This item gives blacklists a bad name.

Thank you! Don Quixote's post about CNN's "God's Warriors," was triggered in large part by the fact that I read your wonderful posts on about that show. His post then started just a cascade of quality commenting at my blog.

DQ is the perfect person to be at the center of this because he has no biases about Israel, being relatively uninterested in it before he met me. He is also non-religious. And, most importantly, he's an analytical man with a truly open mind.

His first post on the subject, which discussed your posts, shows what happens to an intelligent, open mind that gets information only from the MSM, and logically accepts not just MSM facts as true, but MSM underlying premises as well.

Armed with the new-to-him information he gleaned from the comments at that first post, DQ went on to ask another question about Israel and the disputed territories. It was this question that elicited the Ocean Guy response that impressed me so much, I gave it its own post. In other words, there's an incredibly intelligent and informative discussion going on at my blog, and you started it!

Incidentally, at lunch today both DQ and I agreed very strongly about one thing: Israel, in its 60 years of existence, has fought wars well on the ground but has been absolutely abysmally bad at communicating to the world her legal, practical and moral positions vis a vis the land beneath her feet. DQ kept saying that, not only did he understand what the commenters at the blog were saying, he would also have been much more favorable to, rather than neutral about, Israel's position over the past 20 years if she had said what Ocean Guy said.

Incidentally, every time something we do pushes back the biases and misinformation the MSM creates, we know that we, as bloggers, are not just spinning our wheels for our own pleasure, to enthusiastic ooohs and aaahs from the assembled choir.

Jeremiah:

You are, and I mean this most affectionately, hilarious!

If it's funny that's because it's true.

When it comes to Muslim immigration (demographic infiltration), in terms of standards for residency, citizenship, loyalty I'm to the right of Joseph McCarthy -- which is where all sensible American should be.

If (or when) there's another catastrophic Islamic attack against American citizens and/or American interests, the few good Muslims here are going to wish our government had compelled them to come forward and show themselves.

Hiya, BW Room! Nice to run into you here. :-)

Bookworm:

Yes, I agree Ocean Guy's response is fantastic. And DQ seems to be quite open-minded, though his mind has been darkly polluted by misinformation for years and years. It's not so easy to undo the fog. And for every DQ, I shudder to think of how many, oh, Rachel Corrie's are out there.

I understand why Israel and the West are behind the curve in the propaganda war. It's always this way when fighting a totalitarian movement. Democracies are rational and transparent, they are also somewhat naive and expect that truth will win out. Somehow they neglect the obvious lessons of history: that lies and liars are huge draws to mobs, especially in dysfunctional countries.

Arabs lies have grown bolder and slicker over the years. Now they are enshrined in academia, in the MSM, even in the chattering classes of Israel, look a leftie is a leftie, so yes, we are behind the curve and we have educate a whole generation of truly ignorant well-educated people.

Frankly, it's exhausting. Most dissenters who come to my blog don't know the first thing about the history of the Arab Israeli conflict. And I lose patience with their moral equivalence and their references to "Jewish terrorists" in pre-State Israel who are just like modern Arab terrorists, expressing "legitimate grievances."

Banging head against wall.

Seriously considering becoming a drunk.

Oh wait, migraines. Can't.

Darn.

Anywhoo.

Here's what I've learned in Hollywood: facts are important, but perceptions of truth are far more important. And that's why we're so far behind. We insist on facts, the truth. The Arabs go for perceptions of reality.

Really, there's no contest.

BTW, heard that you nominated on of my series for The Council. Very kind of you.

Keep up the great work.

Last things first: I wish I could take credit for that nomination, but all I can do is regret that I wasn't the one who nominated you. I actually nominated CAMERA's article, which is part of my theme this week of getting hard core facts in front of people.

And now on to other things: It's interesting that you talk about historic truth and the evil of moral relativism in such close relation to each other. As I was saying to DQ, facts going back to 1917 or, heck, 1887, aren't so easy to gather and few can readily assimilate them anyway. We can point to legalisms and such but, as Ocean Guy pointed out, Israel has been slow either to press her legal advantage or her territorial gains after battles. Instead, she's so weak she makes it appear as if she doubts her own legal righteousness. She doesn't give us the rhetorical tools to argue. It makes for difficult debate in today's short attention span theater.

But what I also said to DQ is, at the end of the day, I can ignore the facts entirely if I want and look at the country that I believe deserves my support at a moral level.

On the one hand, we have a representative Democracy that gives equal legal and political rights to women, Gays, Arabs, Christians, Hindus -- hey, to all citizens within its borders. It is so desperate for peace that it routinely compromises its own security in the hope of obtaining that peace. Recently, rather than mowing down entirely a neighboring community devoted to killing its citizens, Israel built a wall, immuring its own people to help prevent their deaths.

On the other hand, you have two lawless communities that subjugate women, murder gays, murder and expel Christians, and refuse to allow anyone else within their territories (including, of late, even grovelingly friend journalists). For generations, these people's sole goal, and the value they pass to their children, is to murder the Israelis -- every last one of them -- that live next door. While Israel tries to prevent its own citizens from dying, these people put their children in the front line of battle, not even because they actually aid fighting, but because their inevitable deaths help this culture look pathetic, giving it a leg up in international opinion.

Given these two different cultures, I say law is useful, but not determinative: I'm voting for Israel, the country of (sometimes flawed) Western humanism, and not for Hamas or Fatah, territories of animalistic immorality and violence.

Oh! And "hi," Jeremiah. Nice to see you here, too.

It's almost midnight here in Boise and I'm stumbling around the net. I'm tired and cranky and I've had a row with the missus so, to take my mind off my mind, I type in McKee and Chinatown in google.
One of the resulting URLs is yours. My day may end well after all. Great blog; thanks for the recommendation of Egri (it was between him and How to Write a Screenplay in 21 days or something), condolences on your son, kudos on your politics, and as a nominal christian, thank you for my Messiah. ;-)

Bookworm:

Hmm, not your nomination, very mysterious. I know one is from Soccer Dad, the other is from The Twilight Zone?

Creepy Music cue.

I want to strongly recommend a very fine book I'm reading: "The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy" by Stephanie Gutmann. This fine volume details how and why israel lost the media war to the Arabs.

Essential reading.

I'll be writing a full review shortly.

I just have to say this: You must be a brilliant lawyer. I'm just knocked out by your cool, clean arguments.

I go for dopey drama, effects.

But you're like this super Joe Friday: "Just the facts, Mister."

Thank you. I'm blushing wildly right about now. If only my legal was as interesting as all the stuff I get to cover in blogging....

Here I am again, back with one more piece of information. I got the answer to your Weasels' nomination conundrum. I've nominated other posts of yours in the past, but this time honors go to Soccer Dad and Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Egyptian solution: shove their beloved Arab bretheren into Gaza, lock them up, throw away the key, blame the Zionist dogs.

Compare to:
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones.

Who wrote the second paragraph? Would you believe it was penned by Abu Mazen, the current Palestinian President? Now you know why Hamas hates him, and one of the reasons why some elements in Egypt are willing to give Hamas their support.

Fred:

Glad you like my blog. Writing a script in 21 Days. Hmmm. I dunno. Why not 22?

The Egri book is the gold standard. I have written maybe 50 scripts in my career and I'm still learning from Egri.

Sigh.

A wise man never stops learning.

Stay in touch.

To further a comment by Robert: the West and its belief that respect is a commodity of the individual - a raw material that can be developed into a richer final product according to the traditions of Western tradition - is what is behind the fact that we are never plotting how to defeat our neighbors unless provoked. Honor, righteousness, work ethic, truthfulness, integrity are not qualities that seek to destroy anyone. That others look at us as nations to be destroyed I believe comes from their lack of development of individual commodity of respect. It is simply the jealous nature that comes from not having and wanting to destroy that respect of others. This is also the same method Democrats are using to pick off Republicans. Hardly a party of ethics, the Democrats use the hypocrisy charge to instigate Republicans to eat their own. If we want to win, we must refuse to play their game.