A smear on a good man--Khalidi--in the desperate last days of a presidential race is one of those thrilling political events that is supposed to produce spine-tingling rhetoric. Obama didn't deliver, of course, because he's tight with the Is lob. Josh Marshall did. And here's Glenn Greenwald with a great piece on Salon. He takes the issue where it should go-- to the Jewish neocons who have saddled up McCain like an old nag. Because let's face it, the Jewish left will not revive until Jews reject the Iraq neocons as a Jewish movement and condemn its Zionist orientation, and then look at what's happening over there in Is-rul. Greenwald is doing that:
Nobody has done more to trivialize actual anti-semitism than the neocons and other assorted right-wing polemicists who indiscriminately use it as a club to beat anyone over the head who deviates from their dictates when it comes to Israel and other Middle Eastern policy issues -- from Jimmy Carter when he published his book on the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Jim Baker when the Iraq Study Group report was released. And it's perfectly natural that one of the most transparent abuses of the charge -- the McCain camp's attack on Khalidi -- came on CNN yesterday from McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, a protegeé of Bill Kristol on loan from The Weekly Standard.
The serious pushback against the attacks on Rashid Khalidi is a welcomed sight. In Khalidi's case, the charges of "anti-semitism" are even more disgusting than the normal neocon exploitation, since it's occurring in the last week of a presidential campaign and, as Scott Horton pointed out, is so plainly grounded primarily in the politically useful fact that Khalidi is a Palestinian-American. The anti-semitism accusation is not just manipulative; it itself is bigotry of the highest order.
But this episode illustrates what neocons have been doing for years and, more significantly, signals that the efficacy of this tactic is finally coming to an end. Open debates about U.S. policy towards Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are vital, and people should be able to engage in those debates and be able to take legitimate positions, as Professor Khalidi has plainly done, without hordes of right-wing manipulators swarming on them with anti-semitism accusations.
Very hopeful, this piece. The world's about to change!
Nobody is smearing Khalidi, he is what he is. And again I say, RELEASE THE TAPE. Shouldn't the American people have the right to see it.
The American people have a right to see a lot of things that they don't see, some of which they are partly responsible for. Violently racist settler behaviour in the OT, including checkpoint harrassment of grandmas, the bomb-destroyed remains of a just completed children's pool, the programmatic Israeli refusal to allow Palestinians to visit family graves or to allow medical treatment for the terminally ill. Hell, they have a right to see the distressing human results at the sharp end of their blundering military adventures, but never do.
They have a right too, wouldn't you say, to hear also from Rashid Khalidi himself, without the Ziofascist filter he is presented through. Put up your best noble liar (Dersh? Kristol?) on an unedited talkfest with him, to exercise something called freedom of expression, which believe it or not, applies as comprehensively to Americans of Palestinian descent as it does to American Jews.
God, how the Zionists have infantilised American discourse. This flap must be embarrassing to intelligent Americans. It's up there with the foothill fascism of the Two Minutes Hate afforded Ahmedinejad by elite institutional leaders. It would be comical if it wasn't so fucking dangerous. And wrong.
Good on Glenn Greenwald, an American Jew who is capable of fellow feeling for people outside of his tribe when they cross swords with it. Who is a human being first, American second and Jew third. Who can see the logical conclusion of the racist and totalitarian culture now dominating official American Jewish life.
And before you can accuse me of antisemitism, let me tell you how thrilled I'd be if Greenwald became Obama's Attorney-General, perhaps with Spitzer helping him clean up Wall St. Nouriel Roubini (an Iranian Jew), with advice from old man Soros, could set up a fair and productive financial architecture for an uncertain future. We could have Stiglitz at the Fed, with Krugman at Treasury, Sachs in the mix somewhere too. Our Phil could be the anti-Fleischer, transparency and grace in place of arrogant opacity…
And then I woke up.
Yes, Glenn, How about he bodies hitting the sidewalk on 9/11. Posters of suicide bombers in Palestinian towns. And in fact i would love to trade videos. And Dershowitz against Khalidi, why not.I think it would be a blast. But let my ask you this. Why is an Austrailian so concerned about the Jewish conspiracy. You got the yellow hordes to worry about down there. Do you not?
Even quicker than usual to change the subject Bill. Your 'yellow hordes' are my Asian brothers and sisters. I'd be happy to marry one, if I wasn't already happily shackled. How would you go with the idea of yourself marrying a lovely Palestinian girl?
We live in a globalised world now Bill, and some issues are more global than others. The very 'success' of Zionism in the pre-eminence of their cadres all over the West is what will seed it's failure. We have an Israel Lobby here too, the goals and methods of which are anathema to what I consider the values that ought to be core to any Australia I want to live in. Just as the women-hating imams can piss off back to where they came from so far as I'm concerned, so can the Israel-first brigade. Neither are compatible with the multiculturalism that has distinguished, until the last decade anyway, Australia's postwar image in the world.
Hey Soggie
Why are you not demanding the release of the tapes the Mossad spies took in Liberty Park while waiting for first impact on the Twin Towers now classifed by our Government. Why don't you care about Psuedojudean terrorism buddy. Who wants to see a tape of a respected Palestinian-AMERICAN respected scholar like Khalidi.
And Phil this just the sort of post that has led to your journalistic diaspora. Don't you remember our interview?
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-with-philip-mondo-weiss.html
SOG could also access the main motive for the 9/11 attack, which was the USA's one-sided support of Israel. Although this has been hidden from the masses, you can get the details via the internet.
Nobody's smearing, that's why McCain referred to Neo-NAZIs and Palin called the objective scholar a Palestinian terrorist.