One of the goals of J Street in its campaign against extremist settlers and the Hebron Fund is to cause a divide in Jewish culture. Itâs very frontal of J Street, and must be celebrated. Theyâre calling out the settlers and their American supporters and trying to isolate them culturally and politically, so as to bring about the late, great two-state solution.
A few weeks ago, Adalah held a demonstration outside the Hebron Fund fundraiser in New York, a protest I guess J Street will be joining next year, and Aaron Levitt refused to shake hands with a Chabadnik who was at the fundraiser, because in Levitt's view, the guy regarded Palestinians as mere flesh but was willing to shake the hand of a Jew because Jews are chosen. I published Levitt's view of the matter, and subsequently Richard Witty attacked me and Levitt, saying I hadnât even talked to the Chabadnik about his feelings, just imputed them to him. (I think Richard was right about that...)
Myself, I'll shake hands with anyone. Pretty much always have (ever since the time a relative of mine refused to shake hands with my grandfather because he had been broken my mother's family; I found that self-righteous). And yet I have to honor Levitt's choice. He and Adalah are trying to isolate the Hebron guys just as much as J Street is, in their own way.
Here's what Lincoln said about shaking hands, in a big speech on slavery in 1854.
[You southerners] have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native tyrants known as the "slave-dealer." ... You despise him utterly. You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's children.
If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-dealer you avoid the ceremonyâinstinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now why is this? You do not so treat the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco
As for the analogy of the Hebron settlers to slave-dealers, I know, it's not perfect. But it will serve. The continued dispossession of the Palestinians and denial of their rights is also wrong.
Phil, you are mining interesting history here with Lincoln. Actually, I was not aware that the slave traders in the 1830s or 40s were considered socially unacceptable. Even during a time that southern culture and her economy was dependent on slavery.
No one is now willing to defend the West Bank settlers (it has become socially unaceptable) but their goals are those of Israel and of US foreign policy, not explicitly but in fact.
Let us hope that this disconnect between what is acceptable and what the real policies imply will become generally recognized as happened in America 150 years back.
Keep reading, Phil. And keep writing this pointless wanker blog. That way, you'll never write a book. The truth is, you'll never write it anyway–people who update blogs six times a day are not writers.
One article in Haaretz a couple weeks ago described some of the more mature Jewish residents of Hebron, confronting the younger hooligans, describing how desecrating Muslim graves for example is NOT sanctioned by Torah, nor is harm to Palestinian civilians.
There are all kinds.
If its possible to distinguish WHAT EXACTLY you are objecting to, and limit your issues to that it would be helpful, rather than forming a generalization with likely racist affect.
YOU and I erred in fearing and condemning all southerners when we were hippie youth, even as they were often beneficiaries of institutionalized racism over centuries.
If you want to 'work this through' in the psychological (and moral) sense, then I think you should address the QUANTITATIVE data regarding the Jewish nature of the slave trade, as found in the notorious "Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews," by Professor Tony Martin of the Nation of Islam. If you are able to evaluate this account HONESTLY, and avoid falling into any of the disinfo traps prepared since its appearance by the debunkers of it, then you will gain a large number of extremely likeable new friends. I'm sure Adam will help you if you feel confused by the quantitative data.
Yes Witty you are quite correct. All southerners were not guilty in the 50s and 60s. Many opposed Jim Crow racism. But the over all culture did. And today, the over all culture in Israel support the oppression of the Palestinians, just like the over all culture of the south supported Jim Crow in in the 60s. And today zionist like you support the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank. Of course, we all know that you really really oppose this, but we must be realistic and accept that Israel has the right to defend herself. Just like the the South had to defend herself in the 60s.
off topic but irresistible one-liner from latest Buchanan rant, this time protesting the lack of a decent auto makers bailout : "unlike Mitsubishi, General Motors didn't bomb Pearl Harbor."
Would someone please tell me why it is impossible to find stories about the Fed and the latest interest rate cut that do NOT feature barber shop photos of Bob Bernanke's beard? Is there something about this beard that is suppose to inspire us with confidence in our venerable patriarchs?
RB,
His name is Ben Shalom Bernanke, not Bob.
His beard makes him look mysterious and deep, profound and in the loop on all of the complex mathematical models that allow crooks like Madoff to schtup the investor.
PM
Not to me it doesn't. I have seen so many of these pseudo patriarchs acting and talking like five year olds.
Syvanen,
Phil and I were wrong in fearing and condemning those southerners that did support Jim Crow.
The rules and practises of Jim Crow deserved criticism.
That is DIFFERENT from applying a collective punishment.
If you are against collective punishment, then be against collective punishment.
Pick more precise analyses.
The spokesperson of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, was asked in a phone interview on Monday afternoon in Jerusalem why Princeton Professor Emeritus of International Law Richard Falk, the UNHRCâs Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory, was denied entry into Israel on Sunday upon his arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport, and detained overnight pending deportation. Palmor said, âthe fact that he believes in conspiracy theoriesâ is enough to discredit him. Palmor acknowledged that Falk has not been accused of backing all the conspiracy theories that have been developed around the 9/11 attack (particularly the more anti-Semitic versions). But, Palmor said, âthe fact that he believes that the CIA is directly responsible is enough.â
there ya go witty, someone supplying 'precise analysis'. Pity it is criminal slander and completely unfounded.
Richard, is the presence of the mature settlers less illegal than the hoooligan settlers? Is their presence less detrimental to the lives of the Palestinians who have lived there forever? Do they not avail themselves of the Jews-only roads?
Is there any such thing as a "good" settler if he brings with him the Israeli state to secure his presence?
I noticed Witty hasn't had much comment on any of Adam Horowitz' precise analysis. Has he realized silence is more ethical than obfuscation? The Mondoworld can only hope it is so.
His beard makes him look mysterious and deep
I'll give you mysterious, Paul.
But "deep"?
He couldn't look "deep" if his hair were 20 times longer and he was sitting in naked lotus with a giant madrassa around his neck.
The guy goes to bed with numbers. G-d of the bankers.
Greenspan was also deity. He knew all, but chose to mumble and bumble.
If Ben Shalom is really not of this world, let's see him take it UNDER zero percent.
'Til then he's mere mortal.
MM,
Have you heard anything about sarcasm lately?
Ben Shalom and Alan "the maestro inflating and bursting bubbles" Greenspan should NOT be believed when they open their mouths. Ditto Paulson. I'm sure somebody has done a search and put together a montage of the comments of these keystone banksters over the past eighteen months – they were all proclaiming how the "fundamentals of the US economy are sound", etc. etc. Bullshit, all of it.
So when I read Paulson's comments yesterday about how the American banks have been saved, there will be no more bankrupcies, etc. etc., should I believe him?
You tell me.
PM
Moralistic reprehension:
If its possible to distinguish WHAT EXACTLY you are objecting to,/b> and limit your issues to that it would be helpful, rather than forming a generalization with likely racist affect.
Awailable answer
One of the goals of J Street in its campaign against extremist settlers and the Hebron Fund is to cause a divide in Jewish culture. Itâs very frontal of J Street, and must be celebrated. Theyâre calling out the settlers and their American supporters and trying to isolate them culturally and politically, so as to bring about the late, great two-state solution.
hmmm? no preview option? Have I closed my italics tag?
sorry!!!!
Now my bold marks are gone:
"what exactly are you objecting to"?
Answer:
"'extremist' settlers and their US supporters"
I asked my Dad(Israeli American yesterday what he thinks of Avraham Burg. Surprisingly, my dad actually knows the guy. They were in the same platoon and had regular contact even though Burg wasn't his CO. Burg is also close friends with a friend of my dad who now lives in Chicago. Anyway, he said that he likes a lot of what he says, "he's an intellectual."
Since my dad is the greatest influence on my life, and I don't like what Phil says, and my Dad likes Burg, I'm sure Burg won't like what Phil says either.
Sorry Phil…
Michael, if you had been around the block a couple times, you would be aware that human affinities are not commutative. In other words, the fact that A x B and B x C does not imply that A x C, and conversely, the fact that A x B but B not-x C does not imply A not-x C.
RE Phil's: "Aaron Levitt refused to shake hands with a Chabadnik who was at the fundraiser, because in Levitt's view, the guy regarded Palestinians as mere flesh but was willing to shake the hand of a Jew because Jews are chosen. I published Levitt's view of the matter, and subsequently Richard Witty attacked me and Levitt, saying I hadnât even talked to the Chabadnik about his feelings, just imputed them to him. (I think Richard was right about that…)"
Did Witty also inform Phil that Jewish Orthos teach their own, not just about feelings, but more brainy matter such as:
Chabad's Tanya declares all Gentiles have merely an animal soul, totally selfish at all times, as compared to all Jews who have also
a spiritual soul, rated on five levels. Similarly, Kabbalah distinguishes between Gentile souls, which are satanic, and Jewish souls, which of course, are not.
I think Levitt knew his man, and had every decent right not to shake the Chabadnik's hand.
Goldstein the mass murderer was one of these Orthos, and they
honor him. Check out the frum settlers, and ask yourself, why are
Americans supporting these people? For fighting Hitler, we get
to support Jewish Hitlers with their tin cups out always?
You want to see the results of free Chabad teachings locally? Google
the social interaction and treatment of employees by Chabadniks
running that big kosher shop in Iowa. The company's called Agriprocessors, if memory serves.
I'm not sure why Southerners keep getting pulled into the Israel debate. The situation in Isreal is quite different than the situation in the Jim Crow South, or even the antebellum South.
The South is much larger physically and more populous than Israel, and was much less regimented or ideological than Israel. Southern whites were never required to serve in state or regional militias in order to make war upon, dispossess and oppress blacks.
Even after the Civil War, the region remained more a group of states held together by resentment of defeat than a solid ideological bloc. I would even bet that more of the violence against blacks took place at the local level than at the state or organized regional level.
If anything, the South was somewhat feudal, rather than a centralized, ideological state like Israel, and was always behind the North in developing socially and economically because much of the region was settled later than the North, and then destroyed by war. There was also no organized international effort to fund and support the South, as there is for Israel. Why not just judge Israel by Israel's actions?
Someone mentioned Jewish involvement in the slave trade, and there was some. I'm not sure that Jewishnes would account for any negative attitudes towards slavers in the South, and I'm not even sure that most whites would have come into contact with slave traders. I would like to know how northerners dealt with their fellow citizens who profited from or were involved in slavery and the slave trade. What were their attitudes? Did Lincoln ever shake any of their hands?
The South AT THAT TIME was being wooed by Britain, or, to be more explicit, by Rothschild agents. Not to mention the typically impentrable Masonic aspects.
Rowan, I understand that there was international support for the South during the Civil War in order to weaken the U.S., but I don't think the support can be compared to the type of support that Israel gets, or for the reasons that Israel gets support. My point is that the constant comparisons between the American South and Israel aren't valid, and are meant as more of a condemnation of the South and southerners than of Israel and Jews.
I can well believe that, Todd.
What about the ethical comparison of Southern Slavery and Zionism as I propose in Last Word on Anti-Semitism.
To be honest, I read through a lot of the statistical data when Vogel's Time on the Cross appeared.
I have the impression that Southern slave-owners generally treated black slaves a good deal better than Israelis treat Palestinians.
At least for the slave-owner, the slave was valuable property. For Zionists Palestinians are simply vermin.
In addition, there is no equivalent in Israel of the mulatto slave-owning class that developed in the Old South and that was partially an inheritance from New France. Zionist racism on the whole seems far more vicious and all encompassing that that which developed in the Old South or in the USA in general.
It's hard to talk about the Old South as a monolith because it wasn't a monolith. But I think that it is fair to say that it wasn't a civilization built around making war on blacks- I don't even think that the South of the Jim Crow era was such a place.
I've seen the pictures of slaves who have hideouls whip marks, and I've read accounts of brutal masters, but I don't think that brutality was seen as a virtue.
I don't remember the stats, but I've read that a large amount of the region's wealth was tied up in slaves in the years before the Civil War, even though most whites didn't own slaves, and very few were large-scale owners. The fact that Irish workers were imported to dig canals in Georgia beause slaves were too valuable to risk losing to malaria says something about economic and social realities.
Whatever the truth was, I don't believe that the comparisons to Israel make sense.
I am not really trying to compare the Old South and the modern State of Israel — they are simply too different, but I believe that we can compare the ideology of Southern Slavery as enunciated by John C. Calhoun and colleagues with Zionist ideology.
I could make a good case that Zionism is a 2nd or 3rd generation descendant as well as a radicalization of Calhoun's ideas.
Unless there is some general theory behind the comparison, it's just a psychological red herring. The standard Jewish defensive reflex is always to seek for irrelevant but discreditable mirroring arguments, sometimes to the point of absurdity : you say, what about Jenin, and they say, what about the battle of Culloden, or some damn thing, just to throw you off.
Identifying Calhoun as an ideological forerunner of Zionism is part of good intellectual historiography.
Once an historian makes this claim, he must identify the chain of transmission as well as the transformations and developments of Calhoun's ideas that became part of Zionism.
It would be quite a discovery, that. Good luck with it.
Joachim, I just went back to the essay you mentioned, "Last Word on Anti-Semitism," which I have read previously, but in fact there are only two paragraphs in it which directly address this comparison, and here they are:
"Zionism is a form of violent state sponsored racism that is exactly analogous to American slavery. Slavers stole Africans by means of terrorism, aggression and force. Slavers maintained slavery by means of terrorism, aggression and force. Racist Eastern European Zionists stole Palestine from the native population by means of terrorism, aggression and force. Racist Israeli Zionists hold stolen Palestine by means of terrorism, aggression and force.
"Southern slavers might have asked why abolitionists in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire worried about slavery in the South when serfdom existed in imperial Russia. Antislavery Northerners could reply as anti-Zionist Americans can today that American policy and law have made them complicit in slavery then and in Zionism today. When the State of Israel commits mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide (according to the definition of Rafael Lemkin), the alliance between the USA and Israel renders every American a co-conspirator just as The Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision forced every single American to support slavery. Just as every American before the Civil War was contaminated with the evil of slavery, every American today has been contaminated with the evil of Zionism. All patriotic Americans have a categorical ethical imperative to oppose, denounce and combat Zionism in every way possible."
The question is well posed there, in terms of co-responsibility of co-citizens. But unfortunately this is precisely where the analogy breaks down, in practical terms, because although the ENABLERS of the enslavement are your co-citizens, the US Jews who it appears overwhelmingly fund it, nevertheless the act itself is taking place overseas, so in that respect it resembles not domestic slavery but overseas colonisation, which has been enabled by many US businesses, but with the emphasis more on exploitation of the native workforce of the colony by professional colonial exploiters than by 'settlers.' The differences between the two are sometimes blurred, though, and not only where Jews are involved: Britain at least has facilitated many acts of settler colonialism in Africa, and the USA itself is the result of one such act. To this day, any African ruler who tries to dislodge the white settlers planted in his country, such as Mugabe, will find an almost unanimous chorus of hatred and vilification served up by the world-straddling mass media of the USA, which is as hypocritical about this as about everything else.
Joachim, maybe your understanding of Calhoun is deeper than mine, but I don't see how the comparison to Israel is apt. I don't see Israel as being paternalistic towards Palestinians. Outside of viewing his own group as superior, what is the similarity between Calhoun and Zionist thinkers? Who didn't view whites as superior at the time? Is there evidence that Calhoun had an impact on Zionist thinkers? Is it possible that Calhoun's impact on Southern thought is overblown?
Slavery was a gift from colonial times, and every region was involved and made profits in one way or another. Trans-Atlantic slavery was a worldwide system, so I am hesitant to drop the whole blame on Southerners. Yes, the region held on to the institution a bit longer because development lagged behind the North, but slavery was in no way peculiar to the South.
I'm not defending slavery, but I don't think that a case can be made that Southern society was ever constructed to make war on blacks. There is no doubt that blacks were intended to be second class citizens for much of Southern history, as was the case in the North, also. I think it is generally true that black freedoms were greater in the South when revolt was less feared. Palestinians are pretty much marked by Zionists regardless of their actions.
I think it is fair to ask whether the southern plantation economy was not in effect created by the jewish slavers, in the sense that if one controls the formative industry, one controls the whole society.
I know of Jewish plantation owners, and that there was a Jewish element in the slave trade, but I'm not sure that Jews dominated the trade. Then again, I'd guess that to a class of financial middlemen trading in slaves would be another lucrative business. Could this be the reason that the original charter for the Georgia colony forbade Jews, lawyers and slaves? I never really looked into the reasoning behind the charter.
In a nutshell —
Calhoun developed a biological deterministic view of slavery.
Galton combined Calhoun's and Darwin's ideas to create a modern biological theory of racism.
Galton's ideas became important in racist extremist organic nationalist political ideologies and probably constitute the key source to Nordau's (somewhat hypocritical) belief that commitment to Jewish racial purity would revitalize the Jewish nation.
As for Rowan Berkeley's comment, on my blog I put the following in the leftmost column.
Tip O'Neill said: "All politics is local."
Martillo's globalization extension: "All local politics is global and all global politics is local." (See Mondoweiss comment.)
I have serious reservations about applying the distinction between the domestic and the international in today's policy context — not least because I hypothesize a transnational Jewish Zionist political culture that spans at six continents (N. America, Europe, Asia, Australia, S. America, and Africa).
After all, it is probably quicker to get from Boston to Tel-Aviv today than it was to get from Boston to Richmond in 1850.
I know that Calhoun believed in racial superiority and supported an aristocracy, but the slave trade and the plantation system were established before he was born, and continued after his death. Maybe his ideological impact was as great as many claim, but I always imagine the average plantation owner and slaver to be more interested in business than in ideology.