Alan Dershowitz Mangels Blood Libel
I'm not going to link to The Boston Globe Editorial wherein Alan accused BLM of anti-semitism. It's in my previous post: http://caucus99percent.com/content/black-lives-matter-declares-war-israel
In his editorial abomination Alan cited Col. Richard Kemp as an authoritative voice on how restrained the Israeli Army has been in it's treatment of Palestinians:
This is because, as Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, put it: There has been “no time in the history of warfare when an Army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties...than [the Israel Defense Forces].”
I got to wondering just what kind of credentials Col. Richard Kemp had. Not surprisingly, Col. Richard Kemp is a "hard core Christian Zionist":
But recent reports suggest former Colonel Richard Kemp is also a religious fundamentalist motivated in his ideological support for Israel by a hard-line Christian Zionism.
Col. Kemp also speaks to the dead and specifically Orde Wingate who led a British "Special Night Squad" :
The squad was mostly populated by Zionists with the British “knowing that they were simultaneously members of Haganah,” the militia which would in 1948 play the leading role in ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians. At the same time, “Arabs caught with arms were routinely prosecuted, and some hanged” while Haganah training and arming “had been winked at” (A. J. Sherman, Mandate Days, John Hopkins University Press: 1997, pp. 121, 151).
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/hardcore-christian-z...
That's special all right. I also decided to look further into Alan's accusation of blood libel. It turns out that Alan had a previous defense of Sarah Palin mangling the term blood libel:
http://www.politico.com/story/2011/01/palin-charges-critics-with-blood-l...
Maybe Alan is getting daft in his old age and no longer comprehends what words mean:
Amid the fierce and often partisan debate sparked by Sarah Palin’s use of the words “blood libel,” one thing is clear: The phrase has become increasingly detached from its historical context. For centuries, the phrase “the blood libel” — with the definite article — has been used to signify a unique false accusation against a specific group: the spurious and heinous charge that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood to make matzo for Passover. But now, as Alan Dershowitz, never one to shy away from a dispute, noted in defending Palin’s remark, the term “has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse.”
I thought Palin's use of the term blood libel was preposterous.
In any event, here's the money quote:
His assessment may be correct, but that in itself is regrettable. In applying the phrase loosely, we discount and trivialize the long history — close to a millennium — of the blood libel as a staple of anti-Semitic propaganda. Is there another instance in history of an ethnic or religious group maligned for so many centuries by an accusation so ludicrous, absurd and hateful?
http://forward.com/opinion/134694/the-true-meaning-of-blood-libel/
The article has a thorough historical treatment of the term blood libel. Maybe Alan needs to brush up on his use of the English language.
Or maybe Alan Dershowitz is a racist piece of crap.
Comments
I have SEEN an actual Blood Libel.
I had a Rabbi who collected them, to emphasize the fact that the things existed and were NOT to be trivialized or talked about constantly.
By trying to apply a unmistakably foul lie to political protest against a government, it lessens the power that the words have against true evil.
Essentially, Don't use antibiotics on a cold, dumbass.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
So This Is Genocide, Right?
From the Col. Kemp link:
Or are we drawing a distinction between "ethnic cleansing" and genocide. Just confirming the relevant terms.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Dead is Dead to me.
On any scale. We shouldn't be supporting Israel when they engage in reprehensible behavior.
Screaming Blood Libel is essentially saying that the accusations are complete fabrications made up for the sole purpose of killing Jews.
Again, it's using a real thing as a propaganda tool, which is indefensible and just makes it seem to the general public like the real thing is somehow less likely to be true. (Since Neo-Nazis continue to spin the narrative that the Holocaust was a myth and that nobody ever accused the Jews of Blood Libel, which is something they just MADE UP)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Exactly!
I was astounded to read that Alan had defended Sarah Palin's use of the term:
(from the Politico link)
I am baffled how Alan Dershowitz could defend Palin's use of the term blood libel in reference to a shooting in Arizona.
Could it be . . . ?
Alan and Sarah sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G?
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Maybe he's just feeling as irrelevant
as he now is and just had to try to make himself relevant again. Why do these people feel the need to keep on selling out and shilling like this? For God's sake, when is enough money enough? I feel like that's the only reason any of them do this type of shit - to make themselves famous again so every body is looking at them, sickening and shows massive personal insecurity too, but then I guess only the truly insecure have to be as ugly as these bastards are.
And for him to use that term is just as disgusting as you both point out in these comments. I know we always have to sort of tread lightly on anything Israel/Palestine related, but I for one am sick to death of hearing how great Israel is while they do what they do to the Palestinians. They are damned near as bad as their Nazi tormentors in my opinion. The Nazi's took the Jews' property, livelihoods, any semblance of personal freedom and finally their lives. I see no difference.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
IMO, all of the countries involved the wars in the Middle East
Are committing genocide by dropping bombs full of depleted uranium and other biological weapons. Plus the bombs that kill people outright. Saudi Arabia is using cluster bombs in Yemen that the Obama administration has and is selling them. Hillary saw an increase of weapons sales by over 150% then then previous sold to them. I recently read an article that Saudi Arabia is doing double taps, just like the US does. First they bomb a building full of civilians and then when people come to rescue them they drop another bomb on them. Or on people at weddings, funerals and other social gatherings. We saw that type of activity during the Collateral Murders that Chelsea Manning released. Weapons were sold to Qatar and other countries which have human rights violations accusations. The depleted uranium bombs are causing heinous birth defects in the babies being born in fallujah many years after the bombs were dropped on it. The Clinton administration's sanctions against Iraq which saw over 500 thousand children die from lack of food and medicine. That was just the children, how many more adults also died during the time the sanctions were in place? Madeline Albright, you are on record saying that it was worth it, you sanctimonious asshole!
The sanctions against Iran saw many people not being able to have access to medicines to fight against cancer and other diseases. I haven't seen how many people in Iran died from the sanctions, but I'm sure that it's a high number of them.
Israel is also committing genocide in Gaza and not just from the bombs they drop on them during their wars like the last one that they called mowing the lawn! Plus they are killing them by not allowing food and medicine into the country.
I'm calling these actions genocide. Just like what happened to the Native Americans who were given blankets and other supplies infected with smallpox.
Col. Hemp has no right to call himself a Christian if he believes what Israel and other countries are doing to the people in Gaza and the other countries around the world is okay.
Jesus Christ made himself quite clear about killing people.
The psychopathology of people who believe that these actions are okay I s difficult for me to understand.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
Genocide against Native Americans was more blatant
than the alleged "smallpox blankets". Forced marches far away from their homes, in any and all kinds of weather (including winter); indiscriminate mass slaughter of men, women and children; lies and broken treaties after lies and broken treaties after lies and broken treaties; etc. etc. etc.
To pass all that - proven, documented, unquestionably real atrocities - off with a reference to "smallpox blankets" (unproven, lightly documented at best and only in the year 1763) is, frankly, to trivialize it.
The "Trail of Tears" alone shames two US Presidents, assuming they were capable of shame about it. (Jackson ordered it; his successor van Buren followed through on it.)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
The Trail of Tears was also in defiance of two SCOTUS
decisions.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
The yuuuge loophole in the U.S. constitution becoming evident,
that only the executive has the ability to compel compliance with its decisions through use of force — it follows that when push comes to shove, “separation of powers” is a sham.
As we have seen, against the “unitary executive” the supposed prerogatives of Congress are meaningless if Congress lacks its own organs of investigation and enforcement.
Thank you
it seems that is all that is "taught" about what this country did to the Native Americans. One paragraph or two, small pox, something about missionaries... and it's recess time.
Americans don't even know their own history. It's all been whitewashed.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
When I was a kid, Hawaiian history *began* on December 7, 1941
as far as the North-American controlled media and school curricula were concerned.
Manifest Desitiny
Our god given right to stamp out all that was before us.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
I went to college in Hawaii
and one fall in a class we were talking about the controversy over Columbus Day. One student asked why it was such a big deal, and the instructor said it would be like Hawaii having a James Cook day.... No further discussion necessary for anyone in that room.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Yes, I am very aware that what happened to NAs
involved more than smallpox blankets. I was referring to them in the context of biological or chemical weapons that countries use on people in other countries.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
Better stick to proven atrocities,
because that one isn't proven. It's one of those things that "everybody knows" that have no visible means of support. (The 1837 High Plains epidemic was due to nothing more sinister than plain old human stupidity, greed, and incompetence - a riverboat captain who refused to alter his route, because $$$, even after smallpox broke out among his crew, and it turned into a clusterf*ck from there.)
It IS true, for instance, that the Mongols used to catapult corpses (of men, animals, etc.) over the walls of cities they were besieging, in the hope of causing disease outbreaks. It worked rather too well at Kaffa in 1347 - loosing Yersinia pestis (aka the Black Death) on Europe.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Plague is endemic in the SW USA. Many years ago, as part of
my job, I shot ground squirrels and shipped their frozen carcasses to Salt Lake City for analysis and most of the fleas on these rodents harbored the bacterium.
My friends who lived on the eastern part of the Navajo reservation were very much at risk for catching plague because even their dogs had infected fleas. This was in addition to the rodents which harbored the fleas.
The question I have is why does the disease sometimes become transmissible person to person instead of just flea to person?
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
I would assume that pneumonic and bubonic courses
can go P 2 P. Here is a CDC rundown:http://www.cdc.gov/plague/index.html
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
That helps me - many thanks!
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Thanks for your post. I would also point out that many tribes
were subjected to trails of tears. The Pawnee, to cite one, were forced to march in winter from the plains to Indian Territory which became Oklahoma.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Alan Dershowitz Will Be 78 Next Month
Is Alan allowed to leave the house without a wet nurse?
Seriously folks. Could we possibly get Alan Dershowitz, Ruth Bader Ginsberg (age 83) and countless other septuagenerians to take their retirement and stop fucking everything up with their antiquated belief system?
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Tenure for age survivors, esp in government.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Bit of a Montage to get the thread on track
Arrested Today: 15 year old Amal Kabaha. She slapped at an IDF checkpoint guard after she was subjected to an invasive "search". In her case, as in many many more, the whole knife thing is phony. I am happy she wasn't shot dead and am sorry for the torture she will go through.
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestinian-child-arrested/
I will tell Derkobitch the following statement of fact, "Israel murders and tortures Palestinian children while Israelis munch kosher chips and cheer on the slaughter."
From the Light House.
Appreciate Your Contribution
How Dershowitz or anyone else can defend Israeli treatment of Palestinians is baffling. U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes, regardless of the choice of descriptive terminology, is vile.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Everytime...
... the subject of Institutionalized Racism or Justice for Palestine is essayed, the thread gets sidetracked into streams of irrelevant posts so that any serious commentary is buried down to the bottom of the thread.
From the Light House.
He should change his name to Derpowitz.