
Israeli cartoonist fired over ‘Animal Farm’ Netanyahu caricature:
You can guess, right now, what one of the claims about the caricature is.
See? Pigs = anti-Semitic = invalid criticism. So so predictable… and ludicrous.
Picture & cartoon at the link.
As I’ve said before, it’s not the least bit surprising that so many Americans support Israel. Look at what they did and what they’re doing. They come in, take over, treat the people who were living there as nonhumans without rights, shove them off into undesirable and ever-shrinking territories, settle anywhere they want, and answer any and all resistance with overwhelming, deadly force.
In short, the Israelis are treating the Palestinians exactly the same way white Americans treated native Americans in the 19th century. So of course lots of Americans support them unconditionally. We can’t condemn Israel without condemning ourselves.
Several commentators here have been sucked-in / snookered by the all-too-typical tactics of the straw wars loons: Questionable or not-relevant diversions / derailings, bogus charges of or nazis, fabrications (inventions) about what is claimed, willful misinterpretations, inappropriate pedantic interpretations, lack of citations, and on and on. Very creationist-like. Or analogous to woo-woo.
We see a typical pattern here. A criticism of the Israeli “government” and its polices is almost-immediately met with diversion, fabrication, and charges of or . Frequently without citation or quoting. As soon as those straw platoons are shot down, it switches to . Again, frequently without citation or quoting. Shooting down that splinters into arguments about semantics, who is lying (or lying “more”), the quality / source / reliability of evidence (including shoot-the-messenger), and other tricks to defuse the main point: The Israeli “government” and its policies are abhorrent. (Again, a very common comparison is to apartheid S.Africa.)
On BDS in particular, a common diversion is to compare it to policies in nazi Europe. But, yet again, nazi Europe is a very poor comparison / analogy. That is a typical distraction. A much better comparison / analogy is apartheid S.Africa, which also had a “BDS” movement — the boycott. Which was supported by the ANC in S.Africa.
I did nothing of the sort and you know it.
The full paragraph of the bit I quoted:
The subject of discussion was Israeli Nationalists, not “The Jews” in general.
You are now an actual, literal liar as well as having always been a bully.
Congratulations.
Israel:
– is an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and supremacist Jewish State;
– has been stealing, occupying and colonizing Palestinian land and
oppressing, torturing and killing Palestinians for over 60 years;
– refuses to honor its obligations under international law;
– refuses to accept responsibility and accountability for its past and on-going war crimes; and
– refuses to enter into sincere negotiations for a just and mutually-beneficial peace.
See http://www.ifamericansknew.org and http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/photos/maps/landloss.html for more information.
forodrim wrote:
That is some serious propaganda there. It works to link pro-BDS activists with violent antisemitism and is usually satisfied with simply placing the two events side-by-side on the page and calling it a day. It “nut picks” to find someone saying something obscene (like those who hope BDS will result in the complete destruction of Israel), while ignoring that the stated goal of any BDS advocate I’ve ever seen is to force Israel to put the “two state solution” back on the table and start negotiating for peace again. I’m not saying some of the defenses of BDS aren’t horribly anti-semitic, but this is absurd.
It paints the Israeli government and BDS ‘critics’ in the gentlest possible light as people who simply can’t get their voice heard because their Freeze Peach is being denied, and conveniently ignores that there was lobbying done to try and get state legislatures to pass anti-BDS laws. Just last year, the US Senate tried to pass a law which would’ve attached criminal penalties to boycotting Israel and it had significant bipartisan support.
And perhaps the creme de la creme appeared on page 1 where it asks (lightly paraphrased), . Our old friend Mister Gotcha strikes again!
That is such a horrible defense of the ideas you hold that you’re actually doing a service to your detractors.
First, criticizing the policies of the Israeli government is not necessarily grounded in anti-Semitism.
Second, while Waters does have some valid points, like most pundits, he is too one-sided. It would be hard to find a government which justifies violence and hatred and the propagation of racist stereotypes than that of Palestine. So, yes, Israel is bad, but Palestine is worse.
This doesn’t change the fact that the whole idea “a people without land come to a land without people” used to justify the founding of Israel was wrong. However, this doesn’t give Palestine a free pass to be even worse.
Gandhi-style activism would help Palestine, but they go for the opposite.
I recently attended a concert by Roger Waters. The last one, about 35 years ago, was one with Clapton.
He has some valid points, but is somewhat hypocritical. He lives in New York! Why not boycott the USA?