Best Not to Dignify Holocaust Deniers

I am truly glad this thread has now been archieved. It was downright painful to read. I hope that in the future we all can be more civil to each other.

We debate any number of controversial issues with religious overtones around the world, such as the historicity of Jesus, Mohamed, evolution, etc.

I'm not aware of any other issue so off limits to historical or scholarly review as much as this. I would think continued, historical review would only serve to strengthen the common understanding of what did happen and continue to remind us that even today the world must not tolerate any form of ethnic or religious cleansing.

Unless, of course, those most ardently in opposition to such examinations fear there is something to hide.

Farnaz:

In alio pediculum, in te ricinum non vides

Arminius:

Timeo cerevisiam dilutam

Onofrio, et al.,

Beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere

yael1,

"I clicked on here to let Onofrio know that I'd heard from my Australian relatives."

Farnaz,
I am concerned for you that you get too caught up in these topics and issues, and now taking on alternate identities is a step further into discomfort and dis-ease. I suggest that you get some help. I do not think it is healthy.

I am happy to dialogue directly with you, but not through some sprouted ego component.

If you have issues with what I said, or what you believe I mean, or what you think I do or do not have the right to say, then I am happy to discuss them. I will not reply, past this moment, to your ego appendage yael1.

Onofrio,

Unfortunately I have lost a good bit of my response to you. I will have to make do.

I trust that you understood my last post to you in reply to this. My level of fixity on the subject, be it boredom or intoxication, is beside the point. The level of debate on the subject had descended to pathetic, and that was clear to all. Not to you? Probably not, as you replied in a juvenile way. You did not respond to my comments but sought to discredit me because I was bored.
You make far too many assumptions of me. Have you not gotten bored waiting for a train, or waiting for an adult conversation? You just started spitting in my general direction without addressing the fact that this spitting contest is juvenile. How... childish.

"Quite a transformation you've managed."

No transformation, I am the same. Again, you assume too much.
I may be bored, but that does not prove non caring in the root subject, or a bias toward it. One may be bored with english, but not language. Or bored with cultural anthropology, until the right teacher comes along. It does not make one a racist that he was bored.

You, and Farnaz, called me a racist because I was bored with the drone of jewish pr. Here I agree with Timmy2. You did jump at the racist and antisemitic cards without true cause.

"You sniff imperially:"
You ranted on at my imperious displeasure at the mediocrity of debate until you suggested that I reversed course in praise. No, I had no reversal.

Onofrio, I never negated or disregarded the gravity or veracity of the Holocaust. Read back in my posts on various threads and you will find that I have great regard for this horror and the toll that it took on the victims as well as those not directly touched.

It was you, and Farnaz, that jumped to your own conclusions and ASSUMPTIONS of me, and you were wrong. You can not admit that, it seems, but it is true nonetheless.

Stop being a lap dog for Farnaz, and grow a set that can think of it's own accord. There, I have shot back insult, of my own flavor.

"Some of Farnaz's best moments, in my accounting, was bringing some of his words into this debate."

Farnaz should have just shut her own mouth and quoted from Elie Wiesel and other higher thinkers, philosophers and poets. What came out or her mouth of her own composure was vile, and got more vile over time. She is the racist that she sees pursuing her, and she is the hater of that racist. Push aside the fog and re-read her hate mail. You will come to agree.

I do not dislike Farnaz, to use a strange word. I respect her deeply the experiences that she says that she has had, if they are true, and I can understand to some small extent her come from. But she does have great hate in her, snap prejudice and condemnation, and she is a racist. In my not always humble opinion.

"...your protege Timmy2 has pursued with Javert-like malice."

:-) Timmy stands on his own, in his own way. Thank you for the unintended complement, but he is his own creation. He needs no help from me.

Pseudo,

No, alas!, I have not imbibed that offering by Rogue. I have had their Dead Man's Ale, which I like a lot. I understand that the Yellow Snow is seasonal, and I have not seen it here.

Arminius,

Did you ever get to the Yellow Snow IPA by Rogue I mentioned? Pretty good stuff.

Pseudo,

It is new question night. Let's see what they have in store for us.
They should be smart enough not to give us a third week in a row on holocaust denial.
I'm itching for something fresh. Thought provoking.
Fingers crossed.

Pseudo!

Eat yellow snow?!? Where's my claymore...... let's see, now, what's a good insult in return? ...oh, yes, of course:

Tete futue atque equem in quo huc vectus es! :-D

Timmy,

We do have to come up with a new topic. There will probably be some drivel cooked up by Sally Quinn making much ado about nothing.

Arminius:

"Hi, Timmy,

If Pseudo is Christian, he hides it pretty well."

So do you, you irascible old coot, so maybe you *should* go eat some yellow snow. %-}

Dear Mary.

“I used to get regularly beaten up...for the sole reason that I was Catholic. I withdrew into the Catholic blogs and she followed me there! Enough was enough. I left when she kept calling me 'c..nt', couldn't take that last.”

Mary Cunningham,

I missed a lot of this mess, but I remember your comments from times past, and always found you to be an interesting and engaging personality. I hope to hear more from you in the future.

What is wrong with someone who urges another poster to be more selective about who they choose to correspond with, and suggesting a few by name that have the seal of approval from said blogger. Why would someone try to stop people from making parleys and trying to put past grievances behind them?

You are welcome in on the truce too, Farnaz.
We can all make peace.

Timmy,
"May I suggest not attacking the poster but the poster's ideas and positions."

Depends on what you mean by 'attack'. Heated debate is certainly OK, but sometimes there is a thin line that can be inadvertently crossed in the heat of the fray.

Dear Yael,

If you are not me, and I think that notwithstanding Arminius's (uncivil) accusations, you, like Onofrio, walk about embodied, can you update me on the election? A Jerusalem friend writes that it's the tightest in Israeli history, with the same report coming from Cairo.

Warmest regards,
Farnaz

Onofrio,

Just a quick post. You're welcome to post to whom you'd like of course, but reading through these comments, if I were you I'd be more selective. You've got to extremely hostile bloggers, from whom I can see you deriving no benefit.

There are those it is interesting to engage, and who aren't threatened by difference: DILTD, Pamsm come to mind, but surely there are many others. I mention these two since they've been around for awhile, especially, DITLD.

I don't always agree with Daniel12, in fact on some points disagree strongly, but he is able to post to me and I to him with civility. None of these three posts in language of the sort you described.

You have a wonderful mind, comprehend the century we're in, grasp the multicultural critique, shun single-system seeing. Pearls not be cast, and all that...

Farnaz

Arminius,

"All you have to do is comply with the rules: defend, don't attack, but you can slam any poster who is really out of line"

May I suggest not attacking the poster but the poster's ideas and positions.

Onofrio,

YOU: "Timmy has never been anywhere near an ally of mine"

Actually the reverse is more accurate. It is you who has never been an ally of mine, in fact you have been a detractor of mine from the start. I came on these threads and made some attacks on religion. I didn't know who Onofrio was until he was severely in my face calling me all kinds of names and labeling me all kinds of things I had to look up in the dictionary. That is how I found out who Onofrio was.

Or in simpler terms: You started it bub.

My first ever post to you was in defense of your personal attack on me, for a post I had made on the original article where I attacked no people but only ideas.

Timmy,

Onofrio have a ceasefire going. All you have to do is comply with the rules: defend, don't attack, but you can slam any poster who is really out of line - that's REALLY out of line, not just strongly differing in opinion.

Onofrio,

YOU: "Last time we had a proper parley, Timmy, you took advantage of my vulnerability and put the boot in"

Nope. You drew first blood on that parley. You answered my question honestly though, self admittedly not completely, and you said you would get beck to me with more when you had time to think about it. In the meantime, you went right back to your sarcastic semantic belly dancing and poetic jugular shots at me in your back and forths with Farnaz. Then I put the boot in, because you had broken the truce. Just because you didn't do it in a post directly to me doesn't make it okay. Taking shots at me in your posts to Farnaz counts as a breaking of the cease fire. And you broke it hard.

As I said at the time, your olive branch was severely barbed.

I'll offer again.
You lay off the personal attacks for past grievances and so will I. We can agree and disagree and debate on the subjects being discussed in the forum, but let's stop the personal tit for tat mud slinging.

Mr Wiesel,

For the record, I express my apologies for marring this thread. I intend no disrespect to you, your work, your legacy.

Thank you for showing a better way.

Arminius,

Seems fair enough to me.

Onofrio,

You are yourself, not a phantom.

I will declare a unilateral cease-fire. I will defend if I am attacked, but not attack. If I read a post totally out of line, I reserve the right to slam the poster.

Arminius,

You to me:
"You did lose allies - me, for one, and Timmy, for another, and others too."

Timmy has never been anywhere near an ally of mine. And why would he want to be? I have nothing valid or original to say. I am the "slimiest of demagogues". Nothing lost there. And nothing sought either.

As for you, I appreciate that you acknowledge my actuality again. I don't mind that you despise me, so long as you don't construe me a phantom of another's devising.

Timmy2,

You to me:
"Let's try an experiment Onofrio. Let's both just stick to the points being discussed this week and not throw any ad hominem attack at one another based on past grievances and see how that goes. I can do it if you can."

Last time we had a proper parley, Timmy, you took advantage of my vulnerability and put the boot in.

I don't believe you.

You can say you tried, and that Onofrio refused to comply. I'll cop that sweet. Point conceded.

And given Arminius' assurance that I have no *allies* I've got nothing much to lose. May as well cry havoc.

And you have nothing to fear, since I have no ideas, no clue, and nothing valid to say.

Tell 'em I died game...

Onofrio,

You did lose allies - me, for one, and Timmy, for another, and others too. I think you have misjudged Timmy - sure, he is caustic as hell sometimes, and overdoes his arguments. But rather than slam him, would it not have been better to calmly point out his error? I'm not sure you did this. Farnaz sure as hell never did.

Your Celtic heritage is admirable - Lords of the Isles, that's something!. I also am Ulster - my father was born in Belfast.

Arminius,

You to me:
"You lost a host of potential allies by your shotgun approach."

No shotgun, Arminius. I quoted Timmy's exact words, and pasted the exact words of a crypto-Nazi for comparison. My point was, and has always been, that Timmy uses the same phraseology as hardcore antisemites with all his rants against the notion of antisemitism. I have always taken the route of fair warning, but I just get slapped down. I don't always get up again smiling, though I do try.

Have you ever stopped to consider that I might be trying to do Timmy a favour? Why could he not say, "Yes, I see what you mean, I'll try to avoid that. I see that there are more important issues here than my personal gripe with a term." Nope, just trenchant self-justification, as (it seems) always.

My Celticity - a mix of Cornwall (the very tip, by the Lanyon Quoit), Ulster, and the MacLeods (mhic Tormod) of Gesto, Skye. Through the latter I go back to the Lords of the Isles.

Timmy offered to Onofrio,
"Let's try an experiment Onofrio. Let's both just stick to the points being discussed this week and not throw any ad hominem attack at one another based on past grievances and see how that goes. I can do it if you can."

I'll go along with that too. Enough of the mud slinging.

Onofrio,

YOU: "I set out against your various Robespierrisms too, all on my ownsome"

Oh I forgot. I guess you did have some ideas of your own. They just weren't valid. "Robespierreisms". lol. Name one.

YOU: "Your idea of a debate is bludgeon and steel-trap"

This has always been your opinion. I just don't see it.

I'll fight fire with fire if I am attacked, but I always start out with the intent of having a respectful debate. In a respectful debate, you show respect for the people, meaning you do not attack them personally, but you do not have to be soft on their ideas. You may fire away, no holds barred on the bad ideas and beliefs that you hear. I am harsh on bad ideas and religious institutions, but I am always respectful of people. It's just that some people can take great personal offense to someone thrashing their ideas and beliefs, connected to the religious institutions, and feel as though they have been attacked personally. Or that "their people" have been attacked personally. And then they lash out at me by trying to hurt me back. Like inflicting the most damage possible to my person in such a public on line forum, labeling me a racist, and and antisemite, and a bigot, and a thing of the swamp.

Your idea of debate on the other hand seems to be to debate with someone much easier to debate with than the person you are debating with. For example, call Timmy Robespierre, and then you get to debate against the ideas of Robespierre, not Timmy. Another example, try and marry Timmy to everything LucyLou, and then you can debate against Lucy Lou's position instead of Timmy's actual position.

Couple this with opening and closing ad hominem attacks and that is what I have to deal with on this blog from you.

YOU: "You remain the thread-straddling triumphalist, the blowhard fake, distended with self-regard, with pretensions to surpassing virtue"

Case in point.

Let's try an experiment Onofrio. Let's both just stick to the points being discussed this week and not throw any ad hominem attack at one another based on past grievances and see how that goes. I can do it if you can.

Onofrio, you wrote,
"Your idea of a debate is bludgeon and steel-trap, except when you're trying to curry favour with temporary allies like Arminius."

Oh, horse poop. Timmy is a master of the stiletto. And he has NEVER curried favor with me.

To Timmy from Daniel. The post you sent about the longevity gene was really interesting. I thought the Japanese lived longer because they ate a lot of fish and tofu. Why some Westerners live longer I never thought about--because they seemed not to live as long as the Japanese. If the Westerners would have the same diet as the Japanese would that result in an identical length of age with the Japanese? Or could the Westerners have the mediterranean diet and live as long as the Japanese? Or are the Westerners compared in the study with the Japanese already on the mediterranean diet? I guess I should look all this up myself.

Karen2565.

I shall indeed look up Bishop Wright's book - I need all the help I can get! Thanks very much, and God bless.

Timmy2,

You to me:
"Now we get to find out if you do have any opinions of your own now that the job of being Farnaz's yes man has been temporarily suspended."

My problem with you far antedates my alleged *yes man* status, and you know it. On several occasions, Farnaz has tried to dissade me from contending with you. It was probably embarrassing to her, or she was perhaps trying to stop me embarassing myself. Yet here I am.

My *original* opinions? You don't read them. You have stomped on them, when offered in peace. I pursued Peter Huff's Hell with alacrity; I set out against your various Robespierrisms too, all on my ownsome. And there's more. But why am I protesting to you? Your idea of a debate is bludgeon and steel-trap, except when you're trying to curry favour with temporary allies like Arminius.

You remain the thread-straddling triumphalist, the blowhard fake, distended with self-regard, with pretensions to surpassing virtue. I did not need Farnaz to tell me that.

Onofrio,

The problem I have with you and Farnaz is that just about anyone was your enemy, especially if they dared to utter the 'J' word. Sure, many that you attacked were anti-Semitic, but many, such as Timmy, are not. You lost a host of potential allies by your shotgun approach.

So you're Celt? I am proud to be of Clan Scott, a dedicated Border Reaver, and hold dear the example of the Bold Bucchleuch. The Scotts are always ready for the fray - A Bellandaine! But, I suppose, there could be peace of a sort between us, but it would only be a ceasefire. Probably not a bad idea, actually.

Onofrio to Arminius:

"And scroll down. Do you really think the posters I listed just now to Timmy deserved a reasonable chat, among the porcelain?"

No one ever suggested they did.
It was Yael's/Farnaz's list of bloggers in her final farewell, whom she accused of "fighting for a Judenfrei zone" who were all branded Jew haters without just cause, that was the problem. None of the admonishments to Farnaz for her posting were with regards to the true holocaust deniers and antisemites. It was about the long list of non-racists whom she called "swamp things". That was the problem.

Hi Arminius,

In light of your exchange with KJohnson, I would like to recommend to you a book that I am currenly reading: "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church" by N.T. Wright, who is a bishop of the anglican church in England and considered an expert on NT theology. I am about halfway through the book and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Wright helps the reader understand what the first christians understood the gospel message to mean, and how through the ages, various things got misunderstood, or overemphasized or outright distorted, some of it due to oversimplified translations from the greek.
This is a gem of a book, in my opinion, well written yet accessible to non experts. I may not agree with all of Wright's conclusions or opinions but overall, this book has greatly blessed me and I think will bless you too in depeening your understanding of Jesus and your relationship with him.
I got the book from my local library so hopefully you can get it that way to. If you ever get around to reading it, please let me know what you think.

Arminius,

I see you've returned from your huffy exit.

My combats with Timmy have been my own, not some commission from Farnaz. She and he still had a degree of mutual respect when I started on him, way back when, in the days of Robespierre. Remember that?

And you have been often ready to spray around intemperate invective, Claymorist. You are in no position to find fault in that regard.

And scroll down. Do you really think the posters I listed just now to Timmy deserved a reasonable chat, among the porcelain?

Look, Claymorist, there has ever been entente between us. I do not wish to forsake my popgun, my strawmen, and my lapdog status for a claymore, but I will, if you persist against me. I too am Celt.

Onofrio,

YOU: "You have no compassion for Farnaz. You just referred to her as a "big dog" in your wee triumphal flatulence at me. Quit the BS. You have prioritised your personal vendetta against Farnaz"

Referring to her as "big dog" in the specific cartoon reference I was making is not an insult to her, it is an insult to you. Also, if you could read you would have noticed I said that she will be shown compassion when she stops calling everyone who disagrees with her "swamp thing". She hasn't shown any sign of stopping that nor has she shown any remorse for having done so ad nauseam in the past.

YOU: "You're glad to see her gone, and you know it"

I sure am. Now we get to find out if you do have any opinions of your own now that the job of being Farnaz's yes man has been temporarily suspended.

Onofrio,

YOU: "I call these antisemites for what they are, and the League of Gentlemen bemoan my *tone*"

Only when you were wrong, like in my case for example. I am not an antisemite or a racist, and everyone here knows it. It's clear from my posts. So when people like you and Farnaz, call me and Justilthen, and Rubytues63, antisemites and racists , how are people on this thread supposed to differentiate between us and the real holocaust deniers. Ever read the boy who cried wolf? You and farnaz have been crying wolf for so long, this week when the real wolves showed up, it turned out disastrous for you. Hence the lesson of crying wolf.

Timmy2,

Timmy2 to Nevermore53:
"And she" (Farnaz) "will be treated with compassion if she can just stop putting everyone who disagrees with her into the category of "Swamp thing"."

Then to Onofrio:
"It's a disaster for you isn't it Onofrio?
What's a little dog to do without big dog?"

Timmy, you're faking it again. You have no compassion for Farnaz. You just referred to her as a "big dog" in your wee triumphal flatulence at me.

Quit the BS. You have prioritised your personal vendetta against Farnaz. You're glad to see her gone, and you know it.

Onofrio,

"Arminius finds such ripostes to be "despicable" attacks. He expresses his disgust for ME,..."

That's putting it mildly. Every time your Sacred Farnaz attacked someone, often for no reason except that there was disagreement (such as Timmy and myself), you followed along, panting faithfully, lap poodle that you are, and fired your own popgun. Are you capable of your own opinion? Are you?

Timmy2,

You to Onofrio:
"You took everyone on this blog to task for any transgression that you saw. Everyone."

Wrong. Smear. You have spent far more words than I on *taking to task* on these boards. Do a word count. And earlier in the current thread, those whom I have *taken to task* have been antisemites. That's *racists* to you, Timmy. Scroll down.

So where were you when the likes of Brownshoeairforcepilot, Sami_Jadallah, Lichtme, Telsawy1, and the despicable Sacred_Whor3 and MCHAUN were posting? Busy on Farnaz.

I call these antisemites for what they are, and the League of Gentlemen bemoan my *tone*. Arminius finds such ripostes to be "despicable" attacks. He expresses his disgust for ME, puts out some BS paranoid fantasy about me being just an invention of Farnaz!

Enjoy your brief respite of self-congratulatory piety alongside your fellow tut-tutters. You'll be stomping on them soon enough.

Hi Daniel12,

You got me pegged pretty well there. I can't argue with any of that.

I grabbed this article from Yahoo for you. Thought you might find it interesting given some of your previous posts. Check it out.

FROM YAHOO NEWS:

"A gene linked to longevity in Japanese people has also been uncovered in Europeans, suggesting people with the right genes the world over can reach a ripe old age, a study published Tuesday showed"

"The research, by Germany's Kiel University, compared the genetic make-up of 388 Germans over 100 years old with 731 younger people and found that a variant of the gene FOXO3A occurred very frequently in the older group"

"This confirms the findings of an earlier US study in September 2008 in which scientists examined the genes of 3,741 Japanese men over 95 and came to the same conclusion"

"This discovery is of particular importance because Japanese and Europeans are relatively different genetically. Now we can assume that this gene plays a role worldwide in living longer," said Professor Almut Nebel, head of the research group"

And Onofrio,

It wasn't a "Jewish unpleasantness"
It was a "race-card playing racist" unpleasantness, and you played a major supporting roll.

As you continue to do with your "Jewish unpleasantness" shot.
The equivalent of Yael's "Judenfrei" zone that we were all fighting for all along.

So no, based on your last post, the "unpleasantness" is still not over apparently.

On whether Timmy is an antisemite:

Probably no one will read this as it is getting late on tuesday and the blog will change subjects tomorrow, so I will repeat in the future, but for now, sorry Onofrio and Farnaz, at the risk of having the two of you displeased with me...I have to go with Timmy on this one.

Two consistent things about Timmy I have observed (I leave Timmy's "I am always right" attitude out the discussion): Timmy always asserts that he is an athiest regardless of how much trouble he gets in with the religious. And he (and this is the essential point in this discussion) always says he is trying to get above religious, racial and ethnic conflicts.--In fact he wants all of the three to just go away, and one of the ways to make it all go away is to constantly not take sides with anyone on these matters but rather try to get above everyone--which inevitably results in everyone extremely displeased because probably most people have so much of their identities invested in a racial, religious or ethnic identity.

Timmy I suspect is the kind of person I am sometimes...What I mean is, at one of my jobsites a guy from Sri Lanka, a guy who is half-Syrian, a guy who is from Iraq, and myself are often in the habit of eating out of the same bowl of food, not needing plates at all. What we do is just bring out the plastic forks and spoons and just start digging in. In other words, we have something which one does not read about in the newspapers--and it gives me no end of trouble because so often my personal dealings with people of different race, ethnicity or religion conflicts with the reality the newspapers present and vice versa...

I too like Timmy live in a big city with a great many types of people--and like Timmy I call it home. But Timmy is more idealistic than I am. I dwell too much on the differences between people even though my dealings with people are always positive. I have never gotten into any racial, ethnic or religious arguments with people--or rather I have, but the words between us have never become really dangerous and disabling of friendship.

So, to make a long story short, I can well understand why Timmy offends: He not only seeks to go beyond all religious, racial and ethnic conflicts, he often asserts himself arrogantly threatening people whose identities are bound up with such more than normal.

Oh no frio,

It's a disaster for you isn't it Onofrio?
What's a little dog to do without big dog?

Nevermore53,

If you were around this week and last to read the various blogs, it should be quite clear that the bloggers here really had no choice but to finally react the way that they did to Farnaz's "Primal screaming." As we have all pointed out, the author of this thread has suffered greatly himself and seen the worst of the worst, but there is just no justification for resorting to the very thing you are railing against, which is what Farnaz was doing. She was a little more than just "out of line".

YOU SAID: "But please, try some compassion for what could well be a tortured soul"

Tortured soul is no excuse for the high crime of unjustified race card slander in a public forum, and out and out racism and bigotry in revenge for racism and bigotry.

YOU SAID: "Don't judge Farnaz and her supporters to harshly. One never knows what prompts them to vociferate they way they do"

We are all well aware of what "prompts her to vociferate", and so we do not judge her too harshly. But when we try to tell her that she is getting out of line, her reaction to us is what has been harsh. We are all now on a list of those who have been fighting for a "Judenfrei" zone.

I'm just not sure how we could possibly have handled it any different? It's not like we banished her. She chose to leave on her own accord when we tried to tell her that she was crossing the line. She reacted harshly, labeled us all, and left. She can return anytime she likes. And she will be treated with compassion if she can just stop putting everyone who disagrees with her into the category of "Swamp thing".

Shining new porcelain has replaced all the smashed Meissen.

After an agreeable spot of whist and a quaff of sherry, the League of Gentlemen congratulate each other on their good manners and composure during the recent Jewish unpleasantness, and pick their teeth with the splintered bones.

"Let us have an intellectual discourse," ventures the Bored Comte.

"Oh, I say! Yes let's," exclaims the assembly.

"Ecrasez l'infame!" bursts the claymore sporting Chevalier de l'Armine.

"In Jesus'name," smiles the Duc de Timmetout, basking in his own enlightnement.

Nevermore,

"Hornet's Nest" is an understatement. This blog, and a few proceeding it, have been the nastiest I can remember here on On Faith. You are correct, of course, I must be more compassionate, and I will certainly try. But sometimes I really lose my temper. If I say things unjustly, and either realize it or am reminded of it, I apologize soon after. But Farnaz & Co have really got my Celtic Fury at full steam; I see no true remorse in her, and doubtless never will. Yes, primal scream is probably accurate, but that does not excuse her inability to listen, step back, and reconsider. She is apparently incapable of that.

Holy Cow!!! What kind of a hornets' nest have I stepped into?

I couldn't believe my eyes reading some of the posts. Farnaz certainly wrote things that were out of line, but I suspect she did so because she was truly wounded by anti-semitism and this is her reaction. Some of her posts sound like a primal scream and may come out of sheer anguish.

Arminius,

I have known you long enough to know that you try to be fair and just. There was no need for anyone to malign you. But please, try some compassion for what could well be a tortured soul.

Timmy2,

You haven't been around long enough for me to form a picture of you. You can get quite terse at times and we do not necessarily see eye to eye on a particular subject. Don't judge Farnaz and her supporters to harshly. One never knows what prompts them to vociferate they way they do.

Hi, Timmy,

If Pseudo is Christian, he hides it pretty well.

I remember that you once wrote here about your respect for the teachings of Jesus. We have that in common, for sure.

kjohnson,

I know what the Jefferson Gospels are, but have never actually read them. I may not need to - I am familiar enough with the Gospels to figure out what our 3rd POTUS would have picked out. In a sense his version is my starting point anyway. It took me, after a certain spiritual experience, four readings over a couple of years before I finally bought into the core teachings of Jesus. I am still proceeding on from there. I am well aware of the textual problems, and find that study quite interesting.

Arminius,

You said: " I am Christian (the only one here?)"

I'm pretty sure Pseudo is a Christian. You are not alone.
And although I am not a Christian, I have a great deal of respect for the teachings of the one called Jesus and those touched by his example of love and compassion. While I may criticize the religion of Christianity, I am most certainly not in favor of throwing out the Jesus baby with the dirty doctrinal bath water.

Yes, Arminius, you're right.

Have you ever seen the "Jefferson Bible"? The one Thomas Jefferson redacted from the New Testament, in which he included only Jesus' lessons, not the contexts given them later by the gospel-writers?

It's fascinating and instructive.

KJohnson3,

"This behavior is not dissimilar to that of Christians who invoke the name of Jesus and then go out and commit atrocities in his name -- or who just go out and judge others in spite of Jesus' teaching against judging others.

In both cases, it's pure hypocrisy and, more often than not, hides a less-than-honorable agenda."

Let's replace 'not dissimilar' with 'very similar'. I am Christian (the only one here?), but abhor the hypocrisy of so many who claim to be Christian. As Timmy would say, this is tribalism at work - 'us vs them'. Jesus taught 'WE and WE'.

"If you and Farnaz value him so much, as you say, then how about acting as he would do?"

Arminius,

Yes, this is the point, isn't it? Everyone here has been responding, supposedly, to Elie Wiesel's comments on dealing with Holocaust deniers -- that is, to ignore them. Yet, Onofrio, Farnaz, and Yael (who I suspect is actually Farnaz in disguise) keep on doing exactly what Mr. Wiesel counsels against, even while invoking his name.

Ultimately, that shows a profound lack of respect for the very person they claim to vastly admire.

This behavior is not dissimilar to that of Christians who invoke the name of Jesus and then go out and commit atrocities in his name -- or who just go out and judge others in spite of Jesus' teaching against judging others.

In both cases, it's pure hypocrisy and, more often than not, hides a less-than-honorable agenda.

Onofrio,

I went through the same experience as Timmy, accepting Farnaz as friend, then getting attacked when I had the arrogance of stating my own opinion, that she(?) is at least totally bigoted against Christians, including me, for having the temerity to value our Old Testament, and revere its origins.

But you, Onofrio, are but a clone of Farnaz. You worshiped her every word, and followed each of her despicable attacks with one of your own.

Elie Wiesel has suffered more than all of us here times 1000. Would he have ever lowered himself to make attacks like you and Farnaz have done? Would he have shown such total despite of other groups, except for Nazis, holocaust deniers, and genocide groups in general? He would certainly, and rightly, condemn Christianity for their failures, but he would not call them swamp things and condemn all of us. If you and Farnaz value him so much, as you say, then how about acting as he would do?

The idea here is to search for a way forward, not engage in the old ignorant armies clash by night thing.

We're all God's children, can't you see?
It's not us and them, it's WE and WE!

Oh no frio,

YOU TO JUSTILTHEN: "I can see you appopriating the efforts of Farnaz, whom your protege Timmy2 has pursued with Javert-like malice"

1) I'm certain that Justilthen laughed as hard as I did at the notion that timmy2 is his protege.

2) You are correct sir. I most certainly did make Farnaz my pet project, but only after being labeled a racist/bigot/antisemite/thing from the sewer by her. Before that I was a fan of Farnaz and regularly complimented her on her blogging. But there is no lower a human being can go, in my book, than to publicly accuse someone of being a Jew hater racist, when you know that it is not true. And that's not only what Farnaz did to me, but I then watched her go on to play this most slimy of race card demagoguery with literally everyone who disagreed with her in even the slightest way. In some cases, she accidentally labeled people, who did completely agree with her, these horrible names, only to recant after she realized that she hadn't really read their posts before hurling the most heinous epithets their way. Proof that she labels a racist first, and asks questions later.

Everyone seemed to notice this but you, Onofrio. All of those words of caution you had for me and other bloggers about our style, and substance, but you couldn't just once, save your friend from herself by letting her know that she was getting way out of line? No, in fact you encouraged her all the way. As her friend, you should have been the first of us to give her the heads up that she was being everything that she was claiming to be against. She might have listened to a little admonishment coming from you. But you encouraged her all the way with 100% support for all her race card playing and heinous malicious slander. I'm still not sure why? Only Onofrio knows why. I think my "little dog" cartoon analogy was apropos.

You took everyone on this blog to task for any transgression that you saw. Everyone. Except Farnaz that is. Not once, did you ever question anything that she said. Indeed you were entirely encouraging through the most vile part of it. She needed you, as a friend, to let her have it, on many occasions. But you were not there for her when she needed you most.

Yael1,

YOU: "Timmy2, that is very uncivil.I'm surprised that you would stoop to such a level.You are personally attacking me"

Hardly an attack. Just an amusing comment about your claim to be leaving the post whilst continuing to make abhorrent comments about others. Your disgusting claim that the rest of us bloggers here have succeeded in our goal of creating a "Judenfrei" zone is the very lowest form of demagoguery and a disgrace to the real victims of the Shoah. Nothing wrong with wishing for your disgusting accusations to be finally over.

It is not a Judenfrei zone we want. That is an abhorrent and baseless accusation.
It is a zone free of disgusting baseless race card playing and demagoguery, that we are after here.
Jews are welcome.
Demagogues are not.

"Her family's friend was murdered in front of her when she was a child."

I find it ironic that this piece of information keeps being used to justify Farnaz's racist diatribes, when Elie Wiesel -- a person she claims to admire and someone who has seen far more human depravity at close quarters than Farnaz can even imagine -- makes the point that Holocaust deniers should not be dignified with attention or response.

Farnaz has an enormous need to be the focus of any drama. And the more I read of Yael's posts, the more convinved I am that Yael and Farnaz are one and the same person.

In fact, I'm certain of it.

onofrio:

"Justillthen, you've shown yourself a precious, pompous pontificator. There's some pungent adolescent spittle for you."

Ah, onofrio. What warm respite, the sound of your tut-tutting.

I am sorry that I do not have time to respond. Will have to be later. However, in a sense what difference would it be to my point if I were bored to my eyesockets? The tenor of this 'dialogue' is adolescent often, infantile far too often. You underscored the point. You make no comments on the meat of my points, just insults.

Later.

Quite a transformation you've managed. As Yael indicates, you have persistently opined at how bored you are with the entire Jewish story - Holocaust included - and how overdone you've found it to be. Wasn't a passing comment, but a leitmotif of much of your recent posting.

Bored, bored, bored...like some Versailles comte. Shall I quote from your backlist? No, that would be too tedious...

You sniff imperially:
"There has been a growing revulsion for me in the mediocrity of the dialogue and debate here."

and

"it is rather disgusting, to me. Am I really in a room of adolecents, or are there some grown-ups around?"

Hmm, Justillthen is not amused.

Here you are loftily lamenting the debased tone of all that's gone before your lately found interest in what you call "The subject at hand". What is that subject? Why, Holocaust denial - more of that sameold Jewish story you find so tiresome and utterly unworthy of reiteration.

Now, strangely, its tedium falls away. You deign unctuously to praise. Now the "subject at hand" has "so much fertile ground for intellectual and emotional, and spiritual, growth". What? A change of heart? Or just of posture?

Now, that of which you were formerly thoroughly sick (shall I quote you?) has become eminently worthy of your "intellectual discourse". I can see you there amongst the porcelain of this cozy little debating society you're configuring. Gentlemen, a moment please; the Bored Buddhi recognises that:
"The originator or this thread, Elie Wiesel, has history beyond us of involvement with racism and oppression. Some of Farnaz's best moments, in my accounting, was bringing some of his words into this debate."

I can see you appopriating the efforts of Farnaz, whom your protege Timmy2 has pursued with Javert-like malice.

I can see you intellectualising your way around to a complete volte face.

I can see you trying to steal up on the debating high ground and anoint yourself its paladin.

Arminus,Pseudo,Timmy,Justilthen,

I can not waste my time here. I am not Farnaz anyway. I don't know about poetry.I am not as educated as she is. I speak pretty good English, but not when angry.Also,I don't like incivility.I don't like gangs.I will post here from time to time.I don't like blogging,but I don't like hypocrisy either.

When I sign off you can all gang up together against me or Farnaz. In Yiddish you are called yentas. Arminius, and Timmy2, and Pseudo, and Justilthen are little old ladies who talk about people when they aren't there.Blogs are supposed to be about topics.You made them about a woman who gave a lot to this blog.I am ashamed of you and ashamed for you.

I'll check back to find Farnaz.Also if she isn't there,I will remind you why she is gone.

Arminius,
"Yael1,

You took grave offense at these words of Timmy:
"You're like "The Who" with all your false farewell tours. Are you quite done yet?"

You labeled it a personal attack, and were offended. I thought it was funny as hell, and if that is a personal attack, then I am Caesar's ghost.

Keep it up, Timmy. You are making a lot of good sense here. This blog is showing, through your efforts and also Pseudo's, a remarkable possibility of recovery."
*******************
I don't know exactly what you mean.I know the Who was a rock group.I know that Timmy2 is accusing me of coming back.I know you are attacking me.I am not a ghost.Neither is Farnaz.You are very uncivil.You called her names.You said she was a "troll." I think that was very uncivil.It was very uncivil and mean.Now you want to gang up on me?That is very uncivil.

Yael1,

You took grave offense at these words of Timmy:
"You're like "The Who" with all your false farewell tours. Are you quite done yet?"

You labeled it a personal attack, and were offended. I thought it was funny as hell, and if that is a personal attack, then I am Caesar's ghost.

Keep it up, Timmy. You are making a lot of good sense here. This blog is showing, through your efforts and also Pseudo's, a remarkable possibility of recovery.

Timmy2

"Yael1,

You're like "The Who" with all your false farewell tours. Are you quite done yet?"

Timmy2, that is very uncivil.I'm surprised that you would stoop to such a level.You are personally attacking me.I am so shocked. But I will rise above the malice.

Yael Chen Ayalon

Pseudo,

Lashon hara.The only thing Timmy did was make Farnaz his "special projec." Her family's friend was murdered in front of her when she was a child.
Timmy said Farnaz "racialized herself." Her daughters teeth were knocked out because the girl is Jewish. Timmy said Farnaz "racialized herself."

I used to click on to this blog every week.She always looked for you Pseudo. She always encouraged you to write poetry.I think what you are doing now is uncivil.I think it is cowardly and uncivil.

Lashon Hara. What you are doing is much worse than calling racist bloggers names they deserve.You can cut selective cut and paste all you want.You don't have much self respect.I think maybe you only have as much self respect as Timmy.
Very little, but he is a sick person.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

Timmy,

"Uh, come over here, behind this wall for a second, I want to speak to you behind Farnaz's and Yael1's back"

And while we are still going behind their backs, remember the time I pointed out to you that you were mixing personal issues (Farnaz' daughter), and Israeli national policy issues in a bad way?

I seem to remember you apologizing to her for the mix-up and expressing unreserved sympathy for her and her daughter. I thought it took a real man to do that. (Yeal, buddy, that is a "mensch" out your way.) I actually expected Farnaz to calm down and try and have a civil discussion with you after that. It didn't go that way, though, but I still admire your ability to do it.

Justillthen,

Quite a transformation you've managed. As Yael indicates, you have persistently opined at how bored you are with the entire Jewish story - Holocaust included - and how overdone you've found it to be. Wasn't a passing comment, but a leitmotif of much of your recent posting.

Bored, bored, bored...like some Versailles comte. Shall I quote from your backlist? No, that would be too tedious...

You sniff imperially:
"There has been a growing revulsion for me in the mediocrity of the dialogue and debate here."

and

"it is rather disgusting, to me. Am I really in a room of adolecents, or are there some grown-ups around?"

Hmm, Justillthen is not amused.

Here you are loftily lamenting the debased tone of all that's gone before your lately found interest in what you call "The subject at hand". What is that subject? Why, Holocaust denial - more of that sameold Jewish story you find so tiresome and utterly unworthy of reiteration.

Now, strangely, its tedium falls away. You deign unctuously to praise. Now the "subject at hand" has "so much fertile ground for intellectual and emotional, and spiritual, growth". What? A change of heart? Or just of posture?

Now, that of which you were formerly thoroughly sick (shall I quote you?) has become eminently worthy of your "intellectual discourse". I can see you there amongst the porcelain of this cozy little debating society you're configuring. Gentlemen, a moment please; the Bored Buddhi recognises that:
"The originator or this thread, Elie Wiesel, has history beyond us of involvement with racism and oppression. Some of Farnaz's best moments, in my accounting, was bringing some of his words into this debate."

I can see you appopriating the efforts of Farnaz, whom your protege Timmy2 has pursued with Javert-like malice.

I can see you intellectualising your way around to a complete volte face.

I can see you trying to steal up on the debating high ground and anoint yourself its paladin.

Justillthen, you've shown yourself a precious, pompous pontificator. There's some pungent adolescent spittle for you.

Yael1,

You're like "The Who" with all your false farewell tours. Are you quite done yet?

Justilthen-You also wrote you were bored with the Holocaust.Aren't you being a hypocrite?Is it correct for you to talk about the "fertile ground" when you trampled on that ground?Do you deserve to talk about Elie Wisel at all?Do you deserve to talk down to Farnaz?

Justilthen-

"Perhaps we can lift it a bit, people, from the mire."

I clicked on here to let Onofrio know that I'd heard from my Australian relatives. This is on another topic. I've read these threads and Susan Jacoby's threads.I read where you were "bored with the Jews," although no one asked you.You said "the Jews wanted attention." No on asked you to talk about "the Jews."Isn't that deep in mire?
I live in a country that is very diverse and that is under siege.I have never seen such bigotry and hippocrisy as I have seen in you people as you gang up on one woman who has gone through more than you ever will go through.Yet she fights for everyone.I can't understand you.I'm ashamed of and for you.
*****************
Onofrio,
I heard from my cousins in Sidney.They are fine.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

There has been a growing revulsion for me in the mediocrity of the dialogue and debate here. I had some hopeful moments, and there were valuable topics raised and batted about, but for the most part it is just a catfight, and not a very interesting one at that. The subject at hand has so much fertile ground for intellectual and emotional, and spiritual, growth, but we grovel at the level of mindless accusations and catcalling. Stupid. Are we all adolecents here? If not why do we allow the dialogue to be governed by those that prefer spit fights over intellectual discourse?
The originator or this thread, Elie Wiesel, has history beyond us of involvement with racism and oppression. Some of Farnaz's best moments, in my accounting, was bringing some of his words into this debate.

What do we do?

Chastize? Assault? Spit vile accusations at those with opposing views? Some do well, maintaining moderate voices, or if not moderate then at least respectful.

Mostly though it is rather disgusting, to me. Am I really in a room of adolecents, or are there some grown-ups around?

This, from Chriseverett to MaryCunningham, makes some sense to me:

"But the shame of it is that a blog such as this is potentially such a great forum for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of humor, the practice of polemics (my favorite) and, in a word, community. It can be a place for the discussion of sensitive topics that are difficult to broach in person with people who hold diametrically opposed views."

Perhaps we can lift it a bit, people, from the mire.

Pseudo,

Uh, come over here, behind this wall for a second, I want to speak to you behind Farnaz's and Yael1's back.

Okay, now that they can't hear us, thank you for being a centrist and reasoned voice in this mayhem. From your reasoned tone I can take admonishment and I accept your representations of me as accurate.

YOU WRITE: "We are going to have to draw up some good topics to chew on"

I think the topic at hand is plenty juicy. How do we achieve "never again"? I'd just like the tone of the discussion to be about solutions not blame. My philosophy really is an aim towards a solution. I'm astonished to see it portrayed as racist. I really thought it was anti-racist.

Pseudo:I have written to you two times and that is enough.You keep hiding behind and around timmy2 just as you did before to Farnaz.You went behind her back.Lashon hara.Timmy2 has said horrible things about my county.I have read them. He has said horrible things about Jews.There is no point in this.
******************
Onofrio,
I have relatives in Sidney.Many Israelis have friends and family in your country.Some of them are Jewish.We need to know more about attacks on the synagogues.Please I know there are terrible fires,I know how terrible is fire.If you have a moment please write about the synagogues.I will click on here later.Thank you.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

Yael,

"But you weren't civil.You said nasty things behind Farnaz's back."

This is publishing. There absolutely no "behind anyone's back." We all can read all the posts.

Like I said, I have supported Farnaz strongly when I think she is in the right (which is not always), and I have supported Timmy when I think he is right (which is not always).

I think that Farnaz has a very good basic goal which is to oppose racism, but I think her tactics are sometimes inflammatory and get very personal and insulting. I think Timmy has taken some personal hurt from that, and I am not surprised to see that he has. He in turn has said some inappropriate things in return.

I think it is time for a reset and reboot.

We are mostly good people trying to deal with, and understand, some issues that humanity has fouled up for millennial time spans. If it were easy, our ancestors would have worked it out a few thousand years ago.

I am going to have to get some sleep before tomorrow's workday.

Yael,

"Pseudo: I dislike dishonesty."

Hard to define honesty in such a storm of noise and acrimony. I have dared to be supportive of Farnaz and Timmy both when I think they are right. Sometimes I ignore various challenges, or make pointed comments when I think they are wrong. So I am not sure where "dishonesty" applies to what I do.

I have read a lot of Timmy's stuff and have seen a lot of regrettable things said, and a lot of hurt feelings that went along with them on all sides. These get to resonating as in an echo chamber and become more distorted each time they bounce around.

In case you did not notice, Timmy indicated that he supports the Israeli action in Gaza, so I don't think he is a systematic anti-Jewish guy, but I suggest you ask him.

His personal interaction with Farnaz is a different matter. But I suspect he probably doesn't want to continue that fight either. But you could ask him that too.

Pseudo: You have made my point for me.I can not thank you.You post to me and when I answer you run away and post to timmy2. Just as you posted nasty things about Farnaz behind her back.She did not do that to you.You say to timmy2

"There has been way to many accusations lodged lately, and nowhere near enough civil and respectful discussion as you say."

But you weren't civil.You said nasty things behind Farnaz's back. On Jacoby's thread she asked timmy2 why he spoke to her the way he did. He said:"Because you are a liar."

I don't think that is civil. I don't know much about US. I have only been once to New York, but in my country, we say that talking behind the back is lashon hara. It is sin according to the Bible that Farnaz could explain.
*******************
Onofrio,
Please. I would appreciate it if you can say something about the attacks on synagogues in Australia.It is on the news again now.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

Timmy,

There has been way to many accusations lodged lately, and nowhere near enough civil and respectful discussion as you say. Personally, I reserve the right to disagree with you or anyone else at will, and I will expect no less in return. I think that disagreement is part of healthy debate and learning. Back out in the Midwest where I was raised, we were taught to respect our debate partners. So I look forward to future discussions with you.

Neither will I be an attack dog on call for anyone else as I have been inveighed to be by some.

We are going to have to draw up some good topics to chew on.

Pseudo: I dislike dishonesty. You told Farnaz you would read Timmy2's posts and then accused her of "caterwauling about us." She called you on "ponificiating" and was right. You never stood up to the bigots the way some others did. She named them. Instead, you sneaked around behind her back and ganged up on her with timmy2 and others. She used several tacticts with the antisemites. She informed people with lengthy citations and timelines,and she confronted them. She discussed her strategies. All you did was post about her behind her back. I'm ashamed of you and for you.
******************
Onofrio-
Pleased to make your acquaintance. I won't be blogging here. I clicked on in hopes Farnaz changed her mind. Maybe after a day or two days. I know it's for the best if she doesn't blog here. She's been through enough. So have I. I'm glad you weren't harmed by the horrible fires. I've been reading about them, also I'm reading about synagogues attacked in Australia. Sounds familiar. Thank you for standing up to the antisemites.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

Onofrio,

"Sorry to interrupt your anti-Farnaz support group meeting, but contrary to your vigorously implied conspiracy theory, I am no figment of Farnaz' imagination!"

I think we all need to think about each other as human beings. Except of course the Shell Scripts among us, or various figments of the imagination ginned up in demented cybernetic day dreams.

Whose POSIX thread are you on? Onofrio, Whose POSIX thread are you on?

%-}

Pseudo,

There will be those who may try and block our civil discussions by trying to turn us against one another. Let's try and not let that happen.

Farnaz,

Thank you for all the Wiesel citations, for including my name among those who defy, and for saving me the trouble of reposting the Timmy2 materiel. Regarding the latter: I don't think I broke any Meissen with my *tone*, but the substance will be ignored, certes. River flows away.

Hopefully, Thoth will find a way to manifest.

At the moment, Arminius thinks I am a figment of your imagination :)

Hi Pseudo,

Why I oughta... ;)

Not a fan of arguments but I love a good debate. Even a heated one. But not an abusive one. I can get sucked into those from time to time. What about the Dawkins quote shall we debate? I must say I find myself in complete agreement.

One day, not in our lifetime, but one day, there will be no separation of humans by ethnicity, or race. We are headed there fast. We would be headed there even faster sans our tribal religions, but we will one day get there. Do you believe this?

This is what I base my philosophy on when I say we should be able to see this inevitability and go there mentally now. Some people have a melancholy sadness for this inevitability because we will be losing all of these separate exotic cultures, but I see a greater beauty emerging in the joining together of all of these cultures and the loss of all of our tribalisms that cause so much grief. And the joy of being one human race, one human culture, an amalgamation of the very best of all of our former tribal cultures. We should happily begin this amalgamation process now. This is what I preach. In many ways we have begun. At least in the larger cosmopolitan centers which is where I've always lived. My life is completely infused with every culture on earth. I am fortunate though to live in a large multicultural center in a very multicultural Country.

Thoughts?

Arminius,

You:
"Note that the Farnaz/Yael/Onofrio/Observer/etc creature fits the pattern of the classic internet troll: get on a blog, say nice things, make a lot of friends, and then bomb the s*** out of it with personal attacks aimed from a new agenda."

Sorry to interrupt your anti-Farnaz support group meeting, but contrary to your vigorously implied conspiracy theory, I am no figment of Farnaz' imagination!

Do you really think that she would masquerade as an Anglo-Celtic New South Welsh former Calvinian long-streak-of-pelican-ordure with a penchant for glyphs and doggerel? I am 100% my very own actual self, certes. Remember the Tooheys and Coopers, Claymorist.

Victoria Bitter's not bad either. Speaking of Victoria, threadlings here probably know it not, but that part of my country has just suffered unprecedented cinderisation by bushfires. Many dead and wounded. I had relos in the firing line, but they survived unsinged. Yes, I am AUSTRALIAN. I have never even been to the US.

If you want to leave the boards, cursing, stage left, up to you, though I wish it not.

If you want to feel disgusted with Farnaz, fair enough. That's your right. Just because I do not see her as you do, don't annihilate me via conflation, or consign me to mere invention.

I do not fault you for despising me. But I will not be negated, Arminius.

Timmy,

How are things out your way? I just wanted to check: Have you stopped hating Jews? Do you still deny the Holocaust? Are you a still racist? Have you stop beating your wife? No equivocations now, just simple yes or no answers please.

Maybe its time to discuss other things? For example, could have an argument about your ridiculous quote from Dick Dawkins? %-}

Daniel,

"I am in complete sympathy with Israel."

I understand and agree with your points and I am sympathetic too.

As I said earlier:

"I do believe that the present Israeli incursion into Gaza was disproportionate to the rocket fire thus far experienced. But Hamas is heavily involved with of Iran. In case you have forgotten it, their President has called for the obliteration of Israel and has said that he is willing sacrifice a substantial portion of Iran's population to do it (Does that sound like a threat of WMD warfare to you? It does to me). So Israelis may well wonder when these rockets might become infinitely more deadly. And one thing the Israelis know from history is that when someone says he wants to kill you, you had better take him seriously and man your battle stations."

I guess that puts me in the doghouse because I recognize that there are two sides and call for being pro-Israel AND pro-Palestinian. In the long run the only path to peace includes an end to the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip. Sorry if that simple truth is disturbing. It is going to be a lot more disturbing in another generation if we don't solve the problems now.

Yael1,

"Adios, timmy2,kjohnson3,ccnl,sami,azisk,pseudo,marycunningham,arminius,justilthen,

You have been successful. This thread is now officially Judenfrei."

I have been supportive of Farnaz, in the main, remarking only that she is imperfect like the rest of us, and that she and others have all said things I disagree with, as well as things I agree with. I understand that Farnaz has had a tough road and I have been very sympathetic to her and I remain so. But I have dared to be sympathetic to others as well. Response?

"Pseudo,

Unfortunately, your white Christian world has been compromised by Jews and people of color."

Another Farnaz tidbit:

"...Swamp Thing has caused more deaths of Jews, Muslims, Animists, you name it, which is what christian people love."

Do you really believe that "Christian people", all of us, are like that?

If you actually read this blog you know that Farnaz has repeatedly and attacked other people and called them names, for example suggesting that many are sewer creatures. She has defamed whole groups routinely including, Christians, Muslims, "Mexicans", "whites" and others.

Do you support actually support that kind of thing?

On Israel. The Muslims have succeeded in making it sound as if the Israelis oppress the Palestinians, but the truth is all Muslims have been against Israel since her founding. The true crime of Israel is that the Jews have returned to their ancestral lands and Mohammed never foresaw that much less made provisions for it.

For the past sixty years Muslims of all stripes have tried to destroy Israel. A major conflict was back in '67 when Muslim nations teamed up against Israel and vastly outnumbered her. There was not a word about the Muslims persecuting the Israelis. But then the Muslims lost--and lost some land to the Israelis. Now they have the gall to say there cannot be peace until the Golan heights are returned etc.

Does anyone really doubt if the Muslims would have succeeded in '67 that they would have perpetrated a second holocaust? At best for the Israelis then would have been thousands upon thousands of them killed and the rest driven from the middle east. And no one would have lifted a hand to defend them.

But now of course we hear that the Israelis are like Nazis, that they oppress the Palestinians, that the Palestinians are not heard by the world community, etc. etc. Quite simply the Muslims have turned their constant losses against the Israelis into world class whining and have succeeded in garnering sympathy.

The truth is the Israelis can never have peace with the Palestinians, much less the Muslims in toto. Either Israel fights against the Muslim's attempts to destroy her or she has "peace" with the Muslims which results in the Muslims overwhelming her through sheer demographics--outbreeding the Jews and succeeding in collapsing the Jewish state.

The Israelis must fight forever--but if they do so and win then the Muslims will garner sympathy so...No need to repeat things. The Muslims do not allow any worthwhile kind of peace to exist. And lest anyone think I am too biased against the Muslims, let me help the Muslims a little. We have Sunnis and Shiites arguing about the successor to Mohammed, but if they had any sense they would observe that Mohammed being the great prophet that he was can have no successor--so the Sunnis and Shiites should put the argument to rest and organize themselves against the Israelis.

But of course the Muslims will continue fighting one another and sporadically striking out against Israel and whining away every time Israel keeps them at bay. I cannot help but be on the side of Israel. Islam is a completely dysfunctional civilization. Or perhaps they are only too smart. They will never stop trying to assert themselves, whether by war or by whining.

I am in complete sympathy with Israel.

I ducked in for a peek, and the way this blog is going makes me comment yet again.

To Timmy, KJohnson, ChrisEverett, and M Cunningham: all of you are correct about Farnaz, and I agree.

Note that the Farnaz/Yael/Onofrio/Observer/etc creature fits the pattern of the classic internet troll: get on a blog, say nice things, make a lot of friends, and then bomb the s*** out of it with personal attacks aimed from a new agenda. It would be best to ignore the Farnaz critter, but she/he/it is so prolific with posts that it makes the blog unreadable - another troll characteristic.

Go back under your bridge, Farnaz creature, and stay there.

Yael1,

You make me laugh. You must be Farnaz. Or a learned student of her slimy demagoguery. Not one of those people you listed is a racist or an antisemite, and not a one of them wants to see more Jews persecuted or killed. Shame shame shame on you. You are everything you despise.

Adios, timmy2,kjohnson3,ccnl,sami,azisk,pseudo,marycunningham,arminius,justilthen,

You have been successful. This thread is now officially Judenfrei.

Yael Chen Ayalon
Tel-Aviv

PS. You read right. Tel-Aviv. Some of us are still alive and plan to stay that way.

Dear Farnaz,

"People stop blogging for many reasons. I'm afraid, though, that you have anticipated me."

I knew it,but it's probably in your best interest.The work you're doing is more important than dealing with haters on a blog.I don't blog much. Mainly, I just read, so you probably won't see much from me.I'll keep coming to this site, though. Hopefully, you'll come back one day.

Thanks again for all your posts. I've saved a lot of them.I wish I could meet you.

Sincerely,

Yael

Mary Cunningham and ChrisEverett,

Thanks for your support. I too hope that Farnaz one day gets around to actually quoting my real words and entering into an honest and critical discussion of their merits or lack there of without the slimy mud slinging and race card playing.

She rails against branding by branding.
She screams about labeling whilst labeling.

It could be so much more civil.

Dear Yael,

Thank you so much, but there are, as you note, many other good people who blog here. Among them, there are other Jews, but they don't blog here often. Sparrow has disappeared. You are correct about that, but I doubt she was driven away by antisemitism or by accusations like those of KJohnson3, the naif. (Scroll down.)

People stop blogging for many reasons. I'm afraid, though, that you have anticipated me. I do not want to lose hope, and I deal with enough evil in real life. I have also got a family, a career, and right now, a grant that I occasionally need to work on. This grant is now providing social services on a nonsectarian basis.
Because I wrote it, I have some lingering obligations to the funders. It takes up time, but it has already saved lives.

Onofrio, Persiflage, DITLD, Chris3 and others whose names don't come readily to mind are a pleasure to read, and they are courageous. Maybe, soon Onofrio will post on Thoth, DITLD will post his wonderful musings, Persiflage will post on Buddhism, etc.

Yael, I will be on the lookout for your posts. You have a beautiful name. Thank you for writing to me.

Warmest regards,
Farnaz Mansouri

Yael1,

Here is Farnaz,

"Crawl back under your rock now. Nobody wants you in this country, Islamic"

And here she is opening a statement to a poster who identified himself as muslim

"Muslim Garak,"

His name is Garak, not Muslim Garak.

And I can not find it right now, but she most certainly has called muslim bloggers "terrorists" and "baby rapers" on these threads in giant caps. Just because you didn't see it doesn't make it slander when I point out that she has said it. .

And here now, Yael1 is you.

"Moral midgets"

Do you not see the incredible irony in using the term "moral midgets" to describe others?

"Just ignore Timmy2, Mary Cunningham, et al, as you have been."

Yael1,

Are you serious? Fernaz has been ignoring Timmy2?

Most of the posts on this board -- which are, by definition, Fernaz's -- are directed at Timmy2.

Also, how do you know what people are "good people" from simply encountering them on a message board?

The more I read from you, the more I'm thinking you must be Fernaz. You sound exactly like her -- tone, voice, attitude, sweeping generalizations.

If you are Fernaz and you're posting under another name in order to "support" her, you're even nuttier than I thought.

Does anyone know if Yael1 and Fernaz2 are the same person? They sound similar, and others have mentioned that Fernaz has in the past posted under several different names.

Dear Farnaz,

Please don't give up. Onofrio, DITLD, Persiflage, Chris3 are good people, like you say, and I promise I'll continue to post as well.

You can't make people who refuse to see open their eyes. Even you can't do that. You've spent time cutting and pasting here, and I can see why you stopped.

Just ignore Timmy2, Mary Cunningham, et al, as you have been. Look at what happened to Sparrow, who like us, is Jewish. Remember? I should've posted to you a long time ago. I shouldn't have left you alone after Sparrow stopped posting. I'm sorry, but I just don't have your spirit.

If you don't want to bother pasting again on Catholic and Protestant antisemitism, I'll post your citations.

Don't disappear, Farnaz. Moral midgets are always abundant. You are one in a million.

Yael

CCNL :
"Poor, poor Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31 still does not comprehend or recognize Truth and Reality especially that there were holocausts/massacres/atrocities equal to or greater than the Jewish holocaust.

And she definitely cannot stand to be criticized even when she is guilty of significant violations of blog etiquette. Poor, little rich girl syndrome and/or influence of the JDL???"

You are among the worst antisemitic, homophobes, and xenophobes who blog here. You're an offense to human decency.

Farnaz not only recognizes other genocides, she posts on them. You're just the standard Holocaust denier, gay basher, racist, who loves what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. You post the most revolting things about gays, Muslims, and Jews, and I'm going to paste them if you don't stop.

Countless bloggers have tried to get you to quit this blog. Nobdy wants you. Please take your hate-speech somewhere else.

Mary Cunningham,

Thank you for your support. It brings to mind what for me was a brief "golden era" of On Faith posting that seems to have fallen under the weight of the current Inquisition, which was new back when it descended on Perspective. As I recall, despite our metaphysical differences (me being an enlightened atheist and all), you were one of the few posters with the courage to speak out, and you paid the price as well (not that there's really any price to pay on a silly blog).

But the shame of it is that a blog such as this is potentially such a great forum for the exchange of ideas, the sharing of humor, the practice of polemics (my favorite) and, in a word, community. It can be a place for the discussion of sensitive topics that are difficult to broach in person with people who hold diametrically opposed views. To me Timmy2 epitomizes this virtue, and I am impressed with his continued clarity in the face of such a cartoonishly cacaphonous din. But it requires civility and a commitment to put ideas and rational discourse first.

I'm not going to post any more, but I hope Farnaz takes up Timmy2's offer, reposts whatever she considers to be his most offensive post, subjects it to DISPASSIONATE criticism, and hears him out in his response. Light, not heat.

Poor, poor Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31 still does not comprehend or recognize Truth and Reality especially that there were holocausts/massacres/atrocities equal to or greater than the Jewish holocaust.

And she definitely cannot stand to be criticized even when she is guilty of significant violations of blog etiquette. Poor, little rich girl syndrome and/or influence of the JDL???

Timmy2:

"You call all those with muslim names terrorists and baby rapers."

I've read your bigoted antisemitic posts many times, and I've read Farnaz's posts, too. Not only is what you say untrue, but her own name is Muslim (Iranian) and her husband is Muslim.

She has posted on Rumi, condemned the Iraq and Afghanistan genocide, etc.

I'm not going to have a dialogue with you, but I will not allow you to slander her. I've seen very good people, a number of them Jews, disappear from threads like this one, and I don't want Farnaz to leave. Not on your account, not on Mary Cunningham's, etc.

Dear Farnaz,

You write:

"I don't know what some Jew may have done to you, but you do yourself no good this way, Timmy. I've survived seeing MURDER. I've survived seeing y little girl's teeth knocked out by Catholic girl thugs who ganged up on her screeching antisemitic epithets."

Few people have seen what you have seen or what I have seen. I congratulate you for keeping your humanity in the face of something that even I cannot imagine. I congratulate you on the deep humanity and courage you consistently show on this blog. Although I knew a lot about antisemitism before, I learned much more reading your citations, etc., on Susan Jacoby's blog.

I've also read your many posts against homophobia, xenophobia, etc. I want to thank you as well for all the poetry, for posting Mr. Wiesel's essays, etc.

I just wanted to tell you that there are people reading these threads who hear you loud and clear and who appreciate the time you give to us.

Even now, as the most wretched of antisemites appear, you don't lose heart. You overlook the Mary Cunninghams of this world and praise the many wonderful Catholics who speak out on Reese's thread against the Holocaust deniers-Williamson, Wagner, etc.

Would you consider pasting some of your posts on Church antisemitism here?

Sincerely,
Yael Chen Ayalon

Chris Everett,

I remember what they did to you. It was Farnaz in her Merry Anonymous persona, plus anyone else she could pretend to be. She started by going after an innocuous poster name 'Perspective' and then when you defended him she went after you. Disgusting.

I used to get regularly beaten up...for the sole reason that I was Catholic. I withdrew into the Catholic blogs and she followed me there! Enough was enough. I left when she kept calling me 'c..nt', couldn't take that last. And the funny thing is that people like her will quote Burke til the cows come home "For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing", but nobody really DOES anything here. These blogs are not monitored. Bad behaviour drives out good, and they are left to the likes of Farnaz2, who I really think is a little mad.

Keep trying Timmy2. I wanted to write a little about how Northern Ireland and the Troubles was more the result of colonialism--Ireland was the first country to join (kicking and screaming) the British Empire and the first to leave. Northern Ireland was settled by Scots, on order of Oliver Cromwell. The Catholic Irish were firstly slaughtered and finally ethnically cleansed, all by about 1700. The situation remained in place for about 200 years until the Irish in the Republic left, the Gaels in Northern Ireland remained for another 50 years until they rose...inspired funnily enough by the Civil Rights movement in the US.

But that is another story. Good luck with Farnaz2. I'm sorry, but don't expect help from me. I've done my bit. I have the scars to prove it.

MC
London

Farnaz,

YOU: "What can you do to me? And, more importantly, why bother trying?"

I am not trying to do anything to you or any other Jew. I discuss ideas and you label me a racist, and post the words of others, not me, to back up your claims. I defend myself against your hideous unfounded accusations and your obsession with making everyone else agree with you that I am a racist. That is all. I also point out your hypocrisy in that you rail against racism whilst labeling everyone else by religion and ethnicity. You call all those with muslim names terrorists and baby rapers. You also refer to Jews as a singular group constantly, a practice that you label others a racist doing. That's called being a hypocrite.

You clearly see all ethnic Jews as "your people" due to ethnicity alone. I criticize this practice. I am not the racist.

timmy2 Author Profile Page:

KJohnson3,

Sorry about the OCD comment I will refrain from using that slight in the future. Your description of Farnaz's obsession is much clearer. Thank you.
__________________
I'm afraid the only obsessed person is you, my dear, you who refer to me as your "special project," and seem to have little else on your mind, except me and "the Jews."
_____________
I don't get it, really, since I rarely respond to you, and neither do any other Jews. YOu're feeding off yourself. Indeed, this is obsessional, narcissistic, and more.

I don't know what some Jew may have done to you, but you do yourself no good this way, Timmy. I've survived seeing MURDER. I've survived seeing y little girl's teeth knocked out by Catholic girl thugs who ganged up on her screeching antisemitic epithets.

What can you do to me? And, more importantly, why bother trying?

Farnaz says:

"MORE FROM TIMMY2 TO FOLLOW"

Uh, you haven't posted anything from timmy2 yet. As I pointed out, you have only reposted words from Lucy Lou and Onofrio. None from Timmy2. Are timmy2's actual words too difficult to slander that you need to employ the words of Lucy Lou and the opinions of Onofrio instead to make your invalid point?

Pathetic. When and if you are ever ready to have a civil discussion of my actual words and their meanings, let me know. Until then you make a fool of yourself posting the words of others and trying to marry me to them. No one will buy this pathetic attempt by both you and your shadow, Onofrio, to reach guilt by association.

Post MY COMMENTS only, if you want to try and point to my racism, not someone else's. It only shows how weak your arguments against me are.

Timmy2,

Thank you.

KJohnson3,

Sorry about the OCD comment I will refrain from using that slight in the future. Your description of Farnaz's obsession is much clearer. Thank you.

My God, there's an "off" button?

Who knew!

MORE FROM TIMMY2 TO FOLLOW. FOR NOW, PSEUDO, AND ALL WHO MAY HAVE OVERLOOKED SOME OF WHAT HAS APPEARED HERE IN THE LAST WEEK--I SAY "MAY HAVE OVERLOOKED"--SINCE I READ NO REPLIES FROM THEM, IS A LIST FROM ONOFRIO OF BLOGGERS WHOSE OPINIONS I LEAVE IT FOR YOU TO CHARACTERIZE. I LOOK FORWARD TO READING YOUR OPINIONS.
---------------------------
rt Offensive Comments

Posted on February 5, 2009 20:40
onofrio Author Profile Page:

Yes, it would seem that I have been blocked from the Menachem Rosensaft board. Despite persistent attempts, I cannot get anything through.

I note that a post of mine has been removed. It was a list of the most egregious antisemitic posters on that thread. An earlier one is still extant, at February 4, 2009 7:18 PM http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

The latter one differed from the first in that it added the post of TOBEN1 February 4, 2009 9:32 PM to the list. I challenged this poster at February 4, 2009 10:21 PM as to his identity, suspecting that it may have been the notorious FREDRICK TOBEN of the Nazi-sympathising Adelaide Institute. No response, surprise, surprise.

I titled my second list a "litany of lunacy", and added the word "filth". I assume that someone took exception to this, and had my post excised in-toto. Alternatively, someone at WAPO might have got the jitters about a poem I included with the "litany of lunacy", called "Mitred Pruning", in which I imagined the thought processes of a Bishop Williamson-like figure. Ah, litigation!

I mean it's really pathetic, Farnaz. You claim you are going to post some of Timmy's comments, and then you post instead Lucy Lou's comments and try and attribute them to timmy? Why????

CONTINUED....
Whatever the reasons, I can no longer post at the Rosensaft thread.

So I'll try again here, for what it's worth. My "litany of lunacy" will not be erased. All the following at http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

EDARI2:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:07 AM

BEER2MIAMI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:36 AM

SCOOTERLIBRE:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:07 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 5:00 PM

SOMALI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:22 PM

PNP-KS:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:57 PM

CAPTAINKONA:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:58 PM

FALCON269:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 1:11 PM

WHISTLING:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:17 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:24 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:33 PM

ReporterNotebook, aka MICHAEL SANTOMAURO:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 5:04 PM

FRANCESCA2:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 6:29 PM

TOBEN1:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 9:32 PM

LUCYLOU1:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 10:10 PM

To this the excised list I will add, from the same thread,

RUDEISRAELI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:35 PM

MONO1:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 1:41 AM

ASIZK:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 9:07 AM

FREESPEECH3:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 9:17 AM

Again, not exhaustive, but a representative sample of the sort of poison that has flowed on the Rosensaft board.

February 5, 2009 8:39 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Posted on February 5, 2009 20:39
--------------------------------
onofrio Author Profile Page:

Farnaz,

The Rosensaft site seems to be accepting no more posts from me, so I'll speak here. Thanks for all your data, references, citations, et cetera, and for the anti-racist ally credit. Glad to stand, if only in text. Rosensaft's article has drawn out the very dregs of the septic tank - abjectly retchworthy.

I'm done with Timmy-striving, certes.

Timmy2,

Just one other thing.

It's a personal request, but I'd appreciate if you'd honor it. When referring to other posters' obsessions, please don't use the term OCD.

OCD is an agonizingly difficult anxiety disorder whose sufferers have obsessional thoughts which they neutralize with compulsive behaviors -- neither of which they can control.

It is not related to someone who has an obsessive personality disorder in which they just can't let go of something (e.g., an argument with someone else) or a generally compulsive person whose dishes always have to be washed immediately after a meal.

I'm close to a couple of genuine OCD sufferers, and I hate seeing their struggles lumped in with behaviors of extremely obstinate or narcissistic individuals.

Thanks in advance.

Farnaz,

Your pathetic attempt at guilt by association is just that. Pathetic.
How can I possibly be responsible for anything that Lucy Lou said????? I have repeatedly denounced Lucy Lou and do not stand by anything that she said. Please post my words if you want to accuse me of such horrendous things. I can only defend my own statements.

Hitler thought that there should be more parks in the city. Does everyone who also thinks there should be more parks in the city make common cause with a nazi???? Is that how you operate?

I have given my reasons for my questioning the value of the word "antisemitism". These can be discussed with no need to bring in the words of another blogger to try and find me guilty by association. I explained my reasons for questioning the value of that word. can you not argue with my own words???? Why not? Why the need to bring in Lucy Lou, whom I have never corresponded with or pledged agreement with in any way?

TO EVERYONE:

I'M GOING TO DO THE BEST I CAN TO POST FROM THE LIST OF TIMM2'S OPININGS ON JEWS, GIVEN BY ONOFRIO BELOW. THIS WILL TAKE TIME, AS I HAVE WORK TO DO. WHEN I FINISH WITH THE LIST, I'LL GO BACK TO TIMMY2'S EARLIER POSTS ON THIS "TOPIC."

SINCE I STOPPED RESPONDING TO HIM AWHILE AGO, WHEN INFORMING, EDUCATING, FIGHTING ALL CAME TO NAUGHT, I SHALL BE POSTING FROM ONOFRIO AND OTHERS.

IT IS TIMMY2'S WONT TO ACCUSE ME AND OTHERS WHO TAKE HIM TO TASK AFTER HE HAS POSTED OUR COMMENTS OUT OF CONTEXT. BLAMING THEIR VICTIMS IS WHAT THE TIMMY2'S OF THIS WORLD DO BEST.

Timmy, part 1,

Timmy2, on the Susan Jacoby boards, FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:45 AM

Timmy to Onofrio:
"Just because LucyLou1 is a moron, and thinks that there is no need for the word antisemitism, and points out that there is no such word for racism towards any other ethnicity or race, doesn't make it not true."

Clearly, you think LucyLou1 is right about antisemitism, Timmy. What does she say about it?

LUCYLOU1
February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. on the Menachem Rosensaft thread.

""Why do the Jews, as a race, have such a need to brandish anyone who disagrees with them as anti-semitic? Why does the word anti-semitic even EXIST?"

"If the Jews are so victimized, why are they the only ones? Why doesn't the word "anti-Muslim" exist in our language?"

This in a post that extols the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as "prophetic".

Timmy, you have stated you agree with LucyLou about antisemitism. You also state emphatically:

"I stand by MY reasoning for my opinions on that word." (i.e. antisemitism) "And they are, that it is a racialization itself, thus perpetuating the very thing it labels."
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:45 AM, Susan Jacoby boards

continued below

continued from Onofrio to Timmy2:

Timmy, part 2,

So, based on YOUR reasoning, use of the term antisemitism (especially by Jews) to describe endemic anti-Jewish racism actually perpetuates that racism. The logical implication of this is that the victims of anti-Jewish racism are responsible for their own persecution, based on word choice (btw, not a term coined by Jews).

This is of a piece with your persistent claims on the Susan Jacoby boards that Jews are self-racialised, and hence complicit in their own persecution.

Your post of FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:13 AM on Menachem Rosensaft's thread is thus a disingenuous, tokenistic attempt to airbrush your own image, posted tardily to play catch-up, and features a gallop on your favourite anti-religion hobby-horse to boot. Just like one of those gun nuts who uses the Shoah to justify their firearm addiction.

On the Jacoby boards, you have spent far more words on attacking those who resist antisemitism - calling it for what it is - than you have on confronting the perpetrators.

You're an opinionated blowhard and a fake. You make common cause with a Nazi.

February 5, 2009 6:26 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Farnaz,

In case you hadn't noticed, no one else here besides you and Onofrio are interested in your pathetic OCD witch-hunt of timmy2, and therefore no one is going to follow your instructions and bother themselves by following your links to my past statements. You are welcome to re-post any of my past comments here for critical review if you are truly as obsessed as you seem to be. But as I said before, please take them one at a time we can have a proper and civilized discussion about them.

I have done this myself where you are concerned. For example I have specifically been trying to get you to explain who you are referring to by "us" when you tell THE CHRISTIANS that they stole the Tanakh from "us". This is a point that can be discussed by reasonable adults. But you have to tell us what you meant first.

ONOFRIO, DITLD, PERSIFLAGE, CHRIS3,

I needs must return to my day job. I want to thank you more than I can say for opposing all the hate-filled screeds that have blackened this blog this past week. You have given me hope. So, too, have the many Catholics who posted on Tom Reese's thread standing up against Holocaust denial in specific, and against antiJewish racism in general.

I look forward to more peaceful times, to reading about Thoth (not always peaceful), Buddhism, philosophy (DITLD is a natural-born philosopher!), and Chris3, I hope to get to know you.

God (gods, sprites, and faeries) bless you all!

Farnaz

Farnaz,

How was my re-posting of your smear against Rubytues63 "out of context" or "eroneous". I posted both Ruby's original (and only post on that thread) and your response in full. How was that out of context and erroneous?

You said that your post was not to Rubytues63 but you named her several times in the post, calling her the most vile of names. How could this mistake have happened?

DEAR MR. WIESEL,

PLEASE FORGIVE THE CAPS, BUT IT IS IMPORTANT TO ME THAT YOU READ THIS POST.
_____________________________________

Dear Mr. Wiesel,

I want to thank you, paltry words, I know, for the lifelong war you have waged on behalf of the oppressed. I wish to God that there was some way you could meet my parents, they who scooped me, my brothers and sisters up one night and took us out of the hell of Iran. They knew who you were, Mr. Wiesel, and they had already told this, then, little girl, whose closest family friend had been murdered in front of her.

Last year, I invited to my Holocaust Literature class, a man who had fled the nazis by himself when he was fourteen years old. He spent the next four years, this young Jew, in Nazi occupied Poland among anti-semitic Poles and nazis. We sat silently listening to him recount his story, knowing his mother had surely been murdered by Polish Catholic neighbors, but not yet knowing how. I will not tell you how. You already know enough, sir. Indeed, you know too much.

Toward the end of his talk, he came to subsequent genocides, lamenting the emptiness of that oft repeated, anguished cry, "Never Again." When he came to Darfur, he could not go on. He literally could not speak.

I managed to get my students to share with him, briefly, the work they'd been doing to end the Darfur genocide. He smiled through his tears and ran his fingers through one young man's hair.

Many, many people have heard you, Mr. Wiesel, more than you know, and we are all grateful, will never forget, will always remember.

Farnaz

TO ALL JEWS WHO MAY COME TO THIS THREAD:

Sorry about the caps, but I don't want this lost in the flurry. Please add Chris3 to the list of nonJews, who opposed the racist rants that permeated this blog last week.
___________________________
Please know that throughout this fraught week, Onofrio, DITLD, Persiflage, and other non-Jews consistently spoke out against the hate-speech that blackened this blog.

There may well have been other nonJewish bloggers who did the same--I saw a number of ethical replies to racism. I saw the protests from self-identified Jews. These three nonJews I name, because I know them.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph....

Farnaz

TO EVERYONE:

As for KJohnson3, I'm afraid her shrieking speaks for itself. Both DITLD and I mistook her original post as racist and responded.

She protested that she had been misunderstood, and I apologized. Ever since, she has continually posted as you see. Perhaps, I was wrong to apologize....But, I think when one believes she has erred she should say so.

That is what I believed, and I so stated.

I look forward to reading comments on Timmy2's posts, those Onofrio had the good will and patience to list. These are enumerated below. You will have to go to Susan Jacoby's last blog to read them, and they only concern remarks from the last few weeks.

CHRISEVERETT:

I think we're all in agreement that Holocaust denial is morally repugnant. Let's stop denying the myriad little ways that bigotry is allowed to incubate in our own societies and in our own selves. As they say in the subways of NYC, "If you see something, say something."
_____________________________
That is what Onofrio, DTLD, and Persiflage have done. If you scroll down, you will see a list that Onofrio has had the patience and good will to compile of timmy2s' "something[s]" on Jacoby's thread in just this last week.

I know it would be easier for you and others to read if I posted timmy2's exact words, just as he has done mine, out of context, and in the case of one blogger, erroneously.

If it is inconvenient for you to go to Onofrio's list (scroll down), go to Jacoby's last blog, and read Timmy2's actual words, I will post them right here. Timmy2 has already cluttered this site, so I suppose it makes no difference.

I remember you Chris, and it's good to see you here. I cannot imagine you countenancing antisemitism.

Timmy2,
I'm writing in reference to your post of 2:59 this morning.

I just wanted to note that the points you were making are exactly what I said in a post on another thread a couple of days ago. Exactly.

I pointed out that Farnaz had screamed her vile swamp thing rhetoric at RubyTues and then immediately posted an "oops, I'm sorry" message once she had read the whole thing. She did the same thing to me, posting an apology after I called her out on her facts. At that point, I decided not to engage with her at all anymore.

What makes these episodes so disturbing is that she makes the most appalling, filthy accusations against people she knows nothing about, then spins her head and says, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

The speed of her mood changes and the complete 180-degree turns she does, as well as the vitreol she spews, are a little too pathological for me. I simply won't acknowledge anything else she says.

Timmy2,

I don't often frequent this post anymore, in large part because of the virulent bigotry of various self-appointed "defenders of the demographic" who poise themselves, seemingly chomping at the bit, for any post that can in any way be construed as slighting to their particular group, or more precisely, to the image of their group that they cherish in their minds. It is a distasteful and infuriating irony to be barraged with insinuations, and outright accusations, of bigotry from people who so obviously are really just venting their own bigotry.

I haven't read all the posts on this thread (or even most of them) but the current dynamic is all too familiar. Suffice to say that over the recent months, when I have checked in as a spectator, your posts have been among the clearest, most reasoned, impartial and objective.

Tribalism, inasmuch as it supersedes universal inclusion, is bigotry. Gratuitous tagging of posters with terms such as "Catholic" and "Christian" is bigotry. To speak monolithically for a group, even one's own, is bigotry. To cherish one's own identity as a member of a group above one's identity as a human being is bigotry.

I think we're all in agreement that Holocaust denial is morally repugnant. Let's stop denying the myriad little ways that bigotry is allowed to incubate in our own societies and in our own selves. As they say in the subways of NYC, "If you see something, say something."

Dear Mr. Wiesel,

I want to thank you, paltry words, I know, for the lifelong war you have waged on behalf of the oppressed. I wish to God that there was some way you could meet my parents, they who scooped me, my brothers and sisters up one night and took us out of the hell of Iran. They knew who you were, Mr. Wiesel, and they had already told this, then, little girl, whose closest family friend had been murdered in front of her.

Last year, I invited to my Holocaust Literature class, a man who had fled the nazis by himself when he was fourteen years old. He spent the next four years, this young Jew, in Nazi occupied Poland among anti-semitic Poles and nazis. We sat silently listening to him recount his story, knowing his mother had surely been murdered by Polish Catholic neighbors, but not yet knowing how. I will not tell you how. You already know enough, sir. Indeed, you know too much.

Toward the end of his talk, he came to subsequent genocides, lamenting the emptiness of that oft repeated, anguished cry, "Never Again." When he came to Darfur, he could not go on. He literally could not speak.

I managed to get my students to share with him, briefly, the work they'd been doing to end the Darfur genocide. He smiled through his tears and ran his fingers through one young man's hair.

Many, many people have heard you, Mr. Wiesel, more than you know, and we are all grateful, will never forget, will always remember.

Farnaz

To all Jews who may come to this thread:

Please know that throughout this fraught week, Onofrio, DITLD, Persiflage, and other non-Jews consistently spoke out against the hate-speech that blackened this blog.

There may well have been other nonJewish bloggers who did the same--I saw a number of ethical replies to racism. I saw the protests from self-identified Jews. These three nonJews I name, because I know them.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph....

Farnaz

Farnaz,

I have no problem with you bringing back any of my past statements for critical review. My only request is, for the sake of the other posters, is that you bring them up one at a time, as opposed to posting a long laundry list that will require five posts to respond to, dominating this thread and taking it far off topic. But if you want to have an honest critical discussion of any of my previous posts, I will be happy to engage you one post at a time.

To all Jews who may come to this thread:

Please know that throughout this fraught week, Onofrio, DITLD, Persiflage, and other non-Jews consistently spoke out against the hate-speech that blackened this blog.

There may well have been other nonJewish bloggers who did the same--I saw a number of ethical replies to racism. I saw the protests from self-identified Jews. These three nonJews I name, because I know them.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph....

Farnaz

PSEUDO,
SORRY ABOUT THE CAPS, BUT I DIDN'T WANT THIS AND OTHER POSTS TO BE LOST IN THE FLURRY. I'VE POSTED TO YOU BELOW, AS WELL.
___________________

Pseudo,

I'll be waiting to read your thoughts on Timmy2's posts, the ones that Onofrio took the time to list.

Scroll down. I stopped posting to him awhile back, as I noted. He however cannot control either his obsession with me or his obsession with Jews in general.

If necessary, I will do as Timmy2 has done: Paste his comments. In fact, I will do so going back from the beginning. For now, I will await your conclusions on the list, taken only from Jacoby's last thread, that Onofrio had the patience and good will to post.

Pseudo, I've been condescended to by the best of them, or worst of them, to be accurate. Pontificating is offensive, most particularly in matters when the pontiff speaks without knowledge.

Farnaz

February 9, 2009 12:39 PM

Farnaz said: "I insist: All collective judgments are wrong"

Are you now admitting then that your accusation to THE CHRISTIANS that they stole the Takakh from "us" (THE JEWS) was a collective judgement and was therefore wrong?

FOR JUSTILTHEN AND EVERYONE:

HERE IS ANOTHER PIECE BY ELIE WIESEL. (SORRY ABOUT THE CAPS, BUT I DIDN'T WANT THIS TO GET LOST IN THE FLURRY)

Farnaz

Have you learned the most important Lesson of All?

by Elie Wiesel

First I would like to congratulate you. For you and your parents, the day of your graduation should be marked by joy and celebration. Your years of study and work have brought triumph, which rewards you, honors your teachers and brings pride to your families.

And now you are ready to say farewell to your classmates and face both the privileges and obligations society will feel entitled to place upon you.

How will you cope with them?

May I share with you one of the principles that governs my life? It is the realization that what I receive I must pass on to others. The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.

Isn't this what education is all about?

There is divine beauty in learning, just as there is human beauty in tolerance. To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.

You and I believe that knowledge belongs to everybody, irrespective of race, color or creed. Plato does not address himself to one ethnic group alone, nor does Shakespeare appeal to one religion only. The teachings of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. do not apply just to Indians or African-Americans. Like cognitive science, theoretical physics or algebra, the creations and philosophical ideas of the ages are part of our collective heritage and human memory. We all learn from the same masters.

continued....
In other words, education must, almost by definition, bring people together, bring generations together.

Education has another consequence.

My young friends, I feel it is my moral duty to warn you against an evil that could jeopardize this generation's extraordinary possibilities. That evil is fanaticism.

True education negates fanaticism.

Literature and fanaticism do not go together. Culture and fanaticism are forever irreconcilable. The fanatic is always against culture, because culture means freedom of spirit and imagination, and the fanatic fears someone else's imagination. In fact, the fanatic who wishes to inspire is ultimately doomed to live in fear, always. Fear of the stranger, fear of the other, fear of the other inside him or her.

Fanaticism has many faces: racism, religious bigotry, ethnic hatred. What those faces have in common is an urge to replace words with violence, facts with propaganda, reason with blind impulses, hope with terror.

For a while we might have believed that fanaticism was on its decline. It is not. Quite the contrary, it is on the rise in our cities, in our country and in our world.

In Western Europe—in Germany and France, Belgium and Austria—we are seeing a resurgence of yesterday's demons of fascism and intolerance. In Eastern Europe, ethnic factions are rekindling old conflicts. In the Middle East, deeply held hatreds seem ever on the verge of sparking more raging conflagrations. "It's us against them" has been taken as an essential truth. Strangers are being greeted with animosity almost everywhere.

Let us look at our own country. As this last decade of a century, which is also the last decade of a millennium, runs to its dazzling dénouement, we seem ever more divided. Can't all our citizens—white Americans and African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians, Jews and Christians, Jews and Moslems, young and old—live together, work together and face together their common challenges? Must they—must we—constantly subject ourselves to useless social tensions and dangerous ideological conflicts that could turn joy into dust and creation into ashes?

continued....

We face many difficulties and must find answers to thorny questions if our nation is to flourish: What has happened to our economy? What went wrong with elementary and secondary education? Why are so many youngsters seduced by crime? By drugs? By hate? Why is there so much bloodshed in so many quarters?

The answers to these questions do not lie with the clichés, senseless stereotypes and absurd accusations that are being used to justify religious or ethnic hatred. Evil forces are at work—some, to my embarrassment, unleashed by my fellow teachers—and something must be done to heal the effect of their poisonous theories.

In the New York City neighborhood of Crown Heights last year, a black child was killed when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control and jumped the curb. Already strained tensions between the black and Hasidic communities exploded. A young Hasidic man was killed, and a black man was arrested for the murder. For days and weeks, the streets were filled with scenes of violence and hatred. The incidents left deep scars.

We must ask ourselves if we, as a nation, want to be reduced to addressing our problems with violent actions. Will we allow street wars at home to succeed armed conflicts abroad?

Farnaz we can all go back to discussing the subject at hand when you let go of your OCD witch hunt on timmy2. I am not a racist. I am not an antisemite. I am not a swamp thing. I am critical of Judaism as I am equally with all religions. I am critical of Israel as I am with all countries who are overstepping their bounds and causing more strife not less strife in our world. And I am critical of ethnocentricity which happens to be prevalent in Judaism. That you take that personally is your issue not mine. None of these things make me a racist. In fact my opposition to all tribalism based on race and ethnicity makes me the opposite of a racist. But you don't care about the truth in this case. You've made your label, and you're sticking to it with ears closed. The very thing you rail against. Let it go.

continued....

As a Jew, I have witnessed the consequences of anti-Semitism, which is one of the oldest group-prejudices in history. We Jews have been accused of many sins. Now we are perceived as the group that wields more power than any other. I have heard good people say this—decent people, intelligent people. Don't they know that not all Jews have power? That not all those who have power are Jewish? Haven't they heard of poor Jews who are unable to make ends meet? Who live on welfare?

African-Americans have been subjected to centuries of racism. Today, some blame the victims for the problems of our country. Don't they know that most African-Americans are hardworking, good citizens? That the tragedy that occurred in Los Angeles, born of injustice, is just that, a tragedy? That important parts of American culture—from music to language to literature to fashion—have been created by African-Americans?

I insist: All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. And racism is stupid, just as it is ugly. Its aim is to destroy, to pervert, to distort innocence in human beings and their quest for human equality.

Racism is misleading. There are good people and bad people in every community. No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. We all come from somewhere, and we all wonder where we are going.

I know: You have been tested during your years in school, more than once. But the real tests are still ahead of you. How will you deal with your own or other people's hunger, homelessness, sexual or gender discrimination, and community antagonisms?

The world outside is not waiting to welcome you with open arms. The economic climate is bad; the psychological one is worse. You wonder, will you find jobs? Allies? Friends? I pray to our Father in heaven to answer "yes" to all these questions.

But should you encounter temporary disappointments, I also pray: Do not make someone else pay the price for your pain. Do not see in someone else a scapegoat for your difficulties. Only a fanatic does that—not you, for you have learned to reject fanaticism. You know that fanaticism leads to hatred, and hatred is both destructive and self-destructive.

I speak to you as a teacher and a student—one is both, always. I also speak to you as a witness.

I speak to you, for I do not want my past to become your future.

Pseudo,

I'll be waiting to read your thoughts on Timmy2's posts, the ones that Onofrio took the time to list.

Scroll down. I stopped posting to him awhile back, as I noted. He however cannot control either his obsession with me or his obsession with Jews in general.

If necessary, I will do as Timmy2 has done: Paste his comments. In fact, I will do so going back from the beginning. For now, I will await your conclusions on the list, taken only from Jacoby's last thread, that Onofrio had the patience and good will to post.

Pseudo, I've been condescended to by the best of them, or worst of them, to be accurate. Pontificating is offensive, most particularly in matters when the pontiff speaks without knowledge.

Farnaz

Farnaz said: "Since timmy2 takes the oppression of Jews, in particular to be the fault of Jews"

But timmy never said this. Timmy said that the oppression of Jews was the fault of tribalism. ALL TRIBALISM. And yes that would include Judaism, a very tribal religion. But it also includes every other religion, racism, and nationalism all equally accountable for all of the horrors of tribalism. Seeking revenge for one particular tribe will not end racism. In fact it will extend the idea of tribalism yet another generation.

The "common cause" that Onofrio and Farnaz accuse me of making with a "nazi" [sic] is that I question the value of a word like antisemitism. This common cause with nazis is also shared by many Jews. And here is a classic example of the slimy demagoguery in place of reasoned on topic discussion of an actual point related to the lessons of the holocaust. The point being that how can we end tribalism while having special names for racism towards one particular tribe. It was a question I posed, and it was open to critical argument. Accusing me of making common cause with a nazi is not critical argument. It is slimy demagoguery to distract from a valid question.

This post was not to RubyTuesday. I'm not going to go through timmy's misrepresentations, but will comment on this one: It was to a blogger, whom both I and DITLD misread. I apologized because I was wrong.

Timmy has yet to do this, to apologize, not for having erred once, but for having done so brutally and consistently.
________________________

"Sorry, I misread your post. Frankly, I'm having a really hard time keeping up with the racists who've been posting tonight and getting down to the swamps in which they dwell so as to communicate. MY apologies. While I disagree with your historical analysis, your post was quite sensible"
__________________________________
What on earth does she mean she missed Ruby's post? What was she responding to? Ruby's name? The opening line, because it smelled like a swamp thing? This from a girl who claims she is concerned about what the children might read here. Again, if I were to post here greatest hits, those children would be scarred for life.

She may be "more than okay" with you, Pseudo, but I am far far from the only one on these threads who is fed up with her disgusting demagoguery and irresponsible race card playing.

It's the little boy who cried wolf syndrome. If she calls everyone swamp things, how effective is it on the real holocaust deniers?

justillthen Author Profile Page:

Farnaz,

Seems that a post to you evaporated into the ethers. I wrote in appreciation for your posting of the excerpt from Elie Wiesel. I enjoyed reading it.
------------------
Your welcome! His essays, books, articles are as astonishing as his life. He went to Kosovo to aid the Kosovo Muslims when that country was under siege by the Serbian Christians. He has endlessly spoken out, gone before Congress, etc., when Never Again became again and again and again, in Biafra, UGanda, Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Darfur, etc.

He tried to help us, the Middle Eastern Jews, the Russian Jews, many of whom are lucky to be alive.
He's never ceased.

Pseudo,

If you, et al, have comments on what I've posted, I'd be delighted to read them. Braying at, pontificating about the victim has grown old. Shortly, Timmy2 will post in your defense and you can condole together is that's the path you choose to take.

As a self-declared scientist, you might want to get the evidence first.

As well, there is a subject on this thread. Please bear this in mind.

I doubt Mr. Wiesel would object to our discussing the Tanaim though, after the l'affaire de timmy2 is done.

Here is the irony of irony, very typical of this ilk, and as I note here, it works. They provoke, witch hunt, post only responses to provocation, but not the provocation.

Even among, self-identified scientists it works. Not a surprise, in light of history.
________________________________________

Timmy2 to Onofrio:
"Do you really think that anyone is going to follow your witch-hunt links?"

Probably not. But they're there for anyone who wishes to see the lengths to which Timmy2 will go. People can make up their own mind, or ignore. Whatever.

Timmy2 is an opinionated blowhard and a fake. He has made common cause with the Holocaust denier and crypto-Nazi, LUCYLOU1.
See:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2009/01/obamas_outreach_to_muslims_lau/all_comments.html
ONOFRIO:
February 5, 2009 1:38 AM
February 5, 2009 6:29 PM
February 5, 2009 6:26 PM

Compare the original context of LUCYLOU1:February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. at:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

February 6, 2009 6:29 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Pseudo, et al. I'll await your comments.
_________________________________

onofrio Author Profile Page:

Corrected LUCYLOU1 link for preceding post:

LUCYLOU1: February 4, 2009 10:10 PM

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

February 6, 2009 10:38 AM | Report Offensive Comments

Pseudo,

"She knows I do not agree with all of her tactics but we have a civilized dialog anyway"

That is because she has not labeled you a racist swamp thing nazi in a public forum. If she had, and would not let go of that accusation, and continued to make it every time you posted a comment on topic, and refused to engage you on topic but rather tried to slander and discredit you every time you opened your mouth, then you and her would not be continuing to have a civilized dialogue. I was having civilized dialogues with Farnaz too before she labeled me a racist antisemite bigot at my very first criticism of Judaism. Then again at my very first criticism of Israel and again at my very first criticism of certain aspects of Jewish ethnocentricity. I don't take being labeled such horrible things lightly, and she persists, and persists, and does so in a childish and irresponsible way. That is most certainly not "more than okay with me".

YOU WRITE: "I guess we are all human beings with warts shortcomings and strengths. Still, I think if we keep talking we might keep learning"

I certainly agree. I try to talk on point about issues but it is difficult when someone is taking it all very personally. I assail what I think are bad ideas and actions, not people personally. You and I are capable of a civil discussion, as I am with Justilthen, and Persiflage, and others who I don't agree with everything on. But it seems that anyone criticizing anything Jewish is criticizing Farnaz personally. This is what I mean about her seeing all Jews as "her people". And she absolutely does speak of all Jews as one singularity all the time, and speaks for all Judaism all the time, and yells hypocritically at anyone who does the same, labeling instantly an antisemite.

I have made several attempts to find common ground with Farnaz but she's not having any of it. I am a swamp thing, never to be listened to again. I won't just sit here and take it. If you and Onofrio were a little harsher on her for her irresponsible demagoguery and race card playing, instead of encouraging her ways with sarcastic poetry you may have been able to turn her into a reasoned poster. But both yourself and Onofrio have been all encouragement, and zero admonishment for her race card playing ways and so she continues on with the confidence that what she is doing is righteous. Her actions have chased away Arminius now, and Frederic2 and and many others who are sick of it. For all of my disagreements with Arminius, he never felt that my posting was so egregious that he could not stand to be around it and felt that he had to leave.

You will now get into trouble with Farnaz for daring to try and have a civil discussion with me. She will be upset with you for even engaging me. In fact she has already instructed you not to. How dare you talk to the one she has labeled a swamp thing. He is not to be listened to.

Since it seems that Pseudo and perhaps others haven't read the posts of timmy2, I will post a short list that Onofrio noted for just the last few days. These appear on Susan Jacoby's thread, so you will have to go back and look. If that fails, I will post every one of the antisemitic screeds he penned to which I ceased to respond, and no one among the Christians who blogged here did, except for the few I mentioned.

______________________
From Onofrio:

Timmy2 is an opinionated blowhard and a fake. He has made common cause with the Holocaust denier and crypto-Nazi, LUCYLOU1.

See:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2009/01/obamas_outreach_to_muslims_lau/all_comments.html

ONOFRIO:
February 5, 2009 1:38 AM
February 5, 2009 6:29 PM
February 5, 2009 6:26 PM

Compare the original context of LUCYLOU1:February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/mte-admin/mt-comments.cgi

February 6, 2009 5:44 AM | Report Offensive Comments

Pseudo,

Unfortunately, your white Christian world has been compromised by Jews and people of color. Since timmy2 takes the oppression of Jews, in particular to be the fault of Jews, I fond it depressing that almost, alone, among nonJews Onofrio has taken what he rightly calls his nazi posts on.

Ruby Tuesday's posts not only to me, but on every thread where Israel comes up (relation to Jews? Or almost anything else that could somehow bear on Jews has shown his true colors.

This thread concerns Holocaust denial. You accuse me of "caterwaluling." I'm sorry you aren't able to stick to the subject, identify racisim when it is right in your face and stand up to it.

As I have posted, educating and politely explaining hasn't worked for Jews, although I have used it among other stragies on this blog.

When DTLD, Onofrio, Persiflage and others were taking on the racists, your self-righteous
christian self was nowhere to be found. You say you read timmy's posts. If you had, and you think, pontificate, and bray as you do, I can only feel sorry for you.

And I do.

Farnaz,

Seems that a post to you evaporated into the ethers. I wrote in appreciation for your posting of the excerpt from Elie Wiesel. I enjoyed reading it.

Pseudo,

"...I do recommend quaffing Yellow Snow IPA once in a while."

You are of great taste, Pseudo. NWerner? A fine pick.

Thank you for your thoughtful and measured posts.

Hello Timmy,

I liked your post February 9, 2009 3:05 AM, particularly the aspects on tribalism in conflict, and theological influences. And tribalism equating in ways to racism.

"But although the tribal disagreements themselves have nothing to do with religion, the fact that there are two tribes at all has everything to do with religion."

I do not know if this is necessarily true. There are many diverse human cultures and societies that were not generated by different religions, though these societies developed their own religions in part as a form of identifying and differentiating themselves from others.

Timmy,

"Scroll down. rubytues6 Swamp Thing has caused more deaths of Jews, Muslims, Animists, you name it, which is what christian people love."

I can't gainsay you on this. As a Christian, I find some of Farnaz' caterwauling about us in poor taste; and quite a lot like some of the behaviors she rightly condemns in others. She knows I do not agree with all of her tactics but we have a civilized dialog anyway.

I also find some of what you say in poor taste, but there are the good parts in there too that I prefer to address.

I guess we are all human beings with warts shortcomings and strengths. Still, I think if we keep talking we might keep learning.

justillthen:

"They tend to be heavy handed, historically as in this latest foray into Gaza, and I do not think that it ends up serving their long term interests in the end."

Yes, I think this latest incursion into Gaza was disastrous for both the Gaza and Israel. Losses mount with every engagement. The thing with leaving a couple of million unexploded cluster bomblets on their way out of Southern Lebanon a while back is another example of heavy handed behavior. Strategically, these engagements are huge loosing propositions for Israel and they take a terrible tole on an already impoverished Palestinian people. There are no victors in these messes. Maybe Gaza needs to be demilitarized and policed by a UN peacekeeping force while it, and the lives of its people are rebuilt.

There has got to be a better way.

Arminius,

"Pseudo,
Slings and arrows I can stand. I cannot abide someone getting away with coating with slime anyone who disagrees with her in the slightest. I will miss your poetry."

Glad you liked the poetry. It is a fun writing style. In my daily work I am relentlessly Aristotelian by trade, so the Platonic Pseudo lets me work with the other side of my brain. It is freeing in a way. Poetry can abide contradictions, ambiguities, and passion, that scientific logic will not.

As to Farnaz, I do not agree with all of her tactics either. Something about Type-I versus Type-II error going on there, with the detection threshold set too low. Her goals of encouraging a non-racist dialog are none the less admirable. I prefer to address that on a case by case basis and let her know about it.

Meanwhile, I think it is good to maintain dialog with her and some of the people who she disagrees with both.

Also, I have seen you take off after people you thought were engaging in inappropriate behavior on many occasions, and with scarcely less intensity than that of Farnaz. Still I have maintained dialog with you in spite of that.

I wish you the best regardless of whether I see your interesting posts here again or not.

And while the advice: "Don't eat yellow snow." still applies in spades I do recommend quaffing Yellow Snow IPA once in a while.

Peace, friend.

timmy2:
"I understand and am supportive of the move into Gaza."

I can 'understand' it too, but am not as supportive. Perhaps I need a broader perspective, but I get to the judgment that Israel prefers the scorched earth tactic over more constructive approaches. They tend to be heavy handed, historically as in this latest foray into Gaza, and I do not think that it ends up serving their long term interests in the end. The embrace expansionism, in deference to right wing, zionistic plans of reclaiming all of ancient biblical lands, and that drives decision making through successive governments.

"But I am critical of the settlements in the west bank...."

Yup.

I agree with Richard Dawkins when he said:

"Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations.

Of course today's religious killings and persecutions are not motivated by theological disputes. IRA gunmen don't kill Protestants (or vice versa) over disagreements about transubstantiation. The motive is more likely to be tribal vengeance. It was one of 'them' killed one of 'us'. 'They' drove 'our' great grandfathers out of our ancestral lands. The grievances are economic and political, not religious, and the vendettas stretch back a long way.

But although the tribal disagreements themselves have nothing to do with religion, the fact that there are two tribes at all has everything to do with religion. There are, no doubt, tribal distinctions of genetic or linguistic origin, but in Northern Ireland what else is there but religion? The same applies to Indo-Pakistan, Serbo-Croatia, and various regions of Indonesia and Africa. Religion is the world's most divisive label of group identity and hostility. If a social engineer set out to devise a system for perpetuating today's most vicious enmities, he could not come up with a better formula than sectarian education. Faith schools that taught all religions comparatively might do some good. But the whole point of faith schools is that the children of 'our' tribe must be taught 'their own' religion. Since the children of the other tribe are simultaneously being taught the rival religion with, of course, the rival version of the vendetta-riven history, the prognosis is all too predictable"

Pseudo,

Here is Farnaz's response to Rubytues63

"rubytues6 exists as an accident of evolution. It crawled out of the swamp with a handful of others. Scroll down. rubytues6 Swamp Thing has caused more deaths of Jews, Muslims, Animists, you name it, which is what christian people love.
They don't want Jews to defend themselves in Israel, the US or anywhere else, if it could interfere with their oil dollars. On the other hand this bastard rubytues6 has no trouble joining hands with its fellow bastards in genociding Iraq and Afghanistan. This murdering bastard and its co-religionists have already killed 655, 000 in Iraq, displaced three million Jews in the Middle East, etc"

"Sorry, R. Steinsaltz for the language, but a bastard is a bastard. A racist bastard is a racist bastard. And rubytuesday6 is both.
Crawl back into the sewer now, racist swamp thing bastard.
Farnaz to Rubytues63"

Then, came this

"Sorry, I misread your post. Frankly, I'm having a really hard time keeping up with the racists who've been posting tonight and getting down to the swamps in which they dwell so as to communicate. MY apologies. While I disagree with your historical analysis, your post was quite sensible"

What on earth does she mean she missed Ruby's post? What was she responding to? Ruby's name? The opening line, because it smelled like a swamp thing? This from a girl who claims she is concerned about what the children might read here. Again, if I were to post here greatest hits, those children would be scarred for life.

She may be "more than okay" with you, Pseudo, but I am far far from the only one on these threads who is fed up with her disgusting demagoguery and irresponsible race card playing.

It's the little boy who cried wolf syndrome. If she calls everyone swamp things, how effective is it on the real holocaust deniers?

Pseudo,

Continued,

On another one of the holocaust deniers threads yesterday, a poster named Rubytues63 made the following post.

"Modern Israel exists, in large measure, because of the Holocaust. Post World War II England and America could find no argument to counter the accusation that so long as Jews depended on other ethnic nation-states for their survival, another Jewish genocide was possible and perhaps likely.
By the early 1940s, the Jews owned much of British-controlled Palestine and constituted a third of the total population. When the British decided to leave the area after World War II, the idea was that since Jews already made up such a large percentage of the population, dividing the land into a Jewish-governed region and an Arab-governed region made sense for both peoples. The Arab response to this partitioning was a call for a second Holocaust to “sweep all the Jews into the sea”.
How odd it is that the Arab response to the creation of Israel justified the reasons for its creation. Many Arabs continue to deny the Holocaust to this day because if there was no genocide then (they feel) there is no justification for Israel to exist. The Arabs falsely believe that someone will give them back the land that was not entirely theirs to begin with"

"As for the argument expressed my some people in this blog, that the Jews are bastards because of what is going on in Gaza, all I can say that if some a-holes were firing mortars into the house where my children lived, I might have a disproportional response as well. One-thousand dead in Gaza is a terrible tragedy, but don’t insult the rest of us by comparing this to genocide"

"Before anyone can try and fix what is wrong with the world, he or she must understand the reasons why it is the way it is. Deny the Holocaust and you will never make peace between Arab and Jew – which is exactly what some Arab militants want."

See the next post for Farnaz's response to this post.

Pseudo,

"Farnaz is more than OK in my book. But it sounds like some of this blog has gotten under your skin"

Farnaz got under my skin by calling me and everyone who disagrees with her, not only a racist, but swamp things, Nazis, baby rapers, terrorists, mistakes of evolution, and worse. All the while claiming that she is concerned mostly with what children will read on here.

YOU WROTE: "You should really back off and watch what the long term stream of comments here are. There are a variety of people here. Some of them are plumb crazy and Farnaz has the hang of dealing with them as best as is possible"

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I am with Ausiebarry on his suggestions to Faqrnaz on better ways to deal with racism. Far more reasoned, less emotional and tribal, and more effective.

YOU: You, on the other hand seem to be decent sort, but can get a little too worked up sometimes.

About race card playing and offensive demagoguery, yes, I can get pretty worked up. Sometimes getting worked up is righteous.

YOU: "So I am guessing you don't really know what it is like to have people coming after you to kill you for no good reason at all. If so your frame of reference really doesn't cover what Farnaz is talking about"

To be sure. But there is a reason why they do not put rape victims on the jury in a rape trial. Involuntary emotional prejudice. Farnaz is unable to see that the path to "never again" is the end of ALL tribalism not just Christianity. Antisemitisim is caused by tribalism. And Judaism, like all of the Abrahamic monotheisms, is a form of tribalism. That is not blaming the victims. The victims are the people who died in the pogroms. They did not invent Judaism, they were brainwashed from birth to be members of a religious tribe, as were the Christians who slaughtered them, as were the Germans. We all need to end our allegiance to our false tribes. Farnaz still wants to call all people of her ethnicity "my people", and end racism? It's absurd.

As for her conduct lately, it is disgusting. If I had the OCD of Onofrio and bothered myself to post Farnaz;'s greatest hits, it would probably be removed from the site ass offensive. But I will post one of Farnaz's greatest hits, and this says everything about her vile style and irresponsible demagoguery.

See my next post

From "What Really Makes Us Free?"
Elie Wiesel (1987)

Does there exist a nobler inspiration than the desire to be free? It is by his freedom that a man knows himself, by his sovereignty over his own life that a man measures himself. To violate that freedom, to flout that sovereignty, is to deny man the right to live his life, to take responsibility for himself with dignity.

Man, who was created in God's image, wants to be free as God is free: free to choose between good and evil, love and vengeance, life and death. All the great religions proclaim this. The first law after the Ten Commandments had to do with slavery: It prohibited not only owning slaves but also entering into slavery voluntarily. One who gave up his freedom was punished. To put it another way: Every man was free, but no man was free to give up his freedom.

To strip a man of his freedom is not to believe in man. The dictator does not believe in man. Man's freedom frightens him. Imprisoned as much by his ambition as by his terror, the dictator defines his own freedom in relation to the lack of freedom of others. He feels free only because, and when, other people—his subjects, his victims—are not free. The happiness of others prevents him from being happy himself. Every free man is his adversary, every independent thought renders him impotent.

Caligula felt sure of his own intelligence only when faced with his counselors' stupidity; Stalin derived morbid pleasure from the humiliations he inflicted on his ministers; Hitler liked to insult his generals. Every dictator sees others as potential prisoners or victims—and every dictator ends by being his own prisoner and his own victim. For anyone who claims the right to deprive others of their right to freedom and happiness deprives himself of both. By putting his adversaries in prison, his entire country will be one vast jail. And the jailer is no more free than his prisoners.

continued....
In fact, it is often the prisoner who is truly free. In a police state, the hunted man represents the ideal of freedom; the condemned man honors it. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, in occupied France, the only free people were those in prison. These men and women rejected the comfort of submission and chose to resist the forces of oppression. When they were put in prison, they no longer had anything to fear. They knew they were lost.

When the great French humorist Tristan Bernard was arrested by the Germans after months in hiding, his fellow prisoners were surprised by his smiling face. "How can you smile?" they asked. "Until now, I have lived in fear," he said. "From now on, I will live in hope."

For the free man is open to hope, whereas the dictator is a man without hope. It is because his victims cling to hope that he persecutes them. It is because they believe in freedom as much as they do in life itself that he is determined to deprive them of both. Sometimes he succeeds, but more often he fails. For, in dying, the free man reaffirms the value of life and freedom.

We find many examples in the tales told about all revolutionary movements, in the histories of every struggle for national independence. Heroes and martyrs became the pride of their people by fighting with a weapon in their hand or a prayer on their lips. In a thousand different ways, each proclaimed that freedom alone gives meaning to the life of an individual or a people.

For a people—that is, for a social, ethnic or religious group—the problem and its solution are both simple. When a people loses its freedom, it has a right, a duty, to employ every possible means to win it back. The same is true of the individual—with one difference: An individual's resistance can be expressed in more than one way.

continued....

The Jews who lived in the ghettos under the Nazi occupation showed their independence by leading an organized clandestine life. The teacher who taught the starving children was a free man. The nurse who secretly cared for the wounded, the ill and the dying was a free woman. The rabbi who prayed, the disciple who studied, the father who gave his bread to his children, the children who risked their lives by leaving the ghetto at night in order to bring back to their parents a piece of bread or a few potatoes, the man who consoled his orphaned friend, the orphan who wept with a stranger for a stranger—these were human beings filled with an unquenchable thirst for freedom and dignity. The young people who dreamed of armed insurrection, the lovers who, a moment before they were separated, talked about their bright future together, the insane who wrote poems, the chroniclers who wrote down the day's events by the light of their flickering candles—all of them were free in the noblest sense of the word, though their prison walls seemed impassable and their executioners invincible.

It was the same even in the death camps. Defeated and downcast, overcome by fatigue and anguish, tormented and tortured day after day, hour after hour, even in their sleep, condemned to a slow but certain death, the prisoners nevertheless managed to carve out a patch of freedom for themselves. Every memory became a protest against the system; every smile was a call to resist; every human act turned into a struggle against the torturer's philosophy.

Do not misunderstand me: I am in no way trying to minimize the Nazis' maleficent power. I am not saying that all prisoners succeeded in opposing them by their will to be free. On the contrary, locked with a suffering and solitude unlike any other, the prisoners generally could only adapt to their condition—and either be submerged by it or carried along by time. The apparatus of murder was too perfect not to crush people weakened by hunger, forced labor and punishment. But I am saying that the executioner did not always triumph. Among his victims were some who placed freedom above what constituted their lives. Some managed to escape and alert the public in the free world. Others organized a solidarity movement within the inferno itself. One companion of mine in the camps gave the man next to him a spoonful of soup every day at work. Another would try to amuse us with stories. Yet another would urge us not to forget our names—one way, among many other, of saying "no" to the enemy, of showing that we were free, freer than the enemy.

"Even in a climate of oppression, men are capable of inventing their own freedom. What if they are a minority? Even if only one free individual is left, he is proof that the dictator is powerless against freedom."

-Elie Wiesel

CCNL:

I doubt this is possible, but would you consider attempting a two-week period of sanity?

Farnaz

Onofrio,

With everything in my being, I believe that justice is what stands between us and the void. It is, you can see, growing noticeably darker....

Farnaz :[

PS. Thoth?

Farnaz

Re,
"Not for one moment does Onofrio contend that the experience of oppression or atrocity allows some sort of atrocious redraw/credit balance for the victims."

Onofrio should have added that the experience of oppression or atrocity demands justice, whose soul is truth. And the truth is the most searing avenger, certes. It's what god is made of, says this godloose goose.

But god is scarce, and the earth cannot contain all that demand.

There's always music and silence...

Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31,

Obviously based on my synopsis of the RCC as posted umpteen times on On Faith, I am not a member of the Catholic League.

And who in their right mind would be a Nazi or affiliated with these low life? Surely not I!!! Nazis are the scum of the earth ponds, rivers and oceans. They are the maggots of horror and despicable acts.

Hmmm, so finally you admit not working for the JDL. I guess that atheist in front of your named got your resume thrown out.

Onofrio,

"Not for one moment does Onofrio contend that the experience of oppression or atrocity allows some sort of atrocious redraw/credit balance for the victims."
________________
I daresay no one does. Imagine if all three million of us exiled Middle Eastern Jews started to blow ourselves up all over the Middle East.

Let's see. That would put one million in Tehran...
___________________

Imagine if the two hundred Cypriots whom the Turks forced out of Cyprus in the process of ethnic cleansing, decided to send rockets among the 200,000 Turkish (Muslim, Uqba?) colonialists?
___________________

Or, if the indigenous peoples of your country and mine started rocketing into densely populated areas....
___________________

No, making human sacrifices of the innocent helps nothing.

Farnaz,

Thoth is trying to remember all those glyphs he invented. Gets dyslexic sometimes, what with all the serpents, birds of prey, and eyes, eyes he "dare not meet in dreams".

You should get something to eat.

In the Austral Fundament, if you said your husband was *getting pissed* it would refer to the process of getting drunk :)

Uqba,

I have to agree with Onofrio. You must distinguish between political criticism and racism. Moreover, this thread was to be about Holocaust denial. How it got hijacked and by whom, is readily visible.

Onofrio,

Sorry! I meant to write, "minoritized."

Hi Onofrio,

I guess I missed the Uqba assault. I've been trying to bring him into the fold, but, often, he resists the old four-square. Got a thing about women, for one.

We'll see. Right now, I've got Arminius, who's insulted by my refusal to be "minoritizes"--a Christian martyr, is he--along with the usual pain in the thread.

Frederic2 wishes to wax ahistorical. Either don't wax at all, or expect what you get. Notice the strange bedfellows those Ahistoricals make?

Thoth?

Farnaz et Pseudo,

Thank you both for various kind and supportive remarks below about my posts. I trow you're each heading off to rest, repast, et alii, so bon appetit, bon soir...

Farnaz,
One good turn deserves another. If you have a shrink handy, better see that person. You are dangerous, to yourself and others. See you in Hell.
______________________

Arminius,

I meant no offense. You're acting out. Go to sleep. Get some rest. Things will probably look better in the morning. They generally do.

Farnaz

Ukba,
You are a voice of reason here. I'll miss your posts. Good luck - it's not just muddy here, it is a foul cesspool.

Pseudo,
Slings and arrows I can stand. I cannot abide someone getting away with coating with slime anyone who disagrees with her in the slightest. I will miss your poetry.

Farnaz,
One good turn deserves another. If you have a shrink handy, better see that person. You are dangerous, to yourself and others. See you in Hell.

Farewell, all. This token Christian - you know, one of the book-stealers, rapists of Jews, the cause of all the modern woes the world today - wishes you well. Even Farnaz. Something to do with a guy named Jesus.

Uqba!

You, of Onofrio:
"hubristic and downright smug"

I think you could well be right there, Uqba :) Onofrio is something of a condescending twit at times, so Touche! Zesta!

With regard to your post vs Onofrio vs Asizk, of gist indignant, weighty with Chomskyan sharpness, I would venture:

In Onofrio's defence - he was reacting to Asizk's idiotic and faux-historical comparison of Operations Barbarossa or Reinhard with Israel vs Gaza. Onofrio agrees that this seems callous alongside the current plight of the Gazans. They are suffering right now, and Onofrio did not mean to blancmange their screams. Oh no. He did single out Hamas for blame, rather than the population it so miserably leads.

Onofrio has no problem per se with informed, principled criticism of Israel's current actions in Gaza, but observes that most posters who protest on Gaza's behalf on the current thread are Trojan Horsing for their own antisemitism. In taking this view, Onofrio is not swallowing some standard pro-Israel US line. He is a relatively detached observer, not at all a US-Israel partisan.

Elie Wiesel says "We are not to dignify any Holocaust deniers", and the thread is soon studded with posts bringing up Israel and Gaza, and laced with Holocaust equivocation, if not explicit denial. Onofrio thinks those voices ought to be excoriated for their fake concern, their ugly effrontery, and their abuse of history, not to mention their irrelevance.

If the thread were actually about Gaza, and about helping the Israelis and Palestinians to come to terms, then comments about the IDF and Israeli government policy would be entirely germane. Unfortunately such a thread would probably be targeted by Shoah-pruners, getting us back in the sameold trenches.

(Aside: But then who are we - the rump-spectre of EuroChristendom and/or the crazy flame of Anglophone NeoChristendom - to lecture Israel, or anyone else? Not so very long ago, it was our "world" that produced the Nazis who tried to cut down the Jewish family tree. And our own governments have laid far more collateral waste to Iraqi women and children under collapsed concrete than in the current horror of Gaza. Plank and splinter situation, no?)

Not for one moment does Onofrio contend that the experience of oppression or atrocity allows some sort of atrocious redraw/credit balance for the victims.

Look where that kind of thinking got the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda!

But when the mind-virus of Holocaust denial increasingly infects criticism of the state of Israel, Onofrio is quite apprehensive that antisemites will use it to leverage themselves onto the semblance of the moral high ground. Last time they seized that self-hallowed turf - via post-Versaille 'ressentiment' and Wannsee - the result was Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec...

Elie Wiesel knows all about that...

Pseudo,
Same here; So long for now. You too farnaz; Have a good night.

"My main man Arminius, please don’t get flustered. I know you are a good fellow no matter what anyone says"

Oh, for heaven"s sake, Uqba read what you write before you post it. Damning with faint, praise, and all that.

On the other hand, with different ethnicities blogging, among them members of minority groups, who refuse to be "minoritized," some majority group members, especially, majoritarians, are bound to get antsy, some, not all.

Also, Sands isn't "the" authority. A little knowledge....

I haven't ever met a Tunisian who doesn't speak French.

Uqba:

Pleased to make your acquaintance. Perhaps we can have some interesting discussions in the future.

Pseudo

Faraz,

Tannaim... Interesting. Have to read about them. Glad you were not referring to yet another atrocity scene.

Bon Appetit

My main man Arminius, please don’t get flustered. I know you are a good fellow no matter what anyone says. Stick around; it’s only slightly muddy.

Farnaz:

"Do you, for instance, know who the Tanaim were?"

No. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I don't know everything. I will google it, though. I am guessing that it is not appetizing...

You should really go get some food now. Your husband is right.

Uqba,

Of course, there are North African Jews in Israel, too.

Arminius,

I have enjoyed many of your posts even though you get more than a bit touchy at times (Like, say, now.). I do hope you will stay with it and continue to contribute. You do have an interesting perspective. Sadly, slings and arrows and all that come with the territory.

Uqba,

You can’t refer to the Palestinians as only Muslims for the simple reason that about fifteen percent of them are Christians. Also, many of them are actually Jews who over the centuries converted either to Christianity or to Islam. There is no way to really tell. The Israelis are an amalgam of Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews among other lineages. For all I know most of the Ashkenazy Jews are of European descendants.
_________________________
The third sentence doesn't quite make sense to me. If they're Muslims now, that is what they are.

Israelis are an "amalgam" of Sabras (native born Israeli Jews), Sfardim, Askenazim, Ethopian, Mizrahi, Indian Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
_____________
This isn't a question of racial science. If you prefer not to refer to people by religion, a preference I hold, then I'd recommend Israelis and Palestinians.

Must go. Formerly Muslim husband gets pissed when I forget to eat.

Farnaz

Pseudo,

I agree. :) It's quite unlikely that we'll ever agree on certain things. The question could become whether we can agree to disagree, but only after each of us has heard what the other has to say.

Do you, for instance, know who the Tanaim were?

Farnaz :)

You can’t refer to the Palestinians as only Muslims for the simple reason that about fifteen percent of them are Christians. Also, many of them are actually Jews who over the centuries converted either to Christianity or to Islam. There is no way to really tell. The Israelis are an amalgam of Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews among other lineages. For all I know most of the Ashkenazy Jews are of European descendants.

“Dr Shlomo Sand an expert on European history at Tel Aviv University said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, desperate for converts. “This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time.”

"Jews travelled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and Eastern Europe.”

Dr Sand adds: “It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area’s original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam.”

Actually, from what I’ve read the Ashkenazi Jews look down on the Sephardic Jews and do not treat them as equals. Go figure.

Good luck, Arminius. If you have a pastor, you might want to try talking some things out with him/her.

"Uqba and I, indeed you and I, disagree from time to time, but we are able to communicate. That isn't the case with timmy2. Take a look at what Onofrio took the time to put together, when you've got the time.

Me, I'm off to the grocer's. Family's at sisters, and mustn't forget to eat.

Farnaz :)"

I will go an have a look-see. Meanwhile, I do not expect to ever completely agree with you. As the old joke goes: "When two people agree completely, one of them is unnecessary." %-}

Pax Vobiscum

Farnaz,

Yes, I'll go away. What's the point of being here in all these blogs that you have poisoned with your endless attacks on anyone who dares utter the 'J' word? You are consumed with hatred, striking out at anything that comes within sight, like a wounded, cornered, demented predator.

I'd tell you to have a nice life, but you can't. You are too stricken with your bitterness to see the good in anyone else.

See you in Hell.

Farnaz,

"You might want to take a look, since it strikes me you haven't been keeping up with his posts."

I will take a look. Hope springs eternal, I guess...

Uqba,

"I was careless after all but not in a way you’re trying to make it sound."

Think it through. Really. These habits of mind steal upon us and we don't always even know what we are doing. Farnaz does have a good point.

Pseudo,

I wish you were right about timmy2, but fear you aren't. He's Canadian, for one thing, and he is a bigot. Onofrio, posted a list of his major hits, on Jacoby's thread. You might want to take a look, since it strikes me you haven't been keeping up with his posts.

Onofrio has tried over and over again with timmy2, long after I gave up. I tried everything quite frankly, but timmy2 isn't about dialogue, an exchange of ideas, etc.

As for me, thanks for the defense. I deploy a number of strategies ranging from educational to combative to simply conversational. I've had a lot of practice.

Uqba and I, indeed you and I, disagree from time to time, but we are able to communicate. That isn't the case with timmy2. Take a look at what Onofrio took the time to put together, when you've got the time.

Me, I'm off to the grocer's. Family's at sisters, and mustn't forget to eat.

Farnaz :)

Arminius Author Profile Page:

Farnaz,

yawn.....
____________

That's just it. We don't want to bore you, so how about going away? Don't go away angry. Just go away.

Timmy,

"Perhaps UKBA was referring to the very same group of people you were referring to when you (the atheist/former Christian of Jewish heritage) told the Christians that they stole the Tanakh from "us"."

Farnaz is more than OK in my book. But it sounds like some of this blog has gotten under your skin. You should really back off and watch what the long term stream of comments here are. There are a variety of people here. Some of them are plumb crazy and Farnaz has the hang of dealing with them as best as is possible.

You, on the other hand seem to be decent sort, but can get a little too worked up sometimes. I am guessing that you, like me, live somewhere in the good old US of A where there are lots of people of every kind in your daily life. Jews, Blacks, Poles, Hispanics, even the odd and dreaded WASP, and you get along pretty well with all of them. So I am guessing you don't really know what it is like to have people coming after you to kill you for no good reason at all. If so your frame of reference really doesn't cover what Farnaz is talking about.

In the sixties I was beat up and robbed for racial reasons, and some folks burned down a good bit of my home town in race riots. So I have a small taste of what it is like to watch your home town in flames and fear other people who are different from you because they will probably beat the 5hit out of you, or worse, if they catch you. Still I have never dealt with even a small fraction of what many people in the Middle East deal with on a daily basis. These problems are hard.

Farnaz,

yawn.....

Uqba,

To whit, "when Palestinian and Jewish peoples accept each other as partners in peace because both have suffered long enough."

Muslim and Jewish

or

Palestinian and Israeli

Uqba,

"I was careless after all but not in a way you’re trying to make it sound."
__________________
Please don't put what you do on me. For one thing, it's insulting. For another, you just dig yourself deeper.

Making a mistake is one thing....

Pseudo: “Personally I am pro-Palestinian, AND pro-Israeli… So try being pro-Palestinian AND pro-Israeli on for size.”

Please don’t get me wrong; I am for peace for everyone. I was only trying to highlight the misery and hopes of the Palestinian people. The Israelis and the Palestinians should live in peace either in one state where everyone is equal under the law or in two states as neighbors with mutual respect. I’ll be glad and pray for the day when Palestinian and Jewish peoples accept each other as partners in peace because both have suffered long enough.

Farnaz, as usual you have a point. I was careless after all but not in a way you’re trying to make it sound.

Onofrio,

I meant to thank you for compiling that list of timmy2's greatest hits. Would it be possible to have done with him now?

Could we let him say what he likes about me, and about Jews, for that matter? What point is there in feeding him? He's of no consequence, and that is the source of his racism. If he could look inside himself, he might salvage something worthwhile, but he won't. To use his own self-description, he's an "Aryan."

Having been a victim of the real Aryans, as you know, what affect could a mosquito like him possible have on me?

You have a remarkable mind and soul. Please don't squander your gifts.

Thoth?

Arminius,

When you disappoint, you do so big time. Kindly, take a look at whose thread your on and what the topic of discussion is.

If you want to chat with Timmy2, please go to Jacoby's last thread, where he appears to be holding forth. The rest of us are searching for civility, a way to communicate, etc.

You will find on Jacoby's thread that Onofrio has taken the time to compile a list of highlights from Timmy2. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

Farnaz

Timmy,

Good reply to Pseudo on the current unpleasantness between Israel and the Palestinians. Nice to see a civil post here for a change, thanks.

Pseudo,,

I can't really consider myself pro Israel and pro palestine as you word it, because I think that both sides are screwing the pooch, but I do consider myself "sympathetic" to both sides. I understand Israel's right to protect itself from rocket fire, and suicide bombers, and I am not one who is critical of the move into Gaza under the circumstances. What are they supposed to do with an elected government next door, hell bent on your destruction by way of religious fanatacism, firing rockets into your homeland? I get it. I understand and am supportive of the move into Gaza.

But I am critical of the settlements in the west bank which any expert on the region will tell you, are the true blockade to peace, and the true criminal act of the state of Israel. You have asked UKBA to see both sides and I think that is admirable. But how about asking Farnaz to see both sides? Is it inappropriate to ask her to do that because of the Shoah?

Pseudo,

Yes, it is all garbage. What else could it be. Unfortunately, when you're in an inferno, you need more than a cup of water.

Farnaz

Onofrio:

"So don't be a dupe of the Stalingrad Industry, Pseudo. It's high time that the 1.5 million bluff was called by freethinking people everywhere."

Brilliant bit of satire that one was. Well done.

Farnaz:

Perhaps UKBA was referring to the very same group of people you were referring to when you (the atheist/former Christian of Jewish heritage) told the Christians that they stole the Tanakh from "us".

Who were you referring to Farnaz? Was it THE JEWS?
Is Tanakh yours because of your Jewish ethnicity?
Who is "us" Farnaz?

The truth is you speak of Jews as one singular group all the time, and you hypocritically attack anyone else who does the same. It is "your people" who died in the holocaust because they are ethnic Jews. You don't think that they are my people. They are your people. Only because of ethnicity. THE JEWS, according to you.

If you want other people to stop referring to jews as a singular you need to set a better example.

Farnaz:

Well taken on "the Muslims" as a group. Or as certain wing nuts on talk radio say: "The Islamofascists". It is all garbage.

Pseudo,

"The Jews" are people just like "The Arabs", or "The Palestinians". The sooner we get to thinking of each other that way the better.
______________

In this context, one would more aptly say, "The Jews" are people just like "The Muslims."

Not pleasant, as you note.

Farnaz

Uqba:

BTW, Farnaz is right on this "The Jews" stuff. It is a red flag of racism. Substitute your favorite ethnic group for "The Jews" and see how it plays in your mind. Not well, I warrant. While your post is thoughtful, you really should look at it from that standpoint. "The Jews" are people just like "The Arabs", or "The Palestinians". The sooner we get to thinking of each other that way the better.

Farnaz: Thanks for the correct spelling of Uqba.

Uqba,

I misspelled your name when I posted. Sorry. :(

Hello Pseudo,

His actual name is "Uqba," which I think more elegant than "Ukba," originally, a type, as he explains it.

Uqbq,

You wrote:
"I am not that careless to lump people together and generalize to make a point. I know that being Jewish is not singular."
February 8, 2009 7:10 PM
..........................
after you had written

"You are brainwashed into believing that THE JEWS (emphasis mine) who are the real aggressors in this conflict as the victims and portraying the real victims as the aggressors"
February 8, 2009 5:14 PM
...........................

Evidently, you are "that careless"....

ukba:

"Advising others who simply disagree with you to question the “history” they have “gorged” on is hubristic and downright smug."

The particular historical issue was that another blogger claimed that the Israeli Defense Force had done things to the Palestinians that were worse than anything the Nazis had done in World War II. Look up the Siege of Leningrad, and imagine what Israel would have to do to equal the effects of that. No one would be left alive in Gaza by the time they came close to catching up with the Nazis. So Onofrio is right in what he said.

In regards to the rest of your discussion:

Personally I am pro-Palestinian, AND pro-Israeli. I strongly believe that we have made a pathological and false dichotomy between the welfare of the Palestinians and that of Israel. The Palestinians have been victimized by everyone in the Middle East including Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Saudis (How many Palestinians were killed in Lebanon and Jordan?). They desperately need help from everyone around them to rebuild a shattered nation. The way to peace in the region is to offer the Palestinians a decent life, with housing, education, healthcare, employment, food, and simple human dignity. The whole world should work with Israel and Palestine to achieve this.

I do believe that the present Israeli incursion into Gaza was disproportionate to the rocket fire thus far experienced. But Hamas is heavily involved with of Iran. In case you have forgotten it, their President has called for the obliteration of Israel and has said that he is willing sacrifice a substantial portion of Iran's population to do it (Does that sound like a threat of WMD warfare to you? It does to me). So Israelis may well wonder when these rockets might become infinitely more deadly. And one thing the Israelis know from history is that when someone says he wants to kill you, you had better take him seriously and man your battle stations.

So try being pro-Palestinian AND pro-Israeli on for size. You might be able to see things from that coign of vantage not visible from where you now stand.

Hello Farnaz,

I am not that careless to lump people together and generalize to make a point. I know that being Jewish is not singular.

As for your comment about “Israeli Jewish doctors” helping Muslims in Kosovo, I am proud of what they did and am sure those they helped were grateful. When people rise above politics anything is possible. We see that happens after disasters when everyone pitches in and help the distressed. Therefore I am not the least surprised when Jews help their fellow Muslims or vice versa. It only strengthens my belief in the human capacity for goodness.

Uqba,

Also, you do read English well enough when you read. The topic isn't the Middle East, neither Iraq, about whose 655,000 murdered your cowardly silence speaks volumes, nor about any other ME country.

Read the question before commenting, please.

UKBA,

"The Jews," you write. Which Jews? Who are "The Jews"? There are millions of Jews.

Btw., where were the Tunisians when Elie Wiesel was in Kosovo, under fire, trying to comfort the Kosovo Muslims?

And "The Muslims"? Where were they?

And when Israeli Jewish doctors went to Kosovo to help, where were the rest of "The Muslims."
____________________

Onofrio writes:“Did you ever actually think about any of that "history" you've gorged on?”

Advising others who simply disagree with you to question the “history” they have “gorged” on is hubristic and downright smug.

I think the same argument can be made about your bland run of the mill and outdated way of thinking. Weather you know it or not you are drinking from the same Kool-Aid being served to the general American public. You are ignorant of the basic real issues of the Middle East but somehow that did not stop you from passing your hubristic views. You are brainwashed into believing that the Jews who are the real aggressors in this conflict as the victims and portraying the real victims as the aggressors. I have never seen such an appalling and blatant reversal of reality. One can read about the Jewish side of history in any US newspaper or magazine but finding anything remotely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause is impossible. So, one is left with a public opinion that is totally ignorant and partial toward the Jewish cause. You call that “history” but I call it partial and incomplete history which makes its holder an ignorant brute capable of painting only a caricature picture of the situation.

In reality the issue is not very complicated, it is very simple: The Palestinians want an end to the Israeli occupation, creation of a Palestinian state and release of thousands of political prisoners. Everything else is posturing.

I am sympathetic, as everyone else around the world, to the Jewish people and the suffering they endured throughout the ages and especially most recently during the second world war; but that does not mean we should turn a blind eye and look the other way when those same people commit acts of cruelty, crimes against humanity and systematic extermination of a defenseless Palestinian population. They should not be a given carte blanche to do what they please just because they had been persecuted at the hands of their European hosts. In fact, they should be held to the same moral standards in their behavior like every other nation or a group of people.

Scroll down to continue,

continue,

Some people, among them many Jewish intellectuals, peace activists and courageous Israelis citizens, did just that. They stood up against the prevailing Jewish propaganda machine and tried to tell the other side of the story. The side that has been forgotten and trampled on in this conflict: the true victims, the Palestinians. Here in the United States, some of those who dared to speak the truth for its sake were summarily ignored and in many cases lost their jobs. Even a dead fish can go with the flow, but it takes effort and courage to question prevailing wisdom. And questioning Israel’s brutality is a big risk one has to face in the US. At this juncture of time in history, it is not politically correct in the US to criticize Israel but the truth should be told no matter the consequences; and wrong is wrong no matter who the culprit is. As Jewish peace activist Gilad Atzmon once said:

“I insist that everyone should be able to say what he or she feels regardless of his or her ethnic origin. One should be able to criticize the Holocaust industry or the official Zionist Holocaust narrative despite one’s mother not being a ‘holocaust survivor’. Similarly, one must be entitled to criticize Jewish power despite one not being physically or mentally circumcised.

“Yet, we better acknowledge the unfortunate fact that powerful Zionist forces have capitalized on their Jewishness and used it as a club to neutralize and punish both Jews and non-Jews who are offside the Zionist project or who criticize Israeli crimes.”

Scroll down to continue...

Continue,

Noam Chomsky is another case in point. He is described as linguistic and philosopher who “does not shirk from going to places that official US foreign policy declares out of bounds.”

Also: “People who care about the world and its inhabitants have long recognized him as a visionary and a man of the people. As an eminent scientist with a social conscience he embodies the tireless academic worker – with a vast output of high-quality work – who reluctantly sacrificed his private life for a public one in order to make the world a better place.”

As popular his literary works maybe many tried to stifle his opinions; American book reviewers don’t even review or mention his books. His books are read and are more popular overseas especially in Europe than here at home. His detractors usually attack him and his person and not his arguments because they cannot challenge the truthfulness of the cases he makes.

Chomsky writes:

“Today, Israel could have security, normalization of relations, and integration into the region. But it very clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, and repeated exercise of violence, actions that are not only criminal, murderous and destructive but are also eroding its own long-term security… One of the wisest voices in Israel, Uri Avnery, writes that after an Israeli military victory, "What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet. In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel."

“There is good reason to believe that he is right. Israel is deliberately turning itself into perhaps the most hated country in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long. Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves "supporters of Israel" are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible.

“Meanwhile we are quietly observing a rare event in history, what the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called "politicide," the murder of a nation [the Palestinian people] -- at our hands.” End of comment by Chomsky.

That’s the part of history, you, Onofrio, and countless others are missing on.

CCNL aka Tom aka BunBun,

I notice you haven't denied your CAtholic League, Whites for Christ, and National Socialist affiliations.

Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31,

Now you accuse me of being a Nazi?? How unlady like and deeply offensive considering that the Nazis killed my sister's fiance'at the Battle of the Bulge and the Japanese killed my best friend's brother at Pearl Harbor.

And still you have not denied being a member of the JDL.

A short list of some of CCNL's (aka, "tom" aka bunbun) list of National Socialist Affiliations may be found at this cite. MOre to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Movement_(United_States)

For more than a decade, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Roma have been involved in a lawsuit against Vatican Bank, which thieved from Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma slaughtered by fifteen hundred Franciscan priests. You will find a significant amount of information at the link below.

The Vatican will not settle. Many people, including Orthodox Christians, Jews, Roma, are putting pressure on the Vatican to settle and account for its horrible crimes in this matter. The suit has been monitored all over the world. These Franciscan priests' crimes include cutting up with scissors living Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma.

http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/news.html

Please contact the Vatican and ask them to act justly. More information on the Ustasha Franciscan crimes against humanity, including the names of every one of the fifteen hundred Franciscan murderers is available on the web.

For an unbiased review about the reported Ustasa Gold in Vatican Bank see,

http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/rpt_9806_ng_ustasha.pdf

From Wikipedia:

"Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City in 1968, JDL's self-described purpose was to protect Jews from harassment in Brooklyn, and to protest against local manifestations of antisemitism.[2][1]

"In its report, Terrorism 2000/2001, the FBI referred to the JDL as a "violent extremist Jewish organization" and stated that the FBI was responsible for thwarting at least one of its terrorist acts.[4]

The National Consortium for the Study of Terror and Responses to Terrorism states that, during the JDL's first two decades of activity, it was an "active terrorist organization;"[2] even so, the JDL was specifically referenced by the FBI's Executive Assistant Director Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence, John S. Pistole, in his formal report before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.[2]

While the consortium writes that the JDL does not currently engage in terrorist actions, according to The Washington Post, both active and former JDL leaders currently serve as primary fundraisers for the outlawed Israeli terrorist group Kahane Chai.[5][6] Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has compiled a long list of mainstream sources it says show a thirty year history of JDL terrorism on U.S. soil, as well as its association with Kahane Chai.[7]"

Does this then make all Jews terrorists???

Note: Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31 has not denied being a member of the JDL.

Here is a post from another thread. More on the Turkish invasion/occupation of Cyprus, its ethnic cleansing, its ongoing genocide of the Kurds, its genocide of the Armenians and refusal to acknowledge it in days ahead.

johnalexander1:

Extraordinarily, Mr Stout fails to mention what the Cyprus 'dispute' is about. Let me tell him: it is about illegal invasion, ethnic cleansing and continuing occupation. It is about the forcible deportation of 200,000 Greeks from northern Cyprus; the introduction of 180,000 settlers from mainland Turkey to change the demographic character of the island; the stationing of 40,000 Turkish occupation troops; the systematic destruction by Turkey in northern Cyprus of the island's Greek and Christian character – including the destruction of churches, their conversion into mosques, and the desecration of cemeteries; and it is about 4,500 Greeks slaughtered during the 1974 invasion, the hundreds of Greek women raped and the 1,600 Greeks still missing.

It is absurd, insulting and a complete misunderstanding of the Cyprus issue to say that it is the political leaders on the island who are preventing reunification. Rather, it is Turkey, the occupying power, that is preventing reunification; it is Turkey that is refusing to withdraw it's 40,000 occupation troops from Cyprus; Turkey that is preventing the refugees from returning to their homes; and Turkey that is bringing in colonists from Turkey to try and create 'facts on the ground'.

Peace may come about as a result of an acceptance of the 'other'; but peace also requires that justice is done; and in this case justice requires Turkey withdraws its troops, allows the refugees to return to their homes, and submits itself before a war crimes tribunal to account for the horrors it inflicted on Cyprus in 1974.

Xavisev:

Su madre es un cabrón.

For more than a decade, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Roma have been involved in a lawsuit against Vatican Bank, which thieved from Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma slaughtered by fifteen hundred Franciscan priests. You will find a significant amount of information at the link below.

The Vatican will not settle. Many people, including Orthodox Christians, Jews, Roma, are putting pressure on the Vatican to settle and account for its horrible crimes in this matter. The suit has been monitored all over the world. These Franciscan priests' crimes include cutting up with scissors living Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma.

http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/news.html

Please contact the Vatican and ask them to act justly. More information on the Ustasha Franciscan crimes against humanity, including the names of every one of the fifteen hundred Franciscan murderers is available on the web.

Aní ohev et ha-ahavá b'ha-makóm hazéh...ma yof'éh.

Pseudo,

You to Asizk:
"History lesson? The last time I checked the Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days and took the lives of around a 1,500,000 people."

According to the forensically precise Holocaust denial school of historical verification - as exemplified by that paladin of accuracy, Scooterlibre - the burden of proof is on the Russians. Unless they can produce ID-matched bones for every last one of that 1.5 million, then this enormously inflated figure must be dismissed as the propaganda it surely is, concocted by the notorious Stalingrad Industry in an attempt to monopolise the world's sympathy.

Independent scholars who respect the highest standards of evidence agree it's highly unlikely that the "siege" of Stalingrad ever happened, or was far less severe in its effects than has been claimed by the professional Stalingrad promoters. Indeed, there is hard evidence for only a fraction of the death-count usually blamed on the German army (another gratuitous example of hatred for all things German that seems politically correct these days), and of that, it is probable that most - if not all - the deaths can be attributed to localised famine and purges arranged by Stalin, or simple misadventure. In fact, the total number of deaths in the so-called "siege" of Stalingrad directly attributable to German arms are an exact gross of 144, most of which were mercifully euthanased circus animals that had been abused nearly to death by the Red Army on the orders of Soviet commissars.

The supposed mass-starvation of the inhabitants of Stalingrad is a convenient myth used to slander the chivalrous Wehrmacht. Indeed, the Luftwaffe dropped food-parcels regularly on the city (hostile Soviet propaganda later distorted this into bombing raids) to save the inhabitants FROM starvation. It was only when Stalin's forces ruthlessly shot down these mercy flights that the food supplies to the city ceased.

Increasing numbers of historians are acknowledging that all film footage relating to this supposed "siege" was actually staged after the war, using extras from Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible". Indeed, there is strong evidence that Stalin arranged for the levelling of Stalingrad in order to enable a realistic location shoot for the manufactured Stalingrad atrocity.

As for the myth of Nazi cruelty, it should be recalled that Hitler ordered members of the SS to deliver, personally, special gifts to many Russian children, at considerable risk to their own lives. The children looked forward to the arrival of their фашисты которые убивают ("Black Santas") - as the SS were affectionately known - indeed, there are countless eyewitness statements testifying that they would cry from excess of sheer joy.

So don't be a dupe of the Stalingrad Industry, Pseudo. It's high time that the 1.5 million bluff was called by freethinking people everywhere.

Farnaz,

"I will never forget my mother's words to me the night we left Iran. I had just started speaking after a long period of silence. I asked her quite matter-of-factly if we were going to be killed that night. She hesitated and then said, "There will always be those who come after us.""

For all the rough and tumble of racially motivated assaults and robbery I experienced in my early life, I never dealt with a moment like that.

Xavisev:

"Actually - "wiesel" is German for "weasel"."

You know, Xavisev, I knew a guy with the last name of "Thigpen". Of course every idiot in town called him "Pig Pen". He said to me once that the heck of it was that they all thought they were original, and funny even. Quite a bunch of morons, wouldn't you say?

You really should have grown out of this childish kind of name calling about the time you got out of elementary school.

Asizk:

"U fell into a big hole:it so happened that am a student of history and know as I love passionately."

History lesson? The last time I checked the Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days and took the lives of around a 1,500,000 people.

So call me in two and a half years, after a million in Gaza are dead, and the survivors have resorted to cannibalism. Until then comparing the IDF to the Wehrmacht is a joke and you know it. Especially if you love history.

Or maybe call me when Hamas returns the looted UN food aid to the suffering people of Gaza. That might be nice too.

If you are from Turkey, you know well how your nation reacted against Kurd guerrillas raiding into Turkey. Hamas has been firing rockets into population centers in Israel for years and driving large populations into bomb shelters. Iran has recently given them longer range rockets to target more population centers. You wouldn't you put up with that from the Kurds now, would you?

Farnaz,

Ah, now I'm abashed. I'm supposed to be glyph-adept, Thoth strike me!

Onofrio,

Re furniture-tipping tandava,

Sorry that you find me an @, or other unmentionable.
______________________
No, never. YOu are the most mentionable of mentionables. Sorry, if my amateurish artwork miscommunicated. I am a simple goddess, force of nature, etc.

Xavisev,

You:
"Actually - "wiesel" is German for "weasel"."

And I have it on good authority that Xavisev is Venusian for:

Viral mother-copulating dribbler of galactically vacuous inanities, profanities, and insanities

OR

pea-member

Farnaz,

Re furniture-tipping tandava,

Sorry that you find me an @, or other unmentionable.

Though "The cut worm forgives the plow", another such cut may do for the worm, certes.

Asizk,

You:
"In fact the jewish attrocities on Gaza are worse off than those committed by the naziz on Stalingrad:this city continouesly smuggled food including Iraqi Dates and had plenty of weapons and more imporatntly the steel well to eventually defat the naziz."

It's a wonder I can pick out anything at all from your textual wreckage. A good thing, then, that I am trained to deal with fragments, and archaic thought-worlds...

First, I advise you to become fluent in English before posting on an Anglo-lingual thread. That, or obtain the services of a competent translator.

Second, all your vaunted passion for what you call "history" has not saved you from hysterical historical misinterpretation.

Did you ever actually think about any of that "history" you've gorged on?

If Hamas has its way with Israel - last I looked it was the Islamo-fascists doing the Nazi goosestep - then we would see worse than Stalingrad. What else would you expect from a regime that still officially intends to erase Israel (i.e. lots of people) from the map, and will aid and abet any power (such as the current regime of Iran) who tries to do so? And would you expect Israelis to just let it build up, then lie down and take it? You'd love that, wouldn't you? You'd love them to go meekly to their deaths, just like the good old days of your oh-so-reasonable, chivalrous friends the Nazis.

You:
"So who is and who is not learning from history?"
The answer to the latter is you, Asizk.

Farnaz,

The Elie Wiesel speech that you have quoted below further exposes (if that were possible) the amoebic stature of the various antisemitical cowards who have yowled and yammered their uncase on this thread,

Those

blind brethren of the brutalising bellyache;

viral mindvilers; fasces phantomisers;

fanaticising fakers; pseudotruthing stupidisers;

fishreeking fact-fistulisers...

All they can muster is sameold slush, sputum, and slurry.

Rudra Tandava in Trismegistian Miniscule

Xavisev,

WHAT HAPPENED? GET A HOT TAMALI STUCK IN YOUR MEXI MOUTH, A*HOLE?

SHUT IT, PLEASE. OH, THE SINK....YUCH.

Bwaaahhhhh...why are people always picking on us?

Bwaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

cosmic_central:

Indeed, ignore the Holocaust deniers. However; we should retain the rhetoric of the Holocaust perpetrators, as they were God deniers.
_______________________
The latter is one necessary strategy. There are already enough folks providing information, attempting to educate. I've been among them, even on this current blog.

However, one cannot put out an inferno in only one way. I could use a hand with the "rhetoric" if you have a moment.

Hey asisk, pigface musselman,

Scroll down, or get someone to help your pig paws.

ASISK, TURKISH MUSLIM

The time has come for WaPo readers to learn what the turkisn muslims are doing to Kurds every day.

The time has come for WaPo readers to learn what the turkish muslims are doing to Cypriots.

The time has come for Wapo readers to learn of the Armenian Genocide that turkish muslims conducted.

Every day, they will learn something new, turkish muslim.

Pseudo,

Not only WaPo report that Hamas stole 1.5 million dollars worth of UN food meant for the Palestinans, but it also reported that the UN school the Israelis supposedly targeted, it did not target, did not hit.

Hmmm....NOw this wasn't given headlines. I could spend the next two weeks posting WaPo headlines on Israeli incidents that never happened, but upon which it told the truth in corners and on back pages.

THE UN HAS STOPPED SENDING FOOD TO THE PALESTINIANS BECAUSE HAMAS STOLE 1.5 MILLION DOLLARS OF IT.

pseudo,

U fell into a big hole:it so happened that am a student of history and know as I love passionately;

but all the same:any one who exposes jewish attorcities and war crimes of jews against the Palestinians and jewish crimes against humanities in Gaza is either:
a) a terrorist
b)anti-semitic
c)holocaust denier
d)or better yet has no knowledge of history.

In fact the jewish attrocities on Gaza are worse off than those committed by the naziz on Stalingrad:this city continouesly smuggled food including Iraqi Dates and had plenty of weapons and more imporatntly the steel well to eventually defat the naziz.

But I give credit for admitting that other Europeans and by the million perished in WW11 and not only the "chosen people!!!!!!."

Let us keep focused on Palestine and on Gaza where children live out in the cold-stalingrad and the holocaust are history-from which the world and especially the jews have learnt nothing:they are doing to the occupied Palestinians worse than what the naziz has done unto them.

So who is and who is not learning from history?

asizk:

"...not even the nazis had the heart to bomb 24/7 for 22 days from land,sea and air, a concentration camp-as Gaza is after it was starved for 18 months."

1. Your knowledge of history is pathetic. Ever hear of Stalingrad? Ever hear of the siege of Leningrad? You apparently have no idea what the Nazis were really like.

2. Did you read where Hamas has stolen the UN food aid for Gaza? Seems like everyone hates the Palestinians.

There must be a better way.

Where is my comment wp? or is too truthful for the jews??????

Indeed, ignore the Holocaust deniers. However; we should retain the rhetoric of the Holocaust perpetrators, as they were God deniers.

Hey weisel,

Why don't you say a single word of condemnation on the Holocaust of the Palestinian People by the jews for the past sixty years?

How about the recent Holocaust of the Palestinians in Gaza:400 infants and children murdred by the "victimized jews"with bullet holes into their little hearts,over 200 women murdered-their mothers- and over 100 elderly men and the rest of some thousand Palestinians murderd or maimed are essentially civilians.

Your jews could not confornt overwhelmingly elected Hamas fighters face to face-so jews went after the defensless Palestinian civilians.How Cowardly and shameful.

No but no:you jews are silent, absloutely silent on war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by your jews in occupied Palestine. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?????

Well because jewish life is sacered-after all u guys are the "chosen people" while the dispossessed and downtrodden Palestinians are the wrteched of the earth.

wiesel,
Don't u and your clan have any shame or human dignity to keep silent on the horrendous crimes committed by your jews in Palestine;not even the nazis had the heart to bomb 24/7 for 22 days from land,sea and air, a concentration camp-as Gaza is after it was starved for 18 months.

Why all this-because the Palestinians are demanding their land back which your jewish cousins stole and continue to steal as we speak.

Let the jews no longer play the victim and the guilt trip on us-we are just sick of it.Enough is Enough.

let us focus on the victimized Palestinians and not on their jewish tormentors.

The Vatican and other religious governing bodies should remember and observe with prayer all Holocausts/Massacres/Atrocities not just one.

To Sami Jadallah. You say you are an American? You are not an American. I could care less if you have the papers to prove it. The way you think is not American. You think like a lowlife terrorist.

Pseudo,

Please do no forget Lyndon Johnson when thinking about Martin Luther King Jr.. He was a great man who aligned the machinery of the nation to enact the ideals of Martin Luther King. Yet he died in disgrace, probably believing that he had failed. When you do not recognize such men we are all diminished. For success is possible, even to the imperfect.
__________________

I know. I'm very familiar with his career and posted on him at length on Jacoby's thread. He was the most powerful Majority Leader in US Senate history. It is generally believed that no one else could have pushed the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress, and the story of his "subtle" behind-the-scenes work is legend. With the passage of that Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act became possible.

Don't worry about me, Pseudo. I know racism won't end in my lifetime, not in my daughter's, nor in her daughter's. But other things may begin.

I will never forget my mother's words to me the night we left Iran. I had just started speaking after a long period of silence. I asked her quite matter-of-factly if we were going to be killed that night. She hesitated and then said, "There will always be those who come after us."

Good night, Pseudo.

Good night, and good luck. Now I must rest, and so should you, my friend.

Farnaz,

"Although he is a great man, he is not "mankind." His name is Elie Wiesel."

I speak of Mankind, and to you also.

You can find my personal response to Elie Wiesel below.

Farnaz:

"One person — a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr. — one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death."

Please do no forget Lyndon Johnson when thinking about Martin Luther King Jr.. He was a great man who aligned the machinery of the nation to enact the ideals of Martin Luther King. Yet he died in disgrace, probably believing that he had failed. When you do not recognize such men we are all diminished. For success is possible, even to the imperfect.

Pseudo:

Although he is a great man, he is not "mankind." His name is Elie Wiesel. He went to aid the Kosovo Muslims when Kosovo was under fire. He spoke out relentlessy, petitioned, travelled on behalf of the Chileans genocided by Pinochet, of whom Bishop Williamson is so fond, the Biafrans, the Ugandans, the Ethopians, the Somalians, the Rwandans, the Cambodians, et al. Elie Wiesel

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Acceptance Speech Delivered by Elie Wiesel in Oslo on December 10, 1986

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Chairman Aarvik, members of the Nobel Committee, ladies and gentlemen:

Words of gratitude. First to our common Creator. This is what the Jewish tradition commands us to do. At special occasions, one is duty-bound to recite the following prayer: "Barukh shehekhyanu vekiymanu vehigianu lazman haze" — "Blessed be Thou for having sustained us until this day."

Then — thank you, Chairman Aarvik, for the depth of your eloquence. And for the generosity of your gesture. Thank you for building bridges between people and generations. Thank you, above all, for helping humankind make peace its most urgent and noble aspiration.

I am moved, deeply moved by your words, Chairman Aarvik. And it is with a profound sense of humility that I accept the honor — the highest there is — that you have chosen to bestow upon me. I know your choice transcends my person.

Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do — and at this moment more than ever. The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions…

This honor belongs to all the survivors and their children and, through us to the Jewish people with whose destiny I have always identified.

I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember he asked his father: "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"

And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

continued....

And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.

Of course, since I am a Jew profoundly rooted in my people's memory and tradition, my first response is to Jewish fears, Jewish needs, Jewish crises. For I belong to a traumatized generation, one that experienced the abandonment and solitude of our people. It would be unnatural for me not to make Jewish priorities my own: Israel, Soviet Jewry, Jews in Arab land… But others are important to me. Apartheid is, in my view, as abhorrent as anti-Semitism. To me, Andrei Sakharov's isolation is as much a disgrace as Joseph Begun's imprisonment and Ida Nudel's exile. As is the denial of solidarity and it's leader Lech Walesa's right to dissent. And Nelson Mandela's interminable imprisonment.

There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism and political persecution — in Chile, for instance, or in Ethiopia — writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the Left and by the Right.

continued....

Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. That applies also to Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore when they lead to violence. Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers. They are frustrated, that is understandable, something must be done. The refugees and their misery. The children and their fear. The uprooted and their hopelessness. Something must be done about their situation. Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many sons and daughters and have shed too much blood. This must stop, and all attempts to stop it must be encouraged. Israel will cooperate, I am sure of that. I trust Israel for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from their horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land. Please understand my deep and total commitment to Israel: if you could remember what I remember, you would understand. Israel is the only nation in the world whose existence is threatened. Should Israel lose but one war, it would mean her end and ours as well. But I have faith. Faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even in His creation. Without it no action would be possible. And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all. Isn't that the meaning of Alfred Nobel's legacy? Wasn't his fear of war a shield against war?

There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person — a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr. — one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
This is what I say to the young Jewish boy wondering what I have done with his years. It is in his name that I speak to you and that I express to you my deepest gratitude as one who has emerged from the Kingdom of Night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them.
Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.
Thank you, Chairman Aarvik. Thank you, members of the Nobel Committee. Thank you, people of Norway, for declaring on this singular occasion that our survival has meaning for mankind.

Xavisev:

"Actually - "wiesel" is German for "weasel"."

And your point is... Moron?

Farnaz,

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

You really must give yourself a rest.
You have earned it and passed this day's test.
Tomorrow again you can do your best.

Actually - "wiesel" is German for "weasel".

Farnaz:

Whose thread am I on?

I hope I am on mankind's thread.

Pseudo,

Re: Your poem

They've already decided who should live and who should die. Whose thread are you on?

Where we should live? Whose thread are you on?

Where do I live?

I'll resist the temptation to versify.

Get the heavy furniture out of the room.

Parvati

Pseudo,

Don't worry about it.(?) We're all caught up now.

Pax Vobiscum

I guess it would be naive to hope
That we did not slide that slippery slope

Where if one wins another must loose
Where who will live some man does choose

There's pain aplenty in this wide world
And blame aplenty in maelstrom swirls

Some have lost their frame of reference
And maybe too their frame of reverence

The innocents grope to understand
Who cannot abide hate's great demands

I pray that they will know true peace
Even those who've seen the one called Beast

Farnaz,

"What worries me is Aussie B's failure to answer my question."

Give him time to think...

tandava ^( )^
@

Farnaz,

I don't know what might work. I am at a loss. You've tried hearts-and-minds and found it wanting. What then? *Bellum omnium contra omnes*? Perhaps the earth will spit us out first, or the sun burn us all *black against the ground*.

Onofrio,

Thanks, and I understand.

What worries me is Aussie B's failure to answer my question. You see, I listed several "ways" of dealing. I can only imagine his is among them. Haven't worked very well, now, have they. How much longer are possibly good people like him going to go on this way, asked Farnaz rhetorically. Not much longer....mused Parvata not so rhetorically. Something's vibrating.

Farnaz,

I caught up with the posts. I know that you are past caring about the dithering sensitivities of the *nonracist Christian*, no matter how seeming earnest, particularly when it comes to Elie Wiesel. You are at war. No prisoners. I cannot gainsay you. For me to say on would be like the crow advising the eagle.

"The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow."

"The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey."

W.Blake 'Proverbs of Hell'

Onofrio,

AussieBarry wrote back. Please take a look.

Farnaz

Farnaz,

It's becoming clear to me that Persiflage and myself and DITLD are probably the only posters who get Kali's gist. AussieBarry's application of "racist" shows that your tactic of mirror-invective vs the abjectly prejudiced is lost on some, like poetry often is.

Sometimes the coolly aimed dart of Durga is more effective than Kali's righteous indignation. Not more justified, certes.

Onofrio,

Can you help me understand something? Can you look at Adin Steinsaltz's thread, at a post there by AussieBarry? It's just below mine, asking him for clarification.

Farnaz

Farnaz,

Believe me, I can see why you would feel that way. It is heartbreaking to be amongst all this wilful, implacable ignorance, even if only in text. There comes a point when the dreadfulness of it all gets its claws in to this callow, timorous postprotestant. The thought that you and others have to anticipate the outcomes of this sort of hatred every day is soul-hollowing.

I look at Elie Wiesel and am dumbfounded that a man of such calibre is still in the *firing line*, after all he's suffered, still being blamed for the crimes against him, still hearing calumnies against his lost loved ones, still being loaded with the sick ire of the world. He has done so much to refute the hate, with his life and work, but still it writhes like an undead thing.

Yes, it makes one long for silence. And I've seen only the barest drop of the deadly sea you navigate, and the merest smatter of its creatures...

Hi Onofrio,

I just had a moment of wondering whether I ought to quit this blog for good. Looking through this thread, I'm reminded that there's no shortage of antisemitism in my daily live; I need hardly go on line to find it.

Don't know....

Farnaz,

Thank you for your generous defence vs Telsawy1, the spelling-nazi who does not capitalise at the start of a sentence, and who finds wee pedantry enormously amusing while pseudo-bleeding for Gaza.

telsawy1 Author Profile Page:

Farnaz2:

ironic? you mean sarcastic. use a thesaurus next time...you may understand the difference. and by the way, you need to use a spell check...correspondant is spelled correspondent...unless you're trying to speak french. and try typing my handle correctly...i know it's difficult, but try.

and nice try to defend your caluminaistical friend. it won't fly.

oh, how you made me laugh!!!
________________
"Ironic" and "sarcastic" aren't synonymous. Sentences begin with capital letters, etc. Ask someone to help you read and comment, next time.

You're making a fool of yourself.

Farnaz2:

ironic? you mean sarcastic. use a thesaurus next time...you may understand the difference. and by the way, you need to use a spell check...correspondant is spelled correspondent...unless you're trying to speak french. and try typing my handle correctly...i know it's difficult, but try.

and nice try to defend your caluminaistical friend. it won't fly.

oh, how you made me laugh!!!

ONOFRIO, DITLD,

Take a look at R. Steinsaltz's thread if you have a moment. Notice Kjohnson3's post. She protested to us last night that she was no bigot. And I duly apologized to her.

Well... What can I say? I still so desperately want to believe there's good in the world. Perhaps, there's not as much in KJohnson3 as one would have hoped.

telsawy1 :
onofrio

telsawy1,

If you cared about slain women and children of any nation, you would not be wasting your words calumniating Elie Wiesel.

Your concern is fake. Your homicidal intent is plain. Your heart bleeds bile.

============================================
thank you for unmasking me and for knowing me so well. oh, and by the way...there's no such word as "calumniating". use a dictionary next time.
February 6, 2009 3:15 PM |
__________________________________

Telsawyi was attempting to be ironic (see dictionary, Telsawyi) in his/her post to Onofrio. However, his/her gratitude was well-earned by Telsawyi's erudite correspondant.

Oh, and Telswayi? "Calumniating" is a word, used with frequency among literate speakers of English.

Use a dictionary once in awhile.
______________
Calumniate \Ca*lum"ni*ate\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Calumniated;
p. pr. & vb. n. calumniating.] [L. calumniatus, p. p. of
calumniari. See Calumny, and cf. Challenge, v. t.]
To accuse falsely and maliciously of a crime or offense, or
of something disreputable; to slander; to libel.

Hatred unto the truth did always falsely report and
calumniate all godly men's doings. --Strype.

Syn. -- To asperse; slander; defame; vilify; traduce;
belie; bespatter; blacken; libel. See Asperse.

Hello again Danielinthelionsden,

A couple more bits related to my previous post to you, as it is a potentially volatile concept and not one easily swallowed by those too vested in a particular outcome or outlook.

First on "agreement of innocence". We could also say there "blamelessness". Just to consider.

Second, I reiterate that I am not a racist or antisemite. Never have been... Let's say that there had been a time in my life where I hated most blacks that I met. It was an angry and violent time post civil rights movement where we were integrating and noone was so happy. Integration was abrupt and painful, and I was ill prepared. I thought most blacks sucked.

Never the case for me with jews. Went to school with them, at least a third of my class, before integrating. Found commonality with them post integration. Great kids and great families, most all of them that I knew.

I have just gotten bored with the woe of the jews stories, and annoyed that there is so much continued focus on them daily. I wish Israel would find peace within their lands and those that they have occupied, and with the people that they have occupied. And I wish that jew haters, as you call them, would find peace with the jews, and commonality. I would like to move on from this problem.

Thing is, it continues, like Farnaz's list. And it is not an ongoing problem purely and causally because it is "inside the heads of the Jew haters".

Might be easier if it were so.

Certainly would be easier if both sides, even one side genuinely, wanted peace and resolution...

sami_jadallah,

To those who accuse us of hating Muslims.

Hating a racist ideology as that of Islam is not hating Muslims. Hating actions and crimes committed by Islamic terrorists is not hating Muslims. Hating silence within the Muslim community as their terrorists commit war crimes globally and in Israel is not hating Muslims. Hating the koranic-driven wish for global Islamic dominination is not hating Muslims. Hating killing of women and children and using suicide bombers and unguided rockets against civilians is not hating Muslims. Hating the koran that robs females and apostates of their freedom and their land is not hating Muslims. Hating the property and land theft by Mohammed and his troops is not hating Muslims. Hating Islamic assassinations that put fear in all is not hating Muslims. Hating Islamic terrorists who target airplanes, buildings and their occupants is not hating Muslims. We guess… when Islamic terrorists change their behaviors then we all can change. From what we see in the Iran and Saudi Arabia, we have no reasons to love what Islamic terrorists do to the world in general.

So, one group of people says that only when Israelis change their behavior they will change; and another group says only when Hamas and Islamist fanatics change their behavior they will change. It looks as though no one will change as long as each is expecting the other to change. And so we have the definition entrenchment.

If we put back out into the world the evil that we criticize from others, we simply create twice as much evil. Showering rockets on Israeli towns from sites set amidst civilian populations is stupid and cowardly. It only brings about greater destruction. And the dropping of tons of bombs on these sites in Gaza gives the appearance of cold machine calculation. And yet what two groups of people want is to live in reasonable comfort. Why can't those of us who think that unity of thought and action is possible simply deprive the extremists of their power by not showering upon them such public visibility?

People deny the holocaust, not for the purpose of establishing historical truth, but for the purpose of insulting the dead whose existence they still hate.

Hello Danielinthelionsden,

"The problem with Jews is inside the heads of the Jew haters. They are frustrated with life, ignorant and unknowing, unable to cope or get along, seeking a scapegoat for everything that bothers them."

I generally like your more centrist approach, though one might say that you have gotten a bit more militant with this subject. All's well.

There is a problem that occurs in many places but I will dialogue in in reference to 'victimization'. The 'victim' blames the specific 'perpetrator' of injustice, circumstances, karma, even everything and anything else but itself and it's own participation in it's problems.

The "jew hater" is clearly a disturbed and diseased consciousness/phyche/ego... No doubt. But as you say, they are looking for a scapegoat for their problems and place it, in this case, on jews....

We are not innocent in the manifestation of our experiences in life. If we are 'always' victims, it is not for lack of participation that we continually create the same turmoil...

Farnaz, that beacon of light, on another thread posted a list of antisemetic acts through the ages. Took six to ten postings to put it up. That is a mighty lot, you know, of hatred over centuries.

No doubt that other peoples could compile such a list for their own tribes or ethnicities. But jews have a corner on the market.

That is not a list of continual wrongs done to an innocent peoples by evil peoples. I hate to say it, and will undoubtablely be labeled a foul antisemite for disagreeing with one of the essential rules of that game. Agreement of innocence. But, I am labeled that by some anyway, just because I made the sacrilege of saying I was bored with the preponderance of all things jewish in the media.

All things interconnect, interrelate, and are interdependent. We participate every day in creating our lives as they manifest. I am essentially Buddhist, but that concept flows throughout all the great religions.

The problem is not just inside the heads of the Jew haters.

onofrio

telsawy1,

If you cared about slain women and children of any nation, you would not be wasting your words calumniating Elie Wiesel.

Your concern is fake. Your homicidal intent is plain. Your heart bleeds bile.

============================================

thank you for unmasking me and for knowing me so well. oh, and by the way...there's no such word as "calumniating". use a dictionary next time.

To those who accuse m of hating Jews. Hating a racist ideology as that of Zionism is not hating Jews. Hating actions and crimes committed by Jewish Army is not hating Jews. Hating silence within the Jewish community as their soldiers commit war crimes in Gaza is not hating Jews. Hating the Jewish Occupation is not hating Jews. Hating killing of women and children and using cluster and phosphorous bombs against civilians is not hating Jews. Hating the Apartheid Wall that split families and rob them of freedom and their land is not hating Jews. Hating the property and land theft by Jews is not hating Jews. Hating Jewish checkpoints that keeps people away and that humiliate and cause death to infants and mothers is not hating Jews. Hating targeted assassinations by Jewish army is not hating Jews. I guess… when Jews change their behaviors then we all can change. From what I see in the US and Israel I have no reasons to love what Jews do to the Palestinians

I agree with Eli Wiesel in general (if one argues with a fool then who is the fool?). Still, when a huge relious organization, such as the Catholic Church, allows its plenipotentiary bishops to spout vile idiocies it MUST be held accountable! Not only about "there were no gas-chambers!", but also in reference to the "born-again" conservative Catholic Mass aiming once again at the "Christ killers"!
Walter Plywaski
Ex "native" of Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz & Dachau

Sami_jadallah :

Once, when I spoke up against a group of Jew-haters, bashing the Jews, they called me a Jew and a "Jew-lover"; even though I am not Jewish. They became red-faced with hysteria, in their hatred of Jews and Jewish things. Their bodies' quivered, and they shook, ala Adolph Hitler.

That is what you remind me of Sami-Jadallah. There is nothing in Jews that any better or any worse than in anyone else. Even names that might seem Jewish may or may not indicate a Jewish person, and a Jew may have a name that does not sound Jewish.

out my Jewish name, which IS NOT Jewish, and the pointed my Jewish facial features, which are northern European.

The problem with Jews is inside the heads of the Jew haters. They are frustrated with life, ignorant and unknowing, unable to cope or get along, seeking a scapegoat for everything that bothers them.

We do not need to argue over the meaning or correct usage of the word, anti-Semitc; "Jew-hater" is more linquistically organic, and more to the point.

Jew-hating is base, low, inferior, childish, appalling, ignorant, and every other bad word that is not allowed here on this forum.

I actually cannot even really imagine this kind of foolishness.

Elie:

My God Man! You friggin lived through it and now you are saying "We are not to dignify any Holocaust denier"????

Benjamin Franklin said it best, "All that evil requires to succeed is for good people to do nothing."

If you don't oppose the deniers, then the only message heard is theirs. If theirs is the only message, then people will beleive that they are right. If that happens, so much for never forgive, never forget. If the holocaust never happened, then I can guarrantee it will happen again. And those who didn't speak out will be just as guilty as those who didn't speak out at the beginning in Nazi Germany.

So, either speak out against them, or tell me when would you like to schedule Weld Krystalnacht.

Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31,

Still not denying working for the JDL?? And what is it about your other "handles"?

First: those who continue baiting each other do grave harm to this topic thread. Step back and read your own entries before clicking "post."

In entering this fray, Dr. Wiesel extends an opening to discuss the merits. Why is it that most people posting resort to belligerence and vilification? Better to add to the discussion by building a case for a point of view--especially if it is radically divergent from that of Dr. Wiesel's body of work. Otherwise one's passion falls to the ground and leads nowhere.

Now, some rational debate, please.

Why are the posts denying that 6 million Jews were gased, starved, worked to death, experimented on, or executed??

THE NUMBER OF HUMANS NAZI GERNAMY KILLED IS
12 MILLION...

The nutjobs always forget about the Roma, the Armenians, the gays, the disabled, the blind, the elderly, the infants, and infirm.

The Nazis were equal opportunity murderers and it really didn't matter what your color or religion were... If you weren't "Joe 6-pack German" you got it in the neck.

Remember... Hitler trolled the beer halls where he got his working-class audience drunk and riled up to win the election with national self-pity, blame, and mis-placed indignation. Then, the german intellectual-right, and the power hungry got onboard.

You can convince a drunk idiot, and his boss to do anything, apparently.

The point is fracts of Nazi record keepers show that 12 million HUMANS were MURDERED.

OK. Next idiot argument? Anyone? Bueler?

Mr Wiesel. I do not agree with you. Everyone who denies The holocoast should be shown the evidence. After seeing a convincing evidence then he will hurt himself if he remains a deier.This is the civilized way.

Ignoring Holocost denial is very similar in result to how the rise of Facism was possible in the first place...

It is how the silent majority in the south allows hard-right ideological versions of "christianity" to exist...

It happens via peer pressure/group-think that percolates, and then simmers along until it reaches a critical mass and an idiot causes a hate crime.

The people who are attracted to those who deny the Holocost are not aware of the mountain of Nazi records proving the event and its horrid aftermath. They are uneducated, or highly educated. They feel victimized by society. They don't want to face facts, or they are unaware of them.

Either way pounding the reality of Nazi records is the best tool available, and discrediting the denial is the best use of that weapon.

Let's face it, these are people who largely failed in society, school, etc... That is how they got hateful and resentful in the first place. These people are looking for answers.. and they believe the words of anyone who appears to be "on their side".

Debunk Holocost denial with Nazi records, and exposure of the denier's weak mental state, internal hate, and past behavior.

The kids around them need to be told.

I'd like to see one member of the jew-hating scum mob acknowledge the historical fact that the Jordanians murdered more Palestinians in one weekend in 1970 than the Israelis have killed since the country was founded in 1948.

Come on, can one of you droolers step up to the plate?

THIS POPE IS A REAL WINNER FOR STEARING UP A HORNETS NEST. WHAT WHOULD POPE JP2 SAY BEARING IN MIND HIS BACK GROUND ALSO?

The palestinians have been paying the price of the hollocaust for over 60 years. Apartheid israel has ethnically cleansed palestinians, israel wiped off so many palestinian towns off the FACE OF THE MAP, israel created 6 million palestinain refugees.In west bank aprtheid is very clear, jewish settlers use different roads than palestinians, jewish settlers get more water than palestinains, jewish settlers can kill palestinian civilians for sport, jews demolish palestinian homes and expropriate their propert to build jewish only settlments. The palestinians have been going through a COLD HOLLOCAUST for over 60 years. Shame on the supporters of APARTHEID ISRAEL.

"Ignore Holocaust Deniers," says Mr. Wiesel.

This is one reason I like this man...

Please Mr. Wiesel, please, please take the next step...

Speak out: TELL THE JEWISH LEADERS TO ADVOCATE, PERMIT AND SUPPORT A THOROUGH RE-EXAMMINATION OF HOW MANY JEWS WERE ACTUALLY KILLED DURING WORLD WAR II

Farnaz, I guess the Jewish Black Shirts are out in force, working overtime. You and your kind do not intimidate me and my rights to free speech. Who are you to call me a “terrorists” and who are you and your kind to demand that I leave the US? I am a citizen of this country, served this country and its army with honor and did not serve with the criminal Jewish Army. The only terrorists are the Jewish Terrorists who are committing crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. So Mr. Farnaz you and your kind, simply get loss. We are not afraid of you and your powerful Jewish lobby. You will never intimidate us into submission to your Jewish Zionist agenda. G-d in his drunken moment Chose You, but the US Constitution did not make you the US Chosen People? Perhaps you can go and get 99 Senators to designate you as America’s Chosen One. We will continue to speak out and up until you and your kind stop your war crimes and stop blackmailing the world with your Holocaust Business.

Muslim Garak,

A few facts about Elie Wiesel. First, unlike your Muslim self, Elie Wiesel put his life on the line to go to the Muslim people of Kosovo, when the Christians were killing them. He has spoken out forcefully about every genocide from Rwanda to Bosnia, to Kosovo, to Somalia to Darfur, etc.

Unlike your Islamic self, he is not in the pay of the Saudis. He remembers.

ON the Armenian Genocide
First, Turkey has never recognized the Armenian genocide. Second, neither has Iran, a Holocaust denier, and most other Muslim nations. Most important, the Genociding Turks have not.

The first person to bring the Armenian Genocide to world attention was a Jew, and subsequently Jews have written volumes on it. HOW MANY MOSLIMS HAVE WRITTEN TRUTHFULLY ON THE HOLOCUAST?
ON THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE?

WHAT IS THE ATTITUDE OF THE ARMENIANS TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST? IS THERE ANY ANTISEMITISM IN ARMENIA?

IS THERE ANY ANTISEMITISM IN TURKEY?
_______________
As was explained and as is accessible on the web--I'll paste it later if you can't find it--ADL was afraid for the safety of Turkey's minute Jewish population. WHO WAS GOING TO PROTECT TURKISH JEWS, GARAK? YOU?

Ultimately, however, within ADL, and elsewhere, Jews raised an uproar, and the matter was settled. The Armenian genocide was declared genocide by ADL.

OH, AND GARAK, WHAT WAS IT YOUR GOOD BUDDY ADOLF HITLER SAID, "Who remembers the Armenians?"

WE do. I do. And I remember the Jews, the Kurds, the Cyriots, the Roma. I remember all the people you blood-loving racists killed.
______________
Nice chatting. Crawl back under your Islamic rock now.

.
Jewishness is not defined by the Holocaust. It is not a badge of honor to have been persecuted, either. It is a tragedy.

I suspect that some Holocaust denial is triggered by the unsupported claim that 6 million Jews were killed. Even Yad Vashem acknowledges that is largely a guess. Who knows ? I could have been more; it could have been less.

The best way to honor and remember those taken is to stand against anything similar, from Srebreniza to Gaza.
.

Lichtme,

You love to loathe, is all. To call the deliberate slaughter of millons an "Industry" shows that you are simply projecting the crimes of which you approve onto the victims.

Ironically, the perpetrators of the Shoah did try to make an "Industry" of their evil endeavour. Clearly, you would like to have been part of the effort.

telsawy1,

If you cared about slain women and children of any nation, you would not be wasting your words calumniating Elie Wiesel.

Your concern is fake. Your homicidal intent is plain. Your heart bleeds bile.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey: "The researchers
spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800
people in dozens of 40-household clusters around the country.
Of the 629 deaths they recorded among these families since early 2002, 13%
took place in the 14 months before the invasion and 87% in the 40 months
afterwards. Such a trend repeated nationwide would indicate a rise in annual death
rates from 5.5 per 1,000 to 13.3 per 1,000 - meaning the deaths of some
2.5% of Iraq's 25 million citizens in the last three-and-a-half years.
The researchers say that in nearly 80% of the individual cases, family
members produced death certificates to support their answers."

This survey, which estimated that 2.5% of Iraq's 25 million (625000) died
over three and a half years was careful not to discuss the 'natural causes'
normally associated with a death certificate. At least two thirds of those
who perished during that period could have been caused by the failing
health, food and utility infrastructure of Iraq which began to fall apart due
to the indifference of the totalitarianists during the Socialist dictatorship of
Hussein. If the survey had accounted for the 50 deaths a day (no certificates)
caused by the Mukabarat (secret police), the pre-invasion death toll would be
about 10 per 1,000. Further, the survey specifically used a sampling technique
that did not include American 'incident reports' in the surveyed areas which
would have shown the number of possible direct American involvements.

All the survey has shown is that a death toll goes up whenever there are
conditions of violent human behavior, a given.

Note the definition of democide: Democide is a term coined by political
scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a GOVERNMENT,
including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term
as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not
covered by the legal definition of genocide, and it has found currency among
other scholars.

The survey only indicates that Americans had no intention to carry out and did
not carry out democide against the Iraqis. They may have prevented the on-going
democide by Hussein's Baathists from escalating any further, especially if the
decaying infrastructure (palaces instead of hospitals) had to be rebuilt anyway.

The real problem with democide committers is that they have not been universally
recognized as sociopathic predators by any system of international law because
they are considered 'innocent' until they commit the genocide or democide. Its
also very noticeable that deniers of such genocides as the Holocaust may be
doing so in order to justify their own sociopathic instincts or desire to legitimize democide. Should Deniers of a crime of genocide anywhere automatically be profiled as a crime suspect?

Elie Wiesel is a charlatan. He famously said this:

"...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..."

When the world he sponged off for so long hears him repeat these same words for the dead Palestinian children and the innocent in Gaza, then perhaps he can be listened to...until then, his words are nothing more than propaganda.

This may be the only time I'd disagree with Elie....deniers and their followers need to be confronted each and every time with the historic record, photos and witnesses...anyone who believes the Holocaust didn't happen only needs to read the comments of Eisenhower, Patton, et al...

Weisel is shill and a hypocrite. He had to have his arm twisted and be publicly humiliated to admit the Armenian Holocaust.

Weisel is a fraud and should be ignored. And not given space in the Post.

sami_jadallah,

You are a simple immoral terrorist. You leech off the US while blowing up buses of Israeli school children. You bomb our world trade center. Palestinian Muslim, how goes the honor killings?

Isn't it time Islamics simply proclaimed themselves the terrorists they are? Isn't it time the Islamics admitted to funding worldwide terror? Do you really think we're going to forget you dancing in the street on 9/11, Islamic? Don't think so. You're not welcome here. Never were. Not welcome anywhere. NOt even in God forsaken Saudi Arabia, not in Egypt, not in JOrdan. NOt on the bottom of the swamp.

Surely not in this country.

Never in my life and modern time have I seen, witness any one more reprehensible and hypocrite like Elie Wiesel. A man with no moral backbone who is silent and never speak out against the Jewish crimes committed in Palestine and who does not have the moral or ethical courage to speak up against the Jewish War Crimes committed in Gaza. This man is so morally bankrupt and simply disgusting. He is an insult to every thing that is Jewish.

Hi Daniel12,

Welcome to the place where leeches, vipers, and other swamp things try to assail a great man with their vileness. Pest-repelling is the order of the day.

Onofrio, Daniel12,

One of WaPo's most miserable racists, cintronlourde, just showed up on Adin Steinsaltz's thread. Take a peak if you dare. Warning: Durga found the beast.

Durga

Hey Daniel,

Yup. Substratal. Reminds me of my days in the wild west. :>

Farnaz,

"Kali says, "Hi.""

I must be the only person who has ever been greeted by Kali and lived to tell the tale! :) or perhaps (:0

So is this where everybody is at? Hey Onofrio, Hey Farnaz...what a discussion. I never knew this topic was this sensitive. I thought pretty much knowledge of the holocaust was established and that Jews pretty much lived lives like the rest of us. Ok, sorry, I suppose the Israelis have it rough trying to deal with the twin threats of Muslims trying to eradicate them by force and trying to overcome them with sheer demographics, but as for Jews in the U.S., I thought they were pretty much us and we them. So much for that. I guess Jews in the U.S. had better stay where they pretty much hang out anyway: big northeastern cities and the west coast (I believe most Jews are there right?). Well they had better stay where people are more likely to be cosmopolitan. In other words where sense is likely to exist and not nonsense.

Austral denizen, Love Bomber savant, stopped shock and awe for a goodly while, designating threads public forums. His last, his one-liner is a showstopper, certes.

Must be a lot of smart folk in the Fundament.

Farnaz,

The corn is popping, certes. Good to see another Austral denizen having a go. Seems to have cottoned on to the Love Bomber's gist pretty quick.

CCNL:

And hopefully someday you work just as hard exposing the other holocausts/massacres as summarized at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm .
_____________________
I have. And spare me the self-righteous nonsense. Your goal is not to expose anything. You are feeling under attack about the Shoah, and have an irrational sense of guilt. About that, I'm sorry. Sometimes, when one is dealing with entrenched hatred, one must speak in the terms of one's enemies. You are not my enemy; you are simply a fearful Crossanized person, who needs to cut down on the booze.

Stay away from this fire, my friend, and you won't get burned.

Brownshoeairforcepilot

You:
"Then, to be truly evenminded and tolerant of all opinions, we are not to dignify any Holocaust promoter either."

Who said all opinions ought to be tolerated, you fake moderate? Especially if they're opinions that endorse the Shoah by trying to cover it up. To dismiss Elie Wiesel as a mere "Holocaust promoter" reveals exactly what your opinions really are, Nazi sympathiser.

Farnaz aka Observer12 aka Observer31,

A bit agitated this morning?? Must be all that overtime working for the JDL.

And such language!! Naughty, naughty!! Elie is not at all happy with your conduct.

And hopefully someday you work just as hard exposing the other holocausts/massacres as summarized at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm .

Greetings Onofrio:

If you can spare a moment, take a look. Pop! All's not lost, though. AussieBarry's been blessed with a sense of humor, and, Kali, Herself, likes the occasional chuckle. (Breaks up the din!)

Durga

Farnaz,

Kali, re the "Aryan Nation representative". I've just caught up with that fracas. My, the apopleptic hissy fitting from said ubermensch-in-denial. May go pop.

brucerealtor@gmail.com,

The bottom line, if you've read this thread, and some of the others, is that Holocaust Denier is code for antisemite. This sort of racist feels free to say whatever it wants whenever it wants to and always has. The question is whether we allow such racists to speak without fear of consequence, thereby, presenting for our children, indeed for theirs, a model we do not wish for them.

Our only hope is to stand up to them. Antisemites exist, Bruce, in force. Force is what they understand. Ignoring them does not stop them. Making them understand is futile. Making them pay works. I know. I've done it.

Elie Wiesel is one of the most respected scholars, well known to the general public. To be a Holocaust denier, it would appear that one must be WILLFULLY ignorant [sic] of recent and well known events.

That being the case, his position has merit, namely, don't waste your time arguing with 'hard core' deniers, for they are not interested in the facts -- they are instead seeking ego gratification from like minded bigots. If you do decide to advocate for truth, do not attempt it in a group.

tmaffolter:

Unfortunately, Elie Wiesel's voice has lost most of its moral authority for me. His writings, which were initially lauded for their sensitivity toward human rights are, in light of his more recent behavior, starting to look more like selective concern for his own tribe.

Very disappointing.
________________________
NOt so disappointing as seeing your unfortunate post on this thread. Unlike you, Mr. Wiesel was not only a victim of your co-religionists' genocide but spoke out against it when your fellow christians were attempting to genocide the Kosovo Muslims. He, in fact, went to Kosovo when it was under siege by your christian brothers.

He has opposed genocide wherever it has occurred and has put his own welfare on the line in the process many times.

Quite unlike you, who, when all is said and done are a simple perpetrator. Busy with your fellow americhristians genociding Iraq and Afghanistan. 655,000 dead in Iraq alone.

Very disappointing. Also morally polluting.
Crawl back in the sewer now, and rejoin your fellow swamp things.

Unfortunately, Elie Wiesel's voice has lost most of its moral authority for me. His writings, which were initially lauded for their sensitivity toward human rights are, in light of his more recent behavior, starting to look more like selective concern for his own tribe.

Very disappointing.

CCNL:

The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops, 3,402 combat and 822 non-combat) and 90,253 – 98,521 Iraqi civilians killed, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

And has Observer12 aka Farnaz reappeared now as Observer31????

And does Farnaz still work for the JDL???
_______________________

Guess what, A*hole, Catholic Leaguer, Whites for Christ, Stormfront Capitan. You're way out of your league ethical league here with Elie Wiesel.

I'm not playing with you now, mein Herr. Hier raus, Tom. I mean it. Say something decent, or get lost.

The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US Troops, 3,402 combat and 822 non-combat) and 90,253 – 98,521 Iraqi civilians killed, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

And has Observer12 aka Farnaz reappeared now as Observer31????

And does Farnaz still work for the JDL???

BrownShoeAirForcePilot Author Profile Page:

"We are not to dignify any Holocaust denier."

Then, to be truly evenminded and tolerant of all opinions, we are not to dignify any Holocaust promoter either.

February 5, 2009 11:37 PM | Report Offensive Comments
______________________

Kindly stop promoting them then. A good beginning would be to end your genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Matthew White, the author of Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century (vs. the 20th Century), lists the body counts from many human atrocities to include the Holocaust along with notes about the accuracy of said numbers.

Excerpts were taken from his compilations to show the global horrors committed since the dawn of humankind at least where there is still some history to rely on.

To appreciate the extent of the atrocities, please read White's complete review at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

"We are not to dignify any Holocaust denier."

Then, to be truly evenminded and tolerant of all opinions, we are not to dignify any Holocaust promoter either.

And whose idea was it to invade Iraq, cock____er?

Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
___________________________________

That would be yours, cock____________er, yours and your born again Bushy, born once too many times Cheney, cock__________er. Please, spit it out after you suck it dry, Man. And wipe that stuff off from around your mouth.

What've you been up to, skum bag? Been down to Damascus doing the Iraqi children you forced into prostitution, skummy?

Go back to the sewer. No one wants you here.

Hi Onofrio,

Thought you might be interested. This just in from our Aryan Nation representative, himself, third-personizing out of pious self-adoration, no doubt.

"Timmy's true ethnic background: Aryan, British/German"

Kali

Mr. Wiesel,

I visited Dachau over 20 years ago as a college student on a backpacking trip. There were no words to describe the horror.

I read your book a while ago when it was assigned to my son in school. Thank you for your moving, brutal account of the Holocaust. And, for your humanity and tenderness in sharing your story with the world.

Peace to you.

Farnaz,

Kali, I'm surprised at your restraint.

Playa_Brotha,

"What about my right to free speech?"

You're free to spew your bile. And Elie Wiesel is free to ignore you, and to advise others to do the same. Being less gracious than he, I am not ignoring you.

So what is "the truth" brotha? You another double-killer? First, you make common cause with racists who slaughtered millions. Second, you erase the slain with your denials that the slaughter occured. Double-murder. You must be so glad someone else did your dirty work for you, so now you can keep your hands clean and focus on annihilating memory, history, and fact.

Yes, you're free to speak. As are those who remember your victims.

Onofrio,

Kali says, "Hi." With Elie Wiesel, we're in the Ethical major league. No transformations here, no matter how impressive.

K.

Hmmm....Let us see. First the christians kill 655,000 Iraqi Muslims. Stay tuned for the numbers of refugees, maimed in Iraq that the christians have created. Then the christians tell us there was no Holocaust--That would be the Holocaust they perpetrated. Then the Muslims tell us there was no Armenian genocide.

Huge rise' in Iraqi death tolls
Iraqi woman mourns after car bomb attack in Shia holy city of Kufa, July 2006
Many Iraqis have lost relatives to violence
An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6040054.stm

Hmmm....Now what DO a lot of these folks have in common? I remember when you went to Kosovo, Mr. Wiesel, to comfort the Kosovo MUslims. Kosovo was under siege. I remember.

2ctruth Author Profile Page:

I read an article today about how the Israel Defecation Farce (IDF) stopped a family trying to get three little girls badly burned with US taxpayer bombs to the hospital.

The IDF stopped the vehicle. Had the teen brothers get out. Shot them 37 times while they had their hands up. Then ran over them with a US taxpayer tank. They were found in pieces. Rescue workers couldn't get to them for 11 days.

By then the burned baby girl had been eaten by dogs.

Where is the outrage to these inexcusable crimes?
__________________________
And this is relevant how?

I read an article today about how the Israel Defecation Farce (IDF) stopped a family trying to get three little girls badly burned with US taxpayer bombs to the hospital.

The IDF stopped the vehicle. Had the teen brothers get out. Shot them 37 times while they had their hands up. Then ran over them with a US taxpayer tank. They were found in pieces. Rescue workers couldn't get to them for 11 days.

By then the burned baby girl had been eaten by dogs.

Where is the outrage to these inexcusable crimes?

McHaun,

You:
"Every time the Jews commit one of their many atrocities against its occupied prisoners or neighbors, we get treated to a Blitz of Holocaust whining."

Wrong. Anything the state of Israel does is seized upon, hypocritically amplified, and ruthlessly spun by antisemites in order to smear every Jew, to justify the Shoah, and to clear the way for neo-pogroms.

You only wish the Nazis had finished the job.

You don't care one iota for Palestinians, racist leech. You feed off their suffering.

Xavisev,

You:
"The Pope should have known that he would be crucified in the media for this decision."

The Pope should have known that his bishop was a racist nutjob and had him fired, hellwise. Ah, but such souls need to be forgiven. Fine! Forgive him, pax him, absolvisti him, all in pre-Vatican II Latin, and then fire him! Frock and mitre off! Penance on!

Bishops and other churchmen, it would seem, get *understanding* immunity for almost any unseemliness and seediness, except, ahem, for doctrinal irregularities.

"The Pope should have known that he would be crucified in the media for this decision."

Benny's done his own self in, both as a Muslim and a Jew hater. Several of his decisions have led to in depth investigations of his past. Some of this material is on the web, and has been posted on this blog. My understanding is that a comprehensive study of his unsavory biography is complete and will be published within a few weeks. Someone should have kept the old cross dreser on a tighter leash.

The Pope should have known that he would be crucified in the media for this decision.

Xavisev:

"We are not to dignify any Israel-firsters...."
__________________
I think you got that wrong Swamp Thing. We are not to dignify Sewer-firsters.

Crawl back under the ground, now.

We are not to dignify any Israel-firsters....

punkumin

At the link I provided in this post, you will find answers to all the questions you ask. If you have others, not covered in one of the books, primary source documents, scholarly articles, photographs, films, trial testimony, sites on line, post directly to me with reference to the sites you've already consulted and I shall direct you appropriately. Be glad to!

_______________________________________

smokberry2002@yahoo.com Author Profile Page:

I don't think the so called holocaust deniers deny that the holocaust actually took place. It is the number of people killed that they question.

When it comes to the holocaust no one is allowed to ask questions? Is that the problem? And if so why is that a problem?
_______________________________
What are you talking about? Not only is everyone allowed to ask questions, everyone is encouraged to ask questions. Hundreds of thousands of books have been written about it in many different languages.

There are tons of web sites, articles, archival films, taken at the scenes of mass murders, tortures, etc., photographs, documents written by the perpetrators. I've posted a partial bibliography, but here's a web site listing many but not all texts.

As well, it includes the names of bibliographies in which you'll find thousands more books, etc.

Here is the link. Let us know how you progress.

http://www.nizkor.org/bibliographies/d-title.html

February 5, 2009 8:11 PM

mchaun:

Jeez, Mary, and Uncle Joe. Holy Moly. I was wondering when you'd show up. All your swamp thing friends are here.

140,000 killed by your Jesu hands in Iraq. Why? Did they send missiles to attack you?

Crawl back into your hole. You pollute cyberspace.

smokberry2002@yahoo.com Author Profile Page:

I don't think the so called holocaust deniers deny that the holocaust actually took place. It is the number of people killed that they question.

When it comes to the holocaust no one is allowed to ask questions? Is that the problem? And if so why is that a problem?
_______________________________
What are you talking about? Not only is everyone allowed to ask questions, everyone is encouraged to ask questions. Hundreds of thousands of books have been written about it in many different languages.

There are tons of web sites, articles, archival films, taken at the scenes of mass murders, tortures, etc., photographs, documents written by the perpetrators. I've posted a partial bibliography, but here's a web site listing many but not all texts.

As well, it includes the names of bibliographies in which you'll find thousands more books, etc.

Here is the link. Let us know how you progress.

http://www.nizkor.org/bibliographies/d-title.html

Every time the Jews commit one of their many atrocities against its occupied prisoners or neighbors, we get treated to a Blitz of Holocaust whining.

500 Children slaughtered, how in God's name can you deny that?

Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com

Yanqui:

I am not sure why the genocide against the Jews alone gets such privileged treatment, all atrocities against humanity are equally bad. As for Wiesel, it's too bad he can't walk the walk, having himself joined a terrorist organization bent on the ethnic cleansing of a native population. How much more shameful considering what he himself suffered.
____________________
Odd that you say Elie Wiesel has joined a "terrorist organization bent on the ethnic cleansing of its native population." Odd because he has not only spoken out against the Shoah, but about the attempted ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Muslims. In fact, he went to Kosovo in the middle of the war. And you were where exactly then?

He has also spoken out against the ethnic cleansing in Sudan, the ethnic cleansing in Turkey, the attempted ethnic cleansing of the native Jewish population in Israel. What more could he do?

Also, he has the courage, always had the courage to declare his own ethnicity under his own name, something you haven't got. And you try to name call this man?

Crawl back under your rock, now, Terrorist.

Dear CCNL :
Some of your quoted numbers are quite selective and incorrectly quoted.
In Rummel's "Death by Government" (which you quote) Tito's democide victims in Yugoslavia are put at 1,072,000, not at 600,000.
Also, it would be important to quote what he calls the "Deka-Mega Murders"
1. The Soviet Gulag State : approx. 62 million
2. The Communist Chinese Ant Hill : approx. 35 million
3. The Nazi Genocide State : approx. 21 million
4. The The Depraved Nationalist Regime : approx. 10 million

I am not sure why the genocide against the Jews alone gets such privileged treatment, all atrocities against humanity are equally bad. As for Wiesel, it's too bad he can't walk the walk, having himself joined a terrorist organization bent on the ethnic cleansing of a native population. How much more shameful considering what he himself suffered.

I don't think the so called holocaust deniers deny that the holocaust actually took place. It is the number of people killed that they question.

When it comes to the holocaust no one is allowed to ask questions? Is that the problem? And if so why is that a problem?

The Holocaust is undeniable. It has been documented with eyewitness accounts of our own soldiers, Eisenhower, Patton film, the ovens, the gas chambers it is all there. We had the Nuremberg trials. Those who deny this happened are brain dead Jew hating morons. The Roman Catholic Church should promptly excommunicate this Bishop after the mistake of reinstating him regardless of any possible false recanting on his part. 
One could say that the Jews were part of the reason the allies and we won the war. Hitler was so busy killing and moving the Jews on rail cars he needed for his troops, and building death camps manned by SS it detracted from his war effort. He also scared all the brains out of Germany, those who were loyal to Germany and could have helped him develop the bomb as long as they were revered citizens, and not the victims the Germans and the Nazis made of them. 
Now the Jews have more Nobel Peace Prizes than any other ethic group by far. They have about 25% while only .25 of 1% of the world's population. Envy of the Jews and their industry and brains fills the heart of every boorish moron.

Based on my review of Jewish and non-Jewish studiers of the Holocaust, there is much interesting brew about the Holocaust to cover up through the intellectually dishonest ruberick of "refusal-to- dignify."

I'll bet Christ too was met with "Refusal to Dignify," as probably was any other good Semitic Prophet or Bringer of God's Message for that matter.

Far too often the response to Holocaust "deniers" is to shut them up and censor their research. In the matter of Truth, it obviously matters NOT what mental state, psychic problem, or irrational hatred is the driving force behind someone who doubts and researches and wants to propagate alternative histories of the Holocaust.

If the facts are what they are (Truth), wouldn't awareness of the facts be good to shed light on, so as to study the Holocaust and what really were its causative factors and thus help to prevent it from happening again? Credibility of a person matters, but only as a clue to the facts put forth by that personality.

It is a mistake to confuse credibility with the veracity of facts put forth by a person—and that some Jewish people support Holocaust re-examination is a strong clue to the mainstream held view of the Holocaust.

If Americans can debate evolutionism in 2009, then one should not be surprised about Holocaust debate. Such a debate that successfully engages the facts would undoubtedly open a deep can of worms which could lead to a much more involved social earthquake, a sea change in the way Jewish people would be viewed and in the way they would view themselves, as in:

1) what different kinds of Jews are/were there,
2) which undesirable infames were Jewish,
3) which commendable exemplars of humanity were thought not to be Jews but really were, and
4) what is the fate of present day Jews who I believe are currently under hostage and manipulation by others claiming to be also Jewish.

In some respects, the Germans and Japanese made the world a global concentration camp during WW2.

Mr Wiesel

I've read much of what you have written over the years and have great affection and respect for you as a person and as a writer.
Your refusal to engage with 'deniers' is understandable, and is very much like the evolutionists refusal to engage with creationists;
the point being there is no debate.
Facts are facts.

Mr. Wiesel,

God bless you and the good you have done for humanity. Yesterday, I met a woman from Kosovo. She remembers you, Mr. Wiesel, and she will never forget you as if she had seen you yesterday.

Farnaz

themoderate,

Feel free to submit more accurate body count statistics and references about the atrocities committed by humankind against humankind.

Dear Elie,

In the early sixties when I was a teenager I read your book called Night. As you know, it was a hard story, but I wanted to at least try and understand how events like you lived through could come to be in communities inhabited by many decent human beings.

I lived in one of the "melting pot" cities of America with many ethnic groups rubbing against each other, sometimes rubbing each other the wrong way, especially in the public schools I attended. So, I wondered how such minor aggravations as we had with one another could have escalated and metastasized into a societal cancer like the Holocaust. We had Cold Civil War in America as I grew up, but thanks to the work of people like Martin Luther King and Lyndon B. Johnson we were able to move forward. (By the way, I still believe Lyndon Johnson is greatly under appreciated for his historic role in saving America from such a conflagration as swept Europe when you were a boy. I believe that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that only a consummate master politician like Johnson could have brought through Congress and into law, was a major step away from the abyss for us.)

But even living through a period that could have gone badly, the question remains profoundly perplexing to me. I fear that I have made less progress in understanding it than I thought I would as a boy when I began to read your works and those of others who experienced this horror first hand. Perhaps it just cannot be comprehended if you were not there and did not live it. Perhaps it cannot be comprehended even if you did live it, I don't know.

Now that may seem a disorganized way of saying thank you for your books. But thank you for your books. Perhaps we can only puzzle at it, but I hope we move away from such things step by step as we work to comprehend what cannot really be comprehended.

Forty some years ago, I never though I might be able to drop you a note on an electronic forum of a kind not even named when I read your books. I welcome a chance to wish you well in a somewhat direct way in the manner of the times and tell you that your work matters.

Peace,

Pseudo

Of course I respect your view not to dignify or debate these deniers. I also respect Susan Brooks' counsel that the failure to confront the 'Big Lie' is to give it oxygen (not her words). My Dad, now deceased, saw those death camps as an army captain in the liberation, and it changed him profoundly. And I was changed by his horror and what he conveyed to me. My college roommate's mother was a Holocaust survivor with numbers on her arm. As a young teenager, I read about the underground that saved so many and although their heroism lifted me, it devastated me because of its necessity. This dreadful Bishop who denied the Holocaust is being confronted and rightly so. The dignity demanded here, at least for me, is to remove these voices from anything resembling acceptability.

CCNL:

Your numbers are, not to put too fine a point on it, do not appear to be from serious sources.

Also, what is your point with this obsessive cutting and pasting of these laundry lists? Does it have anything to do with the Williamson case, or is it just what you have handy?

Some have suggested that you are actually a computer program rather than a person. Is that true?

I quite agree. "Holocaust denier" is another word for antisemite, i.e., racist. Nothing comes of debating them. That is correct. Something does come of confronting, fighting, attacking with every resource at one's disposal.

Regardless of where the antisemites are--in schools, in the clergy, in the streets, in the government, on TV, there is no point in debating. They know not Joseph. For them there is only one way, the way they know, the way they have loosed upon the world, Mr. Wiesel.

It is time for young Jews to clean up the moral mess these people have made.

I'm not sure what you would consider "dignification." Sometimes that very process is different in the eyes of different beholders. What is most important, in my view, is to ensure that "facts" are not confused with "beliefs." Beliefs are by definition arguable (including interpretations of facts); facts, in and of themselves, are not arguable, they are either objectively true or not.

There can be no argument about the FACT of the European Holocaust of the late 1930's through mid-1940's. It happened. There is abundant and diverse documentation of this fact. To not challenge "deniers" is to let them muddy factual history. How people wish to interpret the fact of the Holocaust is up to their own conscience.

All of the horrific atrocities committed by humankind against humankind need to be constantly reviewed.

A good starting point is the body counts from these atrocities as found at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

-some excerpts that should be "burned in" your memories:

Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries
1 55 million Second World War 20C
2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine) 20C
3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13 15 million First World War 20C
14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
16 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
17 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
18 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C
19 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
20 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C
21 3 million French Wars of Religion

Reference, Rummel:

European War Dead (1939-45): 28,736,000
Sino-Japanese War Dead (1937-45): 7,140,000

TOTAL: 35,876,000

War-related Democides

Hitler: 20,946,000
Stalin: 13,053,000
Japanese: 5,964,000
Chinese Nationalist: 5,907,000
Allied Bombing: 796,000
Croatian: 655,000
Tito: 600,000
Romanian domestic democide: 484,000
Chinese Communist: 250,000
Hungarian democide in Yugoslavia: 78,000

[TOTAL: 48,733,000]

[FINAL TOTAL (1937-45): 84,609,000]