Saturday, December 4, 2010

Holy Israel!

So much has happened since I took a break, I didn't know where to start, but Israel is a great topic.  A topic of conversation that needs restructuring in the US.

I had previously planned on blogging on this issue under the title, Middle East Justice (as opposed to Middle East Peace), but Holy Israel! have you seen what has culminated now?  I would expect a people who went through the holocaust to be sensitive to racial profiling and abhor the creation of detention centers for an 'other' race of people to prevent 'diluting' culture.  But, Holy Israel! that is what they are doing to Arabs.

The Israeli government passed a measure to create detention centers of African migrants, saying that too many people are flooding in from Egypt, but there is an undercurrent of racism and anti-Arab threats coming from powerful religious leaders in the state and political leaders outright say that they don't want Arabs diluting Jewish culture.

More astounding, orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, is telling people in the northern area of Tzfat, not to rent to people of the Arab race.  He says Tzfat is a holy place for Jewish people and that they should not provide any place for gentiles.  This in the face of a 20% Arab population in Israel.  Well, according to the modern Jewish leadership, there is no place for Palestinians- even sections promised to the Palestinians in the original partition.  Arabs, and those who house them, who live in Tzfat are getting death threats, and good, reasonable Jewish people are being forced to stand up to their leaders.  Leaders who bring the specter of the holocaust, only with blood on Jewish hands.

Holy Israel?

In other related news, powerful religious and political leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who called for the annihilation of Arabs back in 2001, commented this October that he would agree to a moratorium on building in the West Bank (an area partitioned to the Palestinians, with the exception of Jerusalem) only if the US promised that this would be the last moratorium.

More on our unreasonable political coupling with Israel in a different post, suffice to say for now that our loyal alliance with Israel has and is spilling over into a very unjust and dangerous relationship with other actors on the world stage.

P.S.
Maybe the reason that there have been so many references to Hitler recently is because of the alarming incidents of fascist sentiments cropping up in political news, and being accepted as tolerable by the masses.  This also in a future post on fear and nationalism.

God save us from ourselves.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A Poem for Republicans that explains Democrats

Those mean Republicans!  I knew why the Dems and others never yelled back or called names like the Republicans do (even though they deserve a novel of reprise), but this poem in The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennett, illustrates that reason simply:


If you were busy being kind,
Before you knew it, you would find
You'd soon forget to think 'twas true
That someone was unkind to you.

If you were busy being glad,
And cheering people who are sad,
Although your heart might ache a bit,
You'd soon forget to notice it.

If you were busy being good,
And doing just the best you could,
You'd not have time to blame some man
Who's doing just the best he can.

If you were busy being right,
You'd find yourself too busy quite
To criticize your neighbor long
Because he's busy being wrong

...unfortunately, the Repubs have crossed a long, wide line in the sands of right and wrong too many times, and the Dems should have found a way to highlight and correct that, or, as has been done, risk losing the role of leadership. 

I am continually amazed at the grace with which Democrats deal with those mean Republicans.