Those banned must contact me by email if they wish to have their banning reconsidered.

PoliGazette welcomes diverse points of view, but we choose not to publish comments which express their disagreements through personal attack or by embrace of outright racism and bigotry.

“Labeling everyone who criticizes Israel as anti-Semitic, leaves Israel (unfairly) above all.”

You are absolutely right. If you want to criticize Israel’s policies you can do so, quite reasonably. When you do that, I can try to rebut your arguments or facts with superior arguments and better recorded facts. However, antisemitic tropes CANNOT pass for legitimate criticism of Israel.

The moment Selin said this:

“Congratulations, Mr. Ellis, as well as the Jewish organizations of America who only look out for Israeli interests and don’t consider for a MOMENT the humanitarian dimensions of this issue, for making Erdogan stand even STRONGER with commentary like this.”

his argument became antisemitic and therefore illegitimate. Why? Because it is no longer aimed at Israel’s POLICIES, but at Jews, elsewhere, who support Israel but are not in any way responsible for Israel’s actions. In other words, for Selin they are suspect and relevant to his argument by virtue of being Jewish. THAT is antisemitism. In case you wondered.

Surely this little distinction is not so difficult to understand, is it?

Why should anyone but Israel pay to build back Gaza? Israel should be forced to repair those homes and feed those people.

We are witnessing the death throws of capitalism, demonocracy and Israel. Your article is bias, ill informed and Islamiphobic. I am not an Erdogan fan myself, but his only crime is standing up for justice and the rights of the 1300 Palestinians that Israel murdered and the justice of the oppressed and occupied. That is much more than the rest of the world’s leaders have been willing to do. That is the leadership that is required in today’s world. KEEP IT UP MR. ERDOGAN!!

no war…

NE MUTLU TÜRK’ÜM DIYENE

I urge the moderator to leave these comments as are. Nothing can be more damaging to the image of Turkish thoughtfulness and decency they want to project than these incontinent comments. Never in the horizon a hint of a doubt, unaware that by repeating these defamatory memes they are exhibiting and reinforcing the stereotype of the Turk.

It was Spinoza who said:

“In this the Turks have achieved the greatest measure of success. They hold even discussion of religion to be sinful, and with their mass of dogma they gain such a thorough hold on the individual’s judgment that they leave no room in the mind for the exercise of reason, or even the capacity to doubt.”

Substitute “Turkishness” for “religion” (or not, as you please) and you get the tone and substance of these two just right, 400 years after the original comment was made.
________

BtW, concerning the slur upon “Jewish organizations of America”:

Not too long ago, Turks were all too willing to seek to use Jewish influence in the Congress to block this acknowledgement of the historical atrocity that was the Armenian genocide. And the Jewish organizations that helped them pretended, for a while, that they couldn’t smell the stench of this humongous hypocrisy. I don’t suppose this failure of “Jewish organizations of America” to mire themselves in this kind of denial has anything at all to do with the open animus against (not Israel, mind you) but JOOS!

http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2007/08/denying-armenian-genocide-via-normblog.html

I have a history of critiquing Erdogan. I also have a history of agreeing with Robert Ellis on various other issues. But this “opinion” piece is really telling a lot of things.

Congratulations, Mr. Ellis, as well as the Jewish organizations of America who only look out for Israeli interests and don’t consider for a MOMENT the humanitarian dimensions of this issue, for making Erdogan stand even STRONGER with commentary like this.

You are the GIFT that keeps on giving political FREEBIES to Erdogan. Erdogan’s image of being the “righteous” leader of the downtrodden and dispossessed has thus been set in stone.

Congrats.