Oops.  Methinks our love affair in discourse has taken a turn for the worse.  Pity.

An "oversensitive hack"?  Shit, I've been called a helluva worse than that. Sorry I didn't google, but I have no doubt that the "convicted police officers" are doing just fine.  I stand by that.  I say that once the international headlights turned away--because the whole world was watching Venezuela especially when Castro spoke out--those convicted of desecrating a Jewish House of Worship (frat party, I know) those folks are doing just fine.  I have no doubt about that, and nor do I care if in your view or in anyone else's view that makes me a hack.

Sorry to fart in the Chavez memorial circle jerk.  That's not my line.  I stole if from Zionista, another progressive zionist who used to write with us over at the Cafe, but who eventually gave up because there was so little room for people who don't hate Israel to write on the 'so-called' left.  Great line though, so h/t Zionista.

How many decades before you stop jumping at small shadows and start putting in context things that some of your Jewish brethren don't seem to have trouble doing?

When the Israeli press debunks something like the synagogue vandalism, how come you can cling onto the debunked story?

Funny, I thought the Jewish people on the whole were rather brilliant, funny, resilient, and now you're telling me that "perspective" isn't in their vocabulary or genetic makeup? Sorry, I don't buy it.

We both know that anti-Semitism exists. It may be more common AND more damaging in today's world than I see it as being but it may also not be nearly as pervasive and influential in the world as it seems to you.
 When a "people" are demonized, brutalized, marginalized, dis-empowered,  stolen from, and exterminated to the extent possible because of who they are, I can understand that some bitter feelings will last for a long time, often through many generations. Such things are hard to forgive, hard to forget, and as you point out, should not be forgotten, but the remembrance  should, ideally, feed understanding before inciting whiplash rejection. No government, none anywhere, will fail to cynically use those feelings, where they exist, to its advantage and large parts of any population still react as expected, but our myth story is that greater liberal education and sociological evolution will help us sort the wheat from the chafe a bit more intelligently.

1980 is now 33 three years away. An American person who was a U.S. citizen, as opposed to a South or Central American person, would need be around 53 years old or older to have any likely chance to have been aware, at that time, of the crimes being committed in C. and S. America by the U.S.  In this indictment of crime I include the crimes of U.S. supported dictators kept in power by brutal military and paramilitary forces trained and supplied by the U. S.  The School of the Americas is a lasting shameful example of our country's willful, disgraceful, disgusting disregard for the humanity of the common citizens of S. and C. America  as it played its geopolitical game.  
 
I was in Nicaragua for a short time in 1980. I was then, and remain now, very friendly to the people living south of Texas. I worked a bit in support of the Nicaraguan revolution. I felt then and continue to feel that I was on the right side. I was surprised back then that feelings there and in the other C. and S. American countries I traveled in were so friendly and accepting of U.S. Americans. I wondered why I felt no blame directed at me as part of their problem. I concluded eventually that their own experience led them to put the blame on the government which, again in their own experience, did not necessarily reflect the desires and feelings of its citizens. Besides, so many of their relatives had gone to America and sent back glowing reports of the life and opportunities along with some cash. Sadly, I believe this is changing. Sad but understandable, IMO, because of higher education rates and vastly better communication of facts and ideas. S. and C. America are going through a revolution which is rejecting much of what the West has tried too impose upon them. They have not got it all right so far but they have some very valid reasons to reject and react to their historical situation. Worldwide, the opinion held of Americans in general, the opinions of their character and nature held about them just because they are Americans, is falling.
 A million is a big number. Are you aware of the millions of people who died under the brutal reigns of various dictators in the Americas?

Millions. Of people. Murdered. Millions. More. Tortured. Millions more displaced internally and internationally. Millions left alive who have first hand memories and just as likely to see events through their own spectrum and harbor grudges particular to their own experience as any other person. Millions more who only hear the stories from parents and grandparents but have their current situation and their view of it sharply colored and affected by those stories. Being human, they do not always aim their grievances exactly accurately. Sometimes the stories create or enhance prejudices.
Bear with me if you can, this ultimately has a point.

 South and Central Americans have a perspective formed from their own holocausts.

From "Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection" by Bishara Bahbah. St. Martin's Press, 1986.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/CAmer_Experience_ILAMC.html

With the exception of Nicaragua, which has purchased no weapons from Israel since the overthrow of the Somoza government, all the countries of the region are important clients and have signed military agreements with Israel. At the end of 1982, the New York Times quoted U. S. officials as saying that Israel was the largest supplier of infantry equipment to El Salvador and Guatemala, and had a "comparable role" in Honduras and Costa Rica.' Israel's role in the region goes beyond the provision of weapons and military communications and electronics equipment to include a broad range of military assistance, such as training, counterinsurgency and intelligence advice, and military-agricultural development projects based on the Nahal-type projects of the 1960s. Moreover, Israeli-Central American military ties are fraught with a political significance which by and large has been lacking elsewhere in Latin America.


As a region, Central America has all the characteristics traditionally associated with Israeli arms clients-longstanding, entrenched traditions of military rule, right-wing orientation, high incidence of territorial disputes and internal strife, and a tendency toward human rights violations-which make procurement of arms at desirable levels from other countries difficult.

The Carter administration's human rights policy inaugurate in 1977 had the greatest impact on Israel's sales to Central America, particularly to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Somoza's Nicaragua, all of which had been accused of gross and systematic violations of human rights. During the five-year period following the U.S. ban on military credits to El Salvador, Israel was most active in the country, delivering rocket launchers, Uzi submachine guns, Galil assault rifles, ammunition, spare parts and "security" equipment, and the last shipments of the Arava STOL counterinsurgency aircraft. Israel reportedly supplied El Salvador with an average of 80 percent of its weapons needs prior to 1980.
Guatemala responded to President Carter's new policy by rejecting U. S. military aid altogether rather than complying with the human rights standards set by Congress. Three months after the U.S. suspension of military assistance, a cargo load of Israeli grenade launchers, Gaul rifles, Uzi submachine guns, 81-mm mortars, and 120 tons of ammunition arrived at the port of Santo Tomas de Castilla. According to opposition figures, by the end of 1977 the Guatemalan army had switched from Garaud M-1 rifles to Israeli-made Galils.

Israeli arms sales to the Somoza regime likewise received an important boost from the Carter administration's policy. Even before the United States cut off economic and military aid to Nicaragua in November 1978,32 Israeli weapons had become critical to the regime's survival (see Table 9). The Nicaraguan National Guard's supply of weapons and ammunition was severely depleted after the September 1978 popular insurrection, and without reinforcements the government forces were not expected to be able to hold out long against the guerrillas. By 13 October 1978, the Mexican daily Excelsior wrote that Uzis, Galils, and Aravas "will determine the fate of Somoza" and that the victory "would be a victory for Israel because it will show that Israeli-manufactured weapons are reliable and trustworthy." Until the') regime's collapse in July 1979, Israel was Somoza's sole weapons supplier,* delivering helicopters, heavy combat tanks, patrol vehicles, mortars, Galil rifles, Uzi submachine guns, and even missiles.

The Sandinista victory totally changed the situation. The low-level insurgencies and civil wars endemic in this area of poverty and severe income disparities received a tremendous moral boost from the success of the new Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. This, in turn, helped spark military buildups and in general drew the region into an era of escalating violence.

The Sandinista victory also brought Central America back to the very center of U. S. policy considerations, causing a reassessment of its human rights policies in the interests of staving off what it perceived as the spread of communism. Where possible, the United States resumed military assistance. On 28 July 1982, less than two years after the government of General Carlos Humberto Romero was overthrown, President Reagan certified that El Salvador had made significant progress on human rights. This was done even though Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the UN Permanent Commission on Human Rights had concluded that violations were escalating and that the major responsibility lay with the government security forces or paramilitary groups operating with government acquiescence. According to the legal aid office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, a total of 12,501 people in El Salvador were murdered by the army, national guard, or various police forces and paramilitary groups during 1981
With the resumption of U. S. involvement in El Salvador on a large scale,* Israel's role has decreased, but it continues as an important weapons supplier, the second largest source of arms after the United States.

In recent years Israel's advisory role has been more important than military hardware, especially since the United States has been limiting the number of advisors it will have in the country at any one time to fifty-five .48 An estimated 100 to 200 Israeli military advisors have been training the Salvadoran military in counterinsurgency tactics, arms maintenance, and intelligence services.

Guatemala: A Special Case
Other than Panama, Guatemala is the least involved of the Central American countries in anti-Sandinista activities largely because it is the farthest away from Nicaragua and has no Contras operating from its soil. This distance from the area of conflict, combined with its steadfast refusal to make even a gesture toward compliance with U. S. human rights requirements, resulted in a singular lack of U. S. aid, apart from humanitarian aid, to the country from 1977 to 1984, when President Reagan approved a relatively modest $300,000 for military training."
During the relative absence of the United States from the Guatemalan scene, the military government subdued its guerrilla challenge and is proud to have done so without U. S. assistance. Indeed, the government attributes the success of its efforts in this regard to the lack of U. S. oversight and advice, enabling it to find its "own solutions." Such solutions-widely agreed to have been unparalleled in violence-included scorched earth campaigns, the bombing, burning and bulldozing of entire villages, massacres in the countryside, and death squad killings in the city. Although the United States remained in the background, Guatemala obtained assistance to implement these solutions from South Africa, Argentina, Taiwan, and, especially, Israel."

... more significant has been Israel's advisory role to the Guatemalan government. In addition to police and military troop training, this has involved primarily assistance in electronic surveillance systems, intelligence gathering, and military-agricultural resettlement projects in former rebel areas. It is impossible to estimate accurately the number of Israeli military advisors in Guatemala. At the time of the Rios Montt coup d'etat in March 1982, the Israeli press-which referred to the Montt coup as "the Israeli connection" because that group was "trained and equipped by Israel"-put the figure at 300." The PLO ambassador to Nicaragua, Marwan Tahbub, was more conservative, estimating the number of advisors to be 150 to 200, although his figure excluded agricultural and other advisors whose work is in fact of a military nature. Nevertheless, the presence of a large body of Israeli advisors is undisputed. Rios Montt himself told ABC News reporters that his coup had been successful because "many of our soldiers were trained by the Israelis."

Israel's Arms Export Policy: An Assessment
Politically, Israel has not obtained benefits from its arms transfers to Latin America. On the contrary, its position there has declined, as evidenced by eroded support at the United Nations and outspoken criticisms of Israeli policies in the occupied territories and in Lebanon. More important, its role as military ", advisor, supplier, and supporter of brutal and repressive regimes, and its growing reputation as a surrogate for the United States, have cost Israel the sympathy of large segments not only of progressive Latin American opinion, but of the local populations at large, thus canceling the goodwill generated in earlier years by j its cooperative projects.

Representative of the kinds of attitudes resulting from Israel's Central American activities is the following statement in the Costa Rican-based publication, Human Rights in Central America (1980s)

Israel continues denouncing the Nazi genocides from World ') War II committed against the Jewish populations in Germany, Austria and Poland; thirty-five years later, it still pursues Nazis all over the world, but it has no reservations nor shame in cooperating with genocides of peasants in Central America, [or] the Indians of Guatemala and Nicaragua.

As the Israeli daily Davar pointed out on the eve of Somoza's overthrow: [1980s]
The people of Nicaragua did not become anti-Semitic by the influence of a new kind of bananas they have begun to grow. The Sandinista movement does not need such questionable 4 justifications in order to achieve popularity-the fact that Somoza's regime is so corrupt and dirty is sufficient grounds for any reasonable man to support, either openly or covertly, those fighting Somoza. If more and more Nicaraguans are hating Israel more and more, it is not because they have become anti-Semitic suddenly. The reason is different: Because more and more of their children are being killed or wounded by weapons "made in Israel."
... Israel's political well-being in the region hinges on the survival of rightwing military dictatorships. By associating so closely with hated regimes, Israel alienates local populations and effectively rules out the possibility of continued relations in the event of a change in regime. Indeed, most liberation movements in Central America have explicitly expressed the intention of severing ties with Israel immediately upon coming to power.

Israel's arms clients are increasingly apt to be international pariah states or right-wing dictatorships waging war against their own people and in need of Israel's particular military expertise. And this will ultimately be to Israel's detriment politically, and certainly to the detriment of the populations of the countries it supplies.

"It is both my Jewish and human duty to resolutely refuse to take any part in this army. As the son of a people victim to pogroms and destruction, I cannot be a part of your insane policies. As a human being, it is my duty to refuse to participate in any institution which commits crimes against humanity."

Sergio Yahni, Israeli army 'refusnik'

Can you imagine that this support of brutal authoritarianism might cause some resentment among the affected people? To the extent that a self-proclaimed "Jewish State" aids in the brutality, are you surprised that some affected people blame 'Jews'?
I understand your livid rejection of anti-Semitism and I am against it myself just like, but not especially more so, I am against other forms of racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry. Suppose the above information, and there is one hell of a lot more available, was put on a test as a hypothetical. Part of a question about how humans can be expected to act and react. Suppose one of the test questions was whether the actions described would increase or decrease the amount of anti-Semitism among the affected people. What would your answer be? Suppose you were to guess whether that information would ever be used cynically by a politician among those affected people whether he was actually anti-Semitic or not. What answer then? Do you ever consider that you may be asking the world to have a much more evolved and forgiving standard when reacting to Israeli actions than when reacting to the same sorts of things between other groups?
Do you believe that the above actions are morally, ethically, philosophically, legally, or in any other way, justifiable? I do not. [ Remember, please, that I hold my own country to be more responsible and I hold all U.S. Americans to be at least somewhat responsible] Do you see how an affected person who sees that his family was tortured before being murdered and it was done with the aid of a country proudly self-described as a Jewish State might come to jump past any nuanced explanation, might not have a whole lot of forgiveness in his heart, and might just blame his family's plight on Jews rather than on the Israeli government? Can you completely reject that person's gripe because he has technically and maybe honestly by his lights embraced an anti-Semitic dialog to express his feelings? Do you ever cringe, like I do, when you hear the increasing Muslim phobia being spouted and encouraged by some of our own country's people? Is it somehow more forgivable than the rhetoric that drives you crazy? Can you imagine how an Iraqi might consider all Americans to be devils? I am not a devil, you are not a devil, how dare they come to such a conclusion about Americans? Fuck them. Oh yeah, we already did that. now what do they want, a kiss? Would that make everything alright?