The reason this blog exists (I often say) is because of something one of my siblings said to me in 2003: "I demonstrated against the Vietnam war, but my Jewish newspaper says this war could be good for Israel." This was shocking to me because my politics began with my academic family's opposition to the Vietnam war. In fact, one of the most formative events of my political life was the day in my 11th year that my mother went to the Quaker meeting in Baltimore that had been attended by Norman Morrison–the Sunday after Morrison burned himself to death on the lawn of the Pentagon to protest the horrors of Vietnam. My mother never went into churches. But expressing solidarity with Norman Morrison and his family was the most important thing in the universe.
My sibling's comment suggested that there was a Jewish interest that overrode even the antiwar spirit in my family culture, and it led me to look into my religious background and the role of Zionism in American Jewish life. I'd avoided looking at Israel/Palestine till then. Now I had to study the way that neoconservatism and its Zionist underpinnings had affected the Jewish liberal presence in American life. Some of the intellectual way-stations for me were: Kenneth Pollack's book, The Threatening Storm, which laid the basis for liberal support for the Iraq war and never once mentioned the Israeli occupation, even vaguely dismissing "violence" in Israel/Palestine as a distraction to Pollack's bold plans to remake an Arab society. And Pollack had backing from a leading Zionist: Haim Saban. Then of course there was Walt and Mearsheimer's paper, mentioning Saban and Pollack, and showing that the neocons had pushed the war out of concern for Israel's security, and that Sharon and Peres had jumped on board. Then I saw war-promoter Bill Kristol dismiss Walt and Mearsheimer as "schmucks" at Yivo and go on crazily about "conspiracy" theories about the neocons without speaking openly of his own Zionism. And lately reading Joe Klein's confession that "Jewish neocons" had sold the war to him as a "benign domino theory" that would serve Israel's interests.
All these people were reading my sibling's Jewish newspaper; and this agenda wasn't known to Americans.
The heart of this blog is the belief that the Iraq war was a disastrous turn for my country in the world, in which it imitated Israel's policy toward the Arab world, of militancy, occupation, arrogance. And from that comes my challenge to American Jewish identity: to come to terms with the Zionist push for this war, and the inherent dual loyalty issue in the Diaspora role in Jewish nationalism, and understand how it has corrupted Jewish tradition, let alone American policymaking.
A few days back, I was not all that surprised to read the piss-poor stand of the "leftwing" Zionist group Meretz on the Iraq war: they refused to take a position, even though they're "the Left." And I asked Ralph Seliger of Meretz–which is an American wing of an Israeli party–whether he had supported the Iraq war. He said,
I had to be one of the few board members at the time who hoped for the
overthrow of Saddam (albeit entirely for humanitarian reasons). But as
I told you in an email some months ago, once the UN Security Council
had voted against military action, I felt that unilateral US-led action
against Iraq was a bad idea. A ruthless, illegitimate regime like
Saddam's Iraq had to be confronted by a UN-endorsed international
coalition or not at all.
Seliger is misrepresenting his position. He didn't just hope. He pushed. He was a vociferous "liberal hawk" supporter of the war, who praised George Bush for his belligerence and compared Saddam to Hitler and Stalin. He was indistinguishable from war-supporters Paul Berman and George Packer in being repulsed by those who demonstrated against the war. And close to Pollack and Bill Kristol in his sense of the moral imperative in invading Iraq that went beyond "humanitarian" reasons.
One of my boustrophedonic fossickers has turned up Seliger's writings for me.
Here's Seliger writing in the New York Sun three months before the invasion (sorry, no link, it's off Factiva), comparing Saddam to Hitler and Stalin, and while mentioning that Bush was seeking a coalition, not saying anything about the UN Security Council:
The liberal case for war rests on two critical pillars: the danger to world peace posed by Saddam's regime and the nature of that regime…
Secretary of State Baker's 1990 reference to Saddam as a "Hitler" during the build-up to Operation Desert Storm was widely ridiculed at the time; he then undermined his own point, as the first President Bush and Mr. Baker voluntarily left this "Hitler" in power at war's end. Although Saddam was only arguably comparable to Hitler, this was not out of a lack of affinity but rather out of his blessedly limited military strength… Domestically, Saddam has ruled Iraq as a latter day Stalin…
Despite himself, extraordinary events have shaped President Bush into a foreign-affairs president and even an internationalist. In fact, the Bush administration and the liberal hawks are almost – though not quite – in sync. It is thanks to Mr. Bush's determined leadership that the United Nations Security Council authorized a renewed and robust inspections mission in Iraq, and he appears to be patiently building a coalition to effectively put an end to Saddam's regime, if and when the time comes.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Bush will have the staying power and the wisdom to entirely reverse his campaign rhetoric and invest substantially in the nation-building that will be required in Iraq, as it is needed now in Afghanistan….
There are clear risks to going to war and the costs to Americans, Israelis, and other friends of America – not to mention innocent Iraqis – may well be high. But critics rarely acknowledge the risks and costs of not eliminating Saddam's monstrous rule. The risks lie with his ongoing development of unconventional weaponry and his penchant to use it.
Not a lot of humanitarianism, just strict national security, and belligerence. A year later, here is Seliger on MidEast Web expressing revulsion at the demonstrators like me who opposed the war:
began this piece as many thousands participated in international
protests for the first year anniversary of the Iraq war. I remember
feeling some disdain, if not revulsion, at the massive anti-war
demonstrations of last year, before hostilities commenced. Didn't they
understand, I reasoned, that these enormous expressions of opposition
to United States and other efforts to rein in Saddam Hussein were acts
of support for his totalitarian tyranny? One of the things that upset
me most, is that in marching against the war before the United Nations Security Council vote, the anti-war protestors opposed any international effort to forcibly end a heinous regime in the name of "peace."
That is, by the way, a complete misrepresentation of what we protesters were saying. We were not supporting Saddam or opposing U.S. efforts to contain him, which were successful. I love the United States nearly as much as Seliger loves Israel and was trying to save it from disaster. In that angry statement, Seliger approaches his employer, the New York Sun, which called for "treason" investigations of us demonstrators. In 2006, on the Meretz site (Cant get the link right now) Seliger celebrates war-drummer Chris Hitchens:
Personally, I'm pleased that Hitchens has broken with the most egregious elements of the isolationist and anti-American left.. [my emphasis; this guy is as bad as any neocon]. I respect his stand regarding Iraq… [T]o me Iraq was, at its worst, a blunder; more precisely, the invasion was a mistake because it failed to persuade a wide international consensus for intervention. [No UN Security Council here, just a wide consensus, which was utterly absent well before I demonstrated in February 2003] It was certainly not a moral shortcoming to overthrow the particularly odious regime of Saddam, but it has been badly handled politically, and badly executed on the ground – allowing an initial period of chaos to descend into a full-blown insurgency spearheaded by Saddamist hardliners and Al-Qaeda-inspired Jihadis.
The usual liberal hawk excuse: that it is possible to do an uninvited occupation well. Ask the Israelis how they're doing. Then last year here Seliger is agreeing with a writer who says that Bush was right to invade Iraq, though he offers the usual qualification:
Although I don't agree 100%, this resonates with me. I was certainly sympathetic to the overthrow of Saddam in principle, and I was happy to see it happen. I wrote an op-ed in The Sun on the liberal case for war with Saddam. But when the US failed to win its case in the UN Security Council, I felt that an invasion without wide international support was a bad idea. The bull-headed US decision to attack in the face of international opposition was a foreshadowing for what would follow. It's the arrogant, ideologically rigid, hypocritical and incompetent nature of the US intervention that was the problem, not the fact that Saddam was removed (that was the good part).
I'd remind you that Seliger wrote for the Sun. The other day, he sniggered at me for writing for a paleo publication, The American Conservative, an association I'm proud of (they're against the war as I am). Seliger said to me, "I'd never expect to be allowed to write for Commentary or the Weekly Standard. " Well actually, you wrote for the Sun. What's the difference? And that is the issue here. What's the difference between a progressive Zionist and a neocon Zionist? How important are the usual political distinctions when it comes to Zionist ideology? Often they are fairly meaningless. Because Seliger reminds me a lot of Doug Feith. Feith has Herzl's portrait on the wall. So I imagine does Seliger. For good emotional reasons in both cases: Feith's father lost his entire family in the Holocaust. Seliger's parents barely escaped the Holocaust thru a circuitous escape. And so they both believe in western anti-semitism. They both believe in the necessity of the Jewish state as a refuge for the Jews. They were both for the Iraq war, and both are trying now to cover up their own ideological commitment to this mess. Seliger has regularly defended the neocons against Walt and Mearsheimer, saying that W&M smeared them by blaming Iraq on them. It was all George Bush. Just what Doug Feith says in his non-mea-culpa book: George Bush did it. And again the point is Seliger is covering for the neocons because he was guilty of the same thing: thinking about Israel's security, out of Holocaust fears. Conflating Saddam and Hitler. How much was he thinking about Israel's security? I don't know. As Seliger's misrepresentation to me demonstrates, he's not transparent. And this is the great damage that the neocons and the Seliger liberal-hawks have done to Jewish identity. By not being honest about an agenda, and by trying to cover it up to this day, when we all know Sumpin was going on, they allow Americans to look at all Jews and ask, Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist? As I have asked on this site. A legitimate question. Some day Yivo will have a panel on what Zionism has done to American Jewish identity, in which American Jewish dual loyalty and the imitation by American policymakers of Israel's militant dead-end policies with the Arab world will be front and center. They are essential issues. And they speak to the terrible corruption among ardent Zionists in this country: their inability to take the lives of 100s of 1000s of Arabs even a fraction as seriously as they take Jewish lives. Their excuse is, The Holocaust. They are psychologically immured in those events of more than 60 years ago, and fail to see the world in front of their nose.
Philip Weiss – Are you arguing that Saddam Hussein was not the equivalent of Hitler to millions of Iraqis?
Define Zionist.
If you believe that the Jews are a people, and support the right of the Jews to a national home, and you are willing to stand up for that right when it is challenged, then you can call yourself a Zionist, whether or not you belong to any organized Zionist group or accept any "official" definition, and whether or not you live in Israel or plan to live in Israel – and whether or not you are Jewish.
"boustrophedonic fossickers". Thanks.;)
Hard to believe. So Ralph is a politician. Never admit more than can be proved.
As it explains his condescension towards Saif.
More evidence of the world wide Jew conspiracy. Lets see you refute this Witty! Hah!
http://www.jewcy.com/gallery/75_most_influential_people_21st_century
Phil
Its important that you watch your own presumptions seep into your writing.
Your anger is self-perpetuating.
If the only inquiry into the politics of the times occurred after your older brother (also a childhood friend of mine) ASKED about the possible consequences of the war, then YOU didn't inquire sufficiently.
The pattern of bashing Zionists did not originate in this blog. When Seliger refers to irritation at the tone of anti-Iraq war demonstration, that rings true to me.
During Vietnam, when the Workers World Party, SWP, RCP, even Yippies, ranted their loopy stuff, I felt irritated them, enough to wait for demonstrations that were more in keeping with my thinking.
Although I agree strongly with much of message of the Seattle IMF demonstrations a few years ago, the actions of too many rancorous fools, caused me irritation as well. Paul Hawken and Starhawk were not a sober enough balance to counteract the "anarchists" there.
I take Seliger at his word that he was discussing the occupation and its likely consequences, and REJECT your Sunday-morning quarterback litmus-testing.
You conflate Israel's role in the war, and then layer a conspiracy over that original over-significance. You sound to me like a rapture devotee, that regards Israel as the prophetic center of all history.
It just ain't so.
And, it is legitimate for your brother and Ralph to consider the prospective effects of an action.
That Saddam had used chemical agents on those that Iraq was at war with (in GRAVE violation of international law), and that Iraq did shell Israeli cities during the first Gulf War, supports aspects of the neo-conservative thesis and goals.
That Ralph identified that the goals were unlikely to be achievable is a rational counter to the thesis, and is NOT sanction of the thesis.
MANY that you quote frequently cited opposition to the war in Iraq ON the basis of it not likely to be feasible, to likely result in a quagmire, NOT on the basis that it is wrong (though most expressed severe criticism of the doctrine of unilateral aggression).
While from armchairs, the US invasion looks like Israeli pre-emptive aggression, which may be valid with a high confidence of assessment of actual risk; it wasn't parallel in fact.
The prospect that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was at most a speculation (not all that different than your ranting speculations). And, the prospect that Iraq would have a means and will to use them was a second speculation.
There was NO imminent danger to the US, or by any rational intelligence, to Israel.
It was solely unfinished business. Why invade Iraq? "Because we can".
You are right to insist that politicians ask the question "should we?". (I'm not actually hearing that insistence from you.)
I wish I heard some positive (and I don't mean "what you like about Israel"). I mean some goal, some proposal and some choice, then agitation.
You sound like Abbie Hoffman now. (My mother used to babysit for him, did you know that. We actually met Abbie's sister in Falmouth one summer.)
What exactly has the average American gained from the Bush Jr preemptive policy, intrusive Patriot Act, Homeland Security funding, and torture policies that appear to copy Israel's ? They are the ones paying a disproportionate price, both in terms of taxes and dead and forever maimed bodies.
Anon – I think you're on to something buddy. Bush Jr. was elected despite the vast majority of these evil conniving jews voting for him, and with a supreme court made up of almost entirely non-jews putting him in power. Clearly this was a jewish conspiracy. Why, those crafty jews were so clever they made it so that a Jewish VP candidate and a majority vote weren't enough to keep Bush(stein) out of office. Brilliant!
I encourage you to pursue your line of investigation here so that we can help Phil help us genaralize about all jews (sans Phil and Joachim of course)and get on with what needs to be done. Ahem. You know what I mean.
Carry on!
Not to mention the World hates them for being hypocritical, not realizing they've been kept in ignorance by all 4 branches of government–because this nation use to have an operative free press that was the light to the World.
Bush Jr. was elected despite the vast majority of these evil conniving jews NOT voting for him
a tiny jew got in the way of my typing the truth. Just like them.
I don't think there's been a conspiracy. I do think the factual aggregate, to the extent one can piece it together despite a crimp by
blackout of Freedom Of Information Act data in the bloated name of
"national security" would reveal that special interests beyond the general national interest, and indeed, against it, have turned out nation into something that cares not one iota for "Joe Sixpack"–except to lure him or her into being a grunt to die for aspirations and lives beyond his ken–not due to his or her lack of IQ, but lack of information. In boilerplate short, all Joe wants is freedom to be on the moral right side when he dies–a plus would be some college education he cannot afford–he's been added up and abused to the max. Am I wrong?
"They are essential issues. And they speak to the terrible corruption among ardent Zionists in this country: their inability to take the lives of 100s of 1000s of Arabs even a fraction as seriously as they take Jewish lives."
I don't think they take American Gentile lives all that seriously, either.
It would be interesting to be a proverbial fly on the wall if an average IDF grunt and his peer in the US Army were posited by dire circumstances next to each other in a foxhole.
One is simply conscripted. The other economically conscripted, except some of those USA grunts are true believers too.
How does the average W2 German soldier differ from these two men?
Of course you're not wrong my friend. The factul aggregate clearly indicates that these evil jews have been hoodwinking us good gentiles for the last 60 years and we ain't gonna take it any longer. I AM JOE SIX PACK, and all I really want to do is die for a good cause and have a BA and some memories when I do so. These conniving jews are keeping me from doing that.
They elected Bush Jr, er, well you know what I mean, and now they have run the world into the ground over their precious little Israel.
Bastards made me run up my credit card as well. Am I wrong?
Yes, you are. Nobody made you run up your credit card but you, for example.
Recall Seliger's claim from the recent Oct 7 posting on this board 'Seliger Speaks of the 'Oppression' of Palestinians…'
"Even I, who wanted to see a murderous dictator overthrown for the sake of the Iraqis themselves, came to see the invasion as a bad idea even before it happened."
When queried about whether he could verify this, Seliger responded:
"I published nothing expressing this view before the invasion. Since I'm not a high-profile writer, and this was before the Meretz USA Weblog began, you'll just have to take my word on this"
Weiss’ deconstruction of Seliger just demonstrated why one should never take the word of a Zionist on ANY issue, let alone one related to Israel.
It's been shown repeatedly that America's gentile overlords view Joe Six-Pack as nothing more than a tax-slave and potential meat for the grinder. Does the average American fare any worse under Zionists than under Northeastern WASPs? I'm not sure that you can make a case that he does.
And what kind of name is Joe Six-Pack, anyway? I don't even like beer.
Mr. Seliger's comments prior to the war appear to be rather measured and by no means a strong endorsement to go to war. Many found the anti-war protestors (ANSWER)to be problematic, even if they agreed with the position that going into Iraq was not a wise thing to do.
The refusal to really address and discuss the key issues on both sides was disturbing and definitely didn't win over many thoughtful folks to either side.
Many an Arab Muslim was celebrating in Dearborne after the invasion. What are we to make of their dual loyalty?
Nice witch hunt.
What is the difference between anti-zionist and an anti-semite?
About the same as that between a neocon and liberal zionist?
This post seems actually quite defensive Phil. I'm sure your commenters will make you feel more secure.
Conspiracy? What conspiracy? A conspiracy is secret by definition.
This is out in the open.
I agree with the accusation of Phil of witch hunting.
It bothers me that you think so condemingly of your family, friends, colleagues.
I would expect you to respect their measuring of issues, their/our inquiry into multiple aspects of issues, yet still making informed and convincing decision.
Your brother ASKED. Ralph ASKED. Weighed. Thought.
Maybe when it came to actual communication in the real world to those that would be influenced by their comments, they were MORE EFFECTIVE at convincing a non-litmus person of the reasons to not go to war.
You could easily pick similar quotes of mine to conclude that "I supported the war."
But, it would in fact be utter bullshit.
What does that make you Phil?
An interrogator?
Thank you for this post, Phil.
I really appreciate having your blog as a resource that helps illuminate the world and make sense of it.
I'm serious.
BTW, I just had a discussion with an Australian national who to this day has no idea why Prime Minister Howard committed his country to join the invasion of Iraq.
Millions protested against the invasion throughout Australia, including multitudes in Sydney, yet they were ignored.
Why? Can you help explain this, too, Phil? Is the case the same as in the US, or different?
"Seliger is misrepresenting his position. He didn't just hope. He pushed. He was a vociferous "liberal hawk" supporter of the war."
Tsk, tsk, tsk. Who would have ever thunk it?
(Thank God there's still Richard Witty to serve as an example to young "progressive Zionists.")
I would just like to add, in Mr. Seliger's defense, that there is no doubt in my mind that he actually BELIEVES that he tried to stop the war. Just as I'm sure that Richard Witty has also convinced himself that he "vigorously opposed" wars against Israel's rivals.
The Judeofascist will never be "reasoned" out of their malice, which is so deeply embedded in their psyches that it has produced multiple tumors. The cancer will have to by physically cut out and flushed, or sooner or later it is going to kill the entire patient, if the patient isn't eliminated by gentiles first in a legitimate act of self-defense.
Posted by: Ed | October 08, 2008 at 12:43 PM
Phil – What exactly is your commenter advocating for here?
Ed,
Your comment reads to me as a direct incitement to violence against the Judeofascists.
YOU may consider it a figure of speech. Some jerk, or politician can turn this into action.
They can do it easily. Look at war in Iraq: All this talk about cancer and before you know it, invasion, half a million people dead and several million turned into refugees.
Incitement to violence carries consequences to humans whether they are Judeofascists or Iraqis. This is a point Phil is making. Do you want to end up in the same category as people who have blood on their hands not from branding knifes or bayonets but by branding pen (or a keyboard)?
Surely Judaism is at a cross roads.
The ahorrent neocon fascism and the multiple war crimes.
The financial crisis, and apartheid etc….
Yes it was Viet Nam that shaped me tooo
Ed, who is one of the most valuable commenters here, does sometime seem to have an addiction to anger.
Without anger nothing can change, but it can also become an end in itself.
The solution is quite simple and involves absolutely no violence:
Use Federal Reserve Notes as little as possible.
I’m not advocating some blind hacking of innocent Jews. To clarify my comment, I first distinguish between Jews and Judeofascists, and then I advocate surgical removal of their cancerous ideas before they spark blowback against all Jews who have been seduced by Judeofascism, which given its advanced rhetorical, propaganda and guilting techniques and system, and its shameless willingness to impose hysterical, overwrought personal appeals on the Jewish people, is an understandable failing. (Many gentiles have succumbed as well, as has virtually the entirety of the two-party regime.) Perhaps I should have written ‘if the (Judeofascist) patient isn't eliminated by gentiles first in a “legitimate” act of self-defense,’ meaning, as Eva Smagacz suggested, plausible arguments can be made by demagogues that there is no other way but to wipe out the entirety of Judeofascism.
But if I was truly some kind of murderous Communist or Nazi, I would be lined up with either the Democrats or Republicans, who as we speak, are instigating the blind hacking of innocent Muslims and Arabs in the Mideast, and are toying with instigating the blind hacking of Persians, and have subsidized the blind hacking of Palestinians for decades.
If even one tenth of all those Americans who are always oh-so-worried about the plight of Jews had given even a second thought to the plight of the Arabs, we wouldn't be where we are today.
Why is the six-pointed star on the back of the dollar bill?
The six-pointed star wasn't specified in the original design of the Great Seal.
I remember feeling some disdain, if not revulsion, at the massive anti-war demonstrations of last year, before hostilities commenced. Didn't they understand, I reasoned, that these enormous expressions of opposition to United States and other efforts to rein in Saddam Hussein were acts of support for his totalitarian tyranny? One of the things that upset me most, is that in marching against the war before the United Nations Security Council vote, the anti-war protestors opposed any international effort to forcibly end a heinous regime in the name of "peace."
That is, by the way, a complete misrepresentation of what we protesters were saying. We were not supporting Saddam or opposing U.S. efforts to contain him, which were successful. I love the United States nearly as much as Seliger loves Israel and was trying to save it from disaster. In that angry statement, Seliger approaches his employer, the New York Sun, which called for "treason" investigations of us demonstrators.
In the last several posts the question of what is truly being advocated arises…it is unclear what Ed is actually discussing and needs clarification. I suspect that he is saying that the likes of Witty, Seliger, Feith etc cannot be reasoned with. Beyond that, it is not clear.
It is clear however, that Seliger, Cheney, Witty, Perle and Frum and the likes of those fellows considered many antiwar
activists and activities treasonous. Dissent was not appreciated and dissent with action was detested.
I remind everyone that 2 days before she was killed by the IDF, Rachel Corrie gave a press conference in which she stated that she questioned how Bush could call Sharon a a man of peace and that Sharon cared little for his people and not at all for the Palestinian people. This press conference was broadcast over Arab T.V. two days later (the same day that Cheney went on the Sunday talk circuit announcing the impending war – March 16, 2003) she was dead. Shaden Abu Hijleh was murdered by the IDF in Oct. 2002. She was a leader/powerful speaker against the occupation and was leading a weekly march to deliver flowers to the feet of the IDF. She was an activist. The IDF pulled up in front of her very upper middle class house, sat there an inordinately long time, and then shot 14 bullets at her. Her son has no doubt in his mind that they knew exactly who they were targeting. In neither case, was there a credible investigation done even though the U.S. State Dept, U. S. President and some members of Congress have supposedly strongly requested of the Israelis that such occur in both Rachel's and Shaden's cases. My question is that in much the same way Ed's entry could be construed to be incitement to violence, was the "enemy of the state" tag placed on Rachel and Shaden by those in power….
For all the sympathy I feel for my fellow warriors against zion, I have to draw the line at celebrating Rachel Corrie. Anyone who's spent anytime among progressive upper-middle class circles knows her type. She would have lied down in front of a tractor to stop the INS from stopping illegal immigrants in New Mexico (As she encouraged others to do). Palestine was her cause for reasons that have everything to do with her ex boyfriend (against whom she sought revenge) and, of course, mommy and daddy.
We stretch the limits of credulity by pretending we care about cunts like her.
Ed shoudn't worry about judeofacists. History shows every extreme form of political judaism is bound to be very kind to the people who allow it to grow in their backyards.
And Phil, since you have forgotten to tell us how fares the lady dog, I send you greetings from Joe-almost-packed-six-feet-under.
PS: the american crisis has brought the monkeys hope that the vanishing retirement pension of the PAZ-JEW will make him stay very much active till the end of his days. After that, when we are at last all dead (well, at least those of us who can die) we will spend our days in Hades watching dead women's hockey (pity some guys will never see it) and eating bananas fresh from the Stix delta.
"the conflict has always been a two-way dialectic of violence, which the Palestinians fatefully initiated at a massive level when they launched a total war against the Yishuv in 1947 rather than accept partition. The Nakba was a direct result of this war, and would not have happened without it."
Ralph Seliger
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1432
Such beauty.
"Why would Israel act so obviously against its national interest to risk alienating the only world power that was still in its corner after France had abruptly ended its alliance with the Jewish state?"
Ralph Seliger on the USS Liberty. He has no kind words for Israel Shahak.
http://www.forward.com/article/4426/
"By not being honest about an agenda, [neocons] allow Americans to look at all Jews and ask, Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist?"
Exactly. Way back in Balfour Declaration days, anti-zionist Jews argued that a Jewish state would cast all Jews under the pall of "dual loyalty" suspicions. They were right.
Although such suspicions cannot be voiced in our controlled press, they are widespread.
If not for the state of Israel, the desire of most Jews to be regarded as just another, unexceptional religious denomination in a diverse America would have long since been realized. But heavy-handed manipulation of the US political system to milk it of lavish aid to Israel has left a deep undercurrent of unvoiced resentment. Since the Mainstream Media participates in this campaign, it has lost its credibility. Politically, the results have been disastrous, as the feckless official responses to our current predicament underscore.
Zionism isn't merely dishonest; it's dangerous and corrosive to civil society. Keep whacking the zionist dissemblers, Phil. Every time Witty yelps "utter bullshit" (as he did above), you have improved the world.
Thanks for that link, Joshua.
It fleshes out another aspect of Mr. Seliger that we've only seen glimpses of here.
Of all the things wrong with the world, is too open a discussion of Israel really the most pressing?
Thanks for the link Joshua. It is another piece that shows Seliger to be a decent man who is seriously interested in finding a resolution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. The disrespect and disgust with which Seliger has been shown in this blog and in these comments makes the rest of your arguments easy to ignore. Emotional thinking is a reality of life, but not often a useful guide.
Ralph, if you even bother to read these disgusting commentaries, please know that those of us who are genuinely committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians come to an agreement that optimizes the opportunities for both people, are highly appreciative of your work and that of Meretz and Mertetz USA. We know that you have been fighting the good fight for many years and Olmert's statements the other week are strong indicators that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Ironically, while not a particularly strong zionist myself (too conflicted), reading Phil's blog and the commenters here makes me appreciate zionism all the more.
Appreciation is not a requisite of cooperation.
Thank you for this post Phil.
I agree with Chuck D. Reading this blog and its commentators makes me appreciate my Jewishness and my Israeli identity.
Don't forget to read Joshua's second link to Seliger's past work. It's even better than the CampusWatch piece–
A Worrying Inquiry Into Israeli Influence
By Ralph Seliger, Oct 29, 2004
It's a review of James Bamford's "Pretext for War." Seliger calls Bamford a pernicious conspiracy theorist with a fixed agenda to blame Israel. And 9/11 had NOTHING to do with Arab anger at Israel.
Reading this blog and its commentators makes me appreciate my American identity. That is to say, I see I have no other being born and raised here in the USA and being of Irish-German ethnic heritage.
Seliger's linked article bashing a very courageous American completely ignores the facts surrounding the abnormally short investigation and quick cover-up by Johnson and McCain et al of the murder of American boys on the USS Liberty.
Mazel tov, Phil. I think you've finally nailed Ralph. I always knew there was something fishy about the guy intellectually & politically. I don't know how Meretz USA allows him to do whatever it is that he does for them.
The N.Y. Sun? Really. Who will he write for now that the Sun has slunk off into oblivion? I doubt American Conservative would have him. They at least like their writers to be consistent & not intellectual/political charlatans.
A lot of us who are fans of "real history" have been saying the "the Jews" are a myth created by the zionist for a long time. Now a jewish historian says it also…and offers proof. The idea of "jews as a people, a nationality" deserving their own country is something none of us who look at history find any evidence of…it's a modern invention, a cult that sweep the Jews into the zionist delusion. Judism was a religion, it was never a nation or a kingdom..that's all folks. Thruout history people joined, left, opted in and out of Judism just as they did in other religions and probably becuase of where they lived or the times they found themselves in ..there really is no such thing as a jewish nationality, jews are only people who take/took up Judism as a religion.
Idea of a Jewish people invented, says historian
by Jonathan Cook
No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel's bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel's biggest taboo.
Dr. Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.
An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial.
In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today's Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country's conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.
The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling so fast that it has already had three print runs.
Translations are under way into a dozen languages, including Arabic and English. But he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched by his English publisher, Verso, in the United States next year.
In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument. Tom Segev, one of the country's leading journalists, has called the book "fascinating and challenging."
Surprisingly, Dr. Sand said, most of his academic colleagues in Israel have shied away from tackling his arguments. One exception is Israel Bartal, a professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, Dr. Bartal made little effort to rebut Dr. Sand's claims. He dedicated much of his article instead to defending his profession, suggesting that Israeli historians were not as ignorant about the invented nature of Jewish history as Dr. Sand contends.
The idea for the book came to him many years ago, Dr. Sand said, but he waited until recently to start working on it. "I cannot claim to be particularly courageous in publishing the book now," he said. "I waited until I was a full professor. There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort."
Dr. Sand's main argument is that until little more than a century ago, Jews thought of themselves as Jews only because they shared a common religion. At the turn of the 20th century, he said, Zionist Jews challenged this idea and started creating a national history by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion.
Equally, the modern Zionist idea of Jews being obligated to return from exile to the Promised Land was entirely alien to Judaism, he added.
"Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade them from returning until the messiah came."
The biggest surprise during his research came when he started looking at the archaeological evidence from the biblical era.
"I was not raised as a Zionist, but like all other Israelis I took it for granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea and that they were exiled by the Romans in 70AD.
"But once I started looking at the evidence, I discovered that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were legends.
"Similarly with the exile. In fact, you can't explain Jewishness without exile. But when I started to look for history books describing the events of this exile, I couldn't find any. Not one.
"That was because the Romans did not exile people. In fact, Jews in Palestine were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their lands."
Instead, he believes an alternative theory is more plausible: the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. "Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God."
So if there was no exile, how is it that so many Jews ended up scattered around the globe before the modern state of Israel began encouraging them to "return"?
Dr. Sand said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, Judaism was a proselytizing religion, desperate for converts. "This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time."
Jews traveled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe.
Dr. Sand pointed to the strange state of denial in which most Israelis live, noting that papers offered extensive coverage recently to the discovery of the capital of the Khazar kingdom next to the Caspian Sea.
Ynet, the website of Israel's most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, headlined the story: "Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital." And yet none of the papers, he added, had considered the significance of this find to standard accounts of Jewish history.
One further question is prompted by Dr. Sand's account, as he himself notes: if most Jews never left the Holy Land, what became of them?
"It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel's first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area's original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam."
Dr. Sand attributed his colleagues' reticence to engage with him to an implicit acknowledgement by many that the whole edifice of "Jewish history" taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards.
The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Dr. Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.
"There's no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities. Only history is taught in this way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish history to live in a very insular and conservative world where they are not touched by modern developments in historical research.
"I've been criticized in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world."
Richard S,
Why are you trashing Meretz?
Why isn't your criticism just that, criticism?
Witty, why don't you move to Israel? No goy there to haul the trash?
"Anonymous".
I collect compost from my neighbors, mostly goys.
We're peers.
A tough role to live up to, to respect and be respected.
Will you try it? It means no demeaning of Jews for example. Accepting, respecting.
You've NEVER heard me demean "goys" here. That is your self-talk.
Whether Ralph is the most effective advocate or not is an open question.
The principle of progressive Zionism however, is the most rational approach to achieving optimal self-governance and social welfare in the region.
It will result in a good neighbor in relation to a good neighbor.
Rather than civil war or tyrrany of a slight majority (if either Zionist or Palestinian nationalist, or sharia is legislated by the majority).
An ideology of anti-Zionism (that doesn't stop after the just reconciliation of Palestine to Israel politically), results in continued hatred, persecutorial.