mona, i agree and support freedom and dignity for palestinians. while challenging israelis, you might also consider challenging palestinians to support freedom and dignity for israelis by renouncing the arms struggle and civilian rocket attacks. peace requires two.

I just came back from Egypt and I can tell you, as we both know, which the media is keeping the lid on, that the revolutions, plural, we are witnessing today, are also, very much, to regain our dignity. Not just to raise our voice against the oppression by our leaders against their own people, but also to raise our voice against the oppressive Israeli regime and let our countries stand up for what the majority of the population regards speaks to be the way forward, to end the injust, cruel, barbaric and inhuman occupation of Palestine. I am appalled by the hipocrisy of president Obama (and many others) the other day, mentioning the bloodshed in Libya as some kind of unpresedented action, never seen or experienced or even carried out by a brutal western military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course in the name of freedom and democracy.

J Street? That’s a pro-Palestine/anti-Israel lobbying group already. Preaching to the converted, isn’t it? And it seems it didn’t take long for this to become all about Palestine, again, did it? I’d rather you get back to talking about Egypt, myself. Specifically some of the atrocities committed on Copts in recent days. Why do I have to read about that on blogs of Western Christians, instead of on YOUR blog?

By the way, I was fascinated by reports of mass protests in the occupied territories the other day. So I opened the article and read with interest. But lo and behold: they were protesting the US veto of a resolution condemning Israel, and not their own corrupt and tyrannical leadership.

Business as usual for Palestinians, and life goes on without them.

joanne: mona, i agree and support freedom and dignity for palestinians. while challenging israelis, you might also consider challenging palestinians to support freedom and dignity for israelis by renouncing the arms struggle and civilian rocket attacks. peace requires two.

Mona won’t do any such thing because she has gotten into bed with the lunatic fringe of the western left and Israel is the ONLY problem in the middle-east that merits any attention as far as they are concerned. I would expect Mona to be increasingly hostile towards Israel in coming days as she pays back her patrons for the support they have given her recently.

Sorry, Mona, but I have to call it the way I see it. You’ve sacrificed any support you were due from the rest of the west as far as I’m concerned, so I hope your gambit works out well for you. Seems like you could have retained your independence and still been heard. Maybe even heard by more people.

Mona, J-street only pretends to represent Jews. It’s bankrolled by non-Jews and George Soros. It was not birthed from the Jewish community in America and as far as I can tell has no resonance with it.

“I challenged J-Street and Israel to join a revolution for freedom and dignity for Palestinians.”

Not only were you mistaken in the idea that you were preaching to Jews, but that your intended audience was the correct one. For how can the Arabs of Palestine ever achieve freedom and dignity as long as the oppressors of their everyday lives – the terror tyrants of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the P.A. – continue to be supported by Arabs and Muslims from abroad?

This is interesting to me…why do you all so quickly deteriorate your debates into the contest of who is mire wronged or wrong…..shouldn’t everyone have human rights….why don’t you start blog explaining your views and give articulation to your point…all dictatorships…hypocrisy…human rights violations are wrong no matter the reason no matter the victim or the perpetrator…stop shooting African immigrants…they are not all the mercenaries

Ah, and here it is again, the so called ‘programmer craig’, best known from Zeinobias blog, always on tour for spreading his hasbara crap.
Dude, you’re boring as hell. and so do your israelian government. As Mona said, always 10 days to late. Or 100 years, in my humble opinion.

Mona– I was so proud to sit in the audience at J Street yesterday and hear you speak. You were fabulous. I went up afterwards to say “hi,” but there was such a big admiring crowd around you that I had to give up and head for the next session. I look forward to your visit to our program in May.
Warmly, Nancy

Hi Mona,
I first saw you on the Lehrer Newshour during the Egyptian revolution and thought you were great. Now i just saw your speech at JStreet and wanted to tell you you are BEYOND AWESOME! That is the most exciting speech/ impassioned plea i’ve ever heard for the Palestinian cause. I’m really excited about their upcoming protests on March 15th. Have you seen their manifesto? Very moving.

Good luck to you in all your endeavors. I look forward to seeing you frequently in the future on the PBS Lehrer Newshour, Al Jazeera English, and DemocracyNOW with Amy Goodman and wherever else you show up! Thank you for all the work you do! Ciao!

Ah, and here it is again, the so called ‘programmer craig’, best known from Zeinobias blog…

Best known from there? lol. Dude, I hardly even bother reading that blog. I find it offensive. And I’ve been posting here on Mona’s blog since years before “Zeinobia” even had one. You obviously have no idea who I am or where I’ve been frequenting, so why do you pretend you do? Just like being a creep or something?

…always on tour for spreading his hasbara crap.

You are accusing me of being an Israeli propagandist? Or is it a jew you are accusing me of being? Either way, kindly keep the bigotry to yourself.

Dude, you’re boring as hell. and so do your israelian government. As Mona said, always 10 days to late. Or 100 years, in my humble opinion.

Again with the bigotry? Did you even have anything to say? Your entire comment was just an ignorant personal attack with no information and no opinion. And you call ME boring? A goldfish has more personality than you do.

Mona, that’s what I was trying to warn you about. You’ve gotten the “stupid crazy people” of the west on your side now. You’re chances of success just hit zero. The more “Schnellinger” types you have on your side the more support you lose amongst everyone who isn’t a loudmouth idiot.

I really liked your speech. It is true that the israeli government is currently only talking war… operation ‘cast lead’ was an abomination. I do hope that maybe Israeli younger people will give a positive response to your speech!

Craig, Schatzilein, it cost me a few minutes with old aunt Google to know what your agenda is and why I don’t have to take you seriously. I always do this before going ad hominem. So don’t bore me further.

Mona, I think you’re terrific but I have to agree with Craig (whomever he is) that the Israel delegitimizers are looking for any opportunity to co-opt your integrity. There has got to be a space out there for Arab pundits who can see the ME in 360 degrees, something I think you are able to do. It seems to me that those who claim that Israel was at the bottom of the Mubarak regime are as infantalizing of the Arab people as was the dictatorship.

Hi Mona,

Saw you on Bill Maher and have been running your RSS feeds on a couple of my blogs – Peace from Toronto! I am also a significant supporter of Palestinians, and believe that their freedom and dignity have already been boosted by Egypt’s peaceful revolution. The next step involves creating and building a nation.

I am involved with a small group proposing a new solar city (Yawm Jadeed) be built in Gaza, north of Rafah and west of Khan Younis. If any architects, urban planners, builders or financiers would like to support Yawm Jadeed or become involved, please email myself via yuyajoe at yahoo.ca

Stay involved, keep inspiring people, remain yourself!

Be good,

Yuya Joe

Craig and Schnellinger

I am not interested in hosting your personal quarrel. You’ve had a go at each other and responded to each other and Craig almost half this thread are your comments.

So unless either of your comments are actually about my J-Street talk, I am not posting them anymore. Please take your personal issues out on each other elsewhere. I’m trying to hear people’s views on what I said at J-Street.

OK, here’s my view of your J-Street talk: It’s been obvious for quite some time that you’re only interested in interacting with the western left. Many of your fans are not from the left. Many of us have been complaining. Your J-Street talk was the end of the road for me. I’m removing you from my bookmarks. Which is undoubtedly fine by you since you’ve never given a damn about the opinions of anyone who isn’t on the far left anyway.

I have to be honest. I hate all the Arab dictators. You cannot imagine how I wished to see the day that Mubarak, Ben Ali, Jordan’s queen leader(ya know his a male), Saudi’s prostitute king were overthrowned by people power.

However, somehow I dont wana see the brotherly leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi overthrowned. I think without him the world of politics would be so boring. The man is entertaining. Yeah sure his ruthless but his not as ruthless as Jordan’s queen and Saudi’s prostitute King.

The other reason I believe Muammar Qaddafi should not fall is because I know that purpose of the Western nation to be passionate about the situation in Libya is not because they care about the Libyans, it is because they see an opportunity to have prostitute puppet leader in place.

If any one was there to loot the resources of the Libyans let it be the Colonel because he atleast spends some of that money on Libya though majority of it he installs in overseas banks…Btw, Mona your beautiful…This coming from a Somali, because our woman are beautiful thats why…anyways, please do visit my blog, myhajj.blogspot.com

Hello Mona.. A great speech by you at JStreet..

However, to ask Israel to respect Palestinian rights is to ask them to give up the “Jewish Nature” of Israel..

That would mean putting down the segregatory wall that dehumanises Palestinians at a daily basis (West Bank)..

That would mean the release of 1.6 MILLION political prisoners from the concentration camp (a.k.a. Gaza) they’ve been locked down for half a century..

That would mean to allow SIX MILLION dissidents (a.k.a. refugees) back into the country and giving them the right to vote..

So, Mona, be careful what you ask for..

Hi Mona,

I like what you had to say at J Street, and very much agree that a peaceful movement would be the best means to end the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.

I have a particular perspective on this, as a U.S.-born-and-raised citizen of German descent– my mother was a Catholic German born in 1939 in Hitler’s Reich, and my father was born here in the U.S. to Lutheran parents who emigrated to the U.S.

So I’ve always thought about this a lot, in that the people from whom I am descended committed the horrific crime of the Holocaust against so many Jews, of whom only 500,000 of the six million dead were from Germany. My parents and their parents were NOT Nazis, thank God, but still their country of origin did embrace Hitler and his thugs and committed so many crimes against all of humanity.

It’s my 46 years of grappling with the above that underlines much of my thinking about a whole host of matters, and that’s why I mention it.

And that intersects with my thinking about peaceful, non-violent resistance of the sort practiced by Mahatma Gandhi to win independence for India, as well as practiced successfully by Martin Luther King, Jr. here in the U.S. to win greater acceptance (not PERFECT acceptance, alas, but we are always striving to form a “more perfect union” without ever actually to the perfect utopia), and recently practiced so admirably in your native Egypt to bring down the dictator Mubarak.

Like you, I very much feel that a peaceful movement of passive, non-violent resistance by Palestinians AND Israelis would do more to bring about a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than all the suicide bombings and murders by Hamas and other extremists ever have. I am just opposed to the fundamentalist extremists on the Israeli side who think their violence justified by G-D promising all the land to them.

I think Palestinian peaceful resistance will work, ultimately, because Israel is ultimately a country that can be shamed into repudiating its own extremists. Just as Gandhi’s movement shamed a majority in the UK to press for India’s independence, and MLK’s movement shamed a majority of white citizens in the U.S. to recognize the gross injustice perpetrated against citizens of African descent nearly a century after the end of our Civil War.

But there’s a problem I see, and that is that true totalitarians don’t give a damn about shame. Try to peacefully protest against Hitler, or Stalin, or Saddam for that matter, and they’d all gleefully thank you for making it easier to slaughter you en masse, and send the remnants off to their various dens of torture.

The other part to the equation is, those peacefully seeking their ends must not seem to desire the utter destruction of those they are protesting against. Some examples:

1) Gandhi and his followers sought independence for their nation, India, from the U.K., but did not seek in any way to harm the U.K. itself. Only the misguided Indian extremists who admired Hitler, or the Hindu extremists who in the end assassinated Gandhi, held to such delusions.

2) MLK, Jr. and his followers sought to reassure their fellow Americans that they sought only to fulfill the long-promised but equally long-denied dream of equality for ALL in the United States. Only in the fevered minds of the white racists of the KKK did this remotely equal destruction. And these violent white extremists were decisively defeated in the court of American public opinion, though some diehards still do not realize it.

3) Most recently, the peaceful, decentralized freedom movement in Egypt sought the peaceful end to Mubarak’s long dictatorship, but repeatedly emphasized peace, non-violence and that the “people and the Army are one.” This gave the out for the military to ultimately side with their own people over the dictator.

Which leads me to the biggest problem I see with the triumph of a peaceful revolution for Palestinians, and that is the violent extremists of Hamas.

The extremists in Israel, such as Avigdor Lieberman or the murderous Baruch Goldstein or the messianic settlers, are as real as Hamas, but are restrained (far too little, yes) by the norms of a democratic society. There are limits and red lines they dare not cross, and there is a political price to be paid when they do so.

But Hamas observes no such red lines, either in its wars against Israelis or against Palestinian moderates committed to peaceful co-existence with Israel. And they state openly and repeatedly that their aim is nothing less than the complete destruction of the Jewish state, basing the necessity of doing so on, among other things, the Czarist forgery that is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I personally want to see a free independent secular Palestine living in peace side by side with a free independent secular Israel, but I fear a decisive and violent defeat of Hamas is a prerequisite.

Or, more hopefully, a peaceful movement originating in the West Bank can lead to a much improved outcome in shaming Israel into doing the right thing… and this leads eventually to a repudiation of Hamas extremism from within by Gaza’s people. That would be the ideally least bloody way, but the cynic in me worries that I should not get my hopes up.

What do you think, Mona?

Why does everything always degenerate into the tiresome Palestinian issue? If, over the past 60 years, the Arabs had spent half as much energy raging against their own governments as they have at the Israelis, those tyrants would have been overthrown decades ago.

Come back to reality. Arab governments have killed vastly more people than the Israelis.

United Nations down! down! down

United Nations
Down! Down! Down!
You ignore Israel’s brutality and suppress poor nations
That is your JUSTICE?
…We need a No-fly-zone resolution over Israel to protect Palestinians
……Otherwise DOWN! and GET DISOLVED!
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No my attitude isnt piss-poor I have my opinion just like you have yours. If I dont give a crap, I dont give crap. Youre not going to change my opinion. Like I said celebs can do whatever the hell they want because frankly it isnt my business because I wasnt involved or done wrong. Either way its theres and my prerogative to stay out of it.