Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (9971)	3/13/2005 6:25:52 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361724

We still are. Think Boxer and Rat, not Lieberman.

To: geode00 who wrote (9971)	3/13/2005 10:42:01 AM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361724

As rightwing as they come? Not so. One step at a time. And I should say that I don't follow these things closely, so you might take my comments as personal impressions more than authoritative truth. First, the vast majority of American Jews remain liberal, at least on domestic issues, and probably voted for Kerry. Joe Lieberman definitely does not speak for them. Second, the ruling party in Israel is quite conservative, and to remain in power has to practice coalition politics with even more conservative parties representing the Israeli version of fundamentalists who, like those here, take their orders directly from God, and who in their own way represent dangerous obstacles to true resolution. For example, in Israel, it is the fundamentalist cadre who operate many day care centers and early grade schools which compare to Islamic madrassas teaching a radical religious view of reality. The moderates and more left wing Israelis have, in many cases, no real choice about where to send their kids while they work, so there is a form of indoctrination going on among the younger generations that is just as objectionable as if it were muslim children in Pakistan or S.A. There are certainly Israeli leftists and those who favor returning to pre-1967 borders, but they are not in control now and even if they were, Israel has constructed all these settlements in a strategic manner as a buffer against Arab and Palestinian areas. Dismantling them and moving the fundamentalists out of them, as I'm sure you know, is a huge domestic problem. As far as US jews are concerned, sentiment is split on domestic and foreign policy issues for reasons you can well imagine. Jews fear for the survival of Israel, regardless of how they feel about Israeli policies. I believe there is strong sentiment against the way Israel has dealt with Palestinians as well as their internal Arab population, yet we also want to know when it is that Israelis may venture form their homes with nothing but vitality and optimism strapped to their chests, not fearing being blown apart on a bus to work or in a pizza parlor. There certainly are left-leaning Jews in America who feel strongly and act deliberately to change the policies of the Israeli government. The reason you don't know very much about them is because the mass media either toe the party line with regard to Israel and don't really report how deeply domestic Jews might be split about what is going on there, or because all you ever hear about dissent toward Israel here is the rantings of crack-pot radicals who have totally taken up the Palestinian view of history which, by the way, while containing absurd distortions of history, has nevertheless been promoted so successfully over 40 years that more and more people actually seem to believe it, especially in Europe and the UN. So while Europe and the UN promote numerous anti-Israeli policies, pronouncements and either borderline or actual anti-semitic practices, American Jews are pulled yet again in another direction, away from sounding like foolhardy idealists who will unwittingly aid in the destruction of Israel--and if American Jews don't recall their own history, who else will? Then there are the neocons of this adminsitration, some of whom adhere to the far religious right's yearning for the apocalypse and tend to desire policies that will actually hasten confrontation. What we are seeing in all this conflict is the legacy of colonialism, the arbitrary creation of national boudaries that also occurred in Iraq, India, Africa and elsewhere.