IOKIYAR becomes IOKIYAI...

It's Okay If You're An Israeli...

Completely interchangeable...

Goddamnit. I'm sick of reading shit like this. Fuck you, Jon!

konopelli, You're joking of course. That story is about the Americans, really, not the Israelis. And there is no branch of American politics that's been more OK with the 'actions' of Israel than the Democratic party. It's somehow more necessary for D pols to demonstrate their fidelity to Zion...and boy howdy, they do show their colors...

I pride myself on my already well-established cynicism and misanthropy, but that has left me feeling kind of ill. And I didn't even bother watching the video.

You should read the whole book that extract comes from, it is bloody good, although admittedly probably mostly stuff that you already know. I lend it out to friends and wait for them to report back to me that they are having trouble sleeping and/or terrible dreams. So far every single one of them has.

"Obama is the least pro-Israeli of our three candidates. I have no doubt that is why Hillary keeps insisting that he's unelectable."

I'm no fan of AIPAC, to say the least, but I think that's overstating the importance of the Israel issue. If Obama were more openly sympathetic to the Palestinians then maybe you'd be right, but he carefully inserted an obvious pander to the rightwing Israel-supporters in his speech on race a few weeks ago.

HRC says he's unelectable because she'll say anything at this stage. I half-believe the theory that she wants to destroy Obama's chances even if he gets the nomination, because she can't envision waiting until 2016 to run again--if McCain wins in 2008 she can run again in 2012.

Obama isn't least-pro-Israeli enough. Let's not forget his assertion of Israel's "legitimate right to defend itself" while it was bombing the shit out of Lebanese civilians in 2006. You know, the exact same thing as is described above.

WELL, U&I (TAXPAYERS)are selling guns to Israel, how could that be news? I see it as "only fair" since WE=U&I are selling them to the Lebonese (ALL 5 or 6 factions), to the Palestinians, (ALL 2 or 3 factions), Saudis ( who knows how many factions) too.

...but he carefully inserted an obvious pander to the rightwing Israel-supporters in his speech on race a few weeks ago.

Well, it was just too pat. Something pro-forma about it. Some sensed a disturbance in the force.

What was the driver for the race speech? I thought it was Rev. Wright and his moral equivalences disturbed us to the core. Correct words cried out for uttering so that we could be comforted (and policy boxes checked).

Just for the record; I will lie to get to my goals. Internal consistency is more important (to me) than external integrity. Others are probably not so compromised.

IF YOU quit selling them guns, any of them, pick one or two, why, YOU'll erode the market base, cut into the ole profit margine, and WE sell guns to the world. Don't get ME wrong, other folks sell guns too and I'm absolutely that others, other military equipment salesmen from other nations WILL take up the slack, but I'd be GREAT so say that it wasn't AMERICA.

Mike, I'm pretty sure the US doesn't have a "special relationship" with e.g. Hamas.

Now I want to kill you,too.

Save the Oocytes: Wait a while and YOU will be reading where WE been selling to them too, through the Egyptians. WE always play both sides, ALWAYS.

Save the Oocytes,

As I understand it, Hamas was partly the creation of the Israelis, the motivation for the support being that Hamas would serve as a counterforce to the PLO. And since we, uh, underwrite so much that the Israelis do militarily (as detailed in the article that served as the subject of this posting), I guess you could say that we at least had a relationship with Hamas at second hand for a while. Later, of course, when Hamas got too big for their britches, it became a matter of policy to support the PLO against Hamas. That of course worked out so-o-o well. And it were well to recall the rather vexed relationship that the US had with Saddam Hussein over the years; sometimes he was our BFF and we gladly supplied him with arms, precursor chemicals for his poison gases, and intelligence products to use in the Iran-Iraq war, but later there was a bigtime falling out, and you know how that turned out. So Mike Meyer's admonition may be justified by the historical trends.

Indeed. I think my main idea, such as it was, was that even if we did (do?) leak some arms to Hamas, it would hardly balance our "special relationship" with Israel.

I'm still voting for Michael Meyer.