The Economist:
Five months after Barack Obama went to Cairo and persuaded most of the Arab world, in a ringing declaration of even-handedness, that he would face down Israel in his quest for a Palestinian state… [f]rom the Palestinian and Arab point of view, his administration… has meekly capitulated to Israel…
Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, the smaller of the two main parts of a future Palestinian state, mocked [Mahmoud Abbas] for ever thinking that Mr Obama could change American policy towards the Middle East.
There are still folks on our side, most notably Chomsky and those who follow his line, such as Stephen Zunes, who would have us believe that the ritual humiliation of American presidents by Israeli prime ministers, such as we have seen again and again these past weeks, is simply a cover to disguise continuing US support for the Israeli occupation. When it’s brought to their attention, the notion that the pro-Israel lobby might have anything to do with it is dismissed by them out of hand.
Related posts:
- Hoenlein: No daylight between US and Israel. Obama: I disagree
- Why O Why Has Obama Abandoned the Palestinians? (The Left Ignores the Lobby)
- Liberals continue to deny the influence of the Israel lobby, thereby plunging their readers into a tarn of ignorance
- Jewish Community Due for ‘Turmoil’ and ‘Upheaval’ Over Neocon Capitulation
- Nader Blasted Obama for Caving to Lobby on ‘This Critical International Problem’
{ 181 comments }
Why can’t it be both?
That is, perhaps the ritual humiliation of a US president as cover for implicit US policy, as well as the efforts of the Lobby?
Those two concepts seem to mesh nicely with each other.
Obama backed down to Netanyahu to secure the supply chain for oil.
…from Israel? I mean, not to be impertinent, but exactly how much oil do we get from Israel?
Chomsky doesn’t have mainstream support. Neither does Zunes. People will make knee-jerk decisions about this conflict in the same way they do about everything else.
And before that happens, they will have to contend with their own cowardice in questioning the identity politics of Zionist Jews.
There is context. The deep-seated racism in this country against Arabs. We are a country of racist Orientalists. We need to be spoon-fed any kind of truth and for a conflict like I-P where so much truth has been censored by the Jewish Thought Police, the MSM, and our cowardly intelligentsia – what hope is there?
Chomsky isn’t going to do anything about it. Get Palestinians to come here and speak. Not an old Leftist Jew who whitewashes identity politics (dismisses it w/ the antisemitic canard ‘it’s the Juice’ – straw-man).
Get Palestinians to talk about their day to day life. Just what they go through everyday. Get all the survivors of Israeli massacres to talk about what they went through.
You have to stop putting a Jewish face on this conflict for even the goddamn Palestinian side. It’s disgraceful and selfish and proves that the Left is full of a many Jewish gatekeepers and thought police as the right.
Let the people who are suffering speak and let them be humanized in the eyes of our stupid countrymen – via their own personal experiences. Palestinians don’t need help from Jews. They have survived all these years on their own. They simply have to tell people their story. That’s enough to get people motivated to do something. We don’t need Anna Baltzer to sit next to a Palestinian to make it O-K to talk about the Palestinian experience.
In fact, putting a Jew and Arab together is EQUATING the experience. It’s not the same. Palestine is not occupying the Jewish State. It’s the other way around. And it’s not Jew who are being killed all over the ME, it’s ARABS. Not just by terrorists but by the ‘good guys’ too – us.
Arab identity, Palestinian identity today means to be victimized and slandered. Jews go ballistic when someone ‘denies’ (meaning any number of things, from drawing analogies to revisionism to outright denial) their Holocaust religion. Think of how many Holocaust movies we are bombarded w/ each year. Or the Nazis who are chased all over the world to this very day.
Arabs get no justice. And the Palestinian question is the center of all of this.
I don’t understand why we aren’t seeing just everyday Palestinians being asked to tell people about their situation.
Instead we get some Jewish tourist to represent the Palestinians. It’s a disgrace and I really wonder what the Palestinians think.
‘clay of Jewish humanism’ – perfect summation
I mean Phil, what does Palestinian identity mean to you? I remember in one of your videos, you just held up that camera to that poor girl whose father is held in one of Israel’s dungeons. You just held it up to her and stared. I dunno, it’s kind of sick.
Its true, Palestinian voices are not given the air time they deserve.
But lets face it, a Jewish voice in support of Palestinian rights is a hundred times more powerful than a Palestinian voice.
Its not until as you say the Palestinians are finally humanized that we will be moved by what they have to say. Until then people like Phil, Anna Balzar, Noam Chomsky, and other people of Jewish heritage should be honored for speaking up on behalf of Palestinian rights.
I agree, James: those are just facts at the moment. But Cliff makes some good points, JGlatzer’s self-righteous revulsion over Cliff’s mention of Jews — they who can never be mentioned — notwithstanding.
I must say that as someone who has dual identities, as a Palestine solidarity activist with many like minded Middle Eastern friends, and also as someone of Jewish background; there are some really offensive sentiments here. What does Chomsky lacking “mainstream support” have to do with the truth of what he says? He’s dedicated his life to Palestinians for decades, including being on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Children’s Fund, which builds educational facilities for Palestinians in refugee camps; and gives financial donations to the children of Gaza. He donates his time for this cause selflessly, and you have the nerve to dismiss him as a “leftist Jew”?
It seems you have a very sick habit of throwing around the term “Jew” in a very offensive way. The context is really hateful. Philip Weiss presents the issue from his, Jewish Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians’ perspectives. If you are going to push away good natured, genuine and honest people because they happen to be Jewish or Israeli, I think you need to take a hard look at your own prejudices, and that you might be no better than the settler who just cut down a Palestinian olive tree.
Don’t attack him for being frustrated with progress. No need to equate him with a settler. You’ll never win that battle.
Are you offended by the word Jew? Come on…
His point is correct about equating the two sides of the experience. A Palestinian always needs a spokesperson of the Jewish left to represent their viewpoint. Why is that? As a person of dual identities, do you not see this issue repeating itself again and again and again?
Couldn’t agree more, brother. The article I cited a few minutes ago by Marc Ellis specifically, and harshly criticizes Christians for their failure to support “Jews of conscience”.
The following quote cannot really be understood without reading the entire article, but in the hope someone reading this post will take the time to read, and reflect on, Ellis’ thoughts, here it is…
“Jews of conscience feel this Christian self-involvement as a power against them and a betrayal.”
Lest this come across as self-righteous…Ellis’ words sear my own conscience, and with good reason.
JGlatner,
He donates his time for this cause selflessly, and you have the nerve to dismiss him as a “leftist Jew”? What’s the insult? “Leftist Jew?” That’s an insult?
First of all – I never implied that Chomsky was an absolutely bad guy and that his life’s work was meaningless.
We’re talking about I-P. And when it comes to what is IMO the main issue here in the States – identity politics – Chomsky is a complete fake. He has all these nuanced arguments about the political economy of the mass media. That’s something he knows a lot about because he researched it and yada yada yada, he’s not having to continually cite something and say ‘he’s/she’s the leading _____ scholar’ (a thing he does ALL the time).
When he talks about Jewish identity/power – he simply regurgitates a straw-man.
I mean, this guy wrote a goddamn book – an institutional analysis of how the politics of our MSM work! Plenty of people dismissed that book as conspiratorial. Chomsky took a materialist perspective. Why can’t their be a sociological perspective?
I don’t regards Jews as a RACE. Sorry. You’re not part of a Jewish race. There is an identity and it draws upon ethno-religious something something. But the identity is a sociological phenomena. It’s self-perpetuating like the March of Dimes (til they switched to Advances for Babies or something…). You’re not bound by some rule to be Jewish. That’s why there is a totalitarian term – self-hating Jew. For the Jews who aren’t in line w/ the political ideology most Jews support at the moment.
Next, I wasn’t dismissing his work when I stated that he wasn’t mainstream.
Look at the context of my reply to Phil. Phil said ‘we still have people on our side’. So I commented on an old Leftist Jew (I meant this cynically, because I’m sick of the self-righteous garbage; ‘never again’ and all that song and dance’; plus, I have already said before I think Leftist Jews operate on a similar mechanism to the Neocons and Zionists, that sense of moral superiority, for example – someone like Norman Finkelstein could easily be a Zionist, he has the same traits in his rhetoric and his writing. He’s just on ‘our side’.). I don’t how Chomsky is going to help the Palestinian cause. He isn’t. So it’s not about what he’s worth.
The emphasis was on the intellectual laziness of most Americans. Not on Chomsky.
And when I say Zionist Jew or ethnocentric Jew – the context is pretty goddamn clear.
This isn’t about how I say the word Jew. This is about a double standard. It doesn’t matter when we call someone a Muslim terrorist or Islamic terrorist. No one gives a shit. It’s when someone says Leftist Jew, etc. etc.
Identity matters in any case. It’s not enough that Chomsky is a Leftist. He is Jewish. That informs his perspective. That doesn’t mean he was always going to end up a certain way. I consider Zionism to be a construct of Jewish identity politics. I think Chomsky is very idealistic and I made a point before about how this pertains to his identity. Don’t remember if anyone replied to me before on this.
Anyways, when Chomsky was on ‘The Firing Line’ (not sure if that’s the correct name) – he called the armed Vietnamese resistance, ‘heroic’. I found that odd.
Now when Buckley countered the use of this word, the context – with the atrocities the resistance had partaken in – Chomsky said, they only did it when dot dot dot.
I could be wrong about the next part but : has Chomsky EVER called Hamas’s armed resistance of Hezbollah’s armed resistance heroic? No.
In Vietnam, it was bland, face-less, White identity that was fighting the short, plucky, indigenous, Vietnamese. He can’t do that w/ I-P because Jews are ingrained within American society. He can’t present the Israelis like a recent Turkish film has – as fucking monsters.
I mean it’s not enough that these peoples’ rite of passage is walking all another people for a couple of years, but they can manage to go on and have happy lives and do w/e. Israel is a Jewish country club. The niggers live on the outskirts in trash and squalor. They just can’t get their act together can they!?
I’m not a racist. It’s the most obvious logical fallacy.
I look at certain constructs of ‘identity’ – let’s say Jewishness like all other Religion-ness is inherently benign and then it splinters off into ‘good’, ‘wrong’, ‘lost it’s way’, ‘evil’. Fair enough.
But you haven’t convinced me of dropping the ‘Jewish’ adjective. When I say Leftist Jew – I am cynically referring to the utter fucking silence of those street-performers (intellectual capacity) Jewish Liberals during the 60s who never said a word about Israel-Palestine. I’m talking about the phonies who get all up in arms over Darfur (again, identity politics, no one knows a fucking thing about Darfur, they just want to ’save’ a monolith of victimhood -> think ‘black’ -> think of our own history w/ ‘black’ -> there you go). Etc. etc. etc.
Sorry, too many people have died. Even if I were an antisemite, I just don’t give a shit anymore. 500K Iraqi children dead? BEFORE the War? Decades of the most vile racist bullshit passing off as entertainment? Everyone from beloved comedians to our own President (mocking the Uyeegers[sp] – I know I’m misspelling their name horribly, sorry) not giving the slightest bit of respect.
There is physical brutality against the Arab and then intellectual brutality. Slander. Lies. Scapegoating.
And one last thing.
Jews are fine. They will be fine from now on. In fact, not just fine but powerful. Not just logistically, but in imagination-land too!
We have movies now. We have TV. This is socialization. It informs of us popularly accepted attitudes.
You think there are bad Muslims? Bad Arabs? I agree. Just like bad everything else. But do you think you’ll ever see a BAD Jew in American media? Fuck no.
Now if I point out this SIMPLE fact and the double standard, does that mean all Jews are now bad? No. It just means you’re so used to this social pressure defining what is acceptable to be said and not said in the I-P discussion.
Identity politics.
Cliff, I understand what you say; it’s a shame that you have to rip out your heart just to ask some here to even imagine dimly what you are getting at , basic human dignity and respect for all humans.
Glatzer’s Jewish identity is clearly much stronger than his self-described position as a “Palestine solidarity activist” which is open to so many interpretations as to be meaningless in an of itself. Far from dedicating his life to Palestinians for decades, he has rejected their demands for the right of return and had opposed every effort to bring Israel to its knees (or senses, if you prefer) economically such as stopping aid, and implementing boycotts, divestments and sanctions. What kind of a solidarity movement is there when even now there has yet to be a serious movement to stop US aid to Israel or halt the millions of tax-exempt dollars that fund the Jewish settlers and the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem.
Funny, isn’t it, that when there was a movement against US support for the Contras it focused on stopping the relatively minor amount of aid, $15 million, that was going in their direction, which constituted at that time the equivalent of what was going to Israel every day. But what did we hear then and what do we hear now from this so-called “solidarity” movement? ” The ineffectual and unrealistic slogan, “End the occupation!” which most Americans neither know or care about. What they do care about is where their tax money has been going and until the developement of the BDS movement in Palestine, not the US, that fact of life has been ignored for which we have Prof. Chomsky, more than anyone else to thank. That pied piper of BS has dismissed the role of the Israel lobby and the fact that every administration since Eisenhower, until the election of GWB, has tried to stabilize the region and rein Israel into a treaty with its Arab neighbors but has failed due to what the press generally refer to as “domestic”considerations.
If you listen toor read Chomsky, you will think it is all a bluff, that the US is the real rejectionist preventing Israel from agreeing to a two-state solution, for which he supplies NO historical evidence.
A few years back, after Chomsky told an African publication that he was against boycotting Israel, because the Israeli Jews, not the Palestinians (whose opinions he dismissed then as he does now!), would oppose it, I decided the time had come to expose his deception to the world, and wrote for Left Curve, an article entitled,
“Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and Israel-Palestine Conflict,” which has been reproduced and translated into several languages.
When asked by his supporters to respond to my criticisms, the man who has been voted “the world’s leading intellectual” told them he would not read it and told others in emails that I was “crazy” and “obsessed”with him. To this date, I am not aware that any of his acolytes have provided a rebuttal. Here it is,
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html
and if I were to write it again I would add a section on President Kennedy whose name appears nowhere in the Fateful Triangle but who just happened to support both publicly and privately, the right of return of the Palestinians to their homeland (Res. 194), who was adamantly against Israel developing nuclear weapons, and had his brother, Robert, as attorney general, vigorously pressing the American Zionist Council, the precursor to AIPAC, to register as a foreign agent, all three of which were red lines for Israel. (re the latter, see Grant Smith’s “America’s Defense Line.” His successor, LBJ, was enveloped with zionists from his days in the Senate and abandoned all of JFK’s positions. Chomsky, an expert at “manufacturing consent,” obviously thought that knowledge l of this might cause readers to question his position that every president since Eisenhower has considered Israel a strategic asset. Anyone casting Chomsky aside and actually studying the available history that for the most part of its history, the White House and the State Department considered Israel, if not a liability, but a major impediment in thw way of US Middle East policy that needed to be appeased because of the power of the Zionist Lobby.
A further illustration of how Chomksy’s Jewish Zionist roots supersede any feeling he may have for the Palestinians can be seen in his back-and-forth with Noah Cohen a few years back. The first three installments can be read on ZNet, which allowed Chomsky to have the last word. Cohen’s final response to Chomsky, which wasn’t published on ZNet, provides an excellent window into Chomsky’s Jewish supremacism.
In order to avoid the spam filter, I’ll post each link separately.
Noam Chomsky: Justice for Palestine?:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/8819
Noah Cohen: Apologetics for Injustice in Palestine?:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/7980
Noam Chomsky: Advocacy and Realism:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/7981
Noah Cohen: Chomsky’s “Realism” and “Advocacy” : Advocacy for what and for whom?:
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_11365.shtml
I think when individuals make statements about the Palestinians speaking for themselves, and needing no one to speak for them, need to understand that this is not a relatively new phenomena. Settler states and colonialists have used this same ploy for hundreds of years, long before the I-P issue. What we have is a relatively simple lack of historical perspective.
Take for instance with the accusation of “orientalist” there should be a certain historical breadth, the idea of speaking for those with “no voice” and redefining a population goes way back hundreds of years to European colonialism. It was used over a couple of hundred years ago in the now USA against the indigenous populations of North America (in fact it is still used). In The UK, before there was even issues regarding the I-P in their present form, there were entire schools in regard to Africa (as an example), which just spoke primarily of black bush people and headhunters and said that this was the African legacy!
So what am I saying? This was a Euro-American trait (the silence of the other and speaking for them) long before the I-P appeared, and the only thing that the Zionists have done is take over in this ongoing process, specifically for the ME region. They have certainly worsened the process, whereas in earlier orientalism there was at least specific knowledge and appreciation (to a degree) of the cultures where they touted their expertise. With the Zionists we have a degradation, a constant vilification, and that in order to establish their “expertise” and to act like they are bringing something to the table of hegemony. The US doe s not mind, it uses it as cover for its own so-called “war on terror.” Zionists want to be partners in the further exploitation (actually all over the world), they want to personally benefit from it (specifically their elite) economically and for the establishment in the land.
So, there is no one driving anyone else, there is merely a pilot and a co-pilot in the same plane – the lobby, to be frank, is merely an insurance policy. There are interests all over the world, but specifically in the area we are discussing, we have wars taking place and unrest and it eventually drives the USA into a dead end. What has to happen is both the USA and Israel have to come to an understanding that they are on the wrong course. That the present course will destroy both Israel and the US, Israel has married its Ertez to the US dream (among its elites) for world domination giving us a set of dual delusions, look at the parallels in the thrust -
Israel is an occupier, and now so is the USA – both say they want peace in their respective atrocities but instead we have the escalation of violence, only a plan of beating people into senseless submission to their design – what warms the heart of every tried and true fanatical Israel-only Zionist is either genocidal toward the Palestinians, or driving them out of the region, or into the sea if you like – US ultimate delusion (and the entire government in power) is to hold ultimate sway over the Middle East and it’s resources, i.e., oil – the “new Middle East.” Like an unchecked animal they wants to destroy current non-compliant states in the region, and set up compliant and puppet rulers. Look at Iraq, that is his design for the entire region (some say Iran is next) – so we have dual and intersecting delusions taking place, they are wedded to each other (this is what is meant when Zionists speak of both the US and Israel having the same interests). There is a confluence of interest.
The challenge is to get all parties involved in this circle jerk to understand it is the wrong direction. You have the Palestinian interest in this conflict with Israel, and in the world arena you have other world powers arising – there is a whole new paradigm to consider. We either sit down together in all of these interests, a sort of round table if you please, or there will be world conflagration. This is the 21st century, there is no room for a mono-polar power – the idea of a set of dominants (whoever they may be, Euro-American, Pan Pacific, etc.) ruling the world is a delusion from the past, and a new world order is demanded.
With all this talk of “orientalism”, it just dawned on me that “Arab Studies” are still referred to in Hebrew as mizrehanut – literally, “orientalism”! Language can be so sneaky sometimes.
It true that equating Palestinian and Israeli is a worthless endeavour, that makes one want to puke. I agree that people just need to see the how the narrative is a farce, which is that Israel the victim of terrorism, while the acts of terror are retaliation for the stolen land, ruined towns, and the destruction of Palestinian history. Israel is the oppressor & occupier, and the news media and Congress do not have the courage to take a stand. Talk about turd-blossoms.
I think the media realize when this fiction is revealed they are going to suffer greatly for this. But the Jewish goon mafia, will do everything to protect the myth of Israel.
It’s a good scam. One that people will look back on hundreds of year later and think, what a bunch of conniving religious bastards.
Added, I was surprised Grayson voted against the Goldstone report. I thought he might be a demi-Hero of the Congress. In the least, he’s helping to take down the Fed.
Chu, I too was disappointed in Grayson’s vote. Also Kantur. Here are our heroes, folding in the face of the lobby’s onslaught. Which perhaps could be taken as proof positive that The Lobby that-dare-not-speak-its-name is, in fact, more powerful than either the insurance lobby or wall street. In what way is it so powerful – that’s the trillion(s) dollar question. I can see though why Grayson must pick his battles just now so I’m cutting him some slack, if only because we need him elsewhere. kantur also. I hope some day, they’ll all live to tell the real tale….
On a positive note, most of northern california’s representatives (silicon valley-plus) voted present (one voted no). Now that is what passes for progressivism these days…
Danaa,
He needs to choose his battles wisely. He can’t take on Bernake and vote for the Goldstone Report. That Orlando house seat will be pretty damn expensive the next time he runs for Congress. Imagine the Fed on your tail and the Lobby at your flank. That’s a Dan Brown novel. And it’s nice to know Silicon Valley is on board.
In the least, he’s helping to take down the Fed.
Darrell Issa of California is doing excellent work in outing the Fed as well (he’s an important figure in the mix, being one of the richest congresspersons). Unfortunately, he too voted against the report.
Issa is also a strong progressive on most issue and has been also a supporter of accoutability on general. So he had to vote to condemn Goldstone for the same reason Grayson did. And this is a good example of how The Lobby distorts politics across the board. I bet that were we to analyse the votes of most progressives, we’d find quite a few curious nuggets.
There are two sold exceptions I know of – Kucinic on the left and paul on the right 9sort of right). And both are PNG in the ranks of the “influencial”. I am glad to see that Donna Edwards is joining them and there are a few other solids as well (compare to the meager 4 who voted against gaza back in january!).
As for Northern Cal, the political equation is simple: Silicon valley area is highly hetergogeneous with an extremely strong asian component – as well as a latin american one – and quite a bit of the money in fund raisers for all causes (including political ones) traces to high tech and real estate, not finance. It may surprise people to learn that but though israelis (ex or not) feature prominently in certain fields (electronics, software, biotech), american jews are missing in action from hardware intensive fields, as best i can tell (I am in one of those). What jewish people there are, they tend to be as throughly assimilated and global outlooking as everyone else, as are companies founded by ex-israelis. Which translates to the issue of I/P not being a major one for districts represented by the Reps – thus taking them off the hook (somewhat) to vote certain way on this issue. many would have probably voted outright No, were it not for the usual recriminations of Washington.
Now, does this point the way out from our national conundrum on this matter to anyone?
Sorry for the typos. Whipped this out in way too much of a hurry.
Danaa,
Would a website devoted to the voting records of all congress on I/P be a useful tool for the future?
Chu – I think that’s a great idea
Although I think AIPAC has the same data, only upside down.
Danaa, Issa is a Republican. I’m not familiar enough with his voting record to know if he votes for many “progressive” causes, but I doubt it. He is certainly a supporter of accountability.
The desire to bring transparency to the Fed is not a partisan issue. Bernie Sanders, the self-avowed socialist, and Ron Paul, a Libertarian Conservative, have teamed up to sponsor one of the Fed accountability bills. They don’t see eye to eye on many issues outside of this and civil liberties.
I mentioned Issa because I saw a video of him on C-SPAN questioning two college professors, Russell Roberts and William Black, about the government bailouts and about the Fed (Executive Pay and TARP funded companies). Black would represent the progressive side of the issue, while Roberts represented the more conservative side, and Issa was more aligned with Roberts. On the whole, it was interesting to see the two sides come together on the broader issue, even though their reasons for doing so are different. Issa spoke intelligently about the financial specifics, which is rare for anyone in Congress – most of the time, this stuff is over their heads.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/214540#
(The video begins with Kenneth Feinberg. The professors appear later)
Potsherd>
They definitely have the score on every congressional rookie and senior in the house. But the information will be more useful to the US population than the AIPAC henchmen.
Just go to a website and you can measure who’s doing what, with regard to solving the Middle East peace process. A big visual network graph for all to see. Sounds simple enough. Mondo should take it on.
It might work for the AIPAC network also. Just like the mafia and the RICO act, an AIPAC network website can expose the tremendous web of Jewish Dons and Capos.
Capice?
Dan – I REALLY did whip up that post in a hurry. Turns out I mixed up Issa with another representative I had in mind, who is an actual progressive, and who name I couldn’t conjure up. Mortifying, but that’s what happens when one is doing too many things at once – images coalesce somehow and words invert and who knows what else. Definitely not a good day to operate (or design) heavy machinery. I do admit to having insufficient knowledge about the republican side of the house (it’s not like there’s not enough trouble to go around with our own bluedogs chomping on red meat). How’s this for a lengthy mia culpa?
Be it as it may, anyone who’s for accountability – from whichever side of the aisle – is to be commended – especially if they are consistent. I know Ron Paul is, and for that he has my support (even of we disagree on the role of government and a few other odds and ends).
Chu – I think such a web site would be a great tool and potentially quite useful as we go forward. We know Aipac (and probably J Street) have this kind of information at their fingertips which they then proceed to exploit – so we might as well.
Just think of the interesting correlations – like those who are progressive on everything except I/P – or, maybe , the reverse (nothing comes to mind here). This is the kind of thing that a site such as Openleft excels at – on domestic matters of concern to progressives (alas, OpenLeft assiduously stays away from most foreign policy issues in general, probably just so they don’t have to deal with thorny little Israel)
Cliff,
From reading most of your diatribes on here, it really seems like your issue is with Jews and you use the I/P conflict as a basis to hate on Jews. When a Jew tries to help out your cause you feel threatened.
Anna Balzer must really piss you off, not only is she Jewish she is also a women who happens to be young and beautiful.
Although his point on the issue, was there’s always a Jewish spokesperson for the Palestinians. Why is that? I believe the Jewish activists, like Balzer, completely care for the Palestinians and justice, but why can the Palestinians not tell their own story?
The Daily Show is one recent example with Anna Balzer.
I hate people who chalk up her success to their own twisted and totalitarian conception of ‘race’.
My point is proven where you say “not only is she Jewish she is also a wom[a]n who happens to be young and beautiful.”
Wow! She’s kind of like an Aryan Jew, huh? Intelligent and with looks! The perfect specimen!
Good for Anna helping out the poor poor [offensive language] who just can’t get their act together.
My problem isn’t with Ms. Baltzer (who I think is truly courageous, because she doesn’t back down…most of the time, she does try whitewash Jewishness of Zionism which is false. Zionism is a construct of Jewish identity.).
My problem is with Jewish exceptionalists, racist, supremacists. My problem is with [offensive language] you, yonira.
(I’m younger than Anna BTW – and I’m Indian. I feel no connection to ‘India’ and I don’t care. I’m an American. My heroes are Americans (mostly) and Palestinians. I feel solidarity w/ the Palestinians. So while I may be Indian, I don’t identify w/ that identity. The former two are more meaningful for me w/ my politics, my personal story, etc.)
And puhleeze yonira, you’re a Zionist. If someone here like maybe Schumel or Danaa, took genuine offense to what I’m saying I would check myself. Those are Jews of integrity who don’t seem at least to be in love w/ themselves and are humanists first and everything else second.
Who is making the allegations matters. If it’s a common crook (yonira) it means nothing. If it’s a person of character, then there is something I’ve done wrong and I need to do some soul searching.
But I won’t do it for some Zionist [offensive language].
I agreed with some of Cliff’s comments, but not with others. I’m too lazy to go through them point by point, however.
Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with Ann Balzer or what she represents–there should be more like her. If there is to be a fair and just peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s going to come from people on both sides working together to bring it. I don’t think Palestinians should bow and scrape and tone down their criticisms to make people like RW (thankfully absent today) happy, but fortunately, not everyone who espouses peace and reconciliation expects this. And for that matter, I don’t think Israelis have to tone down their criticism of terrorist tactics (but they should admit their side has employed them on a larger scale).
This is a theme that has been repeating itself for time immemorial; the good benevolent colonizer speaks on behalf of the colonized.
It’s similar in a sense to the unspoken rules practiced in the chain of command structure. The line level employee is never to have access to top management. The mid-level supervisor speaks on behalf of the line level employee and will take that employee’s grievances up with top management. That way the mid-level supervisor can maintain his control over the line level employee, because access to top management threatens that supervisor’s position and power.
Cliff, I agree with you on a lot of this. Certainly, Palestinians deserve higher standing within the movement of people claiming to be in solidarity with them. And it is pretty much indisputable that in general Americans and Europeans are racist orientalists. People in solidarity need to generally take cues from Palestinian leadership and not perpetuate paternalism.
But it’s important not to overlook the special value of principled Jewish speakers and activists, like Phil and Baltzer, if only in a practical and not a moral sense. The reality is that in the United States, most of the people who are politically active on Middle East issues are Jews. Not only do Jewish speakers likely (and regrettably) command more credibility with Jewish audiences, but they can usually better understand and cater to those audiences, “re-tracing the steps” that led them from a Jewish background/perspective to an identification with the cause of Palestinians. And the more Jews we can convert to the cause of justice/equality, the fewer we’ll be fighting.
And, even with a general audience, the presence of both Palestinians and Jews enhances the credibility of our movement. Because the truth is that we do stand for universal justice against tribalism. The presence of conscientious Jews doesn’t make that true, but it underscores the point.
There seems to be a sort of tension here, and I don’t exactly know how to negotiate it.
But I certainly share your frustration at Jewish and “western” activists , who take up the mantle of “peace” or “Palestine solidarity” and then effectively dictate to Palestinians which tools they can use and which of their rights they can keep on the table.
Robin, I understand your points. The problem is when there is no Palestinian activists to represent themselves in msm television programs, but sometimes there’s a Jewish activist speaking for them. That seem wrong to viewers because
it implies that Palestinians seem incompetent and need a Jewish activist to speak for them. That diminishes the real perspectives of Palestinians. Although Jewish activists can identify with the Palestinian plight, they will never be a Palestinian. Also people in this country need to see a Palestinian speaker taking the reins. It’s important to have a figure that represents the struggle. Jewish activists, although noble and courageous, seem like their translator in an odd way.
I agree wholeheartedly Chu.
Do any potential Palestinian Americans and/or Palestinian speakers come to mind who might be willing to appear on USA TV News and talk shows, etc?
There was a female Palestinian Lawyer Phil linked to a video. Smart and levelheaded. Can’t remember her name.
What it means is that the minions of the Israel Lobby in Congress care more about their checks from AIPAC than they do about their own (nominally) country and, most of them, their own party. The Democratically-led Congress severely weakened the power of the US, all for the sake of strengthening the racist government of Israel.
It’s much much more complicated than a few checks, potsherd. If only it was just money – which, after all, can be raised elsewhere. It’s unfortunately infinitely more insidious than that. Don’t forget the tit-for-tat that congressional reps must play to get support for their causes. Now what do you think Lieberman is holding out for?
The way legislature is conducted in this country is an utter disgrace, one which The Lobby does all it can to exploit – and perpetuate. The Lobby is, in truth, a poster case for electoral dysfunction – which doesn’t mean it’s off the hook. Not from me.
Here’s a thought: if this country can’t find the will within itself to do something about the physical health of its own citizens, what can we expect from them to shore up the humanity of some palestinians far away?
Well, you’re quite right, of course. And if the system weren’t already corrupt, the lobbies would have no power – not the Israel lobby or the insurance lobby or any other special interests.
It’s at least as much a symptom as a cause.
But it goes another step further when Congress actively works against the interest of national security, not just the health and welfare of the voters.
Well said, Danaa.
===================
Interesting post, Jeff.
Marc Ellis, I think, provides the answer, if your comment about Stephen Zunes is seen as a question. (I don’t know nearly enough to make any comment about Chomsky.)
“At the End of an Era”
http://www.crosscurrents.org/Ellisspring2003.htm
Thanks, Don. An interesting article.
Hi Shmuel…you are quite welcome. Ellis is not so easy on his fellow Jews…but not so easy on us Christians, either. This conflict seems (at least to my underpowered intellect) to raise profound moral questions, which are not always so easy to answer. I do not mean to minimize, or make overly complex, in any way, what Palestinians are subjected to.
But the “abuse of power” seems to me to be “inherent to power”, or the humans who acquire and wield it. I/P certainly has Jewish “flavoring”…how could it not? Just as the conflict in Ireland has Catholic and Protestant “flavoring”. (I can’t think of a better word at the moment).
Or if we want to plumb the depths of human absurdity, we could look at the Catholic vs Catholic conflict between Spaniards and Basques.
I find Ellis so good, so provocative…I have trouble reading his work (that probably makes no sense, but it is how I react to him).
Anyway…thanks in turn for your comment!
Don,
I read some Ellis years ago (Beyond Innocence and Redemption, i think – bought at a Palestinian bookshop in Jerusalem), and remember that I was more impressed with his commitment than his analysis. I will have to go back and reconsider.
At the risk of sounding like I’m praising myself, thanks for the link, Don.
When I read it I thought of James Carroll , the author of Constantine’s Sword, which is a sort of combination of history of Christian antisemitism and Carroll’s own posturing. I have a sense that Carroll is exactly the sort of person Ellis is talking about. Below is a sample from 2006–fairly nauseating, in fact. To be fair, a more recent piece written during the Gaza War wasn’t quite as bad, but the 2006 piece illustrates perfectly how Christian guilt over antisemitism can perversely morph into slanted apologetics for Israel–
link
Thanks, Don (say…I like your name). I had not seen the article by James Carroll before. Yes, I would agree nauseating is a quite accurate description. And yes again…he also seems to fit Marc Ellis description.
This has been an interesting, and very powerful exchange today, no?
Jeff Blankfort has left me reeling; gotta go read his article.
Ellis’ article should be a must-read for RW, the Mondoweiss sloganeer for “the path of possibility and hope,” a path that Marc Ellis explains better than anyone could, because it demands a clear-eyed acceptance of reality and history.
And I think he’s dead on about the 20th C Christians.
Chomsky and Zunes, both admirable men in many ways, spin the narrative that Imperialist Uncle Sam is the dog, and Israel is its tail, which is spun as Sam wants in the interests of Ike’s feared military-industrial lobby interests and Big Oil. I think not only
M & W The Israel Lobby shows that as BIG as BIG OIL is and so much in the USA’s national interest, the fact patterns and accrued evidence has shown Big Oil actually was forced to take a back seat to the PNAC vision. In other words, tiny Israel is the Right wing neo-con AND Left wing PEP dog, and its giant tail is Uncle Sam.
For some relief from this intricate evil, here’s something you may not be aware of in terms of how far it has come–hint, how can a person who got an undergrad college scholarship based on the claim he was not an American citizen become POTUS:
http://nenosplace.forumandco.com/usa-politics-f9/interestingindeed-t19796.htm
Citizen you sometimes make sensible posts but other times you go badly off the rails. Yesterday it was pushing the twin towers controlled demolition myth but this one is just bat-shit insane.
I don’t know what Citizen wrote yesterday, but as far as “the twin towers controlled demolition myth” is concerned, there are many intelligent people who believe the towers came down via controlled demolition. These are not the wacky “conspiracists” that the mainstream media likes to show, rather they are architects, engineers, physicists, pilots, intelligence agents, military personnel…oh, and demolition experts.
Whether they are correct in their assertions is something that should be studiously researched, not dismissed cynically out-of-hand as a “myth.”
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/09/16/why-propaganda-trumps-truth/
http://patriotsquestion911.com/
“Something is wrong with this picture,” thought Nathan Lomba, as he watched replays of the Twin Tower collapses on television on September 11, 2001. A licensed structural engineer trained in buildings’ responses to stress, Lomba saw more on the screen than you or I. He puzzled, “How did the structures collapse in near*symmetrical fashion when the damage was clearly not symmetrical?” Lomba was hardly alone in his discomfort. Most structural engineers were surprised when the towers fell.
They mainly kept their misgivings to themselves, though, as Scientific American and the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, BBC, the History Channel and government agencies such as FEMA and NIST offered varying and often imaginative theories to explain how fires brought the towers down.
http://www.ae911truth.org/downloads/29_Structural-Civil_Engineers_2009-06-17.pdf
I personally do not know what brought those buildings down, but with what understanding of physics, having formerly majored in it (and it isn’t exactly rocket science, in this case)… I don’t believe those planes brought those three buildings down. It just doesn’t work that way.
Like I said, I don’t know what happened. But I know the planes alone couldn’t cause that.
I also know physics well. At least at the level of understanding how the towers came down. No one predicted that such a fire would cause a catastrophic collapse. But in retrospect the collapse is completely explicable. This issue has been covered elsewhere and is quite OT here. I find this very disconcerting to hear people that otherwise seem quite rational claiming that the towers collapse was a controlled demolition. OMG folks, you are labeling yourselves as nutcases. Please do not burden the Palestinians with your irrational conspiracies.
Fair enough that it’s off topic… but I can assure you it most certainly is not explicable as presented in the mainstream. I’ll only say that, if you really want an answer of any sort, look up the tests run by Underwriter’s Laboratories in 2004. Look at the actual tests and their results.
Well, I was called a nutcase for denying that Iraq had nuclear weapons materials, so really, at this point, it’s par for the course.
Moi aussi, chaos.
You’re right, Syvanen, that it is ‘quite OT here’, but I didn’t buy it the first time I watched it. I’d watched far too many controlled demolitions in my life to believe two 110-story bldgs can descend into their footprints in 8-9 seconds. The science will out in the end and that is what I am waiting for.
syvanen, show me where I “pushed the twin towers controlled demolition myth.” I did not. You have quite an imagination. Also, please respond to my comment other than by calling me a bat-shit insane. Thanks.
Citizen, Obama wasn’t known at Occidental as Barry Soetoro, he was known as Barry Obama. http://www.oxy.edu/x8722.xml. And the link you cited is factually wrong on a whole other list of issues.
As for you, Syvanen, whose opinion I respect on these boards, I have no idea who felled the towers, but dont ask me to accept that it was a 45-minute fire from jet fuel on the upper floors. The fire in the North Tower on Valentine’s Day in 1975 burned through the night and engulfed the 9th to the 16th floors, with flames leaping out all sides; building stood the next day. So that dog just dont hunt with me.
Also, Syvanen, you show me anywhere in the world where a natural fire in a building cut 110 stories of columns in fairly even pieces at 45-degree angles and I’ll pay you 100 Gs.
The other thing that always got me was the firemen reporting inside the tower on the 78th floor within minutes of it collapsing. There were no reports that it was 2700 degrees F, the bare minimum to make steel melt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/nyregion/09TOWE.html
MRW and others. The fire did not melt steel. What happened is that the temperature of the hydrocarbon fire reached a point that affected the temper of that metal which was well below the melting point. But it was a temperature that turned the beams into high quality structural steel into the equivalent of cast iron — a form that could not support the weight of the building.
Syvanen, that’s not possible. Steel with more than 2.1% carbon is no longer steel, it’s cast iron, and steel is formed by treating molten (melted) iron with intense heat and mixing it (alloying) with carbon. Unless someone was up there with a stoker, adding carbon, it’s impossible to do. It’s not a reductive process.
The ‘hydrocarbon’ fires you’re talking about were almost out, before the collapses, according to the firemen in their dispatch calls released in 2005. Dont forget they were able to withstand the heat in the corridors and stairwells, and on the floors they were putting fires out, minutes before both collapses. You can google for those mp3s.
MRW, thanks for the link re Soetoro v Obama; I will read it.
Oh, and Citizen, one of the witnesses now turning against Orly Taitz and her birther movement said on page 3 of his affidavit that Taitz said she got the Obama birth certificate from the Mossad. Huffington Post put it up: http://z.pe/Cyx. Second paragraph, pg 3. I think.
It’s a delicious read, actually. He details the affair Taitz is having with her lawyer, and quotes the lawyer describing sex with “older woman’ Orly.
First Nigerian documents, and now Kenyan ones? I would have said the Mossad should get out of the forgery business because they’re no good at it, but apparently fielding forgeries to the American public is like taking candy from babies.
Nah, it’s because they think Americans are stupid enough to buy their crap. And you know what? They might be right.
[great part]
” Orly’s better in bed than 99% of the much younger girls I’ve ever met. You name it: hotter, hornier, wetter, tighter more of a nypho than I’ve ever met in fact. Her only limitation is on kinkiness, she won’t let me bite her.”
She sound like a complete legal hack. If you read on, she was a disaster for the Birthers. She’s a dentist who crossed the bar, but never practices.
This is Blankfort’s point and it is completely accurate, if you read Chomsky and Zunes:
This has been my experience, too. I have brought hundreds of sources documenting this to Chomsky-ites. The result was a complete dismissal, and then a countered strawman argument. When asking these Chomsky-ites to then substantiate their argument, there was none. Dismissal of hundreds of well-prepared sources and no argument to counter with other than a vivid belief of the “true” way the world works. I am quite often reminded of arguing with a religious belief system when engaging these topics. There is no need for fact or evidence, since this materialist perspective explains how the world works.
This leads us to another key problem: The way materialist perspectives ignore the ideological. Chomsky makes his fatal error here. He, and people who follow his paradigm, simply dismiss the ideological. It matters not to Chomsky-ites that neoconservatives, powerful people, the lobby etc have powerful and emotional connections to Israel that cannot be explained through a materialist lens. These highly ideological connections are clear, very visible, and described many who constitute the loose Israeli lobby.
Meanwhile, where are the same lines of evidence for the Oil companies? China’s oil consumption has moved from a net exporter to consuming about three times what Iraq produced: and this growth in consumption came from largely US funding! China has secured the major long term oil contracts. We are backing off of Iraq and moving to Afghanistan, an oil poor nation. Oil companies were fighting and lobbying to increase trade to both Iraq and Iran. In the late 1990’s, Iraq was begging to sell their oil, and countries like France, Russia, UK, and Italy, , and U.S. companies like ExxonMobil (and the American Petroleum Institute) were lobbying to ease the sanctions . Meanwhile, AIPAC was openly pushing for both Iraq invasions. In Iran, AIPAC, the Bronfmans, and senator D’amato lobbied and passed harsh sanction on trade with Iran when US oil companies was Iran’s biggest oil trading partner by far. When the neocons were writing in the mid nineties about “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” Cheney was talking about how an invasion would be a quagmire. The Carter Doctrine is often brought up by Chomsky-ites, yet the man who wrote the often quoted passage came out publicly against the wars in Iraq and Iran.
What about the opinion of the “oil guys.” Obviously, Daddy Bush was against the invasion, much top the very public chagrin of the neoconservatives who very openly fought against clinton, then Powell in pushing for the war. Phillip Carrol, the former CEO of Shell oil thought the neoconservative plan was terrible. The James A Baker Institute wrote a paper warning about the war.
Those who defend Chomsky don’t have the clear evidence, and yet the words of either the pro-Israeli loose lobby, the Oil company representatives and their lobbying efforts does nothing to sway their religious like beliefs in a baseless materialist view.
It is
Is it possible that Chomsky is afraid? Mearsheimer and Walt suffered greatly after they published their book. Perhaps Chomsky just doesn’t want to be persecuted by The Lobby. He gets a lot of grants from the US government. Will those grants still be there if he went against AIPAC?
Otherwise, the only possible explanation is Chomsky’s own ideological beliefs.
I truly don’t think Chomsky is afraid. His strain of ideological selective blindness isn’t new – it reminds me of nothing so much but the Reds who refused to believe the truth about Stalinism.
Materialism, too, can be a True Religion.
Otherwise, the only possible explanation is Chomsky’s own ideological beliefs.
He could also be a well-placed intelligence agent. It may sound crazy, but it’s not at all beyond the realm of possibility.
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it…
I still say that both Chomsky and the “anti-Chomsky’s” can be right.
The Israeli Lobby, epitomized in its power by Feith, Perle, Libby, Emmanuel, the media, etc., etc., is undeniably the major influence on US middle-eastern policy.
Imho, it is equally undeniable that US foreign policy has been guided for decades, if not centuries, by a willingness and appetite to suppress 3rd world populations on behalf of “western” interests through diplomacy, militarism, and economics. And Israel as an ally fits that bill nicely.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the “anti-Chomsky’s” have the belief that the US is somehow the naive, innocent bystander in all of this. It’s not.
“He could also be a well-placed intelligence agent. It may sound crazy, but it’s not at all beyond the realm of possibility.”
Um, for all I know the rest of you are intelligence agents. What better way to discredit honest criticism of well-documented war crimes than to link it all with a bunch of speculative stuff about a far leftwing writer almost universally despised and ignored (to the extent possible) as an intelligence agent. And that 9/11 was an inside job, etc….
Really, Chomsky is wrong about the power of the lobby and I think it’s completely understandable that he would be. What depresses me about this thread is that it shows what happens to marginalized people (marginalized by the mainstream, I mean). We realize that much of what we are supposed to believe is crap, and then we start thinking everything the mainstream believes is crap. Some conspiracy theories are true, so maybe every conspiracy theory is true. Everything supposedly true is false and everything supposedly false is true.
I don’t accept this. Chomsky doesn’t accept it either and on most issues he’s right. Yeah, he’s wrong about the Lobby–his own blindspot at work. But he’s right to stick to what one can show using normal standards of evidence, without resorting to the thought processes normally employed by people suffering from paranoia.
Chomsky doesn’t accept it either and on most issues he’s right.
Jeffrey Blankfort and others have an entire laundry list of issues on which Chomsky has been dead wrong. This has caused untold millions on “the left” to accept wrong assertions, thereby leading them in the wrong direction.
Is this deliberate? I do not know.
Suggesting that someone with the stature of a Noam Chomsky may be an intelligence agent is not paranoid. Having an emotional attachment to the man and his words, and indulging in a diatribe in defense of him, may well be.
Hey, that’s where we are in America now. After what we did in Iraq — what we’re still doing in Iraq, and that agents of the US that tortured people (to death, in some cases) are free, and we’re supposed to believe that “the United States doesn’t torture! Not anymore! Really, we mean it this time!” Donald? The truth is nowhere to be found in the United States, anymore.
Emotional diatribes? Ah, no. I like Noam, respect him, learned a lot from him, and also see his flaws, but I’m not emotional about the charge that he’s an intelligence agent–I just think that’s crazy and it depresses me (not just at this blog) when people who are passionate about human rights in ways that depart from the mainstream also have beliefs that are bizarre, with little connection to reality. Show some evidence that someone, anyone, is an intelligence agent and that’s an argument. Just speculation about it is a total waste of time. If intelligence agencies do that kind of thing, then they are just as likely to send people to hang out at blogs, trying to discredit human rights activism by linking it with paranoid conspiracy theories. I’m serious about that–if I even begin to take your theory seriously then I’m also going to start wondering just why it is that so many on fringes embrace weird notions that discredit the truly legitimate points they actually have to say. Maybe these fringe theories have a little bit of official help? This makes a lot more sense, actually. Psychological warfare. But I’m not totally serious, and even if I were, I would never start speculating about any particular individual without evidence (unless there was something blatantly obvious about it).
But truthfully, I think most of the time it’s just some natural psychological tendency at work—people question things that are normally taken for granted, and then sometimes they start questioning everything and may even think it is some sort of virtue to believe what most people don’t believe. I’ve seen it before, in various contexts. Hell, I’ve seen it in myself.
Donald.
Which of course is precisely what is being done.
The DoD’s Information Operation Roadmap, written in 2003 and declassified in January 2006 by a FOIA request from the National Archives, which maintains it is only done to foreign nationals. http://z.pe/COZ but many reports, which I can’t find now because I couldn’t be bothered to waste the time to look them up, say they are doing it domestically.
We all know the Israeli military is doing it here. I can’t remember their budget or the name of the government agency (google it), and defenseindustrydaily just announced that CACI (NJ) just got a major contract to “support US Army Information Warfare Directorate under $900M TESS Contract.” http://z.pe/CyA
The CACI contract gives them plausible deniability.
I’ve heard similar things, MRW. But then consider the possibility that if they are such busy little beavers, they’d be smart to discredit the left by proposing conspiracy theories so that people naturally associate any charges of major human rights violations committed by the US or Israel with crackpot beliefs. I’ve experienced this firsthand, where I told an inexcusably ignorant friend about the fact that the US has tortured innocent people to death and he came back with “Well, people write books saying Bush was behind 9/11 too.” Now you might think Bush was behind 9/11 (I’ve forgotten who said what in this thread and am going to sleep soon so I won’t look), but I don’t, and I just don’t think it’s a good situation when some wild speculation about 9/11 is linked to solidly documented facts about American (or Israeli) war crimes. It’d be very useful for the government if most people automatically lumped all this into the same category of “wild conspiracy theory of the sort believed by internet types typing away in their basements.”
Stick to what we can damn well prove, or at least show very strong evidence for–why do people have to drag in all this stuff which might be true, or probably isn’t true, or almost certainly isn’t true? They’re doing harm and if I want to trade in the same sort of speculation, I’d wonder if some of that harm isn’t intentional. (Though again, I think most of it is just natural–people going too far.)
Nolan wrote, “the only possible explanation is Chomsky’s own ideological beliefs.”
I suggested another explanation might be that Chomksy is an intelligence agent. I don’t care one way or the other if he is or isn’t; it’s simply a possible explanation given that his words and actions are in line with someone who would be interested in protecting Israel (and financial interests).
Notice the lengths Donald went to in defending Chomsky and berating as “conspiracy” and “paranoid” all the information offered that doesn’t fit neatly with his current worldview.
It’s exactly the sort of energy that Chomksy implores his followers not to expend in researching certain historical events or certain areas of politics/power.
Really, Chomsky is wrong about the power of the lobby and I think it’s completely understandable that he would be.
How is it completely understandable that he would be? The man is hailed as a genius for his ability to see into these sort of things, yet in this case it’s “completely understandable” that he would be wrong about it?
In fact, quite the opposite is true. It’s incomprehensible.
Donald.
Which, of course, is the point of doing it. :-) In the pre-internet days, the Weekly World or the World Weekly, can’t remember, was used for those purposes. Since the Alphabets had to print the truth about what they were doing, they used the WW and would give six to seven false stories AND the correct one, which was usually more bizarre than the lies. Now the WW is the supermarket B&W tabloid that had pictures, say, of a horrified screaming woman on the cover holding alien blobs, or some such, with headlines like “I gave to birth to Elephant Siamese Twins in Back of Taxi.” So off the wall that if you ever quoted the WW as your source, your reputation was gone for life, much less even seen buying the thing in the first place. But, indeed, this is how it worked pre-internet, and not for nothing did Clinton’s personal lawyer go off to head up WW’s parent company in Boca Raton. I could go into a nine-yards yammer-yammer about how I know this, but think I’ll resist. Fact is, it’s true.
The alphabet intels and the military now use each other’s military as a jurisdictional cover to do each other’s dirty work. For example, since you wont google it :-), Haaretz reported “Israel recruits ‘army of bloggers’ to combat anti-Zionist Web sites” here: http://z.pe/CyF, and you know they’ve been on this site. The NYT published “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” which exposed the high-level work done by pundits. And this:
All in aid of what you wrote about. This shit is rife all over the web, and was/is particularly so with respect to the 911 official-story doubters, who include practically all of the NYC Fire Dept and NYPD involved in the clean-up, according to the oral histories released in 2005. So they had to do something to combat that…bring in the wing-nut explanations, discredit others, the usual suspected stuff. And it’s convenient to have some late night hosts carry water for the official story as well. Me? I await the science, which is being done.
Donald.
And another thing. For years and years and years and years and years, any serious NYC or Grade A east-coast investigative reporter who had a story that was too hot to handle, realized would damage his reputation and career, or whose editor wouldn’t publish it because the powers-that-be would be exposed, gave his story to Sherman Skolnick. Why? Because they knew two things: Skolnick would never reveal his source, not ever, and Skolnick would not print without seeing all the evidence and proof first, and he was assiduous about it. Then Skolnick would then proceed to report the item in a bizarre style, without attribution, that gave him cover. Skolnick’s dead now. Dont know who has his papers. But his website is still around, for a time. Skolnick got either polio at age 18 or had some accident that put him in a wheelchair, but he single-handedly brought down the corrupt judges in Chicago with his reporting in the late sixties. He had this gene that insisted on the truth, and accountability.
Guys I think you have to re-access some of the things you cling to, and some facts in regard to reality. Take for example, the M&W book on the lobby, I think they did an outstanding job on the lobby, identifying it and the affiliations. However, when they come to what the US did in the ME America is like some Pollyanna walking around trying to do good but always being thwarted – always getting stuck in these “quagmires.” What you have to do is simple, even though they have done an outstanding job on the lobby – when they put it next to a benevolent bumbling idiot USA in its ME policy something is askew.
Like the USA did not as a practice coerce any ME governments, or set up puppet regimes. As if it was just some slap-happy clown wandering aimlessly just trying to do good in this region – or had some noble aim(s). I mean, come on, put your critical spectacles on. As if the instruments of the World Bank and the IMF had no aims, have you ever heard of the World Bank also funds the wall (and has now funneled money through private organization to “donate”), and how this ties in to the operating procedure as usual, with globalism. In deed, the US funds the building of this disgusting wall. In fact, we will see how there is direct conflict between the World court and the World Bank on this issue.
The World Bank see’s it as a “economic development” area, regardless of the World Courts condemnation of the walls erection. Lets unpack this phrase “economic development” from it’s benign packaging for everyone to see clearly. By the way, you can see some of the other acts of the World bank, which is merely the tool of the strong elite that have oppressed the people all over the world.
Have you ever heard of MEFTA? The World Bank, of course, ignores any of the facts regarding the declared illegality of the wall. The bank proceeds to draft the “Palestinian Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) : Stagnation Or Revival: Israeli Disengagement And Palestinian Economic Prospects,” all grand sounding an deceptively filled with hope and promise. So the Bank proceeds to get funding for massive gates and checkpoints through which the Palestinian goods can pass, and there is funding for elaborate tunnels to funnel the Palestinian people to their jobs while denying them access to their stolen land.
MIDDLE EAST FREE TRADE AREA
The desperate and pauperized Palestinian people will be subjected to the “free market” of sweat shops, their ghettoisation, this is how the Bank glowingly describes it, waxing eloquent to a default: “…a regulatory regime with a minimum of RED TAPE [emphasis mine]…” In other words, no trade unions allowed! No minimum wage, work environmental considerations, etc. The Bank goes on to say that the current wages of the Palestinians are too high for the area and “compromise the international competitiveness.” Even though they are a quarter of the wages made in Israel. They will be made to sustain the economy of occupation. THE PLAN, THE END GAME TO BE FOISTED ON THE PALESTINIANS IS ECONOMIC COLONIALISM.
The goods will have stamped on them “Made In Palestine,” exploiting the name of the Palestinians which will play well in the international markets. On top of this, the loans for the highly mechanized gates and elaborate tunneling will be made to the Palestinians by the World Bank, who will be made to pay for a system of their own demise. So, essentially, the World Bank is ready to get into the business of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. President Bush hopes for the MEFTA plan to be completed by 2013.
This same aim is pronounced throughout the entire ME, though US instruments (and it did not just appear through the Bush administration or Obama, it has been a long term goal). The MEFTA – Middle East Free Trade Agreement, that which is planned for the ME via globalism is a plan for the entire region.
So, if you thought it was just the Palestinians that were at risk, you are wrong. That MEFTA that is supposed to be accomplished by 2013 entails everyone in the ME region – so that each area is to be set for maximum exploitation. The year 2013 is the goal of the ghettoisation of the ME.
Currently, in the ME region you have governments which are, many times, antithetical to the will and health of the people – so that there is a ruling elite with a small enfranchised group to insulate, or armed forces, as they push you into the designs of the “global vision” (the Western nations at the helm of globalism). The ME is being prepared for economic ghettoization. They want to make it a haven for the Fortune 500, another low wage non-right, no-regulation free fire zone to exploit the human resources.
“Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of the few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
So the USA is not merely some benign gentle giant, nor its European cohorts. Do you think this was all planned and designed by the Zionists, or the lobby? My recommendation to you is to get M&W volume out again and read it with a critical eye, especially in its reference to the designs of the USA (both the posters and the authors here). So that the next time you address a man like Noam Chomsky, who is well aware of these facts, you might consider that he has some reasons for what he talks about. Not that I agree with everything Chomsky says, but I think the quick fix to brush him off just speaks volumes of not knowing the terrain you tread on.
Jeffrey Blankfort, you have anything to say about v…’s post? I would be really interested.
Donald.
While you were sleeping I was writing you up a storm above. :-) Anyway, here is another thing you should look at. The report a download here: http://cryptome.org/covert-blogs.zip
“Notice the lengths Donald went to in defending Chomsky and berating as “conspiracy” and “paranoid” all the information offered that doesn’t fit neatly with his current worldview.
It’s exactly the sort of energy that Chomksy implores his followers not to expend in researching certain historical events or certain areas of politics/power. ”
They don’t pay for nothing, you know.
Go ahead and speculate about this person or that being an intelligence agent. No evidence, but whatever. As for Chomsky’s behavior and motives, I agree with much of what Blankfort says–I noticed Chomsky’s flaws on this and other issues a long long time ago. They’re hard to miss. And the motivation is obvious–emotional attachment to some idealized notion of Zionism at some deep level.
Now excuse me, I have to write up a report for my Zionist CIA Mossad masters.
Chomsky’s heart is in the right place most of the time and he can be respected for that. But he is not a big picture guy and his rigid ideology often leaves him looking quite foolish. I first noticed this when he continued to defend the Kmer Rouge even after undisputed evidence of the Cambodian holocaust was available. His denial of The Lobby is downright silly.
BTW, that is an interesting point that he is able to maintain grant funding because of this blind spot.
“that is an interesting point that he is able to maintain grant funding because of this blind spot.”
Chomsky is about 80 years old now and probably not worried about grants. He is despised by the political establishment (though as he points out, there are certain periods of history when there are slight openings for people like him to be heard in the mainstream). He’s gotten grants because despite his politics, he was the towering intellect of his day in linguistics–not everything in our corrupt society is determined solely by politics.
I have never seen Chomsky cited in the mainstream for his criticism of the Israel lobby hypothesis. I have often seen him dismissed by both liberals and conservatives as an anti-American crackpot who thinks we’re guilty of war crimes. It’s maybe a problem with a blog like this where everyone talks about Israel day and night that people start imagining that the whole world revolves around how people view Israel. The Israel Lobby has power because it is made up of powerful people with very strong ideological ties to Israel and they aren’t balanced by any correspondingly powerful people with a great interest in justice for the Palestinians. Hell, even the rightwing Miami Cubans wield hugely disproportionate influence on their chosen issue because no other group cares that much. But to think that Chomsky is judged by the mainstream as that guy who denies the power of the Israel Lobby is so far out of touch with reality that I think maybe some of you should take a vacation from this blog and get some perspective. I may take my own advice here. I’ve been at other blogs where people seem to have equally skewed perspectives–not about I/P, but about whatever particular issue they chose to focus on. Everything was judged on that issue. That’s what’s happening here.
One of the best discussions yet.
As for American Jewish influence being critical to launching Gulf War One, this is just one example recognized by a man who was the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel’s Embassy in Washington, DC at the time:
YORAM ETTINGER, AMERICAN JEWRY’S CLOUT, Jerusalem Post Int. Ed, 2/26/94
“Some 60 percent of early (1992) campaign funds in Democratic congressional races was raised from Jewish sources, as was 50 percent of Harris Wofford’s 1991 senatorial campaign…”
“The Gulf war shed light on the role of the Jewish community, even in the shaping of US foreign policy.
“Thus, it was Jewish lobbying on and off Capitol Hill—in concert with the administration—which played a key role in forging a comfortable bi-partisan congressional majority for “Desert Storm”.
“Jewish political involvement also contributed to the shaping of public and media support and to the moderation of antiwar protests before and during the war.”
In that last paragraph, Ettinger may have been referring to the following taken from an article in the Wall Street Journal, Feb.1, 1991:
“Some Jewish members of the anti-war coalition are plainly troubled
about some of their allies in the movement. “I have been outraged at
the Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism in the peace movement,” says Mr. [Michael]
Lerner, the magazine editor. “Jews who are normally anti-war and who
are against this one are astonished at what they’re finding in this
movement.’”
“The anti-war movement may be a victim of its early success in
rallying large numbers of war opponents before the shooting began.
Some analysts believe the movement coalesced too swiftly.
“‘I’m baffled by the current anti-war movement because it sprung up so
quickly,” says Sam Brown, a leader of the Vietnam anti-war movement
who has not joined the protests this time. “I’m not so sure there was
as much reflection this time. Generals are always accused of fighting
the last war, and maybe the anti-war movement is fighting against the
last war.’”
This “damage control” on the part of people claiming to support Palestinian rights applied to Gulf War Two, as well. Rabbi Arthur Waskow who told the Jewish weekly, Forward, (2/14/03) that United for Peace and Justice, organizers of the February 15th anti-war rally in New York, “has done a great deal to make clear it is not involved in anti-Israel rhetoric. From the beginning there was nothing in United for Peace’s statements that dealt at all with the Israel-Palestine issue.” So it goes.
Thanks for this ref, Jeffrey.
And though Blankfort piece at http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html is long, it’s a great read, and well-researched. Another keeper for my personal library.
Agreed MRW. It’s an incredibly important piece.
No doubt. Outstanding article. Kudos to Jeff Blankfort.
Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:
“Far from dedicating his life to Palestinians for decades, he has rejected their demands for the right of return and had opposed every effort to bring Israel to its knees (or senses, if you prefer) economically such as stopping aid, and implementing boycotts, divestments and sanctions…”
“opposed every effort”? How strange, because back in 2002 I think it was, I watched Chomsky sign, in public, as an alum, the divestment petition at the University of Pennsylvania. It no longer seems to be on the web, but I think it was the same as this well-worded one from Columbia:
http://www.columbiadivest.org/petition.html
It’s a bit of a mystery to me as to why Chomsky’s position on this is so hard to follow. He’s against an academic boycott. He’s against anything that “looks like just an attack on Israel society” (I’m quoting from p. 196 of Perilous Power.) He supports divestment from corporations involved in criminal acts in Israels – Caterpillar, etc.
It is very unlikely though that Chomsky would ever say that he supports
efforts to “bring Israel to its knees”. Probably he would say something more
boring like he supports efforts to stop supplying the weapons used for Israeli
crimes.
Seth, read Blankfort’s leftcurve piece. The link is given above. Blankfort is entirely respectful to Chomsky, but in classic Blankfort form, he gives no quarter to anyone and drills down every reference for the reference behind it. The leftcurve piece addresses the nuances you are trying to make.
MRW, I’m not trying to address any nuance. Blankfort made a blanket statement
about Chomsky opposing “every effort”. It is a false statement. I am referring
to a situation in which a divestment petition was introduced at Penn, Chomsky came and gave a talk at Penn, and at the end the petition was brought on stage and he signed it. His support for that seems to me consistent with his statements
about strategies for activism that he’s made for a long time. What is not
consistent with those statements and actions are sweeping references to
Chomsky’s “determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years”, to quote from Blankfort’s article.
MRW, I reread it after reading this thread, and I had read it before.
He’s against anything that “looks like just an attack on Israel society”
That’s incredibly broad. It leaves the door open for innumerable interpretations down the road.
One wonders if Chomsky would be so concerned about anything that “looks like just an attack on” American society, which he is quite fond of demonizing.
Sorry, Seth, only this was meant to be in bold, and I DID double-check the tags: “ I was the most outspoken opponent of the petition calling for divestment, and in fact refused to sign until it was substantially changed”
Great, homework again, reading Chomsky. I’m not going to be hurried in judging the power of the lobby. From what I’ve read of Chomsky -not that much and not that recent- I’d say that people who say he’s wrong, are usually wrong. I do have the impression though that Chomsky will hold on to a weak theory as long as it’s not proven wrong, while there are theories around that are much better. The trick is to use “better/worse” rather than “wrong/right”.
In response to V’s reference to MIFTA, the Middle East Free Trade Area, V and most others are probably not aware that the first free trade pact negotiated by the United States was with Israel in 1985 that was pushed by AIPAC and opposed by 76 corporations and business groups, including Monsanto, the American Farm Bureau and other state farm bureaus across the country, Dow Chemical, Sunkist Growers, the AFL-CIO, and the Arkansas-based US Bromine Alliance, represented by its then governor, Bill Clinton. Besides AIPAC, 23 relatively innocuous groups supported it. Guess who won?
At the time, the US Trade Commission collected propriatary information from all the companies involved which was collected into a book, copies of which were marked CONFIDENTIAL. One ended up at the Israeli Embassy and another at AIPAC which led to an FBI investigation that was reported in the Washington Post in April, 1984.
After the passage of the IAFTA, the South African Financial Times ran a story featuring a colorful hour glass that showed South African products going through Israel to the United States. That was how apartheid South Africa benefited from its passage.
By coincidence, Grant Smith of IRmep (Inst for Research: Middle East Policy) , has just published a book about the Israel-US FTA called Spy/Trade which is available from the Washington Report on the Middle East at http://www.wrmea.com
Is it necessary to add that to the best of my knowledge Chomsky has never spoken or written about this?
Chomksy, for whatever reason (I won’t speculate here, lest we get into another grudge match), does not like to upset finance capital. Generalizations about big business are fine, but looking into the financiers at the top is off limits.
Jeffrey Blankfort.
Ahh. So the idea of globalization of trade, and specifically agriculture, that Sir James Goldsmith warned would be the undoing of the US and “catastrophic for the world” in 1994 on the Charlie Rose Show, when he went tooth and nail after expansion of GATT at the Uruguay Round (1986 -1994) and which he said he entered politics in order to bury, was started by AIPAC. He even warned our goddam senators. The names of the companies you say above objected in 1986 are all our food and farm producers.
Jesus. I’m sitting here shaking my head. I was so unaware of this in 1986-1994; I thought I was news savvy, but I never had any of this really put together for me; god knows I’m not smart enough to do it on my own. I knew Rahm Emanuel pushed NAFTA “over the goal post” in 1992 or 1993 as he crowed to John Nichol of The Nation in a 2002 article. But as Goldsmith says, NAFTA only affected Canada, the US, and Mexico, not the whole world, small potatoes compared to the world.
I would love to know of AIPAC involvement, if any, in the passing the WTO at the Uruguay Round.
Rose’s interview with Goldsmith is one of those moments when you say, ‘I was told, but didn’t have the ears to listen or the heart to hear’. It is well worth listening to even the first 20 minutes of this hour long show, because what he warned about 15 years ago is here right now, and the forcefulness and energy with which he takes on the issue is great to watch:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5064665078176641728#
Thanks, Jeffrey, for your reply. I learn shit I never knew every time you write something down, and I appreciate it. Truly.
I think that there are two considerations in order here, and I have mentioned them before – one is the nature of the System in the US domestic, and the other is the nature of the US system in regard to foreign policy. If you do not recognize or address the nature of the US system from the beginning to listen and honor elites in the running of policy (both foreign and domestic) you are never going to solve the problem that we are experiencing. Also, if you fail to recognize the exploitative nature of American foreign policy, and you just attach it to one set of interests, these difficulties we are talking about will never be solved.
However, without acknowledging and working on these above issues you will proliferate all sorts of conspiracy theories. I just thought you might like to know (or need to be reminded) because of the nature of some of the posting.
There is not one “system” from the ‘beginning.’ In even a cursory examination into US foreign policy, you find ‘oil interests’ and ideological interests vis-a-vis Israel to be inherently contradictory and problematic for US administrations like Kennedy, Carter, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, etc. In fact, if the term “from the beginning” is going to be used, you would be well advised to notice what J Gelvin points out about how many in the government were against supporting the UN partition of Israel because of material oil concerns and the easily seen effect of pissing off the arabs.; there was also fear of the Soviet Union use of this created volatile political mix to use against the US. They did.
Chiomsky presents this idea without support. At best, he needs to employ a heavy dose of confirmation bias in his presentation.
Yes, looking at just one set of interests is frankly a terrible idea. If Chomsky had to support his umbrella paradigm more, he would find there to be a multiplicity of interests. Chomsky often makes the error to look at the US executive branch, with hardly a mention of the conflict in the Legislative – where much of the Lobbying takes place.
Clearly, using this exclusive paradigm has the effect of trying to silence other narratives, erroneously conflates competing and cooperating domestic and international interests into “the US” and “Israel,” and it does much to hurt an holistic view into the complexity of the issue: which is the first step towards a solution.
Id also like to add to v..
Frankly, the loose scholarship Chomsky applies to conflations of “the corporations” and “the US” would be (rightly) laughed out of the room if similar conflations were made about “the Jews.” It is conspiratorial to make these types of conflations about a seedy poorly-defined cabal. Unfortunately, some people are willing to accept some conspiratorial conflations without the rigid scholarship needed to document direct and unconflated connections to the direct people involved.
Chomsky often makes the error to look at the US executive branch, with hardly a mention of the conflict in the Legislative – where much of the Lobbying takes place.
He also uses the executive as a means of dismissing the intelligence agencies, saying the CIA et al work on behalf of the executive as opposed to functioning independently. When this has been shown to be untrue by actual members of the agencies, Chomsky dismisses such talk as conspiratorial.
Color me shocked. Chomsky’s use of confirmation bias to actively seek out and interpret information, and assign more weight to evidence in a way that confirms his paradigm – and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm his paradigm is stunning and transparent.
While i appreciate your response to some degree Bob, that there are different interests – a confluence to be precise, the fact of the matter is that it is no answer to what I posted –
“If you do not recognize or address the nature of the US system from the beginning to listen and honor elites in the running of policy (both foreign and domestic) you are never going to solve the problem that we are experiencing.”[if you will pardon me quoting myself]
No one denies that there are many different interests, or that the interests of elites may conflict – but that this is the current system, you go on to confirm by citing other interests. the question is specifically at the foundation of the system – that it listens to moneyed interests, and not to the people. Therefore, it will always be susceptible to the will of the few who prevail, no matter how much it endangers the people both foreign and domestic. THAT is the system which we now have Zionists prevailing, and it is the weakness inherent in the system (from the very beginning) that exposes the US to further degradation.
We are NOT talking about “conspiracies,” we are talking about systemic issues. There are no cabals afoot, just a corrupt system that accommodates the moneyed elite – as it has from the BEGINNING. At the outset Madison, the one who is called the father of the Constitution said the chief duty of government is to protect the propertied from the non-propertied – all all of his fellows agreed with him. This is not some mystery, it is taught at every self-respecting school of higher learning, we are not a democracy, but a polyarchy. There is no speculation here, most of the population is well aware of it. So if you want to question someones scholarship, question someone who is not aware of this glaring historical fact.
It is the failure to understand the nature of the system that causes people to think there is something clandestine going on, when nothing could be further from the truth. Or, they hold out myths about the founding of the country and the people involved, and are shocked to find they have their own class interest in mind. I could go on, but I think this is sufficient.
Again, you don’t identify this system, and proclaim you arent basing an argument on a conflated cabal. Try replacing your last sentence of “the moneyed elite” with “the jews” and reflect on how conspiratorial it sounds.
Identify what it is you are talking about and provide information and context. Simply quoting “the moneyed elite” and assuming a materialist perspective that dominates over the ideological just won’t cut it.
Like you said earlier
Yes, looking at just one set of interests is frankly a terrible idea.
bob: Try replacing your last sentence of “the moneyed elite” with “the jews” and reflect on how conspiratorial it sounds.
The two are not the same. The information provided in the expression “moneyed elite” is so relevant to the question of “who runs the zoo” that it is practically tautological. How is it conspiratorial to say that our political, economic and social systems are run by people with means and standing? These people may be different from one another in many ways, and pursue many different “special interests”, but it is far from unreasonable to focus on what they have in common (money and influence) and the relationships between them, as some sort of underlying explanation of why the world is so fucked up.
In and of itself, “the Jews” tells us nothing.
v…, what is the “U.S. system” of which you speak?
It would help if you began to view finance capital as a completely separate entity, one that even admittedly exploitative U.S. based companies are dependent upon. This is why even some super wealthy members of congress are up in arms over the secretive workings of the Fed, which works first and foremost in the interests of international capital, not domestic business. The goal of international bankers is a world of debt servitude.
This is one important thread. And I rarely say thank you to my fellow posters for the care and time they take to answer on these boards. I apologize for that, and do it now. Thank you. Thank you for your brains and your insights and how you challenge me to move the goal posts of my vast un-understanding of things.
Agreed MRW. Thanks to all for participating. The various viewpoints are both fascinating and informative.
I’ve left an e-mail to Blankfort regarding the narrative of Negative (or Inverse) Exceptionalism and how this has been used by Israel and Hasbarites for decades. This often manifests itself in placing the blame, ultimately, on something external to the group, and the connected assumption that those outside of the group (the other, if you will) are prone to sudden gusts of inexplicable hatred. You’ll often see this manifested as “Yes Israel did ___, but was forced to respond because of ___.” Revealing Wolfowitz, Feith’s or AIPAC’s ideological commitment to Israel is shouted down as another manifestation of an inexplicable gust of hatred. It is in these points where Chomsky shares the same paradigmatic propaganda as Hasbarites. “Israel was forced to do ___ because of the United States. ” “Your focus on AIPAC is conspiratorial.. and hateful.”
I hope you received my hastily composed e-mails, Jeff.
Excellent analogy, bob.
I don’t have a bunch of time, but here’s something to read on negative (inverse) exceptionalism. I wish I had the time to dig up the rest of the necessary information.
http://epress.anu.edu.au/war_terror/mobile_devices/ch06s02.html
In literature, it’s called Melodrama. It’s not a pejorative, it’s a description of a worldview, as is Tragedy, which cannot exist in a society’s canon until it has matured. In Melodrama, one is wholly good and it is the ‘other’ who inflicts whatever on the one experiencing it, the ‘other’ who is responsible for one’s demise. So you get the easy dichotomies in Melodrama: good vs evil, black vs white, dark vs light, revenge for great or small slights understood as acceptable, etc.
Tragedy, as a literature form, can only exist when there is a sense of responsibility, where the main person or persons have such intelligence and capacity for self-awareness that they are cognizant of how they could have contributed to their own demise, how their own actions led to the situation in which they are now in. The main character or characters do not have that awareness going into the story, but they arrive at it as a result of what happens to them. Tragedy, as a story form, that tells a society’s stories can only exist in highly developed societies or civilizations.
Look, this is just a whiff over the subject. Robert Bechtold Heilman wrote the definitive work on this and it is utterly fascinating, in my view: riveting. But the story of modern Israel is pure Melodrama.
I think the similarities of a simplistic collective memory of conflicts, a black-and-white memory that portrays the group in a very positive light and the other in a very negative one is similar to that.
Where it differs is in the (as the link above states) “belief held by group members stating that the rest of the world has highly negative behavioural intentions toward them.”
In this view, the rest of the world is unreliable as allies and anyone may be struck by inexplicable gusts of hatred. There is no reason to explain the conflict, as it is inexplicable and simply ‘hatred.’ Preemptive strikes are necessary in this paradigm. The overwhelming force used is, of course, the fault of the other. Critical views are also viewed as ‘hatred’ or, more telling, as ’self hating’ – as if you had departed from a collective narrative.
This is what Chomsky mirrors. Instead, it is the US ultimately at fault. Noticing AIPAC is hateful conspiracy. As Dan Kelly illustrates, Chomsky is quite fond of using the epithet ‘conspiracy’ as a bludgeon, yet it is Chomsky who presents the crude conflated conspiracy of the evil corporations and US.
Actually,Bob, that absolutely can be part of the Melodramatic narrative:
“belief held by group members stating that the rest of the world has highly negative behavioural intentions toward them.” It’s Us versus Them. ‘Them’ is conniving against you, ‘Them is plotting your destruction, ‘Them’ always has it out for you. ‘Them’ is the reason why you never got A, B, or C. ‘Them’ has imposed its power over you for days, weeks, months, eons, and that’s why you were, or are, forced to do X.
On the other hand, Comedy comes under Melodrama (remember Melodrama is not a pejorative, it’s a story paradigm) where the circumstances of all this can delight in the telling of the story when juxtapositions clash.
Why is this even slightly meaningful, or apropos here? Because as Plato said, “He who tells the stories rules the world.” That’s why Shlomo Sand’s new book is sooo important. It breaks up the narrative, and it identifies those parts which are fiction, creations that are not the truth that have had lethal consequences over time. Very important book.
[How will you start to realize things have changed? When people start to change their language, when they stop using the word 'tragedy', for example, to describe a 'catastrophe' or 'disaster', as in “Tragedy on Highway 40.” No it isn't. Because a reporter or writer cannot know if that person who died in that disaster became aware in the instant before his death that he was also responsible for his demise in some way. You can't have Tragedy without self-awareness and a responsibility for your actions.]
And Melodramatic characters look at Tragic characters as suckers, or freiers.
Or quibblers, or who exhibit too much doubt about what they are doing.
Sound familiar?
I like this, MRW. High (tradedy) and Low (Melodrama):
But “responsibility” as the one central ingredient in tragedy feels like an allusion to Greek Hamartia, a more complex story.
What is Oedipus ultimate responsibility?
Responsibility: Rise followed by Fall due to the fatal flaw?
Live isn’t as fair as literature and many later writers noticed.
Thanks MRW for starting this sub-thread on literary models, and thanks to all who subsequently responded. The distinctions made here began in ancient Greece I believe and Shakespeare et all carried them on; they are a pillar foundation of Western Civilization now mostly ignored or insulted in academia. The eternalization
of what it means to be a fully conscious individual, mayhaps the concept of political individualism (to the extent such is not oxymoronic) itself so originated.
LeaNder, maybe the lesson is beware your best intentions may go awry; be more aware of thinking things through before one acts; attempt to parse one’s own selfish concern masked by a part of one as altruism? When one has the time to, attempt to educate oneself from one’s own possible ignorance? Check one’s own righteousness
at the door of one’s mouth?
MrW
Melodrama is quite broad, and this term can overlap with the negative exceptionalism paradigm on many aspects, but it does miss others: and the broadness of melodrama’ obfuscates what is contextually specific here. The term certainly does cover the simplistic duality of narrative by Hasbarites, however the vast majority of melodramatic narratives miss the collective identification and certainly miss the repetition of the collective to summarily explain history through a specific narrative you often see in Hasbara . Certainly, in melodrama as in a negative exceptionalist paradigm, there is an employment ‘us versus them’, and the exaggerated and simplified forms that often fits these narratives is a broad term that often encompasses individual and main character, rather than collective forms of identification. Even reifying an idea of a collective through one protagonist would miss this.
The collective narrative is very important to consider the “self hating” bludgeon used to attempt to make other Jews fall in line with a specific narrative. This narrative, used to emote a collective sense of victimization and a siege mentality. Take what the Bar‑Tal link above describes as problems
In this narrative, the responses, identification, and reactions to are collective and (from the same place) and in framing just the siege mentality this collectivized imposition typifies the reponses and reactions of:
Describing this collective narrative as melodrama may at once hit on the simplistic narrative, but it misses on these other points that are contextually important. A collective pressure to feel victimized, be blamed for other countries conflicts, see criticism as a manifestation of the random, inexplicable hate directed towards the group, preemption against this hate, etc. is something that is lost when using this term from drama.
Chomsky and Zunes are crypto-Zionist gatekeepers. They pretend to be critics of Israel but their real function is to establish boundaries of discourse that preclude any serious criticism of the Lobby. Throwing sand in people’s eyes and pointing at strawmen while pretending to help one see is their raison d’être.
This morning I took another look at Chomsky’s “Fateful Triangle,” and realized that there was much more to be criticized in that book that I had left out. Whereas he devotes almost four pages to Israel’s role in arming and training dictatorships in Central America during the 70s and 80s as an example of its service to US imperialism and thus justifying its massive support from Washington, he spends exactly FIVE lines on reporting/distorting the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain and France. (That there was NO Congressional criticism for Israel’s role in CA on the part of those members of Congress who vigorously opposed US intervention there represented an glaring example of AIPAC’s power that Chomsy was unable or unwilling to acknowledge.)
Predictably, in the five lines on the Suez war there is no mention of the threat made by Eisenhower and Sec of State JF Dulles to eliminate the tax exemptions of the United Jewish Appeal and other Jewish charitable organizations that were contributing to Israel if Ben-Gurion did not withdraw Israeli forces from the Sinai.
There is also no mention that Eisenhower was preparing to intervene with US forces AGAINST Israel when he first heard the news of the invasion and only decided against it when he learned that Britain and France were also involved. Thoroughly scolded, the British and French pulled out quickly but Ben-Gurion was determined to stay.
Moreover, his support of the position that Israel has been a “strategic asset” of the US is so shoddy and lacking sources as to be embarrassing to a genuine historian, but then Chomsky is a linguist which is not quite the same thing.
Need more? 30 years after it’s appearance and when it was by then a major player, the only mention of AIPAC by Chomsky is in a single solitary footnote which supplied part of his evidence that Israel was considered a “strategic asset” by the US.
If wants simplistic answers, as Israel Shahak put, Chomsky’s your man. If you want to know what really happen, you’d better tune him out and go somewhere else.
PS Yes, Bob, I did get your letters. Very interesting.
I hope you put out a new publication on this issue. Its sorely needed.
“If wants simplistic answers [sic] … as Chomsky’s your man.”
Yeah, and always the *same* answer: The U.S. is evil, the U.S. is at fault. Someone ought to tell him that such a mindless, puppet-like one-note act went out with the pre-Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Stalinists. One can’t even say anti-U.S. animus is the man’s pole star; it’s his *only* star.
Enough about the crackpot though. Here’s a story about someone with real integrity and coherence:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127839.html
“Yeah, and always the *same* answer: The U.S. is evil, the U.S. is at fault. Someone ought to tell him that such a mindless, puppet-like one-note act went out with the pre-Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Stalinists. One can’t even say anti-U.S. animus is the man’s pole star; it’s his *only* star.
Enough about the crackpot though”
Bullshit. Jeff’s criticisms are valid, at least in part, but yours are mostly crap. Chomsky focuses on US evil because he is a US citizen–he doesn’t claim that all evil in the world is done by the US and specifically denies any such nonsense and he spends some time in his works denouncing Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, which I mention since you were vicious enough to compare him to a Stalinist. It only takes you a few lines to trash him–responding to this would require going into detail into the man’s entire output. It’s easy to focus, as Jeff is doing for legitimate reasons, on the areas where he is weakest–it’s quite another thing to judge his whole body of commentary on the portions Jeff writes about.
Using your “logic”, one could say that many of the commenters at this blog obsess in a one note manner about “Jewish” evil, that it is their polestar, their only star, blah, blah, blah. In fact in some cases (particularly in the case of the guy who was banned), this is pretty much the case. For others here it is a smear. Some of us focus on Israel’s crimes in part for the same reason we focused on the crimes of America’s other allies–Israel is our ally and so their crimes are our crimes and because of the lobby, their crimes are whitewashed even more than is usual for an ally. But it’s the easiest thing in the world for a Zionist to say that we’re all anti-semites, lumping everyone who is harshly critical of Israel and Zionism into the same category because that’s the easy albeit dishonest way to argue.
I wasn’t sure quite where to put my reply, as there were so many thought-provoking posts, but I’d like to say that the discussion here has been first rate. Not to diminish anyone else’s contribution, but I’d like to commend JBlankfort and bob especially for their analyses. I’m still wading through Blankfort’s long piece from leftcurve, but find it very well written and supported. I’d also like to thank bob on his posts on negative exceptionalism, and his two links discussing Daniel Bar-Tal’s findings with respect to “exceptionalism and siege mentality” and Israeli collective memory.
I’ll try to post up more links on this subject tomorrow. I’m swamped and won’t be back to post.
Would you mind posting them here, Bob? I’m really interested in this.
Ok.
Regarding negative (inverse) exceptionalism:
Here are two people who have drank the “kool-aide”
Here another notable article
I am now going through Bob’s as well, but today seems to be the day, Friday the 13th, when three major appliances said FU too, and I gotta run. But I’ll be back. :-)
If you are going to deal with real issues it is probably good that you consider what I am saying, which is not pointing away from the lobby, but tells you the reason why the lobby grows like a healthy plant in the US systemic soil. So, whereas I do not deny the lobby, it has to be discussed in real time. Not addressing this (what I am saying now and spoke about above) does not give you any real answers, it just makes you complainers with no recourse. When you are done with the lobby lets say after you “took care of it,” something else will move into its place. Lets get back to reality here folks.
I guess I will have to be content with the fact that you cannot answer what I am posting, because no one directly answered anything, too bad – have a good time in the senseless huddle, when you come out of it you will find the game is playing at another park…
v… I spent for too much time than I wanted trying to hunt down what you were talking about with respect to MEFTA. Your link was to a site that gave none of the info you were writing about above. I found this: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-the-world-bank-funds-israel-palestine-wall/, and I am going to go through it later. Just because I am overwhelmed at the moment, and about to go out, I was wondering if you have the link to the World Bank docs lying around?
P.S. v… I understand what you are saying about systems, but systems never change without intervention from without. They’re like giant spinning coils containing their own dynamic and cannot be changed unless someone, or something, intervenes in them; and I am not saying this systems are simplistic or do not interact with each other. They do. Or they are fueled to expand in order to keep them going.
But simply examining the system(s) by itself does no good unless you also understand what that system will be doing along a future timeline if no intervention occurs. And it must be examined in terms of all the other systems that it interacts with it/them along the timeline, which also creates the anticipated future if nothing intervenes from without to change it.
MRW, when I talk about systemic issues I think I know what it will take to change this, however, I don’t think anyone is going to like my answer because it is going to take a great up-swelling of the people. So, I am not talking about small adjustments or the reform syndrome that gets us nowhere.
DEVELOPMENT OR NORMALIZATION?
PALESTINIAN “ECONOMIC” PROJECT UNISPAL
These are just a couple of the documents, you cannot put more than two per post here otherwise the “spam” alarm goes off.
Essentially, in Palestine what is proposed are economic estates which have their own specific moneyed and ruling elite, which report to and support Israel. This is commonly know by the acronym PIEFZA –
PALESTINIAN INDUSTRIAL ESTATES FREE ZONE AREA
Among the “advantages,” which are spelled out in business code of explotation –
Strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Preferential access to US and EU markets.
Proximity to Middle East market of 300 million people and EU market of 380 million people.
Industrial Free Zones providing world-class infrastructure.
Streamlined business services and a well-developed financial sector.
Incentives equally Favorable to international and local investors.
No restrictions on profit and capital repatriation; free movement of currencies.
The business direct benefits reads like a who’s who of how to impoverish a people -
-
Income tax exemptions
Fixed assets exemptions
Free movement of capital and profits
Free movement of investors
Export exemptions
Local market sales
Rules of origin incentives
Investment guarantees
Preferential access to regional and international markets
A way to spirit the money out of the zone without bad ramifications, in other words, no recourse for the exploited people. Depressed wages less than a third of what Israelis make, no restrictions in regard to work environment, no unions, etc.
It does not mean that viable economic activity in manufacturing can be established, but can be a dumping spot for mere assembly, in the words of the definition of the “Made In Palestine” (which is merely the theft of a good name) –
“A Palestinian product is given preferential customs treatment according to existed trade agreements. While each agreement defines its own rules of origin, generally, a product will be stamped “ Made in Palestine” for export, if not less than 35%-40% of its out of factory value, has been processed in Palestine.”
The same course of neocolonial exploitation used all over the world to suppress the people, enrich the few, and make sure the lions share is spirited away. These are just a few examples of goals and aims for the region.
MRW,
You wrote:
Sorry, Seth, only this was meant to be in bold, and I DID double-check the tags: “ I was the most outspoken opponent of the petition calling for divestment, and in fact refused to sign until it was substantially changed”
———
For some reason the “reply” choice isn’t showing up under your message so I’m answering it down here. I have read Blankfort’s piece, and am aware of the Chomsky quote that he and you cite. It is not in contradiction to his position in favor of the Penn divestment campaign, and it most certainly does not support Blankfort’s bizarre statements about Chomsky opposing “every effort to bring Israel to its knees (or senses, if you prefer) economically such as stopping aid, and implementing boycotts, divestments and sanctions…”
You are looking at a few sentences about this, probably from an online chat or something like that. I suggest taking a look at pp. 195-199 of the book Perilous Power, where Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar discuss their opinions of BDS, and in particular Chomsky discuses the MIT petition. He opposed the general formulation “Divest from Israel”, which he describes as “a blanket statement, which is meaningless. After a lot of discussion, they finally made it specific…it ended up being mostly sensible”. He refers to
the petition saying that we “Call on MIT and Harvard to divest from… US companies
that sell arms to Israel, until these petitions are met.” But he objected to the
inclusion of the words after that, adding “to divest from Israel”.
I don’t really see what the problem is here. He favors universities divesting from
companies that sell arms to Israel. He opposes a general call “to divest from Israel”.
As far as I know, he has been very consistent. One can agree or disagree with him, but from this we’re supposed to conclude, according to Blankfort, that Chomsky opposes “every” effort to impact on Israeli policy economically?
V says that he has not been answered. Regarding his assertion that the implementation of the Middle East Free Trade Agreement, if and when it occurs, was independent of AIPAC, and I showed that AIPAC had led the way to such an agreement by managing to conquer some of those that Chomsky and you apparently like to refer to as “elites,” among whom, I would assume he would have included Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and the American Farm Bureau, all of whom were thrashed by AIPAC in the battle of the titans.
The truth is that there are lobbyists for Israel but what we are talking about when we speak of Israel’s domestic juggernaut would be not a lobby in the classic sense but more in size and breadth like a whole hotel.
Israel’s unregistered American agents have shown that their control over the US Congress is an indisputable fact. Fealty to Israel is the only critical issue which for the last three decades the most liberal Democrat has marched arm in arm with the most rabid Republican. If Congress is not Israel’s most important occupied territory, than please tell me what is.
Israel’s men and a handful of women, American citizens all, have penetrated every critical level of the Executive Office, the Treasury, and since Bill Clinton “Judaized” the State Dept., in the words of an Israeli journalist, they have controlled that department, as well. The same names, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, et al flit in and out of the the AIPAC founded Washington Inst., AEI, the Hudson Inst., the Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies, and into the Executive Office or the halls of Congress l where all the doors swing wide open for them. And then, there they are grinning on the network news shows all controlled by Zionists, including non-Jews but Israelophiles like Murdoch–Does Joe Lieberman do anything else on a Sunday morning?–and confronting readers all across America on a daily basis with their syndicated propaganda–Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Jeff Jacoby and on and on like this sentence.
There is nothing like it, and I haven’t even mentioned the business relations between Israel and most of the states, the data of which can be found on the Jewish Virtual Library site, plus the billions of dollars that American unions and businesses have purchased in State of Israel bonds which at any critical point obliges them to defend Israel to defend their divestment.
Israel’s domestic support operation can better be likened to an octopus with its tentacles reaching into every critical area of American society. Now is there any decent human being who thinks that is a healthy situation?
You’ll want to add how AIPAC killed the Iran-Conoco oil deal, and successfully lobbied for sanctions on Iran when US oil comanies were Iran’s largest customers by far. Cheney, by the way was against these sanctions as well.
Oil companies were lobbying to drop the Iraqi sanctions as well. Pro Israeli people like Wolfowitz, Feith, Leeden, Podhoretz, Kristol, et. al. were pushing hard for regime change. (of course, this was when Cheney was calling an Iraq invasion a quagmire) . later, these guys fought over Powell’s objections and got their plan.
“V says that he has not been answered. Regarding his assertion that the implementation of the Middle East Free Trade Agreement, if and when it occurs, was independent of AIPAC, and I showed that AIPAC had led the way to such an agreement by managing to conquer some of those that Chomsky and you apparently like to refer to as “elites,” among whom, I would assume he would have included Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and the American Farm Bureau, all of whom were thrashed by AIPAC in the battle of the titans.”
With all due respect Mr. Blankfort I have said nothing of the sort, what I have said and I do maintain is that AIPAC is a focal point of a confluence of interest. In fact, I do not necessarily disagree with you on the points of AIPAC’s infiltration of the whole of Washington, and submit that you even left some areas out of your enumeration (like the Department of Defense, whose war rooms look like a Zionist “expert(s)” bordello on a Saturday night!).
What AIPAC has promised is another region of exploitation for the interests of the whole, which is the spitting image of the self-same neocolonial projects that have been launched in the rest of the world, in the Middle East. So, as I have said numerous times before we have a confluence of interest here, not merely the dominance of one group. The reasons for the investment in Israel by these various interests (”billions of dollars that American unions and businesses have purchased in State of Israel bonds which at any critical point obliges them to defend Israel to defend their divestment”) is because they promise the new region of exploitation of the future. Everything has been put in place, all of the puppet governments, the fawning regional elites, so the not only the people of Palestine (Palestinians) may be fully exploited, but the entire Middle East may become the new low that one goes to as a multinational corporation to enhance profit that can be spirited away from the region that is the means of production – the capital escape hatch left wide open.
My only repeated point is that there is not just one interest involved in this stew, but promises have been made to and kept for multinational corporations. This is not only done within Washington, but on Wall Street, and on Madison Avenue by structuring and molding their very appearance for consumption among the well trained consumer population which has been created in the USA and other parts of the so-called “developed world.”
So what am I telling you? That you better come to a understanding of how this was created, and it was created by the very system which says that the moneyed elite group that wields the most interest gets the ear. So the system, which is not “of, for, and by the people” (not by a million miles since its inception), has been set upon by another strong and predominant elite. However, that elite would get nowhere if there was not a confluence of interest which carried along other interests (see the archives of my posts on this site). What the Zionists do, is marry their goal of Eretz Yisrael to all of these “benefits,” and with their (the other interests) enrichment they seal their ideological goals.
This situation is not healthy, it has not been healthy for the American people when there has ever been a predominant elite interest in control (whether it is Zionists or an Eastern Anglo-alliance). The only way the people, both foreign and domestic, have ever gained any democratic landscape is by truly threatening these predominant interests with destruction.
So any project we envision has to address both the group(s) that have the ear and interest (as they always have) of the government – cutting them off, and a total dismantling of how this system functions. It is bigger and broader than just dismissing a predominant elite which uses the system. People have to stop looking at the way things move and have their being as merely a present aberration brought about by a single group, it is the WHOLE SYSTEM that must be addressed. It is incumbent on the people as a whole, not just some other group (like J Street, or whatever other interested group) to correct and change the current course.
I mean take if you will with me a historical world tour of what the US has been involved in, for over a hundred years. To get a breath of fresh air read something like the Open Veins Of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano if you want a taste of what has been done to these countries. Or look at the Middle east before the the Zionist project appeared, or the Continent of Africa, or the Pan Pacific atrocities – is anyone even aware of US activity in all of this and how it has all been connected to enriching elites both foreign and domestic?
Imperialism, capitalism, and empire are essentially one. There are some people who try to split up the unholy triumvirate, but it should not be done. I suppose it can be done as an academic exercise, but in real life it is impossible to split. Some have isolated one from the other as a finely honed deception, as if capitalism can be kept pure from atrocities – but they are just fooling others or are self-deceived.
It does not serve any purpose for progressive elements to make jokes about how “stupid” this administration is supposed to be. Whether you are talking about this administration, or the entire length of them since the founding of this nation – there is a design taking place. It is vicious, and tears at the fabric of the world, causing death and destruction in it’s wake. Imperialism is an intelligent, rational, but morally corrupt form of the accumulation of wealth for the few, no matter what the cost to humanity.
The history of US policy, even before WW2, is a history of violent and bloody intervention. It has not been a force for good, virtue, and democracy in the world! You have been propagandized – you have been fooled – you have been taken for the proverbial ride, there is not a more brainwashed and disconnected people in history than the American public.
Our leaders say they are dedicated to democracy, they vainly spew it from their mouths on a regular basis, but it is a lie. The US national security state has been the key force of (the last 50 years for example) overthrowing reformist democratic governments in Guatemala, Guiana, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia, Greece, Argentina, Haiti, Bolivia, and that does not even scratch the surface of all the places violated! These democratic governments have been replaced with pro-capitalist military regimes, that open up their resources, markets and cheap labor (unorganized and underpaid, intimidated by death squads), and have been forced open to US corporate investors on terms that are totally agreeable to them!
The US government has been involved in covert actions, in proxy mercenary wars (run by proteges of the School Of The America’s in some instances) – training, equipping, paying, advising, via the Pentagon, the CIA, and the US National Security State against popular revolutionary governments in Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Portugal, South Yemen, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timur, Western Sahara, Egypt, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Zaire, Figi Islands, Afghanistan ( which is another woefully lacking list). Us forces with direct aggression and invasion have attacked in recent years Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, North Korea, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, with invasion or aerial assault – once again a short list. Millions of people killed by both direct and indirect aggressive actions!
Of course, you never hear a word about this from the US corporate media, the whores and liars for the state. They become mute when they are told, and are infested by psyop’s military spokespersons – even their ranks are filled with ex-CIA and FBI cronies.
All through the Middle East, popular movements, workers movements, unions, student movements, farmer collectives – all of them destroyed and shattered by US aggression in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. In Saudi Arabia that filthy rich, corrupt family would not be able to survive if they did not have US support.
Twenty one countries in Africa have had enormous amounts of US arms, and bribes, to put in the most oppressive, retrograde, and corrupt rulers in to destroy every popular and democratic movement. Those in Africa are perfectly capable (contrary to racist propaganda, taught in US schools and spread by corporate media) of democracy, viable production, and have the ability to organize their own markets and labor – they are not allowed to do it!! Because of the destruction of the economic infrastructure, the impoverishment of the people, and the destruction of their future – they have killed the future of these nations. Drowning them in debt, tying their viability to foreign capital, and spiriting the wealth away from the people.
Anyone who dares to question these atrocious actions is called a rogue state. There is no rogue state, no terrorist movement, no communist threat, that has this kind of record. This record of murder, destruction and violation of international law solely belongs to the US leadership. This is a matter of public record, it’s just that it does not get voiced in the corrupt media in the US.
It is not good enough to just say that this is happening, we have to ask WHY is this happening. People have to know why these atrocities are going on – as long as they believe the lies that they are being protected nothing will happen. They do not care what their leaders are doing as long as they think they are protecting them. The leadership drums it into their heads that people are out to get them, the communists – someone in south/central America – someone from the moon – the terrorists, etc. I mean every year it is something else, it is really sickening. They do it because they want it all, they want to do whatever is necessary to fill the pockets of the few, the elite. They get rich while the people pay the price. The so-called war on terrorism is the elites ticket to carte blanch destruction of other countries without end – because it is a “new war,” and it is one that will “never end.”
The US government has given hundreds of billions of dollars away for foreign military aid – imagine what that could have done at home, enough to solve all the budgetary concerns in the states right now. It was aid given away to subsidize millions of foreign troops and internal security forces in more than eighty countries. Not to defend those nations from outside invasion – but to protect ruling oligarchs and corporate investors from the dangers of domestic anti-capitalistic insurgency! There has been no evidence that they have been threatened by neighboring countries, so why build up the military forces? It is to make war on their own people, their own working people. To protect those countries for rape and make the world safe for the fortune 500. These countries are opened on a global scale for exploitation from transnational corporations and investors. These forces that we support have always been used to oppress people who just want some form of egalitarian fair play.
The struggle has always been between those who think the land, the labor, the resources, the markets, the technology, and the capital of the world are there for the capital accumulation and enrichment process of the few, as opposed to those who think those things are there for the needs and the social betterment of the many. That is the struggle that goes on to this day.
If you think what I am talking about is a recent development you are sadly mistaken, in 1907 listen to what Woodrow Wilson said: “Since trade ignores national boundaries, and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market – the flag of the nation must follow him, and the doors which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions gained by finance must be safeguarded by ministers of state. Even if the sovereignty of the nations are outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained and planted in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or unused.”
So those who think the USA is being picked on better start waking up and take a look at the real world.
GAIN SOME UNDERSTANDING
v writes:
I mean take if you will with me a historical world tour of what the US has been involved in, for over a hundred years.
If I understand what you’re saying, you’re making a similar point to what Joseph Massad makes in his piece “Blaming the Lobby” :
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/op35.htm
———————
While many of the studies of the pro-Israel lobby are sound and full of awe-inspiring well- documented details about the formidable power commanded by groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies, the problem with most of them is what remains unarticulated.
[...]
The arguments put forth by these studies would have been more convincing if the Israel lobby was forcing the United States government to pursue policies in the Middle East that are inconsistent with its global policies elsewhere. This, however, is far from what happens.
————————————
I wonder if Massad is also one of “the movement’s trained seals”, in Blankfort’s
charming phrase, providing “damage control” for AIPAC.
To begin, with your question regarding my opinion of Joseph Massad, it is mixed. While I defended him when he was under attack at Columbia, I was deeply disappointed that he and Asad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese professor, comfortably based in California, whose blog is entitled what he audaciously calls himself, “The Angry Arab,” were among the first to take issue with Mearsheimer and Walt, thus providing critical cover for AIPAC and “The Lobby,” M&W’s brave effort was barely out of the starting gate.
Here is my point by point response to Prof. Massad’s article on CounterPunch:
http://dissidentvoice.org/Apr06/Blankfort11.htm and what I had to say about AbuKhalil which also appeared on CounterPunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/blankfort02242007.html
I should add that when an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in Michigan suggested, at an event where he appeared, that Massad should debate me, the illustrious professor responded that I was an “anti-semite.” When I wrote to Massad asking him if that report was true I received no reply.
As for AbuKhalil, he is an example of not wanting to read what he doesn’t want to know. Until I began working on a book I used to have an extensive email list on which was focused on articles referring to the The Lobby with an occasional one sentence intro by me. Believing at one time, before the above article was written, that he might be interested in getting the information, he quickly responded in quite a brisk fashion that I should remove him from the list and so I did.
In a previous post you clarified the difference that Chomsky had made between supporting divestment from companies doing business in Israel of which he finally (but has never very publicly) approved as opposed to a campaign targeting the Israeli economy of which he disapproved. If this does not set him apart from the Palestinian led BDS movement and place him on the side of those protecting Israel, I don’t know what more proof you can ask for besides what I noted in my article and added to on this thread.
V and Blankfort: I’ll attempt to resolve the dispute (which seems to me to be both complex and petty) between you two as simply as I can put it: what we may be witnessing is a process of Final Convergence – between the Corporatocracy that America is becoming (or is already) and highly organized lobbies such as AIPAC (which, as you both admit is just the tip of the iceberg). One cannot easily separate the two because long ago, zionism as an ideology, has infiltrated – and merged with capitalism. As one became extreme, so did the other. It’s not as simple as jews’ prominence in politics, judiciary, finance and media. Those are just interfaces. It’s more the infusion and mingling of profoundly selfish goals that seek to benefit narrow constituencies at the expense of a whole population. In other words, the over-influence of the lobby may not be a conspiracy as much as it is a the result of confluence between networks into something that embraces the well connected – and usually well heeled – few , but leaves much of the citizenry out cold.
This convergence process – which I view as a kind of DNA co-mingling between elites – may well account for the outsized influence of zionistics (israel trumps all else), something that’s been happening curiously in parallel with the ascendence of extreme capitalism (all ‘free’ enterprise, all the time; the market as god and king). Politics in the US is just one of several notable casualties of this process. trade agreements – such as nafta – supported by few citizens but all the elites is another. The pitifulness of MSM as a check and balance of power is a third example.
I do not mean to take aipac off the hook here by any means, because theirs has been the most deliberate and conscious attempt to take over as much as the reins of power as they could get access to. Their success derives from the fact that unlike the fuzzier forces of corporatism, zionists had clear focus, and because they did, could figure out ways of riding – and even co-opting – the corporate wave.
Going back to our debaters, I think that instead of expanding such intellectual capital debating the margins, perhaps it would be better if those of us concerned about the mutation growing in front of us, kept our eye on the real threat – and put all this wonderful power to good use, preferably conjuring ways to combat the golem itself.
PS had this been a real essay, I’d have to provide proper examples. So it’s just a mid evening rant, with a glass of wine behind me, and another day fighting dragons up ahead…
I haven’t been able to participate in this important discussion until now, because real life has been taking up most of my time the past couple of days, but I have been trying to follow. My tendency would be to agree with V (and Danaa – 1 glass of wine brings clarity of thought), although Blankfort’s criticism of Chomsky and the Chomskyites is quite compelling. Zionism and its subversion of government, media etc. is “only” part of a much broader phenomenon. I offer an imperfect control group: Europe in general and Italy in particular. Israel plays a far less important role here than in the US, yet the convergence of interests between right and left, finance, media, industry, etc. is virtually identical. The all-pervasive religion of economic growth (and consequent disproportionate allocation of resources to the wealthy), effective monopolies disguised as open markets, security as an excuse for internal and external control, powerful military-industrial complexes, privatisation of public resources, citizens as consumers, etc. – all supported and promoted by a sophisticated system of psychological control and engineering through mass media behavioural models and disinformation. Were Zionism to disappear off the face of the earth today, we would still be in very deep shit, and they can only kill you once. We all have our particular problems – the Palestinians certainly more than most of us – but the bottom line goes far beyond AIPAC, without minimising its power and detrimental impact on many different levels.
Reading your comment, a few more points occurred to me that I think may illuminate the unique nature of the AIPAC lobby in its American context – and kind of go to the heart of the points of contention between v and jeffrey. At the risk of belaboring points that others have ably brought out before, I see 5 distinguishing features:
1. Unlike other lobbies that tackle domestic policies, Aipac is directed by and for a foreign power, and in so much as it is highly effective, it substantially bends american foreign policy. Its prime focus is on the ME policy but because AIPAC is so capable across the board, and has successfully injected allies and enforcers into all policy branches (eg state department, foreign relations committees in Congress, etc) it could frankly bend american policy anywhere it chooses, were it to want to do that. Had AIPAC been opposed by an equally effective lobby for some other foreign entity, a balance of interests could have been achieved. But this just did not happen as no other country’s lobby comes even close, not even China’s (though that may change, I just can’t see how yet)
2. Because america IS a superpower that projects far and wide, its distorted foreign policy has global repercussions. So whereas there are aipac-like versions in other countries as well (Britain, canada and australia come to mind), the impact of those countries on global stage is limited, so what damage is done, it is more localized.
3. That AIPAC’s influence is so pervasive in all branches of the US government is a direct result of a dysfunctional electoral/governance system which give lobbies disproportionate power to affect policy and executive decisions. In this sense, AIPAC as a lobby FEEDS on the way the system is held hostage to those with the greatest means, intensity and intent. So where we see a similar confluence of elite-benefitting forces in other countries (the corporatocracy), the power of aipac in the US uniquely derives from its willingness and ability to exploit a system that lends itself all too well to just such an exploitation. I think, this is partly why it seems at times difficult to separate it from other lobbies, which is what gives a chance to the likes of Chomsky and Zunes to “muddy the water”.
On this point, were I to think of something similar in depth and scope in say, Italy, the mafia comes to mind. I bet that a side by side comparison of methods, social enabling factors and bendable government agencies, would find quite a few similarities. Basically, those powers who can grow tentacles tend to use them anywhere they can, anywhere it’s possible. After all, what’s the difference really between an outright bribe and a surreptitious campaign donation? where is the dividing line? and who’s to point it out if the media is hostage to the very ones doing the bribing? of course, even if the analogy holds, per point 2 above, Italy’s influence is limited by its modest size, so the damage is contained to a regional sphere of influence (is it? I sometimes wonder…).
4. Aipac as an iceberg. This is where the tribal aspect comes in, as well as the lack of transparency – in striking contrast to other powerful lobbies, such as wall street and health insurance. Whose donations can be listed and followed for all to see.
Shucks – it’s such an important point but I just ran out of steam – or rather, I must go tend to some flower beds (literally AND figuratively…..). Damned that making a living business – always something, just when on a roll….maybe later?
That was my point Danaa. In the US, the most visible subverter of “by the people for the people” may be AIPAC, and in Italy it may be the Mafia, but the mechanisms and many of the aims are the same (power, control, immunity). Furthermore, these two, relatively identifiable groups are not the only players in either country. In fact they may not even be the biggest or the scariest – to the extent that they can be isolated from the others.
Regarding the damage done by the Italian Mafia (particularly Camorra and Ndrangheta), it is absolutely global and certainly rivals AIPAC in the damage it causes and the dangers it poses.
Slavoj Zizek has some interesting side bars on some of the issues raised here. This article is kind of all over the place, but I liked quite a few bits of it for reasons of my own:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n14/slavoj-zizek/berlusconi-in-tehran
Some of favorite quotes:
“…Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who thought up and put into practice a ‘capitalism with Asian values’. The virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. … Now, however, the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.”
“We act as though we were free, not only accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction tell us what to do and think.”
“ Free elections’ involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them.”
And at the end, he finally gets to Berlusconi”s Italy:
“Italy an experimental laboratory where our future is being worked out. If our political choice is between permissive-liberal technocratism and fundamentalist populism, Berlusconi’s great achievement has been to reconcile the two, to embody both at the same time. It is arguably this combination which makes him unbeatable, at least in the near future: the remains of the Italian ‘left’ are now resigned to him as their fate. This is perhaps the saddest aspect of his reign: his democracy is a democracy of those who win by default, who rule through cynical demoralisation.”
You spelled it out very well, Danaa. The comparison with the Mafia is actually a good one since prior to AIPAC, going back to 1945, the then relatively loosely organized zionists were mobilized by Ben-Gurion to break American laws as well as an embargo to illegally ship guns, machinery to make more guns, as well as explosives to the Jews in Palestine and this has been romanticized by Leonard Slater in “The Pledge.”
Since that time when they have needed to bend or break US laws to do what Israel wants to be done there is evidence that its loyal followers in the US have not hesitated to do it.
Thanks for the Zizek article, Danaa. It’s been quoted in what’s left of our “free” press, and has been making the rounds here. Zizek’s analysis is right on target, and the idea of Italy as a socio-political laboratory is far more important than most people outside of Italy think (happy just to laugh at the Italian “clown”). There is a small but growing movement in Italy (rooted largely in the work of Serge Latouche) that hasn’t exactly given up on the macro-political disaster area, but has been focusing on the creation and strengthening of local community, as an alternative and challenge to the existing order. We’re fighting, but also hunkering down.
Jeffrey, credit for the inspiration goes to Shmuel, who knows the dastardly goings on in and spreading out of Italy far better than I – a merely quick understudy….
I signed on tonight after a few — OK, a lot, — of drinks with friends. I am in no condition to make sense of the ink I thought I looked at. But I am going to get to it tomorrow.
It think a lot of important things have been written.
I think two things have happened. The keyhole was Chomsky. But the rooms beyond have expanded and we’re using keyhole language to describe the rooms.
at least the facts about JFKennedy is not just in our heads, They were powerful enough then to just role over the truths of what policies the president kennedy was trying to enforce and they offed a usa president…probably the very last one who tried to change the evils in the world. Right of return and the foriegn allignment of the aipac group which was the zionist group ..but then changed their names. PUT that all into the public view to see and watch how many brainwashed people there really are in the zusa
If you want further proof in regard to the Palestinians exploitation, go to the third podcast on Alternative Information site at this link and listen to it for yourself (even Neve Gordon is a participant) –
<a href="http://www.alternativenews.org/english/2234-audio-of-seminar.html"ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION ESTATES
Several posters have correctly pointed out that the Zionist network is part of the larger problem of US imperialism and that absent the former, the US would still be engaged in carrying out actions that are detrimental to the well being of this planet and its people as it was doing so before Zionism reared its ugly hydra head.
While this should be obvious, making this argument tends to detract from the role that its proponents have played in enhancing the success of those actions while reducing and, on occasions neutralizing domestic resistance which otherwise would not be bound by any similar restraints since there is nothing that begins to approach the Zionist network and its influence on American society across the entire political spectrum.
This was particularly evident in the struggles against US interventionist policies in Central American and against the apartheid regime in South Africa when the loudest of those groups criticizing the US role ran and hid when asked to condemn what Israel was doing in both regions. I also wrote on that issue for Left Curve and a slightly abridged version appeared in the CounterPunch book,”The Politics of Anti-Semitism.” http://www.leftcurve.org/LC27WebPages/IsraelLobby.html
Absent any but marginal criticism or even mention of its existence by Chomsky and his followers, Zunes, and Norman Finkelstein, the power of the Zionist network grew substantially over the years to the point where the foreign policy of the GW Bush administration came to resemble the agenda of PNAC (Project for a New American Century).
This was no surprise because the administration of the former became populated with leading members of the latter and hence we had the second Gulf War and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein which was an essential item on the PNAC “to do” list. That it was also on the “to do” list of the same neocons who had advised Israeli PM Netanyahu back in 1996 (”Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”) was, of course, no coincidence.
A critical mistake made by opponents to the war, (again thanks to the myopia of the Chomskyites) was to separate the neocons from the rest of the Zionist network which also pushed for war. The result, in short, was that the 2006 mid-term elections which produced a Democratic majority in Congress on the back of what was perceived to be an anti-war vote had the perverse result of bringing to power the most pro-Israel Congress in US history, that is, until the election of 2008.
Taking a look at who was appointed to the key Foreign Affairs Committee chair (Howard Berman) where all the odious resolutions supporting Israeli originate and its subchairs dealing with the Middle East and South Asia (Gary Ackerman) , Europe (Robert Wexler) , the Western Hemisphere (Elliot Engel) and Terrorism, Proliferation and Trade (Brad Sherman), it is clear that hardcore Zionists are in key positions to ask how high when Israel says “Jump.”
Those appointments were made by Nancy Pelosi whose rise to political power and the House Speakership stemmed from her publicly stated unconditional loyalty to Israel as much as her ability to raise funds in the Bay Area.
It should also be noted that the head of the 2006 Democratic Senate campaign committee was another Israel-firster Charles Schumer and in the Congressional races it was none other than Rahm Emanuel. As Maxine Waters, one of but two members of the Congression Black Caucus that had the temerity to vote against HR 867 (opposing the Goldstone Report) pointed out in a largely ignored statement, it was Emanuel who selected those Blue Dog Democrats to run for office in 2006, the very ones who have helped to gut the health care legislation but whose commitment to Israel is rock solid. This is but one example of how the Zionist network has undermined what little is left of American democracy to the detriment of the public’s welfare. And it’s been that wayfor years. By focusing on the “big picture” as Chomsky has done for decades and ignoring the critical elements that make up that picture, we are in a situation today that seems to defy change.
A glaring example of that could be found in the San Francisco Bay Area where the “leadership” of the anti-war movements, ANSWER, UFPJ and the various ad hic coalitions over the years have focused their attentions and criticism on the White House while literally ignoring Pelosi as well as the late and not lamented Tom Lantos who represented part of San Francisco and was generally considered Israel’s number one man in the House. The reasons given privately were that both were the favorites of the SF Labor Council.
If Chomsky, the most influential individual in the left spectrum had directed people’s attention to what they could do locally in their Congressional districts, rather than concentrating on the elites in Washington who were beyond the reach of protesters in the streets that excuse would not have been acceptable. In sum, Chomsky “made us spectators when history demands that we be participants,” as I wrote in an exchange with him in the old NY National Guardian in 1991 when we were on friendly terms.
Finally, is it not curious that Chomsky’s reputation and public exposure have grown in inverse proportion to that of the “anti-war movement which, at the moment, barely exists? Of course, there are other factors, but that undeniable aspect of present day reality is something to consider.
Jeffrey – it is my recollection that a number of people did attempt to make this connection public and were savaged by the usual suspects for “antisemitic” suggestions of dual loyalty and using “neocon” as code for “Jew.” As if, for the most part, they weren’t.
Well Mr. Blankfort, that was a really good argument for what you consider the failures of the “Chomskyites,” and no one can deny the specifics that you gave as examples. The only difficulty there is with the argument is that you chide these failures because “the larger problem of US imperialism and that absent the former,” and than you begin to talk about the systemic activity of American Imperialism. You go on to say -
“If Chomsky, the most influential individual in the left spectrum had directed people’s attention to what they could do locally in their Congressional districts, rather than concentrating on the elites in Washington who were beyond the reach of protesters in the streets that excuse would not have been acceptable.”
Yet your whole argument shows these same individuals you talk about embedded deeply in the system of American Imperialism –
“Foreign Affairs Committee chair – subchairs dealing with the Middle East and South Asia – Europe – the Western Hemisphere – Terrorism, Proliferation and Trade” etc.
You say they can be reached on a local level, but when this same local level addressed these individuals zero happened, this activity was present and your implication that says it did not take place is not true. Maybe you mean that while they addressed these things people should have said – “you damn Israel-first Jewish Zionist,” than maybe it would have been effective? Hell Mr. Blankfort, people cannot even get a glance about minor issues by addressing their local representatives, and you want them to stem the major thrust of imperialism by saying they are Zionists? I would say that this system is meant to isolate the people from their own government, that representation at this juncture is a joke (even though you strongly invoke it) – the system is not set up to listen to the people local or national. You imply that something works when it does not.
You are fond of saying this is all the fault of Chomsky and his sidekicks, but miss that fact that it just might be the will of the people that is the problem, and their determination to continue and turn up the pressure (of course this is hard to do when the media turns on and off at the behest of the status quo and moneyed interest – in fact it virtually ignores the public protests by not even covering them, something that was not done previously and it is difficult to get a ground swell when you can hear crickets in regard to the activities). You also bypass the complete electoral charade with the change magician Obama (who has done nothing but increase troops but have them walk “next door”, have the media virtually shut off on what is happening) and how people were disarmed by placing their hope in that ineffective windbag. However, we can just chalk it up to the “myopic” view of Chomsky (I have always wondered how you get myopia from looking at the entire system).
You can rest assured Mr. Blankfort, that nothing has ever moved this wretched system except the fear of losing it all. This time their fear will be founded, and it won’t be just a means of pressure for change either local or national, the fuel of discontent is there and building like never before (just in case you did not notice) and the moment must be seized to take it away from fascists and people who are on the dead end street of mere reform.
V…, it’s obvious that you’re more interested in winning an argument than in finding productive ways to move forward. This is another result of too much Chomsky et al, as I can personally attest, being a former “Chomskyite” myself. You seem to be here to just convince everyone of your worldview. You didn’t address any of the specifics Jeffrey brought to your attention; rather, you just whitewashed the entire list of well-documented facts by going on about the evils of imperialism, of which we’re all well aware, thank you. You present absolutely no concrete evidence for your positions.
You say they can be reached on a local level, but when this same local level addressed these individuals zero happened, this activity was present and your implication that says it did not take place is not true.
Where is the evidence for this?
For those reading who feel further isolated and helpless after reading v…’s comments (much as reading Chomsky can leave one feeling at first greatly informed, then ultimately completely helpless), please know that local officials can be reached through coordinated efforts and, of course, money, as the Zionist Power Structure has proven time and time again. If every single person in a given Congressional district wrote a short letter to their representative indicating that they would not be voting for the person unless he or she changed his or her votes vis a vis U.S. taxpayer funding for Israel, and with the note included a check for $10 or $20, I can assure you we would start to see change.
We can coordinate and get going, or we can write letters to our editors and come on blogs like this and moan about imperialism. The choice is ours.
(I don’t mean to entirely dismiss the idea of writing to newspapers – it’s important).
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://www.cnionline.org/
“V…, it’s obvious that you’re more interested in winning an argument than in finding productive ways to move forward. ”
Oh, is that so Dan? I think it is more apparent what takes place when someone is an author on a site as opposed to an average poster, easy to side with bequeathed authority, but whatever.
However Dan, lets cut to the chase. What you and Jeffrey propose is that this is still a working system, through normal channels of influence – totally ignoring the bankrupt nature of the beast. However, you keep writing letters and sending small checks, get a few thousand people to do it, see what happens. Than the next discussion we can can have is the one about the failure of the” Blankfortites.”
What I believe is occurring here is a deep undercurrent, both of you (Jeffrey and Dan) do not want to let loose the delusion of some functioning system that has never existed. I am clueless as to what you’re major malfunction is, perhaps you think there is a chimera of an “American Dream” (American Scream is more descriptive). I am not adverse to some of the things mentioned at the inception of this nation (the only difference is that I mean it for all of the people, rather than just the few that the “founding fathers” meant it for) –
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
You two, even after all that has happened, do not know when to apply this plea (and I do it not being any right wing patriotic die-hard). Quite frankly, not even what Chomsky recommends either.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?
Here is further evidence of the far-reaching tentacles of the Zionist Power Structure: the debate that never happened between Jeffrey Blankfort and Mitchell Plitnick of Jewish Voices for Peace. JVP, as an alleged peace group, would presumably be against all forms of imperialism. Not so, as evidenced by the “peace” group leader’s love for Israel.
This is just one of innumerable examples of how the Zionist Power Structure is much larger than just another group that happens to be aligned with, and gaining from, U.S. imperialist interests. Peace groups are by definition against war and imperialism and the funding for it. Yet in the U.S., almost every single one makes an exception for Israel. This cannot be explained by the theory that the Israel “Lobby” is just another group that happens to benefit by being aligned with U.S. imperial interests. These peace groups are against all forms of U.S. imperialism. Except, apparently, when it comes to Israel.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/iraq-pal-israel.html#debate
I cannot disagree with your comments about our electoral system which was designed for 13 states and even then to keep those without property from ever taking power. That it puts the average citizen at a greater distance from her or his ostensible representative than in any other Western government cannot be argued. In fact, as I told students, when I was teaching, the Democratic and Republican parties were somewhat of a fiction, not real parties in the sense that they are in say Italy or France where you find their offices in local neighborhoods.
To prove my point, I would tell them to try and find an office for either party in the entire San Francisco Bay area. All they came up with was telephone numbers with answering machines at the other end.
That does not mean, however, that the system is impervious to grass roots action, and that members of Congress are not susceptible to local pressure if intelligently applied on any issue. It worked in the 80s, when Reagan was president, to get Congress to vote against aid to the Contras which led, of course, to the Iran-Contra scandal in which Israel’s role remained unspoken.
The problem is that what passes for a progressive movement in this country, or particularly its leadership, has not made a serious attempt to do that with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Given his stature in within the movement, Chomsky’s role in that is undeniable but I am not trying to put all or most of the blame on his shoulders. The movement’s leadership has a long and sordid history of cozying up to local Democratic politicians and politically bankrupt union officials which rarely if ever catchs the attention of the movement’s rank and file. This may be attributed to the relatively low level of consciousness and anti-intellectualism that permeates American society across the board in which people tend more to operate from their gut than from their head. It is also a lot easier to focus anger on the criminal elites in Washington when opposing them requires no sacrifice.
The irony, as you mention, is that the only serious political action being taken today is by the ultra-right wing of the Republican party whose public talking heads have fed a potentially dangerous populist backlash that began with the immigration issue and has grown by leaps and bounds with the bailing out of the banks and Wall Street that began with Bush, reached full steam under Obama and has been carried over into the campaign by the “know-nothings” against “socialized medicine.”
You suggest that my example of how members of Congress who have a history of putting pro-Israel issues first chair the House Foreign Services Committe and several of its key subcommittee chairs illustrates how “embedded” they are in defending US imperialism. Although there is truth in what you say since Israel has obviously enjoyed the benefits of US imperialism, I will argue that that is not their primary interest. Rather, those members of Congress are part and parcel of the global lobbying arm of the organized Jewish community in the US which is primarily directed by the American Jewish Committee, which could be said to serve as the State Dept. for the Zionist network.
It has institutes that are devoted to lobbying activities in Latin America, Africa and Brussells and its officials meet regularly on Israel’s behalf with the heads of state and their highest ranking military officials and entertain them when they are in the US. None of this is ever reported in the mainstream media but it readily available on its website. Moreover, they are just one of a number of Jewish tax-exempt organizations that routinely send public officials on week-long all expense paid trips to Israel where they meet with top officials of the Israeli government, tour Yad Vashem and Masada, and return home, thoroughly indoctrinated and under considerable obligation to their hosts. The American Jewish Committee’s travel program is called Project Interchange and it largely targets people of color who have influence in their communities here like Judge Sonia Sotomayor who made the trip a few years ago.
Even then, the Zionist network realized that it had to woo the burgeoning Latino community with its huge voting bloc to Israel’s side and it has been very successful in doing so. When was the last time or even the first time anyone reading this heard a discussion or even a report on that?
Let me say something because it may not be apparent Mr. Blankfort, in no way am I trying to say that the exposes you have brought to light are worthless – particularly in Zionisms activity and stranglehold on the US government. That would not only be an incorrect assessment, but a lie.
The only thing I am doing here is discussing the nature of the challenge and what it will take to stop the current course. In fact, I would be interested in your proposals of “local pressure if intelligently applied,” I just do not want a repeat of the never ending saga of local activity which amounts to nothing. The genius of an effective local remedy is in replicating it and creating a national ground swell, so effectiveness does not need to be measured by a hard and fast rule of local / national. However, the nature of what is addressed, and this strand alone, causes some concern.
I have long asserted, in reference to your statement –
“…the global lobbying arm of the organized Jewish community in the US which is primarily directed by the American Jewish Committee…”
– a course of direct on the floors of these organizations, toe to toe if you please. Something a little more aggressive than just occasionally holding signs outside of stated meeting, etc.
I just wanted to make this clear (above). The primary difference between Zionism and its opposition is state apparatus, not only access to it but control of it. In fact, it is the same advantage during the Mandate period and afterward, that caused the demise of the Palestinian people. What we do not want is a repeat in the states of the same situation (of what happened in Palestine). I am convinced that it is the unity of all parties concerned in Palestine (West Bank, inside Israel, Jerusalem, scattered diaspora) in many acts of resistance is the winning ticket, and I don’t think it is any different for the average American that wants to stop the course of this current system here.
I believe we have exhausted this thread, but before I depart, I would point that most of the information that I have posted here are not state secrets. What has been almost entirely lacking on the part of those opposed to Zionism is the recognition that unless those who express their solidarity with the Palestinians come to realize that their fight has to be in the US that the front line of Zionism is the organized Jewish establishment and that they are ready and willing to take on its organizations in a creative and public way, the situation both in Israel/Palestine as well as here will only get worse.
But, as it is, one will not even find the issue of the Israel Lobby/Zionist Network on the program of any of the many conferences that have been held here by either Palestinian-Americans or their supporters. That is the disgusting truth. Quite apart from problems caused by closet zionists in their midst, they suffer from the fact that the political line of the organized opposition to Zionism in this country has been set by various varieties of self-styled Marxists, Trotskyists whose political viewpoints do not allow consideration of the role played by domestic pressure groups, regardless of their size. The same problem one finds when listening to the talking heads besides Chomsky and Zunes, such as Tariq Ali, Phyllis Bennis and Norman Finkelstein, all, let’s call them for what they are, “Zionist Lobby Deniers.” An illustrious crew to go up against. And that’s just on OUR side.
Jeffrey, thank you for all the work you do on this issue.
Thanks Dan and to all of you who have expressed your support for what I have been trying in some crazy, stubborn way to accomplish.
Comments on this entry are closed.