by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
A lot of people often ask me why Israel doesn’t allow UN forces into the occupied territories, and why it rejects so many of the UN resolutions levied against it. “How can you accuse the UN of antisemitism,” they ask?
Well, here’s one good reason: The fourth Secretary General (ie., head honcho) of the UN, Kurt Waldheim, was a Nazi. And he’s still on the payroll.
Old news for some, but new news for the new Left with their total lack of historical sense.
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
Julie Burchill, a reporter for the UK Guardian, is leaving the paper citing the ongoingly blatant anti-Israel bias the paper holds. (c/o LGF)
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
All the chocolate and none of the guilt? P’shaw! As if! Gamble away your conscience this Chanukah with Grandma Goldman’s Chocolate Guilt, a play on the traditional holiday favorite, chocolate Chanukah gelt, which, instead of the typical menorah impression on the side, bears a Jewish mother upon its foil along with such kvetches as “The phone works both ways you know.” Oy gevalt.
The product is the invention of “two Indians and a Chinese guy” from Livingston, NJ (as revealed to me in an e-mail by co-creator Andrew Cheung), and a comedy writer who works for Maxim (who appears to be tending a character blog). Apparently they think an annoying Jewish mother is funny. Perhaps they should try having one.
In any case, the chocolate is OU certified, so if you want to bring home the shlock for the holidays, it’s an option. When was the last time guilt tasted this good?
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
Let the press blitz begin…
While Mr. Kushner sees “Angels” as his “response to the Reagan counterrevolution, which began in response to the great cultural revolution of the 1960’s,” he is confident that it will resonate with today’s audiences. “Reaganism is still alive and kicking, and doing dreadful damage,” he says. “The apocalypse the play anticipates in its darker moments is both metaphoric and real. The world is hotter than it was when I wrote the play. It’s crazier. The trouble we’re in is, if anything, worse.”
Wrestling with Zion editor Tony Kushner’s new television adaptation of his play Angels in America debuts next Sunday on HBO, and the massive media coverage has begun… Here’s The NY Times and The Chicago Tribune on the subject, as well as The SF Gate, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek.
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
Alarm over emigration levels is growing among Israel’s political leadership as the country’s Jews seek to escape the violence of the Palestinian uprising and deepening recession.
The government wants to bring another million Jews to Israel by 2010. Yet figures released by the ministry responsible for helping new immigrants show that an estimated 760,000 Israelis are living abroad, up from 550,000 in 2000.
The Washington Times reports on Israel’s growing emigration and shrinking immigration levels.
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
Arutz Sheva reports,
Former CIA director James Woolsey says that Europe’s intolerance of Jews is a first step toward dictatorial rule. In a speech to a predominantly Jewish audience at York University in Toronto, Woolsey said that Europe’s increasing anti-Semitism is its “first breath of totalitarianism.”
Oh, and Sharon’s government’s not totalitarian at all, right?
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
The Sunday Times Book Review on Abe Foxman’s Never Again:
What accounts for Foxman’s anxiety? It’s not simply that hate crimes against Jews have increased markedly; it has more to do with the nature of the hatred than with its frequency. The new anti-Semitism is a mutant strain of the old bacillus, making it extremely transportable and highly potent. Wherever Foxman looks in the world, he sees examples of the problem, emerging along every point on the political spectrum. For example: in the past few years, extreme leftwing and right-wing groups in Europe have worked together to mount anti-Israel demonstrations in several major cities; in the United States, white supremacists and other ultraright-wing organizations have taken up the Palestinian issue in the hope of building a new coalition against Jews; and left-wing groups throughout the country, and especially on college campuses, have championed the anti-Israel cause, at times pushing it, in Foxman’s words, ”over the line into outright anti-Semitism.”
In a related Op-Ed, the UK Guardian reports,
There is no doubt that recent anti-semitism is linked to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And it is equally without doubt that Israeli policies sometimes deserve criticism. There is nothing wrong, or even remotely anti-semitic, in disapproving of Israeli policies. Nevertheless, this debate - with its insistence that there is a distinction between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism - misses the crucial point of contention. Israel’s advocates do not want to gag critics by brandishing the bogeyman of anti-semitism: rather, they are concerned about the form the criticism takes.
Meh, I agree and disagree. While the average Jewish citizen (particularly those somewhat Left of center) may not be as prone to do so, it is unquestionable that the Jewish establishment does its best to dismiss any critics of Israel as antisemites. Might I recommend a book on the subject?
by Mobius · Sunday, November 30th, 2003
Though at this point it’s not legally binding in any way, “Leading Israeli opposition politicians and Palestinian officials plan to sign [the Geneva Accords] Monday laying out solutions to the tough questions blocking peace between the two sides.”
Now if they can get Sharon out and someone on the Left in, maybe they can actually implement this sucker.
by Mobius · Saturday, November 29th, 2003
This online edition of Bob Barsky’s Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent gives the whole lowdown on Chomsky’s history with Zionism. Props to MIT for putting a whole free book online.
by Mobius · Saturday, November 29th, 2003
Whatever the truth, the videotape offers insights into the shadowy world of Palestinian informers, real or suspected. Israel recruits thousands of them with offers of, if not sex, money and valuable favors like travel permits or reduced jail sentences, say Palestinians, who regard collaborators as traitors and have killed many of them.
There’s a clip of an accused collaborator being killed by a firing squad in Relentless. Fucking grusome.
Just last August, The Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade (a faction of Yassir Arafat’s Fatah movement) killed their first female ‘collaborator.’ There was no trial… Just a videotaped confession at gunpoint. And then a fatal shot.
When I say I want justice for both peoples…
by Mobius · Saturday, November 29th, 2003
As a mass movement, Socialist Zionism is finished. One might say that it accomplished its actual goal–the building of the Jewish state–without falling prey to the illusion that it “failed” to ensure that the state was a socialist one. For unless one identifies “socialism” with statism, socialism was never a goal of Ben-Gurion and his co-thinkers. One cannot compromise ideals one does not have. It will doubtless be a long time before the majority of the Israeli working class-or for that matter most other working classes-embraces internationalist democratic socialism. In the meantime, however, no tears need be shed over the death of Labor Zionist nationalist socialism.
– Jason Schulman in New Politics
by Mobius · Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
Update your bookmarks kids. The Yada Yada Yada Blog is now at TheYadaBlog.com. Design by Brad Pilcher with a touch of Mobius. Hosted by yours truly.
Also building a couple of sites for Protocol’s Steven I. Weiss. Details in the near futre…
by Mobius · Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
Israeli customs agents have seized 450 singing and dancing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein dolls, saying they were inciteful material.
One more notch on the free speech belt for Israel, huh?
by Mobius · Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
A Salt Lake City congregation has suffered a rift over the hiring of a lesbian rabbi, sending some opponents racing to the local Orthodox synagogue, while bringing other new families into the fold.
I dunno… She’s a little too butchy for my taste.
I kid, I kid!
by Mobius · Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
After weeks of public attention about new, liberal proposals for an Israel-Palestinian peace accord, right-wing members of the Likud governing party and settler leaders revealed they are developing their own plan to end three years of violence. It calls for annexing the territories and offering Palestinians Israeli citizenship but no state of their own.
Sounds more like legitimized apartheid to me. No equal representation? No reparations? Bah. Wouldn’t fly in a million years.
by Mobius · Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
WTF?! Did you know the Kabbalah Learning Centre tried to patent “Rachel’s” red string?! Eyes twitching, buldging…
Nods to Swamp City, by way of Gawker, by way of Protocols.
by The Town Crier · Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
That’s right. Beginning next month, Israelis will need to be fingerprinted in order to obtain a visa.
by Mobius · Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
