Washington Examiner @dcexaminer
Alan Dershowitz on defending Trump: "My liberal friends don't invite me to dinner anymore." washex.am/2CcMPr
Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal Dec 27
Calling for shoving needles under the fingernails of crime suspects and razing entire Palestinian villages never cost him a liberal dinner invite. Only defending Trump did. #resist
Showing posts with label Alan Dershowitz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Dershowitz. Show all posts
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Wikipedia Warning
"Yesterday, I was checking. I can report that there has been a clear, organised effort to insert Zionist lies and fabrications into entries about the Arab-Israeli conflict on Wikipedia. Even historical matters are altered and edited, and then they cite the work of polemicists like Alan Dershowitz. It must be coming from the Israeli foreign ministry or the propaganda arm of the occupation regime in Tel Aviv." (Wikipedia entries on Arab-Israeli conflict, The Angry Arab News Service, 9/2/17)
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
The Last Thing on Their Minds
Remember when the Middle East's only innocent bystander 'miraculously' acquired East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Egypt's Sinai and Syria's Golan Heights in just 6 days back in June 1967?
Remember how, in the words of Alan Dershowitz, "the only question was whether the Arab armies would be able to strike the first military blow"? (The Case for Israel, p 92)
Remember UK novelist Howard Jacobson telling us on Q&A in May 2011, "You often hear people talking about the occupation.... I don't know anyone who wants the occupation. I don't know any Israeli who wants the occupation. But people speak about it as if it just kind of happened. One day there was an occupation. Out of a clear, blue sky Jews dropped... Israeli people dropped down and said, 'We'll have that piece of land'. It's not what happened."? (See my 24/5/11 post Gunfight at the Q&A Corral.)
So much for the flimflam. Here's the reality:
"The [Israeli] military archives have released generals' testimonies that put the reader on the ground during Israel's capture of Jerusalem's Old City in the 1967 Six-Day War... Further testimony released Sunday was by Maj. Gen. Uzi Narkiss, who headed Central Command during the war. He told how the IDF had plans for conquering the West Bank in three days. He remembered that before the war he had told reserve officers in the 4th Brigade: 'I don't know if something will happen, but if it does, within 72 hours we'll drive out all the Arabs from the West Bank.' On June 5, Narkiss received orders to prepare for war... Narkiss phoned [Israeli West] Jerusalem Mayor teddy Kolleck. 'It's war, everything's in order... You'll be mayor of a united Jerusalem. We're enjoying great success; the armored forces are already inside.' Narkiss' testimony details his efforts to get the army into Jerusalem's Old City... As Narkiss put it, 'Since I'm a Jerusalemite and know this thing and know the concept of lamenting a missed opportunity for generations, I said that now was the time to take Jerusalem.' He was referring to the failure to keep the Old City in 1948." (Israeli generals in 1967 war: concerned over Jerusalem looting, hoping to drive Arabs out of West Bank, Gil Cohen, Haaretz, 5/6/16)
Remember how, in the words of Alan Dershowitz, "the only question was whether the Arab armies would be able to strike the first military blow"? (The Case for Israel, p 92)
Remember UK novelist Howard Jacobson telling us on Q&A in May 2011, "You often hear people talking about the occupation.... I don't know anyone who wants the occupation. I don't know any Israeli who wants the occupation. But people speak about it as if it just kind of happened. One day there was an occupation. Out of a clear, blue sky Jews dropped... Israeli people dropped down and said, 'We'll have that piece of land'. It's not what happened."? (See my 24/5/11 post Gunfight at the Q&A Corral.)
So much for the flimflam. Here's the reality:
"The [Israeli] military archives have released generals' testimonies that put the reader on the ground during Israel's capture of Jerusalem's Old City in the 1967 Six-Day War... Further testimony released Sunday was by Maj. Gen. Uzi Narkiss, who headed Central Command during the war. He told how the IDF had plans for conquering the West Bank in three days. He remembered that before the war he had told reserve officers in the 4th Brigade: 'I don't know if something will happen, but if it does, within 72 hours we'll drive out all the Arabs from the West Bank.' On June 5, Narkiss received orders to prepare for war... Narkiss phoned [Israeli West] Jerusalem Mayor teddy Kolleck. 'It's war, everything's in order... You'll be mayor of a united Jerusalem. We're enjoying great success; the armored forces are already inside.' Narkiss' testimony details his efforts to get the army into Jerusalem's Old City... As Narkiss put it, 'Since I'm a Jerusalemite and know this thing and know the concept of lamenting a missed opportunity for generations, I said that now was the time to take Jerusalem.' He was referring to the failure to keep the Old City in 1948." (Israeli generals in 1967 war: concerned over Jerusalem looting, hoping to drive Arabs out of West Bank, Gil Cohen, Haaretz, 5/6/16)
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Who Serves the Drinks?
"Within colonial histories, the term 'bwana' demarcated racial and class distinctions: white men were 'bwana' and white women 'memsahib.' The implicit distinction was between colonizer men as rulers and colonized boys as servants, an ideological as opposed to chronological distinction." (Jambo Bwana: Obama as Tourist-Guest, gukira.wordpress.com, 22/4/09)
The converse of political Zionism's current efforts to portray its project in Palestine as a return of the native son to a homeland from which he was long ago driven, is its wholesale repudiation of the nation that Israel is a settler-colonial state founded by European Jewish colons. This particular facet of Zionism's flight from reality (let me count the ways) looms large in contemporary Zionist discourse these days.
It is no coincidence, for example, that such a prominent contemporary apologist for Israel as Alan Dershowitz should have begun his 2003 book, The Case for Israel, by attempting to rebut the charge. Is Israel a Colonial, Imperialist State? is the question-title of the first chapter of his book. As you'd expect, Dershowitz's answer is a resounding 'NO!': "Israel is a state comprising primarily refugees and their descendants exercising the right to self-determination... refugees escaping the oppressive anti-Semitism of colonial Europe and the Muslim states of the Middle East and North Africa." (pp 13-14)
Sure, sure, Bwana, but it's not really that complicated. You see, there's a very simple test for what is and isn't a colonial state: Who serves the drinks?
"'You will have a coffee,' [Elisha] stated, snapping his fingers for the Arab waiter. He put me in mind of the racist post-'67 occupation joke: God calls the founders of the great faiths to his house and they sit around in armchairs - Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius. Suddenly they realise someone is missing. 'Where's Mohammed?' asks Buddha. God claps his hand to his forehead. 'Of course,' he says, 'I forgot. Mohammed! Bring 6 coffees right away!'" (The Death of Moishe-Ganef, Simon Louvish, 1986, p 116)
"There was some guy, I think his name was Muhammad, who became a friend of ours. What does that mean? He understood the game. He understood that the person who makes the decisions isn't... he got it that there's no reason to get the right permits and whatever, the way to do things is with the soldiers in the field. So that's how he got friendly with us. He'd ask, 'Hey, do you need cigarettes?' He would distribute gas in the area, so he'd always come and go, and if you needed something, then you give money to Muhammad and he'll bring it... or he wouldn't take the money. Food? Something to drink? Drinks, cigarettes, little things like that, sure. And in exchange, he'd cross more easily than other people." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, 2010,p 278)
The converse of political Zionism's current efforts to portray its project in Palestine as a return of the native son to a homeland from which he was long ago driven, is its wholesale repudiation of the nation that Israel is a settler-colonial state founded by European Jewish colons. This particular facet of Zionism's flight from reality (let me count the ways) looms large in contemporary Zionist discourse these days.
It is no coincidence, for example, that such a prominent contemporary apologist for Israel as Alan Dershowitz should have begun his 2003 book, The Case for Israel, by attempting to rebut the charge. Is Israel a Colonial, Imperialist State? is the question-title of the first chapter of his book. As you'd expect, Dershowitz's answer is a resounding 'NO!': "Israel is a state comprising primarily refugees and their descendants exercising the right to self-determination... refugees escaping the oppressive anti-Semitism of colonial Europe and the Muslim states of the Middle East and North Africa." (pp 13-14)
Sure, sure, Bwana, but it's not really that complicated. You see, there's a very simple test for what is and isn't a colonial state: Who serves the drinks?
"'You will have a coffee,' [Elisha] stated, snapping his fingers for the Arab waiter. He put me in mind of the racist post-'67 occupation joke: God calls the founders of the great faiths to his house and they sit around in armchairs - Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius. Suddenly they realise someone is missing. 'Where's Mohammed?' asks Buddha. God claps his hand to his forehead. 'Of course,' he says, 'I forgot. Mohammed! Bring 6 coffees right away!'" (The Death of Moishe-Ganef, Simon Louvish, 1986, p 116)
"There was some guy, I think his name was Muhammad, who became a friend of ours. What does that mean? He understood the game. He understood that the person who makes the decisions isn't... he got it that there's no reason to get the right permits and whatever, the way to do things is with the soldiers in the field. So that's how he got friendly with us. He'd ask, 'Hey, do you need cigarettes?' He would distribute gas in the area, so he'd always come and go, and if you needed something, then you give money to Muhammad and he'll bring it... or he wouldn't take the money. Food? Something to drink? Drinks, cigarettes, little things like that, sure. And in exchange, he'd cross more easily than other people." (Our Harsh Logic: Israeli soldiers' testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, Breaking the Silence, 2010,p 278)
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Not For the Faint of Heart
"While the investigations published by the Israeli military have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that [Palestinian] civilians [in Gaza] were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy." ('If I knew then, what I know now': Israel did not target civilians in Gaza, Richard Goldstone, washingtonpost.com/Sydney Morning Herald, 4/4/11)
So, to invoke the military euphemism for bloody murder, His Honour seems to believe that those civilians were simply collateral damage, and that Israel is therefore off the hook as far as their deaths are concerned. But I'm afraid it's not that simple. As Canadian philosopher Michael Neumann points out:
"There is... another element of contemporary warfare that might be equivalent to terrorism, and that is 'collateral damage'... The critics... spare no effort to show that the US and Israel do, in fact, willfully kill innocent civilians. But it is not easy to show this, because you can't get inside people's heads: how do you prove their claimed intentions are not their real ones?... However, the issue is not whether a distinction can be made between collateral damage and terrorism; it is rather whether this distinction has moral importance. The answer depends on a further distinction: there is more than one kind of 'collateral damage'. One kind of collateral damage is, in important ways, morally distinct from terrorism. The other is not.
"Suppose, for instance, some naval battle in which a destroyer is sunk in shallow water. After the fighting is over, divers inspect the vessel and are horrified to discover it carried several dozen civilians... who were being transported to safe exile in a nonbelligerant country. This is unexpected collateral damage: no one imagined... this terrible but also terribly unusual circumstance.
"But when the Americans - or for that matter the Israelis - speak of collateral damage, they are not speaking of the unexpected kind. On the contrary, they know with certainty - the commanders, the soldiers, the decision-makers - that civilians are in the firing line and that they will be killed... This is expected collateral damage, innocent deaths that no reasonable person could fail to expect.
"Expected collateral damage involves knowingly killing innocent civilians. Terrorism involves intentionally killing civilians. The conceptual difference is discernible, but the moral difference is too academic even for an academic... An example will make this plain. Suppose Joanne decides she wants to kill Jack by running him over in her SUV. She knows he goes to a movie at the Paramount every Friday night. She plans to drive into that movie line at high speed. She will hit him and, as she knows full well, some of the people standing behind him and in front of him. She also knows full well that, when she hits them, they will be killed. She executes her plan. According to most legal codes, she is guilty of homicide; not only of Jack, but of anyone else she kills. It's literally collateral damage, but it's not accidental. Certainly to the dead it doesn't matter that she did not intend to kill them, but only decided to perform an action that she knew would kill them. If this difference doesn't matter, neither does the difference between terrorism and expected collateral damage." (The Case Against Israel, 2005, pp 160-162)
Nor is His Honour being entirely honest with us in this matter. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explains:
"'If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document'. Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone's much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: 'If I had known then that the report would turm me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all'. And if that wasn't the original sentence, it certainly is the subtext of Goldstone's article.
"This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC's illegal dealings with the State of Israel.
"Already in October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, 'I've got a great love for Israel' and 'I've worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so' (Video: 'Fareed Zakaria GPS.' 4/10/09)
"Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love not be at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.
"But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson's bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since 'Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole'. The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa's Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for 'doing greater damage to the State of Israel'. Last February, Goldstone said that 'Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not', in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report on the website of Israel's Channel 2. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded more.
"Readers might ask 'so what?' and 'why could Goldstone not withstand the heat?' Good questions, but alas the Zionization of Jewish communities and the false identification of Jewishness with Zionism is still a powerful disincentive that prevents liberal Jews from boldly facing Israel and its crimes. Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable to stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a 'self-hating Jew' with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.
"Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of 'delegitimising' Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.
"We should have recognised that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, 'Zionist', is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. 'I am a Zionist' is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity - if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.
"That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the 'evidence' brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.
"The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. 'The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust', promised Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008. There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings of Palestinians were a 'mistake'.
"Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by 'mistake'. So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing on only one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.
"This is also clear from the way he escalates his language against Hamas in the article and de-escalates his words toward Israel. And he hopes that this would absolve him of Israel's righteous fury. But he is wrong, very wrong. Only a few hours passed from the publication of the article until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of course the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Shimon Peres commissioned Goldstone with a new role in life: he is expected to move from one campus to the other and hop from one public venue to the next in the service of a new and pious Israel. He may choose not to do it; but then again he might not be allowed to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah as a retaliation.
"Goldstone and his colleagues wrote a very detailed report, but they were quite reserved in their conclusions. The picture unfolding from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations was far more horrendous and was described less in the clinical and legal language that quite often fails to convey the magnitude of the horror. It was first Western public opinion that understood better than Goldstone the implications of his report. Israel's international legitimacy has suffered an unprecedented blow. He was genuinely shocked to learn that this was the result.
"We have been there before. In the late 1980s, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a similar, sterile, account of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinian academics such as Edward Said, Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi were the ones who pointed to the significant implications for Israel's identity and self-image, and nature of the archival material he unearthed. Morris too cowered under pressure and asked to be readmitted to the tribe. He went very far with his mea culpa and re-emerged as an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing. Goldstone can go in that direction too; or at least this is what the Israelis expect him to do now.
"Professionally, both Morris and Goldstone tried to retreat to a position that claimed, as Goldstone does in The Washington Post article, that Israel can only be judged by its intentions not the consequences of its deeds. Therefore only the Israeli army, in both cases, can be a reliable source for knowing what these intentions were. Very few decent and intelligent people in the world would accept such a bizarre analysis and explanation.
"Goldstone has not yet entered the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did. But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a 'repentant Jew') between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism - you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.
"Winning Zionist love in the short-term is far less important than losing the world's respect in the long-run. Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine." (Goldstone's fateful U-turn, The Electronic Intifada, 4/4/11)
So, to invoke the military euphemism for bloody murder, His Honour seems to believe that those civilians were simply collateral damage, and that Israel is therefore off the hook as far as their deaths are concerned. But I'm afraid it's not that simple. As Canadian philosopher Michael Neumann points out:
"There is... another element of contemporary warfare that might be equivalent to terrorism, and that is 'collateral damage'... The critics... spare no effort to show that the US and Israel do, in fact, willfully kill innocent civilians. But it is not easy to show this, because you can't get inside people's heads: how do you prove their claimed intentions are not their real ones?... However, the issue is not whether a distinction can be made between collateral damage and terrorism; it is rather whether this distinction has moral importance. The answer depends on a further distinction: there is more than one kind of 'collateral damage'. One kind of collateral damage is, in important ways, morally distinct from terrorism. The other is not.
"Suppose, for instance, some naval battle in which a destroyer is sunk in shallow water. After the fighting is over, divers inspect the vessel and are horrified to discover it carried several dozen civilians... who were being transported to safe exile in a nonbelligerant country. This is unexpected collateral damage: no one imagined... this terrible but also terribly unusual circumstance.
"But when the Americans - or for that matter the Israelis - speak of collateral damage, they are not speaking of the unexpected kind. On the contrary, they know with certainty - the commanders, the soldiers, the decision-makers - that civilians are in the firing line and that they will be killed... This is expected collateral damage, innocent deaths that no reasonable person could fail to expect.
"Expected collateral damage involves knowingly killing innocent civilians. Terrorism involves intentionally killing civilians. The conceptual difference is discernible, but the moral difference is too academic even for an academic... An example will make this plain. Suppose Joanne decides she wants to kill Jack by running him over in her SUV. She knows he goes to a movie at the Paramount every Friday night. She plans to drive into that movie line at high speed. She will hit him and, as she knows full well, some of the people standing behind him and in front of him. She also knows full well that, when she hits them, they will be killed. She executes her plan. According to most legal codes, she is guilty of homicide; not only of Jack, but of anyone else she kills. It's literally collateral damage, but it's not accidental. Certainly to the dead it doesn't matter that she did not intend to kill them, but only decided to perform an action that she knew would kill them. If this difference doesn't matter, neither does the difference between terrorism and expected collateral damage." (The Case Against Israel, 2005, pp 160-162)
Nor is His Honour being entirely honest with us in this matter. As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe explains:
"'If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document'. Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone's much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: 'If I had known then that the report would turm me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all'. And if that wasn't the original sentence, it certainly is the subtext of Goldstone's article.
"This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC's illegal dealings with the State of Israel.
"Already in October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, 'I've got a great love for Israel' and 'I've worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so' (Video: 'Fareed Zakaria GPS.' 4/10/09)
"Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love not be at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.
"But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson's bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since 'Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole'. The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa's Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for 'doing greater damage to the State of Israel'. Last February, Goldstone said that 'Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not', in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report on the website of Israel's Channel 2. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded more.
"Readers might ask 'so what?' and 'why could Goldstone not withstand the heat?' Good questions, but alas the Zionization of Jewish communities and the false identification of Jewishness with Zionism is still a powerful disincentive that prevents liberal Jews from boldly facing Israel and its crimes. Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable to stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a 'self-hating Jew' with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.
"Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of 'delegitimising' Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.
"We should have recognised that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, 'Zionist', is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. 'I am a Zionist' is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity - if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.
"That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the 'evidence' brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.
"The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. 'The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust', promised Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008. There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings of Palestinians were a 'mistake'.
"Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by 'mistake'. So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing on only one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.
"This is also clear from the way he escalates his language against Hamas in the article and de-escalates his words toward Israel. And he hopes that this would absolve him of Israel's righteous fury. But he is wrong, very wrong. Only a few hours passed from the publication of the article until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of course the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Shimon Peres commissioned Goldstone with a new role in life: he is expected to move from one campus to the other and hop from one public venue to the next in the service of a new and pious Israel. He may choose not to do it; but then again he might not be allowed to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah as a retaliation.
"Goldstone and his colleagues wrote a very detailed report, but they were quite reserved in their conclusions. The picture unfolding from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations was far more horrendous and was described less in the clinical and legal language that quite often fails to convey the magnitude of the horror. It was first Western public opinion that understood better than Goldstone the implications of his report. Israel's international legitimacy has suffered an unprecedented blow. He was genuinely shocked to learn that this was the result.
"We have been there before. In the late 1980s, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a similar, sterile, account of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinian academics such as Edward Said, Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi were the ones who pointed to the significant implications for Israel's identity and self-image, and nature of the archival material he unearthed. Morris too cowered under pressure and asked to be readmitted to the tribe. He went very far with his mea culpa and re-emerged as an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing. Goldstone can go in that direction too; or at least this is what the Israelis expect him to do now.
"Professionally, both Morris and Goldstone tried to retreat to a position that claimed, as Goldstone does in The Washington Post article, that Israel can only be judged by its intentions not the consequences of its deeds. Therefore only the Israeli army, in both cases, can be a reliable source for knowing what these intentions were. Very few decent and intelligent people in the world would accept such a bizarre analysis and explanation.
"Goldstone has not yet entered the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did. But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a 'repentant Jew') between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism - you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.
"Winning Zionist love in the short-term is far less important than losing the world's respect in the long-run. Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine." (Goldstone's fateful U-turn, The Electronic Intifada, 4/4/11)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Goose & Gander
What's good for the goose...
"Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz set out the case for a military attack on Iran in front of a capacity audience at Central Synagogue on Sunday. Young and old crowded the synagogue on a drizzly Sydney night to hear one of the world's most prominent Zionist advocates make the case for his beloved Israel. And advocate he did, ruminating under the gentle guidance of Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher on his legal career, the peace process and Israel's enemies.'" (Iran war would take 3 days: Dershowitz, The Australian Jewish News, 8/10/10)
... would most definitely not be good for the gander:
Tehran University Professor X set out the case for a military attack on Israel in front of a capacity audience at Arncliffe Mosque on Sunday. Young and old crowded the mosque on a drizzly Sydney night to hear one of the world's most prominent anti-Zionist advocates make the case for his beloved Iran. And advocate he did, ruminating under the gentle guidance of Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher on his academic career, what he called 'the so-called peace process' and Iran's enemies.
"Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz set out the case for a military attack on Iran in front of a capacity audience at Central Synagogue on Sunday. Young and old crowded the synagogue on a drizzly Sydney night to hear one of the world's most prominent Zionist advocates make the case for his beloved Israel. And advocate he did, ruminating under the gentle guidance of Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher on his legal career, the peace process and Israel's enemies.'" (Iran war would take 3 days: Dershowitz, The Australian Jewish News, 8/10/10)
... would most definitely not be good for the gander:
Tehran University Professor X set out the case for a military attack on Israel in front of a capacity audience at Arncliffe Mosque on Sunday. Young and old crowded the mosque on a drizzly Sydney night to hear one of the world's most prominent anti-Zionist advocates make the case for his beloved Iran. And advocate he did, ruminating under the gentle guidance of Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher on his academic career, what he called 'the so-called peace process' and Iran's enemies.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Coming to a School Near You?
Building bridges, raising awareness, reaching out. Sounds good. Tell me more:
"The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' (JBD) third 'bridge-building' road trip saw the organisation's chief executive, Vic Alhadeff, raise awareness about the Jewish community on NSW's Central Coast. Alhadeff conducted interviews with two local radio stations, discussing such topics as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, racism and JBD outreach programs. Together with education manager Lynda Ben-Menashe, he also delivered a 2-hr presentation about the Holocaust to Erina High School's HSC students." (Gosford road trip, 20/8/10)
Just a minute, what was that about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
I wonder what Vic & Lynda had to say to the students of Erina High about that little shindig. Well, actually I don't have to wonder. I've got a fairly good idea thanks to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' newsletter, At the Board. Volume 1 - 2008 has this to say under the heading Bridge-building tour reaches thousands:
"The NSW JBD reached 800 people directly - plus thousands more through media interviews - during an intensive bridge-building tour of Central West NSW. JBD CEO Vic Alhadaff and Education Manager Lynda Ben-Menashe visited Forbes, Parkes, Dubbo and Mudgee, conducting 19 engagements in a week - with 8 schools, 5 media outlets, 3 Anglican churches, 2 Rotary clubs and one MP - Independent Member for Dubbo Dawn Fardell. Topics covered included Israel, the Middle East, the Holocaust, the Jewish experience in Australia, Jewish belief and practice, racism and antisemitism... Throughout their visit, Alhadeff and Ben-Menashe encouraged visits to the Sydney Holocaust Museum and distributed educational materials, including the Understanding Judaism brochure which was published by the JBD; the anti-racism Paper Clips DVD; Alan Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel; Rabbi Raymond Apple's book The Jewish Way; promotional packages from the Sydney Jewish Museum; and lists of websites for teachers to utilise... 'We spoke about Israel's world-leading water-management practices, the fact that drip-irrigation - which is used extensively in the Central West - is Israeli technology, and the fact that Israel leads the world in water recycling. 'We encouraged connections with the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, which conducts IT trade missions to Israel. We also found commonalities between the local communities and Israel's experience in responding to terrorism, as the Forbes rugby team was in Bali and Forbes lost 3 of its sons there. We emphasised that the clash with democratic values for which those 3 young men were killed is what Israel faces on a daily basis."
Yes, kiddies, it really is as simple as that: just as your mates were murdered most foully by the enemies of democracy in Bali, those same enemies of democracy have been, and are even now, busy murdering Israeli Jews.
Now while Vic & Lynda are free to propagandise for Israel in Australian schools, and have been doing so at least since 2008, over in 'the Middle East's only democracy' another group, with a genuinely educational agenda, can't even speak to Israeli teachers, let alone get into an Israeli schoolroom:
"Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Israel's education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot - a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the 'nakba' by Palestinians - organised a workshop for primary school teachers. The ministry said the course had not been approved and told teachers not to participate in Zochrot-sponsored activities during the coming school year." (Israel tells schools not to teach nakba, Jonathan Cook, The National, 21/8/10)
Hm... I wonder what Vic & Lynda are telling Australian students about the Palestinian nakba. Well, actually I don't need to wonder, I know. Here's a paragraph on the subject from a little booklet distributed by the JBD called The Arab-Israel Conflict & the Peace Process: "Essentially... the Arab exodus was a result of the fact that the war of 1947-1949 took place, in the sense that if there had been no [Arab] invasion and a peaceful partition had been completed then it is unlikely that any substantial emigration would have occurred."
To unwrap: There are no Palestinians, only generic Arabs. There was no ethnic cleansing, only war. If only the Arab states hadn't invaded Palestine, if only the Palestinians - sorry, Arabs -had jumped for joy at the partition of their homeland, then there'd have been no substantial emigration.
Substantial emigration, for God's sake!
Perhaps, now that Zochrot have been prevented from talking to Israeli teachers, they could visit Australia, stopping off first at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies to educate slow learners, Vic & Lynda, before proceeding to Erina High and all of the other schools who've been misinformed by them.
"The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' (JBD) third 'bridge-building' road trip saw the organisation's chief executive, Vic Alhadeff, raise awareness about the Jewish community on NSW's Central Coast. Alhadeff conducted interviews with two local radio stations, discussing such topics as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, racism and JBD outreach programs. Together with education manager Lynda Ben-Menashe, he also delivered a 2-hr presentation about the Holocaust to Erina High School's HSC students." (Gosford road trip, 20/8/10)
Just a minute, what was that about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
I wonder what Vic & Lynda had to say to the students of Erina High about that little shindig. Well, actually I don't have to wonder. I've got a fairly good idea thanks to the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies' newsletter, At the Board. Volume 1 - 2008 has this to say under the heading Bridge-building tour reaches thousands:
"The NSW JBD reached 800 people directly - plus thousands more through media interviews - during an intensive bridge-building tour of Central West NSW. JBD CEO Vic Alhadaff and Education Manager Lynda Ben-Menashe visited Forbes, Parkes, Dubbo and Mudgee, conducting 19 engagements in a week - with 8 schools, 5 media outlets, 3 Anglican churches, 2 Rotary clubs and one MP - Independent Member for Dubbo Dawn Fardell. Topics covered included Israel, the Middle East, the Holocaust, the Jewish experience in Australia, Jewish belief and practice, racism and antisemitism... Throughout their visit, Alhadeff and Ben-Menashe encouraged visits to the Sydney Holocaust Museum and distributed educational materials, including the Understanding Judaism brochure which was published by the JBD; the anti-racism Paper Clips DVD; Alan Dershowitz's book The Case for Israel; Rabbi Raymond Apple's book The Jewish Way; promotional packages from the Sydney Jewish Museum; and lists of websites for teachers to utilise... 'We spoke about Israel's world-leading water-management practices, the fact that drip-irrigation - which is used extensively in the Central West - is Israeli technology, and the fact that Israel leads the world in water recycling. 'We encouraged connections with the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, which conducts IT trade missions to Israel. We also found commonalities between the local communities and Israel's experience in responding to terrorism, as the Forbes rugby team was in Bali and Forbes lost 3 of its sons there. We emphasised that the clash with democratic values for which those 3 young men were killed is what Israel faces on a daily basis."
Yes, kiddies, it really is as simple as that: just as your mates were murdered most foully by the enemies of democracy in Bali, those same enemies of democracy have been, and are even now, busy murdering Israeli Jews.
Now while Vic & Lynda are free to propagandise for Israel in Australian schools, and have been doing so at least since 2008, over in 'the Middle East's only democracy' another group, with a genuinely educational agenda, can't even speak to Israeli teachers, let alone get into an Israeli schoolroom:
"Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Israel's education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot - a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the 'nakba' by Palestinians - organised a workshop for primary school teachers. The ministry said the course had not been approved and told teachers not to participate in Zochrot-sponsored activities during the coming school year." (Israel tells schools not to teach nakba, Jonathan Cook, The National, 21/8/10)
Hm... I wonder what Vic & Lynda are telling Australian students about the Palestinian nakba. Well, actually I don't need to wonder, I know. Here's a paragraph on the subject from a little booklet distributed by the JBD called The Arab-Israel Conflict & the Peace Process: "Essentially... the Arab exodus was a result of the fact that the war of 1947-1949 took place, in the sense that if there had been no [Arab] invasion and a peaceful partition had been completed then it is unlikely that any substantial emigration would have occurred."
To unwrap: There are no Palestinians, only generic Arabs. There was no ethnic cleansing, only war. If only the Arab states hadn't invaded Palestine, if only the Palestinians - sorry, Arabs -had jumped for joy at the partition of their homeland, then there'd have been no substantial emigration.
Substantial emigration, for God's sake!
Perhaps, now that Zochrot have been prevented from talking to Israeli teachers, they could visit Australia, stopping off first at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies to educate slow learners, Vic & Lynda, before proceeding to Erina High and all of the other schools who've been misinformed by them.
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