My wife and I went to a family gathering yesterday in the neighborhood she grew up in, Chestnut Hill. The Nebraska game was on and a few of us talked about international politics. We talked about human rights in China, the oppression of the Muslim minority in the west and the crushing of the Tibetans in 1950. We moved on to the Middle East. I said, "Well Obama scared people when he said that Jerusalem should be undivided." My wife's cousin said, "I don't think it should be divided. It's one city." He has spent more time in Israel than I have, three weeks to my 10 days, and he was expressing impatience with the idea of partition. Why should we encourage ethnic and religious separation? "They have lived together in centuries past," my wife's cousin said. "It will happen again."
Middle East politics shadow my life. They come up in every social setting I'm in, quietly or not. Yesterday my wife and I saw a friend who's dating a Palestinian who is related to a leading figure of Palestinian resistance. None of our conversation was about politics or The Issue. But it was a shadow to the conversation.
Yesterday, too--I had a full day--I had tea with a friend who was involved in the formation of Jews Against the Occupation, eight years ago, soon after the second intifadah began. He told me that JATO had begun with a simple principle: We support the right of return. A lot of people left the organization over this principle, but it was a very clear line at a time when the Jewish community was still completely invested in the Exodus story. I found his statement staggering. One, the right of return is regularly described by good liberal Zionists (Lilly Rivlin, just 6 days ago at the Workmen's Circle/Shalom Center event) as "Israel's worst nightmare." Yet these young Jews organized on that very basis-- a simple principle of justice. Deeply moving.
Also, I reflected that JATO will some day be commemorated in Jewish history. The whole anti-Zionist movement in the U.S. today will some day be written about as historic and, I wager, important. So I was stirred by a premonition of history between two guys sitting in a coffeehouse in Philadelphia, at a time when the media would never say a word about this stuff.
Mideast politics was the shadow side of the presidential campaign. David Axelrod versus the neoconservatives was an unspoken battle over the two-state question; my JATO friend pointed out that the leftmost position in Washington is the J Street position. Two states, and do it in a hurry; those are the lefties in Washington. But in world opinion, that is a very conventional opinion. And out there in privileged living rooms in the States, the conversation is ahead of Washington. Again, because I am reading Lincoln, I think of the days of abolition. When William Lloyd Garrison started the Liberator in 1831, his was a radical position. There were many northern radicals against slavery. Some lost their jobs for their opposition; Lincoln says so. The accommodation of slavery had the general effect to "blow out the moral lights around us," as Lincoln says beautifully. And just like JATO, Garrison was emphatic, 30 years before Emancipation. "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Sometimes I think that my shadow life, my shadow conversation, is becoming the shadow life of the country visavis the Middle East. Why should there be partition? Isn't that a form of apartheid? Will such an arrangement last? What is fair? And did you hear about the Nakba? Watching the football game, my wife's cousin said to me that he was surprised to read about the Nakba on this blog. So we've helped move the ball down the field, right here.
In some ways it's an alienated spot to be, the shadow side of the official conversation. But we have confidence that we will be heard. Another friend quoted Hannah Arendt the other day. "We are conscious pariahs."
The two-state solution is NOT parallel to slavery.
If anything, in the near term (50 years), the single-state solution is MORE likely to result in suppression of large minorities (whomever).
Don't embellish your stand. Its just a political choice, especially if the only approach that you pursue is the one of agitation of people, rather than reconciliation between people.
You demonstrate the horrendous bait and switch use of language about the "occupation".
YOU use it here to refer to ANY Zionist jurisdiction, NOT to distinguish the 67 borders in any manner.
By that confusion, you FEED the worst of fraud that enhances the marriage of anti-semitism and political dissent.
And, in your dinners, NO mention of the Mumbai terror (only 195 killed), nor of the targeting of a center of the very small Jewish community.
The elephant is STANDING in the room, Phil. You can smell it.
Slavery came to an end when moral outrage coincided with the economic interests of northern industrialists, in opposition to an institution that stood in the way of the universalization of wage labor. A two-state solution amenable to Israel incorporates Palestine into the neoliberal system:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hanieh190708a.html
That isn't to say that a good portion of Israel's population is not subject to the ravages of corporate globalization. And under a single state, both Jews and Arabs will be. In either case, an agreement is only the first step, and in fact might preclude widespread social improvement.
"THE" "right of return".
I would argue for the promised day in court on specific land title claims, rather than the political right of return.
The majority of otherwise sympathetic should have left for that litmus test.
Do they argue for the right of return of Jews to the West Bank, even the ones that held title to land there pre 1948, that WERE ethnically cleansed. (Not as many in numbers, but to a dissenter its the PRINCIPLE!!!)
Thats if they don't want to be hypocrites, self-advertisers (to quote Norman Mailer, not around this issue).
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FROM HANNAH ARENDT:
"The assumption of an eternal anti-Semitism … has been adapted by a great many unbiased historians and by even a greater number of Jews. It is this odd coincidence which makes the theory so very dangerous and confusing. Its escapist basis is in both instances the same; just as anti-Semites understandably desire to escape responsibility for their deeds, so Jews, attacked and on the defensive, even more understandably, do not wish to under any circumstances discuss their share of responsibility."
Hannah Arendt, Origins, p. 7 (Jewish historian)
PHIL POSTED: Hannah Arendt the other day. "We are conscious pariahs."
ME: Thanks so much, Phil! Now "conscious pariah" will be stuck in my mind all day like that Abba tune was stuck in the mind of that teenager in "Empire Falls"! You snake, you! (LOL)
COFFEE TALK:
"Is it better to be a conscious pariah or an unconscious pariah?"
DISCUSS!!!!!!
PS. Barbara Streisand? "Like butter!"
Damn straight! One City! Undivided! But international, for all the Book's People.
Can you name an alternative, anyone? I don't think so, but it's not about me.
Off-topic but good news for our passionate optimist and friends.
Samantha Power Returns to Obama Team
Who's an optimist? The Army and the defense industries are welcoming the new-ly jobless. Weaponry is being doled out to "friends" around the world and I'm not talking trebuchets. I see a great Crusade a-building. You think all these groaning armies are just gonna sit around cleaning their weapons forever?
There's gonna be hell to pay.
I felt like Phil Weiss on thursday. we had thanksgiving dinner with a friend who had done intelligence in the nixon white house. she was jewish, a mcain-ite, socially liberal. she espoused all these conservative viewpoints but was fully on board with the war on terror, kind of like our local asshole columnist jeff jacoby. but she was a nice lady
Phil really is a most special type of asshole. Much of the world woke up today to find that Muslims had killed another 200 innocent infidels. The surviving terrorist admitted that they wanted to kill 5,000 people (and "as many as possible of them Jews").
Phil, on the other hand, is still imaging that someday his name will be writ large in the Big Book of Jewish History. I guess Trotskyites must have thought that same thing–sure they laugh at us now, but History is coming our way, bit by bit but irretrievably, and more every day.
I've come to the conclusion that Phil's hobby horse can be isolated into five distinct components:
10% hatred of organized Judaism and its prosaic community
10% desire to be accepted by WASP society, what's left of it anyway
10% frustration over failed journalism career
10% desire to be part of some sixties style earth changing cause
and
60% absolute narcissism.
His many critics fail to have identified that last motive.
I should've known not to use the "elephant in the room" metaphor the other day.
Or at least explained (to poor Richard) that an "elephant in the room" is a situation where something huge is NOT being mentioned.
The Terror in Mumbai was only on CNN for 48 hours straight, dominated all the evening news programs, all major corporate newspaper headlines and websites the next day… And yes, the coverage included the invaluable information about the Jewish center–that little tidbit did not go unnoticed.
That's not exactly an elephant "in the room."
That's a trained professional elephant, under-age but with a phony Pakistani passport, right smack dab under the big spots of the big tent in the Worldwide Media Circus.
An elephant in a room, that would be more like the unstated and uniquely unconditional ideological adherence to zionism in the mass media and U.S. Congress.
Or the fact that Ashkenazim are not the only "Jews", they aren't even related to the ancient Judeans any more than I am, yet ultra-nationalist Ashkenazim colonizing Palestine regularly claim the right to speak for "the Jews."
I imagine though that those elephants probably smell a lot worse to Richard. Maybe he's trying not to notice.
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"Journalist" posted: Phil, on the other hand, is still imaging that someday his name will be writ large in the Big Book of Jewish History. I guess Trotskyites must have thought that same thing–
ME: IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE "NECONS" are imaging that someday THEIR names will be writ large in the Big Book of Jewish History?
Did the Lady dog get to go to Thanksgiving?
RE; I said, "Well Obama scared people when he said that Jerusalem should be undivided." My wife's cousin said, "I don't think it should be divided. It's one city." He has spent more time in Israel than I have, three weeks to my 10 days, and he was expressing impatience with the idea of partition. Why should we encourage ethnic and religious separation? "They have lived together in centuries past," my wife's cousin said. "It will happen again."
>>>>
The point is always not to disguise jewish colonial chauvinism with a varnish of multiculturalism. When an Israeli jew says, Jerusalem must not be divided, most often they mean, we must be able to continue to dominate the arabs in and around Jerusalem. But what the palestinian arabs have needed for the last almost 100 years is secure protection from jewish colonial chauvinism, and so they MUST be offered some means of controlling jewish demography and colonialism in and around Jerusalem, as well as a means of reversing the demographic shifts that jewish colonialism has imposed. So 'living together' yes, only in combination with de-privileging jewish colonisation of jerusalem, not 'living together' as continued domination by jews of arabs. It is in the latter sense that many, and perhaps your friend, most often means it: a city undivided so that there are no controls on Jewish bigotry.
Why do we single out terrorist actions when Empire kills far more?
Israel kills 10 times the children that terrorists kill. Israel kills 4.5 times as many civilians in general as terrorists kill.
I'm sure Americans in Iraq are even more indiscriminate and brutal.
Now, we can go on and on about how terrorists are evil and blah blah, but the reality is that America is occupying Iraq, not the other way around.
Israel is occupying Palestine, Palestine is not occupying Israel.
This rhetoric is typical of people in imperial nations. Your pain is magnified by the fact that you enjoy a higher standard of living.
Never mind the fact that by using indiscriminate force, Israel CREATES more terrorism. Never mind the fact that by using indiscriminate force, America CREATES more terrorism.
Never mind the fact that by abusing Palestinian civilians, evicting them from their homes for NO GOOD REASON (as if there is one), demolishing their homes and leaving them homeless and poor, forcing them to pass through checkpoints, treating them inhumanely, letting the IDF get away with murder over and over, imposing curfews on them, etc. etc. etc.
Israel never had a right to make a state on top of the indigenous population. Hence, the subsequent wars. The Arabs lost and have been paying for it since, not because they didn't want peace, but because they did not WIN the war.
The only solution will be one-state. The facts on the ground will end the conflict in it's present form. The demographic boom, providing Israel doesn't commit outright genocide (I wouldn't put it past those racists), will recreate the natural demographic makeup of the region.
None of these Arabs will give in to imperialism. There tactics are stupid. Attacking civilians and hurting people who have nothing to do with their troubles. It's just as monstrous as what Israel and America and Britain before them, are doing to the world now.
Its definitely the elephant in Phil's room.
Unless of course he reported accurately, and although the massacre was in full swing, including the targeted abduction of the Habad House, and it never hit their conversation.
One never reports every word of a conversation of course.
Yes, the elephant in the room:
The surviving terrorist Kasab has told police that they were sent with a specific mission of targeting Israelis to avenge atrocities on Palestinians. This was why they targetted Nariman House, a complex meant for Israelis. Other places attacked were to raise the body count for publicity purposes. The plan was to create a 9/11 for India.
Phil is outraged that the Palestinians don't have their own state. Those who would deprive Hamas and Fatah with a state are evil neo-con Zionists.
On the other hand, of course, those who advocate one state of Palestine are surely just. After all, why should there be partition? Isn't that apartheid?
I also look forward to Phil's forthcoming post calling for the undoing of India's partition.
Obama's being pulled up by the short-hairs, as Beiden warned. The attacks had a bipolar quality to it, as did the USA's 9/11. Some
thoughts from Australia of what Obama is facing:
link to theaustralian.news.com.au
Only three nations originally rejected treating terrorism as a WAR, deserving
full spectrum military solution: USA, Israel, India. Those three thought the best approach was police action against criminals.
Interestingly, if we are at War with Terrorism, then why aren't
captured suspects treated as POWs?
Why does Witty just care about the Jews who were killed in Mumbai, and not the 'only' (his word) 195 people in total?
Oops, I meant the reverse, that is, those three named nations were the only ones in the whole world who advocated full spectrum War, rather than police action handling of terrorists.
"This was why they targetted Nariman House, a complex meant for Israelis. "
Thats the horrible danger of a fanatic ignorant selection of targets (ANY target is horrific).
The Habad house serves local Jews and traveling Jews. That 1/2 of those traveling are Israeli is ignorant and racist.
Non-Jews were killed in the assault on the Habad house as well.
Also, there is no assessment of the number of Muslim Indians that were killed either. As 1/4 of the population of Mumbai is Muslim, its likely that a high % were.
TARGETING Habad is racist. Do you get it?
Do you get the degree of terror, the degree of suppression implied? Or do you perhaps approve (whoever "you" are)?
It's interesting that you include JATO as part of the "anti-Zionist" movement. When a blogger at IsraellyCool described JATO as anti-Zionist, a representative of the organization angrily responded:
"Jews Against the Occupation" are not an “anti-zionist” group as you contend. All of our members believe in the right of Israel to exist. Our issue is with the Israeli Occupation."
Yet, the blogger countered:
"You support the so-called “Right of Return”, which would necessarily result in the cessation of Israel as a Jewish state, due to its demographic implications. So how can you claim to support Israel’s right to exist?"
I think that your characterization and IsraellyCool's characterization is correct: JATO is, in essence, an anti-Zionist group. Problem is, JATO doesn't even have the courage of its convictions to be open about that. Its mission statement on the Palestinian right of return is misleading:
"Thousands of Palestinians were driven out of their houses and off of their farms during and after the creation of Israel. They must be allowed to return to their homeland."
Today, the number of Palestinian refugees, their families and descendants numbers in the millions, not the "thousands."
If JATO believes in a Palestinian right of return that would, in effect, change the demographic composition of Israel, then it should come out and say so. Instead, it tries to have it both ways, claiming that they are a Zionist group while supporting a policy that would create one state, with Jews as a possible minority.
I don't think that history will be kind to groups that are purposefully ambivalent and misleading.
The surviving terrorist admitted that they wanted to kill 5,000 people (and "as many as possible of them Jews").
Could we please have your source, Journalist?
TARGETING Habad is racist. Do you get it? Posted by: Richard Witty | November 30, 2008 at 11:42 AM
– no; 'racist' would be a description of one possible motivation, among a number any of us can easily think of, for targeting Lubavitch (you recall, I contest their claim to own the sefirot, so I shan't call them ' habad'). They themselves are outstandingly racist, as is well known:
"The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever, as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives. So the Gemara31 comments on the verse,32 “The kindness of the nations is sin” — that all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification…"
link to chabad.org
Witty, calm down. Take your meds. Unless you think the targeting of
the Orthodox Jewish outpost to save all Jews for the group has no reason other than anti-semitism, read this (a few excerpts) because its important
for our next President to know:
Palestine, that cause of so much, the running sore of the world, is also clear. Zionism, the project and defence of Israel in roughly its original borders of 1948, has the clear justification of the Principle of Humanity. Neo-Zionism is the intention and policy, long-running and settled, to deprive the Palestinians of at least their liberty in the last 1/5th of their homeland, historic Palestine. Their defence of themselves against this, their liberation movement, their terrorism, also has the clear justification of the Principle of Humanity. Both Zionism and the Palestinian defence against neo-Zio
nism are to be reverenced.
If, unsatisfied by what you have heard, you ask what the Principle of Humanity is, one part of the answer is that it is the principle that has these consequences. It is inconceivable that human decency brought into clear reflection could do other than accord to the Palestinians a moral right to their terrorism against neo-Zionism within historic Palestine. Obama should think on this in particular, remembering the past of his own people.
t is also clear that in a circumstance in which an indigenous people is being destroyed in the homeland taken from them, there is every reason not to resist the arming of those who are capable of supporting them. Whatever may be said of avoiding further proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is perfectly arguable that Iran should not be obstructed from coming to possess them in order to have a power in support of the Palestinians comparable to that of neo-Zionism against them.
link to counterpunch.org
Chabad seems to be doing a bit of freudian projection of its own in the quote by Rowan B, as "unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever, as is written in Etz Chayim, Portal 49, ch. 3, that all the good that the nations do, is done out of selfish motives."
Why is it always the pot calling the kettle black?
Is it EVER anything boiled down but X group over Y group? First, survive at all costs as the collective God on earth absent any knowledge of any real God other than the chimera of your own
collective ego? The blood line of continuity must continue, leave the end times for the stupid romantics.
This makes the advocates a member of God in a practical sense.
This God has no image as none is necessary, and is in fact, counter-productive.
Man is made in the image of God, but we have no image of God.
Where would the biblical sources for power and slavery be without anthropomorphism? The power of poetry?
Nowhere without the power of money, which is higher than the power of force since it alone enables force.
That quotation is from chapter one of book one of Likutei Amarim, which is the primary quoted textbook of their founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1845-1812).
Get used to it Witty.
Because this attack will be the norm if things continue as they are. Economic and social disintegration will have a throughly uncivilized effect on us here in the West. And I think when all is said and done jews are not going to be particularly popular for their role in America's downfall. Certainly not the only cause – but the most visible.
I would suggest all of you right-wing pro-Israel zealots think very carefully about this when spouting the usual lies and nonsense…
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Did the Lady dog get to go to Thanksgiving?
Posted by: Anonymous | November 30, 2008 at 02:17 AM
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What's that? Mondoweiss have better gamekeepers than anonymous impersonators. The lady dog is our care, along with imaginary elephants (to be used for transumption only, take notice), bloody pigeons, the wild sogs of the bogs, overfed chimpskys, ducks and their junebugs, stalking and trojan horses, Walt&Mearsheimer (a pair of jackals), the digital screaming eagles (airborne division of the 101 fighting keyboards) and especially the big bats, an endangered species.
I have more compassion for the Jewish people than many of the people here. Israel is in the wrong on many issues vis-a-vis the Palestinians, but anyone who has seriously studied the Holocaust and what actually transpired, would have much more compassion for these people. I find Mr. Witty to be a humane person, and I find many of the people who post here to be callous and obnoxious. This is Mr. Weiss's style as well. He is clearly not a parent.
Before you haul off calling me a zio-nazi, I am not a zionist per se, and I support the Palestinians in their rightful demand for a homeland and reparations for the Nakbah. I just think that many of the posters here are as twisted as Mr. Sword of Gideon.