Facebook is wonderful - it provides opportunities to talk with larger organizations (as well as those who follow them). So I have been motivated to spend some time talking on the AIPAC Facebook page (as well as Jewish Journal, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, and Dennis Prager). I particularly enjoyed today's entry (if I say so myself) after AIPAC finally pulled down the story (and the trail of comments, including one where I tried to put into polite language a question over AIPACs integrity for publishing a false story). My original comment was
Here's a test of AIPIC integrity: The AP story on self-inspection was wrong, and AP has substantially revised what they posted. Will AIPAC keep repeating the falsehood about self-inspection?
and today's follow-on was
So, after a week, AIPAC removed the false story about so-called "self-inspections", but all they did was erase the historical record of that error, not actually acknowledge that they promoted a lie. This is the exact same position AIPAC takes on their support for the Iraq War, back when Saddam was Hitler and diplomacy couldn't be trusted to deal with Iraq's WMDs.
So the rest of this diary is just to share some other favorite quotes, and to encourage any of you to visit these sites and or re-use any of the arguments that these touch upon
Here's one of a series of responses to those who claim that the only authentic Jewish response to this deal is opposition
I have a very different take on this issue. I am a conservative Jew, 53 years old, we keep a kosher home, we don't drive on shabbat, go to shul regularly. From my perspective, I find the actions of the Netanyahu Administration and Jewish institutions such as AIPAC to be in direct opposition to Jewish values, both pragmatically and ethically. Pragmatically, because there is no credible path to negotiating a better deal and because every person arguing against diplomacy now also argued against diplomacy prior to the Iraq War, they were all wrong then, and I have yet to hear from one of them who learned anything from that "mistake of historic proportions". There are real dangers in the world, but testosterone and ignorance are not the best way to address them. Ethically I am concerned by some of the opposition to this deal, because historically when a stronger nation panders to bigotry and fear against a smaller nation, all too often unnecessary conflict breaks out, and too many times in the past it has been the Jews who were victims. Read some of the comments opposing this deal, and you will see demonstrations of the hatred. If there is no deal (and thus Arak still produces plutonium, Iran retains 30 times more enriched uranium and has three times the centrifuges, no inspections) and yet if Iran is as evil as opponents of the deal assert, then can anyone show a credible scenario where it does not lead to war? And a war against a country with three times the population of Iraq could well triple the 36,000 casualties the US military suffered, and the 100,000 noncombatant civilian deaths in Iraq.
Here's the type of response that a reference to Nazi Germany gets
Every reference to Nazis needs to be answered by a much more relevant reference to the Iraq War. All those rejecting diplomacy now are the same as those who pushed for war in 2003 against Iraq. Diplomacy and inspections were actually working - there were no weapons of mass destruction. But at the urging of those who favored war over diplomacy, there were over 36,000 US casualties, trillions of dollars spent, roughly 100,000 non-combatant civilians killed. Did any of you learn anything from that mistake of historical proportions?
And here's a response to those "you can't trust Iran" arguments
Kathy, I respectfully disagree with your premise. Rejecting this deal is far riskier than accepting it. I don't want Iran to avoid comprehensive inspections, to keep producing plutonium in their Arak reactor, to keep the 97% of their enriched uranium that this deal gets rid of, and to have three times the centrifuges. If this deal is rejected, Iran keeps that much more dangerous set of nuclear capabilities. And if the US walks away from a deal approved by England, France, Germany, Russia, China and a 15-0 vote in the UN Security Council, the coalition and the embargo will collapse. We all want to choose the option that best reduces risks to the US, so please lay out a plausible scenario of how rejecting this deal leads to a better outcome for the US.
Regarding Dennis Prager's silly article about politics, lying and where he accused President Obama of lying for asserting that the danger today is less than the danger of the Cold War
What if we applied to Dennis’s argument the very principles Dennis asserts about the two types of lying (if you know it’s a lie is wrong it is immoral, if you believe the lie it is even more dangerous)? Despite the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dennis declares as false an absolutely true statement made by the President when Dennis asserts “that the number of strategists who called for military action against the Soviet Union during Kennedy’s presidency was so tiny and so irrelevant that the president’s statement [strategists advocated military action against the Soviets] is essentially a straw man” So how should this claim by Dennis be assessed? Immoral? Dangerous ignorance? Or do we have to reject history and pretend that the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs was for a full-scale, five-day air campaign against the Soviet missile sites and Castro’s air force, with an option to invade the island afterward if they thought necessary
http://www.theatlantic.com/...
and a follow-on
We know today that that it was paranoid to see the Communists as ideologues committed to our destruction. That does not substantiate the claim made by Dennis that the Communists “valued their own lives and even those of their fellow countrymen incomparably more than the Islamic leaders of Iran do”, it just shows that treating other countries as cartoon evil is a reckless approach for dealing with dangers in the real world. Furthermore, the argument that Dennis makes that Communism was a lesser threat than radical Islam ignores the millions of human beings actually killed in the Soviet Union, in Mao’s China, and in Cambodia. He also ignores that the Soviet Union had enough nukes to destroy all life on Earth, while the Iranians currently none.
Finally, I do spend some of my time also calling out the actual anti-semetic trolls who also populate these sites (to be honest, there's not a few of them, and so unfortunately they reinforce the paranoia that all opposition to the AIPAC position is from bigots)
Khaled, stop. Your inflammatory rhetoric is entirely counter-productive. Death threats, even in internet posting, just encourage extremism on all sides.