'Israel is a Lunatic State' - Finkelstein on Gaza Flotilla Attack

[Better Believe It]

Run time: 05:24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB_CKL5h2_8   Posted on YouTube: May 31, 2010 By YouTube Member: RussiaToday Views on YouTube: 134508   Posted on DU: June 03, 2010 By DU Member: Better Believe It Views on DU: 1276

 
Norman G. Finkelstein: What happened with the Gaza flotilla was not an accident. You have to remember that the Israeli cabinet met for fully a week. All the cabinet ministers discussed and deliberated how they would handle the flotilla. There were numerous reports in the Israeli press, numerous suggestions, numerous recommendations about what to do. At the end of the day, they decided on a nighttime armed commando raid on a humanitarian convoy. Israel is now a lunatic state. It's a lunatic state with between two and three hundred nuclear devices. It is threatening war daily against Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah in Lebanon has already stated on several occasions: if Israel attacks it will retaliate in kind. Things are getting out of control. We have to ask ourselves a simple, basic, fundamental question: can a lunatic state like Israel be trusted with two to three hundred nuclear devices when it is now threatening its neighbors Iran and Lebanon with an attack?

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/finkelstein310510.html

[Taverner]

1. Awesome seeing a fellow American Jew decrying this action!!!!

I felt like I was the only one...

[aquart]

2. He is not decrying the action nearly as much as negating the entire state of Israel.

What action does that utter ass propose the world take to rid Israel of the nuclear weapons whose numbers he believes himself privy to? Is that dimwitted troll proposing an armed invasion? A good talking to? A vast cone of silence lowered upon the nation? What's his brilliant answer?

The Israeli cabinet met for a week and this was their solution but it was "lunatic"? WHAT WERE THE OTHER SOLUTIONS? What is YOUR brilliant solution for next door neighbors who want you dead? Try getting a missile in your backyard and see how sane your responses are.

The United States had ONE terrorist attack and our response was TWO WARS, hundreds of thousands of dead people who were completely uninvolved in the attack, Guantanamo, Homeland Security, and the Patriot Act.

Israel gets attacked every damn day. Yet I never see ANY recognition here of that horrific fact of life. They have tried being nice. They have tried being mean. Nothing works.

Present your brilliant solutions. They're needed.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Better Believe It]

5. The US could end all military aid to Israel. They clearly don't need it.

A yet taxpayers continue to pay year after year after year for tens of billions in military aid to Israel.

They are armed to the teeth with nuclear bombs and a military that over 40 years ago could easily defeat ALL of the military forces of Arab nations in the middle east! Israel is a lot stronger now!

Let's end all military assistance to Israel and stop defending all of the actions of an extreme right-wing regime in Israel.

Hell, the Israeli right-wingers make U.S. tea-baggers look like liberal humanists!

How can anyone who considers themselves even a little bit liberal support the Israeli rightists?

[Taverner]

10. Yes, but at the same time we really don't contribute a whole lot in cash

Most of it is diplomatic cover


Problem is - AIPAC is not the voice of most Jews, just the most hawkish ones

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Thing is the Likud (their answer to our Republicans) has done what the Bush Admin did - spin hysteria from fear of the other

Hell, this erupted to a point when a Likidnik killed Israel's Ghandi (Rabin) - this was a man who wanted to make peace

And at the same time, Arafat was trying to elminiate all of the pacifists from the PLO

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War is big business

Both sides' leadership profit from the war

[damntexdem]

6. No, it's Netanyahu who is on course to negate the state of Israel.

The issue is that no one is likely to try to take away nukes from a state with hundreds of nukes.

Instead, the U.S. and other countries should cut off all aid and support for Israel. Israel obviously wants to go it alone, so let them. The best thing the U.S. can do in the short run is to stop supporting the lunatic state.

And note that there are other lunatic states around, but they don't have hundreds of nukes.

And Israel has acted nice? What, they've occupied others' land in a nice way? They've made a concentration camp of Gaza in a nice way?

[movonne]

7. The two wars you talk about came from chaney and bush who

were right wing war mongers...the same type are now running israel...

[PDJane]

11. you are missing that Israel attacks Palestine

every damn day too. You're missing that there is no way to count the number of people who die at checkpoints waiting for medical aid. Good Lord, man, wake up.

[activa8tr]

4. You certainly are NOT the only one, not by a long shot.

We have to ask the question what is the state of Israel doing to garner any sympathy and support from the rest of the world?

I see nothing recently that they have done. A night time Commando raid on unarmed civilians in international waters where 9 foreigners are killed is NOT a solution, and makes matters worse, IMO.

[Taverner]

9. I agree - and at the same time I want Israel to be a great nation

In the "true" sense of the word

If it is to be "our" homeland, I want to to be an ethical homeland...

[Better Believe It]

12. How about just a nice and good nation. That's what I'd like the United States to be.

A nation that recognizes and respects human rights everywhere and that provide economic and political rights for all of its residents.

I could live with that.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. American Radical: the trials of Norman Finkelstein - a new film

link to preview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hO_0byNexA


link to info about this film:

http://www.americanradicalthefilm.com/


...

[izquierdista]

13. He has no camera presence

He needs to learn how to make his point, converse with the interviewer and quit whining on and on and on and......

[indepat]

14. Perhaps the real lunatics are those who support Israel's every action, no matter what,

no matter how inhumane, no matter how unthinkable, like mindless lemming rushing out to sea. :P

[maynard32]

15. This guy is Brilliant.

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. be and sure and watch this debate with a senior Israeli government adviser:

this a very heated debate

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLB8DfhnJD0&feature=related

and for a more soft-spoken debate in 2006 with former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami:

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2006/02/14

[scholarsOrAcademics]

17. the state as an international actor

The foreign policy of a state is the color a state gives to its neighbors and the world, embodied in its actions as an agent on the world stage. So, to the outside world this is the nature, the essence of the Jewish State of Israel. It is proper for the United Nations to judge this action for its consistency with the welfare and threats to its members. The foreign policy of a state is a policy position, not a characterization of its past or a prescription for its future. The foreign policy of a state is justifiably subject to evaluation as to whether it is an intolerable threat to the existence of other existing states. The limit of what is intolerable is for the U.N. to say, not the G7 or G20.
Bring back the U.N.

[Jim Sagle]

18. Finkelstein is a lunatic activist. Obviously life's pressures got to him.

[scholarsOrAcademics]

19. nuclear war threats old hat

its true there are many newer and more deadly threats than nuclear bombs. But they do not have the general public cache that nuclear bombs have. Targeted killings in this computer enhanced age is only one of the newest. Which way is the wind blowing today? Drip, drip, drip - Kafka's Penal Colony is leaving many in a state of StopThink.

[Jim Sagle]

20. Is that a drone overhead? AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH....

[scholarsOrAcademics]

21. bird watching

Maybe its a laugh or a joke, but I spotted a Wackinhut - the first I've seen, today in the University District. Keep your batteries charged.