A Mel Gibson Moment

[stilltrucking]

A Moment Mel Would Understand

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; Page A17

The world is having a Mel Gibson moment. If it does not quite hold Jews "responsible for all the wars in the world," then certainly it is ready to blame Israel alone for the carnage in Lebanon and, in the addled formulations of some, the war in Iraq as well. Gibson offered his inebriated analysis to a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, but drunk and a skunk though he may be, he put his finger to the anti-Israel zeitgeist and uttered its prevailing sentiment: Enough.

The war in Lebanon has thus far proved to be a debacle for both Israel and the United States. It has flipped George Bush into a state of babbling inanity about how this was "a moment of opportunity" -- as Britain's Tony Blair, his steadfast enabler, stood by and watched. This is similar to the opportunity presented by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which offered Bush et al. the chance to rearrange the china of the Middle East by smashing a good deal of it. That, as we all know, has not worked quite as splendidly as promised.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00927.html

[e_dog]

Mel Gibson is wrong.

It's the Christians who are responsible for most of the wars in the world right now. Including the secular Christians. but Not the true Christians of course, who believe in peace. but the fake Christians like G.W. Bush, and Richard the Lionhearted, who only want war. Imperialism, capitalism, crusades, slavery, nationalism, etc. all employed perfectly by the Christian world.

but don't interpret this as anti-Christian. i like war; it's good for the GDP.

Mel said that his Passion movie was directly inspired by God. is anyone surprised that he's a raving lunatic?

[stilltrucking]

Maybe Mel is right
God does work in mysterious ways
Maybe George Bush is right
Maybe Hitler was right
Maybe some humans are less than others
I don't know anymore

I am not sure if I care anymore
My chickens have come home to roost
Where is Malcom X when we need him?

[e_dog]

sometimes methinks you take this depressive misanthropic sarcasm too far.

[Arcadia]

"The world is having a Mel Gibson moment"

mmm... I don't feel it funny today. And basically it's not true at all.

[Arcadia]

“No va a gustarle la respuesta”, afirma Sagi Tsipori, de 40 años y uno de los miembros del kibutz (antigua comuna) de Kefar Giladi, donde el domingo murieron 12 soldados israelíes por la explosión de un katiusha lanzado por Hezbolá desde el sur de Líbano. “Con Hezbolá y quienes les ayudan no se dialoga, se los extermina.”

sad.

[firsty]

it's quite possible to vehemently disagree with israel's policies without being anti-semitic. the world's outrage at israel's shelling of southern lebanon does NOT equal a "mel gibson moment". israel isnt immune to criticism or even attack (diplomatic or otherwise) simply because it's a jewish state.

israel's policies are closer to the policies of radical islamic states such as iran, in terms of being fueled by a fundamentalist religion and a sense of entitlement and privilege in god's eye.

the jewish people are no different than any other group of people. but the state of israel does not equal the jewish people, and the state of israel cant continue to fall back on claims of anti-semitism or some global application of a "mel gibson moment" in order to defend itself from sound criticism. thats just fucking gay.

[e_dog]

i think your analysis is flawed, firsty.

first, the military machine of Israel is perfectly consistent, logically, with secular-ethnic-nationalist militarism, and so doesn't necessarily rely on religious fundamentalism, unlike Iran. Second, the Iranians presently seem to be much more pacifist than the Israeli military, which is now acting more akin to the imperial militaristic aggressiveness of its ally and supporter, the United States military machine.

but i agree that of course it is not anti-semitic to criticize the Israelis. to the contrary, the best way to truly demonstrate ones LOVE for a people is to criticize those, including its representatives and leaders, who are leading it astray.

so, for instance, it is ONLY those who hate Bush who love America. anyone who supports Bush is betraying America, just as anyone who supports Olmert, the psychopath leading Israel into escalating war, is actually harming the security of the Israeli state not helping it.

[stilltrucking]

it is ONLY those who hate Bush who love America

You would be suprised about that e-dog.

Take these people for example

http://www.apfn.org/

There are some people who hate Bush cause he is not right enough.

Israel has only one thing going for it. G*d is on their side. How do I know? My Bible tells me so.

It ain't easy being green.
or being a heretic.
Maybe my favorite line from the movie Frida was when she is ready to die and she tells Diego, "Burn the Bible."

I think I would burn mine except I love the poetry in it.

[firsty]

hi edog,

1. iran isnt passive in these events, just as the US isnt passive in supplying israel with weapons.

2. your use of the word "ethnic" in your description of israel's nationalistic machine is curious. arent these considered "ethnic jews"? putting the "ethnic" label on a group of people in all respects connected by their religion is superfluous. furthermore, the issue i had was with the original quote, which seemed to attach anti-israeli sentiment to anti-jewish sentiment, which, despite the fact that israel's leaders are more similar to bush's radical christianity, is wrong. i still stand by my statement, which is that israel's actions are more like those of iran's - radical religious beliefs gone wrong. of course, where have radical religious beliefs gone right?

[stilltrucking]

your use of the word "ethnic" in your description of israel's nationalistic machine is curious. arent these considered "ethnic jews"? putting the "ethnic" label on a group of people in all respects connected by their religion is superfluous

No firsty

Jews are not connectied by their religion. They are connected by their mothers mitochondrial DNA. Jew is something you catch from your mother. You have to prove your mother was a Jewess if you want that right of return. Makes no difference if you are an atheist, just so your mother is a Jew. Makes no difference who your daddy is.

I think e-dog used the right word. It is racist and ethnic.

[firsty]

thats what i mean. ethnic and religious are synonomous here.

[stilltrucking]

I lost it firsty. sorry I did read it carefuly enough. just one more comment the racist remark is for myself. I am not saying that all Jews are racists. I stood outside a Jewish delicateseen in Balto picketing with CORE because they would not serve African Americans. One gray sweet grandmotherly type said to me or us or someone, "Why are they here? I would not go where I was not wanted." I will probably never read it but I bought a book at the thrift store for a quater. It was called Broken Alliance, the history of the Jews and African Americans.

I got to go is this classic mindless ramble or what?

[firsty]

all humans have the capacity for ignorance, therefore all humans have the capacity for racism.

all religions foster intolerance. ALL. that doesnt mean that all religious people are intolerant or that all religious ideas are intolerant. but by their nature, by teaching their "path" or "stricture" or "whatever," they inherently exclude others.

God saves. religion kills. i'll say that till the day i die.

nations cannot be built on religions. they can be built on ideas taken from religions, but they cannot be built on religions. religious nations are not viable human structures. when building a nation (government), the nation's identity must be societal. by making a nation's identity religious, the government becomes simply one step too far removed from the society that built that religion. the society can generate religions and governments, but the religion cannot generate the government, because religion is false, religions dont exist outside of thought.

i see myself falling into a hole here because i'm not using precise enough language. i see society as the first and only development that comes from a group of people. society is simply a complex relationship among more than two people. that group can create religions, philosophies, commerce, etc., and they can use those ideas to build a government, which becomes necessary whenever a society finds itself with a conflict among any two or more members of the group, or when the society becomes too big for all members to be a part of the decision making process. but taking one of those human constructs (philosophy, religion, etc) and making a government from it, will cause problems. religion is the worst. you cant build a nation on religion unless you want to be in immediate and natural conflict with another society (it doesnt matter if the other society is built on religion or not, making things even worse).

fuck me runnin.

[stilltrucking]

The Religious-Secular Divide in Israeli Politics

Shmuel Sandler, Robert O. Freedman, Shibley Telhami

The following is the edited text of a Sadat Forum held at the Brookings Institution on February 23, 1999. The cosponsors are the Brookings Foreign Policy Program and the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. For a printable version of this article, click here. SHMUEL SANDLER, Sara and Simha Lainer Chair in Democracy and Civility, BarIlan UniversityOn Sunday, February 14, 1999, two big religious-secular demonstrations occurred in Jerusalem in which 300,000 people participated. I watched the demonstrations on television, since I did not know in which one to participate. This shows my personal viewpoint. I understand both sides and I will try to be as fair as I can be in presenting the rivalry between them. Public-opinion polls indicate that Israelis see the internal divide as very critical. Most of them believe that this divide is sharper than the one between Arabs and Israelis or between Israelis and Palestinians.

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol6/9906_sandler.asp

A jewish state seems as surreal to me as an Islamic state. . I have enough trouble trying to deal with this so called Christian state we live in.

I know nothing about Israeli politics. But I think they must have religious fanatics as dangerous as ours. No I don’t want no truck with theocracies.

I must be down in a hole too. Cause you are making perfect sense to me. A secular democracy is about the best Israel can hope for. Not likely I don’t guess. I can understand why some Jews feel they most live in Israel. I don’t know where I must live. By the sea or on it maybe.