New Bin Laden Tape
Osama bin Laden seems to have dropped a new audiotape. The early highlights:
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden described President Barack Obama as “powerless” to stop the war in Afghanistan and threatened to step up guerrilla warfare there in a new audiotape released to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
In the 11-minute tape, addressed to the American people, bin Laden said Obama is only following the warlike policies of his predecessor George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and he urged Americans to “liberate” themselves from the influence of “neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby.”
Two noteworthy points here. One is that the odd framing of Obama as “powerless”—rather than simply unwilling—to stop the war in Afghanistan highlights the extent to which Obama is a PR asset for the United States. It’s difficult for bin Laden to take him on directly, so instead he suggests he’s not really running things. Also a reminder here that the war in Afghanistan is viewed skeptically by most Muslims and that a really prolonged US engagement there runs the risk of inflaming broader sentiment against us.
Second, is that OBL didn’t used to lean very heavily on the Israel issue in his rhetoric. After all, there are lots of militant anti-Israel groups out there. The key conceit of al-Qaeda is that those groups are thinking way too small, and people need to join into a much more grandiose war than an effort to destroy a very small country. I think this reflects al-Qaeda’s recent difficulty recruiting, as you can think of this as bin Laden shifting to a kind of lowest common denominator appeal. We see here that the indifference to Palestinian suffering that’s considered de rigeur by many in American politics is a key strategic vulnerability of the United States; when the well is running dry, this is something people looking to rally recruits against us turn to.
53 Responses to “New Bin Laden Tape”
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September 14th, 2009 at 10:49 am
OMG, bin Laden is soullite!
He has internet access!
September 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Assuming it’s really him on the tape. Why doesn’t he release a videotape in which he’s holding today’s copy of the Karachi Times?
September 14th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Second, is that OBL didn’t used to lean very heavily on the Israel issue in his rhetoric.
With all due respect, this is bullshit. Bullshit and a typical scummy talking point of a scummy lying Zionist apologist.
“bin laden” israel – 5 million hits in google.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Peter,
I have a theory about that. Early in the Iraq War, the jihadists were putting out a lot of video tapes. And they kept getting attacked by our forces shortly thereafter. After a while, those types of propaganda tapes ceased.
I think our intel agencies are really, really good at picking up on subtle cues from video tapes, and al Qaeda has figured that out.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
The first several of those 5 million hits are from Zionists, Abb1. The Likudniks play up the bin Laden/Israel connection, because it benenfits them to do so.
Why you’re playing along, I’m not entirely sure.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Joe,
The first several million of Abb1’s posts are virulent, anti-Semitic screed. He keeps spewing the same hate over, and over again, because he thinks it benefits himself to do so.
Why you’re playing along, I’m not entirely sure.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I can’t be bothered to do the research right now, but I strongly suspect that Israel is mentioned in most, if not all, of his messages.
And Mohamed Atta was, apparently, pretty much solely motivated by the US support for the Zionists; from wikipedia:
This is so trivial. Denying it is ridiculous, it places you squarely into Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity territory. You should try to develop some other angle.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Why you’re playing along, I’m not entirely sure.
Juan Cole @ Informed Comment pushes this line too, i.e. spins facts to support his thesis that 9/11 was the chickens coming home to roost over America’s support of Israel.
OBL first of all hates the Saudi royal family, which is easy to do, but for him its b/c of hardcore religious reasons.
In 1979, religious extremists seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca; the government regained control after 10 days and those captured are executed. OBL was shocked and upset how the government handled it by bring guns in to the Mosque instead of starving them out.
Then he was upset over US troops stationed in the holy land after the First Gulf War. He did mention Israel at the beginning, but it seems to be of secondary importance. He’s against the Saudi royal family and their backers in the infidel West.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Sahu,
I wouldn’t want anyone reading along to think he had a point.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I can’t be bothered to do the research right now, but I strongly suspect that Israel is mentioned in most, if not all, of his messages.
No they’re not. You’re just obsessed with the Jews.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Matt — yes it’s true OBL was irate over American forces on Arabian soil & wished to overthrow the Saudi regime, but his anti-Israel rhetoric was there at the beginning. In the fall of 2001 I watched a pre-9/11 Al-Qaeda recruiting video at Columbia that professors had acquired: it focused on the Balkans, American troops in the Gulf, and Israeli assaults on Palestinians. Israel was as prominent as other points.
Israel advocates have downplayed the degree of interest OBL has had in Israel-Palestine, as this would shine an unwanted spotlight on Israeli policies. And I think they’ve largely succeeded in creating a disconnection in American discourse. When it’s brought up, people freak. (But to be fair, American policy shouldn’t be based on the concerns of OBL.)
Joe from Lowell: I don’t see where you get that Likudniks play up an Al-Qaeda-Israel connection. They play up a “we should fight Muslims together!” angle, but not an “OBL is inspired by the injustices we perpetrate on Palestinians” angle.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:44 am
OBL first of all hates the Saudi royal family
…even though I am certainly impressed by your ability to read his mind, this is completely irrelevant. The question is not what he likes or hates, but about his rhetoric. And Israel certainly is, and has always been, a major part of it.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:49 am
You’re just obsessed with the Jews.
Not only I am not obsessed with Jews, I don’t even believe they exist. You are the only one here talking about ‘Jews’, so who is obsessed?
September 14th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Israel advocates have downplayed the degree of interest OBL has had in Israel-Palestine, as this would shine an unwanted spotlight on Israeli policies. And I think they’ve largely succeeded in creating a disconnection in American discourse. When it’s brought up, people freak. (But to be fair, American policy shouldn’t be based on the concerns of OBL.)
No, you’re wrong. Ariel Sharon and Likudniks tried to link the Palestinians and OBL and say to us “see, this is what we’re dealing with.” 9/11 was an unmitigated disaster for Palestinians. Even I now sympathize more with Israel.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be peacefully solved no matter what OBL says.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Also a reminder here that the war in Afghanistan is viewed skeptically by most Muslims
IIRC the view that 9/11 was carried out by Arabs is viewed skeptically by most Muslims as well.
There are at least two majority Muslim countries that have troops in the coalition, and most of the other countries that usually provide basing privileges in the Centcom AOR are still willing to do so to support operations in Afghanistan (esp compared with their willingness to do it for that other place)
The *Afghan* opinion otoh, is of supreme importance. At present a majority support the international presence (albeit for most as the lesser of two evils frankly)
September 14th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Yeah, but if you dig into it the line was also that revolutionary Islamists didn’t really hate Israel. They hated “success” and the West and that Palestinian objections to Zionism were just a proxy for the real target, North American and European civilization.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
“…when the well is running dry, this is something people looking to rally recruits against us turn to”.
Gee, do you think maybe he’s taking lessons from the GOP?
September 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
It is bizarre in the extreme that eight years after 9/11, the person who the U.S. government and most of its establishment pundits claim to believe masterminded the event is not only still at large but free to distribute press releases and have them commented upon without apparent outrage by these same pundits.
Something stinks.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
John K,
Sure, they don’t phrase it like that. Rather, they play up the “Osama hates the existence of a successful, democratic Jewish state on lands that he thinks Muslims used to live on.”
September 14th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
tim,
Well, we all know what happened at Tora Bora. Gotta get those special forces scouting out targets in Iraq, doncha know!
But Pakistan’s tough. Remember the guy who shot the CIA employees with an AK-47 as they sat in traffic at Langley? It took years to root him out once he got to Pakistan.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Does anyone doubt that the ENTIRE Muslim world detests Israel because of its mistreatment of the Palestinians?
Because of 9/11, Bin Laden’s voice is the one that’s given the most attention
September 14th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
“indifference to Palestinian suffering that’s considered de rigeur by many in American politics…”
If indifference to Palestinian suffering is the American policy, why do we give more than $600 million to the Palestinian Authority every year? Why do we give them weapons, including armored personell carriers and helicopters? Why is the official American policy for the last decade to demand a two-state solution and a Palestinian state? Why does our State department issue declaratives against Israeli human rights offenses? Why has our official government policy equated Israeli settlers as being the moral equivalents of Palestinian terrorists?
Maybe you’re referring to the extreme right wing, led by people like Huckabee? In that regard, you’re right about “indifference to Palestinian suffering”. However, you very purposely left unsaid who you were talking about. Please be more precise when claiming that a part of “American politics” considers Palestinians to be subhuman and not worth their compassion. Your vagueness leads one to worry that you’re talking about a much larger portion of the political populace than I’m guessing.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Uh huh. Nobody who denies that your ethnic group exists can possibly be prejudiced against them.
Just ask the Kurds-er, “Mountain Turks.”
September 14th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
If this is the new core message – I think it will work to his advantage. #1 it has the value of being true, and #2 there’s no messy Koranic verse to cloud the message. I mean, could there be a building more synonymous with what the Catholic church used to call “Engorgement” than the WTC? Does anyone think it’s lost on the Muslim world that virtually all of Clinton and Bush’s foreign policy team were Israel-firsters? When the Bremer team in Iraq were introducing a new Iraqi flag and it looked suspiciously like Israel’s – the people went nuts and they had to scrap it. EVERYONE outside of our dear little Republic knows that Israel is a vile, racist, Apartheid, super-militarized State that wouldn’t even be able to survive if it didn’t leech off the US of A to the tune of close to 2 TRILLION BUCKS since 1973. We’ve got a mainstream media that either presents Israel as “the victim” (sic) or says nothing about it. For years, outside of Gore Vidal and Pat Buchanan, only the Aryan Brotherhood crowd said anything about a government that shows more fealty in its declarations and UN votes to Israel than it does to the country they were elected to serve. Uh, The Red, White, and Blue. When a center-right mainstream (Jewish) pundit like Joe Klein started to point out that the Jewish neocons were the ones who took over the government and pushed us into Iraq – I thought there might be some growing discussion of this, but, no, nary a word has been said about it since. Instead, the same wicked and odious fifth column Israel Lobby that caused the Iraqi debacle is now screeching that Obama’s grace period is over and he MUST NUKE IRAN NOW!!!! Now, or a little later – that’s pretty much the contours of what to do about Iran by the chattering classes on the idiot box or the “respectable” press and Zionist-lite blogs like this. I suspect that bin Laden’s words will wither and die in the flatulent cave of the winds rather quickly, but they shouldn’t and ought not if all of us living in this grand land wish to be liberated from the deadly threat of living in Tel Aviv West.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
If indifference to Palestinian suffering is the American policy, why do we give more than $600 million to the Palestinian Authority every year?
To maintain the puppet government in the WB, why else. The puppet government used by racist Zionist scum and their scummy racist US supporters to weaken and split the national liberation movement.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Nobody who denies that your ethnic group exists can possibly be prejudiced against them.
Yes, it would certainly seem difficult to become obsessed with something that doesn’t exist, which was the original accusation. If you want to make a new one now, you need to give some specifics.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Excellent post, Matt.
This is it? This is how Osama is choosing to to out, whining about Israel? He must be exhausted and not thinking clearly. Does he really want to great Allah as just another minor-league martyr for Palestine?
Please go to the back of the line, Mr. bin Laden. Your cause, it turns out, was no greater than those that proceeded you.
September 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“Does anyone doubt that the ENTIRE Muslim world detests Israel because of its mistreatment of the Palestinians?”
I’m not sure the because statement has to follow. Much of the Muslim world detests Israel (though Indonesia doesn’t seem super-concerned). Whether or not it has much to do with the actual treatment of the Palestinians is a different issue entirely.
And are we sure this is the typical abb1? This one seems even worse than usual. Did the crookedtimber folks just delete his worst comments so that I only saw the mild ones?
September 14th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I find Bin Ladens rethoric very apealing and scarily close to the truth. Not so 10 years ago. Bin Laden suceeded in a scary way radicalicing US policy. This is the same dynamic we see here on this blog considering party politics just more extreme. Demonice the other side by pickking on the most radical ones, which leads to a harsh response and solidarity by the less radical of the other side.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“I’m not sure the because statement has to follow. Much of the Muslim world detests Israel (though Indonesia doesn’t seem super-concerned). Whether or not it has much to do with the actual treatment of the Palestinians is a different issue entirely.” (Sebastian)
It appears that the availability of (CO2) oxygen has something to do with breathing and sustaining life. Whether or not the lack of availability of same might hasten death is open to question. (Martians traveling to Pluto don’t seem super-concerned)
September 14th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Sebastian, it sounds like you disagree with something I wrote here, but you don’t give a clue of what it might be, so I’m not sure how to respond.
Should I, perhaps, respond in the same manner? Fine, here it is: Sebastian, you are a cretin. Now we’re even.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
[...] Yglesias parses the new audiotape from Osama bin [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
bin Laden has made another tape and in it he says that we should trust those guys from Nigeria with our bank accounts.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
[...] but we do see the article as a useful counterpoint to the recent round of articles and blog posts about al-Qaeda’s imminent [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
One possibility is that Osama bin Laden has simply changed his mind about some things — that he used to regard Israel as an odious but relatively minor issue, but now he thinks Israel is a key motive in U.S. support of the un-Islamic or insufficiently-Islamic Arab regimes that Al Qaeda opposes. Maybe he got the idea from watching the reactions of American militant Zionists like Joe Lieberman and Mike Huckabee react to Obama’s settlement freeze requests. To be sure, Osama bin Laden’s tapes include a lot of propaganda, but at least some of what he genuinely thinks is in there too.
abb1 is non-anti-Jewish in approximately the same sense tha Trent Lott is non-anti-Black or Marty Peretz is non-anti-Arab. I.e., no calls for the destruction of synagogues, or formal discrimination like barring Jews from land ownership, or anything like that. However, the motives of Jews are automatically assumed to be nefarious, the motives of anyone anti-Jewish are assumed to be benign, a massacre of unarmed Jews in Hebron is said to be something Jews brought upon themselves, etc. There are criteria under which one might say that neither Lott nor Peretz nor abb1 are prejudiced, and there are criteria under which one might say that all are prejudiced.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Now, that’s bullshit, Julian Elson. You don’t understand much, do you. The fact of the matter is that I won’t give a damn whether you fancy yourself Jewish or Klingon; it’s that simple.
If you seriously claim that “the motives of Jews are automatically assumed to be nefarious” by me, it should be easy to produce a quote to this effect (and with a link, please). So, please do. And if you can’t – and of course you can’t – then, obviously, you’re nothing but lying scum, Julian Elson. Yes, you, Julian Elson, you, as an individual, regardless of your silly imaginary identities.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
1) Why are so many posters making what appear to be factual statement when they obviously have never looked into the matter in even the most superficial way?
2) Abb1 is right. In 1997-98 TV interviews– and in his fatwas, Bin Laden gave 3 primary reasons why the Islamic World should declare war on the USA:
a) US support for Israeli attacks on the Palestinians
b) US support for the corrupt Saudi royal family
c) US killing of 600,000 Iraqi children
3) In an interview with Pakistan’s DAWN journal just after the Sept 11 attacks, Bin Laden explicitly called out US sale of advanced weapons to Israel. In the months preceding the Sept 11 attack, Ariel Sharon picked a fight with the Palestinians by walking through the Al Apsa mosque area with hundreds of armed guards and in May 2001 had bombed the Palestinians with F16 supplied by the USA.
George W Bush , in an early move to suck the cock of the Neocons, had ordered the State Department to stop its protest. Bush then turned around and sold 52 more F16s to Sharon in June. Al Qaeda’s order to execute the Sept 11 attack was issued in July.
Of course , neither the Israel Lobby supporters among the Democrats nor the Big Oil and Big Defense supporters among the Republicans wanted this to come out. So you will notice that the 911 Commission NEVER examined what provoked the Sept 11 attack. As Commission consultant Ernest May acknowledged to the New Republic, saying the issue was too hot politically.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Here is Bin Laden’s Nov 2001 interview with DAWN:
http://www.dawn.com/2001/11/10/top1.htm
“The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims. The entire America, because they elect the Congress.”
Ask yourself WHO has been lying to you — and WHY?
September 14th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Here’s Marc Lynch today at Foreign Policy:
I hope this satisfies those (including, surprisingly, Matt) who believe OBL didn’t used to lean on the Israel issue.
Poptarts wrote: Ariel Sharon and Likudniks tried to link the Palestinians and OBL and say to us “see, this is what we’re dealing with.” 9/11 was an unmitigated disaster for Palestinians. Even I now sympathize more with Israel.
So you believe Sharon’s false equivalency between al-Qaeda’s world jihad and Palestinian groups who have a specific nationalistic goal? Well then you’ve been had. The point I was making is that Israel advocates completely reject (and attempt to repress) the attention OBL gives the Palestinian suffering. AJC, ADL, Likudniks and Christian Zionists only wish to conflate Palestinians and al-Qaeda, which isn’t the same as saying al-Qaeda is inspired by Israel. They can’t stand for the latter statement.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Look at the 1997 interview Bin Laden gave to CNN’s Peter Arnett:
http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm
An excerpt:
“REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, you’ve declared a jihad against the United States. Can you tell us why? And is the jihad directed against the US government or the United States’ troops in Arabia? What about US civilians in Arabia or the people of the United States?
BIN LADIN: We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet’s Night Travel Land (Palestine). And we believe the US is directly responsible for those who were killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. The mention of the US reminds us before everything else of those innocent children who were dismembered, their heads and arms cut off in the recent explosion that took place in Qana (in Lebanon). This US government abandoned even humanitarian feelings by these hideous crimes. It transgressed all bounds and behaved in a way not witnessed before by any power or any imperialist power in the world. ”
He goes on to mention the other two grievances later.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:55 am
So, Julian Elson, per #36, since you failed to produce any evidence of your very serious accusation against me, I take it you now concede that you are a scummy lying Zionist apologist. Consequently, I shall refer to you from now on as: Julian Elson, lying scumbag. That’s your new name, scumbag.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I did, you twit. Google “Mountain Turk,” since the reference clearly went over your head.
In fact, Jews (and Kurds!) exist, and the denial of that fact demonstrates an appalling prejudice.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:57 am
But I’m not denying that you and others believe that they are Jews. You can identify yourself as a ‘Jew’, and that’s fine with me, but it’s something that only exists in your head, has nothing to do with objective reality, and of no consequence to anybody. So, I don’t see how this can count for ‘prejudice’, you moron. Prejudice against whom?
And it’s different with ‘Kurds’. One could define ‘Kurds’ as a population of a specific geographic region. But it doesn’t work with ‘Jews’, and that’s your problem.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:35 am
…not that disbelieving in ‘Kurds’ amounts to anything even remotely resembling ‘prejudice’, of course; let alone ‘appalling prejudice’. That’s just total nonsense; something only a completely brainwashed ‘liberal’ idiot could come up with.
It’s perfectly alright (not to mention helpful and highly advisable) to perceive every human being as an individual, fully autonomous individual with his or her own agency, as opposed to a ‘Kurd’ or a ‘Jew’, or a ‘woman’, or a ‘homosexual’.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
As I mentioned, there are criteria of prejudice under which one might say that you (abb1), Trent Lott, and Marty Peretz are all non-prejudiced. If you prefer these more stringent criteria, then that’s a matter of definitions, and we can both accept that. If you think that Trent Lott and/or Mart Peretz are prejudiced, but that you aren’t, then find a quote from either of them regarding their putative targets of prejudice (you’ll probably have a tough time saying that either one, say, advocates formal discrimination, or officially holds a doctrine of racial inferiority, etc), and I’ll match it to one of yours.
September 15th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Well, lying scumbag Julian Elson, I have no idea whether Trent Lott is prejudiced or not, nor do I care. Marty Peretz, of course, is well known for being racist scum, without a doubt. If you need his racist quotes, use google. Still, what does any of them have to do with me? Clearly, absolutely nothing.
And I must compliment you, lying scumbag Julian Elson: you seem to be breaking some serious new ground in inventing sleazy innuendo. You should patent this.
OK, let’s try this: there is certainly a set of criteria by which both Jeffrey Dahmer and lying scumbag Julian Elson could be described as “non-completely-crazy-monsters”. How do you like this one?
September 15th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Okay. I agree that there are criteria under which both Dahmer and I are “not-completely-crazy-monsters.” For instance, if your criteria for being a completely crazy monster is that you must kill at least 1,000 people, then neither of us are. If your criteria are that. One might also establish criteria under which both of us are CCMs — say, anyone who has ever swatted a mosquito is a completely crazy monster. However, I would say that there are also criteria under which Dahmer is a CCM and I am not: i.e., “killing a human and eating his body parts makes you a CCM.”
Anyway, here’s a Peretz quote, which some might regard as expressing anti-Arab prejudice:
“Berber comes from the same root as barbarian. But there is nothing barbarian about the Berbers. Their rugs and and especially their vases are so much more subtle than the glimmery ornate of their Arab neighbors.”
Here’s an abb1 quote:
“What kind of idiot would sit thru a fucking seder and then brag about it? I did it once when I was a teenager, and I would rather have a root canal than do it again. You guys really are nuts.”
The commonality lies in a unique singling out of Arab or Jewish culture as inferior at an aesthetic level. Naturally, such matters are ones of personal taste, but one doesn’t find Peretz’s condemnations of, say, different types of Chinese vases, or abb1 talking about how stupid it is to celebrate Diwali.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Peretz is racist Nazi-like scum, rugs and vases notwithstanding.
Now, I don’t know what Diwali is, but pointing out that seder is a long and extremely boring religious ritual that no modern American with a college degree has any apparent reason to participate in (not to mention, to brag about) is a perfectly innocent observation. Same goes for the Easter Mass and whatever the Muslim equivalent of it is.
OK, but let us leave the seders and other distractions alone for a minute; let’s get down to real business. I want to see a quote where “the motives of Jews are automatically assumed to be nefarious”; otherwise, I’m afraid, you are destined to remain a lying scumbag forever. Note that now (with this seder thing) you also starting to sound a bit like a weasel.
September 15th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
“Jewish progressive my ass, you tribalistic savage.” — abb1, July 15, 2009.
“it’s mostly those “Jewish-something” who proudly display their savagery nowadays.” — abb1, July 16, 2009.
No doubt this displays nothing against Jews in particular, somehow. Whatever. Trent Lott reminiscing about Strom Thurmond’s candidacy had nothing in particular to do with blacks. Marty Peretz claiming “Even the bare rudiments of civilization will not soon come back to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates” wasn’t about Arabs in particular.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Of course you forgot to post the links with the context, you weasel.
Anyway, “Jewish progressive my ass, you tribalistic savage” – so? when responding to an individual who sounds like a tribalistic savage, how does this indicate that “the motives of Jews are automatically assumed to be nefarious”?
And yes, “it’s mostly those “Jewish-something” who proudly display their savagery nowadays” – that is certainly true. They are Zionists. I don’t know any current mainstream movement in the US prefixing everything with Slav- or Celtic- at every occasion. That’s a fact, not assumption.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
You’re right — I did forget to post the links to the context — the context being your attacks on Matt for writing a post defending Human Rights Watch from the attacks of the Israeli government, for which you insulted him for including six letters — “Jewish,” incidentally — in his post.
Here is a link to the context:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/israeli-government-aipac-stepping-up-attacks-on-human-rights-watch.php
September 15th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Yes, like I said, “Jewish-progressive” makes no more sense than “Aryan-progressive”. You either progressive or you are not; and keep your meaningless ethnic identity to yourself, if you don’t want to sound like a savage who believes in his tribe’s exclusivity. And that goes for all ethnic tribes.
Question: if I am just like Marty Peretz and other racists, surely I must have my own favorite ethnic or racial group, superior to all the other groups, correct? So, which one is it?
September 17th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Posts 37-40 together are among the best rebuttals I’ve seen to the idea that Bin Laden’s attack on the US was not motivated by opposition to US policies with respect to Israel. Good job Don Williams and John K.
Abb1 – I understand feeling like you have to get the last word, but you really don’t. People who feel emotionally connected to Israel are going to call you anti-Semitic if you argue against Zionism. It’s an emotional reaction, not subject to reason. When you attack Zionism, they feel (not think but feel) like you are attacking them, and in some vague way they feel like you’re doing it because of their Jewish ethnic identity. So they call you anti-Semitic. No argument is going to change that.
Give the guy the last word and anyone who reads this thread who doesn’t share his emotional environment will recognize by the second or third exchange what had been happening and feel no need to see it continued.