Watch The Videos at The Bottom!
That's quite a bold claim.
It took me a while to realize, (either because I'm too slow or because I all too often see the good in people --- probably the former....) that much of the honesty he talks about is the "politically correct" form of honesty that is acceptable.
That's when he's at his best.
At his worst, it seemed like his brand of honesty was spilling everyone's shit out all over his blog. The lives and secrets of others became stories for his blog. Names were often left out--- sometimes hinted at, though it didn't take much to figure out who he was referring to in some of them.
None of this bothered me much. Do as you please, live and let live.
As long as you aren't physically or emotionally hurting someone else and you don't claim to be trying to live a life of "do no harm," I don't care.
The problem was, in at least one of his posts... he was either being completely dishonest or he was ignorant. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and go with him being ignorant.
In one of his posts he made the rather blatant statement, I am paraphrasing here... that there is this blind irrational hatred of Jews in the middle east and that no one will ever be able to fix the problems over there. According to him, this is how it's always been. Everyone just wakes up and hates Jews.
Now, I’m not denying that these kinds of people exist. There are some people that do have blind irrational hatred. Just like those who blindly hate Blacks, Asians or any other race, ethnicity or group. These people exist. Though, I would say they are rare in our day and age.
But is this really the case in the Middle East? It could be. Though in order for us to make a proper judgement we really need to way the facts and decide for ourselves.
Before we go any further, I think it's important to bring up some points that could be relevant to our discussion.
The author of the blog that I'm referring to is Jewish. I assume that he's a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. This probably, but not with absolute certainty.... means there is a good chance he's a supporter of the United States and Israel.
From my experience with watching and reading the mainstream media, the statement that I was paraphrasing from him is really quite similar to the talking points I see on Fox News and most of the mainstream North American media. I'm a Canadian citizen and I think there's a bit more diversity of opinion in Canada, but not much.
Certainly since 9/11, and even more since the Harper Conservatives have been in power, Canada has been going the same way as the United States in its foreign policy. The fact is, the United States and Canada are both large supporters of Israel in our current time.
Just to make it clear, I do not see a problem with being a supporter of another country. There are some who like to argue that no citizen's taxes should be supporting any country except the one they live in. We can leave that argument for another day. Let's just realize for now that many people support other countries. If a country displays values that they themselves uphold, it may be irrational for them to not support it, at least intellectually and emotionally.
Israel has many good things going for it from a western point of view. It is generally more liberal and excepting of people and their lifestyle choices. So I would say this is the understandable and reasonable side to the support from the so-called western democracies.
That being said, we have to realize that we should also be skeptical and question everything we read and hear. Many people question mainstream media on other stories and topics because they might not be getting the complete picture. We might be wise to do the same here also.
Below are some videos of people who have much more credibility than me, so I will leave them to say their thing. This at least should get some to question everything. It may also help those who are ignorant become more informed, and those who are not being completely truthful, become more so.
The first is the General's son: from Miko Peled, you can get his book here:
Here is the video:
The next is video from Democracy Now about the new documentary titled the Gatekeepers:
The next is a debate with Norman Finkelstein and Sholom Ben Ami:
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