Political correctness has been a weapon of the Left weilded as a club against the Right for many years. But recently it seems to have become a weapon of the Left wielded as a club against… those on the Left. For a political movement that makes incessant noise about freedom of speech, they sure seem really sensitive about offending anyone.
Helen Thomas got herself retired for essentially calling for genocide against the Jews of Israel. Not overly surprising there.
Rick Sanchez got himself fired for saying that the Jews run CNN. That’s sorta old-school anti-semitism, and kinda surprising for him to whip that out.
Juan Williams got himself fired from NPR for stating that those who dress as radical Muslims at airports make him nervous. This statement was likely not even factually arguable, yet it lost him a long-term gig (but opened the door to a better one). The most likely explanation for Williams’ termination was not the actual statement, but that he has had the gall to appear on Fox News, which the leftist leadership fo NPR finds unforgivable. So much for freedom of speech.
And now Keith Olbermann has been canned by MSNBC for donating the legal amount to Democratic Senatorial and Congressional candidates. NBC has regulations in its employee contracts to prohibit such things, in order to prevent the appearance of political partisanship… but it hardly seems likely that anyone would ever mistake Olbermann for a non-partisan. So, why now? On emight be tempted to think that the batcrap insanity displayed by Olbermann might have persuaded NBC management that he’s more of a liability than an asset, and used his contributions as a convenient excuse to be rid of him.
30 Responses to “Eating Their Own”
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Now, come on… Helen Thomas didn’t say she wanted to exterminate the Israelis, she said she thought it might be smarter for them to head for Germany and Poland rather than hang around in their current location where their neighbors hate them and shoot unguided rockets at them when they aren’t sending explosive-laden children toward them.
I’ll tell you one thing; a Jew living in Germany or Poland has a lot better chance of dying peacefully in their bed from old age than one in Israel, and a lot less overheated summer weather to deal with as well.
She said she wanted them to go back where they came from (though a large percentage of them were born in Israel, so that’s where they’re from). Where “they’re from” just tried to butcher the lot of ’em when they left, so telling them to go back is like telling someone who has escaped from a burning building that they should go back to it.
Other than “Sabras”- Israelis born in Israel since its founding – a large proportion of Israelis had an ancestry that has been European/Asian for several hundreds, if not over a thousand, years… and in some cases never had any Jewish ancestors that came from the Mideast at all; as they are descendants of the Jewish converts of Kazeristan, not native-born people of ancient Judea.
You could make an equally reasonable argument that Irish Roman Catholics have the right to own Italy, as being _Roman_ Catholics, they are obviously “Roman”, and all the area of the old Roman Empire belongs to them by birthright, no matter who’s living on the Italian peninsula nowadays. š
Zionism was an interesting idea, and one can see why a religious/ethnic group that suffered so much by being a minority in all the countries they lived in would dream of being a majority in a country of their own again after 2,000 years…but unfortunately, how they are doing it presently is to inflict the same sort of civil discrimination and lesser ethnic status on the Palestinians that others have historically inflicted on the Jews.
In fact, the parallels with the way that the Nazis thought about Jews are so close that they seem to be reflected in some sort of twisted mirror, right down to the words used.
Germany needed to expand into its ancient historic area so that “Greater Germany” could allow sufficient living room for its Aryan population; Israel must expand into the West Bank so that the ancient historic area of Judea can provide increased living area for its growing population to settle in “Greater Israel”.
Nazis turned the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw into a killing ground for Jews via devastation and starvation. When Israel isn’t blowing up parts of Gaza via airstrikes, it’s banning any shipments of concrete into it so the populace can’t rebuild the place.
Every time an Aryan has sex with a Jew, they are polluting the German race; every time a Jew marries a non-Jew they are lost to their people and their nation:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/watch-new-campaign-targets-jews-lost-to-assimilation-1.8592
If it wasn’t so horribly tragic, it would be a perfect black comedy.
The basic problem here is something I think you would understand Scott, given your criticism of religious superstition.
Once you decide that your own group (ethnically, religiously, culturally, racially, or politically) are “God’s Chosen People”, where does that exactly leave everyone else?
All the monotheistic religions seem to hold to the “we’re God’s chosen people” belief. Not all of the monotheistic religions take that belief and extend it to mean “kill the infidels.” The Jews seem, at worst, to extend it to mean “let’s keep ourselves separate,” which is a damn sight better than their neighbors with their Necromongerish ideology of “kill or convert all humans.”
As I recently saw on Fark, “7+3=11″ and 7+3=potato” are both wrong, but they are not *equally* wrong.
Scott,
to complete your “burning building” analogy, asking them “to go back to it” would only constitute a risk if it still were on fire. But to stay in your picture, the flames have long since been extinguished, the whole place has been rebuilt, and an efficient alarm and sprinkler system is now in place. In other words, stop pretending like Germany and a significant part of Europe is still run by the nazis – that already ended in the last millennium, you know. Antisemitism is nowadays as much (or as little) a problem in Germany and Western Europe as it is in the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism, and Pat is completely correct in his assessment in the first post. So Thomas’ suggestion is certainly unpractical, but hardly unsafe.
Martin
Germany and Poland are places where the Jews experienced just about the worst things imaginable, and left very shortly after for some damned good reasons. Regardless of whether or not Germany and Poland are now wonderful places, the suggestion that they go back is a suggestion that they go back to what it was that they left. Which was genocide.
Thomas’ suggestion was not “unsafe,” true, but it was venomous.
Alright, ditch the “burning building analogy,” and switch to the “abusive father who tried to murder you but who is now supposedly reformed analogy.”
Thomas said they should go home, not back in time, and since there isn’t an operational time machine in existence anyway, your interpretation of that being a suggestion of them merrily going back to genocide is just plain bat crazy moronic lunacy. And if you would bother to keep yourself a bit more informed about what happened in the last six decades or so you would know that neither Poland nor any part of Germany are under dictatorship rule anymore, and not just “supposedly reformed”. But sticking with facts is apparently not exactly one of your strong suits.
> Thomas said they should go home
They *are* home.
> But sticking with facts is apparently not exactly one of your strong suits.
Yeah, I guess you’re right… absolutely nothing important enough to be remembered by an entire culture happened in Germany six decades or so ago.
In any event: if you think that I am “bat crazy moronic loony” and incapable of “sticking with facts,” I’m left to wonder why you’re here.
Well, if this is really all about remembrance, following your logic let’s remember what still happened to black people in the US a few decades ago then, shall we? If you assume countries never change, African Americans would still have to be afraid of routine lynchings, since active racism would have to be assumed to be alive and well, correct? As for why I’m sticking around, that’s for me to know and for you to keep on wondering, but don’t be surprised to get called out when you exhibit (willful?) ignorance, resort to misrepresentation of facts or try to get away with outright falsehoods and blatant lies. For example, I never called you a ābat crazy moronic loonyā as a *person*, as you try to insinuate, but rather characterized your *behavior* as plain bat crazy moronic lunacy. I don’t know whether you are unwilling or unable to recognize the difference, but both alternatives do not reflect well on you. But don’t worry, if you really can’t keep your facts straight, I’m always glad to help.
I’m keen to see what happens when the last of the generation that survived the Holocaust and founded Israel passes away.
Because that’s the time when new governmental systems hit their major crisis;
When the last of the Bolsheviks that remembered the Russian revolution died, that was when the nails started going into the Soviet Union’s coffin.
The same thing happened in China, when they made the slight revision to classical Marxist-Leninist philosophy to include the concept “To be rich is glorious!” several years back. š
I’ll say one thing for Israel; if you want an electorate that is highly involved and knowledgeable about their government, you can’t beat this crew.
You ask an Israeli “What do you think the Israeli government should do in regards to the Palestinians?” and you had better be ready for a ten hour discussion on the matter complete with big charts and maps detailed down to square feet, and possibly references to vast amounts of Talmudic knowledge regarding the correct way to plant a fertile garden on barren soil. š
Unfortunately, that upside is also the downside of the equation; the populace is _so_ knowledgeable and opinionated about even the smallest political things that if you could get three of them to agree on anything in detail, you have not only accoplished a miracle, it’s time to form a new political party – as you are now a new and strong force in Israeli politics.
People complain that the US needs a third politcal party other than Democrats and Republicans; take a look at Israel and see how well a parliamentary government made up of around _thirty_ politacal parties works at governing a nation.
Everyone is in a constant state of flux as they simultaneously try to realign their party in regards to the governing coalition and its opinions about whether only whole crackers should be put in chicken soup, or if it’s permissible to crush them before adding them to the soup*, and doing their damnedest to try and undermine the agendas of any other political parties 24/7/365.
*The opinions of some conservative Rabbis regarding that no crackers should ever be put in chicken soup for any reason, as the Manna of Exodus probably wasn’t any sort of a saltine cracker whatsoever, should also be taken into account.
> If you assume countries never change
I doubt anyone is making that assumption; I certainly see nobody making that assumption here. However, you’re doing a fantastic job of leaping to unfounded conclusions. You somehow seem to think that any of this discussion has any damned thing to do with Germany as it is today, when it obviously does not.
> if you really canāt keep your facts straight, Iām always glad to help.
Pot, kettle.
> Iām keen to see what happens when the last of the generation that survived the Holocaust and founded Israel passes away.
Indeed. Then there’ll be a switch from a nation based on the experiences, decades past, of an attempted genocide by a nation of thirty or so million people… to a nation based on the *current* experience of a constant low-level attempted genocide by a surrounding culture of hundreds of millions.
Read this little book sometime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Portage_to_San_Cristobal_of_A.H.
As Steiner pointed out about why he wrote it, if you start defining yourself as very different from everyone else, then you had better be ready to have the rest of the world take you at your word, and deal with you on that statement’s ramifications.
In short, “You are very different from all of the rest of us, and therefore exterminating you wouldn’t be like killing _real people_, would it? I mean, you yourself have said that you are something completely else entirely from the rest of us.”
And that’s how the “Us-Them” concept always ends up if taken to its logical realization.
That link was supposed to this BTW:
http://www.amazon.com/Portage-San-Cristobal-H-Phoenix/dp/0226772357
But I think we all already know just how deep the Zionist claws have dug themselves into the back of the American Eagle, don’t we?
DON’T WE?
Remember the good ol’ days when the seventh day of the week was Sunday, rather than Saturday, on our calenders?
Well, I don’t either.
But I will tell you one thing; if God’s anything like me, He’s going to need Sunday to rest up from that hangover he got on Saturday night…
So that’s obviously the “Day Of Rest” that was spoken of in the Bible, no matter what the Jews and Jewish fifth-column calender makers think. š
When you tell somebody to go to Germany, *of course* the discussion has *a lot* to do how Germany is today. If Germany still was under nazi rule, it would be akin to telling them to go to hell. Now it’s inviting them to join a democratic nation. How you can even start to deny that is a simply breathtaking (deliberate?) breakdown of elementary logic. Once again, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts, sir. But to take this discussion back to the original departure point, Olberman will be back on air tomorrow…
Whether you agree with Scott’s initial points about the comment being related to going back to the days of extermination or the counter point of things being peachie keen now in the places that once participated in that; one thing remains… Ms. Thomas expressed her opinion that the Israelis were not welcome, even in their ancestral home, and that they should leave. The “jews” have often been declared “not welcome” by the host nations they emigrated to. That is what was insulting.
> you are certainly entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts
That’s why I’m sticking to the facts, while you’re indulging in self-pitying fantasies about mean ol’ Scott picking on innocent Germans… rather than paying attention to the topic of the discussion: not the state of Germany today, but the state of Helen Thomas’ anti-semitism today. Helen Thomas has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-Jew/pro-Arab rhetoric; this last episode was merely the most blatant.
Ok, let’s walk through this from the beginning, shall we? First, you claim that Thomas was “calling for genocide against the Jews of Israel”. When Pat gently calls you out on that “misstatement”, you equate going back to Germany to reentering a burning building. When I politely point out the complete dissociation of this statement from reality, you change your metaphor to an abusive father. When I point out that this fact free rant is also not supported by historical developments since WWII, all of a sudden you try to claim that it’s not about Germany at all. Now you may think repeating a lie often enough actually makes it true, but as a proud member of the reality based community I have to inform you that that is fortunately not the case. Note that it is really hard to get away with lies when all your contradictions and distortions are documented on a single page.
Ok Scott, time to put up or shut up: since you claim that “Thomas has a long history of anti-Israeli and anti-Jew/pro-Arab rhetoric”, please produce *one single quote* that clearly supports your initial assertion of her “essentially calling for genocide against the Jews of Israel” (no purely made up ones though please – provide a verifyable source for anything you might come up with). Otherwise I have to assume that you essentially operate based on smear tactics.
Martin
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1528
> as a proud member of the reality based community
I’ve often found that those who insist on referring to themselves in suchy terms typically *aren’t* reality based, but stridently ideological. And that’s fine… if only you’d recognize that fact.
I know this won’t burst your armor-plated bubble, but Germans *did* try to exterminate the Jews. Andf no matter how refermed they may think of themselves, the Jews of Israel who eiother came from Europe or whose ancestors came from Europe remember what Germany did to them. The burning building analogy may be weak, but the reformed abusive father analogy is not.
If you cannot handle the fact that Germans have a massive black stain on their record within living memory… too damned bad. Historical revisionism is not welcome here, anymore than calls for genocide are.
IMMEDIATELY STOP YOUR UTTERLY VILE, DISGUSTING AND SICK ATTEMPT TO SMEAR ME AS A HOLOCAUST DENIER SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU CANNOT SUPPORT YOUR POSITION WITH RATIONAL ARGUMENTS. *NOWHERE AND NEVER* have I ever given even the slightest indication that I would doubt, let alone dispute, the occurrence of the holocaust or the sole responsibility of the German nazis for perpetrating it. I was starting to suspect you were pretty far divorced from reality, but I still would never have expected even you would stoop that low. At least you have finally recognized that the burning building analogy was utter bullcrap, but the reformed abusive father one is besides the point as well, since it assumes the same person remaining in the same position and merely undergoing some treatment. Transferring this analogy to a country would mean the same political system with the same players is in place unchanged, and those in power have merely undergone some “reeducation”. Of course nothing could be further from the truth in Germany. The political system was *completely* changed after WWII, the Allies performed a thorough denazification campaign and ran the Nuernberg Trials, and over six decades after the war more than two generations of democratic politicians have come and gone. So the only one who is trying to get by with historical revisionism here is you, and all your pathetic argument finally comes down is “remembrance”, but needless to say that memories are completely and utterly different from real objective risk, which is after all what you were (and still are) trying to scare up in the case of modern German. And of course you still haven’t been able to come up with one iota of evidence for your alleged “calls for genocide” by Thomas. But what else is new.
And yes, before you ask, I have read the link on Thomas. She certainly repeatedly asked questions that would be considered inconvenient and even provocative by some in power, just as any good reporter and journalist should, but I did not see even one single fragment of a sentence where she actively encouraged or advocated violence. So I’m still waiting to see any shred of evidence for your preposterous claims of “calls for genocide” (you DO know what that means, right?), albeit admittedly not exactly with bated breath.
Bernie,
what Thomas said may certainly have been considered insulting by some, many or even most in the Jewish community, but there is a huge difference between being insulting and, as Scott is trying to spin it, “calling for genocide against the Jews of Israel”, wouldn’t you agree? Thought so.
Martin
Alright, enough of this bullcrap. The point of mentioning Thomas’ statment was the *perception.* Germany today could be a Benneton ad of brightly colored racial and religious tolerance… and it would be entirely irrelevant to the discussion. The worst things ever done to the Jews in the last few centuries – probably ever – were done in Germany and Poland. And where were Thomas’ “go-to” location to ship the citizens of Israel to? Germany and Poland, where most of the Israelies alive today were never from. The message was quite clear.
As to the meaning of “genocide:”
Lemkin’s idea of genocide as an offense against international law was widely accepted by the international community and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg Trials (the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders specifies in Count 3 that the defendants “conducted deliberate and systematic genocideānamely, the extermination of racial and national groups…”[13]) Lemkin presented a draft resolution for a Genocide Convention treaty to a number of countries in an effort to persuade them to sponsor the resolution. With the support of the United States, the resolution was placed before the General Assembly for consideration. In 1943, Lemkin wrote:
Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.[9]
Shipping all the Israelies out of Israel would qualify as “genocide.” And note, the Palestinains who removed themselves from Israel don’t fall under this category. They largely left during the war of ’48 because they were told to… not by the Israelies, but by the leaders of the aggressor Arab nations. They were told to get out of the line of fire, as the Arab armies would mow down or push all the Jews into the sea… and then the Palestinians could go back home. But the Arab armies failed in their attempted genocide, and the Israelies, not surprisingly, weren’t too keen on letting those who wanted them dead to come marching back in.
>Shipping all the Israelies out of Israel would qualify as āgenocide.ā
No it wouldn’t at all. The proper term is ethnic cleansing. And calling for them to leave on their own is not even ethnic cleansing.
Well, why didn’t you say from the beginning that you’re one of those faith based touchy feely types to whom “perception” trumps reality?
ADMIN EDIT: Rest of your drivel snipped. If you nare truly so pig-ignorant as to believe that perception plays no part in trumping reality… well, what can I say, some people just like to deny the way the real world works.
For anyone else reading along, consider this:
1) Ever hear of the “placebo effect?” Perception here can quite profoundly effect a perons reality.
2) Imagine you see a guy on a streetcorner burning a copy of the local telephone book. Now imagine that it is instead a copy of the Koran, and that streetcorner is in Mecca. Same physicality, but different results are entirely likely due to how the event is percieved.
3) Imagine you’re at some public sporting event. You see a father with a young child, showing the young child how to properly wave a flag. You look closer and see that the flag is the flag of your preferred team. How do you react, if at all?
Instead, imagine the precisely identical situation, but that the flag is that of the opposing team. How do you react, if at all?
Further, replace the “team flag” with the Nazi flag with the swastika. How do you react? How do you react if this is occuring in Germany, and you’re a German police officer?
In all these cases, the only *PHYSICAL* difference in the situation is the symbology of the flag. And I can assure you that symbols mean precisely dick to the physical world; a swastika ain’t gonna jump off the flag and bitchslap you, anymore than a rainbow flag is going to start emitting magical unicorns that shit fluffy kittens and vomit cotton candy. The only difference is your *perception* of them.
You go ahead and deny the value of how things are percieved all you like.
> The proper term is ethnic cleansing.
Stipulating that for the purposes of avoiding needless arguement… is that really much of an improvement?
> calling for them to leave on their own is not even ethnic cleansing.
The problem is, there has been a loud call for them to leave since well before 1948. A call backed up by a credible, and repeatedly attempted, threat to kill them all to the last child.
Again, it’s down to the perception inheirant with the message. Germany and Poland hold a specific place in the memory of Israelies. And calls for Israelies to leave Israel also hold certain definite connotations. You don;t get to use such things without being called out for them, just as someone in the South cannot plant a large wooden crucifix in a black families lawn and set fire to it and call it an innocent “welcome to the neighborhood” display.
Part of Thomas quote was:
“They should go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”
You only focussed on Germany and Poland. Is your own country such a horrid place for jews too. If yes, the conclusion is your point is right. If no, then your conclusion about Thomas is deeply flawed. For you to admit that however would require hell to freeze over.
> You only focussed on Germany and Poland.
Yes, because that was her initial response. it was only when she was questioend further, when it dawned on her that she was revealing her true self, that she tried to recover.
When you deal with political types like Helen Thomas, the only answers you can even *hope* are remotely honest are the quick, off-the-cuff responses given to surprise questions before they have the chance to think things through and formulate a calculated response.
Besides, Hell freezes over pretty much annually.
