17 March 2009

Isabel Kershner's Linguistic Acrobatics




I saw this photo in the NYT and the thought that immediately struck me was "Whose this gangster and his hired killers?"

Then I started reading the article and laughed out loud when I read the NYT's linguistic acrobatics used to describe the other fascist gangster Avigdor Lieberman: "an often indelicate and outspoken politician whose threatening language aimed at Arabs arouses suspicion and some trepidation abroad". To be fair, she does try to make amends towards the end of the article, although not that well "Mr. Lieberman ran a contentious election campaign that many here and abroad saw as racist, focusing on the question of loyalty of the Arab citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the population."

That sort of language could only come from the the keyboard of a Brit, and there it was, Isabel Kershner's name credited as the author. So who is Kershner when she's at home?

Well, first off, according to Wikipedia she's British, born in Manchester. She's now an Israeli resident married to Hirsch Goodman, senior fellow at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, which in 2006 called for "military action to stop Iran's nuclear program." This is still considered a "serious" option by IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashke-Nazi.

She was a faculty member of the Anita Saltz Education Center of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, Jerusalem. Prior to joining the NYT, she worked for the Jerusalem Report - owned by the Jerusalem Post. According to Wikipedia, she has also written for The New Republic, which has "a hawkish viewpoint on foreign policy, especially in its support for Israel."

According to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com: "In 2002 and 2003, The New Republic was one of the leading crusaders for an attack on Iraq, railing against what it called "the intellectual incoherence of the liberal war critics." By December 2006 it had admitted this: "The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war."

There are of course unscrupulous propagandists who accuse her of being a 'liberal' for describing the Likud party as "far-right-wing", and the self-annointed spokesman of the monster raving loonies of the illegal settler movement (who have the chutzpah to use a 3,000 year old fairy story as the basis for an immoral and illegal land grab), Yisrael Medad, describes her as "a bit biased", "misleading", and her writing as "troublesome"...

For once, I agree with him.

Update: 21/3/09:

Mr.Medad is the settlers' propagandist-in-chief. I present you with his laughable performance on BBC's Hardtalk:

1of3 BBC Hardtalk Interview with israeli settler 03.2007



2of3 BBC Hardtalk Interview with israeli settler 03.2007



3of3 BBC Hardtalk Interview with israeli settler 03-2007




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Going back to the Freeman Affair in the US, Philip Giraldi has an excellent piece exposing the WaPo's extreme right wing Israeli support.

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And in Iraq, US troops killed a 12 year old Iaqi girl with 'warnng shots'. According to CNN "A 12-year-old girl died Monday after she was struck by a warning shot fired as a vehicle accelerated toward an Iraqi police station, said the U.S.-led military coalition."

The only problem is that the girl wasn't even in the car, she "was standing about 100 meters (about 328 feet) behind the vehicle". What happened to the vehicle and its occupants? We don't know. What will happen to the trigger-happy murderer? The "shooting is under investigation" according to "the military". We all know what that means. No action will ever be taken.

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Meanwhile back in London....

"A group of leading judges and investigators called yesterday for a “prompt, independent and impartial” investigation into allegations of war crimes committed during Israel’s offensive in Gaza."

Will it ever happen?
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Also, here is Zbiginiew Brzeznski's off the record speech to British Elites:


Zbiginiew Brzeznski - Off the record speech



t.

7 comments:

YMedad said...

Hi there, this is Yisrael Medad one of those "unscrupulous propagandists", a "self-annointed spokesman of the monster raving loonies of the illegal settler movement (who have the chutzpah to use a 3,000 year old fairy story as the basis for an immoral and illegal land grab also criticise her)". We can do without the adjectives but why is Bible history a "fairy tale"? There is enough scientific and archeological evidence, as well as literature from surrounding nations, to confirm most of what is included in the Biblical account. But more than that, Jews lived in the Land of Israel for centuries upon centuries and most importantly, for centuries prior to the Arab conquest and occupation. So why go bonkers about this?

The Daily Sketch said...

"There is enough scientific and archeological evidence, as well as literature from surrounding nations, to confirm most of what is included in the Biblical account."

This is of course fundamentalist bullshit. There is no scientific or archeological evidence of the existence of god, consequently the rest of your theory falls flat. If you cannot prove the existence of god how can you possibly prove that this entity you call god gave you the title deeds to a piece of land?

YMedad said...

With all due respect, I perhaps was not understood.

I was not arguing about whether God exists, in what form or whatever. I was simply trying to say that from the historical point of view, whether God existed or not, the Jewish people lived in the Land of Israel, built two Temples there, fought wars there, listened to prophets and were ruled by Kings there.

In other words, just like every other people who have a state or homeland or whatever, like the British or Spanish, the Jewish people have had on ongoing 3000 year old connection with a piece of territory that, in 1917 (Balfour), 1919 (Versailles), 1920 (San Remo and 1922-23 (League of Nations), all the world recognized should become the reconstituted Jewish national home.

The Arabs, on the other hand, came to this area only in 638 CE, less than 1400 years ago, never made it a separate "Palestinian" entity and refused to accept any compromise on the matter and went to war (in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39 and 1947-49 and terror afterwards), and lost.

End of story.

David Sketchley said...

Not exactly end of story, Yisrael, is it?

You are being highly disingenuous, but then that's your speciality.

Your friends in the illegal colonies don't believe what you write any more than you yourself do. The whole point according to these Jewish taliban, is that God gave them the land.

You yourself admitted as much on BBC's Hardtalk. I have to point out that Stephen Sackur completely showed you up to be the charlatan you are. You contradicted yourself so many times it was almost embarrasing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S1ujv5tKag&feature=related

YMedad said...

Actually, I think my 2003 appearance on Hardtalk with Tim Sebastian was better. Take a look and then you might not be so anti and angry: here

David Sketchley said...

This whole biblical thing was also responsible for the Israeli war crimes in Gaza. In fact, any sane person, looking at what happened in Gaza, can only recoil in horror at the degeneration of Israeli society in general, and as the prime movers of that degeneration into a moral abyss, the settler movement and their infiltration into the armed forces and the transformation of those armed forces into a truly rotten nazi machine.

"Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive they were fighting a "religious war" against gentiles, according to one army commander's account published Friday.

"Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land," he said."
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52J36V20090320

David Sketchley said...

Israel Faces Uncomfortable Questions as Soldiers Point to Indiscriminate Killings
Soldiers Say They Were Pressured to Fight "Holy War"
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/03/20/israel-faces-uncomfortable-questions-as-soldiers-point-to-indiscriminate-killings/

During the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, repeated reports of indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians and other unsavory conduct were routinely dismissed by the government as enemy propaganda. It was an easy sell: the war was extremely popular domestically and a tight censorship regime kept the stories from being independently confirmed by media outlets. Yet with the war over the Israeli government is getting an unpleasant reminder of its military’s conduct during the invasion from a source it likely never expected: its own soldiers.

Several members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that took part in the invasion have publicly testified in recent days that, despite official claims that the troops’ behavior was impeccable, lax rules of engagement led to killings of innocent civilians. Troops were ordered to smash into homes and kill everyone within, a sniper shot an unarmed elderly woman trying to flee the area. As one soldier put it: “I simply felt it was murder in cold blood.” The Israeli military has promised an official investigation.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Gaza war and the killings of civilians is the apparent religious aspect. One of the soldiers pointed to literature distributed to the troops by the military rabbinate, saying the clear message was “we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

Yet before the blame is laid solely on the military’s religious officials, one must acknowledge the entire unsavory culture of the soldiers. Today, Haaretz reports on a custom clothing outlet that prints T-shirts for soldiers. One shirt in particular shows a crosshairs across the stomach of a pregnant woman with the slogan (in Hebrew and English) “1 Shot 2 Kills.” From the testimony emerging lately, it seems likely this was indeed standard operating procedure for at least some of the snipers sent to Gaza.