Washington Jewish Week covered a Jews-for-Obama rally in D.C. Saturday night. At this event, a young progressive named Shira Robinson said better than I have that Obama's efforts to shore up his standing in the traditional Jewish community are alienating Jewish "progressives."
"There's more than one Jewish voice," and that other voice believes in "the need for a just solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], not just a peaceful solution," Adams Morgan resident Shira Robinson said to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.[Weiss emphasis]
In an interview, Robinson, a history and international affairs professor at George Washington University, said Obama has "gone out of his way" to placate the "mainstream" community while disappointing "progressives" like herself. Nonetheless, she said she and all the progressive Jews she knew were still planning on voting for the senator.
I'd note that Robinson when at the U. of
Iowa was interested in the history of "settler colonialism" and
the imposition of military rule on Palestinian Arabs by the fledgling Jewish
state. I assume that she is a post-Zionist. Justice in the Middle
East
Yes, redemption. Thanks for the courageous Jews and Gentiles. Neither are many, and neither hold much power. The Jews have place for courageous Gentiles, and it's time for the Gentiles to have a place for courageous Jews. Finkelstein can meet them at the gate.
But does Shira Robinson expect Obama do something that she does not do herself.
Are progressive Jews telling the IRS to start stripping Jewish communual organizations of their 501(c)(3) status that makes contributions tax deductible?
Are progressive Jews demanding investigation of the David Project, Daniel Pipes, Joe Kaufman, Terror-Free Oil, the Middle East Forum for conspiracy against rights in the case of Arab and Muslim academics or Debbie Almontaser?
Progessive Jews have an ethical obligation
1. to distance themselves from the Civil and Criminal infractions that Israel Lobbying and Advocacy efforts routinely entail and
2. to demand that the federal and state governments as well as the IRS start to open up investigations.
If Jewish employees of the government work to thwart such investigations, progressive Jews have to point out that they are probably in violation of conspiracy or obstruction of justice statutes.
It's really hard for both American goys and American jews to
buck all of this essentially inhumane stuff, justified by selected history. Sorry, I am depressed at the moment.
I voted for the Senator, mostly for the vibe, for the fact that Hillary was establishment (not relative to Phil's invocation of Jewish establishment). My younger son is an enthusiastic supporter. He loves that Obama appeals to youthful participation.
Ironically, supporters of Hillary say the same thing.
I had an occassion this past weekend to converse with a first cousin who was in the same Harvard Law class as Obama. I think he said that he voted for Obama, but that he was an opportunist self-promoter even then.
But, he also said that a majority of his Harvard classmates were similar.
Post-Zionist sounds like it means that Zionism has achieved its ends to a high level of confidence, and is therefore either unnecessary or transformable to something qualitatively different.
Or, do you mean post-formative Zionist, just a passing of time?
If you mean a qualitative permanent change in condition, I don't think its a done deal.
For two reasons.
1. There still are intensely held prejudices against Jews and active agitation to remove their equal popular participation in democracies (on a one-person, one-vote basis). For example, Phil occassionally apologies for Jews' presence in professional fields, as if earning personal reputation is subject to an ethnic litmus test.
2. One of the lessons of the holocaust is that "englightened" societies can turn, that even a generation's experience (our diaspora hippie generation) is not sufficient time frame to be confident.
European Jews that experienced the holocaust or aftermath don't ask if the appropriate time for Zionism is past, if we have enough confidence to proceed to post-Zionism (whatever that means to Phil).
Phil and I had a conversation this past weekend, in which I described that I felt that peace and justice were only possible to the extent that both Palestine and Israel humanized the other, regarded the other's community as human beings, deserving of compassion and support.
My message was that it takes humanization of BOTH communities, warts and all.
For the left, gauging by their expression and frequency of issues raised, my sense is that many regard Israel as "other", and the requirement of taking special efforts to humanize Israel is most important to get to justice.
Thats if one seeks to transform by consent, rather than browbeat by force.
"1. There still are intensely held prejudices against Jews and active agitation to remove their equal popular participation in democracies (on a one-person, one-vote basis). For example, Phil occassionally apologies for Jews' presence in professional fields, as if earning personal reputation is subject to an ethnic litmus test."
No way, Witty. The rest of your comment is actually reasonable by your standards, but nowhere does Phil imply that Jews or any ethnicities ought not to enter any professional fields. Quote him if you're going to make such a ridiculous charge. That strawman you've constructed on your own.
Furthermore, with very few assumptions not even the more aggressive, less politically/ethnically sensitive commenters here have suggested that hard-working and intelligent people should be excluded from powerful positions based on ethnicity.
You are trying to conflate opposition to ethnicity and ideology, which, I must say, seems to be a common tactic among apologists for Zionism. If we criticize Israel, say by stating facts, we are accused of anti-Semitism by you and your like. What we non-Jewish, non-tribal Americans resent GREATLY isn't any ethnicity, it is the presence of so many crypto-Zionists in powerful positions making decisions (like deposing Saddam and occupying Iraq) based on their tribal preferences and personal financial interests. That is very different than racism and you ought to be ashamed for intentionally trying to confuse the two.
Post-Zionism is where Israeli Jews will find permanence and security. The original injustice of Zionism, of the Nakba, of the idea of a Jewish supremacist state on land you never paid for, is the powder that fills those rockets falling on Sderot and all the other violent forms of resistance undertaken.
If you were to read the excellent link to commondreams provided by Charles on the other thread, about Hamas, you would see that your characterization of that organization and its actions is actually a vicious generalization built upon propaganda and racist assumptions. How many times has Hamas offered a truce, Witty–ask yourself that the next time that you ache for your relatives over in stolen Palestine.
My wife explained the issue in plain English. (See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
).
The Zionist philosophizes that the Palestinian is not a human (Israel was a land without a people). The Anti-Zionist argues that the Palestinian is a human being. So what is the moderate viewpoint? The Palestinian is a quasi-human? Is this the American Progressive Jewish position?
Recognizing the humanity of Palestinians means making atonement by
1. reconveying the properties that racist Eastern European Ashkenazim stole from them,
2. restoring the residence rights of which racist Eastern European Ashkenazim wrongly stripped tehm and
3. returning the country from which racist Eastern European Ashkenazim ethnically cleansed them.
Until Zionists acknowledge, show remorse and atone for the crimes that they have committed and continue to commit, there is no reason to believe that they will not do again.
Given the falsehoods that racist Zionists like Witty believe about Jewish history, it is practically guaranteed that Zionists will commit the crimes over and over again.
The Czarist empire was more or less successfully modernizing in the latter half of the 19th century. It was a relatively violent society. The pogroms against Jews were not unique and were certainly not sponsored by the Czarist government, which considered the violence a threat to itself as well as to Jews.
In New Russia in the early 19th century we can find cases of Jewish incitement against Greeks. Probably minority Poles in orthodox majority areas suffered the worst violence, but uniate Ruthenians Catholics in majority orthodox Ukrainians had severe problems. There were also severe pogroms against German Russians before the overthrow of the Czarist government.
Most of the history that we learn in the USA about the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Czarist Russia is radical political propaganda — much of it post-revolution.
When Jewish studies historians like Stanislawski tried to determine the true situation for Russian Jews before the revolution, the facts turned out to be very different from common beliefs.
When I look at the history of Russian Jews in late 19th and early 20th century Russia, I see a lot of very angry people, who thought that they should have more status, wealth and power than the Russian Empire were willing to concede to them.
Ethnic Ashkenazi Zionism and Communism developed out of the anger.
Ashkenazi Communists lead a movement to overthrow the Czar while Ashkenazi Zionists decided to take in Palestine what they felt the Russian Empire was withholding from them.
The mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide that ethnic Ashkenazim planned and executed in the territory of the Russian Empire and in Palestine have little difference, and it hardly mattered that until they decided to steal Palestine, Ashkenazim had had practically no contacts with Palestinians because in ethnic Ashkenazi racism there is not much difference between one group of gentiles and another
The violence that Ashkenazim felt toward Russian and Ukrainian peasants they wrecked on the fallahina of Palestine in almost exactly the same way that Ashkenazi Communists brutalized the peasants of the Soviet Union.
you fuck arab Mr. Martillo?
There's never been a meritocracy on earth. The USA has tried hardest to reach same, using Ron Paul's forgotten constitution, and left a full-blown plutocracy degrading the individual the founding fathers had in mind long term and in view of then human history (which has not changed enough). At best, the USA reached its highest zenith by its own constitutional terms, described by Phil as in his generation's time. Since then, what was formerly bought by birth and manipulated ignorance forced has morphed to simple manipulated ignorance forced. Money, after all, is only a means to and end; unfortunately, the end has remained the same, power to the next group, not the individual.
Merit is as merit does, once achieved. There is no successor model. In the end, politics is personal, family. The rest is BS.
Yes, look at what certain tribes did in the name of communism, and what others did in the name of democracy after. Capital, no?
I don't think Israel is "the Other." I have an old cat who, though I've been really been nice to him for over a decade, still is really skitzy, which I attribute to some past trauma by human hands. I know he has his reasons, I just feed him, clean up after him, and ignore how ungrateful he seems; I warm to the few moments he seems grateful for how I have supported his life, his going which ever way he deens. I am a Gentile.
"If we criticize Israel, say by stating facts, we are accused of anti-Semitism by you and your like. "
Stating facts is insufficient to form a judgement. The math of how you interpret facts, including how you select what is relevant vs irrelevant (not to mention what you are just not aware of), is more important.
I certainly don't call anyone anti-semitic for stating facts. I don't know if a person is anti-semitic or not. I do know forms of anti-semitism, that many dissenters ignore (I would say opportunistically, or dogmatically).
Its likely that MM, Joachim, others, cannot in their hearts humanize Israelis, including allowing them to live by their own determined sense of nationhood.
Yelling that someone is racist, doesn't make them so. I contest the idiotic formula "Zionism is racism". Its false in fact, though might be true within a single dimension.
"Anti-zionism is racism" is equally true.
The sadness of the word, is that those that fixate on Zionist "racism", have required a redefinition of the word, to fit the notion.
Somehow restrictions to emigration by holocaust refugees on ethnic basis is not racism. Somehow prohibition from owning property in Palestine by Jews (assumed to be expansionist Zionist) is not racism. Somehow judgement on title issues by rhetoric rather than court deliberation under consistent rule of law, is not racism.
Its important to improve the standard, to raise the bar, and address substantive issues more than rhetorical ones.
What's the history of the rule of (property) law in the Israel empowred?
LOL
So Americans, lucky we who can read about the heroic Alamo.
J. Martillo wrote:
"The mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide that ethnic Ashkenazim planned and executed in the territory of the Russian Empire and in Palestine have little difference, and it hardly mattered that until they decided to steal Palestine, Ashkenazim had had practically no contacts with Palestinians because in ethnic Ashkenazi racism there is not much difference between one group of gentiles and another"
There is one difference: The Jewish Bolsheviks murdered millions, while the Jewish Zionists have thus far only murdered thousands. But if you include those killed in Iraq as a result of the Jewish Zionist Neocon engineered Iraq war, by some estimates, the number surpasses 1 million.
Not that the current American top-tier candidates of both parties have a clue, but where are we going?
From Issues and Questions in the Historiography of Pre-State Zionism ( link to members.aol.com
), which is a lecture that I gave at Rutgers in Oct. 2002.
Not Even Questions — “Either Elvis Is Dead or He Isn’t”
Because of Zionist control of the discourse, obvious facts become the subject of dispute.
Zionism is A racist Ideology
Zionism presupposes that Jewish historical, ethnic or national rights to Palestine are superior to the human rights of the native population.
The first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines racism[v] as follows.
The notion that one’s ethnic stock is superior.
The assertion that one group’s rights are superior to another group’s rights is tantamount to the claim that the former group is superior to the latter group. Zionism is a racist ideology as matter of standard dictionary definitions that American journalists and political leaders simply ignore (viz Figure 1). It is hard to be more explicitly racist than Zionist ideology.[7] Zionists dispute the point because in our culture it is acceptable to hate racism, racists and those that support racism. Simple application of dictionary definitions and basic rules of logic like modus ponens show that hostility toward the Zionist state, Zionists and those that support Zionism is perfectly legitimate and as meritorious by modern standards as despising any form of racism.
File under "There is no Lobby":
Greenwich Conn. library cancels appearance of If Americans Knew–
“>link to greenwichtime.com
Here's the initial ad which the library claimed "violated public sensitivities"–
The unstated question is 'how many millions more are Jewish ideologues going to be allowed to kill before civilization blows the whistle?'
Posted by: Ed. | February 14, 2008 at 01:32 PM
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That's been my question from the begining. I have thought time and time again the whistle was about to be blown and it hasn't happened.
Now I think the US's position is beyond repair and Isr-Pal will end when the US crashes economically and or Israel gets us into a war with Iran.
What can't last doesn't and the blowblack is going to be hell for Israel in particular and to a lesser degree for the US.
The ideology of Zionism is that Jews are a people, and had to form a state, and in a land that they regarded as home, as their former homelands rejected them.
Some sought all, some sought some. Until fascism, Zionism was a quaint utopian ideology, with its propounders sometimes talking big, but as a utopia. Something they would work for, but absent the horror of the holocaust would likely not be anything significant in the world.
The holocaust occurred, and Jews needed a home. In 1947, the mandated portion by the UN was small. Rejected by opportunistic land-grabbing Arab states. In 1948, the mandated portion was larger, rejected by opportunistic new land-grabbing Arab states.
War. Dispossession. A great shock to Palestinians. A great joy to Israelis. Terror. A great shock to Israelis. A great joy to some Palestinians.
Its time to stop the shock.
Now is the time to turn to mutual health, predicated on acceptance of the other.
Yes, the blowback is coming, just like a subprime mortage initialed by a prime second mortgage.
The securities industry, the banks–they are the USA government. So, what's new?
You know, Witty, I used to dislike your comments, but now I fear them. There's always the possibility your friend the PAZ-Jew will come to your help and this is causing serious problems here.
In fact the PAZ-Jew is a destroyer of good neighbourhood relations. You see, we are treebalists round here and the other monkeys in our communal tree were somewhat accostumed to my habbit of shaking my branch violently while screamming "the jews! the f#@ jews again!". In fact I believe they suspect I call them "the jews", which is ridiculous, but also funny, so I let them believe what they will. Anyway things got worse after the PAZ-Jew arrived. Instead of my old poised behaviour I now jump from branch to branch wielding my keyboard against them monkeys, laughing hysterically, screamming "the paz-jew! the paz-jew is killing me!" I'm making people nervous. People dislike maggots having fun. They nicknamed my branch "davidians" and I think they mean business this time, federal business, that is. They now call my activities "anti-simiantism". I only hope they will not get hold of the keyboard because they always wanted do be part of the movement they cal "Simionism" and as soon as they enter Mondoweiss they will discover there is a witty monkey inside it.
So, Witty, beware, you will end your days surrounded by a party of monkeys who believe you are their personal saviour and sooner or later they will call you to become more like them, meaning "to transform by consent or to be browbeaten by force."
As it is I ask you to keep the PAZ-Jew away: stop writting nonsense (let me do it in your stead!) and the world will be a better place to be a monkey.
It's time to stop the schock. Where's the person who simply gets robbed without a good reason he or she can relate to? Double shock that. Awe steps forward, not a pawn at last.
There's something uncanny in that Greenwich Time's article. The usual irony when dealing with non-conformist opinions is absent. Of course I know little about the american media coverage of non-pro-zionist viewpoints, but I just felt they were treating the subject and the speaker as normal. So strange. As a precaution I will wear my tin-foil hat. End-time is comming.
How do we know that Witty is lying?
a) His lips are moving.
b) He is typing.
c) He is breathing.
Zionism was not a quaint utopian ideology in the 1890s. Ahad Haam was already accusing the Zionists of abusing Palestinians at that time period. In point of fact, he did not mind making conditions difficult for Palestinians. He just feared that mistreating Palestinians too blatantly would cause a hostile reaction in Europe.
Almost everything after the description of early Zionism is an easily demonstrable lie.
But this is beside the point.
I am perfectly willing to admit
1. that after working more than 10 years on and off in Israel and the OT, I wish Israeli Zionists the worst and
2. that I wish Palestinians well,
but my concerns are here in the USA.
There is no reason for Americans to pay trillions to maintain an ethnic fundamentalist Jewish state in the ME, and we need to have an open discussion of the cost of Zionism to the USA.
Even more to the point, Israel advocacy organizations and an informal network of Zionist groups and individuals is conspiring against the rights of Americans for the State of Israel while Jews in the US government are thwarting investigations and prosecutions.
Zionist fear-mongering that lead to the passage of the patriot act and restrictions on habeas corpus is a conspiracy against the Constitution to put down the government.
There is probably one way to save the USA.
From link to members.aol.com
.
Among religious, leftist, and right wing ethnic Ashkenazim there has long been a current of thought that Jews are safest in alliance (or better in dominating) an undemocratic government.[5] Thanks to the Patriot act and other actions of the Bush administration, the undemocratic Zionist future is coming into being right before our eyes, and McCain looks like the most likely of current present candidates to bring about the fulfillment of the ultimate globalized Zionist dystopia, but Zionists throughout the political system are poised to influence any other possible victor except Ron Paul, whom Zionist facilitators and gate-keepers in the US media are trying to starve of media attention.
Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures.
BTW, the Weir story is just another minor example Israel advocacy and lobbying activities that amount to conspiracy against rights.
Will Witty denounce Zionist activities that amount to criminal conspiracy against rights?
Does his primary loyalties belong to the Constitution and his fellow Americans or with ethnic Ashkenazi tribalism and the State of Israel?
Yes, I was a surprised by the tone of the Greenwich article too. The reporter's name isn't Jewish and apparently the boss he has to please isn't either. Amazing.
P.S. "they nicknamed my branch 'davidians'" hehe
A World Without Israel
By Josef Joffe
Foreign Policy | March 11, 2005
Since World War II, no state has suffered so cruel a reversal of fortunes as Israel. Admired all the way into the 1970s as the state of “those plucky Jews” who survived against all odds and made democracy and the desert bloom in a climate hostile to both liberty and greenery, Israel has become the target of creeping delegitimization. The denigration comes in two guises. The first, the soft version, blames Israel first and most for whatever ails the Middle East, and for having corrupted U.S. foreign policy. It is the standard fare of editorials around the world, not to mention the sheer venom oozing from the pages of the Arab-Islamic press. The more recent hard version zeroes in on Israel’s very existence. According to this dispensation, it is Israel as such, and not its behavior, that lies at the root of troubles in the Middle East. Hence the “statocidal” conclusion that Israel’s birth, midwifed by both the United States and the Soviet Union in 1948, was a grievous mistake, grandiose and worthy as it may have been at the time.
The soft version is familiar enough. One motif is the “wagging the dog” theory. Thus, in the United States, the “Jewish lobby” and a cabal of neoconservatives have bamboozled the Bush administration into a mindless pro-Israel policy inimical to the national interest. This view attributes, as has happened so often in history, too much clout to the Jews. And behind this charge lurks a more general one—that it is somehow antidemocratic for subnational groups to throw themselves into the hurly-burly of politics when it comes to foreign policy. But let us count the ways in which subnational entities battle over the national interest: unions and corporations clamor for tariffs and tax loopholes; nongovernmental organizations agitate for humanitarian intervention; and Cuban Americans keep us from smoking cheroots from the Vuelta Abajo. In previous years, Poles militated in favor of Solidarity, African Americans against Apartheid South Africa, and Latvians against the Soviet Union. In other words, the democratic melee has never stopped at the water’s edge.
Another soft version is the “root-cause” theory in its many variations. Because the “obstinate” and “recalcitrant” Israelis are the main culprits, they must be punished and pushed back for the sake of peace. “Put pressure on Israel”; “cut economic and military aid”; “serve them notice that we will not condone their brutalities”—these have been the boilerplate homilies, indeed the obsessions, of the chattering classes and the foreign-office establishment for decades. Yet, as Sigmund Freud reminded us, obsessions tend to spread. And so there are ever more creative addenda to the well-wrought root-cause theory. Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians is a “tremendous obstacle to democratization because it inflames all the worst, most regressive aspects of Arab nationalism and Arab culture.” In other words, the conflict drives the pathology, and not the other way around—which is like the streetfighter explaining to the police: “It all started when this guy hit back.”
The problem with this root-cause argument is threefold: It blurs, if not reverses, cause and effect. It ignores a myriad of conflicts unrelated to Israel. And it absolves the Arabs of culpability, shifting the blame to you know whom. If one believes former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Arab-Islamic quest for weapons of mass destruction, and by extension the war against Iraq, are also Made in Israel. “[A]s long as Israel has nuclear weapons,” Ritter opines, “it has chosen to take a path that is inherently confrontational.…Now the Arab countries, the Muslim world, is not about to sit back and let this happen, so they will seek their own deterrent. We saw this in Iraq, not only with a nuclear deterrent but also with a biological weapons deterrent…that the Iraqis were developing to offset the Israeli nuclear superiority.”
This theory would be engaging if it did not collide with some inconvenient facts. Iraqis didn’t use their weapons of mass destruction against the Israeli usurper but against fellow Muslims during the Iran-Iraq War, and against fellow Iraqis in the poison-gas attack against Kurds in Halabja in 1988—neither of whom were brandishing any nuclear weapons. As for the Iraqi nuclear program, we now have the “Duelfer Report,” based on the debriefing of Iraqi regime loyalists, which concluded: “Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior-level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.”
Now to the hard version. Ever so subtly, a more baleful tone slips into this narrative: Israel is not merely an unruly neighbor but an unwelcome intruder. Still timidly uttered outside the Arab world, this version’s proponents in the West bestride the stage as truth-sayers who dare to defy taboo. Thus, the British writer A.N. Wilson declares that he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Israel, through its own actions, has proven it does not have the right to exist. And, following Sept. 11, 2001, Brazilian scholar Jose Arthur Giannotti said: “Let us agree that the history of the Middle East would be entirely different without the State of Israel, which opened a wound between Islam and the West. Can you get rid of Muslim terrorism without getting rid of this wound which is the source of the frustration of potential terrorists?”
The very idea of a Jewish state is an “anachronism,” argues Tony Judt, a professor and director of the Remarque Institute at New York University. It resembles a “late-nineteenth-century separatist project” that has “no place” in this wondrous new world moving toward the teleological perfection of multiethnic and multicultural togetherness bound together by international law. The time has come to “think the unthinkable,” hence, to ditch this Jewish state for a binational one, guaranteed, of course, by international force.
So let us assume that Israel is an anachronism and a historical mistake without which the Arab-Islamic world stretching from Algeria to Egypt, from Syria to Pakistan, would be a far happier place, above all because the original sin, the establishment of Israel, never would have been committed. Then let’s move from the past to the present, pretending that we could wave a mighty magic wand, and “poof,” Israel disappears from the map.
Civilization of Clashes
Let us start the what-if procession in 1948, when Israel was born in war. Would stillbirth have nipped the Palestinian problem in the bud? Not quite. Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon marched on Haifa and Tel Aviv not to liberate Palestine, but to grab it. The invasion was a textbook competitive power play by neighboring states intent on acquiring territory for themselves. If they had been victorious, a Palestinian state would not have emerged, and there still would have been plenty of refugees. (Recall that half the population of Kuwait fled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s “liberation” of that country in 1990.) Indeed, assuming that Palestinian nationalism had awakened when it did in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinians might now be dispatching suicide bombers to Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.
Let us imagine Israel had disappeared in 1967, instead of occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were held, respectively, by Jordan’s King Hussein and Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Would they have relinquished their possessions to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and thrown in Haifa and Tel Aviv for good measure? Not likely. The two potentates, enemies in all but name, were united only by their common hatred and fear of Arafat, the founder of Fatah (the Palestine National Liberation Movement) and rightly suspected of plotting against Arab regimes. In short, the “root cause” of Palestinian statelessness would have persisted, even in Israel’s absence.
Let us finally assume, through a thought experiment, that Israel goes “poof” today. How would this development affect the political pathologies of the Middle East? Only those who think the Palestinian issue is at the core of the Middle East conflict would lightly predict a happy career for this most dysfunctional region once Israel vanishes. For there is no such thing as “the” conflict. A quick count reveals five ways in which the region’s fortunes would remain stunted—or worse:
States vs. States: Israel’s elimination from the regional balance would hardly bolster intra-Arab amity. The retraction of the colonial powers, Britain and France, in the mid-20th century left behind a bunch of young Arab states seeking to redraw the map of the region. From the very beginning, Syria laid claim to Lebanon. In 1970, only the Israeli military deterred Damascus from invading Jordan under the pretext of supporting a Palestinian uprising. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Nasser’s Egypt proclaimed itself the avatar of pan-Arabism, intervening in Yemen during the 1960s. Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat, was embroiled in on-and-off clashes with Libya throughout the late 1970s. Syria marched into Lebanon in 1976 and then effectively annexed the country 15 years later, and Iraq launched two wars against fellow Muslim states: Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990. The war against Iran was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. None of these conflicts is related to the Israeli-Palestinian one. Indeed, Israel’s disappearance would only liberate military assets for use in such internal rivalries.
Believers vs. Believers: Those who think that the Middle East conflict is a “Muslim-Jewish thing” had better take a closer look at the score card: 14 years of sectarian bloodshed in Lebanon; Saddam’s campaign of extinction against the Shia in the aftermath of the first Gulf War; Syria’s massacre of 20,000 people in the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold of Hama in 1982; and terrorist violence against Egyptian Christians in the 1990s. Add to this tally intraconfessional oppression, such as in Saudi Arabia, where the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect wields the truncheon of state power to inflict its dour lifestyle on the less devout.
Ideologies vs. Ideologies: Zionism is not the only “ism” in the region, which is rife with competing ideologies. Even though the Baathist parties in Syria and Iraq sprang from the same fascist European roots, both have vied for precedence in the Middle East. Nasser wielded pan-Arabism-cum-socialism against the Arab nation-state. And both Baathists and Nasserites have opposed the monarchies, such as in Jordan. Khomeinist Iran and Wahhabite Saudi Arabia remain mortal enemies. What is the connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Nil, with the exception of Hamas, a terror army of the faithful once supported by Israel as a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organization and now responsible for many suicide bombings in Israel. But will Hamas disband once Israel is gone? Hardly. Hamas has bigger ambitions than eliminating the “Zionist entity.” The organization seeks nothing less than a unified Arab state under a regime of God.
Reactionary Utopia vs. Modernity: A common enmity toward Israel is the only thing that prevents Arab modernizers and traditionalists from tearing their societies apart. Fundamentalists vie against secularists and reformist Muslims for the fusion of mosque and state under the green flag of the Prophet. And a barely concealed class struggle pits a minuscule bourgeoisie and millions of unemployed young men against the power structure, usually a form of statist cronyism that controls the means of production. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains the antagonisms in the world around it.
Regimes vs. Peoples: The existence of Israel cannot explain the breadth and depth of the Mukhabarat states (secret police states) throughout the Middle East. With the exceptions of Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf sheikdoms, which gingerly practice an enlightened monarchism, all Arab countries (plus Iran and Pakistan) are but variations of despotism—from the dynastic dictatorship of Syria to the authoritarianism of Egypt. Intranational strife in Algeria has killed nearly 100,000, with no letup in sight. Saddam’s victims are said to number 300,000. After the Khomeinists took power in 1979, Iran was embroiled not only in the Iran-Iraq War but also in barely contained civil unrest into the 1980s. Pakistan is an explosion waiting to happen. Ruthless suppression is the price of stability in this region.
Again, it would take a florid imagination to surmise that factoring Israel out of the Middle East equation would produce liberal democracy in the region. It might be plausible to argue that the dialectic of enmity somehow favors dictatorship in “frontline states” such as Egypt and Syria—governments that invoke the proximity of the “Zionist threat” as a pretext to suppress dissent. But how then to explain the mayhem in faraway Algeria, the bizarre cult-of-personality regime in Libya, the pious kleptocracy of Saudi Arabia, the clerical despotism of Iran, or democracy’s enduring failure to take root in Pakistan? Did Israel somehow cause the various putsches that produced the republic of fear in Iraq? If Jordan, the state sharing the longest border with Israel, can experiment with constitutional monarchy, why not Syria?
It won’t do to lay the democracy and development deficits of the Arab world on the doorstep of the Jewish state. Israel is a pretext, not a cause, and therefore its dispatch will not heal the self-inflicted wounds of the Arab-Islamic world. Nor will the mild version of “statocide,” a binational state, do the trick—not in view of the “civilization of clashes” (to borrow a term from British historian Niall Ferguson) that is the hallmark of Arab political culture. The mortal struggle between Israelis and Palestinians would simply shift from the outside to the inside.
My Enemy, Myself
Can anybody proclaim in good conscience that these dysfunctionalities of the Arab world would vanish along with Israel? Two U.N. “Arab Human Development Reports,” written by Arab authors, say no. The calamities are homemade. Stagnation and hopelessness have three root causes. The first is lack of freedom. The United Nations cites the persistence of absolute autocracies, bogus elections, judiciaries beholden to executives, and constraints on civil society. Freedom of expression and association are also sharply limited. The second root cause is lack of knowledge: Sixty-five million adults are illiterate, and some 10 million children have no schooling at all. As such, the Arab world is dropping ever further behind in scientific research and the development of information technology. Third, female participation in political and economic life is the lowest in the world. Economic growth will continue to lag as long as the potential of half the population remains largely untapped.
Will all of this right itself when that Judeo-Western insult to Arab pride finally vanishes? Will the millions of unemployed and bored young men, cannon fodder for the terrorists, vanish as well—along with one-party rule, corruption, and closed economies? This notion makes sense only if one cherishes single-cause explanations or, worse, harbors a particular animus against the Jewish state and its refusal to behave like Sweden. (Come to think of it, Sweden would not be Sweden either if it lived in the Hobbesian world of the Middle East.)
Finally, the most popular what-if issue of them all: Would the Islamic world hate the United States less if Israel vanished? Like all what-if queries, this one, too, admits only suggestive evidence. To begin, the notion that 5 million Jews are solely responsible for the rage of 1 billion or so Muslims cannot carry the weight assigned to it. Second, Arab-Islamic hatreds of the United States preceded the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. Recall the loathing left behind by the U.S.-managed coup that restored the shah’s rule in Tehran in 1953, or the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958. As soon as Britain and France left the Middle East, the United States became the dominant power and the No. 1 target. Another bit of suggestive evidence is that the fiercest (unofficial) anti-Americanism emanates from Washington’s self-styled allies in the Arab Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Is this situation because of Israel—or because it is so convenient for these regimes to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” (as Shakespeare’s Henry IV put it) to distract their populations from their dependence on the “Great Satan”?
Take the Cairo Declaration against “U.S. hegemony,” endorsed by 400 delegates from across the Middle East and the West in December 2002. The lengthy indictment mentions Palestine only peripherally. The central condemnation, uttered in profuse variation, targets the United States for monopolizing power “within the framework of capitalist globalization,” for reinstating “colonialism,” and for blocking the “emergence of forces that would shift the balance of power toward multi-polarity.” In short, Global America is responsible for all the afflictions of the Arab world, with Israel coming in a distant second.
This familiar tale has an ironic twist: One of the key signers is Nader Fergany, lead author of the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report. So even those who confess to the internal failures of the Arab world end up blaming “the Other.” Given the enormity of the indictment, ditching Israel will not absolve the United States. Iran’s Khomeinists have it right, so to speak, when they denounce America as the “Great Satan” and Israel only as the “Little Satan,” a handmaiden of U.S. power. What really riles America-haters in the Middle East is Washington’s intrusion into their affairs, be it for reasons of oil, terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction. This fact is why Osama bin Laden, having attached himself to the Palestinian cause only as an afterthought, calls the Americans the new crusaders, and the Jews their imperialist stand-ins.
None of this is to argue in favor of Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor to excuse the cruel hardship it imposes on the Palestinians, which is pernicious, even for Israel’s own soul. But as this analysis suggests, the real source of Arab angst is the West as a palpable symbol of misery and an irresistible target of what noted Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami has called “Arab rage.” The puzzle is why so many Westerners, like those who signed the Cairo Declaration, believe otherwise.
Is this anti-Semitism, as so many Jews are quick to suspect? No, but denying Israel’s legitimacy bears an uncanny resemblance to some central features of this darkest of creeds. Accordingly, the Jews are omnipotent, ubiquitous, and thus responsible for the evils of the world. Today, Israel finds itself in an analogous position, either as handmaiden or manipulator of U.S. might. The soft version sighs: “If only Israel were more reasonable…” The semihard version demands that “the United States pull the rug out from under Israel” to impose the pliancy that comes from impotence. And the hard-hard version dreams about salvation springing from Israel’s disappearance.
Why, sure—if it weren’t for that old joke from Israel’s War of Independence: While the bullets were whistling overhead and the two Jews in their foxhole were running out of rounds, one griped, “If the Brits had to give us a country not their own, why couldn’t they have given us Switzerland?” Alas, Israel is just a strip of land in the world’s most noxious neighborhood, and the cleanup hasn’t even begun.
Josef Joffe is the publisher of Die Zeit, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and distinguished fellow at the Institute for International Studies, both at Stanford University.
Poor David the lesser, jealous of neither belonging in the Davidians nor being helped by the paz-jew he imagines he can undo Martillo's powerful thinking using this Joffe fellow.
Let us remind Joffe's machinations when the Iraq War was a delightful dream in the zionist mind, afterall that is what Mondoweiss is all about "Iraq comes home: the war of ideas, by Philip Weiss."
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Hubs, Spokes and Public Goods
October 30, 2002
By Josef Joffe
(Begin Excerpt)
…America’s bases now stretch around the world: from Norfolk, Virginia via Europe and the Middle East into Central Asia, and from there to the Western and Central Pacific all the way back home to San Diego. By comparison, imperial Britain at its height looks like a poor second cousin to 21st-century America.
The Middle East is at present a spoke in the making. The United States has not yet imposed peace on the Levant, full discipline on nominal allies like Saudi Arabia, nor yet transformed the regimes of its two major foes, Iran and Iraq. But Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat, Riyadh and Cairo, all take their quarrels to Washington and all depend on American might and benevolence. If the United States pulls off its Saddam and Palestinian capers, it will all but complete its quest for dominance over the Middle East initiated with the extrusion of Britain and France after the Suez War of 1956. All that would remain would be the fall of the Islamic regime in Iran…
(End Excerpt)
http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol1Issue8/Vol1Issue8JoffePFV.html
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You know Martillo you are one strange guy. You really need help
J. Martillo wrote:
"Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures."
I agree with nearly 100% of what you write about Israel and Zionism, Joachim, but I disagree that Israel should be abolished.
I believe that Jewish Bolshevism shows that Jewish ideologues are far more dangerous in the diaspora than they are in Israel. Jewish Neoconservatism demonstrates the same thing.
I think if Israel had some limits set on its behavior, and was forced to end the occupation, establish permanent borders and write a constitution, it could be reformed into a tolerable entity, or at least contained.
The reason none of this is possible is because diaspora Jewish Zionists see to it through their money, their various lobbies and their influence that no pressure is brought to bear upon Israel to reform its behavior. In fact, grotesquely, its dysfunctional behavior is rewarded by the US taxpayer, again mostly due to the Jewish Zionist lobby.
This is why I advocate the deportation of hard core Jewish Zionists to Israel–in order that they cannot prevent the gentile world from bringing the pressure to bear on Israel that is necessary for its reformation through their wealth and positions of power and influence.
I almost think of hard core diaspora Jewish Zionists as obsessively overprotective parents whose desire to protect their adult children has reached pathological proportions, to the point where they are now stalking them to make sure they don't get injured crossing the street or go out on a date with the wrong person. Something has gone haywire with their nurturing instincts.
If there were another realistic solution than deporting them to the object of their pathological fixation, I think it would be worth exploring. But given Jewish ideologue tenaciousness, I really can't see anything else working.
And if Israel were to be destroyed, God knows what kind diabolical plans for humanity diaspora Jewish fanatics would dream up in retaliation.
Far better to let them badger one another in a contained Israel, and stew in their juices.
There you go big Ed, let it come spewing out buddy. It is a revelation though. I didn't realize that there were guys like you left. I thought the last ones went down in Hitler's bunker. I'm going to have to pass your name to the elders in Jerusalem though. I think it's time we nailed you. After all, next to the black death, killing Christ, controlling the worlds economy, and being both communists, capitalists, and everything in between. Not to mention the Kennedy assasination. Who the hell is one low life cock roach named Ed.
I told you "sword of gideon" was our old pal Bill Pearlman.
Just can't stay away. Perhaps the site fills some need in you Bill?
Thank you David for that Joffe article.
He speaks accurately and well.
My pleasure, Richard. I thought you might like it. (He's Jewish after all.)
Actually Joffe is not Jewish at all, but I guess an ignorant piece of shit like yourself just makes everything up anyway.
this is also a terrific article on obama…
link to antiwar.com
/>
The War Party Targets Obama
They'll never let him become president
He's said it many times, in many different venues, and perhaps the words change a bit over time, and the cadences, too, but the message is always the same:
"I think the pundits have it wrong. I think the American people have had enough of politicians who go out of their way to look tough, who say one thing in a caucus and another in a general election. When I am the nominee of our party, the choice will be clear. My Republican opponent won't be able to say that we both supported this war in Iraq. He won't be able to say that we really agree about using the war in Iraq to justify military action against Iran, or about the diplomacy of not talking and saber-rattling. He won't be able to say that I haven't been open and straight with the American people, or that I've changed my positions. And you know what? The American people want that choice. Because I believe that's what we need in our next President.
"We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought – a war that needs to end."
I had to check because Joffe in the Eastern European context is a name *only* associated with Jews and is in fact a Hebrew word.
From Wikipedia:
Josef Joffe is member of a variety of head gremia and boards so e.g. as member of the Abraham-Geiger rabbinic seminary in Potsdam, Deutsches Museum, Aspen Institute Berlin, Jacobs University Bremen, Ben Gurion University, American Academy Berlin, Leo Baeck Institut New York and Humanity in Action (Berlin).
These would be unusual associations for a non-Jew, and Commentary certifies him as Jewish in link to commentarymagazine.com
.
Joffe is a trustee of the Abraham-Geiger rabbinic seminary in Potsdam.
http://www.hoover.org/bios/joffe.html
It doesn't matter if Joffe is Jewish.
His content is a good summary.
Any comments on his assertions that bear the light of day?
Joffee doesn't agree with the full 9/11 Commission conclusion because he wants to be sure Israel is not made the scapegoat for all the problems in the Middle East in light of the colonial history of the region ignoring tribal conflict right up through Bush's neocons. Also, while he says Israel should not build walls, should integrate the Palestinians into the labor market, and should vacate the settlements, he never says the USA should lean on Israel to do so ; rather he says Arabs don't know a good deal when they see it.
"The holocaust occured and people needed a home" – Richard Witty
_____
This is the conventional wisdom and rationale. But I have to tell you something to the contrary that sounds very cynical:
Israel was meant for the millions of downtrodden East European Jews. The Zionists didn't count much on the rather well established West European ones. (Also, quantitatively there were 3.5 million Jews in Poland but just 500,000 in Germany for instance, before WW II. And the German Jews preferred to emigrate to America rather than Palestine.)
Towards the end of WW II some Zionists had this sad but sober realization: 'Hell, the Jews Israel was meant for will be wiped out. There is no longer a need for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine'. (According to Peter Novick, 'The Holocaust in American Life')
But others went ahead to establish a Jewish state anyway – not because but in spite of the Holocaust.
I'm sorry I have to say this.
Of course, Josef Joffe is German and Jewish.
He is the chief editor of DIE ZEIT (the time), a left-liberal rather intellectual and influential weekly that's published in Hamburg.
Let me ad something to my point that the establishment of Israel was 'in spite of the Holocaust'.
According to Peter Novick, the deliberation among some Zionists was that they thought the few WW II surviving Jews would be easily integrated into European societies after the defeat of Nazism. Hence, no need for a Jewish state.
Well, there is now a Jewish state – but the people there are not WW II refugees.
"In 1948, The great majority of Jews in Israel in 1948 were those who had immigrated to Palestine after the increase in anti-Semitism in Europe after 1932. In the 1950s, although below those throughout Europe, Israeli living standards were superior to those in most of the Arab Middle East. The Israeli government easily persuaded Jews from many countries, for example, Morocco, Yemen and Bulgaria, to immigrate to Israel. The Israeli government induced Jewish immigration from Iraq by bribing the government of Iraq to strip most Iraqi Jews of their citizenship and to confiscate their property. By contrast, few Jews immigrated to Israel from the more advanced countries of the eastern Mediterranean, such as Greece or Egypt. The majority of the Israeli Jewish population shifted to the non-Ashkenazi. From 1949 to 1965, Ashkenazi Jews in Israel declined to a minority that stabilized at about 40 per cent of Israel's population. The substantial immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union thereafter increased the Ashkenazi population to about 55 per cent."