Nick Cohen Rambles Into Incoherence 59


Of all the defences of Israel killing unarmed Turkish protestors – the majority of them shot in the back, four in the back of the head execution style – Nick Cohen’s ramble must be the least coherent by a very highly paid hack.

As far as I can make any sense at all of his nine pint muddle, it relies chiefly on his usual contention that anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same thing, plus the idea that anybody who opposes Israeli brutality, supports Islamic extremism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/06/israel-gaza-blockade

He manages to get in a side swipe at those of us wise enough to oppose the war in Iraq.

Why is he paid for this nonsense?


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59 thoughts on “Nick Cohen Rambles Into Incoherence

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  • Neil Barker

    Craig, my Emma reckons you’re a bit of a bigoted tosser. However, I am open minded. Have you ever had mental health problems before?

    You going to censor this message (again), O censorious one?

  • luis

    Xymphora is always a good read on these subjects:

    The detachment of the lie factory from reality

    It is obvious that the hasbara lie factory is now directed entirely to the Jewish population of Israel and the world Jewish population. The lies are simply too preposterous to work on anybody not already predisposed, or paid, to believe them (watching the paid liars pretend to accept the Israeli bullshit is very entertaining, and ultimately completely destructive of any credibility they think they once had). Of course, part of the hasbara scam is to produce the raw material for lying reports in the American media, but to a large extent the Jews don’t even care about the American media any longer. Supremacists think that any opinions outside the group are worthless. As long as they still have a bribery/blackmail jackboot on the necks of American politicians, nothing else matters. Propaganda is no longer necessary. Thus, the supremacists are reduced to lying to themselves.

    continues at: http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2010/06/detachment-of-lie-factory-from-reality.html

  • Apostate

    You and your dumb wife want to mind your manners-you Hasbarat dingbats!

    I’ve had my differences with Craig but I’ve got no doubt he’s sincere in his beliefs.

    Whereas you,Cathouse Larry,Uncle Tom Cobley and all your Zio-troll friends re-gurgitate ad-infinitum tedious non-cognitive boiler-plate that does more to discredit Israel than back it up.

    Mind you arch-Israeli warmonger-in-chief,Netanyahu is pretty good at that too!

    http://www.gregfelton.com/media/2009_10_25.htm

    Take your Zio-spew disinfo elsewhere you pair of dingbats!

  • mrjohn01

    Neil

    “Craig, my Emma reckons you’re a bit of a bigoted tosser. However, I am open minded. Have you ever had mental health problems before?”

    Don’t you remember ? He was sitting next to you in the waiting room.

  • Steelback

    This guy Barker and his wife are like the typical Hasbarat internet attack-dogs described in the Felton and Xymphora links.

    Just how ineffective and hopeless they are is proven by the fact that even if only a handful of Craig’s regular visitors use the links they may well get a taste for more independent anti-Zionist Palestine solidarity commentary.

    Hasbarat 0 Independent Anti-Zionists 6

    Watch these fatally wounded Hasbarats go lamely back to their kennels and stay there chewing their bones and licking their wounds till Israel’s next mindless atrocity.

    (LOL)

  • Randal

    Eddie produces one of the standard pro-US and pro-Israeli counterattacks: “Do we hear a peep from Craig Murray and his followers on this matter? We do not. And why? Because it is does not fit with their world view that the US and its allies are the only source of evil in the world. It is a philosophy lacking in morality.”

    Apart from the fact that many such as Craig Murray do in fact complain about moral issues in countries not aligned with the US, the rational approach to moral issues in international affairs is clearly, within broadly similar categories of behaviour, to treat with the utmost seriousness gross abuses committed by our own governments. Those are the ones that are committed notionally in our names and with the proceeds of our tax payments

    Second in priority should be gross abuses committed by our allies, and especially those that rely heavily on support from our governments in one form or another.

    Finally, gross abuses committed by neutral or enemy states should be regarded as something it would be nice to have the luxury of preventing, but a long way behind the first two in terms of our having any plausible ability to affect them, or responsibility to try.

    So although it’s nice to generate an empty warm feeling in ourselves by shouting about every bad thing that happens in the world, what we should be shouting loudest and most frequently about are the things done on our name or with our tax payments or with our implied support.

    Eddie’s philosophy appears to be a morality (conveniently) lacking in rationality.

  • Neil Craig

    Where the “anti-Zionists” are not at least equally opposed to worse acts by our own government anti-Semitism is certainly a credible assumption. If thiose accused can produce any other equaly credible reason then it is up to them to do so. If they cannot that must be the default assumption.

    Whatever one says about the Israelis one cannot dispute that when it comes to respect for human rights & international law they are thousands of times ahead of the Nazi scum who attacked Yugoslavia. It is a matter of record that the number of people killed in the entire Gaza war, overwhelmingly combatants, is less than the number of civilians, in nominal peacetime, dissected while alive, by NATO “police” (formerly the KLA) under NATO authority to steal their body organs.

    It seems clear that anybody who complains more about the Israelis, let alone who supports racist & pro-Nazi parties, such as the LibDems responsible for such atrocities, unmatched even by Mr Hitler, cannot, under any circumstances claim to be motivated by concern for human rights.

    Perhaps if the author here disagrees he will be able to explain.

  • eddie

    Randal you don’t get my point. You protest rightly about, say, the shooting at Stockwell and put it on a par, or above, the mass murder of thousands in North Korea. On a par or above in the sense that you get your knickers in a twist about the former but do fuck all about the latter. To say that you can do nothing about the latter shows the shallowness of your philosophy. Your moral ranking system is askew. When the history books come to be written a hundred years from now historians will be asking a simple question. Why did the so-called left obsess over these little matters when such enormities were being perpetrated around the world? It’s no different to the sixties when the trots were busy protesting about Vietnam at the very moment that Mao was killing millions of his own citizens – 60 million in fact. But I suppose that you take Stalin’s view that a single death is a tragedy whereas a million dead is a mere statistic.

    MJ – I am sure despise Saudi as much as you. However, a regime that stops women driving and cuts off the heads of murderers is on a moral par with one that hangs Gay men in public places, wouldn’t you say? Let’s not split hairs – it’s like trying to work out whether Stalin was more evil than Hitler.

  • wendy

    “Why is he paid for this nonsense?”

    to muddy the waters and keep believers onside

  • Anonymous

    Enormities are being practised around the world. One of the biggest ones is the enormity of suffering Israel has inflicted upon Palestinian civilians. Nearly 2 million people imprisoned and blockaded from the world. I call that a pretty enormous crime. And we haven’t even mentioned the constant attacks on people in the West Bank, the theft of their land, imprisonment without trial, no freedom of movement etc etc. Given the knock-on effect this has on the whole Middle East and beyond it kind of puts N Korea and Zimbabwe in the shade.e But you are right, let’s not split hairs between them all.

  • Leo

    @Eddie:

    Since you’re complaining about what and how much we complain about things here, on the basis we should complain about everything that deserves complaint and that it is invalid to focus more on some things than others, I take it you yourself are also all over the web commenting on articles and websites which apologise for the Zionist murders?

    I take it you’re on the sites that specialise in criticism of North Korea, Iran, etc., complaining that they don’t complain enough about the USA, UK and Israel?

    Or are you selective (or simply time-strapped) in what you complain about just like everyone else?

    @Neil Craig:

    “It seems clear that anybody who complains more about the Israelis, let alone who supports racist & pro-Nazi parties, such as the LibDems responsible for such atrocities, unmatched even by Mr Hitler, cannot, under any circumstances claim to be motivated by concern for human rights.”

    That’s a joke post, right? Please tell me you were being sarcastic and aren’t the most confused person in the world.

    FYI, the LibDems are not Nazis, even if you did see a recently headline in a tabloid rag that managed to shoehorn “Nick Clegg” and “Nazi” into the same sentence through some incredible leaps of logic (or lack of).

  • eddie

    Anonymous

    another example of your distorted moral equivalence. How anyone can compare the slave state that is North Korea with Gaza and the West Bank defies logic and brains.

    Leo don’t be an arse.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    Eddie,

    Iran does things in it’s own house using it’s own rules. Some people slap their naughty children, some do not using their own rules. Very few by comparison slap other people’s children.

    America went into Iraq on a lie and orphaned, maimed and murdered many children.

    Recently I learn’t of an Iraqi teenage girl badly disfigured by phosphorous burns in Fallujah that committed suicide because she was taunted for her scars.

    Britain is complicit in torture so we all have a heavy cross to bear, some very much heavier than others.

  • Mr M

    Is it not racism when they imply other people are born with this thing called anti-Semitism.

    Why would any paper allow an article conflating anti-Semitism or “Jew hatred” with Islam ?

    The other that confuses me is why they claim to condemn Islamic fascism in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but they can’t see Jewish fascism?

    If people like are allowed to write articles, then it won’t be wrong before we get to read articles from Nick Griffin, Le Pen, etc.

    The man was being insulting, but rather than removing his article they instead removed the posts of annoyed users. You can’t beat a bad business plan than this for a paper.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    I was going to comment on the Observer website to point out Nick’s constant lack of any real knowledge of the Egyptian or Jordanian Muslim brotherhoods; the fact that experts on Islamic extremist terrorist groups like Fawaz A Gerges say that the Brotherhoods are attacked by terrorist groups for being “collaborators” due to their peaceful participation in elections ; the fact that in Egypt they are often attacked, beaten, jailed or killed by the police and hired thugs of the Mubarak dictatorship ; that their female supporters are often beaten and sexually abused by these thugs; and so that Cohen is only showing his ignorance in equating the Muslim Brotherhood parties with terrorists like al Qa’ida. The Brotherhood may well be religious fundamentalists and i don’t agree with them, but they have the same right as anyone to peacefully campaign for their views.

    Also as you’ve pointed out Craig if all peaceful avenues for political involvement for Muslims are closed down then violence will be the only one left – just the same as for any other group of people it will encourage terrorism by a minority of them – far better to let them have the same civil and political rights as the rest of us and to express themselves peacefully.

    Unfortunately the Guardian / Observer website, being highly concerned with free speech and debate, have already closed comments on the day of publication, so unfortunately you’re getting my rant at Cohen here Craig – sorry.

  • Anonymous

    eddie, I am not saying Israel and N Korea are directly comparable, I am pointing out the consequences of your logic and the position you put yourself in. That’s where you end up with these sort of claims you make. However, Israel is one of the biggest political problems for all nations, that is the position Israel has put itself in. It has plenty of options, but consistently chooses the most violent, aggressive and non co-operative ones.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Alan Campbell – this is not World War Two. Ships full of food, medical aid and cement are not Nazi warships.

    Israeli soldiers opening fire on them and killing unarmed people before they even board them are not World War Two partisans fighting Nazi murder.

    Your video link post in this thread seems to be yet another cheap attempt to pretend that anyone criticising any action of the Israeli military or government hates all Jews and wants another Holocaust.

    That’s a ludicrous joke. Try getting a real argument based on the facts as they relate to Israelis and Palestinians.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Neil Craig wrote “It is a matter of record that the number of people killed in the entire Gaza war, overwhelmingly combatants, is less than the number of civilians, in nominal peacetime, dissected while alive, by NATO “police” (formerly the KLA) under NATO authority to steal their body organs.”

    Really? Where is your source for these amazing claims Neil? A “matter of record” by whom, where, when?

    I don’t doubt there were former KLA in NATO’s police force – i’ve read that in more than one newspaper – nor do i doubt that many of the KLA are involved in organised crime.

    However as to the live dissection, never heard about that.

    To be more civilians than have been killed by Israeli forces from the foundation of the state of Israel on (even excluding the 1949 war in which many civilians were killed by Zionist militias – most notably at Deir Yasson) we’d have to be talking tens or hundreds of thousands, even if you only include those killed directly by Israeli forces rather than also including those killed by illnesses brought on by malnutrition, denial of medical treatment, refusal by Israeli forces to let Palestinians pass through checkpoints to hospitals fast enough; and lack of clean water, due to Israel monopolising water supplies, destroying sewage and water pumping stations and refusing to allow them to be reconstructed or provided with spare parts for repairs.

    For instance there were 1,400 Palestinians killed in 3 weeks by “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec 2009 to Jan 2009 alone – at least half civilians according to investigations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

    That was unusually high – it’s usually been a minimum of 300 a year though, so over 60 years that’s (at a very, very conservative estimate) 15,000 Palestinian civilians killed.

    Since human rights groups have taken to only referring to women and children as definitely being civilians the real total is almost certainly much higher.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    p.s when i say human rights groups refer only to women and children as definitely being civilians i mean among Palestinians in the occupied territories, due to Israeli government and military spokespeople adopting the (false) definition of “civilian” used by Karadzic and Mladic in the Srebrenica massacre – “males of military age”.

    This concession to Israeli government propaganda has backfired as they have started to argue that unarmed women and children are all “potential suicide bombers” on the grounds that a tiny minority were used as suicide bombers by Palestinian terrorist groups.

  • Duncan McFarlane

    Also whatever crimes NATO has committed can’t be used to claim Israeli governments and forces’ crimes are fine, or should be let pass.

    Two wrongs don’t make a right – that simple.

  • Leo

    @Eddie:

    “Leo don’t be an arse.”

    Haha, so it’s “being an arse” to hold you to your own rules?

    That makes you an arse, mate.

  • Fulano

    Hell, even Loser Larry is a better writer than Nick Cohen.

    A long time ago I was taught that people who won’t get to the point either have nothing to say or something to hide. Cohen is guilty on both counts. Aaronovitch is a close second.

    What constantly amazes me is how representatives of the so-called “secular decent Left” (Cohen, Aaronovitch, Kamm etc.) will go out of their way to defend a country that believes it has biblical rights to occupy land in the Middle East.

  • Mr M

    @Fulano,

    lol, just recognising the racial connection of the self styled “lefty” or “secularist” who can’t empathise with the plight of those under Israel’s control will qualify you as an “anti-Semitic”. In fact, just the mere mention of those Arabs in Gaza will be enaugh to get you into the anti-Semite books. Only Jewish people suffer in this world.

  • Fulano

    @ Mr. M

    Would you believe that a while back a certain journalist of the Times (name withheld) reported me to an employer for “anti-semitism” for opining foolishly in a company email that the US Congress was a bunch of “AIPAC-funded idiots”?

    How nasty and low can you go….

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