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Like davidminzer, I’m Jewish and descendant of holocaust survivors. Moreover, I’ve been a Zionist all of my life. I went to a Zionist school, I was active in Zionist youth groups. I’ve always been a fervent supporter of Israel as a refuge for Jews around the world who seek a place to exercise their traditions and embrace their identity in peace. I sang the Israeli anthem in the train rails of Aushwitz-Birkenau and I pledged to fight every day of my life to make sure the savage crimes that had taken place there would never happen again. Every year I pledged: Never Again. Remember and Never forget.

Well, I haven’t forgotten. And so to honor that pledge, to honor the memory of my family members who died in those death camps and because “there comes a time when silence is betrayal,” today I finally and publicly end my support for the state of Israel.

ENOUGH. I’m done justifying crimes against humanity by a country that claims to be an illuminated western democracy. I’m done defending a country that is unwilling to grant self-determination to a neighboring people because it won’t let go of a few settlements and divide a city. I’m done tolerating the slaughtering of innocent kids, the murderous and barbaric occupation of an impoverished people, the utter disregard for human life.
Fuck them.

If they think their daily peace of mind is worth the lives of hundreds of innocent people, Fuck them. If they think the best way to go right now would be to vote for Natanyahu (who is so far winning in the polls), Fuck them.

If they won’t bat an eye before keeping millions without electricity or water, before bombing civilian neighborhoods at exactly the time when kids are leaving schools, before breaking every standard of international law or moral decency, Fuck them.

It’s time for every true progressive in this country and around the world to do the only thing that our consciences should allow us to do, the only thing that can keep us consistent with our supposed beliefs that human life is precious and that unnecessary violence is always criminal, barbarous and unacceptable. We must demand that Israel stop violence and immediately put an end to its colonialist military occupation of Palestine. And until they do so, we must organize and do everything we can to make sure our money is not financing mass murder and oppression.

Thanks to Ian Warner




  1. Angel H. Wong says:

    Do guys want to unite the Jews and the Muslims? Organize a gay pride parade in Jerusalem and even the Christians will pitch in.

    Sometimes I wonder if Hate and not love as their religion claims is what keeps all those people together…

  2. MikeN says:

    >If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

    One can only hope that hearing this type of thing from Barack Obama might spark a change in outlook among some on the left. It is surprising to hear this from Obama, who previously was steeped in the language of the left, having Edward Said as a mentor at Columbia.

  3. # 141 bobbo said, on December 30th, 2008 at 4:55 am

    I do kinda wonder WHY the USA does support Israel so much. Its been a lot of money for nothing in return that I personally value.

    Was it not of value to get intelligence and advice from Israel that, had we paid attention, would have saved thousands of lives?

    Israel had told the U.S. for a generation that we had to put a wall between the cockpit and the cabin of our aircraft rather than a door.

    AP wants money for the full article. So, the best link for this that I could find was this one.

    Summer 2001: Israel Warns US of ‘Big Attack’

    The Associated Press will report in May 2002, “Israeli intelligence services were aware several months before Sept. 11 that bin Laden was planning a large-scale terror attack but did not know what his targets would be, Israeli officials have said. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells the Associated Press shortly after the attacks that ‘everybody knew about a heightened alert and knew that bin Laden was preparing a big attack.’ He said information was passed on to Washington but denied Israel had any concrete intelligence that could have been used to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.” [Associated Press, 5/19/2002] The claim that Israel lacks concrete intelligence is contradicted by other media reports (see August 8-15, 2001) (see August 23, 2001) (see September 4, 2001).

    If true, would that constitute something of value to you?

  4. bobbo says:

    #159–Mikey==don’t you love psychological tells: You said, “Obama might spark a change in outlook among some on the left.” //// yeah, I agree and it was evident from day one with his pushing for more troops in Afghanistan and like you don’t expect any change on the right at all.

    Thank you.

  5. bobbo says:

    #160–Scott==you ask: “If true, would that constitute something of value to you?” /// Bin Laden planning attacks but we don’t know where/when/how/who?

    I’ll send you a coupon for a vegetarian meal if you can hypothecate how that information could be helpful at all===even if someone who wasn’t brain dead was in the Oval Office.

    Notwithstanding my little fit there, I think I did identify the proxy value of Israel. Just don’t know if we are paying the correct amount of money .

    All to say===we need to get off foreign oil and let the place return to sand. Another black mark for the oil patch boys.

  6. #162 – bobbo,

    bin Laden planning attacks against the U.S. is enough information to at least heighten security. Also, the info about not being hijacked that is still not in use even today, is highly valuable information as well.

    Skip the vegemeal. If I were interested in not killing for my food, I’d have to go whole hog (or whole long pig) and become a fruitarian.

    Will no one speak out for the cruelty to broccoli??!!?

  7. Cursor_ says:

    #54

    That’s all well and fine if you are a jew.

    Not every smeggin’ person is a jew, so we don’t need to follow the jewish religious text.

    The Arab-Jew issue is no differemt than the Hutu-Tutsi issue that plagued Rwanda.

    Its idiotic, plain and simple.

    Cursor_

  8. bobbo says:

    #163–Scott==not really. How would security he heightened? For how long, starting and ending when? If it is for one month by putting an extra guard on Grants Tomb, then what about all the other non-specific threats that come in on a weekly basis? What about security fatigue?

    As Bush correctly said at the time: The warnings about bin Laden “were not actionable.” And indeed they weren’t. Unless you think lip service has value.

  9. Mondain says:

    Ugh! you religious nut-jobs and your mystical b.s. Kill yourselves and go to your god, please.

  10. MikeN says:

    Well maybe the right will go back to being isolationist, like candidate Bush. However, this post didn’t come from a right-winger like Pat Buchanan.

  11. bobsyeruncle says:

    Now I don’t much cotton to big-noses but hamas is indeed a tasty spread. So I think they should throw a huge block party and eat all the hamas. Soylent peace.

  12. MikeN says:

    Why does the left hate Israel and Jews so much? Is it that Jews are shopkeepers? Because Moses was head of the NRA?

    Or do they look at all the Pyramids and wish there were more, and blame the Jews for leaving?
    If so, you should know that the Jews didn’tbuild the pyramids.

  13. Carcarius says:

    #137 – Misanthropic

    I’m with you. I am not an anti-semite, I just understand where anti-semitism comes from. It’s like when I post on these boards. There are some posters who think everything they write is gold and when they see someone who doesn’t spend their life writing blog posts write something not quite to their liking they jump on them.

    The similarity comes from the castigation of a group by another who thinks they are superior. The “inferior” group reacts and conflict arises.

    Anyway, I am an athiest. I think the western religions are dangerous to the world in the long-run. Western religion has had a part in promoting civilization that allowed scientific innovation to flourish to a certain extent, but in the long-term it ends up killing true progress.

    Think of where the human race might be if it could put these silly religious issues behind us and focus on exploring the universe. Pipe dream I know…

  14. Carcarius says:

    #108 GA

    I didn’t realize people thought I was anti-semitic. That’s funny. I guess I should have been following these boards more and I would have noticed this.

  15. #170 – Carcarius,

    Antisemitism comes from the same place as all bigotry, an inability to realize that there is no Us and Them. There is only Us. We are all so closely related that the concept of race or of Us versus Them is silly in the extreme.

    About 70-80,000 years ago, some catastrophic event happened, most likely a mega-volcano, that caused the human population to decrease to about 3-7,000 humans on the entire planet. (Alas that it did not go to zero!)

    This has left us as inbred and closely related as cheetahs who went through a similar bottle neck. Lou Reed, if he is aware of this, might call us “mutant inbred piglets with cloven hooves”.

    Until we realize that we are all Us, we will continue to kill each other at every possible opportunity. Religion, by the very definition of its sectarianism, divides us into sects of Us and Them. The problem with this is that it is always OK to, and is often mandated that we must, kill Them.

    There are many other ways we divide Us from Them and most result in Us killing Them as well. All such divisions must be removed so that we stop killing each other. The reason we must stop the killing is that even though on the surface the population reduction may seem to be a good thing, the environmental consequences of warfare are actually worse even than having the people on the face of the planet. And, the population always bounces back and beyond so quickly anyway.

    So, peaceful population reduction means are a necessity. But war-mongering reductions don’t help.

  16. Clancy5158 says:

    You appeasers of Islamic mainiacs make me sick to my stomach! You are nothing more than smug, armchair philosophers, vomiting your bile from the comfort of a society where fear is a vague concept. You’ve lost your collective ways! You are brainwashed, eternal infants dreaming away your fetid little lives wrapped in delusional visions of Marx and Trotsky.

    Who are you to critcize the actions or motives of the people of Israel? They have been earnestly about the serious business of survival since early in the twentieth century while you counted money and complained! I hope and pray that the leaders of Israel never stop defending thier homeland with whatever means necessary, even to the total annihilation of the Palistinians! I’d be just as satisfied if a peaceful solution could be achieved, perhaps more so. But history has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Jihadists DO NOT DESIRE A PEACEFUL SOLUTION!!!

    They fervently desire the death of every last Christian and Jew, and the subjugation of the entire world. You, my smug and cavalier elitist cynics, are absolutely and fatally mad to suppose otherwise.


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