ANSWER strikes again!

is hardly "intolerance".

Far more to the point is the new your "Peace and Justice" or whatever coalition being formed specifically to EXCLUDE workers world even tho in good stalinist tradition WW go out of their way to never say any part of their politiX which their coalition partners would consider "offensive" or etc.

I mean WW don't even field their own speakers at rallies they organize often.

Like I said -- proof?

A crowd which is mainly pro-palestine wouldn't want an anti-palestine speaker. Duh. A protest is not larry king live.

"intolerant" is one of the dumber charges flung about by the right OR the left.

ANSWER apparently finds this enough of a reason to kick this man off the agenda of a PEACE protest, a man who has told his own congregation to support the peace cause despite misgivings about marching with such extremists. I suppose 'intolerant' is dumb but I'm not smart enough to come up with any other words that aren't compounds of profanity.

Lerner has often spoken in support of both the Palestinian people and the right to a Palestinian state. I'm not going to say I agree with everything he's ever said, but there's no need to paint him as "anti-palestine".

You should see some of what they're saying about him on the SF indymedia site--terrible caricatures, that even I would label anti-semitic (and that's a term I'm not fond of throwing about).

Until we wake up to the reality of the Isreali-Palestinian morass, recognizing both the rights of each side and the terrors that are played out in their names, we are going to continue with such non-constructive finger pointing and name-calling, only further marginalizing the voices for a possible peace, making it ever more difficult to achieve.

mark p to thread!

mr. mxylplytck is the third best superman character after bizarro superman and bizarro mr. mxyulpytulik

"Lerner knows better than to equate criticism of Israeli policy, no matter how harsh, with anti-Semitism. But he believes ANSWER crosses the line into bigotry. "It is anti-Semitic to make it sound as though Israel's repression of human rights is the worst instance of repression of human rights going on in the world today," he says. "It is not racist to criticize black crime, but it is racist to criticize black crime when you're not criticizing much greater white crime." "

is what the article sez.

Now its not to hard to see what he means: the same thing MOST liberal zionists mean -- the reason palestinian statehood is so difficult is coz of instances of palestinian terror, which they consider far GREATER of a threat/crime than instances of Israeli attacks on palestinians.

Again, this is a view which is pretty unpopular in the crowd they aim to attract to the demo. As it turns out tho, the main gripe is that he criticized a member of the coalition organizing the demo BY NAME which is apparently verboten w/r/t ANY of the organizers.

Now I find this a nasty and stupid rule, but haha one designed to promote "tolerance".