Rev. J. himself was, as far as I can remember, an Inch from the Democratic nomination himself in the not-too-distant past.

In fact, he might have dug the rut for the Democratic obsession about the need for a "black" President.

Now, according to the opinion polls taken three weeks ahead of the election, this is going to happen.

Jackson is thus only making an honest statement about the next White House's agenda.

 

Israel has had ample time to prepare for a situation in which US support can no longer be expected, and steps have been taken in order to secure international relations outside of the American sphere.

At least, I hope this is the case, and the little I know about this is encouraging although a bit on the "too little- too late" side.

We have had many opportunities to study the way the USA customarily throws its allies under the bus in order to appease its enemies and attempt to secure its oil supply, and Mrs. Rice has done lots of good work on us lately in order to dispel that great-friendship/ undefectable-alliance illusion of ours.

So, we are going to discover what being an independent country means pretty soon, and be better off for it.

 

The "rude awakening" lies elsewhere. The realization that a majority of the American Jewish community couldn't care less about us going under and votes accordingly, will be a hard knock on the occiput for most of us. I've been doing some reading on this lately. We have never accepted these people as our own flesh and blood, since they have shockingly heretical (Reform a.s.o.) religious practices, and the mentality gap between these assimiliated descendants of Ashkenazi refugees and the Mediterranean Israelis is just too wide. The fact that they are now returning the favor should not come to us as a surprise. There's nothing they despise more than Conservatives, Orthodoxes, and F.I.S.H. (F***ing Israeli S**t Heads), in that order. Why should they insist on our wellbeing and survival if we cannot never even recognize their Jewishness, let alone identify it?

Believe me, I tried. Hard. And failed miserably. I'm not religious at all and only try to know my way around Jewish culture, but there's nothing recognizably Jewish in their wishy-washy liberal, humanistic creed apart for some gastronomical traditions and a few Yiddish expressions.

 

 Hey, Ezekiel, what say you?

Swhitebull, ayeka?

 

 

 

 

 

I always thought Prof. Alan Dershowitz was firmly on our side, and I have always admired his advocacy for Israel and the Jewish people. Now, this!

It is very unlikely that a man of his caliber has let himself be misled by the Dems' electoral sweet talking and that he has missed the nature and the background of the Candidate's entourage and advisers: Brzezinsky and Khalidi for Moses' sake!

Rather, it is now quite clear that for people like him, sticking it to the right-wingers, the conservatives, the fundies, and all that goyish bunch of hicks at home, is way more important than whatever may happen to that obnoxious group of Jewish hillbillies over there across the Ocean!

 

LINK

On June 4, he told a pro-Israel crowd that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." A day later he decided that it would be "up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations." Six weeks later, he wrote off his commitment to a united Jerusalem as "an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech."

Which one of us is a FISH? I didn't understand which particular flavour of Israeli that might be. It might be me.

I don't find the the attitudes of the liberal reform Jews in America and Europe "wishy washy". They are looking out for themselves, which takes priority over looking out out for you. Their own national economy is more important to them than Israels, and they vote accordingly. I speak as someone who has close family who fit the "wishy washy liberal" etc. description you provided. They have jobs they want to keep and family they know will never emigrate to Israel and they have their priorities straight. So I don't blame them. That still isn't reason to vote for B. Hussien <rhymes with Osama>, but for other reasons.

Ha Battar!

I'm a FISH. You're one too, and an argumentative one at that.

I didn't know you had relatives in the US. I thought your family was Mesopotamian-British. I have some distant relatives on the Eastern seaboard. We had the opportunity to meet in the early '70's, but then the old folks passed away and we lost contact with the younger, intermarried generation. These were simple, decent, hardworking people, and we never got around to discuss such matters as Zionism, Judaism and suchlike.

I guess we'll find them out someday but we haven't really tried yet.

 

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just trying to get things straight with the situation we're facing.

I'm not calling anyone a wishy-washy liberal either. Wishy-washy liberal is the best adjective I can find, without exerting myself too much, in order to describe the religious practice of the Reform Jews in the USA. This is my subjective impression, not judgment, of the little I know about Reform. The Judaism you and I are acquainted with, the holotextual variety THEY call Orthodox, is anything but liberal, and is fairly forceful and demanding when it comes to the worshiping business itself. You and I remember this, however, rather dimly since the last time we were in a synagogue was for our bar-mitzwahs!

My point was to stress that the rift which exists between this rather vestigial American Judaism and the already larger Jewish community of Eretz Israel is wider than we thought it could be. We have taken their support and their solidarity for granted for way too long. It isn't, and the proof in the pudding is their vote for BHO.

I do not think that there's anything we can or should do about it. Even if we get a political opportunity to address one of the chief reasons for this rift, the Orthodox establishment's inflexibility regarding intermarriage and conversions, and this is unlikely to happen, it'll still be too late to reverse the process.

 

This is not a new phenomenon, and large Jewish communities have always been assimilated to cultural extinction throughout our 25-or-so centuries of recorded history. This time, however, it seems to have dire strategic implications on the physical survival of all the other Jewish communities.

 

On the other hand, when and if the antisemites get the upper hand in the USA, and it looks as if they're about to, there's not going to be much of a difference whether one is an Orthodox, a FISH, Reform, haredi, reconstructionist, or just has a difficult-to-pronounce Alemanic, Slavic or Iberic family name. Maybe J.P. Sartre was right: being Jewish may mean nothing more than being persecuted as such.

 

 

Although I do not agree with everything she says, nor with much anything she stands for, Naomi Ragen has at least captured the anguish and the gut feeling of most of the informed Israelis regarding this election.

 

It's a good read from a sharp pen!

 

Equating it with how the Oslo agreements felt is rather shrewd IMO: I do remember the disbelief and the foreboding we all felt while viewing THE handshake. At the time, however, optimism prevailed, and I am still not convinced we were entirely wrong. I must also say that I did not experience the Park Hotel Seder like she did... 

Shirrush,

              I was referring to my British brothers and sisters whose political mindset is virtually identical to the American one, and to my British nieces and nephews, some of whom will doubtless marry non-Jews, and some of whom will not.

They care aboyt Israel, but they care about Britain more so.

 

If the right wing takes over the US of A, they will have their hands full persecuting the Muslims, the Homosexuals, the atheists, the feminists, the liberals, etc, before they get round to the Jews. Unless they can find a homosexual atheist Jewish liberal to get started with.  

I have a large (in term of biomass!) bunch of French brothers, sisters, cousins and nephews. They are certainly involved in what's going on where they live and pay taxes, but whenever they go to vote for anything other than the local councils, Israel comes first. The present generation's intermarriage rate is zero, and I'm not concerned about the next one's, since the previous one's was about one-third, and we are quite used to accepting non-Jews in our family. None of the cousins issued from our intermarried aunts married Jews, but they're still family, and as close as ever.

Most of my French relatives are, however, a lot less secular and somewhat more "liberal" than we are here in Chelm.

 

So, you're telling me that the Limeys are much different from the Froggies and more like the Amerikookies? Naah, I don't believe you!

When I was at the Hebrew U School of Overseas Students, sticking together with the Poms and the Southafs came to us Phrogues quite naturally. After all, they were as crazy as we were depraved, and with all these Argies around it was difficult not to anyway...

 

As you certainly can see for yourself, er, right here on SP and e.g. here, today's US right wing is a lot kosherer than the brownish European one we know. Their racist, paleoconversative, KKK'ish fringe doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of ever reaching prominence. I was referring to what could happen to the American Jews when the useful idiots of the US left get to run the ship and start doing Islam's good work.

 

 

 

 

You know - this is where I kind of wonder where you get these strange ideas from?

 

You can ask any good old boy what he thinks of Israel and he will get really hot talking about how the Israeli military kicks butt and they seem to be able to do it right.  The average red-neck has a heap of respect and downright affection for Israel and feels that backing Israel is the only option.  They could care less about the religion. 

 

While you pose the same kind of question to a leftist you will get the oppression of the Palestinians being equal to the Nazis and how we should not be funding zionists expansion etc...

 

Just so you'd like to know where your real friends are... and where the real enemies lie.

Battar;

Not quite kosher, I'm afraid. I'm a Republican and I still eat pork products and shellfish. But I am not a member of the KKK.