The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Show me what evil looks like....THIS is what evil looks like.

    By jollyroger on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 1:31am |

    I have framed the title of this post in a conscious parallel to the chant from the Wall Street Occupation ("show me what democracy looks like...) because sometimes the only way to really appreciate the devil is by having in mind an angel for comparison.

    In this case, (and ain't it tiresome) evil looks (yet again) like the oppression in Gaza.

    Women there afflicted with breast cancer are dying because the isotopes they need are embargoed, and they are unable to travel out of Gaza to receive treatment.

    Breast cancer in Gaza is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and the surgical remedies available inside Gaza are not sufficient to treat it. Women must then apply for permits to leave Gaza for treatment in surrounding countries. This is a lengthy process, and often their permits are arbitrarily revoked at the checkpoints. As a result, many women die waiting for treatment.

    I am abjured to avoid the formula "Zionism is racism" (even though it clearly is.)

    May I be permitted  "Zionism is evil"?

    Certainly in this manifestation it is, and it is surely in the service of Zionism that women are trapped unto death in the Gaza Ghetto.

     

     

    Comments

    The shark is well and truly jumped.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 7:13am

    Zionism per se is not evil, but you could say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Zionism's original idea was to "heal" the Jewish people of the deformations of centuries of Diaspora.  But they picked the wrong neighborhood to do it. Now they have painted themselves into a corner, where they are forced to do a dozen evil things before breakfast just to keep their lead balloon afloat. Believe me, this is not just a Palestinian tragedy... it is bending the Jewish people, who are/were an ornament of humanity, all out of shape.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 4:03pm

    Similar to Seaton's argument, I think you're conflating two disparate things. If one were to point out the evil things the US has done, I don't think one could be expected to draw the conclusion that "freedom is evil", where you can feel free to substitute whatever idealized concept that the US stands for in lieu of "freedom" if you prefer.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 5:21pm

    Re:USA, will you go for "manifest destiny" is evil?


    by jollyroger on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 9:06pm

    Point and match.


    by Verified Atheist on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 9:31pm

    Nifty GIF (is that the young Welles?)


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 12:23am

    Never mind...I recognize it now, it's Charles Foster Kane applauding his remarkably untalentend chanteuse girlfriend,.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 12:55am

    In the context of 19th century eurocentrism and imperialism Zionism was rather benign. In the days before antibiotics had brought down infant mortality in hot countries, ottoman Palestine, although certainly not empty, was nothing near as populated as today. Most of the land was owned by absentee Turkish landlords, who lived in Istanbul. Buying land was easy and Baron Rothschild helped finance the first colonies. In Jewish families of that period Zionism was the sort of flaky thing that your wife's younger brother was involved in.

    The horrible irony is that Hitler put Zionism on the map so to speak... again within a totally eurocentric context of the day, the idea that in compensation for the Holocaust, the Jewish people should be given Palestine instead of Baden Würtenberg seemed to make sense.

    The real change is the emancipation, self-consciousness and the empowerment of the heretofore subordinate and invisible... the process whereby "colored people" become "people of color". Israel's case is like the slogan of Sam Peckinpah's classic, "The Wild Bunch"... "they came too late, they stayed too long".

    The true problem in coming decades (centuries?) is how the Jewish people extricate themselves from the Middle East with their souls intact.


    by David Seaton on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 1:31am

    Okay, some examples of evil:

     

    George W. Bush A portrait shot of a smiling older male looking straight ahead. He has short gray hair, and is wearing a dark navy blazer with a blue styled tie over a white collared shirt. In the background is an American flag hanging from a flagpole.

     

    Jeff Sessions
     

     

    Darrell Issa

    I could go on and on and on, and I have for three goddamn years.

    hahahaha

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 7:19pm

    Caption for picture # 1

    What, me worry?

    You fell for the compassionate conservative? WAHahahahahaha

     

    Caption for #2


    by Resistance on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 7:51pm

    Caption for #4

    Look into my eyes.


    by Resistance on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 8:03pm

    hahhahah

    At least one person understands me! hhahahaha


    by Richard Day on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 8:06pm

    Proud to admit it too.


    by Resistance on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 8:26pm

    "Step avay from ze car"


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 2:09am

    three evils outta four smile?


    by jollyroger on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 9:01pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wKyXA_nMVQ&feature=related


    by Resistance on Mon, 09/26/2011 - 9:54pm

    O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
    My tables—meet it is I set it down
    That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—
    At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 2:18am

    Kill the wabbit...?


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 2:21am

    JR, I love reading your stuff, even when I can't understand it because you have all these references to heady stuff.  But this is just schmaltz, really.  The truth of the matter is that, even if Israel did not take care of the thousands and thousands of Gazans in Israeli hospitals as a matter of course, this thesis of yours is just nonsense.  Israel has nothing to do with keeping Gazans out of Egypt, absolutely nothing.  And medical supplies are not blockaded.  This is just another piece of bullshit propaganda.

    You see some people say I'm an hysterical Jew.  People love to call Jews hysterical these days.  Frankly I think the hysteria is displayed in your blog, and in the response of my favorite anti-ahem-zionist, David Seaton.  I  mean look at this guy, like a fly on shit . . . in fact, very much like a fly on shit.

    L'Shana Tova JR.  Call your family.  It couldn't hurt.

    Ber Schmuel ben David Chaim

    Bruce


    by Bruce Levine on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 9:56am

    Bruce,  

    You are not hysterical, you are only a bit obsessive in your endless hasbarah, that is all.


    by David Seaton on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 11:10am

    David,

    I make no apologies for being obsessive about things Jewish.  I'm a Jew, proud of it, and choose to define what that means without regard to your list of who is a good Jew and who is a bad Jew.  

    Indeed I am a member of the tribe--as were my parents, grandparents, great-great grandparents, and as was my great-great-great-great grandfather, whose grave I was able to locate in the ancient Jewish cemetery in Safed in 2005.  That Jewish cemetery David is over 2,000 years old and it sits in the northern mountains of what is now once again the Land of Israel.  My great-great-great-great grandfather emigrated to Safed because it is where he wished to be buried--with his People and in his homeland.  He died in the land of our ancestors in 1860.  And his ancestors were Jewish too, and most of his and my descendants were murdered in the 20th century, in the Diaspora where they were always despised and othered.

    So, yes, that explains my obsession David.  The real question is what explains yours?

    Bruce


    by Bruce Levine on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 11:53am

    Happy New Year, Bruce. The film is not out yet, but the producers do not seem of obviously biased origin. There ARE checkpoints. There ARE embargoed items.

    Re:tribal identity.

    I prefer to be rootless cosmopolitan...I believe the arc of human progress historically has been to associate oneself with ever larger groupings (tribe-village-county-nation-world) of humanity, and that what separates us from the humanity of all others is a defect in our consciousness.

    I am so anti-tribal, that I consider it an obvious way to condemn patriotism, which I find odious as well.

    When obliged to fill out a form calling for an entry under "race", it is my conceit to enter "human"

    PS Dinner at my sister's Thursday, my cousin's ("they follow the holidays are weekend things" rule) Saturday.


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 3:15pm

    Good for you JR.  All the best.


    by Bruce Levine on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 3:18pm

    Back at ya, and those three great kids.  (How'd the marathon go?)


    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 3:21pm

    It's on Columbus Day weekend.


    by Bruce Levine on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 10:03pm

    The race is over Columbus Day weekend.  Thanks!


    by Bruce Levine on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 10:03pm

    So the blonde is training here in Brooklyn? I'll keep an eye out for..um, never mind...

    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 11:02pm

    I count myself a hopeless slug 4 never running one.

    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 11:05pm

    Two words: Zoe Kaplowitz

    by jollyroger on Tue, 09/27/2011 - 11:10pm