Last night I went to a Brit Tzedek event–two-state solution progressive Zionists–at an Upper West Side synagogue. More to say later, I’m traveling, but I wanted to note one statement that was made.
A guest speaker, Gershon Baskin, an Israeli leader of IPCRI, a joint Israeli/Palestinian thinktank, said that he had lately tried to help broker terms for a Hamas ceasefire with his Hamas connections, and then had sent off an email to Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative who as a National Security Council official plays a large role in Bush Administration Middle East policy. "Elliott always responds to our emails, he engages us in discussion," Baskin said. "He’s a very important player." In this instance, Abrams responded with "nasty comments."
I’ve blogged alot about the mind of Abrams, the son-in-law of motheaten lion Norman Podhoretz, because he has been a Jewish nationalist/separatist, saying in his 1997 book Faith or Fear that Jews must stand apart from their society in every country except Israel. Brit Tzedek is now urgent about pushing Americans towards a two-state solution. Well if the two-state solution fails this year, Baskin says, Netanyahu will come in as Israeli P.M. and Hamas and chaos will reign in the Occupied Territories. Abrams has often been associated with the Netanyahu/Likud/Commentary Magazine bloc in American public life. I wonder what his goals are now, what he’s thinking? Does he urgently seek a two-state solution? Does he secretly hope for failure in the peace process so that Israel will be the right wing fantasy of Eretz Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan?
Or has he, like Olmert, collapsed into acceptance of the two-state solution? I wonder what he’s thinking, and why the MSM have not sought him out.
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The question of "dual loyalty" will never
disappear as long as powerful Jews like
Abrams speak so brazenly of apartness from
the wider society. In how many Jewish families, one wonders, would it be considered
a higher form of patriotism to serve in the
IDF than in the American military, which is
now engaged in a war being waged for a
Zionist agenda?
why do you need two states? are the jews in israel and abroad that racist and separatist that they couldnt fathom two peoples and different faiths living in one state….its funny how the jews want inclusivity and diversity in all nations except their beloved israel.
How do Abrams and the other neocons attain such powerful positions? It couldn't be pay back to AIPAC? Naw, they were the only ones that had the qualifications. Right!
That fine old man of the Israeli Peace Movement, Uri Avnery, has a wonderful article in Counterpunch today. Can you imagine if he were in such a powerful position? Wow!
And yes Phil, be backs Obama!
http://counterpunch.org/avnery03242008.html
More from Abrams on the Two-State Solution:
http://podblanc.com/?q=node/15737
I also met Baskin and his colleague Hanna Siniora near my home about a week ago.
I was impressed with Hanna's generosity of policy in the presence of Gershon Baskin's assumption of Zionism as a given.
He convinced me (not by an argument, just by his lack of negative reaction to Zionist assumptions) that many Palestinians probably bear a similarly generous perspective towards Israelis and Jews.
He is an older man, early 70's, and may not be representative of the fulcrum of Palestinian emphasis.
He was not compromising in the sense of white-washing his own personal or political experience. By his generosity, he conveyed to me the extent to which settlement expansion is a grand ignorance and self-defeat for all peace-seeking.
Likud doesn't want a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution with no viable Palestinian life in the West Bank.
The fingers pattern of settlement blocs and accompanying infrastructure was designed. It included the design of making Palestinian life non-viable, AND the design of making a relatively easy annexation (by closing the fingers, into a "fist" for analogy).
Likud's view is that the settlement bloc exercise is nearing completion, and if they can hold out as little as five more years (who knows actually), that they won't have to even deal with Palestinians in the West Bank.
So, the peace bloc does NOT take that view.
The peace bloc takes the view that Palestinian rights are co-existent, and don't disappear even with forced or "voluntary" resettlement.
When the radical anti-Zionists regard the peace bloc as complicit, they compel an either/or decision of either radical single-state (whatever flavor) OR radical Zionist.
We, peaceniks, are NOT in either, but do represent the civil solution to the problem, negotiation.
To the extent that anti-Zionists condemn peace advocates, they ENABLE the radical Zionist approach.
And, it is now somewhat hopeless. In today's Haaretz, there was an article on the utter dysfunction of Meretz, the only consistent advocate for peace among Israeli parties.
Labor might as well be Kadima now.
The only solution Elliot Abrams is interested in is the final solution. He is a Zionist criminal who should be sitting in a jail cell for his past and present crimes.
Why Won't Hugo Chavez Let Us Assassinate Him?http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-wont-hugo-chavez-let-us-assassinate.html
Elliot Abrams was the first Neocon (Jabotinskian) to become fully immersed in Friedmanite ideology.
Rumsfeld was a Friedmanite recruited to Jabotinskianism.
The Neocon Jabotinskian Wolfowitz in the final stage of blending of Jabotinskianism and Friedmanite doctrine left the Pentagon for the World Bank.
Islamic groups have proven the toughest nut for Friedmanite ideologues to crack, and Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran and Malaysia have all quite reasonably shown complete contempt for the IMF and World Bank as tools of a sort of hybrid of
1) US Neocolonialism,
2) Zionist manipulation, and
3) a sort of ethnochauvinist exploitive economic behavior that was contributive to the Chmielnicki Rebellion as well as to hostility toward Jewish megawealth throughout Central and Eastern Europe since the 17th century.
Sara Roy's studies indicate that there might have been some sort of effort to control an emerging Palestinian state via international economic strictures.
Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran have made a complete hash of any such idea.
Is it surprising that "Abrams responded with 'nasty comments'?"
[Note that in the USA the sort of business practices historically associated with ethnic Ashkenazi communal economic behavior is called restraint of trade and is illegal.]
.
"Does [Abrams] secretly hope for failure in the peace process so that Israel will be the right wing fantasy of Eretz Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan?"
Probably: the "two-state solution" may be the benchmark of pseudo-liberal conventional wisdom. But in reality, it will no more lead to peace than the Maginot Line prevented a second world war. At best, any patronizing two-state solution will be an analogue to South Africa's last decade of apartheid, when Coloureds and Asians were granted their own second-class, playpen parliaments in a last-ditch effort at marginalizing the black majority. It didn't work. In fact, the Potemkin parliaments accelerated apartheid's demise.
With the broad middle-ground completely lost in the Quartet's jackoff fantasyland of the two-state solution, it's the radicals that have a handle on reality: the militant zionists and Hamas both correctly realize that there WILL be a single state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. The question is who will rule it. I'm betting on the Arabs, not the zionists. A patronizing two-state solution, featuring crippled, non-viable Palestinian statelets, will set the clock ticking on the last days of the doomed zionist apartheid state. Bring it on! Two states, one group of deluded suckers.
"The question is who will rule it. I'm betting on the Arabs, not the zionists."
Must have been a huge pipe that you just smoked, boyeee! Get you feet back on the ground:
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-method-of-stealing-land-from.html
Don't be so sure that Apartheid is over in South Africa!
Income disparity is greater now than it was in the last years of Apartheid.
As part of the agreement to transfer power from de Klerk to Mandela, SA has a constitution that is particularly hard to modify, the national bank is completely independent of the government, and the people who are in charge of the economy are exactly the same people that ran it at the end of Apartheid.
The World Bank, the IMF and the US government have all made it clear that there will be extremely negative repercussions if the government tries to redistribute even only part of the national wealth back to the native population from whom it was stolen.
And before someone babbles about all the effort that whites did to develop a modern industrial sector of the economy, just remember that SA's wealth comes from minerals that happened to be in the group long before whites came to Southern Africa.
.
The New York Slimes, with faultlessly sleazy taste, has chosen to mark the sad milestone of 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers with an article titled "4,000 Dead: Messages From the Front Lines." Prominently featured is a photo showing a soldier in U.S. Army camo uniform in front of … wait for it … a huge Israeli flag. Un-effing-believable. I am not making this up; see for yourself:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/03/24/us/agami-600.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/29lp6g
I had three reactions to this repulsive display, in the following order:
1. Much like Bibi Netanyahu remarking that 9/11 would be good for Israel, this intrusion of Israeli nationalism into America's pain is patently offensive.
2. On the other hand, the Slimes' callous photo links Israel to the attack on Iraq, which simply validates what we all know. A bunch of neocon Jewish fifth columnists in the Bush administration engineered this War for Israel.
3. It's also a crude effort at propaganda. As Phil often points out, Jews are conspicuously underrepresented on the list of U.S. military casualties in Iraq. To counter this uncomfortable fact, the Slimes has selected an atypical Jewish fighter for post-mortem hagiography:
"Private Agami had time for everyone, and everyone had time for him. Affectionately called GI Jew, he held his religion up to the light. He used it to build tolerance among the troops and shatter stereotypes; few in his unit had ever met a Jew. He flew the Israeli flag over his cot in Adhamiya. He painted the words Hebrew Hammer onto his rifle. He even managed to keep kosher, a feat that required a steady diet of protein shakes and cereal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/25dead.web.html?hp
Yet by publishing Agami's photo in front of the Israeli flag, the Slimes has effectively invoked the old dual-loyalty "canard" [sic], as well as memorably and symbolically linking the Iraq war to Israel. Needless to say, this single inflammatory photo, circulated throughout the Muslim world, will help recruit thousands of new mujahideen.
This is why I say that the Slimes is dying. They can't even do effective propaganda anymore. Obviously there is no Jewish conspiracy that controls the press. Seriously. If there were, they certainly would not shoot themselves in the foot with this botched, amateurish mixed message. Who is in charge of this sinking ship, anyway? Given that the CIA originally financed and trained al Qaida, they would be a more plausible suspect than any zionist conspiracy. Wake up, Jill — the CIA's workin' for them, honey.
Geez! I thought the name Elliot Abrams was familiar. He is connected to all sorts of atrocities committed in the 1980's in Central America, and had felony charges prepared against him in Iran-Contra!! How are such execrable people allowed into the US government?. Disgusting.
Jim Haygood:
I looked at that photo from The Times.
It is abhorrent.
How is it that the US military allows flags of other nations to be displayed by its own troops in a war zone?
This article written in Ha'Aretz is valuable to read. Called "Shattering a National Mythology."
It's about Tel Aviv Univ. historian Prof. Shlomo Sand's latest book, which unfortunately is only available in Hebrew, that that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. He discovered that the story of the exile (and hence the diaspora) is a Christian myth to punish Jews for rejecting the Christian gospel. He says that the Palestinians are more likely the descendants of the original inhabitants of the land.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html
Here are salient paragraphs from the Ha'Aretz article if you don't have the time to read the whole thing, because it goes to the heart of what Abrams believes, and what Abrams believes according to this Israeli historian is plain false:
===================
SANDS: [H]ere I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish. As far back as 1828, the Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinson) said that the ancient language of the Jews was not Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, the father of Israeli historiography, was not hesitant about describing the Khazars as the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and describes Khazaria as 'the mother of the diasporas' in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck."
HA'ARETZ: Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening?
SANDS: "It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. … There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."
HA'ARETZ: Is there no justification for this fear?
SANDS: "No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for me being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."
[...]
"From the perspective of Zionism, this country does not belong to its citizens, but rather to the Jewish people. I recognize one definition of a nation: a group of people that wants to live in sovereignty over itself. But most of the Jews in the world have no desire to live in the State of Israel, even though nothing is preventing them from doing so. Therefore, they cannot be seen as a nation."
HA'ARETZ: What is so dangerous about Jews imagining that they belong to one people? Why is this bad?
SANDS: "In the Israeli discourse about roots there is a degree of perversion. This is an ethnocentric, biological, genetic discourse. But Israel has no existence as a Jewish state: If Israel does not develop and become an open, multicultural society we will have a Kosovo in the Galilee. [...] "We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law.
HA'ARETZ: If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?
SANDS: "To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. [...]
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html
Jews are one people.
That the Jewish people have various racial roots, does not diminish that in the slightest.
People are a people by association and consent, not by blood, though blood may be one of many means by which people come to associate.
Fine, Richard.
But Sands point was "that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period." It was a myth created by Christians that used an exile to punish Jews for not adopting their gospel. The dispora was a myth. Nothing to return to because they were never banished. And that the Palestinians are ore likely the original inhabitants of the land.
"SANDS: … "We must begin to work hard to transform our place into an Israeli republic where ethnic origin, as well as faith, will not be relevant in the eyes of the law."
Versus Witty's Brave New World of the Not-Yet-Landed, the Light unto the Nations.
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/03/what-clarence-t.html
…
"Jewish affirmation itself is a good in the world. It represents the affirmation of a people, following centuries of suppression and dispossession.
There are others that will follow. Other national movements of existing and new nations that are not yet landed, that require a home space."
**********************************************
Would this be a moral advancement of mankind, Witty? And how will this work in a world that is rather crowded as you emphasize elsewhere?
good perception, Jim. Yes I don't like "The Slimes" term in spite of Judy & all; although I have to acknowledge it is partly fitting.
Concerning this: "Who is in charge of this sinking ship, anyway? Given that the CIA originally financed and trained al Qaida, they would be a more plausible suspect than any zionist conspiracy. Wake up, Jill — the CIA's workin' for them, honey."
The phenomenon the NYTarticle describes has been witnessed by many of us, all over the world. Israel and the US; the core allies in the war on terrorism. With Israel providing centuries of experience. It took many, many shapes. E.g. in academia there were attempts to merge anti-Americanism and antisemitism.
The Germans witnessed the proud parade of a Jewish Israeli/German in a jacket made out of the US flag during the Bush election night that was broadcast till early in the morning. He fiercely proclaimed: We are all Americans now.
I think Phillip is riding a counterwave.
And – in spite of a degree of Old Europe sympathy for you – you are too speedy in connecting dots, it feels.
The part of the CIA in the larger scenario is much more complex it feels. My impression was that the OSP managed to blame the CIA in the end. Remember the term: stovepiping in this context? With Tenet not entirely innocent, true.
The head of the German services at the time, can prove that he warned of curveball, by the way. Do you remember him?
If the CIA was completely controlled much of the narrative would not make sense. Tenet was controlled/or adjusted himself, but was Valerie Plame?
"Bush reelection night" of course.
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