Israeli airstrike into Gaza kills fighter

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Exactly. So if you oppose that, you are opposing radicals and a particular governmental policy of Israel. No connection to antisemetism there. And it's only partially linked to anti-Zionism, in that if you don't support Israel then you most likely don't support its expansion. But it doesn't go the other way.

Ok, I think you are wrong and it does go both ways. That has been my experience. I have been to Israel. I have been to the Middle East. The people over there don't just hate the presence of the Jewish State.... They hate Jews. The rest of that is a ruse by anti-Jewish supporters of the Arab cause.

(note I have not taken a side on the issue so don't paint me into this picture)

Originally Posted by Ibram
Anti-zionism means you think that the jews have no more right to kick people off their land for their own country than the christians or the sikhs or the bokonists do.

No... it means there is no god, no one said that Jews deserve shit more than anyone else. That they get to steal shit from anyone else, that they already own, because the magic sky pixie said so. That is what anti-Zionism is.
It means the Palestinians deserve to protect themselves and retaliate exactly as much as Israel and Israel does not deserve arms and funds from the US more than any other nation.
It means Israel is not fucking special, never has been and never will be. Religion needs to be ignored.
As a true libertarian, we need to stay out of it and never should have been involved in the first place.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

What propaganda? --asks Pierce from his ostrich pose.

Well, we could start with something the Holocaust Museum has to say about The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (let this title stand for the several it's been published under -- try the Wikipedia entry for a summary) :

Meanwhile, the forgery has found traction in much of the Middle East. Televised dramatizations of The Protocols have appeared on Egyptian television in October-November 2002 and on Al-Manar (Hezbollah) television in 2003. The latter version included scenes depicting Jews draining the blood of a Christian child as an ingredient in matzah (unleavened bread consumed by observant Jews during the Passover holiday; the actual ingredients are flour and water only).

In 2003, the manuscript library at Alexandria, Egypt reportedly displayed an Arabic edition of The Protocols as an example of a Jewish holy book.

In 2005, Iranian booksellers displayed copies of The Protocols and The International Jew at the Frankfurt (Germany) Book Fair, the world's largest.

The tragedy of The Protocols, Greene says, is that "a piece of propaganda that nurtured anti-Semitism during the Nazi period is still doing the same today."

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Actually, the great difference between Griff and Radar and myself is that I'm not a pacifist. They object to that. I ignore the objections.

I simply cannot be a pacifist; it's not a sustainable philosophy of life.

That Griff and Radar can't understand a libertarian who isn't a pacifist is not -- not directly anyway -- my problem. I don't think people who are that into freedom should be narrow-minded about it, for this seems to me exclusive of any possibility to be into freedom.

Griff, where the hell are you getting this "Trotskyite roots" idea?

Rkzen, when you understand that it's truer to libertarianism to promote, defend, and support the more libertarian society against the less libertarian, then I think you'll be a real libertarian. Otherwise, what you've got is passivism, to coin a term.

[Griff]

This is fast becoming the convenient redefinition thread. Not initiating force does not make one a pacifist.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Griff

Not initiating force does not make one a pacifist.

But there seems, does there not, a crippling unwillingness to -- actually win?

And I'd read from your quote not a Trotskyite root -- but an anti-Trotskyite one. These thinkers matured enough to drop Trotskyist philosophy and come up with something better -- and antithetical.

[Griff]

If actually attacked, you fight to win in a way that is productive.

The problem with advocating the Neo Con position initiating violence is that is was borne of the Trotskyite desire for international socialist revolution. It is incompatable with the Western ideal of self-determination.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Griff

If actually attacked, you fight to win in a way that is productive.

Yeah, right: allow the antilibertarian opposition the first strike.

Not helping bullies does.

[Griff]

"I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory."- Irving Kristol

[Griff]

"From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives – including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol – the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example, William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years, National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists, such as Burnham and Chambers. It played a major role in creating the Goldwaterite and Reaganite New Right and in stimulating an anti-Soviet foreign policy."- Seymour Martin Lipset

I have actually read what it means to be a libertarian and our philosophy on foreign wars.

Not our fight.

I would like to see one state created with no special treatment for either group. All former borders returned to UN specifications. All land stolen by Israel from their neighbors in the name of "god promised", ever, is returned.
Not a bit at a time, not with concessions, just returned.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

I would like to see one state created with no special treatment for either group. All former borders returned to UN specifications. All land stolen by Israel from their neighbors in the name of "god promised", ever, is returned.
Not a bit at a time, not with concessions, just returned.

That might have been possible at one time, but that little '67 war thingy and the one that followed a few years later, now followed by Iran going after a nuke, I doubt that will ever happen. But I bet you that the Persians would be willing to sacrifice the Arabs just to drop the big one on Israel.