Comments on: A Jew Hater Responds!… Sort-Of

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 06:57:12 +0000

Mike,

On the one hand, I appreciate you taking the fight to David Harris Gershon, because he truly is the most loathsome (and pathetic) fraud I have ever encountered.

However, I hereby appeal to you to consider dropping this whole thing, for the following reason: It is bringing him exactly the publicity that he so desperately seeks.

As annoying as he is, Gershon is also a nothing – a middle aged substitute kindergarten teacher with nothing to show for his life. He has tried and definitively failed to sell a book that publishers won't touch with a 10 foot pole. All he does is write diaries at Daily Kos for the 100 or so people who still read that site, and none of those people count for anything. If you continue to attack him in this forum, you risk feeding the martyr narrative that he is trying so hard to cultivate. You are giving him publicity that he otherwise would never have. I submit that at this point it is better to simply let him languish in obscurity.

By: Abbi Adest

Abbi Adest — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:12:04 +0000

But the reality of every day life for Palestinians is that the PA largely dominates it, at least in the West Bank. Gazans have more difficulties because… they shoot more rockets. But for those on the West Bank, the PA runs their day to day lives. They recently held municipal elections. Israel had nothing to do with it.

Someone did take my grandparents' homes away from them when they were sent to Auschwitz. After the war, they did make do and went to America, while other sibling came here. So please save the lecture about what I would feel like if people took away my family's house and maybe the family itself.

The Palestinians lost the war and they have to accept that fact. Only when they are ready to accept this face will we be able to have peace here.

By: Andrew Shapiro Katz

Andrew Shapiro Katz — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:27:28 +0000

Abbi Adest – I was writing specifically to Mike Lumish, so it is important to be familiar with what he writes. But more importantly, I was talking about the day to do reality of life for the Palestinians in the West Bank. Three offers that most Israelis consider generous does not change the reality of military occupation and settlement. If someone took your home from you, and you were therefore homeless, you might prefer to make do (and find other ways to attack that person) instead of agreeing to take back only part of what had been taken from you. And more importantly, you wouldn't see the offer as being particularly generous either, when you feel entitled to get back AT LEAST what was taken from you. One can argue that the military occupation was necessary and just, under the circumstances. But the decision to settle the land without formally annexing it and making it part of Israel proper was, and is, the source of many Israeli political and diplomatic problems. Maybe these problems are worth Jews being able to live in historical Israel, but we have to acknowledge that they were not a necessity. We may have been forced to occupy, but not to settle. It was a choice, and it has its costs – security costs, economic costs, diplomatic costs, and moral costs.

By: Abbi Adest

Abbi Adest — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:08:27 +0000

"Personally, I see us as having more power, agency, and therefore responsibility that that". And we have used this power, agency and responsibility to make 3 generous offers of a viable state to the Palestinians in the last 10 years. Each of these offers have been rejected. This very salient fact seems to be ignored by all those who throw around loaded language like "apartheid". Who is letting anyone off the hook? Bibi has said very publicly numerous times that he wants to sit down and come to an agreement with Abbas. Abbas is the one running the UN instead of Jerusalem. Bibi is bluffing? He's not serious? What does Abbas have to lose by calling Bibi's bluff?

By: Marni Mandell

Marni Mandell — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 08:52:29 +0000

This is exactly how I felt after seeing Five Broken Cameras last night. Thank you for so clearly articulating my thoughts.

By: Andrew Shapiro Katz

Andrew Shapiro Katz — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:55:47 +0000

The West Bank isn't occupied; Israel is. And "Jew-hater" and "anti-Semite" isn't a slur; "right-wing" is. And David Harris-Gershon, who lived in Israel to study Torah and become a Jewish educator (a time during which two friends were killed, and his wife was injured, in the Hebrew U bombing), hates Israel and Jews because he thinks that Israeli control and settlement of the West Bank, with the resulting two-tier system of legal rights, is unjust and immoral. Many Israelis, "mainstream" ones who serve in the army and fight and die for this country, believe the same thing. Some believe that it is a necessary evil. Some believe that it is an unnecessary evil. But they agree that it is an evil, nonetheless. Is it a majority of Israelis who think this way? Maybe not. But the majority thinking one way doesn't make the minority a bunch of traitors. The State (and state) of the Jews is not improved by pen-wielding modern-day Sicarii. For most Israelis, the issue is far more complicated than you (at least when you are "beating up" Jewish Progressives or Liberal Zionists or whatever) make it out to be. You are fighting one kind of naive moral clarity with another. I am no fan of using "apartheid" to describe the West Bank, but I GET what people like David are trying to say. The majority of Israelis want Israel to be Democratic. And we want it to have Jewish character. We want access to Jewish holy sites, and think Jews aught to be able to live in historic Israel. But a portion of historic Israel was offered to us, and we accepted it. And we don't want to be in a permanent state of war with our Arab neighbors. We are comfortable enjoying the spoils of our military victories, and we are comfortable using force to protect ourselves, but we also know that these people were here when we started moving back her en mass, and we recognize that they have rights, as inhabitants of the land and as human beings. That's why Israel has Arab citizens. So when our borders expanded without us extending the same rights to ALL those inhabiting the territory, we knew we were doing something iffy – something that may compromise some number (or all) of the things we want ourselves and the state to be. We have not found a solution yet, so the tragic (for us and them) situation continues. You write that Progressives treat Muslims like children not responsible for their actions, and this is the ultimate form of racism. I would add (not counter, as I think there is some truth to what you write) that you do something similar vis-a-vis Jews and Israel – that Israel must be excused for what IT does because of its threatened position and history of persecution. Personally, I see us as having more power, agency, and therefore responsibility that that. I think we should try to do the right thing, even IF there are people who will hate us just because they hate us, and even if there are many other countries out there in which far worse things are done. But even if we want to treat Israel as a "child" nation (because of its relative youth), I am reminded that I don't let my children off the hook for doing bad things, just because there are kids who behave worse, or because there are kids who will hate them anyway.

By: Andrew Shapiro Katz

Andrew Shapiro Katz — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:55:47 +0000

By: Brian John Thomas

Brian John Thomas — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:43:54 +0000

I've found Michael Lerner to be a raving lunatic and it hardly comes as any surprise that he would be promoting this kind of stuff. Over at Israellycool we have been carefully documenting the failure of Israel to implement apartheid properly. Have fun:

http://www.israellycool.com/tag/apartheid/

By: Brian John Thomas

Brian John Thomas — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:43:54 +0000

http://www.israellycool.com/tag/apartheid/

By: Dov Blair Epstein

Dov Blair Epstein — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:32:32 +0000

But Michael Lerner has no shame, and gershon Harris is a bottom feeder.

By: Dov Blair Epstein

Dov Blair Epstein — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:32:32 +0000

But Michael Lerner has no shame, and gershon Harris is a bottom feeder.

By: oldschooltwentysix

oldschooltwentysix — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:00:09 +0000

He hates the USA no less, and sees Israel as its proxy. If only he would not pretend to care about Israel. If only he was less selective in his moral outrage.

Many have seen through the veil of those that enable Israel and Jew hatred, then claim victim status when the facts are laid bare. Calling others right-wing and Islamophobes is the last remedy of scoundrels.

This individual left behind belief in liberal principles long ago, in favor of being a propagandist for the cause against the West, the very culture that affords him the freedom to spread deception. How long would he last under Hamas? He is so smart that he has become a fool, believing in a righteous cause that leads to destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, including himself.