Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 70

Why I May Be Blogging Less for a Bit

Toughed it out pretty well yesterday but need to ease off today.  Broke three ribs in a biking accident on Monday.  As many know it's a painful and stubborn recovery so going slow.   Will keep posting here but probably reduced for a few days.  Thanks for your visits and your patience.  Feel free to catch up with my Photo Blog and Ye Olde Baseball page or "hidden" history of our use of the atomic bomb--of even the first chapter of my first novel.   

Line Busy, So You Are Dead?

Good NYT piece tonight on Israel policy of trying to notify civilians--before bombs hit and wipe out them or their homes out.  Of course, there are glitches (besides making the Israelis feel they are behaving morally), and human rights groups still protest.  Note:  Article not written by one of the two NYT mainstays in Jerusalem bureau. Note how Isabel Kershner in a separate piece paints the phone call as getting Israel off the hook.  Also the usual equating of rocket attacks that caused no injuries or damage vs. massive damage to homes and lives lost in Gaza. Unconfirmed report tonight of a hospital hit.

Beethoven for His Rampaging Countrymen

As the Germans score five goals in first 29 minutes, celebrate with this:

Crosby, Stills, Nash and...Fallon?

Jimmy returns to his "Fancy" Neil impersonation, with special guests...

One Year Ago: Pro Footballer Slammed for Being...Palestinian

The Nation's Dave Zirin was all over it one year ago this month, and NYT joined in.  Truly disgusting. 

An article on the Web site The Front Page suggested that he had terrorist ties. A column on Yahoo Sports, since removed, said he held anti-Semitic views. An employee of Major League Baseball on Twitter compared Aboushi to Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end charged with murder, before later apologizing.

Waves of support for Aboushi started rolling in on Thursday, and on Friday, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement condemning the attacks on his character and applauding him for taking pride in his culture. The Jets also backed Aboushi, an offensive lineman they selected in the fifth round.

In a statement, Aboushi said he was upset that his reputation had been tarnished by people who did not know him, but that he was proud of his Palestinian heritage and to have been born and raised in the United States.

Topical Song Pick of the Day

Greatest song of recent years about the conflict (or just about anything else) from our favorite lefty songster, Steve Earle's "Jerusalem."

The Beaten Boy and Mother

Interview with Tareq Abu Khieder  -- in English, naturally, since he is American.   Says he was not throwing rocks and doesn't know why Israeli police attacked him.  His mother says, "This happens to Palestinians every day....all the time" but because her son is American he is getting media attention.    She says had to wait three hours to get into American embassy.  "Nobody should be beat up this badly, for any reason...This is not human," she adds.

Gideon Levy: What Israel Has Become

Gideon Levy, longtime columnist,  comments in Israel daily Haaretz today: "The youths of the Jewish state are attacking Palestinians in the streets of Jerusalem, just like gentile youths used to attack Jews in the streets of Europe. The Israelis of the Jewish state are rampaging on social networks, displaying hatred and a lust for revenge, unprecedented in its diabolic scope. Some unknown people from the Jewish state, purely based on his ethnicity. These are the children of the nationalistic and racist generation – Netanyahu’s offspring."

For five years now, they have been hearing nothing but incitement, scaremongering and supremacy over Arabs from this generation’s true instructor, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not one humane word, no commiseration or equal treatment.

They grew up with the provocative demand for recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state,” and they drew the inevitable conclusions....

The mob was the first to internalize its true significance: a Jewish state is one in which there is room only for Jews. The fate of Africans is to be sent to the Holot detention center in the Negev, while that of Palestinians is to suffer from pogroms. That’s how it works in a Jewish state: only this way can it be Jewish. 

In a Jewish state, the High Court of Justice approves the demolition of a murder suspect’s family home even before his conviction. A Jewish state legislates racist and nationalist laws.

The media in the Jewish state wallows in the murder of three yeshiva students, while almost entirely ignoring the fates of several Palestinian youths of the same age who have been killed by army fire over the last few months, usually for no reason.

No one was punished for these acts – in the Jewish state there is one law for Jews and another for Arabs, whose lives are cheap. There is no hint of abiding by international laws and conventions. In the Jewish state, there is pity and humane feelings only for Jews, rights only for the Chosen People. The Jewish state is only for Jews.

It’s not the skinheads that are the Jewish state’s main problem, it’s the sanctimonious eye-rollers, the thugs, the extreme right wing and the settlers. It’s not the margins but the mainstream, which is partly very nationalistic and partly indifferent.

In the Jewish state, there is no remnant of the biblical injunction to treat the minority or the stranger with justice. There are no more Jews left who marched with Martin Luther King or who sat in jail with Nelson Mandela. The Jewish state, which Israel insists the Palestinians recognize, must first recognize itself. At the end of the day, at the end of a terrible week, it seems that a Jewish state means a racist, nationalistic state, meant for Jews only.

'Rosie' Comes Home

Sister of Dave and Ray Davies, "Rose," who inspired this 1966 Kinks song, has died.  She was, I  believe, the oldest of six sisters.  The song bemoans her move to Australia with husband Arthur--and need we add that perhaps the band's greatest concept album, sometimes called "the first rock opera"  was 1969's Arthur in which a couple moves to Australia (see second song below). 

Latest from Snowden

Delayed a bit this week, due to government appeal, but now out tonight via Bart Gellman at Wash Post. 

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.