Because of its great victory, people tend to assume that the results of the Six Day War was a foregone conclusion for Israel – it was not. Israel was faced with the real possibility that she might well perish, and overcame it. What is so appalling is the pablum being spouted by the liberal establishment that somehow the Six Day War was a disaster for the Middle East or that it might have been better had Israel not won the war or the war had ended in a stalemate. As Mr. Stephens writes, hard choices have hard consequences but Israel eventually might have to act again to save itself.
by Bret Stephens
On June 4, 1989, parliamentary elections in Poland gave Solidarity 99 out of the 100 seats they were allowed to contest. For those who still doubted it—and there were many—the vote illustrated the utter illegitimacy of Communist rule in central Europe. Five months later, the wall came down in Berlin. Two years after that, the hammer-and-sickle was lowered, hopefully for the last time, over the Kremlin.
Also on June 4, 1989, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army seized control of Tiananmen Square in Beijing from the students who had been occupying it for the previous several weeks. The result, in that case, was the death of hundreds, maybe more, the imprisonment of thousands, the reconsolidation of hard-line Communist Party rule and the emergence of China not as a nation tracing a slow but steady course toward freedom but as a new form of dictatorship, one that sought to harness the energies of private enterprise to the ambitions of despotism.
What’s in a date? It was surely coincidental that two epochal events took place on the same day. Yet sometimes coincidences can illuminate deeper truths. In these cases, they remind us of the brittleness of tyrannical regimes, but also of their brutality; of their susceptibility to sudden collapse, but also of their capacity for endless slaughter; of their inner weakness, but also of their will to power.
[.......]
And so the fourth of June ought to be a date to mark in our calendars. It is a reminder that a core democratic task is to preserve the capacity to be scandalized by tyranny: wise enough to fear it, bold enough to resist it, persistent enough to expose it, and idealistic enough to believe it can be brought down.
Yet there aren’t the only fourths of June from recent history that ought to matter to us. There is also the fourth of June, 1967. It was a Sunday, the day before the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it. It was the eve of battle, the moment of decision.
On the fourth of June, 1967, Israel—deploying 275,000 troops, 200 combat planes, and 1,100 tanks—faced off against combined Arab armies that fielded nearly twice as many troops, more than four times as many planes, and nearly five times as many tanks.
On the fourth of June, 1967, the commander of the Egyptian army, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, told Ahmad Shukeiri, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “soon we’ll be able to take the initiative and rid ourselves of Israel once and for all.”
On the fourth of June, 1967, Israel had not received emergency military aid promised by the United States; nor had the United States mounted a promised international armada to break Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran; nor had Israel gotten any relief from France, which just then decided to turn on the Jewish state with an arms embargo; nor had it gotten any diplomatic relief at the United Nations, which had instantly capitulated to Egyptian demands to withdraw peacekeepers from the Sinai.
On the fourth of June, 1967, a divided Israeli cabinet met to decide what to do. One minister urged his colleagues not to go to war without an ally. Another insisted Israel needed a more clear-cut casus belli, even if it meant sending an Israeli ship on a suicide mission through the blockaded straits. Even David Ben-Gurion, no longer prime minister but still politically influential, felt Israel was acting in too much haste.
On the fourth of June, 1967, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko summoned Israel’s ambassador in Moscow to warn him that the Soviet Union would not brook “Zionist aggression” and that it was prepared to interfere on behalf of its Arab clients. As Gromyko was delivering that warning in Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol received a letter from Lyndon Johnson, who wrote to “emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities.”
And yet, despite this litany, it was on the fourth of June, 1967, that Israel chose to strike—and strike first. “They will condemn us,” Yigal Allon, the labor minister, told his cabinet colleagues. “And we will survive.”
All of this should sound familiar to us today—the threat to Israel’s existence, the political divisions within the country, the muddle of U.S. policy, the global opposition to Israel, Israel’s fear of being blamed for starting a war. And yet the gap between what the fourth of June, 1967, ought to mean to the world and what much of the world takes to be its meaning appears to be a bottomless chasm.
Five years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, the Economist published an editorial arguing that the war was “one of history’s pyrrhic victories….A calamity for the Jewish state no less than for its neighbors.” One has to marvel at the mental gymnastics required to come to that conclusion. You have to ignore everything Israel did to avoid the war, including beseeching King Hussein of Jordan not to join in, and you also have to ignore Israel’s immediate—and immediately rejected—offers to return the Sinai and the Golan Heights, as well as its efforts to establish an autonomous Palestinian authority in the West Bank.
You have to suppose that it is somehow “pyrrhic” that Israel remains a sovereign and prosperous state today, 45 years later, whereas it took the Romans a mere four years to make the original Pyrrhus’s victory proverbially pyrrhic. You have to deny that history’s losers typically aren’t given a second bite at the apple—just ask the East Prussians, or the Mexicans of San Diego, San Antonio, and Santa Fé. You have to think that the trade-off between France’s Mirages and America’s Phantoms, or between soft European support and hard American backing, was a bad one.
Above all—and this is the decisive point—you have to believe that the confidence and self-respect Israelis gained in the wake of the Six-Day War was prideful and sinful, and that the possession of political power ill befits the Jewish people, and that weakness is the only sure token of virtue.
Yet that is precisely how so much of the world has come to see the war. Thus, the day when the Jewish state had its back to the wall is now regarded as the last day Israelis could hold their heads high—because they weren’t occupying someone else’s land. The day when Israel stood behind borders that tempted its neighbors into war is now regarded as the day to which history must rewind—those notorious 1967 lines—in order to achieve a lasting peace. The day when Israel achieved one of the most unexpected military victories of the 20th century is now regarded as Israel’s original sin, the moment it began its descent into ethnic chauvinism, international ostracism, and national suicide.
Triumph: Israeli army paratroopers (L-R) Zion Karasanti, Yitzhak Yifat, and Haim Oshri stand beside the Western Wall after capturing it, June 7, 1967.How did this come to be? How did the meaning of the fourth of June get turned on its head?
One answer—and a powerful one—is that excuses for hating Jews are surely one of the world’s inexhaustible resources. It may be highly convenient to treat the Six-Day War as the moment Israel went rotten, but it’s an argument that can be sustained only by amnesia, ignorance, or bad faith. Israel was hated be fore the fourth of June as much as it was hated after the fourth of June. And you can be sure that, in the event that Israel withdraws from the last inch of “occupied” territory, the hatred will not abate, but only shape-shift into some other form.
A second answer is that history never gives us the counterfactual, the what-might-have-been. It’s always possible to argue that things might have turned out much better for the Jewish state if only it had stayed its hand before the war, or if it had acted otherwise after it.
Even so, it’s amazing how anyone can make the case that Israel suffered a “calamity” as a result of the Six-Day War. In 1967, the country had a per capita GDP of $1,500. Today the figure approaches $30,000. In 1967, support for Israel could barely muster 80 or so signatures in Congress. Today pro-Israel legislation routinely gets near-unanimous support in both houses. Since 1967, Israel has been deemed guilty of the sin of occupying a notional country called “Palestine.” In 1967, Israel was “Palestine.” Is Israel really so much worse off today?
But there is another answer, a deeper one, which perhaps can explain not only why the meaning of June 4 has been twisted, but a few other mysteries as well. And that’s the morality—the false and dangerous morality—of pity.
On the fourth of June, 1967, there were excellent reasons to side with Israel. It was a democracy besieged and assaulted by tyrannies. Its maritime rights had been violated by Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran; international law was on its side. It had compelling reasons to believe it was under mortal threat. It made no territorial demands on its neighbors, much less call for their destruction. It was a net contributor, scientifically and culturally, to the march of civilization. Simply put, the Israelis were the good guys.
Yet the reason usually cited for sympathizing with Israel that fourth of June is that it was the underdog—the proverbial 98-pound weakling versus its big bullying neighbors. And this was true, albeit only partially true, because Israel quickly demonstrated that it wasn’t such a weakling after all.
But it’s hard to make a defensible case for siding with the underdog based on underdog-status alone. Was Saddam Hussein hiding in his spider hole a better man than he was in his palaces? Were the allies in 1945 less deserving of victory than they were in 1942? Was Israel’s cause less right on June 12, right after the war, than it had been on June 4? These are the kind of nonsense propositions you are bound to wind up with if you make moral judgments based on underdog- or overdog-status alone.
The instinct to side with the underdog arises, at least in part, from the guilty pleasure of pity—the feeling of superiority that the sensation of pity almost automatically confers. Pity, it turns out, is not a form of sympathy, or empathy, or a genuinely humane concern for the misfortunes of others. On the contrary, pity is really a form of self-congratulation, an act of condescension, a sublimated type of narcissism. Little wonder, then, that the politics of pity should thrive in what the late Christopher Lasch called our culture of narcissism.
Consider the ways these politics plays out in our lives today. Remember that headline in Le Monde from September 12, 2001—“Nous Sommes Tous Américains”—“We Are All Americans”? Le Monde’s editorial pity lasted just so long as the wreckage of the Twin Towers smoldered in the ground, and then it was straight back to bashing the hyperpuissance. Or take the condemnation of the United States, by outfits such as Amnesty International, for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Poor Osama, defenseless before those marauding SEALs!
Yet nowhere do the politics of pity play out more vividly than when it comes to the Palestinians. How is it that, at least on the left, the Palestinians have become the new Chosen People? Part of the answer surely lies in the fact that Palestinians, uniquely, are the perceived victims of the Jewish state, and therefore another vehicle for castigating Jews. If you believe that Jews can do no right, you’re probably disposed to think that Palestinians can do no wrong—especially when they are attacking Jews.
[......]
The reason Palestinians don’t have to earn global sympathy by showing themselves worthy of it is that they are the perceived underdogs and are therefore automatically entitled to the benefit of every doubt. And it is because “caring” for the Palestinians flatters the vanity of their sympathizers. I don’t think the world really loves the Palestinians. But, as the late Donna Summer might have said, it does “love to love” them. Being pro-Palestinian, as that term is typically used, is not a testament to compassion. It is, more often than not, an act of self-love. It’s moral onanism.
Dogs of war: Israeli tanks advance toward Egyptian positions in the Sinai, June 4, 1967.
In recent years, friends of Israel, and many Israelis as well, have sought to reengage the world’s affections by trying to portray Israel as the real underdog—in other words, to enter a contest of victimhood with the Palestinians. This, too, is an effort, albeit a misguided one, to get back to the fourth of June.
Today, no visiting dignitary in Israel is allowed to leave the country before making the obligatory visit to Sderot, the hard-hit town near the Gaza Strip. No promotional videos by Jewish-American groups can avoid some touching exposition about how their money has been spent to help Sderot and its people. When Barack Obama visited Israel as a candidate in 2008, he famously said that if his daughters had to face what the children of Sderot do, he would want to do something about that, too. And it was largely on that basis that American Jewry decided that Obama “got” Israel.
[......]
But whatever else it is, Sderot should not be turned into advertisement for Israel in its bid to make itself more popular. On the contrary, Sderot is an indictment of Israel for its longstanding failure to stop the attacks from Gaza. The foremost responsibility of any government is the safety of its citizens. It was bad enough that Israel allowed more than three years to pass between its withdrawal from Gaza and Operation Cast Lead, in which Israeli forces entered Gaza again to degrade the Palestinian terror machinery. Much worse was the all-but-official Israeli policy to milk Sderot for pity value.
What’s more, it’s the Palestinians who are the real pros at calling attention to their misfortunes, real or invented. Why would Israel want to compete? Toward the end of the second intifada, in 2004, the scorecard of Palestinian to Israeli deaths stood roughly at 3:1. This was an empty statistic that took no account of guilt, innocence, or discrimination in the use of force, but which was nonetheless wielded to some political effect against Israel. But let’s ask the question: Would it have been better if the ratio had been reversed, with three Israeli fatalities to every one Palestinian?
Or, to take another example, would the Israeli cabinet have done better on June 4, 1967, to decide to sit and wait for Nasser to strike the first blow, and to accept several thousand more dead—as Golda Meir would six years later by waiting for the Arab attack that began the Yom Kippur War? What would that have achieved, other than, at best, a more victimized victory?
That would have been perverse. Israel was not founded to serve as another vehicle for showcasing Jewish victimhood, but for ending it. That day may still be very far off. But if the memory of the fourth of June means anything, it’s that statecraft cannot be conducted as a beauty pageant, and that the “benefit”—if that’s the word—of being seen as the righteous victim should count for nothing against the moral imperative of ensuring one’s survival.
This is a lesson that, for better or worse, the world has never let Israel long forget. But it’s also a lesson we here in the United States could stand to learn anew. The fourth of June ought to mean something for Americans as well.
Several years ago, Bill Clinton explained that part of his foreign-policy doctrine might be called the “Can I Kill Him Tomorrow?” theory of international relations—the idea being that if the military option against some particular threat remained viable for another day, diplomacy could still be given a chance to work.
This bit of characteristic moral preening by the former president was intended to demonstrate that the possession of vast power did not tempt him to lose his sense of moral restraint (except maybe with an intern or two). But it also betrayed the great assumption of his generation of baby boomers, which is that the principal task of statesmanship isn’t to make the hard call when it comes to the inevitable choice of evils. It is to postpone—and, with any luck, to avoid—having to make that call at all. It is the idea that politics can be about whatever we want it to be about.
[........]
It’s the same story with the Obama administration today, whose approach has largely been to deal with the world as we would wish it would be, not as it is. In the wish-it-would-be world, a reset would have been achieved with Russia, a grand bargain would have been struck with Iran, anti-Americanism would have been carried away on the breeze of the president’s rhetorical uplift, the Taliban would have been moved to embrace democracy, and we would be greening the industrial economy while moving toward a world without nuclear weapons.
The world as we would wish it to be is not a world in which Syria is bleeding, the Chinese are increasing the rate of annual military spending by a double-digit percentage, the Arab Spring is turning to an Islamist winter, Europe is imploding economically, and Iran is brazening its way to a nuclear bomb. That world is the real world, and it is the world the rest of us inhabit: the world of the concrete fact, the world of the worsening circumstance. It is the world in which decisions are made harder, not easier, by delay, in which delay increases the chances of failure, and of death.
It is a world choked with pity, yet pitiless.
In short, it is the world of the fourth of June—the fourth of June as it really was, and as we should try to remember it. It is the world as we find it when we have given up illusions. But it is also a world to seize.
Seventy years ago, in June 1942, the Nazis took revenge for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague by murdering the entire village of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia. Edna St. Vincent Millay memorialized that massacre—and its meaning for America—in a poem.
Oh, my country, so foolish and dear,
Scornful America, crooning a tune.
Think, Think: are we immune?
Catch him, catch him and stop him soon!Those lines were written when it was already too late for Lidice, too late for European Jewry, and nearly too late for the United States. They ought to remind us: Time is rarely on our side. Hard choices can’t be avoided without hard consequences. The world doesn’t wait. Act, act, before it’s too late.
Read the rest - Born on the fourth of June
Tags: Bret Stephens
ששת הימים, כלבה!
@ Macker:
I agree.
I can’t stand Tom Friedman.
The Six Day War was Israel v. Arab Nationalists. Now it will be Israel v. Islamofascists.
Obama hates the Jews.
Great post. Need translation on #1 LOL.
One of the best books I have listened to in recent history is Six Days of War by Michael Oren. I have “read” several of Oren’s books -- all are excellent.
Dolphin wrote:
Michael Oren is now Israel’s U.S. Ambassador.
darkwords wrote:
Amongst a lot of over things.
Dolphin wrote:
Six Days, Bitch!
Had Israel achieved nuclear weapons capability as of ’67?
@ Speranza:
I think I knew that. It has been a while, but also saw an interview with him (maybe with Glenn Beck, but don’t remember), I was very impressed.
@ Speranza:
The Islamofascists are much more dangerous. Plus Israel is just one of many targets.
@ Speranza:
Thanks -- didn’t know “bitch” could be translated into Hebrew.
Dolphin wrote:
Use google translate.
http://translate.google.com/
Rodan wrote:
Agreed. They cannot be reasoned with.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
I believe she did.
Dolphin wrote:
He is a very good speaker and ambassador.
@ Speranza:
They are evil.
@ Speranza:
That Aswan High Dam reminds me of nothing so much as a giant toilet tank. All it lacks is a big ol’ flush handle….
@ Speranza:
I was just being lazy.
I really want to visit Israel. I don’t want to go on an “organized” trip, would rather go with an individual that has been there or travels there frequently. I may have a lead on this from a friend of hubby’s that his mom goes once or twice a year. Friends mom stays 2-3 weeks at a time.
The tanks in the picture are “Super Shermans.” They appear to be the later models having the running gear of the E-8s. They were US cast-off exports. The Israelis upgraded the armor, and canned the original guns and converted them to 105mm -- which incidentally was the same bore we were using in our front-line tanks at the time.
In many respects -- prior Israeli conflicts were proxy US/Soviet testing grounds. Two interesting aspects, for me regarding the 1967 conflict -- it proved the efficacy of wire-guided anti-armor missiles namely the Sagger system for the bad guys, and for the good guys -- the most definitive use to that date of air power in the role of close-air-support and mock artillery.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
LOL I see a photoshop in someone’s future. lol
@ Brick:
Yes they are upgraded Sherman’s. The IDF also used British Centurion’s, American M-48 Patton’s and French (light tank) AMX-13′s.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
If Egypt attacks Israel then the Aswan should be a fair target.
Dolphin wrote:
There are advantages (and some disadvantages) to planning your own itinerary.
So while Israel was fighting for her life, America’s hippies enjoyed a Summer Of Love? What a year ’67 was. Glad I was born after all that.
Speranza wrote:
Egypt (if the military has any say in it) won’t attack Israel. To do so they would have to mass in the Sinai first… even a small nuke air burst, game over.
NoThreat2U wrote:
I remember the year well. The Monterey Pop Festival (June 16 -- 18, 1967) happened a week after the Six Day War ended (June 10, 1967) which leads me to wonder what would have happened had God forbid Israel had been destroyed in June 1967 with over 2 million dead, soon to be dead, or terrorized Jews to add to the butchers bill 22 short years after the Holocaust? I guess the festival would have gone on as if nothing else had happened.
@ Speranza:
I agree. And I am not an international traveler. I also don’t like being told what to do. I am more of an explorer than a follower and recognize that -- that can get me in trouble in the region!
Dolphin wrote:
The thing abut Israel is that it is a tiny, tiny country the size of New Jersey with so much to see. However traveling with a group gives you an opportunity to make some great friends.
@ NoThreat2U:
Girl -- you are younger than me! G-d I feel old!
@ Speranza:
Sad to say but I agree…it would have been as though nothing happened. How sad.
brookly red wrote:
I am worried that the MB would do to the Egyptian military what Recep Tayyip Erdogan did to the Turkish military.
@ Speranza:
If it’s any consolation, I will be 45 in a few months. And believe me, there are times when I feel old with what is going on these days!
Speranza wrote:
Interestingly, had the Brits honored their original deal -- the IDF could have been sporting front-line Chieftains in 1973 for their next big dust-up. It was probably this, and the idea that if you can’t get something you want, build it yourself that gave rise to their own main battle tanks, the Merkavas. From that point forward Israel no longer had to make do with respect to their military wares.
NoThreat2U wrote:
They’d have had a moment of silence in the capitals or parliaments of the Western democracies and Israel would’ve been forgotten shortly thereafter.
Brick wrote:
You know your stuff! The British reneged on the Chieftain deal (later selling Chieftain’s to Iran and possibly Jordan) after Israel helped upgrade the Chieftains too! Israel decided to build the Merkava tank, just like they built their own version of the French Mirage 5 after France embargoed the 50 jets already paid for. The Israeli Mirage was called the “Nesher” and fought splendidly during the Yom Kippur War and after the Nesher the next step was the even better Kfir jet.
NoThreat2U wrote:
I was only 7 and even then didn’t care for the hippy scene on TV.
/give me bugs bunny any day than the hippie shows.
NoThreat2U wrote:
I am older then you (born during the early years of the first Eisenhower term) and amazed at all the technological changes I have seen in my lifetime.
Lily wrote:
My favorite thing about the Summer of Love (I was a bit too young to indulge in it) was seeing The Doors on Ed Sullivan.
@ Speranza:
I was even too young for that!! Cartoons were my favorite and The Wide World of Disney!
Speranza wrote:
they might, they probably will. so what? it will just weaken the military and not change the facts on the ground. when i was a kid i pumped gas after school. i learned quickly that no matter how big, bad and scary you were you had to step out of the car to get to me… BANG i just kicked the door shut on you shin… BANG i just did it again. Sucks to be you
Egypt will not attack Israel because they have to cross the Sinai to do it.
@ Lily:
Wait! What about the Mod Squad? One white , one blond,
one black.
“What’s your name Boy?”
“Link”
“Link what?”
“Lincoln!!!!!!!!!!!”
Dumb show.
@ Lily:
Although I did watch the Ed Sullivan show.
@ RIX:
Even at 7 I didn’t like that show. Always looked forward to the Wizard of Oz being played once a year though.
brookly red wrote:
The POTUS should inform the Egyptians (quietly) that any hostilities initiated against Israel would bring the US in on Israel’s side.
Heck, at least ya’ll had TV’s growing up. Was forbidden in my house. Bought my first TV at a garage sale in ’83; it was a small black and white that I got for $15. Moved out and to Texas in 84. LOL.
@ Dolphin:
My grandparents even had a color TV!!! We had only black and white.
Lily wrote:
Certain years in your life resonate with you as you get older. 1967 and 1973 (not just for the Yom Kippur War) are two years that I recall really, really well. 1973 also was the Spring and Summer of Watergate amongst other things (I was a Sophomore in college) which I recall so vividly. I got a summer job that year working at Lafayette Radio (long gone) for $2.25 an hour!
@ Dolphin:
To be honest didn’t watch a lot of TV when little…was outside playing …TV was usually watched when sick, in the evening or when the weather was too hot or raining or too cold.
Lily wrote:
We got our first color TV (a Magnavox) in 1969.
Lily wrote:
The annual showing of the Wizard of Oz (on Sunday nights) was a real happening.
RIX wrote:
A-team, Charlie’s Angles (that was really sick come to think of it) Gillian’s Island fer Pete’s sake… all commie social conditioning. Batman? with and under aged side-kick butt-boy in tights?, gay. Sorry if you watch TV you lose.
@ Speranza:
I remember Watergate..but was too young to really to be concerned.
All I knew was war (Vietnam) from the news and thought that when you grew up if you were a boy you went to war.
@ Speranza:
I dont know if they would have even gotten that…look at the minute of silence the Olympic won’t do.
@ Speranza:
I can so see Obama doing that.////
brookly red wrote:
Oh come on we cannot turn our backs on the popular culture and expect to win elections. Besides -- Batman gave me a horny 13 year old boy the fantasies about Julie Newmar.
At the time of the Six-Day War, the NYT magazine published a pro-Israel piece by Cynthia Ozick, titled “All the World Wants the Jews Dead.”
I cannot imagine the NYT doing that today. It wants the Jews dead all right—the Sulzberger family converted to Episcopalianism a long time ago—but it likes its euphemisms far too well.
@ brookly red:
Didn’t care for those shows…even at a young age they were stupid to be honest. I loved old black and white movies though.
@ Lily:
My parents weren’t hippies either. lol
@ Lily:
It was a stupid show, but we all thought that the
blond hippy, Peggy Lipton was hot.
Speranza wrote:
The POUTS would never do anything to piss off the Islamists.
NoThreat2U wrote:
In 1967 Israel actually was very popular. Nobody talked about the Palestinians back then.
Speranza wrote:
the POUTS is a muslim commie actively neutering our military, now care to re-think that?
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Are you sure it wasn’t about the Yom Kippur War. The worm had changed by then.
Speranza wrote:
The Arabs had only invented themselves as “Palestinians” 3 years earlier, in 1964.
The Marxist/Islamist/separatist wing of the Civil Rights Movement—Stokeley Carmichael, Ron Karenga, etc.—immediately made common cause with them.
Speranza wrote:
It was a big deal wasn’t it???
@ Lily:
It was against my fathers “religion”. Not bashing, but growing up with kids that all had TV, it was, at times humiliating for me at that age. The bonus was that I read all the books that were based on the movies they were going to see and at least had that up on them. I still, to this day, prefer to read the book, than see the movie. Especially if the book is excellent -- I have no desire to see the movie.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
We are talking about a real POTUS, not the imposter we have now.
Speranza wrote:
Yes, I’m sure. It was the Six-Day War.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
“Palestine” and Old Jerusalem -- part of Jordan. Gaza -- administered by Egypt.
NoThreat2U wrote:
My parents weren’t hippies but they weren’t conservative either.
We were snobs. My Dad only shopped at Sears and bought us a big color tv floor model. And it didn’t have that fishbowl look to it. I swear that sucker survived into the mid 80s. lol
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
The Israel bashing started after the Six Day War in 1968. The Liberals loved Israel in 1967.
@ brookly red:
Come on, Gilligans Island was a documentary.
It was, wasn’t it?
@ Dolphin:
Book worm here. I read the book and would watch the movie. I love reading..even though we had a TV…reading was awesome to me.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
They view Arabs as their Black brothers.
Speranza wrote:
Not entirely. They were still willing to twiddle their thumbs and “tsk, tsk” while Israel was annihilated.
Speranza wrote:
My information suggests Israel has had nuclear weapons since around 1958.
@ Lily:
Alfred Hitchcock when vacationing at my grandmas. The TV was an ancient old Zeineth tube.
Used to scare me to death. And the had me sleeping in the basement, with the bugs (roaches).
@ Speranza:
They viewed it as a Socialist state.
@ Dolphin:
Even when I was little I just loved scary shows!! Alfred Hitchcock loved his movies…problem was it was hard to get me scared!!! No problems sleeping from scary shows.
Speranza wrote:
Yes. The formerly-majority-Jewish Old City—what the lying media falsely call “traditionally Arab East Jerusalem”—had been ethnically cleansed of its Jews, the property expropriated, and the cemeteries and synagogues desecrated.
The Jordanians illegally held the Old City for 19 years. The utterly useless UN, which had made pious noises about making Jerusalem an “international city” and about “guaranteeing access to holy places” did absolutely nothing to protect the Jews of the Old City or enable Jews to visit the Wall during those 19 years.
Still like scary shows and books…not gory or slasher flicks though those aren’t scary just gory.
@ Lily:
You saw “Night of the Living Dead?”
Bunch of Obama voters.
Don’t supress their vote!
Speranza wrote:
That was what made Ozick’s headline/title so provocative at the time.
@ RIX:
Nope Night of the Living Dead …not my cup of tea…although I loved the B-flick The Crawling Eyes..haven’t seen that in years.
@ Lily:
I could and still can read the shit, but my brain only allowed what I could handle. I can read Steven King and others, but won’t watch the movies. Maybe it is because I was singe until 35. Still can’t watch scary movies.
Rodan wrote:
They’re all big Frantz Fanon fanboys.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
The U.N. (FDR’s dream) has always been full of shit just like St. FDR was.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
@ NoThreat2U:
The Aswan High Dam should be one of Israel’s first…if not the first…targets.
Nite all.
@ Dolphin:
Oh wow…too bad you can’t come over for a movie fest…I have some excellent scary shows.
We would have fun…I’d protect you!
Rodan wrote:
I always liked you but now I have a new found respect for you. Well done Sir.
Rodan wrote:
Back then it was hard to love the fascist Nasser and the nutty Baathist Syrians. King Hussein though was referred to as “the P.L.K.” meaning “The Plucky Little King”.
Rodan wrote:
That’s probably why some folks call the A-rabs “Sand Non-Crackas!”
@ Dolphin:
Nite {Dolphin}!
The Godzilla movies were great. That thing kept
stomping on Tokyo.
For my money Mothra was the star though. That moth
was a great actress.
The fact that she never won an Oscar just lets you
know how political Hollywood is!
@ Macker:
It seems like any country fighting muslims hesitate to strike fast and strike hard.
doriangrey wrote:
I doubt it. The Dimona reactor only became active some time between 1962 and 1964.
NoThreat2U wrote:
You have too. There are too many of them.
@ RIX:
Damn straight…creature flicks..loved those!
RIX wrote:
You think Bridezillas is terrifying, wait until Godzilla starts trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
Macker wrote:
why it can’t hurt them… now Egypt’s 4th army massing could, and it would not make it to the border.
Lily wrote:
As a little boy I used to love the annual TV showing of Abbot and Costello Meets Frankenstein.
The 1933 film “The Invisible Man” with Claude Rains playing the Invisible Man is one of the best.
@ Speranza:
Those were good too!
Comedy and scary at the same time..a childs favorite!!!
@ RIX:
Mary Ann, or Ginger?
Speranza wrote:
is that the one with John Kerry?
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
Mary Ann for me.
brookly red wrote:
No that was Glen Strange playing Frankenstein.
@ Speranza:
I think I saw a later version of that movie…liked it.
Lily wrote:
Hell yeah. I loved the Dracula flicks when you could
see the strings on the rubber bat.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
tag team…
it’s how we do it in Brooklyn.
@ Speranza:
Hubby always says Mary Ann too…probably because I looked closer to her than Ginger.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
Mary Ann was the girl that you brought home to meet
mother.
Ginger is the girl that you brought home and hoped
that mother wasn’t home.
brookly red wrote:
How come Ginger goes on a 3 hour cruise wearing a formal evening gown?
And what’s with the professor? How come he can make a radio out of a coconut but cannot fix a hole in the boat??
@ brookly red:
Destroy the Aswan Dam, and the resulting flood would flush 95% of the sh1t in Egypt into the Med.
@ RIX:
Oh yeah…loved Vampire flicks when I was little.
Lily wrote:
Mary Ann had that pretty and wholesome look.
Mary Ann to marry, Ginger to fool around with.
Lily wrote:
I have the 1933 The Invisible Man on DVD.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
How about Obama becomes President? Frightening but absurd,
could never happen.
@ Speranza:
Fix the boat, and ruin a great gig, trapped on an idyllic Pacific island with two hotties? He didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, you know.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
because it would be bad press and it would leave the other 5% the military untouched… first you go for the threat.
@ Speranza:
I’ve seen the movie (and it isn’t in my collection) but I’m sure it wasn’t the 1933 movie…but I could be wrong.
RIX wrote:
Dear heavens we are actually living a scary movie aren’t we? I prefer to watch them and not live them.
Thanks G_d Israel won. That is all I have to say.
@ Speranza:
I agree. Go in and clean house. Make them reconsider ever fucking with us again. Total annihilation is all they would understant.
@ brookly red:
The military would be completely demoralized, and even if they vowed revenge, their supply lines, and indeed their sources of supply would have ceased to exist. They’d have to surrender in order to eat, once they’d eaten the rations they had in-theater.
@ RIX:
Yeah they did…the girls always seemed to go into a trance.
@ Lily:
After the surge of patriotism after 9/11 ,the country
elects an American hating fool?
RIX wrote:
That’s the point. Vampire stories are all about repressed sexuality.
Lily wrote:
It’s like the vampires were Obama, people swooned.
Chris Matthews should have played Draculas love interest.
I hate to break it to you all but Ginger was lipstick to Mary-anns butch, the Professor was a union wanker who could not fix a leak, Gilligan really was the Skippers “lil buddy” the Holews were actually sane but Mormons, and the reason they were never found was because the gubermit was looking for them…
the lesson to be learned? life is a bitch deal with it and if you put your faith in the gubermit you are marooned. Deal with that.
RIX wrote:
Remember that the communists backing Obama had been laying the groundwork for this since he was hangin’ with the Choom Gang—and before. As in Invisible Man—the Ellison novel, not the HG Wells story or the films made from it—Obama is basically the photogenic front man for “the Brotherhood,” i.e., the Communist Party. Unlike the hero of Invisible Man, Obama is perfectly willing to be that front man; he will never wake up the way Ellison’s hero does.
@ RIX:
Nobody would willingly believe in a vampire with such poor taste as to want to suck the blood out of Chris Matthews. Vampires have class, if nothing else.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Come on, they got laid at the cast party.
RIX wrote:
I know it’s insane.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
true.
RIX wrote:
Well obama is the FIRST GAY PRESIDENT.
RIX wrote:
Back to the teachers union…people are not born stupid, they need to be trained.
brookly red wrote:
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
@ Lily:
The current state of America.
brookly red wrote:
Well they didn’t train me to be stupid. At least I knew what stupid is.
/I had two little brothers after all.
RIX wrote:
*Ding* *Ding* *Ding*
@ brookly red:
That’s right, the Founding Fathers are portrayed
as racist honkys.
On the other hand anti-social slobs are held up as
heroes.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
again leftest propaganda… nothing stops a vampire colder than a paternity lawsuit and garnished wages.
Lily wrote:
Unfortunately.
@ brookly red:
Thanks. I’m tired of talking. I am going to do!
Good night fun seekers.
Have a great evening.
@ RIX:
My favorite character wass Rodan!
Rodan wrote:
Your in Florida right? they need help clearing the voting list to only living citizens
NoThreat2U wrote:
They are afraid that NATO will bomb them to help the Muzz.
@ brookly red:
Yes, the voting rolls are being purged as we speak.
Lily wrote:
Indeed.
RIX wrote:
Moochel is not proud of her country for a reason… she was taught with our tax dollars to hate us. Wrap you head around that.
@ Macker:
Oh yeah that will get him lots of votes/not.
Rodan wrote:
mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord… sing Rodan, sing!
@ brookly red:
Thank goodness I never was taught to hate our country!!
/plus I don’t think I would have bought into that idea.
@ brookly red:
Oh my!
@ Lily:
Rodan singing that is.
Lily wrote:
they tried, Lord they tried and as long as their is one free state there is hope… the Saints still sux, but at least they aren’t the Cow pretty Boys
Lily wrote:
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Sing mothaphuca! sing!
@ brookly red:
Oh now … you bashing on my Saints???
We still have Drew Brees.
Trust me it isn’t working on teaching most kids to hate their country. My two sons love this country and are on a war-path to vote this so-called president OUT!!!!
Oldest son can’t take the lies out of his mouth anymore!!
@ brookly red:
PREACH IT {brookly}! PREACH IT!!!!
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
sing damn it sing!
@ brookly red:
Well concerning the Cowboys at least the Saints have never cried on national TV….BAM!
@ Rodan:
I liked Gamera myself, that big turtle-thing that could pull in his legs, and then shoot smoke out the leg holes in his shell, and somehow fly like that.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
can they hear in Washington? I don’t think so!
@ Lily:
GO TEXANS
With that piece of business completed
I saw a funny bumper sticker on a car today
OMG!
Obama Must Go in 2912
Gave me hope…
@ Calo:
*2012*
@ brookly red:
They certainly need to hear it! Loud and clear!!!!
@ Calo:
{Calo} the whole time in Houston saw not one bumper sticker for obama and none to there and to home. Oh yeah..gave me hope. That is the hope we need …not his!!!
@ Calo:
Your keyboard went communist????
Lily wrote:
sing Lilly, sing… the devil hates it when you sing.
@ Calo:
Texans have never cried on national TV either. BAM!
@ brookly red:
I know..but I don’t sing very well.
@ brookly red:
That’s the one thing I will be able to do if I get to heaven sing, sing, sing!!!!
Lily wrote:
they did at their Super Bowl celebr… oh, never mind
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
now there is a name i havent heard in a good long time.
@ brookly red:
Oh-oh….Calo is here….
Lily wrote:
I have found just humming it on the subway scares the shit of oZombies.
brookly red wrote:
Oh I’ll sing it..even if I’m out of key to at least give them a damn whack on the head …
@ brookly red:
Whatever, we have about a month to go until football season.
Meanwhile we have the Olympics in London to look forward to and plenty of half naked firm male bodies to drool over the TV screen at.
@ Calo:
Word.
@ Lily:
I always enjoy the British boys accents…
Much more soothing and sensual that an East Coast one.
Calo wrote:
Ugg… word on the street is the Muz is set to strike London. Several small but coordinated attacks on soft targets (hotels), and airlines if they can.
@ Calo:
Oh seems daughter-in-law has trumped son…name for future baby girl will not be Breezy…but Annabelle.
well the girl turned 10 today
and one of her presents was the hunger games cd and she made me download it onto the computer so we could listen to it
hmmmmm
she seems to be liking it
so far I have heard two songs I really liked
Calo wrote:
loves me some of that Alabama
gals accents
@ brookly red:
Yep heard those rumors too…
Lily wrote:
bet you a quarter he calls her breezy anyway
@ buzzsawmonkey:
what’s up with Babbazee?
@ mawskrat:
southern accents
just sayin
@ rain of lead:
Probably…after all Drew Brees is his fav ….
/Happy Birthday to your daughter too!
Lily wrote:
which makes me think no, but they are putting assets in place… bluff? we shall see.
@ mawskrat:
What about Louisiana accents?
@ brookly red:
Who knows but time will tell. If I were a betting person…I wouldn’t bet on this one. Nope…could be just rumor.
Lily wrote:
it’s all good…can’t stand the N.E. accents>LOL
@ mawskrat:
rain of lead wrote:
Mmmhum, yes…
You called into BTR once and your voice was like butter.
Calo wrote:
(blush)
@ Calo:
Polite and smooth…
Lily wrote:
I got a bad feeling, they are exposing assets and we have an election coming this could be for real.
ahem….
Miranda lambert sings a song on the soundtrack
give a listen
VERY old school country
@ brookly red:
Like I said could go either way…so no betting. Could be/could be not.
is from 1974
Guggi wrote:
Not much has changed in 38 years.