(Photo: Dana Goldstein)
Should we call it the anti-lobby–the surging force inside Jewish life against the actions of the Israel lobby?
Jewish Voice for Peace had a huge billboard outside the AIPAC policy conference calling for Palestinian freedom. And here is a letter JVP is sending out from Dorothy Naor, a 77-year-old who was detained last week as part of the crackdown by the Israeli police on New Profile, the feminist movement to demilitarize Israel.
Naor's letter urges Americans to lift up their voices against the lobby:
America keeps on sending us billions of dollars in weapons every year. And yet, Israel has become the least safe country for Jews to live in (except for war zones such as Afghanistan, where no one is safe).
* Nowhere else in the world since WWII have we Jews lived through 12 wars/battles/campaigns–all in less that 61 years.
* Nowhere else in the world since WWII have so many Jews been killed in violence–over 23,000 since Israel came into being.
And yet, we have no security. 61 years of the use of force have not brought us Israelis one iota of security…
We dared to ask whether militarism was the only way. We are undeterred. We will continue asking.It is your time to ask too.
If you are an American, please take a moment right now to call on Congress to ask the question: what happened with your US tax dollars in Gaza?…Here in Israel, we do not need more US weapons. We need you to help us achieve peace-real peace.
There can be no peace, however, until the Palestinians have justice. The Palestinian catastrophe since 1948 has included expulsion from their homes and lands, and for those who remained in the West Bank and Gaza, extra-judicial executions, land confiscations, no freedom of movement, nor the freedom to build homes and communities, Palestinians live always with the fear of Israeli military incursions. Since September 29, 2000 Israel has killed 6,248 Palestinians. 1,487 of these have been children.
"Anti-lobby." I like that a lot, because it doesn't force anyone into the camp of ending Israel, or ending the concept of a Jewish state. But it does address the primary source of the Zionist problem in the Middle East: the Zionist fifth column in America, be it Jewish Zionist, Christian Zionist, or Judeophile liberal Zionist. I've always said: dry up Zionism's blank check from the US, and its guarantee of US veto’s in the UN, and its guarantee that the US will run political interference for it in other areas such as economic boycotts, and Zionist expansionism will quickly come to an end. In fact, why do these Jewish Zionists even want to live in the US if they love Israel so much? Is their primary function to keep the pipeline open? They're really at the root of the problem.
I'm always a bit suspicious of Jews who suddenly turn on Zionism when the support for Isreal has always been high in most Jewish communities. Do they get off that easy? How heartfelt is the opposition? Do non-Jews get to take an honest look at the harm that Jews have done to them? Will Jews turn their zeal for reform and justice on themselves collectively, as they often ask other groups to do, and look at the harm that they have caused others? Do Jews and non-Jews even fit together in the West?
This is one brave lady! Mazel tov!
Dorothy Naor had some input into my screenplay Two Weeks in September. She told me that she recognized the people on whom I had based many characters.
who was detained last week as part of the crackdown by the Israeli police on New Profile, the feminist movement to demilitarize Israel. I've been following this on Niqnaq. New Profile isn't solely a feminist movement, it's also anarchist and just anti-draft. http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/feminists-...
I think 'Anti-lobby' is problematic because it sounds negative, reactive. It sounds secondary to AIPAC, which it may be at the moment but linguistically it doesn't give the impression of a 'pro-active' agenda, or of an agenda which is anything more than a response to AIPAC's influence. If the goal is to reset, to reframe the conversation, being 'anti' has its very clear limits.
What I read of your screenplay is interesting, Joachim. Maybe the negative Christian imagery, swastikas and lynchings will shock Jews into examining themselves, but I believe that most whites and Christians should be spared the guilting. I'm not sure that such imagery will get you too far with the majority, but I could be wrong. Either way, if refering to the Elders of Zion in a book title would be off limits due to issues of sensitivity, wouldn't wrongly tying other people to Israel's crimes also be off limits due to sensitivities and the fact that Israel should stand on its own? Are you still writing a book on Judonia?
The sequence from page 1-4 was the script doctor. I started the story at the American university campus. She argued that I needed a general introduction describing inhumanity to universalize the script. Yes I am still working on the book, but I am breaking it up into 150-200 page volumes. The first is Themes of Zionist Foreign Policy which I hope to finish over the next two weeks.
The Christian West does not hold groups collectively responsible for the crimes and trespasses of their ancestors into perpetuity. This concept has been eroded by the “liberal” Statists in the post-Christian West (I'm thinking, for example, of how generations of innocent Germans have been made to pay for decades for the Holocaust and WWII), but nursing grudges even after the trespass or crime has been acknowledged, addressed and reasonably compensated is unhealthy and destructive. I always figure: balls to the wall against the injustice, but then let it go. Anything else is cancerous and corrosive. That's kind of the American way, too — or at least it used to be. Two wrongs…turn the other cheek…we all know the routine. But that’s why it’s important to maintain the Christian ethos and not allow the State to supplant it with its own “morality.” Hence, libertarianism.
BTW, it might even be possible to start the story later at p. 19 in the university president's office. Everything before could really be backstory that is inferred from the rest of the text while the main story takes place in Palestine. I thought it would be best to get to the Akram family as quick as possible, but the script doctor argued that the material might be too alien to Americans. Also a lot of the audience would be college students. It might be better to give more time to the characters with which they could identity.
OT but amusing: Caroline Glick today accuses Obama of " courting the ayatollahs like an overeager bridegroom."
Your instinct is better. You never never put exposition upfront in a play. Start with the conflict, which is universal. Do you think people watching Antigone today know Greek history? Take a look at the first 40 lines of Hamlet. We know something's up and it ain't pretty. Grabs you right away.
Not a wise move on her part. This guy plays poker.
Whoops! I thought you were writing a stage play. Rules are much tighter for a stage play than a screenplay. You can get away with a lot more extraneous stuff. But still, the conflict stuff rules. I mean look at Gibson's move, written in Aramaic, per crissake.
Issues of sensitivity? What about issues of honesty? Oh. Sorry. I forgot. Honesty doesn't count here.
But he plays poker badly.
Joachim, that stuff really happened? The Palestinian couple I mean…
What would you know about honesty? From what you say an ignoramus would think you actually had a child soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, when we all know that would never happen–though you might easily have one in the IDF.
Well, we all know the poker game is rigged. Else, what's an AIPAC jew for?
It happened during my last working trip to the Occupied Territories. I have made the story more cinematic. I gave the movie a prequel/sequel, which is about a couple that I met a few years earlier although I put the events after those of Two Weeks in September and moved the couple from Jerusalem to Boston. That screenplay is entitled Devorah's Two Weddings.
It happened during my last working trip to the Occupied Territories in 2002. I have made the story more cinematic. I gave the movie a prequel/sequel, which is about a couple that I met a few years earlier although I put the events after those of Two Weeks in September and moved the couple from Jerusalem to Boston. That screenplay is entitled Devorah's Two Weddings.
"Do non-Jews get to take an honest look at the harm that Jews have done to them?" That's a non-sensical question. Every anti-Zionist Jew I've encountered doesn't blame certain Palestinians for being anti-semitic because we know Israel claims to represent the Jewish people and Israeli soldiers introduce themselves as 'the Jews' when they invade peoples' homes. No anti-Zionist Jew ever said Hamas has to renounce their charter before peace. Taxpaying Americans, a group I'm in, have collective responsibility for Israel. "Jews" do not, though many Zionists would have you believe they do.
I would just like to note that East Germany didn't pay Holocaust reparations, inspite of being occupied by the Jewish-dominated Soviet Union. Also, name the last liberal statist that held Americans responsible for destroying the Indians.
only thing we know for sure is Jacobwolfie never served in the US military's "war on terror."
Why do "taxpaying Americans" have a "collective responsibility" for Israel?
East Germany's income was in worthless east-german marks, not in hard western currency. I am sure now discussions – about the repatriations – are in full flow. Another round of payments is also being sought for children and grand-children of Holocaust survivors for their suffering.
None of which negates that defining a position against lobbying would be useful, very. What is it about lobbying that is problematic? Is it possible to divorce what is problematic (given that one can mount evidence of that) from lobbying as a process, or is it the process itself, and the form of government from which it extends, the actual problem? If so, what alternatives are available, and how do we get there from here?
Naor's letter demolishes the safe haven theory, demonstrates the lack of validity to any notion that one would gather all the members of any group together in one area, in order to protect them from the rest of the world, when far better is it for any group to be a part of the whole, as individuals, singular, united with all the others similar in one aspect, being human.
What is the reason for Israel to up arms against Iran? Israel is an ethno-theocratic state; it defines itself by religion and cultural tradition, using them as a basis by which to control the economy, not least by allocation of resources and collection of taxes and fees, etc. It is a bastion of capitalism; a vanguard for penetration into the Orient by the Occident, to use 20th century terminology. Islam, not incidentally, contains economic elements, one of which is the prohibition of usury. Christianity also contains such a prohibition but has developed work-arounds. Barbara Tuchman's thesis was that Christianity did this by creating an ostracized class, the Jews. If Judaism has no similar prohibition, it would seem to create a fundamental contradiction between Judaism and Islam. If Judaism also prohibits usury, but along with Christianity has been flexible enough for the members to find ways around the prohibitions, then the contradiction might be more easily understood in terms of economic theory: wealth creates power; changing the social guidelines regarding usury would change ownership of wealth, and thus control of power. That is a likely reason for world war. This, then, is a perspective that helps make clear a motive for the emphasis being brought to the threat presented by Iran. Powerful interests want to continue their war for control of power and wealth. Do they truly represent us; is this being done in our interest? Without question, it is being done in our name, with our tax financing, using our family members.
My bias is exemplified by my assumption that Judaism, as a monotheistic religion arising from a certain period of time, developing within the world I inhabit, probably does have prohibitions against usury. If, from ignorance, I am incorrect, it doesn't change my conclusion, rather takes my thoughts in new directions.
Islam developed work arounds.
"I am incorrect, it doesn't change my conclusion, rather takes my thoughts in new directions." In other words, if your current facts do not support your racism, you will dig up new facts that will.
Demonstrate my racism, please. Explain what you mean; support your assertion. I posted the comment before realizing that it seemed as if my conclusion was contingent on whether Judaism prohibits usury. It isn't. My general expectation would be that any religion with such a restriction would develop work-arounds, given the millenia that separate our present reality from the era that saw establishment of even the most recent of the religions. Micro-loans are a work-around of a different sort.
Someone once told me I was being racist because I was speaking of Judaism as a religion (at least I think that was what was meant; anonymous didn't explain his comment) – Jacobwolfen, your here response seems similar. I hope you will explain, because the only workable response to bias is constant observation, and I fail in that duty if I don't accept criticism for evaluation. I am not religious; this undoubtedly results in a bias. How that bias might result in racism is a question worth examining, if that is the connection being made.
You have already made a conclusion, a bigotry, which you will not change, even though your supporting information proves to be totally incorrect. That is the jist of the statement you previously made.
Because we enable it financially. If society wasn't structured to make us feed the government with taxes and army volunteers, the whole imperialist support for Zionism would be cut at the stem.