Israel, the Ponzi state
A Ponzi scheme consists in the perpetrator offering unrealistic returns
on the capital invested and then using the assets of the later
investors to pay high profits to the earlier ones. It's success depends
on the new investors bringing more and more even newer ones into the
game. It all falls apart when people start asking awkward questions and
demanding their money back. This causes a panic and the entire pyramid
collapses.
Bernard L. Madoff has become a household word with his Ponzi-Pyramid scheme that has bilked billions of dollars from the world's wealthy. Many if not most of Madoff's victims are Jewish. They trusted him and he betrayed them.
My thesis is that the state of Israel is a huge Ponzi scheme: a geo-strategic Ponzi, a military-Ponzi and finally, or perhaps first of all, a moral-Ponzi.
Bernard L. Madoff has become a household word with his Ponzi-Pyramid scheme that has bilked billions of dollars from the world's wealthy. Many if not most of Madoff's victims are Jewish. They trusted him and he betrayed them.
My thesis is that the state of Israel is a huge Ponzi scheme: a geo-strategic Ponzi, a military-Ponzi and finally, or perhaps first of all, a moral-Ponzi.
How is Israel a "Ponzi scheme"?
Israel's first "selling point", the much quoted and much disputed old saw, "a land without a people for a people without a land", which, whoever actually said it first, has led to much ethnic cleansing, is the nucleus of the entire "scam". Although in the light of the "New Historians" the phrase is not being used so much anymore, when I lived in Israel in the 1970s, soon after the Six Day War, this phrase was repeated to me endlessly.
Zionism's second and most powerful selling point and the final, by default, defense of everything that Israel does, is that the pain that Europeans inflicted on the Jewish people entitles the Jewish people to inflict pain on a third party, the Palestinians, who played no part whatsoever in the Shoa. This has to be the most curious reading of the law of Talion in all its endless history.
"A land without a people for a people without a land" presupposes that some people are entitled to be more visible than others, have more rights than others, are more "equal" than others. No democracy can be built on sands like these. Take the finest people in the world, and Israel has taken some of the finest, and then flatter, force, entice, fool or trick them into playing out that phrase and despite the quality of the players, nothing but evil can result.
What is happening today in Gaza flows naturally from that phrase.
Why is all this a fraud?
The victims of the Israeli Ponzi are many...
In physical pain, and humiliation, the Palestinians are the greatest victims of course, but immense will be the pain of the Jewish people all over the world as they awake to find that what was sold to them as a safe refuge, a place of regeneration and a "light unto the gentiles", has in fact, become a death trap and a moral sewer of corrupt politicians committing sordid common crimes of every sort while simultaneously bombing entrapped civilians.
When they find that their refuge and light has become a place where the Jewish people's name is being dirtied for the ages, then that awakening will finally have a much more lasting effect on our western world then rivers of innocent blood. In many ways the Jewish people have always been and continue to be the "mirror soul" of western culture, and the tarnishing of that mirror deforms us all.
I also said that Israel is a geo-political and military Ponzi too.
After the Six Day War and especially after the Yom Kippur war Israel and its military have been sold in the USA as an essential American strategic asset in the Middle East, when in fact America's support of Israel's military machine is probably the greatest, perhaps the only obstacle that America faces in having normal relations with the Muslim world.
The Gaza operation is so sordid and criminal and the images of civilian suffering so horrifying, that to be associated with them drains any life out of the soft power that America may still possess.
Gaza has been a wake up call for even the most sober of strategists.
One of America's most highly respected strategic thinkers, Anthony H. Cordesman, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
Perhaps there is a window opening briefly where Barack Obama may have the opportunity, by simply washing his hands, to rid the USA of this horrible problem... perhaps by just giving the Israelis enough rope, they may end up hanging themselves.
Read this by Gideon Levy in today's Haaretz:
I think Barack Obama or any other president of the USA that I can think of, or even imagine, would do anything in their power, up to and including invading Holland in order to prevent Levy's scenario from ever taking place.
However, if Obama does allow a Hague trial of the Israeli "kitchen cabinet" to occur (and why not include Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld while they are at it?) I will be forced to conclude that Obama's admirers are not blowing smoke out of their hinder parts, but that he is, in fact, the great man they insist he is.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/
Israel's first "selling point", the much quoted and much disputed old saw, "a land without a people for a people without a land", which, whoever actually said it first, has led to much ethnic cleansing, is the nucleus of the entire "scam". Although in the light of the "New Historians" the phrase is not being used so much anymore, when I lived in Israel in the 1970s, soon after the Six Day War, this phrase was repeated to me endlessly.
Zionism's second and most powerful selling point and the final, by default, defense of everything that Israel does, is that the pain that Europeans inflicted on the Jewish people entitles the Jewish people to inflict pain on a third party, the Palestinians, who played no part whatsoever in the Shoa. This has to be the most curious reading of the law of Talion in all its endless history.
"A land without a people for a people without a land" presupposes that some people are entitled to be more visible than others, have more rights than others, are more "equal" than others. No democracy can be built on sands like these. Take the finest people in the world, and Israel has taken some of the finest, and then flatter, force, entice, fool or trick them into playing out that phrase and despite the quality of the players, nothing but evil can result.
What is happening today in Gaza flows naturally from that phrase.
Why is all this a fraud?
The victims of the Israeli Ponzi are many...
In physical pain, and humiliation, the Palestinians are the greatest victims of course, but immense will be the pain of the Jewish people all over the world as they awake to find that what was sold to them as a safe refuge, a place of regeneration and a "light unto the gentiles", has in fact, become a death trap and a moral sewer of corrupt politicians committing sordid common crimes of every sort while simultaneously bombing entrapped civilians.
When they find that their refuge and light has become a place where the Jewish people's name is being dirtied for the ages, then that awakening will finally have a much more lasting effect on our western world then rivers of innocent blood. In many ways the Jewish people have always been and continue to be the "mirror soul" of western culture, and the tarnishing of that mirror deforms us all.
I also said that Israel is a geo-political and military Ponzi too.
After the Six Day War and especially after the Yom Kippur war Israel and its military have been sold in the USA as an essential American strategic asset in the Middle East, when in fact America's support of Israel's military machine is probably the greatest, perhaps the only obstacle that America faces in having normal relations with the Muslim world.
The Gaza operation is so sordid and criminal and the images of civilian suffering so horrifying, that to be associated with them drains any life out of the soft power that America may still possess.
Gaza has been a wake up call for even the most sober of strategists.
One of America's most highly respected strategic thinkers, Anthony H. Cordesman, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel's actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?In short Israel is in the process of destroying any future the United States might still have of influencing events in its favor in the Middle East.
To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. (...) As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel's top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them
Perhaps there is a window opening briefly where Barack Obama may have the opportunity, by simply washing his hands, to rid the USA of this horrible problem... perhaps by just giving the Israelis enough rope, they may end up hanging themselves.
Read this by Gideon Levy in today's Haaretz:
This past weekend, the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Geneva have demanded an investigation into war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Israel. In a world in which Bosnian leaders and their counterparts from Rwanda have already been put on trial, a similar demand is likely to arise for the fomenters of this war. Israeli basketball players will not be the only ones who have to shamefully take cover in sports arenas, and senior officers who conducted this war will not be the only ones forced to hide in El Al planes lest they be arrested. This time, our most senior statesmen, the members of the war kitchen cabinet, are liable to pay a personal and national price.A very slender hope, indeed.
I don't write these words with joy, but with sorrow and deep shame. Despite all the slack the world has cut us since as long as we can remember, despite the leniency shown toward Israel, the world might say otherwise this time. If we continue like this, maybe one day a new, special court will be established in The Hague.
I think Barack Obama or any other president of the USA that I can think of, or even imagine, would do anything in their power, up to and including invading Holland in order to prevent Levy's scenario from ever taking place.
However, if Obama does allow a Hague trial of the Israeli "kitchen cabinet" to occur (and why not include Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld while they are at it?) I will be forced to conclude that Obama's admirers are not blowing smoke out of their hinder parts, but that he is, in fact, the great man they insist he is.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/
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...And like all such schemes, this one is wreaking a heavy toll on its victims. Good post.
January 12, 2009 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
David -
While going back 150 years to the original sin is good for historical perspective I'm not so sure it works to solve the I/P problem. Reality says Israel isn't going to go anywhere nor are the Palestinians. So since both are sitting on land the other claims on historical and religious grounds (both of which make the solution doubly difficult) what is the solution.
All I read is post after post which defends or eviscerates one side or the other. Personally I think the moral high ground that was held by one side or the other has long ago eroded into dust.
January 12, 2009 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any Israeli will tell you that reality, facts are "created", that is how Israel came into being, for them it is their cardinal rule of action, "creating facts".
This is a dangerous principal to base your survival on, because it works both ways.
January 13, 2009 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I note your borrowed picture shows white phosphorus in use, presumably in dense city area, risking civilians.
January 12, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Israelis are using Willy Pete and DIME (dense inert metal explosives) on Gazans. There are also reports of the possible use of DU and thermobaric weapons.
If they are successful at removing Hamas, they will be clearing the field for Al_Qaeda:
(MB=Muslim Brotherhood)
"Even if Hamas emerges weakened, as Israeli strategists hope, all the better (from al-Qaeda's point of view, that is). In general, where the MB is strong (Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine for example), AQ has had a hard time finding a point of entry despite serious efforts to do so, while where the MB is weak (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Lebanon) it has had more success. Up to now, AQ-minded groups have had little success in penetrating Gaza, because Hamas had it locked. Now they clearly have high hopes of finding an entree with a radicalized, devastated population and a weakened Hamas.
Al-Qaeda likely can not thank Israel enough for its efforts over the last two weeks. Over the last few years, al-Qaeda has been losing ground with the mainstream Muslim public -- because of its real radicalism and fringe ideology, its killing of so many Muslim innocents in its attacks in Muslim countries, challenges from other Islamist groups and from within its own ranks, an increasingly effective strategic communications campaign by Western and Arab governments, and more. Israel's military assault against Gaza threatens to reverse that trend."
http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/node/14962
January 13, 2009 3:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find myself increasingly apathetic about this whole Palestine/Israel/Arab issue. I don't particularly like admitting this, but I think it has finally just about worn me out, in terms of my ability to feel much concern for any side in it, or to continue to try to PICK a 'side' to be for.
More and more, two overall concepts guide whatever thinking I find myself able to devote to this:
(1)What are the CORE American geo-political interests here, in the changed realities of TODAY's world? Are these sufficient to justify our continued diversion of attention and resources to this problem? (I understand the idea of "moral" issues, but don't give me that, please. There are similar moral issues all over the globe, all the time - most rising and falling in anonymity.).
(2)Peace is always a good thing, but there are times when only WAR makes peace - all-out, no-holds-barred war to the finish. At the end, someone wins and someone else loses, and we all move-on from there. I'm getting close in my own mind to believing that even that catastrophic event may be preferable to the slow, simmering war-by-installment-plan of lo these many years, with no end in sight. I just hope if it comes to that, the rest of us have the good sense to keep our heads down and out of the line of fire.
January 13, 2009 6:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why is the USA in the Middle East?
Because "that is where the oil is". And also that is where the Suez Canal is.
Oil is what is important in the Middle East and Israel is making it difficult and finally impossible for the USA to have normal relations with the Muslims who own that oil and with the Muslims that control the Suez canal.
Now, do you see why you might work up some interest?
January 13, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's strange that you can be apathetic about something that deeply affects America's CORE interests in TODAY's world.
January 13, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink