Friday, January 28, 2011

Working on my frustrations with IPMN's Facebook page

Did you ever get so fed up with something on a Facebook site that you wanted to comment and couldn't. But what if it is a Presbyterian Facebook site? You would think that if you were Presbyterian you should be able to speak-out. But not on the Israel/Palestine Mission Network Facebook site.

So what I have done, and I may make this an every so often, habit, I have copied out a whole section of their Facebook with their links and comments and I am going to comment.


"Israel Palestine Mission Network Rand Paul calls for a halt to aid to Israel

U.S. Democrats and pro-Israel lobbies slam Republican Senator's call to halt Israel aid
http://www.haaretz.com/
Tea Party representative Rand Paul tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he has a lot of respect for Israel but he doesn't believe the U.S. should be funding the Mideast arms race during financial crisis.
Top of Form
3 hours ago ·
4 people like this.
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Israel Palestine Mission Network
Quote:"You have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides? I have a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as, you know, a fountain of peace and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East. But at... the same time, I don't think funding both sides of the arm race, particularly when we have to borrow the money from China to send it to someone else. We just can't do it anymore. The debt is all- consuming and it threatens our well-being as a country,” Paul said.See More
2 hours ago ·
1 personFran Foley Lawrence likes this.

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Ralph Garlin Clingan Presby elder RP needs some help with that Israel as democracy mistake!
2 hours ago ·
1 personKate Sobolewski likes this.
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Bill Doerrfeld I disagree with much of Rand Paul except for this. I believe a democratic nation is one which separates church and state. The Jewish state of Israel doesn't meet this definition."

The above section is the first link I have copied out. The IPMN have quoted Ron Paul. I will quote Congresswoman Nita Lowey, Ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, who called the proposal shocking.
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“Israel is the only democratic nation in the Middle East and one of our most stalwart allies”, Lowey said. “A stable and secure Israel is in our national security interest and has been a staple of our foreign policy for more than sixty years. Using our budget deficit as a reason to abandon Israel is inexcusable. It is unclear to me whether Rand Paul speaks for the Tea Party, the Republican Party, or simply himself”.

Also see the comment by Bill Doerrfeld, I wish to respond to it. England has an official state church and is still a Democracy. The same is true of several European countries.

And that comment by Clingan is wrong. When we had problems with awful racism in the United States we did not stop being a Democracy. Instead we used our form of goverment to work on such problems until they were solved. Of course there are more that need working on.

Below is the next section I picked up:

"Israel Palestine Mission Network ‎"The Claims Conference was set up in 1951 by 24 Jewish organizations to negotiate with the German government on compensation for Holocaust survivors and their heirs..."

Report: Holocaust compensation group withheld over a billion Euros from Jewish survivors
http://www.haaretz.com/
Leading barrister Jeffrey for Board of Deputies of British Jews Jeffrey Gruder says conference did not hold the money for the owners or their heirs, but allocated it to other purposes.

3 hours ago · 11 ·
Peter Leitzke likes this.

Boni Julia Caracciolo how much "compensation" did the other millions of non-jews receive after the war?"

I am not at all sure why this got posted on IPMN, except often when something bad is committed by either Jewish people or about Jewish people or by Israel, IPMN posts it as if to say, "see how awful they are." But it was the comment by Boni Julia Caracciolo that I wanted to respond to.

There was no other group of people, as an ethnic group, that the Nazi's attempted to totally destroy. And they almost succeeded. No other group lost six million people. Of course God would not let that happen. But that comment by Caracciolo, is one often made by anti-Semites.

8 comments:

Melanie said...

great insight. thanks for posting!

Viola Larson said...

Thanks Melanie,
By the way, I love chipotle too. And your haiku blog is amazing!!!

Pastor Bob said...

This is so curious. Most of the anti Israel/antisemite stuff is coming from the left these days. Who knew tea party and libertarian people were trending that way too?

Viola Larson said...

Bob this doesn't surprise me at all. There has always been some anti-Semitism in the libertarian party. And part of the problem is that they are loaded with conspiracy theories which almost always ends up pulling the Jews in as the bad guys.

Now I'm not paying that much attention to the tea party so I don't know about them.

Anonymous said...

Pastor Bob: There's long been a broad strain of isolationism in libertarianism that I think is actually where Rand Paul is coming from. I don't think he's anti-Israel so much as simply against foreign aid in any form. The people commenting on the IPMN post, on the other had, all appear to be rabid left-wing anti-Israel people who happen to have found an ally on this one particular subject (aid to Israel, which they fervently want to cut off, even as they lobby for increased aid to their favored nations).

David Fischler
Woodbridge, VA

will wpotts said...

Pastor Bob - yes, recent overt antisemitism has been coming from the left. It started (if one wants to be generous) with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel emphases, but these quickly slid into outright antisemitism.

But, the limited government movement - particularly libertarians and constitutionalists has also had this element present. While I wholeheartedly agree with the concepts of limited government, individual freedom, and rule of law - I have to acknowledge this anti-Jewish element has been present among many who claim to advocate those things.

This isn't about specific personalities - I have no idea, for instance, what Rand Paul's personal views are. It is, however, a product of various conspiracy theories. On the left these have to do with Zionists. On the right they now use the word Zionist, but they used to use the word Jew to mean the same thing.

Specifically - they mean an international cabal of very wealthy people who have had a very disproportionate hand in world events. That thesis is manifestly true in some senses - I mean, we all know that backroom deals affect national and international policies.

Yet in both cases, these lead to utterly ridiculous and irrational conclusions.

will spotts said...

How this conspiracy talk become irrationale in the case of the Jews is that ALL Jewish people are held to be part of the conspiracy. As if, for example, ordinary people with no evident wealth or influence, were sticking together because they were all in on the plot.

In terms of the 'right wing' side of the conspiracy, much is made of the Rothschild family. Hitler (among many others) was an avid believer. But more normal people whose sympathies lie on the right have an added animus because they perceive much Jewish political activism to be strongly left-wing. For the Nazis (I mean in terms of their propaganda - the people they sought to appeal to) it was the Bolsheviks who were Jewsish. In the US, it has been the ACLU and Hollywood who were viewed in that way. Today we hear about corporations, bankers - who devalue currency, and Bernie Madoff.

This loses all semblance of sanity because it takes certain verifiable things and mixes them with egregiously far-fetched claims - and then blames a group.

The Jews are perceived as having disproportionate influence, being clannish, having dual loyalties, controlling the government, controlling the banks, controlling the media - and nothing - no matter how ridiculous - is considered beyond their nefarious capabilities and purposes. They become supernaturally evil.

And that's what we're seeing on left and right today.

will spotts said...

The problem today is that the topic is immensely complicated. There are historical, sociological reasons for some of the perceptions held by antisemites. (For instance, certain industries and professions were open to the Jewish people, while others were not.)

But the perceptions are warped in an almost schizophrenic manner. Connections are made where none exist - and the lack of proof is taken as if it were proof.

The process is identical for the left and the right. The difference is that the right's antisemitism was socially unacceptible, so it was not really a threat - and it was not widespread (in the US). For all Henry Ford's efforts, the American people, by and large, didn't really buy it.

On the left, however, it is given some sort of moral cover - mostly by churches. The phenomenon is identical. But its acceptibility in the US is increasing rapidly. If we are not careful, we will wake up one day to find that our churches have contributed (once again) to an insane and hideous antisemitic climate.