Congressmen Brian Baird and Keith Ellison have published a beautiful piece on American policy in Israel/Palestine in the Seattle Times. Excerpts below. A few comments first.
–It is significant to me that Baird and Ellison are non-Jews, writing in a west coast publication. The most forceful statement about Israel/Palestine at the Nation's Obama event last week also came from a non-Jewish congressperson, Donna Edwards of Maryland (as Scott McConnell reported here). These are signs of the change I have been pushing for: non-Jewish Americans must become engaged on the issue. All three of these brave people are forward-looking progressives.
–It is interesting to compare Baird/Ellison with Michael Walzer/Avishai Margalit in the New York Review of Books. They also penned an anti-Gaza piece. But it is virtually impossible to read as such. Read it for yourself, I find it impenetrable: legalistic and detached from the incredible suffering. While Baird and Ellison write simply and straightforwardly, and without my emotion (no "slaughter" here) about a tragedy. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of Walzer/Margalit's crowning principle in that piece–treat others' civilians as you treat your own–but I would emphasize that that a west coast newspaper with non-Jewish voices is offering better guidance on this moral horror than a leading intellectual publication in New York with Jewish voices. And why do I inject the religious note? Because I would insist that New York publications are generally leery of lesson 1 above. They do not want to include non-Jewish voices, they are hesitant to have non-Jews comment on this stuff. The pattern is overwhelming, in the Times, the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books: Jewish guides are sought. Though yes, now and then an Arab or Palestinian is allowed to write. The great division that is occurring now is between Jews, Roger Cohen vs. Jeffrey Goldberg. I want more voices.
From Baird/Ellison:
We are convinced that the strategy in Gaza and ongoing policies in
the West Bank are counterproductive to the cause of justice and lasting
peace for all concerned.
In our judgment, pursuing extremists with overwhelming air power in
one of the most densely populated areas in the world — with no means
for civilians to escape — ensures the devastation that has occurred in
Gaza. The extremist targets may have been hit, but so too were
essential civilian services and any means of economic self-sufficiency.
Palestinian families and businesses now lack the resources to rebuild
their homes and businesses because they cannot get essential building
materials such as glass or concrete. The consequence is that Hamas has
not been visibly or demonstrably weakened but, ironically, moderate
voices in the region have.
Beyond Gaza, a less dramatic but counterproductive strategy is
taking place in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority leaders have
recognized the right of Israel to exist, have been fighting the
corruption of prior regimes, and have maintained law and order
throughout the recent Gaza assaults.
Despite these efforts, the economy of the West Bank is crippled by
more than 600 imposed checkpoints. Palestinians must endure long and
humiliating searches on a daily basis. even essential medical
professionals and critically ill patients are forced to take circuitous
and costly detours.
Meanwhile, despite commitments to the contrary, Israeli settlements continue to expand throughout the West Bank.
Repeatedly we were asked by moderate Palestinians and others in the Islamic world: What is the reward for moderation and peace?
"They do not want to include non-Jewish voices, they are hesitant to have non-Jews comment on this stuff."
Seems like there ought to be lots and lots of Christian Zionists willing to chime in on the issue. I mean, c'mon, Zionism was a Christian idea from the beginning, and I have heard many detailed projections about the future of Israel and its people from Christian Zionists. I can't understand why the New York Times does not give them a prominent voice on the subject. Haven't they earned it, after all, with their monetary suppoprt for Israel?
The Times largely reflect a secular Zionist view, a refuge for Jews against imagined pogroms to be. They are deeply suspicious of Christian fundies since the paths diverge in the long run. The neos are suspicious too, but have a marriage of convenience. A very temporary one.
But then I'm a secular goy so the whole religious thing seems pretty nutty to me.
these guys are obviously not looking for a job promotion….
Until a majority of non-Jewish Americans begin opposing US policies towards arming and subsidizing Israeli's apartheid society, the policies will not change.
Agreed.
I wrote something similar on this site a few weeks ago.
Get busy!
We’ve seen this kind of MSM controlled/ideological reporting on behalf of powerful subversive internal/external movements hostile to American values and organized by or around murderously corrupt Jewish ideologues, their ideological partners, and their useful idiots before.
At a time when the Soviets were murdering those in their immediate sphere by the millions, never fear, the New York Times had Walter Duranty on the job as a foreign correspondent from Moscow. He heroically reported…virtually none of it. In fact, apparently on behalf of the Communist enterprise, he methodically went about covering up mass murder as the NYT’s foreign correspondent from 1922 to 1936 — a period during which millions were murdered or starved to death by the Communist State, most of them Christians.
So never underestimate the extent to which certain ideologues inflamed by “a fire in the minds of men,” will turn away from mass murder out of ideological rectitude. The Communists did yesterday, and the Necons/Neolibs are dong the same today.
BTW, “a fire in the minds of men” was a turn of phrase used by Dostoyevsky to describe the ‘feverish mental state’ of early Communists that was later embraced by Christian Zionist Bush and his Neocon speech writers and inserted into his second inauguration address. (See Raimondo at http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/feb/28/00007/ ) What an insult to hundreds of millions of murdered Christians. Whether Bush and his Zionist and Christian Zionist fellow travelers have embraced Zionism out of a deliberate, back-handed insult to Christianity (in favor of Statism as the ultimate authority), or out of sheer stupidity makes no more difference than the reasons behind why a lot of left-liberals once embraced and continue to embrace Communism, and why a lot of left liberals once embraced and continue to embrace Zionism.)
@ Bruce,
Don't pretend you are interested in gentiles doing what it takes to shake "a majority of non-Jewish Americans" from their Zionist-induced trance, because I and plenty of others elsewhere are doing just that (and in the name of libertarianism no less!) but are getting nothing but grief from your kind in response.
That's the problem with most non-Zionist, left-liberal Jewish ideologues: they only want anti-Zionism on their own authoritarian-Statist/incubating neo-Communist terms. They want to be able to maintain the authoritarian, soul-killing Statist control, but just lose the Zionist albatross (which means deep down, they don't really want non-Jewish emancipation at all. Can't have that, too many pogroms, too many Holocausts. The State must always maintain control with plenty of Jews pulling the strings–which is just a variation of Zionism under a different guise.)
Either the insecure and warped, Jew and non-Jew alike, are going to have to take a leap of faith and embrace libertarianism, or the destructive loop of wrath and retaliation is going to continue indefinitely, and it will be your own stubborn fault. The spiritual health of the Western civilization cannot be put on hold by the State indefinitely to appease the insecurities of emotional juvenile delinquent renegades, no matter how many of them might be out there.
From a comment as JSF by "sk"
"The first footnote of Perry Anderson's typically magisterial survey stresses the same point:
http://www.newleftreview.org/A2330
Among those who advocated or prophesied the recovery of the land of Israel by the Jews were Milton, Locke, Newton, Priestley, Fichte, Browning, as well as the better known case of George Eliot. Among politicians could be numbered Shaftesbury, Palmerston, Milner, Lloyd George. In the Enlightenment tradition, there was Napoleon's call to the Jews to reconquer their patrimony, during the Syrian campaign of 1799. See the careful study by Regina Sharif of this neglected subject: Non-Jewish Zionism, London 1983, passim. Among political and bureaucratic elites, Christian Zionism was often quite compatible with anti-Semitism, since it projected departure of local Jews to the Holy Land: for this, see Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, New York 1999, pp. 33-36 et seq.
Following is an excerpt from Non-Jewish Zionism:
Long before Theodor Herzl accepted 'the mighty legend' of Palestine this legend had been made an intrinsic component of Western culture. The legend of Palestine as the ancestral home of all Jews vividly lived in the imagination of most Christians at the turn of the century, and continues to be felt today in the West's unequivocal support for Israel.
People view reality through a set images which may or may not correspond to empirical reality. This also holds true for foreign policy. This set of images is the product of a certain political culture and is transmitted from generation to generation through the process of socialization. The Zionist image matrix that evolved in the West over four centuries and which accounts today for the widespread Western pro-Israeli attitudes and policies is very complex but can be looked upon as the sum of the following images: the Biblical image, the image of self-identification and the moral image.
Here:
http://www.al-moharer.net/falasteen_docs/regina_sharif.htm
is an essay by the same author in which she delineates links between British Imperialism and Zionism."
sk |
Thanks for asking, Chris. Always glad to be of service.
And are you gonna say that American contemporary Christian ZIonism isn't a big supporter of Israel?
@ Chris Berel
"Imagined pogroms? Is it true you slept through the entire time you were in history class and had your boyfriend take the test for you?"
Chris, How many pogroms have you personally suffered through since the Nakba? You think there's not enough proportional jews in top USA regime slots? How so?
Chris Berel, I don't know much, but I am sure that every comment you post here causes many, many people who were complacent in their views to re-consider them. Yup, when they read your comments, people see a whole new angle on the US support for Israel's policies.
Yer doin' good, pal. Keep it up. Thanks to you, lots of people will consider the source and ideology of their Zionism support, and re-consider its worth to them.
You have done a lot for the cause.
ED further vindicates the concerns of non-Jews that a safe haven must exist for them to escape the assholism espoused by the Witty-Berels of America. Americans, wake up from your slumber. Look at what the Wittys and Berels have long done in your name, and at your expense only.
Mooser is astute. If anybody's comments support the info from jew-hating sources it's the bigoted, and intentionally ignorant spew of Berel & Stools, most truly named.
What lies?
"Mooser is astute."
Yes, but the Jewish monogamous tradition means that only my wife knows just what a stute I really am!