Blogblather's alleged pro-Islamism and anti-Israelism

            Billy Blogblather rants a bit at me and Israel.  After he has his say I respond briefly below   As the starting point for his rant he quotes me to say: "I will grant that Blogblather said he opposed Islamism, but what are we to do with the fact that he supported practically (in his argument) Hamas and Hezbollah?  I'm not sure he thought that through, but he seemed to infer that if Hamas was duly elected that it was somehow no longer a terrorist organization, and that isn't true."

            BLOGBLATHER'S COMMENTS:  "Not only does Blogblather . . . oppose Islamism,  he opposes Christianity and Judaism and as well as any religion that believes some stupid-ass God wrote a book and that every word of it is true.  The Abrahamic religions are the greatest curse ever to have afflicted the earth. Amen
            "I do not oppose Islamism.  I oppose terrorism.  Islamists can be as wacky as they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone.  Christianity has in its inillustrious history had the blood of innocents on its hands many times.  And so has America which is, in many ways a secular religion.  Why Lawrence feels the need to defend America's crimes eludes me.  It seems childish.  I want America to get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW.  If a people prefer to live in the 7th Century, then let them, goddamit, it's their culture, not ours.  If they try to make us live in the 7th century -- then kill them.  There, I've said it.  Islamists, I'm convinced, are not fighting to make the world Islamic, rather they're fighting what they perceive as cultural invasions, attacks on their culture, their way of life, their belief system.  And we are a threat to their culture, outside influence is always a threat to insular thought.  We are not purposefully trying to change them.  It just all comes with the territory of exposure.  Either time and delicate diplomacy or horrific tragedy will work this out.
            "But back to Lawrence's accusations against me.  I stated many times, my position on Israel.  I have been and am still a staunch supporter of Israel.  Only because of the suffering of Jewish people at the hands of the larger culture from which I come -- Western European Christian -- we are unconscionable murderers so many millions of Jews -- we, not Germany, we our culture.  We did this and we owe the Jews a recompense that can never be repaid.  So what did we do?  Why, we appropriated land from a poor, powerless people, the Palestinians and pronounced it: "Israel", home of the Jews as indeed it had been 2000 years earlier.  Bravo! to us in the West who Pontius Pilately believed we had washed away the blood on our hands.  But the Pals see it differently.  They see their land taken away from them who had done no harm to anyone, taken away without any compensation.  And they see today an Israel not wanting peace, but wanting more land and more land and more land.  "Lebansraum" we've heard that word before.  I am deeply disturbed by what I take to be Israel's intransigence vis-a-vis it's Arab neighbors, and I have begun to believe that only a cut off of American aid to Israel can bring Israel back to the bargaining table.  Israel needs to survive, not just for Israel's sake but for the sake of all us Jew-killers, it needs to survive to remind the people of the earth how monstrous we have once been and can be again.  I apologize to all Israelis for using them as a metonymy.  I hope Lawrence has the freedom of mind to understand this.  To apprehend that one can be devoted to a place, a person, an idea, a religion, a culture, a country even and still hate what it, he, she,  they are doing.  There is no contradiction there."

            LAWRENCE RESPONDS:  Very funny Billy -- a series of statements so bizarre and indefensible as to be un-addressable in any practical sense. 

            Without going into detail let me say that I do not dislike you, Billy.  Quite the contrary: I like you and support you staunchly for having been born in such a backward place as Tennessee.  But I think all government support, police and fire protection, Medicare etc. should be denied you in order to force you to use normal rules of logic in our debate.