From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 17:00:46 GMT
> From: joedees@bellsouth.net
>
> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
>
> > > From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
> > >
> > > This is addressed to the host of this list:
> > >
> > > Are Joe Dees and others not enjoined from posting anti-Islamic
> > > diatribes from this list, and was Joe not suspended already once
> > > from this list for doing so?
> > >
> > > Will you enforce your rule, or are we again, on this list, to be
> > > subjected to this nonsense?
> >
> > Lawry,
> >
> > Joe's nonsense may be offensive, but it does prove a point I was
> > making.
> >
> > Here's what I wrote:
> >
> > > The principled anti-Isreali stance is a result of human
> > > intelligence, not memetic struggle. The unprincipled anti-Israeli
> > > stance results from the success of the anti-Jew meme. Another
> > > unprincipled stance, which is pro-Isreali, depends on the success of
> > > the meme that equates all criticism of Israel with "anti-Semitism"
> > > (the irony being that Arabs are themselves Semitic).
> >
> > Here's Joe's comment on my criticism of Israeli persecution of
> > Palestinians:
> >
> > > I simply refuse to allow Dace's blatant antijewish
> > > hate-propagandizing to go unanswered.
> >
> > Except for the substition of "anti-Semitic" with the more accurate
> > term, "antijewish," Joe illustrated my point perfectly. He responded
> > to my criticism of Israeli state policy by accusing me of bigotry.
> >
> When Dace heads a post 'Naxion", one can draw no other conclusion
> than that it is antipathy-inspired.
The Nazion thesis is intended to explain why the state of Israel is engaged
in a Nazi-like persecution of a helpless minority group. Jews were
traumatized from European persecution, culminating in the holocaust, and
without realizing what was happening, the evil that had been done to them
was perpetuated onto others. In a broader sense, this is roughly the thesis
of C. Fred Alford's *What Evil Means to Us.* Alford presents what might be
known as the "hot potato" theory of evil. The evil we do is largely the
result of evil done to us. We are made to suffer, and we find relief in
imposing our suffering onto others. So, for instance, your boss chews you
out; you come home and yell at your wife; she unfairly punishes your kid; he
makes vicious fun of the kid who lives around the corner, and on and on it
goes. Connecting postwar Zionism to Nazism is a way of making sense of
Israeli persecution of Palestinians without having to resort to racist
notions of inherent Jewish evil. Now *that* would be a hate-inspired
belief.
> He would like to draw the parallel
> between abused children growing up to be abusers themselves, and an
> abused Jewry adopting the mindset of their persecuters, but it simply
> doesn't wash. The mindset that Jews adopted instead was that they
> would never again be passive victims of antijewish persecution and
> genocide, from Nazis, Islamofascists, or anyone else, but would fight
> back against it henceforth. After all, they saw what passive
> acquiescence got them; six million mass murdered.
This is exactly the point I'm trying to make. As Israelis persecute
Palestinians they imagine they're only defending themselves. Israelis think
they're the victims in this struggle, though, as I pointed out earlier, the
oppression is entirely asymmetrical. Cancel out the violence on both sides,
and what's left is systematic Israeli oppression of Palestinians, not the
other way around. As Bernard Avishai of Jerusalem points out in a recent
letter to Harper's (June 2003), Zionism began as a much-needed defense of
the Jewish people but became something else altogether after the 1967 war.
"Most people bring tragedy on themselves not by doing the wrong thing but by
doing the right thing too long." To put this in our own terms, Zionism
began as an idea but became a pathological meme. What started as the
entirely rational defense of the Jewish people mutated into the
unconsciously-driven onslaught on the Palestinian people.
> > His thinking on this issue is warped by memetic interference. The
> > same is true, as I pointed out, of people infected by the antijewish
> > meme. Joe's long post containing interviews between Arabs-- many
> > (though not all) of whom exhibit antijewish hatred-- nicely
> > illustrates this point. The intractability of the Israel debate is
> > due in large part on the fact that both sides are inflexibly memified.
> > However, both sides are also capable of overcoming their prejudice.
> >
> The Hamas, Hizbullah, Tanzim, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyr's
> brigade attacks that ensue every time peace is threatened bountifully
> indicates who is opposed to a peaceful two-state solution. Israel would
> gladly accept such a solution, including dismantling Jewish settlements
> in the West Bank and Gaza, if it would guarantee the security of their
> citizens, and has stated so on numerous occasions; the aforementioned
> groups have openly stated that they will NEVER accept an agreement
> that includes an existent Israel. What is interesting is why Israelis are
> willing to accept Palestinians living in Israel, but Palestinians are
> unwilling to accept Israelis living in the West bank and Gaza. I chalk it
> up to religious intolerance and bigotry.
As the Jewish scholar Noam Chomsky has repeatedly noted, from the beginning
the "peace process" was designed to formalize Palestinian oppression rather
than end it. The latest round is no different. President W. gave a speech
last year, known as the June 24 speech, which laid down the terms of
Palestinian surrender once again. According to columnist Alexander
Cockburn, the speech "hedged Palestinian aspirations with so many
restrictions and caveats that it ended up as a binding guarantee by the US
government that at no time in the foreseeable future would the Palestinian
national flag be permitted to fly over any real estate more substantial than
a few football fields of rubble, denied water and surrounded by freeways
restricted to Israeli settlers and the IDF." When the Palestinians
naturally reject formalization of their subjugation, they are accused of
being opposed to peace, thereby justifying further attacks on them. It's a
giant scam, though no doubt, like many scams, the scammers honestly believe
in their own righteousness.
> > There was no antijewish diatribe, rather an analysis of Israel's
> > criminal persecution of Palestinians. Instead of responding to it
> > rationally, you proved my point that Israel-defenders tend to
> > thoughtlessly equate criticism of Israel with antijewish prejudice.
> > That it's a culturally-shared, knee-jerk response indicates a memetic
> > basis.
> >
> Dace has yet to answer my point about the real genocidals being the
> Palestinian homicide bombers,
The very first point I made was that the violence is practiced by both
sides, so we need to get beyond outrage over the violence and examine the
underlying problem, which is systematic Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
> Dace refuses to address the ubiquity,
> depth and intensity of that bigotry and the vicious murder that it spawns,
> perferring to characterize the Israeli self-protective, perventive and
> defensive actions in response as criminal,
Nope, never claimed that. What's criminal is the systematic Israeli
oppression of Palestinians. The cycle of violence is not the point.
> Ted is not only antijew, but unconsciously, taken-for-grantedly so; he
> cannot even see that he is. However, his stance can clearly be seen
> when one takes into account the supposed facts that he emphasizes,
> and the other facts which he chooses to ignore.
Once again, you're projecting. That you are anti-Arab is illustrated by the
fact that you ignore systematic Israeli oppression of Palestinians, which is
the only relevant fact in this entire saga.
Ted
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