The obsessive racist rants of Sigmund, Carl and Alfred
Thanks to everyone for their expressions of support regarding the pitiful smear by the Arab-hate blog ‘Sigmund Carl and Alfred’ (SC&A) — or “Siggy” as he wants to be known (see sigmundcarlandalfred DOT wordpress.com). I am bemused by SC&A’s continued obsession with me and this blog, and after endeavouring to engage with him civilly and comprehensively with facts, I will be ignoring his easily dismissible rants from this point.
This constitutes my final response that follows on from these first two posts that already deal with his slanderous claims:
Part I: Conversations with bigotry: on Israel, Islam and Ideologues
Part II: Israeli funding for Hamas plus: note to “Sigmund, Carl and Alfred”
The following is from the comments section of my post Exporting Apartheid: Israel’s war turned into a brand. All relevant link sources to his blog are embedded there for reference; I have removed the links in this particular post and will refrain from linking to his site again upon some good advice.
If you’d like to read the original comments at ‘The Israeli Beast’ (SC&A’s title) post, they’re here in full in word and .pdf.
What the above makes clear is that Sigmund Carl and Alfred argues in circles, repetitively flogging points already addressed. The fact that I’ve addressed them directly doesn’t stop SC&A from desperately repeating them ad nauseum (such as the spurious three preconditions furphy which Israel does not itself meet and must be mutual) and then dishonestly claiming that these claims were ignored.
And no, SC&A, putting words in people’s mouths is no substitute for an argument. Neither Larisa at AtLargely.com nor I call for the abhorrent extermination of thousands of Jews. This is so clearly absurd and disingenuous that it just shows up SC&A’s desperation.
Yet it is clear that SC&A is comfortable with the hate and wholesale killing of Arabs, whom he repeatedly and openly state he does not consider to be the moral equal of Jews. You are the racist here, SC&A, not Larisa or I. It is also clear that it is he, not Larisa and I, is the one who is “upset”.
SC&A is obsessed with (and repeats ad nauseum) a few rare and episodic slurs about Jews as sons of pigs and monkeys as if they are somehow representative of the diverse Arab world that treated the Jews in its midst far better than Europe did. Yet strangely it is he who is repeatedly calling others “pigs”, “cows”, “monkeys”, “apes” and “bestial”, the very accusation he levels at the Arab world. The hypocrisy and racism is legion. And of course SC&A willfully ignores widespread Israeli racism, amply documented and references provided.
In any case, as a blog friend writes, “I’m proud to be called names. It means people can’t find fault with my logic”.
***
As promised, here’s my response to your claims, Sigmund (and you are one person though you say ‘we’). As your web bio blurb states:
Sigmund Carl and Alfred isn’t really three people; he’s just one, “Siggy” for short. He earns his living as a political analyst specializing in anticipating the behavior of what he refers to as “really crazy people.”
And those really crazy people, in your estimation, includes a stated hatred of and for the Left, Arabs and Muslims. Despite your slander, I’ve endeavoured to once again address your multi-post smear civilly. For someone who is fond of talking about civilised values, your responses are altogether lacking in a modicum of good manners — one should think it is your mother that needs to be spoken to! (see SC&A blog byline)
More substantively, in reading your multiple posts about this blog and blogger, I am bemused at a number of things.
The first is the number of posts I merit. Despite decrying my views as inconsequential, I am apparently important enough to warrant several posts.
Second, I am not the only furious fixation — anyone who is deemed left or liberal earns your ire. I happen not be a liberal in the US understanding of what that means, and I feature right of centre voices regularly, such as Andrew Bacevich, Patrick Buchanan, Ron Paul and Chalmers Johnson. The same can not be said of you featuring left-wing voices, which you explicitly say that you hate. Your record of slander in fact includes a declared hate of the left, hatred of Islam and hatred for the Arab world (which you repeatedly call “broken”) as if it exists as a blanket entity.
These are just some of the people who come in for similar treatment by you — people I generally respect and admire as it happens:
Record of Slander:
* Robert Fisk: esteemed British journalist who works for the Independent, lives in Lebanon and has written several highly regarded books on the Middle East;
* (Dr) Saree Makdisi: Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA;
* Cindy Sheehan (”Another Cow Put Out To Pasture: Cindy Sheehan’s Last Dance”) mother and tireless campaigner for justice and an end to the occupation of Iraq;
* Phillip Weiss: progressive American Jewish journalist, Sigmund’s post includes that moronic and oft-repeated phrase: “Dance, Philip Weiss, dance”;
* (Dr) Joseph Massad: Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University;
* The Left:”Yeah, leftists really do care about justice. Just like pedophiles care about children”;
* Dr Steven Soldz: psychoanalyist
The difference is that these people ignore you. I chose to address your claims. After this occasion, I may decide to use my time more judiciously.
Third, it is exceedingly curious that you appear to have an animal fixation: cows, beasts, apes, cockroaches and “bestial” are repeatedly mentioned in your veritable menagerie. You point the finger at a minority of racists in the Arab world calling Jews pigs as evidence of bigotry (and rightly so, though not representative as you claim), yet practise this insidious name calling and defining people as less than humans yourself. So how is this not hypocritical and offensive?
More examples with excerpts and links so the full context can be seen:
Hate:
*Why I Hate Islam:
SC&A: I hate Islam. I hate everything about what passes for Islam and I hate everyone who defends what passes for Islam. I hate Islamic politics, I hate the Islamic ’street’ and I hate Islamic fueled bigotry, racism and hate…. Hitler killed 50 million with bullets and fire. Islam is killing hundreds of millions with tyranny and evil and like Hitler, and what passes for Muslims today, rejoice in the deaths of those they kill.” [Yes, your “best friend” is Muslim, but you still hate it and its perceived effects on him]
On Hating, the Left and evil
* Saddam Hussein’s execution
SC&A: “It’s just a fascinating thing, you have people outraged at the execution and oblivious to the evil…. Evil has to be excised…. There’s a little too much “love” and not enough hate….” [My comment: Hate does not diminish evil, it sustains it; understanding root causes and addressing those is what dissolves it]
Religious superiority
* Jews, Basketball And The Human Potential
SC&A: “Pondering whether or not Jews are ’smarter’ than everyone else is like asking if basketball players are taller than everyone else. The evidence speaks for itself. The real question, is why Jews are smarter. There are of course, many theories. Some point to genetics, others point to culture. Yet others see the Jewish achievement as a combination of factors, giving no added weight to culture or genetics.”
Doesn’t play well with other children bloggers: (sample only)
* The Unapologetic Mexican
* Science Blogs
* Pajamas Media
* Flying Imam
* Politics Central
* Deltos (also calls him an ape in a tuxedo)
Lessons in maturity, tact and charm?
* “Be a man. Don’t run away like a cockroach when the light is on”
* Blog of Carrie: “…she might be best kept in the back rooms, doing repetetive [sic] tasks…not left alone with people…Carrie is living proof that dumbing down of educational standards alone can’t produce the level of stupidity seen on blogfart.”
* Treatment of Jasmine in comments here
Contempt for readers/ self-aggrandisement (samples only)
* two-six-shooters-and-sacred-cows:
SC&A: “Most of you are clueless fools when it comes to politics. Now, don’t misunderstand. That you are clueless idiots isn’t your fault. You have been deluded into thinking you are reasonably intelligent and educated. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. That so many of you subscribe to certain political view (not ideologies- for the most part, you are incapable of actually understanding what a ideology really means), and acknowledge that by parroting the one liners and zingers that are bandied about, only highlights your level of spectacular shallowness.”
* SC&A: “Finally, as to my tone, longtime readers recall that for quite a while, SC&A was a rant blog- albeit far more intelligent and cutting than most”
***
Now, to addressing the points in the multiple posts I’ve apparently warranted. First, here’s a refresher from the original post thread “The Israeli Beast” (word document)
SC&A’S CLAIMS (indented and italicized, followed by my comments):
SC&A: the ‘occupation’ of the Palestinian territories has been the most benign occupation in history.
This is a false statement and an utterly absurd claim. The longest running military occupation in modern history has been immensely and willfully destructive, not benign, for for the Palestinians in the OPT (West Bank and Gaza Strip), with a ratio of 1:4 deaths – four Palestinians killed for every Israeli, most of them civilians, women and children. Is withholding Palestinians own money to invest in infrastructure, taxes Israel collects, “benign”? Is bombing an electricity station in the Gaza Strip and depriving Gaza of power “benign”? Is subjecting children and civilians to terrifying sonic booms on a regular basis “benign”? Humiliation at numerous checkpoints? Torture, strip-searches, strikes, bulldozing of houses, starvation, targeted killing, kidnapping of Palestinian ministers — the list could go on and on — “benign”?
SC&A: One more, Jews are being ‘ghettoized’ by the likes of el Khoury- this time, in their own country, singled out and set apart.
We are not here talking about Jews generally but Israelis specifically, one fifth of whom are Arabs, whose government is ghettoizing its own population.
SC&A: Just because it is au courrant to say criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, does not make it so. It an absurd and skewed look at reality. Criticism of Israel has become anti-Semitic because there is a different standard of measurement for Israel than there is for any other country (the same applies to the US. When America is criticized, is also by a different yardstick).
Whether it is au courrant or not is irrelevant, the simple fact is that criticism of Israel in and of itself is most certainly not anti-Semitic. Judith Butler has written a good piece here, No, it is not anti-Semitic.
The standards Israel are measured by are the standards it claims for itself – that of being democratic, claiming purity of arms, holding itself up above others (“light of nations). We already know most current Arab governments are despotic and authoritarian, but not uniformly so, but nor do they claim to be western-style democracies, nor are western-style democracies themselves the yardstick or paragon of virtue for other nations. In the region, Lebanon is also democratic and diverse along multi-religious lines.
The US is both praised and criticized by a hegemonial yardstick for the common-sensical reason that it’s a superpower. There are vastly different types of states, and it would not make sense holding Tuvalu or the Congo to the same set of standards, in part because they do not even claim the same standards as the US.
SC&A: SC&A wonder why el Khoury singles out Israel for such treatment. What is it about Israel that is so special? Why does el Khoury treat Israel so differently from other, real human rights violators? Of course, the answer is clear. Simply put, it is anti Semitism. To point to Israel as the worst human rights offender in the world is laughable.
First of all, Israel most certainly is a very “real” violator of human rights. Second, nowhere do I claim that Israel is the “worst human rights offender in the world”, another instance of Sigmund attempting attempting to put words in peoples mouths — which is to say, another falsehood.
Third, is Sigmund trying to dictate the chosen content of my posts? It is clearly my choice about what I post on, not his. I am not choosing to focus on human rights abuses in China, or the United States, or Australia. My chosen area of interest on this occasion in this blog venue is the Middle East, and by pointing out Israel’s egregious abuses and the fact that it does not live up to its own claims does not constitute singling out. Does someone interested in China get accused of singling out China and not looking at Israel, or Chechnya, or the Congo? Hardly, that’s simply their chosen area of focus.
So let me put the question back to Sigmund. What is it about Israel that is so special that one can not choose to legitimately focus upon its foreign policies without attracting the absurd charge that one is singling it out? Is it immune from legitimate criticism?
Is anyone telling him not to focus upon the Arab world? Or the Left? Or Islam, which he systematically vilifies?
The apparent difference between us is that I include Israeli voices of dissent, as well as right-of-centre voices too, whereas the left only appears in his posts to smear and slander them.
SC&A: There is simply a closing of doors and a cessation of communications, as if the case against Israel were so egregious that it stood out in a most singular fashion.
Sigmund, first you say I expended thousands of words, now you claim a “cessation of communications”. How exactly was the door closed? Did I not engage you point by point and address all key points? I’d say my communication was quite comprehensive, and I am under no compunction whatsoever to continue engaging with someone who resorts to facile smear and name-calling such as “cow”, “whore”, “nazi” and “postmodern ape in a tuxedo” — the level of your discourse, or lack thereof. Play civilly and mount substantive arguments, or suffer the consequences of being ignored.
SC&A: In A Sacred Right: The Palestinian Right Of Return , el Khoury breathlessly emphasizes the opinion of Jew who takes issue with and then rewrites Israel’s past. She presents the opinion piece by Alex Stein, as Gospel and this Phd candidate is only too happy to go along with the revisionist history
An article is presented (how exactly is it made to be “gospel?”), there is no “breathless emphasis” upon anything. Your judgment of “revisionist history” is your opinion, and you have presented no argument that engages with or refutes Alex Stein’s article.
SC&A: What is it about Israel that el Khoury finds so offensive?
I have enumerated this many times. Let’s be specific. We are talking about Israeli government policies here, let’s make that clear. Israel’s present government practices are worse than South African-era apartheid policies, stealing more land with illegal settlements, building a wall that further eats 10% of Palestinian land, thwarts Palestinian development by preventing movement and denying re-entry visas, cuts off aid, destroys homes and olive groves, imprisons tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese without charge or trial, torturing many with impunity, treats Palestinians like cattle with several checkpoints where they are also abused with impunity, and so much more. Do you want more, Sigmund?
SC&A: In the end, el Khoury is a fraud- and an anti Semite, notwithstanding el Khoury’s protestations and assurances ‘that some of her best friends are Jews.’
Now you’re being funny. What exactly am I being fraudulent about? You singularly fail to point out anywhere the fraud you misperceive.
In fact, I have put my full name and credentials to my claims, where are yours, “Sigmund”?
And while I do happen to have valued Jewish friends, nowhere in fact have I ever protested or assured that some of my best friends are Jews as some sort of immunity, so where have I even mentioned this? Show me just where I say this, Sigmund. If you can not, you are the fraud, on this and other counts.
SC&A: In el Khoury’s world, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad is really a nice, but misunderstood man, and a ‘victim’ of all kinds of ‘misunderstandings
Yet another straw man where you attempt to refute something I did not say. I neither said he was nice nor a victim. Failure to show where points again to fraudulent claims. My point was that “wipe off the map” was a mistranslation, and that President Ahmadinejad was a loose cannon who doesn’t hold the real political power in Iran.
SC&A: Further, Israeli immigration policy is remarkably similar to the immigration policies of other nations
Not at all, nor do you furnish satisfactory evidence to support your claim. Israel itself claims to be unique, so how on earth do you think your claim stacks up to its own claim? No other country has a Law of ‘Return’ for a particularly religion where the person is not even native to that region, and is automatically guaranteed right of entry over native inhabitants.
SC&A: El Khoury’s blog tag, ‘Holocaust Related’ is perhaps the best indicator of her intellectual dishonesty. Only articles (preferably written by Jews) that are dismissive or belittle the Holocaust are on her radar. She herself is very careful- she posits not a single word when it comes to the horrors of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad would be so proud
Again, this is disingenuously trying to circumscribe and dictate the content of my blog. I am under no obligation to include Holocaust related articles that you deem worthwhile, Sigmund. There is already a large body of work out there that I am under no obligation to revisit, and your ridiculous judgment that they dismiss or belittle the Holocaust is again unsubstantiated.
SC&A: Her racism becomes clear in Iran’s President Did Not Say Israel Must be Wiped Off The Map
How exactly is this racist? Again, your ridiculous charge goes unsubstantiated.
SC&A: El Khoury cannot contain her bigotry. She is like a pedophile who professes to love children
This is just smear and slander, one of your tiresome stock retorts that is repeated ad nauseum. Since it is routinely levelled and at people I generally respect and admire (Robert Fisk, Phillip Weiss, Saree Makdisi, Joseph Massad), the ridiculous smear says more about you and your modus operandi. Nor does one Fisk have to be superhumanly correct in his journalism — he is right most of the time, most journalists venturing their take on things will not be right 100% of the time. He’s still one of the best journalists in the region.
SC&A: When El Khoury and her ilk deliberately refuse to divine the difference between Hizbollah, with their committed and stated anti Semitism (Nasrallah has often referred to Jews as ‘descendants of apes and pigs’) and Israel, she and they identify themselves liars or idiots. When Mein Kampf remains a best seller for decades in the Arab world and decades old promises to ‘finish what Hitler started,’ el Khoury cannot be taken seriously when she feigns outrage (and even then, mildly). Her refusal to to take a stand against proactively against those kind of outrages speaks for itself and undermines her credibility.
Refusal to take a stand? “Feign” outrage? On the contrary, I acknowledged the institutionalized racism in both; you on the other hand refuse to recognize the institutionalised racism in Israel which was clearly pointed out and evidence furnished. Where is your stand against Israel’s racism, apartheid and egregious abuses? Your judgment of my “outrage” as being “feigned” and/ or mild has no anchor in reality – you neither know me nor have any basis upon which to form this quite erroneous opinion.
SC&A: Why some forms of racism are given a pass, Ms el Khoury? Why does ‘even handedness’ mean only the constant excoriation of Israel? How is it that el Khoury seems to have missed the institutionalized racism, bigotry and hate that come to define the Arab world? How is it that el Khoury sees fit to ignore that kind of hate?
Short answer: no forms of racism are “given a pass”. Nor do they “define” the Arab world, only in your flawed judgment. Nor are they ignored, as already stated. Next question.
SC&A: What does Ms Khoury think happened at Sabra and Shatilla? Why did the Phalange go into the camps? Was it out of a sense of unbounded love? Does Ms Khoury and the Lebanese Army today see the Palestinians comrades in arms?
A massacre happened, what do you think happened? And the Phalange atrocity was actively enabled by butcher Ariel Sharon, who was found to be intimately involved by a court, why do you choose to ignore this salient fact also? Because of the Naqba the Israelis inflicted upon the Palestinians, Lebanon took in Palestinian refugees equivalent to a tenth of its whole population. The Phalange are to blame for the atrocity (as is Ariel Sharon); Israel for its ethnic cleansing that gave rise to this mass displacement in the first place.
SC&A: Will Ms Khoury rewrite history again? Will she misrepresent the findings of the Kahane Commission? Will she dismiss Nagi Najjar’s eye witness account of the events?
History is continuously being written and re-written by historians, and I have not “re-written history” on this or any other occasion. You employ a cheap rhetorical phrase, not for the first time, that is empty and refers to nothing. “Will I do this”, “will I do that”, also clearly implies that I haven’t actually referred to them, so how can you claim I am re-writing history to which I haven’t referred?
SC&A: graduate student of ‘Human Geography’ is a product of wide but shallow pool that is postmodernism
Again, no basis in reality whatsoever. You evidence little idea of what postmodernism is and rely upon extensive quotes, and once understood, I am actually not a postmodernist and am rather critical of it, as are many fellow academics both in Human Geography and the social sciences generally.
SC&A: Quoting Dr Sanity: postmodernist nihilists “they are so narcissistically invested in that world view, that they tremble in fear whenever the real world presents them with something that contradicts their religiously held beliefs. … if you want to understand why that which is truly evil –embracing death, slavery, and nihilism–is now presented and even trumpeted as the “good” while the good is dismissed, denigrated and mocked; then you would do well to understand the psychology and ideology of the covert enemies of America and of civilization–the adult children of postmodern nihilism.”
“Trembling in fear?” Is that why I went over to your blog and took on your claims point by point? How and where exactly are “death, slavery, and nihilism … presented and even trumpeted as the “good”?”
I can safely and happily say I’m not a nihilist. In fact, I happen to hail from quite a religious family. You know little about me, cowardly Sigmund, but at least I put my real full name on my blog.
SC&A: In our last installment, we will look at the postmodern environment that has birthed ‘Human Geography’ and how that environment attracts intellectual lightweights and agendized bigots
Incorrect, the postmodern movement, which actually started in architecture in no way “birthed” Human Geography, which was actually quite a quantitative discipline. You evince no knowledge of the discipline’s history or development. As for the agendised bigot smear, I’ll let people be the judge. Let our words and work speak for itself.
SC&A: If the Palestinians really wanted to defeat the Israelis, they would cease their obsessive devotion to terror. The burgeoning security industry would collapse and the Israeli economy would spin into a recession. If all Islamist terror would cease, Israeli expertise in security and terror would no longer be needed anywhere in the world and that nation would be reduced to irrelevance (it’s not as if Israel has anything to offer, unlike the Arab world). That would teach those damned ’sons of apes and pigs’!
“Defeat” is not on my agenda, neither people should “defeat” the other. Both need to renounce their terror tactics, particularly Israel who is the bigger partner and for whom the ball is in its court to effect lasting good and lead the way. Your repetition of the apes and pigs slur serves no purpose here, I could just as easily reproduce numerous anti Arab-Semitic slurs by the Israeli Zionists (cockroaches and insects to be crushed) which I’ve actually refrained from doing thus far.
SC&A: To be sure, Israel, as a nation, is not above reproach. There are policies that deserve renunciation and reconsideration. Nevertheless, to single Israel out from the body of world nations that have for decades and longer have been far more repressive than Israel has ever been as an expression of ‘anti-Zionism’ is patently anti-Semitic.
The singling out claim is patently false for reasons already mentioned, and urgent legitimate opposition to Israel’s mutated Zionism is not anti-Semitic or anti-Judaic. It doesn’t exist to the exclusion of awareness of other genocides either, such as the one currently happening in Iraq, an invasion Israel and the Israel Lobby aggressively pushed for.
And while Sigmund claims that “There are policies that deserve renunciation and reconsideration”, he does not examine or even mention a single one.
SC&A: As we have noted in more than one occasion, she is the proverbial ape in a tuxedo, mimicking civilized behavior, furiously dancing in the hopes that no one will recognize her bigotry and deceit. The moment someone speaks in away they don’t like, they work themselves into a frenzy.
As you have repeatedly said, with the silly affectation ‘we’, this silly ape statement reflects upon your own bigotry. No one is working themselves into a frenzy with several posts but you.
SC&A: Anne and her ilk do not feel any guilt whatsoever in their own deceit, bigotry and hate, nor do they feel guilt in their attempts to manipulate others with that same deceit, bigotry and hate. They want to persuade you to adopt their ideologies because in doing so, they have exerted control over you. Anne is hardly alone- nor is it our intent to elevate Anne into someone relevant. Clearly, she is adept at what she does, but so is any good gardener or baker. In the universe of bigots, she remarkably unremarkable.
Let’s juxtapose these two confused claims. You claim I and others are manipulative, want control, but I am unremarkable (yet see fit to devote several posts to me). You see a whole “universe of bigots”. Yet they are irrelevant, despite the fact they want to control people and there’s so many in a veritable “universe”. You do realize how comically idiotic this sounds, don’t you? Again, its testament to your Manichean world view, where there is a universe of bigotry and evil. And here in your half-baked pseudo-psychoanalysis:
SC&A: We are in the midst of an Age of Psychopathy and it is the times that give Anne a platform. … It matters little what the cause is- ‘professional’ protesters concern themselves only with themselves, rather than any one cause. They can eco-conscious one week, animal rights supporters the next and pro Palestinian supporters the week after that. As long as they are at center stage, as they are perceived as a ‘martyr for the cause’ and as long as they espouse any ideology that holds anyone responsible or accountable, they are ‘happy in their work.’ In their world, everyone is equal, every culture is equal and every ideology has equal merit- unless of course, you are white, American, Israeli/Jewish and espouse democratic principles- then you are irreparably evil. This kind of broken thinking is more than relevant, because this kind of thinking allows for the real perversion of reality
I’ve not seen distorted and confused psycho-veneer babble like this in a long time. How is guilt a dirty word, particularly when you refuse to see it when it comes to Israel? Why shouldn’t each culture and person be considered equal as a fine expression of democracy that you say we claim to be evil? Your suggestion that people like myself (and you see so many of us) are fickle and/ or insincere with our causes is just laughable and something I can not, of course, take seriously. My whole life has been about and related to the Middle East in one way or another. The Palestinian cause with me is one that has been close to my heart for several years, not just this week. Your claims are offensive to the dedicated people who selflessly serve others not as martyrs but as human beings, many of them American (www.ifamericansknew.org) and Israelis (eg www.gush-shalom.org).
SC&A: As for recognizing the Palestinians, Israel has done so decades ago and have signed treaty after treaty (actually, the Israelis sign treaties. The Palestinians themselves say they have signed Hudnas. or ceasefires. Treaties with Jews are unacceptable). Every unilateral withdrawal from territory resulted in more terror.
Excuse me, Israel has recognized the Palestinians and signed treaty after treaty? To which treaties do you refer, exactly??
And is Israel’s unconscionable withholding of Palestinian taxes, money that properly belongs to them, part of this unnamed “treaty”?
You have your causality wrong. The resistance to occupation continued because it got worse or no better after the Gaza Strip withdrawal – the control and occupation and economic strangulation continued unabated, as did the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
SC&A: Her defense of Hamas- and even worse, her implying that they and Israel are moral equivalents- is no different from support of the KKK, Nazi or any other racist and bigoted ideology
I said Arabs and Israelis were both human beings and moral equals as such, get your facts straight first of all. Then refrain from applying double moral standards.
Nowhere do I say that I “support” Hamas, rather I say they should be recognized as the democratically and legitimately elected government. I most certainly do uphold and recognise their legitimacy.
I also made a clear distinction between recognition of a regime and between active support for it, citing the fact that the current Bush-Cheney presidency are also responsible for a genocidal war yet recognizing them is not tantamount to “supporting” them, nor to supporting any other regime. And for all your touted racist and bigoted ideology, no word about Israel’s mutated militant Zionism, very racist and very bigoted.
SC&A: Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and Jews- and neither you or PG can dance your way around that. It is taught in schools, repeated in media and preached from the pulpit of state paid religious leaders.
The Hamas Charter has already been acknowledged for what it deplorably says about destruction. Again, the point is that while one side is merely talking about it, the other side (Israel) is actually and actively enacting it.
So if someone says they are going to kill Sigmund, but another party actually has guns outside your house and shoots the children and evicts you from your house, which one are you going to be more concerned with? The rhetoric or the reality?
Again, the violent intent of both needs to be tackled. The difference is that I and others see both. You only see one.
The other difference is that you do not even acknowledge the basic reality of the military occupation, dispossession and violent strangulation of Palestinians as what is fuelling the violence against Israelis.
SC&A: Speaking of dispossession, what about the almost 1 million Jews booted out of Arab countries? Does that injustice concern you? (in response to another commenter).
Jews lived in relative harmony in Arab lands for centuries, as already mentioned. It was the imposition of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleaning and violent displacement, rape and murder of Palestinians that saw Arab countries expel Jews. You also conveniently forget that some early militant Zionists conspired by underhand means to induce Jews to leave Arab lands, which included knowingly killing Jews. This included Zionist collusion with the Nazis (see the work of Lenni Brenner), something Sigmund altogether ignores when he repeats Arab government relations with Nazi Germany.
SC&A: Hears [sic] a reality pill. If the Israelis really wanted to kill the Palestinians off, they would not be so inept
Indeed, nor is it inept but merely surreptitious, inducing them to leave their own land if not just booting them off, making life unbearable, calling them a traitorous fifth column where they are Israeli citizens, tightening the noose of control of checkpoints and borders, arming and abetting factions to divide and rule.
Palestinian violence and resistance arose in reaction to the Israeli attempt to exterminate them, it is not a widespread pre-existing predilection. It is the Israeli state which is addicted to violence above all. Last time I checked, Palestine hadn’t armed and funded factions of the Likud or Labour Party nor invaded a country. Nor had Lebanon invaded its neighbours. Israel has.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:20 pm Thank you for this. Your response was absolutely predictable. I will address this response. [Ann: Most notably, you didn’t actually address any of the direct questions to substantiate your claims.]
June 26th, 2007 at 7:13 am I spent a lot of time writing comments at SC&A a year or two ago and still show up there to take the pulse of contemporary citizen neo-cons. I’m glad to be introduced to you through that habit of mine. At my last ‘debate’ I quoted Carl Jung’s dictum that whatever irritates us in others has an origin within ourselves. I quoted this to see if he could offer any self reflection on what his hatred and vitriol might signify about his inner life. SC&A attacked me for quoting Carl Jung, saying that Carl Jung was a Nazi sympathizer who enabled genocide. He did this without being able to acknowledge any contradiction between this criticism and his adoption of ‘Carl’ in “admiring tribute” as part of his nom de plum. I always saw that SC&A was wrong, but I was left seeing him as much more disturbed than I had thought. I don’t write this casually, but there is nobody home. SC&A is not writing to share his views about the world — views that that he stands behind and is willing to defend and support. He is writing to discharge his self hatred by projecting it onto others. You will not reach any intellectual integrity or accountability for what he writes because those values have nothing to do with his purpose in writing.I admire your thoroughness and care in dismantling his rant.
June 26th, 2007 at 8:11 am LOL- Copi- nice to see you back!In any event, you are still true to form- recall your knee jerk reaction to Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich- something even Jimmy Carter found repulsive! As far as Jung goes, it appears you are attempting to rewrite history, not unlike our host here.
June 26th, 2007 at 11:44 am Copithorne, Pleased to meet you and thank you for your insightful comment. I think your appraisal speaks well for itself, and the fact he demonises even Carl Jung further displays a disturbed, “everyone is evil” (but me) world view. This integrity-challenged, ideologically-blinkered stooge has also apparently got a particularly acute case of logorrhea, in which his rants are more psycho than analysis. The bumbling bully-boy is also evidenced with language about others like “wants another beating”. Great to meet an intelligent person who stands up to such nonsense and I hope you come by again. I appreciate the comments.