Can a conversation on the "rights and wrongs of criticising Israel" be held on SCJM?
Cazador
A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community
over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a
British historian who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling
any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to
anti-Semites. One thing's for sure: any appearance of consensus over
the Middle East has been shattered.
Gaby Wood
Sunday February 11, 2007
The Observer
On 3 October last year, the distinguished British-born historian Tony
Judt was preparing for a public lecture when the telephone rang. He
was due to give the talk, entitled 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign
Policy', at the Polish consulate in New York in less than an hour. The
caterers were already there. But when he picked up the phone he was
informed that his lecture had been suddenly cancelled.
He was also told that Abraham Foxman, the national director of the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was on the phone to the Polish consul.
Whether the call from the ADL was the cause of the cancellation would
become the subject of heated debate in the days and months to come.
Foxman labelled such accusations 'conspiratorial nonsense'; however,
the Polish consul, Krzysztof Kasprzyk, later acknowledged that he had
been contacted by a number of Jewish groups - including the ADL and
the American Jewish Committee (AJC) - who were concerned about Judt's
anti-Israel message.
'The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as
exercising a delicate pressure,' Kasprzyk said. It didn't take him
long to see how it might look for Poland, given its history, to be
fostering arguments that in certain spheres of American intellectual
life have been conflated with anti-Semitism.
'They do what the more tactful members of the intelligence services
used to do in late Communist society,' Tony Judt says of the ADL when
I speak to him from his home in New York. 'They point out how foolish
it is to associate with the wrong people. So they call up the Poles
and they say: Did you know that Judt is a notorious critic of Israel,
and therefore shading into or giving comfort to anti-Semites?'
In the New York Jewish press, the episode was dubbed - with a
debatable degree of sarcasm - 'l'Affaire Judt'. Certainly, not
everyone felt Judt was a latter-day Dreyfus. The New York Review of
Books published an open letter to Abraham Foxman in Judt's defence,
which was signed by 114 intellectuals, many of whom disagreed with
Judt on the Middle East yet felt that his right to free speech had
been indefensibly curbed. But Christopher Hitchens, reminiscing about
an occasion when a talk of his own was cancelled for similar reasons,
cried out: 'What a chance I missed to call attention to myself!' - not
the sort of opportunity Hitchens is in the habit of passing up - 'Once
again, absolutely conventional attacks on Israeli and US policy are
presented as heroically original.'
In the past two weeks, the Judt Affair has entered an entirely new
gear. In an essay written by the Holocaust scholar Alvin Rosenfeld and
published by the American Jewish Committee, Judt's views - and those
of other 'progressive Jews' such as the American playwright Tony
Kushner and the British academic Jacqueline Rose - were expressly
linked to anti-Semitism. That row was reported in the New York Times,
giving it an unprecedented prominence, and since then the story has
opened the floodgates of a debate that until now has been shrouded in
fear. Americans have long been in the grip of a cultural taboo that is
characterised by Judt as follows: 'All Jews are silenced by the
requirement to be supportive of Israel, and all non-Jews are silenced
by the fear of being thought anti-Semitic, and there is no
conversation on the subject.'
Philip Weiss, a bold polemicist whose New York Observer blog,
MondoWeiss, has been besieged by posts on the subject since he
addressed it last week, has even gone so far as to declare a new
movement. His account of it embraces the new forum for dissent,
Independent Jewish Voices, which was launched in Britain last week by
an eminent group that includes Eric Hobsbawm and Harold Pinter. In
launching its manifesto, Independent Jewish Voices has taken the 40th
anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an
occasion to create 'a climate and a space in which Jews of different
affiliations and persuasions can express their opinions about the
actions of the Israeli government without being accused of disloyalty
or being dismissed as self-hating.' One of its founding principles is:
'The battle against anti-Semitism is vital and is undermined whenever
opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as
anti-Semitic.'
'A lot of people, like Tony Judt, have been doing brave work here in
the US for a while,' Weiss tells me. 'What has happened specifically
is that for once, the mainstream is paying attention.'
He dates the beginning of this back to last March, when an explosive
article about the influence of the Israel lobby on American foreign
policy, written by two American political scientists, Stephen Walt and
John Mearsheimer, was published in the London Review of Books (having
originally been turned down by the Atlantic Monthly). The response to
the piece was so overwhelming - and so coloured by accusations of anti-
Semitism - that the LRB decided to host a debate on the subject in New
York last September. That debate was sold out; Tony Judt, one of the
speakers, gave an exceptionally eloquent performance, in the course of
which he said it was significant that the event had been hosted by a
London publication. Public conversation on the issue had been so
absent in America, he suggested, that it could only be opened up by
importation.
'When Walt and Mearsheimer were published in London,' Philip Weiss
continues, 'I said: something's changing.' Since then, the publication
of former president Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid, and the attention given to Rosenfeld's accusations in his
AJC article, have proved, in Weiss's view, that 'there's no question
that something has changed. One of the excitements of what's going on
right now is that people who have had feelings about this and have not
expressed them are popping up all over. It's personally very stirring
to me that this is happening. I can't believe it.'
In fact, the debate is so current that the online magazine Slate has
come up with a quiz entitled 'Are You A Liberal Anti-Semite?' (Sample
question: 'Which state's offences against humanity bother you most? a)
Sudan b) Israel c) Massachusetts'.) One of the prizes is dinner with
Tony Judt.
Tony Judt is, in the words of a fellow historian, 'one of our most
dazzling public intellectuals'. As a prominent professor at New York
University and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books,
the New York Times and The Nation, he has a strong and widely heard
voice. His latest book, Postwar - a magnificent, opinionated and vast
history of Europe since 1945 - was voted one of the 10 best books of
last year by the New York Times. A talented forger of links between
thinkers from countries all over the world, Judt worked tirelessly
after 1989 to bring together eastern European and American
intellectuals, and he solidified these efforts by founding the
Remarque Institute at NYU in 1995 to promote the study and discussion
of Europe in America. A natural polemicist, he brought with him to New
York an Oxbridge tradition more pugnacious than is generally
characteristic of American academic life, and found himself - after
years spent concentrating on European history - drawn back into an
engagement with the Middle East.
In 2003, Judt wrote an articulately provocative piece for the New York
Review of Books entitled 'Israel: The Alternative', in which he
argued, among other things, that Israel was 'an anachronism' that was
'bad for the Jews' and should be converted into a binational state.
The offices of the New York Review were inundated with letters as a
result. Last year, Judt wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in
which he argued that America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing
Israel wrought tremendous damage. As the page was about to go to
press, the editor rang him up. 'Just one thing,' he said, 'You are
Jewish, aren't you?'
Judt was born in London in 1948. Growing up Jewish in 1950s Britain,
as he has said, he came to know a thing or two about anti-Semitism.
His mother was from London and his father, who was born in Belgium,
had come there as a stateless person. Judt was brought up in what he
describes as 'a fairly standard left-wing Jewish secular political
environment', but with close links to his Yiddish-speaking
grandparents, all of whom were eastern European Jews, from Romania and
Russia and Lithuania and Poland. As a teenager, he joined a left-wing
Zionist organisation and became very active in the kibbutz movement,
living in Israel on and off for a large part of the early 1960s.
'What changed for me,' he says now, 'was that in 1967 I went out as a
volunteer at the time of the Six Day War; after the war was finished I
volunteered for auxiliary military service and I ended up as a sort of
informal translator for other volunteers up on the Golan Heights. And
there for the first time I began to see another face of Israel that
had been camouflaged from me by my enthusiasm for the idealism of the
kibbutz movement.' He became, he recalls, quickly very detached from
Israel. 'And in fact when I was a student in Paris I became involved
in 1970 with Palestinians and young Israelis, trying to organise
groups to talk about peace settlements and ending the conflict.'
Last week, as he looked over the list of signatories of the new
British network, Independent Jewish Voices, Judt says he was struck by
how many of them are people who have not in the past identified
themselves publicly as Jewish. 'Of course they're Jewish,' he
clarifies, 'but it was not part of their public identity tag. And now
they feel - and I would share this sentiment - a need to say, look: if
it helps you understand just how bad things have got in the Middle
East, I am willing to act not as a freestanding historian but as a
Jew. I don't normally like to act as though being Jewish was who I am,
but it's a kind of inverse moral blackmail that forces you to go the
other way.'
Speaking from Bloomington, Indiana, where he is a director of Indiana
University's Jewish Studies Program, Alvin Rosenfeld tells me that his
essay 'does seem to have struck a raw nerve'. 'I've been accused of
wanting to shut down debate and stifle free speech,' he says, 'and
none of that is true. I stand strongly for vigorous debate and open
discussion. What in the past was said behind the hands and on the
margins of society has been coming into the mainstream of discourse,'
Rosenfeld adds, echoing the sentiments of those he attacks, 'Now one
can deal with it. And that's one of the things I set out to do.'
Though Rosenfeld is careful not to say in his essay that anti-Zionism
and anti-Semitism are identical, he does state that 'Anti-Zionism is
the form that much of today's anti-Semitism takes, so much so that
some now see earlier attempts to rid the world of Jews finding a
parallel in present-day desires to get rid of the Jewish state.' He
labels the work of Judt, Rose, Kushner et al 'This Jewish war against
the Jewish state.' I ask him if he would say that an increase in anti-
Zionist sentiment might be caused by Israeli policy. 'I doubt it,' he
replies. 'As I read these people, it strikes to the heart, not of
particular policies, but the idea of a sovereign Jewish state in the
Middle East. I think it goes to the question of Israel's origins and
essence.'
'Oh that's nuts,' Judt counters, 'I've never said Israel doesn't have
a right to exist. I'm not actually sure that anyone in what we would
call the respectable political mainstream ever has.'
'He says that,' says Rosenfeld, 'but it's not true. In his writings he
calls not for a two-state solution but for the dissolution of the
state of Israel and a one-state solution, and everyone knows that in
no time at all, were such a scenario to come about, Jews would be a
minority within this newly configured state, and would be at the mercy
of a population that's not likely to treat them gently. Tony Judt is a
kind of political fantasist, it strikes me.'
'The issue is not whether Israel has a right to exist,' Judt says
plainly, 'Israel does exist. It exists just like Belgium or Kuwait or
any other country which was invented at some point in the past and is
now a fact. The question is what kind of a state Israel should be.
That's all.'
Anti-Zionism has, like Zionism itself, a long and complicated history.
'The thing that we tend to forget,' Judt explains, 'is that until the
Second World War, Zionism was a minority taste even within Jewish
political organisations. The main body of European Jews was either
apolitical or integrated, and voting within the existing countries
they lived in. So to be anti-Zionist, at least until the late 1930s,
was to be lined up with most Jews. It would make no sense to think of
it as anti-Semitic.
'After the Second World War, for a fairly brief period - from let's
say 1945 to about 1953 - the overwhelming majority of Jews who were
politically thinking were Zionists, either actively or
sympathetically, for the rather obvious reason that Israel was the
only hope for Jewish survivors. But then many of them, like Hannah
Arendt or Arthur Koestler, both of whom were Zionists at various
points, took their distance, on the grounds that it was already clear
to them that Israel was going to become the kind of state that as a
cosmopolitan Jew they couldn't identify with.
'Ever since then, there has been an unbroken tradition of non-Israeli
Jews who regard Israel as either unrelated to their own identity or
something of which they sometimes approve, sometimes disapprove,
sometimes totally dislike. This range of opinion is not new,' Judt
concludes. 'The only thing that's new - and it's a product of the post-
Sixties - is the insistence that it's anti-Semitic.'
Judt tells a story about an Israeli journalist who was in Washington
in the 1960s. 'The Israeli ambassador was retiring, and the journalist
asked him what he thought was his biggest achievement. The ambassador
said: "I've succeeded in beginning to convince Americans that anti-
Zionism is anti-Semitism." There has been a progressive emergence of a
conflation,' Judt explains. 'It didn't just happen naturally. And it
was pushed quite actively in the Seventies and Eighties, to the point
at which it became so normal in this country that it was for a while
the default assumption. It's really only in the last five to eight
years that it's started to be questioned.'
The actions of very pro-Israel Jewish organisations - for instance,
making carefully placed phone calls relating to certain public
speakers - are, Judt believes, now born of panic rather than
confidence.
'They've lost control of the debate,' he says. 'For a long time all
they had to deal with were people like Norman Finkelstein or Noam
Chomsky, who they could dismiss as loonies of the left. Now they're
having to face, for want of a better cliché, the mainstream: people
like me who have a fairly long established record of being Social
Democrats (in the European sense) and certainly not on the crazy left
on most issues, saying very critical things about Israel. They're not
used to that, so their initial response has been to silence people if
they could, and their second response has been to ratchet up the anti-
Semitic charge.' Judt thinks it's telling that the New York Times 'is
willing to report these issues and let reporters quote both sides. In
the past, you would have had silence.'
Whether this will have any effect in Washington is another matter. The
political influence of AIPAC (the pro-Israel lobby, American Israel
Public Affairs Committee) is as strong as it ever was, and Judt argues
that since it's not worth going out on a limb on Israel from
Congressmen's point of view, change has to happen at a presidential
level. Hillary, he says, 'is pretty gutless on this'; she has already
given two gung-ho speeches to AIPAC. It's not a topic Barack Obama has
yet picked up on, Judt adds, but Obama was brave enough to oppose the
Iraq war from the outset, so it's possible that he would take a
courageous stance elsewhere in the Middle East. 'A presidential
candidate has to feel that once he or she gets into office - they
wouldn't dare open their mouths while they're running for election -
they don't stand to lose very much in public opinion if they put
pressure on Israel,' Judt says
In Postwar, Judt writes of Europe that 'After 1989, nothing - not the
future, not the present and above all not the past - would ever be the
same.' Is there a moment like that, I ask him, in this situation? 'I
think so,' he replies. 'It's not as tidy a moment as 1989 in Europe.
But I think one could say that after the Iraq war, for want of a
better defining moment, the American silence on the complexities and
disasters of the Middle East was broken. The shell broke and
conversation - however uncomfortable, however much slandered - became
possible. I'm not sure that will change things in the Middle East, but
it's changed the shape of things here. Even five years ago, I don't
think it would have looked the way it does now.'
He sounds almost optimistic.
'Well,' he sighs, 'I do my best.'
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
no way am I reading all that.
But the general rule is that if people hold israel to a standard they
don't hold anybody else to.
specifically
america can target terorists, israel can't.
suicide bombings are ok in israel, but not ok elsewhere. (as some
muslims eg in the MCB, say. Or as Sheikh Al Azhar - sheikh tantawi
says)
Or, they sympathise with suicide bombers that blow themselves up in
israel. When they do it in britain, they won't sympathise. Cherie
Blair sympathised with the ones that blew themselves up in israel. I
didn't hear her say anything like that about the ones that blew
themselves up in britain.
In the past, colin powell would (diplomatically) condemn israel for
targetted assassinations. I heard him on TV. An online search showed
him as explicitly unsupportive. .
This was prior to, and partly whilst, America was doing it themselves
e.g. to uday and qusay. Then America had to change their policy
towards israel on targetted assassinations, to be more lenient, so as
not to be hypocritical.
Often when people condemn israel, they do to israel alone. When other
countries do the same, or worse.
Don't condemn Israel alone for torturing terrorists. Egypt tortures
its prisoners.
Similarly, targetted assasinations.
Similarly, for going to war. Germany bombed one british city -London.
In response, Britain bombed many (german) cities. Nobody complained
then that it was disproportionate.
Don't condemn israel alone for bombing lebanon, when America is doing
the same thing in iraq. Or when britain did the same thing to germany
Netanyahu called it a triple standard. He said. A double standard is
bad. A triple standard is worse. They have one standard for the west,
another for the arabs, and a third standard for Israel.
note- in all these situations, there are perhaps distinctions between
the israel case and the other case. Sometimes they matter, sometimes
they don't. Most often they don't. Also, little distinctions can't
explain every case.
Cazador
This article does not directly address the central issue raised by
Professors Mearsheimer & Walt, the effect of the lobby -- and its
artificially induced taboos against criticizing Israeli policy -- on
our ability to pursue the American national interest in the Middle
East. ( http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/
RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf ) Pursuit of that interest by
definition benefits all Americans.
It has been clear from the beginning, i.e., since 1967, that
occupation and creeping annexation in Gaza and the West Bank are
contrary to that interest. Yet the subject can not be broached,
especially by our leadership, our political class. There is no
precedent for this in all of American history.
The result has been that the United States has had no choice but to be
involved with Israel *in a fashion* which alienates most of the Muslim
world. We don't accept her policy but we not only can't oppose it
openly, we can't even oppose it implicitly by scaling down our aid in
direct proportion to Israel's refusal to recognize our national
interests.
This is an extremely unhealthy situation not only for the United
States, which is facing a fourth and perhaps even fifth anti-Muslim
war in the Middle East in less than twenty years (to say nothing of
the bottomless pit of the "war on terror") but for Israel too. The
dangers for her in the long run are not remotely justified by the
possibilities she may have of vanquishing the Palestinians and
annexing large parts of the West Bank.
Israel should be working to reclaim her world-wide reputation and to
permit America to do the same. Yes, I say *permit* advisedly. Everyone
here who has followed this perpetual crisis understands that America
is very unlikely to abandon Israel. That's really not the issue. Nor
for that matter will Western Europe. What she must stop doing are
things which make settlement impossible, i.e., refusing to dismantle
the settlements and accept the green line as the basis for a
comprehensive solution. Without those concession *to us* by Israel
America will not recover from this disaster. It is a debt owed by
Israel to the United States. Unless she pays it and dismantles the
lobby the alternatives for the relationship do not look good. The tail
will not wag the dog forever. It's unnatural.
Israel already has some eighty percent of Palestine. It is in the
American interest that she declare the Zionist era to be at an end,
its goals amply fulfilled and that she join in the declaration of her
boundaries at the green line and begin shifting to a civilian economy.
She needs to free America from this thralldom if only because the
relationship as it is today is unnatural and as such can not long
endure.
Henry Goodman
<jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1171308649.8...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> <snip>
>
> no way am I reading all that.
>
>
other
> countries do the same, or worse.
> Don't condemn Israel alone for torturing terrorists. Egypt tortures
> its prisoners.
> Similarly, targetted assasinations.
>
> Similarly, for going to war. Germany bombed one british
city -London.
> In response, Britain bombed many (german) cities. Nobody complained
> then that it was disproportionate.
Quite wrong. Germany bombed most large British cities; I suspect you
are too young to remember. The most famous was Coventry, but they also
destroyed the centre of my native city, Plymouth, and many others.
--
Henry Goodman
henry dot goodman at virgin dot net
Eliyahu
>
>
> Israel already has some eighty percent of Palestine. It is in the
> American interest that she declare the Zionist era to be at an end,
> its goals amply fulfilled and that she join in the declaration of her
> boundaries at the green line and begin shifting to a civilian economy.
> She needs to free America from this thralldom if only because the
> relationship as it is today is unnatural and as such can not long
> endure.
"Israel already has some eighty percent of Palestine"??? First,
there's no such place as "Palestine" for them to have 80% of, and the
only thing that Israel does have is Israel. Of course, if you're an
Arab apologist, the basis of your argument is that Israel has no right
to exist in the first place and that Israel proper constitutes 80% of
"Palestine"(the country you'd like to see in place after we're driven
into the sea), currently known as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
That fantasy of yours also completely ignores the geography of the
original Palestinian mandate, which included not only those areas, but
also the entire much larger area of Trans-Jordan, (Now the state of
Jordan) which was supposed to be a "homeland" for the Arabs (AKA
"Palestinians) while the area to the west of the Jordan was to be a
Jewish state.
AFA the settlements, if it weren't for Arab hatred of Jews, it
wouldn't be necessary to have IDF forces to guard what would otherwise
simply be Jewish communities living in the West Bank and Gaza; no
different than the Arab communities currently existing inside Israel.
Or do you argue that all Arab states have a right to be free of Jews,
while Jews must tolerate large numbers of Arabs living inside our
state? It's called a "double standard" when you allow different norms
for Arab nations than you do for the civilized nations.
And no one has suggested that the green line is an acceptable
international border. The Arabs don't accept that, because they aren't
willing to allow for Israel to exist. Even the various treaties
negotiated over the years concede that the green line is only an
arbitrary point that has little to do with the eventual borders of
Israel. So with whom would you have Israel "join in the declaration
of her boundries at the green line"?
Your entire thesis seems to be that we Jews control America from
backstage and that we need to stop doing so. Correct? That's what I
thought. You can pick up your white robe and hood from the checkstand
on the way out...
Eliyahu
quon...@yahoo.com
> A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community
> over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a
> British historian who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling
> any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to
> anti-Semites. One thing's for sure: any appearance of consensus over
> the Middle East has been shattered.
>
Thanks for posting this very interesting article.
The answer to the question you post in your header is "probably not,"
unless your idea of a *conversation* consists of name-calling and
misrepresentations of any position you may take that is perceived as
not blindly pro-Israel.
Perhaps the thing that really gives succour to anti-Semites is the
perception that Israel and its policies may not be questioned at all
without aspersions being cast upon the character of the questioner.
-- Q
Eliyahu
OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
(mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
defamatory toward both Israel and the US, we can safely assume that
he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
under bridges...
Eliyahu
Cazador
Let's presume for the sake of the argument that everything is as you
say here is true. How does pointing them out advance us on a path to a
solution? In my second post I adddress policy questions related to a
settlement in the Palestinian-Israeli stand-off. I would very much
appreciate a response to those concrete suggestions.
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
>
you wouldn't like it
the solution to the problem was solved a long time ago.
Let Rabbi Meir Kahane ZTL explain it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGFk5jVxeWo
fla...@verizon.net
On 12-Feb-2007, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 12, 3:45 pm, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Feb 12, 2:10 pm, "Cazador" <coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote:> A
> > f
>
> OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> defamatory toward both Israel and the US, we can safely assume that
> he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> and watch things boil.
Worse than that, as I've seen in scj.
Susan
Patricia Heil
read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
D.M. Procida
> Similarly, for going to war. Germany bombed one british city -London.
I suppose you consider Coventry, Swansea, Southampton, Swindon, Cardiff,
Manchester, Sheffielf, Plymouth, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester to
be part of Greater London or something.
Daniele
--
<http://vurt.org>
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
> This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
Absolutely. The rule PDFTT fits here very well. It is also highly
instructive to see who came to his defense.
Moshe Schorr
It is a tremendous Mitzvah to always be happy! - Reb Nachman of Breslov
The home and family are the center of Judaism, *not* the synagogue.
Disclaimer: Nothing here necessarily reflects the opinion of Hebrew University
quon...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 12, 3:45 pm, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 12, 2:10 pm, "Cazador" <coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote:> A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community
> > > over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a
> > > British historian who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling
> > > any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to
> > > anti-Semites. One thing's for sure: any appearance of consensus over
> > > the Middle East has been shattered.
>
> > (snip rest)
>
> > Thanks for posting this very interesting article.
>
> > The answer to the question you post in your header is "probably not,"
> > unless your idea of a *conversation* consists of name-calling and
> > misrepresentations of any position you may take that is perceived as
> > not blindly pro-Israel.
>
> > Perhaps the thing that really gives succour to anti-Semites is the
> > perception that Israel and its policies may not be questioned at all
> > without aspersions being cast upon the character of the questioner.
> > -- Q
>
> OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> defamatory toward both Israel and the US,
While it may be incorrect to repost a copyrighted article, people do
it because they wish to facilitate discussion and not because they are
looking for trouble.
I don't know what Cazador's posting history is, but I hope controversy
isn't forbidden at SCJM, because it seems to me that many people
engage in it, including those who clearly are not trolls.
we can safely assume that
> he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> under bridges...
Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>
> Eliyahu
Cazador
I'm looking for quality conversation on the most important issues of
the day, a thing impossible without both civility and probity. I
defame no one. I declare exactly where I stand and am prepared to have
it subjected to criticism from the brightest and best informed people
here. I do not engage in ad hominem argument. But I don't want to play
games with political correctness either. I'm convinced that that
pattern has become very dangerous both for Israel and the US. BTW I
support Israel if not all of her policies. I have for half a century.
Surely you don't see SCJM as a group in which you should never
encounter an idea which conflicts with accepted wisdom? I hope not
because the unmonitored groups tend to be filled with anti-Semites and
Jews who are both inclined to substitute ad hominem diatribes for
genuine give and take. That's not reflective of American Jews in
general. I simply want to advance the issues out in the day light.
The articles I have posted are critical of israeli policies, as am I.
If anything in them is anti-Semitic I'll acknowledge it and apologise.
You need only to make the point and I will respond in measured
fashion. In the meantime I'd like to introduce into this forum some
fundamental questions about the relevance of the American national
interest to our Middle Eastern policies. If I'm to be excluded I would
hope it is on a fair-minded basis but in any event being here is a
privilege, not a right. I understand that. It's true of all monitored
groups.
cindys
<quon...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1171334080.5...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> impose fake rules on it. -- Q
What "fake rules?" When a moderated group is established, the individuals
who establish the group can make whatever rules they wish. This is called
having a charter. If someone doesn't like the *rules*, he is always free to
leave and post in an unmoderated group. The insistence that there is some
sort of arbitrary obligation for the SCJM moderators to allow individuals to
post whatever they want in the name of *free speech* is completely bogus.
That is why we have moderators - to disallow speech that does not fall
within the guidelines of the charter.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
quon...@yahoo.com
> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1171334080.5...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>
> -------
> What "fake rules?" When a moderated group is established, the individuals
> who establish the group can make whatever rules they wish.
Those are not the rules I had in mind.
By "fake rules", I meant that in order to prevent certain
conversations from taking place at all, some posters will announce
that the use of certain words or expressions or ideas -- many of them
widely held even among Jews -- brands the speaker as a "jew hater,"
"antisemite" or "bigot."
I don't see how a group can have a discussion about life among the
Palestinians in the occupied territories, if they are not allowed to
write "Palestinians" or "occupied territories," for instance.
This is called
> having a charter. If someone doesn't like the *rules*, he is always free to
> leave and post in an unmoderated group. The insistence that there is some
> sort of arbitrary obligation for the SCJM moderators to allow individuals to
> post whatever they want in the name of *free speech* is completely bogus.
Isn't the idea that the moderators allow individuals to post whatever
they want *as long as it conforms to the charter?*
Does the charter stipulate that we may not say "Palestinians?"
Is there an official embargo on "occupied territories?"
> That is why we have moderators - to disallow speech that does not fall
> within the guidelines of the charter.
Aside from violating copyright by posting an entire article, what did
Cazador write that does not fall within the guidelines of the charter?
-- Q
> Best regards,
> ---Cindy S.
quon...@yahoo.com
> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>
> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT fits here very well. It is also highly
> instructive to see who came to his defense.
How is it instructive? What do you think it proves? -- Q
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
(D.M. Procida) wrote:
> jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk <jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > Similarly, for going to war. Germany bombed one british city -London.
>
> I suppose you consider Coventry, Swansea, Southampton, Swindon, Cardiff,
> Manchester, Sheffielf, Plymouth, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester to
> be part of Greater London or something.
>
> Daniele
> --
History isn't my strong point. I was just quoting binyamin netanyahu(I
heard him in a live speach). It's his fault!!
googling netanyahu dresden
brings up some related results. And at one link he is said to have
made that claim in England.
Anyhow. The general and specific point still remains.
If Israel were to bomb Hezbollah like Hezbollah bomb them. If Israel
allowed jewish terrorist units to massacre arabs. Then it'd be
considered utterly disproportionate.
Similarly, with that specific point
When Germany bombed many cities, and Britain bombed many German cities
in response. Nobody said Britain was disproportionate
So the double standard is still evident in that example.
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
> On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
>> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>
>> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
>> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>>
>> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT fits here very well. It is also highly
>> instructive to see who came to his defense.
>
> How is it instructive? What do you think it proves? -- Q
"Birds of a feather, flock together".
quon...@yahoo.com
> quond...@yahoo.com writes:
> > On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
> >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
> >> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> >> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>
> >> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT fits here very well. It is also highly
> >> instructive to see who came to his defense.
>
> > How is it instructive? What do you think it proves? -- Q
>
> "Birds of a feather, flock together".
Unless you're talking about actual birds, that cliche is nonsense. Or
do you have issues about people's right to contribute here if they
don't happen to agree with you?
If you were talking about me, I don't have a history of posting to the
newsgroups Cazador posts to, nor to I have a long history of posting
about Jewish subjects.
The article posted by Cazador was in part about "ganging up" on an
idea or on an individual, so that views that differ from the orthodoxy
du jour are suppressed.
IMO, that is the dynamic that is sometimes evident in this
newsgroup. -- Q
D.M. Procida
> History isn't my strong point. I was just quoting binyamin netanyahu(I
> heard him in a live speach). It's his fault!!
Well, I am not exactly surprised to that Bibi's grasp of European
history is a little bit loose. Though I thought he was a pretty ghastly
prime minister, his volatility made him easily the most entertaining
Israel has had for some time.
There was a story around ten years ago about him having a screaming row
with his wife at the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, which was somehow
transmitted over the public address system.
Daniele
--
<http://vurt.org>
cindys
<quon...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1171385893....@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
snip>
> The article posted by Cazador was in part about "ganging up" on an
> idea or on an individual, so that views that differ from the orthodoxy
> du jour are suppressed.
>
> IMO, that is the dynamic that is sometimes evident in this
> newsgroup. -- Q
----------
It doesn't seem to me like his posts have been "suppressed," nor have yours
been, but you seem to do an awful lot of complaining about it. In fact, you
have both been permitted to post here despite the fact that you are posting
about a topic that is technically off-topic for SCJM, per the charter. Other
people besides you and Cazador are allowed to post on SCJM. And these other
people are permitted to say "We don't like what you and Cazador are posting.
We find it offensive." That is not "suppression." That is other people
expressing their opinions just as you have expressed yours.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
cindys
<quon...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1171374366.4...@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> On Feb 13, 7:45 am, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>
>> news:1171334080.5...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
>> > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
>> > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
>> > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>>
>> -------
>> What "fake rules?" When a moderated group is established, the individuals
>> who establish the group can make whatever rules they wish.
>
> Those are not the rules I had in mind.
>
> By "fake rules", I meant that in order to prevent certain
> conversations from taking place at all, some posters will announce
> that the use of certain words or expressions or ideas -- many of them
> widely held even among Jews -- brands the speaker as a "jew hater,"
> "antisemite" or "bigot."
When the shoe fits...
>
> I don't see how a group can have a discussion about life among the
> Palestinians in the occupied territories, if they are not allowed to
> write "Palestinians" or "occupied territories," for instance.
You just wrote the words "Palestinians" and "occupied territories" didn't
you? Apparently, your post wasn't rejected, as I was able to read it. Why do
you believe participants on a Jewish newsgroup are obligated to legitimize
your terminology? Why are we not permitted to point out that the
"Palestinian people" were invented by PLO for the sake of political
expediency in order to legitimize terrorism?
>
>
> This is called
>> having a charter. If someone doesn't like the *rules*, he is always free
>> to
>> leave and post in an unmoderated group. The insistence that there is some
>> sort of arbitrary obligation for the SCJM moderators to allow individuals
>> to
>> post whatever they want in the name of *free speech* is completely bogus.
>
>
> Isn't the idea that the moderators allow individuals to post whatever
> they want *as long as it conforms to the charter?*
Yes. And discussions about the Middle East are actually off-topic, according
to the charter, so any thread about Israel or the so-called "Palestinians"
or Jimmy Carter's book about the Middle East are technically outside the
charter. As is antisemitism.
>
> Does the charter stipulate that we may not say "Palestinians?"
Did someone stop you from saying that? You said it right now. Does the
charter stipulate that I (and other SCJMers) may not say that there is no
such thing as "Palestinians?"
>
> Is there an official embargo on "occupied territories?"
Did someone stop you from saying "occupied territories?" What you would like
is so-called "freedom of speech" for yourself but not for anyone who
disputes you. You want to be able to use*your* terminology without anyone
being permitted to object to it.
This is a common complaint from new posters who post things that the
regulars find offensive. When one of the regular posters points out that
certain words or ideas are offensive, in the next post, the new poster will
invariably assert that someone is trying to prevent him/her from posting,
drive him/her off the group, "shut [him/her] up." Why do you think you
should be able to post whatever words or ideas you want and no one should be
allowed to voice an objection?
>
>> That is why we have moderators - to disallow speech that does not fall
>> within the guidelines of the charter.
>
> Aside from violating copyright by posting an entire article, what did
> Cazador write that does not fall within the guidelines of the charter?
He wrote about politics in the Middle East. That does not fall within the
guidelines of the charter.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
Eliyahu
> On Feb 13, 7:45 am, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:1171334080.5...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> > > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> > > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> > > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>
> > -------
> > What "fake rules?" When a moderated group is established, the individuals
> > who establish the group can make whatever rules they wish.
>
> Those are not the rules I had in mind.
>
> By "fake rules", I meant that in order to prevent certain
> conversations from taking place at all, some posters will announce
> that the use of certain words or expressions or ideas -- many of them
> widely held even among Jews -- brands the speaker as a "jew hater,"
> "antisemite" or "bigot."
>
> I don't see how a group can have a discussion about life among the
> Palestinians in the occupied territories, if they are not allowed to
> write "Palestinians" or "occupied territories," for instance.
>
other newsgroups for those discussions, just as there are newsgroups
to discuss Harley Davidson motorcycles, model airplanes, recipes for
pork chops, conspiracies to hide UFOs, and the attributes of various
porn stars. You've been posting to Usenet since 1998, mostly in
alt.gossip.royalty until you came here a couple month ago to defend
and support Mormons and Jimmy Carter, so this isn't anything new to
you. If you want to talk about Palestinians, there's
soc.culture.palestine (admittedly an oxymoron, but what else is
new...).
Eliyahu
quon...@yahoo.com
I have defended Mormons' missionizing, but not their baptisms of dead
Jews. I have not "supported" them, however. There's a difference
between "defending" and "supporting."
I have neither defended nor supported Jimmy Carter.
>so this isn't anything new to
> you. If you want to talk about Palestinians, there's
> soc.culture.palestine (admittedly an oxymoron, but what else is
> new...).
I don't especially want to talk about Palestinians, but I don't see
why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
None of the threads on SCJM that I have participated in have been
initiated by me, including those about Jimmy Carter, Palestinians and
Mormons.
I hope you're not saying that it's okay for some SCJM posters to
discuss these subjects, but it's not okay for me to do so -- Q
>
> Eliyahu
quon...@yahoo.com
> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1171374366.4...@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > On Feb 13, 7:45 am, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> >> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> >>news:1171334080.5...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> >> > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> >> > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> >> > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> >> > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>
> >> -------
> >> What "fake rules?" When a moderated group is established, the individuals
> >> who establish the group can make whatever rules they wish.
>
> > Those are not the rules I had in mind.
>
> > By "fake rules", I meant that in order to prevent certain
> > conversations from taking place at all, some posters will announce
> > that the use of certain words or expressions or ideas -- many of them
> > widely held even among Jews -- brands the speaker as a "jew hater,"
> > "antisemite" or "bigot."
>
> When the shoe fits...
Yes, I know, "birds of a feather," to you, too.
>
>
>
> > I don't see how a group can have a discussion about life among the
> > Palestinians in the occupied territories, if they are not allowed to
> > write "Palestinians" or "occupied territories," for instance.
>
> You just wrote the words "Palestinians" and "occupied territories" didn't
> you? Apparently, your post wasn't rejected, as I was able to read it. Why do
> you believe participants on a Jewish newsgroup are obligated to legitimize
> your terminology? Why are we not permitted to point out that the
> "Palestinian people" were invented by PLO for the sake of political
> expediency in order to legitimize terrorism?
>
>
>
> > This is called
> >> having a charter. If someone doesn't like the *rules*, he is always free
> >> to
> >> leave and post in an unmoderated group. The insistence that there is some
> >> sort of arbitrary obligation for the SCJM moderators to allow individuals
> >> to
> >> post whatever they want in the name of *free speech* is completely bogus.
>
> > Isn't the idea that the moderators allow individuals to post whatever
> > they want *as long as it conforms to the charter?*
>
> Yes. And discussions about the Middle East are actually off-topic, according
> to the charter, so any thread about Israel or the so-called "Palestinians"
> or Jimmy Carter's book about the Middle East are technically outside the
> charter. As is antisemitism.
Okay. But kindly note that I didn't bring these subjects up. They
were discussions-in-progress.
>
>
>
> > Does the charter stipulate that we may not say "Palestinians?"
>
> Did someone stop you from saying that? You said it right now. Does the
> charter stipulate that I (and other SCJMers) may not say that there is no
> such thing as "Palestinians?"
No. But the charter also does not say that people who use the terms
"Palestinians" and "occupied territories" must therefore be bigots
and antisemites and people who "love dead Jews."
>
>
>
> > Is there an official embargo on "occupied territories?"
>
> Did someone stop you from saying "occupied territories?" What you would like
> is so-called "freedom of speech" for yourself but not for anyone who
> disputes you. You want to be able to use*your* terminology without anyone
> being permitted to object to it.
I have no objection to being corrected, but I have no obligation to
agree with everybody who corrects me.
What I take strong issue with is the use of these linguistic
yardsticks by which posters' characters are condemned, despite the
fact that the mainstream press -- which is where most of us get our
information -- uses the same terminology.
>
> This is a common complaint from new posters who post things that the
> regulars find offensive. When one of the regular posters points out that
> certain words or ideas are offensive, in the next post, the new poster will
> invariably assert that someone is trying to prevent him/her from posting,
> drive him/her off the group, "shut [him/her] up."
I suspect that some people in this newsgroup don't really want new
posters, but reading between the lines, I bet lots of people have been
driven away from SCJM who might have evolved into valuable
contributors.
IMO, *a few* of the regulars are too easily offended -- to the point
that it might even be said that they are looking for trouble.
> Why do you think you
> should be able to post whatever words or ideas you want and no one should be
> allowed to voice an objection?
That is not what I think.
What I think is that there's a distinction between correcting
somebody, and labeling that person as a bigot and an antisemite
because he or she has used certain words to express an idea or ask a
question, words which are in common usage by the press and other
sources.
>
>
>
> >> That is why we have moderators - to disallow speech that does not fall
> >> within the guidelines of the charter.
>
> > Aside from violating copyright by posting an entire article, what did
> > Cazador write that does not fall within the guidelines of the charter?
>
> He wrote about politics in the Middle East. That does not fall within the
> guidelines of the charter.
Maybe he wrote about politics in the Middle East because other people
were discussing it. To paraphrase Orwell, perhaps some posters are
more equal than others, if not in the eyes of the moderators (who seem
to be evenhanded) in the eyes of the "regulars."
cindys
<quon...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1171402140....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
snip
>
> I don't especially want to talk about Palestinians, but I don't see
> why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
And for the umpteenth time, so who's stopping you?
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
<snip>
Last week, as he looked over the list of signatories of the new
British network, Independent Jewish Voices, Judt says he was struck
by
how many of them are people who have not in the past identified
themselves publicly as Jewish. 'Of course they're Jewish,' he
clarifies, 'but it was not part of their public identity tag. And now
they feel - and I would share this sentiment - a need to say, look:
if
it helps you understand just how bad things have got in the Middle
East, I am willing to act not as a freestanding historian but as a
Jew. I don't normally like to act as though being Jewish was who I
am,
but it's a kind of inverse moral blackmail that forces you to go the
other way.'
<snip>
or how most british jews with their head screwed on see it-
some of these characters never once mention that they're jewish. But
now they want to criticise israel, they "come out" about being
jewish.
But I like your article's description, quoting the feelings of one of
the leading equivalent idiots in america. They don't want to admit
that they are jewish. But if they think it'll bring peace, then
they'll make that sacrifice.
less amusingly.
even jewish kids have more maturity. only wanting to be jewish if
watching a film with jewish gangstas or making a self deprecating joke
about themselves(which anti-semites love).
These demented prople feel that being jewish and supporting
palestinians gives them a moral highground. And they feel ashamed of
who they are if it means blowing up an olive tree of a guy coming to
kill their fellow jews
They want to be seen as even, and since they're jewish, they feel it
makes them feel bias by default or that they wil be perceived as bias
by default - and that's true. So they go the other way to counter it,
and so they gain the respect of those that would otherwise have seen
them as bias.
more amusingly, some of these comments-
related article, about the signatories
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1779801/posts
Tilly
> you wouldn't like it
>
> the solution to the problem was solved a long time ago.
>
> Let Rabbi Meir Kahane ZTL explain it
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGFk5jVxeWo
Yes, I gathered you have very extremist views.
Kahane was a racist bigot.
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
> jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > you wouldn't like it
>
> > the solution to the problem was solved a long time ago.
>
> > Let Rabbi Meir Kahane ZTL explain it
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGFk5jVxeWo
>
> Yes, I gathered you have very extremist views.
> Kahane was a racist bigot.
>
Do you believe in Israel's law of, "right to return" . That it should
apply only to jews, and not to gentiles?
Do you believe that, in theory, if arabs ever outnumbered jews, in
israel. That they, as the majourity, should be able to run the
country? Would you be against a non-jewish prime minister of Israel?
If you answered those questions like a normal jew, then any arab would
say you were a racist.
I'll let Rabbi Meir Kahane answer you directly. The accusation that
he was a racist, was made against him many times. Here, he responds
to people similar to you.
He starts speaking around 6 minutes in. But he responds to the charge
that he is a racist, around the 14th minute. This is his speach at
Brandeis University.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=351859701655684248&q=kahane+brandeis&hl=en
fla...@verizon.net
On 13-Feb-2007, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
> quon...@yahoo.com writes:
> > On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
> >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
> >>
> >> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> >> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
> >>
> >> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT
I am fairly certainly you meant "PDNFTT"....
> >> fits here very well. It is also highly
> >> instructive to see who came to his defense.
> >
> > How is it instructive? What do you think it proves? -- Q
>
> "Birds of a feather, flock together".
>
It was also a "nice" sanity check.
Susan
Tim Meushaw
>
> On 13-Feb-2007, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
>
>> quon...@yahoo.com writes:
>> > On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
>> >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
>> >>
>> >> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
>> >> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>> >>
>> >> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT
>
> I am fairly certainly you meant "PDNFTT"....
I'm certain he meant "Don't". :-)
Tim
--
Timothy A. Meushaw
meu...@pobox.com
fla...@verizon.net
I'm sure you are right :-}
Susan
dsha...@gmail.com
> > Israel already has some eighty percent of Palestine. It is in the
> > American interest that she declare the Zionist era to be at an end,
> > its goals amply fulfilled and that she join in the declaration of her
> > boundaries at the green line and begin shifting to a civilian economy.
> > She needs to free America from this thralldom if only because the
> > relationship as it is today is unnatural and as such can not long
> > endure.
On Feb 12, 2:01 pm, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Israel already has some eighty percent of Palestine"??? First,
> there's no such place as "Palestine" for them to have 80% of,
Certainly there was, and is, a place called "Palestine". It's the
geographical designation for the general region in the Near East which
comprises the ancient Jewish kingdoms at their greatest extent. Most
recently, it was a Class A Mandate of the League of Nations.
For both the above reasons, there is no way Israel today "has some
eighty percent of Palestine", if only because Britain severed some 77%
of Palestine for the emirate of Transjordan, now the Hashemite kingdom
of Jordan.
>and the only thing that Israel does have is Israel.
Well, sort of.
>Of course, if you're an
> Arab apologist, the basis of your argument is that Israel has no right
> to exist in the first place and that Israel proper constitutes 80% of
> "Palestine"(the country you'd like to see in place after we're driven
> into the sea), currently known as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
> That fantasy of yours also completely ignores the geography of the
> original Palestinian mandate, which included not only those areas, but
> also the entire much larger area of Trans-Jordan, (Now the state of
> Jordan) which was supposed to be a "homeland" for the Arabs (AKA
> "Palestinians) while the area to the west of the Jordan was to be a
> Jewish state.
Note on the so-called West Bank: so-called because Jordan conquered it
from the UN-designated area allocated to the projected Arab state in
western Palestine, and annexed it in violation of UNGAR 181, at the
time time Egypt seized the Gaza Strip. As it's been 40 years since the
West Bank ceased to be the West Bank, it's long past time to call it
by something more accurate.
> AFA the settlements, if it weren't for Arab hatred of Jews, it
> wouldn't be necessary to have IDF forces to guard what would otherwise
> simply be Jewish communities living in the West Bank and Gaza; no
> different than the Arab communities currently existing inside Israel.
> Or do you argue that all Arab states have a right to be free of Jews,
> while Jews must tolerate large numbers of Arabs living inside our
> state? It's called a "double standard" when you allow different norms
> for Arab nations than you do for the civilized nations.
And when such a double standard is employed in criticism of Israel,
the criticism ceases to be legitimate.
> And no one has suggested that the green line is an acceptable
> international border. The Arabs don't accept that, because they aren't
> willing to allow for Israel to exist. Even the various treaties
> negotiated over the years concede that the green line is only an
> arbitrary point that has little to do with the eventual borders of
> Israel.
The so-called "green line" is nothing more than the armistice line of
1949. Armistice lines are not borders, and never have been. They're
merely the line where the fighting stopped.
> So with whom would you have Israel "join in the declaration
> of her boundries at the green line"?
Saudi Arabia or the PA, I would guess.
> Your entire thesis seems to be that we Jews control America from
> backstage and that we need to stop doing so. Correct? That's what I
> thought. You can pick up your white robe and hood from the checkstand
> on the way out...
> Eliyahu
If Jews control America, I want a raise.
Deborah
dsha...@gmail.com
> news:1171402140....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> snip
> > I don't especially want to talk about Palestinians, but I don't see
> > why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
On Feb 13, 4:15 pm, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> And for the umpteenth time, so who's stopping you?
> Best regards,
> ---Cindy S.
I would hope the moderators would stop threads which threaten to
devolve into yet another rant about the Palestinians, the "largest per
capita recipients of aid in the world". Take it to the unmoderated
groups.
Deborah
Yisroel Markov
Thanks for posting that. I was at that speech, and remember how he
wiped the floor with his opponents. I saw a few of my friends in that
video, perhaps even myself.
Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member
www.reason.com -- for unbiased analysis of the world DNRC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Judge, and be prepared to be judged" -- Ayn Rand
jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:09:22 +0000 (UTC), "jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk"
> <jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk> said:
>
>
>
>
>
> >On Feb 14, 3:51 am, "Tilly" <Till...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> jameshanle...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> >> > you wouldn't like it
>
> >> > the solution to the problem was solved a long time ago.
>
> >> > Let Rabbi Meir Kahane ZTL explain it
> >> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGFk5jVxeWo
>
> >> Yes, I gathered you have very extremist views.
> >> Kahane was a racist bigot.
>
> >Do you believe in Israel's law of, "right to return" . That it should
> >apply only to jews, and not to gentiles?
> >Do you believe that, in theory, if arabs ever outnumbered jews, in
> >israel. That they, as the majourity, should be able to run the
> >country? Would you be against a non-jewish prime minister of Israel?
>
> >If you answered those questions like a normal jew, then any arab would
> >say you were a racist.
>
> >I'll let Rabbi Meir Kahane answer you directly. The accusation that
> >he was a racist, was made against him many times. Here, he responds
> >to people similar to you.
> >He starts speaking around 6 minutes in. But he responds to the charge
> >that he is a racist, around the 14th minute. This is his speach at
> >Brandeis University.
>
>
> Thanks for posting that. I was at that speech, and remember how he
> wiped the floor with his opponents. I saw a few of my friends in that
> video, perhaps even myself.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Judge, and be prepared to be judged" -- Ayn Rand- Hide quoted text -
>
that's amazing.
i'm sure people would be willing to cut one of their arms off - and
more - if it'd bring rabbi kahane back.
What struck me was the brilliance of his philosophy. In a clip from a
talk he gave to kids at "camp sdei chemed". Some really confident 16
or 17 year old kid stands up and talked with such strength and
conviction, but he disagreed with Kahane on the point of american
aid. All the kids clapped him when he finished, thinking he'd got
one on Kahane. Kahane then responded arguing against him with even
more clarity and knowledge and wisdom . And all the kids clap Kahane
even more than they clapped the other guy! But Kahane didn't smile.
He wasn't there to wipe the floor with those he argued with. That
didn't give him pleasure.
At times, when talking to the students at Brandeis, he sounded like a
wise father gently educating a wayward son. They were so full of hate,
and he was so full of sense, and in his rivers of sense, was such
wisdom and kindness and guidance.
For people to just come and hear him speak, and say "hey, he was a
great speaker!!!" That wasn't what he wanted. We never got to see it,
but he wanted to give jews strength and pride and lead the jewish
people to a torah way of life, in the jewish state. And if jews were
crazy enough to live in the diaspora, he would train them to protect
themselves from anti-semitism.
Until that time, that he could be prime minister, he needed money, and
votes.. He was so straight forward. In one audio clip, he was speaking
to his great supporters. Introducing him as Maraynu(our rabbi). He
described an event that sounded like Amona, and he described the
persecution of sephardim "the definitive book has yet to be
written.." But he said to them, that for them to come here and hear
him, doesn't do anything. They had a severe lack of funds, parties in
the knesset got about - I think - a hundred thousand shekels a month.
He told them "We need your money" !!! I'm sure he didn't like saying
it, but it had to be said. He was amongst friends. I've never heard
anybody else raising money talk like that! I'm sure it was the right
thing to say. He knew what needed to be done, and he'd get to the
point. He wasn't in it for himself at all.
My LOR once said, an "Ish" is a man that behaves like a man.
If I google torah "ish", he was an ish tam(straight), an ish tzaddik,
an ish emet, an ish ha-halacha.
ps: those 2 anti israel characters , one with the beard and one with
the suit. Which was reform minister "rabbi" axelrod?
Assuming it was the guy in the suit. What kind of character was the
guy with the beard, he was like a muslim. If he was orthodox, what
was he doing standing with axelrod?! Just 'cos he was so pro arab?!
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
> fla...@verizon.net <fla...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> > On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
>>> >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>> >>
>>> >> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
>>> >> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>>> >>
>>> >> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT
>>
>> I am fairly certainly you meant "PDNFTT"....
>
> I'm certain he meant "Don't". :-)
You're right of course Tim, but just as I added the "N" to SD(N)WOTN
to avoid any misunderstanding, I should have added it here as well.
Thanks Susan and Tim for thinking kindly of me.
dsha...@gmail.com
> > > Thanks for posting this very interesting article.
> > > The answer to the question you post in your header is "probably not,"
> > > unless your idea of a *conversation* consists of name-calling and
> > > misrepresentations of any position you may take that is perceived as
> > > not blindly pro-Israel.
> > > Perhaps the thing that really gives succour to anti-Semites is the
> > > perception that Israel and its policies may not be questioned at all
> > > without aspersions being cast upon the character of the questioner.
> > > -- Q
> On Feb 12, 7:55 pm, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> > (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> > thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> > defamatory toward both Israel and the US,
On Feb 13, 4:25 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> While it may be incorrect to repost a copyrighted article, people do
> it because they wish to facilitate discussion and not because they are
> looking for trouble.
People post copyrighted materials all the time. AFAIK, no one has been
taken to task for it, so long as attribution is made.
> I don't know what Cazador's posting history is,
Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
and the US.
>but I hope controversy isn't forbidden at SCJM
This is a moderated JEWISH newsgroup. Controversy is built in.
>, because it seems to me that many people
> engage in it, including those who clearly are not trolls.
> we can safely assume that
> > he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> > and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> > under bridges...
> Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> impose fake rules on it. -- Q
What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
of Israel.
Deborah
Henry Goodman
news:i%7Ah.895$tD2...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
rather not
> read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
OK. So this is a test case for the debate we had a few weeks ago on
whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
Opinions?
--
Henry Goodman
henry dot goodman at virgin dot net
cindys
news:1171488875.2...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...
Me too. As I've stated many times, SCJM was not created to provide a
forum
for people to slam Israel or her so-called *oppression* of the *poor
Palestinians.* These kinds of posts have been appearing more and more
frequently on SCJM, and I voice my objection every time I see one of
them.
But at any rate, there have been quite a few posts from the above
poster in
this vein, so it doesn't seem as if anyone has prevented her from
"taking
part in the discussion in progress" (as she suggests) despite the fact
that
she did in fact come here specifically to initiate a discussion about
the
*poor oppressed Palestinians* as portrayed in Jimmy Carter's book.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
quon...@yahoo.com
> <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1171488875.2...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...>> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >>news:1171402140....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >> snip
> >> > I don't especially want to talk about Palestinians, but I don't see
> >> > why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
>
> > On Feb 13, 4:15 pm, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> >> And for the umpteenth time, so who's stopping you?
> >> Best regards,
> >> ---Cindy S.
>
> > I would hope the moderators would stop threads which threaten to
> > devolve into yet another rant about the Palestinians, the "largest per
> > capita recipients of aid in the world". Take it to the unmoderated
> > groups.
>
> -----------
> Me too. As I've stated many times, SCJM was not created to provide a
> forum
> for people to slam Israel or her so-called *oppression* of the *poor
> Palestinians.*
Who has written anything about "poor Palestinians?"
I think you need to document what you write, because if you are
talking about me, what you are writing is completely untrue.
>These kinds of posts have been appearing more and more
> frequently on SCJM, and I voice my objection every time I see one of
> them.
Are you saying that only one opinion is permitted in this newsgroup?
Do you think that the moderators should exclude other opinions, or
posters who have other opinions?
> But at any rate, there have been quite a few posts from the above
> poster in
> this vein,
That is false. I have written absolutely nothing that a normal person
could possibly construe as supporting the Palestinians or as "slamming
Israel.".
>so it doesn't seem as if anyone has prevented her from
> "taking
> part in the discussion in progress" (as she suggests) despite the fact
> that
> she did in fact come here specifically to initiate a discussion about
> the
> *poor oppressed Palestinians* as portrayed in Jimmy Carter's book.
1. I have never used the words you have -- for reasons best known to
yourself -- put in quotes: "poor oppressed Palestinians." So that
not something I wrote; it is a fabrication of yours that you not only
persist in repeating, but embellish with each repetition.
2. I did not inititate any discussion about Carter's book, or any
other discussion that I have participated in. And I am far more
interested in the way people have reacted to Carter's book than I am
in the issues it is about.
3. And how would *you* know how Jimmy Carter portrays the
Palestinians in his book, since you have not read it? -- Q
> Best regards,
> ---Cindy S.
quon...@yahoo.com
> > > On Feb 12, 3:45 pm, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > Thanks for posting this very interesting article.
> > > > The answer to the question you post in your header is "probably not,"
> > > > unless your idea of a *conversation* consists of name-calling and
> > > > misrepresentations of any position you may take that is perceived as
> > > > not blindly pro-Israel.
> > > > Perhaps the thing that really gives succour to anti-Semites is the
> > > > perception that Israel and its policies may not be questioned at all
> > > > without aspersions being cast upon the character of the questioner.
> > > > -- Q
> > On Feb 12, 7:55 pm, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> > > (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> > > thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> > > defamatory toward both Israel and the US,
>
> On Feb 13, 4:25 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > While it may be incorrect to repost a copyrighted article, people do
> > it because they wish to facilitate discussion and not because they are
> > looking for trouble.
>
> People post copyrighted materials all the time. AFAIK, no one has been
> taken to task for it, so long as attribution is made.
Copyright is one of those subjects that has been debated into the
ground on usenet. While I understand why the moderators would exclude
entire articles -- whether attributed or not -- my belief -- which
case law has tended to support -- is that posting to the usenet is
not "publishing" and that copyright law does not apply to it.
>
> > I don't know what Cazador's posting history is,
>
> Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
> and the US.
I don't read the groups where he posts, but I am sorry to hear that he
is a person with that sort of axe to grind.
>
> >but I hope controversy isn't forbidden at SCJM
>
> This is a moderated JEWISH newsgroup. Controversy is built in.
>
> >, because it seems to me that many people
> > engage in it, including those who clearly are not trolls.
> > we can safely assume that
> > > he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> > > and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> > > under bridges...
> > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
>
> What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
> of Israel.
The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
case may be) as an antisemite.
Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
except a further descent into personal insult.
-- Q
>
> Deborah
cindys
> On Feb 15, 9:07 am, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:1171488875.2...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...>> <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > >>news:1171402140....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > >> snip
> > >> > I don't especially want to talk about Palestinians, but I don't see
> > >> > why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
>
> > > On Feb 13, 4:15 pm, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> > >> And for the umpteenth time, so who's stopping you?
> > >> Best regards,
> > >> ---Cindy S.
>
> > > I would hope the moderators would stop threads which threaten to
> > > devolve into yet another rant about the Palestinians, the "largest per
> > > capita recipients of aid in the world". Take it to the unmoderated
> > > groups.
>
> > -----------
> > Me too. As I've stated many times, SCJM was not created to provide a
> > forum
> > for people to slam Israel or her so-called *oppression* of the *poor
> > Palestinians.*
>
> Who has written anything about "poor Palestinians?"
Several people have written posts criticizing Israel for her so-called
*oppression* of the "Palestinians."
>
> I think you need to document what you write, because if you are
> talking about me, what you are writing is completely untrue.
Really.
>
> >These kinds of posts have been appearing more and more
> > frequently on SCJM, and I voice my objection every time I see one of
> > them.
>
> Are you saying that only one opinion is permitted in this newsgroup?
I am saying this is not a forum to criticize Israel for her so-called
*mistreatment* and *human rights violations* of a group of people who
are doing whatever they can to kill Israeli citizens and destroy
Israel.
> Do you think that the moderators should exclude other opinions, or
> posters who have other opinions?
I don't think there should be posts on SCJM that accuse Israel of
"human rights violations" and "oppression" and whatever else somebody
feels like saying. If I wanted to read this sort of anti-Israel,
antisemitic rhetoric, I would go to the unmoderated groups. The entire
subject of mid-East politics is off-topic anyway, according to the
charter, and the moderators do have the power to enforce that at will.
>
> > But at any rate, there have been quite a few posts from the above
> > poster in
> > this vein,
>
> That is false. I have written absolutely nothing that a normal person
> could possibly construe as supporting the Palestinians or as "slamming
> Israel.".
Except that you expressed (on the basis of Jimmy Carter's book) that
in your opinion Israel is being too harsh with the *Palestinians,* as
if you were in a position to judge.
>
> >so it doesn't seem as if anyone has prevented her from
> > "taking
> > part in the discussion in progress" (as she suggests) despite the fact
> > that
> > she did in fact come here specifically to initiate a discussion about
> > the
> > *poor oppressed Palestinians* as portrayed in Jimmy Carter's book.
>
> 1. I have never used the words you have -- for reasons best known to
> yourself -- put in quotes: "poor oppressed Palestinians."
No, I used asterisks.
>So that
> not something I wrote; it is a fabrication of yours that you not only
> persist in repeating, but embellish with each repetition.
All a person needs to do is check your posting history right here on
SCJM.
> 2. I did not inititate any discussion about Carter's book, or any
> other discussion that I have participated in.
You didn't???? You didn't come to SCJM stating that you had just read
Jimmy Carter's book and wanted to discuss it with other people who had
read it, and you wanted someone to point out any factual errors he
made in the book, citing chapter and page number ??? Gee! Well, I
guess I must have been getting you confused with Moshe Shorr or Harry
Weiss. Maybe they're the ones who posted those things.
>And I am far more
> interested in the way people have reacted to Carter's book than I am
> in the issues it is about.
Your more interested in people's reactions than the issues Carter
presented? If that were true, then why did you come to SCJM stating
that you had just read Jimmy Carter's book and wanted to discuss it
with other people who had read it and wanted someone to point out any
factual errors he made in the book, citing chapter and page
number ???
You really need to stop trying to backpedal when your claims are so
simple to refute.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
cindys
> snip
> The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> case may be) as an antisemite.
>
> Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
> but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> except a further descent into personal insult.
----------
Oh well...
Best regards,
----Cindy S.
Tim Meushaw
> The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> case may be) as an antisemite.
If it makes you feel any better, we feel that way when they're used at
the beginning of a discussion and at the end of a discussion, too, not
just when they're used in the middle of a discussion.
> Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
> but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> except a further descent into personal insult.
Fortunately, SCJM has never descended into personal insults before on
any topic, EVER, so we should be safe here. </sarcasm>
D.M. Procida
> OK. So this is a test case for the debate we had a few weeks ago on
> whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
> certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
> Opinions?
Did you mean on the basis of the person's posting history, or on the
basis of allegations of their posting history, bearing in mind that if
there's one thing this group is not short of, it's people who will
allege all kinds of things about other people, with little sense of how
outlandish their claims or spiteful their motives are.
Daniele
--
<http://vurt.org>
cindys
> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>
> news:i%7Ah.895$tD2...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> rather not
> > read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>
> OK. So this is a test case for the debate we had a few weeks ago on
> whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
> certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
> Opinions?
Personally, I'd like him out of here. But in this particular case, you
don't have to modify the charter to ban him as an individual on the
basis of his posting history. His post is off-topic for SCJM.
Discussions of Israel and the *Palestinians* are off-topic (per the
charter). If he would like to share his gefilte fish recipe, I
wouldn't have a problem with that ;-)
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
cindys
Procida) wrote:
I would say on the basis of his actual posting history since examples
of his actual posts were cited on SCJM (in the thread entitled "Free
Speech") within the last 24 hours. Apparently, those must not have
appeared on your newsreader. Never mind. You are free to click on over
to SCJ unmoderated to see his current posts.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
Eliyahu
quon...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Feb 15, 7:34 am, "dshar...@gmail.com" <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > People post copyrighted materials all the time. AFAIK, no one has been
> > taken to task for it, so long as attribution is made.
>
> Copyright is one of those subjects that has been debated into the
> ground on usenet. While I understand why the moderators would exclude
> entire articles -- whether attributed or not -- my belief -- which
> case law has tended to support -- is that posting to the usenet is
> not "publishing" and that copyright law does not apply to it.
> >
is, indeed, a form of publication controlled by copyright laws.
Sometimes a moderator will inadvertently allow something to be posted
despite copyright violation, but the policy of the newsgroup is that
you may post a link to copyrighted material and a short excerpt
(within the limits of the "fair use" doctrine"), but posting entire
articles written by someone else is still not allowed, as it violates
the law, not to mention halachic problems of theft.
Eliyahu
Yisroel Markov
<jamesh...@yahoo.co.uk> said:
[snip]
>i'm sure people would be willing to cut one of their arms off - and
>more - if it'd bring rabbi kahane back.
>
>What struck me was the brilliance of his philosophy. In a clip from a
>talk he gave to kids at "camp sdei chemed". Some really confident 16
>or 17 year old kid stands up and talked with such strength and
>conviction, but he disagreed with Kahane on the point of american
>aid. All the kids clapped him when he finished, thinking he'd got
>one on Kahane. Kahane then responded arguing against him with even
>more clarity and knowledge and wisdom . And all the kids clap Kahane
>even more than they clapped the other guy! But Kahane didn't smile.
>He wasn't there to wipe the floor with those he argued with. That
>didn't give him pleasure.
>
>At times, when talking to the students at Brandeis, he sounded like a
>wise father gently educating a wayward son. They were so full of hate,
>and he was so full of sense, and in his rivers of sense, was such
>wisdom and kindness and guidance.
OK, "wipe the floor" was not a good expression to use. He answered all
questions, and no one had a good comeback.
[snip]
>
>ps: those 2 anti israel characters , one with the beard and one with
>the suit. Which was reform minister "rabbi" axelrod?
Neither. He wasn't there, to the best of my recollection.
>Assuming it was the guy in the suit. What kind of character was the
>guy with the beard, he was like a muslim. If he was orthodox, what
>was he doing standing with axelrod?! Just 'cos he was so pro arab?!
The guy in the suit was IIRC the "Orthodox adviser" of the local
Hillel. Maybe not, but I do remember him as an O rabbi, albeit a
rather liberal one. The hairy guy I don't remember at all.
Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member
www.reason.com -- for unbiased analysis of the world DNRC
dsha...@gmail.com
> > > > OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> > > > (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> > > > thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> > > > defamatory toward both Israel and the US,
> > On Feb 13, 4:25 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > While it may be incorrect to repost a copyrighted article, people do
> > > it because they wish to facilitate discussion and not because they are
> > > looking for trouble.
> <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > People post copyrighted materials all the time. AFAIK, no one has been
> > taken to task for it, so long as attribution is made.
On Feb 15, 7:46 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Copyright is one of those subjects that has been debated into the
> ground on usenet.
Further debate on it has no place here.
> > > I don't know what Cazador's posting history is,
> > Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
> > and the US.
> I don't read the groups where he posts, but I am sorry to hear that he
> is a person with that sort of axe to grind.
Not even that much of an axe. It's more like a one-note piano.
> > >but I hope controversy isn't forbidden at SCJM
> > This is a moderated JEWISH newsgroup. Controversy is built in.
> > >, because it seems to me that many people
> > > engage in it, including those who clearly are not trolls.
> > > we can safely assume that
> > > > he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> > > > and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> > > > under bridges...
> > > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> > > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> > > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> > > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
> > What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
> > of Israel.
> The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> case may be) as an antisemite.
The identification isn't always automatic. It's usually made because
those are standard catchphrases specific to anitsemites, who really
couldn't care less about Palestinians.
> Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
No, just to Jewish newsgroups, whether moderated or not.
> but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> except a further descent into personal insult.
> -- Q
Certainly there's a place to go: forward with the discussion. In the
past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
to be what she claims for others. The accuastion was simply ignored as
being of no more importance, given the source, than that cry from a
certain boy who cried it too often.
Deborah
dsha...@gmail.com
> > Copyright is one of those subjects that has been debated into the
> > ground on usenet. While I understand why the moderators would exclude
> > entire articles -- whether attributed or not -- my belief -- which
> > case law has tended to support -- is that posting to the usenet is
> > not "publishing" and that copyright law does not apply to it.
On Feb 15, 1:14 pm, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know what law school you attended, but posting on newsgroups
> is, indeed, a form of publication controlled by copyright laws.
> Sometimes a moderator will inadvertently allow something to be posted
> despite copyright violation, but the policy of the newsgroup is that
> you may post a link to copyrighted material and a short excerpt
> (within the limits of the "fair use" doctrine"), but posting entire
> articles written by someone else is still not allowed, as it violates
> the law, not to mention halachic problems of theft.
> Eliyahu
I have a feeling that I'm going to feel like I've just asked a stupid
question, but what are the halachic problems of theft here? If one
posts an article, with correct attribution and the link to the
article, what would be the difference? For me, it's more convenient to
read an article on the group, rather than using the link to the site
of the article (which occasionally fails to load). How would this
create a halachic problem of theft?
Deborah
quon...@yahoo.com
> On 2007-02-15, quond...@yahoo.com <quond...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> > discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> > expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> > lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> > papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> > case may be) as an antisemite.
>
> If it makes you feel any better, we feel that way when they're used at
> the beginning of a discussion and at the end of a discussion, too, not
> just when they're used in the middle of a discussion.
I haven't decided whether it makes me feel any better, but any
clarification -- including what you have just supplied -- is helpful.
>
> > Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
> > but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> > is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> > except a further descent into personal insult.
>
> Fortunately, SCJM has never descended into personal insults before on
> any topic, EVER, so we should be safe here. </sarcasm>
Oh. That's good.
Thanks for the chuckle. I'm okay just so long as the personal insults
are evenly spread about the newsgroup. That's the democratic way of
doing it. -- Q
>
> Tim
>
> --
> Timothy A. Meushaw
dsha...@gmail.com
> >> > why I cannot take part in a discussion that is already in progress.
> > On Feb 13, 4:15 pm, "cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> >> And for the umpteenth time, so who's stopping you?
> >> Best regards,
> >> ---Cindy S.
> <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote
> > I would hope the moderators would stop threads which threaten to
> > devolve into yet another rant about the Palestinians, the "largest per
> > capita recipients of aid in the world". Take it to the unmoderated
> > groups.
"cindys" <cste...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> Me too. As I've stated many times, SCJM was not created to provide a
> forum
> for people to slam Israel or her so-called *oppression* of the *poor
> Palestinians.* These kinds of posts have been appearing more and more
> frequently on SCJM, and I voice my objection every time I see one of
> them.
Keep up the good work.
> But at any rate, there have been quite a few posts from the above
> poster in
> this vein, so it doesn't seem as if anyone has prevented her from
> "taking
> part in the discussion in progress" (as she suggests) despite the fact
> that
> she did in fact come here specifically to initiate a discussion about
> the
> *poor oppressed Palestinians* as portrayed in Jimmy Carter's book.
> Best regards,
> ---Cindy S.
By now, we've heard everything there is to hear. Another rant in that
vein will hardly fill a page, and it's proper venue is the unmoderated
groups. This one is for Jewish subjects only, and that doesn't
qualify.
Deborah
dsha...@gmail.com
> news:i%7Ah.895$tD2...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> rather not
> > read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
On Feb 15, 5:51 am, "Henry Goodman" <henry.good...@virgin.net> wrote:
> OK. So this is a test case for the debate we had a few weeks ago on
> whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
> certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
> Opinions?
I'd prefer not to ban posters based solely on their posting history in
other groups, with the exception of extreme cases, which most of us
know. Give the poster a chance to behave. If s/he doesn't, then put on
the ban. That applies to the majority, of course, not to the minority
of complete and utter antisemitic nutjobs.
Deborah
quon...@yahoo.com
Good. Just so it's clear that I wasn't one of them.
>
>
>
> > I think you need to document what you write, because if you are
> > talking about me, what you are writing is completely untrue.
>
> Really.
Yes. Really.
>
>
>
> > >These kinds of posts have been appearing more and more
> > > frequently on SCJM, and I voice my objection every time I see one of
> > > them.
>
> > Are you saying that only one opinion is permitted in this newsgroup?
>
> I am saying this is not a forum to criticize Israel for her so-called
> *mistreatment* and *human rights violations* of a group of people who
> are doing whatever they can to kill Israeli citizens and destroy
> Israel.
Who was doing that?
>
> > Do you think that the moderators should exclude other opinions, or
> > posters who have other opinions?
>
> I don't think there should be posts on SCJM that accuse Israel of
> "human rights violations" and "oppression" and whatever else somebody
> feels like saying. If I wanted to read this sort of anti-Israel,
> antisemitic rhetoric, I would go to the unmoderated groups.
You seem to be saying that this newsgroup should only contain that
which *you* want to read. I thought this was an appropriate forum to
discuss Jimmy Carter's book, especially inasmuch as such a discussion
was already in progress. I guess I was wrong about that.
> The entire
> subject of mid-East politics is off-topic anyway, according to the
> charter, and the moderators do have the power to enforce that at will.
Understood. But -- as I say -- these discussion that I joined were
already in progress. It's not as if I arrived here and imposed these
discussions on SCJM.
>
>
>
> > > But at any rate, there have been quite a few posts from the above
> > > poster in
> > > this vein,
>
> > That is false. I have written absolutely nothing that a normal person
> > could possibly construe as supporting the Palestinians or as "slamming
> > Israel.".
>
> Except that you expressed (on the basis of Jimmy Carter's book) that
> in your opinion Israel is being too harsh with the *Palestinians,* as
> if you were in a position to judge.
I am not in a position to judge, and I have not expressed any such
opinion. I think you need to go back are reread what I actually wrote
before writing further misrepresentations of what you think are my
opinions.
>
>
>
> > >so it doesn't seem as if anyone has prevented her from
> > > "taking
> > > part in the discussion in progress" (as she suggests) despite the fact
> > > that
> > > she did in fact come here specifically to initiate a discussion about
> > > the
> > > *poor oppressed Palestinians* as portrayed in Jimmy Carter's book.
>
> > 1. I have never used the words you have -- for reasons best known to
> > yourself -- put in quotes: "poor oppressed Palestinians."
>
> No, I used asterisks.
Same thing.
>
> >So that
> > not something I wrote; it is a fabrication of yours that you not only
> > persist in repeating, but embellish with each repetition.
>
> All a person needs to do is check your posting history right here on
> SCJM.
No person -- and especially not you -- seems to be willing to do
that. You cannot cite a single instance where I have said I believe
that the Palestinians are oppressed.
>
> > 2. I did not inititate any discussion about Carter's book, or any
> > other discussion that I have participated in.
>
> You didn't???? You didn't come to SCJM stating that you had just read
> Jimmy Carter's book and wanted to discuss it with other people who had
> read it, and you wanted someone to point out any factual errors he
> made in the book, citing chapter and page number ???
I wrote a post asking for further information, yes, but the thread
critical of Jimmy Carter's book was already in progress. I think
it's a reasonable request to make of people who have read a book and
are criticizing it. Little did I know that the modus operandi around
here is to skip the "reading" part, before proceeding with the
"criticism."
>Gee! Well, I
> guess I must have been getting you confused with Moshe Shorr or Harry
> Weiss.
God forbid.
>Maybe they're the ones who posted those things.
>
> >And I am far more
> > interested in the way people have reacted to Carter's book than I am
> > in the issues it is about.
>
> Your more interested in people's reactions than the issues Carter
> presented? If that were true, then why did you come to SCJM stating
> that you had just read Jimmy Carter's book and wanted to discuss it
> with other people who had read it and wanted someone to point out any
> factual errors he made in the book, citing chapter and page
> number ???
Because I can certainly understand the anger if Carter made false
claims in his book. But I am not -- as I have already said quite a
few times -- familiar enough with the history in question to know
which parts of the book are inaccurate.
>
> You really need to stop trying to backpedal when your claims are so
> simple to refute.
They are simple to "refute," only if your way of refuting them is to
hurl insults, and refuse to supply documentation. -- Q
> Best regards,
> ---Cindy S.
fla...@verizon.net
On 15-Feb-2007, "cindys" <cst...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> His post is off-topic for SCJM.
> Discussions of Israel and the *Palestinians* are off-topic (per the
> charter). If he would like to share his gefilte fish recipe, I
> wouldn't have a problem with that ;-)
I would - <bwlechch>!!
Susan, already picking out crayons.
quon...@yahoo.com
> > > > On Feb 12, 7:55 pm, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> > > > > (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> > > > > thing on other newsgroups with nothing but material critical or
> > > > > defamatory toward both Israel and the US,
> > > On Feb 13, 4:25 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > While it may be incorrect to repost a copyrighted article, people do
> > > > it because they wish to facilitate discussion and not because they are
> > > > looking for trouble.
> > <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > People post copyrighted materials all the time. AFAIK, no one has been
> > > taken to task for it, so long as attribution is made.
>
> On Feb 15, 7:46 am, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > Copyright is one of those subjects that has been debated into the
> > ground on usenet.
>
> Further debate on it has no place here.
Good. Because I don't want to discuss it.
>
> > > > I don't know what Cazador's posting history is,
> > > Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
> > > and the US.
> > I don't read the groups where he posts, but I am sorry to hear that he
> > is a person with that sort of axe to grind.
>
> Not even that much of an axe. It's more like a one-note piano.
I really don't think I am a bird of that particular feather, as Moshe
put it.
>
>
>
> > > >but I hope controversy isn't forbidden at SCJM
> > > This is a moderated JEWISH newsgroup. Controversy is built in.
> > > >, because it seems to me that many people
> > > > engage in it, including those who clearly are not trolls.
> > > > we can safely assume that
> > > > > he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> > > > > and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> > > > > under bridges...
> > > > Maybe. But regardless of who posted it -- or why -- the article
> > > > raises some interesting points about how dialogue -- which I think is
> > > > a good and necessary thing in general -- gets derailed by people who
> > > > impose fake rules on it. -- Q
> > > What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
> > > of Israel.
> > The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> > discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> > expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> > lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> > papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> > case may be) as an antisemite.
>
> The identification isn't always automatic. It's usually made because
> those are standard catchphrases specific to anitsemites, who really
> couldn't care less about Palestinians.
I understand that. But I'm finding that some people are a little too
quick to tar strangers with that brush. My opinions -- to the extent
that I even have any -- aren't very different from those of many
posters who have not been accused of posting "antisemitic trash."
>
> > Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
>
> No, just to Jewish newsgroups, whether moderated or not.
It's apparently impossible to conduct any kind of discussion at all in
the unmoderated Jewish newsgroups.
>
> > but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> > is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> > except a further descent into personal insult.
> > -- Q
>
> Certainly there's a place to go: forward with the discussion.
That's what I've been trying to do, with a bit of guidance from the
moderators.
> In the
> past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
> by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
> we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
> to be what she claims for others.
It's a very bad way to conduct a dialogue. It should be possible to
question the party line -- assuming there is one -- without being
labeled an evil person.
> The accuastion was simply ignored as
> being of no more importance, given the source, than that cry from a
> certain boy who cried it too often.
Thank you for telling me that. I guess I need to get outside of
myself and look around a little bit more. It's important to consider
the source -- as they say. That's something I probably need to learn
how to do. -- Q
>
> Deborah
Jim F.
"cindys" <cst...@rochester.rr.com> wrote in message
news:1171547925.8...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> On Feb 15, 8:51 am, "Henry Goodman" <henry.good...@virgin.net> wrote:
>> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>>
>> news:i%7Ah.895$tD2...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>>
>> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
>> rather not
>> > read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>>
>> OK. So this is a test case for the debate we had a few weeks ago on
>> whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
>> certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
>> Opinions?
> -----------
> Personally, I'd like him out of here. But in this particular case, you
> don't have to modify the charter to ban him as an individual on the
> basis of his posting history. His post is off-topic for SCJM.
> Discussions of Israel and the *Palestinians* are off-topic (per the
> charter).
Alas, that's a rule that is more honored here in the breach than
in the practice. I have seen multitudes of discussions here
concernng Israel, the Palestinians, and the Middle East.
I am not sure why this newsgroup should have such a rule,
if the mods for whatever reason are unwilling to enforce it,
or this rule is enforced in an inconsistent manner. That sort
of thing doesn't do either the mods or the newsgroup much
good IMO. This rule should either be dropped or modified
or otherwise clarified. There is no reason to have a rule prohibiting
discussions of certain topics if it is not going to be enforced or if
it is going to be enforced in an inconsistent manner.
D.M. Procida
> > Did you mean on the basis of the person's posting history, or on the
> > basis of allegations of their posting history, bearing in mind that if
> > there's one thing this group is not short of, it's people who will
> > allege all kinds of things about other people, with little sense of how
> > outlandish their claims or spiteful their motives are.
> ------------
> I would say on the basis of his actual posting history since examples
> of his actual posts were cited on SCJM (in the thread entitled "Free
> Speech") within the last 24 hours. Apparently, those must not have
> appeared on your newsreader. Never mind. You are free to click on over
> to SCJ unmoderated to see his current posts.
I was thinking of people in general, not this person, about whom I know
absolutely nothing.
The problem with basing these kind of exclusion on this sort of
allegation is this:
Just suppose, for example, that a lying liar tried to discredit another
person in a discussion by mendaciously claiming that they are
unhealthily obsessed with circumcision and have been posting about it to
Usenet for 13 years (whereas in fact the truth is that they posted once,
thirteen years ago, and mentioned it in passing in the context of
debunking an urban legend about it).
Would you think that such a person's allegations about other people
should be given any credence?
Suppose that someone introduced someone to the group, vouching for them
"personally", only for it to turn out very shortly afterwards that the
personal reference was entirely unreliable, and that the would-be
sponsor had in fact just introduced a person who had arrived under a
false name, age, religion and identity.
Would you consider such a person to be a reliable guide to who should
and should not be allowed to post?
I am sure you would agree that someone as dishonest and foolish as this
does not have any business whatsoever in trying to control who gets to
speak and who doesn't.
Daniele
--
<http://vurt.org>
fla...@verizon.net
> > but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> > is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> > except a further descent into personal insult.
> > -- Q
>
> Certainly there's a place to go: forward with the discussion. In the
> past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
> by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
> we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
> to be what she claims for others. The accuastion was simply ignored as
> being of no more importance, given the source, than that cry from a
> certain boy who cried it too often.
There is always a place to go after an accusation like that: it's called
"proof".
It either exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then the caller has a lot of
egg
on his/her face. If not, then we know where the egg goes.
Susan
Eliyahu
The theft would occur if (1) it is posted without attribution,
creating the impression that the poster were the real author, and
probably (2) if it's posted without permission of the author or his
agent.
Eliyahu
Henry Goodman
news:53kct9F...@mid.individual.net...
An explanation of the situation regarding discussion of Israeli topics
on scjm.
When scjm was set up (1999?) there were 2 unmoderated groups
soc.culture.jewish (scj) and soc.culture.israel (sci). The intention
was to set up a moderated group to discuss Jewish subjects because scj
was infested with anti-Semites and missionaries, so the charter
suggested that discussions of Israel should take place on sci. Later,
following the intifada of 2000, it was deemed inappropriate to ignore
the situation in Israel which was of critical importance to the Jewish
people. Further, sci became infested by trolls with strong anti-Israel
views and was no longer a suitable place to discuss Israeli topics. So
the moderators have allowed threads concerning Israeli topics; this
has been done consistently; I don't think the "Israel" rejection
reason has been used for a long time.
We are now developing a method for modifying the charter of scjm so
possibly that clause can be dropped officially.
The alternative would be to set up a modified group (scim?) to discuss
Israeli issues with different moderators (presumably based in Israel).
This would require substantial effort to set up. Any volunteers?
fla...@verizon.net
On 15-Feb-2007, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
> Tim Meushaw <meu...@pobox.com> writes:
> > fla...@verizon.net <fla...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>> > On Feb 13, 6:11 am, mos...@mm.huji.ac.il wrote:
> >>> >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> writes:
> >>> >>
> >>> >> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> >>> >> > rather not read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Absolutely. The rule PDFTT
> >>
> >> I am fairly certainly you meant "PDNFTT"....
> >
> > I'm certain he meant "Don't". :-)
>
> You're right of course Tim, but just as I added the "N" to SD(N)WOTN
> to avoid any misunderstanding, I should have added it here as well.
In fact, it was *specifically* that which made me think that you had
accidentally left it out.
>
> Thanks Susan and Tim for thinking kindly of me.
You make it difficult not to.
Susan
>
> Moshe Schorr
> It is a tremendous Mitzvah to always be happy! - Reb Nachman of Breslov
> The home and family are the center of Judaism, *not* the synagogue.
> Disclaimer: Nothing here necessarily reflects the opinion of Hebrew
> University
cindys
Procida) wrote:
> >
>
> Just suppose, for example, that a lying liar tried to discredit another
> person in a discussion by mendaciously claiming that they are
> unhealthily obsessed with circumcision
I would say sexuality and the human body is more accurate. But that's
just my opinion.
>and have been posting about it to
> Usenet for 13 years (whereas in fact the truth is that they posted once,
> thirteen years ago, and mentioned it in passing in the context of
> debunking an urban legend about it).
Not to mention an extensive review of a book entitled the _The
Descent of Men_ by Steve Jones, which is all about male sexuality.
Nothing wrong with writing a book review of course.
>
> Would you think that such a person's allegations about other people
> should be given any credence?
Why not?
>
> Suppose that someone introduced someone to the group, vouching for them
> "personally", only for it to turn out very shortly afterwards that the
> personal reference was entirely unreliable,
Actually, it was completely reliable.
>and that the would-be
> sponsor had in fact just introduced a person who had arrived under a
> false name, age, religion and identity.
And suppose said person knew this individual off-line and knew the
reasons for this misrepresentation but reasons remain confidential.
Nobody is obligated to divulge personal information on Usenet. An
error in judgment (on the part of the other poster) at worst.
>
> Would you consider such a person to be a reliable guide to who should
> and should not be allowed to post?
Why not? When said person has a well-established posting history of
many years duration and has spoken with a number of other posters on
the phone and met several of them face-to-face. I think said person
has a lot more credibility than a "high-browed antisemite" whose
presence has driven any number of long-term posters from this group.
>
> I am sure you would agree that someone as dishonest and foolish as this
> does not have any business whatsoever in trying to control who gets to
> speak and who doesn't.
>
The only people who get to control who gets to speak and who doesn't
are the moderators. But it does get a little tiresome listening to new
posters complain that the regulars are somehow interfering with their
freedom of speech, even though they (the new posters) post profusely
and their numerous posts are accepted daily, including the complaints
that someone is trying to "shut [them] up." The moderators haven't
been rejecting your posts now have they (including this one)? So, why
don't you get over it already?
Best regards,
---Cindy S.
fla...@verizon.net
On 16-Feb-2007, "cindys" <cst...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> But it does get a little tiresome listening to new
> posters complain that the regulars are somehow interfering with their
> freedom of speech, even though they (the new posters) post profusely
> and their numerous posts are accepted daily, including the complaints
> that someone is trying to "shut [them] up."
And even more tiresome for them to misrepresent past events in
order to make themselves look innocent, all the while proclaiming
they are.
If they are innocent, do they need to keep proving it?
No one's said anything since the mistakes - except him.
Susan
Eliyahu
supporting Israel's right to exist is just some sort of "party line",
and that it ought to be open for debate. I can assure you that it's
not just a "party line", but, rather, one of the fundamentals of our
newsgroup -- that the right of Israel to a continued existence is not
open to question or discussion. We aren't Satmar; we aren't NK, and
posts questioning the right of Israel's existence continue to be off-
topic here.
Eliyahu
quon...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 15, 11:29 pm, quond...@yahoo.com wrote:> On Feb 15, 6:33 pm, "dshar...@gmail.com" <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > In the
> > > past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
> > > by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
> > > we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
> > > to be what she claims for others.
>
> > It's a very bad way to conduct a dialogue. It should be possible to
> > question the party line -- assuming there is one -- without being
> > labeled an evil person.
>
> Part of the issue is the apparent assumption by a few people that
> supporting Israel's right to exist is just some sort of "party line",
> and that it ought to be open for debate.
I haven't seen any threads like that. What I meant by "party line"
was the insistence -- or, if you prefer, the *suggestion* -- that
terms such as "occupied territories" and "Palestinians" not be used.
>I can assure you that it's
> not just a "party line", but, rather, one of the fundamentals of our
> newsgroup -- that the right of Israel to a continued existence is not
> open to question or discussion.
I certainly wasn't discussing it -- if that's where you're heading
with this.
> We aren't Satmar; we aren't NK, and
> posts questioning the right of Israel's existence continue to be off-
> topic here.
Fair enough. But that's not what I was referring to. -- Q
>
> Eliyahu
dsha...@gmail.com
> > > I don't know what law school you attended, but posting on newsgroups
> > > is, indeed, a form of publication controlled by copyright laws.
> > > Sometimes a moderator will inadvertently allow something to be posted
> > > despite copyright violation, but the policy of the newsgroup is that
> > > you may post a link to copyrighted material and a short excerpt
> > > (within the limits of the "fair use" doctrine"), but posting entire
> > > articles written by someone else is still not allowed, as it violates
> > > the law, not to mention halachic problems of theft.
> > > Eliyahu
> > I have a feeling that I'm going to feel like I've just asked a stupid
> > question, but what are the halachic problems of theft here? If one
> > posts an article, with correct attribution and the link to the
> > article, what would be the difference? For me, it's more convenient to
> > read an article on the group, rather than using the link to the site
> > of the article (which occasionally fails to load). How would this
> > create a halachic problem of theft?
> > Deborah
On Feb 16, 4:39 am, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The theft would occur if (1) it is posted without attribution,
> creating the impression that the poster were the real author, and
> probably (2) if it's posted without permission of the author or his
> agent.
> Eliyahu
I can clearly see the theft in (1); that, simply, is plagiarism. The
reason in (2) is in a greyer area. Would the author give his/her
permission for a reprint of the article on a Usenet discussion group,
which would allow for a wider (not much wider, granted) audience for
the article? That's something few, if any, authors would reject. In
the second case, I tend to see any objection as coming from the owners
of the venue(s) in which the article appeared, in that one avoids the
irritating adverts which are the life blood of any publication.
(I once asked a reporter for The Oregonian if she had any objection to
her articles appearing on usenet. Her answer: "Hell, no, as long as
they spell my name right. And don't edit anything I wrote." Just an
opinion.)
Deborah
dsha...@gmail.com
> > > > Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
> > > > and the US.
> > > I don't read the groups where he posts, but I am sorry to hear that he
> > > is a person with that sort of axe to grind.
> > Not even that much of an axe. It's more like a one-note piano.
quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I really don't think I am a bird of that particular feather, as Moshe
> put it.
Which Moshe?
> > > > What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
> > > > of Israel.
> > > The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> > > discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> > > expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> > > lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> > > papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> > > case may be) as an antisemite.
> > The identification isn't always automatic. It's usually made because
> > those are standard catchphrases specific to anitsemites, who really
> > couldn't care less about Palestinians.
> I understand that. But I'm finding that some people are a little too
> quick to tar strangers with that brush. My opinions -- to the extent
> that I even have any -- aren't very different from those of many
> posters who have not been accused of posting "antisemitic trash."
It could be the way they're presented. It's a touchy subject, made all
the more sensitive because so many use it as a cover for virulent
antisemitism.
> > > Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
> > No, just to Jewish newsgroups, whether moderated or not.
> It's apparently impossible to conduct any kind of discussion at all in
> the unmoderated Jewish newsgroups.
That wasn't always the case. It became so, and now we have the
moderated group--thank heaven for that.
> > > but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> > > is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> > > except a further descent into personal insult.
> > Certainly there's a place to go: forward with the discussion.
> That's what I've been trying to do, with a bit of guidance from the
> moderators.
> > In the
> > past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
> > by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
> > we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
> > to be what she claims for others.
> It's a very bad way to conduct a dialogue. It should be possible to
> question the party line -- assuming there is one -- without being
> labeled an evil person.
As it happens, bigots, such as the poster who was very quick with the
label, aren't interested in questioning the "party line", or in
debate. They hew strictly to their agenda, however much the facts
dispute it.
> > The accuastion was simply ignored as
> > being of no more importance, given the source, than that cry from a
> > certain boy who cried it too often.
> Thank you for telling me that. I guess I need to get outside of
> myself and look around a little bit more. It's important to consider
> the source -- as they say. That's something I probably need to learn
> how to do. -- Q
HTH.
Deborah
Abe Kohen
Best,
Abe
2-18-07
R'foo-ah shlay-ma l' Zahava Fruma bat Miriam
R'foo-ah shlay-ma to all victims of Islamofascist terror
"Cazador" <coaste...@yahoo.com> wrote
A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community
over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a
British historian who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling
any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to
anti-Semites. One thing's for sure: any appearance of consensus over
the Middle East has been shattered.
Gaby Wood
Sunday February 11, 2007
The Observer
[copyrighted material deleted]
Abe Kohen
>
> OTOH, when someone shows up here and reposts a copyrighted article
> (mods slipped up there...), and has a long history of doing the same
> defamatory toward both Israel and the US, we can safely assume that
> he's not looking for discussion, but only wants to stir the pot a bit
> and watch things boil. Sort of like the mythical beings that dwell
> under bridges...
Thank you, Eliyahu.
Eliyahu
article, as it was done for hire. In any case, we can't just presume
that they will give us permission to republish what they own, but must
ask. As an example, I have written permission from kashrut.com to
publish their alerts here in SCJM. Similarly, other sources will have
a statement at the end of an article giving express permission to
republish, including the conditions of that permission. I can
guarantee you, however, that the NY Times, LA Times, JPost, MSNBC,
etc., do not allow republication without permission.
To give this a more topical tie-in, the author of The Jewish
Connection suggests that quotation marks were originally a Jewish
idea, designed to avoid the halachic prohibition against theft in
quoting another author, by making it clear that the cited material was
not original.
Eliyahu
Abe Kohen
> "Jim F." <m...@privacy.net> wrote
> > "cindys" <cst...@rochester.rr.com> wrote
> > > "Henry Goodman" <henry.good...@virgin.net> wrote:
> > >> "Patricia Heil" <pajh...@earthlink.net> wrote in
> >
>
> on scjm.
> When scjm was set up (1999?) there were 2 unmoderated groups
> soc.culture.jewish (scj) and soc.culture.israel (sci). The intention
> was to set up a moderated group to discuss Jewish subjects because scj
> was infested with anti-Semites and missionaries, so the charter
> suggested that discussions of Israel should take place on sci. Later,
> following the intifada of 2000, it was deemed inappropriate to ignore
> the situation in Israel which was of critical importance to the Jewish
> people. Further, sci became infested by trolls with strong anti-Israel
> views and was no longer a suitable place to discuss Israeli topics. So
> the moderators have allowed threads concerning Israeli topics; this
> has been done consistently; I don't think the "Israel" rejection
> reason has been used for a long time.
> We are now developing a method for modifying the charter of scjm so
> possibly that clause can be dropped officially.
> The alternative would be to set up a modified group (scim?) to discuss
> Israeli issues with different moderators (presumably based in Israel).
> This would require substantial effort to set up. Any volunteers?
This would be playing into the hands of self-hating Jews and other
anti-semites who espouse the view that one can be anti-Israel and not be an
anti-semite.
The enemies of Israel shout Itbah-al-Yahud.
quon...@yahoo.com
> <dshar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > Posting nothing but material critical or defamatory toward both Israel
> > > > > and the US.
> > > > I don't read the groups where he posts, but I am sorry to hear that he
> > > > is a person with that sort of axe to grind.
> > > Not even that much of an axe. It's more like a one-note piano.
> quond...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > I really don't think I am a bird of that particular feather, as Moshe
> > put it.
>
> Which Moshe?
Moshe Schorr.
>
> > > > > What rules are those? I have never seen any rules posted on critique
> > > > > of Israel.
> > > > The "fake rules" I was referring to is when -- in the middle of a
> > > > discussion -- one of the parties says that people who use words and
> > > > expressions like "Palestinians" or "Occupied Territories" or "Jewish
> > > > lobby" that such usage -- which many posters read in their daily
> > > > papers -- automatically identifies the speaker (or the poster, as the
> > > > case may be) as an antisemite.
> > > The identification isn't always automatic. It's usually made because
> > > those are standard catchphrases specific to anitsemites, who really
> > > couldn't care less about Palestinians.
> > I understand that. But I'm finding that some people are a little too
> > quick to tar strangers with that brush. My opinions -- to the extent
> > that I even have any -- aren't very different from those of many
> > posters who have not been accused of posting "antisemitic trash."
>
> It could be the way they're presented. It's a touchy subject, made all
> the more sensitive because so many use it as a cover for virulent
> antisemitism.
I am aware of that. But the assumption seems to be that a newcomer is
an antisemite, until proved otherwise.
And I don't really know how anybody can prove they are not
antisemitic, especially if a handful of other parties to the
discussion insist on altering that person's words and treated, w/o
quoting her directly, and treating their "enhanced" version as
"evidence.".
>
> > > > Maybe controversy is built-in to the notion of a moderated newsgroup,
> > > No, just to Jewish newsgroups, whether moderated or not.
> > It's apparently impossible to conduct any kind of discussion at all in
> > the unmoderated Jewish newsgroups.
>
> That wasn't always the case. It became so, and now we have the
> moderated group--thank heaven for that.
There is another side to that coin, which is that people should try to
restrain themselves from addressing trolls of any kind, and especially
the antisemitic ones. Arguing with antisemitic trolls only adds fuel
to the fire. And doing so has never -- since the beginning of the
usenet, and even in the dark ages before that -- convinced anybody to
change their beliefs. More than one newsgroup has been wrecked
because a poster refused to ignore trolls.
>
> > > > but that sort of tactic is definitely a conversation stopper. There
> > > > is nowhere to go after somebody has accused somebody else of bigotry,
> > > > except a further descent into personal insult.
> > > Certainly there's a place to go: forward with the discussion.
> > That's what I've been trying to do, with a bit of guidance from the
> > moderators.
> > > In the
> > > past two days, I and two other posters were repeatedly called bigots
> > > by another poster, who then accused us of calling her a bigot, which
> > > we hadn't done. Unsurprisingly, she's already shown herself repeatedly
> > > to be what she claims for others.
> > It's a very bad way to conduct a dialogue. It should be possible to
> > question the party line -- assuming there is one -- without being
> > labeled an evil person.
>
> As it happens, bigots, such as the poster who was very quick with the
> label, aren't interested in questioning the "party line", or in
> debate. They hew strictly to their agenda, however much the facts
> dispute it.
The method seems to be to shove the actual facts aside, substitute
something rather different from the facts, and argue against that.
>
> > > The accuastion was simply ignored as
> > > being of no more importance, given the source, than that cry from a
> > > certain boy who cried it too often.
> > Thank you for telling me that. I guess I need to get outside of
> > myself and look around a little bit more. It's important to consider
> > the source -- as they say. That's something I probably need to learn
> > how to do. -- Q
>
> HTH.
It does. A lot. Thanks very much. -- Q
>
> Deborah
Giorgies E. Geshahnna
Is there such an halachic prohibition? If yes, where is such
prohibition against theft by quoting material without correct
attribution documented? And if there be such documented source, is the
source older that the recorded use of quotation marks? I doubt it. Are
quotation marks mentioned in halachic literature at all?
Those who follow my writings here and on certain other venues, and who
remember me when I went by the name of Ke------iom will recall the
whimsical poetry to which I occasionally treated the users. and while
I would certainly look askance at anyone who republished my poems
without permission or proper attribution, I do not believe any
actually issur is violated thereby. But perhaps there is. in that
case, could I sue and recover damages in beth din? And if the
transggression were willfull, could I perhaps recover triple damages
as penalty? It matters little. God has boestowed ample monetary wealth
upon both Hannes and me, and we are not in need of monies awarded in
beith din.
Giorgies
wishing happy imbibing on forthcoming purime
Patricia Heil
"Abe Kohen" <ako...@xenon.stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:er9ndh$j69$1...@falcon.steinthal.us...
Ask Fiona
dsha...@gmail.com
On Feb 18, 9:19 am, "Eliyahu" <lro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's often the owners of the venue who own the copyright for an
> article, as it was done for hire. In any case, we can't just presume
> that they will give us permission to republish what they own, but must
> ask. As an example, I have written permission from kashrut.com to
> publish their alerts here in SCJM. Similarly, other sources will have
> a statement at the end of an article giving express permission to
> republish, including the conditions of that permission. I can
> guarantee you, however, that the NY Times, LA Times, JPost, MSNBC,
> etc., do not allow republication without permission.
Very interesting! Even on usenet, with attribution? What if the
article being quoted is one from decades ago?
> To give this a more topical tie-in, the author of The Jewish
> Connection suggests that quotation marks were originally a Jewish
> idea, designed to avoid the halachic prohibition against theft in
> quoting another author, by making it clear that the cited material was
> not original.
> Eliyahu
Now this is interesting. How far back does the usage date?
Deborah
dsha...@gmail.com
> No fair-use. No copyright notice. A long anti-semitic piece. Why?
Possibly for the same reason the same poster pasted this snippet from
the Wiki entry on biblical archaeology. For which, concerning the
alleged "example" from Dr Shanks, I've been unable to locate any
direct reference.
Archaeology and modern Israeli politics
Biblical archaeology is sometimes politically controversial,
especially when it touches on the United Monarchy period, as some
Israelis seek to use the existence of the Kingdom as support for a
Greater Israel today. Arguments against the historicity of the
Kingdom
(or perhaps an existence in a smaller and less impressive form), or
against the historicity of a recognisable Exodus, can lead to charges
of anti-Semitism, for example from Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical
Archaeology Review.
(Wikipedia)
-From: "Cazador" <coaster132...@yahoo.com>
Date: 17 Feb 2007 09:23:06 -0800
Subject: Myth, politics and anti-Semitism
Deborah
> Best,
> Abe
> 2-18-07
> R'foo-ah shlay-ma l' Zahava Fruma bat Miriam
> R'foo-ah shlay-ma to all victims of Islamofascist terror
> "Cazador" <coaster132...@yahoo.com> wrote
Abe Kohen
> "Patricia Heil" <paj...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:i%7Ah.895$tD2...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > This guy is a heavy troll on the unmoderated group and I would
> rather not
> > read him here. How do the rest of you feel?
>
> whether the charter should be changed to allow the moderators to ban
> certain posters on the basis of their posting history elsewhere.
> Opinions?
Opinions? Since you asked, sure.
The more I think about it, the more I realize it is impossible to implement.
Suppose someone is a repentant anti-semite. Such person might have posted in
the past anti-semitic drivel. Now that he has seen the light, under the new
guidelines, he would be prohibited from sharing his newly enlightened views
with us.
The second impediment is that one man's missionary is not another's. A
concrete example, for purposes of elucidating, is when I responded to one of
Daniele's Xian postings, which was lacking any Jewish content. The response
was, shall we say, surprising to me.
"Daniele has proven himself not a missionary. He is not asking you to
join a church, but to define bigoted attitudes, which relate to
Susan's comments about JW bigotry. Try reading it and replace "church"
with "synagogue". "Jesus" with "Torah" and see what we mean.
Your propensity for occasionally submitting offensive posts is the
main reason why we are taking so long to decide on your frequent
requests for auto-approved status. Daniele comes from a Xian
background, and his example is relevant."
Now, to say the least, some moderators may consider this as being flexible.
Others would demand to chuck him based on the new proposal.
IMHO, it's just not workable.
Best,
Abe
2-19-07
quon...@yahoo.com
I've been asking for proof, but what is being offered instead of proof
by those who have made accusations is: "your posts speak for
themselves" -- or WTTE. -- Q
dsha...@gmail.com
> We are now developing a method for modifying the charter of scjm so
> possibly that clause can be dropped officially.
> The alternative would be to set up a modified group (scim?) to discuss
> Israeli issues with different moderators (presumably based in Israel).
> This would require substantial effort to set up. Any volunteers?
Any responses other than *******sound of crickets****** ?
What would a setup of scim involve? What would being a moderator
involve?
Deborah