POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY SHIRA HERZOG IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Liberal values?
In Israel?
Which values would those be?
Assassinating anyone the state pleases?
Attacking anyone the state pleases?
Keeping about 4 million people in virtual bondage?
Stealing other people's homes and farms on a weekly basis?
Please, this is a silly way to write.
There are a small number of decent, liberal-minded people in Israel - people like Urey Avnery - but they do not in anyway characterize that society as a whole.
Indeed, they are treated often as outcasts or traitors.
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"Somehow zandoli claims that Israel and Saudi Arabia are allies. This must be some strange form of distributive property applied to countries.
"It's almost like saying that because Canada and Cuba have cordial relations so does the us and Cuba based."
If you cared to inform yourself, you'd know that behind the scenes Israel and Saudi Arabia cooperate closely on a number of matters.
This is of course kept from the public or the Saudi dynasty would be toppled.
The U.S. plays a key role in the relationship.
By the way, Israel - despite its phony stuff about being the only democracy in the Middle east - has always best loved cooperative tyrants in neighboring lands. It was great pals with Mubarak in Egypt and was rattled by his fall.
Indeed, that is why the military in Egypt is taking so long to bring reform, the U.S. closely watching on Israel's behalf that nothing too radical happens (for "radical" read "democratic").
Israel had some good connections with Gaddafi too, and it loves the King of Jordan.
Israel is about as far as it gets from liberal values as a society, but it loves playing the hypocritical game of blubbering about democracy while secretly pushing the United States to suppress it in the region.
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"Liberal values desperately need to be stomped on."
We see several ignorant comments resembling the one above.
They all have in common a clear lack of understanding of what the word "liberal" means.
Liberal does not mean left wing, except in the vituperative and hateful politics of the United States.
Liberal is a very old and honorable term having to do with belief in democratic values and human rights. It is associated too with general concepts like open government, fair dealing, and, as a matter of fact, free trade.
There is a long record of liberalism in Western society which involves many great people, most of them not of "the left."
Thomas Jefferson was regarded as a genuine liberal in his day, and yet Thomas Jefferson today is the godfather of the American Right Wing.
In the poisonous political atmosphere of the United States, the word has been abused much the way puritans used the term "papists."
Yet, there is a grain of truth in their vituperation because people like Gingrich, Palin, Delay, Bush, Cheney and others of the extreme right are not genuine friends of democratic values or human rights.
Those kinds of establishment types have always cosied up to tyrants and dictators who were agreeable to America's notions of how things should be run.
The postwar record of the United States includes countless coups and interventions, many against democratic governments, and friendship with a host of brutes from the Shah to Pinochet and Marcos and Ceausescu and Thieu and Suharto.
And that record is the result of the very people who vilify the word "liberal' and ignorantly associate it with "left wing."
Liberal values?
In Israel?
Which values would those be?
Assassinating anyone the state pleases?
Attacking anyone the state pleases?
Keeping about 4 million people in virtual bondage?
Stealing other people's homes and farms on a weekly basis?
Please, this is a silly way to write.
There are a small number of decent, liberal-minded people in Israel - people like Urey Avnery - but they do not in anyway characterize that society as a whole.
Indeed, they are treated often as outcasts or traitors.
_______________________________________
"Somehow zandoli claims that Israel and Saudi Arabia are allies. This must be some strange form of distributive property applied to countries.
"It's almost like saying that because Canada and Cuba have cordial relations so does the us and Cuba based."
If you cared to inform yourself, you'd know that behind the scenes Israel and Saudi Arabia cooperate closely on a number of matters.
This is of course kept from the public or the Saudi dynasty would be toppled.
The U.S. plays a key role in the relationship.
By the way, Israel - despite its phony stuff about being the only democracy in the Middle east - has always best loved cooperative tyrants in neighboring lands. It was great pals with Mubarak in Egypt and was rattled by his fall.
Indeed, that is why the military in Egypt is taking so long to bring reform, the U.S. closely watching on Israel's behalf that nothing too radical happens (for "radical" read "democratic").
Israel had some good connections with Gaddafi too, and it loves the King of Jordan.
Israel is about as far as it gets from liberal values as a society, but it loves playing the hypocritical game of blubbering about democracy while secretly pushing the United States to suppress it in the region.
_____________________________________
"Liberal values desperately need to be stomped on."
We see several ignorant comments resembling the one above.
They all have in common a clear lack of understanding of what the word "liberal" means.
Liberal does not mean left wing, except in the vituperative and hateful politics of the United States.
Liberal is a very old and honorable term having to do with belief in democratic values and human rights. It is associated too with general concepts like open government, fair dealing, and, as a matter of fact, free trade.
There is a long record of liberalism in Western society which involves many great people, most of them not of "the left."
Thomas Jefferson was regarded as a genuine liberal in his day, and yet Thomas Jefferson today is the godfather of the American Right Wing.
In the poisonous political atmosphere of the United States, the word has been abused much the way puritans used the term "papists."
Yet, there is a grain of truth in their vituperation because people like Gingrich, Palin, Delay, Bush, Cheney and others of the extreme right are not genuine friends of democratic values or human rights.
Those kinds of establishment types have always cosied up to tyrants and dictators who were agreeable to America's notions of how things should be run.
The postwar record of the United States includes countless coups and interventions, many against democratic governments, and friendship with a host of brutes from the Shah to Pinochet and Marcos and Ceausescu and Thieu and Suharto.
And that record is the result of the very people who vilify the word "liberal' and ignorantly associate it with "left wing."
