Friday, March 16, 2012

He said That?!

To say that most Zionist comments on Israel-related blog posts are as boring as batshit is the mother-of-all understatements. This is because, as brain-dead ideological defenders of the indefensible, their authors have little but lame talking points churned out by Zionist propaganda mills to work with.

Just occasionally, however, a klutz among them comes up with a comment so hilariously dumb as to warrant my sharing it with you. The comment in question, from someone calling himself Frankel, comes from the thread following the January 2012 post Because policing the discourse is punk rock at the US blog L'Hote. Enjoy:

"I'm no fan of much of what Israel does, but as a Jew is it so unreasonable for me to become suspicious when I see so many people who have no skin in the game (that is, people who are neither Jews nor Arabs) take such a critical concern to the behavior of Israelis? And please spare me the line about the aid we give to Israel. The US gives plenty of money or other aid to countries with transgressions far worse than Israel and you don't hear a peep about it.

"I mean, look how women, gays, christians and palestinian refugees have to live in most of the middle east. I guess none of them are fortunate enough to be victims of Jews." JANUARY 28, 2012

What? Run that by you again?

Sure: Palestinian refugees are fortunate enough not to be victims of (presumably Israeli) Jews.

I mean where does one begin with this bloke?

What part of the following eye-witness testimony to Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous Arab population, for example, does he not get (providing, of course, he can get his head around its use of capital letters)? The setting is Israel, 1950. Migdal (al-Majdal in Arabic) is now the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon:

"When I got on to the bus, I could already feel the bitterness of the Arab inhabitants; the two Arab passengers with whom I tried to begin a conversation (without touching on the questions which I had in mind) gave laconic answers. When we arrived in Migdal Gad, I went to the barber, a new immigrant who had already been living in the city for 18 months, and asked him what had been happening over the previous 2 months. He said that the Agency - for him that was the government - had sent the Arabs away from the place and that they had not left of their own free will. He advised me to get further information from the military authorities. Tomorrow, he said, there will be no more Arabs in Migdal. His wife added, 'They are foul and dirty, those ghetto creatures'.

"I went to the ghetto. A soldier on guard stopped me: no entry. I talked to him and showed him my identity card. He let me through when he saw that I was a Jew - superior race. The picture that I then got was very depressing. People were settling their affairs in preparation for the exodus. The next day they would have to leave their houses, the homes of their fathers and forefathers, family possessions for centuries. One man was selling a writing desk in the street and others were selling all kinds of possessions. Armed soldiers were going through the streets keeping order. There was no one to visit, no one to talk to...

"At the other end of the street, about 300 yards from the ghetto, were the offices of the military governor. There was a notice on the door: 'housing committee'. New immigrants were standing in a queue here to be assigned the houses that would be vacated the next day. But what was particularly striking, juxtaposed to this oppressive poverty within the ghetto, was the number of luxury cars parked in front of the offices of the military governor; in one of the rooms I could see a group of 10 to 12 people sitting round a conference table littered with beer mugs. I could not hear what they were talking about, but I automatically assumed that they were discussing the last stages of the expulsion and redistribution of the homes of these unfortunate homeless people.

"I tried to get an official account of events from the military governor, but he was not there. The mayor, whom I found hard at work in the ghetto, remarked that now was not the time to write anything, and that if he was asked, he would supply details in a couple of weeks. He also said that this was not a good place for talking aloud: the Arabs understood Hebrew and the street had ears.

"There are now 1100 new immigrant families totalling about 4000 people; a large number of them are descended from oriental [Jewish] communities. Neighbouring [Arab] villages like Isdud, Yibna, Julis and other places have been devastated and the new immigrants have been settled in new settlements in the vicinity of the devastated villages. Not in Migdal, where no new houses have been built and where the immigrants are settled in the homes of former inhabitants; in their homes and on land that they have been forced to leave." (Joseph Abileah, from a letter published in the Palestina Bulletin, The Hague, 6 September 1969 - quoted in Palestine Comes First, Lucas Grollenberg, 1980, pp 72-73)

[To place the above in context: "al-Majdal/Migdal-Ashqelon About 2,500 Arabs still lived in Migdal-Ashqelon until the beginning of 1950. Most of them were already displaced persons who had been uprooted from their homes and gathered into the ghetto the state established for them on the outskirts of the town. Their freedom of movement was limited, and they were allowed to leave the ghetto primarily to work. Depending on how much freedom of movement each had been granted they'd seen or heard how their homes had been given to Jewish families who were moving into them. About 10 months elapsed from the day Moshe Dayan decided they were unwelcome in the town until the expulsion of all Arabs had been completed. The main argument was, as always, that they provided 'a haven for infiltrators'. The success of the project, which depended on the cooperation of more than a few Israelis - truck drivers, government ministers who were familiar with the decision, journalists adhering to the official line - would not have been possible had those involved not been convinced that it was 'for the refugees' own good' - they were treated as refugees even before being expelled. It wasn't enough that the Israeli Jews accept the separation of the 'refugees' from family members who had already been expelled to Gaza, or their life in the ghetto, as a fact not subject to appeal. Israel also tried to convince the Palestinians themselves that their evacuation to refugee camps in Gaza was a rescue. The procedures were similar to those the army and the state had previously employed elsewhere, but this time a few months of systematic effort were invested, including a 'campaign of whispers', lies and deception, daily violence and abuse, and a slightly more favorable currency exchange rate." (From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction & State Formation, 1947-1950, Ariella Azoulay, 2011, p 196)]

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