Two Jewish critics of Zionism respond to my posts about the conference Sunday I'm going to, about trying to recuperate the Jewish antiwar tradition… Here is Jack Ross, who is irritated by my description of the conferees as PEP –which means "Progressive Except for Palestine":
there, miss the point about these people. Its not about an ethnic blind spot,
it's about their conceit that they really are "liberal" or
"progressive", whatever that even means. There are those in the
middle, which is frankly most of the folks at my shul (or at least
those who will be at the conference), who are at least nominally
pro-Palestinian because of their conceit about being part of something
called "the left". And then there are those who actually oppose
Zionism because it's just plain wrong, which is what I find so
refreshing about Anna Baltzer and her crew.
As
for me, I know the score about what's up over there but I fear becoming
as radical as y'all, so I escape the reality and into history, which is
why I'm in Cincinnati right now.
And here is Jeff Blankfort on the same event:
have in common? There is no mention of the word, Palestine. How Remnick
can write a 12,000 word article on Obama without mentioning his connections to
the Jewish community, to AIPAC, and his support of Israel, is extraordinary but Edward Said
would have understood it. He stopped reading the New Yorker because of
its long mistreatment of the Palestine question although Si Hersh's
articles re Iran and the CIA are always worth reading.
The Shalom Center, Rabbi
Waskow's baby, is problematic. Waskow has bragged to the Forward that
he has managed to keep the Palestinian issue out of the anti-war
demonstrations called by the UFPJ and in that he has been ably assisted
by Leslie Cagan, another old time Jewish lefty, also on the program. There
is nothing politically left about this affair at all. It is just
another tribal feel good ritual in which one can expect to hear "tikkun
olam" from more than one speaker. I trust Amy Goodman won't be one of them, but even she did not have the courage to interview either Mearsheimer or Walt.
