I insist that Gaza is the Elian Gonzalez moment: that moment in the life of a lobby when its selfish and repulsive motivations/actions are revealed to the broader public, and they shake their heads and distance themselves. Gaza is showing that American Jewish organizations will support Israel no matter what it does. Revealed: Israeli monstrosity and American dual loyalty. This comes thru in the very important exchange involving Bill Moyers and Abe Foxman.
Moyers's outrage over Gaza was prompted in part by Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who has been saving lives day and night in Gaza and who told CBS that Gaza was a "Dante's Inferno." Abe Foxman was angered that Moyers had relied on a man who has allegedly said that the 9/11 attacks were deserved by the U.S. Moyers hit back:
Also lamentable is your description of my “promotion” of the Norwegian doctor in Gaza when in fact I was simply quoting what he told CBS News: “It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.” The whole world has been able to see for itself what he was talking about, and as one major news organization after another has been reporting, is reeling from the sight.
Moyers doesn't care whether the doctor is a 3-toed skink. It's what he's reporting that Moyers finds reliable. A day before Foxman sent his letter, AIPAC sent out this letter mentioning the doctor, on January 12, making a similar allegation:
Also, remember the video we are seeing from Gaza comes from Hamas linked "journalists" and may be staged (like much of the Hezbollah photos in 2006) and the Norweigian doctor is a Hizbollah supporter who has in an interview with norwegian paper Dagbladet, condoned the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
One link says that Gilbert is an "outspoken communist and pro-terror." This is truly disgusting. Here's a doctor who whatever his beliefs is merely trying to save lives. And is doing so. But such individuals must be smeared in the effort to justify a slaughter.
We're all Hamas now.
Let's tell the truth. Anti-semitism is rampant.
The machine translation of the interview into English works excellently. So people can look at what he really said and that he might not be the "tin-foil-crowd-member". This association seems clearly intended.
The "rampant" antisemitism Bill Pearlman alleges can't hold a candle to the rabid racism apparent among the Israeli elite–and perhaps throughout the Israeli population, particularly those who enjoyed their hilltop, lawnchair view of the war.
Interesting piece from psychologist Avigail Abarbanel, former Israeli, now living in Australia, on the psyche of Foxman and Pearlman: link to avigailabarbanel.me.uk
An excerpt:
"Gal says that Shapira lost his ‘survival instinct’ but what he calls survival instinct I call trauma-induced Jewish paranoia. Both Shapira and I have both lost our Jewish paranoia alongside a growing number of Jewish peace activists inside and outside Israel. And thank goodness we have, because it means that we have healed from Jewish trauma. As a result we are healthier more peaceful people, who do not see the world exclusively in adversarial terms. We no longer think about everything in terms of whether ‘it’s good for the Jews or not’, we do not believe that our life’s purpose is to preserve the Jewish people, and we can work as equals alongside non-Jewish people to promote peace. We no longer spend every waking moment worrying about anti-Semitism, as we were taught to do. We know it exists as do other forms of racism, but we do not allow it to define who we are, what we do, or what we think and feel about ourselves and about others. Being free from Jewish trauma means being free from fear of anti-Semitism.
Zionist Jews think I have gone insane because I don’t fear anti-Semitism and refuse to focus on it, but I think I have gone sane. I once received an email from an Israeli who said to me: ‘You are naïve and stupid but regardless, when they finally come to get you, you will run to us and we will still accept you with open arms’ to which I responded, ‘Thanks but I had my time in Israel and I’d rather take my chances elsewhere’. Trying to convince him that no one is coming to get me, was pointless.
These are not just the ramblings of one man. This echoes the feelings of the majority of Israeli Jews and most Zionist Jews. Even very educated people feel this way. ‘Because we were victims of anti-Semitism we can never relax and must always be vigilant in case a new enemy of the Jews will come to destroy us.’
Living with trauma is a terrible thing and it leads to precisely the sort of views and sentiments expressed by Gal, and the kind of crimes committed by Israel right now. Trauma that is a product of past hurts can make you believe that everyone hates you and wants to destroy you — now, always, not just in the past. Some people respond to trauma by becoming aggressive and frightening, to make sure it doesn’t happen to them again. Just like Gal says, ‘No one will throw a stone at us for being Jews’."
more at link…
It’s been pretty well established that economically and geopolitically, Israel has been nothing but a drag on the US for decades. So why did Chomsky profess to believe that Israel was a spearhead for American interests in the Mideast for all those years, and that it was getting its strings pulled primarily by gentile economic interests? I’ll tell you why: because he is Jewish, and he was consciously or unconsciously carrying out the left-liberal narrative constructed by “liberal” Jews designed to scapegoat gentiles for the Jewish supremacist agenda called Zionism. Capitalism is the problem, said these left-wing Jewish Zionist agents, not Judeofascism.
Chomsky seems to finally be coming around to the fact of Judeofascism, but I have yet to see him or any other Jewish intellectual admit that the world has an organized Jewry problem. Why? Because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe (by Judeofascists) that addressing or even recognizing the organized Jewry problem equals an embryonic “second holocaust.” This is as patently absurd as saying that liberal criticism and targeting of Christian behavior, attitudes and beliefs equals a fledgling second Communist perpetrated holocaust against Christians.
Given this, one can only conclude that Jewish intellectuals unwilling to acknowledge the organized Jewry problem are still consciously or unconsciously working on behalf of Jewish supremacism.
I’m not saying that the world doesn’t also have a hyper capitalist problem; I’m saying that the world has a hyper capitalist problem AND a Judeofascist problem. Both must be addressed, as its alleged Christian problem has been in the West since the advent of Communism, and as its alleged Islamic problem has been for decades and is being extremely intensely re-visited today.
Judeofascists, hyper capitalists, and dialectical materialist leftists love pointing their crooked fingers at others, but can’t stand to look themselves in the mirror, ugly creatures that they are.
Great article, ttt. Thanks.
Here's a cleaned-up translation of the money quote from Dagbladet:
"The attack on New York was not surprising following Western policies in recent decades. I am upset by the terrorist strike, but at least as upset by the suffering caused by the USA. It is in this context the 5,000 killed must be seen. If the US government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, then the oppressed have an equal right to attack the USA which such weapons as they are able to make. Dead civilians are the same whether they be American, Palestinian, or Iraqi, says the head surgeon and professor Mads Gilbert."
Gilbert may be a Marxist, but unlike right-wing Zionists he has a heart as well as a brain. The Anti-Defamation League ought to drop the "anti" from its name. When the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder published an essay condemning Israel's war crimes in Lebanon -06, Foxman accused him of… wait for it… having Alzheimer's disease.
Anti-Zionist left-liberals really shouldn't ask organized Jewry to do something (acknowledge the Nakba and Zionist Jewish supremacism and its racist agenda) that they aren't prepared to do themselves (acknowledge Western left-liberalism's role in enabling and perpetuating Communist atrocities). I would love to see some of the left-liberals who inhabit this site acknowledge the Communist-perpetrated holocaust against Christians and dissidents in the Soviet Union on behalf of their own "therapy." In fact, while they're at it, perhaps they should acknowledge that left-liberalism has supported Zionist atrocities for decades, and that Obama is at this very moment surrounding himself with some of the most noxious pro-Zionists in modern history.
After they’ve done that, perhaps then they can convincingly join the anti-Zionist cause. Until they do that, they’re just self-righteous hypocrites sitting in false judgment.
@Ed, I have added your "blog" to my Gaza blog roll. link to shoe08.blogspot.com<
However, I do not believe the anti-Zionists are "self-righteous hypocrites." It is difficult for all people to move beyond the comfort zone of their childhoods.
But you are right about "sitting in judgement." perhaps the term you were loomking for is Limousine liberal?
Let's tell the truth. Anti-semitism is rampant. Zionists are having a party over it. Zionists need their dose of anti-semitism.
When Herzl is rejected by French Jews, who find the fact that half the population went to the defense of Dreyfus pretty much proves they don't really need a state of their own, the same Herzl says those Jews are "not Jews anymore."
Zionists are fascists motherfuckers, who were rightly despised by most other Jews, including under Nazi Germany. And that's not surprising, considering that German Zionists were racist antisemites who helped Hitler cope with the international boycott campaign launched by American Jews. Of course, they expected something in return and they were helped by Hitler with their little state project in Palestine.
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There was a time when the ADL was highly regarded and performed a valuable service in combating anti-Semitism in this country. Sadly, that important work now takes a backseat to shilling (hasbara) for Israel.
Re: J L-D
I agree, but I think that it, or another organization, will in the post-Zionist era rise to carry out its original mission. When it does, it will be good for America and the world. I hope I live to see it.
Note that I make no claims that this era will be coming anytime soon. I think that, in spite of the enormous lifting of the veil of Zionist motivation and actions, it will take decades due to the entrenchment of Lobby loyalists in government, both political appointees and civil service, and our two nationally viable political parties.
It's not because he's Jewish that Chomsky can't see "wag the dog" politics in Israel-US relations. It's because he's a lot farther left than the "left-liberal" label suggests. His paradigm is more Marxist than that–and Marxism can't accommodate the push-pull that exists between an empire and the more powerful of its client states. He also doesn't take the power of the Zionist Lobby much into account.
that's what i've always thought, delia.
Lets not lose sight of the actual balance of power.
I think, Philip Weiss to the contrary, that the anti-Zionist forces in America are very weak and disorganized. The confrontation is not very far developed. Livni is the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, a government to which the US swears allegiance, and Finkelstein is unemployable.
Members of the elected government of Gaza are assassinated with not a murmer of international protest.
No question. Israel First rules in USA. Watch the next 3 months of Obama rule, to see if American is a democracy with its own values and survival first. I predict rabid Jews will come out first, dumb goys
there just to pay the price.
"His paradigm is more Marxist than that–and Marxism can't accommodate the push-pull that exists between an empire and the more powerful of its client states. He also doesn't take the power of the Zionist Lobby much into account."
I'd like to second delia's analysis of Chomsky. His analytical framework just doesn't admit the kind of ethnic forces at work here. We are all stuck with our analytical frameworks, and there are many questions where the materialist Chomskian perspective is the appropriate tool. But it is useless for understanding Zionism, which is more a psychological phenomenon than an economic one.
"Trauma-Induced Jewish Paranoia" sounds a lot like what Gilad Atzmon is describing in: Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder-A Glimpse Into Israeli Collective Psychosis.
@Ed: Chomsky seems to finally be coming around to the fact of Judeofascism
I'd be interested – in the looking-for-laughs sense – to see where you got that idea.
But other than that, please fuck off with your paranoid bullshit. Pretty much any concrete action in the US or elsewhere in the West in support of the Palestinians is put together by some alliance of Arabs and Muslims and the Left – not left-liberals, if that means Nation-magazine types, but the actual, principled, Left. That includes all the recent demonstrations, whether called by ANSWER or Al-Awda. Meanwhile, your kind with all the paranoia about Jews secretly indoctrinating everyone from Joe Sixpack to Noam Chomsky seem to exist essentially only on the Internet. That's probably a good thing, in the end, but it means you sound really absurd posturing as if you get to decide who's a real anti-Zionist. That's already been decided by who's done anything meaningful. And none of us have any interest in having people like you around – you accept the equation of Israel and Jewry and simply flip it around, you play into the Zionists' hands, and you and they deserve each other.
What came first, the Marxist paradigm, or Marx’s need to reduce the framework of social and economic clashes to a question of materialism as opposed to a question of religious/ethnic value systems due to his own Jewish background? To ever be accepted, respected, and attain professional gratification in the Western society of Marx’s era, there was a need remove the pro-Christian bias that could potentially keep his views, as a Jew, outside the realm of serious consideration. (Marx came from a long line of rabbis, even though his father converted to Christianity for professional purposes, as I recall).
Chomsky has studiously ignored or dismissed the "Jewish problem," and Marx reduced it to a function of material need. As a Marxist, that's probably Chomsky's rationale for ignoring the Jewish character of Israel and insisting the whole problem is all about Western greed, not about the Jewish religious/ethnic value system. Chomsky is carrying on Marx's tradition of dismissing Jewish cultural and ethnic background in political, social and economic analysis and theory not because they were/are irrelevant to the equation, but because it was/is personally more convenient for each to do so.
Some have maintained that Marx didn’t dismiss Jewishness at all, and was in fact an anti-semite, perhaps as compensation for his own Jewish background — to prove it had no pull on his intellect. Some believe that Chomsky is a Jewish Zionist agent engaged in misdirection. Whatever the case, to be accurate, any analysis must incorporate ALL relevant factors into its theory, not pick and choose those factors according to the personal convenience, insecurities or agenda of the person conducting the study.
I believe most Jewish intellectuals who have taken on either the Jewish question or the Zionist question have deluded themselves into the belief that they are objective even though they are clearly instinctively sympathetic to and favorably biased towards Zionists and/or Jews. The capacity for self-delusion is indeed a major component of “the Jewish problem” (which, of course, is merely a concentrated microcosm of “the human problem.”)
@Kal: "Pretty much any concrete action in the US or elsewhere in the West in support of the Palestinians is put together by some alliance of Arabs and Muslims and the Left"
The Left partnered with organized Jewry throughout much of the Communist era to promote one another, so there would be no Zionist problem and Israel lobby problem today if it wasn't for the efforts of the Left to promote Jewry, in part as a counter/sabotage to the Christian status-quo. So the Left certainly has a lot to make up for in the Mideast arena (without even mentioning the Soviet war against Afghanistan).
The Left has never been right on the big questions, and basically screws up everything it touches. Why should anyone trust a Left working with Muslims today that just yesterday was collaborating with Judeofascists?
I might believe the Left is well-intentioned and not cynically motivated out of power-madness (and among the younger set, vanity) when and only when it confesses and atones for murdering millions of Christians and dissidents in the Communist era, and acknowledges it made a huge mistake when it helped promote organized Jewry to the elite status that it enjoys today.
Let's start with you, Kal. As a Leftist, are you willing to admit and forsake the mass murders perpetrated by your predecessor brethren? Are you willing to admit that their judgment and mentality has historically been wrong-headed and murderous? If so, what makes you think such a corrupt, twisted, hypocritical and depraved belief system could ever do anything but make the Mideast problem, in the long-term, immensely worse? Or has the Left changed its spots?
The first law enacted by the communist regime was a law making anti-semitism a high crime against the state.
Marx:
"The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews.
…
In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism."
Marx viewed the huckster as the Jew and visa-versa; he called this "practical Judiasm." It was his figurative response to the idea that religion per se had to be done away with for Man to be free and that emancipation would be harder for the Jew than the Christian since
Judaism was more primitive, less evolved, than its successor Christianity.
A devastating expose of Zionism is in a book called "The Controversy of Zion"
by Douglas Reed. The book can be bought on the Internet, search: +catalog+
"book title"
The book is also on the internet, see: www.controversyofzion.info , also
www.conroversy_of_zion.com Douglas Reed's other books are on the
internet, see: www.douglasreed.co.uk
John Newell
NYC NY