I keep braying that Gaza is a watershed moment in American political life and American Jewish life. The billboard is one of ten being put up in New Mexico by an Albuquerque-based grassroots org (the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel). Here is their press release. The group looks to be multicultural, and led by two Jews, Lori Rudolph and Rich Forer. Forer says that he is a former member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who has been shaken from ideological slumbers in the last couple of years by the Israeli New Historians. He has learned that Jewish schoolchildren are "grossly misinformed" about the conflict and are taught to demonize Palestinians. Gaza was a "monstrous act of inhumanity," he continues, and Israel must act sincerely to restore the dignity to both peoples.
Monstrous act of inhumanity, that is the takeaway phrase. I believe anyone can be a member of AIPAC; but Forer's epiphany is evidently sincere, and symptomatic of a change in the American Jewish relationship to Israel that AIPAC will have to reckon with.
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'He has learned that Jewish schoolchildren are "grossly misinformed" about the conflict and are taught to demonize Palestinians.'
Okay, so Israeli-raised Jews have a good excuse of cultist brainwashing. So what's the excuse of Jewish Zionist Americans who supported the Gaza slaughter with the same ferocity? Heal thyself, diaspora Zionist. Kudos to Rudolph and Forer. They're going over the heads of the cult-keepers in America, including the "liberal" ones who only want to address the Zionist problem in Israel.
Liberals are not attacking Foxman, Dershowitz, Abrams, Walzer, Weisetlier, Chessler and all the other Jewish gangsters and vermin disgracing our airwaves?
You need to read more liberals.
(hint: Nancy Pelosi is not a liberal)
Why should we just stop at military aid? Why should we aid Israel at all? My problem with most former Zionists who "see the light" is that they usually find some sort of comfortable fallback position on Israel, and will still work for their primary Jewish and Zionist loyalties in the end.
In the end, their interests are almost always at odds with the interests of mainstream America.
Naval blockade.
Starve them for a year.
The link to the Coalition's press release doesn't seem to work. Can you fix it, Phil? Thanks.
This made me day. :) There is hope in the world.
You are right, Phil. Thank God, you are right–and I'm wrong to be so pessimistic.
I haven't prayed in a while, being so angry at all the wars, poverty and pain in the world. For a while now I have lacked in faith, in God and as well as humanity. But something aobut this bilboard– the innocent face of that child, and the people behind the billboard–it stirred hope in me and faith.
@ rykart,
I'm not interested in left-statists who have traded in their Jewish-supremacy for statist-supremacy. They've simply switched out the "the Jews" for "the Party," and the ones who ended up in Israel did the opposite.
Libertarian liberalism is the only authentic kind.
(hint: a set of chains stamped "Big Brother" is no less confining than a set of chains stamped "Zio." If the Zionist pied noirs currently stomping Palestinians were to emigrate wholesale into America tomorrow, they'd join their diaspora brethren in a conspiracy to solidify control of Big Brother under the guise of "multi-cultural progressivism" the following day, and grow government even bigger, more intrusive and murderous than ever. Freedom is anathema to certain minds, as the Founders understood well. Monopolistic, control-freak, criminal minds see it as a threat to their racketeering enterprise.)
Finkelstein says "I'm not for one state or two states. I'm a NO state kind of guy."
Which is pretty standard liberal fare.
Again…no idea who you are referring to.
@ Todd
There is no non-military direct aid to Israel.
Whether or not I agree with you in principle is irrelevant–the most recent Memorandum of Understanding signed between the U.S. and Israel in 2007 completed the transition of U.S. aid into entirely military aid. We no longer provide non-military aid to Israel–it's all guns and fancy toys.
And, since Israel is a nuclear weapons state, US aid is 100% unlawful under the Symington Amendment.
Saleema
Check out "From little things big things grow" and you will find a sustaining message of hope.
It deals with the origins of recent aboriginal activism in Australia. The creative cooperation of musicians and songwriters Kevin Carmody and Paul Kelly has been an inspiration.The former is black and the latter White.
Lori Rudolph and Rick Forer may start a brushfire.
Mind yourself.
John.
@David
Whatever the official policy is, I doubt that $3 billion is all that goes to Israel on a yearly basis from the U.S. I've seen many different figures thrown around, but I tend to doubt the government figures. What would you consider to be the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers on a yearly basis if all aid, loans and favors of all sorts were added up? Do you think that $3 billion would cover it all?
Excellent! Thanks for covering this, Phil.
@ rykart,
Is "libertarian socialist" Noam Chomsky a real liberal? Why bother going through the phase of all-encompassing statism if the ultimate goal is for the State to melt away? I'll tell you why: Because the totalitarian State is the ultimate goal for a lot of these kinds of “liberals,” not its obsolescence.
If Finkelstein really is an authentic liberal, one would think he would put more effort into anti-government activism. Finkelstein may be right about Zionism, but he’s naïve about socialism, as are our hosts here at Mondoweiss.
Frankly, I suspect many well-intentioned liberal Jewish political activists of having "issues" with the libertarian ideology of the Founders not because they have serious problem with their ideals (even if those ideals weren't totally actualized initially) but because the Founders were, to a man, raised as Christians.
Jewish ego can't stand the concept that the path to human emancipation goes through, or has gone through, Christianity. They've got to do it "their way.” And too often that means sidetracking through socialism, which isn't sidetracking at all, but actually regressing. And this plays into the hands of malignant Judeofascists.
Just look at what the Neocons were able to "accomplish" with the neo-American Leviathan. Think of how much more they'll be able to "accomplish" with an even bigger and more powerful Leviathan.
The MOU that Bush signed with the Israelis in 2007 committed the U.S. to give Israel $30 billion in military aid over the next decade. This is grant aid, given in cash — one lump sum — at the start of each fiscal year. The US does this favor for no other nation. Israel is required to spend 74 percent of the money to buy U.S. military goods and services.
So, yeah, US weapons are most certainly bombing the hell out of Lebanon and Gaza. Former CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison write all about it March 5 at this website.
Please – I suppose there should be a working link in Here is their press release, but it does not seem to work
If he's a former member of AIPAC, which means he paid dues, everything he says must be true. This is a big deal?
Efraim Karsh destroyed the "New Historians" in "Fabricating Israeli History".
@ Todd,
You certainly raise a good point. U.S. political support (as well as moral support and private economic support) is certainly worth more than the $30 billion in military aid we will provide over the next decade.
But actually doing advocacy on the issue requires some tactical work. "No More Military Aid to Israel," linked to a concrete number that administrations sign and Congress authorizes, is a campaign, not a dogma. I'd certainly morally support an "End U.S. Veto" campaign, but I think military aid is a good tactical choice as far as a place to start. Showing folks where their tax money goes is a good way to start the more in-depth conversation that you'd like to be having. See www.endtheoccupation.org for ways to get involved.
Julian, give up! Ephraim Karsh's attempt to deny the reality revealed by the "new historians" is a pathetic, transparently dishonest attempt to keep alive the myths of Israel's creation.
Karsh's work on the Middle East has received criticism. In a review of Empires of the Sand, Dr. Anthony Toth (D.Phil, Oxford) says
This is a polemical book whose authors have extended the intemperate and unbalanced rhetoric customarily employed by dogmatic partisans of the Arab Israeli conflict to the normally sedate and measured arena of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman history.
and
The book relies mainly on Western published sources and official British documents. But their use of even these sources is limited, since they actually ignore most of nineteenth-century history. Instead, the authors emphasize those episodes they feel support their interpretations. [5]
In an answer to Karsh's criticism on the New Historians, Morris responded in four lines:
Efraim Karsh's article (…) is a mélange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies that vividly demonstrates his profound ignorance of both the source material (…) and the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict. It does not deserve serious attention or reply.[6]
Morris later gave more extensive criticism in a review of Fabricating Israeli History:
But this is Karsh's way, to belabor minor points while completely ignoring, and hiding from his readers, the main pieces of evidence.
and
It is a measure of Karsh's ignorance of what actually went on in the Middle East in 1948 that he writes (p. 97) of "the Arab attack on the newly-established State of Israel, in which Transjordan's Arab Legion participated." Quite simply, it did not. and Karsh employs his usual method of focusing on the one document that seems to uphold his argument-often while twisting its real purport-while simply ignoring the mas of documents that undercut it. [7]
Political scientist Ian Lustick describes Karsh's writing in Fabricating Israeli History as malevolent and the nature of his analysis as erratic and sloppy. The book, he wrote, is ripe with 'howlers, contradictions and distortions'.[8] Lustick points to six instances in which Karsh gives quotes that say the very opposite of what Karsh tells his readers they say. One example he gives is of a statement made by Golda Meir that Karsh alludes to in support of his argument that there was never an agreement between Abdullah of Transjordan and the Zionist leadership. In the quote itself, according to the interpretation of Lustick, Meir explicitly writes about an agreement: 'The meeting [in November 1947] was conducted on the basis that there was an arrangement and an understanding as to what both of us wanted and that our interests did not collide'.[9]
Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London Yezid Sayigh[10] has commented of Karsh that, "He is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian (nor political/social scientist)," and encouraged "robust responses [that] make sure that any self-respecting scholar will be too embarrassed to even try to incorporate the Karsh books in his/her teaching or research because they can't pretend they didn't know how flimsy their foundations are."[11] Citing his doctorate in political science and international relations and his undergraduate training in modern Middle Eastern history and Arabic language and literature, Karsh wrote that Sayigh's criticism were "not a scholarly debate on facts and theses but a character assassination couched in high pseudo-academic rhetoric".[12]
Professor of History at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University Richard Bulliet, in an academic review, describes the Karshs Empires of the Sand as "a tendentious and unreliable piece of scholarship that should have been vetted more thoroughly by the publisher" and asserts that the authors failed to "contribute a dimension of sense and scholarship that raises the debate[s in question] to a higher level." [13]Karsh in response wondered "what credential did Bulliet possess, that a leading journal in the field should ask him to review our book? He is a medievalist who has done no research or writing on the subject. But in his spare time, he propagates the view of the Middle East and its nations as hapless victims of Western imperialism"."[12]
[edit]Books
but DANIEL PIPES LIKES IT!!!!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha HA!!
Stop it, Julian…my sides are killing me!
Ed wrote:
"Libertarian liberalism is the only authentic kind."
You go guy. Otherwise what's the alternative? Like Pete Townshend said, "Out with the old boss, in with the new boss"?
Actually, it was: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
In a just world, it would by now have been identified as Obama's unofficial campaign slogan, wouldn't it? But you have to hand it to the Democrats, they ran a very sophisticated "anti-war" bait-and-switch operation. In fact, so sophisticated that most still haven't noticed it, or simply don't want to.
Golly, gee whiz! Phil has found another anecdotal "former AIPAC supporter" who now has become an Israel basher. Just today, I met a fellow whose father was a veteran MAPAM-peace activist, whose brother is in MERETZ and whose nephew sat in the clink for refusing to serve in the IDF, YET, this fellow is now an Orthodox/religious settler living in Judea/Samaria, raising his kids and grandchildren there!
Also, former Knesset member from the HADASH-Communist party and veteran "peace activist" Charlie Biton now says he was wrong (he was interviewed in the Makor Rishon newspaper) and says he has become convinced after his endless number of meetings with Palestinian figures that they DON'T want peace with Israel on any terms and that the "political right" and Judea/Samaria settlers were correct all along. These two examples are far more important for determining the situation on the ground than this arm-chair activist in New Mexico.
Has anybody informed the Palestinians about Phil's Easter dinner at which the participants agreed that "nationalism is dead". Phil would have to admit that if this is true, then Israel would be doing the Palestinians a favor by NOT giving them a state…this would keep them away from falling into the "tribalism" and "nationalism" traps.
@ Julian
"Efraim Karsh destroyed the "New Historians" in "Fabricating Israeli History".
Karsh alleged the new historians systematically distorted archival evidence. He also listed examples of alleged distortions, half-lies, plain lies. Shlaim' defended his work. Morris accused Karsh of the very things Karsh accused the new historians to have done & subsequently published a long rebuttal and further replied with his own details countering Karh's details. Morris concluded Karsh work was comparable to that of Holocaust deniers.
Some destruction.
I had just written CA Sen. Barbara Boxer this morning about this very issue. Great to hear there is an organized movement as well.
@ bar_kochba132 (LOL)
So, AIPAC critic = Israel basher?
"National is dead" might mean a one-state solution, for starters, never a keep one-but-give- nothing- to the- other- solution.
I'm inches away from clicking the donate button. My guess is the Palestinians are so stupid they might kidnap and, who knows, decapitate him? Worth the chance I'd say.
@ Ed: Regarding your comment that "Jewish ego can't stand the concept that the path to human emancipation goes through, or has gone through, Christianity" you might be intersted to learn about the Christian teachings on debt bondage, courtesy of Michael Hudson:
Christian endorsement of debt cancellation and Clean Slates
From at least as early as 2400 BC it was normal for Sumerian and Babylonian rulers to annul the population’s personal and agrarian “barley” debts upon taking the throne for their first full year of rule. In addition to annulling these debts, Mesopotamian Clean Slates freed bondservants and restored self-support land to former owners who had forfeited their crop rights to foreclosing creditors. The Babylonian word for these Clean Slates was andurarum, and Jewish law adopted them with the cognate Hebrew word deror. But by the first millennium BC, kings had come to represent local oligarchies, so Mosaic Law took Clean Slates out of the hands of rulers and placed them at the center of Judaic religion in the Jubilee Year of Leviticus 25. Like Babylonian law, it cancelled personal debts, freed bondservants and restored land tenure to its “original” holders.
Debt cancellation is at the heart of the laws of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy calling for debts to be cancelled periodically, and to liberate indebted bondservants. Ezra and Nehemiah describe how they returned from Babylon to restore order by canceling the debts – and re‑discovering the Book of Deuteronomy. But creditor oligarchies were on the rise throughout the Mediterranean region in the centuries that followed. By the time of Jesus the mainstream of Jewish leadership had mounted an attack on the Jubilee Year, endorsing Rabbi Hillel’s prosbul, a legal clause by which creditors forced debtors to sign away their rights to debt annulment at the Jubilee. In his first sermon, Jesus sought to retain the Jubilee year by unrolling the scroll of Isaiah and announcing that he had come to proclaim the Year of Our Lord.
The Jewish oligarchy appealed to Rome to crucify Jesus. As he and his followers gained adherents by advocating debt forgiveness, Rome used violence against them. But Christianity grew by creating communities of mutual aid. Upon achieving political power, the new religion’s most important economic achievement was to outlaw debt bondage throughout Western civilization. However, the idea of a Clean Slate had to be postponed until the Day of Judgment at the end of history.
As creditors drove the post-Roman economy into a Dark Age, Christians banned the charging of interest altogether, even on commercial “silver” loans. Ancient languages had no words to distinguish “interest” from “usury.” This distinction was drawn only in the 13th century, as Church theologians applied the term “interest” to commercial loans in which “silent backers” advanced money to entrepreneurs. It was permissible for bankers to charge a foreign-exchange agio premium (that typically included an interest charge in practice), as long as the charge could be justified by their own labor and related outlays to provide money-transfer and loans. However, mortgages loans and personal loans were deemed usurious. The 13th-century Churchmen treated usury as theft and hence in violation of the Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.”
From antiquity through medieval European times, most theft took the form of usury, getting debtors to forfeit collateral they had pledged in exchange for emergency funds. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther in 1516 warned that this practice destroyed cities much as a worm destroys an apple from within its core. John Calvin in 1565, the last year of his life, likewise defined usury and fraud as theft on a plane with highwaymen and robbers. This ethic produced a line of development extending down to only a generation ago as Western law became more humane toward debtors. Debtors unable to pay are no longer turned into bondservants to their creditors, and debtors’ prisons have been closed down. Bankruptcy laws permit individuals (and corporations) to annul debts when they cannot pay.
But this eight-century-long historical trend is now being confronted with an anti-Enlightenment threatening to reverse it. In the United States, credit card companies have given enormous sums of campaign contributions to politicians willing to rewrite the bankruptcy laws to make home mortgage debts permanent and beyond the power of judges to write down. Wealthy individuals with more than one home can have their own mortgage debts on these properties written down, but homeowners with just a single residence are confronted with a lifetime of debt peonage. This is just the reverse of ancient law that protected the self-support land of citizens, but not their townhouses and other surplus property.
Have Lori or Rich endorsed boycotting Israel or ending aid because of the "grossly misinformed" and "monstrous act of inhumanity" because if they haven't I find them hard to take seriously. Words and billboards are cheap compared to the destruction of life and truth.
situation on the ground
This is no grainy newsreel Holy Coast distributed weekly by moguls with an axe to grind. This is hi-def, realtime, non-stop.
Everyone knows what goes on in your madhouse except those living there.
In my city's New Times the Coalition for Justice in the Holy Land ran a full page add in the Jan. 8-Jan 14, 2008 edition with the headline 'Why Does a Gazan Child Have to Lose Her Life?' and with three graphic pictures of dead Palestinian children.
@ Lance Thruster
An organized movement that's going strong! You can help spread the movement, check out www.endtheoccupation.org to find out how.
@ Laurie
I'd be with you except your comment seems like a bizarre response to a billboard that says "No More Military Aid to Israel." So evidently yes, they endorse ending aid (as I mentioned earlier, all U.S. aid to Israel is military aid). Not sure how they feel about BDS, but their stance on aid seems pretty explicit…
@David
There are many American Jews who are appalled at Israel's military aggression and might well support a move to cut military support but they would never think of ending all aid to Israel. Aid comes in the form of U.S. tax dollars to be sure but it also comes in monetary and spiritual support to schools, hospitals and such. There are direct donations, pension investments, etc. This 'soft' aid lends moral support to Israel's continuing displacement and destruction of the Palestinians. Aid isn't only about money.
BTW David, how much time are you giving to get your in-depth conversation started and bearing results? Given Israel's current level of aggression, how much time do you think the Palestinians have?
From Endtheoccupation.org
"This section contains analysis by the late Edward Said on the need to pay close attention to America’s treatment of the African American people to understand US policy towards the Middle East;" – this certainly strikes me as a very divisive statement if one is truly interested in bring together Americans to help end the Palestinian genocide. One of the reasons Edward Said received has much attention as he did was because he relied on race to build many of his arguments which in turn turned off many would be supporters.
David, I'm not impressed with your organizations 'tactics'
Given Israel's current level of aggression, how much time do you think the Palestinians have?
Posted by: Laurie | April 14, 2009 at 06:02 AM
5 to 6 thousand years. Based on population increase, the Palestinians will number about 450 million to the 7 million Jews in Israel. By then, they will believe they can defeat the Jews in an actual war. By then they just might.
@ David
Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign aid in American history–and most Americans
don't even know it. So far, arguably the I-P conflict has cost US Taxpayers 3 trillion dollars, which would have gone a long way to a real bailout these days despite Wall St, and without resorting to debt owed by us and our younger generations to places like China:
So it is true! Liars use bullshit stats. Thanks for the proof, Citz!
Some things are too big to do all at once, and have to be done in stages. Ending military aid to Israel is exactly the right place to begin. It also would not hurt at all for the U.S. to get tough for once about enforcing U.S. law regarding the manner in which Israel uses the equipment and technology it gets from the U.S.
Ending military aid to Israel, and denying Israel any further purchases of military equipment and technology as long as it uses it in violation of U.S. laws would not only put Israel on notice, it would create a major change for Israel on the ground.
Clarification:
"It also would not hurt at all for the U.S. to get tough for once about enforcing U.S. law regarding the manner in which Israel uses the equipment and technology it gets from the U.S."
Should be "the equipment and technoloty it has already received from the U.S."
@ Laurie,
Your not impressed with efforts to end U.S. aid to Israel, use an apartheid framework for popular education about the Israeli policy, and promote boycott, divestment, and sanctions in communities, campuses, and organizations across the U.S.?
Ok. Cool. What's your idea?
Overwhelm the occupation with the intense volume of your blog comments?
@ Laurie,
Allow me to clarify what I'm trying to say here (without the snark this time):
I'm not disagreeing with the content of anything you're saying, nor am I denigrating the importance of forums like this one for discussion of these topics. Having lived in East Jerusalem for about a year and a half, I've seen the rate of settlement expansion, the intensity of Israeli military aggression (on a much smaller scale than the recent orgy of violence against Gaza), etc., etc. I absolutely agree with you that there is urgent need for change–including a massive change in U.S. policy and U.S. support for Israeli policy.
The question I'm raising here is: how do we create that change?
It seems to me that we have to start somewhere. Yes, the situation is urgent, but all the more reason to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We can hardly wait until every single individual who lends monetary, emotional, or whatever kind of support for Israel to change their minds–that's the opposite of urgency.
U.S. military aid to Israel is, as everyone on this forum knows, massive. Cutting it off would be huge. And, as Shirin has mentioned, we have legal instruments and advocacy instruments that we can use to work towards that. I'd love to see private donations to Israel stop until Palestinians are treated like human beings, but in the meantime, other tactics are needed. Whether that means education efforts like this blog, advocacy efforts on U.S. policy, BDS work, solidarity work and grassroots human rights work in Palestine, whatever. I'm just not sure we gain that much by sniping at other people's tactics b/c they're not comprehensive enough or whatever. There's no silver bullet–it's the combined pressure of many of these efforts over time that will create some sort of concrete difference.
David,
You are absolutely right.
Massive change is not accomplished by everyone trying to do everything at once. Massive change is accomplished step by step by each concerned person doing what they can do, and using the time they have to devote to the effort as productively as possible.
Constantly taking pot shots at one's fellow activists for what they are doing, or not doing, or whatever else wastes everyone's time, distracts from the effort, drains energy, and poisons the well. People who have time and energy to spend sniping at their fellow activists ought to put that energy and time into positive action.
But then you would be interferring with the "Great Nazi Flame War". Laura and Rykart are full-bore players while you are just in with half of your ass. Get in there Shirin, you are embarrassing the Palestinians with your cowardly behavior.
Posted by: David | April 14, 2009 at 01:38 PM – I respect what you are doing and good luck with it. We are on the same side. I think there is room for more than one approach. Mine is to tell it like I see it to all Israelis supporters and not let up until until the killing and displacement stops. This means all aid to and commerce with Israel is the same as aiding and abetting a crime.
Posted by: Shirin | April 14, 2009 at 02:01 PM – sorta like what you've just done? Blow it Shirin
Well, Laurie, if you find it effective picking fights with people, including those who are on the same side you are, I wish you good luck with that technique.
I don't have time for that, so we will go our separate ways, and hopefully each of us will succeed in our own way in helping to bring about a good result for the Palestinians.
David, this is the quote I reacted to: "This section contains analysis by the late Edward Said on the need to pay close attention to America’s treatment of the African American people to understand US policy towards the Middle East;"
I believe bring race into this or almost any issue is divisive. Israelis took the land because they wanted it, not because Palestinians were/are a different race, because of course they are not. Apartheid applies to Israel because Israel wants a Jewish state and therefore a *separation* of peoples. It is not a racial issue. To site African Americans is to conjure the ghost of race and the popular myths and truths that go along with race issues in the States. Interestingly, the States extended citizen to both the Blacks and the American Indians. Israel resists this because it would mean the end of a predominately Jewish state.
Well, Shirin, you do seem to have time for it. "good result" for the Palestinians. I WANT JUSTICE. You and your hand wringing Zionist can hope for a "good result".