(This post is brought to you by my yetzer-hara. That's the little devilish Donald-Duck that sits on your left shoulder, whispering advice you should ignore. Like writing a satirical post.)
"Mr. Netanyahu says he supports Mr. Obama's plan to engage the Iranians. He also supports the tightening of sanctions on the regime, if engagement doesn't work. But there should be little doubt that, by the end of this year, if no progress is made, Mr. Netanyahu will seriously consider attacking Iran. His military advisers tell me they believe an attack, even an attack conducted without American help or permission, would have a reasonably high chance of setting back the Iranian program for two to five years. "
Jeffrey Goldberg in the New York Times today
Dear Bibi,
Re: IRAN
Why not bomb, baby, bomb ? Or as the song goes,
Bomb, bomb, bomb! Bomb, bomb, Iran!
After all Iran is run by a Hitler-clone. Ahmadinejad is Amalek, according to your closest advisors. And we all know of the mitzvah to wipe out Amalek. Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe you off the map. He will bury you, and look what the US did to the Soviet Union after Kruschev made that threat….
I mean, the future of Israel, no, the Jewish people, no, the West is at stake.
You know that the policy of appeasement led by Barack HUSSEIN Obama is not going to work. Sure, give it some time, to make you and Israel look responsible.
But then bomb, baby, bomb.
Will you stop the Iranian nuclear program? Not according to your military advisors. You will only set it back a few years.
But think of the benefits:
- You will no doubt kill a few thousand innocent Iranians. With any luck, that number may be contained to a few hundred. That will guarantee that Ahmadinejad is reelected for life by an enormous margin.
- You will whip up the Muslim world into a greater frenzy against Israel and the US than it is in today. This means more terror, more suicide bombers, more Jews killed all over the world.
Does it get better than that, Bibi?
I mean, with more Jews dead, how can anybody pressure Israel to end the Occupation? With the international backlack creating the "New New Anti-semitism," will anybody worry about Gaza?
Think about it, Bibi….we want moshiach now.
Best
Jerry
PS. If you won't bomb Iran, you can at least plant an article in the New York Times by a friendly Jewish journalist – Jeffrey Goldberg will do the trick – that will exaggerate Israel's threat to bomb Iran. That way, you can win concessions from Obama without having to expend your capital. Goldberg is an Israeli citizen; he won't mind compromising journalistic ethics to help you out.
Bluff, Bibi, Bluff!
oh, am i happy to read you think that article is a bluff. i read it and started planing my (failed) escape from israel. i do hope that goldberg guy was exaggerating!
ReplyDelete"You will no doubt kill a few thousand innocent Iranians. With any luck, that number may be contained to a few hundred."
ReplyDeleteJust wondering how you get to your estimate on casualties. Have they built up their nuclear infrastructure that close to their civilian centers?
Bibi is pushing Obama in a corner with the Iranian issue. He knows that he has the best card. This is some sort of blackmail. He is saying to his powerful ally and protector "If you don’t stop the Iranian bomb through negotiations we’ll do the job”. He has even the gut to impose a time frame to Obama: talk until October. And of course, he is not giving a single miserable inch towards peace with the Palestinians. Even the problem of illegal outposts must be discussed beforehand. This country has become insane! The Palestinians are suffering but they are not the only one. Diaspora Jews are also emotionally blackmailed and trapped in a war logic that is not theirs. I see friends of mine, who where on the left, now becoming right-wingers on this issue. I sense they want war, in order to get rid once for all of the Iranian threat and the Arabs all together. And on the other side, I see more and more Jew-haters because of Israel’s behavior.
ReplyDeleteWhat has become of us, Jews!
"What has become of us, Jews!"
ReplyDeleteI think we'll be alright as soon as we get rid of all the Iranians and Arabs. That would really really help. Even if we could just get rid of 80-90% of them it would make things a lot easier. King Saul held back and look what happened to him. I say let's give it a shot.
Innocent Iranians? That's an oxymoron if I have ever heard of one.
ReplyDeleteIt has come down to this.
Either it's the Israelis or the Iranians.
So, choose your side.
In an universal, in an objective sense all lives are equal. The life of a Israeli is worth exactly the same as the life of a Iranian.
ReplyDeleteBut, sorry, I am no robot. I do not live life in an objective fashion. To me it does matter if the person who is dead is an Israeli or an Iranian.
And I am sure it would matter even more to me if I was one of those Israelis fated to suffer the torturous cruel death of radiation sickness if unfortunate enough to have survived the initial blast.
Wanting to survive, wanting your family to survive, wanting your nation to survive is no sin.
When people use the "all lives are equal" line to me my response is that to a mother her child is the most valuable person in the world.
Life isn't meant to be lived objectively. And I wouldn't want to live in a world where it was. I wouldn't want to live in a world where a parents values strangers children to the same degree as they value their own. For that would be truly be a hollow world indeed. That would be a world without love.
Either a bunch of Iranians or a bunch of Israelis have to die.
ReplyDeleteBut from your perspective I don't know where that leaves things.
An Iranian is worth just the same as an Israeli. No more and no less. And from an universal objective sense that is true.
So, yeah it is no worse that the people die are Israeli rather than Iranian. But then again, wouldn't the opposite be just as true as well?
So, really it doesn't matter if Israel Bombs Iran and thereby making the deaths be of Iranians instead of Israelis. It wouldn't matter if Israel didn't and thereby the deaths become that of Israelis, but it doesn't matter if they do either.
So, from an objective standard both scenarios are the same. Neither scenario being worse than the other.
So, in this case objectively therefore the outcome doesn't matter because it has equal significance either way.
That is if we look at at objectively. Looking at it objectively you shouldn't care what happens.
Of course I am a human being that fate has put me into a certain, place and time in history, a certain situation, and a certain position giving me a viewpoint subject to the influence of all of that.
And from my subjective position in life I say BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB Iran. Something I have wanted to see happen since 1979. Sure it is late in coming but better late than never. And sure, I wish that we would be the ones doing it but it is more important that indeed someone does it and if we can't I just thank G-d that Israel can.
Iran is no danger to anyone. It remains within its borders,and has no record of attacking its neighbours, unlike Israel. Israel is constantly at war,either with the people she occupies, or with her neighbours like Lebanon. Israel's army constantly itches for action and supplies ammunition to the politicians to make the necessary propaganda for war. This has a number of advantages. It reinforces the primacy of the army in Israeli life, it acts as a laboratory for new weapons which can then be exported, and it maintains the population in a state of anxiety. The passive population drink in this propaganda and look to their army as their salvation. This shows just how far from reality they are. Those whom the gods wish to destroy.....
ReplyDeleteHey, Bill, it is morally defensible to prefer your own family over other people.
ReplyDeleteWhere your logic and morality fails (well, one of the many places your logic and morality fails) is where you reason from that uncontroversial (except for Kantians) premise to the following: to save my family it is moral to kill thousands of innocent people who do not threaten my family.
That conclusion is part of what is known as "Mafia Morality", which is immoral. Most unreflecting people I know live their lives with Mafia Morality. Certainly a lot of the people who read this blog do.
Since you are apparently not used to thinking hard about ethics, Bill, you commit a common fallacy. I suggest that you read my post, "On Singling Out Israel for Moral Approbation"
Anonymous, did you leave that tripe on my blog before? You certainly don't expect me to answer it, do you? Or do you belong in the subjectivist club.
ReplyDeleteSorry for sounding insulting, but hey, everything is subjective, right?
Jerry, why don't you admit that you are against love?
ReplyDeleteWell I am pro-love. I am pro the fact that a Parent loves their own child far, far more than someone elses.
Would I kill thousands of people (or more accurately have killed on my behalf) to save my own family.
Absolutely.
We need our dark side to survive. Don't fear it. Don't hate love.
Let's not get tripped up on semantics here.
ReplyDeleteI for one am an absolutist but I realize that what I am absolutist about has been effected by who I am, which tribe I belong to, etc.
It's subjective in an universal sense but it isn't subjective in a subjective sense. In a pretty subjective sense it is quite absolutist.
There are absolute values that guide my actions but I do realize had I been born of a different tribe, etc these absolute values would have been different absolute values or at the very least applied differently.
But the fact is I wasn't born into a different tribe. I was born into mine. Which means there are some absolute obligations that I must abide.
One of these is to protect the tribe. So, no looking at it this way all lives are not equal. The lives of members of my tribe is far more important than those who aren't of my tribe.
Now, here is where we have to get careful with definitions. In some ways that can be considered an absolute statement in that it is unwavering. But of course the statement itself is subject to the one saying it. I don't expect members of other tribes to feel the same way about members of my tribe than I do about members of my own tribe, but I do expect members of other tribes to feel the same way about the members of their tribe that I feel about members of my tribe.
I guess the difference is of that of a participant and that of outside uninterested observer. Of course in an ultimate sense all lives are equal, but that doesn't stay the case when you are talking about how it is for the people involved. For the people involved their lives, the lives of the family, friends, fellow citizens are far more important than that of those who don't fall into those categories. That is how it is supposed to be. That is human.
That is love.
So there is an absolutist morality involved here. It isn't the same type of "moral relativism" that people usually mean by that term. After all, I can't change where fate has placed me so in a practical sense it is quite absolute.
" do you belong in the subjectivist club."
ReplyDeleteIt all depends on what you mean. I despise moral relativism but I also realize that we live in an imperfect world. I realize that while in one sense "all lives are equal" in another sense that is absolutely false.
To a Mother her child is the most valuable life in the world.
Sometimes in this world you must do "bad things". But indeed it is better for a lover of the truth to tell a lie than a liar to tell the truth. And in this imperfective world it is better to do evil than be evil, especially when the lives of your love ones are at stake.
I don't know if you are a Star Trek fan but in one episode they had "Abraham Lincoln" express his feeling about how war must be fought. As he put it you must "match their evil". The writer of that episode almost got it right but it is even a little worse than that. Merely "matching" them puts things into stalemate situation. You actually have to surpass their evil. You have to overwhelm them with violence until their ability and will to fight is crushed (I believe that was what the writer was trying to get at when he had Lincoln say you fight with "finality" so he really wasn't that far off but with all this stupid talk of "proportionality" it just needs to be clear that you must overwhelm your enemy which of course means that in the end your violence will be totally out of proportion to theirs).
"Where your logic and morality fails (well, one of the many places your logic and morality fails) is where you reason from that uncontroversial (except for Kantians) premise to the following: to save my family it is moral to kill thousands of innocent people who do not threaten my family."
ReplyDeleteBut obviously THEY DO threaten my family. Perhaps they don't intend to threaten my family, perhaps they can't help but to threaten my family, but at the end of the day what matters is that they DO THREATEN MY FAMILY.
So, when all is said and done the cold hard truth of the matter is that it is either them or me. It is either their family or my family.
And of course from my perspective having it be me and my family would be a bad thing.
Call it "Mafia Morality" if you like but the fact is that it's SURVIVAL Morality. And it isn't wrong to survive regardless of the prejudice that self-hating Jews seem to have against surviving.
Hey Jerry, you need to watch that Captain Kirk transporter accident episode again.
ReplyDeleteEither that or see the BBC Miniseries Jekyll.
Hyde is love.
Anonymous May 28, 2009
ReplyDeleteYou can be absolutely wrong in your belief about what is necessary to keep your family safe.
Don't forget that you are part of only one group within the tribe; not everyone agrees with your perspective of the situation.
How do you 'plant' an article in the NYT?
ReplyDelete"Lucy said...
ReplyDeleteHow do you 'plant' an article in the NYT?"
Stalin could do so quite effectively through his use of Walter Duranty.
So, yeah, wouldn't be the first time.
However, you have failed to demonstrate to me any other difference between your philosophies. Your good and your evil use the same methods, achieve the same results. Do you have an explanation?
ReplyDeleteYou established the methods and the goals.
For you to use as you chose.
What did you offer the others if they won?
What they wanted most. Power.
You offered me the lives of my crew.
One matter further, gentlemen. We fight on their level. With trickery, brutality, finality. We match their evil.
ReplyDeleteI know, James. I was reputed to be a gentle man. But I was commander in chief during the four bloodiest years of my country's history. I gave orders that sent a hundred thousand men to their death at the hands of their brothers. There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war except its ending. And you are fighting for the lives of your crew.