Going CRAZY For Zion!

The entire world has been watching the coverage of the recent disaster in Haiti. Then I get an email telling me that Tikun Buffoon Richard Silverstein has been “covering” the events himself (see below). Low and behold, I found:

Didn’t know there was anything particularly Zionist about providing disaster relief? You learn something new every day. This is a story of exploiting the suffering of poor, defenseless Haitians on behalf of Israeli triumphalism.

Does someone have issues? Who would criticize Israel, even in a backhanded way, for giving this kind of humanitarian aid? We see what kind of fringe crackpot we are dealing with in “Tikun Olam.” Talk about desperation-frustration. Silverstein next quotes Yoel Donchin, who he describes as a former Israeli disaster relief worker:

Generally speaking, we start preparing for such a mission within hours of the announcement of a natural disaster. Most often the Israeli mission team is the first one to land in the area. Like those who climb Mount Everest, it plants its flag on the highest peak available, announcing to all and sundry that the site has been conquered. And in order to ensure that the public is aware of this sporting achievement, the mission is accompanied by media representatives, photographers, an IDF spokesman’s office squad and others.

If that weren’t enough, the comments section feature a reader complaining about Sol Salbe’s (friend of Richard) translation:

Jon says:
January 20, 2010 at 1:16 AM

This is quite a bad translation. Whole sentences are missing. I’ll deal with this tomorrow, I have productive activity ahead of me.
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Richard Silverstein says:
January 20, 2010 at 3:40 PM

When you can translate Hebrew as well as Sol Salbe then you can talk. Till then shutup.

I have productive activity ahead of me.

That’s it. You’re done. I’ve had about as much snark as I can take. If you ever mature enough to actually write comments w/o snark & all the other infantilisms you introduce into yours you may let me know & I can reinstate you. Till then you’re toast.

Keep in mind that Silverstein was born in 1952. That puts him at around 58 years old! What man at that age behaves this way? Later on another commenter criticizes the control-freak leftist only to be censored:

Steven says:
January 20, 2010 at 3:30 PM

Silverstein is an absolute bigot. The truth is that he couldn’t give two hoots about Tikkun Olam. He just cares about attacking his brothers.
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Richard Silverstein says:
January 20, 2010 at 5:05 PM

Actually, I couldn’t give two hoots about you. As for, Tikun Olam, I’ll lv my readers to judge whether I honor the standards of that concept. As for attacking, I’d say you did it first since I don’t know you fr. Adam.

You’ve violated my comment rules & are banned.

Perhaps we should let Richard himself have the closing statement on this issue:

And why is a country 5,000 miles away the first to establish a field hospital when the U.S. has far more such facilities & is far closer?

It’s wonderful to watch evil crumple up and wilt!

Little Dickie claims Israel is “Zionizing” Haiti

The whole world is amazed at the courage and tenacity of the Israeli medical team in Haiti. But not our favorite little kapo.

That is right – Little Dickie is complaining that Israelis saving lives amounts to the “Zionization” of Haiti. Hell, Dem Joos will next be building settlements in Haiti! He also carries an item from the UK whining about how the US is “occupying” Haiti under the guise of saving Haitians. You can see Haitians being occupied by Zionists in the photo.

Dickie himself thinks those Haitians are nothing but mud people who do not deserve to be rescued by any smelly Yids! He whines that if Israel REALLY wanted to help, it would send port-a-potties and food instead. He knows this by asking thousands of Haitians what they need most … not.

So just what exactly has Little Dickie sent to Haiti out of his own pocket? By which of course we mean – from out of his wife’s pocketbook? (Dickie does not work so he can sit around and gripe about the sort of aid that Israel sends to Haiti without having to donate a nickle of his own!)

Dickie prefers to help the poor Haitians with YOUR nickles and dimes!

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Update (1-26-10):

Bradley Burston of Haaretz has written a wonderful article about this subject matter. Ironically in the comments section, Silverstein has his own opinion about Burston’s article!

Bashing Israel for saving Haitians

By Bradley Burston

I’d like to say a word of honor and thanks and, yes, pride for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.

That’s it.

I believe that they are people, individuals, who went there to save limbs from gangrene and amputation, stanch internal bleeding, relieve crushing pain. To deliver babies. To risk their lives, using jackhammers and hydraulics and their hands to make crawl spaces under tons of concrete and silt, going in themselves to pull children and adults to safety.

For all the time that they’ve been working, however, people far away, snug in the comfort of their laptops, have been furiously busy as well, people who are enraged to the boiling point by news reports of the Israeli rescue mission. People who see it as their mission to tell the world exactly what’s wrong with all of this.

Over the past week, the work of the Israeli medical team has become a kind of Rorschach for how people view Israel and Israelis. Most of the comment, it must be said, is supportive. Even on the part of those who cast the humanitarian misery in Gaza in contrast.

But for a shocking number of others, the bottom line is simple: Israel, and Israelis, can do no right.

In its most extreme form, there are those who have accused Israel of using the Haiti catastrophe as a new reservoir for harvesting organs.

But even many of those who shun blood libels, have seized on the Haiti mission to bash Israel, revealing in many cases a hatred – and a bigotry – that borders on the visceral.

“I guess giving Israel credit for good deeds in Haiti,” wrote reader John Smithson on the widely read Mondoweiss site, “is like watching a serial killer or other sociopathic type mow an old woman’s lawn (or some other charitable thing).”

The contention is that Israel sent aid to Haiti on purely cynical motives, harnessing public relations to divert attention from the Goldstone Report, to divert attention from Gaza, to divert attention from its never-ending, always expanding internal crises.

The implication is that Israel, and Israelis, are constitutionally incapable of doing good for its own sake. Or that whenever they appear to do good, people of conscience should recognize that the evil designs behind it render any good that may be done, complicit in wrongdoing.

True, it is willful blindness to contend that Israel can do no wrong. But it is nothing short of racism to maintain, in Haiti and in general, that Israelis can do no right.

Israel, like all countries where war is endemic, like much of the unfortunate world, and like Palestine, is a nation whose people have been ruined, distorted, permanently traumatized, emotionally stunted. Yet Israelis, like people in all countries where war is endemic, and like Palestinians, have demonstrated enormous reservoirs of humanity under inhuman stresses.

As Palestinian-American journalist Ray Hanania wrote of the Israeli aid effort this week: “200,000 Haitians died in an earthquake. They sent doctors and supplies to help. That is a good thing. Just because we are fighting with Israel doesn’t mean we should sneer at that assistance to people in need. YES, I wish Israel could show the same compassion for Palestinians. But Israel and Haiti are not at war and Israelis and Palestinians (mainly Hamas and the settlers) are.”

People who truly know this place as more than a moral cartoon, also know that there is no such thing as a clear conscience in the Holy Land. Either your conscience is conflicted, or it is no conscience at all.

No one knows better than Israelis – not even their worst critics abroad – how flawed and wrongheaded their country’s behavior, and that of their countrymen, so often is.

No one knows better than Palestinians and their supporters, what it is to be tainted by bigotry, take missteps in conflict, and be dismissed by hatred.

I’d like to say a word of honor and thanks for the Israelis, paramedics, physicians, nurses, midwives, and medical imaging technicians, who went to Haiti to save lives.

Israelis, and Jews in the wider world, should not be forced to recite a catechism over how terrible, how flawed, how often mistaken they already know Israel to be, just in order to earn the right to feel and express their admiration, their gratitude, and yes, their pride.

Comment #187: