IntenseDebate - David

14 years ago @ Jewish Daily Forward - Miriam Shaviv: With Fr... · 0 replies · +6 points

Wake up.

If you want Israel to be an ethno-religious nation state, then the liberal multiculturalists who support you are either ignorant or complete hypocrites. In the liberal worldview, Israel is "bigoted" by its very nature.

Your only honest allies will be nationalists who believe their own nations, like Israel, should have a coherent ethnic/cultural/religious identity.

It is incredible folly to alienate natural allies in favor of pandering to the illusions of a liberal public that has to be fooled into thinking Israel is something other than what it is.

14 years ago @ CSMonitor: Books - I need to know: Where ... · 0 replies · +2 points

I agree with Kate and some other commentators. Modern fiction--at least the kind that gets reviewed or that I am likely to see at a bookstore--simply doesn't appeal to me. Usually I can't stand the writing style of modern authors. I find rediscoving old classics to be more rewarding.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Arab spokesman Makovsk... · 0 replies · +1 points

You are right about the variety of attitudes towards political Zionism among the Orthodox. However, even most of the Orthodox who do not see the State of Israel as messianic are very eager to push expansion and use the most inflammatory rhetoric against Palestinians or any political leader who attempts to compromise with them.

To find out what is truly *holy* to someone, look at what he reacts to as blasphemy. Only a few Jewish theologians have openly criticized the quasi-christological treatment of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and religious Jews are tolerant of Jewish atheists or Buddhists. Completely nonviolent anti-zionists, though, are reviled and cast out of the larger Jewish community, as an advocate of Baal-worship might have been in the past.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Security boss: 'Hamas ... · 1 reply · +1 points

For whom?

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Arab spokesman Makovsk... · 4 replies · +1 points

Ed, modern Zionism has corrrupted the theology of the most visible Jewish groups. The Neutrei Karta are probably the closest representatives of the Orthodox view on Zionism before the formation of Israel and the complete ideological victory of Zionism in '67.

Just as Christians have been corrupted by the false messianism of left-wing social agandas, Judaism has been seduced by the false messianism of Zionism. Many secular Jews, berift of a strong theological grounding in monotheism, seek to replace God with both leftist and Zionist messianism simultaneously.

Zionism is simply a particularly (but not exclusively) Jewish form of the old modernist heresy that inflamed the messianic visions of Communism and Nazism: We will be our own messiah; we will be our own gods, and once our enemies are cleared away, the world we be perfect.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - 'Peace Now' speaker sa... · 0 replies · +3 points

I have not heard of any. Settlers pretty much by definition are irredentist Zionists.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - inside 'Bruno,' a glim... · 0 replies · +5 points

For me, abusing someone's hospitality and trust in order to humiliate him is one of the most vicerally contemptible practices I can think of.

Cohen restricts himself to politically correct targets who have no political or media power with which to respond. He's not only a bully, but a coward as well.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Foxman worries that Ob... · 0 replies · +2 points

Dual loyalty? No, I think Foxman's loyalties are quite undivided!

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Olmert op-ed uses the ... · 7 replies · +2 points

Thanks for the replies. Part of the problem is that I can't imagine that the Palestinians would accept a hostile settler presence in their own state.

I'm using the term "ethnic cleansing," mainly to point out how removal would be perceived by many Israelis and for the hard line Zionists in the US, and how serious the political resistance to removal would be. I agree that they have no legal right to be there, and their forcible removal would be justified under international law. Unfortunately international law doesn't seem to mean much in Israel.

If Obama really convinces the Israelis that the free ride is over, and is able to split the Jewish community and break the power of the lobby, removal might be possible. He'll have to do this in any case to make any progress, and he still has a long way to go.

15 years ago @ Mondoweiss - bad dream · 0 replies · +2 points

Fascinating dream, as yours always are.

Do you remember how you changed the liturgy?

IntenseDebate Comment System

Connect with David_F

People I'm following

David_F