In this interview with the Daily Telegraph in England, Israel's ambassador to Britain says that the country used to be a fair-minded place, but that calls for academic boycotts of Israel and "microscopic" examination of Israel's treatment of Palestinians have changed the climate. Ron Prosor:
"Israel faces an intensified campaign of delegitimisation, demonisation and double standards. Britain has become a hotbed for radical anti-Israeli views and a haven for disingenuous calls for a 'One state solution', a euphemistic name for a movement advocating Israel's destruction."
Reminds me a little of Cynthia Ozick complaining of the new mood on campus here. Or Leon Wieseltier describing his "grave concerns" for the future of American Jewry.
Is this THE Philip Weiss on the Colbert Report?
I think it's more like an English disease, as we say. There's not much of this going on in continental Europe these days–here in France Israel is much "en vogue."
Can't be.
No mention of my fantastic blog at all on the Colbert Report. :-)
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My first reaction to this was: Big Deal. American opinion leaders are just as mendacious and arrogant about our own affairs. Why pick on the Zionists in this respect.
But when I think about it, it seems noteworthy that the delusiveness of American and Zionist public opinions mirror each other so closely. Maybe there is a deeper connection.
Maybe the carriers of the thuggish Zionist mindset have actually taken over as the managers of public opinion for the American Ruling Class, the way the Indians have taken over the motel industry.
Which would mean that the antisemites are pretty much correct.
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American Jews have become identified with Israel. Certainly this has been a free choice of American Jewry's. If Israel looks good this reflects favorably on American Jews. ABC, no?
After the Six Day War people suddenly saw Jews as "macho" for the first time in 2000 years, it was natural and irresistible for Jewish people to take the ride. ABC, no?
Now Israel is identified with apartheid and expensive gasoline and little by little with a very intimidating lobby that all must kowtow to. So now American Jews are stuck with it.
One longs for the good old days of Albert Einstein and George Gershwin, Jack Benny and Hannah Arendt instead of Pipes, Dershowitz, Foxman, Olemert Bibi and Mofaz.
Tragedy.
Indeed it was Phil on the Colbert Report. A few days back he was also on Al-Jazeera. Yes, no mention of blog. But Stephen has invited John Mearsheimer in the past, so who knows, maybe next one would be about the blog.
I have a different feeling than your dismissal Phil.
Excepting the poster child of Cynthia Ozick (I don't know Wieselter), the reality is that campuses are often abusive to those that hold positions that aren't politically correct, and that ANY assertion of loving Israel in ANY way, is one of those taboos.
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Britain is a "hotbed of anti-Israeli views" only if one uses the sleep-walking U.S. as a reference. Israel's officially segregationist state not only defies U.S. anti-discrimination laws, but also it tramples those of the EU. Why shouldn't the Brits bitch and complain about an outlaw state which treats its minorities as second-class citizens? Brits have got every right to block Israeli academics from visiting the UK and discriminating against Muslim students (of which Britain has plenty), as they are accustomed and entitled to do at home.
By the way, have you ever noticed the catchphrase "the Jewish state" which is applied to Israel by the U.S. press? This is very odd, isn't it? Kind of like referring to pre-civil rights era Dixie as "the White Empire." Disarmingly true, but likely to become embarrasing in a changing cultural milieu. Isn't "the Jewish state" one of those anachronistic Zionist locutions which needs to be phased out for the post-Kosher Jim Crow era?
Here's an example from an AP article picked up in today's Slimes:
"The Islamic militant group [Hamas], which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide attacks, rejects the Jewish state's right to exist."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?scp=1&sq=jewish+state&st=nyt
BINGO! Two pieces of hoary boilerplate, "the Jewish state" and "right to exist," strung together without so much as a conjunction between 'em. Now if the ace journos at AP could pull off a triple cliche, they'd win the Ziotrifecta. First prize is a week in Tel Aviv. Second prize is two weeks in Tel Aviv.
Israel is the Jewish state, as France is the French state, or Palestine will be the Palestinian state.
Quintessence, one two three.
David Seaton, American Jewry old and new.
Jim Haygood, 'Jewish state Israel' aka dreamtime Dixie.
Richard Twitty, Jews are to Israel as the French are to France.
Nosiree. The French are people who happen to be citizens of France. Ditto, the English, the Americans, etc., etc. All bitzers. So by the same token, ethnically Arab Israelis are to Israel as the French are to France. And of course, behind it all, Jewish Israelis are themselves bitzers. Some of them aren't even one per cent Jews, so 100 per cent bitzers.
Behind Twitty's much reproduced inanity is the denial of the rudiments of intelligence.
This is an additional crime of Israel and its lobby. Not merely the original and ongoing sin of ethnic cleansing on the ground, but in the associated hasbara the strategic attack on reason, on morality, on the language itself that conveys reason and morality. On humanity itself.
When will this madness end?
It isn't really the Jews fault. Who could resist?
The United States is going through a period of decadence and decline and has become fair game for anyone with a coherent agenda. AIPAC hasn't created American decadence, it is merely taking advantage of it.
Since the only bulwark between Israel and having to carry out the UN resolutions is the USA and America has become so weak and easily manipulable, AIPAC is finding easy what before would have been much more difficult.
Approximately the same percentage of French citizens are non-French as the percentage of Israeli citizens that are non-Jewish. 20%.
The Jewish nature of Israel (ethnically defined, not religious), is rational and national.
Its definitely new, and like all new things, displace old.
The problem that I see is that rather than coming to a sense of enough, Israel continues to pursue more and harms often unnecessarily in its defense.
Phil's political analysis often does not include the purpose of the state in its accepted math.
That is analagous to considering the US as just a place, and not a nation. (The US is not a people in the same way that France is French or Palestine is Palestinian. The US is a nation by principle, administration, and shared experience – often forged in times of hardship and war, not unlike the unity that forms Israel, the nation.)
I see the AIPAC phenomena as composed of two valid constructions and one invalid or exagerated.
The two valid constructions are:
1. The Jewish people are genuinely a "We" (A subjective reference that is more intimate than "they", or "it".) As such, when Israel is shelled by Hamas or Hezbollah, one reaction is "we" are being attacked.
2. Israel is genuinely a democratic, developed state, that is genuinely an ally in the big picture interests of the US.
The invalid construction is of over-compensation, some guilt that "our family" did not experience the holocaust. Or, that we are not on the front lines, others are in our behalf. "We owe."
The assimilated view holds no "we". Maybe Phil was changed by being in New York during 911. I was changed by the assault of the left in numerous locales when I stated that I loved that Israel exists, and love it now.
Israel is my family, and even as I urge reform, I don't reject it, and I don't carelessly expose it to harm.
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"The Jewish nature of Israel (ethnically defined, not religious), is rational and national." – R. Witty
Now we're reduced to nursery rhymes.
"The Arab nature of Palestine is anodyne and non-malign."
See Mohammed. See Mohammed run. Run, Mohammed, run!
Are David Seaton and Madrid the same person?
Or am I connecting dots to fast?
French citizens are by definition French.
The state creates French identify. Otherwise France is a conglomeration of Burgundians, Bretons, Provincalians, Basques, Alsatians, etc.
David Seaton lives in Madrid, but he is not Madrid.
I have to give up trolling Richard Witty, and I promised this morning to abstain from comments, but … then:
"The Jewish nature of Israel (ethnically defined, not religious), is rational and national."
Is there a miracle from heaven that turns all converts into "ethnic" Jews over the centuries?
"Its definitely new, and like all new things, displace old."
The reason why certain nations are connected to religious majorities has much to do with the choice of the sovereign, historically.
I can't help, but this line of argument makes me feel as if you wanted to help the Nazis to succeed after all this time.
It feels your side of the larger argument usually–hmmm?–takes a wide perspective over centuries. So pray tell me, what "ethnicity" do French people have for you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France#Origin_and_history_of_the_name
Wouldn't it be wiser to not stress Jewish ethnicity but in fact its diversity?
But I leave you alone now.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Ethnic groups
As officially stated by the French government and 2001 French Census reports on the ethnological origins of the French people. Note the French government does not officially classify people by race or ethnicity, in order to encourage integration, assimilation and patriotic unity of all French people regardless of ethnic and national origins as policy since the French Revolution.
The modern French are descendants of 3 major division of "racial" or ethnological groups of white Europeans: Indigenous Celts known as the Gaul and the term "Gallic" of French pride, the Romans from the Italian Peninsula who brought in the Latin-based French language, and finally the Franks of West Germanic origins will established the Frankish kingdom, later known as France.
Ethnic groups residing in Metropolitian France:
Celtic and Latin with Germanic, Slavic, Other European (Greek, Armenian and Turkish), North African (Arab, Berber and Jewish), Indochinese (Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian), Black African, Black Carribean, Hispanic (Latin) American and Basque minorities.
Overseas departments and territories: Black African, white European, mulatto (mixed race), East Indian, Chinese, Malagasy (Reunion and Mayotte), Amerindian (French Guyana), Melanesian: Kanak and Futunan (New Caledonia) and Polynesian: Tahitian and Marquesan (French Polynesia).
An estimate of 10-15 million French citizens or about one-fifth of the population is of ethnic or national non-French origins. The largest of such groups are Germans, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Poles; and later waves of North Africans (has risen to about 6.5 million) of Arab-Berber background.
"Nos Ancêtres, les Gaulois".
Little black boys and girls in Martinique recite that in school.
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)
I didn’t think America was a place where bookstores barred people for their viewpoints, until it happened to me, right here in Washington, D.C., the city of my birth.
I was scheduled to speak at Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse last month about my latest book, “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation.” My appearance was canceled when the bookstore owners realized that my book concludes by questioning the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead it proposes a single democratic, secular and multicultural state in which Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully as citizens with equal rights.
“I do not believe that your book will further constructive debate in the United States,” one of the owners wrote to me in an e-mail. “A single state is not a solution.” I was dismayed that my invitation was rescinded because I express a different point of view from the one sanctioned by a supposedly independent bookstore. Yet the cancellation seems to fit into a larger pattern of nationwide censorship about this issue.
Stanford professor Joel Beinin had been invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at a Silicon Valley school last year; his appearance was canceled when the school was criticized for booking the event. Tony Judt of New York University was invited to speak about Israel and Palestine at the Polish Consulate in New York last fall; his talk was canceled after the consulate came under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.
The fact that senior scholars are prevented from speaking in well-known forums because they do not toe an official line suggests that the civic culture on which our country was founded has broken down, at least when it comes to Palestine and Israel.
Yet citizens can object to the muzzling of ideas. After receiving letters of protest and eloquent entreaties by bloggers, Politics and Prose decided last week to reissue my invitation. This reversal is an important step forward but questions still linger. Can we afford not to hear each other out as we evaluate our Middle East policies? Should Palestinians not be allowed to speak unless their erstwhile audience gets to tell them what to say? What, then, is the point of a conversation? What is the alternative to conversation?
What is so unspeakably wrong with saying that justice, secularism, tolerance and equality of citizens — rather than privileges granted on the basis of religion — should be among the values of a state?
– Saree Makdisi
Los Angeles
The writer is a professor of English literature at UCLA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060603066.html
"Israel is my family, and even as I urge reform, I don't reject it, and I don't carelessly expose it to harm."
Richard, have you ever met a father who just can't see his child's defects?
Because only a zio-dad could look at Lord Rothschild et al, and see philanthropist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Rothschild%2C_1st_Baron_Rothschild
"Natty also funded Cecil Rhodes in the development of the British South Africa Company and the De Beers diamond conglomerate. He administered Rhodes's estate after his death in 1902 and helped to set up the Rhodes Scholarship scheme at Oxford University."
So, how do you view good old Cecil Rhodes, Richard?
would all the jewish zionist here have been cool and groovy with the idea that the jews extermination in europe was being debated by the most erudite members of the world community all the while the extermination was ongoing OR would they have been clamoring for the anhilation of germany and any other state that supported its activities?
what would you be doing right now witty et al if it were the jews who were being ethnically cleansed?
if you choose this slow ongoing so called peace process then stop complaining that the world didnt come to the rescue of the abused community of jews in europe whose lives were exterminated in that quest to cleanse the population of europe of jewry…ON the other hand if you choose a quick solution so that the ethnic cleansing would cease, then join hands with the british dissenters and all the others who are now getting onboard the rescue train.
effect change now and save lives.
the state of israel is conducting nuremberg type crimes in the middle eastn against a semitic race on the morning after the ethnic cleansing of europes jews. cause certainly we all must acknowldege that it was only sixty some plus years since that crime was commited in europe, the jews in israel didnt wait to continnue the madness of politics in the twentieth century before they began their crime spree.
every six months or so I ask phil and his phillipinas the same question: why are you giving Palestinians rights to
land that you deny to American Indians, australian aboriginals, and Germans in central and eastern Europe? No answer yet, but it's a fucking good question!
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david — U.S. Indian reservations are the American version of the "two-state solution." Didn't work out so well for formerly nomadic people. Little economic development; lots of unemployment and substance abuse.
The more forward-looking Palestianians are probably studying "Beat the Dealer" as they prepare for their own two-state bantustans. Hopefully the Quartet won't be so crass as to name the first Palestianian casino the "Thousand and One Arabian Nights." But with the zio-crowd, you never know.
"…and Germans in central and eastern Europe?"
A very easy answer. The German Nazis killed millions of Russians and Eastern European people. Concerning Russia, there were so many "Germans" left, that Kohl invited them to flow back into the "fatherland" in his long, long reign. Most of them didn't even speak German anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II#Casualties_and_atrocities
This is getting absurd.
3 million volksdeutschen were transferred
in 1945-48. Can they havetheir homes back? If not, on what principle are you denying them?
Anytime something new occurs it:
1. Displaces something old
2. Genuinely needs to defend itself until it is accepted
3. Goes too far in its defense
Every change.
Every movement that ANYONE has ever advocated for and accomplished.
Its not evil for it.
The posse here and in Britain goes too far as well.
Overzealous, imprecise, biased. Even Phil.
every six months or so I ask phil and his phillipinas the same question: why are you giving Palestinians rights to
land that you deny to American Indians, australian aboriginals, and Germans in central and eastern Europe? No answer yet, but it's a fucking good question!
Posted by: david | June 10, 2008 at 10:38 AM
>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it's a very stupid question and very old dodge.
You might as well ask why we stopped burning witches.
It's the 21st century dumbo, not the 16th century…it's called human evolution and civilization.
"Can they have their homes back? If not, on what principle are you denying them?"
If they had property they were compensated.
In a time were many people had to start from zero that wasn't such a bad thing, and coursed quite a bit of antipathies. You only needed two people to testify you had owned property, due to the Iron Curtain, a girl friend whose father was from Russia once told me. As with the de-Nazification some were clever others not, peasants on the average did better than academics.
I am not an expert on these topics. A voice from the background whose family came from Pommers reminds posters with a map of Germany–pre-Nazi borders–and the sentence: Split into three parts. Never!, with a certain amount of disgust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pommern
Many of my friends are from the now Polish parts or Russia or descendants. Not one of them likes to move back there, although some have holiday homes there. None of them is a member of the dislodged associations, whose very vocabulary still make me want to p***.
Watch closely:
http://tinyurl.com/5utyns
"Controversy over the location of the Centre
On its official home page, the Centre points out that, "All victims of genocide and expulsion need a place in our hearts and in the historical memory. Human rights are indivisible."
Well-known intellectuals and politicians, including Germans Günter Grass and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in 2003 expressed support for a centre devoted to all expelled during the 20th century, located in some place connected with expulsions, e.g. Wrocław (Breslau).
However, while Steinbach claims the Centre will represent the suffering of other nations as well, she believes that it is an internal German affair and rejects the proposal of creating the Centre under international control.
The Bavarian Prime Minister and chairman of CSU Edmund Stoiber argued that "the place for a museum showing the dreadful fate of expelled Germans is in the German capital"."
You decide which side you are on. I am on Grass' side in this issue and not Madame Steinbach's.
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But as far as I am informed International Law doesn't allow collective penalties anymore, or does it? Should we turn back the wheels of time?
"from Pomerania reminds me of elections posters with maps …"
"Overzealous, imprecise, biased. Even Phil."
Richard, this reminds me of the larger debate about "bad" scholarship: while it seems allowed in every field to look from a specific angle, e.g. I can look at economics from the point of view of what's best for companies; as I can look what's best for employees, as an essential force for the way to success. OK this is a fast example. Nobody would call it bad scholarship to choose either angle.
Why isn't it allowed to look at the Israel-Palestine conflict from either side? Why is it called bad scholarship there, if someone does? Can you give me one single equivalent from your field of expertise? …
How would you define good vs bad scholarship?
And what exactly makes YOU: Moderate, precise, unbiased?
And can you suggest a book in political-sciences (not history) about the Israel/Palestine conflict that is moderate, precise, unbiased to me?
I am here to learn.
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Besides Witty, and I have to admit it really troubles me, since I may ignore something essential, I simply don't like the "Darwinian taste" of your mails. That may be a result of my post-Nazi Germany experience. … or possibly the result of having read one book too much from the Nazi era. What puzzles me is that you don't seem to realize this connection.
The right of the stronger, men hard as Krupp Steel.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky
(one of the founders of the Haganah (the Zionists paramilitary militia-army before the 1948 war).
Ze'ev Jabotinsky declared that settlement of the "land" is the only "law". He declared:
"There is no justice, no law, and no God in heaven, only a single law which decides and supercedes all—- [Jewish] settlement [of the land]." (Righteous Victims, p. 108)
live by the sword die by the sword.
law and vengeance is all they know.
Leandor,
Phil is rah-rahing for the British flavor of the anti-Zionist approach.
Its a step past clear and considerate dissent.
Its a couple steps outside of urging reform.
"Its a step past clear and considerate dissent.
Its a couple steps outside of urging reform."
That is a reference to the "British way".
David
because it's happening right now as you speak, bucko.
Palestinian land and livelihoods being appropriated and destroyed as you speak, while the casualties are displaced, imprisoned, starved and killed.
The cost of being the wrong ethnicity. A problem only recently faced by European Jewry.
Anyway, where do you live, David?
I covet your property. I wouldn't mind coming around with a Caterpillar and knocking down your place, preferably with you inside, maybe take out one or two of your kids on their way to school.
"It isn't really the Jews fault. Who could resist?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061002449_pf.html
Its a step past clear and considerate dissent.
Its a couple steps outside of urging reform.
Posted by: Richard Witty | June 10, 2008 at 03:32 PM
Why then Witty I think you'll have to report him and all of us at once to the thought police.
Anti-zionism, let it fester and Americans might start questioning military aid in general!
RE: "3 million volksdeutschen were transferred
in 1945-48. Can they havetheir homes back? If not, on what principle are you denying them?"
In the larger context of this expulsion according to race/ethnic status, two million ethnic Germans died and fifteen milllion survived transfer aka ethnic cleansing from eastern europe; the great majority of these 17 million souls had never supported Hitler, their sin being born ethnic Germans behind the wrong side of the new borders–most of the communities had been established for many centuries.