Last night in an interview, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC tried to get Obama to criticize the Republican Party, and he wouldn't. Obama's playing for Republicans now.
It's time to identify a central characteristic of this great politician: his ambiguity. Obama is neither black nor white, he is neither progressive nor conservative, indeed even his sexuality can seem ambiguous. His femininity is part of his enormous charm. Look how lithe he is next to masculine McCain. Ambiguity has served Obama very well indeed. For instance, he alienated no one at Harvard Law School–the stories are always about him engaging a group of people in a spirited discussion of issues, and giving nothing away, never taking a stand. Despite the famous woodshed moment on the Senate floor with Joe Lieberman after Lieberman attacked him, I bet he hasn't burned that bridge either.
Obamaguity–I need to coin this–is a big issue for us on the left. We want Obama to be a leader not a pol; we want him to be the Reagan of the left. And, in my little camp, we want him to be the savior of the Palestinians' right to self-determination. He gives us very mixed signals. He used to be Rashid Khalidi's friend. I'm sure he knows the Palestinian narrative, and not just from eating Mona Khalidi's hummus. Now Obama's thrown Khalidi under the bus.
I derive some faith about Obama's ambiguity from a book my wife is reading: Adam Nicolson's Quarrel With the King, which describes the rise of the upstart Pembroke family in England in the 16th century, before they took on the king.
For a century, from about 1540 onward, this family maintained a long, simmering quarrel with the king, one that flickered across the decades, part opposition, part seduction, part manipulation, and part denial. Only, finally, in the 1640s did it erupt in civil war… At different times [the Pembrokes] both threatened the crown and acted as its bruisingly efficient and violent agents. These were rebels not to be found plotting in a dimly lit garret but either dancing in the candlelit halls and delicious arbors of royal pleasure or actually commanding royal armies… They were, in other words, highly ambivalent figures…[T]he quarrel itself was never quite absent but only rarely showed its fully nked face. It could be said that this book is a study in the ambiguity necessarily involved in the exercise and maintenance of power and status. [my emphasis]
No one has had to teach Obama these lessons. He knows them in his dislocated fatherless Kenyan-Pacific bones. He is no rebel in a garret, he has always danced in the candlelit halls. And so I wonder if he is not deeply involved now in a quarrel with Jewish power in America/the Israel lobby. At AIPAC he seduced. He pandered on Jerusalem and praised the long-ago Jewish martyrs of the civil rights movement. Even though he knows what Avrum Burg knows: "American Jews today are no longer part of the minority coalition
with African Americans and Hispanics and the rest of the domestic
coalition in the struggle for American justice and liberties." He needs Jewish power, he courts it, he derives strength from it (as the Pembrokes rose on the backs of the king). But some day he will also turn on it.
Related posts:
- On Israel, Rahm Emanuel Is to the Right of George Bush (and the Paleos)
- Canard? Zionism fostered suspicion among other Americans that Jews in public life feel a duty to put Israel’s interests first
- The Royal Road to Neconservatism
- Obama Just Acts Brainwashed to Hold on to the Lieberman Democrats
- Rahm Emanuel’s Father’s Racist Comments Now Poking Into Mainstream Media
{ 50 comments }
"For instance, he alienated no one at Harvard Law School"
He alienated my cousin Grant. Ask him next time you see him.
The Obamessiah is a self-confessed "blank screen" upon which gullible intellectuals have projected endless amounts of fantasy.
He is, in fact, nothing more than a quintessential product of the Chicago Machine with boundless ambition and few,if any, scruples; how well he has absorbed the
teachings of Alinsky, the left's own Machiavelli!
Phil, since in many ways you are not a fool, I have always been somewhat puzzled by your enthusiasm for Obama. Yes, the man is a pol. He wouldn't have risen so far so fast if he wasn't. He is very good at tacking against the wind. We'll have to wait and see whether he's actually any good at anything else. It looks like we will have the chance.
I disagree with your analysis.
You speak as a radical, and by that I mean that you are primarily critical, and disrespect the SKILL of mediation as if it were cooptation or betrayal.
Its not. Obama is doing EXACTLY what he is committed to, reconciliation, healing.
If you've ever experienced any therapy that includes respectfully hearing both sides, NOT buying either sides conclusions, but valuing the experience as persons' experience, and as information.
The radical approach makes that reconciliation process difficult if not entirely stopped.
Its the reason that Obama distances himself from radicals and radical process, even as he learns from the narratives and the persons.
The list of things that are objected to, add up to no intersection.
In the case of Israel/Palestine, a blaming approach (even if accurate), results in ONLY a pendulum swing from one injustice to another.
The art is to tell one's own story, so that it is heard, not to demean the others.
In Israel/Palestine, BOTH dominant story lines are accurate and relevant. To pick only one, is the wrong one.
To get to justice, it takes valuing the two simultaneiously.
Are you up for that? Or is cops and robbers, the McCainian/Bushian comic book polarity, the only possibility?
Khalidi did NOT invalidate the Zionist story. He explained that it was incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete.
The Palestinian nationalist, nakba-only, story is also incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete.
Despite the fact that I have already sent in my absentee vote for Nader, and I take every opportunity to try to inform Obama people of how he has voted in the past, I must admit there is a part of me that feels a glimmer of hope that what Phil says is true.
Of course, if Obama sways too far from his masters, won't he be risking his life?
I posted this before, but I'll put the link up again here, because I think it's important for people to know:
"On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask "What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return "What’s that?” Or if I say, "You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, "No he doesn’t.”
At what point will there be INTELLECTUAL HONESTY about what is happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be…"
http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/10/29/what-do-they-have-to-do/
Richard, i agree with you about the nakba-only story. it is "prospectively criminally incomplete." excellent phrase. as you suggest, a narrative can be misapplied. I enjoin the palestinian narrative as a corrective to a narrative that HAS been applied and that is NOT PROSPECTIVELY CRIMINALLY incomplete, but Is ALREADY criminally incomplete: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian lands.
So will I ride the Palestinian horse all the way into the gates of the city? No. I don't want any people pushed into the sea. Phil
"The Palestinian nationalist, nakba-only, story is also incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete."
How would anyone know Richard? The majority of Americans don't know what the Nakba is. But everyone knows about Jewish suffering. We've heard it all ad nauseum. You are absolutely amazing when you write this stuff. It's as if you honestly believe that the two narratives share equal billing. When Palestinians are owners of media, editors of The NY Times and WaPo, movie writers and producers, etc. – when that situation comes to pass, THEN the arguments you make will have merit. Until such time, it's all nonsense.
"Khalidi did NOT invalidate the Zionist story. He explained that it was incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete."
Richard, something that is qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally, IS BY DEFINITION invalidated. Stop using fancy word play which says nothing and keeps the status quo intact.
You ignore the important point that BOTH narratives are accurate and valid.
I wish you enjoined the Palestinian narrative as an antidote. I sense that in your flirtation with anti-Zionism you adopt it as a spur, not a healing.
The narrative of Jewish refugees of REAL genocide (not dislocation), cursed and beaten on their return to hometowns in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary; prohibited from emigration to Great Britain, US; is real.
They returned to a community that welcomed them, NOT pariahs for surviving.
WE deserve a home, and if it means taking it, that is justice.
When my son and I built a sukkah a few weeks ago, we cut the branches of some evergreen trees. We thanked each tree for giving its branches.
The most enlightened of Americans THANK the Indians for accepting new neighbors (even as Indians did not accept them willingly).
The most enlightened of Israelis THANK Palestinians for doing the same.
They DON'T apologize for living though, or for living as community, or for living as nation.
There are 100 people with megaphones shouting an untrue story to the masses, one so untrue that it is criminal. They have been shouting this story, through their megaphones, for decades, to the point where now it has become a part of the collective consciousness of the masses they continue to shout it to.
There are 5 people, victims of this crime, who are trying to tell their side of the story. They have no megaphones, and due to the criminality of the first narrative, they are looked upon by the masses as unworthy, not to be trusted, dangerous. Their words are barely audible in the midst of the 100 megaphones, and what does get through is more often than not misunderstood by the masses because their reality has been shaped for so long by the people with the megaphones.
By Richard's logic, both narratives are on equal ground.
Invalidation is comic book, Higgins.
Suitably binary, appealing to over-simplists.
By the same logic that Phil urges Jews to not vote for Obama because they won't get to influence him when he becomes president (twisted logic in a thousand ways), when you vote for Nader or Barr or whomever, you will be taking the equivalent of the chasidic commitment, to voluntarily isolate yourself in your own small circle.
I instead suggest that you DO vote for Obama, as he is the CHOICE for president, no nose-holding.
I don't think that voting for him buys influence. Even you.
Vote for him.
"There are 100 people with megaphones shouting an untrue story to the masses"
What "untrue" story is that?
The neo-conservative story is held by a small proportion of Jews, if that is what you are referring to.
That is not 100, that is a few, only empowered for the absence of skillful alternative.
That you and Phil choose to condemn rather than propose alternative, keeps it the same.
There is NO US isolation. There is only different methods and character of involvement.
Same as "Jewish power". There is no voluntary universal individual ethnic renunciation. There is moral choice, learning, HOW to use and be in power.
"WE deserve a home, and if it means taking it, that is justice.
When my son and I built a sukkah a few weeks ago, we cut the branches of some evergreen trees. We thanked each tree for giving its branches.
The most enlightened of Americans THANK the Indians for accepting new neighbors (even as Indians did not accept them willingly).
The most enlightened of Israelis THANK Palestinians for doing the same.
They DON'T apologize for living though, or for living as community, or for living as nation."
The above comment says about as much as I need to know about you, Richard. It's frankly disgusting, and I understand now (although I won't condone it) how some people can say that Zionists are less than human. Utterly disgusting.
I feel persecuted, and I feel like everyone is against me, and truthfully, many people are. But, at the same time, there are people who are here to help me as well. I'm tired, poor, and hungry. Rather than reach out to the people who are here to help me in the midst of my persecution, I'm going to go it alone, because I'm unique. So, I'm going to rob and kill somebody. But I'll be sure to thank them as I do it.
If we were not desparate, not in genuine need, your repulsion would be rational.
In the period that Zionism became relevant, Jews survived the holocaust, and were made permanent hated refugees in Europe.
Its the difference between an action that is necessity and an action that is only by choice (and greed).
Your repulsion says something to me as well. It says that you are an individual that will ignore need, ignore desparation, instead picking an ideological side, a selective description of justice.
The present is different than that past. It is different in that Israel has enough now. It need not expand. It does NEED enough, and safely.
And, as there are ways to accommodate a Palestine that is enough and viable, it should.
But, it should not suicide.
If you think that YOUR presence wherever you live did not include the same moral choices, then you are deluded.
"when you vote for Nader or Barr or whomever, you will be taking the equivalent of the chasidic commitment, to voluntarily isolate yourself in your own small circle.
I instead suggest that you DO vote for Obama, as he is the CHOICE for president, no nose-holding. "
I already voted for Nader, and I resent any suggestion that I'm merely voting against something rather than for something. First of all, there's nothing wrong with voting against something. If I don't agree with how Obama has voted in the past, who he surrounds himself with, and how I feel he will act in the future based on these facts, then I'm going to vote against him. I voted for Nader because I voted my conscience. Electoral politics isn't all about who wins and loses a given election. Anyway, I thought you were more concerned with social solutions to problems rather than political ones. Obama represents a political "solution" much more than does Nader, who encourages grassroots activism (more so than giving it lip service like Obama) and who isn't part of a huge political machine. Again, you seem to contradict yourself, Richard.
Incidentally, it is enlightening that you haven't ever addressed the votes Obama has made in the past and the overall spinelessness of the entire Democratic party. I have posted specifics time and again, and I never get any meaningful response, just vague pronouncements like "idealist" and "looks very presidential." I'm convinced Obama will maintain status quo, and I sense you're ok with the status quo, so I'm not surprised.
Posted by: Richard Witty | October 31, 2008 at 02:00 PM
>>>>>
Jews like you are hated for good reason…the reasons are on display in everything you say here.
You are sick beyond repair.
richard witty's comments about thanking the palestinians for taking their country is so repulsive i will never forget it. it says it all…
"When my son and I built a sukkah a few weeks ago, we cut the branches of some evergreen trees. We thanked each tree for giving its branches."
Did you film this? I'd kinda like to see how that's done.
Are you comparing Palestinian suffering to evergreen branches? That's interesting.
I also like the typical Zionist talk of the American Indian in order to remind us that Zionists are Americans only when it's convenient, and whatever they do is justified by America's shortcomings. Thanks, Richard.
Witty wishes you to expire from his knife in your back with a prayer for your killer. What Witty wishes is exactly NAZI.
Or, rather pirated Ashke-NAZI.
"For a century, from about 1540 onward, this family maintained a long, simmering quarrel with the king, one that flickered across the decades, part opposition, part seduction, part manipulation, and part denial."
This could also describe the Jewish relationship to their Christian host societies.
So we've got an ambiguous response to an ambiguous force. My head hurts.
There are myriad examples of peoples who have been desperate over the years who haven't resorted to what the Zionists did to the Palestinians.
"Its the difference between an action that is necessity and an action that is only by choice (and greed)."
The only choice was to ethnically cleanse Palestine? Come on Richard, even you don't believe that.
"Your repulsion says something to me as well. It says that you are an individual that will ignore need, ignore desparation, instead picking an ideological side, a selective description of justice."
Richard, you're the ideologue here, not me. Zionism is an ideology, a racist, Jewish supremacist one, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and systemic genocide of Palestinians is a result of this ideology, not the desperation of the oppressed Jews of Europe, many of whom were left to die by the Zionist movement so that it could accomplish its mission. If that's not ideological, I don't know what is.
"My sympathy (for Jewish persecution) does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?" -Gandhi
"Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye." -Isaac Asimov
If Witty had been born in Bolshevik Russia, he would have gone to work for the Communists as a propagandist rationalizing the historical necessity of the government's mass murder of millions of Christian peasants, Cossacks and dissidents. Instead, he was born in Zionist-occupied America, and so he has gone to work rationalizing Zionism's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on behalf for the Jewish state in Palestine and on behalf of the diaspora Nation of Zion in the US.
As Soviet history shows, the current Palestinian and Arab plight in the Mideast at the hands of Judeofascists is just the tip of the iceburg of what the Nation of Zion has planned for them, and plans to use the US for. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Jewish Zionist agents like Witty in the US, and virtually all of them are of a similar mindset with a similar world view, or worse. These are incredibly dangerous people, because they beleive that no matter what they do or how many they kill, or arrange to have killed, it is all totally justified, and always will be.
By Witty's logic, it would be just fine to undo 40+ years of immigration and to send Zionists on aliyah as long as we thank them all on their way out. I just love Witty's sensitive side. I almost think he's joking.
I think Phil misreads Obama's intentions. Phil assumes he is just sucking up to Jewish power, until he no longer needs it, whereupon he will turn on it, as the Pembrokes apparently did in England. Phil calls it Obamaguity.
I think Obama is all about nuance and empathy, and, I hope, a different set of intentions. Obama is perhaps the all time champion listener. He gains trust and credibility by listening deeply to opposing sides, checking and enforcing his listening ability by then summarizing and restating each speaker's views more eloquently than the speaker had been able to express them, thus establishing that he "gets" that person's views.
This is a very important talent for mediating disputes. Once this groundwork is established, he can in his own mind, or on a piece of paper or chalk board, articulate opposing interests, find whatever common ground there is, then imagine and pursue processes for building consensus around either a trade off on the areas of disagreement, or introduce other forms of compensation to defuse or repair perceptions of harm. Through such processes, he can isolate and disempower the radicals, hate-mongers, fear-mongers, terrorists, bitter-enders, those who are inclined to resolve small problems by "going huge" as Rumsfeld/Cheney famously blundered, or blowing things up spectacularly as terrorists do.
I see him as having the potential to be the World Mediator in Chief – the Obamediator, if you will. I think it is wrong to project onto him a motivation to prevaricate and suck up to power, while concealing an ambition to turn on those in power as soon as he is able. Phil once said he had known thousands of "frogs," those who kiss up and kick down. I have only known a few, and I do not believe this is a universal behavior pattern, and in fact, it is a very self-limiting leadership style. I do not think that it is consistent with the finest traditions of American leadership, which includes our founders' views that power corrupts and needs to be controlled by checks and balances. I personally see Obama as likely to use his exceptional powers of mediation combined with America's exceptional power, to advance a realistic version of American influence, to defuse conflict, diminish fear. To export education and self-empowerment, rather than seek to be chief of the world's police force. To understand that history limits Empire, but that American checks and balances can keep on going.
I am perhaps guilty of projecting my own views onto him, when I assume he knows that there are plus sum games to be played, in which many, even most, can gain, where the gains add up to much more than the losses, and that it is wise to play plus sum games whenever possible. I see America's extraordinary economic expansion as the result of consistently playing plus sum games, where expansion of trade, reduction of cost, shortening of time for communication and transportation, all permit growth in overall wealth and well-being. I see war as the ultimate negative sum game, in which the losses greatly outnumber the gains, but sometimes necessary as a check on power. Those who seek to play negative sum games for profit or power are the ultimate destroyers. Those who assume every game is a zero-sum game with equal winners and losers have a too-limited outlook.
Israel, the United States, Palestine, the Muslim World, and the entire world, can be much better off when there is peace in the Middle East. Mandela knew that liberation of South Africa required not only release of Blacks from oppression, but also release of Afrikaaners from fear. Peace in the Middle East will similarly require release of the Palestinians from oppression and release of Israelis and Jews worldwide, from their fear. Empowering frogs won't get us there. We need the Obamediator.
"There are myriad examples of peoples who have been desperate over the years who haven't resorted to what the Zionists did to the Palestinians. "
This we agree strongly. That is the urge for reform, rather than denial. Israel continues to take, when it is no longer necessary.
I guess you guys don't read my comments, only your own reaction.
On thanks. YOU live on stolen land. You live knowing it, and still you remain. You probably take it for granted.
Thanking others that came before, in whatever role or relation, is BETTER than denial, or contempt.
Great post Doppler.
"On thanks. YOU live on stolen land. You live knowing it, and still you remain. You probably take it for granted.
Thanking others that came before, in whatever role or relation, is BETTER than denial, or contempt."
Some land was purchased from Indians, some was purchased from European powers, some was taken from European or colonial powers, and much was taken from natives. The difference is that we didn't ask others to pay for or suppot the conquest, and in your case to fight for it.
"The only choice was to ethnically cleanse Palestine?"
A moderate portion of Palestine was ethnically cleansed. Not all, too much for my taste.
Nearly definitely, some was necessary in order to have an actual Jewish state, a bold idea, that wonderful people supported and support, and wonderful people opposed and oppose.
It is an open question if it was absolutely necessary or only rationally understood as necessary. It wasn't completed in fact, and that lends a great deal of doubt as to whether it was actually intended in the way that you attribute.
I know that you have never experienced either ethnic cleansing (which Jews have experienced a hundred times for every one Palestinian, and in the past learned how to live with it, to survive it), or genocide.
I, like Phil, haven't. But, I do KNOW well people who have. My in-laws survived the holocaust, the post-holocaust refugee persecution, the Israeli pioneer era, multiple wars in Israel, terror.
Its not inconsiderable.
Traumas were inflicted on innocents in the name of ethnic cleansing of Jews from the land, at MANY points. Traumas were inflicted on innocent Palestinians.
One's own traumas do NOT justify inflicting traumas on others, if avoidable.
The attitude of harrass until you get what you want, is a failed political approach.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to then distinguish the well-meaning from the ill-meaning. The same criteria applies to both Zionists and leftists.
Higgins,
I didn't say you wasted your vote in voting for Nader. I voted for Nader in 2000. I said that you isolated yourself, that by the logic that Phil applies to Jews voting for Obama, you isolated yourself from the voice earned by loyalty. You don't have it now. Politically, you are a renegade only.
When I voted for Nader, it was a vote for the green movement.
For the two decades from 1985 to 2005, I argued for a green green movement, which was rapidly turning more socialist/political than ecological and social.
I agree with you that Zionism is an ideology, that there are other ways to survive the world.
And, I also agree with even the most ruthless ones, that the shift in Jewish consciousness from abused to self-assertion was a great good.
I differ with the rightwing Zionists that it is necessary to oppress others, in order to self-assert. But, it is NECESSARY to have backbone and identity.
"The difference is that we didn't ask others to pay for or suppot the conquest, and in your case to fight for it. "
Bull.
You are STILL the beneficiary of others expulsion and annihilation.
You rationalize buying land from expropriated European powers, the SAME as you contest the rationalization of Israelis in the West Bank buying land from a state that they regard as holding valid title.
Better to humbly acknowledge the parallel reality.
Witty,
One difference between the USA's relationship to Native American tribes and Israel's relationship to the Palestinians is that the abuse of Palestinians is still going on. Many Native American tribes have clearly-defined reservations within which they exercise a considerable amount of sovereignty, and if members of the tribes prefer to live outside the reservations, they have the same rights as any other citizen. This is simply not true of Palestinians today. Yes, certainly, the USA grew in part through conquest and even what would now be called ethnic cleansing. But we can't change the past, and we're not still doing it today. Most people who are concerned about the plight of the Palestinians are not asking for Israel's destruction, merely for an end to the mistreatment of Palestinians and an end to the illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. If you cannot see the difference between the American and the Israeli situation as they stand today, then perhaps what so many people in this thread are saying about you is true.
Lets leave Israel aside for a second. And Phil Weiss's fairly self evident homosexuality. Does anybody really want a president who oozes estrogen and never takes a stand.
Richard, again you didn't address any of the specifics I raised, and instead just used your words to attempt to put me on the defensive. A typical Zionist maneuver. I don't have to defend my vote to you, and I won't, other than to say that I voted for Nader because I agree with the ideas of his platform more than any other candidate.
"A moderate portion of Palestine was ethnically cleansed. Not all, too much for my taste."
Bullshit. Do you want to see a map?
" also agree with even the most ruthless ones, that the shift in Jewish consciousness from abused to self-assertion was a great good.
"I differ with the rightwing Zionists that it is necessary to oppress others, in order to self-assert. But, it is NECESSARY to have backbone and identity."
The Palestinians don't want to oppress either, but they have lost their identity (due to Zionist narratives) and feel it is NECESSARY to have a backbone. Thus, they will be ethnically cleansing "a moderate portion" of Israel (which was theirs to begin with, more than the current residents can say). Not all of Israel, mind you, and too much for my taste…
An Obama presidency will unleash popular resistance to the establishment, but not because he will lead it. Obama's election will be a signal for the liberals, progressives and leftists to make their voices heard, which he will attempt to stifle for the establishment. Obama's oppositon to the change people really want will define his administration. I hope I am wrong, but it was either Hoffman, Rubin or Seal who wrote that liberal presidents unleash the people to realize their political goals, which the liberal politicians have no intention of pursuing, creating conflict between them. LBJ and the protests his presidency inspired would be the model. If Obama tries to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, which I think he will, then his greatest oppositon will not be conservatives, but the progressives and liberals who gave him power.
It is certain that the Jewish people are a people, a desperate people but a self-assertive people, a single people but a very diverse people.
Anti-Zionism, in denying the Jewish people their peoplehood, is a criminal neglect, prospectively criminally incomplete.
If any of you could meet my cousin, Gunther, at Harvard, who knew Barack Obama back then, he would tell you that Obama is not immune to violent slander and devaluation of Jewish peoplehood.
All non-Jewish populations are susceptible. Anti-Jewishpeoplehood is the oldest social pathology known to man.
To deny that our collective desperation and victimhood are sincere, mitigative, and entirely warranted, in justifying the continued colonization of a foreign land for profit, is to slander the inviolable claim of the singular Jewish people to extra-legal sovereignty on someone else's land.
Naturally deeply this offends the Jewish people.
I don't vibrate with what the agitators here who are upset about Obama however, whether left, right, or right/left. I call them the either/or.
I however perceive a parallel reality. Obama represents respect and non-confrontation of the inherent right of capital to globalized markets and the eternal right of Zionists to inflame the Middle East in the quest for a much-idolized peoplehood.
After all that is a right that all other ethno-religio-tribal associative entities share.
Phil is being irresponsibly provocative by continuing to talk about disproportionate Jewish power as if there were any, or it were in need of any criticism. (There isn't, and it's not.)
My cousin at Harvard and my extended family over colonizing in Palestine and my friends and acquaintances who are political donors are in a state of constant financial instability and immense fear for their lives.
Without the good of Zionism, the necessity of Zionism, they could just disappear, and the singular entity of the Jewish people might disappear with them to the factbin of history.
He threw him under the bus? When?
That was good, Vote 4 P.A.Z.!
On Nader, from an antiwar, Libertarian, former Ron Paul supporter (Justin Raimondo):
"On the defining issue of the campaign – and the age – Nader is spot on: the bailout of the banks, he avers, “was clearly socialism bailing out capitalism.” Not that this version of capitalism has anything to do with authentically free enterprise: “This is the collapse of corporate capitalist ideology,” says Nader. “I emphasize corporate, because the only capitalism left now is small business. They’re the only ones who are free to go bankrupt.”
On foreign policy, Nader is the only consistent anti-interventionist in the race, or, at least, the only one who makes this an important part of his campaign. Unlike McCain and Obama, who both revel in baiting the Russian bear, Nader asks: “Why don’t we leave the Russians alone?” Why, he asks, are we provoking Moscow into another cold war? Obama, the candidate of the supposedly “antiwar” wing of the Democratic party, is pledged to usher Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO – which the Russians view as an aggressive act. Both want anti-missile “defense” shields in place in Eastern and Central Europe – only Nader seems to understand that this is just a scam for enriching the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Nader is the Eugene Debs of our times: he is brave, intractably committed to principle, and disdainful of the limousine liberals and their “conservative” counterparts who grimace in maidenly horror at the sight and sounds of such truth-telling populism. Most importantly, Ralph Nader knows who are the real enemies of the American people, and what is the source of their power. He, alone, is serious about breaking that power. While I may disagree with some of his more socialistic proposals, and probably wouldn’t last very long at a Nader-for-President meeting before getting into it with his commie followers, I don’t know of anyone in American political life, at the moment, who has more genuine good old fashioned integrity. I also can’t think of anyone who annoys the limousine liberals and Obama-oids more–and since these folks are our future rulers, or so it seems, that is reason enough to cheer his campaign and his continued presence in public life."
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/ralph_nader_for_president/
"One difference between the USA's relationship to Native American tribes and Israel's relationship to the Palestinians is that the abuse of Palestinians is still going on."
Tell that to the dispossessed still refugees on reservations (now 400 years since the British settlement, and 140 years since the Western Indian wars).
It is different that it is happening now, and we agree that the dispossession of the Palestinians should stop, and should recede to mutually acceptable borders.
Your collective imagining that I secretly condone or passively accept Israeli expansion is a delusion.
But, I AM a Zionist. I assert to paraphrase PAZ' ridicule, that the Jewish people are a people, and require the right and physical space to self-govern.
And, that there is an intersection between Jews' self-governing and Palestinians self-governing. It is possible to be good neighbors to good neighbors, all that that takes.
"Most people who are concerned about the plight of the Palestinians are not asking for Israel's destruction, merely for an end to the mistreatment of Palestinians and an end to the illegal settlements in Palestinian territory"
Those that are asking for a change for the better for the Palestinians, and strong action to realize that peacefully, I SUPPORT.
Its the IDEOLOGY that Jews don't deserve the right to self-govern that I contest.
Paz-
Your ridicule does not change history nor reality, nor prospects for the present, nor your very judgemental litmus testing.
It only suggests a pendulum swing, exactly as Higgins does, but NO proposal.
It is time for a change, a change to mutual respect, rather than repititive contempt.
He hasn't ridden to Khalidi's rescue but he's hardly thrown the man under a bus.
On Nader.
Nader has lost his way. His prior inspirations are now repititions.
His insights are interesting but without backbone.
His candidacy destroyed the prospects for the green movement and green party, in HIS celebrity, rather than the precedent of real on-the-ground grassroots community development.
It became primarily political rather than primarily social. (By political I mean about "their" power, rather than OUR.)
I wonder how much of the current effort to place checks and balances on jewish power is considered by Doppler a zero-sum strategy because he seems much too fast to use the antisemitic slur. Besides, jews will not willingly be released from fear and he knows this but still makes very poor parallels between South Africa and Palestine. As it is, the aliance which brought apartheid to an end is the opposite of the current configuration. But of course people learn different at the Tom Friedman School of Coherent Arguments and Fact-Based Propaganda and at the Pearlman School of Yiddish and Cheap Horribly Offensive Schtick, the world famous PSYCHOS Institute.
"I see America's extraordinary economic expansion as the result of consistently playing plus sum games"
Now I am getting those headaches! You know, it's all sooo ambiguous… ok, but I concede Doppler has my vote for presidential speechwriter… what I'm talking about, I forgot I don't vote in american elections.
What?! PAZ is back! Man I'm going to be an illegal immigrant in America so I can have both big credit for my tree-house and my vote for PAZ! Ok, Maybe I still cannot vote, but I'm sure the credit is still at hand, isn't it? I would be a beautiful monkey living in places with ecological names like Greenberg Building.
The most important thing that could happen for Israelis, for the Middle East, and perhaps the world, would be a negotiated peace with the Palestinians and the formation of two nation states. Senator Obama, if elected will have so much on his plate, not to mention the expectation that he be able to cut each and every Gordian knot on one hand, and the profoundly projected skeptical resistance of the American right wing, who feel very little compassionate conservatism these days as they fall from ascendancy. Obama is a win-win negotiator; if he can in someway because of his range of understanding help the process reengage, then the politics will fall into place. But after the last eight years of asleep on the job compounded with can't close a deal if her life depended on it, some improvement is naturally bound to occur.
@Dan Kelly:
You have every right to vote for Nader (or against Obama, for that matter). However, in my view, you are wasting your vote. For better or for worse, the tripartite government and the electoral procedures that the Framers left us are strongly pre-disposed to a two-party system at the national level, particularly as regards the Presidency. This is just reality.
Therefore, when I consider my Presidential vote, I must choose between two alternatives. It is entirely possible for me to disagree with Obama on his FISA vote or his stance on the death penalty (I do), and still conclude that he is the better of the two choices that are actually available.
This does not mean that I am "taken in" by his smooth style, or his rhetoric, or his Obambiguity — it means that I realize that I am voting on who will be the next POTUS, and I would prefer it to be Barack Obama rather than John McCain.
For what it's worth, I also think Ralph Nader would be a terrible President — he has no visible political skills — but I would vote for him over McCain if they were the two actual possibilities.
As I began, you are fully entitled to your vote, and your opinion. Please do not cheapen yourself by suggesting that all those who do not agree with your choice are somehow deluded.
Wow. I see Richard brushing aside the horrible plight of the Palestinians, and I see a bunch of one-sided extreme idealogues accusing Zionism of being extreme and idealogical. Very funny.
The Palestinian plight, which is awful and can't be justified must be remedied by Israel, the West, and most of all the Arab countries who are most responsible for it by historical fact. Let me chat a bit about what happened before and after the Holocaust (which by the way does not justify any injustice to the Palestinians):
-The Zionist movement had nothing to do with the Holocuast. It began in the late 1800's well before it. It grew out of a justified inalienable right and thirt of a nation of a people, long ago kicked out of their homeland, and not fully accepted where they were, to have their own country, one in which they originated as a nation.
-Jews started populating a Turkish-Ottoman Empire colony (not some make believe "nation" of Palestine the notion of which didn't even exist until much later) by settling horrible, unsettled, malaria-ridden swamps or villages and towns where there was already some Jewish presence from 100's of years back. Eventually, more Jews started coming and BUYING TURKISH land from its Arab / Palestinian owners.
-As more Jews started coming, posing no threat to anyone, Arabs started acting out and committed pogroms, horrible violent deadly crimes against innocent Jews.
-This really picked up pace post WWI under the British mandate. While Britain committed itself to a Jewish homeland, it sided with Palestinians against the Jews mainly and stood by while Jews were murdered, without provocation.
-When Hitler came to power, pre-1940 though, a Palestinian leader made a deal with Hitler to help carry out the final solution in the middle east.
-In 1948, the Jews, now Israel, accepted the UN mandate, supported by Russia (not so West or Zionist) and America. This was a tiny sliver of land in which the overwhelming majority were Jews.
-Already before end of the British mandate, Arabs and Palestinians started attacking Jewish villages. In a mixture of self-defense and some scheming, hard to say now and we'll never know how much of each, Jews started to encourage some Palestinians to leave. Right or wrong, hard to say. These people were attacking and threatening the lives of Jews.
-In 1948, 5 Arab countries attacked Israel, UNPROVOKED. At this point, it gets messy. Many Palestinians left because of the Arab violence. Many were told to leave by the Arabs. And many were kicked out by Israelis. We'll never know how much of each, but it all happened, all unjust. This doesn't necessarily justify what Israel did (it's unclear what it did do and to what degree), but the cause clearly originates with the Arabs and violent Palestinian elements. There's no counter fact to this.
-In 1948, there were something like 800,000 Jews living in Arab countries. They were kicked out and forced to Israel, as refugees by the Arabs. No one talks about their plight.
-After the war ended, the 800,000 Arab Jewish refugees and a larger amount of European Jewish refugees and native Israelis built a country together with the support of world Jewery and the US.
-After the war ended, Jordan subjugated the Palestinians in what we now know as the West Bank, Egypt did the same with Gaza (Israel tried to give Gaza back to Egypt in 1979 and they turned it down), and the Palestinian refugees who escaped to other Arab countries were subjugated as permanent victim refugees, unwanted in the Arab countries and useful as weapons against Israel.
-In 1967 Israel in self-defense militarily occoupied Arab lands (Not Palestinian lands, there was no such thing). Note that BEFORE 1967 Palestinians were committing criminal terrorist acts against Israel. To using 1967 by Palestinians as some sort of cause of horrid crimes is dishonest.
-After, the Palestinians started agitating for their own nation.
-Here Israel made a horrible strategic and moral mistake and decided to settle these lands instead of just occupy for security. Horrible error, unjust, morally wrong, etc.
-Just like the Holocaust doesn't justify any crimes comittied by Israel against the Palestinians (which were committed in response to Palestinian aggression, not the Holocaust), whatever Israel did does not justify suicide bombing innocent Israeli civilians with nails.
-Anyone who morally equates anything with suicide bombing civilians during passover, weddings, and bar mitzvahs with nails either has no moral bearing or is an anti semite.
-Anyone who ignores the horrible suffering of the Palestinians is a racist and morally and intellectually dishonest.
-Anyone who says that non violent approaches would never allow for a Palestinian state is full of shit. They've never tried! The most gains they've made were during times of minimum violence.
-Israelis as a nation want a Palestinian stable friend country. They tried to give it to the Palestinians in 2000 when Arafat decided not to take it. FACT. To show his hypocrisy, he said in 2002 "Now I'll take that deal" after all the suicide bombs. yeah right.
-Anyone who says no one talks about Palestinian suffering in the US or in Europe or in Israel is either a liar, an anti semite, or doesn't read any media at all whatsoever in the US, Europe, or Israel.
-Israel has Jewish human rights groups fighting for the Palestian cause.
-I'm not aware of any Palestinian human rights groups fighting for the safety of innocent Israeli civilians.
-When a Palestinian rock thrower gets hurt by an Israel soldier, self defensively or overly aggressively, he goes to a good Israeli hospital by the way.
This story is way more complicated than any of you seem to comprehend. So stop pretending. I've only covered a sliver of the facts. There are supporting poins and counter points to all I said, but it's a more honest and unbiased account than anything here. Cut it out.
Today, both Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians are victims of a leadership vacuum or poor leadership of both Israel and what some day we hope will be a great nation of Palestine.
By the way, I'm a moderate Zionist, and I cry the same when a Palestinian child is accidentally killed by Israeli military action as when an Israeli child is purposefully killed by a bomber. I cry the same for both. As an decent human being should.
While not morally equivalent, they're the most horrible of tragedies. Every Palestinian deserves to lead a good life. Every Israeli does too.
higgins 147 – witty 0. Nurse, the salts!
'from abused to self-assertion was a great good.'
Be honest Richard. This is the effect of ideology-sickness. The inability to be clear where this clashes with the Project. If you were capable of being honest on this issue that sentence would have read 'from abused to abuser'. Bridge too far though; your people cannot abuse, that's the other lot – you guys just 'self-assert' and lo, you find that it is good.
'One's own traumas do NOT justify inflicting traumas on others, if avoidable.'
I suppose Germany's treatment by the other great powers at and after Versailles doesn't excuse it's subsequent treatment of Jews. But (rolls the shoulders, opens out the hands) sadly, inflicting traumas was not avoidable in Palestine. Too bad for them.
'Great post Doppler.'
Agreed. While I share some of Phil and higgins's inner hope of a volte-face on November 5, I recognise that Presidential insurgency isn't really a supportable hope given Obama's record, and there are grounds for assuming that any radical change, if executed poorly or too fast, would be counterproductive, even dangerous.
It's interesting Doppler brings up sum games. One of the best American responses to 911, amid all the fearful chest-thumping, was Non-Zero author Robert Wright's 9-piece post 911 series in Slate. Far more sensible than Fareed Zakaria's feted piece in Newsweek, which was careful to avoid treading on American tender spots, Wright located a sensible mode of response in casting the situation as a sum game, in which a Walt and Merasheimer-ish weighting of interests takes precedence over emotional reaction – which too often of course becomes over-reaction.
To win, even just to avoid defeat, often means approaching the counterparty in a dispute without the baggage of condemnation or even blame. If the goal is peaceful resolution, both sides may have to accept a slight loss of what the Asians might call 'face'. This in turn requires a stated (even if not genuinely felt) recognition that the 'other side' too has grievances based on demonstrable realities, which your side has the power to modify, if not altogether remove. And vice versa. This approach marries morality to self-interest, as opposed to what normally obtains, which emphasises one of these (normally the latter) at the expense of the other.
It really is nothing more than a description of, and formula for, maturity and common sense in decision-making. But it is anathema for Zionism, and lots of other 'isms' to, which are predicated on some insupportable sense of preference or entitlement, often itself based on historic resentments. Old Man Kristol famously defined statesmanship as the art of knowing one's enemies, when sensible, 'non-aligned' people know that it means trying to make even enemies friends, or at least unfriendly enough to be a threat.
Phil has talked of the apparent coldness at the heart of Obama's thought. LIke Kennedy, his feeling, though obviously an important component, is not the sole driver of his actions. Rather than having a radical anti-Lobby action plan in his back pocket, ready to brandish once he's inside the Oval Office, he is more likely as Doppler says to speak softly as he introduces new or at least hitherto disallowed memes and concepts into the discourse, his very reasonableness casting the frenzied reaction into stark relief, thereby slowly isolating the real moonbats and pulling the undecided rump back into the centre. He won't go straight from first gear to fifth, risking the engine. No, he'll take his time, according to a plan that won't be so rigid that he can't take changes in events or his thinking into account along the way.
This alone will make an exhilarating change from the last 8 years.
Rather than try to take the Lobby out all guns blazing, surely the acme of risky behaviour for all concerned, the plan may be to slowly draw out the heat, deflate the pressure with a few timely and well-aimed pinpricks, each of which is framed in the cool rational light of American self-interest.
Win-win situations. They can occur, but you have to leave your rancour at the door.
'Old Man Kristol famously defined statesmanship as the art of knowing one's enemies, when sensible, 'non-aligned' people know that it means trying to make even enemies friends, or at least *unfriendly enough to be a threat*.'
That should read 'friendly enough not to be a threat'.
I guess my tinkering with this post's interesting idea of contemporaries being alienated at school may have backfired due to it's need of some kind of complement. Therefore for historical accuracy purposes I would like to declare a caveat: it is a well know fact that MM is one of the notable alumnus of the world famous Pearlman School of Yiddish and Cheap Horribly Offensive Schtick (PSYCHOS); what we didn't know until yesterday is that he is also a Tom Friedman School of Coherent Arguments and Fact-Based Propaganda alumnus. That ends the caveat. Apologies for being dull, but that is because I have never had an application of mine accepted from such prestigious institutions and that makes me prone to feel pleasure in being pedantic and wasting your time.
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