Likud taking down its apostate?

8 thoughts on “Likud taking down its apostate?”

1. It does seem that Sharon successfully used the Gaza disengagement to hold off his indictment on corruption charges and Olmert hopes to do the same with his initiative with Syria. As you point out, however, Sharon was immensely popular right up to the end whereas Olmert is in the same popularity catagory as George Bush. What effect will Olmert’s removal have on peace prospects? There seem to be several people in the wings trying to take over Kadima in place of Livni. Are any of them more likely to seek a peace deal or relieve the Gaza blocade?

2. Helena,
   have you seen any evidence that would suggest that it is the United States, and not Likud, who might well be behind the taking down of their apostate? Olmert has been a very, very, bad boy recently, and one cannt help wondering whether all this is pay-back time. I have been intrigued with a few reports that Talansky would rather deal with the Israelis than the FBI

3. Helena,
   have you seen any evidence that would suggest that it is the United States, and not Likud, who might well be behind the taking down of their apostate? Olmert has been a very, very, bad boy recently, and one cannt help wondering whether all this is pay-back time. I have been intrigued with a few reports that Talansky would rather deal with the Israelis than the FBI

4. Helena,
   have you seen any evidence that would suggest that it is the United States, and not Likud, who might be behind the taking down of this apostate? Olmert has been a very, very, disobedient client-state king recently, and one cannt help wondering whether all this is pay-back time. I have been intrigued with a few reports that Talansky would rather deal with the Israelis than the FBI.
   If Olmert had been living two thousand years ago, and had done to the Romans what he has just done to the Americans, he would probably have been literally crucified. The Emperors never liked having their faces rubbed in the dirt in public in such a spectacular fashion.

5. Helena,
   have you seen any evidence that would suggest that it is the United States, and not Likud, who might be behind the taking down of this apostate? Olmert has been a very, very, disobedient client-state king recently, and one cannt help wondering whether all this is pay-back time from the US as well. I have been intrigued with a few reports that Talansky would rather deal with the Israelis than the FBI.
   If Olmert had been living two thousand years ago, and had done to the Romans what he has just done to the Americans, he would probably have been literally crucified. The Emperors never liked having their faces rubbed in the dirt in public in such a spectacular fashion.

6. ‘Israel’s money-drenched political system … of sleazy internal corruption’
   Right. Israel is corrupt and evil.
   Conventional anti-Semitism has it that Israel/Jews using the playbook of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion dupe the well-meaning goyim into evil-doing and financial bondage. But in fact, Israel is only acting as Uncle Sam’s ‘Mini-Me’, like Japan in the Western Pacific, or Colombia in South America — the local teeth-of-the-big-dog.
   The petro-security profiteers require gendarmes if they are to control the lion’s share of the planet’s resources while half the world lives in squalor. It is understandable but regrettable that the Jewish state, representing a historically persecuted people, assumes this role.

7. An excellent piece from today’s Guardian-:
   http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daphna_baram/2008/05/olmerts_bitter_harvest.html

8. Edward Luttwak is one of those neocons who was
   “expert” on war without much war experience. But what
   he lacked in experience he more than made up for in
   “realist reasoning” and a great sense of history. He
   wrote the best article I ever read, warning of how we
   fail to appreciate what continuing in Iraq is doing to
   us in FOREIGN AFFAIRS 2005:
   http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2007/LuttwakTestimony070123.pdf
   Alas, in a recent NY TIMES oped, Luttwak reverted to
   exposing himself as a semi-doc historian of Islam and
   neocon propagandist, asserting that Obama to Muslims
   is an “apostate” because he became a Christian and not
   a Muslim like his father and step-father. Therefore,
   argues Luttwak, Muslim leaders would not negotiate
   with him but would try instead to kill him for Allah.
   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opinion/12luttwak.html?pagewanted=print
   The NY Times reader’s ombudsman criticized Luttwak’s
   piece for its uninformed allegations and the NY Times
   for publishing such a piece without checking the
   errors in its assertions.
   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01pubed.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
   To be quite honest, the NY TIMES oped page is not like
   a high school biology textbook in which science is
   adulterated with the absurdities of “intelligent
   design,” a silly notion that now even enjoys Jewish
   advocates:
   http://www.rae.org/dendar.html
   Op-eds are not the Science Section of the NY Times on
   Tuesday, requiring expert fact-checking by the editor.
   Readers owe it to themselves to double check biases
   and not be so gullible.
   On the other hand, the Luttwak argument is so absurd
   and so uncharacteristic of his rational realism, that
   one can only wonder if this is not representative of a
   new neocon desperate “party line” designed to promote
   the Clinton candidacy and, should it fail, that of
   McCain. Its timing and argument suggest that.
   Never having achieved academic standing, the neocons
   have made the most of the publishing empire which
   first the CIA and then Israeli and private interests
   later funded for this group of so-called “public
   intellectuals.”
   The real danger is that: voters are “dumb goyim,”
   flavor that seems to be signature of the style of a
   lot of what adherents to this “neoconservative” label
   advocate. Their covert support of Hillary Clinton as
   an alternative candidate they can work with– in case
   their Republican candidate doesn’t make it– is well
   known. Though hiding their pro-Hillary positions, they
   have taken to outspoken anti-Obama positions. In
   appreciating the race aspect of the neocon aversion to
   a “Swartza President,” I do believe one should begin
   with a read of Podhoretz’s 1963 piece: “My Negro
   Problem– and Yours.”
   http://www.lukeford.net/Images/photos/out.pdf
   Two recent articles elaborate on the impact of this
   proclivity and the, until recently, Podhoretz support
   for Giuliani.
   http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2007/Giuliani-Worse-Bush1aug07.htm
   http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0712.heilbrunn.html
   While there are varieties in intensity in the neocon
   grouping (here I do not include their satellite
   “goyim” hangers on), Obama gets hit with both barrels
   firing at once: not only being black, but also by his
   calling for talking to Iran, the neocons have come to
   label him an apostate of their version of Americanism.
   For that reason, Luttwak, a characteristically well
   reasoned and well informed author with a heavy realist
   overlay, surprised me in how far he would go in light
   of the un-likelihood that Obama would endorse the
   neocon demand that we bomb Iran.
   For me, the issue is that neocon advocacy of extreme
   intervention by force, whose costs would be reimbursed
   by American oil piracy, would just be a “weird
   science” idea that I would not pay much attention to,
   were it not that it guided Bush into the running
   aground of the American Ship of State. As more and
   more media gives it exposure, what with Republican
   Presidential candidate John McCain blithering the
   extreme neocon views whispered in his ear by Senator
   Lieberman, his neocon minder, the neocons are facing a
   public resurgence with both a racial as well as an
   anti-Islamic wind in their sails. Alas, for most
   Americans, Wolfowitz’s declaration that oil will make
   the whole War on Terror against Arabs quite
   profitable, is remembered bitterly, given that oil
   costs twice as much as it had cost when we first
   invaded oil rich Iraq. At the same time, Bush’s
   promise of Middle East peace between Israel and the
   Palestinians has suddenly gone silent in the face of
   the onset of Israel’s construction of 700 new homes
   for non-existent Jewish emigrants in East Jerusalem.
   It should be remembered that the State Dept, in 2002
   protested the continued housing construction given
   that 74% of the finished domiciles lie empty as there
   are no olims to occupy them. Now, as then, these are
   merely meant to be “facts on the ground” for
   maximizing Israel’s expansion– built at US taxpayers’
   expense. And this comes at a time of baffling
   allegedly crooked financial dealings between no less
   than the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and various
   Jewish American financiers. I might remind that all
   Israeli Prime Ministers since Rabin faced
   investigations for such dollars laundering, this one
   seeming to be the first to not end in obfuscation by
   “raison d’etat.”
   Yet it would be a grave error to think that the
   neocons are Zionist zealots. A financially motivated
   trail, it seems to me, buried in “endowments” and
   “consultantship” fees seem more likely motivators than
   any zealotry, much as can be said of their penchant
   for Pentagon spending on strategic weapons.
   But frustrated Americans who face a choice between a
   candidate for another 100 years of involvement in the
   Iraq imbroglio and one who advocates an emphasis on
   extrication (safe and reasonable) do take note of the
   play on both his race and religion coming from this
   group that is so trigger-prone to shout “anti-Semite”
   at doubters of their advocacy. The question becomes:
   will people just say “good riddance” to the neocons as
   they fade or will they associate them with all the
   tragic events that befell the public’s life in one way
   or another as neocon cowboy policies unfolded
   post-9/11?
   It is becoming clear now, as a result of Doug Feith’s
   and Scott McClellan’s books that Bush was NOT the
   “decider” but rather the cream-cheese part of the
   Presidential cake onto which everyone else left his
   footprint. As the “UNdecider” is exposed more and more
   as irresponsibly “disengaged”– a term popularized by
   his one time Sec. of the Treasury in the first Bush
   Administration expose book– people are going to
   wonder who ran this man?
   Popular history– much of it pushed by the egocentric
   neocons in their hunger for fame and profit in search
   of “mensch-hood”– points to them as the driving
   force.
   Personally, I would say, fine, let Muse Clio give them
   their historic up and comings. Unfortunately, it’s not
   that easy. For the neocons have claimed to be the
   voice of American Jews and the soul of American
   Zionism. Jews that oppose them they diagnosed as
   “self-hating Jews” or, if they fail to be intimidated
   by such approbation, they are pillared and persecuted,
   as is the fate of Norman Fikelstein. Supported fully
   by some Israeli politicians, the neocons inferred
   quite a length to their reach in that Finklestein, a
   Jews and hence cannot be denied entry into Israel, was
   thrown out at Lod airport, denied entry by the very
   government whose PM is facing criminal charges for his
   involvement with, if I’m not mistaken, neocon money
   men in the US.
   So, the association is being painfully made in the
   minds of average Americans: 9/11–>war in Iraq–> war
   prospects with Iran–> doubling of oil prices–>
   Bush’s attempts to make peace in the Mideast–>the
   encroachment into Palestinian territories to build 700
   homes for non-existent Jewish settlers–>American
   economic crisis–>increased funds for Israel–>AIPAC
   and spy scandal–>Israeli PM and Jewish-American
   financier scandal–>McCain advocating another century
   of Iraq involvement with his neocon minder at his
   shoulder–>neocon propaganda hitting on Obama racially
   and religiously……on and on it goes and soon they
   are not only seeing a neocon made fiasco but, alas, a
   Jewish manipulation of the United States. AND THIS
   DESPITE THE FACT THAT IN NOVEMBER– I AM QUITE
   CERTAIN– A GOOD MAJORITY OF JEWS WILL VOTE FOR OBAMA
   *EXACTLY* BECAUSE OF THE VIEWS THE NEOCONS DENOUNCE.
   So propagandistic has been the assault on Obama and so
   slanderous will be McCain’s assaults on him– because
   that’s McCain’s nature, unprepared, inarticulate,
   superficial, and when he loses an argument he goes
   nuts (all with his neocon minder, Lieberman, at his
   side)– that it is quite possible that the simplest
   finger pointing frenzied rage and frustration of many
   Americans will manifest as: THE JEWS ARE DOING ALL
   THIS TO US. All those neocons, who with such abandon
   throw the term “anti-Semite” at others are feeding
   that nightmarish tomorrow, one that may be a freight
   train out of control heading for a catastrophic wreck
   of our nation as a tolerant democracy. That could make
   this century worst than the last and certainly more
   absurd. Recently, a group wrote in the Jewish NY
   TIMES, the FORWARD, that Jews need to manifest their
   intrinsic moderation to neutralize the fraudulent
   vitriol of the neocon propaganda machine; as one who
   has seen American anti-isms manifest as herd behavior
   in the past, I worry, worry indeed.
   My solution is simple. I could never advocate
   silencing anyone, especially not those who would
   silence all who disagree with them. On the contrary,
   they must be faced in debate. I remember that at a
   university event I confronted the utter mendacity of a
   neocon’s anti-Islam and pro-Israel propaganda. After
   ceremoniously calling me an anti-Semite, he suggested
   that, ” you start your own publication and put forward
   your views if you disagree with me.” That’s exactly
   the problem. We are not going to profit from a
   European-like mass of factional presses. After all, we
   only have two parties in this country. What will save
   America now is exactly what students at UC Berkley
   went out on strike for (25,000 out of 27,000
   students): MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE. We must promote debate
   and teach-ins as occurred during the Vietnam War. At
   that time, both sides frequently met in debate; it was
   only when one side dominated that we got into trouble
   and when the other side dominated that we lost. We
   must promote debate, not only between the two
   candidates, but given the ugly propaganda of untruths
   out there, between all who have a horse in the Mideast
   race– BUT ALWAYS IN MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE. I know from
   experience that the opportunity for rebuttal– both
   for and against the neocons– will defang them,
   exposing these anaerobes to oxygen. And nothing like
   debate will demonstrate clearly to everyone that when
   you lock six Jews in a room you get debate of seven
   opinions forevermore. That alone will nip in the bud
   the conspiratorial impression that just might flower
   because of the neocons’ radical self-injection into
   the Presidential Campaign.
   Daniel E. Teodoru

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