Lying

I get so impatient with having to say the same thing over and over again.  Unfortunately, the current state of our political life is just that- one specimen of Republican jackassery after another, on and on ad infinitum.  So I thought I would take a chance to write briefly about one of my most fundamental beliefs, which I think is directly related to the ability of Republicans to keep up their idiocy for ever.

Here's the thing about lies:  People, in general, do not believe lies because they are plausible; they believe them because it suits their interest to do so.  And the funny thing is that, for the vast majority of people, it is a short journey to actually believing whatever is convenient.

Well, it is a clear result of this fact that there is no one easier to lie to than yourself, because there is no one on earth that has as much interest in believing your lies as you do.

Don't want to pay taxes?  Just tell yourself that cutting taxes increases government revenue.  Don't want to deal with global warming?  Just tell yourself that it is a gigantic conspiracy by tens of thousands of scientists.  Don't want to deal with your own racism?  Just tell yourself that black people are all degenerate thugs.  Tell yourself that the surge worked.  Tell yourself that the Republican near-depression of 2008 was caused by some obscure real estate law forced through by Democrats in the 1970's.  Tell yourself that Democrats create deficits and Republicans end them.  Tell yourself that Saddam Hussein was on the part of starting a nuclear war with the United States, and when that doesn't pan out, start telling the same nonsense about Iran.\

And it seems that people can actually believe things like this, particularly if they are conservative and they think someone is going to cut their taxes or make them rich if they just suspend their reason.

Hey, you know what?  I can guarantee you that even Hitler believed that he was building a better world for the only people that mattered.

People believe what they want to believe.  That, in a way, applies to all of us, even those of us who want to believe things that make sense, and for which there is some sort of real evidence.  Unfortunately, that seems to be a dwindling segment of the American people, compared to the ones who want to throw reason aside and just believe in fairies.

Comments

Raymond Smith said…
I believe there are a larger portion of people that want to believe in empirical data then blatant lies. The problem is that with the current conditions in the USA the vast majority feel helpless. If they say go out and demonstrate to protest something, like back in the 60'2 there appears more of a chance to get shot by police. Yes this was a risk back in the 60's but time have changed and Law Support is no longer a "To Protect and Serve" type of agency of the past.
Fear is a disease that has been embedded in the USA society. It was accomplished by Timothy McVeigh, then 911 and all of the physiological games of color coding days via possible threats. This fear has been drilled deeply into even the police agencies who appear for the most part to be operating in Military survival mode, not worried about the public, worried about surviving and all outside of law enforcement agencies are enemies to be guarded against.
Just my observation from years of working around Law Enforcement personnel.
Sam 240 said…
"Don't want to deal with your own racism? Just tell yourself that black people are all degenerate thugs." -- Green Eagle.

Don't want to deal with your own anti-Cherokee bigotry? Like Andrew Jackson, just tell yourself that the Cherokees are all degenerate thugs bent on killing all the whites.

Don't want to deal with your own anti-Armenian bigotry? Like Talaat, just tell yourself that Armenians are all degenerate thugs bent on killing all the Turks.

Don't want to deal with your own anti-Chechen bigotry? Like Stalin, just tell yourself that the Chechens are all degenerate thugs bent on killing all the Russians and Georgians.

Don't want to deal with your anti-Palestinian bigotry? Like Green Eagle, just tell yourself that the Palestinians are all degenerate thugs who are bent on killing all the Jews. And, if anyone disagrees with you, just ban them.

Hey, you know what? I can guarantee you that even Andrew Jackson, Talaat, Stalin, and Green Eagle believed that they were building a better world for the only people that mattered.

Physician, heal thyself.

Infidel753 said…
for the vast majority of people, it is a short journey to actually believing whatever is convenient

The popularity of religion in a wide range of cultures certainly bears this out. High levels of mass education seem to be the only effective antidote (see Scandinavia, Japan).

I've long been convinced that the growing centrality of religious fundamentalism in the US right wing is at the root of their extreme propensity for reality-denial and believing emotionally-satisfying nonsense. The mind that has shut off its critical faculties in order to accept biblical literalism finds it that much easier to shut off those faculties for the sake of believing whatever other convenient rubbish presents itself.
Hans "Grüne" Adler said…
Why are you so anti-Hitler, and why do those Arabs in Israel (they lie when they call themselves "Palestinians") think Hitler wasn't so great?

Hitler wasn't the biggest anti-Semite at the time. Winston Churchill was.

Hitler just wanted to expel the Jews. This isn't a problem. Just like Israel is for the Jews, Turkey for the Turks, England for the English, and America for the Americans, Germany is for the Germans. Nobody has any business in Israel unless the Jews want them there, and the same goes for any other country. If the Turks don't want Greeks in Turkey, they expelled them; if the Greeks don't want Turks in Greece, they get rid of them. You said this was good. If the Jews don't want Arab scum in Israel, they should get rid of them. This is right and good. Therefore, unless you are an anti-German bigot, Germans should have the same right.

You aren't a bigot, are you?

Benyamin Netanjahu says that Hitler didn't want to kill the Jews, and Netanyahu is a wonderful and honest man. The Israelis elected him, and the Jews are wonderful and honest people.

A few days ago, some anti-Semitic swine told me to look at this article. It says that Yitzhak Shamir helped the Nazis during World War II, and therefore Zionism is evil.

If Hitler were really anti-Semitic, would Israel elect someone who helped him? Shamir was a wonderful man, and the Jews are a wonderful and honest people. If they elected Shamir after he sided with Nazi Germany, than Nazi Germany wasn't as anti-Semitic as those "Palestinian" barbarians say he was.

You know where those Jews should have gone? To their homeland, Israel.

But Winston Churchill wouldn't let them go home. He wanted them dead.

In 1944, the Nazis offered to hand all of the Hungarian Jews over to Britain. The exchange never took place. Churchill wanted to preserve English control over Palestine, and he wanted those 400,000 Jews dead.

Churchill was the real anti-Semite. He could have saved those Jews the Nazis were trying to protect. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency says that the offer took place, and I believe them. They are Jews, and therefore they are good people.

Oh, here's an article about how Churchill killed 3 million Indians during World War II. He hated everyone who wasn't an white Anglo-Saxon Christian.

No wonder all those Republicans praised him while they were lying their way to killing Iraqis. He was the real racist anti-Semite.

Also, Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians during the Holodomor, and who was the only leader who tried to bring Stalin down? Hitler. Stalin wanted to kill all the Jews. Therefore, by trying to destroy Stalin, Hitler was helping the Jews in the Soviet Union.

The only reason for the Holocaust was the Mufti's advice to the Nazis. Again, Netanyahu, the leader of Israel says so, and the honest and intelligent Jews would never elect a Holocaust denier to office. This is why Israel is justified in getting rid of the Palestinians.

Keep telling yourself lies, Sam. I had to speak up against a Jew-hater like you.

P.S. That tribute I was planning to make to the Charlie Hebdo martyrs never did pan out. I couldn't teach myself how to draw well.







Adam Alabaster, A-1 American said…
Large Green Dodo claims "the Republican near-depression of 2008 was caused by some obscure real estate law forced through by Democrats in the 1970's."

That near-depression was caused by Democrats, and you know it.

2001: Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House. No recession.
2002: Republicans control the White House, and Democrats run the Senate. Recession.
2003-06: Republicans control the White House and all of Congress. No recession.
2007-08: Republicans control the White House, and Democrats run Congress. Near-depression.

See a pattern? Republicans run things - no recession. Democrats gain control of the legislature - recession. Conclusion: a bad economy is the Democrat Party's fault.

2009-10: Democrats run Congress and the White House. Still a near-depression.
2011: Republicans gain control of the House. The economy gets better.
2015: Republicans gain control of the Senate. The economy continues to improve.

Moral: As we drive out the Democrats and replace them with Republicans, the economy gets better.

Dummycrats like you love lying.

Sam240 said…
Hans,

Stalin may have wanted to kill millions of Jews. Hitler was responsible for killing between 5 and 6 million of them.*

Your defense of Hitler is clearly anti-Semitic.

[*Note: The Ustashe and the Romanian government were also trying to kill off the Jews in their countries. Personally, I'm holding those allies responsible for deaths there.]

Netanyahu is a deeply dishonest individual. In an effort to smear the entire Palestinian people, he is spreading a lie created by Holocaust Denier David Irving. Given that the ultimate source of your information is a lying anti-Semite, it is, at best, deeply suspect. I, myself, consider it a lie.

I'll also quote the Los Angeles Times, which notes at least one MK is describing Netanyahu as a Holocaust denier:

Another opposition lawmaker, Dov Khenin, demanded that the prime minister retract his words and apologize for what he called a “distortion of history that joins the murky wave of Holocaust denial.” The lawmaker, who leads a parliamentary lobby for Holocaust survivors, said Netanyahu crossed all red lines in his efforts to “blame the Arabs for all injustices of the world and history.”

Palestinians too were incensed.

“It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbor so much … to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history,” said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, urging Netanyahu to stop “using this human tragedy to score points for his political end.”


[Note: I would call Belgium's Leopold II the most evil person in history, but Hitler's definitely in the top ten, and probably in the top five. He had stated years before taking power that he wanted to exterminate the Jews.]


Now, as for Yitzhak Shamir: I cannot deny that he saw Britain as the real enemy. However, no matter how evil a person is, it is not too difficult to find a contemporary defender. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Mandate Palestine (as it was then known); finding one who wanted to help the enemy of the British occupiers should not be two hard.

One cannot excuse Hitler's genocide by quoting a Jew who (a) due to geographic location, was not subject to the Holocaust, and (b) wanted to help the enemy (Germany) of an existing enemy (Britain). To omit any references to Jews who criticized Hitler is fundamentally dishonest.

Sam 240 said…
Continuing my attack on Hans:

Now, I will address one possible response from Green Eagle. He will say that the presence of some Israeli Jew who sided with Hitler is no reason to condemn Israel. So far, I agree with him. Doing so would be unfair. If the Israeli population had relegated all such people to political oblivion, it would have been a very good thing.

However, Yitzhak Shamir was no fringe figure. He became Prime Minister of Israel. He was one of the founders of the Likud Party, which is controlling party in Israel's current governing coalition.

He is as far as being a fringe figure in Israeli history as you can get.

Hans, you may use such a link to try to whitewash Hitler. But the number of dead Jews, Sinti, and Roma prevent such a whitewash. And even if the Mufti of Jerusalem suggested killing all the Jews (which he didn't), Hitler was the one responsible for carrying the suggestion out, and must receive the bulk of the blame. (Furthermore, even Netanyahu didn't claim that the Mufti wanted the Sinti and Roma dead; that's still on Hitler.)

I, for myself, use the fact that Shamir became PM as a reason to distrust Israel. As a Jew, why should support any country that elected a pro-Hitler terrorist to such a high office? Why should I support a country like Israel whose current leader has aided Neo-Nazis with his rhetoric?

---

One final note. Hans, you never did say that Hitler didn't want to kill the Jews. You merely quoted Netanyahu making such a claim. The sole lie you say was "The only reason for the Holocaust was the Mufti's advice to the Nazis" -- and you attribute it to Netanyahu.

Your comment has one value: It is an excellent example of how someone can be utterly dishonest without actually stating a falsehood. For that reason, I would justify leaving it up, while accompanying it with a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of how the dishonesty was carried out.

Go read some Deborah Lipstadt.
Hans "Grüne" Adler said…
Dear Sam,

I am not anti-Semitic.

I believe Israel is the greatest nation on Earth. It's the only one which truly recognizes the threat that Arab Muslim degenerates pose to the planet.

I believe that the Jews are honest and intelligent people, although, you, Sam, are an exception.

I appreciate and admire Green Eagle for his defense of Israel and his criticism of the so-called Palestinians.

I will defend Israel against its enemies, like you. You want them all wiped out, you self-hating anti-Semite. I donate money to the IDF.

Green Eagle has been forced to delete your messages because you are an anti-Semitic liar with no redeeming value whatsoever.

I invite you to go to Hell. You belong there.
Zog said…
Green Eagle,

Please, please, please don't stop this exchange between Sam and Hans.

I think this is going to be even better than W.C. Fields versus Charlie McCarthy.
Magpie said…
Zog, maybe it’s just the mood I’m in, but I’m not sure I agree. No offence intended to you.

Watching the stupid fight is only entertaining up to a point.. and that point usually comes when we remember that this sort of stupid is the reason the world isn’t a much nicer place.

Statements like this:
“by trying to destroy Stalin, Hitler was helping the Jews in the Soviet Union”
makes me wonder if the internet was such a good idea.

Adam Alabaster actually illustrates Green Eagle’s point.

Another reason people believe lies – I mean huge, noon at night, lies like… ‘Hitler really didn’t mean Jewish people any harm’ – is related to the style of thinking that people like David Icke and Alex Jones engage in: completely alternate explanations for reality that depend on weird narratives that they then get a narcissist (and profitable) thrill from imparting.
‘oh I’ve got a big secret… Burt Bacharach is the son of Mickey Mouse by Eva Braun and he has Satanic orgies on Pluto and THAT’s the reason the world is as it is’

Losers do that a lot. They have not the humility, nor the patience, nor the work ethic to actually deal with the world via stone cold sober analysis and fact sifting to come out with any sane, humane or balanced understanding of any particular issue... oh no...
What THEY buy into is one monolithic edifice built of pure bullshit upon which they stand - mouth and fly wide open – calling an entire people “cockroaches”. Because that makes them feel better.

It’s just… depressing. When you read stuff like this... it becomes that much less a mystery that the likes of Hitler found people so prepared and willing to abase themselves in any way possible just to stand in his shadow.
Infidel753 said…
This is why I use comment moderation. GE puts up a post making a simple solid point and the comments get hijacked by interminable turgid crackpottery.

By the way, "Green Eagle" in German is "Grüner Adler"(with an R on the adjective) when it doesn't have an article or demonstrative in front of it.
Hans "Grüne" Adler said…
Infidel753 - It's just a coincidence.

My name really is Hans Adler. People call me "Grüne" (or Green) because of the Werder Bremen jacket I usually wear. I've stated this before.

We call my pal Eric Podolski "Blau" because of his Hertha Berlin jacket. If I followed Borussia Dortmund, they'd call me "Gelb." Both of us used to watch Soccer Made in Germany when we were younger. Good times.

And, if I followed the Collingwood Magpies of the AFL, they'd call me "Dummkopf."

Adler is actually a common name.

There's also a pianist and a Jewish author on Wikipedia who share my first and last name.

Don't forget other Adlers. There's Felix Adler, who established the Ethical Culture movement; Robert Adler, the inventor of the remote control; Larry Adler, the all-time greatest harmonica player ever; Mortimer Adler, the philosopher; and Alfred Adler, the psychologist. All of those were wonderful people.

Most of them were Jews. If I were anti-Semitic, I wouldn't call them wonderful, would I? If I were anti-Semitic, I wouldn't donate to the IDF, would I?


Now let me say something.

England expelled its Jews in 1290, and remained officially Jew-free until 1657. That's 367 years of no Jews. England has also carried out genocides of its own. Where are the native Tasmanians today? All dead. But do people view the English as history's greatest monsters? No.

In 1492, Spain expelled its Jews with the Alhambra Decree. Spain didn't get around to repealing it until 1968. That's 476 years! During that time, the Spanish eliminated the Taino people from the face of the earth. But do people view the English as history's greatest monsters? No.

But we Germans had just twelve bad years and people decided we're history's greatest monsters. It's not fair.

I'd just like it if someone used Isabella I and Ferdinand II as the exemplars of anti-Semitism once in a while. Is that too much to ask?
Hans "Grüne" Adler said…
Magpie:

I never said "Hitler really didn’t mean Jewish people any harm." I said he wanted to expel the Jews. That's harm. I also said that he fell prey to the Mufti and his hatred of Jews. But, since the English and Spanish get away scot-free for expelling their Jews, why should we criticize the Germans for doing the same thing? Specifically blaming us while ignoring those two peoples is rank anti-German bigotry, and I know you don't want to be a bigot.

Also, Stalin wanted to exterminate the Jews. Anything that hindered Stalin from carrying out this extermination was a good thing for them, even if helping the Jews wasn't even an objective of stopping Stalin. Or are you an anti-Semite who wanted Stalin to send all the Jews to the death camps he was running in Siberia? I know you aren't. So please stop defending Stalin.

-----
Note also that Grüne is a nickname, so I put it in quotes. Ferencváros is known as the Green Eagles, due to its mascot being a green eagle. Ferencvaros is also known for its rabid anti-Semitism; its fans despise rival<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=o2QpA0fGyiIC&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=ferencvaros+%22anti-semitism%22&source=bl&ots=WJv1rriSlG&sig=gcz1wuEQx5r7tqVbfjmJgeLREm0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC8Q6AEwA2oVChMIwrG0j4CJyQIVBFU-Ch11xg4t#v=onepage&q=ferencvaros%20%22anti-semitism%22&f=false>MTK</a> for being a "Jew Club."

If I had known about Ferencvaros back in the 1980s, I probably would have supported a club whose main color wasn't green. That's how much those anti-Semites repel me.
Zog said…
Magpie -

I have three points.

1) You owe Adam Alabaster a BIG apology. He's the one who suggested that Republicans improve the economy, and you accused him of being a stupid Hitler-worshiping loser. It's Adler the Werder Bremen fan who defended Hitler.

2) Adler may seem stupid, but he's really a crackpot. I've seen him elsewhere, always before he gets deleted. He really does believe that almost every ethnic group has its homeland and belongs there at the expense of everyone else. (The exceptions are the Slavs and the Arabs; he considers them nomads with no true homeland.) He's stated that if some Country X were to try to exterminate the Germans -- his ethnic group -- he'd view it as morally right, because Germans don't have any right to be in Country X without its consent.

3) Green Eagle thinks that Sam is a dishonest jerk. I disagree -- the key to understanding how Sam acts is the fact that she's related to Lev, who calls her his "stupid cousin."

Lev, as you might have noticed, is a piece of work. He admires Meir Kahane, and, judging by how he once spoke of his "teachers" at school and how he's going to join the IDF to kill Palestinians when he gets old enough, I think he's in junior high.

You state, "What THEY [losers] buy into is one monolithic edifice built of pure bullshit upon which they stand - mouth and fly wide open – calling an entire people “cockroaches”. Because that makes them feel better." That's Lev; he calls the entire Palestinian people two-legged cockroaches.

What I'm about to say is largely conjecture. However, I know how 13- and 14-year-old loudmouths (like Lev) like to act. He's going to use every crime committed by a Palestinian to show that they ought to be eliminated. He's going to praise any Zionist who calls for getting rid of them, and he's especially going to do it to a "stupid cousin" [sic] like Sam. He's going to cheer any attack against Palestinians -- the worse for them, the better for him.

If you had to deal with someone like that on a daily basis, you'd think that most Zionists believe in ethnic cleansing and that the Israeli government is extremely criminal -- it's only going to be the criminal acts against Palestinians that Lev celebrates.

So how do you convince someone like Lev that he's wrong? It's not accurate to say that he doesn't care if he's hurting Muslims and Christians -- that's attractive to him. You're going to have to show him that Zionism hurts Jews. The sources that he might listen to are going to be Jewish. They'd be places like Tikun Olam and Mondoweiss and Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

After all that, it's not a surprise that Sam would act as though she's going up against Lev when she comments here. When she reads something by Green Eagle on the subject, she probably feels that she's up against another Lev.

It's pleasing that she's finally getting a chance to eviscerate someone who deserves it.
Magpie said…
Zog,

Actually all I said about Adam Alabaster specifically is that his comment illustrates Green Eagle’s point about people believing Right wing lies. The rest wasn’t actually about him necessarily.
I say this not to spare Adam, because what he wrote is still garbage, but just to be clear.
Beyond that… there is a snowflake’s chance in hell that I will ever apologise for not accepting Right wing bile as worthwhile commentary, Zog. Let’s get that straight.

Hans,

Don’t weasel word this… you are seeking to mitigate Hitler’s and by extension the Nazi’s guilt in an age-defining atrocity against the Jews (and others) by deflecting to Stalin who was also a vile mass-murderer.
That is unpardonable.
Also unpardonable is your attempt to find equivalence in what Nazi Germany did to anything Britain did.
I will remind you that Britain was the sanctuary destination of many Jews escaping the pogroms of Russia long before your country let Hitler and his filth take control of it. Britain had a Jewish-born Prime Minister in the 19th century.

Don’t even bother to suggest that condemnation of Hitler in any way amounts to anti-German bigotry. That is just another disgusting deflection.

I never once defended Stalin and I never will. But you know that full well. You are just engaging in another pathetic deflection. Quite stupid really. No-one will fall for it.

Zog says you are a crackpot.
Even the insane are deserving of respect as human beings – but you’re a Hitler apologist. That doesn’t get a pass just because you’re a mental case. Piss off.
Zog said…
Infidel753 noted, "By the way, "Green Eagle" in German is "Grüner Adler"(with an R on the adjective) when it doesn't have an article or demonstrative in front of it."

I think it may be a coincidence. I've seen him comment here before he added the "Grüne" -- but he was so bad that those comments were removed.

One comment has been left up -- from January of this year: The Cartoon.

It's near the bottom of the thread.

Here's from Green Eagle's response (deliberately bolded):

I do not have a problem in the world with your first five cartoons, although I do think they demonstrate that you are the clear victim of some fairly serious sexual dysfunction. But since I don't know you, I don't really care about that. . . .

As for the sixth one, I will give you credit for having included it just to continue trying to be deliberately offensive, but if you really believe it, you are a vicious racist.


Note that three of the cartoons he proposed can be interpreted as very anti-Semitic.

If this really were a hoax, someone would have had to either (a) search through months of responses just to locate the original poster and the cartoon comment, or (b) create and backdate both an original post and a phony response from Green Eagle. Both are unlikely. Furthermore, I cannot see a hoaxster making posts in January, and having the patience to wait ten months to make the next post.

Coincidence is unlikely, but, in this case, fraud's even more unlikely. Trolls just aren't that cunning or patient. If I had to bet, I'd go with coincidence.
Green Eagle said…
I wanted to reply to all of this, but Green Eagle has had a fairly catastrophic computer failure. Luckily no hard drive crash, and I hope to be back in business within a day or two.
Thanks for your patience.
Alfred the Mediocre said…
Sorry about your computer.

In the meanwhile, I have to express my sorrow at all the victims of ISIS in today's Paris attacks, and my sympathies to their survivors. I want to condemn ISIS in the harshest terms possible, but my language is not capable of doing so. They are truly evil people.

I am at a loss at what to do about them. Perhaps there are some people who want to recognize the Islamic State as a legitimate country, just like they honored the IRA by recognizing the Republic of Ireland as a legitimate country. But religious fanatics, be they Mohammedans or Papists, never give up.
Green Eagle said…
Alfred: all fixed. It looked bad, but my computer wizard (who was a beta tester of Windows 1) found the problem without any trouble.

I agree with you: it would be easy to crush ISIS out of existence, but only at the cost of immense civilian casualties.

It is important to understand that ISIS commits these atrocities not in spite of the fact that they are atrocities, but because they are. ISIS shares with a large part of the Christian right a belief in an apocalyptic war between "good" (i.e. themselves) and "evil" (i.e. the other guys) They believe that despite their almost infinitesmal military power, God has ordained that they will win this war, so they are doing whatever disgusting thing they can, to try to make it impossible for the West to not respond with force. Forget the fact that the German military, between 1935 and 1945, had 35,000,000 troops, and was backed up by the greatest military technology and production capacity in the history of the world, and still couldn't win that war. We could crush ISIS in days if we had no concern for innocent bystanders (God knows, we had little enough in Iraq or Vietnam) but unless ISIS finally succeeds in stripping us of our last remaining vestiges of humanity, this is going to be an ugly next few years.
Zog said…
Alfred -

Let me clear up one misconception. The membership of the IRA was largely Catholic, but the group itself was a nationalist one, not a religious one.

The IRA did include some Protestants. One of them was Ronnie Bunting, who later went on to establish the Irish National Liberation Army (a terrorist group) because the IRA was too eager to work with Britain.

Incidently, Ronnie's father, Ronald Bunting, was a leader of the Loyal Citizens of Ulster (a terrorist group), an arm of the pro-British Ulster Protestant Volunteers (another terrorist group).

Family reunions must have been a lot of fun.
Green Eagle said…
I think it is important, also, to understand that very few people really accept the claim by the IRA which existed from the '50's on to have much connection with the IRA that led the Irish Revolution, and later became the Fine Gael party.

The original IRA took the opportunity of the exhaustion of British military might in World War I to throw off British rule; this is very similar to the United States' revolution, which took place after decades of war between Britain and France had rendered the British army incapable of maintaining control thousands of miles away. In the case of Ireland, of course, there were centuries of grievances against Britain to provide a justification of their struggle. I do not want to deny, by the way, that there were unacceptable actions the other way around, but here we have two ethnically separate countries, one of which invaded and ruled the other. This is completely different from the situation in Israel, where there was not a pre-existing ethnic population of any size, where what people there were there had no history of aggression against them by Jews, and the incomers were returning to their homeland. The analogizing of the Israeli situation with European colonialism is one of the great myths that underlie the Palestinians' fabrication of a false history.

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