Yesterday Richard Silverstein offered a criticism of Times reporter Ethan Bronner's comments on the Nakba:
[Ethan] Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954...
Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.
...[F]or Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. [All emphases mine]
Prophetic. Now flash back nearly 20 years, the most important moment in the making of Barack Obama, the Harvard Law Review's presidential election of 1990. From the Boston Globe:
In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read "Diversity Now" and "Homogeneity Feeds Hatred."
[In February 1990, the election lasted] until just after midnight, when only Obama and a 24-year-old Harvard graduate named David Goldberg remained contenders .
At about 12:30 a.m., the editors called Obama into the room, told him he had won, and broke into applause. [Kenneth] Mack, another black editor, pulled Obama in for a hug.
"It was a hard hug, and it lasted a while," Obama told the Harvard Law Record, the school newspaper, at the time. "At that point, I realized this was not just an individual thing. . . but something much bigger."
A few additions to this important parable of American life: Obama's presidency put him on front pages around the country and led to his book deal. The Globe's fine reporting was done by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman, who I assume are like myself, upper-middle-class Jews drawn to journalism. David Goldberg is, I believe, a progressive lawyer specializing in public law in New York, working for poor women denied health care.
The Declaration of independence that Silverstein cites promised that Israel would " ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex..."
The lesson of this story is a simple one. After World War II, Jews in America and Israel set out to guarantee civil rights to all, even in the wake of horrors like the Holocaust and slavery/segregation. In America, we also were a minority, and Jewish activists in the David Goldberg tradition succeeded beyond the world's wildest dreams. In Israel we have utterly failed. Homogeneity breeds hatred. Diversity now.
An arab running for leader of Israel is as likely as a black being elected leader of apartheid South Africa. The whole mentality of the people there is based on colonialism and ethnic self-congratulation, and it is much more likely, on current evidence, that the Israelis will expel the vast majority of the remaining Arab population, perhaps under the guise of a 'land swap' to keep settlements (in other words, Israel would get both colonies and ethnic cleansing), than that Israel would allow any meaningful arab participation in its decision-making.
Like the whites in South Africa or the pieds noirs in Algeria, the Israeli jews will remain bigoted: the only hope is that the US and Europe will pressure them into concessions despite their bigotry.
Well Phil is certainly right in his conviction that American Jews are establishment players in the USA since 1945. You can look at the statistics regarding ethnic-religious groups in all upper strata of our four branches of government, then too, in the industry that paints the vision for soap opera Americans: Hollywood. Here's one for starters: While American Jews make up slightly less than 3% of the American population, they are at least 20% of the Democratic super-delegates. How's that for one American, one vote? Not to mention, over two-thirds of Democratic campaign financing is furnished by American Jewish groups–even 25% of the Republican campaign financing… Are gentile Americans not suppose to notice this? Where is that written in the 7 Noah laws the historical Jews mandated for the gentiles of the whole world? Over history, sometimes appears some uppity gentiles. When will they ever learn?
Anyone who thinks diversity does anything more than breed hatred must not have been watching the civil wars in Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Cyprus and elsewhere in the world, including Los Angeles where there was a huge riot between Mexicans and blacks in a school cafeteria yesterday.
There is a reason most Jews work for homogeny in Israel and diversity in America. They are seeking to strengthen Israel while weakening Christian America. A weakened America is more easily subjugated to Jewish interests. We're not permitted to put up a Nativity display in the courthouse square at Christmas but are stuck sending billions in subsidies every year to the theocracy of Israel where Orthodox Rabbis make law.
Most Americans are actually opposed to all the immigration that's been imposed upon us. And if we had a referendum on how much money to send Israel each year the aid would be reduced to zero. Yet none of the so called mainstream candidates propose to do anything to reduce either immigration or aid to Israel. Why is that?
The Establishment Clause was originally meant to bar our government form preferring one Religion over another–the Founding Father had in mind the Church Of England of course. But there's a distinction often overlooked between that and a pure seperation of Church & State. Many local governments have settled the matter in court over the years by either banning all religious displays on public property, or trying to include them all (same re diverse religious holdiays celebrated in public schools). I haven't been following these type of cases in the last decade–now I'm wondering, is Islam getting the same type of treatment in our public places and spaces?
As far as immigration, all three mainstream presidential candidates are on the same page–either and/or for Latino votes and/or cheap labor for wealthy corporations.
Ditto re Israel in terms of rubber-stamping whatever Israeli regime is in place–and they've all been the same (right-leaning) due to Israel's parlimentary makeup, although Obama actually put on public record and anti-AIPAC type stance (not picked up by the USA MSM) he thinks there's more than one way to be pro-Israel.
When all your two-party-selected candidates have nearly the exact same stance on how to handle 20 million illegal aliens & how to handle Israel's choice of actions, and there is nobody to vote for in contrast, and the candidates fear to talk about those two major issues, what does this mean about the power of the USA's democracy in action?
The MSM & Cable pundits all say the main issue for Americans is our economy. But nobody is spelling out the relation of our foreign policy and immigration policy to the state of our economy. There's a third force feeding our ill economy, which they don't discuss in any detail with the American people: our Federal Reserve system and its actions. Yet that is the third of the three third rails, witness the bailout by ignorant average Americans of Wall Street, with some bones to mostly blacks who bought into the notion of being entitled to a virtually free home because banks had red-lined in the past.
Affirmative action, it keeps springing anew. Open borders. Unconditionally rubber-stamping Israel regime actions. Bailing out predatory lenders.
What's wrong with this American approach?
It totally leaves out and taxes directly or indirectly those Americans who have most lived up to the definition of good
civic character, as applied domestically and internationally.
The moral compass of Uncle Sam is broken, and has been for over fifty years. True, it was broken then too. Two wrongs don't make a right
The audicity of hope in Obama is that he actually thinks its his life mission to make things right for all in this eternally uneven world. I dreamt Obama and Ron Paul were on the same ticket.
Then I awoke.
I awoke in Gaza, and I was spit upon. I awoke in a Manpower INC day-job office in New Mexico, and was turned away. I awoke in Iraq, furnished with the usual cheap GI equipment.
I looked at my self in the mirror. I couldn't complain. I deserved
my fate. I was a NAZI, wasn't I? I cut myself, got stoned. I deserved it.
I don't quite buy the claim that the jewsish establishment only sought justice and equality for blacks during the civil rights years. During the same time period, many of the same people were closely supporting what Israel was doing to the Palestinians. Yes, contradictions exist in life, but it appears that the point was to break down the traditional establishment and crawl to the top of the pile for self-serving reasons.
Not to mention they didn't say much about Israel's support of apartheid S Africa.
"Homogeneity breeds hatred. Diversity now."
I think that statement should really be read as stating that diversity breeds a sense of security for jews. My hometown was far more peaceful when it was very homogeneous.
I don't claim that either homogeneity or diversity always leads to peace or violence, but I believe that I correctly understand that many who push diversity could care less about peace or stability. I guess others can be naive dreamers, but the American experience with diversity has hardly been a bed of roses.