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156 comments posted · 1 followers · following 0

9 years ago @ Wonkette - Stupid Swimsuit Model ... · 0 replies · +1 points

what? a woman chased off of twitter by misogynists for expressing a benign political opinion? inconceivable!

9 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - The Jewish Left is Ali... · 0 replies · +2 points

When a Republican gets more than 40% of the Jewish vote, we can talk about the death of Jewish liberalism and the Jewish Left. Until then, this is all intellectual masturbation. Also: Every comment above makes me want to throw up. I will never stop being a Jewish Leftist precisely because I can never bring myself to associate with views as repugnant as those that emanate from the Jewish Right.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Lawyer Rejected by Mas... · 0 replies · +1 points

Also worth noting that the ADL only changed its tune on the Armenian Genocide after Turkish-Israeli relations began to crumble. The American Jewish establishment, which consistently resisted efforts by the U.S. Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide, only began to care about it when getting the U.S. Congress to recognize it could be used as a wedge to push Turkey back into a relationship with Israel.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Hacking the All-or-Not... · 0 replies · +2 points

Is that what you call inciting race riots and rounding refugees into prison camps? Tighter immigration policies? I appreciate the illustration of your moral sensibilities.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Hacking the All-or-Not... · 2 replies · 0 points

I compared a newspaper whose editorials have called repeatedly for ethnically cleansing Israel of African migrants and asylum seekers Der Judischer Sturmer. That's not quite the same as baselessly accusing a stranger of serial theft.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Hacking the All-or-Not... · 4 replies · 0 points

Disagree as forcefully with my politics as you would like. Be as rude and disgusting as you please. But do refrain from making libelous allegations about criminal behavior on my part unless you would like to hear from my attorney. Thanks.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Bursting the Bubbles o... · 1 reply · -11 points

Making a moral choice not to purchase products manufactured on expropriated land by an occupied people, who, because of the occupier's policies, have no economic opportunities other than to work for their occupier is "shortsighted, unfair, and ultimately self-defeating?"

More like Sam Norich & Jane Eisner feel the need to toe the Jewish establishment line for fear that their newspaper will be further marginalized than it already has been for defending Peter Beinart.

There’s a certain arrogance in promoting an occupation from the safety and security of America that has economically damaged workers who appear to have no opportunities other than to work for their occupier.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - There\'s a Good Reason... · 0 replies · 0 points

You are ignoring the fact that Native American and Iraqi civil society didn't issue a joint boycott resolution calling on the support of the international community. Palestinian civil society did.

And you should know, if you are progressive, that there was far more than one protest agains the Iraq War. There were hundreds, all over the world, on a rolling basis over the course of a decade, all the way up to Occupy and beyond.

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - There\'s a Good Reason... · 1 reply · -1 points

There's a far more obvious reason why Israel gets singled out:

I am Jewish. I was raised to see Israel as my homeland and my inheritance. I was raised to believe that Israel is a light unto the nations, and a symbol for the Middle East and the entire world as to what a progressive liberal democracy can and should look like. I pray facing Jerusalem. I remember Zion in my prayers. I say "Next year in Jerusalem!" at the end of my Passover seder. I have two sisters who made aliyah, and countless other relatives who live in Israel. I have lived there, for several years. It is part of my heritage and identity as a Jew.

And as American, I was raised to believe that Israel and the U.S. share a commitment to the same values of openness, democracy, and civil rights. My country gives billions in aid to Israel, because of that shared commitment. My elected representatives spend a significant amount of time engaging with issues relating to Israel because of that commitment.

I cannot say these things about any other country. I do not have the same relationship to a single other nation.

So why should I care first about other countries and the way they conduct their affairs before I care about the U.S. and Israel? Are Syria or North Korea or Iran my homeland? Do I have relatives there? Does my government claim a special relationship and bankroll their militaries? If not, I have no reason to make them my top priority.

The only people who claim otherwise are those who want Israel not only to not be at the top of my list of human rights concerns, but not to be on my list at all. But when it comes to tzedakah, then Israel should be the top priority!

Still, why should I not hold my own community to a higher standard than I would hold those with whom I have no relationship or for whom I have no regard? Don't you expect your family to treat you better than strangers? Should you be more concerned with what happens in your neighbor's house than within your own? Don't you expect your community institutions to treat the members of your community with the utmost respect? Wouldn't you go bonkers if your local community engaged in some kind of racist discrimination? Why shouldn't we have the same expectations of Israel? That as a nation with which we identify as family on the basis of shared values, it ought to live up to those values? How is that a double standard? If you expect the best from your child but don't even think about the neighbor's child, is that a double standard?

10 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - There\'s a Good Reason... · 2 replies · +1 points

"So where was the BDS movement accompanying America's killing of tens of thousands in Iraq, or the continuing military presence in Afghanistan, including drone strikes that kill dozens of civilians?"

Many American student campus groups pushed their universities to divest from war profiteering defense contractors, throughout the Iraq War. You just didn't hear anything about it because it's not a divisive issue that gets people all up in arms like divestment from Israel does. If students want their university to divest from Lockheed, the local Jewish community isn't going to issue a bunch of press releases and op-eds, have Alan Dershowitz give a press conference, etc. No one gives a crap. It's not news. So you can pretend that such resistance didn't exist, but in fact, it did, as significantly as BDS from Israel does now.

"The silence from American progressives to their own country's wars over the past decade has been deafening."

I was arrested twice protesting the war in Iraq and many of the people involved in Palestinian solidarity activism today got their chops in the anti-war and anti-globalization movements. 250,000 people protested against the Iraq War in NYC. You're kind of just making stuff up so that you can self-righteously tarnish progressives and ignore the massive abuses being committed Israel.