Really. +972 is also good, similar format.
I knew you’d say something substantive.
Sorry, I’m not good with subtext in plaintext, I could you just say what you mean?
I’m saying that expressing incredulity with no explanation is subtext in plaintext. You’re better at it than you think.
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Is there anything wrong with the article or the author? It didn’t seem all that dramatic and the author seems to be pretty decent as an individual.
I know the site has it’s detractors, but the detractors seem to be falling pretty heavily on the other side of the spectrum, so I’m not sure that we should be lending them that much credence when the issue itself is so polarizing that some people will jump on one side blindly…and I’m not sure that ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’ is the way to go in this conversation.
The general concept, that treating any subset of humans as ‘more important’ than another is fundamentally dangerous, isn’t exactly unsupported by evidence. We’re biologically tribal, and not acknowledging the bad behaviors and actions it causes and making efforts to prioritize the well being of all humans regardless of culture, race, and creed is hardly something one should scoff at.
In many cases I’d agree but that site is so consistently what it is that here I can’t agree.
I’ve credited FOX articles when they’re good, and FOX is a genuine blight on humanity…lots of inciting of violence and tragedies created there. Surely you can give a stopped watch a chance to be right, if only twice a day?
Come on, I dare ya! 
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Stein’s views on the middle-east are pretty mainstream for American Jews. I know very well the congregation she grew up in (including her rabbi), and though Reform it was a very gung-ho pro-Israel congregation in those days, so her background influences aren’t exactly comparable to, say, some of the Labour MPs in Britain that have been a problem recently.
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Perhaps amongst the Reform, but thats still an appeal to popularity.
Well, it depends what you mean by “anti-Zionism”. If the question is about Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state, almost all American Jews agree with this, but when you start asking about support for Israel’s negotiation policy or their settlement policy support drops to below 50%. Of course, you can attack these poll findings by asserting that the respondants are not true Scotsmen Jews.
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I just want to add that while I think for any number of reasons that Stein is not fit to be US president - I’m not even sure at this point she’s fit to be a doctor - the “anti-Semitic” speculation is so patently ridiculous, you might as well be accusing her of having the Dreaded Lurgi.
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In that Forward article you link there is an unstated point which is key to understanding: American Reform Jews (a bit redundant, the Reform movement is nearly non existent outside the US) are now and historically have been nearly completely disengaged from the existence of the State of Israel. They weren’t there for the formation of the State, were root and branch opposed to it to begin with and even after changes in 1967 and 1973 still couldn’t be bothered to move there and become part of the populace. Even today less than 2% of the population of the State affiliates with the Reform movement and all of those individuals are Israeli Americans.
“Right to exist as a sovereign state” is also slippery. When I speak of Judea & Samaria, most American Reform Jews tend to be confused as they don’t even know that is the correct name of the area west of the Jordan river. Most of them also have a very profound ignorance of Jewish historical populations in the region in general as well as the 19th and 20th century conflict history. So yes, this whole thing is slippery. Its hard to talk about something when one side doesn’t understand the basics.
This is of course completely separate from the question in Jewish religious law of “who is a Jew”. In fact the State of Israel’s law on the Right of Return is actually far more generous on this than religious law. The State counts anyone with even one Jewish grandparent and those who converted by any stream of Judaism whereas Jewish law requires either direct maternal descent or an Orthodox conversion.
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Could you crank up the patronizing tone of your post a bit?
(Added on review) While I’m not a reform Jew (my grandparents were Orthodox, but I do not practice), as an American Jew I find your attempt to school me on the religion is hard to stomach. As I said, I know Stein’s congregation well, especially from the 60s. Members of her congregation, probably including her parents, sent bags of money to Israel in the form of Israeli Bonds, before, during, and after the 6-day war, and I can think of half-a-dozen kids I knew from the congregation who spent time on kibbutzes. This was also true for the other reform congregations close to me. Your suggestion that they were disconnected from the State is deeply ignorant.
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No patronizing intended. In the past more than in the present American Reform Jews engaged in acts of support from afar and some spent some time in the State. I’m not demeaning those efforts but contrasting with the commitment of moving to the State. Again, this is something that Amerincan Reform Jews have never done in large numbers.
Unfortunately it seems that these days, less young Reform Jews are taking advantage of free Birthright trips as well.
Some of them might argue that there’s as much commitment in working hard to generating the money to finance the State (for example through organizations like the JNF) as it is to go have a subsidized life there.
In any event, the question was whether Stein’s Reform upbringing (or more generally that of American Jews who have a nuanced view of Israel) has caused her to become anti-Semitic, and I think that is a gross calumny.
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Actually I wasn’t saying that because she grew up Reform she now has a problem but just that she does have a problem.
She has lots of problems, but being anti-Semitic is not one of them.
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Not always, plenty of hippies idea of “free love” we’re always about the obligation of women to have sex with men, especially on communes. Sexism existed, racism existed, pseudoscience still flourishes and to this day I meet regressive assholes who go to rainbow gatherings (in that case through a local community group i volunteer for)
The issue with “hippies” is the cruft beyond the tie dye. All that can exist without the trappings best left behind.
With the greens, they’re so afraid to lose funding that try cling to the worst of the hippie garbage that has little to do with leftism and progressive action.
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Yeah, that was when I decided she could piss off.
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@nemomen, @daneel, I’ll admit that’s a completely valid criticism - in this matter she showed a deep misunderstanding of an important foreign policy issue (much like you’d expect from Trump) and when that misunderstanding was corrected, she backed and filled like a professional politician (much like you’d expect from Clinton).
If your most important criterion for a Presidential candidate is that they be deeply informed concerning global political issues, then this is a place where Clinton outshines Stein so it’s a good reason to go Democrat. I’m not tremendously concerned, personally, because the president has staff that exist to track such issues, and Stein’s behavior here shows she can listen to staff.
If your most important criterion for a Presidential candidate is that they not behave like professional politicians, shaping their message retroactively to obscure tactical errors and dumb mistakes, then this is a place where Trump shines, so it’s a good reason to go Republican. Trump is 100% not a machine politician like Clinton, he’s a showman, an impressario, and he clearly beats Stein at stubbornly sticking to his mistakes.
My criteria are more along the lines of finding the best chance of saving the human race from its own greed and rapacity, which is where the Green Party’s strengths lie. I’m not going to pretend the Greens have no weaknesses, I’m going to say that their weaknesses are trivial compared to those of the various Brown parties.
@Israel_B, if the most important criterion is an uncritical acceptance of Zionism, Hillary Clinton is the best major candidate choice. I am anti-Zionist, myself, despite having Zionist friends and associates in Israel with whom I correspond regularly, and being rather fond of Conservative Judaism. I believe Israel’s government and policies are fundamentally harmful to the Jewish people and to Judaism itself, and that a modern multicultural state that disempowers the Chief Rabbinate and explicitly permits the intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews should peacefully replace the current racist and religiously bigoted governing structures. Obviously this aligns me pretty well with Jill Stein’s views on Israel, although I’m quite a bit more radical. I hope you won’t take my anti-Zionism personally since my criticisms of Israel and Orthodoxy are not meant as criticisms of your hêgemonikon.
@Phrenological, I’m very much aware that the Hippies were born in an era where sexism and racism were routine and accepted, where nearly every movie and book explicitly showed woman being physically dominated by men as a romantic act. These facts do not invalidate the shared ideals of the various Hippie movements, nor do the individual behaviors of people who failed to meet those ideals mean that the ideals themselves were corrupt. Your arguments are increasingly tenuous; if you haven’t already read it, you might enjoy “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”.
@William_Holz, you should definitely read HPMOR (although not for the same reason, but rather because it reads like you wrote it). But back OT, I recommend you do a little more research on the multi-level corruption of the FDA before endorsing its purity so strongly! I think it’s really quite irresponsible to discuss anything FDA-regulated without mentioning this, and Dr. Stein ought to be applauded for acknowledging it. I’ve already linked examples of FDA corruption favoring large amoral medical-industrial entities at the expense of the American people; you should also take a look at how their correct recommendations have often been overruled or countermanded by bipartisan efforts of lawmakers - see antibiotic abuse in the meat industry, for one example, which the FDA proposed banning in 1977. The FDA is broken and Stein is among the few to acknowledge this, and of those she is the only one I know of calling for its reform - rather than for its dissolution. This is a major issue that only Stein, of the available candidates, is truly equipped to deal with.
@nothingfuture, the Green position on alternative medicine is not materially different from those of the Republican and Democratic parties so it’s nonsense to pretend this is a valid differentiator. But if you’re a raving anti-homeopathy nutcase (not saying you are!) perhaps you should consider that the major parties had the power to outlaw dilution homeopathy and have chosen to pander instead.
Personally, like most Americans, I am comfortable with Dr. Stein’s positions on both mainstream and alternative medicine. I would be permanently disabled if it weren’t for alternative medicine, and both I and my daughter would most likely be dead if I were uncritically accepting of mainstream corporate medicine, and I’d certainly be dead if I rejected mainstream medicine. Following the principles of empiricism and rationality, I accept my observations as real, until proven otherwise; there simply is no mainstream/alternative dichotomy that maps to good/bad. It’s more complicated than that, except in the minds of zealots who reject rationality in favor of easy answers.
In Re: GMOs, I am again comfortable with the majority American viewpoint that Dr. Stein endorses, in my case because the pro-GMO people and corporations are so vehemently anti-labeling. I have no problems or issues with GMOs except for the labeling issue - lack of consumer choice translates directly to an inability to do proper population studies as well as blatant market manipulation, and I’m against both those things. If there can’t be labels, I’d rather there were no GMOs, because science and free markets are more important to me than corporate profits. GMOs are not necessary to feed and nourish the world, we can easily do that without any GMOs at all if we really want to. The only benefit to doing so with GMOs is to restrict the number of humans that can profit from it (basically by taking advantage of “intellectual property” laws that favor huge corporations to the detriment of farmers.)
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