I was blown away by Joe Biden last night. He was truly presidential. He got more and more confident as the evening went on. He grew into it. I wondered why he had not been able to defeat Obama earlier this year. He is real and he has gravitas, a rare combination, Trumanesque. I felt safe with him. I had the inkling watching him, Some day this guy will be President, and that's not a bad thing.
The Truman analogy works because in the middle of this great performance came the complete pander to Israel, for which he feels "passion." And Sarah Palin promptly chirped, We both love Israel. The amazing thing about the moment was that at this very time Ehud Olmert is speaking in the most extreme terms about Israel's future, as he has been for the last year, and American politicians are stuck in their happy talk about Israel. If American politicians could be at all realistic, they might actually lead the situation. As it is, they feel beholden to the Israel lobby, which has absolutely stymied discussion in high circles about the place.
At the grass roots, it's changing (as Alison Weir said 2 weeks ago at Yale), but at the high levels there is no shift. And here I would mention Ralph Seliger. All through our conversation I have been hammering the Occupation, which as Mohamed ElBaradei of IAEA has said, is a "red flag" of injustice across the Arab world. Lately Seliger responded to my hectoring on this score by saying that his organization, Meretz USA, said in its latest publication:
erred."
I think this is pathetic lukewarm language. If this is how a leftleaning Jewish group attacks the occupation, it just shows how noble Jewish Voice for Peace has been, or Jews Against The Occupation. They have no qualms about attacking the apartheid conditions head on. And even Olmert has used the word apartheid in speaking darkly about Israel's future. The very best of our politicians are craven.
If one has an exception, or qualification, to the principles of Universalism, then one is a chauvinist. And, what is left is covered by the question who's ox is being gored?
If you take the current Israeli-USA preemption doctrine to the end, where does it go? It goes straight to the question once asked of an SS officer: "How can you justify your troops bayoneting Jewish babies?"
Answer: "One day they will be Jews."
Now, turning to discussions with Israeli settlers (from NY)…
But Gidget and Hair Plug both love Israel.
And the World Trade Center has been attacked twice for the same
main reason–withheld from the American masses, and redacted from the official report.
Both VPs have their sons in Iraq.
Goyischekopfs true
More on core preemption from Weir's discussion on Occupation 101
on her web site:
"Occupation 101 contains good Israelis.
The fact is, the film does not exaggerate conditions, or the history. The situation for Palestinians is that bad. In fact, it's worse. The reality is that some quotes from Israeli soldiers that have been reported in the Israeli media were not included in the film – they were too strong.
Perhaps it would be informative for Weiss and others to learn a little of what was left out of the film. One example is a quote from the Israeli publication Davar, which published an account by a soldier who participated in the 1948 massacre at the Palestinian village of Dueima. The soldier described the actions of his fellow soldiers:
" … They killed between eighty to one hundred Arab men, women and children. To kill the children they [soldiers] fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one home without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite them. One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a building he was about to blow up … Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered 'good guys'… became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remain, the better."
There are a great many more of these grisly, firsthand accounts about numerous massacres throughout Israel’s history. If Occupation 101 were going to be made even longer than it already is, the need would probably be to include more on these, which almost no one knows about, rather than putting in more on the narrative about how Israel fulfilled “some Jews’ dreams,” which everyone has heard about, over and over again.
It is strange to read Weiss’s bashing of the film in the midst of a piece emphasizing the value of listening to the voices of young Arab-Americans. However, Weiss says that he arrived late, so it’s possible he didn’t see the credits and assumed I was responsible for it. Or perhaps he is simply not so enthusiastic about young Arab voices when they stray beyond the parameters he would set for them… which is disappointing in a writer who normally opposes efforts to keep discussion of Israel-Palestine only within limits set by Jewish/Israeli preferences.
Weiss then goes on to describe the discussion after the film. Here, also, I feel his description distorts the reality.
Following the film there was an extended question-and-answer session. While most people seemed moved by the film and asked questions about specific aspects, there were also challenging questions from people who were partisan toward Israel. The Q & A went on quite a long time, until finally the student organizer determined it was time to close the event. He stood up and said there would be one more question. There were still a great many hands up, and I randomly called on a student who had been waiting, like numerous others, to be called on. He asked whether there was hope that peace would ever be reached… I responded that I felt that when the US ended our massive aid to Israel, which prevented the Israeli government from believing it would ever have to compromise, the two populations would be able to find peace. I stated that there were visionaries on both sides who would be able to step forward when the US one-sided support of Israeli militarism got out of the way, and that Israelis and Palestinians would then find the way forward.
The event was then over. It had been a long night and the students needed to get home to study. Many of the foreign students, in particular, feel it is critical that they do well at Yale; otherwise, as one student told me, they won’t be able to stay. Suddenly, a man in the audience stood up and shouted out that he was an Israeli solider and that everything had been “lies.” There was considerable shouting back and forth, and when it finally quieted, I said to him that I fervently disagreed and asked him to name any inaccuracies. He apparently couldn’t, so he instead began to go into a long discourse of some sort; it was difficult to hear in all the commotion. This type of behavior is typical. I’ve rarely been to an event about Palestine in which some Israelis or Israel partisans have not demanded everyone’s attention and time far beyond that allotted to anyone else.
While this IDF soldier was trying to claim victim-hood for Israelis, yet again, the irony of the situation struck me. Here was a man who was an Israeli soldier – the one that you see at every checkpoint demanding ID’s from old women and young students; deciding who may pass and who may not; yelling at people who respond too slowly; flirting with female soldiers while people wait in line in the sun to be waved through; who point machine guns at crowds going to pray, work, school, and who bark orders at old, stumbling men; who smash rifle butts into nonviolent protestors; who regularly, as some soldiers have described the Israeli military’s actions, “starve, humiliate, and dominate an entire population” … here he was, a member of the Israeli occupying force, trying to demand the victim’s right to speak, even as real victims had been willing to forego their questions when time forced the event to end. It seemed to me that either all the students should be allowed to ask their questions without discrimination, including the many Palestinian and Arab students who rarely have a voice, or no one; and since the student organizer had called the event to an end, I ended it.
Weiss disapproved, feeling that I should have favored the IDF soldier with more time, despite the lateness of the hour and the fact that other students had equal right, at least, to speak.
He also wished I had brought "some nuance to the victimization narratives." It's interesting to ponder this, so often demanded by Jewish writers in regard to Israeli oppression and so rarely elsewhere. Perhaps if more Afrikaners had been living in the US, there would have been more demand that depiction of South African oppression be more "nuanced." As it was, I don't recall a lot of nuance on this subject, or a lot of concern at its absence. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that South African apartheid ended… while Israeli apartheid goes on and on and on.
By the way, after the event many of the Arab and international students seemed enormously excited about the evening, the film, and my role. I find this reaction frequently. I think they’re astonished to see a non-Arab, non-Muslim American who for once is not watering things down – who is actually describing honestly and fully what it’s like for Palestinians. (Of course, that shouldn’t be considered laudatory, it should be routine. Moreover, I should have looked into what my government was funding in Palestine at a far younger age.)
Weiss then writes that he wishes that I spoke “more transparently about [my] path to this work.” Yet, my talks largely focus on my path to this work, and I’ve often been interviewed about this on radio programs. In fact, there’s even a video on this by Alternate Focus, which has been shown on a number of public access television stations around the country and that is posted on Youtube. I’ve also included my story occasionally in my writings. Given my commitment to and history of openness on this subject, the accusation of a lack of transparency seems considerably off the mark and a bit weird, almost as though he’s suggesting some sort of sinister motivation but doesn’t say what.
Truthfully, if he had wished to know more about this, I wonder why he didn’t simply ask me. From his blog entry it appears that at some points he was standing quite close to me. It feels a little strange that he never came up and introduced himself, especially since he writes that he’s on my “side.” Having read a few of his pieces, which I had found interesting, I would have enjoyed meeting him.
This reminds me of a pro-Israel zealot from the West Coast some years ago who sat next to me at a conference and then wrote about me later (with significantly more inaccuracy and outright venom). It always seemed strange to me that a writer wouldn’t attempt to speak to the subject of his report – especially when he’s right next to her.
I’d like to think that if Weiss had spoken to me directly – perhaps if we’d gone for coffee afterwards or the next day – and if we’d talked over our goals and perceptions and beliefs in person, rather than through public, impersonal blogs, we would have found a great deal in common; in fact, I expect it would have been a learning experience for both of us. I hope our future conversations will be face to face, not through the Internet. Personally, I think we’re both trying to do important work, and sometimes succeeding. It would be good to join forces.
POSTED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2008 AT 02:43PM BY [ALISON WEIR | COMMENTS OFF"
Wow, Phil. You have a great blog, but sometimes you say the most outlandish things about certain politicians and political commentators.
This was my reaction to last night's "debate":
"I just finished viewing possibly the biggest piece of political garbage ever produced.
I don't know whom I loathe more: Gwen Ifill, Joe Biden or Palin.
Have such depths of demagoguery, disingenuousness and inarticulateness ever been plummed before?!!"
The only way Biden will ever be president is if Obama dies in office.
It embarrasses me the way presidential candidates pander to Israel. I wish they would show half as much passion for America. Someone once said that the campaign speeches of senators from New York sound like they're running to be mayor of Tel Aviv.
I share Biden's views that the US should NEVER abandon Israel to the whims of extremists.
What was unspoken at the debate, was that an Obama administration would continue and hopefully increase aid for Palestinian development, and inter-community exchanges and political reconciliaton, in a fair way.
Palin initiated the framing of the neo-conservative litmus testing, and skillfully in her optimistically cynical way. (Smart people will get the joke.)
I doubt that she considers Palestinians "common people" worthy of self-governance and social health, any of them that she "knows about". I bet that Obama and Biden do.
That constructs a very different math.
The difference say between Likud and Meretz.