You guys are still on this? Finding a few screwballs in crowds of tens of thousands isn't difficult - but regardless this video in particular is a load of deceptive crap. It was made by a liberal group called Think Progress who sent plants into Tea Party rallies to get racism quotes - some of the plants were chased away by Tea Partiers to boot.

http://www.rightklik.net/2010/07/think-progress-lies-and-deception.html

There now - don't you people who thought this was an 'expose' feel stupid? Stop being tools and start thinking. Tea Party isn't about race. It's about slapping down government, which is taking too much power and needs to be corrected. But I don't know why I even try sometimes. Some people are so blinkered by partisan fanboism that if Barak Obama told them the moon was made of green cheese they'd really, truly, honestly think he was telling the truth.

How can people rationally discuss the ideas of a Kenyan Nazi Socialist?

How can people rationally discuss the agenda of a stupid, bible-thumping, drunken, chicken-hawk, racist sexist homophobe neocon? From Reagan to Bush to Palin - those are the lables the left applies. Conservative politicians are not engaged on the merits of policy. They are attacked with ad hominems.

Barak Obama does not discuss conservative policy. He dismisses it blythely and pretends he didn't hear it. Like when the Republicans took him to the woodshed just before the health care vote. They cleaned his clock. They beat him like a rug with his own bill. But he ignored every conservative point and said crap like "that's just a prop..." and proceeded to parade sob stories as if they justify his position.

When it comes to policy the GOP has been more than willing to talk substance. The blogosphere and talk radio are not so egalitarian, but they bring up many facts that go otherwise unreported by the left leaning news media. They all certainly are given to fits of exaggeration and rhetoical hyperbole - but since when was that uncommon in politics? But now all of a sudden "oooo - it's mean spirited". Bullcrap. The left ate, drank, breathed and slept in mean spiritedness for 8 years and now they're all offended by it? The public isn't buying it because they aren't that stupid. The left's crocodile tears ring hollow because it's just rhetoric. The right whined about it during Bush, and this is nothing more than the cycle of life in the political world.

^Winstonfield_Pennypacker
Please explain how the GOP is wrong in their analysis of Barak Obama as a radical leftist, socialist, big government tax & $pender who is well on the way to ruining the economy.


If the discussions were just about his policies then it might actually be productive. Yes, lets talk about national debt and the costs of federal programs... or we can just put convenient labels on people that convey negative connotations in the absence of actual debate.

How can people rationally discuss the ideas of a Kenyan Nazi Socialist? We can't listen to him, he's trying to take over the country and drive it into the ground. How can anyone vote for Armageddon Bills? It isn't difference of opinion, it's a fight against "radical leftists".

I know too many people who think Obama was born in Kenya and wants to confiscate all firearms. You can't blame that kinda stuff on bad polls.

A more apt question might be, "Why do so many Democrats discuss polls from Media Matters as if they had credibility?"

To be frank about this - why lie when the truth is better? Back in the 00s, Democrats created a whole bunch of talking points about Bush, Rove & their agenda items. Horror stories of the military industrial complex, deficits, debt, neocons, and such were easy to sell to the left because there was some truth to it. Bush did hike military spending, increase the deficit, run up debt, and philosophically tilted towards pro-Israel foreign policy. There was meat on the Democrat propoganda bones. Like all demagogues, there was ridiculousness mixed in - but the core wasn't all that off the mark.

"Lies about Obama..." So far they aren't so much lies as they are very slight exaggerations. The GOP says Obama is socialist, is running up unsupportable debt, is taking over key industries, wants single-payer health care, energy taxes, illegal amnesty, and so on. So far I'm not seeing anything that disproves those as 'lies' any more than Democrats were 'lying' about Bush.

As far as I can tell, what the GOP is saying about Obama's agenda is just about spot on. The icky health care bill is indeed designed to wipe out private insurance and redistribute wealth while not saving money at all. Obama is warming up to hit the entire US with pointless energy taxes next. He's already leaking talking points for illegal amnesty. He's already 'bailed out' big labor pension plans using the TARP money, and is looking like he's out to use more funds to bail out other labor goons including the Teacher's union & state pensions. The CBO just released a projection that by 2020, 90% of the entire nation's GDP will be needed to meet government obligations. Please explain how the GOP is wrong in their analysis of Barak Obama as a radical leftist, socialist, big government tax & $pender who is well on the way to ruining the economy.

Would that not then mean that ... Sarah Palin is Constitutionally prohibited from becoming ... President or Vice President of the United States of America?

Well - if you want to play the rhetorical game of strict denotative definitions - then "insurrection" would mean Barak Obama should be tossed out today. An insurrection is simply "resistance against civil authority or an established government", right? As a civil rights activist Obama as resisted the government. The entire Democrat resisted an established government during GWB. The Republicans are doing it right now under Obama. You know what? The more I think about it, the more I like this goofball textpert interpretation. It essentially means that NOBODY is allowed to run for political office. Throw them all out. Good riddance.

The teabagger movement ... was founded by old skool conservative republican, Dick Armey

It would be more accurate to say that Dick Armey supported the already existent Tea Party in the same way Democrats supported the anti-war movement. Under GWB, a grassroots movement got going that was opposed to the way the Iraq war was handled. This true representation of the national mood was aided and abetted by Democrats. Democrats "astroturfed" the bejeezus out of the anti-war movement. It was politically exigent, as well as a philosophical position they agreed with.

Republicans are trying to do the same thing with the Tea Party. The Tea Party is grassroots. It is filled with citizens who hate debt and deficits - who want balanced budgets & fiscal restraint at the federal level. It is Republicans, Independants, and even Democrats for whom sound fiscal policy is a critical issue. But Republicans for years flapped thier lips about fiscal conservatism (even though they don't practice it much). Of course the GOP is going to foster & foment a movement that they politically sympathize with.

The Tea Party movement is about fiscal conservatism. They want balanced budgets, reduced spending, and limited federal power. In that sense they agree with some libertarian principles, but aren't interested in the social policies that make the libertarian party such a collection of oddballs. Neither are they interested in the "Republican party" except as a vehicle to slam the brakes on Obama & Democrats. If the GOP thinks they can just use the Tea Party like a wet-wipe and then go on to be a bunch of fiscal idiots like Bush, then they will find the TP to be an unreliable ally.

Stewart - like most of the Democrats - completely missed what Brown was all about. Brown himself was just a lucky schmoe who happened to 'be there'. You could have put a potted plant against Croakley and the result would have been similar. Croakley - like the bulk of the Democrat party today - was drunk on a sense of priveledge, power, and arrogance. For the past year they've been strutting around thinking that the wave of anger against GWB was going to let them do whatever they wanted. They also thought that the man-child Barak Obama really was all that and a bag of chips and whatever he wanted was what the people wanted and what was best for the country. This combination of arrogance and the illusion that Obama was 'more' than just a twit in a suit gave them the mental security blanket they have been DREAMING of having for years.

They're liberals. They are far-left leaning radicals. And they've had to HIDE it for soooo long. Then along comes a supermajority and a popular leftist president and they thought they could finally - FINALLY - take the mask off and let it all hang out. So they did. They started trying to pass crap that nobody liked. The people started rejecting it, and in their arrogance and hubris they ignored popular opinion (just like Bush did on Iraq). The tea parties were not the grumbling of a few puppet malcontents (like Pelosi, Obama, Stewert, et al wished they were). They were the tip of a very angry iceberg.

People elected Obama because he sold himself as a guy who was 'post-partisan' and would help correct the financial crisis caused by government over-spending and debt. Instead the people were dismayed with Obama's radical leftist agenda. They protested, but the left-wing liberals were in NO MOOD to let their leftist agenda get interrupted by such piddling trifles as the PEOPLE. So they mocked the protests. They ignored the voters. They pretty much spit in the face of the people, and now it has come back to bite them in the @$$ (just like Bush).

So Kennedy's seat is gone because they ran an arrogant, disconnected liberal lapdog who thought the seat was her's just because she showed up. Seen the news today? Health Care Reform is DEAD! This is a GREAT day for America because a radical, left-wing assault on freedom has been killed dead. Democrats rats are jumping the SS HealthCareReform in droves. Even Pelosi is giving up on it. Huzzah! Let's hope the GOP takes both houses of Congress this fall and throw government into total deadlock.

I never underestimate the GOP's ability to shoot itself in the foot. But things are looking promising. Brown won because he was unapologetically CONSERVATIVE. He said, "I'll stop health care because it is stupid policy..." He was totally right. The people responded. The GOP path is clear. If you want to skunk the "Progressive" liberals in the mid-terms then run on a CONSERVATIVE ticket where you promise to balance the budget, CUT SPENDING, pay down the debt, and reduce government to its proper scope & function. Do it GOP and you'll have the people behind you. If you just run RINOs like McCain again then you're screwed.

Point? Since when has Mr. Doofus ever had a point? He's the guy that the Democrats allow to be their crazy, cat-throwing aunt. Most of the time they keep him locked up in the attic. But every once in a while they unlock his door and take off his muzzle so he can jibber jabber. Then they take his verbal diarrhea and spoon it around HufPo, DU, and other leftist house organs for the fringe kook dogs to lick for a while. That's his only function. He's a guy the leftists use to toss red meat when they think the fringe kooks need something to chew on.

So he pops up and reads a laundry list of the Bush Administration's many failures. Yawn. Old news. What he isn't so keen on doing is making a laundry list of Barak Obama's many failures and how they are as bad or worse than Bush's.

For example - I don't really see a whole lot of people getting on Obama's case for 'taking his sweet time' in dealing with Haiti. During Katrina, people whined about Bush's slow response before the Hurricane had even left New Orleans. But the fact was Federal relief was already moving before the storm even hit, and things only got really bad because of the stupidity and sluggishness of Nagin and Blanco (Democrats). Haiti is a horrible disaster and things down there are deteriorating rapidly. Relief has been slower getting there than it was for Katrina, and yet I don't hear Mr. Doofus blaming Obama for that. Why is is OK to blame Katrina's bad outcome on Bush, but Obama gets a pass for Haiti? One simple answer... Blatant, obvious, naked, politically motived BIAS.

So I'm not impressed when Mr. Doofus rattles off a series of liberal, left-wing bones he has to pick with the Bush administration. He gets no points for that. You know what would be impressive? If he rattled off the huge, massive, impressive list of failures in the Obama administration, and his own Congress. It is at that point he would deserve some props for having a pair, and would show he was a person with principles. This? This just proves he's one more in a long line of liberal, left-wing, Democrat party lapdogs.

Just like I'm not impressed when Micheal Steele rips Democrats. Yawn. Why not rip into your own party Mikey and get after them for being big-spending, government program loving special interest tools? The Democrat party is in the process of practically HANDING you the House and maybe even the Senate this year. Why aren't you prepping your party to do the right thing and cut federal spending by 50%?

Maybe one day people will figure out there is no right and left, there is only business, the arguments just create a diversion.

Hm - only PARTLY correct. There is no right and left, there is only BIG GOVERNMENT. The arguments are just a diversion.

In his desire to have a Bi-Partisan government, he didn't push the Supermajority, to ramrod through all of the things he promised

Sigh. No. Just no. Obama is making the exact same mistake Bush did. He thought his popularity was so high that he could cram an UNPOPULAR agenda down everyone's throat with the co-operation of a lick-spittle Congress.

After 9/11 Bush was crazy popular. The radical left still hated him, but public support was high. So Bush decided to spend his political capital on an agenda that was NOT popular - the Iraq War. No one every was convinced that Iraq was worth going to war over. It wasn't popular. The political left saw this and jumped on the bandwagon. The left didn't 'create' anti-war hate. They just took shameless advantage of it. Bush kept pushing, went over the heads of the people, and did whatever he wanted because he had the Congress. Having Congress doing what he wanted (against public opinion) eroded his popularity badly until he left office a lame-duck with a legacy in shambles.

Barak Obama is doing the EXACT same thing. After election he was crazy popular. The radical right hated him, but public support was high. So Obama decided to spend his political capital on an agenda that is NOT POPULAR (Health Care, Cap & Tax, etc...). Polls are sour on his crappy health care plan, his cap & tax and a bazillion other things he's done. His stimulus plans have not accomplished jack, and people are steamed because all his 'shovel ready' jobs have resulted in nothing but higher unemployement. But Obama keeps pushing, against the will of the American people, and does whatever he wants because he has Congress. And doing whatever you want in the face of public opinion is a road to losing Congress, becoming a lame-duck one-termer and leaving office with a legacy in shambles.

Obama's only hope is to ditch his radical agenda and start focusing on what the people WANT instead of what HE wants.

Diagnosing Benny Morris
The Mind of a European Settler
by Gabriel Ash


Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949 is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Ha'aretz. The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil � The native is declared insensitive to ethics � the enemy of values. � He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it � the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from The Wretched of the Earth). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an Arabian Palestine, he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Ha'aretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book Righteous Victims, Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to�Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. � At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state�[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. � Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two�" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Ha'aretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and clich�s. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a small band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, we have in addition the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Ha'aretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. There is hardly anything he says that hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to have nothing to do with the Middle East.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Related Articles:

* The Education of Benny the Barbarian by Ahmed Amr
* Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion by Adi Ophir

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is a regular contributor to Yellow Times.org, where this article first appeared (www.yellowtimes.org). Gabriel encourages your comments: gash@YellowTimes.org

>> ^westy:
um WTF , why are people so moronic.
The only times its worth standing outside in the cold is for like the colaps of the Berlin wall or something like that. this blindly idolising and celebrating people is irrational ignorant and dangerous.


Haven't you realized?! Barak is the second coming! Join the club, douche!

You're republican, I get it.

No - you don't because I'm not. Haven't voted 'Republican' in the last 5 elections.

You're most likely well off, middle to upperclass, and want to keep it that way.

Partly. I don't want to 'keep it that way'. I'd like to move to the upper-upper class some day.

Working class problems don't concern you.

As a working professional I beg to differ. I'm not 'blue collar' if that's what you mean by 'working class', but I am a salaried employee and thus subject to the same issues that effect the bulk of Americans.

The healthcare reform was redundant in your eyes

Redundant? The Obama version of health care reform, yes. Reform of the health care system should take place at a regulatory level - not a 'government involvement' level. In that sense, yes, 'Democrat defined' health care reform very much is redundant (and a whole lot of other negative adjectives).

Given her local and national mishaps, the burden of proof is on people like you to prove she is not stupid.

Given that she had a rather successful gubernatorial term, I'd propose that as evidence that she is not 'stupid' as the neolib left wants to define her. Her roster of actual accomplishments is more robust than Barak Obama's was when he began his presidential run. I'm not saying she's a Rhode scholar, but there is no evidence that she's the brain-dead idiot the hard left wing likes to portray her as. As far as 'papers'? She's not in academia that I know of. She's had a think piece she published on health care in the NY Times. She's written a book. I know that liberals will just pooh-pooh and say that someone wrote them for her - so why even bother talking about them?

Again - I'm not a Palin booster or anything. I just find that the radical left wing is exhibiting a rather large degree of 'Derangement Syndrome' regarding her and those who like her. I also find that such hyperbolic claims are devoid of any substantive evidence and oozing with opinion and misinformation.

Haha "If Barak Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, [Rupublicans] will try to ban bacon!" Priceless.

As always - this ends up being an example of how the extreme fringe right is used to falsely smear any and all opposition to Obama's radical left wing policies. To his credit (and I always give it where it is due) Barak Obama himself disagrees with this man's inaccurate conclusions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8264166.stm

Bill is absolutely right in this clip. The vast majority of the objection to Obama is because of his politics, not his race. There are some goofballs who are along for the ride - just like the Iraq War protests had far-left wing kooks which Republicans attempted to portray as the majority. I call BS on both sides here. It is wearisome to have to deal with this over and over again every time an issue comes up. The forgetful, the ignorant, and the hypocritical have to be constantly reminded that this kind of propogandist mudslinging should be condemned no matter what side it comes from. As far as I'm concerned, this is just another guy falsely smearing millions of citizens because of the actions of a tiny minority.

I'm sure the majority of liberals aren't running around spray-painting crap in an attempt to frame up conservatives. People doing stuff like that are probably rare cases of brain-addled extremists who have been prodded into repugnant action by a constant stream of hate speech. Who knows? All I know is that such people deserve to be spit out the bottom orifice of society.

But something that I consider to be JUST as reprehensible is the blatant, obvious attempt by Democrat party members to paint the protests with the same 'extremist' brush as our hypothetical misguided kooks. The kooks are just frenzied, hyped-up goofballs who need to be pitied and shunned. But the Democrat party members... Nancy Pelosi, Claire McKaskell, Arlen Spectre, Ben Cardin, Brian Baird, Steny Hoyer, and many others - right up to Barak FREAKING Obama himself have blasted the protesters in terms that are insulting, demeaning, and dismissive. These aren't citizen kooks, random bloggers, or talking heads. These are people who hold political power describing thier own consitituents as if they were the enemy.

What kind of example is that? If they want to defuse the anger, shouldn't they be honest, open, and forthcoming and willing to engage the people?

When these bozos start getting all defensive, snippy, angry, and insulting to the people who are challenging them, it doesn't make me think that these are poor, innocent Democrats that are the victims of mean old mobs of extremists...

...It makes me think that the citizens are hitting these Democrats RIGHT between the eyes with truths that the Democrats want to hide so they can pass this bill before anyone can stop it. And it also makes me think that the Democrats are a bunch of slimeball hypocrites - because they sure didn't have ANY problems with 'community activism' during the Bush administration, or during Obama's campaign. But now the they are on the other end they want to act like citizen participation is a nasty, ugly thing that needs to be suppressed. Shame on them, and shame on anyone defending them.

What could be more important? In the near future, health care will be 16% of our GDP, far more than any other first world country. We're going to piss the riches of our nation down the toilet to prop up an insurance industry that does nothing but push paper around?

You - like Obama - offer a false choice. Health care costs are increasing. This is true. Something should probably be done to help reduce costs. This is also true. What is NOT true is that the proper, correct, wise course of action is to accept Obama's plan.

In fact, it is something of a misnomer to even call it "Obama's Plan". Obama doesn't really have a plan. For all his rhetoric and his speechifying, Obama has never once put forward a concrete, solid "plan" that is written down on paper for people to discuss. The plans we are discussing today are the House plans (of which there are 4 or 5 different ones in 'draft' form) and to a lesser extent the Senate plan (which is largely unknown and unwritten).

Now - there are some pretty alarming provisions in the House bill. Page 18 is a provision that will essentially put private insurance offerings out of business within a few short months to years. Page 838 has language that suggests government will be required to visit the homes of new parents to advise and consent on educational and social choices. Page 22 mandates audits of all companies who self-insure. Page 30 establishes a government committee to decide on patient health care options. Page 59 gives the Federal government involuntary, uncontested access to your personal checking accounts in order to draft for payment. Page 65 ensures taxpayer subsidization of Union health care in perpetuity. Page 72 and 84 forces all private insurance to use the government's rules, and also forces them to be 'part' of the government system (effectively making 'private' insurance an 'in name only' option). Pages 95 turns ACORN and other liberal interest groups into an army of 'enrollers' to recruit people into the plan. Page 102 automatically enrolls any Medicaid qualifier into the national plan. Page 124 shuts the door on suing the government plan for malpractice, price fixing, or any other consumer recourse for mistakes & constested decisions. Page 127 gives the government panels the right to set doctor wages. Page 145 forces all companies to auto-enroll employees in the system whether they participate or not. Page 149 forces all companies to pay health care for part time employees and family members. Page 150 forces anyone with a salary of 250K+ to pay a 6% tax if they don't participate in the national "option". Section 1233 gives the doctor the mandate to 'initiate' so-called 'end of life couselling' to patients, and who is to say that at some point the government won't apply pressure to doctors to do this less as an 'option' and more as a 'you really should do this...' approach? For government to even brush against these kinds of issues is creepy beyond belief.

Now - the neolibs of Congress and the Senate are defending the umbrella term "health care reform" by saying that the bill really DOESN'T do all these things. The problem is, there is concrete language right there in the bill that says YES the government IS going to get involved in these things. The American people have seen it, and they don't like it. The language in the bill is vague, indeterminiate, and smacks of the 'public option' really being a Trojan Horse to a nationalized, mandatory, compulsory system. And what is more - Barak Obama (and the neolibs) have for YEARS said that what they are really after is a nationalized system. Why in the world should we believe them when they say they DON'T want a national system when (A) the bill is leading towards nationalization and (B) they have said that's what they want?

The fact is that the Health Care plan that is going through Congress is a horrible plan, and the American people have seen it for what it is. They don't want it. And they are NOT satisfied with politicians who make vague, non-committal excuses that the bill really ISN'T what the people think it is (when all evidence contradicts them). Should health care be reformed? Probably. Should the government be solution to the problem? Pht - not in a BILLION years.

The demand being made by Obama and the neolibs that THIS PLAN be passed now now now now now NOW over the objections of the majority of the American people is not flying. There is no reason to be so hasty. It makes the neolibs look shifty, desperate, and untrustworthy - and the American people as a whole are not falling for it. If it is SOOOOOO all-fired important, shouldn't Obama have a plan on paper? Shouldn't Congress be willing to address the SPECIFIC objections over language in the bill rather than just whining "No no no - you're wrong!" Can't we just admit the House bill is crap and broom the whole thing and start over with a bill that DOESN'T contail all these suspicious provisions? If you're answer is "NO NO NO - we need THIS bill NOW!" then I have no choice but to conclude that you're a partisan zombie. Something this important should be done slowly, carefully, with rigorous testing, and with the consent of the majority of the American people.