Bloomberg goes to Israel and opens his mouth

[ensho]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/nyregion/05mayor.html?_r=1&hp


In Israel, Bloomberg Shows His Support


-snip-

(after an air raid warning)

Calm but somber as he emerged from the safe room, Mr. Bloomberg played down the moment of panic. “I feel exactly the same way I do when I’m in New York City,” he said. “You are worried about it, you turn to the professionals, and I think what is obvious is that the Israelis are as well trained as the N.Y.P.D.,” he said.

-snip-

Mr. Bloomberg, who came here to express his backing for Israel and — like other New York mayors before him — to enhance his standing with Jewish voters back home, flew in at dawn on his private jet, the morning after Israel’s punishing air assaults segued into a ground war. “I think I speak for an awful lot, almost all Americans, who think that Israel is doing the right thing in defending itself,” he said during a stop in the southern city of Ashkelon, offering a message of unequivocal support he would sound throughout the day.

Traveling with him were Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, and Representative Gary L. Ackerman of Queens. They spent most of their day in the southern part of the country, first in Ashkelon, which has become a main target of Hamas rocket fire in the last week, and then in Sderot, a town on the Gaza border that has suffered most of the attacks.

-snip-

Asked about the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, Mr. Bloomberg replied sharply: “That they are putting people at risk is an outrage. If Hamas would focus on building a country instead of trying to destroy another one, then those people would not be getting injured or killed.”
-snip-
--------------------------

does Bloomberg, Kelly and Ackerman have to go to Israel and talk like this to please their Jewish constituents in NYC? is that true?

[ShortnFiery]

1. Aren't the self-righteous filthy rich just lovely human beings?

:eyes:

[subsuelo]

9. As Israel murders and massacres it's way into the new year

[GodlessBiker]

2. Yes, it's true. It's a ritualistic pilgrimage performed regularly.

[JuniperLea]

3. "to enhance his standing with Jewish voters back home"

Unless anyone mistakes his actions as humanitarian, or an act in support of peace.

Yeah, damn those Palestinians for going all David against their Goliath.

I hope God is watching this.

[CTyankee]

4. Do you think Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state?

I'd be interested in your answer. As a matter of fact, I'd like to know what other posters in this thread think about my question.

I'm seeing some code words here that disturb me...

[ensho]

5. seeing Israli neo cons killing women and children disturbs me

nt

[CTyankee]

6. And if Hamas's stated goal is to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, would that not by definition

mean killing women and children?

[ensho]

7. anybody killing women and children disturbs me, however

Israel's treatment of the Palistians has not been humane or even sane.

[CTyankee]

12. Do you believe that Hamas hates Israel because it has killed women and children?

I mean, is this the basis for the hatred? I'm sure they hate Israel's actions in this and prior conflicts, but is this the root reason for they're hatred of Israel?

If the basis for their hatred is their religiously inspired belief that Israel should be wiped off the map, utterly destroyed and its people decimated, then you've got a problem. Your feeling about treatment that is inhumane and not sane then can be looked at as it applies to Hamas...

[StudsT]

40. probably

not to mention rape, torture, and terrorism of a whole population for decades.

StudsT

[azurnoir]

30. Hasn't that little horsie been riden to death

Well the deaths of many women and children anyway? Destroying Israel is also Fatahs stated goal but I do not see any bombs falling on the OPT oh wait that might the settlements at risk.

here is a link to the PLO charter of which Fatah is a part

http://www.iris.org.il/plochart.htm

American Jewry: Fatah Charter Calls to 'Eradicate' Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/124315

Fatah and Hamas - Is There REALLY a Difference?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/20...

[LeftishBrit]

36. American neocons have killed a lot more women and children - should America not exist?

[Hell Hath No Fury]

8. I'll take that on.

Does Israel have the right to exist as a Jewish State?

Honestly? I don't know anymore.

And I say this as someone who has been 100% pro-Israel in the past.

If remaining a Jewish State means continued abuses of basic civil rights, engaging in premptive military actions, and an internal, two-tiered apartheid system by the Israeli government -- I simply cannot support that.

Everything the US has done in Iraq that I have protested against in the last 5+ years -- the assasinations, the torture, the indefinite imprisonment without charges, the kidnapping, the razing of homes, the use of white phosphorus -- all have been done by the Israeli government as well. I find it disgusting.


If the desire to remain a Jewish State means Jewish Israelis sink to the depths of inhumanity and engage in atrocities, then I think they have lost much more than any possible State - they have lost their souls.

[ShadesOfGrey]

14. I have to agree with you...

Of course Israel has a right to exist but it's the "as a Jewish state" part that I'm starting to question.

[CTyankee]

21. What is it about Israel being a Jewish state that you don't like?

How can Israel be anything BUT a Jewish state? :shrug:

[ShadesOfGrey]

25. Just thinking outside the box here...

but Arabs and Jews lived peacefully side by side in Palestine for a Millenium before the turn of the century, no?

[CTyankee]

27. I really don't know how peaceful their co-existence was. I do know that

Israel installed a democracy in their new country. I'm not sure if other Arab states had done that...

[CTyankee]

15. Do you think that if Israel is pushed into the sea and utterly destroyed that

the Palestinians will do a better, more humanitarian, less atrocity committing and apartheid committing job of governing that part of the world?

[ShadesOfGrey]

16. Is it either/or?

Israel exists and continues to oppress the palestinians or it is pushed into the sea?

[CTyankee]

19. No I don't, but that's because I believe a lot can and will be done internationally

once Obama takes office. And that is as it should be.

But if Palestinians get land and resources to live, will THEY renounce any aforementioned pledges to destroy Israel?

In other words, are their actions based on reaction to Israeli oppression or is it intrinsic to their religious beliefs that simply believes in the eradication of the Jews? If religious fundamentalism is their reason,then it will not stop regardless of WHAT Israel does. Israel by definition would be anathema and total war would be launched to achieve that goal. Religious ferver kills people rather effectively.

[AnOhioan]

28. The Palestinian people have not sworn to destroy Israel....

Hamas has...big difference.

If the Palestinians received the land and resources to live as others do, the violence may well cease.

We don't know though, what we do know is that the Palestinians have not had those things since before 1948.

[CTyankee]

32. If the desired goal is reached (and that would mean the destruction of Israel) would

the replacement model of government by the Palestinians be a democracy, as the Israeli model is? Would they tolerate the Jews that remained (if any were not exterminated in the process)? Or would they simply be expelled (as they have from, well, many, many countries over the years in Western Europe -- lessee, Spain, Russia,Austria, Germany, France -- have I left any out?). I have mercifully left out burnings at the stake in the Torquemada and the pograms in Russia and we don't even want to talk about Germany now do we).

Hmm, think this thing through and you come to an interesting conclusion, but I won't tell you in advance what that would be....

[AnOhioan]

37. The desired goal of Hamas? Or the Palestinian people?

I do not think the two are the same. I think the average Palestinian would be thrilled to have a country, one with secure borders, one with the possibility of economic progress, one that co-exists with it's neighbors.

I do not see the establishment Palestinian state as meaning the destruction of Israel.

[CTyankee]

38. I think we do have hope that the destruction of Israel is NOT the outcome of

a Palestinian state being established. Bush has aggravated the situation by not playing a more active role in negoatiation between the two parties. I think Obama is smarter and will do a lot better.

My real point here is to get people thinking about the history of what happened to the Jews and start some thinking about why that may have been the case.

You make a sane and positive statement. Thank you.

[HeraldSquare212]

10. Well, I'm starting to have some thoughts about Connecticut....

(humor)

[HeraldSquare212]

11. Do you think Israel's statehood justifies West Bank land and resources grab?

Lebensraum, it's called, right?

[CTyankee]

17. Tell me about what the Palestinians want.

If you can convince me that they are only reacting to Israeli violence, that they do not hold a world view in which Jews are wiped off the planet because they do not have a right to exist, then fine, our conversation is over. But I will ask for some proof that that is, indeed, the case first...

[HeraldSquare212]

18. Diplomacy based on your principles would never get started, much less succeed.

Would it be enoguht? I don't know. But it's certainly a minimum. But in any event, I'm not aware of principles of international law that state that if an entity is opposed to your existence you may steal from or obliterate that entity; if there were, we would have leveled Iran long ago, right? And Cuba would have been perfectly jutified in taking the Keys.

[CTyankee]

20. I don't think the analogy is a good fit. You could also argue that the U.S. has no problem with the

existance of an Iran, only with an Iran that threatens dangerous instability in the ME. And Cuba, as far as I know, has not tried to simply grab a piece of the U.S. because it was nearby.

[HeraldSquare212]

22. No, I'm saying that recognition of the right to exist is not a precursor to negotiation with

adversaries nor does it justify action against those adversaries, or else, as in my example, the US would be perfectly justified in attacking Iran, as Iran in its rhetoric states that the US should not exist.

[CTyankee]

23. But again we just want to change Iran, not cause the extinction of the Iranian people.

We're fine with a "peaceful" Iran.

My guess is that you would have been against the establishment of the state of Israel in the first place as an unwelcome intrusion onto other peoples territory...

[HeraldSquare212]

24. I may well have been. But I'm just saying that the fact that an entity won't recognize your right to

exist does not mean you don't negotiate with it or have the right to steal land and resources from it.

[CTyankee]

26. Actually, there has been lots of negotiation between Israel and a number of ME countries that

don't want Israel to exist.

And if Israel ceases to exist, what kind of government will the Palestinians install, do you think? Will it be a democracy? Will any remaining Jews have any rights or will they be rounded up and either killed or shipped off? Will the Palestinians then bring peace and harmony to the ME?

[Jefferson23]

13. Political opportunist imo.

[IndianaGreen]

29. Why doesn't he joint the IDF and go to Gaza to fight?

Or is Bloomberg another of those chicken hawks?

[IndianaGreen]

31. While Bloomberg is in Israel, here is what was going on in NYC

A group of Jewish protesters gathered in Union Square Monday to denounce the latest Israeli military action in Gaza.

"We know the Jews have experienced oppression throughout the centuries and we can recognize oppression when we see it.
And we know that the Palestinians here are the victims not the perpetrators," said Michael Letwin, NYC Labor Against the War.

"I know full well what genocide is, what racism is. And genocide and racism go hand-in-hand with the Israeli attack in Gaza," said Michael Kramer, an Israeli veteran.

It was a different scene at a rally near the United Nations.

Protesters, including some local elected officials, said Israel is just defending its citizens.

"No one likes war, no one likes violence, no one likes bloodshed. But, Hamas began a campaign of terror that's gone on for years. And I think Israel is doing all it can to end it in the only way they have left," said Congressman Anthony Weiner.

"The world needs to realize that it's because of Hamas that Israel is now operating in Gaza. It's because of Hamas that the Palestinian people in Gaza are suffering. And if Hamas would stop firing rockets, stop firing at Israel, there would be peace and Israel will not be operating in Gaza right now," said Avi Posnick, an Israeli supporter.

Organizers said another rally is being planned in front of the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday.

http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=91746

The video shows both sets of protests by NYC Jews, pro and anti Israel attack on Gaza.

[CTyankee]

33. Please, folks, let this give a rest to the idea that ALL Jews think alike on Israel!

I've known this for a long, long time. It is time many of you do too!

[LeftishBrit]

39. Most definitely we do not

I know Jews with views on this conflict that range from right of the Likud to extremely pro-Palestinian.

Jews are not monolithic on anything. 'Two Jews, three opinions'.

[bridgit]

34. A guy that seeks to end-run two terms as NYC mayor, flies off to lend support...

to a country filled with kith & kin...that circumvents the rights of, well, some in their neighborhood, so as to say.......sure, that's a proper use of time :sarcasm:

Mayor Michael Nero Quetzalcoatl Bloomberg Seeks Third Term

Hooray for absolute power corrupting absolutely! New York City chief Michael Bloomberg has petitioned the council for a rule change allowing sitting mayors to run for a third term, and surprise surprise the billionaire’s power grab has been satiated. Vladamir Putin--I mean Michael Bloomberg--can now serve twelve years, or eight more than Caligula got in Ancient Rome.

http://www.cinemablend.com/celebrity/Mayor-Michael-Nero-Quetzalcoatl-Bloomberg-Seeks-Third-Term-13009.html

[LeftishBrit]

35. If he went there on his money, it's his right to go where he wants and open his mouth as he likes

If he used taxpayers' money that's different; but it doesn't sound as though he did.