Sincere and decent people make an attempt to discuss facts

Michael,

How in the world do you think you are "the mighty middle?" You are an extremist. Most people don't get to see the facts that I posted, you on the other hand have seen them. For you to have the audacity to call it " anti-semite bullshit" shows you are a dishonest extremist. NOTHING was "anti-semitic" NOTHING was "bullshit".

Sincere and decent people make an attempt to discuss facts brought to their atention. Yes, many people support Israel but they have not had the opportunity to see the facts. A big part of the reason for that is the manipulative tactic of threatening to accuse or accusing people who dare to point out the truth of being "anti-Semitic." And "Chomskyite"?!?, why don't you drop the grade school tactics which are absolutely destructive to honest and open debate. You erect barriers to allowing yourself to see the truth. Wouldn't want to turn into a "Chomskyite" or be "anti-Semitic" now would you? So you can't even for a second consider the facts I posted can you? Do you see what ugly and absurd game you are playing? You poison public discourse, perhaps that is your goal? Sabotage honest attempts at dialog so that facts you don't want discussed can not be?

Not all Jews support these injustices. Why not drop the game playing and nasty attacks and listen to what other Jews are saying? (in addition to Chomsky and Finkelstein.) Matania Ben-Artzi has the moral courage and the honesty to confront the Israeli Supreme Court President, Aharon Barak, on his wrong doings. So don't lie about what I wrote.

"Your Court has shamefully succumbed to every whim of the military. Innocent youths were kidnapped in Lebanon to be used as bargaining chips - and your Court approved it. Administrative detentions were imposed by the thousands - but all the appeals to you were dismissed. Targeted killings that took the lives of hundreds of innocent bystanders, cruel closures that wreaked havoc among millions of Palestinians (so that Jewish fanatics could be unabated in their festivities), inhumane destruction of the livelihood of tens of thousands of families--all these have been repeatedly legitimized by your Court."

You have not even made an attempt to refute any of the points I raised, all you can do is sling mud and make contrived complaints about what people consider to be a perfectly normal thing to do, quote sources.
( this guy responded to my original posts(see below) with this:
"Tom: Please do not come here and cut and paste stuff you found on Chomskyite websites. Do your own writing -- like the rest of us do. #2.1 michael reynolds (http://www.mightymiddle.com) on Jul 28 2006, 08:40"

and this: "Tom doesn't care what I wrote, he's trying to drive traffic to Chomskyite websites. What I actually say is irrelevant so long as he perceives an opportunity to cut and paste some anti-semite bullshit. #3.2 michael reynolds (http://www.mightymiddle.com) on Jul 28 2006, 08:46"

My origninal posts:
" Israel routinely takes Palestinians, Lebanese hostage. In fact, Israel was the only country in the world, in 1997, which legalized hostage-taking. The liberal head of the Israeli High Court, Aharon Barak, he said it's legal, legitimate, under international law to take what he called bargaining chips in order to get prisoners, Israeli prisoners being held by the Lebanese. The decision was reversed in 2000, but Israel continued to hold Lebanese hostages until 2004. So, at worst, Hamas is being accused of what Israel legalized and routinely does.

There are "9,000 Palestinians who are effectively hostages being held by Israel. 1,000 of them are administrative detainees ... who are being held without any charges or trial. And the other 8,000 are being held after military courts have convicted them, almost always on the basis of confessions which were extracted by torture. So if we're going to look simply at the numbers" [there are three Israelis SOLDIERS held] But "effectively we have about 9,000 on the Israeli side."
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=241

Israel should not be occupying the Golan Heights and it should not be refusing to give the maps to the mine fields they planted in sothern Lebanon. And for God sakes, Israel should give back the "bargaining chips" they have held for decades.

"Hizbullah kept telling the world how keen it was to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.
Hundreds of dead in Lebanon, at least 1,000 severely injured and more than half a million refugees -- all because Israel is not ready to sit down at the negotiating table. "
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10643

#1 Tom Murphy (http://representativepress.blogspot.com/) on Jul 27 2006, 23:50

"Rather than open diplomatic channels to calm the violence down and start the process of getting its soldiers back, Israel launched bombing raids deep into Lebanese territory the same day. ... Israel continued its rampage across the south and into Beirut, where the airport, roads, bridges, and power stations were pummelled. We now know from reports in the US media that the Israeli army had been planning such a strike against Lebanon for at least a year. In contrast to the image of Hizbullah frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah held off from serious retaliation. For the first day and a half, he limited his strikes to the northern borders areas, which have faced Hizbullah attacks in the past and are well protected. He waited till late on June 13 before turning his guns on Haifa, even though we now know he could have targeted Israel’s third largest city from the outset. A small volley of rockets directed at Haifa caused no injuries and looked more like a warning than an escalation.

It was another three days -- days of constant Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, destroying the country and injuring countless civilians -- before Nasrallah hit Haifa again, including a shell that killed eight workers in a railway depot.

No one should have been surprised. Nasrallah was doing exactly what he had threatened to do if Israel refused to negotiate and chose the path of war instead. Although the international media quoted his ominous televised message that “Haifa is just the beginning”, Nasrallah in fact made his threat conditional on Israel’s continuing strikes against Lebanon. In the same speech he warned: “ As long as the enemy pursues its aggression without limits and red lines , we will pursue the confrontation without limits and red lines.” Well, Israel did, and so now has Nasrallah."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10643

Jingoist, are you aware that Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights as it builds illegal settlements and encampments to steal even more land and water resources? The Lebanese want the occupation to end and they want their people who are held hostage back.
Are you aware that Israel continues to hold hostages "bargaining chips?" "The US-Israel regard kidnapping is quite fine, including kidnapping of civilians, a far worse crime under international law than kidnapping of soldiers." You can't see that these actions are provocations?

The cross border raid by Israel ( extremely underreported in the US ) on June 24th to kidnap two civilians is only one of many examples . Since the powerful don't investigate their own crimes, details are unknown, but there is plenty of evidence nevertheless. For example, the shocking revelations about Israel's secret prison/torture chambers, far worse than Guantanamo, in which hundreds of Lebanese have been kept, many abducted from Lebanon, some kept as hostages for many years. No one knows what happened to them, beyond the few who are acknowledged. There are some who are concerned about them, among them the father of the captured Israeli soldier Ehud Goldwasser, who express his sympathy for the families of the abducted Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails (Israeli radio, July 20)."
http://forum.zmag.org:8181/wb/default.asp?action=9&read=20736&fid=5