"The list of the Top 10 Living Tough Jews it is not only about brute physical strength," he writes, " it is about a people who are smart, strong, resilient, rugged, bold and fearless."
"This is a reflection of good, tough Jews who are positive representations of the Jewish people, (no gangsters here) -- don't let a yarmulke fool you."
And, who tops his toughnesss list of role models, the people he wants us to emulate?
Who is Numero Uno?
1."Israel Defense Forces: All of the men and women of the Israel Defense Forces -- the holy Jewish army are the toughest (and holiest) Jews one can ever imagine. They protect the people of Israel against tremendous odds, and with Israel's survival threatened daily these Jews are consummate warriors, fighting not only for a country but for an important ideal."
Weighing in at number 8 is none other the number one funder of America's right-wing politicians, the man every GOP hopeful sucks up to: Sheldon Adelson. He's called, "The richest Jew in the world, Adelson, is famously resilient, stubborn and focused on winning. The son of Jewish immigrants, Adelson grew up lower-class, dropped out of the City College of New York -- and has built one of the largest casino empires in the world?"
You get the idea. Be tough, become a zillionaire, and then run a country that now has the fourth largest military in the world (US funded of course) that can target an overcrowded ghetto like Gaza--not unlike those many Jews were once forced to live in--turning it into a shooting gallery for the most sophisticated weaponry, all justified as necessary for their country's survival.
Writer and former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges who reported from Gaza, calls Israel's tough guy but very pervasive and deceitful PR campaign, "the Big Lie."
"The Big Lie makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will continue to wage a campaign of state terror and will never admit its atrocities or its intentions," he writes.
"The vast disparity between what Israel says and what Israel does tells the Palestinians that there is no hope. Israel will do and say whatever it wants. International law, like the truth, will always be irrelevant. There will never, the Palestinians understand from the Big Lie, be an acknowledgement of reality by the Israeli leadership.
Hedges adds, "Israel's ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, in a Big Lie of his own, said last month at a conference of Christians United for Israel that the Israeli army should be given the "Nobel Peace Prize " a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting with unimaginable restraint". The Big Lie destroys any possibility of history and therefore any hope for a dialogue between antagonistic parties that can be grounded in truth and reality."
To Jewish Rabbis like Michael Lerner, it's not just the truth that is being trashed. It is Judaism itself.
He writes on Salon: --it is the brutality of that assault which finally has broken me into tears and heartbreak. While claiming that it is only interested in uprooting tunnels that could be used to attack Israel, the IDF has engaged in the same criminal (emphasis mine) behavior that the world condemns in other struggles around the world: the intentional targeting of civilians (the same crime that Hamas has been engaged in over the years in its bombing of Sdeyrot and its current targeting of Israeli population centers, thankfully unsuccessfully, which correctly has earned it the label as a terrorist organization).
Using the excuse that Hamas is using civilians as "human shields" and placing its war material in civilian apartments, a claim that a UN human rights investigatory commission found groundless when it was used the last time Israel invaded Gaza in 2008-2009 and engaged in similar levels of killing civilians), Israel has managed to kill over 1,500 Palestinians and has wounded over 8,000 thousand more."
On and on he goes, as someone who has backed Israel for years, excoriating the way Israel's needs and Zionist ideology as defined by a harsh right-wing government, dominated by a military dominated "security cabinet, "has come to speak for and define the needs of Jews in the world.
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