Don’t mistake the values of Bibi and his allies for Jewish values. And, yes, it is true that we Jews often fail to live up to our values–like Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and every other group.
19 Likes
And Tricky Dick Nixon, too.
He should boycott American aid, then.
11 Likes
Is he talking about the way we treated Native Americans? Because those really aren’t “American Values” so much as the most shameful part of our history.
6 Likes
It is certainly hubris for THIS prime minister to lecture the US.
4 Likes
You’re forgetting something very central: it is not settlements that the Arab World sees as the problem alone. Many Westerners don’t really understand how much the Arabs hate Israel. No, “hate” isn’t strong enough. “Loathe” isn’t strong enough. Westerners tend to dismiss statements like “wipe Israel off the map” as grandiose sloganeering, “Occupied Palestine” is not the West Bank and Gaza. It’s the entire country. I don’t have a solution and I neither care really for that country nor its settlements, but I have long ago abandoned the idea that if Israel would just go back to the Green Line (not an international border, by the way), that all would be great. Problem solved. The ante bellum status quo (that’s Latin for pre-1967) was not some paradise of peaceful co-existence. Westerners need to start confronting that and having the Arabs confront it too. Thinking everything is about settlements is self-deception.
2 Likes
Bibi is getting his cues on what to say from his right-wing buddies in the US. Which is to parrot the right-wing line that “Obama does not support American values, he does not think like us…and he does not look like us”.
10 Likes
As an American and a Jew who supports Israel but is not knee-jerk about it I find Bibi’s comments absurd. Why should I, an American and a Jew be able to supercede the rights of multi-generational landholders of different religions, tending to their olive and citrus with little concern long before Bibi’s dad immigrated from Europe. If he is so contemptuous of us he ought to accept a cut in aid so we can redirect it for other overseas humanitarian concerns that derive greater benefits such fighting infectious diseases and making sure young people are not educated in hate-filled Madrases.
12 Likes
Jewish values, as far as I have seen in my life and experience, are concerned with social justice, workers’ rights and trade unionism, respect for knowledge and the pursuit of it, infinite compassion and understanding for human fallibility and stubborn persistence in the face of all obstacles.
Despite centuries of oppression, they have not only endured, but have even produced a unique sense of humor that skewers their ‘betters’ while speaking to the universal experience of all underdogs. How remarkable is that?
Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli Right are not the standard bearers of the Jewish experience any more than Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society represent the American ideal.
Let’s not conflate the degeneracy of Israeli nationalism and ultra- Zionism with the nobility of Judaism.
22 Likes
It’s long past time to cut off funding to Izrael and to neutralize their power over Congress.
3 Likes
He feels free to criticize because he thinks the right wing is totally on his side. They would rather have Putin or Bibi in the White House and bully the American people. These are not ‘American values’…they are the values of people who think they are always right and when they step on YOUR values they are doing it out of ‘compassion’…
5 Likes
Are we done here?
Can we finally tell this son of a bitch to fuck off?
Take your fucking minions and get the fuck out of my country.
And, no, there will be no goddam check this year.
You’re on your own, tough guy.
Go ahead and handle it.
11 Likes
Don’t blame Israel’s leaders. Blame their people for electing them.
That’s the excuse they always use for punishing the Palestinian people.
6 Likes
I have to wonder to what extent the tendency of Dems to be afraid of criticizing Israel has to do with the importance of Florida in the presidential electoral map. If they can be more or less assured of winning the electoral vote without carrying Florida, the stakes of being publicly critical of Israel could potentially plummet.
9 Likes
I’ve been looking down the list of “American Values”. Two terms, “Chosen People” and “Promised Land” keep oozing out of that list. What were we ever doing supporting a theocracy of bigots in the first place? You’d think that the leader of a group that has been a pariah in every culture they’ve been unable to assimilate into for the last 3 or 4,000 years would at least form a focus group and try to figure out what the problem is! Sure, the Egyptians, forty years in the desert and the Inquisition were all a bitch and the NAZI’s forced us to take your side, but that’s when we violated the “American Values”!
Everything (generally) would have been fine if we had determined that the chosen people were Palestinian and the promised land for the Jews was Maricopa County, Arizona!
I love and admire the accomplishments of the Jewish community but I think, as an American, they are dragging a ton of religious baggage around that doesn’t belong in the American psyche. And it’s time for them to solve their own problems. We’re not Jews, we’re everything!
3 Likes
BINGO.
8 Likes
…and should we, now, financially support another nation’s ethnic cleansing program?
1 Like
with “friends” like these…
1 Like
It is so much easier (and cheaper) to be a real estate developer if you have an army to push the previous owners off of their land.
2 Likes
Bibi is doing himself no favor and Israel no favor. In my late teens and early twenties, I was a strong supporter of Israel. I am now in my mid-sixties, and Israel’s ever more radical policies and inhumane practices over the years make that impossible today.
As to Mr. Obama and Bibi’s notion of “American values,” in my opinion Bibi can just go (bleep!) himself.
6 Likes