That doesn’t mean the alliance Israel and the U.S. won’t succeed to enter a new war in the Near East against Iran. Bibi Netanyahu can use aggression against the biblical enemy of Persia to unite a divided population:
- ○ Most papers favor to report the latest corruption-related scandal to rock Netanyahu and his cronies
Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism: Different Religions, Same Hate | Tikun Olam |
When he got to a discussion of the Inquisition he mentioned, of course, the expulsion of Jews and the subsequent torture of Marranos at the hands of the Church and State. But one fact was entirely new to me: the Catholic State expelled not just Jews, but the defeated Muslims (or Moors) as well. Muslims too were tortured if they were found to have concealed their continuing allegiance to Islam.
An interesting question is-why I didn’t know this. Certainly it is largely because in the Jewish history courses I took at the Jewish Theological Seminary and medieval Spanish Hebrew poetry at the Hebrew University, none of this was mentioned. The question is, Why?
Continued below the fold …
That’s the general issue I want to explore. It relates to a Jewish need for exceptionalism. It is an impulse that begins far back in our history, perhaps to God’s promise to Abraham to make his descendants “as numerous as the stars in the sky” (this was written at a time when you could still see thousands of stars in the night sky!). Or perhaps it goes back to the verse in the Bible in which God calls Israel a “chosen people.”
We certainly are not the only religion or nation to hold such beliefs. Here in the U.S., “American exceptionalism” goes back at least to the 19th century and the notion of “Manifest Destiny,” if not earlier. But we Jews have made tradition of this. And while such a notion of being set aside for a sacred or divine purpose can be a blessing; more often it has proven a curse.
Netanyahu’s cheap theatrics fall flat, but alas, he has an audience of one — Trump | Mondoweiss |
The good news from Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Iran’s “secret atomic archive” yesterday is that it was so cheaply theatrical that it is being widely dismissed as vaudeville. He used the word secret 15 times, and in the encore pulled back a black curtain on his evidence, proclaiming, “I just revealed something the world has never seen before.”
The bad news is that the world doesn’t matter; Netanyahu obviously pitched his message to one person, Donald Trump, who is moved by cheap theatrics; and lobbying Trump to go to war against Iran looks to be a far better bet than lobbying his predecessor, Barack Obama. Under similar pressure three years ago, Obama said that only one country in the world was against the deal, Israel, and that it would be an “abrogation of my constitutional duty” to defer to Israel rather than the American people.
○ Netanyahu’s Revenge: Trump the Winner
○ Israel’s PM Office Claims Victory In Iran Nuclear Deal Defeat
○ Obama Turncoats: CNN Facilitates UANI Advocate Pro-Israel
○ Coalition of the Willing Against Iran: US Justice Dept, Ungar, UANI and Mossad
○ Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria – CIA 1983
After losing out on the successful Iran nuclear deal under Obama, leave it to PM Netanyahu, conservative propaganda and the broad Israel lobby in the United States to take revenge … Democrats losing their presidential bid in 2016. Pointing fingers to Russia? What a load of bs, fake news and pure propaganda … dream on, keep eyes shut.
Revealed: UK’s push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance | The Guardian |
British diplomats plan to use four major summits this year – the G7, the G20, Nato and the European Union – to try to deepen the alliance against Russia hastily built by the Foreign Office after the poisoning of the former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March.
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A cross-party alliance in parliament has developed which sees the question of Russian corruption no longer through the prism of finance, but instead as a security and foreign policy threat, requiring fresh sanctions even if this causes short-term economic damage to the UK.Ministers want to pursue a broad Russian containment strategy at the coming summits covering cybersecurity, Nato’s military posture, sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs and a more comprehensive approach to Russian disinformation.
It is argued that votes by MPs this week over public registers of beneficial share ownership in Britain’s overseas territories and the introduction of Magnitsky-style sanctions belatedly gives the UK greater moral credibility to urge wavering countries to join an international alliance.
○ ‘Dirty money’: U-turn as Tories back plans to make tax havens transparent | The Guardian |
In past generations, politicians always find the tools to demonize the opposition and create the enemy image in a blitz for war. Pushing ahead with corporatism, profit for the few and pure capitalism using the financial tools of sanctions in a frigid Cold War setting. History doesn’t teach humanity lessons, such a shame!
