text:
Witnessing Gaza
CultureNews
Marc H. Ellis on August 18, 2014 54 Comments
Max Blumenthal's photo of Israeli soldiers' vandalism of school in Khuza'a
This is part of Marc H. Ellis's "Exile and the Prophetic" feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
As we approach the endgame of this phase of Gaza's tribulations – for rest assured, Gaza's tribulations will continue – reporters on the ground are writing and photographing the disaster. Like all of us, they're looking for hope in Gaza's ruins. They're not finding much.
Among these reporters are Jews from Israel and America. They're observing what their fellow reporters are – devastation as far as the eye can see. They're meeting with the grieving, the homeless and the injured. They're also finding out what the dead look like close up.
I'm thinking especially of young Jews like Max Blumenthal, whose twitter photos are arresting, and Allison Deger's incisive reporting. But there are others, like the veteran Israeli reporter Amira Hass. In the coming days, more Jewish reporters will arrive.
I have never seen the devastation of war. It can't be easy for any of the reporters. Is it different for Jews?
A few of these reporters have been in touch with me. They are startled and shaken by what they're experiencing. Israel's invasion seems pointless. What they see is the sheer brutality of it all. Since this might be the point of the invasion, asking the deeper questions of life and death is natural.
Like all of us, they're struggling to make sense of it all – as human beings and as Jews. The Jewish identifier is intriguing, especially since most of the Jewish reporters aren't religious and have tenuous, if any, connections with the larger Jewish community. They think of themselves as typical reporters and photojournalists. Most don't want to be singled out as Jews. They just "happen" to be Jewish.
But most of the Jewish reporters are not well-paid journalists assigned by the higher-ups for the Gaza beat. It's volunteer duty, raise your own money and take the risk.
Still the soul searching may have been unexpected. To one who wrote, I offered that as a human being she is witnessing part of the human drama without blinders. Being Jewish adds another dimension:
Yes, the most obvious thing you're doing is helping the world know what happened in Gaza and encouraging solidarity with the Palestinian people. But, as well, you are a Jew observing what "we" have done – Israel specifically and Jews around the world who enable Israel's violence.
Has Jewish history come to this? What are Jews of Conscience like you to do with what you are seeing, touching, experiencing?
You are a different pair of Jewish boots on the ground. First the soldiers, now you.
You might not know what to do with this. I don't know either.
Who does? Jews have never descended to this level of depravity before.
The end of Jewish history as we have known and inherited it – I think that's what you're witnessing. Whatever ethical values were present in our tradition – what both of us consciously or subconsciously draw upon – are gone.
Like – or with – the Palestinians – Jewish ethics have literally been blown away.
What you write, the photographs you post, detail this end.
Documenting the end isn't easy – I think it's very, very important.
There is no return to what is lost. This may pain you in a way that isn't definable. I think of you as experiencing a trauma that comes from another place and is now inside you.
That trauma isn't going away – I think you know that. It will get worse. That's what I read in your words. I see it in your photos.
If only there was something hopeful I could share with you. Nothing in my lifetime – perhaps in yours since you are much younger but I also doubt this – will set this aright. Barring a strike from the heavens – a miracle of sorts – Palestinians will remain under Israel's thumb.
We need clear-headed political and economic analysis – your reporting demands this – and something more – your reporting demand this as well.
That something more is within and beyond your personal/reporting/solidarity journey. You are witnessing a horror that is present-day but resonates with the Jewish past. It's defining our Jewish future.
Yes, you're witnessing our future in Gaza – which has already arrived.
So in my mind you're a witness – a witness at the end. Small comfort.
Hold fast – what you're doing is important.
Jewish boots on the ground in Gaza. First Israel destroys, then Jews and others detail the end.
Of course, Gaza remains alive and this, too, must be written about and photographed. And these Jewish reporters are alive, too. Which is a source of hope.
Perhaps I should include this hope when the next email from Gaza arrives.
These Jewish boots on the ground are a sign of hope – the only hope we have – at the end. So I have to choose my words wisely.
I also have to tell them the truth as I see it. It wouldn't be right to condescend to those who bear the weight of Jewish history as it comes to its end.
Marc H. Ellis
Marc H. Ellis is Professor of History and Jewish Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of the Global Prophetic. His latest book is Finding Our Voice: Embodying the Prophetic and Other Misadventures.
Other posts by Marc H. Ellis.
hophmi on August 18, 2014, 10:49 am
":The end of Jewish history as we have known and inherited it – I think that's what you're witnessing. Whatever ethical values were present in our tradition – what both of us consciously or subconsciously draw upon – are gone."
Right – Jews have no ethical traditions now. And you wonder, Marc, why people consider anti-Zionism an antisemitic movement.
amigo on August 18, 2014, 11:27 am
Right – Jews have no ethical traditions now. hopmi
Dead right they no longer have ethical traditions.
They threw all their traditions out with the bath water and swapped them for Apartheid and land theft.
The majority won.
Or lost , depending on which way you look at it.
just on August 18, 2014, 11:33 am
Can you point to any 'ethical traditions' that are alive and well?
btw, anti- Zionism is NOT antisemitic at all. The only people who consider it such are Zionists, hophmi.
Kay24 on August 18, 2014, 11:54 am
The real meaning of anti-semitism, seems lost in the zionists lame efforts to label all criticism of zionists and Israel, anti-semitism. Of course it is done to silence the criticism, and intimidate those who dare do it.
MHughes976 on August 18, 2014, 12:33 pm
As to real meanings – to me (for what that's worth) 'anti-Semitism' means 'significant prejudice (or worse) against at least some things Jewish'. To others, including most Zionists, it means 'significant opposition to at least some things strongly supported by Jewish people'. I keep saying a bit boringly that meanings are not real things and that we can all use words as we like provided we make ourselves clear and speak consistently.
A Zionist would think that I am an anti-Semite even under my own definition, since to him/her only prejudice can explain rejection of Zionism: I would deny this and would claim that rejection of Zionism is rational. A Zionist would also claim that, since Zionism has strong Jewish support, I am certainly an anti-Semite under the Zionists' own definition – which is quite true: there's nothing I can do about it, except say that under this definition, unlike mine, there can be forms of anti-Semitism which are justified.
RoHa on August 18, 2014, 1:03 pm
"I keep saying a bit boringly that meanings are not real things and that we can all use words as we like provided we make ourselves clear and speak consistently."
Though if we want to be understood, we should use words in the way other people use them, and if we want to be really clear as well as understood, we should use them the way I say they should be used.
michelle on August 18, 2014, 1:48 pm
'you' seem to be anti-injustice
and being that is a double neg.
it resolves to a positive
yeah!!!!
G-d Bless
Mooser on August 18, 2014, 7:37 pm
I know what an anti-Semite is! An anti-Semite believes Jews are fundamentally different, intrinsically, essentially different from other human beings, and cannot live on terms of equality and tolerance with other humans.
I know who the biggest proponent of that view has been in my lifetime.
Philemon on August 18, 2014, 10:02 pm
Mooser, do you mean… Zionists and Israelis?
Did I get it right?
Gene Shae on August 18, 2014, 6:42 pm
@just, criticizing Israel is not in itself anti Semitic. However, being anti-Zionist surely is as it exclusively denies Jews the right given to any other people
Bumblebye on August 18, 2014, 7:10 pm
Complete Codswallop, Gene Shae!
No ethnic/religious category has the exclusive right to self-determination as such. If Israel wanted to be an ethno-religious supremacist state it should have chosen to set up in uninhabited islands somewhere in order to do so. As it is, it denies the right to self-determination of the indigenous people of the land it has stolen.
tree on August 18, 2014, 7:14 pm
However, being anti-Zionist surely is as it exclusively denies Jews the right given to any other people
Zionism is the belief that Jews should have preferential rights in the State of Israel. It includes the "right" of ethnic cleansing, discrimination, injustice towards minorities, and "rights" of confiscation and use of land based on ethnicity. NO ONE should have those "rights", and no one legally does in the United States but Jews have that privilege in Israel. To oppose those bigoted privileges is not anti-Jewish, any more than to oppose apartheid in South Africa, or legal discrimination against blacks in the United States is anti-white. Why this concept is so hard to grasp for Zionists is hard to understand.
JeffB on August 18, 2014, 7:31 pm
@tree
No Zionism was the belief that Jews should migrate to Palestine and form a society called Israel. Today it is the belief that Israel is for Israelis the same way France is for the French and China for the Chinese. There is no belief about discrimination and in fact Israel has a pretty good track record of integrating minorities willing to be integrated.
The reason Zionists have trouble buying your view is because it is simply false.
true support is to agree with correct acts
and to disagree with incorrect acts
anti-whatever supports incorrect acts
Bumblebye on August 19, 2014, 12:59 am
@JeffB
Do we hear you cackling behind your keyboard as you type such deluded rubbish?
tree on August 19, 2014, 5:22 am
The Jewish National Fund discriminated against non-Jews from its very inception in 1901. It set up covenants on the land it bought denying any tenant farmer who was not Jewish from farming on the land, even though such tenant farming was legal under Ottoman Empire law. It also prohibited any non-Jews from either working on the land, or from ever buying the land. This was discrimination from the very git-go. Jews who owned land in Palestine prior to the JNF were boycotted and threatened by Zionist Jews during the second Aliyah if they hired non-Jewish workers. The Zionists also lobbied the British Mandate Government to hire Jews in preference to non-Jews and to pay Jews more than they paid non-Jews for doing the same work. They also discriminated against Arab Jews from the very beginning by not allowing them to become equal members of the kibbutzim. The JNF, which by its very charter is an organization meant solely to benefit Jews, is a quasi-governmental organization in Israel and is a constituent member of the Israel Land Authority.
Today it is the belief that Israel is for Israelis the same way France is for the French and China for the Chinese.
No, Israel does not recognize "Israeli" as a nationality. It claims it is a Jewish State, and even demands that the Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish State, rather than an Israeli State.
There is no belief about discrimination and in fact Israel has a pretty good track record of integrating minorities willing to be integrated.
Ethnically cleansing anywhere from 750,000 to 800,000 people does not in any way shape or form constitute a "good track record". Neither does the confiscation of land from non-Jews in order to benefit Jews only. There is a asic institutional discrimination against non-Jews in favor of Jews and that is how the government and the majority of Jewish Israelis believe it should be. You are in complete denial about what Israel is and what they believe in. I suspect that you know better but cannot admit as much because you know that admitting that Israel was founded on oppressive discrimination would lead to calls for its reform and you like the privileges it accords to Jews. You're a hypocrite.
eljay on August 18, 2014, 7:25 pm
>> Gene Shaeee: … being anti-Zionist surely is as it exclusively denies Jews the right given to any other people
Zionists demand the right to have a religion-supremacist state. That is not a right anyone is given or entitled to.
talknic on August 19, 2014, 1:12 am
@ JeffB " Zionism was the belief that Jews should migrate to Palestine and form a society called Israel"
OK. They did that according to the Israeli Govt "as an independent republic within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947" . Nothing outside of those proclaimed boundaries has ever been legally acquired by Israel or recognized as Israeli.
A) The legal extent of Israeli sovereignty is only as proclaimed and as recognized (ibid) It does not included any territory the Israeli Govt declared was "outside the State of Israel" … "in Palestine"
B) The French do not have a law of return nor do the Chinese
"There is no belief about discrimination"
The Law of Return is discriminatory. The marriage laws are discriminatory. The illegal annexation of non-Israeli territories is discriminatory.
" and in fact Israel has a pretty good track record of integrating minorities willing to be integrated"
You either know nothing of Israel's well documented discriminatory Laws http://www.adalah.org/upfiles/2011/Adalah_The_Inequality_Report_March_2011.pdf or you're just another liar for Zionist colonialism and blatant bigotry
"The reason Zionists have trouble buying your view is because…" …. the truth is to them like Holy Water to Nosferatu
justicewillprevail on August 19, 2014, 2:06 am
JeffB, you write screeds of verbose convoluted tortured prose, and still have no idea about your fantasy state. Israel doesn't do citizenship like any other country, to the extent that there is no such thing as an Israeli:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/10/high-court-rules-it-impossible-be-israeli-201310201360824801.html
Because to be one would ruin the meticulously constructed apartheid where you are granted privileges according to your mother's culture, even if you have never been to or lived in the region. And of course you are treated like a dog if you don't belong to the elitist group. No other state justifies ethnic cleansing like that, makes artificial distinctions between its citizens based on 19th century notions of race, and treats them accordingly, to the point where millions of them are denied citizenship because it will threaten the gerrymandered identity of the state, which conveniently has one set of borders for them, and another for Jews. Israel gives more rights to people who have never been there than the indigenous people who live under its despotic rule – don't tell us it is like any other state. There is no comparison, please spare us the entirely baseless comparisons you seem to think are relevant. They are irrelevant.
eljay on August 19, 2014, 7:21 am
>> JeffBeee: Today it is the belief that Israel is for Israelis the same way France is for the French and China for the Chinese.
The way Israel and Zio-supremacists tell it, Israel remains a supremacist "Jewish State" primarily of and for Jewish Israelis and non-Israeli Jews.
Andre on August 18, 2014, 7:53 pm
@Gene, since when is Zionists=Jews? Ever heard of e.g. CUFI?
just on August 18, 2014, 7:57 pm
Horse manure, Gene. You want to talk about rights– show me the rights that were stolen along with everything else from the Palestinian people.
Zionism is a racist, colonialist ideology and nationalist movement gone insane, not a religion.
PS You're not in charge of the 'rules'.
Well, what is this right of self-determination and how does it apply to all concerned?
Hophmi, you're never satisfied, are you? Now here's Mr. Ellis taking Israel as the exemplar and standard for Jewish ethics and you're not pleased? What more do you want?
Betsy on August 18, 2014, 11:10 am
@Marc — this is the human condition. One of the oldest ethical insight is recognizing that humans commit evil, when they are bound together by myths of us/them. So, to accept that Israel is behaving like this, is to accept that such myths of exceptionalism & communalism lead to herd like behavior. I don't understand the angst about losing Jewish ethical traditions — which have rich resources for combatting such myths (and therefore seem like prophetic traditions to cling to & laud & reclaim!). What is being lost is a naïve & exceptionalist belief that Jewish people aren't like other humans & aren't prone to such collective evil. It should be liberating to be free of this naïve belief! Welcome to the human condition! This belief of ethical exceptionalism was itself an ethical problem — akin to the dangerous "innocence" that James Baldwin wrote about so eloquently in discussing a certain White consciousness.
I sometimes get tired of this lament about having to change Jewish identity. It verges on whining about not being pure, not accepting membership in ordinary humanity. Isn't it more important to put ones shoulder to the wheel & build alternative forms of resistance & transformation? I mean, doh, States commit evil when based on ethnic / racial particularities — this is old news & combatting it is a broad common struggle, for which we have all sorts of good ideas & skills & ethical traditions. This is not new ethical ground (as, say, combatting global climate change is). Isn't it time to get on with it, and not waste time on mere identity politics & personal anxieties about personal identity?
Now if you were going to argue that there is something *inherent* to Jewish ethical traditions that has caused this current evil, than that would be an interesting argument. For instance, do the scriptural stories (of Christian & Jewish traditions) contain inherent imperial tendencies, e.g., Joshua invading & slaying? That is something to grapple with & change.
thoughtful comment, Betsy.
From my point of view, as regulars here well know, accepting membership in ordinary humanity is a duty.
If the Jewish ethical traditions have, indeed, come to an end, this will help with the process of fulfilling that duty, for then all Jews will have to be participants in the general moral community.
seafoid on August 18, 2014, 4:02 pm
Jews developed a lot of those ethical positions in the absence of power. Now the bots have power and they turn out to be the same as the Cossacks. Well, fancy that ! Who woulda thunk it ?
I don't see the point of bothering with the mitzvot given the Cossack angle. I mean, who cares if the milk mixes with the meat when kids are being murdered?
Zionism fails, and everybody wants to take it out on poor old Judaism.
That would suit Zionists nicely.
Philemon on August 18, 2014, 8:53 pm
Well, that's why Israel and Zionists keep trying to co-opt poor old Judaism, of course.
It's their "human shield."
And anyone against Zionism is an anti-Semite! /sarc/
W.Jones on August 18, 2014, 10:17 pm
Mooser,
There are three ways I see to avoid equating Judaism with modern nationalism.
First, Judaism's visions of a theocratic or ethnic kingdom can be "spiritualized", so that instead of talking about a political state, the prophecies were about a "state of being" or a religious community (an assembly, Church, tribe, etc.).
Second, the visions could be seen as real promises of a political theocracy, but one whose time has not yet come and still awaits the Messiah.
Third, the promise of an Abrahamic kingdom could be seen to open up to include all nations that accept the Messiah, as Abraham was promised to be the father of many nations. So rather than an exclusive vision, Israel could come to mean a house or realm of many peoples.
I believe that one of these three is the best interpretation of Judaism, but am not sure which one. What do you think?
Nonetheless, it's important to recognize that for most of its history, the ancient Jewish community operated rather similar to modern Zionism, in that it was dedicated to a state for one religion and nationality. Granted, the ancient Israelites might not have been as focused on driving out other peoples from Palestine as the Nakba was, but at times they too could be harsh (eg. under Joshua).
"Nonetheless, it's important to recognize that for most of its history, the ancient Jewish community operated rather similar to modern Zionism, in that it was dedicated to a state for one religion and nationality."
Ah, so that's what the ghettos and the segregation, and the sumptuary laws, and the restricted professions were all about? Not to mention the pogroms and genocide? It was just the "Jewish community operated rather similar to modern Zionism in that it was dedicated to a state for one religion and nationality"?
Are you daft? And no, I don't give a husky f–k what the Bible says about the "ancient" Jews.
W.Jones on August 19, 2014, 4:14 pm
(("Nonetheless, it's important to recognize that for most of its history, the ancient Jewish community operated rather similar to modern Zionism, in that it was dedicated to a state for one religion and nationality."))
I don't give a husky f–k what the Bible says about the "ancient" Jews.
Hello, Mooser.
I think that this is a worthwhile topic. If Judaism's main spiritual book, the TaNaKh, describes the ancient Jews as managing and seeking a theocracy or nationalist state for their religious community, then wouldn't you say that the TaNaKh's descriptions are relevant to the relationship between Judaism and Zionism?
Also, I sympathize with your desire to distinguish Judaism from nationalism, and tried to give three ways to make the distinction. What did you think about them?
lyn117 on August 18, 2014, 11:38 am
Thanks, Betsy, you expressed my thoughts well.
Human depravity is common, it tends not to get recorded by the governments or people doing it. It's always "the enemy" who's depraved, impure, the instigators against innocent victims (us).
To say this is the end of [ethical] Jewish history as you know it, perhaps means you left 1948 out of Jewish history? I'm sorry, please don't throw out your ethical tradition with the loss of belief in innocent victimhood.
Kay24 on August 18, 2014, 12:03 pm
What are they afraid of? If, as they claim they were "defending" themselves and taking extreme "care" to avoid civilians casualties, why are they so hell bent in preventing investigations by the international organizations in Gaza?
Another example of the guilty being afraid.
"Israel bars Amnesty, Human Rights Watch workers from Gaza
Human rights organizations prevented from conducting investigations into Israel-Hamas fighting.
By Amira Hass
Israel has been refusing to allow employees of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to enter the Gaza Strip in order to conduct their own independent investigations into the fighting, using various bureaucratic excuses."
amigo on August 18, 2014, 1:35 pm
Kay 24, this is just a replay of Jenin, Cast lead, summer Rains and all the other slaughters they carried out and had to keep out the prying eyes of Jew haters and anti semites.
Imagine what a normal Jury would think of a defendant not allowing the police onto a murder scene or refusing to show up for trial or making no attempt to defend himself other than shouting kangaroo court from a distance.The idea , that you cannot try us if we don,t show up.
The zios seem to think this behaviour enhances their claim to innocence.
Only in Ziosville.
concernedhuman on August 18, 2014, 4:27 pm
Kay then israel will not even allow ICC .
But seems even ICC will not be investigating due to pressure from BIG GUNS !
Hague court under western pressure not to open Gaza war crimes inquiry
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/aug/18/hague-court-western-pressure-gaza-inquiry
If israel can call ICC a kangaroo court what will israel call Amnesty International –a anti-semitic organization?!
Amigo and concernedhuman, it seems once again the war criminals will get away with massacre again. The US and it's EU allies seem to be working hard behind the scenes to make sure of that.
The ICC should not get intimidated nor threatened by any nation, but should do their work without any interference, to get justice for civilians who are used for testing out new weapons.
jon s on August 18, 2014, 12:12 pm
See this essay by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ( a different "jon s"…):
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=2a91b54e856e0e4ee78b585d2&id=4efce2d3d9&e=6d6ff9e089
Donald on August 18, 2014, 9:30 pm
Sacks had the opportunity to point out that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all capable of violence and intolerance in the name of their respective faiths and how all three groups need to examine themselves, but instead he made it all about how the horrible Muslims and Christians are constantly blaming Israel when Israel kills people. It's just days since Israel killed hundreds of Palestinian children and for him, the problem here is anti-semitism. I wonder if you and he are capable of understanding how nauseating this is.
jon s on August 19, 2014, 2:10 am
Donald,
Are you sure that you read the entire essay?
It includes this:
"we need a commitment by leaders of all the great faiths to work to ensure the rights of religious minorities in every part of the world where they have an influence. None of us will win if we work alone: not Jews, not Christians, not Muslims. The victim cannot cure the crime."
"Genesis 1, common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, says that every human being, regardless of colour, class or creed, is in the image of God. Our shared humanity takes precedence over our religious differences. Until we are prepared to take this seriously, people will continue to kill in the name of the God of life and practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. And God himself will weep."
So Rabbi Sacks certainly refers to the responsibility of all three religions.
And it's "Rabbi Sacks", Donald. A little respect.
As to the huge number of civilian casualties, including the children – their blood is on Hamas' hands.
eljay on August 19, 2014, 11:49 am
>> jon seee: Donald, Are you sure that you read the entire essay?
Donald's point is valid: Sacks whitewashes the past and ON-GOING (war) crimes committed by Jews.
>> And it's "Rabbi Sacks", Donald. A little respect.
You often fail to include titles when referring to Obama or Netanyahu. Why the sudden, hypocritical reverence for titles?
Donald on August 19, 2014, 11:54 am
Yes. It sounded much like the sort of dreck that Eli Wiesel might write on this subject.
That was his real point and yours and it is utterly immoral. "Rabbi" Sacks is a hypocrite and an apologist for war crimes. There's nothing new about this–apologists for America's behavior in Vietnam (specifically the free fire zones) made identical arguments there, and I imagine the Russian apologists for the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan made similar arguments about how the Soviets responded to the mujahideen (who were not boy scouts in their behavior either).
So yes, I read that claim that we all have to work together and by itself that was fine–but the other theme in the article, the reason you like it so much, is that he also absolves Israel of any blame for its own sins. We all work together to end hatred and we do this by condemning Muslims and Christians for their sins, and by absolving Israel when it kills hundreds of children. Sorry, but that's not what honest moral leadership looks like. That's a man trying to make himself feel good and blame everyone else for the sins of the side he favors. Sure, he wants peace and reconciliation, but only if he doesn't have to be honest with himself. I wonder if the good rabbi is married? Does he take that approach if he has an argument with his wife? Does he tell her that he wants reconciliation and they both have to work at it, and oh, by the way, it's her fault he raised his voice and in fact any notion that he himself might be to blame is just an example of her irrational hostility towards him.
I'm fairly sure Hamas leaders (who in recent years say they are willing to live with Jews) would make exactly the same argument with respect to their suicide bombing campaign in the Second Intifada. Perhaps "Rabbi" Sacks and the Hamas leadership could get together around a campfire and swap rationalizations.
Sacks also clearly misrepresented what happened in 2002 in the siege of the Church of the Nativity. Here is his whitewashed version:
In Israel a group of Palestinian terrorists had taken refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Israeli army, not wishing to enter a house of worship, stationed soldiers outside to wait until the terrorists emerged. It took several weeks.
In fact, the siege took place during the bloodiest part of Israel's offensive against the second Intifada, Operation Defensive Shield, when the IDF laid siege to most Palestinian cities and during which over 250 Palestinians were killed over the course of one month. The IDF did not simply "wait outside" the Church, after 200 people, the majority of them NOT fighters, nor "wanted men" as the IDF referred to them, sought sanctuary inside the Church. IDF snipers killed 8 inside the Church, including the church bellringer, cut off electricity and water, prevented food and water from being brought in, and damaged portions of the Church exterior, all while international negotiations were under way to arrange exile to Gaza or Europe for the few wanted men that the IDF was after.
After the siege had ended, the only credible reports of damage inside the Church came from a fire cause by Israel fire from outside the Church, and trash and the strong smell of urine. Any Palestinian refuge seeker who attempted to go to the Church courtyard to relieve himself was shot by Israel snipers.
Here's a timeline of the siege, and a listing of Israeli distortions:
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-distortions-during-siege-church-nativity/3984
Kind of like how the blood of the murdered of Lidice were on the hands of the Czech resistance, right?
Why can't Israel take responsibility for its own actions? No one makes you kill children. You make a choice.
Kris on August 18, 2014, 11:00 pm
@jon s, Rabbi Sacks' essay is amazing. Amazing for his cluelessness, which is so complete that he has no idea why, except as an expression of "blood libel," Israel is accused of "the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity."
From Sacks' essay:
"The historic danger in monotheism has been the willingness of believers to divide humanity into the redeemed against the infidel. To guard against this, Genesis 1, common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, says that every human being, regardless of colour, class or creed, is in the image of God. Our shared humanity takes precedence over our religious differences."
How is it possible that Sacks has no awareness of how cynical these words are when spoken in defense of Israel, where ethnic/religious supremacism is the law? Where is the "shared humanity" in Israel's decades-long campaign of land theft, ethnic cleansing, and calculated cruelty against the Palestinians?
When you realize that people don't like you, it's probably good to start by examining your own actions and attitudes, before you start accusing people of "blood libel," etc.
The photo shows the words "freedom" and "peace" in Arabic in the lower right hand corner and the Zionist bastards go and spray their appropriated symbol of hate on the wall under it, like dogs marking the territory.
Steve Macklevore on August 19, 2014, 3:57 am
I'm sorry but as a gentile, I'm finding this self-absorption difficult to take. That short paragraph is so problematic on several levels…
JeffB on August 19, 2014, 7:31 am
The Jewish National Fund discriminated against non-Jews from its very inception in 1901.
That's partially correct. We are talking about the government of Israel. If we include quasi governmental institutions things get murkier. Then things like Agudath Israel of America even though they aren't in Israel become an import.
[The JNF] set up covenants on the land it bought denying any tenant farmer who was not Jewish from farming on the land, even though such tenant farming was legal under Ottoman Empire law.
Well yes, but at that point it was a trivial amount of land it was setting up for Jewish redemption through labor. I don't suffer from housing discrimination because I can't go live in a monastery. There is a difference between 90% being inaccessible and .09% being inaccessible. By the mid 1920s the position reversed due to the citrus explosion. If Zionism were as blanketly as committed to discrimination as your side claims that wouldn't have happened.
They also discriminated against Arab Jews from the very beginning by not allowing them to become equal members of the kibbutzim.
That was racism in the community. But it has been reversed. If racism were intrinsic to Zionism it wouldn't have been reversed.
That's recognizing the legitimacy of the inhabitants of Israel which in the case of Palestine is constantly called into question. Even though the French are descended from tribes that evolved in Germany there are not frequent statements that the French should go back to Germany. Israelis are mostly Jewish, and Israel is Jewish in the way that France is Catholic. Catholicism is embedded within the culture and the language to the point that even atheistic French hold mostly Catholic views on most issues. No one considers that particularly troubling. When it comes to Judaism however it is considered particularly troubling. That's what the Palestinians are being asked to recognize.
In terms of getting rid of the legal distinctions based on nationality I'm all in favor of that. But right now Israeli Arabs are not. There is a notion of multiple nationalities with separate educational systems and separate systems of social law which all the nationalities support. I certainly would prefer that those distinctions be dissolved. But it is hard to call something discrimination that Israeli Arabs widely support.
JeffB: Israel has a pretty good track record of integrating minorities willing to be integrated.
Tree: Ethnically cleansing anywhere from 750,000 to 800,000 people does not in any way shape or form constitute a "good track record".
Did you notice the conditional part of the clause? "minorities willing to be integrated". The Palestinians in the 1930-40s were not willing to be integrated, they had an anti-colonial pan arabist orientation. The sephardic and mizrahi Jews were. The Russian Christians are. And frankly the Israeli-Arabs that saw the mass ethnic cleansing and thus threw in the towel on were being successfully assimilated all through to the 1980s. So clearly the Zionist state is willing to assimilate minorities that are willing to be assimilated. The bulk of Palestinians are not.
Neither does the confiscation of land from non-Jews in order to benefit Jews only.
I'm not sure which you mean here. Generally when people on Mondowweiss talk about confiscation they are talking about Israel taking territory in the West Bank. That's liberating land from enemy control. That is something that both China and France have done many times in their history.
There is a asic institutional discrimination against non-Jews in favor of Jews and that is how the government and the majority of Jewish Israelis believe it should be.
I agree with you. But that's intrinsic to Zionism. Israel needs a civil rights movement. I think what's halted the civil rights movement is the fact that the Israeli Arabs identified with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rather than Israel. After the slaves were freed in America, Americans really weren't sure whether blacks wanted to be Americans or not. African Americans decided in the late 19th century that they sought to be fully American and to create an America that didn't have institutional racism. But that was a trade. Had they gone the other way, and decided not to be American then it isn't a civil rights movement.
Similarly Jews and Catholics in America were able to convince Americans that Protestantism was not intrinsic to being American. They did this partially through religious reform, creating structurally Protestant versions of Judaism and Catholicism so as to make their religion less threatening. The Jewish minority in France sought to be fully French and argued that they were fully French for many decades. Again a civil rights movement is a two way dialogue.
This is a dialogue I fully support. I completely agree that it would be much better if Israel were engaged in this dialogue. I think it is tragic that the occupation / colonization of the WestBank is causing Israeli Arabs to regress from identifying as Israeli. And I think you would agree I'm not a slouch when it comes to Zionism. In the end though Israeli exists for Israelis, and if Israeli Arabs want to be Palestinians and not Israeli Arabs then they can't be part of Israel.
That is asking the French to support their country being overridden by enemies. I said French like France not French like Belgium for a good reason.
. You are in complete denial about what Israel is and what they believe in. I suspect that you know better but cannot admit as much because you know that admitting that Israel was founded on oppressive discrimination would lead to calls for its reform and you like the privileges it accords to Jews.
I'm all for the reform of Israel. I'm all for a civil rights movement. The debate with BDS is about the annihilation of Israel not its reform. Most BDSers support policies that would turn Israel into a Palestinian state with a religious Jewish minority. That's what happened to France in the 5th century when the country was overridden by Franks and the previous culture destroyed. The debate is whether Israel should be annihilated, not whether it should be reformed. I support reforms in America, that doesn't mean I supported the 9/11 attacks. I can acknowledge that Al Qaeda can have legitimate complaints about the USA policy without wishing for them to get sufficient military power for them to be able to force those changes on the American population.
JeffB.
me:The Jewish National Fund discriminated against non-Jews from its very inception in 1901.
you: That's partially correct. We are talking about the government of Israel.
No, we were talking about Zionism, which you insisted did not involve a belief in discrimination in favor of Jews, yet now you admit it did.
If you are thrown off the land you have legally lived on and cultivated because you are of the "wrong" ethnicity or religion, then that is discrimination. Its obvious. We aren't talking about you moving into a monastery, as much as you may want to make false analogies to obscure the issue. I'm not sure whether you are just ignorant and willing to make up what you believe is plausible shit, or whether you are purposefully lying (maybe a little of both?) but the Zionist policy of "conquest of the land" and "conquest of labor", both of which entailed the dispossession of non-Jews in Palestine, continued from the turn of the twentieth century up through the 1940's and was embraced by the State of Israel with its founding in 1948. Zionism was and is, to use your term, "blanketly" discriminatory.
From Matzpen:
The Zionist colonization proceeded under three basic slogans. The first of these is Kibush Hakarka (Conquest of the Land). This means that the holy soil of Palestine is to be made the patrimony of the Jewish people. Jews must work the land, and Jews alone are entitled to do so. During the mandate period, this slogan justified the Zionist land purchases and the forcible removal of the Palestinian peasants; since the formation of the state, it continues to justify the violent expropriation of Palestinians without any pretence of contractual agreement
The second slogan is Kibush Ha'avoda (Conquest of Labor). In practice, this means that, as far as possible, Jewish enterprises must hire only Jewish workers. It meant that the Histadrut, which virtually excluded Arabs from membership until the mid-196os, had as its main function before the establishment of the state in 1948 the enforcement of an Arab labor boycott
The third of these slogans is Tozteret Ha'aretz (Produce of the Land). In practice, this slogan meant the maintenance of a strict boycott of Arab-produced goods. Jews were to buy only from Jewish-run farms and stores.
Today, either from tactical considerations or from stirrings of guilty consciences, Zionist spokesmen try to cover up this past – and present To demonstrate that these slogans in fact represented day-to-day practice of the Zionist colonization, it suffices to quote David Hacohen, a leader of the Mapai Labor Party, which ruled and still rules in Israel Hacohen was a member of the Knesset for many years and chairman of its most important committee, Defense and Foreign Affairs. In a speech to the secretariat of the Mapai in November 1969, Hacohen stated:
"I remember being one of the first of our comrades to go to London after the First World War … There I became a socialist … When I joined the socialist students – English, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Indian, African – we found that we were all under English domination or rule. And even here, in these intimate surroundings, I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there. … To pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had bought; to praise to the skies the Kereen Kayemet [Jewish Fund] that sent Hanlon to Beirut to buy land from absentee effendi [landlords] and to throw the fellahin[peasants] off the land – to buy dozens of dunams 12 from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid, one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild, the incarnation of capitalism, as a socialist and to name him the "benefactor" – to do all that was not easy. And despite the fact that we did it – maybe we had no choice – I wasn't happy about it "13.
Hacohen's revelation of his feelings is surely sufficient evidence that these slogans constituted day-to-day practice and that Zionism was in fact a colonization of displacement.
http://www.matzpen.org/english/1972-02-10/introduction/
These boycotts and pickets against hiring Palestinian Arab workers continued through all the of pre-state period. As Simha Flapan pointed out in Zionism and the Palestinians:
The issue of Jewish labour became thus part of the larger problem of the scale and pace of Jewish immigration. This would explain the strange fact that the campaign for '100 percent Jewish labour' reached its climax precisely in the years of prosperity and large-scale Jewish immigration in 1933-35. The paradox of the situation was in the fact that Arab labour in the Jewish colonies increased not in the wake of competition between Jewish and Arab workers and not due to the employers' search for higher profits, but due to the shortage of Jewish labor, in the rural sector in particular. The economic boom in towns, the higher wages in construction drew thousands of Jewish workers away from agriculture and no moral appeal to Zionist ideals and national interest could persuade the workers in the colonies and the new immigrants to renounce a higher standard of living and lucrative employment offered by the economic boom in the cities.
…The shortage of Jewish labour and the economic boom threatened to wreck the [Zionist] policy of economic and social segregation; Arab workers were drawn in increasing numbers into construction sites in the cities and to the new colonies in the Sharon in which, up till now. the principle of 100 per cent of Jewish labour was preserved. To oppose this drift the labour leadership (now well entrenched in the Jewish Agency with Ben-Gurion and Sharett heading its Jerusalem section) took recourse to drastic measures which had far-reaching consequences on the relations between Jews and Arabs. In 1933 the Histadruth launched, for the first time, a campaign to remove Arab workers from the cities. Specially formed mobile units moved from place to place to identify and evict by force, if necessary, Arab workers from construction sites and other Jewish enterprises. This campaign in the cities, especially in Haifa and Jerusalem, which had a mixed population, assumed dramatic dimensions and had a devastating effect on public opinion. Every single case of removal of Arab workers – and in many case the operation took the form of ugly scenes of violence – was reported in the Jewish press and reverberated in the Arab media, creating an atmosphere of unprecedented tension.
Flapan goes on to note that this campaign to forcibly remove Arab workers was a significant factor in the outbreak of the Palestinian Uprising in 1936.
Did you notice the conditional part of the clause? "minorities willing to be integrated". The Palestinians in the 1930-40s were not willing to be integrated …
Yes, I noted it as weasel words meant to excuse the actions of the Israeli government in discriminating against Palestinian non-Jews. Blaming the victim, in other words. You do that quite a bit. The Palestinians in the 1930s-40 were not the ones fighting integration into society. It was clearly the Zionists who immigrated and then refused to integrate into the existing society, and sought by all means to prevent the integration of Palestinians into the discriminatory state they created in 1948.
me: Neither does the confiscation of land from non-Jews in order to benefit Jews only.
you:I'm not sure which you mean here. Generally when people on Mondowweiss talk about confiscation they are talking about Israel taking territory in the West Bank. That's liberating land from enemy control.
Again, I'm not sure whether you are ignorant or simply lying. Israel confiscated land from its own Palestinian citizens ( and from the absentee owners who were ethnically cleansed from Israel/Palestine) long before 1967. Taking land from non-Jewish citizens of Israel and giving it to Jews is discrimination, plain and simple. And "liberating land from enemy control" is exactly what Nazi Germany did to Poland in WWII. I don't think that is something you should speak of positively unless you wish to be seen as a fascist. (But then, maybe you do so wish.)
me:There is a basic institutional discrimination against non-Jews in favor of Jews and that is how the government and the majority of Jewish Israelis believe it should be.
you:I agree with you. But that's intrinsic to Zionism.
My point exactly. So why did you insist otherwise above? So now we agree that Zionism is intrinsically discriminatory.
Similarly Jews and Catholics in America were able to convince Americans that Protestantism was not intrinsic to being American.
No, the founding fathers were mostly Deists, believed in freedom of religion, and never believed that Protestantism was intrinsic to being American, nor did they set up a State of the Protestant People. I find it amazing that you will even distort American history to try to excuse what Zionism is. Well, maybe not amazing. You often struggle to make arguments that have no relationship to reality, and this is just one of them. As is your last argument that somehow BDS is just like Al-Queda. Because treating everyone in Israel as equal before the law, regardless of ethnicity or religion is just like getting attacked on 9-11. Right. Its just another one of your false analogies.
These boycotts and pickets against hiring Palestinian Arab workers continued through all the of pre-state period.
They most certainly did not. That is simply false. During the mid 1920s to 1935 Israel aggressively expanded the Arab role in their economy and imported Arab workers. The 1936-9 war was not a result of a the failure to utilize Arab labor but arguably was a result of the willingness to utilize Arab labor. The expansion of the citrus industry beyond what the Jewish population could self sustain made Zionists into classic colonialists and thus made them vulnerable to damaging the supply of labor and thus less likely to engage in broad reprisals. It was not until 1937 that there was a return the Communist ideology of the late teens through early 20s when Zionists had boycotted Arab labor.
Your own quote from Simha Flapan here supports my point. There was an expansion of Arab labor going on that Ben Gurion was opposed to. The reason he had something to be opposed to was because it was happening
What you are doing here is trying to grossly oversimplify 4 different Zionist waves of immigration into one large conspiracy. That is part of how demonization works. And I'm not going along with it. If Jewish Zionists are rapidly and drastically expanding the Arab labor pool in the Jewish economy that proves that Jewish Zionism was not at all times and all places opposed to Arab labor in the Jewish economy.
In 1936 the Arab labor pool was still expanding. It wasn't until the uprising that the pool started to contract and not until '37 that it started to rapidly contract. The cause of outbreak was the influx of anti-colonialist ideology from Syria which was more applicable now that Jews were acting like classic colonizers.
The Palestinians in the 1930s-40 were not the ones fighting integration into society.
The Palestinians in the 1930s were the ones who bought into an anti-colonialist ideology and started tossing bombs into Jewish centers to drive the colonials out. That's fighting integration.
It was clearly the Zionists who immigrated and then refused to integrate into the existing society
Zionists were not merely immigrants to Palestine. They sought to construct a new homeland in Palestine. They were not immigrating into an existing state and meekly trying to fit in. The Ashkenazi Jews were not migrating to become Mizrahi Jews or Palestinians. There is a distinction between not integrating into Palestine and your claim that they always supported total exclusion.
and sought by all means to prevent the integration of Palestinians into the discriminatory state they created in 1948.
Total nonsense. They immediately created structures to integrate them during the military rule and the integration process continues with increasing success in some areas until today. Just look at the jobs Israeli Arabs hold, those simply wouldn't exist if Israel were trying to exclude them from the economy by all means.
And "liberating land from enemy control" is exactly what Nazi Germany did to Poland in WWII.
And it also what Poland did at the end of WWII. Same process works in either direction.
No, the founding fathers were mostly Deists,
No they weren't, though there were quite a few deists.
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were the only founding fathers who signed the declaration with strong Deist ties, the other 54 did not have such ties. Cornelius Harnett was the only signer of the Articles of Confederation with such ties the other 47 did not. Benjamin Franklin was the only signer of the Constitution with such ties the other 54 did not.
But every single one of all three groups came from a Protestant background and had a Protestant affiliation. Deism certainly was an influential movement in the 18th century among America's leaders but it is simply inaccurate to say that our founders were Deists.
and never believed that Protestantism was intrinsic to being American
Their intent as clearly indicated by their writings at the time was to expand the government beyond Church of England to include nonconforming Protestants. Loyalty to the Pope was considered a foreign loyalty, veneration of Saints was still considered a disqualifying belief. Jews and Catholics were mostly excluded from juries, public employment, public notaries (they couldn't validly swear)…
Because treating everyone in Israel as equal before the law, regardless of ethnicity or religion
I'm perfectly willing to treat everyone in Israel equally before the law. And I'm a Zionist. In your theory such a belief is impossible. You may want to consider that contradiction a bit. BDS is not advocating equality before the law.
@Talknic
The French do not have a law of return nor do the Chinese
They most certainly do. The French did not leave the Pied-Noir to die in Algeria when they lost the Algerian war. The Chinese just recently allowed a huge influx of Indonesians of Chinese ethnicity in the 1990s when anti-Chinese violence drove them out.
JeffB on August 19, 2014, 12:44 pm
@MHughes976 says:
The right of people living in a territory to form a government for that territory which sets and enforces the laws for that territory.
Shorter JeffyB: "If I have anything to do with it, from behind my keyboard in America, Israelis will fight to the last man to keep what they have stolen. And I will hold their coats!"


text:
Swiss Aid for
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1. – 8. week of life
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Home > Real Life Stories > Detail
Diana Recovers Her Inner Strength
Diana has her life pretty well on track. With her earnings as a shop assistant, she can support herself. All that is missing is a solid relationship. Then, at 28, she meets a friendly, interesting man who soon becomes her boyfriend.
Diana: "Every time I look at my baby, I am the happiest person alive!"
She hopes to be on the way to a permanent relationship with her new acquaintance. After about a year, she becomes pregnant. This was not planned. Diana is rattled. Because she has always been against abortion, her biggest wish is for her boyfriend to stand by her and the child.
A Nasty Surprise
The news hits the new father like a bombshell. For him the situation is clear: the child has to go! He sees his plans to emigrate and pursue his career in danger. He begins to put pressure relentlessly on Diana to get an abortion.
It hurts her deeply that her boyfriend abandons her in this situation. Depressed and alone, she begins to question her standpoint on abortion. Her insecurity is heightened by the fear that her savings won't be enough to cover life with her child.
Search for a Foothold
Diana confides in her mother, who was also once an unplanned child, about her crisis. Many years before, her grandmother struggled to prevent Diana's mother from being aborted. And through her mother's head flashes the thought, "Now I have to save my grandchild!" So she searches the internet all night, looking for help for her pregnant daughter. The next morning, she presents Diana with the phone number of the SAMC helpline.
Diana calls immediately. She tells the counsellor that she originally wanted to keep her baby, but now she is totally confused. Her boyfriend has now recruited his own mother to help pressure Diana into having an abortion. The counsellor tries everything she can to calm Diana down by reminding her that other people's wishes have no priority over her own and her child's. She encourages Diana to listen to her heart and to keep her baby.
Diana stays in contact with her counsellor. She continues to circle around the question "Can I make it, alone with my child?" The counsellor explains the different ways that the SAMC can help her, and then says, "A lot of women before you were in similar, difficult circumstances. You can also get your life back on track with the help that is at your disposal!"
Liberating Decision
In the days following, Diana had to deal with renewed pressure, but managed to follow the advice of the SAMC. After three weeks, she and her mother meet the counsellor in person. Diana tells how the mother of her boyfriend is threatening to hire lawyers to ensure that her son will not have to pay any child support after the birth because he has clearly said that he does not want the baby. The counsellor reassures her by saying, "There is no chance for that, and the SAMC would also give you any legal help necessary!" After talking for hours, all of the questions and concerns are addressed.
The counsellor's explanations, and the conviction that the SAMC would be there to support her, help Diana to recover her inner strength: she decides to keep her baby. Her mood keeps improving, and she joyfully prepares herself for the coming birth.
Happiness is Bigger than the Problems
After the birth of a healthy baby girl, Diana tells her counsellor, "How happy I am, that I decided to keep my daughter!". While receiving maternity benefits, Diana does well financially, so the counsellor helps her to begin legal action to prove paternity.
Until that is decided, the SAMC provides the new mother with material help. Diana says, "I am so glad that you have stood by me through all of the difficult times. You have given me hope!" Then she adds, "Every time I look at my baby, I am the happiest person alive!"
Swiss Aid for Mother and Child (SAMC)
Post-office box
CH-4142 Münchenstein
Phone 0800 811 100 (free call)
helpline(at)samc-foundation.ch

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Falling in Love with the Work
December 9, 2009 Mack Newton On Mack Newton
When I returned from Vietnam some years ago, I re-started my martial arts training. I had already achieved a black belt in Karate, but when I decided to enter Taekwon-Do, it meant starting over from the beginning as an adult. It was difficult. Not only was I recovering from Vietnam injuries, but I kept focusing back to my old karate training.
I really didn't like to work as hard as was necessary to train in Taekwon-Do. My instructor had a little warm-up pen for those who arrived late to class. Late arrivals had to change into uniform and go into that little pen and stretch until the class was done with their initial exercises, or until he was ready to bring you into the class. I often came late intentionally to avoid the exercise portion altogether.
A young Korean man in the class befriended me. He was roughly my age, but had spent many years training exclusively in Taekwon-Do. I was often in trouble with my instructor for my bad habits and frequent lateness. My young friend asked me why I was having so much difficulty.
"I really don't like the exercises," I told him. "I don't think I ever will like them. But I want to get my black belt."
"It is going to be very difficult for you to train over a long time period," he replied, "when you are only focused on the results or on gaining a rank. You need to fall in love with the work. You need to fall in love with the practice. I don't worry so much about getting better in Taekwon-Do, I just love the practice. I love being in line, doing the kicks and punches, I just love the work."
It took awhile, but I finally began to understand what he had told me. When I started falling in love with the practice itself, with pushups and stretching, with kicking and doing patterns, I started looking forward to going to class and even the pre-class workout. When I learned to fall in love with the work, the progress took care of itself. When I became caught up in the work, I quit worrying about promotion tests or the next tournament. I wasn't worried about the results, and so they seemed to come automatically.
Now as I look back on over 40 years of training, I realize it would be impossible for me to still have the same enthusiasm, the same commitment, the same creativity, desire, and enjoyment without falling in love with the work rather than what the work produced.
Work is exponentially harder for people who are only in love with the prize. You see many examples of this in life. If an Olympics competitor is in love with the idea of getting a gold medal, or finishing a particular race, they have nothing left to go on when they have accomplished their goal.
Some athletes, once they have achieved their goal, say "I'm never setting foot in another swimming pool again." Or "I'm never taking one more lap around the track. I'm done with it."
A similar example is when a person wants to lose weight or get healthy. If you are in love with the look you want to achieve or a number on the scale— but not the work itself—you will be stressed and burdened by the struggles it takes to achieve your goal. How much weight have I lost today? This week? How do I look in my clothes? Why can't I do this stretch?
When you're in love with the work itself, you feel pleasure and joy just from the smell of the studio, the interaction with other people, the sweat running down your face, the feel of your muscles under tension when you're stretching, you love the heat in the room. The actual process becomes a thrill for you.
Time flies when you are in love with the work. You lose more weight and get stronger and healthier faster. It seems to happen so quickly, because you're not focused on the prize.
It's very useful to think and visualize your goal, to imagine how it will feel when you achieve it. When you're in love with the work, you can still use mountaintop thinking by using your mind to project forward to see what you'll be like when you reach your goal. But by falling in love with the work, you can also remain in the moment, in the present, in the now.
Falling in love with the work empowers you to continue over a long period and not get burned out. Time flies when you're not thinking about results, you're thinking about the process. Instead of staring at the clock, you'll be amazed to notice that class is already over. It's very similar to what athletes and artists refer to as a state of flow—when you become so absorbed in the process that time ceases to exist.
Many goals can only be achieved over a long period of time. It's going to seem to take forever if you don't fall in love with the work. Without that love, your motivation can falter if the process gets difficult or you stumble over an obstacle.
When I was learning to love the work during my early Taekwon- Do training, I used the same affirmations and self-talk that I use to get better at anything else. I said to myself I love pushups, I love being in this class, I love doing all the things that make me great. It becomes a self-generating process. The quicker and stronger I became, the faster I became quick and powerful.
Many people put off pleasure and love for future whens…. when I get married…when I've lost 50 pounds…when I get a raise…everything will be perfect then and I can enjoy myself. But every time we get to one of those little stations in life, we discover it's not all we thought it would be.
Treasure the journey itself, the day-to-day process of life, and don't spend time worrying about the destination. If you fall in love with your work, you'll find not only fewer bumps in the road, but that more good things seem to happen faster in your life. When you reach your goals, you'll briefly look back and think how did that happen so fast?
Mack Newton
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It all began when I got back from a two-and-a-half week vacation in the United States a few years back. As I resumed my normal routine of running in the mornings before going to work, something didn't feel quite right. Specifically, there was a throbbing pain on the left side of my bum.
I'd had recurring trouble with my piriformis muscle before, so I began doing some stretches that I'd learned during my last round of physiotherapy. But after things got so excruciating that I began popping painkillers on a regular basis, I booked in to see an osteopath at a nearby facility.
The pain didn't go away. Instead, it migrated to different parts of my back over the next few months. There was one point when I could hardly walk. Meanwhile, my migraines – which had grown in intensity over the previous decade – were getting progressively more frequent.


Not great at teaching. I recommend taking this course somewhere else and transferring the credit, especially if you are interested in course subject or want to actually learn something.
Agree with most on here, not great, or accommodating. Very rude and clearly dislikes teaching!
This is the most lying dishonest person I have every meet.
Most useless prof. I have ever had. He know nothing about computers.
The worst prof. I have ever had. This is the worst experience of my life.


The insurance giant loses its way as rivals Geico, Progressive reinvent the business.
His dream of a broader financial services empire in ruins, Thomas Wilson is running out of time to revive Allstate's once-dominant insurance business.
Since Mr. Wilson became CEO of the country's second-largest auto and home insurer nearly five years ago, Allstate has stuck to its old ways while rivals using new direct-sales techniques grabbed most of the growth in the $164-billion U.S. auto insurance market. Customers are defecting, premium revenue is falling and Northbrook-based Allstate's stock price is down by half since Mr. Wilson took the helm.
Shareholders seem fed up. Nearly 1 in 3 voted against his re-election as board chairman at last month's annual meeting, the highest percentage of "no" votes for any CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company this year.
"I think (he has) probably a year, maybe two at the most," says Meyer Shields, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore.
More than Mr. Wilson's job is at stake. Allstate's long slump casts doubt on the future of an 80-year-old company with deep roots in Chicago and 8,400 local employees. Allstate faces the same fate that befell other stalwarts of corporate Chicago — Motorola Inc. and Tribune Co., to name two — that foundered after missing fundamental shifts in their industries.
If Mr. Wilson, 53, can't turn around the auto insurance unit, Allstate faces a long, painful shrinking process that could add many more layoffs to the roughly 1,000 local jobs it has cut since the financial crisis. With its stock trading well below book value, the company also could be vulnerable to a takeover.
"It is going to have to grow," Mr. Shields says. "It's taking forever to turn around."
The eighth-largest Chicago-area company, Allstate was born during the Great Depression as the in-store insurance arm of Sears Roebuck & Co. It became independent in 1995, when Sears spun it off in a $9-billion deal.
Allstate moved beyond the Sears store insurance counters, building a network of exclusive agents around the country to sell auto and homeowners coverage to middle-class Americans in the postwar era. It remains a behemoth. About $1 of every $10 spent by U.S. households on car insurance goes to Allstate; it serves nearly 16 million households.
During the 2000s, Allstate moved to reduce its reliance on insurance by expanding into banking and retirement products. It expanded in life insurance, too, selling annuities through banks and other outside firms, as well as though its agents.
Mr. Wilson, as chief operating officer under predecessor Edward Liddy and later as CEO, was the architect of the strategy. But his vision of Allstate as a financial superstore for the middle-class clientele of its agents never bore fruit, and it left the company more vulnerable than most property-casualty insurers to the financial meltdown of the late 2000s. Allstate posted a loss of $1.7 billion in 2008, largely due to investment losses. The next year, it cut its dividend in half.
Meanwhile, natural disasters pummeled the homeowners insurance business. Hurricane Katrina caused $3.7 billion in losses for Allstate in 2005, leading the company to curtail homeowners policies in coastal areas. That hurt its auto business in those regions because Allstate's customers tend to buy auto and homeowners policies from the same insurer.
While Allstate was trying unsuccessfully to diversify, rivals were revolutionizing the auto insurance business, which Allstate still counts on for most of its sales. Auto premiums generated 55% of its $31.4 billion in revenue last year.
Geico and Progressive Corp. found a new formula for growth in the relatively mature business. They crafted a lower-cost model combining direct sales over the Internet and telephone with heavy television advertising. Offering lower prices and more convenience, they grew rapidly at the expense of Allstate and other insurers that sell mostly through agents.
Meanwhile, Bloomington-based State Farm Insurance Cos., the largest car and home insurer in the U.S. and a mutual company owned by its policyholders, is consistently rated better for claims handling and service than Allstate. Unlike publicly traded Allstate, it can offer lower prices without worrying about Wall Street's reaction to the resulting shrinkage of profit margins. State Farm's auto insurance business is still growing despite an online presence even smaller than Allstate's.
Allstate finds itself in a no man's land — it's not the cheapest auto insurer, and it's not known for providing the best service.
Mr. Wilson, who declined an interview request for this story, isn't the first Allstate CEO who failed to grasp the power of direct selling to reshape the industry. But he appears to get it now.
He dramatically changed course with a $1-billion deal last month to acquire San Francisco-based online auto insurer Esurance Insurance Services Inc. Formed in 1999, Esurance outsells Allstate's 10-year-old Internet platform.
Under Allstate, Esurance will keep its brand name and sell policies at lower prices than Allstate agents offer. That's another break with the past.
Shareholders are turning up the heat on Allstate Corp. directors.
At last month's annual meeting, directors Joshua Smith and H. John Riley Jr. barely cracked the 50% vote mark needed for re-election to the board. Chairman and CEO Thomas Wilson saw a 31% vote against him — the highest percentage of "no" votes for any CEO of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500.
Three familiar local names — former Illinois Tool Works Inc. CEO W. James Farrell, former Transora Inc. CEO Judith Sprieser and former Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. executive Andrea Redmond — attracted the opposition of about 40%. A fourth, former McDonald's Corp. CEO Jack Greenberg, got a thumbs-down from 31.7%.
The votes bode poorly for Mr. Wilson's future and put intense pressure on the board to act if results don't improve soon, says Charles Elson, chairman of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
"You can't ignore it," Mr. Elson says. "You have to make some significant changes."
Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services chided the board for approving $9.3 million in pay for Mr. Wilson last year, despite shareholder returns that lagged an index of comparable companies.
ISS also took issue with the board's response to a shareholder vote calling for Allstate to allow the owners of at least 10% of its stock to call a special meeting of shareholders. Instead, Allstate set the threshold at 20%.
In an emailed statement, Allstate said, "The stockholder support for our board was down this year because our board acted to implement the right for stockholders to call special meetings at a different threshold (20% vs. 10%) than had been part of a stockholder proposal which received majority support in 2009 and 2010."
As for Mr. Wilson, "Ultimately, it's pretty hard for (management) to last with that kind of opposition," Mr. Elson says. "Unless you tell a pretty convincing story next year, it's going to be pretty hard."
When Allstate launched an online sales operation in 2000 under Mr. Liddy, it didn't undercut its agents on price, fearing a backlash from the 15,000-plus salesforce.
"To me, that was the fatal flaw from the get-go," says Jeffrey Lewis, an Allstate vice-president from 1999 to 2004, who helped launch the effort. Mr. Lewis, now retired, says the customer "expectation was, 'If I did all the work myself, I was going to get a better price.' "
Geico and Mayfield Village, Ohio-based Progressive were happy to meet that expectation. During the ensuing 11 years, Allstate's annual online sales reached $700 million, while Geico's surged by $10 billion.
Mr. Wilson says things will be different with Esurance. But his new online unit will need a big dose of ad spending, which already is soaring as auto insurers vie more feverishly each year for consumers' attention.
Esurance spent $100 million on ads last year, badly trailing Geico, the industry's big spender at about $800 million. Allstate's ad budget is around $500 million, concentrated on the familiar "good hands" ads featuring actor Dennis Haysbert and Dean Winters' cheekier "Mayhem" character personifying all that can go wrong in the world. The company plans to advertise Esurance separately, with some sort of tagline identifying it as an Allstate unit.
"We'll expand (advertising) appropriately, but it will be at a reasonable return," Mr. Wilson told investors this month.
More ad spending puts more pressure on profits, a fact not lost on investors wondering how "Mayhem" can garner so much buzz (500,000 Facebook fans and nearly 10 million YouTube views) without boosting Allstate's sales.
Wall Street generally approves of the Esurance acquisition, but Allstate stock got no boost from the deal. Some question Allstate's ability to execute, given past missteps.
A $1.2-billion deal in 1999 for Chicago-based CNA Financial Corp.'s auto and homeowners insurance unit was supposed to expand Allstate's sales through independent agents. But Allstate backed away from the strategy after too many high-risk customers signed up. Its sales through independent agents shrank to $1.1 billion last year from $3 billion just after the CNA acquisition.
"Given their track record, what happens (to Esurance)?" says Greg Peters, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates in Chicago. "It may grow in the short term, but if history repeats itself this will be a shrinking book of business over the long term."
And while Allstate aims to compete more effectively with Geico and Progressive on their turf, they're targeting Allstate's stronghold among older consumers who like to buy auto and homeowners insurance from the same company. Until recently neither sold homeowners insurance. But both have linked up with home insurers to offer a bundled product.
"It's a huge chunk of business we're after," John Sauerland, Progressive's president of personal lines, told investors this month.
In the meantime, Allstate is creating its own sort of mayhem within its captive agent force, which accounted for more than 90% of its $26 billion in property-casualty insurance premiums last year. The company is culling low performers and pushing for consolidation among its 11,500 agencies, hoping bigger operations will provide better service. Executives have said the number of agencies could fall by as much as 25%.
Agents say management is sending out more "threat letters," warning agents that they'll be terminated if they don't start hitting sales targets.
Allstate also is reducing base commissions for many agents and making more of their pay contingent on reaching sales goals set by the company.
"The morale today is probably at its lowest that I've ever seen," says Jim Fish, executive director of the Gulfport, Miss.-based National Assn. of Professional Allstate Agents, a frequent critic of the company over many years.
Some agents are leaving Allstate to form independent agencies and selling their old customers cheaper policies from other insurers. It's not particularly hard to do.
Allstate Corp. put food on the table for Greg Haynes and his family for five decades before he decided he'd had enough. Like his father, who started as an Allstate agent in Victoria, Texas, in 1954, Mr. Haynes sold insurance for Allstate, too, from 1990 to 2009. For the first half of that period, he did well, doubling his father's book of business to $5 million.
Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit, slamming Allstate with $3.7 billion in losses. The insurer responded by pulling back from areas prone to hurricane damage, and half of Mr. Haynes' customers were no longer able to get homeowners insurance from him. They left in droves, and his $5-million book withered to about $2.5 million. "Those customers would say, 'If you don't want my home, you don't want my auto either,' " he says.
Then the recession hit, and he says Allstate's prices weren't competitive. "They'd say, 'I love you, Greg, but I'm looking for ways to save money,' " he says.
In late 2009, Mr. Haynes, 51, took a $300,000 company buyout and hung up his shingle as an independent agent, joining with another fed-up Allstate veteran, John Burgman, 54. Their firm, Victoria Insurance Group LLC, has $2.5 million in premiums, and Mr. Haynes estimates about 20% of his old Allstate customers are with him.
Mr. Burgman says he and Mr. Haynes haven't had to do much soliciting in their town of 60,000, home to petrochemical plants and a soon-to-be Caterpillar Inc. factory. "You see people at the grocery store," he says. "You cross paths."
Mr. Haynes says he gets a couple calls a month from unhappy Allstate agents picking his brain on "going independent."
"I tell them, 'No. 1, they better start saving their money,' " he says. Then, he says, "My advice: Get out of Dodge."
Agents who leave the company get a one-time severance payment equal to 1½ times a year's commissions. So, an agent with a $1-million client list can receive up to $150,000. There are no restrictions on setting up a competing agency other than locating it at least a mile from the former Allstate franchise and refraining from soliciting former customers for a year.
Greg Haynes started his own agency in Victoria, Texas, in late 2009 after taking a $300,000 buyout from Allstate following nearly 20 years as an agent. He estimates about 20% of his former Allstate customers now are with him and are insured by other companies.
Defecting agents say the power of Allstate's brand — an advantage the company touts in missives to agents — is no match for competitors' lower prices.
"We sell from Hartford, Travelers, Safeco," says Mr. Haynes' partner John Burgman, another former Allstate agent. "When the difference (in price) is 25% on an annual premium, branding takes a back seat. It really does."
Joseph Lacher, Allstate's property and casualty president, told analysts this month that the agency overhaul will take about two years but will create agencies that do a better job of retaining clients and selling other insurance products to auto policyholders. In the short term, though, he acknowledges the company could lose some customers.
"We're convinced that . . . over the couple-of-years transition, (agency performance) will improve," he said. "But inside of a year, we could see a little noise around it."
In a statement, the company adds, "Our growth strategy is to serve customers well and attract new business with effective marketing campaigns such as 'Mayhem.' This is a great time to build an Allstate agency, and we have had no problems retaining high performers or attracting talented entrepreneurs to our company."
Analyst Mr. Shields says Allstate hasn't explained adequately why bigger agents are better. And he believes the risks of the agency-rationalization campaign are higher than the company admits.
"I honestly don't (understand)," he says. "I wish I did."
Allstate is still struggling to rebuild its finances following the crushing hit to shareholders' equity suffered during the financial crisis. Its operating returns on equity hover below 10%, far less than its 14% average over the past decade. Since its $1.7-billion loss in 2008, Allstate has posted modest earnings of $854 million, or $1.58 per share, in 2009 and $928 million, or $1.71 per share, in 2010. Revenue fell slightly last year to $31.4 billion from $32 billion in 2009.
At a recent "investor day" presentation, its first in over a decade, Allstate's top brass laid out a three-year plan for rebuilding its returns to 14%.The plan depends largely on big rate hikes on homeowners policies.
Homeowners insurance continues to bedevil Allstate. Six years after Katrina, a spate of tornadoes and other storms have caused big losses. Allstate suffered $2 billion in losses during April and May alone, nearly equal to all of its catastrophe losses in 2010.
Worries about Allstate's future are reflected in the price of its stock. At $29.43 last Friday, Allstate stock traded at 81% of its book value per share. Progressive shares, by contrast, fetch more than twice book value.
The dividend cut has yet to be restored, and Allstate has just begun repurchasing stock at modest levels — something it was doing aggressively before the crisis. Analysts who saw the company's ultra-low stock price as a buying opportunity are having second thoughts.
Citigroup's Keith Walsh cut his rating to "hold" from "buy" after the investor conference, laying out his doubts in a note that emphasized he's "not buying into management's plans."
quote|Meyer Shields, analyst,Stifel Nicolaus & Co.


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text:
Airstrikes will Strengthen ISIS, says Fayyad
Former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister says root causes must be addressed
By Ashish Kumar Sen
The ongoing coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham will do very little to destroy the militant group and may, in fact, enhance its ability to recruit more fighters, according to Salam Fayyad, a former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.
ISIS is a "nonstate actor" and it will be "very, very difficult to win a war in a decisive way," Fayyad said at the Atlantic Council on February 11.
"We need to begin to look at the content of the military component of the effort so far…If it continues to be of the kind that has been taking place for the past six months, it is not out of the question that this kind of intervention could actually reinforce ISIS' hand and make it stronger and better able to recruit more fighters," he added.
US President Barack Obama on February 11 asked Congress for authorization to continue fighting ISIS, which he said poses "a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, and to US national security."
The US has cobbled together a coalition of more than sixty countries to work toward eliminating the threat posed by ISIS. The coalition has conducted more than two thousand airstrikes on ISIS targets.
Obama said in remarks at the White House that the military campaign is working.
"We're disrupting their command and control and supply lines, making it harder for them to move. We're destroying their fighting positions, their tanks, their vehicles, their barracks, their training camps, and the oil and gas facilities and infrastructure that fund their operations. We're taking out their commanders, their fighters, and their leaders," Obama said.
"Our coalition is on the offensive, [ISIS] is on the defensive, and [ISIS] is going to lose," he added.
Fayyad, however, said it would be very hard to defeat ISIS.
"All it takes for some to survive bombings and they will declare victory," said Fayyad, who is a Distinguished Statesman in the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
"What you have here…is an insurgency-turned-self-proclaimed state. You go after them militarily, you risk another transformation back into insurgency," he said.
While US and NATO military operations against al-Qaeda degraded the terrorist group's ability to carry out attacks in Afghanistan, the operations in Iraq and Syria are not of the same order of magnitude, said Fayyad.
"If their command and control is not completely degraded then you are looking at a serious risk of this becoming a more dangerous phenomenon internationally, not only regionally," he added.
Fayyad said religion is "almost like an afterthought" for groups like ISIS and that a strategy needs to be developed that addresses the root causes of this problem, including high rates of youth unemployment and a deep sense of injustice.
Stephen J. Hadley, who served as National Security Advisor in the George W. Bush administration and participated in the panel discussion, agreed.
If the US rolls back ISIS, but fails to address the underlying problems "they will fester and we will in four or five years have ISIS 2, which we now know will be more brutal than ISIS 1, and they will in the end of the day come for us," said Hadley, who is a member of the Atlantic Council Board of Directors.
"We need to help the people in the region try to find a way forward, and then we're going to have to make a commitment to do that recognizing that it is going to be the work of decades, if not a generation," he added.
Francis J. Ricciardone, Vice President and Director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said ISIS' rise has underscored the gravity of the grievances in the region.
"Maybe this is a service that ISIS has almost provided with blinding clarity to us in the West and the stakeholders in the region that the problem is actually a profound challenge to attack on the very legitimacy of the order of regional states," said Ricciardone, who served as the US Ambassador to Turkey from 2011 to 2014.
"They are not challenging regimes that have governed badly … they are not challenging insufficient provision of services…they are challenging the source of legitimacy of those who say, 'We are the state, we set the rules, we enforce them, we govern, we provide and guide economic activity etc.,'" he added.
Fayyad said the US must make a strategic decision to "be on the right side of the people."
Ashish Kumar Sen is an editor with the Atlantic Council.
Middle East Security Initiative
Stephen J. Hadley
Salam Fayyad
Francis J. Ricciardone
Ashish Kumar Sen


So, I was up at 5.30 this morning to head to the mountain I was going to see the eclipse from. The eclipse was due at 10.24 according to the website I'd read it from. However, having made it to the top in reasonable time, 10.24 came and went, and the faint glow of the sun showed no signs of dimming.
Having just found an internet cafe I now see that very cleverly the time was quoted as UTC, not local time. I simply didn't consider that one would write an eclipse time in anything but local time! So, this means I have another 6 hours to wait, which may just give time for the clouds to move a little.
Still, I've seen a rather beautiful, sacred mountain this morning, with stunning panoramas, gorgeous pagodas, and piped music blasting out to remove any feelings of authenticity the place may once have had. That said it was stunning and I'm glad I made the journey here, if only for that.
Off to read some papers now (no cafes here to work in, so I'll sit in the lobby of the hotel for a while) and will head out again later to try my luck once more. After this I have a four and a half hour train ride with no seat (all the seats were sold out by the time I arrived here and there was no way to book the ticket at my previous location). So, I'll be standing till around 1 in the morning, crash in a hotel for the night and then take off on another 16 hour train ride for Beijing tomorrow evening. Adventures, adventures!
For you, all the fun stuff!
Hey Ryan, yep, this has been a fun trip, though your huge trip sounds to have been an amazing experience!
BN, would you expect any less from me?


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