You can't be fucking serious... Convert her to Judaism? This is clearly MEMRI bullshit now.

Whatever to make the Palestinians seem more like animals so the Israeli apartheid can go on.

Yeah, the host is daft and fawning but that doesn't make it not worth watching. Israel's policy is incendiary and unfortunate but understandably provoked the endless stream of suicide bombings. Both sides are wrong and both sides have done evil. Can Israel really dismantle all the checkpoints without causing an upsurge in terrorism? The conflict has to be won in the hearts and minds of people on both sides, and that is what Wafa Sultan is attempting to do. She is advocating nothing but peace, rationality, secularism, and nonviolence. She has been the subject of character assassination by a few Muslim zealots.

Firstly - this is a dupe - http://www.videosift.com/video/The-clash-we-are-witnessing-around-the-world-is-not-a-clash-of-religions

While the women in the video may have some good points to make she resorts to simplistic generalities and ill-informed comments. For example, although we haven't seen Jews blow themselves up, for over fifty years we have seen the Israelis oppress the Palestinians - including daily humiliation, terrorism and murder and a concerted effort to steal Palestinian land and annex Jerusalem. This is just as appalling as the acts of a person forced to blow themselves up out of desperation.

Free Palestine - حرﺓ‎‎‎ فلسطين

MEMRI TV - A WARNING:

In my daily trawl through YouTube I have encountered many videos from Memri TV. This website only shows the very worst of the Islamic world - radical fringe preachers with little or no public support, unobjective critics of America and Israel, anti-semites, holocaust deniers, misogynists, etc. However, it presents these opinions as if they are widely held, rarely questioned, and representative of the Islamic world. Further more - and this is particularly worrying - the site often mistranslates, or takes out of context, what major Islamic leaders are saying in order to make them seem more extreme and bigotted. The site uses an Arabic title and icon in order to try and disguise its real agenda.

Who are Memri? They send out their videos to all senators and congressmen, and all mainstream media, so we should really know something about them!

MEMRI was founded in 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. Meyrav Wurmser and her husband David Wurmser were both co authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel) which was the precursor for the Wolfowitz doctrine- which led to PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Dr. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Her husband David Wurmser works directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It was David Wurmser that told Dick Cheney that Wilson's wife Plame was the one that sent Wilson to Niger.

MEMRI's headquarters are in Washington DC. It is a non-profit organization, exempt from taxation, that has private donors. MEMRI's largest donor is The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has also provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy.

I had not known about MEMRI previously, their relation to the Neocon movement is definitely something of a concern. However, I would still like to vote this up, since we have all voted on Fox news videos at one time or another for example (either for their comedic value or simply blatant twisting of the facts!). The community has been made aware of such media outlets and their methods - though their exposure.

The Doctor speaks a valid message in the clip, although indeed "general" as you'd put it. I think this is a limitation of the '30 sec/soundbite/' style news we get nowadays, I do wish the topic could be given much more time. Despite this (and though broadcast through a questionable source), I wouldn't want to see her comments missed with a discarded post.

Now that we know MEMRI is a biased source, the community will be aware of this when they seek videos on the subject. Have faith that it's smart enough to pick the difference

Having actually watched both videos in full, I can tell you with certainty that they are not at all duplicates of each other. This one is an audio commentary upon the former video.

Additionally, I would like to point out that ad hominem attacks are only relevant in judging the accuracy of *data* that is supported only by someone's assertion. Whether or not someone has, say, lied in the past, is only salient if you propose to "take their word for it".
Ad hominem attacks have no relevance whatsoever in judging the accuracy of competing *arguments* put forth upon undisputed premises. Each person should use his or her own logical mind to decide whether an argument stands or falls.
Thirdly, ad hominem attacks upon a middleman have no relevance whatsoever in disputes about sourced premises in which the original source is available.
If someone is wrong, either their premises are wrong, or their argument is wrong, or both. Ad hominem attacks are only relevant in a small subset of the first case. We are not being asked to take Wafa Sultan's word for anything here.

I am disgusted by the fact that ad hominem attacks waste so much precious time in so many debates that would better be spent arguing about the real subject of the debate.

I am not a neo-con, not a conservative, not a bigot. I'm just someone who values logic in a discussion.

"While the women in the video may have some good points to make she resorts to simplistic generalities and ill-informed comments. For example, although we haven't seen Jews blow themselves up, for over fifty years we have seen the Israelis oppress the Palestinians - including daily humiliation, terrorism and murder and a concerted effort to steal Palestinian land and annex Jerusalem. This is just as appalling as the acts of a person forced to blow themselves up out of desperation."

Ugh, such bs...

How is it bullshit? Ghostcake? Or is it in your view that everyone in Palestine is just a ticking time bomb?

Farhad, it's bullshit because accidental deaths of people standing nearby people who are actively firing on Israeli troops are not as bad as suicide bombings in shopping malls that are actively intended to kill a lot of innocents. Israel has not advocated slaughtering noncombatants, although several dictators of predominantly Muslim countries in the region have. Whether or not these dictators represent their people, something is wrong with a culture that allows such evil into a position of power. How many Rabbis and Ministers issued death threats on nonviolent cartoonists and writers lately? Whether or not it's a correct interpretation of scripture, some radical Muslim fanatics are doing everything in their power to squash free speech and other civil liberties. This is an outrage that needs to be met head on by moderate Muslims and everyone else with sense.
(disclaimer about the splinter in someone else's eye versus the log in your own...)

"Israel has not advocated slaughtering civilians" - yes it has on many occasions. For example, my sisters best friend - a civilian - was shot dead by the IDF while trying to save the lives of Palestinian school children who were being indiscriminately shot at by Israeli forces. The IDF originally attempted to claim that he had been killed by Palestinians and only after enormous international pressure did they admit that they were responsible. A subsequent non-partisan enquiry revealed that the IDF had been deliberately targetting civilians.

A matter of official policy is very different from the actions of a few rogue crazy soldiers. I strongly doubt those orders came from the top.

The following report from Human Rights Watch details Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon last summer - http://hrw.org/reports/2006/lebanon0806/ . Similar conclusions were reached by Amnesty International - http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1856587,00.html They have also reported the same indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Palestine http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/02/21/isrlpa271.htm . I of course condemn Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians too - as do Human Rights Watch and Amnesty.

Now you say that the orders didn't come from the top. Lets look at the past careers of some Israeli Prime Ministers. Menachem Begin was the commander of the terrorist group Irgun that blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 96 people. He was Israeli Prime Minister in the '70s and '80s. He once described a massacre as "a splendid act of conquest". Yitzak Shamir was Prime Minister until 1992. He had been a leader of a Jewish group called the Stern Gang which carried out a string of assassinations. One of the most recent Israeli Prime Ministers, Ariel Sharon, has long been involved in terror. In 1983, he was found indirectly, but personally, responsible for a civilian massacre by Lebanese militia in two Palestinian refugee camps. At least 800 innocent men, women and children were murdered in cold blood, most of them Palestinians, after Sharon ordered his men to allow the militiamen access to the camps.

oh crap... how did I upvote this? I wanted the down button... dammit... sifty give me back mah vote!

*discard

Self-discarding this video (discard called by original submitter jwray)