Mar 20 2012
Israel Ramps Up War-Rhetoric on Iran
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The killing of four Jews in France yesterday by a man feared to be a serial murderer spurred strong words from Tel Aviv and warnings from the Israeli Parliament that the shooting was a sign of growing anti-Semitism. A teacher at a Jewish school in France and three children were shot dead by a man who officials also believe killed three soldiers from North Africa this month in two separate incidents. Today Israeli officials lashed out at EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton for her words of condolence in which she mourned tragic circumstances facing children around the world including, “what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world.” In condemning her remarks and urging her to “reverse” them Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “The children Ashton should be talking about are those in the south of Israel who live in fear after the rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip.” Tensions between Gaza and Israel are high after days of cross border attacks last week left an estimated 25 Palestinians dead and many wounded on both sides. The fighting began when Israel assassinated the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees group of Gaza on March 9th. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week escalated his rhetoric on Iran, blaming Tehran for supporting fighters in Gaza and making the provocative statement, “Gaza is Iran.” British Prime Minister David Cameron said last week he did not see justification for an Israeli strike on Iran and the US has not been publicly supportive. Netanyahu also said a lack of support would not deter his country from defending itself, and stated, “Israel has never left its fate to others, not even the best of its friends.”
GUEST: Jennifer Lowenstein, a political activist and a faculty associate in Middle East Studies through the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also assistant programming director at the A. E. Havens Center, a division of the Department of Sociology also at the UW-Madison, and she is the Secretary and Treasurer of The Chomsky Fund
2 Responses to “Israel Ramps Up War-Rhetoric on Iran”
i cant believe that we are dealing with the problems of another,
the Irali are full of hatred towards everyone else, why should we get involved. Let them fight their own battles, is bad enough that we supported with weapons now we have to go fire then for them?
what a nasty bunch….
I want to debate Netanyahu, et al, about war mongering because Israel, especially and maybe the entire world “EXISTS” on the basis of THE PORNIFICATION OF FORCE!
Symptoms of the pornification of force are wars, abuses of power that are revealed when the arrogance of relative, subjectively constructed judgment rears its ugly head. This limited judgment DISINFORMS us that there is “the other” when the other “R” us!
The biggest illusion of all may be that of ownership of property. We hardly own ourselves, let alone can we, do we own anything (ownership is a legal fiction i.e., Joseph Proudhon “Property is theft”) when we refuse to “own up” to even HAVING a dark side. We try to push our dark sides off, by projecting them onto “the other” whether “the other” is the immigrant or the 1%, etc.
Those who embrace their own dark sides, have included “the other” ABSOLUTELY instead of RELATIVELY. Simultaneously, they also live , love and laugh absolutely, presently, because they know that is all we really have. All their energy is FOR THE PRESENT! HA HA!
Instead of making “the other” out to be the rason d’etre for the emergence, the maintenance, and the PERFORMANCE of THE PORNIFICATION OF FORCE, those who accept as their IDENTITY their own dark sides, NEED only the wholeness of themselves to be existent! It’s ABSOLUTE lovability. I want to kiss MYSELF all the time!
Those who deny their own dark sides will always “live” (if you can call it living at all when you are in a zombie like state, that is) sensing and, perhaps unknowingly, ENABLING, SEEKING, the external evil that is really within THEM.
This is because the pornification of force is their negative core identity, regardless of their constructed social and cultural “masks” and roles, their race, gender, etnicity religion, etc.
So keep whining, all you pornifcators of force, and compete with who whines most virally, have an olympic holocaust, but really, it will HAVE YOU!
Or, try to extricate yourselves from the pornification of force by discarding ALL social and cultural traditions, all countries, all governments all identities, customs, traditions, etc.
Lets all begin to make new “memories”, let’s MAKE the PRESENT for a change!