Talk:Israeli proxy forces

I restored the initial part of this article that was deleted last night. I suspect that the person who deleted it found the opinions expressed there anti-Semitic. If that's the concern, however, they should be addressed by working that comment into the article rather than by deleting the Malaysian. The Malaysian comments were widely reported (and criticized) at the time they were made. If the argument that Israel rules via proxy forces is deceptive, answer it, don't just delete it as though it hasn't been uttered. --Sheldon Rampton 10:15 7 Feb 2004 (EST)

I'm the deleter. I think you're confusing two things here. Mahathir Mohamed talked of Jews using proxy forces, clearly antisemitic. Mohamed never used the term "Israeli proxy forces", which is why there's just no reason for his comments to be there. PNAC was talking about the SLA and/or its remnants, something very specific. Mohamed was making a broadly antisemitic argument and almost certainly not thinking of Israel and Lebanon, but of lobbyists and possibly Iraq as well, since it is a common antisemitic notion that the US invaded Iraq because of Jewish lobbying. To leave this like it is, it suggests a number of erroneous things, including that Jews and Israelis are the same thing, that the statement have anything to do with one another, and so on. There's really no way to edit it except to delete the first part and put it somewhere else.

Without meaning any disrespect, all uncertainty about, and distrust of, the power and influence of the Israeli or Jewish lobby in the United States is in direct proportion to the presence of those lobbies, the purpose of which is most probably as myopic and self-centered as other lobbies. There's nothing antisemitic about it; the same uncertainty and distrust applies to all oversized influence peddlers and profiteers. --M

There is a lot of debate about Israel, and I expect that there will be debate here on the SourceWatch. Hopefully Maynard's edits to the article help put the Malaysian comments in better context. To the user who has been contributing from the IP number 150.108.235.20: Welcome, and please feel invited to edit further. If you want to continue contributing to the SourceWatch, I'd encourage you to register as a user. There's no charge, and you can register it anonymously if you'd like. It gives you a few more options (such as setting up your own user page), which also makes communication easier between you and other users. --Sheldon Rampton 18:14 7 Feb 2004 (EST)

I understand what you're saying, but you're missing my point. In this case, I don't think the two have anything to do with one another because they reference two demonstratively different things. Proxy forces in Southern Lebanon is something that can be easily defined; Israel used proxy forces during the Lebanon War; they were able to do so because those forces were fighting the same enemy. There's nothing intrinsically unusual or surprising about that. Mahathir Mohamed was talking about something very different. He was claiming something much more sinister, that Jews use international influence, financial and otherwise, to get what they want. It's a "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" kind of reference. It's just a total mistake to associate the two. When someone talks of Israel using proxy forces in the context of Southern Lebanon, reasonable people can debate and disagree. When you say that Mahathir Mohamed was talking about the same thing when he talked about Jews operating by proxy and getting other people to fight their wars for them, particularly in the context of the rest of his speech, not only is terming this "Israeli proxy forces" demonstrably incorrect, but to argue that it's not antisemitic is to me deeply misguided.


 * Actually, I'm not missing your point. As long as the points you're making are explained in the text of this article, I think there's still a reason to mention the Mahathir Mohamed comments, precisely for the purpose of making the clarification that you're making. It's very common for people to equate "Jews" and "Israel," for obvious reasons. Moreover, the world Jewish community is strongly supportive of the state of Israel, so it's not surprising that people would equate the concept of "Jewish proxies" with "Israeli proxies." One of the things that this article should accomplish, hopefully, is helping distinguish between the two. Personally, I'm critical of the state of Israel, but I'm sympathetic to the issue you're raising about anti-Semitic propaganda uses of foreign policy concerns. (In this general vein, you might be interested in one of the articles I contributed awhile ago, titled Fake whistleblower memos on media bias in the Iraq war.)


 * Maybe you feel that the Mahathir Mohamed comments belong in a separate article. You could create an article about him and put the material there, accompanied by a critique. I wouldn't have any objection to that. The point is that the material shouldn't simply be deleted; it should be dealt with. It would also be good to include some external links to credible supporting documentation, such as a news story where Mohamed is quoted. --Sheldon Rampton 21:26 7 Feb 2004 (EST)