Cidu Bill on Sep 3rd 2010
Tuesday, Hamas gunmen opened fire on and killed four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank. Following the attack, more than three thousand Gazans held a celebration in the streets.
Three thousand Gazans celebrated the murder of four civilians.
Now, I understand there are two sides to almost every issue, and I even understand what leads people to commit acts of terrorism… but I’m sorry, these people aren’t human beings. Aside from the fact that feeling pride over the murder of four civilians is kind of pathetic, how twisted do you have to be to take to the streets and hold a mass celebration?
As of this morning, international outrage still seems to be on hold.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, politics, terrorism | 44 responses so far
Cidu Bill on Apr 27th 2010
Yesterday, National Security Adviser James Jones apologized for a joke he told last week during his keynote address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel organization.
A member of the Taliban was separated from his fighting party and wandered around for a few days in the desert, lost, out of food, no water. He looked on the horizon and he saw what looked like a little shack, and he walked toward that shack and as he got to it, turned out that it was a shack, a store, a little store owned by a Jewish merchant. And the Taliban warrior went up to him and said, ‘I need water, get me some water.’ And the merchant said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any water, but would you like to buy a tie? We have a nice sale of ties today.’
Whereupon the Taliban erupted into a stream of language that I can’t repeat about Israel, about Jewish people, about the man himself, about his family – and just saying ‘I need water, you try to sell me ties, you people don’t get it.’
And passively, the merchant stood there until this Taliban was through with his diatribe and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry but I don’t have water for you and I forgive you for all of the insults you’ve levied against me, my family, my country, but I will help you out. If you go over that hill and walk about two miles there’s a restaurant there, and they have all the water you’ll need.’
And the Taliban, instead of saying thanks, still muttering under his breath, disappears over the hill – only to come back about an hour later and walking up to the merchant and says, ‘Your brother tells me I need a tie in order to get into the restaurant.’
Offense was taken (Jones is not “of the Tribe”).
Putting aside the pointlessness of the anecdote and the fact that the joke itself probably predates the Bible, was this really an anti-Semitic joke?
(And let’s save time and get the inevitable and irrelevant “Arabs are Semites too” comment out of the way right here)
Filed in Bill Bickel, Israel, James Jones, Taliban, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, anti-Semitism, jokes | 37 responses so far
