(Christian Science Monitor) - In an interview with Israel Army Radio, Hagai Ben Artzi, the brother of Netanyahu's wife Sara, reportedly said: "it needs to be said clearly and simply: There is an anti-Semitic president in the US. It's not that Obama doesn't sympathize with [Mr. Netanyahu]. He doesn't sympathize with the people of Israel."
Netanyahu's office swifty published a condemnation: "I entirely reject the remarks of Hagai Ben Artzi."
1 Gilo: 850 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Nov 2009 2 Pisgat Zeev: 600 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Jan 2010 3 Sheikh Jarrah: Several Palestinian families evicted in past 18 months to make way for Jewish settlers after court ruled in ownership dispute 4 Ramat Shlomo: 1,600 homes approved for publication and planning objections in Mar 2010 5 Silwan: Demolition orders on 88 Palestinian homes built without difficult-to-get permits - Israel planning controversial renewal project 6. West Bank barrier: Making Palestinian movement between West Bank and Jerusalem harder - Israel says it's for security
US still waiting for Netanyahu response on settlement concerns
● Martin Indyk On Netanyahu-U.S. Flap
≈ Cross-posted from my diary @BooMan -- Blahblah Biden Visits Netanyahu, Israel ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Could Bibi's brother-in-law be any more of a stereotypical Israeli idiot? Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Joseph Eötvösz, a Hungarian nobleman, would say in the 1920's that "an anti-Semite is one who hates the Jews... more than necessary."
Funny spelling -- they translated the given name, but kept the umlauts in the surname, yet added a 'z' at the end for whatever reason... while the reference itself is totally wrong.
József Eötvös lived 1813-1871: long dead by the 1920s... He was a writer and reform politician, who became minister for religion and education in 1867, and was responsible to bring in the law that made Jewish citizens and religion equal by law. (He was also the father of the better known physicist Loránd Eötvös.)
The earliest record of the Hungarian version (for the record: Antiszemita az, aki a kelleténél jobban gyűlöli a zsidót and slight variations thereof) I found is in a 16 April 1920 record of Parliament (pdf, Hungarian), in which a liberal MP of Jewish origin is making fun of anti-semites. When he quotes it [actually in a slightly off form, shouters 'correct' him), he calls it a "Hungarian proverb".
Elsewhere on the web, it is ascribed to writer Kálmán Mikszáth (1847-1910). I first thought it was apocryphal, but then I found the original: with archaic wording, and of course a different context. It is in a newspaper article Mikszáth published on 25 October 1884, which is a sarcastic-cynical piece on Parliament's first session after elections. The quote is at the end, when he talks about the then four parties in Parliament:
IOW, a double-edged swipe at the then active Hungarian Nationwide Antisemite Party and antisemites in other parties. (For the record, having scanned through dozens of Mikszáth's previous articles, I find he spent a lot of time exposing the idiocy of lower-case and upper-case anti-semites, while at the same time, he held the stereotypes too. For example, on the sidelines of the Tiszaeszlár Affair, he contrasts a family of assimilated Jews distressed by the new hostility of neighbours following the anti-semitic campaign, and a money-grubbing Jewish pub owner who is happy about the many extra customers as journalists and antisemitic spectators flock to view the trial -- to conclude that anti-semitism hits the good Jews and misses its target...) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
"For 20 years he sat with the preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli," Ben-Artzi said. "When an anti-Semitic president comes to power in America, it is our test, and we must say: `We will not give up. We are a 4,000-year-old people, while you will pass on and disappear in one or two years. Who will remember you? But Jerusalem will always be secure.'"
Setting aside the seeming veiled threat -- as if America couldn't blow Israel off the planet at the drop of a hat if it really wanted to -- last I'd checked, America was a hundred and seventy years older than Israel.
We have people who drive cars that are older than Israel. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
