My Dinner With Pamela Gross-Finkelstein

[kalian]

http://amconmag.com/2004_06_21/taki.html

At a sugar magnate’s posh dinner party in New York City last week, the lady on my right had just called Ariel Sharon a war criminal and a terrorist. I looked at her place card: Pamela Gross-Finkelstein. “You’re not German, by any chance?” I asked her. “No, I’m New York Jewish—and not a self-loathing one either,” came the answer. Pamela and I hit it off after that, as I did with the rest of the table—most of them very rich and Jewish—who happened to agree. Now I don’t usually report on private dinner conversations, but this was a breakthrough. It’s not everyday that someone, Jewish or otherwise, can criticize Likud and stay standing.

The fact that a few educated people in New York are starting to see the light gives me hope, however slight. Israel is acting in an outrageous, illegal, and criminal manner. Sharon is a disgrace, and the only thing he has managed to accomplish is to scare both Bush and Kerry into keeping their mouths shut, until Nov. 2, that is. Then he will begin his blackmailing all over again. At the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention in the nation’s capital a couple of weeks ago, both Tom DeLay and George W. Bush made it very clear: as goes Israel, so goes America. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg repeated the mantra during the Israel parade on Fifth Avenue a few days later.

If one had been asleep for the last 56 years and had just woken up, a-la-Rip Van Winkle, you’d think Colorado was under attack. The only trouble is that Israel is not America’s 51st state, AIPAC or no AIPAC. Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, fired on a peaceful demonstration killing 40 people and injuring hundreds, most of them teenagers and children, and Bush called the massacre “troubling,” a telling reaction. I have not heard Bush’s response to the killing of a 3-year-old Palestinian girl the day after the demonstration, and it’s just as well. He most likely would have asked for a clarification. Was the 3-year-old playing with her pigtails, or was she crawling on all fours?

However you cut it—and believe me, the Israeli lobby and the neocons are spinning like they’ve never spun before —this was an unprovoked attack against unarmed and peaceful demonstrators. Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Sharon, expressed regret at the deaths but denied that Israeli forces had planned to shoot into crowds. So there you have it. Shoot first, express your regrets, deny meaning to do it, and everything is hunky-dory.

Great editorial. So, do "progressives" on these boards agree with
this? Or are all these jews that express their anti-Sharonist
sentiments just a bunhc of "uncle Jakes"? :eyes:

[the Kelly Gang]

1. nice piece

[Classical_Liberal]

2. Hope the trend continues if indeed it is one.

.

[drdon326]

3. kick

.

[geek tragedy]

4. I've never heard that Jews couldn't criticize Sharon

I went to a school with plenty of liberal Jews, and though they're not big fans of Arafat and his crew, they also didn't hesitate to criticize the Likudniks.

[drdon326]

5. kick

.