Bob Carr's tweeted (16/5/18) question "Is Washington in the hands of people who are clinically insane?" pretty much answers itself given the evidence he tenders:
"This quote from their ambassador to Israel, justifying the shift of the US embassy, would appear to present a prima facie case for institutional admission & a program of medication with longer term therapeutic attention: 'Well first of all, I would take issue with beginning the history lesson in 1947. Go back another 3,500 years. Go back to the Bible. I'll tell you an interesting story. One of the great commentators on the Bible, his name was Rashi, and he said, the reason that the Bible begins with the creation of the world is to create the chain of title from God directly to the Jewish people for the land of Israel, so that if the nations of the world say that the Jewish people don't own the land of Israel, they would point to the fact that God created the world and gave it to them'."
It's a virulent form of insanity called political Zionism, Bob. It's what's driving the Israeli settler movement. It's what's driving Israel. It's what's long been driving US policy in the Middle East. It used to fly pretty much under the radar, but it's now there for all who are paying attention to see.
Showing posts with label tribalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tribalism. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2018
Thursday, December 21, 2017
The (OFF) White Tribe
A fascinating piece in yesterday's Australian, Hanson's Stonehenge gran is no laughing matter, by Catherine J. Frieman, lecturer in European archaeology at the Australian National University's school of archaeology and anthropology:
"Of all the strange section 44 news, by far the most surreal was Pauline Hanson's claim that her grandmother was born at Stonehenge. Stonehenge... is a 4000 to 5000-year-old stone circle in the middle of a dield by the side of the A303 in Wiltshire, in the south of England. No one lives there... Wags and internet commenters (rightfully) got a bit of a laugh out of this news, and I'll admit that my first reaction was also to snigger. But, as an archaeologist who studies European pre-history, I also know that claims about personal connections to Europe's past may be more insidious than simple historical misunderstanding. As recent events have demonstrated, European icons now hold sway as status markers of white supremacy.
"In August, neo-Nazis and white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many of them carried signs and paraphernalia decorated with medieval and Viking designs. At the same time, in Britain a white supremacist, neo-pagan group known as Odinists demanded that the Church of England hand over a number of churches that were, they claimed, built on Norse holy sites. Also around that time, renowned ancient historian Mary Beard spent weeks fighting with right-wing commentators and Twitter trolls over her (entirely correct) claim that Roman Britain was diverse and multicultural.
"Ideas about who our ancestors were, where they lived and what they believed are powerful. In Australia, this power has been harnessed in a strong and positive way by indigenous communities asserting their rights to their country and to their status as Australia's first people. But there is a dangerous power in the past as well. Nazi Germany funded considerable prehistoric archaeological research because Adolf Hitler believed he could draw lines of descent between Nazi Aryans and people in the Bronze and Iron ages from 3000-4000 years ago.
"Today's neo-Nazis are continuing Hitler's project when they brandish shields painted with Viking runes and symbols, or shout at marches about Vinland - a Viking settlement in northeast North America. This is, they imagine, a noble period of white European dominance. They claim (cultural, if not always genetic) descent from these imagined Vikings and so they argue that they, not First Nations people and Native Americans, are the true indigenous people in the continent. The idea here is that there was no civilisation of value in North America before Europeans arrived - a version of terra nullius that replaces the English convicts with Viking fishermen.
"In fact, we know that during the Viking period - and the medieval and Roman periods, and earlier in prehistory - Europe was ethnically diverse and people with different genealogies and skin tones lived alongside each other. Recent skeletal and DNA research demonstrates that some of Roman York's wealthiest inhabitants were African and Middle Eastern. Other DNA evidence tells us the first farmers in western Europe were genetically closer to today's Turkish population than to contemporary Europeans.
"When we talk about the ultra-right and how it creates these imagined white pasts, we almost never mention Stonehenge. Despite Hitler's love of the Bronze Age, the modern alt-right tends to stick, at least publicly, to the Vikings. But Stonehenge is not without controversy. It is probably the most famous prehistoric monument in England, if not Europe... It is also a site of spiritual significance for neo-pagans who claim they have a religious and cultural connection to Iron Age Druids... So I doubt that Hanson was engaging in nefarious acts when she listed her grandmother's place of birth as a 5000-year-old stone circle. But I also can't just laugh and move on because I know the past is powerful and no site is more English than Stonehenge.
"The settler ideology of European dominance in Australia relies on a belief that European culture, values and traditions are superior to anyone else's. European white have (Western) civilisation, the rest of the world just has identities. Call me alarmist, but when the leader of a right-wing party with explicit planks against multiculturalism, Muslim religious practices and indigenous sovereignty publicly asserts she has a blood tie to a European prehistoric site, I think it's time to start worrying."
***
Like I said, a fascinating piece, but notice how the the biggest reinvention of the past, that of political Zionism, has gone completely unreferenced.
OK, so Hitler "believed he could draw lines of descent between Nazi Aryans and people in the Bronze and Iron ages from 3000-4000 years ago," but what about Binyamin Netanyahu's immediate "line of descent": Nathan Mileikowsky (grandfather), Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu (father)? What's that change of names all about?
Nathan Mileikowsky, bitten by the Zionist bug, imagined himself a direct descendant of the ancient 'Israelites,' and passed this incredible delusion on to his son, whom he named Benzion Mileikowsky. Benzion Mileikovsky then dropped the Polish 'Mileikowsky' for the Hebrew 'Netanyahu', and the rest, as they say, is history:
"In my office in Jerusalem," said PM Netanyahu in his 2011 UNGA speech, "there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since."
"Of all the strange section 44 news, by far the most surreal was Pauline Hanson's claim that her grandmother was born at Stonehenge. Stonehenge... is a 4000 to 5000-year-old stone circle in the middle of a dield by the side of the A303 in Wiltshire, in the south of England. No one lives there... Wags and internet commenters (rightfully) got a bit of a laugh out of this news, and I'll admit that my first reaction was also to snigger. But, as an archaeologist who studies European pre-history, I also know that claims about personal connections to Europe's past may be more insidious than simple historical misunderstanding. As recent events have demonstrated, European icons now hold sway as status markers of white supremacy.
"In August, neo-Nazis and white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many of them carried signs and paraphernalia decorated with medieval and Viking designs. At the same time, in Britain a white supremacist, neo-pagan group known as Odinists demanded that the Church of England hand over a number of churches that were, they claimed, built on Norse holy sites. Also around that time, renowned ancient historian Mary Beard spent weeks fighting with right-wing commentators and Twitter trolls over her (entirely correct) claim that Roman Britain was diverse and multicultural.
"Ideas about who our ancestors were, where they lived and what they believed are powerful. In Australia, this power has been harnessed in a strong and positive way by indigenous communities asserting their rights to their country and to their status as Australia's first people. But there is a dangerous power in the past as well. Nazi Germany funded considerable prehistoric archaeological research because Adolf Hitler believed he could draw lines of descent between Nazi Aryans and people in the Bronze and Iron ages from 3000-4000 years ago.
"Today's neo-Nazis are continuing Hitler's project when they brandish shields painted with Viking runes and symbols, or shout at marches about Vinland - a Viking settlement in northeast North America. This is, they imagine, a noble period of white European dominance. They claim (cultural, if not always genetic) descent from these imagined Vikings and so they argue that they, not First Nations people and Native Americans, are the true indigenous people in the continent. The idea here is that there was no civilisation of value in North America before Europeans arrived - a version of terra nullius that replaces the English convicts with Viking fishermen.
"In fact, we know that during the Viking period - and the medieval and Roman periods, and earlier in prehistory - Europe was ethnically diverse and people with different genealogies and skin tones lived alongside each other. Recent skeletal and DNA research demonstrates that some of Roman York's wealthiest inhabitants were African and Middle Eastern. Other DNA evidence tells us the first farmers in western Europe were genetically closer to today's Turkish population than to contemporary Europeans.
"When we talk about the ultra-right and how it creates these imagined white pasts, we almost never mention Stonehenge. Despite Hitler's love of the Bronze Age, the modern alt-right tends to stick, at least publicly, to the Vikings. But Stonehenge is not without controversy. It is probably the most famous prehistoric monument in England, if not Europe... It is also a site of spiritual significance for neo-pagans who claim they have a religious and cultural connection to Iron Age Druids... So I doubt that Hanson was engaging in nefarious acts when she listed her grandmother's place of birth as a 5000-year-old stone circle. But I also can't just laugh and move on because I know the past is powerful and no site is more English than Stonehenge.
"The settler ideology of European dominance in Australia relies on a belief that European culture, values and traditions are superior to anyone else's. European white have (Western) civilisation, the rest of the world just has identities. Call me alarmist, but when the leader of a right-wing party with explicit planks against multiculturalism, Muslim religious practices and indigenous sovereignty publicly asserts she has a blood tie to a European prehistoric site, I think it's time to start worrying."
***
Like I said, a fascinating piece, but notice how the the biggest reinvention of the past, that of political Zionism, has gone completely unreferenced.
OK, so Hitler "believed he could draw lines of descent between Nazi Aryans and people in the Bronze and Iron ages from 3000-4000 years ago," but what about Binyamin Netanyahu's immediate "line of descent": Nathan Mileikowsky (grandfather), Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu (father)? What's that change of names all about?
Nathan Mileikowsky, bitten by the Zionist bug, imagined himself a direct descendant of the ancient 'Israelites,' and passed this incredible delusion on to his son, whom he named Benzion Mileikowsky. Benzion Mileikovsky then dropped the Polish 'Mileikowsky' for the Hebrew 'Netanyahu', and the rest, as they say, is history:
"In my office in Jerusalem," said PM Netanyahu in his 2011 UNGA speech, "there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That's my last name. My first, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since."
Monday, April 25, 2016
The Return of the Desert God
Israeli blogger, Adam Keller (Crazy Country), begins his latest post, The Return of the Desert God (23/4/16), with a reflection on Passover, the Jewish Holiday of Liberty - based, of course, on the Biblical Book of Exodus - but, Israel being Israel, sees nothing to celebrate:
"In one particular Israeli home, this year's celebration of the Holiday of Liberty, reached a high peak. Sergeant Elor Azaria, who last month in Hebron shot a wounded Palestinian, lying on the ground, in the head and was photographed in the act by a human rights activist, was given leave from detention to spend the Passover holiday with his family. As opinion polls indicate, a majority of Israeli Jews think that anyone considered a terrorist should be killed, even if disarmed and no longer posing any threat. They concluded, therefore, that Sgt Azaria should not be charged with either murder or manslaughter. Rather, he should be released and perhaps even given a citation and a medal.
"In order to understand the deep roots of the present situation in Israel, it might be worth taking a look at another part of the Bible, a far less enticing one, the story of the Conquest of Canaan. After the great liberation from bondage in Egypt, the freed Hebrew slaves wandered in the desert for 40 years. They were reluctant to undertake the mission which God sought to impose upon them, namely to conquer the Promised Land. For that reluctance the Bible brands them cowards. The mission fell to their children, who did not remember the time of slavery in Egypt. Under the command of Joshua, son of Nun, they ferociously attacked the Land of Canaan and conquered city after city. God ordered them to slaughter all the inhabitants, men, women and children, and in some places, even the domestic animals. After they'd finished, they proceeded to divide and parcel out the land which had been emptied of its inhabitants.
"At least, that is how it is described in the Book of Joshua. Many modern historians and researchers doubt the veracity of this depiction. If so, then this Book, which gained a sacred status as part of the Jewish scriptures, must have been authored by someone with a particularly morbid cast of mind. This text was taken up by Christianity and broadcast around the world, serving as a source of inspiration for European settlers in North America and South Africa to identify with Joshua's Hebrew warriors and see Native Americans and Blacks as the new Canaanites.
"It should be noted that Judaism itself... has, over the centuries, increasingly distanced itself from this text. The distant descendants [?] of those savage nomads, they who had emerged from the desert with swords dripping with blood and destroyed the cities of Canaan, had become the quintessential urbanites in the many countries in which they lived. Above all, they admired scholars and sages, and kept their distance from warlike activities... Also, the god in which Jews believe, a universal God who holds eternal sway 'from end to end of the world', was far removed from the bloodthirsty tribal God of the ancient nomads. Jews also abandoned the blood sacrifice of animals, which had turned the temples of the ancient world into veritable slaughterhouses, and replaced it with public prayer, a custom also adopted by Christians and Muslims. But the Book of Joshua and other bloody verses remained part of the Bible. Observant Jews must not omit even one letter from the scriptures, let alone a whole book. But it is permitted to provide softening interpretations and glosses. It was also possible to put off dealing with such issues until the coming of the Messiah, when they would be irrelevant to the actual lives of Jews in the here and now... For centuries this was not the focus of Jewish faith and tradition; among the many sacred dates and holidays in the Jewish calendar no date was set to commemorate Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan.
"It wasn't until the rise of the Zionist movement in 19th century Europe, which even before reaching the Promised Land and meeting the Arabs face-to-face had already begun to cultivate dreams of a 'muscular Judaism'. In 1899, Saul Tchernichovsky... who was destined to become one of the main Zionist poets, wrote one of his most memorable poems: The people have grown old - their god with them/ Passions, stifled by unmanly folk/ Have arisen from a thousand years of slumber!/ I bend the knee to life, to beauty, to power/ To all the wondrous glories, of which/ Corrupt and degenerate walking corpses/ Have robbed the mighty God/ Of the vast, uncharted deserts/ The God of the conquerors/ Who took Canaan by storm/ But these have bound him up in straps, in phylacteries!
"One hundred and seventeen years have passed since a passionate young poet wrote those words. A hundred and seventeen years, during which the Zionist movement and the state of Israel have been engaged in the task of releasing the God of the Conquerors of Canaan from his chains. The ultimate fruit of these efforts, the visage of the rampant God of the Desert, can be seen in the video released this week containing footage from a demonstration in Tel Aviv, an enthusiastic rally called in support of the aforementioned Sgt Azaria, who had aimed his rifle and fired point blank at the head of the injured Palestinian lying on the ground. 'Muhammad is dead! Muhammad is dead!' chanted the crowd, and then 'We will burn down your village! Burn, village, burn!' and 'A Jew has a soul, an Arab is the son of a whore!' followed by 'A Leftist is the son of a whore!' and 'Fuck the media!' and concluding with a plain 'Death to the Arabs! Death to the Arabs!'
"Undoubtedly, the God of the Conquerors of Canaan is now rampaging throughout the state of Israel and the territories under its ongoing military rule. And where are we going to find, these days, someone to try binding him up again?"
"In one particular Israeli home, this year's celebration of the Holiday of Liberty, reached a high peak. Sergeant Elor Azaria, who last month in Hebron shot a wounded Palestinian, lying on the ground, in the head and was photographed in the act by a human rights activist, was given leave from detention to spend the Passover holiday with his family. As opinion polls indicate, a majority of Israeli Jews think that anyone considered a terrorist should be killed, even if disarmed and no longer posing any threat. They concluded, therefore, that Sgt Azaria should not be charged with either murder or manslaughter. Rather, he should be released and perhaps even given a citation and a medal.
"In order to understand the deep roots of the present situation in Israel, it might be worth taking a look at another part of the Bible, a far less enticing one, the story of the Conquest of Canaan. After the great liberation from bondage in Egypt, the freed Hebrew slaves wandered in the desert for 40 years. They were reluctant to undertake the mission which God sought to impose upon them, namely to conquer the Promised Land. For that reluctance the Bible brands them cowards. The mission fell to their children, who did not remember the time of slavery in Egypt. Under the command of Joshua, son of Nun, they ferociously attacked the Land of Canaan and conquered city after city. God ordered them to slaughter all the inhabitants, men, women and children, and in some places, even the domestic animals. After they'd finished, they proceeded to divide and parcel out the land which had been emptied of its inhabitants.
"At least, that is how it is described in the Book of Joshua. Many modern historians and researchers doubt the veracity of this depiction. If so, then this Book, which gained a sacred status as part of the Jewish scriptures, must have been authored by someone with a particularly morbid cast of mind. This text was taken up by Christianity and broadcast around the world, serving as a source of inspiration for European settlers in North America and South Africa to identify with Joshua's Hebrew warriors and see Native Americans and Blacks as the new Canaanites.
"It should be noted that Judaism itself... has, over the centuries, increasingly distanced itself from this text. The distant descendants [?] of those savage nomads, they who had emerged from the desert with swords dripping with blood and destroyed the cities of Canaan, had become the quintessential urbanites in the many countries in which they lived. Above all, they admired scholars and sages, and kept their distance from warlike activities... Also, the god in which Jews believe, a universal God who holds eternal sway 'from end to end of the world', was far removed from the bloodthirsty tribal God of the ancient nomads. Jews also abandoned the blood sacrifice of animals, which had turned the temples of the ancient world into veritable slaughterhouses, and replaced it with public prayer, a custom also adopted by Christians and Muslims. But the Book of Joshua and other bloody verses remained part of the Bible. Observant Jews must not omit even one letter from the scriptures, let alone a whole book. But it is permitted to provide softening interpretations and glosses. It was also possible to put off dealing with such issues until the coming of the Messiah, when they would be irrelevant to the actual lives of Jews in the here and now... For centuries this was not the focus of Jewish faith and tradition; among the many sacred dates and holidays in the Jewish calendar no date was set to commemorate Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan.
"It wasn't until the rise of the Zionist movement in 19th century Europe, which even before reaching the Promised Land and meeting the Arabs face-to-face had already begun to cultivate dreams of a 'muscular Judaism'. In 1899, Saul Tchernichovsky... who was destined to become one of the main Zionist poets, wrote one of his most memorable poems: The people have grown old - their god with them/ Passions, stifled by unmanly folk/ Have arisen from a thousand years of slumber!/ I bend the knee to life, to beauty, to power/ To all the wondrous glories, of which/ Corrupt and degenerate walking corpses/ Have robbed the mighty God/ Of the vast, uncharted deserts/ The God of the conquerors/ Who took Canaan by storm/ But these have bound him up in straps, in phylacteries!
"One hundred and seventeen years have passed since a passionate young poet wrote those words. A hundred and seventeen years, during which the Zionist movement and the state of Israel have been engaged in the task of releasing the God of the Conquerors of Canaan from his chains. The ultimate fruit of these efforts, the visage of the rampant God of the Desert, can be seen in the video released this week containing footage from a demonstration in Tel Aviv, an enthusiastic rally called in support of the aforementioned Sgt Azaria, who had aimed his rifle and fired point blank at the head of the injured Palestinian lying on the ground. 'Muhammad is dead! Muhammad is dead!' chanted the crowd, and then 'We will burn down your village! Burn, village, burn!' and 'A Jew has a soul, an Arab is the son of a whore!' followed by 'A Leftist is the son of a whore!' and 'Fuck the media!' and concluding with a plain 'Death to the Arabs! Death to the Arabs!'
"Undoubtedly, the God of the Conquerors of Canaan is now rampaging throughout the state of Israel and the territories under its ongoing military rule. And where are we going to find, these days, someone to try binding him up again?"
Saturday, October 3, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 3
Conclusion
"The record provides no historical basis for the claims of Jewish Supremacists.
"What has been cited as the disproportionate 'Jewish genius' turns out to be a two-edged sword - demonstrating the best and the worst.
"Claiming a monopoly on high academic achievement must be expanded to owning up to the Jewish authors of the worst financial and foreign policy disasters - they too are 'high achievers'.
"Donations from financial billionaires, all 'geniuses', have financed the war crimes of the Israeli state and made possible the expansion of violent Jewish settlers throughout occupied Palestine - spreading misery and displacement for millions.
"In fairness, the most notorious Jewish swindler in contemporary America was even-handed: 'Bernie' Madoff swindled Jews and Goys. Hollywood moguls and New York philanthropists - he wasn't picky about who he fleeced.
"The latest fashion among Jewish Supremacist 'geneticists' is to extol the discovery of uniquely special 'genes' predisposing Jews to experience the 'holocaust' and even inherit the experience of suffering from long dead ancestors. Such 'scientists' should be careful. As Jazz artist and essayist Gilad Atzmon wryly notes: 'They will put the anti-Semites out of business'.
"Ultimately, Jews, who have assimilated into the greater society or not, who intermarry and who do not, are all products of the social system in which they live and (like everyone else) they are the makers of the roles they decide to play within it.
"In the past, a uniquely disproportionate percentage of Jews chose to fight for universal humanist values - rejecting the notion of a chosen people.
"Today, a disproportionate percentage of educated Jews have chosen to embrace an 'ethno-religious' Supremacist dogma which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.
"Never forget! Racialist supremacist doctrines led Germany down the blind alley of totalitarianism and world war, in which scores of millions perished.
"Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel's crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.
"The root problem is not genetic, it is collective political dementia: a demented ideology that claims a chosen elite can forever dominate and exploit the majority of American people. The time will come when the accumulated disasters will force the American people to push back, unmasking the elite and rejecting its supremacist doctrines. Let us hope that they will act with passion guided by reason." (petras.lahaine.org, 4/9/15)
"The record provides no historical basis for the claims of Jewish Supremacists.
"What has been cited as the disproportionate 'Jewish genius' turns out to be a two-edged sword - demonstrating the best and the worst.
"Claiming a monopoly on high academic achievement must be expanded to owning up to the Jewish authors of the worst financial and foreign policy disasters - they too are 'high achievers'.
"Donations from financial billionaires, all 'geniuses', have financed the war crimes of the Israeli state and made possible the expansion of violent Jewish settlers throughout occupied Palestine - spreading misery and displacement for millions.
"In fairness, the most notorious Jewish swindler in contemporary America was even-handed: 'Bernie' Madoff swindled Jews and Goys. Hollywood moguls and New York philanthropists - he wasn't picky about who he fleeced.
"The latest fashion among Jewish Supremacist 'geneticists' is to extol the discovery of uniquely special 'genes' predisposing Jews to experience the 'holocaust' and even inherit the experience of suffering from long dead ancestors. Such 'scientists' should be careful. As Jazz artist and essayist Gilad Atzmon wryly notes: 'They will put the anti-Semites out of business'.
"Ultimately, Jews, who have assimilated into the greater society or not, who intermarry and who do not, are all products of the social system in which they live and (like everyone else) they are the makers of the roles they decide to play within it.
"In the past, a uniquely disproportionate percentage of Jews chose to fight for universal humanist values - rejecting the notion of a chosen people.
"Today, a disproportionate percentage of educated Jews have chosen to embrace an 'ethno-religious' Supremacist dogma which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.
"Never forget! Racialist supremacist doctrines led Germany down the blind alley of totalitarianism and world war, in which scores of millions perished.
"Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel's crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.
"The root problem is not genetic, it is collective political dementia: a demented ideology that claims a chosen elite can forever dominate and exploit the majority of American people. The time will come when the accumulated disasters will force the American people to push back, unmasking the elite and rejecting its supremacist doctrines. Let us hope that they will act with passion guided by reason." (petras.lahaine.org, 4/9/15)
Friday, October 2, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 2
Challenging the Myths of Jewish Supremacists
"There are serious problems regarding the claims of the Jewish Supremacists.
"For centuries Jewish 'wisdom' was confined to textual exegesis of religious dogma - texts full of superstition and social control, as well as blind intolerance, and which produced neither reasoned arguments nor contributed to scientific and human advancement.
"Jewish scholarship of note occurred among thinkers like Spinoza who revolted against the Jewish ghetto gatekeepers and rejected Jewish dogma.
"Notable scientists emerged in the context of working and studying with non-Jews in non-Jewish institutions - the universities and centers of learning in the West. The majority of world-renowned Jewish scholars integrated and contributed to predominantly non-Jewish (Muslim and Christian) and secular institutions of higher learning.
"Historically, highly talented individuals of Jewish origin succeeded by renouncing the constraints of everyday Jewish life, rabbinical overseers and Jewish institutions. Most contemporary prestigious scientists, including the frequently cited Nobel Prize winners, have little or nothing to do with Judaism and their contributions have everything to do with the highly secular, integrated culture in which they prospered intellectually - despite expressions of crude anti-Semitism in the larger society.
"Secondly, Jewish Supremacists persist in claiming 'racial credit' for the achievements of individuals who have publicly renounced, denounced and distanced themselves from Judaism and have dismissed any notion of Israel as their spiritual homeland. Their universal prestige has prevented them from being labeled apostate or 'self-hating'. Albert Einstein, often cited by the Supremacists as the supreme example of 'Jewish genius', denounced Israel's war crimes and showed disdain for any tribal identity. In their era, Marx and Trotsky, like the vast majority of emancipated European Jews, given the chance, became engaged in universalistic organizations, attacking the entire notion that Jews were a 'special people' chosen by divine authority (or by the latter-day Zionists).
"Thirdly, Supremacists compile a very selective list of virtuous Jews, while omitting areas of life and activity where Jews have disproportionately played a negative and destructive role.
"After all, is it Jewish 'genius' that makes Israel a leading exporter of arms, intrusive, high-tech spy systems and sends military and paramilitary advisers and torturers to work with death-squad regimes in Africa and Latin America?
"Among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are three Israeli Prime Ministers who waged wars of ethnic cleansing against millions of Palestinians and expanded racist 'Jews only' settlements throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. These include Menachem Begin (notorious career bomber and terrorist), Yitzhak Rabin (a militarist who was assassinated by an even more racist, Jewish terrorist), and Shimon Peres. Among Jewish-American Nobel 'peaceniks' is Henry Kissinger who oversaw the brutal and illegal US war in Indo-China, causing 4 million Vietnamese deaths; who wrote the 'template for regime change' by overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chilean President Allende and condemned Chile to decades of police state terror; and who supported Indonesia's destruction of East Timor.
"In other words, these Nobel recipients, who Supremacists cite as 'examples of Jewish Supremacy', have sown terror and injustice on countless captive peoples and nations - giving the Nobel Peace Prize a dubious distinction.
"Among the greatest billion dollar swindlers in recent US history we'd find a disproportionate percentage of American Jews - curiously not mentioned by the Supremacists in their usual litany: Bernard Madoff pillaged over $50 billion from his clients, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Marc Rich are well-known names, adding the distinction of 'Jewish genius' to a list of financial mega-felons.
"Among the less respectable notables whose material successes have been tarnished by personal weaknesses, we have the billionaire and pedophile pimp, Jeffry Epstein; IMF President, rapist and debaucher, Dominic Strauss Kahn; entrepreneur and 'nudist' Dov Charney; New York Governor and 'repeat customer, Elliot Spitzer; Congressman and exhibitionist Anthony Weiner; and the fun-loving sports impresario who brought down FIFA, the piratical Chuck Blazer. Curiously, none of these extraordinarily successful notables have been cited as examples of Jewish Supremacy.
"As we contemplate the millions of war refugees driven from the Near East and North Africa, we should credit the role of US neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologues and policymakers - a disproportionate percentage of whom are Jews. Millions of Chilean workers suffered as Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys 'advised' Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on dismantling the welfare state (even if it required the murder of trade unionists!). Ayn Rand (Alyssa Rosenbaum) and her fanatical free market epigones have savaged all progressive social legislation and turned the most retrograde forms of selfishness into a religion of 'superiority'!
"The disastrous US war against Iraq was largely organized, promoted and justified by a disproportionate percentage of US Jews (Zionists), including leading policymakers in the Bush and Obama administrations - Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Dennis Ross, Martyn Indyk, David Frum, Shulsky, Levey, Cohen, Rahm Emanuel etc. They continue to push for war against Iran and should be seen as the 'godfathers' of the tragedies of Iraq, Syria and Libya from which millions have fled.
"The biggest financial crisis since the great depression was largely due to the financial policies of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. The trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street by Ben Shalom Bernacke and Stanley Fischer, while Janet Yellen ignored the plight of millions of Americans who lost their homes because of mortgage foreclosures.
"In sum, Jewish Supremacists should proudly take credit for the American Jews who have been disproportionately responsible for the largest economic and foreign policy failures of the contemporary period - including the horrific suffering these have entailed!
"Back in the more normal world of crime, Russian-Jewish mobsters dominate or share supremacy with the Italian Mafia in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami and scores of cities in between. They display their unique genius at extortion and murder - knowing they can always find safe haven in the 'Promised Land'!
"On the cultural front, the finest Jewish writers, artists, musicians and scientists have emerged outside of Israel. A few may have immigrated to the Jewish state, but many other intellectuals and artists of note have chosen to leave Israel, repelled by the racist, intolerant and repressive apartheid state and society promoted by Jewish Supremacists."
To be continued...
"There are serious problems regarding the claims of the Jewish Supremacists.
"For centuries Jewish 'wisdom' was confined to textual exegesis of religious dogma - texts full of superstition and social control, as well as blind intolerance, and which produced neither reasoned arguments nor contributed to scientific and human advancement.
"Jewish scholarship of note occurred among thinkers like Spinoza who revolted against the Jewish ghetto gatekeepers and rejected Jewish dogma.
"Notable scientists emerged in the context of working and studying with non-Jews in non-Jewish institutions - the universities and centers of learning in the West. The majority of world-renowned Jewish scholars integrated and contributed to predominantly non-Jewish (Muslim and Christian) and secular institutions of higher learning.
"Historically, highly talented individuals of Jewish origin succeeded by renouncing the constraints of everyday Jewish life, rabbinical overseers and Jewish institutions. Most contemporary prestigious scientists, including the frequently cited Nobel Prize winners, have little or nothing to do with Judaism and their contributions have everything to do with the highly secular, integrated culture in which they prospered intellectually - despite expressions of crude anti-Semitism in the larger society.
"Secondly, Jewish Supremacists persist in claiming 'racial credit' for the achievements of individuals who have publicly renounced, denounced and distanced themselves from Judaism and have dismissed any notion of Israel as their spiritual homeland. Their universal prestige has prevented them from being labeled apostate or 'self-hating'. Albert Einstein, often cited by the Supremacists as the supreme example of 'Jewish genius', denounced Israel's war crimes and showed disdain for any tribal identity. In their era, Marx and Trotsky, like the vast majority of emancipated European Jews, given the chance, became engaged in universalistic organizations, attacking the entire notion that Jews were a 'special people' chosen by divine authority (or by the latter-day Zionists).
"Thirdly, Supremacists compile a very selective list of virtuous Jews, while omitting areas of life and activity where Jews have disproportionately played a negative and destructive role.
"After all, is it Jewish 'genius' that makes Israel a leading exporter of arms, intrusive, high-tech spy systems and sends military and paramilitary advisers and torturers to work with death-squad regimes in Africa and Latin America?
"Among the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are three Israeli Prime Ministers who waged wars of ethnic cleansing against millions of Palestinians and expanded racist 'Jews only' settlements throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. These include Menachem Begin (notorious career bomber and terrorist), Yitzhak Rabin (a militarist who was assassinated by an even more racist, Jewish terrorist), and Shimon Peres. Among Jewish-American Nobel 'peaceniks' is Henry Kissinger who oversaw the brutal and illegal US war in Indo-China, causing 4 million Vietnamese deaths; who wrote the 'template for regime change' by overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chilean President Allende and condemned Chile to decades of police state terror; and who supported Indonesia's destruction of East Timor.
"In other words, these Nobel recipients, who Supremacists cite as 'examples of Jewish Supremacy', have sown terror and injustice on countless captive peoples and nations - giving the Nobel Peace Prize a dubious distinction.
"Among the greatest billion dollar swindlers in recent US history we'd find a disproportionate percentage of American Jews - curiously not mentioned by the Supremacists in their usual litany: Bernard Madoff pillaged over $50 billion from his clients, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Marc Rich are well-known names, adding the distinction of 'Jewish genius' to a list of financial mega-felons.
"Among the less respectable notables whose material successes have been tarnished by personal weaknesses, we have the billionaire and pedophile pimp, Jeffry Epstein; IMF President, rapist and debaucher, Dominic Strauss Kahn; entrepreneur and 'nudist' Dov Charney; New York Governor and 'repeat customer, Elliot Spitzer; Congressman and exhibitionist Anthony Weiner; and the fun-loving sports impresario who brought down FIFA, the piratical Chuck Blazer. Curiously, none of these extraordinarily successful notables have been cited as examples of Jewish Supremacy.
"As we contemplate the millions of war refugees driven from the Near East and North Africa, we should credit the role of US neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologues and policymakers - a disproportionate percentage of whom are Jews. Millions of Chilean workers suffered as Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys 'advised' Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on dismantling the welfare state (even if it required the murder of trade unionists!). Ayn Rand (Alyssa Rosenbaum) and her fanatical free market epigones have savaged all progressive social legislation and turned the most retrograde forms of selfishness into a religion of 'superiority'!
"The disastrous US war against Iraq was largely organized, promoted and justified by a disproportionate percentage of US Jews (Zionists), including leading policymakers in the Bush and Obama administrations - Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Dennis Ross, Martyn Indyk, David Frum, Shulsky, Levey, Cohen, Rahm Emanuel etc. They continue to push for war against Iran and should be seen as the 'godfathers' of the tragedies of Iraq, Syria and Libya from which millions have fled.
"The biggest financial crisis since the great depression was largely due to the financial policies of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. The trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street by Ben Shalom Bernacke and Stanley Fischer, while Janet Yellen ignored the plight of millions of Americans who lost their homes because of mortgage foreclosures.
"In sum, Jewish Supremacists should proudly take credit for the American Jews who have been disproportionately responsible for the largest economic and foreign policy failures of the contemporary period - including the horrific suffering these have entailed!
"Back in the more normal world of crime, Russian-Jewish mobsters dominate or share supremacy with the Italian Mafia in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami and scores of cities in between. They display their unique genius at extortion and murder - knowing they can always find safe haven in the 'Promised Land'!
"On the cultural front, the finest Jewish writers, artists, musicians and scientists have emerged outside of Israel. A few may have immigrated to the Jewish state, but many other intellectuals and artists of note have chosen to leave Israel, repelled by the racist, intolerant and repressive apartheid state and society promoted by Jewish Supremacists."
To be continued...
Thursday, October 1, 2015
James Petras on Jewish Supremacism 1
Is there anyone so wise to the ways of the world as James Petras? Rhetorical question.
Here's Part 1 of my 3-part serialisation of one of his most recent essays, The Doctrine of 'Superior People': The Bond Between Israel & World Zionism. Forget the claret, it's the clarity you need:
Introduction
"The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological - the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims 'Jews are a superior people'.
"Apart from small, extremist rightwing sects who exhibit visceral anti-Semitism and denigrate everything Jewish, there are very few academics and politicians willing to question this supremacist doctrine. On the contrary, there is an incurable tendency to advance oneself by accepting and embellishing on it.
"For example, in August 2015, US Vice-president Joe Biden attributed 'special genius' to Jews, slavish flattery that embarrassed even New York's liberal Jewish intellectuals.
"Israel's dominant role in formulating US Middle East policy is largely a product of its success at recruiting, socializing and motivating overseas Jews to act as an organized force to intervene in US politics and push Israel's agenda.
"What motivates American Jews, who have been raised and educated in the US, to serve Israel? After all, these are individuals who prospered, achieved high status and occupy the highest positions of prestige and responsibility. Why should they parrot the policies of Israel and follow the dictates of Israeli leaders (a foreign regime), serving its violent colonial, racist agenda?
"What binds a minority of highly educated and privileged Jews to the most rabidly rightwing Israeli regime in history - a relationship they actually celebrate?
"What turns comfortable, prosperous American Jews into vindictive bullies, willing and able to blackmail, threaten and punish any dissident voices among their Gentile and Jewish compatriots who have dared to criticize Israel?
"What prevents many intelligent, liberal and progressive Jews from openly questioning Israel's agenda, and especially confronting the role of Zionist zealots who serve as tel Aviv's fifth column against the interest of the United states?
"There are numerous historical and personal factors that can and should be taken into account to understand this phenomenon. In this essay, I am going to focus on one - the ideology that 'Jews are a superior people'. The notion that Jews, either through some genetic, biologic, cultural, historical, familial and/or upbringing, have special qualities allowing them to achieve at a uniquely higher level than the 'inferior' non-Jews. We will proceed by sketching the main outline of the Jewish supremacist ideology and then advance our critique.
"We will conclude by evaluating the negative consequences of this ideology and propose a democratic alternative.
Jewish Supremacism
"Exponents of Jewish Supremacism (JS) frequently cite the prestigious awards, worldly successes and high honors, which, they emphasize, have been disproportionately achieved by Jews.
"The argument goes: While Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world population, they have produced 24% of the US Nobel Prize winners; over 30% of the Ivy League professors and students; and the majority of major US film, stage and TV producers.
"They cite the 'disproportionate number' of scientists, leading doctors, lawyers and billionaires.
"They cite past geniuses like Einstein, Freud and Marx.
"They point to the founders of the world's great monotheistic religions - Moses and Abraham.
"They lay claim to a unique learning tradition embedded in centuries of Talmudic scholarship.
"Jewish supremacists never miss a chance to cite the 'Jewish background' of any highly accomplished contemporary public figure in the entertainment, publishing, financial fields, or any other sectors of life in the US.
"Disproportionately great accomplishments by a disproportionate minority has become the mantra for heralding a self-styled 'meritocratic elite'... and for justifying its disproportionate wealth, power and privilege - and influence.
To be continued...
Here's Part 1 of my 3-part serialisation of one of his most recent essays, The Doctrine of 'Superior People': The Bond Between Israel & World Zionism. Forget the claret, it's the clarity you need:
Introduction
"The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological - the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims 'Jews are a superior people'.
"Apart from small, extremist rightwing sects who exhibit visceral anti-Semitism and denigrate everything Jewish, there are very few academics and politicians willing to question this supremacist doctrine. On the contrary, there is an incurable tendency to advance oneself by accepting and embellishing on it.
"For example, in August 2015, US Vice-president Joe Biden attributed 'special genius' to Jews, slavish flattery that embarrassed even New York's liberal Jewish intellectuals.
"Israel's dominant role in formulating US Middle East policy is largely a product of its success at recruiting, socializing and motivating overseas Jews to act as an organized force to intervene in US politics and push Israel's agenda.
"What motivates American Jews, who have been raised and educated in the US, to serve Israel? After all, these are individuals who prospered, achieved high status and occupy the highest positions of prestige and responsibility. Why should they parrot the policies of Israel and follow the dictates of Israeli leaders (a foreign regime), serving its violent colonial, racist agenda?
"What binds a minority of highly educated and privileged Jews to the most rabidly rightwing Israeli regime in history - a relationship they actually celebrate?
"What turns comfortable, prosperous American Jews into vindictive bullies, willing and able to blackmail, threaten and punish any dissident voices among their Gentile and Jewish compatriots who have dared to criticize Israel?
"What prevents many intelligent, liberal and progressive Jews from openly questioning Israel's agenda, and especially confronting the role of Zionist zealots who serve as tel Aviv's fifth column against the interest of the United states?
"There are numerous historical and personal factors that can and should be taken into account to understand this phenomenon. In this essay, I am going to focus on one - the ideology that 'Jews are a superior people'. The notion that Jews, either through some genetic, biologic, cultural, historical, familial and/or upbringing, have special qualities allowing them to achieve at a uniquely higher level than the 'inferior' non-Jews. We will proceed by sketching the main outline of the Jewish supremacist ideology and then advance our critique.
"We will conclude by evaluating the negative consequences of this ideology and propose a democratic alternative.
Jewish Supremacism
"Exponents of Jewish Supremacism (JS) frequently cite the prestigious awards, worldly successes and high honors, which, they emphasize, have been disproportionately achieved by Jews.
"The argument goes: While Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world population, they have produced 24% of the US Nobel Prize winners; over 30% of the Ivy League professors and students; and the majority of major US film, stage and TV producers.
"They cite the 'disproportionate number' of scientists, leading doctors, lawyers and billionaires.
"They cite past geniuses like Einstein, Freud and Marx.
"They point to the founders of the world's great monotheistic religions - Moses and Abraham.
"They lay claim to a unique learning tradition embedded in centuries of Talmudic scholarship.
"Jewish supremacists never miss a chance to cite the 'Jewish background' of any highly accomplished contemporary public figure in the entertainment, publishing, financial fields, or any other sectors of life in the US.
"Disproportionately great accomplishments by a disproportionate minority has become the mantra for heralding a self-styled 'meritocratic elite'... and for justifying its disproportionate wealth, power and privilege - and influence.
To be continued...
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Pulling Punches?
Playing it safe in the ms media inevitably involves pussyfooting around with words:
"On tribalism we're much more conflicted. Easily the best counter to tribalism would be to ban religious schools. Not religion. That's fine. But segregating children on religious grounds inculcates Chosen People Syndrome from birth. Be it Wahhabist, Jewish or Anglican, in Saudi, Paris or Bronte, chosenpeopleism makes war, not peace. This is not God's doing, though religions lend themselves to tribalism." (Tribalism lets out our inner fascist, Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/1/15)
'Wahhabist, Jewish or Anglican'. An interesting choice of words. Wouldn't 'Muslim, Jewish or Christian' have been more to the point?
And if, as is the case with Farrelly's op-ed, the focus is really on the interface between tribalism and religion, where the going really gets rough,wouldn't the logical choice have been 'Wahhabist, Zionist or Christian Zionist?
But just imagine the conniptions which would have followed.
"On tribalism we're much more conflicted. Easily the best counter to tribalism would be to ban religious schools. Not religion. That's fine. But segregating children on religious grounds inculcates Chosen People Syndrome from birth. Be it Wahhabist, Jewish or Anglican, in Saudi, Paris or Bronte, chosenpeopleism makes war, not peace. This is not God's doing, though religions lend themselves to tribalism." (Tribalism lets out our inner fascist, Elizabeth Farrelly, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/1/15)
'Wahhabist, Jewish or Anglican'. An interesting choice of words. Wouldn't 'Muslim, Jewish or Christian' have been more to the point?
And if, as is the case with Farrelly's op-ed, the focus is really on the interface between tribalism and religion, where the going really gets rough,wouldn't the logical choice have been 'Wahhabist, Zionist or Christian Zionist?
But just imagine the conniptions which would have followed.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Buy This 'Vicious Anti-Israel Screed' NOW!
To warm you up here's Australia's leading Zionist comedian, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan:
"[T]he Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history. It is intellectually disputatious; any two Israelis will have three opinions and be happy to argue them to a lamp post. It is multi-ethnic, there is a great stress on human solidarity, there is due process. And I've never heard an Israeli speak casually about the value of Palestinian life." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)
Now once you've picked yourself up off the floor, read this extract from Chapter 13 - Cut Off from the Tribe - of Max Blumenthal's new book Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel. The usual suspects are describing it as a "vicious anti-Israel screed" so you know it's good value:
"Over a plate of surprisingly decent bean curd sauce at the Chinese restaurant - one of only a handful I knew in [Tel Aviv] - [David] Sheen recalled how he arrived in Israel in 1999 from a solidly middle class, ultra-Zionist family from Toronto, Canada. At age 25, he was brimming with excitement about the earthy communal dream that awaited him: 'I saw Israel entirely through the frame of a Zionist education. I grew up in a very heavily Jewish environment, in a Jewish neighborhood, a Jewish school, synagogue - everything. The school was Zionist, and I was heavily immersed in the idea that we need Israel so there won't be another Holocaust, and that Israel needs us because it needs to be built up - it's surrounded with enemies so it needs our help to build itself. So when I first arrived in Israel I was thinking about the collective, and the concept of the Jewish people represented the strongest collective.'
"Though Sheen was heavily immersed in the tribalistic culture of Zionism, he had also cultivated strong leftist views through his participation in anti-globalization protests in Toronto. 'With every other issue besides Israel, I was on the left side of the spectrum,' he said. 'I was a PEP - a Progressive Except for Palestine.' Within a month of arriving in Israel, that began to change. He realized that everything he had known about Israelis and Palestinians was a fantasy cultivated through years of heavy indoctrination. His view of the occupation as a necessary, albeit unpleasant security measure was shattered after he spent long hours chatting with Palestinian workers who woke up at 4am each morning to slip into Israel from Nablus to work construction jobs for meager pay. 'Once I saw how the occupation created a permanent underclass and that it existed to promote exploitation - just by realizing that I broke with the PEP mentality.'
"Sheen's contact with actual Israelis undermined his idealized vision of the Zionist collective. 'Israelis were not exactly trying to pull together in the name of the Jewish people like I thought,' he said. 'It's a dog-eat-dog shark pool where you've got to swim to survive, and nobody has any idea of what civility means. People are manipulative and exploitative without any moral compunction or sense that there's anything wrong with that. They're not embarrassed about taking advantage of other people.'
"Alienated by the aggressive capitalism that was consuming urban life in Israel, Sheen retreated to a kibbutz in the Negev Desert called Kibbutz Samar. At first he thought he had finally found the slow-paced communal lifestyle he had been seeking. But then he peered beneath the kibbutz's socialist veneer: 'What broke me was they got workers from Thailand to work on the kibbutz for next to nothing,' Sheen recounted. 'I realized it wasn't really socialism they were practicing. It was socialism for Jews only. I grew up in multicultural Toronto where diversity was a positive thing. So it went against my values, and I tried to convince the kibbutz not to do this, to let the Thai workers live in normal apartments like everyone else - don't stick 6 of them in a fucking closet. Treat them like normal humans. Very few people even saw it as an issue worth discussing, let alone dealing with. They didn't see them as deserving of basic standards of living. They said, 'They're making more here than they would back in their country.' So that makes it okay? I wanted to get away from capitalism and away from exploitation, but I saw that kibbutz life was just that - it was segregationist Zionism. So I left.'
"In 2006, Israeli forces simultaneously carpet-bombed the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon. Israel blanketed the Strip with more than 6,000 artillery shells and missiles, deliberately destroyed Gaza's main power plant, then bombed the access roads to prevent the plant from being repaired. Within the span of about two months, the army had killed at least 202 civilians including 44 children in an operation billed to Israelis as a search for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In Southern Lebanon, Israeli bombing turned 800,000 Lebanese citizens - over a quarter of the country's population - into refugees while killing more than 1,100 civilians, including at least 300 children. Summarizing the views of the Israeli military leadership at the time, columnist Yaron London, one of the most prominent television journalists in the country, wrote, 'There is no longer any need for complicated distinctions... In practical terms, the Palestinians in Gaza are all [Hamas leader] Khaled Meshal, the Lebanese are all [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.'
"Indignant at the disproportionate violence Israel had unleashed against civilians, Sheen joined up with the small but feisty bands of Israeli radical leftists who had dedicated themselves to direct action against their country's militaristic policies. During a gay pride rally in Tel Aviv called 'Queeruption', Sheen and a group of friends held signs reading, 'Stop the bombing.' They were immediately set upon by riot police who beat them with billyclubs before dragging them away.
"'I was shocked,' Sheen remarked. 'Nowadays everyone knows the police are brutal, but at the time I still couldn't believe that Israeli police would attack other Jews - and for simply holding signs.' At another anti-war protest in Tel Aviv, a prim-looking waitress burst through the door of a nearby restaurant and hurled a glass at the protesters. 'I watched that glass hit the ground and shatter. I can still hear the sound. It was when I realized that even in the heart of liberal Tel Aviv there is a seething hatred for anyone with humanistic values,' Sheen said.
"At the time, Sheen was living on a moshav (a collective farm) near the Gaza border. From his home, he listened to the thundering sound of bombs falling on Gaza all day and all night. 'The ground was literally shaking underneath my feet,' he recalled. Sheen ventured into town filled with revulsion at the shelling of Gaza. 'When I told people at the supermarket what I thought of the bombing, they would all say, 'What do you care? It's not going to hit you, it's hitting them.' I said back, 'It's hitting actual people. Doesn't that matter to you?' And they would get enraged and say, 'What are you, a fucking leftist? You don't care about the Jews.' That's when I realized that in Israel, you're either in favor of any level of violence unleashed on those people, no matter who they were, or if you're against it, you're with the terrorists. I was shocked that that attitude was so mainstream.'
"Sheen went on: 'To come out against these wars on civilians - you were cut off. You were not part of the tribe. You were not part of the Jewish people. You were alone. Once you have a personal experience like that, it etches those beliefs into your soul'." (pp 66-68)
Now do yourself a favour and go out and buy it!
"[T]he Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history. It is intellectually disputatious; any two Israelis will have three opinions and be happy to argue them to a lamp post. It is multi-ethnic, there is a great stress on human solidarity, there is due process. And I've never heard an Israeli speak casually about the value of Palestinian life." (Israel still looks good, warts & all, The Australian Literary Review, 6/5/09)
Now once you've picked yourself up off the floor, read this extract from Chapter 13 - Cut Off from the Tribe - of Max Blumenthal's new book Goliath: Life & Loathing in Greater Israel. The usual suspects are describing it as a "vicious anti-Israel screed" so you know it's good value:
"Over a plate of surprisingly decent bean curd sauce at the Chinese restaurant - one of only a handful I knew in [Tel Aviv] - [David] Sheen recalled how he arrived in Israel in 1999 from a solidly middle class, ultra-Zionist family from Toronto, Canada. At age 25, he was brimming with excitement about the earthy communal dream that awaited him: 'I saw Israel entirely through the frame of a Zionist education. I grew up in a very heavily Jewish environment, in a Jewish neighborhood, a Jewish school, synagogue - everything. The school was Zionist, and I was heavily immersed in the idea that we need Israel so there won't be another Holocaust, and that Israel needs us because it needs to be built up - it's surrounded with enemies so it needs our help to build itself. So when I first arrived in Israel I was thinking about the collective, and the concept of the Jewish people represented the strongest collective.'
"Though Sheen was heavily immersed in the tribalistic culture of Zionism, he had also cultivated strong leftist views through his participation in anti-globalization protests in Toronto. 'With every other issue besides Israel, I was on the left side of the spectrum,' he said. 'I was a PEP - a Progressive Except for Palestine.' Within a month of arriving in Israel, that began to change. He realized that everything he had known about Israelis and Palestinians was a fantasy cultivated through years of heavy indoctrination. His view of the occupation as a necessary, albeit unpleasant security measure was shattered after he spent long hours chatting with Palestinian workers who woke up at 4am each morning to slip into Israel from Nablus to work construction jobs for meager pay. 'Once I saw how the occupation created a permanent underclass and that it existed to promote exploitation - just by realizing that I broke with the PEP mentality.'
"Sheen's contact with actual Israelis undermined his idealized vision of the Zionist collective. 'Israelis were not exactly trying to pull together in the name of the Jewish people like I thought,' he said. 'It's a dog-eat-dog shark pool where you've got to swim to survive, and nobody has any idea of what civility means. People are manipulative and exploitative without any moral compunction or sense that there's anything wrong with that. They're not embarrassed about taking advantage of other people.'
"Alienated by the aggressive capitalism that was consuming urban life in Israel, Sheen retreated to a kibbutz in the Negev Desert called Kibbutz Samar. At first he thought he had finally found the slow-paced communal lifestyle he had been seeking. But then he peered beneath the kibbutz's socialist veneer: 'What broke me was they got workers from Thailand to work on the kibbutz for next to nothing,' Sheen recounted. 'I realized it wasn't really socialism they were practicing. It was socialism for Jews only. I grew up in multicultural Toronto where diversity was a positive thing. So it went against my values, and I tried to convince the kibbutz not to do this, to let the Thai workers live in normal apartments like everyone else - don't stick 6 of them in a fucking closet. Treat them like normal humans. Very few people even saw it as an issue worth discussing, let alone dealing with. They didn't see them as deserving of basic standards of living. They said, 'They're making more here than they would back in their country.' So that makes it okay? I wanted to get away from capitalism and away from exploitation, but I saw that kibbutz life was just that - it was segregationist Zionism. So I left.'
"In 2006, Israeli forces simultaneously carpet-bombed the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon. Israel blanketed the Strip with more than 6,000 artillery shells and missiles, deliberately destroyed Gaza's main power plant, then bombed the access roads to prevent the plant from being repaired. Within the span of about two months, the army had killed at least 202 civilians including 44 children in an operation billed to Israelis as a search for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. In Southern Lebanon, Israeli bombing turned 800,000 Lebanese citizens - over a quarter of the country's population - into refugees while killing more than 1,100 civilians, including at least 300 children. Summarizing the views of the Israeli military leadership at the time, columnist Yaron London, one of the most prominent television journalists in the country, wrote, 'There is no longer any need for complicated distinctions... In practical terms, the Palestinians in Gaza are all [Hamas leader] Khaled Meshal, the Lebanese are all [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.'
"Indignant at the disproportionate violence Israel had unleashed against civilians, Sheen joined up with the small but feisty bands of Israeli radical leftists who had dedicated themselves to direct action against their country's militaristic policies. During a gay pride rally in Tel Aviv called 'Queeruption', Sheen and a group of friends held signs reading, 'Stop the bombing.' They were immediately set upon by riot police who beat them with billyclubs before dragging them away.
"'I was shocked,' Sheen remarked. 'Nowadays everyone knows the police are brutal, but at the time I still couldn't believe that Israeli police would attack other Jews - and for simply holding signs.' At another anti-war protest in Tel Aviv, a prim-looking waitress burst through the door of a nearby restaurant and hurled a glass at the protesters. 'I watched that glass hit the ground and shatter. I can still hear the sound. It was when I realized that even in the heart of liberal Tel Aviv there is a seething hatred for anyone with humanistic values,' Sheen said.
"At the time, Sheen was living on a moshav (a collective farm) near the Gaza border. From his home, he listened to the thundering sound of bombs falling on Gaza all day and all night. 'The ground was literally shaking underneath my feet,' he recalled. Sheen ventured into town filled with revulsion at the shelling of Gaza. 'When I told people at the supermarket what I thought of the bombing, they would all say, 'What do you care? It's not going to hit you, it's hitting them.' I said back, 'It's hitting actual people. Doesn't that matter to you?' And they would get enraged and say, 'What are you, a fucking leftist? You don't care about the Jews.' That's when I realized that in Israel, you're either in favor of any level of violence unleashed on those people, no matter who they were, or if you're against it, you're with the terrorists. I was shocked that that attitude was so mainstream.'
"Sheen went on: 'To come out against these wars on civilians - you were cut off. You were not part of the tribe. You were not part of the Jewish people. You were alone. Once you have a personal experience like that, it etches those beliefs into your soul'." (pp 66-68)
Now do yourself a favour and go out and buy it!
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Prisoner X 5
In my 3rd post in this series, I discussed two aspects of the Prisoner X case which I felt were worth raising. The other two, bigger picture issues, I'd intended to canvass will be the subject of this post.
The first concerns the extraordinary silence of Australia's Jewish community when one of their own, from a prominent Melbourne Zionist family no less, came to grief whilst in Israeli hands: "Few in the local Jewish community have spoken publicly about Mr Zygier's death - more than a dozen organisations and individuals contacted on Thursday by Fairfax Media offered no comment - but the silence does not surprise Mr Greener, who put it down to a modest Malvern family's simple desire for privacy." (We want justice for Ben Zygier, family friend says, Konrad Marshall, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/2/13)
The question arises: Is this closing of ranks simply a sign of respect for the privacy of the Zygier family or is something more tribal involved? With around 80% of Australian Jews calling themselves Zionists, it is impossible not to speculate whether some kind of totalitarian groupthink, in this case a rallying around the - Isaeli - flag, right or wrong, is at work.
The following February 15 Fran Kelly interview with Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, on ABC Radio National's Breakfast program gives credence to this view. To describe it as gruelling is to indulge in understatement. Chester's response to Kelly's generally clueless questions resembles nothing so much as the inky discharge of a squid as it attempts to evade a predator, even if, in this case, one without teeth. My comments in square brackets:
Fran Kelly: Well thousands of Australian Jews travel to Israel every year for holidays, to study, to work, even to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, but none... have had a tragic experience like this. Philip Chester is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia which funds and organises travel to Israel, especially for young people. His organisation has actually helped more than 10,000 Australian Jews to emigrate permanently to Israel. Philip Chester, I know you're unaware of the details of this case but generally would you be surprised to learn that Australians you send to Israel could be recruited by Mossad as spies? [Kelly's naivete is astonishing. If Zionist leaders such as Chester, a one-time Betar youth movement leader, have no qualms whatever about young Australian Jews joining the so-called Israel Defence Forces (IDF), why would they cavil at them moving into the other sectors of Israel's state security apparatus?]
Philip Chester: Fran, I don't really have any knowledge about recruitment of any Australians to Israeli agencies. [I know nothing.] It's not something we're involved in or that anyone discusses with us or that we make any enquiries in relation to. We facilitate young, middle-aged and older people, families, youngsters, single people to, once they make the decision that they want to move to Israel and live there, help them do that. Many of them, if they're of the right age, need to do some military service... in Israel but that's when our involvement ends and they serve the country if required and then go on with their productive lives hopefully.
FK: Since the tragic circumstances surrounding Ben Zygier's death have become public we've been hearing from spies and spy agencies and people associated with them that Australians and New Zealanders are particularly attractive recruits for Mossad because our passports are so widely accepted. An Australian passport allows Israeli spies to travel throughout the Middle East without attracting suspicion. What's your advice... to Australian Jews who go to Israel if they are approached by Mossad or are recruited in this way?
PC: Well, Fran, obviously I don't represent or have any involvement in the security agencies in Israel or in Australia for that matter so it's not something we dispense advice on or something we're involved in or have any discussions with anybody on. Obviously, every person has to be cognisant of the laws of Israel, and Australia if they're still an Australian citizen, and be aware of the implications of... if there was ever a breach of those laws, but I'm not in the business of giving advice on issues like that. We haven't been involved in any such cases or had any matters raised with us that we needed to discuss with anybody. [I know nothing.]
FK: I am not even suggesting for a moment that you have any involvement in this at all but it's very much an issue in discussion now, and even now Fairfax papers are reporting that ASIO is investigating 3 Australians who were recruited. I wonder what your reaction to that is, and I suppose I'm asking you in this context, in this debate that's currently around, has anyone implied to you at all that they have been contacted by Mossad?
PC: No. No one has implied or said anything to me or, I believe, to our organisation about that. Of course, these allegations of which there are many flying around at the moment about passports or recruitment or the involvement of agencies. [Australian passports? What Australian passports?] As far as I understand they do not have any substantiation associated with them at the moment. I assume there will be further inquiries and investigations in relation to that but really there's nothing I can comment on that has been put to me in any factual sense about any person being approached or any discussion with them or any Australian about the use of their passports... [I know nothing.] As I said before, if anyone is involved in a breach of Australian law, that's a serious matter that obviously the Australian government needs to enquire about and investigate. That's perfectly appropriate, but no, I'm not aware [of] or have had any such matters drawn to my or my organisation's attention. [I know nothing.]
FK: Do you think it's a confusing line or can you see why it'd be confusing for young Australian Jews in particular who may be spending time in Israel? At what point does loyalty to Israel become disloyalty to Australia? Where is the line that shouldn't be crossed?
PC: Well I don't... when an Australian decides to move to another country... as you said earlier a number of Australian Jews have because they feel an affinity to Israel and people from other communities move to other countries for various reasons. It happens all the time, the movement of people throughout the world. [So Australian Jews who migrate to Israel because they're indoctrinated into believing that it's their divine right to do so while the country's ethnically-cleansed indigenous population cannot return to their homeland for fear of a bullet in the brain are the equivalent of other Australians visiting the country they or their parents were born in?] When they make that decision, they decide to make Israel their home, I don't believe for a moment they abandon their love and affinity with Australia. Australia is a wonderful country where Jews thrived and I believe have made a wonderful contribution as well and so I don't think any issue of dual loyalty arises for Australian Jews when they move to Israel They settle into their new country that's their new home but this doesn't mean any form of disloyalty in relation to Australia. They come back often. Of course, they still have families here and they maintain a very strong and warm relationship and we see them coming back and forth all the time and that's our impression and experience.
FK: The difficulty here I guess is it does mean they're disloyal to Australia if they become spies. If, as is alleged in the case of Ben Zygier, they come home to register a false name, get a new false passport. I mean the Age is now reporting that Ben Zygier had been in contact with Australian intelligence agencies and may have been prepared to blow the whistle on the misuse of Australian passports, because we do know for a fact, this is not just rumour, that Australian passports were used by Israeli agents in the assassination of a Palestinian militant, the Hamas official in Dubai.
PC: Fran, there are, as you're highlighting, there are lots of stories flying around at the moment [Just vicious rumours, Fran!] that I can't substantiate or...
FK (forcefully): That's not a story though. At the time the Australian government registered the strongest possible complaint about that. Our foreign minister at the time, Stephen Smith, said there was no doubt our passports had been misused.
PC: Yes, yes, I remember the...the...the incident very well. There was a lot of controversy surrounding it [Notice how, when a Zionist is confroned with a factual truth, he simply brands it 'controversisl'?] and, as I said before, if any Australian at any time misuses his Australian passport I understand that's a breach of Australian law and that's a serious matter that the authorities need to deal with but I don't for a minute want your listeners to believe that when we send Australians to live in Israel that there's an industry that exists of harvesting or using passports in any inappropriate or illegal way. [Oh yes there is! See my 4/3/10 post Removing the 'I' from CIA.] As I said, it's not something I have any personal experience of or have ever heard anyone discuss [I know nothing.], so the issues that occurred 2010 and that are being alleged now I can't... I have no sense of the magnitude, of how many people are involved, if anybody, but as I said before, if there are, the Australian authorities should be dealing with it. It's perfectly appropriate.
FK: And I accept... as I said, I'm not trying to impute that at all, that you have any knowledge of this but given these 2 incidences and given the tragic circumstance and the inappropriate circumstances surrounding it all, it would seem... I wonder in the future now as president of the ZFA, a group that does coordinate, help, support and fund young Australians to either move or certainly travel to Israel, whether you will be at pains to talk to these young people before they go about this issue.
PC: Well, it's not... I don't, we don't have a manifest we hand out which says, you know, don't do this, don't do that, be aware of this, don't worry about that. If... um... we would... I'll certainly say to any person moving to Israel, please be aware of all the laws of Israel, of course, and certainly Australia. We would if this came... if someone wanted to discuss this or the issue arose we'd certainly reinforce the fact that, if they remain Australian citizens, they continue to have obligations under the laws of Australia and these have to be taken very seriously.
FK: And are you, as president of the ZFA, disappointed in the Israeli authorities, the Israeli government, that gave the Australian government and the family of Ben Zygier very little information about what was happening to Ben Zygier, that the Australian government was never really told the nature of the accusations against him, the information was very scant and came only through back channels, not official, formal channels like the ambassador, does that disappoint you, that behaviour?
PC: Fran, I don't think anyone knows what communications actually took place, what was discussed, what was coming and to where. I saw that the foreign minister originally thought there'd been no communication with the Australian government in relation to Prisoner X. They retracted that last week when it became evident that there had been some comments.
FK: But only through the intelligence channels.
PC: Well, I can't sit here and answer how valid and effective those communications were. Same with the family. I don't know exactly what the family was or was not told. It's just complete speculation. [I know nothing.] What I can say, Fran, is the Zygier family are well regarded and active members of the Jewish community, that what happened to their young son was a tragedy. We're very sad about it for them and for our community. That's obviously something which has upset us greatly, but everything that surrounds it, communications, what actually happened to Ben, is just speculation that I can't add to. [I know nothing.]
The final aspect of the Prisoner X case that concerns me, and one which sheds a glaring light on Australian corporate media values and culture, is the huge discrepancy in the Australian media's treatment of Jewish as opposed to Arab deaths. It is impossible to believe that a Palestinian-Australian who fell foul of the Israelis in some way or other would receive anywhere near the same level of attention or concern. Indeed, as likely as not, they would not even be accorded the presumption of innocence. This is racism, pure and simple.
The first concerns the extraordinary silence of Australia's Jewish community when one of their own, from a prominent Melbourne Zionist family no less, came to grief whilst in Israeli hands: "Few in the local Jewish community have spoken publicly about Mr Zygier's death - more than a dozen organisations and individuals contacted on Thursday by Fairfax Media offered no comment - but the silence does not surprise Mr Greener, who put it down to a modest Malvern family's simple desire for privacy." (We want justice for Ben Zygier, family friend says, Konrad Marshall, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/2/13)
The question arises: Is this closing of ranks simply a sign of respect for the privacy of the Zygier family or is something more tribal involved? With around 80% of Australian Jews calling themselves Zionists, it is impossible not to speculate whether some kind of totalitarian groupthink, in this case a rallying around the - Isaeli - flag, right or wrong, is at work.
The following February 15 Fran Kelly interview with Philip Chester, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, on ABC Radio National's Breakfast program gives credence to this view. To describe it as gruelling is to indulge in understatement. Chester's response to Kelly's generally clueless questions resembles nothing so much as the inky discharge of a squid as it attempts to evade a predator, even if, in this case, one without teeth. My comments in square brackets:
Fran Kelly: Well thousands of Australian Jews travel to Israel every year for holidays, to study, to work, even to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, but none... have had a tragic experience like this. Philip Chester is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia which funds and organises travel to Israel, especially for young people. His organisation has actually helped more than 10,000 Australian Jews to emigrate permanently to Israel. Philip Chester, I know you're unaware of the details of this case but generally would you be surprised to learn that Australians you send to Israel could be recruited by Mossad as spies? [Kelly's naivete is astonishing. If Zionist leaders such as Chester, a one-time Betar youth movement leader, have no qualms whatever about young Australian Jews joining the so-called Israel Defence Forces (IDF), why would they cavil at them moving into the other sectors of Israel's state security apparatus?]
Philip Chester: Fran, I don't really have any knowledge about recruitment of any Australians to Israeli agencies. [I know nothing.] It's not something we're involved in or that anyone discusses with us or that we make any enquiries in relation to. We facilitate young, middle-aged and older people, families, youngsters, single people to, once they make the decision that they want to move to Israel and live there, help them do that. Many of them, if they're of the right age, need to do some military service... in Israel but that's when our involvement ends and they serve the country if required and then go on with their productive lives hopefully.
FK: Since the tragic circumstances surrounding Ben Zygier's death have become public we've been hearing from spies and spy agencies and people associated with them that Australians and New Zealanders are particularly attractive recruits for Mossad because our passports are so widely accepted. An Australian passport allows Israeli spies to travel throughout the Middle East without attracting suspicion. What's your advice... to Australian Jews who go to Israel if they are approached by Mossad or are recruited in this way?
PC: Well, Fran, obviously I don't represent or have any involvement in the security agencies in Israel or in Australia for that matter so it's not something we dispense advice on or something we're involved in or have any discussions with anybody on. Obviously, every person has to be cognisant of the laws of Israel, and Australia if they're still an Australian citizen, and be aware of the implications of... if there was ever a breach of those laws, but I'm not in the business of giving advice on issues like that. We haven't been involved in any such cases or had any matters raised with us that we needed to discuss with anybody. [I know nothing.]
FK: I am not even suggesting for a moment that you have any involvement in this at all but it's very much an issue in discussion now, and even now Fairfax papers are reporting that ASIO is investigating 3 Australians who were recruited. I wonder what your reaction to that is, and I suppose I'm asking you in this context, in this debate that's currently around, has anyone implied to you at all that they have been contacted by Mossad?
PC: No. No one has implied or said anything to me or, I believe, to our organisation about that. Of course, these allegations of which there are many flying around at the moment about passports or recruitment or the involvement of agencies. [Australian passports? What Australian passports?] As far as I understand they do not have any substantiation associated with them at the moment. I assume there will be further inquiries and investigations in relation to that but really there's nothing I can comment on that has been put to me in any factual sense about any person being approached or any discussion with them or any Australian about the use of their passports... [I know nothing.] As I said before, if anyone is involved in a breach of Australian law, that's a serious matter that obviously the Australian government needs to enquire about and investigate. That's perfectly appropriate, but no, I'm not aware [of] or have had any such matters drawn to my or my organisation's attention. [I know nothing.]
FK: Do you think it's a confusing line or can you see why it'd be confusing for young Australian Jews in particular who may be spending time in Israel? At what point does loyalty to Israel become disloyalty to Australia? Where is the line that shouldn't be crossed?
PC: Well I don't... when an Australian decides to move to another country... as you said earlier a number of Australian Jews have because they feel an affinity to Israel and people from other communities move to other countries for various reasons. It happens all the time, the movement of people throughout the world. [So Australian Jews who migrate to Israel because they're indoctrinated into believing that it's their divine right to do so while the country's ethnically-cleansed indigenous population cannot return to their homeland for fear of a bullet in the brain are the equivalent of other Australians visiting the country they or their parents were born in?] When they make that decision, they decide to make Israel their home, I don't believe for a moment they abandon their love and affinity with Australia. Australia is a wonderful country where Jews thrived and I believe have made a wonderful contribution as well and so I don't think any issue of dual loyalty arises for Australian Jews when they move to Israel They settle into their new country that's their new home but this doesn't mean any form of disloyalty in relation to Australia. They come back often. Of course, they still have families here and they maintain a very strong and warm relationship and we see them coming back and forth all the time and that's our impression and experience.
FK: The difficulty here I guess is it does mean they're disloyal to Australia if they become spies. If, as is alleged in the case of Ben Zygier, they come home to register a false name, get a new false passport. I mean the Age is now reporting that Ben Zygier had been in contact with Australian intelligence agencies and may have been prepared to blow the whistle on the misuse of Australian passports, because we do know for a fact, this is not just rumour, that Australian passports were used by Israeli agents in the assassination of a Palestinian militant, the Hamas official in Dubai.
PC: Fran, there are, as you're highlighting, there are lots of stories flying around at the moment [Just vicious rumours, Fran!] that I can't substantiate or...
FK (forcefully): That's not a story though. At the time the Australian government registered the strongest possible complaint about that. Our foreign minister at the time, Stephen Smith, said there was no doubt our passports had been misused.
PC: Yes, yes, I remember the...the...the incident very well. There was a lot of controversy surrounding it [Notice how, when a Zionist is confroned with a factual truth, he simply brands it 'controversisl'?] and, as I said before, if any Australian at any time misuses his Australian passport I understand that's a breach of Australian law and that's a serious matter that the authorities need to deal with but I don't for a minute want your listeners to believe that when we send Australians to live in Israel that there's an industry that exists of harvesting or using passports in any inappropriate or illegal way. [Oh yes there is! See my 4/3/10 post Removing the 'I' from CIA.] As I said, it's not something I have any personal experience of or have ever heard anyone discuss [I know nothing.], so the issues that occurred 2010 and that are being alleged now I can't... I have no sense of the magnitude, of how many people are involved, if anybody, but as I said before, if there are, the Australian authorities should be dealing with it. It's perfectly appropriate.
FK: And I accept... as I said, I'm not trying to impute that at all, that you have any knowledge of this but given these 2 incidences and given the tragic circumstance and the inappropriate circumstances surrounding it all, it would seem... I wonder in the future now as president of the ZFA, a group that does coordinate, help, support and fund young Australians to either move or certainly travel to Israel, whether you will be at pains to talk to these young people before they go about this issue.
PC: Well, it's not... I don't, we don't have a manifest we hand out which says, you know, don't do this, don't do that, be aware of this, don't worry about that. If... um... we would... I'll certainly say to any person moving to Israel, please be aware of all the laws of Israel, of course, and certainly Australia. We would if this came... if someone wanted to discuss this or the issue arose we'd certainly reinforce the fact that, if they remain Australian citizens, they continue to have obligations under the laws of Australia and these have to be taken very seriously.
FK: And are you, as president of the ZFA, disappointed in the Israeli authorities, the Israeli government, that gave the Australian government and the family of Ben Zygier very little information about what was happening to Ben Zygier, that the Australian government was never really told the nature of the accusations against him, the information was very scant and came only through back channels, not official, formal channels like the ambassador, does that disappoint you, that behaviour?
PC: Fran, I don't think anyone knows what communications actually took place, what was discussed, what was coming and to where. I saw that the foreign minister originally thought there'd been no communication with the Australian government in relation to Prisoner X. They retracted that last week when it became evident that there had been some comments.
FK: But only through the intelligence channels.
PC: Well, I can't sit here and answer how valid and effective those communications were. Same with the family. I don't know exactly what the family was or was not told. It's just complete speculation. [I know nothing.] What I can say, Fran, is the Zygier family are well regarded and active members of the Jewish community, that what happened to their young son was a tragedy. We're very sad about it for them and for our community. That's obviously something which has upset us greatly, but everything that surrounds it, communications, what actually happened to Ben, is just speculation that I can't add to. [I know nothing.]
The final aspect of the Prisoner X case that concerns me, and one which sheds a glaring light on Australian corporate media values and culture, is the huge discrepancy in the Australian media's treatment of Jewish as opposed to Arab deaths. It is impossible to believe that a Palestinian-Australian who fell foul of the Israelis in some way or other would receive anywhere near the same level of attention or concern. Indeed, as likely as not, they would not even be accorded the presumption of innocence. This is racism, pure and simple.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
More Abraham & Less Lincoln If You Don't Mind, Mr Spielberg
I know it's off topic but as one who simply cannot tolerate the least tampering with the historical record, the following instance of special pleading - from someone calling himself an historian - irks me no end.
Basically, film director Steven Spielberg is here being chided by an "American Jewish historian" for not including "at least one Jew" in his latest film, Lincoln, even though the historical record doesn't strictly warrant it:
"As a historian, I took a special pleasure in Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's drama on America's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, that focuses on his tumultuous final months in office... But as an American Jewish historian, I'm somewhat disappointed with Lincoln. So much of it is so good, but it would have been even better if he had put at least one Jew in the movie somewhere. He had a lot of options. In the very beginning of Lincoln, for instance, Spielberg briefly depicts the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry and has two US black soldiers talk about it. Couldn't they have said something about General Frederick Salomon, one of the Union commanders in this engagement, who was also a Jewish immigrant from Prussia? Then there's the telegraph office at the War Department... Couldn't Spielberg have shown President Lincoln chatting with Edward Rosewater, the 20-something Jewish telegraphic operator who sent out the Emancipation Proclamation from that very office on January 1, 1863? True, he was out of Washington... by early 1865, when almost all of the action in the movie occurs, but if Spielberg had smuggled him in two years off schedule, who would have noticed apart from the historians who have been busy documenting the minor inaccuracies in Lincoln in small-circulation journals? Much of Lincoln depicts life in the family quarters of the White House. Couldn't we have been given a glimpse of Isachar Zacharie there? An English Jewish podiatrist... Zacharie was someone who enjoyed Lincoln's confidence perhaps more than any other private individual, according to a September 24, 1864 editorial in the New York World. And he was, perhaps, the most favoured family visitor at the White House. I'm not sure that Dr Zacharie made any White House calls during precisely the months depicted in Lincoln, but we do have evidence that he corresponded with the president around this time, and the poetic licence involved in putting him on the scene would not have been very great." (Missing link with Spielberg's Lincoln, Lance Sussman, JTA/The Australian Jewish News, 1/2/13)
File under tribalism.
Basically, film director Steven Spielberg is here being chided by an "American Jewish historian" for not including "at least one Jew" in his latest film, Lincoln, even though the historical record doesn't strictly warrant it:
"As a historian, I took a special pleasure in Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's drama on America's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, that focuses on his tumultuous final months in office... But as an American Jewish historian, I'm somewhat disappointed with Lincoln. So much of it is so good, but it would have been even better if he had put at least one Jew in the movie somewhere. He had a lot of options. In the very beginning of Lincoln, for instance, Spielberg briefly depicts the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry and has two US black soldiers talk about it. Couldn't they have said something about General Frederick Salomon, one of the Union commanders in this engagement, who was also a Jewish immigrant from Prussia? Then there's the telegraph office at the War Department... Couldn't Spielberg have shown President Lincoln chatting with Edward Rosewater, the 20-something Jewish telegraphic operator who sent out the Emancipation Proclamation from that very office on January 1, 1863? True, he was out of Washington... by early 1865, when almost all of the action in the movie occurs, but if Spielberg had smuggled him in two years off schedule, who would have noticed apart from the historians who have been busy documenting the minor inaccuracies in Lincoln in small-circulation journals? Much of Lincoln depicts life in the family quarters of the White House. Couldn't we have been given a glimpse of Isachar Zacharie there? An English Jewish podiatrist... Zacharie was someone who enjoyed Lincoln's confidence perhaps more than any other private individual, according to a September 24, 1864 editorial in the New York World. And he was, perhaps, the most favoured family visitor at the White House. I'm not sure that Dr Zacharie made any White House calls during precisely the months depicted in Lincoln, but we do have evidence that he corresponded with the president around this time, and the poetic licence involved in putting him on the scene would not have been very great." (Missing link with Spielberg's Lincoln, Lance Sussman, JTA/The Australian Jewish News, 1/2/13)
File under tribalism.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Chomsky: Let Them Learn Swahili First
In a 14 December letter to the Australian (where else?), a James Miller of Woolloomooloo, NSW, wrote in part:
"On what basis does the University of Sydney lend institutional support to a group with a guiding objective of boycotting Jewish business and cultural institutions? In case university leaders are interested, even that virulently pro-Palestinian, Noam Chomsky... considers the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement with its boycott of Israeli universities as pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel. Chomsky further characterises the BDS movement as inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people."
The really interesting thing here is not Miller's par-for-the-course substitution of the word Jewish for the word Israeli, but his use of Leftist icon, Noam Chomsky, as ammunition for his attack on the BDS movement. Improbable as it may seem, there is some truth in Miller's claim that Chomsky has labelled BDS as anti-Semitic. While not quite as categorical as Miller would have us believe, Chomsky has, sadly, set the table for an anti-BDS feeding frenzy by Zionist propagandists such as Miller.
This came in the context of a 2/9/10 interview with Frank Barat, during which Chomsky characterised the 2005 call for BDS by Palestinian NGOs, with its three goals of an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, and support for the Palestinian right of return as a call for the "destruction of Israel," adding "it's a gift to the Israeli and US hardliners, they know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return." He further claimed that the call was grossly "hypocritical" because Israeli crimes are a mere "fragment of US crimes or English crimes or those in any other country," which he assessed as "100 times worse." He then went on to say (and here is the nub of Miller's propaganda) that a 2002 call at M.I.T to divest from Israeli universities "could and was attacked as pure anti-Semitism, unfortunately with justice." Rather than elaborate on this bizarre statement, however, Chomsky went on to complain that "the issue of anti-Semitism, which around here doesn't exist," unfortunately came to overshadow the issue of the Palestinians who were being hammered badly by Sharon at the time. A more appropriate target for action, he averred , would have been the ending of US arms sales to Israel. Finally, he suggested that more needed to be done to educate the American public before the BDS "tactic" was deployed.
Not quite what Miller makes it out to be, of course, but certainly grist for his mill. So let us examine Chomsky's words more closely:
Destruction of Israel? What does Chomsky mean here? Could he have been referring to the old 'driving the Jews into the sea' line (and BTW, what victim of settler-colonialism has not fantasised about driving his oppressors into the sea or wherever at some stage?). Or to the dismantling of Israel's apartheid laws, transforming it from a Jewish state into a state for all of its people, including dispossessed Palestinian refugees? Whatever he meant, he sure handed a gift to those Israeli and US hardliners he was so concerned should not be so lucky. Talk about loose lips!
They know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return? Presumably, 'they' are the Israeli and US hardliners, but what a strange way of putting it. Is he really indicating that he opposes the Palestinian right of return? If so, what other parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the Palestinian right of return being simply a reflection of Article 13) would he also oppose? And if not... what the hell is he getting at? Where's the clarity here?
Israeli crimes are a mere fraction of US crimes? Maybe so. But surely this is little consolation to Palestinians who have lost everything. Can you really imagine a Palestinian reflecting thus: Oh well, Chomsky says the US has done much worse to folks on the other side of the planet so what have I really got to complain about? Had an adjacent Palestinian groaned audibly at this point, I for one could not have faulted him/her.
Re the false allegation of anti-Semitism: while I can perhaps understand Chomsky's reluctance to giving those 'hardliners' a free kick (which, as I've already intimated is exactly what he's done in this interview), surely he can't be unaware that any criticism of Israel, no matter how meek and mild, can trigger this obscene smear? Moreover, the fact that he can say, at one and the same time, that the allegation was justified but that there's no anti-Semitism at M.I.T. suggests a concerning capacity for muddled thinking in one so lauded.
Fast forward to Chomsky's visit to Gaza in October this year, where he was interviewed by Rami Almeghari, in part on his position on BDS. Suffice it to say that only one of the above points is revisited. And guess which one. He begins by making two points: boycotts should be highly selective and should help rather than hinder those they're designed to help, in this case the Palestinian people. He then goes on to say this:
"If you call for an academic boycott of say Tel Aviv University you have to ask yourself what the consequences are of that call for the Palestinians and there's an indirect answer. When you carry out an act in the United States, you are trying to reach the American population and [make it] more supportive of Palestinian rights and [more] opposed to Israeli and US policies. So you ask yourself: what effect will an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University have on [an] American audience... [and] that depends on the amount of organization and education that has taken place in the United States. Today, if you look at [American's] understandings and beliefs, a call for an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University [would only] strengthen support for Israel and US policy because it's not understood. There is no point talking to people in Swahili if they don't understand what you're saying." (Chomsky in Gaza: academic boycott will strengthen support for Israel', Electronic Intifada, 20/10/12)
That's right, over two years after the first interview, Americans are still not ready for BDS! How long then must the Palestinians and their supporters wait for Americans to learn Swahili before they advocate a boycott of Israel's academic institutions? Like, forever?
The question arises: Just where is Chomsky coming from here? I'm inclined to agree with James Petras' assessment:
"Noam Chomsky has been called the leading US intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world, especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East particularly the role of his own ethnic group, or the Jewish pro-Israel Lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete with intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, staunch opponents of the abuses of power by others, but not of one's own kin and kind." (from Noam Chomsky & the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fifteen Erroneous Theses, in The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 168-169)
Petras' essay on Chomsky should be required reading for any progressive with a serious interest in this subject.
STOP PRESS: This letter from Chomsky appeared in yesterday's Australian:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as 'pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel' and that I said BDS efforts are 'inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people.' (Letters, 14/12). These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain. When Human Rights Watch 'calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law', it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism. I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israel occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement. Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
"On what basis does the University of Sydney lend institutional support to a group with a guiding objective of boycotting Jewish business and cultural institutions? In case university leaders are interested, even that virulently pro-Palestinian, Noam Chomsky... considers the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement with its boycott of Israeli universities as pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel. Chomsky further characterises the BDS movement as inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people."
The really interesting thing here is not Miller's par-for-the-course substitution of the word Jewish for the word Israeli, but his use of Leftist icon, Noam Chomsky, as ammunition for his attack on the BDS movement. Improbable as it may seem, there is some truth in Miller's claim that Chomsky has labelled BDS as anti-Semitic. While not quite as categorical as Miller would have us believe, Chomsky has, sadly, set the table for an anti-BDS feeding frenzy by Zionist propagandists such as Miller.
This came in the context of a 2/9/10 interview with Frank Barat, during which Chomsky characterised the 2005 call for BDS by Palestinian NGOs, with its three goals of an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, and support for the Palestinian right of return as a call for the "destruction of Israel," adding "it's a gift to the Israeli and US hardliners, they know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return." He further claimed that the call was grossly "hypocritical" because Israeli crimes are a mere "fragment of US crimes or English crimes or those in any other country," which he assessed as "100 times worse." He then went on to say (and here is the nub of Miller's propaganda) that a 2002 call at M.I.T to divest from Israeli universities "could and was attacked as pure anti-Semitism, unfortunately with justice." Rather than elaborate on this bizarre statement, however, Chomsky went on to complain that "the issue of anti-Semitism, which around here doesn't exist," unfortunately came to overshadow the issue of the Palestinians who were being hammered badly by Sharon at the time. A more appropriate target for action, he averred , would have been the ending of US arms sales to Israel. Finally, he suggested that more needed to be done to educate the American public before the BDS "tactic" was deployed.
Not quite what Miller makes it out to be, of course, but certainly grist for his mill. So let us examine Chomsky's words more closely:
Destruction of Israel? What does Chomsky mean here? Could he have been referring to the old 'driving the Jews into the sea' line (and BTW, what victim of settler-colonialism has not fantasised about driving his oppressors into the sea or wherever at some stage?). Or to the dismantling of Israel's apartheid laws, transforming it from a Jewish state into a state for all of its people, including dispossessed Palestinian refugees? Whatever he meant, he sure handed a gift to those Israeli and US hardliners he was so concerned should not be so lucky. Talk about loose lips!
They know perfectly well there's not going to be an implementation of the right of return? Presumably, 'they' are the Israeli and US hardliners, but what a strange way of putting it. Is he really indicating that he opposes the Palestinian right of return? If so, what other parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the Palestinian right of return being simply a reflection of Article 13) would he also oppose? And if not... what the hell is he getting at? Where's the clarity here?
Israeli crimes are a mere fraction of US crimes? Maybe so. But surely this is little consolation to Palestinians who have lost everything. Can you really imagine a Palestinian reflecting thus: Oh well, Chomsky says the US has done much worse to folks on the other side of the planet so what have I really got to complain about? Had an adjacent Palestinian groaned audibly at this point, I for one could not have faulted him/her.
Re the false allegation of anti-Semitism: while I can perhaps understand Chomsky's reluctance to giving those 'hardliners' a free kick (which, as I've already intimated is exactly what he's done in this interview), surely he can't be unaware that any criticism of Israel, no matter how meek and mild, can trigger this obscene smear? Moreover, the fact that he can say, at one and the same time, that the allegation was justified but that there's no anti-Semitism at M.I.T. suggests a concerning capacity for muddled thinking in one so lauded.
Fast forward to Chomsky's visit to Gaza in October this year, where he was interviewed by Rami Almeghari, in part on his position on BDS. Suffice it to say that only one of the above points is revisited. And guess which one. He begins by making two points: boycotts should be highly selective and should help rather than hinder those they're designed to help, in this case the Palestinian people. He then goes on to say this:
"If you call for an academic boycott of say Tel Aviv University you have to ask yourself what the consequences are of that call for the Palestinians and there's an indirect answer. When you carry out an act in the United States, you are trying to reach the American population and [make it] more supportive of Palestinian rights and [more] opposed to Israeli and US policies. So you ask yourself: what effect will an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University have on [an] American audience... [and] that depends on the amount of organization and education that has taken place in the United States. Today, if you look at [American's] understandings and beliefs, a call for an academic boycott of Tel Aviv University [would only] strengthen support for Israel and US policy because it's not understood. There is no point talking to people in Swahili if they don't understand what you're saying." (Chomsky in Gaza: academic boycott will strengthen support for Israel', Electronic Intifada, 20/10/12)
That's right, over two years after the first interview, Americans are still not ready for BDS! How long then must the Palestinians and their supporters wait for Americans to learn Swahili before they advocate a boycott of Israel's academic institutions? Like, forever?
The question arises: Just where is Chomsky coming from here? I'm inclined to agree with James Petras' assessment:
"Noam Chomsky has been called the leading US intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world, especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East particularly the role of his own ethnic group, or the Jewish pro-Israel Lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete with intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, staunch opponents of the abuses of power by others, but not of one's own kin and kind." (from Noam Chomsky & the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fifteen Erroneous Theses, in The Power of Israel in the United States, 2006, pp 168-169)
Petras' essay on Chomsky should be required reading for any progressive with a serious interest in this subject.
STOP PRESS: This letter from Chomsky appeared in yesterday's Australian:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as 'pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel' and that I said BDS efforts are 'inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people.' (Letters, 14/12). These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain. When Human Rights Watch 'calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law', it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism. I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israel occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement. Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
Friday, March 9, 2012
Pack Attack
The following eminently sensible letter from Peter Loewensohn, Cremorne, appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:
"As an Australian Jew, I sit and observe in trepidation, as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, endeavours to drag Barack Obama, kicking and screaming, into bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities ('Fears Obama meeting will not prevent Israeli strike on Iran', March 7).
"The purpose of Iran's reactors is sketchy. The West claimed proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The West was wrong.
"Iran has nothing to gain by attacking Israel, nuclear or otherwise. It may well attack, if in retaliation. We do know that to bomb the Iranian reactors is by all accounts an extremely difficult exercise, with no guarantee of the desired results, even if the US assists Israel.
"Netanyahu is reputed to have stated he doesn't want to be remembered as the Prime Minister on whose watch Israel was annihilated by Iran. With his present ambitions, he might well be remembered as the Prime Minister responsible for, at best, mass conflict in the Middle East, or at worst, World War III.
"If he devoted his energies to making peace with the Palestinians, rather than humiliating them, blockading them, bombing them and building on their land, his legacy may be that a peaceful solution was his doing.
"Regrettably, I can't see that happening with him as Prime Minister. There would need to be a change of government in Israel and a swing of opinion, more in line with increasing support there, for peace with the Palestinians. I hold my breath."
When non-Jews dare to criticise Israel on the letters page, Jewish Zionists (and occasionally non-Jewish Zionists) invariably trot out a propaganda-ridden response of some kind. Note, however, that our Jewish critic of Netanyahu, Peter Loewensohn, is singled out in today's Herald for special treatment, a veritable pack attack:
"Peter Loewensohn writes that 'Iran has nothing to gain by attacking Israel, nuclear or otherwise'. Simple logic should prompt all to share Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's concerns.
"First there is Iran's comments of annihilating a United Nations-member state from the face of the earth. Couple this with Iran's actions, of which the UN's nuclear watchdog has expressed 'serious concerns' relating to research and development 'specific to nuclear weapons' capabilities.
"While we have the luxury of contemplating the costs of an Iranian confrontation from the comfort of our distant Australian shores, Israelis are busy asking themselves what the far greater price will be of enabling a radicalised, despotic regime to gain a nuclear stranglehold on the Middle East." Evan Guttman, North Bondi
Nuclear stranglehold on the Middle East? Pot calls kettle black.
"Peter Loewensohn hasn't cottoned on to the fact that it is not Israel that is 'dragging the US, kicking and screaming' into a conflict with Iran. It's Israel doing the heavy lifting for the Obama administration facing an election in November and a public fearful of yet another Middle East war." George Fishman, Vaucluse
The chutzpah! The chutzpah!
"As an Australian Jew, I object to attempts by Peter Loewensohn to claim some sort of moral authority by opening his letter stating that he is an 'Australian Jew'.
"The nationality and religion of the writer is irrelevant.
"My nationality and religion give me no moral authority, intelligence or expertise in appreciating the nuclear threat, nor the military, political or geopolitical implications of Iran's theocratic government's quest to develop nuclear facilities and possibly nuclear weapons." Eric Borecki, Bellevue Hill
On the contrary, Mr Borecki, if a foreign government, which claims to speak not just for its own citizens but for Jews everywhere*, including Australia (even should they decline such 'representation'), trumpets its desire to attack another country, Mr Loewensohn, both as an Australian Jew and a thinking man, is not only within his rights to say that Israel does not speak for him, but no doubt feels morally obliged to do so.
[*"In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people. We are blessed to live in an age when there is a Jewish state capable of defending the Jewish people." Netanyahu's AIPAC speech, 5/3/12)
"As an Australian Jew, I sit and observe in trepidation, as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, endeavours to drag Barack Obama, kicking and screaming, into bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities ('Fears Obama meeting will not prevent Israeli strike on Iran', March 7).
"The purpose of Iran's reactors is sketchy. The West claimed proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The West was wrong.
"Iran has nothing to gain by attacking Israel, nuclear or otherwise. It may well attack, if in retaliation. We do know that to bomb the Iranian reactors is by all accounts an extremely difficult exercise, with no guarantee of the desired results, even if the US assists Israel.
"Netanyahu is reputed to have stated he doesn't want to be remembered as the Prime Minister on whose watch Israel was annihilated by Iran. With his present ambitions, he might well be remembered as the Prime Minister responsible for, at best, mass conflict in the Middle East, or at worst, World War III.
"If he devoted his energies to making peace with the Palestinians, rather than humiliating them, blockading them, bombing them and building on their land, his legacy may be that a peaceful solution was his doing.
"Regrettably, I can't see that happening with him as Prime Minister. There would need to be a change of government in Israel and a swing of opinion, more in line with increasing support there, for peace with the Palestinians. I hold my breath."
When non-Jews dare to criticise Israel on the letters page, Jewish Zionists (and occasionally non-Jewish Zionists) invariably trot out a propaganda-ridden response of some kind. Note, however, that our Jewish critic of Netanyahu, Peter Loewensohn, is singled out in today's Herald for special treatment, a veritable pack attack:
"Peter Loewensohn writes that 'Iran has nothing to gain by attacking Israel, nuclear or otherwise'. Simple logic should prompt all to share Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's concerns.
"First there is Iran's comments of annihilating a United Nations-member state from the face of the earth. Couple this with Iran's actions, of which the UN's nuclear watchdog has expressed 'serious concerns' relating to research and development 'specific to nuclear weapons' capabilities.
"While we have the luxury of contemplating the costs of an Iranian confrontation from the comfort of our distant Australian shores, Israelis are busy asking themselves what the far greater price will be of enabling a radicalised, despotic regime to gain a nuclear stranglehold on the Middle East." Evan Guttman, North Bondi
Nuclear stranglehold on the Middle East? Pot calls kettle black.
"Peter Loewensohn hasn't cottoned on to the fact that it is not Israel that is 'dragging the US, kicking and screaming' into a conflict with Iran. It's Israel doing the heavy lifting for the Obama administration facing an election in November and a public fearful of yet another Middle East war." George Fishman, Vaucluse
The chutzpah! The chutzpah!
"As an Australian Jew, I object to attempts by Peter Loewensohn to claim some sort of moral authority by opening his letter stating that he is an 'Australian Jew'.
"The nationality and religion of the writer is irrelevant.
"My nationality and religion give me no moral authority, intelligence or expertise in appreciating the nuclear threat, nor the military, political or geopolitical implications of Iran's theocratic government's quest to develop nuclear facilities and possibly nuclear weapons." Eric Borecki, Bellevue Hill
On the contrary, Mr Borecki, if a foreign government, which claims to speak not just for its own citizens but for Jews everywhere*, including Australia (even should they decline such 'representation'), trumpets its desire to attack another country, Mr Loewensohn, both as an Australian Jew and a thinking man, is not only within his rights to say that Israel does not speak for him, but no doubt feels morally obliged to do so.
[*"In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people. We are blessed to live in an age when there is a Jewish state capable of defending the Jewish people." Netanyahu's AIPAC speech, 5/3/12)
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Unforgiven
And cast ye the unprofitable servant [of Zion] into outer darkness: there shall be weeping...
"Yom Kippur, it has been said, has come months early for Richard Goldstone, the South African former judge who reported for the United Nations on the 2008-09 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. According to Israel and other critics, Goldstone's 2009 report was always destined to be biased, and those fears were realised when it accused not only Hamas, but also Israel, of committing war crimes. The controversial report has been seized upon ever since to demonise Israel as a malicious aggressor. Now, in a staggering volte-face published in the United States last week, Goldstone effectively has admitted he was wrong. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur is about recognising past wrongs and repenting, but in this sorry case no amount of repenting will repair the damage done." (Editorial, Israel has its day of atonement, The Australian, 5/4/11)
... and gnashing of teeth:
"Judge Richard Goldstone is expected to stand trial for libel following his retraction of his Operation Cast Lead report, in which he accused Israel of war crimes. Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), currently in the United States, has enlisted the help of a number of Jewish-American attorneys who agreed to file a lawsuit against the South African judge at no charge. A petition will be filed with a New York District Court next week, in which the plaintiffs will demand a formal apology and a symbolic financial compensation for the State of Israel. A second lawsuit may be filed in an Israeli court if Goldstone arrives in Israel... 'The Goldstone report is the 2010 version of a blood libel. The twisted image Goldstone painted of the State of Israel caused damage, is still causing damage and will continue to damage Israel and its citizens for years to come. A public apology published in every country might lessen the harm already done', Danon explained. (Goldstone to face libel suit, Attila Somfalvi, ynetnews.com, 7/4/11)
"Yom Kippur, it has been said, has come months early for Richard Goldstone, the South African former judge who reported for the United Nations on the 2008-09 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. According to Israel and other critics, Goldstone's 2009 report was always destined to be biased, and those fears were realised when it accused not only Hamas, but also Israel, of committing war crimes. The controversial report has been seized upon ever since to demonise Israel as a malicious aggressor. Now, in a staggering volte-face published in the United States last week, Goldstone effectively has admitted he was wrong. The Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur is about recognising past wrongs and repenting, but in this sorry case no amount of repenting will repair the damage done." (Editorial, Israel has its day of atonement, The Australian, 5/4/11)
... and gnashing of teeth:
"Judge Richard Goldstone is expected to stand trial for libel following his retraction of his Operation Cast Lead report, in which he accused Israel of war crimes. Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), currently in the United States, has enlisted the help of a number of Jewish-American attorneys who agreed to file a lawsuit against the South African judge at no charge. A petition will be filed with a New York District Court next week, in which the plaintiffs will demand a formal apology and a symbolic financial compensation for the State of Israel. A second lawsuit may be filed in an Israeli court if Goldstone arrives in Israel... 'The Goldstone report is the 2010 version of a blood libel. The twisted image Goldstone painted of the State of Israel caused damage, is still causing damage and will continue to damage Israel and its citizens for years to come. A public apology published in every country might lessen the harm already done', Danon explained. (Goldstone to face libel suit, Attila Somfalvi, ynetnews.com, 7/4/11)
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)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Busting Those Mind-Forged Manacles
I'm always inspired by the stories of those who manage to break free of the limitations of their cultural/tribal conditioning - what the great English poet William Blake referred to as "mind-forged manacles" - and see things afresh. Here is one such story. I came across it at mondoweiss.net and feel it deserves the widest possible distribution. In April this year, grad student Greg Eow wrote the following letter to Ussama Makdisi, a professor of Middle East history at Rice University:
"Dear Professor Makdisi, I don't know if you remember me, but I finished my PhD in the Rice history department in 2007. I was one of Thomas Haskell's students. We ran into each other a handful of times, including once when I helped you with some of the microfilm machines in Fondren Library. Anyway, this is a strange email, both to write and most likely to receive. But I wanted to tell you about some recent experiences which have profoundly changed my view of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. You have demonstrated an interest in changing how people think about the issue, and so I thought you might be interested in what for me has turned out to be a transformative event.
"First of all, a quick word about presuppositions. I confess that I never previously paid a great deal of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Insofar as I did follow the issue, my sympathies were with the neoconservatives. Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis were my guides. They were realists, I would tell myself, whereas those who quarreled with them - for instance colleagues at Rice who were more interested in postcolonial studies than I - had political axes to grind. Not for me the romance of resistance. I was a good sceptic, an empiricist; and if there was a problem in Israel, it was clear to me it had to do with Muslim fundamentalism, terrorism, and the clash between Enlightenment values and democracy on the one hand and premodern tribalism and totalitarianism on the other.
"Flash forward a couple of years. I'm through with grad school, I finally have some time and money, and I embark on a self-directed course of study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have my feelings, sure, but I realize that I don't know a whole lot, that a lot of smart people disagree with me, and now I want to make a good faith effort to learn about the issue and test my prejudices against the scholarship in the field. I read Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, Benny Morris, Patrick Seale, David Fromkin, Juan Cole, Efraim Karsh, Tom Segev, William Cleveland, Bernard Rougier, Albert Hourani. I read your book and article on anti-Americanism. And I spent 2 weeks traveling through Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem and the West Bank. In sum, I read about 40 books from a number of different standpoints and traveled through the region to see what is going on with my own eyes.
"The result? Well, the whole experience essentially knocked me on my butt. I was wrong about a great many things. And not just wrong, but deeply wrong. Wrong to such a degree that to realize it has left me shaken, wondering how exactly I got to be so intellectually, and in this case morally, obtuse. Just a taste of the data that undid my world view:
"1) The Arab people I met in Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank (and Jerusalem), the vast majority of them Muslims, were almost uniformly lovely, warm and welcoming. I wasn't expecting passersby in the street in all of these places to invite me into their homes for tea to discuss how much they 'hate George Bush, but like Americans'. (This happened too often to count.) Pretty much everyone thought US policy was a disaster, but they were angry about policy and lovely to me in ways that make the 'they hate us for our freedom' line not only inaccurate but criminal. Among the people I met: a 20-year old Shiite Muslim named Muhammad whom I met in the Beqaa Valley. Muhammad supports Hezbollah because of their a) resistance to Israeli incursions into Lebanon (he didn't say anything about Hezbollah provocations); b) their welfare programs; and c) their support of the Palestinian cause (all his words). He's been to mosque no more than twice in his life, eats pork, and likes nothing more than going dancing in Beirut. That is to say, he is entirely secular. With Lewis and Huntington as my guides, I have no way to make sense of such an encounter.
"2) Driving through the West Bank at night allows one to see the proliferation of illegal Israeli settlements with immediate and striking force. They are everywhere, some small, some huge, on the high ground lit up like prisons. I thought the reason why the two-state solution had failed was Palestinian intransigence. A look at the settlements - even a quick look - demolishes such a simple explanation. Traveling through the West Bank at night, and later visiting and talking with people in Ramallah, reinforced an essential point: Israel, or at least powerful forces within Israel, is actively pursuing policies to colonize and annex the West Bank, while simultaneously making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will pick up and leave. The evidence was there for anyone with eyes to see, irrefutable and horrible in its obviousness. How I got duped by the 'Israel wants peace behind the 1967 borders, but extremists deny it to them' line is a question I will be asking myself again and again with embarrassment and not a little shame.
"I could go on, but this (unsolicited) email has gone on long enough and you get the point. What I'm saying is this: keep writing, keep telling US citizens to better inform themselves about what is going on in their name and with their tax dollars. If they're honest, and they go see for themselves what's going on, I can guarantee that the reasonableness of what you and others have written on the matter will soon become apparent."
Bull's-eye!
"Dear Professor Makdisi, I don't know if you remember me, but I finished my PhD in the Rice history department in 2007. I was one of Thomas Haskell's students. We ran into each other a handful of times, including once when I helped you with some of the microfilm machines in Fondren Library. Anyway, this is a strange email, both to write and most likely to receive. But I wanted to tell you about some recent experiences which have profoundly changed my view of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. You have demonstrated an interest in changing how people think about the issue, and so I thought you might be interested in what for me has turned out to be a transformative event.
"First of all, a quick word about presuppositions. I confess that I never previously paid a great deal of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Insofar as I did follow the issue, my sympathies were with the neoconservatives. Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis were my guides. They were realists, I would tell myself, whereas those who quarreled with them - for instance colleagues at Rice who were more interested in postcolonial studies than I - had political axes to grind. Not for me the romance of resistance. I was a good sceptic, an empiricist; and if there was a problem in Israel, it was clear to me it had to do with Muslim fundamentalism, terrorism, and the clash between Enlightenment values and democracy on the one hand and premodern tribalism and totalitarianism on the other.
"Flash forward a couple of years. I'm through with grad school, I finally have some time and money, and I embark on a self-directed course of study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have my feelings, sure, but I realize that I don't know a whole lot, that a lot of smart people disagree with me, and now I want to make a good faith effort to learn about the issue and test my prejudices against the scholarship in the field. I read Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, Benny Morris, Patrick Seale, David Fromkin, Juan Cole, Efraim Karsh, Tom Segev, William Cleveland, Bernard Rougier, Albert Hourani. I read your book and article on anti-Americanism. And I spent 2 weeks traveling through Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem and the West Bank. In sum, I read about 40 books from a number of different standpoints and traveled through the region to see what is going on with my own eyes.
"The result? Well, the whole experience essentially knocked me on my butt. I was wrong about a great many things. And not just wrong, but deeply wrong. Wrong to such a degree that to realize it has left me shaken, wondering how exactly I got to be so intellectually, and in this case morally, obtuse. Just a taste of the data that undid my world view:
"1) The Arab people I met in Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank (and Jerusalem), the vast majority of them Muslims, were almost uniformly lovely, warm and welcoming. I wasn't expecting passersby in the street in all of these places to invite me into their homes for tea to discuss how much they 'hate George Bush, but like Americans'. (This happened too often to count.) Pretty much everyone thought US policy was a disaster, but they were angry about policy and lovely to me in ways that make the 'they hate us for our freedom' line not only inaccurate but criminal. Among the people I met: a 20-year old Shiite Muslim named Muhammad whom I met in the Beqaa Valley. Muhammad supports Hezbollah because of their a) resistance to Israeli incursions into Lebanon (he didn't say anything about Hezbollah provocations); b) their welfare programs; and c) their support of the Palestinian cause (all his words). He's been to mosque no more than twice in his life, eats pork, and likes nothing more than going dancing in Beirut. That is to say, he is entirely secular. With Lewis and Huntington as my guides, I have no way to make sense of such an encounter.
"2) Driving through the West Bank at night allows one to see the proliferation of illegal Israeli settlements with immediate and striking force. They are everywhere, some small, some huge, on the high ground lit up like prisons. I thought the reason why the two-state solution had failed was Palestinian intransigence. A look at the settlements - even a quick look - demolishes such a simple explanation. Traveling through the West Bank at night, and later visiting and talking with people in Ramallah, reinforced an essential point: Israel, or at least powerful forces within Israel, is actively pursuing policies to colonize and annex the West Bank, while simultaneously making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will pick up and leave. The evidence was there for anyone with eyes to see, irrefutable and horrible in its obviousness. How I got duped by the 'Israel wants peace behind the 1967 borders, but extremists deny it to them' line is a question I will be asking myself again and again with embarrassment and not a little shame.
"I could go on, but this (unsolicited) email has gone on long enough and you get the point. What I'm saying is this: keep writing, keep telling US citizens to better inform themselves about what is going on in their name and with their tax dollars. If they're honest, and they go see for themselves what's going on, I can guarantee that the reasonableness of what you and others have written on the matter will soon become apparent."
Bull's-eye!
Monday, July 5, 2010
Brains Overboard: The Tribal Mentality
"Several of the victims of an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla were shot in the head from above, presumably from a helicopter, according to the forensics report released Monday by a human rights group." (Flotilla victims shot from Israeli chopper, Turkish report shows, hurriyetdailynews.com, 29/6/10)
"All but two of the 9 Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and 5 died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports... The 9 volunteers were shot a total of 31 times, according to the documents." (Forensics: Turks shot multiple times on Gaza-bound ship, ynetnews.com, 29/6/10)
"Activists on board a six-ship flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip tried to lynch the the Israel Navy commandos who boarded their Turkish-flagged boat early Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources told Haaretz on Monday afternoon. At least 9 people were killed and several more were wounded in the fighting that erupted aboard one of the ships." (Israel Navy commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us, Amos Harel, Haaretz, 31/5/10)
Israeli talking points aside, how to explain the disparity between the data revealed in the Turkish forensic report on the Gaza flotilla massacre victims and the earlier Israeli story?
Glenn Greenwald's must-read The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression & tribalism (salon.com, 3/6/10) is as good an explanation as any. Some excerpts:
"How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim... that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of 'victim' and 'aggressor' is blatantly reversed with such claims - which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, US foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky - talking about America's post-9/11 policies - described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force: 'In one of his many speeches, to US troops in Vietnam, [President Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, 'There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right, they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want'. That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you. The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, 'I'm a murderous monster'. It has to be self-defense. 'I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me'. Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.'
"Thus nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcome as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this 'we-are-the-victim' mindset.
"A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose worldview is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!) Haaretz today reports that 'Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the US gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel's raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla'. Gee, whatever could account for that 'rare demonstration of unity' between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it's such a mystery. I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: 'I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel'... On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.
"It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves: I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it's fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity, which was pummeled into me from childhood - rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis - the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?
"Doesn't the most minimal level of intellectual awareness - indeed, the concept of adulthood itself - require that analysis? And, of course, the 'self-hating' epithet - with which I've naturally been bombarded relentlessly over the last week - is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one's 'own group' rather than endeavour to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true. This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it's instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who 'reason' the same way."
"All but two of the 9 Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and 5 died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports... The 9 volunteers were shot a total of 31 times, according to the documents." (Forensics: Turks shot multiple times on Gaza-bound ship, ynetnews.com, 29/6/10)
"Activists on board a six-ship flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip tried to lynch the the Israel Navy commandos who boarded their Turkish-flagged boat early Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources told Haaretz on Monday afternoon. At least 9 people were killed and several more were wounded in the fighting that erupted aboard one of the ships." (Israel Navy commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us, Amos Harel, Haaretz, 31/5/10)
Israeli talking points aside, how to explain the disparity between the data revealed in the Turkish forensic report on the Gaza flotilla massacre victims and the earlier Israeli story?
Glenn Greenwald's must-read The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression & tribalism (salon.com, 3/6/10) is as good an explanation as any. Some excerpts:
"How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim... that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world's greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of 'victim' and 'aggressor' is blatantly reversed with such claims - which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, US foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky - talking about America's post-9/11 policies - described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force: 'In one of his many speeches, to US troops in Vietnam, [President Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, 'There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right, they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want'. That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you. The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, 'I'm a murderous monster'. It has to be self-defense. 'I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me'. Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.'
"Thus nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcome as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this 'we-are-the-victim' mindset.
"A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose worldview is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!) Haaretz today reports that 'Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the US gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel's raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla'. Gee, whatever could account for that 'rare demonstration of unity' between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it's such a mystery. I can't express how many emails I've received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: 'I'm a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel'... On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.
"It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves: I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it's fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity, which was pummeled into me from childhood - rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis - the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?
"Doesn't the most minimal level of intellectual awareness - indeed, the concept of adulthood itself - require that analysis? And, of course, the 'self-hating' epithet - with which I've naturally been bombarded relentlessly over the last week - is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one's 'own group' rather than endeavour to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true. This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it's instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who 'reason' the same way."
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